#its taken us a million years to get cleared by the system (on purpose i stg) so its literally midterm time and we havent gotten in yet | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

trillian-anders · 4 years

Text

the assistant

pairing: ransom drysdale x reader

warnings: violence, angst, fluff, smut && SPOILERS

word count: 6.8k

description: part 1 of 5. CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS, PLEASE DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVE NOT WATCHED THE FILM. you’ve been working for the thrombeys for four years now, the last three years of your service being a glorified babysitter to the most annoying, self-absorbed, dickhead hugh ransom drysdale.

You wanted to smack that dumb smirk off his stupid dumb face.

Hugh Ransom Drysdale. The bane of your fucking existence. Standing there with that stupid fucking smirk on his face, he fucking loved this. Watching as you cleaned up his mess. A crying girl on his doorstep and you, his assistant (aka babysitter), trying to calm her down enough to get her to leave his house. This dumb contemporary floor to ceiling windowed, minimalist, empty souled house. The girl had been picked up at a bar last night. Charmed by his handsome face, the money he was careless to spend, the way he spoke to you like you were the most beautiful thing in the world.

It was a fucking joke. A trick. You’ve seen it a million times and you’d be willing you bet that you’d see it a million more.

The door blocked her view of him, your clear view of him from the side, sipping on a mug of coffee in his hands and fucking smirking.

“He won't even see me?” You hated when they cried. Like each of them had this idea that they’d go home with Ransom Drysdale and fuck him so good that he’d tie them to his bed and never let them leave or something.

You sighed heavily before replying, “Mr. Drysdale has business to attend to, he’s unavailable at the moment, but I can leave him a message if you’d like?” You did this maybe five or six times a week. In the early morning hours, after his sexual escapade and some rest, Ransom would wake early and leave for the gym. In that time you were supposed to ‘take out the trash’ as he described it. This morning, the girl left dazed and confused in the fog taking an uber back to her home, but returning an hour later trying to plead her case. It was giving you a migraine.

The girl stepped back from the porch, shoes crunching against the gravel as she searched the windows for his face. “FUCK YOU RANSOM.” She shouted, flipping the bird into the air. The man hiding to your right, choked on his coffee in laughter as you watched the girl get back into her car and disappear from sight.

“What's on the agenda today Ransom,” You shut the door quietly, turning to face him, “Because if I have to do that again tomorrow I’ll quit.” He scoffed in indignation.

“You’re not gonna quit,” He drained the rest of his mug, “You can’t even leave the house long as you got that.” He gestured towards your leg. Sitting firmly on your right ankle was a house arrest bracelet. One meant for him, but carefully bribed into being put on your own leg. The stupid son of a bitch got away with murder, after the death of his late Grandfather’s housekeeper by his own hand and the attempted murder of the girl that got the entire Thrombey fortune, he stayed the lucky son of a bitch he had been his entire life.

Evidence was mishandled, not enough proof. That whole, ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ thing. The rich asshole got fucking house arrest and court mandated therapy. Even after there were three fucking witnesses to him attempting to murder Marta Cabrera.

Money oiled the gears of the justice system, letting the trust fund baby slip through without consequence. That’s where you come in.

You worked for the Thrombey’s before. As a tutor to Meg when she began to fail her english class. For whatever reason, Lynda and Richard Drysdale liked you, assigned you a new task. Their sweet baby boy Hugh, called Ransom by everyone but the Help. You’ve worked for Ransom for three years now. The first year before the death of his Grandfather and Thrombey patriarch, and now two years after his death and wouldn’t you know it. Hugh Ransom Drysdale wrote a fucking bestseller.

Everyone wanted an insight into this family. Harlan Thrombey always said there was so much of him in Ransom. He wasn’t lying.

Ransom wrote the first of what you knew would be many new Thrombey family murder mystery novels. And he was reaping in the cash. He was two months away from his next big release. Something you’re sure would fly off the shelves just as quickly as the first.

“Don’t worry,” He said, “I’ve got a deadline to meet.” His coffee mug abandoned by the front door for you to clean up, he left you to officially start your day. He retreated into the study he created for himself to crank out the last four chapters he needed for his book, maybe.

Due to circumstances beyond your control, you were the one placed on house arrest. As long as no one was notified that Ransom left the perimeter of the house you were being paid well, and you being paid well meant your younger sister gets taken care of. You were able to send her money every month to help with the fact that she was staying with an estranged aunt. It hadn’t been easy once your mother died, but the Thrombey’s lighten the load so to say.

That’s why you were washing Ransom’s sheets that reeked of sex, picking up and disposing of torn panties and tossing used condoms the fucking dick couldn’t be bothered enough to toss two more feet into the trash can in his on-suite. You’d invested in rubber gloves.

On days that Ransom had to meet with his probation officer he would wear a dummy bracelet. It got him by and soon the fucker would be over and done with house arrest all together. You’d be able to move back home then. Hopefully.

“Ransom, you ever gonna eat today?” You knocked on the open door of his study, bringing his attention from his computer to you, who held a bowl of pasta in your one hand. He sighed, leaning back in his chair and rubbing his eyes. There were multicolored post-its surrounding his computer. Your mind made the connection with how similar it was to his Grandfather’s own workspace. You gently placed the bowl on his desk, turning to pour him a tumbler of whiskey from the small bar in the corner of the room.

“I don’t know how the old bastard ever cranked out two books a year,” His neck cracked. “How is that even possible?” He took a large bite of the pasta, squinting at the screen. His eyes quickly shifted to yours, watching you set down the glass of whiskey in front of him. He grabbed your wrist. “Stay.” It was an order. “Sit.” You took your place in a chair across from him.

“Harlan wrote every day,” You told him, “You write whenever you’re not off sticking your dick into anything that breathes.” He laughed at that.

“Not everything that breathes,” He typed a few more words into the word document, “I haven’t fucked you yet.” Your core pulsed, he said yet.

Audibly you scoffed, “I would never willingly fuck you Ransom.” You pulled your legs up onto the chair to make yourself comfortable. He smirked at that, eyes not leaving the computer screen.

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” That stupid smirk. You hated that fucking smirk. So condescending.

When you first met Ransom you were probably very much like the girls that you now pry out of his bed at 8 am. You had been tutoring Meg at the family home, sitting at the kitchen table going over Othello when he sauntered in, digging through the cabinets for snacks. You could feel Meg tense up next to you and that’s when he turned. He was so fucking pretty. Blue eyes, well kept hair, cashmere sweater, those broad fucking shoulders, and on his face, stretching that full bottom lip you wanted to tug between your teeth, was a smirk.

That pulsing throb between your thighs soon was quickly forgotten as he opened his mouth and began to speak, “How’s it going Meg, trouble reading? Or do they not teach you how to read when you’re a liberal? Lord knows you guys never fucking understand anything anyway.” Meg snapped back at him, but you were stunned. You could tell he said that on purpose, knowing it would make her go off on the tangent he was now, finding a sick pleasure in it. That was the first time you’d seen the smirk. You’d lost count of how many times you’ve seen it since then.

“I really hate you Ransom.” You sighed, sinking further into your chair. He had almost finished off the bowl of pasta by now, whiskey long since emptied. He thinks it’s funny, you hating him because he responds looking you in your eyes, maintaining his smirk,

“I know you do baby.” He liked to do that. Call you pet names. Once he had even pretended you were his wife when you accidentally walked in on him and a girl he had been balls deep in, bent over the back of the couch. He fucking LOVED that one. The girl had cried, embarrassed, apologizing as she picked her bra up from the floor and slunk out the front door behind you. That was a while ago. Pre-Murder. You should have seen it then. How insane he actually was.

Ransom was incredibly smart and was a quick thinker. It was part of the reason that he had gotten away with murder in the first place. You knew that. It showed in his novel. He would have you read chapters, give him your opinion, before writing and rewriting. Showing you again. He’d ask you if you could figure out who was the murderer, a sinister glint in his eyes, arms crossed, standing above you waiting. He could only be satisfied if you didn’t have a clue.

It was a gift, you supposed, the ease in which he wrote to make every character a possible suspect in completely new and incredible scenarios. He had three books in various states of completion that he was chipping away at, the one he was currently working on seemingly better than the previous published.

His Mother, the one who gave him the silver spoon and cursed him for having it his whole life, was suddenly proud of him. His Father, now divorced from his Mother, would come by weekly asking for money. Ransom loved that too. His Dad got nothing due to the prenup, leaving him penniless. The cushy job he had at Lynda’s real estate empire was gone, and now Dad was working at local agency scraping by on low commission. Last week his Father came to the door while Ransom was writing and muscled his way not too kindly past you into the house.

“Ransom!” He called, finding his way into his son’s study. You quietly shut the door, returning to folding laundry. The door shut tightly behind him and sounds had been muffled. It’s only when their voices went from calm to a screaming match did the door wretch open and Ransom followed his Dad out, both red faced.

“We’ve given you everything in your fucking life and you can’t even give one iota back.” Ransom opened the front door, gesturing to the porch.

“Get the fuck out, and don’t come back.” His voice stern and commanding.

“Fuck you Ransom.” With that he was gone. The silence that had settled over the house was thick, Ransom’s hand still resting against the closed door before he took a breath and, without taking a glance in your direction, returned to his study. Closing the door.

The echo of that argument sat in the house for the rest of the day, Ransom leaving soon after to find a body to lose himself in. If the murder trial did anything, it made Ransom into a bad boy and girls fucking loved it. He wasn’t, technically, guilty after all.

You attempted to clear the bowl in front of him, but was stopped by his hand. His eyes never left the screen as he brought your hand to his lips, placing a kiss in your palm, before dragging your arm to his other shoulder, hugging himself with it awkwardly until you gave in and wrapped your other arm around him, holding him tightly for a moment.

He was soft sometimes. His Mom never held him when he was a kid. He was left alone a lot while she was building her empire. Babysitters never stayed long, nannies came and went. Sometimes you truly felt bad for him, other times you remember that he was a dick and that he loved to play tricks and torment anyone and everyone that was supposed to take care of him, including you. The only difference was you weren’t able to leave.

He let you go soon after that, letting you clean up the mess from dinner and stoke the fire place warming the house that always seemed too cold. As you stood by the fire, arms wrapped around yourself you could feel him behind you, coming to wrap his arms around your waist, leaning his head on your shoulder as you stared into the flames. There was a moment or two of silence as you both stood there.

If this were any other situation, if Ransom loved you, if this was someone who loved you, if this someone cared enough to care about the things you care about, this would be kind of romantic. But it’s Ransom, and he didn’t care about anyone but himself, he definitely didn’t care about you, and he one hundred percent didn’t care about anything you care about. “I’m going out.”

His arms left your waist and his chest left your back leaving you cold. “For fucks sake Ransom, I don’t feel like throwing out a girl tomorrow morning.” You turned to watch him throwing his coat on. He smirked. He fucking smirked.

“I’ll give you a break and throw her out myself then.” And he was gone.

Hours later you’re woken by the sound of Ransom coming home, sure enough he wasn’t alone. Soft giggles and a bang, he’s shoved her against the wall beside your room. There were muffled groans as you assumed she found her knees right there in the hallway. He got off on this shit, you knew. Often stopping somewhere outside your door to start his sexual escapades. Knowing you were mere feet away, like some half-assed exhibitionism. It wasn’t long after that the girl squealed and there was more muffled talking before they moved to his bedroom. To which you shared a wall.

Your bedroom, before you were a live-in, housed a bunch of items you believed graced a teen boy’s bedroom walls at one point. And still, shoved in the corner, were playboy model cardboard cutouts, “They’re vintage, mint condition, and worth a lot.” Sure, Ransom, sure they are. Arcade games, framed patriots jerseys, a lacrosse set from his high school days. You were shoved in the middle of it all, a single bed shoved against the wall surrounded by what once was a room full of teenage boy memorabilia. A shrine to his youth.

The headboard soon came knocking and hope for sleep was lost. The girl’s moans escalating to shrieks. Either he was as good as he says, or these girls really care about his ego. Either could be true when there’s more than one comma in your bank account.

The kitchen was much quieter. A steady rocking still came from upstairs, but thankfully it was muffled by the floor. As you made a cup of tea you figured you would see if he had printed off a new chapter ready for you to read. You hope he wouldn’t have gone out without finishing it anyway.

You were not sure why you cared to be honest. You had this love/hate for Ransom. He was an annoying prick who did something really fucking horrible, but he also made it very clear to everyone involved that you had nothing to do with it. There was a scary moment there, after his arrest, when you were brought to the station for interrogation. You hadn’t known he had even gotten up to any of these crimes. He kept you completely in the dark and he was sure to let his arresting officers know that. You hadn’t even seen him since the night Harlan died when he left the party stranding you at the estate.

Money does crazy things to people. The threat of his steady income leaving was enough to push him to do something crazy. He was lucky enough that the recorded confession magically was erased. He was lucky for dirty cops. He was lucky that even though his mother despised his lifestyle she didn’t want him to go to prison. He was so lucky. Now with his first novel sitting highly on the bestseller list, he seemed even more lucky than he did before.

His study was on the opposite side of the house from his bedroom, muffling the sounds enough for you to flip through the packet left on top of his keyboard. Three chapters away from completion you were following the detective through paces where things felt more confusing than ever, the clues were unclear and there was not much to go on, but the tension between the eldest son of the victim and his ex-wife were mounting and it was hard to believe that maybe this guy had nothing to do with it despite what was described as an ‘air-tight’ alibi. You read through the chapter twice, scribbling your thoughts in red pen along the margins.

“What do you think?” You jumped in your chair, looking up to see Ransom in the doorway.

“You scared the shit out of me,” Your hand still clutching your chest. He had a glass of water in his hand, chest bare, solid navy pajama pants slung low on his hips. His chest hair always got you, just a little bit. He tugged his bottom lip between his teeth and pushed off the door jam to walk into the room, taking a seat in the chair you occupied hours ago. “It’s good,” you cleared your throat, “I’m not sure how much longer I can wait for you to finish to be honest.” He chuckled softly.

“Let me see.” You handed him the packet and his eyes scanned the margins, reading your comments. They were mostly reactions, that’s what he liked. He wanted to know how you reacted to everything he put in front of you, did you like the romance, the tension, the lust he was trying to write between the ex-husband and wife? Or was it too distracting from the plot? Is the detective too unbelievable? He’s a character for sure. Can you figure out whodunnit yet?

“What are you doing out of bed?” You asked, spinning the chair side to side, waiting for him to put the packet down.

“I told you I was going to kick her out.” He took another sip from his water. You scoffed,

“And you couldn’t start doing this sooner?” A smile stretched his lips,

“I like how much it bothers you.”

“It’s annoying,” you said, “Worst way to start my day.” He laughed.

“That’s the only reason?” He asked, throwing the packet back on the desk, leaning back in his chair. Smirking.

“You’re such an asshole, you know that?” You pushed back from the desk, moving to exit the room. He quickly grabbed your wrist, tugging you over to his side where he looked up at you,

“If you wanna take their place, just let me know.” Your other hand came up to smack him on his shoulder, causing him to laugh as he released you, letting you take your exit.

“Dick.”

You found him the next morning at his desk, looking as though he had very little sleep. “Babe could you get me some coffee?” You yawned in the doorway,

“Sure.” It didn’t take long before you were setting the cup in front of him. “Your therapist is coming by at one.” He nodded, not looking up from his computer. “I’ll come get you when it’s time for you to get ready.”

He was focused. You weren’t sure where this focus came from. It was every once in a while that he would find this stroke of inspiration and write for a whole day straight. Hopefully he will be finished his book before schedule and be able to get ahead for the next one.

Soon he was washed, dressed, and ready for the one person he dreads the most. He hated therapy sessions. There were only ten more he needed to do before the court mandate was over. Ten more weeks until you were able to get this lovely ankle bracelet off when you would hopefully be able to go back to the routine you had with him before. Where you’d sleep in your own shitty apartment and show up to work a 9 to 9 five days a week.

After sessions he was always moody, quiet, and tended to need his favorite single malt restocked the next day. Not exactly in line with how he should be tending to whatever revelation the therapist has been streamlining him to, but that wasn’t any of your business. You could say though that during the last 42 weeks of sessions this refractory period was shortening to less and less time, maybe tonight you won't be peeling him off the floor of the study and dragging him up to his room drunk off his ass.

While in the session you were trying not to listen in on, you were sunk heavily on the living room couch, drinking coffee and reading the latest chapter he had slapped into your hands before entering back into his study. The book was so close to being finished, the last two chapters leading you to the big reveal and aftermath. The climax was steady taking hold and you were more sure than ever that the eldest son had something to do with it. You didn’t know what he did, but it was something.

He looked mad enough to kill as the Doctor left. Slamming the door, barely missing the Doctor’s jacket sleeve as he made his hasty retreat. Ransom stood seething for a moment by the front door, a chill running down your spine. He had murdered someone before, something you try to forget seeing as you are forced to spend so much time with him. His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides. It felt like an hour before he moved.

“I’m going out.” The words spoken sternly as he stomped his way up the stairs like a petulant child, returning moments later, cleaned up, eyes blank, before grabbing his coat and slamming the door loud enough to make you jump.

