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f-nodragonart · 3 years

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Worldbuilding, briefly

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how I approach worldbuilding in my own work, and how worldbuilding appears in the media that I admire, and just want to share some thoughts

so, y’know how lot of writers admit that it feels like their characters end up writing themselves? hijacking the creators’ brains and acting out their own lives? I feel the same can be said for settings, if they’re given the chance to breathe freely

suffice to say, a setting should feel dynamic-- a living, changing thing that affects (and is affected by) characters/plot/etc., and has solid internal logic. I think the two central concepts which make for good worldbuilding, in this respect, are:

a sense of history

holistic integration with all other story elements

History

when a setting only exists in the present moment, it comes off flat and static-- merely a cardboard set-piece that could fall over at a gust of too-strong wind (or critical thought). settings need history to feel vibrant and alive, just as any individual character needs history to inform their actions and beliefs

essentially, good worldbuilding answers the question of, “How did we get here?”

in practice, having a sense of history helps a great deal in predicting and designing how a setting looks at the present. think of it like following branching pathways back to the source-- the main divergence(s) from real-life. as humans living on planet Earth in our particular sociocultural environments, whatever we create will automatically borrow from what we’re familiar with, so it helps to track down where we may be subconsciously starting at. once we find that initial divergence, it’s a simple matter of following logical stepping-stones from that source, up to the present point

thus, you can break the broad question of, “How did we get here?” down into smaller, more manageable chunks by carefully tracking along a path of history

some examples of what I’m talking about here:

need an explanation for the current geopolitical climate? trace back the basic history of all the countries in question, follow it back to basic sources (fighting over resources/territory, power/ideological struggles, etc.), to figure out why the geopolitical landscape looks as it does today. want to figure out how a particular culture came to their current beliefs/practices? look back to the history of their land-- what resources do they use, what ecological cycles impact them, how much cultural overlap do they have with their neighbors, and how does this impact what they most cherish in themselves and others? want to figure out how/why a creature exists in your world? map their evolutionary taxonomy and ecological relationships back to a point that connects to the other creatures on your planet-- where exactly did they “start” out and what pushed them to evolve the way the did?

most of these sub-questions will likely never be directly answered in your story, and you don’t even need to have detailed answers for most of them. but trust me when I say that YOU knowing the answers (even answers that you may consider broad and simple) will affect how you craft the present setting and its sense of history

of course, the level of divergence from real-life will impact how much reworking a given setting needs in order to feel self-sustaining and whole. a world where political history diverges from real-life only a few years previous is going to have different needs than a story whose very life-forms are built on different molecular structures than Earth life, for example. it can be intimidating in some cases, but if you’re willing to put in the work and research for it, you can make some pretty incredible discoveries

Holistic Integration

I’ll fully admit, Folding Ideas’ video on Ludonarrative Dissonance is what rly got me thinking abt this topic (and more deeply abt my own thoughts on stylistic/tonal consistency). his central idea about how we can approach story elements as separate or integrated rly clarified some of my vague opinions/feelings on certain media

essentially, worldbuilding shouldn’t be treated as separate from other story elements like plot and themes, if you want it to work holistically in your world. otherwise, your worldbuilding may start telling a different story from the plot/themes/etc. you’re consciously trying to craft. in fact, I’ll even argue that it’s impossible to treat worldbuilding separately, on a fundamental level

let me focus specifically on themes for a moment when I say, humans don’t create objectively. we don’t craft worlds or stories without automatically inserting our own beliefs and ideas into the settings. to say that a setting is free of theme in particular is highly arrogant, imo, and a sign that the creator likely thinks their own views are simply the “norm”. a magic system will reflect a creator’s views on souls and energy and existence; creature designs will reveal the aesthetic and types of animals a creator gravitates towards; various political systems will reflect a creator’s background and assumptions about the power/morality of said systems

in this way, I think it’s downright impossible to craft a world without themes in the first place. so it just makes sense to recognize and lean into that, while crafting the more deliberate themes of a story

but even if we do assume, for sake of argument, that worlds COULD be crafted objectively, I just don’t understand why they would? why/how a world functions the way it does will affect the ways characters move through that world, and how they experience their arcs and subsequent themes. like, it’s genuinely baffling for me to imagine crafting a story without every element organically weaving into and affecting one another, it just doesn’t feel like it would even work

because when an element of the story doesn’t exist in service of the other elements around it, that element becomes a useless distraction rather than an asset. folks complain all the time about useless characters-- people that take up precious screentime without moving any other element (plot, character arcs, tone, etc.) forward. yet the same can absolutely be said for settings-- settings which just exist as spaces to set characters while they experience a plot, separate from that given setting. when these settings don’t touch any other element of the story in any meaningful way (or vis-versa), they become distracting and useless, and ultimately destabilize/undermine the other elements

like, when we’re told a setting is rough and dangerous, but the characters that live there don’t act like it (no street smarts, no sense of caution towards their environment, no sense of where they are and how to get where they need to quickly--), it undermines the reliability of the characters’ personalities/arcs. when we’re told a setting is full of casual magic which affects everything, yet we’re shown a 1:1 picture of real life with no sign of how people using magic, how tech may integrate with magic, how magic affects aesthetic or history, it distracts from and undermines the fantasy/escapism. when we’re explicitly told that a story’s themes center around defying expectations/roles, yet the setting we’re supposed to root for only reinforces pre-defined roles and rules, it completely undermines any of the deliberate themes the creator intends. when we’re following a plot through various environments meant to showcase the variety of culture and aesthetic a world has cultivated, but we’re merely shown variations on a very similar theme, it’s distracting and boring

worldbuilding should not feel like a dissonant piece from other story elements. worldbuilding should harmonize with and enhance all other story elements, and those elements in turn should enhance the worldbuilding. while it absolutely is useful to tackle or talk about certain elements separately (I mean, I am taking a whole post to discuss worldbuilding, specifically), ultimately a good story is a whole whose parts can’t be fully removed from one another