Aside from Ransom’s Mother never being around and aside from his Father’s string of extramarital affairs and aside from his Grandfather’s need to push him in every direction but close, you wish you could say that Ransom had a good childhood. But he didn’t. When he was little the kids picked on him for being rich, and when he was bigger they only became friends with him because he was rich. He was such a bully. At least, that’s what his Mother told you once drunk off chardonnay at his birthday dinner last year.

Disappointment.

That was a clear sentiment for the small family get together, and by small family get together you meant the dinner you cooked and Ransom looking like he’d rather be in prison than listen to his parents bicker over his Father’s new (Not so new seeing as he’d been caught kissing her by a PI before Harlan’s death) girlfriend. She was smart enough not to come.

This night was looking a lot like that one. Ransom, after his parents left and you began to tidy up, began to scream at you.

“What gave you the fucking right you dumb bitch?” He was spitting, face red as you cleared the dishes. “You’re only here for the money. The fucking money. How much is she paying you huh?” The bottle of expensive whiskey he had been drinking throughout the night was in his hand, swinging it around and taking pulls straight from the bottle. “Not enough obviously because you would have let me fuck you a long time ago.”

Your face flushed red as your own anger began to rise. He continued, “Never, ever, fucking again will you allow my parents in this house, do you understand me?” His unoccupied hand grabbed your arm tight enough to bruise, turning you to face him. His eyes wild and unfocused. “I said do you understand me?” You not so gently wretched your arm from his.

“Don’t touch me.” He always fucking did this. Blamed you for things you had no control over. Lynda approached you about a dinner for Ransom’s birthday. It was her name in your paystubs. You can’t say no.

“How dare you-” He began, but was cut short.

“No Ransom. No.” Like scolding a fucking dog who put his paws on the table. You threw the bowl you currently had in your hands into the sink, turning to fully face him. “I am only here for the money and I am only here because your Mother pays me a lot to be here.” His jaw clenched. “But I’m also here because I’m the only fucking person who even remotely cares about your ungrateful prissy spoiled ass and if it wasn’t for me you’d be sitting in this fucking glass house, alone, with only your own self-righteous attitude to keep you company. So don’t you ever touch me like that again. Do you understand?”

He loudly clunked the bottle onto the kitchen island, stumbling in your direction as you backed yourself into the sink. His trial had just concluded two weeks ago, Fran’s murder fresh on your mind and you wondered if you just made a terrible mistake. Over the course of this rant, the alcohol was sinking into his bloodstream, it turned his anger into a crippling depression. One that resulted in his hands softly grasping your shoulders, and tugging you into his body. His face found your neck and slowly started to grow damp with what you realized were his tears.

Your heart broke a bit, too much empathy, even for this asshole. Your arms came to wrap around his shoulders, letting him cry it out.

That was the first and only time you saw Ransom cry over anything. If he hadn’t been as drunk as he was you knew that moment would never have happened. The sweet little moment that made your heart ache was quickly gone the next morning when Ransom made you coffee and thought it would be hilarious that after you thanked him for being so sweet he joked that he poisoned it. You could still recall the cackles of laughter as you spit your coffee into the sink.

That was the day he began writing his first novel.

He came home alone tonight which was strange. And far earlier than normal. You usually were in bed, or holed up in his study by the time he arrived him after a night out. Staying out of his way as he drug a bubbly hopeful girl up to his bed to satisfy his own needs for the night. He found you tonight, sitting outside, watching Netflix on your tablet by the firepit you had decided to light, a hot cup of tea sitting on the end table next to you. Cozy and wrapped in a blanket.

You could feel his eyes on you from the doorway. You tapped the screen, pausing your show and turned to look at him. His hair was slightly mussed, face flushed, and socked toes curling from the chill. He was looking at you strangely.

“You’re home early.” You placed the tablet down on the end table, turning to face him. He nodded, crossing his arms and leaning against the door jam.

“I just needed a drive.” There was a soft smile on his face, well that’s new.

“Is everything okay?” He never tells you anything, but the sentiment matters. He looked to his feet, nodding.

“I’m probably going to try to stay up and finish the book tonight.” He shifted himself back into the house, your voice calling out to him,

“Come sit out here for a bit. It’s calming, just take a break from thinking for a minute.” He sighed and looked at you again, debating something in his head.

“I need to be alone.” You tried anyway. He disappeared from sight. And that was that.

The next day Ransom began acting even more strangely. The book was finished, the last two chapters handed wordlessly to you as he left for the gym on what you’re assuming was no sleep. That wasn’t the strange part. The strange part was when he returned three hours later bearing a box of donuts from your favorite bakery and two lattes, on his face was a smile.

“What did you do?” You accused, “Did you poison this?” You gestured towards the latte he placed in your hand.

“No.” He laughed, sliding the box of donuts to you. You stared at him skeptically before taking a sip. Tastes normal.

“Are you sick?” Your wrist coming to lay across his forehead, temperature feels fine.

“No.” He laughed again, pulling your wrist from his forehead and kissing your palm before opening the box of donuts, pulling a cinnamon sugar donut to his lips. “You just told me the other day how you missed these and I figured since I passed the shop on the way back it wouldn’t hurt to go pick some up.” It was suspicious. You continued to look at him skeptically. He sighed, placing the donut on the counter, grabbing the latte from your hand he took a large sip of it. “I didn’t fucking poison you Y/N.”

Okay.

Okay. You examined the box of donuts, pulling out the bear claw that was begging to be eaten. Still warm. You moaned in delight as soon as the warm pastry hit your taste buds. You really had missed these. Opening your eyes, you saw Ransom staring blankly at you before his eyes shifted to the packet by your side.

“All finished?” You swallowed and nodded, sliding the packet marked with red over to him and as he began to study your notes you tried to think about what could have possibly gotten him in such a good mood. The Doctor’s visit was odd enough. Yes he was angry when the Doctor left, but then just a drive? Not a blackout drunk, bringing two girls home to pleasure himself with and accidentally falling into a line or two of coke night, but a drive?

Maybe therapy had been working? Maybe he had a breakthrough? He finished the novel. The eldest son had something to do with it, his airtight alibi just that, a cover for the crime having been committed at a different time than the coroner’s estimated time frame due to him freezing the body and allowing it to thaw in the house.

You had asked Harlan how he came up with such incredible stories once. He said they just popped into his head fully formed, his brain moving faster than his fingers. He kept a little notebook with good ideas and would simmer in them as long as it took for a stroke of inspiration. The rest was just typing.

He smirked at some of your comments, ‘what a fucking joke’ you wrote next to the eldest son’s monologue about being passed over, his whining, annoying, self centered crying about how life wasn’t fair.

“What’s the smirk for?” You asked, removing the lid of your latte and dipping part of the bear claw in it.

“The lack of sympathy for Greg.” You scoffed and rolled your eyes.

“He’s a fucking loser.” Ransom’s eyes met yours, “I bet you see a lot of yourself in him.” That made him laugh.

“What? You don’t like spoiled rich men?” He leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms in front of his chest. You rolled your eyes, taking another sip from the milky sweet latte you didn’t know would feel like your life’s blood right now.

“I think you know the answer to that.”

“I think you find me endearing.” Ransom smirked. Your neck flushed.

“I find you annoying,” You admitted. “I only put up with you because of my paycheck.” He licked his lips.

“Sure,” He closed the packet, pushing it aside to take another bite of the donut, cinnamon sugar dusting his lips. “You put up with me because you’re secretly in love with me, but you know that I would never get with The Help.” This made you laugh.

“If you want me to be the Help I’ll gladly call you Hugh if it means you leave me alone.” He placed his paper cup on the counter, circling around to you.

“I like when you call me Hugh.” His hands came to rest on your upper arms, grinning.

“You’re disgusting.” He laughed at the clear displeasure on your face, spinning your stool around to him, and you leaned back, creating some distance as he came to stand between your legs.

“You don’t mean that do you baby?” His fingers toying with the ends of your hair. You could feel your nipples harden in excitement, body betraying you. A wet growing between your legs.

“Ransom what are you doing?” You said in exasperation. You weren’t blind. Ransom was gorgeous. You’d maybe, possibly, gotten off to the thought of him once or twice or maybe more than that in the four years you’ve known him. But he was also a scumbag who fucks and then throws girls out hours later. His moods were hot and cold. He had major Mommy issues and he’s not technically guilty of murder, but he’s a fucking murderer. But also… he’s been going to therapy and after that fight on his birthday last year he’s never laid a hand on you in anger again, there’s been some arguments sure, but he’s mostly nice to you. Caring even.

“Why don’t you love me Y/N?” His voice almost came out as a whine. He was playing with you.

“Ransom stop.” You pushed him away gently. He was fucking smirking.

“Usually there’s a ‘don’t’ in front of that.” Cocky bastard.

“You’re the worst person I know. And I hate that fucking smirk.” You picked at your now cold bear claw, trying to turn from him.

“Why don’t you wipe it off my face then?” Your eyes met his and you glared.

“What’s gotten into you today? Maybe you should go out early. Find some girl to satisfy whatever you’re going through right now.” His hands met your hips, spinning your stool back around to face him.

“What if I want you to satisfy whatever I’m going through right now.” His groin fit right up against your core and you could feel his throbbing heat between your legs. Fuck.

“Don’t make this mistake Ransom.” You placed one hand gently on his chest, attempting (but not really) to push him back. His forehead coming to rest against yours. “You don’t want this.”

“This is the only thing I’ve ever really wanted.” His breath mingled with yours, sweet, cinnamon and coffee.

“You’re not thinking straight.” His lips brushed against yours, tongue coming out to wet his lips, his eyes locked with yours. Why weren’t you pushing him away? Your breath hitched as his tongue accidentally grazed your bottom lip.

“The only clarity I’ve ever had in my life has been when I’m with you.”

His lips pressed heavily against yours, pushing you back against your bedroom door as his hand came to tangle in your hair. He was all consuming, body hot and heavy against yours. Your core was thrumming with want, moisture pooling in the crotch of your yoga pants. His hips were rolling into yours and you could feel the hard length of him against your belly. His lips quickly moved across your jaw to your neck and you could hear yourself moaning softly as he licked, sucked, and nibbled on the sensitive skin below your ear. Your hands clenching the soft material of the t-shirt by his hips, dipping your fingers slowly into the waistband of his shorts.

His lips parted from your neck, hand tilting your head back so he could look into your eyes before taking your mouth once more. His mouth moved down this time to the tops of your breasts, hands leaving to shift the thick wool cardigan off your shoulders and onto the floor before dropping the straps of your camisole and exposing them to the air, nipples already pebbled in excitement.

You hadn’t dated in a while, unable to because of your paid house arrest and before that the way Ransom had worked you to the bone picking up after him. And the touch from someone else always felt better than your own. His hands felt huge on you, protecting.

Your head met the door as he enveloped your right nipple in his mouth, rolling the sensitive bud on his tongue until he felt the left neglected, and switched, beginning to toy with your right nipple between his finger tips. Moans and heavy breaths were the only sounds in the hallway as Ransom made his way down your body, slipping your yoga pants and panties off your hips as he found his knees before you.

“Ransom-”

“Shhhhh,” He pressed his lips against your naval, working his way to your trembling core. His hand lifted your right thigh, draping it over his shoulder as his eyes focused in on your, what you knew must be soaking, wet pussy. His eyes met yours from his knees, your legs trembling with anticipation, eyes locked as his pink tongue came to meet your pussy for the first time, a shuddering breath being released from you urged him on further.

His thick fingers spread your lips open, exposing your clit to his gentle assault. A building pleasure in your core as his tongue began to skillfully work, pulling moans from your mouth. How was he so good at this? Experimenting with different strokes, different pressure, finding what you like.

“Just like that, oh my god.” He rolled his tongue against your clit, eyes finding yours once more, keeping pace. You could see the corner of his mouth pull up in a smirk as he began to work you up to climax. “You’re such a fucking asshole, I hate that fucking smirk.” Head hitting back against the door as he used his fingers to tease your opening. “Oh my god.” Your hips bucked against his face, causing him to use the arm currently wrapped around your thigh to splay open on your abdomen, holding your hips still. The wet noises and soft grunts from the man between your thighs only caused you to grow closer to your release.

“You taste so fucking good baby,” moaned between your thighs.

“Don’t fucking stop.” You scolded. So close. So fucking close. He obeyed, continuing his assault on your dripping pussy, fingers entering your tight channel to stroke against your sensitive walls. He buried his face further into your pussy, nose coming to rest in the soft curls there as he watched you come undone. Your moans escalating in volume as you felt your body tighten with pleasure, hips begging to buck against his face as he rode you through it. He continued to lick and suck on your clit until your hands found his head, pushing him away, legs shaking as you dropped against the door, knees coming to rest around his body.

That fucking smirk, “How was that?” He asked, face glistening with your cum.

“Fuck you Ransom.” And he fucking laughed the bastard. What a fucking dick. He brought his face back to yours, gently claiming your lips. The tang of your pussy ever present as you felt him consume you. Your heart was still racing as he picked you up from the floor, bringing you into his bedroom and ever so gently laying you down on the sheets you had just changed two hours ago.

His eyes were shifting between yours, a strange expression on his face.

“You can’t kick me out tomorrow Ransom,” Your breathing was heavy as he began to work at your neck, his hands going to remove his gym shorts. “I can’t leave.” He pressed his lips back to yours as you felt him rub the tip of his dick against your clit, your body shaking with over-stimulation. It felt so intimate. Before, his eyes on yours as he brought you over with his tongue and now as he slowly enters you, stretching your walls with his thick cock, eyes not breaking contact he sighs,

“I think you’re the only person I’ve ever loved.”

#ransom drysdale x reader #ransom drysdale #knives out #chris evans

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politicaltheatre · 3 years

Text

Depraved Indifference

"I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK? It's, like, incredible."

- Donald Trump, at a campaign stop at Dordt College, Sioux Center, Iowa, January 23, 2016

This quote didn’t find its way into the second impeachment trial of the now-former President, but it should have. In a better world it would have, but in that better world a man such Donald Trump would not ever have been elected to any office, let alone one as powerful as president. And yet, somehow he was.

Donald Trump is no longer president, something his defenders, standing before the Senate and sitting among the trial’s jury, have taken great pains to try to focus our attention on.

Note how they talk about the importance of “moving on” and getting over it, thereby distancing us and, far more importantly, themselves from what was done.

Note how they try to frame the charge against Trump - “inciting violence against the government of the United States” - as merely “partisan” and “political”, something devoid of any legal justification or standing, as if the crimes were not witnessed by billions around the world in real time.

Note how, when faced with having to face the morally depraved actions they either encouraged or enabled in Trump and those who followed him, and having to defend their own complicity in the indefensible result, they turn to not even a little bit thinly veiled threats against those daring to accuse. Any retribution, they do declare, any continuation of violence against Trump’s declared enemies, that will be on you.

This has all the subtlety and predictability of a trial in the Jim Crow South, and, given the number of Confederate flags waving inside the Capitol on January 6th, that really isn’t too strong a comparison.

Trump, as anyone anywhere in the world even casually paying attention should know, is entirely guilty of inciting that riot. He spent years cultivating doubt in the electoral system, months casting doubt on the 2020 mail-in voting results, and, finally, weeks spreading blatant lies about voting fraud, ones that he continues to tell to this day.

He did all of this while encouraging and enabling exactly the kind of violence done on his behalf that we all saw on the 6th and, as the House impeachment managers have helpfully shown at length, in the days, weeks, months, and years leading up to it.

“Stand back and stand by”, right? The Proud Boys stuck that on t-shirts.

If the videos the House managers have played have failed to persuade, we tell ourselves, perhaps the evidence of Trump’s Defense and Justice departments undermining the Capitol police and National Guard’s response will. How about a timeline of Trump’s fiddling while the Capitol burned and his own Vice President quite literally ran for his life? No? Really?

You don’t need a lot of time to prepare a case when the defendant has been caught, figuratively, thousands of times in the middle of Fifth Avenue with a smoking gun. Trump’s thumbs offered up hundreds of smoking guns to choose from. Videos of his post-election rallies do, too. The ones he posted that day, hours after the breach, calling the men and women hunting “traitors” of both parties and battering Capitol police with American flags “patriots”, well, that’s a prosecutor’s dream. Or should be.

So, yes, he is guilty. Very, very, very guilty.

Ah, but so are at least three of his jury members: Josh Hawley, James Lankford, and Ted Cruz. They all gave credence to Trump’s lies, they all gave weight to those lies by demanding that the Senate investigate them once more and yet again before confirming the election, and that day they all cynically and repeatedly called for the rejection of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory. Well, Hawley and Cruz did; Lankford was trying to when he was evacuated.

They were no less guilty of trying to profit from the misplaced and misguided rage of those storming the Senate chamber than Trump, and, if the rioters’ own social media accounts are to be believed, Hawley and Cruz at the very least were no less accountable for them being there. Lankford, it seems, needs to up his social media game.

Those three senators, of course, are not on trial. They are merely jurors charged with deciding the guilt or innocence of Donald Trump for doing what they did themselves. They will be joined in their guaranteed “No” votes by at least 41 other Republican senators who, like them, once again voted to claim that, despite over 200 years of clear legal precedent, this impeachment trial is “unconstitutional”.

It’s no shock that the House managers’ detailed legal history lesson fell on deaf ears, nor is it that those three and other Trump Republicans were caught “reading” during the presentation of evidence. Rand Paul, whose own ridiculous claims about the election and trial have been followed by threats of retaliation, was caught doodling like teen stuck in detention.