Internal Logic

you may be wondering why I have yet to make any real mention of “logic” up to this point, since that’s how most folks analyze worldbuilding. hell, even I usually judge worlds based on how well they stick to their “internal logic”. but I think focusing on a vague sense of “logic” puts the cart before the horse, so to speak

if you don’t know the history of a particular setting, how can you track any cultural/political/etc. logic to its source? to say that logic “pre-establishes” certain rules is to admit that there is a sense of history there in the first place, thus specific events preceding the present text which explain why the present exists as it does. like, the big bang is a historical event that’s set up the logic of our entire universe, the same way a war sets up the political logic of a nation going forward. thus, history precedes logic

but before history can set precedents in worldbuilding, it’s really the other story elements which decide what history is important enough to establish in the first place. a story whose themes center around biological imperatives and ecology will need worldbuilding with a strong biological history; a story whose plot centers on political intrigue will need a world with a strong political history; a story with characters ranging across all different cultures will need to establish history for those cultures, etc. you aren’t obligated to establish the history of every single aspect of a setting, merely the parts that are actually relevant to the rest of the narrative in some way

this is how the internal logic of a story is established: by knowing exactly what history needs to be established to enhance the other story elements. logic should organically follow, once you have a strong grasp of history and holistic integration

-Mod Spiral

#worldbuilding #mod spiral #me: *holds worldbuilding/lore/specevo* I just think it's neat :)

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quant-um-fizzx · 5 years

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Swept Away

Synopsis: Bucky feels strangely drawn to a woman at a Halloween party thrown at the Avengers compound.

Bucky Barnes x Reader. Except - not? There’s really no way to explain this upfront without giving the whole thing away. It is a nameless female character but it’s also not “fictional you” as a reader because I could not get that to work within this mystery concept.

Warnings: Smut, I’m calling this Dub-Con (but only in the sense that things might not be what they seem) Language, mild Angst, an attempt to be eerie.

Word Count: about 3000

This is for @sherrybaby14‘s Fall Into You writing challenge from the prompt: “Halloween Party”

It’s loud like parties always are and Bucky welcomes a reason not to join in their bickering, no matter how playful.

“It’s the principle, really.” Steve says, sniffs whatever Thor tipped into his glass this time.

“Yes, that’s my point. Thank you. Don’t make a rule and then break it.” Rhodey gripes, adjusting the gold construction paper shooting star taped to the center of his shirt.

“I believe the rule as stated was ‘don’t spend more than $10 on a superhero costume.’ I spent zero dollars on this ensemble.” Tony gestures at the Mark 5 armor he’s wearing. “What we need is a neutral party analysis, who will then concur I am winning at not spending.”

Clint twirls an empty beer bottle between his fingers. “Look, I’m not saying that it’s cheating to come as yourself...”

“I sense a ‘but’ in there somewhere,” Nat says.

“I sense a butt right here,” Rocket chimes in. He’s dressed no differently, having openly complained he didn’t see the point and costumes sound more like some of the stupid shit Quill would be into.

Steve flicks the deep red bed sheet pinned to the back of his shirt, making it swoosh around his feet, casually flipping what no one needs to know is Thor’s actual hammer. The group chatters on as he surveys the room, pausing when he spies Bucky in a far corner, his arm slipping artfully around the waist of a very pretty woman in a white post-Edwardian nightdress. She seems familiar but he can’t really get a good look at her and, considering Bucky’s clearly enthralled with her, he doesn’t think he should be trying to get a better look. They appear deep in conversation, the woman’s hair falling across her face like a curtain. It’s intimate, the way they lean in, and suddenly Steve feels like he’s intruding. He coughs and returns his attention back to the current debate.

***

She curls further into his side, burrows her chilled shoulder down where he’s warm and snug. Her head falls back to look up at him with doe-eyes. He gets lost in them, irises so peaceful and deep, dark like still waters, like starless night sky. She runs her hand over the blue near-ancient canvas stretched across his chest, traces the white star with an elegant digit.

He leans in, almost captures her lips. Forgets it’s not private. Like there’s no one else. Like there shouldn’t ever be. She offers her neck, bends so far back that it’s a bit unnatural, but he brushes the thought away. He shakes his head, tries to recall something. It seems important. Scratching at his brain.

He stops, pulls back. His eyes pinch. He doesn’t know this woman. Doesn’t know anything about her. But he wants to. He wants to know her. Maybe that’s what he couldn’t remember. “What’s…” Runs his nose along her cheek. “What’s your name, Darlin’?”

Did she already tell him that? Did he already ask?

***

“Tell me again, how is coming as yourself and wearing your actual multi-million dollar suit not breaking the rules?” Nat saunters across the circle, grabbing a drink off the bar.