This, not anything said by Trump’s crack legal team, is the argument for the defense: they know what Trump did, they know it was wrong, they know what they’re doing, and they know that’s wrong, too. And they do not care. They do not care.

These aren’t stupid people, they’re just dishonest. More specifically, they’re corrupt. What they believe, what they take as a matter of faith, is that they’ll face no real consequences for anything they’re doing or anything they’ve done.

And who’s to tell them they’re wrong? What’s the worse Hawley or Cruz will face? Censure? You can’t shame the shameless. They’ll wear their censures the same way Trump would, as a badge of courage on which they can raise campaign money and, they hope, draw out votes from Trump’s millions of rabidly loyal supporters.

For Hawley, Cruz, and others already campaigning for 2024, that’s all that matters. For them, this is just an opportunity, a means to an end, as they pursue their highly profitable careers in politics. It’s just business. For them, Trump, and every other one in Congress, on TV, and on social media who chose to ignore what people might do if they lied to them and wound them up, and for all of those choosing to ignore the consequences of it now, that’s all this is: just business.

And that’s the problem.

Politics shouldn’t be a business. We know that without even having to be told. When we talk about it, we do so in terms of “service” and “doing one’s duty”, words and phrases that romanticize the selfless nature we want to see in our politics and our politicians. We don’t just do that because that’s how we’ve always heard it spoken of, we do that because we know that the ones who embody that ideal are rare. There’s just too much evidence to deny it.

Go back far as you want, there have been men and women seeking power for the purpose of defending themselves and their friends from accountability. Back in the day, they sought appointments through connections or simply joined the clergy. These days, they run for office.

The political party in this country that currently stands against accountability is the Republican Party. Sure, the Democratic Party has its own sizable share of complicity for allowing the country’s drift into right-wing aggressive selfishness, but, lucky for us, it hasn’t been able to rid itself of its accountable members the way the Republican Party has. Of course, that’s only natural, given the importance of accountability to the political Left.

The last two Republican presidents were elected in no small part because they had a background in business. Yes, they each ran their businesses into the ground, but they ran them.

George W. Bush came into office as a “corporate” president, one who would, we were assured, delegate to those more experienced and skilled in areas where he was…lacking. We waved away his inadequacies and were somehow shocked when he failed in exactly every one of those areas. Still, he and his friends made money hand over fist, so the corporate presidency was good for business, big business, in particular, which got a big bailout.

Donald Trump should have inspired even less confidence, but confidence man that he is, he played enough suckers to get him in the White House. As much pain, suffering, and death as he has caused in four excruciatingly long years, he and his cronies have made out like gangbusters, too. The government they were hired to manage, not so much.

From the start, he and his cabinet secretaries lived by the old rule, “it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to get permission”. Not that they asked for forgiveness. That’s for losers. They broke laws, fleeced taxpayers, and resigned knowing that whatever penalty they might face would pale compared to the profits they took with them.

This is the mentality that drives corporate decision making around the world. For them, the adage is a bit more like, “better to settle a lawsuit than risk profits”. They, too, avoid apologies whenever possible. That keeps the damages paid to to victims and their families lower.

Currently, there are companies selling cars, drugs, baby food, and other products that they know are defective and a threat to the people using them. They know this. They know there’s a high risk that people will die, and they do it anyway. Instead of recognizing the threat and stopping, they do cost-benefit analyses to determine the number of deaths from their products they can afford.

This, it’s worth stating, is not capitalism. We may tell ourselves that it is, but that’s just us looking for an easy answer, a scapegoat for our own failures. In fact, this pattern was just as common under communism, too; just ask anybody who used to live near Chernobyl. Mistakes are hidden, a given number of deaths are accepted, and the perception of success and prestige is maintained.

This is corruption, and deaths and suffering caused by a lack of accountability are what corruption does. A death is a symptom, a great, big red flag, something to tell you that something is very, very, very wrong, but how many of those red flags do we see and ignore before we finally stop to ask what it is we’ve been seeing?

How many smaller red flags, such as poverty, racism, anti-semitism, police brutality, injustice, and sexual abuse, do we pass because we’ve just become so used to seeing them? Do we tell ourselves that there is nothing we can do? Do we even ask if there is anything we can do? Or do we, as so many senators are now preparing to do, instead embrace corruption as a virtue.

This is the real threat, a system that accepts this and holds no one accountable, and a culture that pushes back against demands for accountability, embracing the very worst of who we are and what we can do to others just to prove that we can. The result is a flood of childish acting out and a loss of trust in products and services that we must be able to trust because they are supposed to keep us safe.

Is this as great a threat to our society as the January 6th attack on the Capitol? This is that attack. The product failures that led to the attack were political. We have watched as our political and government institutions have failed. We have watched as those entrusted to deliver a product that works and keeps us safe have, again and again, deliberately or not, betrayed that trust. As with any other product sold, each breach of trust carries over into the next, accumulating and compounding, eroding not just our ability to trust those products but all products like them.

Think of the doubts Americans have about the safety of vaccines? Sure, we can chalk that down to internet conspiracy theories and echo chambers if we like, but would they have gained the traction they have in a world in which we weren’t inundated with ads featuring paid-non-attorney-spokespersons asking us if we or a loved one took this drug or that and had experienced one or more life threatening side effects? How many of us heard about the Covid-19 vaccines and asked, How long before we see the ads for that?

For decades, we have allowed ourselves to become a nation of beta-testers, taking on the cost and burden of quality control that the companies releasing and profiting from these products, and these class action lawsuits have become big business as a result. Every new pharmaceutical product that hits the shelves, part of us is just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Time and the success of these vaccines should put an end to that, at least for this pandemic, but that we have to do so should tell us about the work we have to do to repair our society, or to build one that can exist without absolving us from being accountable to each other.

Until then, we have other kinds of corruption to face, including one that may be more destructive than anything we’re seeing in the Senate this week.

The Reddit-GameStop insurrection might have been fun to watch from the sidelines, a bit of schadenfreude for those of us on the outside of Wall Street, looking in, but the truth is the hedge fund villains still made their money, and the systemic fault lines this episode exposed should have us all scared and paying attention.

Our economy is overly concentrated in Wall Street’s product and therefore overly dependent on its success and stability. A loss of faith in its product has been underway for years. That’s how you get to day traders trying to take on hedge funds the way they did. This wasn’t David vs Goliath, this was guerrilla warfare over who gets to make the quick and easy profits.

The upside of that is that some of the “little guys” seem to win something; the downside of that is that it does nothing to fix the problems we have with Wall Street. Rather, it only makes them worse, by highlighting how easy it is to manipulate stocks and commodities and how few get to do it and get away with it.

What happens, then, when no one has any faith left in Wall Street? What happens when everyone believes it is nothing more than a casino designed to take money rather than make it?

Well, we’re almost there. We have a massive, growing online gambling industry, and with it an online gambling problem. Sports leagues, some with their own recent histories of cheaters (and worse) getting away with it, have turned their own fans onto gambling as part of the sport. How many of these people, blowing their money on bad beats, think of it as no different than investing on Wall Street stocks?

A better question: What happens to all of those stock prices when everyone, including the crooks on Wall Street, lose faith in that system, take their profits, and leave? An even better question: What happens if they do that all at once?

The answer is: Lost jobs, pensions, food and housing security, and hope.

In other words, 2020 on steroids. That’s what you get with corruption, an environment in which politicians like Donald Trump, companies willing to harm consumers, and right wing domestic terrorists thrive. As long as they aren’t held accountable, they will.

“Bad for the country”, indeed.

- Daniel Ward

#impeachment #corruption #politics #depraved indifference #aggressive selfishness #Donald Trump #josh hawley #ted cruz #james lankford #mitch mcconnell #lindsey graham #republicans #democrats #january 6th #insurrection #long reads #long read

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razieltwelve · 3 years

Text

Reconstruction (Final Effect)

Shepard heard a buzzing noise and glanced around until she caught sight of the swarm of glowing insects. They paused in their flight and then formed into a series of glowing arrows.

“Huh...” She chuckled. “That is pretty handy.” She nodded at the insects. “Thanks.”

The arrows bobbed up and down in response and then continued onto whatever their next errand was. As she walked through the debris left by the battle, Shepard could only shake her head as more insects emerged. Some were small, similar in size to ants, whilst others were titanic creatures, one of them even as large as the Reapers that lay broken and scattered on the ruins of New York.

The Eranthem were apparently an insect-like species that the Empire had discovered years ago. Their driving desire had been to work and serve their creators, but those creators had been destroyed. The Empire had taken the Eranthem in and given them a new home and purpose. By all accounts, the Eranthem were more than happy with their current situation. The Empire encompassed more than a million worlds, which meant there was always plenty of work for them to do, and the Eranthem were treated with esteem and respect by their new leaders. In fact, there was even an Eranthem character in that obnoxious cartoon she’d caught a glimpse of.

Despite some initial misgivings, the Eranthem had also become increasingly popular on Earth. They could do just about anything that needed doing. They could sift through the rubble for survivors, clear away the debris, and even recycle dead Reapers. Moreover, they were incredible at construction. Give the Eranthem the raw materials, and they could throw together a field hospital in a matter of hours if there were enough of them. Combined with the Empire’s advanced technology, the situation had gone from seemingly hopeless to under control in a matter of days.

She finally reached her destination, and she took a moment to steady herself before entering the command area. Sentries of various kinds watched over the area, and she exchanged nods with some soldiers as she made her way over to the holographic projector that kept track of reconstruction efforts across the globe.

“Shepard.” Admiral Hackett gestured for her to join them.

“Sir.” Shepard inclined her head and glanced at the projection. “How are things going?”

“Earth and its colonies - not just in this solar system but everywhere - are officially free of Reapers, but there’s a lot of work to do. We took a lot of hits, there’s no denying that, but we’ve come through it in better condition than we could have hoped.” He gestured, and the hologram shifted into one depicting Systems Alliance territory. “Red is bad, green is good.”

Shepard sighed as she took in the large patches of red. Yet even now, as she watched, she could see them changing colour. “It could be worse.”

“It was all red a few days ago, Shepard.” Hackett ran one hand over his face. “But we’ve had help.” He lowered his voice slightly. “Have you seen the Eranthem work?”

“Yes, I have, sir. They’re miracle workers.”

“They are,” Hackett agreed. “I saw a bunch of them crafting the walls of a shelter even as some of the smaller ones made the wiring and plumbing. It’s incredible. We’re already in talks to have them throw together the essential infrastructure we need to really begin rebuilding.”

“About the rebuilding...”

“We want to do as much of it as we can ourselves,” Hackett said. “I know it would be easier to ask our new allies to do it for us, but we can’t look too weak. Besides, reconstruction is big business. We’ve got a bunch of people who need employment, and this will go a long way to helping them. Of course, there are essential services that we can’t afford to delay on. We’ll ask for help getting those up and running as quickly as we can.”

Shepard nodded. “Sounds good, sir.” She paused. “Has there been word from the Council?”

Hackett laughed. “You bet there has. The Asari have thrown about a billion diplomatic injunctions at anyone they can think of. They only stopped after that Supreme Admiral Blakey threatened to just annex Thessia if they wouldn’t shut up. Apparently, they were arguing about who should be in charge.”

“Begging your pardon, sir, but I would think the people with solar system killing super weapons built into their dreadnoughts would be in charge.”

He chuckled wryly. “The Asari always did say we could be too pragmatic for our own good. But you’re right. It’s usually not a good idea to argue with the people saving your species and carrying around enough firepower to make the Reapers look like tin cans.” He looked up at the titanic Imperial dreadnought that had locked itself into orbit over the city to help distribute supplies, personnel, and equipment. “But I’m sure the more practical matriarchs are already looking for a way to profit from this.”

“And the Salarians and Turians?”

“I’m told our Salarian friends might well be recruited by the Dia-Farron. Apparently, they think they’ll make good minions or something.”

“Ah.” Shepard had met several members of the Dia-Farron. There seemed to be two types of them: insanely brilliant but devious and borderline insane or utterly sensible and down to earth. The latter was seemingly tasked with keeping the former in line. Still, there was no denying their good work. “I can see that happening.”

“As for the Turians, they’ve been getting along with our new allies well. The Empire has a very martially oriented culture. It’s something the Turians can understand and bond with.” Hackett grinned. “It’s incredible, isn’t it? We’ve finally met life from another galaxy, and it’s quite similar to us in many ways.”

“I can’t say I expected it.” Shepard’s lips curled. “But I’m not complaining.”

“No,” Hackett said. “I don’t think anyone is.” He pointed. “I know they’re not.”

Shepard followed his gaze and smiled. The war had been hard on children. So many had seen friends and family killed or harvested. But not far away, one of the Dia-Farron's gigantic war hamster had shed its armour and was gleefully carrying around more than a dozen kids. The children were laughing in delight as the eminently cuddly harbinger of doom ambled through the ruins. Its Dia-Farron walked alongside, directing the Eranthem nearby.

X X X

Author’s Notes

After the war comes reconstruction. It’ll be a tough balancing act. The desire to rebuild as quickly as possibly has to be weighed against the need to avoid over-reliance on the Empire and Alliance. The Systems Alliance will have their work cut out for them. However, I think they’ll likely handle things better than the Aari, Turians, and Salarians. Humans are an adaptable bunch.

The Dia-Farron also make surprisingly good ambassadors, as do their war hamsters. It’s a reminder that they are wonderful to their friends and allies and terrifying to their enemies. Meanwhile, the Eranthem look at all the work that needs doing, and they’re just happy to be useful.

If you’re interested in my thoughts on writing and other topics, you can find those here.

I also write original fiction, which you can find on Amazon here or on Audible here.

#final effect #fanfiction #shepard #hackett

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stillness-in-green · 3 years

Text

Ahistorical, Absurd, and Unsustainable (Thanks + Sources and Further Reading)

This post concludes the essay-as-written. I'm going to try to get a full version up on AO3 within the next few days, which I will link here (ETA: here) and on my tumblr generally. It will have properly hotlinked footnotes and a table of contents. It will also probably be all in one chapter, as it was intended to be read, with the exception of the resources below.

Thanks to @codenamesazanka, who provided me a lot of useful links to resources on Japanese law when I was still just spitting overheated hypotheses into the void. Thanks also to @robotlesbianjavert, @aysall and my tumblr-less BF for their game beta-reads, their catches of some grammar and spelling mistakes that would have ranged from annoying to mortifying, and for the checks on my thought process and organizational flow. Thanks to everyone in my chat group for putting up with me when I had a mini "oh god what am I doing I'm not a lawyer" meltdown over my first draft Logistics conclusions.

And thanks to all of the people on tumblr who read and reblogged this! If any of you want some further reading on the topics I discussed, or if you just want to double-check my information, see below to conclude:

Ahistorical, Absurd, and Unsustainable: An Examination of the Mass Arrest of the Paranormal Liberation Front

Introduction and Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four and Conclusion

Sources and Further Reading

I tended to start with Wikipedia and then either follow their source links or Google for further information when I needed more detail or to clear up the occasional bit of conflicting information. Unfortunately, I wasn’t thinking quite far enough in advance to save a link to every single source I used, but I’ve done my best to either dig them back up in retrospect or find another source relaying similar information.

All direct quotes, excerpted panels and canonical information comes from Viz's official translation of My Hero Academia or My Hero Academia: Vigilantes.

///

Overviews on the pre-war Japanese incidents I cited for comparative purposes:

The March 15 Incident

The February 26 Incident

The Rice Riots. Further information sourced from the rather more detailed Japanese page.

The formation and immediate ban of the Farmer-Labor Party.

///

General reading on uprisings, riots, coups, and protests that otherwise got out of hand.

The Era of Popular Violence

Rebellions in Japan

Attempted Coups in Japan

///

On Aum Shinrikyo and the sarin gas attacks:

Wikipedia has some basics, but further information was sourced from a Congress report on Aum some seven months after the attack and this Aum retrospective written last year.

The Wikipedia page on Underground.

For another story wrestling with these topics, consider giving the anime Mawaru Penguindrum a whirl. Without explicitly telling you that's what it's doing, it deals with the difficulties—stigma leading to ostracization, depression and radicalization—faced by the children of a fictionalized Aum Shinrikyo expy some years following an equally obvious fictionalized expy of the sarin gas attacks, as well as critically depicting the state of society that may have lead members of Japan’s “Lost Generation” to cults like Aum to begin with. There’s a good but spoilerific breakdown on that aspect of the show here.

///

International referents:

India’s Million Man March, and a BBC report on the arrests/detainments.

An article about a lawsuit brought by the ACLU over the Baltimore arrests, and the cite on 24-hour releases.

This article is my source of the 1,200 number on the mass trials in Egypt. This one is a more in-depth look at the problems with the trials, while this one shows that the mass trial problems are still ongoing.

///

Japan’s laws:

The Peace Preservation Laws

English translations of the Penal Code and the Subversive Activities Prevention Act.

An overview of the state of criminal conspiracy law in Japan circa 2007, looking at the first incarnation of what would eventually become the 2017 law.

A scathing opinion piece on said 2017 law.

A citation on the Subversive Activities Prevention Act being invoked against Aum, and only Aum. Dated year-of, but there have been no invocations of it since, despite Japan seeing a marked upswing in anti-new religious movement sentiment after the sarin gas attacks.

///

Japan’s penal system:

A broad overview on Wikipedia.

Two sources for numbers, one less recent, but with more context and detail here; another with the most recent numbers available here.

Cite for 2018 number of arrests.

///

The trial process and criminal justice:

An exhaustive report on the structures, status, and proceedings of criminal justice in Japan at every stage from the initial arrest to post-release services circa 2019.

The Wikipedia article on pre-trial detention cells in Japan, which has a decent overview of why they’re controversial. See also the entry for the role of confessions in the indictment process.

Cite for the number of deaths caused by law enforcement in Japan in 2018.

An overview on lay judges, and an article on the Japanese public’s broad discomfort with the system.

A good article on the high conviction rate and what activists call “hostage justice.”

Another good article on the conviction rate, this one touching on several of the aspects I mention about lenient sentences and coerced confessions, as well as some that I didn't, like corrupt or compromised judges.

A broad look at attorneys in Japan and, buried in an article on the lay judge system because I could not for the life of me find the interview I read that talked about it, a citation for the unpopularity of defense attorneys. (Footnote 365)

A Wikipedia page for Yasuda Yoshihiro, who I quipped about in a footnote and refrained from explaining further. Long story short, he’s maybe the example of an unpopular defense attorney in Japan, an anti-death penalty activist who has served as defense in a number of high-profile cases, absolutely the most notable of which was that of Asahara Shoukou, the leader of Aum Shinrikyo.

An interview with the CEO of Cross Career, an employment agency founded by an ex-convict and dedicated to helping others like him find work. Talks some about the stigma around felons and how it impacts recidivism in Japan.

///

On children in Japan:

An exhaustive rundown on the state of alternative childcare in Japan.

An article about the way children’s independence is founded on a strong faith in their community, and a post that mentions the TV program Hajimete no Otsukai (My First Errand).

///

On AEDs:

An article from relatively early on—back in 2007—in the rollout. From the following year, there’s this rather drier but informative article from a medical journal discussing the effectiveness of the movement thus far and steps that could be taken to make the public more confident in using the devices.

///

Further relevant My Hero Academia meta:

Tumblr user @codenamesazanka has posted some excerpts and discussion about Murakami’s Underground and how the issues Murakami raises can also be seen in My Hero Academia.

My take on the MLA and quirk supremacy, part of a much longer piece covering my general lore on the MLA, its members, and its history. For some more specific discussion on why I think the series itself supports the view that the MLA at large was not as hardline quirk supremacist as Geten claims, see Geten’s section “On Quirk Supremacy (and Re-Destro, still)” in this post about my headcanons for the canonical MLA members.

#bnha meta #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #bnha #my writing #plf arrests #stillness has salt

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deathonyourtongue · 4 years

Note

How about something with Henry Cavill and the reader moving in together, while doing so he finds all her old cosplay photos and costumes, seeing she is as much a geek as him😊💗

I love this, but I’ll be the first to admit, I know NOTHING about cosplay, its rules, etc. so I don’t know if the character I picked is even cosplay-able, but...ENJOY!! Oh, and ten points if you can guess which character the reader cosplayed as. ;)

Amalgamating furniture and possessions is never an easy task, and deadlines for moving trucks and keys only make it worse. Though you’ve managed to label most of the boxes you’re bringing into your new home, towards the end, when the moving truck was rolling up, you start rushing and labeling goes right out the window. By the time everything is dumped into the new house, the only way to truly decipher which boxes are yours and which are Henry’s is the box brand’s logo.

“Darling, where do you want these?” Henry calls as you pass by, holding an end table that’ll now serve as a temporary nightstand, since yours disintegrated on the way over; it’s what you get for buying cheap furniture. Though you’re slowly replacing the DIY-assembly furniture for more long-lasting pieces, it nevertheless adds to your stress and you can only manage a moment’s pause to look at which boxes Henry’s toeing carefully before making a decision.

“Just...in the spare room. I can’t remember what I put in there,” you say, dismissing the importance of the boxes, especially since they’re the ones you hadn’t labeled back at the old place; whatever’s in them definitely doesn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things.

Henry nods, wishing he could get you to take a break, but knowing better than to try and stop you before you’re ready. He moves the boxes easily, setting them in the room before grabbing the box cutter from his pocket. While you’ve tasked yourself with furniture arranging, he’s been put in charge of unpacking and doing the initial organization of what goes in what room. The plan is for the two of you to organize things properly together later on, once everything is roughly in place.

After slipping the knife through the tape and flipping open the flaps, Henry has to sit back on his heels, his head cocked to one side in confusion. Though you’ve known each other going on five years, this is part of your life he’s never been privy to.

The first item in the box is a leather corset. Hand-crafted, it not only looks like it cost a fortune, but has clearly been used a time or two. Henry’s fingertips slip over the embossing on the center panel, the design intricate and definitely well-done. He’s not sure if it means anything, but it adds to the mystique of the piece as a whole.

His eyes go wide as he pulls out the next piece, now concluding this is a whole outfit. His mind races to a million different places, Henry wondering if you’ve been living some sort of double life the whole time he’s known you. Holding the black latex bodysuit out in front of him, he can’t help but get a little turned on, picturing you in it easily.

Henry’s imagination doesn’t have to do much more work, as the next object in the box is a framed picture. Looking as though it was taken at a convention of some sort, Henry finds it strange that you’d have a picture of two strangers, but after having a closer look, gasps when he realizes you’re in the picture.

“Fuck me sideways,” he mutters to himself, the whole outfit making perfect sense when he takes it in in its entirety. He can’t keep the smile from his face as he pulls out the trench and the guns next, the orange tips on the revolvers being the only real way to tell that they’re props and not the real deal.

Shaking his head, his smile only grows as he pulls out a folder of professionally shot pictures, the set and your poses meant to recreate scenes from your favorite movie. Everything done in painstaking details, it’s clear that both you and the photographer worked really hard on it.

The amulet is next, and Henry has to fight the urge to clap as though cheering you on, knowing it would only interrupt you in your work. Excited is an understatement, and he beams as he turns the imitation over in his hand, once more marveling at the detail.

Reaching the bottom of the box, Henry’s almost disappointed when he doesn’t find the fangs, but instead is met with the boots that seal the whole outfit together. He wonders if you’ve lost them over the years, and has half a mind to order you a new pair for...reasons.

Henry’s so caught up in what he’s discovered that he doesn’t realize you’ve been on a break for the better part of ten minutes, after having unpacked some stuff for the bathroom that you needed. He also doesn’t hear you tip-toe in behind him, crouching down until your mouth is level with his ear.

“I’ve been lost without you, my Lord; constantly hounded by Kraven and his never-ending infatuation,” you whisper in your best British accent, waiting only a moment before gently biting down on Henry’s neck, your hand holding the opposite side of his face as though willing him to keep still while you ‘feed’.

The noise that leaves Henry is half strangled cry and half moan, and it’s exactly what you’re hoping to hear as you slowly suck a hickey into his neck, keeping your fangs pressed to his skin so that the bruising goes around the small circular marks the fangs leave. It’s a tried-and-true system of making it look like he’s been bit, and had he known you in your early twenties, he’d have had one on his neck nearly every week of the month.

“Jesus, love,” he mumbles, leaning back against you, eyes closed in what you can only read as pure arousal.

“You didn’t think you were the only geek in this house, did you? Some of us just keep it...in the dark.” Your purposely-evil laugh breaks any spell you had on him and Henry dissolves into a peel of delighted laughter, because that was, by far, the cheesiest thing he’s ever heard come out of your mouth.

@fumbling-fanfics @skiesfallithurts @pinkpenguin7 @madmedusa178 @crushed-pink-petals @fangoria @bluestarego @caffeinated-writer @my–own–personal–paradise @tastingmellow @honeychicana @lua-latina @angelicapriscilla @swiftyhowlz @schreiberpablo @pinkwatchblueshoes @kirasmomsstuff @prettypascal @blacklotus-of-the-black-kingdom @nardahsb @playbucky @veryfastspeedz @queen-of-the-kastle @freyahelps @cajunpeach @godlikeentity @captainsamwlsn @nakusaych9 @katerka88 @katerka88 @kirasmomsstuff @melaninmimii @alienor-romanova @downtowndk @redhairedmoiraandtheliferuiners @safiras @agniavateira @henryfanfics101 @fatefuldestinies

#henry cavill x reader #henry cavill fic #fluff #fic #deathonyourtongueoriginals

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liverpolitics · 3 years

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Liverpool’s Metro Mayor Candidates 2021: All you need to Know.

Tomorrow, on Thursday the 6th of May, the Liverpolitan people will be travelling in droves to their nearest polling station to vote on the future of the Liverpool City Region.

Yes, the 2021 Local Elections are almost upon us and the residents of Liverpool, Sefton, Knowsley, Wirral, St. Helens and Halton boroughs will all be able to vote for the councillors who they want to see represent them in their local ward. This year, Liverpolitans will also be provided with a ballot that will allow them to vote for their preferred candidate for the region’s metro mayor.

The metro mayor was a role first established in 2016 under the Cities and Local Government Devolution Act and is a title that has only ever been held by Labour’s Steve Rotherham since 2017. Now while the Liverpool Metro Mayor does not hold the same powers as a First Minister or the Mayor of London, they do have a number of important roles vital to the cities development. The Metro Mayor is responsible for uniting Liverpool’s six boroughs and encouraging them to work collectively to better Liverpool’s economic and political position. Furthermore, the Metro Mayor has a duty, to the best of their ability, to attract investment and economic prosperity across the region. They also hold certain powers, such as the management of cross-borough services, like public transport. Hence, while they are limited in what they can do in comparison to other devolved positions, the metro mayor is instrumental for our region’s future development, whether that be economical, environmental or political.

This blog is intended to provide information on the Metro Mayor candidates to help voters make a more informed decision on who they want to see as the face and voice of the Liverpool City Region. Note: I do not intend to influence how the reader will vote, but I will be asserting my own opinions on the candidates, their policies, and the parties they represent. Furthermore, the policy information included has been taken from an LCR Mayoral Election 2021 guide in order to help readers gain a better perspective of the candidates.

Jade Marsden (Conservative Party)

Now being a Conservative candidate in Liverpool already puts Marsden at a significant setback. There has and still remains a long held stigma against the Tories dating back to Margaret Thatcher, as captured in the sentiment that “Scousers Hate Tories”. Though while one would seek to disregard Marsden from the get go, I must please ask you to hear what she has to offer to Liverpool before jumping to a conclusion.

Mrs. Marsden is a current resident of South Liverpool and formerly stood as the parliamentary candidates for both Bootle and Sefton Central respectively. According the Sefton Central Conservatives, Marsden’s “wealth” of experience of local politics would be beneficial in her ability to be a strong “Fresh Voice” for the Liverpool City Region.

Marsden strongly believes that it has been under Labour’s leadership that the LCR has been let down. As a result, we have missed out on key investment, transport improvements and well-paid jobs. Thus, the LCR needs a vision that delivers for future generations, offers a solution to air pollution and secures jobs and future investment. Marsden intends to offer this to Liverpool.

Is a Blue Liverpool the way forward?

Marsden, if victorious, intends to cooperate with Westminster to “get things done”. If she was to be elected, she would:

Not charge the Metro Mayoral Precept, part of the council tax that funds city region-wide services that the Metro Mayor is responsible for.

Ensure spending is widespread and not just focused on central Liverpool.

Lobby the government to make the region an urban national park to protect Liverpolitan green spaces and the coastline.

Work to end homelessness as we recover from the pandemic, as well as improve social housing that contains dangerous living conditions.

Improve regional transport connections.

Attract new investment to help out small businesses and the high street, in order to ensure that local people have good quality jobs.

Now while this may sound ideal, I do hold certain critiques of Marsden’s policy agenda.

First of all, the Mayoral Precept, as mentioned, is responsible for funding city region-wide services. Not charging it may allow tax payers to keep more money in their pocket, a possible benefit due to the impact of the pandemic. However, a cut to the Mayoral Precept will come at a cost for local services. Public transport, for instance, would lose out on funding as a result. This somewhat contradicts her pledge to improve regional transport connections.

Secondly, while the “urban national park” label may sound good on the surface, I cannot help but think this would put the LCR at a setback. Liverpool has beautiful natural scenery, the likes of Thurstaston Beach or Sefton Park is proof of this. Liverpool thrives on its green spaces. These spaces should be protected under law. However, I believe an “urban national park” status will put the city at a disadvantage. It is not clear whether Marsden’s urban national park intends to prevent development on disused docks in Liverpool or Birkenhead. Furthermore, there are well needed transport connections that would be vital for moving cargo to or from the Port of Liverpool. Liverpool’s urban development and economic prosperity cannot be jeopardised if Marsden seeks to attract new investment and create new jobs.

Yet there are key issues that I do agree with Marsden on. While the Liverpool name is the regional “brand”, investment has been too focused on central Liverpool. The city centre is thriving while town centres in Bootle, Birkenhead, Widnes, etc. are awaiting significant investment. However, Rotherham has only been in office for 4 years. Given time, he too could secure funding for locations beyond Liverpool City Centre.

Other things to Remember:

Above, I have chosen to insert an image of Southport town centre. Southport in the 2019 General Election was the only Liverpolitan constituency to vote Conservative, represented by MP Damien Moore since 2017.

Recently, Southport was awarded £37.5 Million in government funding to help in regenerating the town. This was one of the largest town deals that the government has agreed to. This money would allow the town to invest in existing attractions and all-weather attractions across the seafront, as well as attract new businesses to the area. It is believed that the masterplan will create 1,000 new jobs and it is predicted that Southport will enjoy a 1 Million increase in visitors per year.

This goes to show that there may be possible perks of having a Conservative representative for the region at a time where the Tory’s dominate Westminster. This may be something worth considering when casting your vote tomorrow. A vote for Marsden, may be a vote for an increase in Liverpool’s funding.

David Newman (Liberal Democrats Party)

Until recently, Southport local David Newman was not supposed to be the Lib Dem candidate for the Metro Mayor role. Newman “stepped forward” after the former candidate, Wirral councillor Andy Corkhill, was forced to withdraw because of his serious battle with cancer.

Newman understands that unlike other city region residents, he and his partner are fortunate to have a young family, work, own his own home and live a happy, healthy life. He identifies that others in our region are being left behind and he seeks to offer Liverpolitans a way to “Step Forward”.

Newman is offering voters to join him in creating real leadership in Liverpool and providing a real direction. Newman also seeks to tackle the climate emergency, fix the region’s broken transport system and provide hope for businesses effected by the Covid-19 Pandemic.

Are you ready to Step Forward?

Like all residents of the city region, Newman is aware of how our region has been tarnished by the actions of the city’s ‘political bosses’. It is the next Metro Mayor’s job to repair the damaged reputation caused by a handful of greedy politicians and ‘cowboy’ developers. Newman seeks to ‘clean up’ local politics and ensure that he is held accountable to the citizens of Liverpool.

Newman seeks to ensure that our region is welcoming, ensuring that all investments are ethical. He also seeks to launch a green recovery plan to tackle the current climate crisis. This would help in fixing the city’s reputation that Labour predecessors exploited for their own ends.

Newman also seeks to ensure no one in Liverpool, Sefton, Wirral, Knowsley, St. Helens or Halton are left behind. To do so, Newman intends to launch the UK’s first trial of Universal Basic Income (UBI) to put an end to the poverty that has plagued local communities. Newman also seeks to open up Liverpool to European and Global investment so that the city can once again be placed at the ‘Heart of the Globe’.

So what are Newman’s policies? For the purpose of this, I have divided his policies into four categories: Post Covid-19 Recovery, The Climate Emergency, Transport; A Global Region.

Post Covid-19 Recovery

Newman intends to deliver a new economic deal to create jobs, allow businesses to thrive and help out those in our community who have been left behind. He seeks to do this by:

Trialling UBI in Liverpool. Newman wishes to initiate a scheme that would make it so citizens would no longer have to rely on government welfare or the goodwill of landlords. Having UBI would make it so money is no longer an issue, it would allow people to learn new skills and bring an end to regional poverty.

Reinventing the High Street by introducing a number of services that people want and need, this includes child care and an expansion of hospitality.

Creating new jobs and allow for residents to develop new skills and undergo new training.

Supporting Small Businesses and the Self-Employed by fighting for a rent relief fund for small businesses in debt and relief payments for self-employed without property.

The Climate Emergency

Newman believes that Liverpool has an opportunity to become a beacon for national and international governments on how to tackle the climate emergency. He seeks to do this by:

Creating a Green Recovery Plan which would ensure that all infrastructure plans and investments are in line with what is needed to address the climate emergency. Newman also intends to create a clear carbon budget and carbon reduction pathway.

Ensuring that all parks and green spaces across the region are legally protected to prevent future development on the land.

Investing in Clean, Renewable Energy by advancing tidal power and investing into more wind farms.

Ensuring the Port of Liverpool in Net Zero Carbon by finding a suitable, sustainable way of moving freight (not by road) and advocating for the halting of the importation of industrial-scale North American biomass.

Transport

Newman wishes to make regional public transport more accessible by reducing ticket fairs and increasing services to locations currently underserved. His transport ideas also go hand in hand with his desire for tackling the climate emergency. Newman would improve transport by:

Fixing the broken bus network and delivering on Steve Rotherham’s failed promise to introduce Bus Franchising. As well as Introduce more flexible season passes and tickets so journey’s that involve more than one bus are easier to make.