“I’m just saying, that since you were the guy who made the rule, it’s kinda weird that you’re the one breaking it.” Clint sets his bottle down with a clink that sounds a bit more irritated than he appears.

“Point of order: Cap lent his costume to two people.” Tony feigns deep offense, gestures toward Scott.

“What? This? Nah, I hand-sewed this baby myself for Comic-Con years ago.” Scott stands proudly, hands heroically on his hips.

Tony’s eyes roll back into his brain. “That still leaves Barnes and his circa WW2 Star-Spangled-ness? Care to explain the museum piece over there and the clothes he’s wearing while you’re at it?”

***

She smiles softly, delicate. Her features unbothered despite that it seems he’s forgotten her. Goes up on her toes and places cool fingertips on his fevered lips. Pushes her own together in a silent hush and he feels it in his gut - feels himself give in to something more than gravity pulling him down, twisting. He leans in toward those lotus-petal painted lips, almost...almost.

She pulls back just a little. Smile shy, but somehow not. A little knowing. Knows a secret she’s going to show him. He doesn’t like secrets; he’s kept too many, he’s been too many. Doesn’t trust them.

But he wants to know hers. Wants her. Needs to see where this leads.

Her fingers entwine with his, pull him fluidly toward the exit door.

And he forgets. Forgets they are leaving a brightly lit room, forgets there are people who might miss him, forgets everyone, everything but the promise of losing himself in her.

***

Steve shrugs. “Bucky asked how much trouble it would be to borrow it. Turns out it wasn’t much trouble,” he says, pulling his eyes away from the door Bucky had disappeared through.

“Excellent!” Tony claps. “Now that we can all agree the utilization of old suits is not a budget factor, let’s discuss what I am sure is a fascinating reason why Wilson here jumped on the opportunity to dress as a defunct Russian asset.”

Sam scoffs and pretends to smooth the aluminum foil wrapped around his left arm. “The Winter Soldier? Nah, my arm’s just dressed as a baked potato.”

***

Her fingers swim up under his shirt and along each rib like organ keys. He’s draped over her, touching every inch, body covering her like a blanket, a pall. Their kisses swell and he dives when her mouth parts for him. At first a shallow exploration, his warm pink tongue skimming inside until she, impatient and sudden, curls into his mouth and catches it.

The party and the lights feel a million leagues away. The sounds muffled and distant as if they’ve sneaked off to skinnydip not go necking in a backseat.

Lips and teeth banging, urgent. She’s under and around him all at once. Calling him to claim her like the open sea.

Hot breath rushes from him as he pulls away and she floats up to follow but then settles back flat along the seat, smiling up at him. Hair splayed out around her face in waves and her face glowing like the moon.

It registers with him that they’re in a parking lot, in the back of a car. It seems like new information, as if he had just realized. Must have been too busy kissing her, touching her because he doesn't know how they got here. Doesn’t remember clambering into the car. It’s large and old. A Studebaker? A Streamliner?

No, that can’t be right.

***

“Hey, Mr. Stark. Cool Costume. Ned dressed as Mark 5 in 3rd grade.” Peter scurries up, acting slightly winded, as most of the crowd shoots daggers at him. “It, uh, it looks way better on you though.” He looks hopefully around, checking if that fixed whatever he’d said wrong.

Shuddering, as if he’s just recalled what he’d come to say, Peter looks back quickly over his shoulder at the doorway Bucky and the woman walked out. “That’s all kinds of creepy. Just like that urban legend, right?”

“When it comes to questionable bed partners, I am spectacularly aware that I have no room to talk. But what is the deal with Steve’s pal and Coraline?” Tony gestures over his shoulder. “There’s a line between cute and creepy. But that one just runs a bit too realistic as The Woman in White.”

Steve looks between them and the door again. “The what?”

***

He presses his lips to her neck. Runs his tongue up a long trail to the shell of her ear.

Soft. He’s never felt anything so soft in his hands. Breasts like silt, spilling under his palms. Soft every place he’s hard. He’s so hard, aching with it. Cock straining, reducing him down to that near-pain desire. He wants to bury himself between her thighs, drown himself inside her.

She pulls the gown free from her shoulders and it pools around her. She arches up to him. Offers. Urges.

Insists.

He licks his lips and wants more. Already can’t remember what she tastes like, saltwater or sweetened honey? He kisses her again, soft press against his tongue and he’s thirsty. Parched. Dives in for more but each touch leaves him wanting more. More heat. More water. More...air.

She’s under him and begging him.

“Take me.”

Rouge tongue runs over chapped lips as he comes up for a breath. “You don’t have to ask me twice, Sugar.” He rasps, lungs seized up in want.

Her hands dig into blue shoulders and her legs wrap around red and white stripes, clasping behind the small of his back. Pulling him down to her, pulling him under.

Fog coats the windows. Their want dripping in rivulets down the glass. The air is thick with it, clings to his lungs, each breath heavy, laboring.

“Hang on babe,” he pulls back, heart racing gulping down air. “Whew. Huh. Wow.” He looks around, squints, trying to get his bearings. “Gimme a sec, okay?”

She smiles again, sweet as rain. Shakes her head slowly, hair swirling around, a tangle of moss on the seat. Locks her hands behind his neck and digs her heels into his thighs.