Improving the Merseyrail network by reopening lines that currently lack passenger services, building new station and making existing ones more accessible to disabled passengers. Newman also intends to push for further electrification of the local rail network and reuse the Wapping Tunnel to give Merseyrail access to the City Line.

Investing into more cycle paths and walking opportunities.

A Global Region

Newman seeks to cooperate with European and International partners to allow Liverpool to be a major player on the world stage. Newman intends to:

Work with Greater Manchester and Stormont to create embassies in European and Global cities to assist with the development of trade, industry, university links, etc.

Encourage London- based High Commissions and Embassies to create Honorary Ambassadors to Liverpool.

Work with our international football clubs and use events like the Grand National and Southport Open to showcase the region and seek new opportunities.

I must say, Newman has a lot of policies. The question is, can he realistically deliver them? Trialling UBI, further electrification of the rail network; building tidal and wind energy farms, etc. are all very costly projects. It is possible that Newman will struggle to accomplish his ideas given the financial restraint placed upon the city region.

Furthermore, his global city policies tend to be very Eurocentric, describing Liverpool as a “proud European region”. The Lib Dems should know by now that alienating Brexiteers tends not to work out very well for them. I believe that there should be a focus not simply on Brussels, but also on countries beyond Europe, such as Canada, the U.S.A., Japan, Australia, New Zealand, etc.

However, despite this, I am quite fond of Newman and what he stands for. I was particularly excited those for his transport policies as I for a long time have advocated for the reopening of the likes of the Wapping tunnel. It felt good to know that a metro mayor candidate shared this interest in disused lines. If you wish to read more of his policies, please visit: https://www.davidnewman.org.uk/

Gary Cargill (Green Party)

Actor Gary Cargill, known for his roles in Hollyoaks (2010-11,2013) and Peterloo (2018), is standing to be a Green Mayor (”For Everyone”) in the LCR. Cargill, Liverpool born and Runcorn raised, seeks to ‘turn the city region green’ and ‘inspire real long lasting change’.

His policies centre on the current climate emergency, thus prioritising environmental policies and protecting the most vulnerable suffering in our communities.

As a Green Mayor, Cargill promises the Liverpolitan people that he will:

Create new skilled jobs in Green Energy and Technology.

Build a clean, affordable transport system.

Invest in developing skills and training for young people.

Protect green spaces for future generations.

Establish a ‘People’s Assembly’ to ensure the Metro Mayor is completely accountable.

While all this sounds pretty generic and similar to previous candidates, Cargill goes a step further. Unlike his adversaries, Cargill discusses what he would do for each borough individually. This admittedly impressed me as he seems not to be focused on Liverpool collectively.

#GARY4HALTON - Cargill promises to push for an improved City Region-wide air monitoring system, particularly around sources of pollution.

#GARY4KNOWSLEY - Cargill wants to put Knowsley borough back on the map by making sure that local towns receive a fair share of regional investment and support.

#GARY4LIVERPOOL - Cargill will work towards having more safer and accessible walking and cycling networks. He also wants to develop cheaper and cleaner public transport.

#GARY4SEFTON - Cargill promises to protect Sefton’s green spaces from development and road building. He also wants to invest into more renewable energy along the Sefton coast, a valuable resource for wind a solar.

#GARY4ST.HELENS - Cargill wants to make sure that the Green Belt in St. Helens is protected. He wishes to stop local councils from building warehouses in Haydock, Bold and Newton which risk “destroying our natural environment”.

GARY4WIRRAL - Cargill insists that due to the climate emergency, the Liverpool region’s economic growth is not as important and cannot remain constant. However, Cargill wants to take advantage of regeneration opportunities, like Wirral Waters, to invest in a circular economy that provides Green Jobs in renewable energy and housing.

It is clear that Cargill, as expected from a Green candidate, is passionate about the Liverpool region’s environment. Of all of his ideas, my favourite is his idea for making use of the Sefton coastline’s valuable resources for solar and wind energy.

However, I personally I see more flaws in Cargill’s policies than I see sensible ideas. Cargill has made clear that the climate emergency is the number one priority for Liverpool, even our regional economy is expendable for the sake of the environment. Environmental issues are undoubtedly important, but how does Cargill hope to fund his policies if he is willing to sacrifice Liverpool’s economic recovery?

This was also reinforced during his debate with Steve Rotherham where he openly condemned Liverpool’s free port status as a “Thatcherite race to the bottom”. Despite the opportunities for job creation and investment the free port could bring to Liverpool, he wishes to scrap it. As Rotherham commented, without this status, industries and opportunities will be exported to the North East. Liverpool cannot afford to pass up on investments like the Free Port.

From what I can gather, based on the policies I have seen and his appearance on the Granada Reports debate, the Greens are too one policy focused. This could be extremely detrimental for our region. Yet I could be biased, is a ‘Green Mayor’ the way forward?

Steve Rotherham (Labour Party)

The final candidate running for the Metro Mayor position is none other than Steve Rotherham who, tomorrow, is up for re-election.

Having held the metro mayor title since 2017, Rotherham promises to ensure that if he was to be elected once again, there will be ‘No One Left Behind’. Rotherham promises that he will ‘stand up for everyone’ across the Liverpool region, but how has his track record been so far?

During his time as metro mayor:

Liverpool (pre-Covid) became the fastest growing economy in the UK. Rotherham also points out his management to attain another £232 Million to fund transport, skills and tackling homelessness.

Public Transport saw Improvement. Northern’s stripped franchise aside, during Rotherham’s time as mayor, Merseyrail opened its first station in 20 years and claimed to have taken steps to take control of the region’s buses and rail infrastructure.

Young People were Helped. £48 Million was invested into upgrading school/college facilities.

He ‘Fought Injustice’ through spending £8 million to develop a Housing First pilot to tackle homelessness. He also supported 1,300 families into work.

He lowered the toll for the Mersey tunnels to the lowest it has ever been.

Was this enough for a first term? I argue no.

In terms of transport, the new Merseyrail Class-777 trains are yet to appear on our lines. Whether or not their launch has been delayed due to Covid-19 or not, the metro mayor should have already launched the service to prove his commitment to a “London Style Transport System”. Furthermore, only opening one Merseyrail station in your first term is not an achievement. Maghull North was opened to the public in 2018, yet it took Rotherham until 2020 (his last year in office) to begin working on Headbolt Lane? I also have heard little about the supposed reopening of St. James Street. I don’t think this is good enough.

Also, as Newman pointed out, Rotherham has completely failed to deliver improved and nationalised bus services. In fact we are now “9 months behind Manchester” according to Rotherham himself. To put it simply, he failed to deliver on his promise that will Liverpool will be the first city outside of London to have a nationalised transport infrastructure. In fact, he has allowed Liverpool’s closest rival, Manchester, to get ahead in the fight for better public transport.

Speaking of Manchester, in 2020 the Republic of Ireland declared it would be opening a consulate in the North in order to “Strengthen our Bonds”. The contenders for this consulate were Liverpool and Manchester. You would think that Liverpool, given its history and much closer association with the Irish people would be chosen for the consulate. Yet, this is not what happened. Rotherham allowed, with seemingly little fight, for the consulate to go to our neighbour. One could argue that Andy Burnham has become the Mayor of Manchester and Liverpool.

How has he allowed for Liverpool to be outcompeted by our closest rival?

Now onto his response to Covid-19...

Rotherham claimed that during 2020, he took on Boris Johnson and Westminster to win more money to funding for testing, vaccinations and furlough. Though, I would have to argue that it was Andy Burnham who stood up for the people of the North. Rotherham was in fact nowhere to be seen. His track record is definitely something to be made aware of when voting for Metro Mayor.

No One Left Behind

However, while he may not be the ideal candidate based on his track record, it is still worth considering his policies before casting a final decision.

Rotherham, if re-elected, has promised to deliver:

A £150 million Covid Recovery Fund, double the number of Green Jobs and would work towards a more locally controlled London-style transport network.

A Guarantee to Young People that a job, apprenticeship or training opportunities will be made available for all school leavers within 6 months of becoming unemployed.

Greater control of the transport system with the new trains coming into service and tap-in tap-out ticketing being introduced. Rotherham also promises a cycle revolution.

A Green New Deal that will ensure that Liverpool leads the Green Industrial Revolution. He will double the number of green jobs, harness the power of the Mersey (invest into renewable energy) and ensure our region is on track to be net zero by 2040.

A Digitally Connected Region, achieved through the deliverance of ultrafast broadband infrastructure across the entire region. This would make Liverpool the most connected region in the country.

Now Rotherham does have some good policies. The question is can he deliver them?

However, it should be noted that Rotherham may not have to worry about re-election. As a twitter user put it, ‘Hitler could be a labour mayor and win’. The Liverpool region, despite years of neglect and being overlooked, is a Labour stronghold. This gives Rotherham a boost in his effort to be re-elected.

Closing Thoughts

I hope this article has allowed you to understand all the candidates in greater depth. The Metro Mayor is an important figure for our region and we must ensure that the right person gets the job. So, make sure you find the time to go out and vote tomorrow!

Best of luck to all the candidates!

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prettyboysdontlookatexplosions · 4 years

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totally stealing @honeybabydichotomy‘s meme-adaptation concept re: i have a handful of things that could be described WIPs and nearly all of them i already can’t shut my mouth about, but here is a trip through the GOOGLE DOCS GRAVEYARD of abandoned fandoms past (mcu, trc, something too embarrassing to list above the cut so you’ll just have to CLICK and find out)

first up, the last fic i never actually wrote for, lmao, american idol season 8 RPF fandom, back in 2010... this was going to be a bigbang fic but in keeping with my terrible track record re: challenges etc. i did not finish it, although in my defense that had at least something to do with spilling coffee all over my laptop right around the time i started a very hours-intensive job with a huge commute. when i look at this now i’m like, this sure was me writing ten years ago, but i still love the emotional architecture of any story in which one deliberately shut-off and long-repressed individual is uncomfortably thawed by the miracle of someone else’s open-hearted joie de vivre; it’s the oldest story here but arguably the closest to an actual WIP in that the ghost of that idea is the seed for the divorced quentin AU i harbor hopes of one day writing; you can definitely see the Relevant Vibes in this exchange, i think, although i feel the need to clarify that adam lambert enjoying twilight is a thing he said on national television, i wouldn’t do that to someone on my own:

Veselka is crowded, but despite the bitter February cold, Kris doesn't mind waiting outside for twenty minutes, leaning against the glass display case of the expensive toy store next door, separated from Adam by little more than an inch. "So - okay, this is kind of terrible. Like, worse than the Twilight thing. But I feel like you should know who you're dealing with, so."

"It can't be that bad."

Adam just smiles knowingly. "Oh, can't it?"

"Hit me with your best shot," Kris says. Something twitches in his stomach as Adam raises his eyebrow to that.

Adam leans down to whisper in Kris's ear, sending inexplicable sparks down Kris's neck. "Sometimes, when I'm standing in the street or on the subway or something, I like to watch people go by and try to guess what they're like in bed."

Kris blushes. "Very mature," he says with a nervous laugh, embarrassed about his own embarrassment.

Adam holds up his hands in a gesture of innocence. "Hey. We're all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars," he intones. "Oscar Wilde."

"Do you think that's true?"

"I think it is. At least - " Adam tilts his chin up, a mischievous glint in his eyes " - I identify with it."

Kris searches for something to say that won't make him seem hopelessly square. "What's the view like from down there?"

Adam gazes at the night sky, where Manhattan's perpetual glow blots out all but the brightest lights. "I like it. You see more of them this way."

Kris thinks he's spent six years priding himself himself on keeping his gaze fixed straight ahead, avoiding the pull of the horizon or the distraction of the sun. "So. Mr. Gutter." He points to a thirty-something man getting out of a parked Ford across the street. "What's he like?"

next up: an unpublished MCU snippet! this was a peggy character study set at howard’s funeral, also an excuse for me to have feelings about tony stark; idiotically, i actually have a complete draft of this, and got a really brilliant beta job from @nimmieamee, but then never went back and revised it and also could not bring myself to post it when despite being passable as done i could tell in my bones it was simply Not Working, even though parts of it i really liked:

Howard had not taken to aging with grace. It, too, offended him: the body betraying the dream of perfectibility. Dodging it had taken up an increasing percentage of his time. He took up jogging, early among the public, too late in his life: a few months in and a busted knee earned him doctor's orders to abandon that pursuit. His bones were already too brittle to benefit. Howard himself had become brittle long ago. You could blame the war; but that was what happened to people with no give to them. They were like the driest branches waiting for a storm, only unlike branches they recognized on some level the precariousness of their structure, and consequently dedicated themselves to forgetting it.

Howard was undeterred. (Being deterred also went against his every principle.) He had swimming pools installed, outdoors in Los Angeles, adorned with artificial rocks arranged just so to give the impression of a hot spring, and indoors in West Hampton, heated, lit underwater with a yellow-green glow throwing tendrils of light on smooth white walls. Fitness gurus and nutrition consultants were put on retainer, a bicoastal platoon to prevent malfunctions; physical therapists were brought in to recalibrate around malfunctions. They quit with increasing frequency, as his temper frayed along with his body. He gave up, in sequence, smoking, alcohol, red meat, all meat, alcohol, sugar, processed grains, alcohol, salt, and direct sunlight--although by the time of this last pronouncement, it produced little noticeable effect.

Lately he had become obsessed with the idea of cryogenic freezing: the fantasy of going to sleep and waking up in a time when his intellectual heirs had figured out how to repair and replace his rusted pieces. Skin firmed and thickened; knees stitched back to mint condition; a whole new heart, perhaps, grown in a jar or assembled from compounds yet to be constructed. "Wouldn't you take the chance, if you had it?" he had murmured, eyes going dreamy as they did when he talked of his latest missiles.

Peggy pictured Steve in the Arctic, his hyperactive cells stilled by the indifferent cold. She shivered, like a child hearing a ghost story, and said no, she wouldn't.

finally, two stories from a fandom i actually never published any stories with, or engaged with in any meaningful way: the fuckin raven cycle. the dumbest books on god’s green earth. the first was a ronan story where gansey actually dies and stays the fuck dead, and ronan handles it by being a huge asshole, and then, unlike in these hideous godforsaken books, actually decides on purpose to be a better person.... i’m realizing revisiting this now that some of the itch of this story i’ve finally gotten out of my system via damage control, but the GENIUS IDEA of ronan giving matthew an actual soul by giving up the dream power and thus becoming an actual human, sadly, does not really transfer, even though it’s the best concept i’ve ever thought of in my life. anyway, whatever, i have a type:

He opened the door. Adam and Blue were looking at him with expressions he couldn't decipher. Noah was looking at the floor.

"Are you—" Adam started. Ronan watched the word okay die of its own irrelevance in Adam's mouth.

"None of you were invited," Ronan said.

Blue started, "We just—"

"Sorry," he said, loud enough to drown her out. "But this is a very exclusive party. That means no rednecks"—he pointed at Adam—"no bitches"—Blue—"and no pussies"—Noah. "So I'm going to need you all to leave."

He focused his eyes on Blue. She looked like she wanted to slap him. This was familiar. He wanted to go back to the time when his only interactions with Blue Sergeant involved saying something and watching her look at him like she wanted to slap him. Things had gotten complicated after that. Then Gansey had died. Ronan couldn't articulate the connection, but he felt strongly that it was there.

"Maybe I wasn't clear," he said. "What I mean is: get the fuck out of my house."

and last but not least, another TRC story, motivated initially by dreaminess and then sporadically continued after TRK came out (seriously like ever 18 months i dig this one out and write another 500 words and give up again) out of spite - a story where, because fuck stief, adam parrish gets a cell phone, ronan lynch gets a job, and no one assumes that finally having sex means you’re basically married forever without even talking about if you’re boyfriends. this one is like, so close to being “done” in that it almost goes beginning to end and has a lot of individual lines i actually like, but has always been very difficult to pull together because of the reality that maggie stiefvater wrote a series such that ronan lynch acting like a decent boyfriend or experiencing character growth or talking about his emotions is literally out of character, which makes it hard to write a dreamy summer hook-up story; i was actually thinking earlier this year of picking it back up YET AGAIN, but then damage control ate my brain... one day, perhaps, for the satisfaction of having finished... or i might just listen to “cruel summer” by taylor swift while meditating on it for a couple million more hours:

“Did you call me over just to give me the fucking silent treatment in person?” Ronan said. It sounded less vicious than it should have. Like he had been aiming for a growl and somehow landed on a mumble.

I didn’t call you over, Adam wanted to say, but it wasn’t actually true. He had. That seemed wrong, though. Ronan Lynch wasn’t someone to be called over. He was too wild and spiteful for that. Even Gansey couldn’t manage it. The rest of Ronan’s world had given up trying long ago.

But when Adam had called, Ronan had come.

He felt like he might throw up.

“I’m not giving you the silent treatment,” he said instead. “I’m just—“ But he didn’t know what he was doing. So he switched tacks. “You just—“ But he didn’t know that, either. And asking Ronan what the fuck are you doing had never yielded helpful results.

So Adam stuck to the truest thing, what he had worked his whole life to make true. “I’m leaving in three months.”

“What the fuck does that have to do with anything,” Ronan spat. This time he was closer to the expected intensity, but there was still something strange under his voice. Maybe not. Maybe Adam was just having a nervous breakdown.

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thedefinitionofbts · 4 years

Text

Upon Your Existence (3)

Ch. 1 | Ch. 2 | Ch. 3

Pairings: Jeon Jungkook x Reader (ft. the rest of BTS)

Genre: Science Fantasy, Angst, Apocalypse Au

Words: 7K

Description: …and so they just meet each other in these stories written inside these worlds built in their minds. Of course some will be sad, and others happy, but that’s just the way the universe is…chaotic, imperfect, but magnificently beautiful.

You’ll always remember his eyes, a pair of dark obsidian orbs, cloudy and unreadable to many but to you they were always crystal clear like the polycrystalline structure of black diamonds.

“Hurry, we need to go!” He beckons urgently as you remained huddled in the corner of your bedroom closet, arms wrapped around your legs and chin resting on the caps of your knees.

“Where’s mommy and daddy?” You peer up at your older brother, eyes wide and stricken with fear.

It was already dark outside. The bright glow of blue and red lights flicker through the glass windows, ricocheting off the walls of the room your parents once read you bedtime stories in. You can hear the voices of police officers and military personnel through the loud speakers, advising everyone to evacuate the city.

“They’re waiting for us, come on.” Yoongi responds more softly, flashing you a tender smile, one that you have witnessed more than anyone else, giving you more than enough strength to latch on to his extended hand.

You were just nine years old when news of the first outbreak was broadcasted over the television. At the time, it had not occurred to you how strange it all was, or perhaps it did, but it was all too confusing to even begin questioning any of it. You knew nothing about viruses or the spread of diseases in general, but after moving to the designated “safe haven” for your district and continuing your education through your teens, some things have naturally come to light.

Like back in high school chemistry, when your teacher demonstrated the effects of acid on protein to show students how you could go blind if it got in your eye. It was simply to remind everyone to wear goggles, but you’ll never forget the way the drop of HCl seared the egg white, making the fluid bubble up and solidify instantly. You imagine the virus doing the same to human flesh, only with a more complicated mechanism that had less to do with altering the structure of existing proteins and more to do with actually changing gene expression.

It only takes one person. One mutation. One strand of viral DNA to contaminate it all.

It almost sounded too easy, and though the official announcement stated the virus originated in the jungle off the coast, countless people had suspected it was actually developed by the government, a biological weapon gone awry. It wasn’t until over a decade later that it became quite clear, though still unofficial since the elite would never admit to such a horrendous act publicly, that everything was more or less planned as a means to control the population.

So no, the virus did not entail the end of the world. The world government had actually done a pretty job controlling it. How could they not since they planned it all anyways? But of course, if the world wants to end, it’ll find a way to end.

That, you had also learned through a news broadcast.

“Karma” Hoseok exhales, twisting the key and turning off the engine.

“Hoseok, it’s not Karma if the top 1% still survive.” Yoongi mumbles, stepping out of the passenger door and stretching out his back.

“The biggest fuck you would be if the comet just disintegrates right before it strikes.” Hoseok scoffs. “If only…”

You ponder the possibility of this all being a false positive. “Maybe it’ll miss Earth, and everyone will have evacuated the planet for no reason at all.” It’s a joke, but not the funny kind. You know it’s impossible, but you didn’t really say it for the purpose of anyone agreeing with you or even refuting the statement, considering the nonexistent possibility.

“Maybe…” Hoseok exhales, not entirely paying attention to what he was even responding to but rather just blankly gazing at the open field with its tall grasses swaying in the wind.

Yoongi remains silent. He has been the whole trip for the most part, and in a way, his nonchalance was peaceful and reassuring as it had always been for you growing up.

But this is it. This is where you part ways.

It’s a strange feeling, really. You’ve always imagined this moment to be more emotionally overwhelming, saying goodbye to your brother forever and all. He was the only person you’d ever really trusted, and the only other person who has felt like the closest thing to home, a place that never really existed, and even if it did, it won’t for long. Maybe habituation, or months of convinced acceptance has left you numb, or maybe it's the effect of building something so much up in your head that the actual experience doesn’t live up to what you’ve expected all this time.

“Are you sure?” Yoongi’s voice is low and subdued. He doesn’t make eye contact as he awaits your response, and perhaps it’s because he’s never questioned your personal decisions or the fact that he’s directly expressing his concern for you that you find yourself hesitating for the first time in months.

Did he invite you on this trip hoping you would change your mind in the end?

The thought makes your heart clench, and you have to tell yourself you’re overanalyzing. Yoongi wasn’t the kind to hint at what he wanted. He always directly expressed his thoughts no matter how offensive or uncalled for they are. You’ve always admired him for that sort of bravery, so it wouldn’t make sense for him to change now. Besides, you had made up your mind half a year ago, ever since you saw the timer flash across the T.V. screen.

Six months was how long they gave the general population to decide. Either you were rich enough to leave earth or you had to come to terms with the end. They had known about it years in advance, and though it’s unclear whether or not the planned viral outbreak was related to the detection of the comet’s trajectory, what’s undeniable is that they had kept everyone in the dark to avoid chaos.

You had no interest in space, nor did you want to be a part of a system so cruel. Yoongi didn’t either, not initially, but you weren’t going to blame him for meeting a boy who was the literal manifestation of the sun, someone who could make his heart beat in ways it never did.

“Your spot will always be open” Hoseok chimes in with his bright sunshine of a smile, and you can almost feel a fraction of what Yoongi feels when he sees it too.

“There’s more I want to see before it’s too late.” It’s not like you were alone. There were millions of other people staying on the planet- those who couldn’t afford a ticket on the escape ship.

Yoongi nods lightly, turning to walk up the steps to join Hoseok, who was already at the top still looking at you standing below, perhaps also hoping you would change your mind. Even now, you can see the softness in the latter’s eyes, the tangibility of the warmth that he radiates, and you have no trouble understanding why your bother fell for him.

And that’s the last image you see of the two. Hoseok’s melancholic gaze and the slight upturn of Yoongi’s lip as the doors close.

…

There’s a certain kind of calmness that accompanies solitude, even when the entire world is ready to burst under suppressed chaos. There’s also a strange detachment that comes with wanting to do everything while at the same time not wanting to do anything at all because none of it mattered anymore.

Stepping onto the train, you immediately get a whiff of the stench of sweat and body odor, the kind that tells you you’re not the only one who thought spending the next few days just gazing at the world was a good way to ride through the end. Most of the seats were taken, homeless people with all their bags large and small, scattered across the floor. You almost trip on someone’s sleeping bag as you navigate down the aisle, looking for a less crowded cart, which you are fortunate enough to find just as the train begins to move.

Settling down in the seat closest to the window, you momentarily let your eyes dwell on someone sitting a couple seats away. His attention was focused on the scenery outside, but he somehow sensed the weight of your scrutiny as he turns just as you were about to lean to get a better view.

You barely avert your gaze before he catches you staring, though you’re pretty sure he noticed because the next thing you know, he’s made his way over and is now seated across from you. Despite the sudden proximity and the bout of nerves it has initiated, you choose to keep your attention pointed at the passing scenery now zipping by in parallel with the train’s increasing speed.

“Gorgeous, isn’t it?” His voice is light with a deep, husky undertone that glides through the air.

You look up to find that he isn’t even looking out the window. You swallow, finding it bizarre that he’s staring at you so intently. “Indeed.”

“Traveling?”

You nod.

“Going anywhere in particular?” He tilts his head curiously; a motion almost child-like in nature and it makes you relax for the first time since you started this solo venture.

“Nope.”

He smiles, eyes crinkling at the edges. “So your plan was to just sit on this train and look out the window?”

“Pretty much, yeah” You shrug, sensing your anxieties dissipate as he does not seem to pose a threat of any kind.

He chuckles softly. “But don’t you want to go out there and really feel the earth. Really experience being alive on this planet one last time?”

“It’s dangerous.”

“It’s the end of the world. What do you have to lose?”

He was right, and your excuses don’t even sound convincing to yourself anymore.

“So what exactly are you proposing?”

“This train loops around the entire continent. I say we get off at each stop and do one thing we’ve always wanted to do.”

“We?” You’re thrown off by how easily he placed the word in his sentence. How he didn’t even hesitate to include you in his spur of the moment proposal.

He nods.

“Together?” You ask again, still skeptical.

He laughs softly; looking down and back up again with a playful smirk.

“What if we want to do different things?” You counter, still unsure why you are playing along with this stranger who hasn’t even introduced himself.

“Ok. We’ll get off at each stop and do one thing you’ve always wanted to do.”

“You’re sure putting a lot of bets on someone you don’t even know.” You comment, waiting to see how he’s going to react.

There’s a peculiar look in his eyes, one that speaks of anticipation precipitously lost to the wind. He drops his gaze momentarily, smiling to himself before looking up at you once more.

“Or you could say I’m going all in on someone I would like to get to know.” There’s cheerfulness in his voice that you haven’t heard in a long time, an unfamiliar yet heart racing aura of beginnings rather than the familiar imminent end that has surrounded your life for months. It makes you smile, but you can’t help but notice the sad glint in his eyes merely seconds before it’s gone.

“I…actually haven’t really thought about what I want to do.” You confess, diverting your attention to the landscape outside. Your life had always been planned. Whether it was wandering down paths that others had led you towards or the world leaving you no alternative option, you had never been offered the freedom of uninhibited choice. It was like the events had already been written, and you were just living it out like a character in a story everyone already knows the end to.

“Maybe you shouldn’t think about it.” His voice startles you, making you realize you had paused mid conversation.

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve found that overthinking leads to indecisiveness.” He tilts his head, analyzing your reaction as if waiting for a specific response.

“I’m not indecisive, and I don’t overthink.” You deny, despite knowing full well you are and have always been.

He doesn’t look convinced. “Ok, then you’re afraid of regrets?”

“I’m just…I dunno…scared?”

He nods, displaying that he understands what you mean. “But you are here now, so you must’ve found some source of courage.”

You wouldn’t really consider your decision to stay on earth courageous. To you it was more like the final act of rebellion you had the chance of carrying out, not that you ever came close to rebelling in the past.

“Well?” The train has stopped, and you can tell he’s waiting for you to decide to get off with him or not.

It’s not forceful or pressuring in anyway, but communicates an air of patience you find to be very comforting. And there’s something about the way he speaks to you, the way he gauges your response as if he already knows what you’re about to say that inclines you to believe he knows more about you than logically possible for someone you just met. Maybe you were just easy to read, or this guy is just really good at reading social cues. Whatever it may be, you had two seconds to make your decision, and if the past has taught you anything, you already know that there’s no turning back.

…

Getting off the train, you’re surprised by the number of people still around and the cultural music dancing through the air. You expected the city to be less crowded and the mood to be more somber, a scene that makes the end of the world more obvious, in what way you weren’t sure, but definitely nothing close to what you were currently presented.

“They’re just here, like us, enjoying these last days.” He blinks slowly, somehow able to tell that the scene has left you dumbfounded.

“I guess I just expected something different” You reply, still looking around at the people laughing and chatting away in the outdoor seating areas of restaurants and coffee shops.

“Only 1% of the population left, and most of them probably didn’t live in old towns like this.” He glances at you from under the sunhat he had put on right after exiting the train.

His response puts a smile on your face. A picture of a smiling Hoseok and Yoongi flashes through your mind as you are remembered how they spoke about the privileged. It had been a long time since your mood has felt this light.

“So are you going to properly introduce yourself? Or am I going to have to ask you questions?” You narrow your eyes, feeling mischievous all of a sudden.

He laughs, eyes crinkling at the edges again. “It’s the end of the world. I could tell you anything and it wouldn’t even matter.” He skips a few feet ahead of you before twirling around and offering you his hand.

You’re surprised by your own lack of hesitation as you reach out almost instinctively.

“Wow, that was easier than expected.” He comments, referring to how quickly you accepted his offer compared to your obvious indecision back on the train, eyes almost wide as he gives your hand a light squeeze, making sure that it was indeed real, and his eyes weren’t just playing tricks on him.

“It’s the end of the world.” You shrug, repeating the words he had been reiterating since the two of you met. An unfamiliar fullness engulfs your heart, and you wonder if the boy next to you feels it too. You don’t remember the last time you had held someone’s hand like this or if you had ever held a hand that fit to yours so perfectly.

“Jungkook.” He suddenly breathes out, probably noticing the way you’ve been staring at your interlinked hands like he would suddenly let go or disappear into thin air.

“Huh?” You look up almost dazed.

“My name. It’s Jungkook.” He smiles, gripping your hand a bit tighter.

“Oh, um, I’m Y/N.” You response almost awkwardly, unprepared for his sudden revelation of sorts, trying to recall why the name seemed familiar while at the same time knowing with the utmost certainty you had never known a person with that name.

He bobs, the expression on his face making you almost suspect that this wasn’t new information to him.

“So what would you like to do, Miss Y/N?” He gestures at the completely foreign town, the lake and mountains not too far in the distance.

“I don’t know.” You reveal truthfully, not having thought this far yet. You were kind of just banking on intuition, but you were so caught up analyzing him along with your own shifting disposition that you hadn’t actually thought about the actual world and what you wanted to do. “With the virus and all, I had never made a bucket list or anything. I just assumed I would never get a chance to come to places like this anyways.”

“Even when it was nearly eradicated?”

“Then came this whole comet ordeal.” You sigh. “End of the world, remember?”

“Not like I could forget.” He starts swinging your interlinked arms causally. “Shall we just walk around then? Explore some abandoned buildings that may or may not be haunted.”

“You can’t seriously believe in ghosts, can you?” You cock a brow. “In this day and age?”

He cackles. “I was just testing you.”

“Sure you were” You flash him the look, but it doesn't last before you’re consumed by his contagious laughter.

It wasn’t long before the two of you stumble upon a rather decent looking lodging facility, not that you were looking for anything fancy. The walls were made of stone, a suitable complement to the cobblestone roads you had been walking along since leaving the train station, with ivy crawling up the sides and lining the windows. The building gave off the impression that it was an affordable choice for two broke travelers, not that money really mattered anymore.

“We should probably put some of our stuff down and explore the city.” Jungkook suggests, looking up from the map on his phone.

You exhale slowly, almost having forgotten how heavy your backpack weighed on your shoulders. The sun had moved to the middle of the sky, causing beads of sweat to form and start sliding down your forehead. It wasn’t extremely hot, but you had opted to wear a few extra layers in an attempt to keep your bags a bit lighter.

Following him into the lobby, you don’t expect Jungkook to arrange a room for you as well, but he comes back with two keys to two separate rooms.

“Thanks” You voice softly as hands one of them to you.

“It would probably be safer to stay in the same room, but I don’t want you to think I’m some perverted stalker trying to take advantage of you.”

You smirk before failing to contain your own laughter. “I already assumed you were.”

He rolls his eyes. “Just let me know if you need anything, ok?”

You nod, glancing at him one last time before heading towards your room. He seemed concerned, or his mind was thinking about something else.

The room smelled moist and musky, with an almost rotten scent, like it hadn’t been cleaned in quite some time. Not that you were expecting some pristine hotel room or sterilized classroom like the facilities back in the cities during the viral outbreak, but it was pretty clear the place hadn’t been tidied in weeks. The bed sheets were unwashed, and the trash bins hadn’t even been emptied.

You walk over to open a window, hoping the air outside would somehow neutralize the pungent odor. Just as you were contemplating going over to suggest exploring the markets, you hear a knock at your door.

“Who is it?” You call out, hoping that it was just Jungkook coming back to check up on you.

There’s no answer, but you can hear the pounding get louder, like whoever was on the other side was trying to break down the door. There’s a loud crack as the wooden door pane splinters, the rusty knob just falling off and rolling across the floor. You’re frozen in place, eyes full of fear as you stare at the large man standing at the entrance.

He slowly walks towards you with a frown on his face, blocking your view of the hallway and only escape.

Before you could scream, you hear a loud bang and the next thing you know, the man was on the ground. Your eyes immediately dart up and to your uttermost relief, you see Jungkook with a lamp clasped in his hand, eyes wide with alarm.

“We need to get out of here” He exhales, quickly grabbing your hand and making a run for it.

You don’t get a chance to look back, all you can focus on is keeping up with Jungkook’s speed as he leads you back out to the street and navigates through the crowds of people.

“Wha-how did you…?” You look at him and back in the direction the two of you ran from, mind still reeling from the hasty course of events.

“It was my bad really, I should’ve know most places aren’t safe anymore.” He shakes his head, looking around at the people still gathered in large crowds when you’re finally at a safe distance from the lodge. “Maybe that’s why everyone is here out in the open.”

“Hey, it’s ok, we’re fine and there’s only like three weeks left anyways” You give his hand a tight squeeze, unsure of why you felt so compelled to make him feel better. Perhaps it was the sadness in his eyes, something you can’t seem to ignore because it looked so familiar yet you’re unable to comprehend it fully.

He sighs. “Three weeks…are you the type who prefers to count down?”

You want to forget about it, to not be constantly reminded that the world you once knew is gone and these last moments will soon be swallowed in the same way. But no matter how hard you try to ignore the thought, it’s always there at the back of your mind, a subconscious countdown that keeps showing up intermittently.

“I just want to be as prepared as possible, and I don’t like surprises.”