She reaches down inside his pants and draws him out, a whisper caress on his length. Barely there, but possessive. Hers.

“Take me.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” he gasps, breathless. Gasps as strokes him. “I’ll make it good, so good for you.”

He wants her. Wants her like air. “Can’t wait. Gotta have you - now.”

She flips him over, deft like he weighs nothing and he floats beneath her. Straddles his hips and anchors him, grinding onto his cock. Her head falls back again, does that deep swoon to expose the marble column of her neck. And he feels again like he needs to stop her, to catch her head and stop her. To cradle her skull.

***

“I can tell you, Cap,” Sam says, leaning in conspiratorially, “but you and I are going to have a long chat later about how you manage to interact with other humans every day and still stay so damned isolated.”

Steve gives Sam a withering look but motions for him to continue.

“The story goes, there’s a ghost that wanders the area. She fell for a guy years ago and got abandoned. The story changes in the details. Sometimes she died in childbirth, jumped off a bridge, whatever. But one detail is always the same: heartbreaker was shipping off to war the next day. So, she, you know, ‘did it for her country.’ But the guy never comes back and she dies, waiting for him. Wandering the road leading to where they were last together.”

“Huh, that’s super weird,” Scott says, throwing back what he immediately learns is heavily-spiked cider, his eyes going wide on the burn.

“Ghost stories are weird by definition, Scott” Nat says, licking the rim of her glass.

“No,” Scott coughs, throwing back two more cider shots in quick succession. “I mean it’s weird because I picked her up on the road coming here. She asked all slow and dramatic about her soldier - I guess she is just super into Halloween - and I was gonna call her an Uber but then she said she was looking for Stark’s thing.”

Steve is incredibly done with this entire conversation. Peter, the exact opposite, presses for more info. “Which road?”

Sam shrugs dismissively. “The one by the old fairgrounds.”

Scott chokes on a fourth shot. “Down in Queens.”

“You mean the fairgrounds where Stark held the first Expo?” Steve say, unblinking. All fun gone.

Suddenly, Steve knows where he’s seen her. It’s just been a very, very long time since 1943.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Tony says, eyes locked on Steve.

“Are you saying that I picked up a...a... ghost and rode with her for an hour? Guys...guys, I need to sit down.” Scott wobbles, hand shooting out to steady himself on Rocket. Rocket steps aside.

Before Scott’s ass hits the floor, everyone else is out the door.

***

She sinks down around him, fluid and silk. Her hands press into his chest. His warm muscles tense and brown nipples pebble in her touch’s wake.

As she rides him, the night’s light behind her makes her hair look like a halo floating out around her. A thought breaks through that she looks familiar - he does know her - but she’s just one more thing he lost along the way.

He wants to tell her they can make this new, start over, whatever went wrong before, he can fix it and it wasn’t his fault and didn’t mean to leave her and please forgive him because he didn’t mean to toss her away.

Wait.

Wait...

He recalls a flash of her face, dry and bright. She’s looking up at him in his brown uniform. Red car hovering on a stage behind her. Then, as suddenly as it came, the picture’s gone, popped like a burst bubble.

***

Steve and Sam are first out the back, toward the dock. Peter has a legit meltdown but still manages to check every car. They’re all empty.

“Cap! There!” Clint shouts, pointing out at the water.

The middle of the goddamn lake.

In the goddamn, deathly still, dark lake.

***

She glides over him and it’s so desperate and slippery. Everything urgent when all he’d really wanted is to take his time. To do this right. Bring her some daisies - or, no, she'd like lilies he thinks dumbly and runs his hands up to cup her face. He wants to show her a good time before his ships out in the morning and see if she has a different friend for Steve.

The guilt is raw and burrowing in his heart he can’t shake it but he doesn’t quite know why.

Maybe that’s her secret. What she wanted to show him.

Maybe it’s that she deserves better than this back seat in a parked car outside Stark’s expo. He starts to say sorry but is silenced with another watery kiss.

Burning starts low in his back, the building pull low in his spine, and he wants to come. Desperate for his end.

Maybe it’s too much because she can have it all she can have him and he’s not scared - but a small spark fires some forgotten place in his mind, that he is scared - that maybe he should be.

Sliding over him, bend and rock. Tight. He surges up into her again and again. His release looms, vision tunneled down to her. Nothing but her and the sweet hold, the way she’s anchored him down after so many years adrift.

He thinks blindly that he should warn her. Opens his mouth but she swallows his words.

Then he’s coming, pulsing out of him like lifeblood. Breathless and drained. And he’s so tired.

Peaceful. Serene.

“Take me,” she sings.

He can’t hold on. Body aches for rest.

Her brow furrows. “Take me home.”

His eyes flutter. He starts to form the words, but just...can’t.

He would’ve taken her home and not left. He didn’t mean to make it seem like it must have seemed. He didn’t just throw her away. But it was war and he wasn’t expecting the hell it brought or the hell that came after. It had all seemed so innocent in that old back seat, with his promises he didn’t mean to break.

She grinds down, damned serum refractory period kicking in. He swells against all reason and moves with her until she shakes and clenches, nails digging into his skin, a mournful wail spiraling out of her as he feels himself spill again.

She touches his neck, feels his pulse stutter out, slow. Her face is confused. Head shaking.

He takes her hand, holds it to his heart. An apology.