“Somehow that’s not so surprising.” He smiles for the first time in a while, and you don’t miss the hint of playfulness in his words. It’s reassuring and quells some of your anxiety.

“You don’t seem to mind this whole ordeal.” You suddenly blurt out. Ever since you met this dark haired doe-eyed Jungkook, he’s seemed so…okay with everything, like the end of the world was some kind of adventure and not a dark and dreary end to existence.

He cocks a brow. “Almost getting us into some deep shit back there?”

“No, the fact that we have three weeks left, and then it’s over.” You exhale, letting out a breath you didn’t know you had been holding in for so long and finally feeling that weight being lifted off your chest.

His features relax as he turns to face you. “I’m looking forward to what lies beyond the end and in the meantime, making the most of what we are given now.”

You don’t quite understand what he means, and there are so many questions you want to ask, but the determined look in his eyes makes you wonder if you’re missing something deeper, something he wants to convey but is waiting for you to reach your own conclusion.

“Beyond the end?”

He chuckles lightly. “Like how people say endings give birth to new beginnings?”

“You sound like my mom.” You huff, knowing that he’s just playing around again and avoiding the real answer to your question.

“Do you miss her?” He suddenly asks.

“She was never really around much. Neither was my dad.” There’s an extended pause as Jungkook waits for you to continue, almost like he senses there’s more you want to say. “My brother Yoongi was my rock, the only person in my life that I could turn towards for guidance like an actual parental figure. My parents were loving and all, but being adopted, they were just nice picture parents. They didn’t offer me the kind of depth I needed. And my brother, you know, was older and I’m sure he didn’t think much of it at the time, but his advice was something I always took seriously, whether it was subconscious or not. His opinions impacted a lot of my decisions in life…” You trail off, thinking back to all the decisions you had made because Yoongi had expressed some form of bias towards it and still question to this day if they were the right ones. It’s not like you had that many regrets, but you can’t help but wonder if your life would’ve turned out differently had you made more choices independently. “You know I could’ve just said fuck it and did the thing I actually wanted to do.”

“Well, here’s your chance.”

…

The two of you decide that the safest place to sleep is the train.

Though it was often crowded and smelled of human sweat, it was still better than figuring how to set up a tent or having to climb a tree. And after the incident at the lodge, neither of you really wanted to risk it again. Besides, spending one or two days in one city is more than enough to grab some local food and do some sightseeing. You also realize that all of the towns sort of start blending into one another, like the days you’re still trying not to countdown. You’ve gotten to the point where it doesn’t bother you as much, at least not when you’re with traveling with someone you’ve grown too fond of too quickly, but in the best way ever.

“I guess I really didn’t think any of this through, but none of it really matters now, does it?”

You were trailing behind him in the orchard, the sun’s rays filtering through the leaves casting moving patterns on the ground. Spending the past few days visiting gardens and vineyards had been more fun than you had expected. The fruit was sweet and the flowers were bright and lively. Each farm you visited looked to stretch on for miles and miles, twisting and twirling along the hills and rivers. You had always been told that beauty existed in the most unexpected of places, and you were finally given the chance to witness it for yourself.

“You know there’s no point in living every day thinking about the fact that you’re going to die anyways.” He takes a bite of the apple he just picked off of one of the lower branches of the tree. The sound so crisp and juicy, you can feel your mouth salivating.

You release a light chuckle. “You’re telling me this when it’s literally the end of the world?”

He turns to toss you an apple. “I’m advising you to stop thinking about endings.”

Catching it in your hands, you stare at the intermingled colors for a moment, red, yellow, and a tad bit of green merging but never really mixing to become one. Taking a bite you realize its sweetness is lace with a tangy after taste, like those bittersweet endings you’ve come to know so well.

“I used to come to these places filled with so many thoughts on how to remember the details that I forget to enjoy the actual experience.” You pause, taking the time to decide if you wanted to continue.

Jungkook doesn’t make a sound, no signal to hint that he was going throw in commentary or interrupt your train of thought. You turn to glance at him, wondering if he’s wrapped in his own contemplation, only to find that he just looking at you, staring so intently you have to look away as you feel the blood rush to face.

“You’re still afraid of losing your memories, huh?”

It leaves his lips as a whisper, so soft that you are compelled to believe he was just mumbling to himself. You want to linger over his interesting choice of words, but you try not to think much of it and continue.

“So I tried to reason that if the journey is what we should be focusing on, I should just set goals that I’ll never reach. That way I wouldn’t have to deal with endings or being directionless in life.” You laugh. “And of course that backfired.”

“Continuously chasing after something you’ll never obtain?” He tilts his head towards the sun, closing his eyes for a brief moment.

You observe his side profile, visually drawing the outline of his silhouette and carving the image of his physical form into your brain knowing that it will last only as long as the end of time will allow.

“I just don’t like endings…or goodbyes…or even the thought that this is all there is to it.” You murmur, shifting your eyes back to the ground.

“There’s always more too it than you think.”

“And then I read somewhere that people don’t remember what you do but they remember how you made them feel.” You don’t know where you’re going with your outburst of thoughts, and maybe the diminishing days are convincing you to let it all out before it’s too late no matter how nonsensical everything you are saying is.

The breeze blowing by emphasizes the brief silence that follows, in which only the gentle rustling of leaves can be heard. You don’t know what else to say. You’ve never gotten this far in a conversation where your thoughts have been unhindered and you hadn’t planned an entire speech out. At this point you’re just waiting for him to respond, to tell you that you should stop thinking about uselessly irrelevant things or at least question why you’re telling him all this.

You watch as he turns to face you, not having realized you had closed the distance between you whilst ranting. He was so close you can almost feel the light brush of his shirt as it lifts up slightly in the wind and the heat of his body radiating off his smooth skin. His gaze is distracting. It’s something you’ve learned over the past week and then some. The way his dark pupils twinkle mysteriously almost mimicking those of someone’s you will never forget, but there’s something different about his. His eyes reflected the sunlight like there were stars inside.

You’re so enraptured by his beauty that you don’t realize he’s reduced the remaining space between the two of you to almost nothing, lips just millimeters away now. Without another thought, you lean forward and kiss him, mouth clumsily crashing with his. You can feel his lips curve into a smile as he kisses you back much in a much more composed and practiced manner, like he has done it a million times before, only you know that’s not possible. He breaks free temporarily only to murmur one sentence in response.

“I’ll always remember the way you made me feel.”

…

Time starts to fluctuate in ways you begin to lose track of.

Sometimes you wake up in the middle of the night confused about where you were and frantically searching for something to calm your racing thoughts. You have dreams about different phases of your life, places you’ve been, people you used to know, only they are distorted in ways that make them almost unrecognizable. And then when you try to dig them up from your memories, you find that they are lost and everything has changed.

Now you find solace in the moonlight pouring through the curtain windows of the train and the solidity of Jungkook’s hand intertwined with yours as his jacket covers both of your bodies. The way he never leaves your side is unusual for someone you didn’t even know existed until about two weeks ago, and yet he gives you no reason to doubt that he would ever leave.

It’s something you’ve too grown familiar with, the scent of his body and the warmth of his smile. And as you walk the streets of foreign cities, navigating through crowds of strange people whose faces you won’t even remember, you choose to inscribe the details of his features in your memoirs, the softness of his skin, the width of his shoulders, the veins on his forearms...

You’ve learned that he enjoys gazing at large bodies of water, lakes, rivers, and oceans, which is why you find yourself on the beach at the last stop of your journey.

“Would it make sense to say I’ve always liked being alone, but I’m not too fond of being lonely?”

He takes a minute to contemplate your seemingly contradictory statement.

“Makes perfect sense to me.” He absentmindedly tosses a seashell at the incoming wave. It’s swallowed instantly, and all you can focus on is the foamy ripples that wane back into the seemingly endless blue. “I think what makes us feel lonely is being with people who don’t really understand us, and that doesn’t happen when you’re alone since you’re just by yourself. ”

“Wow, you’re the first person who hasn’t just told me I’m just being anti-social…well, technically the second.” You smile, breathing out slowly. “I think you and my brother, Yoongi, would’ve gotten along pretty well.”

“Did he leave?”

You nod, recalling the last image of him still safely tucked away in your memories.

“And you wanted to stay to enjoy these last few weeks.”

You arch a brow, having expected him to ask why you didn’t leave rather than stating the exact answer you would’ve given him had he asked.

“How’d you guess?”

He laughs. “I figured, since you don’t seem bothered wasting all this time with me.”

“True.” You smile. “Although I wouldn’t call it wasting…”

The salty sea breeze is something you definitely didn’t have the luxury of smelling growing up. This is your first time visiting the beach, first time seeing the ocean. Each day you’ve spent on this adventure of sorts with Jungkook has been a first…and a last now that you think about it.

“You’re right. I couldn’t have asked for a better end to life on earth.”

…

Home.

It’s not a concept you are familiar with in the traditional sense. It’s not a feeling you’ve experienced first hand nor is it a place you’ve truly been to.

But looking into Jungkook’s eyes you can see it.

You can see it in the way he looks at you, the way he embraces you in his arms not because it's the end of the world and there is no one else to hold, but because it's where you belong and neither of you would have it any other way.

“This can’t be it.” You choke out, already losing yourself to the rush of tears, though you had tried so hard to keep it together until the end. “W-we j-just met…”

He doesn’t say anything, but instead holds you tighter.

“I never even asked you anything about yourself. All I did was ramble on and on about me, throwing all my stupid thoughts out there like any of it mattered.” You’re tears won’t stop. You had always hated endings; putting the utmost effort into not caring so you wouldn’t have anything you were afraid of losing. But you just couldn’t do it. Not with him.

He flashes you one last smile as he gently cups your tear-streamed cheeks in his hands, a gesture that is not overpowered by a deep sense of hollowness but rather reflects an almost peaceful ray of hope.

“I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. I’ll always be here.”

…

...

“I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve watched him die. I just remember always crying until I have no tears left to shed. But he always gives me that reassuring look, with those stars in his eyes and that twitch of his soft lips like it isn’t the last time, that we’ll for sure meet again.” You release a trivial laugh, already feeling the effects of the alcohol. “Of course, I never pick up on it until I’m about to wake up.”

The bar was dim and comparably quiet, being that it was only you and Namjoon sitting at the counter. It was a Monday night, not exactly the best of days to get drunk, but it’s not like you really cared, though you probably should. You had invited the entire lab out for dinner to celebrate the publishing of your most recent paper, which turned out quite pleasant and ended roughly an hour ago. All the other students and professors had gone home.

“He’s always waiting.” You murmur, staring at the shot glass in front of you, still talking as if you were by yourself, reiterating the words that continuously circle back in your head.

Namjoon looks up, startled by your sudden comment after a lengthy pause.

“I never have to look for him because he always comes back to me.” You scoff, bringing the glass up to your lips, tilting your head, and letting the liquid burn down your throat. “And then when I react like I’ve just met him for the first time, he just flashes that gentle smile of acceptance like I didn’t just break his heart.”

Your bottom lip quivers, and before you know it, tears are streaming down your face. God, you feel ridiculous.

“And that happens every time?” Namjoon’s voice is barely a whisper, his eyes focused on his own glass.

“Never misses a beat.” You sniffle softy, picking up a napkin to dot away your tears. “I thought I was ok, but I guess I am insane.” You laugh pathetically.

“I understand. He means a lot to you.”

“He’s the kind of forever that never changes, the kind of time that does not reach an end just to continue that moment you’ve always wanted to last for an eternity.” You don’t even know what’s gotten into you, and though you’re aware of the mess you must look like right now, you can’t seem to pull it together.

There’s a long pause, and nothing but the sound of stifled music and distant footsteps can be heard.

“Professor Y/L/N, I know it’s not my place to be curious about your personal life, but can you really not think of a single person that resembles him, whether it is in the past or now?” Namjoon voice is more desperate than he probably intended, but any could tell you were not being quite yourself.

A forced smile makes it’s way to your lips as you shake your head. “He was always exactly what I needed. He was always too good to be real.”

“It’s not impossible.”

“It’s bad to be too dependent on other people.” You flash him an amused look, not really knowing what you are saying anymore as your head begins to spin from the alcohol. “And please, please, don’t get me wrong. I’m not weak or insecure.”

Namjoon doesn’t respond, sensing your tipsiness.

“It’s not that he gives my life meaning or that he makes me feel complete.” You run your hands through your hair, trying to keep your cool, but anyone could tell you’re losing it. “He’s the only truth in a world of lies. Even when I’m not aware that everything around me is merely a dream, he always feels like the only thing that is real, and for him I would be content never waking up because the rest of reality doesn’t even matter. And don’t get me wrong, I’ve long learned to be independent and logical, to refrain from getting lost in dreams, relying on others, and carrying expectations that will only result in disappointment. I’ve practiced the art of self-love for all my life, and I’m fine. My life has purpose, and I am complete the way I am.” You release a shaky breath, palms feeling cold and clammy. “I’ve always felt that I’ve had everything and yet… he offers more.”

You look up to meet Namjoon’s eyes that are nothing but sympathetic.

“How could I not want more?” You croak, beginning to cry again. “I’m so greedy.”

That’s what it is. Always wanting more, never feeling like what you have is enough. When will you learn to be grateful for what is and stop trying to obtain what is not yours to begin with?

“You are not greedy.” Namjoon’s voice is discreet, but firm. “You’re afraid to believe of his existence.”

Your eyes shoot up to meet his. “Because I know he doesn’t exist.”

“Then why do you keep going back?” His question is not for the purpose of attacking you or for blatantly calling you out for something you’ve been guilty of for years, but it catches you off guard, and you suddenly find yourself exposed… vulnerable.

“My research” You reply dryly, maintaining a steady voice amidst the fable you’ve been repeatedly telling everyone who’s ever asked. “I don’t really have a choice.”

Namjoon doesn’t look convinced, but he doesn’t try to force the truth out of you even though he knows exactly why. “No, I mean, why does your mind subconsciously always go back to him?” He murmurs, staring at the table solemnly.

His query once again seizes you in unfamiliar territory, and for the first time, you don’t know what to say or at least can’t come up with an answer that will not expose the true reason you’ve been experimenting. Because you know Namjoon is right.

You just don’t know how right he is.

...

#bts fanfic #jungkook fanfic #jungkook angst #jungkook x reader #bts x reader #bts scenarios #bts angst #bts imagines #wow it's been so long #i didn't forget about this story i promise

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is6621 · 3 years

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Biometrics in Airports: Mostly Positive

The rise of biometrics over the last few years has been significant, and we are now at a place where we are going to be seeing implementations of this technology in our daily lives. Biometrics themselves are considered technology that is able to measure and calculate human characteristics. A popular implementation of biometric technology is for authentication purposes, such as your fingerprint or face being able to unlock your iPhone. However, the implementation that I will be talking about today is concerned with the mass use of biometrics in public places, such as airports.

Airlines have already begun to experiment with this technology in multiple areas of their business. Delta has launched a “curb-to-gate” facial recognition system for international passengers at the Atlanta airport. This system will allow passengers to move quickly through the airport and reduce the amount of time that is normally spent waiting in security lines, checking their bags, and checking in for their flights. Additionally, this system and other biometric systems will allow for a greater level of security within airports which is undoubtedly a good thing for national security.

British Airways, who has implemented a similar system, reported that they are able to board 400 passengers in 22 minutes, which is less than half of the usual time it takes to board a plane that size. Delta has reported that its “curb-to-gate” system has decreased boarding times for wide-body planes by 9 minutes. Although a few minutes may not seem significant at first glance, it is important to note that saving a few minutes for each flight can translate to millions of dollars over the course of a year through thousands of flights.

Although these changes are clearly beneficial to both the consumers' time and the airline's bottom line, there are significant concerns surrounding the issue of privacy with this technology. Requiring travelers to use these systems in order to get on their flights will force everyone who ever travels by plane to forfeit their biometric profile to these companies and government agencies such as the TSA. Once a person’s biometric profile is in a system like that, there is really no knowing what it is going to be used for.

However, customers do not seem to mind very much. Delta reports that only 2% of their passengers choose to opt out of their facial recognition system and resort to the usual passport process. This is likely due to the increasing efficiency of the system, allowing for a significantly faster and easier process for the traveler. When the benefit increases, the concern for privacy becomes less and less important in relation to saving time and effort.

Biometrics are only being currently used for international travel, as there is only one federal database with all of the passport information. Because of this, it is very easy for biometric technology to check people’s faces against this one database. For domestic travel it is much more complex, as the most common form of identification is a state driver license. There are obviously more databases with slightly varying pictures and layout of information between each individual state. Because of this, we will likely have to wait a few years before biometric technology is able to benefit us for domestic flights. A domestic facial recognition system will likely start with travelers who are enrolled in TSA pre-check, as they are all required to have their pictures taken as a part of the application process, all of which are of course stored within the same database in a consistent manner.

Clear, a private firm, has taken the initiative and partnered with 27 airports to provide domestic biometric screening to people who desire to move quickly through security. Customers can sign up online and are required to pay a monthly fee of $15 for the service. It will be interesting to see if there is quicker growth on the private side of these systems or on the public side. My personal belief is that people who travel frequently will desire to use the Clear service, as it will be worth it to them as they are always traveling through airports.