Then, she rails back, wretches and twists. She slips through his fingers like time, like silk, like thread.

What was once solid, warm like new sun on a cold sill, now shifts. Contorts and writhes, skin viscus and pooling around his fingers like so much rancid dough.

He wants to care but he wants to sleep. Just rest his eyes. Just for a second. It doesn’t feel right but he can’t make himself care. It’s so quiet and peaceful, down here where she used to be solid, where he used to be warm.

***

Then, when he’s almost gone, when peace has fired off in nearly every cell, he’s yanked free.

Colder than he’s ever been. Night air like a fire burning, like he is nothing but frostbite dropped in a boiling pot.

Sam drags him up onto the dock and collapses beside him. Sam’s face is drawn and terrified and their clothes soggy and weighted, water running off between the wooden planks.

“The Hell Barnes? Party full of perfectly available, alive folk and that’s the strange you go for.”

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x original female character #bucky barnes smut #bucky barnes fanfiction

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awkwardlyamusing-blog · 5 years

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The Levy Family's Irving Powerhouse

New Post has been published on http://doggietrainingclasses.com/the-levy-familys-irving-powerhouse/

The Levy Family's Irving Powerhouse

Nine years ago, Taiwanese pig farmers caused a stir that reverberated 7,700 miles away in an Irving office block. An odor-eating cleanup chemical made by NCH Corp. had mistakenly been poured into a water tank used by 25,000 piglets. When told to flush the biological product—unlicensed as a feed supplement—the Taiwanese flatly refused.

Their defiance stemmed from seeing the pigs gain 3 percent more weight on the same diet over a month, while mortality halved, from 4.5 percent to 2 percent, saving the farm a bundle. The Taiwanese attributed the improvements to NCH’s product and, with the pigs so healthy, regulators gave special permission for the farm to continue using it.

NCH now markets a probiotic feed supplement made from more effective, FDA-approved ingredients, to farms in Thailand, Taiwan, India, and Mexico. A study by a university in Taiwan found chickens gained 4.4 percent more weight than a control group, with an added bonus of statistically “significant” less E. coli and salmonella, a major problem in the poultry industry.

“If we can do this for animals, why can’t we do it for humans?” asks Lester Levy Jr., one of four co-CEOs (that’s not a misprint) of family-run NCH.

Going beyond their core fields—lubricants, water treatment chemicals, plumbing parts, and cleaning products—is nothing new for the company. Over time, it has sold church sheet music, fish tanks, graffiti removers, first aid kits, a hairball remedy for cats, and diapers for dog.

The Levys now running the company trace that entrepreneurialism to their grandfather, Milton P. Levy Sr., who launched the National Disinfectant Co. in 1919 near Old City Park in Dallas. It was a good time to go into hygiene products, as the world was in the middle of a Spanish influenza epidemic. Milton had other motivations, too; he wanted to impress a reluctant girlfriend so she’d return from New York and marry him. He ultimately prevailed, and the match endured—as did his company, becoming National Chemsearch and later renamed NCH Corp.

Over the next 100 years, the family-led venture survived a near collapse after World War II, went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 1969 (with the Levys holding a majority of shares), went private again three decades later, and weathered a major downturn during the 2008 recession. It is now generating a comfortable $1 billion in sales in 58 countries, employing 7,500 around the globe.

Still, NCH and the third-generation of Levys remain far less well known than other homegrown North Texas enterprises and their respective founding families. “When I tell people in Dallas that I do work for NCH, they say, ‘Who?’” says Jim Davidson, an executive trainer who has done work for the company and known the family for about 15 years. “The Levys have been very successful and support community efforts, but they don’t go, ‘Look at us! Look at us!’ They keep a low profile in the community—I would assume deliberately.”

AGREEING TO DISAGREE

The four NCH CEOs also serve as co-presidents of the company. They’re two sets of Levy brothers—John and Robert, and their cousins, Walter and Lester Jr., whose sister, Ann, is the other Levy on the company’s board.

John handles global corporate services and the Partsmaster division of industrial supplies. He’s tall, quiet, and health-minded, Davidson says. “He’ll walk up six flights of stairs instead of taking the elevator. He is the financial person, very factual.”

Walter, who supervises Asian chemical sales, is the most sociable, Davidson says, and likes to look at new ideas operationally. Robert, who handles the Danco-brand and the rest of the plumbing division, as well as retail pet products, is quiet, but can be the catalyst for action at the end of a discussion.

Lester Jr., who oversees biological product lines and Latin American chemical sales, “is an idea person, always bouncing ideas, looking for more,” Davidson says. A former college athlete, Lester studied the African meerkat during prolonged stays on the continent and maintains a website about the mongoose cousin, meerkats.net.

The four CEOs have figured out a way to work well together as a family unit, Davidson says: “They have different personalities, but they respect the different aspects of those personalities. Each brings a unique perspective to the business.”

All four of the Levys have MBAs. Lester and Walter earned theirs despite having dyslexia—Walter severely. He dealt with the challenge by getting his textbooks recorded. Both brothers now routinely use text-to-sound software. Walter recently expressed disbelief when Lester told him that he had read an entire book cover to cover. “What book?” Walter challenged. “Tuesdays with Morrie,” his younger brother replied.

The four frequently argue, but it never becomes a fight, Robert says. “Twenty minutes later, we’ll all be at dinner together.”