In conclusion, biometric technology and facial recognition in airports will provide more positives through saving the time of the travelers than the negatives of potential privacy concerns. There will likely be a small percentage of the population who will simply refuse to become a part of the system, but will dwindle as the benefits of using this technology increase to a significant point.

Sources:

https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/biometric-screening-airports-spreading-fast-some-fear-face-scanning-systems-ncna982756

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innervoiceartblog · 3 years

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(via Unraveling – Terry Tempest Williams)

Photo by Rhonda Lashley Lopez

Unraveling by Terry Tempest Williams

Terry Tempest Williams searches for what is revealed when worlds unravel, tracing the entangled nature of undoing and becoming.

Unravel un·rav·el | \ ˌənˈravəl \

verb gerund or present participle: unraveling

1. undo (twisted, knitted, or woven threads)

Similar: untangle, disentangle, straighten out, separate out, unsnarl, unknot, unwind, untwist, undo, untie, unkink, unjumble

2. (of an intricate process, system, or arrangement) disintegrate or be destroyed

Similar: fall apart, come apart (at the seams), fail, collapse, go wrong

3. investigate and solve or explain (something complicated or puzzling)

Similar: solve, resolve, work out, clear up, puzzle out, find an answer to, get to the bottom of, explain, elucidate, fathom, decipher, decode, crack, penetrate, untangle, unfold, settle, reveal, clarify, sort out, make head or tail of, figure out, suss (out)

I am unraveling. I am unraveling like a rattlesnake in the desert tightly coiled, my tail issuing a warning I cannot yet decipher. My mind is unraveling as I move to free my thoughts from being held captive for too long in such a tensely wound space. For months, I have been in a defensive stance visible only to surrounding ghosts. Fear brought me here. Uncertainty brought me here. Two hundred and fifty thousand dead from the coronavirus brought me here. My capacity to strike, from one emotion to the next, frightens me. After isolating myself in a landscape of arid beauty for the past nine months during a global pandemic, why do I find myself in the process of unraveling now? What is waiting and wanting to come forth?

When I don’t know what something means, I do three things: consult a dictionary; ask someone I respect and listen; go for a walk.

The dictionary gave me definitions, but what caught my attention was the word “reveal” in the list of synonyms. To unravel is to reveal what has been hidden. And when I asked my father (now 87 years old and weathering the pandemic at home with his partner and a borrowed dog named Sparky) what he thought it meant to “unravel,” he simply said, “I’m too bored to think about it.”

I understand.

An hour later, Brooke and I went for a walk. We found a small, unexpected pioneer cemetery, adorned with plastic red and blue roses, on a bluff overlooking the Dolores River. We stopped to watch a great blue heron fish the shallows. The long-legged bird was not unraveling; she was paying attention, focused on her task. Within minutes, she speared a trout, most likely a rainbow. We watched her slowly, deliberately walk back to the mudflats, toss her head back, releasing the fish into the air, and on its way down gulp the trout whole. The narrow body of the trout, now a bulge, was moving down her neck in a series of muscular swallows. The heron stood still for some time along the riverbank, then waded back into the depths of her perfect concentration.

What interested me in this particular moment was how the heron could live her life, as her species was meant to live, with an integrity of purpose in place—even as the ecosystem to which she belongs is unraveling around her. Climate change is affecting the flow of the Colorado River, with its incoming tributaries, like the Dolores, waning. We are now in what climate scientists are calling “a megadrought.” Moab’s average annual rainfall is 10 inches. In 2020, we have received 4.9 inches, less than half the norm. Monitoring the health of the Dolores River, the nonprofit group Conservation Colorado gave the Dolores River a grade of D− in terms of its water quality. Why? Dams and reservoirs disrupt the natural flows and displace sediments, deeply altering the character of the river. Abandoned mines and uranium tailings continue to leach into the headwaters, carrying on a toxic history familiar to the Four Corners region of the American Southwest. Increased fossil fuel development, including fracked gas, is affecting water tables and aquifers, all contributing to its failing grade.

Could we read the health of the great blue heron fishing along the Dolores River through this poisonous narrative now alive in her bloodstream? Like us, each species large and small—feathered, furred, or finned—carries the larger story of planetary health in their cells. The difference between our species and other species is that we are responsible for much of the demise of all the others.

As life on the planet is unraveling, in ways seen and unseen, we are also unraveling the natural consequences that these larger narratives of unconscious behavior are inflicting on populations, both human and wild. For example, the heinous, illegal wildlife trafficking infiltrating “wet markets” (where fresh meat, fish, and produce are sold) from Asia to Africa and across the globe is responsible for 75 percent of zoonotic viruses. COVID-19, the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, is a zoonotic disease. That means it came from an animal or animals. SARS-CoV-2 is not the first novel coronavirus to infect humans—it’s the seventh.

A report from the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) found “that the United States imported almost 23 million whole animals, parts, samples and products made from bats, primates and rodents over a recent five-year period. These animals harbor 75% of known zoonotic viruses—pathogens that spread from animals to people.”

Wildlife markets in China—where animals are “kept in cramped cages for purchase and slaughter”—are believed to be the source of the global pandemic we now find ourselves in. The CBD goes on to say that, “…many researchers believe it originated from a bat, a scaly mammal called a pangolin (globally the most heavily trafficked mammal), or potentially both. The virus may have spilled over to humans from an unknown animal. Or it may have evolved after infecting people.”

We are unraveling in inexplicable ways given how tightly and mysteriously the world is woven together. Pull one strand and all the strands are disrupted, threatening the integrity of the overall pattern.

We are Earth unraveling and reforming creation.

Along with dictionaries, scientists, and the land itself, I consult the Dead. I hear my grandmother telling me to focus on “the golden thread” that shows us “the through line” that weaves the world back together again. Where might this golden thread be found now?

In March, early in the novel coronavirus pandemic, a global prayer was held at a designated time on a Sunday morning for the Earth and all its inhabitants. Like so many collective rituals, this reached me on the wind by word of mouth.

I walked outside and faced Round Mountain, an ancient volcano plug in the southern end of the valley where we live. I held my grandmother’s “hand stone”—an egg-shaped, polished amethyst—in my right hand as I had seen her do repeatedly. It was her talisman, which she bequeathed to me in her will. She told me it calmed her heart and opened it. I closed my eyes in prayer—believing in the power and connectivity of people gathered together in the name of health and peace on the planet. My mind was quiet, receptive.

In time, I began to feel a heat rising in me from the ground up. To quell my fears and skepticism, I kept my attention focused on how the warmth was settling in my body. In my mind’s eye, I saw a flame coming toward me from the center of Round Mountain, gaining in heat and size and intensity, until it entered my heart, becoming “a burning core of care”—those were the words that came to me as this force burned with a ferocity of intent that I have never known. My grandmother’s hand stone was hot, almost too hot to hold. Opening my eyes, I opened my hand. The stone was shattered inside, with dozens of fracture lines appearing that had not been there before. It didn’t make sense. My eye focused on a particularly large and complex fracture that occurred at the intersection where the deepest purple merged with the brightest, clearest part of the crystal. Within that broken angle, it appeared brown, burnt. I lifted the crystal up toward the light, and therein, I saw a flame.

I have no explanation for this other than to say that what was burning in me burned through the gemstone in my hand, shattering it. The energy I felt rising from the Earth through the soles of my feet and from Round Mountain itself reached directly into my heart with the radiance of a million prayers circulating around the planet and in that moment created a fire in me of inexhaustible light.

In my desire to understand my own unraveling in this global pandemic, I could not have imagined that it would be my grandmother’s golden thread that would lead me to the source of both my undoing and becoming: isolation and engagement. The golden thread became the gilded sunlight woven into the wings of the great blue heron fishing along the banks of the Dolores River. This same shimmering thread exposed the facts that deciphered the toxic residues from abandoned mines and uranium tailings which are poisoning our rivers, poisoning us, and killing creatures. In a similar way, it cinched the illegal wildlife trade that taunted wet markets with “bush meat,” ripe with tainted blood, a spillover causing a global virus infecting us all, threatening what we have taken for granted: Life.

This golden strand reveals what binds awe and terror together, as it travels through shadow and light—illuminating the loose threads waiting to be picked up by each of us so we can mend, repair, and restore what has come apart. We can reweave the world anew, not from the places of fear and doubt, but from the intimate spaces of belonging we must retrieve for ourselves. We are Earth unraveling and reforming creation. We are meant to engage not isolate. These are difficult days. What causes us to recoil, strike, and retreat is also what allows us to reach out from the anxiety of unknowing and dare to trust what is to come—a reassembling of our humanity.

There is something deeper than hope. Between the hours of darkness and dawn, the voices of our ancestors are amplified in the dreamtime—warning us of our awakening wisdom—a blessing to behold and a burden to enact.

#Terry Tempest Williams #Emergence Magazine #Unraveling #Live #Life #Love

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razieltwelve · 4 years

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Do Your Part (The Vestige)

With the advent of the Second Breach War, recruitment drives were launched throughout the world as civilisation once more shifted to a war footing. Here are some of the slogans they used:

Be a hero. Be a pilot.

Every extra pilot is a million saved lives. Get tested today.

Engineers. Mechanics. Techs. Do your part. Join the Eidolon Program.

We saved the world once. We can do it again. Join the Eidolon Program today.

So many have given their all. Don’t let their sacrifice be in vain. The Eidolon Program is now recruiting.

During the First Breach War, pilots were celebrities, real-life superheroes who were saving the world. The victory in the First Breach War turned them into living legends, heroes out of myth and story. People didn’t just like pilots. They idolised them.

When the Second Breach War started, the Eidolon Program was swamped with applications despite the tremendously dangerous nature of the job. It was like being offered a chance to become Superman. Was anybody going to say no?

With many of the pilots from the first war unable to serve for a variety of reasons (the two most frequent being death or lingering disability) and the fal’Cie arriving in larger numbers than ever before, the Eidolon Program had no choice but to accept as many suitable pilots as it could.

With civilisation on the brink of collapse, the Eidolon Program rushed the first set of recruits through training in a record six months. Naturally, this resulted in horrific casualties. Piloting refurbished Eidolons from the previous war, these new recruits were inexperienced, outgunned, and hopelessly idealistic.

Casualty rates were in the vicinity of 50% in the first six months. Perhaps the most tragic story of all is that of a family in which all eight children, four sets of twins, were wiped out in a single battle. Born and raised in Midgar, they fell in the cities defence, along with the lone pair of veteran pilots leading them. The loss of ten Eidolons (there were others onsite) was absolutely catastrophic given the depleted ranks of the Eidolon Program and the seemingly unrelenting advance of the fal’Cie.

That’s right. Of the pilots who went through the first rushed training program, half were dead within six months of entering active duty.

Yet their sacrifice was not without purpose. The time they bought the Eidolon Program was crucial. Their deaths stymied the fal’Cie onslaught long enough for nations across the world to ramp up Eidolon and weapons production and for the second set of recruits to go through a more thorough training program.

There are many who call the strategy, which was devised by Grand Marshal Farron, a crime against humanity. Yet the truth of the matter if brutally clear when examined objectively. At the start of the Second Breach War, the Eidolon Program simply did not have enough Eidolons or pilots to mount a proper defence. Furthermore, the fal’Cie were no longer appearing from a single Breach. Instead, the enemy demonstrated the ability to send multiple fal’Cie through short-lived temporary Breaches that could appear in a variety of different locations.

Left unchecked, the fal’Cie would exterminate the world’s population in less than a month. Even with the full force of the Eidolon Program’s resources, they would still triumph in less than a year if conventional tactics were employed. Worse, the fal’Cie had begun to target production and manufacturing facilities to prevent the Eidolon Program from increasing its fighting power. The decision was therefore made to focus on defending war-critical areas at any cost in the hope that eventually improved production and training techniques would allow the Eidolon Program to reach a level of strength sufficient to repel the fal’Cie onslaught in earnest.

Subsequent analyses suggests that Grand Marshal Farron’s tactics were likely the only route to victory despite the horrific costs they incurred.

When the Second Breach War started, there were a total of twenty useable Eidolons in the entire world, all of them more than a decade old. The others had all either been destroyed in the climactic final battle of the First Breach War or had been completely decommissioned or even disassembled. By scrounging together whatever they could, the Eidolon Program was able to field a total of fifty Eidolons. At its peak, it had once fielded two hundred.

A year after the Second Breach War began, the first of the Mark VIs rolled off the production line. These Eidolons were based on the Mark Vs that had done the brunt of the damage against the fal’Cie toward the end of the First Breach War. However, advances in technology meant they were at least 75% more effective in combat than their predecessors.

With most of the world’s economy devoted to the war effort, the Mark VIs arrived in force, with a dozen of them entering service each month. This massive increase in fighting power allowed the Eidolon Program to finally begin establish a firm defensive line. Better still, improvements in production technology allowed for the number of Eidolons produced each month to increase even further.

The tide of battle truly began to turn when the first of the Mark VI-2s arrived two years after the Second Breach War began. Based on the Mark VIs but with vastly improved weaponry designed specifically to counter the evolution seen in the fal’Cie, these Eidolons demonstrated 45% more combat effectiveness than their predecessors. This meant that a single Mark VI-2 was worth roughly 2.5 Mark Vs in battle.

Production of the Mark VI-2 hit new levels thanks to the diversion of any spare industrial capacity. As many as twenty Mark VI-2 were produced across the world each month. The Eidolon Program finally had the strength and numbers to establish Arks across the world instead of focusing primarily on defending areas critical to the war effort.

Another welcome innovation arrived shortly after with the development of the Aerial Rapid Deployment System. This was essentially a system that allowed Eidolons to be deployed via rocket, allowing the Eidolon Program to cover larger areas and to rapidly increase its forces in a given area if necessary. Naturally, retrieving the Eidolons took longer since more conventional aircraft or transport were used, but the ability to deploy them rapidly was game-changing.

Throughout all of this, recruitment drives were maintained. Also important was the use of propaganda to ensure civilian morale remained high. This was particularly important during the opening stages of the war when the Eidolon Program was on the back foot and facing mounting civilian and pilot casualties. As the war turned, and the Eidolon Program began to repel assault after assault with growing ease, the propaganda drive continued.

What would eventually lead to the end of Second Breach War years later would be the development of Breach technology, allowing the Eidolon Program to strike back at the enemy instead of simply defending. The bomb used to end the First Breach War had been the largest in human history, with an estimated output of one gigaton (the largest nuclear device built to that point had a yield of roughly 40 megatons). Grand Marshal Farron would order the deployed of even more destructive weaponry to eventually end the war.

After all, the Makers had survived one such bomb although it had taken them years to recover. With the ability to create their own Breaches, the Eidolon Program would not make that same mistake. Indeed, there are some who would later call the Grand Marshal the Butcher of Bodhum in reference to both her actions and her home city.

Of course, opinions on her decision to essentially commit genocide are generally viewed in a much more positive light by those who have suffered at the hands of the fal’Cie.

As the infamous the Grand Marshal herself put it: “They came to our world not once but twice, and each time their objective was the same: to kill all of us and claim our world for themselves. Now that we’re finally winning and have a chance to finish this once and for all, they don’t get to just surrender and sue for peace. They wanted an existential battle? They got one. It might make me a monster, but I will gladly be called that if it means never having to worry about one of their creations smashing one of our cities and slaughtering our people. They chose this kind of war. I’m just choosing to finish it the same they started.”

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Author’s Notes

Yeah, the Second Breach War starts off as an absolute bloodbath. The world was caught with its pants down, and Lightning basically had to decide what the best course of action was. With the forces they had, there was no way they could win. Their only hope was to fight a defensive delaying action until production could ramp up enough to give them a fighting shot. You can bet she wasn’t happy about it, but she could also see it was their best shot at surviving and winning. It might also have played a part in her eventual decision to simply wipe out the Makers when they develop the ability to create their own Breaches. You can bet the bombs they dropped had the names of all the lives that were lost written on them too. It’s not much, but it’s revenge of a sort for all those who were lost.

Incidentally, this could also lead into an eventual Mass Effect crossover as a triumphant humanity uses the Breach technology, technology recovered from the smoking ruins of the Makers’ world, and their own advances to reach into space. For obvious reasons, though, their first encounter with the Turians is going to go differently. And you can imagine how dimly they’ll view any attack on their own people.

And the Turian, for their part, might wonder what they’ve gotten into when they realise that the last time humanity got invaded by aliens, they wiped them out despite being at a massive disadvantage for most of the war. This time, humanity has technology that is in many ways better (Breach technology can be used for near-instantaneous travel across vast distances as well as a host of other things).

Not to mention how they’ll react when they see an Eidolon in action. Everybody is gangster until a Titan Class Mark XXV Eidolon drops out of the sky and start killing everything. Three hundred metres of pure , undiluted human badassery created for the sole purposes of annihilating anything that even looks at humanity funny. Trust me, the Turians on Shanxi are going to freak when they see a dreadnought get cut in half after one of those gets deployed in space to basically ‘grapple’ the spaceship because why not?

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I also write original fiction, which you can find on Amazon here. I’ve recently released two stories, Attempted Adventuring and Surviving Quarantine, as well as two audiobooks, Two Necromancers, a Bureaucrat, and an Army of Golems, Two Necromancers, a Dragon, and a Vampire, and The Hungry Dragon Cookie Company. If you like humour, action, and adventure, be sure to check them out.

#the vestige #fanfiction

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