By 2013, Walter had concluded that NCH needed to quit the fracking business. Sales for its “green” fracking chemical were booming like the drilling technique itself. But costs also mounted. Only Robert joined Walter in his skepticism. “I drank the Kool Aid,” admits Lester Jr., as did John. Revenue poured in, but NCH had to keep investing ever more to keep up.

“I kept saying, ‘No!’” Walter recalls. “Every month the list of customers changed and I asked, ‘Why can’t we keep customers?’ At any time, Schlumberger or Halliburton could spend more on R&D and create a better product. I thought there would be no way to compete.”

Walter finally won over the two holdouts, and today there’s only relief. Explains Lester: “We don’t want to put a lot of assets in a highly cyclical business.

In 2016, NCH sold the Terra Services unit for a few million and wrote off the losses. “The major lesson for us,” John says, “is that we are more comfortable innovating products that are closer to the traditional markets we have pursued in the core chemical business.”

The coming-of-age moment for the third generation of Levys was the foray into East Europe, as the Soviet Empire collapsed. Lester was visiting West Germany when the Berlin Wall fell. He joined hordes of mauerspechte or “wall woodpeckers,” who handed him a rail spike and a hammer to chip off concrete pieces of history.

A small chunk of the wall is mounted in a shadow box at NCH headquarters, enclosed with a snapshot of the hammer-wielding Levy. “There were 200 Russian tanks waiting there and I told myself, ‘I’m going to get killed,’” Lester recalls. But the armored vehicles didn’t shift or fire and he had an epiphany. “I realized the East was opening up.”

REBOUNDING FROM TRAGEDY

The previous generation of NCH leaders—three sons of the company’s founder—had come of age in a very different way: by saving the business. Milton Jr. (Bubba), Lester Sr., and Irvin shelved their own ambitions in 1946 when their father dropped dead of a heart attack at the age of 55. That left their 52-year-old mother, Ruth, in charge, but owing the government a crippling wartime “excess profits” tax bill of $100,000 (equivalent to $1.34 million in 2019) and a third of its gross revenue.

Lester Sr. had passed the bar exam before serving in the Army Air Corps and wanted to practice law. But his mother implored him: “Lester, you run the company and make it right.”

An emergency infusion of capital was needed. Luckily, Jack Mann a longtime and loyal employee, stayed with the company. He took the three Levy sons to Mercantile National, where he told its chief, Milton F. Brown, that extending a life-saving loan was better than the bank finding itself in the disinfectant business. Brown needed little convincing. “I never lost any money on your dad,” the banker told them. “He borrowed from me for years, and I don’t believe fruit falls far from the tree. So, I’m going to go along with you boys.”

Crisis averted, the second generation leaders transformed the distribution company by hiring chemists, microbiologists, and other technical specialists to expand manufacturing of their own industrial and maintenance products at a new plant in Irving. Sales offices, then production units, were opened around the country and overseas.

National Disinfectant Co. was rechristened as National Chemsearch in 1960 to reflect new product lines. Sales reached $47 million by 1969, when NCH floated publicly traded shares. Instead of hiring outside consultants to suggest how to enter new markets, the brothers tested the waters with face-to-face sales calls, relying on an internal sales bible called The Gears of Selling. Irvin and Bubba conceived the manual while on a business trip to Oklahoma in a stick-shift vehicle. The selling process was broken down into three steps, or “gears.”

A generation later, the sales handbook was used to get through locked gates at a Russian factory, to demonstrate a self-polishing floor cleaner in a Budapest hotel, and to show amazed Chinese trade fair-goers that an electric motor could be cleaned without highly flammable gasoline. The sales manual explains the importance of initial small talk, handing out promotional novelties, giving live demonstrations, and closing a sale, and includes tips on overcoming excuses not to buy.

TAKING ON EASTERN EUROPE

NCH’s West European managers had taken a pass on the East, where free market economics was still a vague notion. They didn’t want to risk their budgets, or their reputations, on what seemed like a futile effort. But the third-generation leaders relished the challenge. “It was really fun,” says Lester Jr. “It didn’t seem hard to us.”

Walter cold-called on a power plant over the objection of his Russian interpreter. He got in to see the manager by chatting up a guard and handing him a rare, Western-made pocket knife, engraved with the NCH logo.

But not everyone was friendly toward Americans. Portraits of Lenin still adorned some factory managers’ offices. And there were other challenges. Phones didn’t work. A Czech Ph.D. took a 13-hour bus journey for a job interview after being reached by messenger. “The hardest part was finding people to trust,” says Jerry Mansfield, a British employee who was recruited for the East Europe expansion. A Russian chemist ran off with NCH’s product formulations. A St. Petersburg factory had 40,000 people on the books, but only 100 actually came to work. Russian authorities twice drained NCH’s bank accounts; in one case, half was seized as “taxes” and the remainder taken as a “loan” to the government.

NCH gave up on Russia and Bulgaria, and Ukraine, Moldova, and Kazakhstan were a no-go, Walter says. But other former Soviet bloc countries proved welcoming. It helped that maintenance supplies from Russia were no longer imported. But the poor conditions cut both ways.

“Prague was crumbling, and dirty. Things didn’t work,” recalls Edward Jansen, a multilingual Dutchman who would end up running sales in East Europe. “Some factory floors hadn’t been cleaned in years—a half inch of oil covered the floor. It was like walking on gum. But it was great for us,” says Jansen, explaining that NCH’s cleaning products fulfilled an obvious need.

The company opened small warehouses throughout the region, hiring and training core management. Ph.D. holders were willing to peddle the company’s goods—something unheard of today. “We went from zero to 250 salesmen in five years; total sales quickly hit $60 million” says Jansen, in a call from Switzerland, where he now runs his own business after 15 years with NCH. “Competition became tougher with more foreign companies coming in, but they didn’t build a good foundation with qualified people like we had. That’s why NCH is still here.”

A FAMILY BUY-BACK

Another turning point was the decision by the third generation to take NCH private. Their fathers were not keen on the idea. The sons argued that the company was undervalued. Diversified conglomerates were out of favor and NCH was no longer followed by Wall Street analysts. “We had been among the ‘Nifty 50’ [for high earnings per share] because of our high growth in the 1950s and 60s,” says John. “But growth had slowed to single digits,” Walter adds. “We stopped being sexy.”

“We saw our parents were getting older and tax laws were friendlier to private companies,” says Lester Jr. “By keeping it in the family, we protected employees from upheavals,” says John, adding that “it took us two years to persuade our parents to take on debt.” Having grown up during the Depression, they were wary of borrowing heavily. “Really it was John who pulled it off,” Walter recalls. “He convinced everyone.”

In 2002, the family bought back the 43 percent of stock it didn’t already own, by borrowing $108 million. “We paid that off,” Lester Jr. says. “In 18 months,” adds Walter. “No, two years, two months—paid in full,” says John. Revenue grew from $679 million in 2001 to $1 billion today.

That’s not to say there haven’t been challenges. Three years ago, the Department of Justice fined NCH about $335,342 for plying Chinese government officials with gifts, meals, and other hospitality to influence purchases. Compared to other U.S. companies that have been fined millions for bribery, NCH’s penalty was relatively small. The DOJ explained the leniency by noting that the Texas company had blown the whistle on itself, carried out a comprehensive internal investigation of the bribes, and took disciplinary action against those who were responsible.

John Levy says it should come as no surprise that NCH voluntarily informed federal authorities. “Our family has always had a very strong philosophy about doing business ethically, with no exceptions or tolerance for marginally questionable activities,” he says. “We repeat advice that has been handed down to us: ‘You should not do anything that you would not want to read about on the front page of your local newspaper.’”

LOOKING AHEAD

The company is gearing up for ongoing expansion. It has outgrown its Irving plant and is shifting production of water treatment chemicals to a new 200,000-square-foot facility in Greenville, freeing up more room for lubricant manufacturing in DFW. Then there’s the biotech breakthrough that evolved from the Taiwanese pig incident. After the 2010 episode, a small team in Irving reworked the probiotic, using microbials deemed safe by the American Association of Feed Control Officials and the FDA. “It took us eight months to develop the first product safe to feed pigs and chickens,” says Charles Greenwald, an A&M geneticist who heads the group.

Using a proprietary system called ECOcharger, even more probiotics are absorbed in an animal’s gut. The additive did cause one problem; at one Asian poultry farm, eggs came out 25 percent bigger, so packing machinery had to be shut down until readjusted to handle the extra jumbo eggs. The ECOcharger radically ramps up absorption of beneficial bacteria to 90 percent, compared to about 3 percent absorption of probiotic products now on the market.

Would there be a way to deliver a super beneficial probiotic in, say, an Earl Grey teabag? Human testing is planned for this year at a Texas university, and preliminary talks are under way with U.S. pharmaceutical companies and food processors.

“There was a lot of disbelief internally, at the board level,” Greenwald says. “They didn’t know we had the skill set to enter this market. Lester supported us.” And the others were won over. “The Levys are dreamers,” Greenwald says. “They also get things done.”

Meanwhile, four adult cousins from the fourth generation of the Levy family have joined NCH. Will they someday lead the company? “That’s left to be determined,” says John Levy, noting that there had been no formal succession plan for him and his co-CEOs. “It just evolved,” he says. “We’ll see how they progress in their careers.”

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‘They Were Conned’: How Reckless Loans Devastated a Generation of Taxi Drivers

Between 2002 and 2014, the price of a medallion rose to more than $1 million from $200,000, even though city records showed that driver incomes barely changed. Immigrants saw owning a medallion as a great opportunity. If you were a bank, would you lend loan applicants interest-only loans that required them to pay exorbitant fees, forfeit their legal rights and give up almost all their monthly income, indefinitely: (1) Yes, (2) No? Why? What are the ethics underlying your decision?

The phone call that ruined Mohammed Hoque’s life came in April 2014 as he began another long day driving a New York City taxi, a job he had held since emigrating from Bangladesh nine years earlier.

The call came from a prominent businessman who was selling a medallion, the coveted city permit that allows a driver to own a yellow cab instead of working for someone else. If Mr. Hoque gave him $50,000 that day, he promised to arrange a loan for the purchase.

After years chafing under bosses he hated, Mr. Hoque thought his dreams of wealth and independence were coming true. He emptied his bank account, borrowed from friends and hurried to the man’s office in Astoria, Queens. Mr. Hoque handed over a check and received a stack of papers. He signed his name and left, eager to tell his wife.

Mr. Hoque made about $30,000 that year. He had no idea, he said later, that he had just signed a contract that required him to pay $1.7 million.

Over the past year, a spate of suicides by taxi drivers in New York City has highlighted in brutal terms the overwhelming debt and financial plight of medallion owners. All along, officials have blamed the crisis on competition from ride-hailing companies such as Uber and Lyft.

But a New York Times investigation found much of the devastation can be traced to a handful of powerful industry leaders who steadily and artificially drove up the price of taxi medallions, creating a bubble that eventually burst. Over more than a decade, they channeled thousands of drivers into reckless loans and extracted hundreds of millions of dollars before the market collapsed.

These business practices generated huge profits for bankers, brokers, lawyers, investors, fleet owners and debt collectors. The leaders of nonprofit credit unions became multimillionaires. Medallion brokers grew rich enough to buy yachts and waterfront properties. One of the most successful bankers hired the rap star Nicki Minaj to perform at a family party.

But the methods stripped immigrant families of their life savings, crushed drivers under debt they could not repay and engulfed an industry that has long defined New York. More than 950 medallion owners have filed for bankruptcy, according to a Times analysis of court records. Thousands more are barely hanging on.

The practices were strikingly similar to those behind the housing market crash that led to the 2008 global economic meltdown: Banks and loosely regulated private lenders wrote risky loans and encouraged frequent refinancing; drivers took on debt they could not afford, under terms they often did not understand.

Some big banks even entered the taxi industry in the aftermath of the housing crash, seeking a new market, with new borrowers.

The combination of easy money, eager borrowers and the lure of a rare asset helped prices soar far above what medallions were really worth. Some industry leaders fed the frenzy by purposefully overpaying for medallions in order to inflate prices, The Times found.

Between 2002 and 2014, the price of a medallion rose to more than $1 million from $200,000, even though city records showed that driver incomes barely changed.

About 4,000 drivers bought medallions in that period, records show. They were excited to buy, but they were enticed by a dubious premise.

“The whole thing was like a Ponzi scheme because it totally depended on the value going up,” said Haywood Miller, a debt specialist who has consulted for both borrowers and lenders. “The part that wasn’t fair was the guy who’s buying is an immigrant, maybe someone who couldn’t speak English. They were conned.”

As in the housing crash, government officials ignored warning signs and exempted lenders from regulations. The city Taxi and Limousine Commission went the furthest of all, turning into a cheerleader for medallion sales. It was tasked with regulating the industry, but as prices skyrocketed, it sold new medallions and began declaring they were “better than the stock market.”

After the medallion market collapsed, Mayor Bill de Blasio opted not to fund a bailout, and earlier this year, the City Council speaker, Corey Johnson, shut down the committee overseeing the taxi industry, saying it had completed most of its work.

Over 10 months, The Times interviewed 450 people, built a database of every medallion sale since 1995 and reviewed thousands of individual loans and other documents, including internal bank records and confidential profit-sharing agreements.

The investigation found example after example of drivers trapped in exploitative loans, including hundreds who signed interest-only loans that required them to pay exorbitant fees, forfeit their legal rights and give up almost all their monthly income, indefinitely.

A Pakistani immigrant who thought he was just buying a car ended up with a $780,000 medallion loan that left him unable to pay rent. A Bangladeshi immigrant said he was told to lie about his income on his loan application; he eventually lost his medallion. A Haitian immigrant who worked to exhaustion to make his monthly payments discovered he had been paying only interest and went bankrupt.

It is unclear if the practices violated any laws. But after reviewing The Times’s findings, experts said the methods were among the worst that have been used since the housing crash.

“I don’t think I could concoct a more predatory scheme if I tried,” said Roger Bertling, the senior instructor at Harvard Law School’s clinic on predatory lending and consumer protection. “This was modern-day indentured servitude.”

Lenders developed their techniques in New York but spread them to Chicago, Boston, San Francisco and elsewhere, transforming taxi industries across the United States.

In interviews, lenders denied wrongdoing. They noted that regulators approved their practices, and said some borrowers made poor decisions and assumed too much debt. They said some drivers were happy to use climbing medallion values as collateral to take out cash, and that those who sold their medallions at the height of the market made money.

The lenders said they believed medallion values would keep increasing, as they almost always had. No one, they said, could have predicted Uber and Lyft would emerge to undercut the business.

“People love to blame banks for things that happen because they’re big bad banks,” said Robert Familant, the former head of Progressive Credit Union, a small nonprofit that specialized in medallion loans. “We didn’t do anything, in my opinion, other than try to help small businesspeople become successful.”

Mr. Familant made about $30 million in salary and deferred payouts during the bubble, including $4.8 million in bonuses and incentives in 2014, the year it burst, according to disclosure forms.

Meera Joshi, who joined the Taxi and Limousine Commission in 2011 and became chairwoman in 2014, said it was not the city’s job to regulate lending. But she acknowledged that officials saw red flags and could have done something.

“There were lots of players, and lots of people just watched it happen. So the T.L.C. watched it happen. The lenders watched it happen. The borrowers watched it happen as their investment went up, and it wasn’t until it started falling apart that people started taking action and pointing fingers,” said Ms. Joshi, who left the commission in March. “It was a party. Why stop it?”

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Very long article continues ...

#Loans #taxi

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