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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year

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Private equity finally delivered Sarah Palin's death panels

Tonight (Apr 26), I’ll be in Burbank, signing Red Team Blues at Dark Delicacies at 6PM.

Remember “death panels”? Sarah Palin promised us that universal healthcare was a prelude to a Stalinist nightmare in which unaccountable bureaucrats decided who lived or died based on a cost-benefit analysis of what it would cost to keep you alive versus how much your life was worth.

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/26/death-panels/#what-the-heck-is-going-on-with-CMS

Palin was right that any kind of healthcare rationing runs the risk of this kind of calculus, where we weight spending $10,000 to extend a young, healthy person’s life by 40 years against $1,000 to extend an elderly, disabled person’s life by a mere two years.

It’s a ghastly, nightmarish prospect — as anyone who uses the private healthcare system knows very well. More than 27m Americans have no health insurance, and millions more have been tricked into buying scam “cost-sharing” systems run by evangelical grifters:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/02/health/christian-health-care-insurance.html

But for the millions of Americans with insurance, death panels are an everyday occurrence, or at least a lurking concern. Anyone who pays attention knows that insurers have entire departments designed to mass-reject legitimate claims and stall patients who demand that the insurer lives up to its claim:

https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/khn-podcast-an-arm-and-a-leg-how-to-shop-for-health-insurance-november-24-2021/

The private healthcare sector is designed to deny care. Its first duty is to its shareholders, not its patients, and every dollar spent on care is a dollar not available for dividends. The ideal insurance customer pays their premiums without complaint, and then pays cash for all their care on top of it.

All that was true even before private equity started buying up and merging whole swathes of the US healthcare system (or “healthcare” “system”). The PE playbook — slash wages, sell off physical plant, slash wages, reduce quality and raise prices — works in part because of its scale. These aren’t the usual economies of scale. Rather the PE strategy is to buy and merge all the similar businesses in a region, so customers, suppliers and workers have nowhere else to turn.

That’s bad enough when it’s aimed at funeral homes, pet groomers or any of the other sectors that have been bigfooted by PE:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/16/schumpeterian-terrorism/#deliberately-broken

But it’s especially grave when applied to hospitals:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/21/profitable-butchers/#looted

Or emergency room physicians:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/14/unhealthy-finances/#steins-law

And if you think that’s a capitalist hellscape nightmare, just imagine how PE deals with dying, elderly people. Yes, PE has transformed the hospice industry, and it’s even worse than you imagine.

Yesterday, the Center for Economic and Policy Research published “Preying on the Dying: Private Equity Gets Rich in Hospice Care,” written by some of the nation’s most valiant PE slayers: Eileen Appelbaum, Rosemary Batt and Emma Curchin:

https://cepr.net/report/preying-on-the-dying-private-equity-gets-rich-in-hospice-care/

Medicare pays private hospices $203-$1,462 per day to take care of dying old people — seniors that a doctor has certified to have less than six months left. That comes to $22.4b/year in public transfers to private hospices. If hospices that $1,462 day-rate, they have lots of duties, like providing eight hours’ worth of home care. But if the hospice is content to take the $203/day rate, they are not required to do anything. Literally. It’s just free money for whatever the operator feels like doing for a dying elderly person, including doing nothing at all.

As Appelbaum told Maureen Tkacik for her excellent writeup in The American Prospect: “Why anybody commits fraud is a mystery to me, because you can make so much money playing within the guidelines the way the payment scheme operates.”

https://prospect.org/health/2023-04-26-born-to-die-hospice-care/

In California, it’s very, very easy to set up a hospice. Pay $3,000, fill in some paperwork (or don’t — no one checks it, ever), and you’re ready to start caring for beloved parents, grandparents, sisters, brothers, aunts and uncles as they depart this world. You do get a site inspection, but don’t worry — you aren’t required to bring your site up to code until after you’re licensed, and again, they never check — not even if there are multiple complaints. After all, no one at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has the job of tracking complaints.

This is absolute catnip for private equity — free government money, no obligations, no enforcement, and the people you harm are literally dying and can’t complain. What’s not to like? No wonder PE companies have spent billions “rolling up” hospices across the country. There are 591 hospices in Van Nuys, CA alone — but at least 30 of them share a single medical director:

https://auditor.ca.gov/reports/2021-123/index.html#pg34A

Medicare caps per-patient dispersals at $32,000, which presents an interesting commercial question for remorseless, paperclip-maximizing, grandparent-devouring private equity ghouls: do you take in sick patients (who cost more, but die sooner) or healthy patients (cost less, potentially live longer)?

In Van Nuys, the strategy is to bring in healthy patients and do nothing. 51% of Van Nuys hospice patients are “live discharged” — that is, they don’t die. This figure — triple the national average — is “a reliable sign of fraud.”

There are so many hospice scams and most of them are so stupid that it takes a monumental failure of oversight not to catch and prevent them. Here’s a goodun: hospices bribe doctors to “admit” patients to a hospice without their knowledge. The hospice bills for the patient, but otherwise has no contact with them. This can go on for a long time, until the patient tries to visit the doctor and discovers that their Medicare has been canceled (you lose your Medicare once you go into hospice).

Another scam: offer patients the loosest narcotics policy in town, promising all the opioids they want. Then, once their benefits expire, let them die of an overdose (don’t worry, people who die in hospice don’t get autopsies):

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/12/05/how-hospice-became-a-for-profit-hustle

You can hire con artists to serve as your sales-force, and have them talk vulnerable, elderly people into enrolling in hospice care by convincing them they have nothing to live for and should just die already and not burden their loved ones any longer.

Hospitals and hospices also collude: hospitals can revive dying patients, ignoring their Do Not Resuscitate orders, so they can be transfered to a hospice and die there, saving the hospital from adding another dead patient to their stats.CMS’s solution is perverse: they’re working with Humana to expand Medicare Advantage (a scam that convinces patients to give up Medicare and enrol in a private insurance program, whose private-sector death panel rejects 13% of claims that Medicare would have paid for). The program will pay private companies $32,000 for every patient who agrees to cease care and die. As our friends on the right like to say, “incentives matter.”

Appelbaum and co have a better idea:

Do more enforcement: increase inspections and audits.

Block mergers and rollups of hospices that make them too big to fail and too big to jail.

Close existing loopholes.

They should know. Appelbaum and her co-authors write the best, most incisive analysis of private equity around. For more of their work, check out their proposal for ending pension-plan ripoffs by Wall Street firms:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/05/mego/#A09948

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in Burbank, Mountain View, Berkeley, San Francisco, Portland, Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, DC, Gaithersburg, Oxford, Hay, Manchester, Nottingham, London, and Berlin!

[Image ID: An industrial meat grinder, fed by a conveyor belt. A dead, elderly man is traveling up the conveyor, headed for the grinder's intake. The grinder is labelled 'HOSPICE' in drippy Hallowe'en lettering. It sits in a spreading pool of blood.]

Image: Seydelmann (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GW300_1.jpghttps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GW300_1.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

#pluralistic #cepr #medicare advantage #medicare #hospice #aca #aging #death panels #fraud #california #preying on the dying

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stereax · 10 months

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How is Toronto doing over there?

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Okay let me explain what Toronto is doing... actually no I can't, what they're doing defies all reason. Or it makes perfect sense, but only if you're on the same cocktail of black tar heroin and crystal meth as Brad Treliving. Here we go!

This is the Leafs' page on CapFriendly. They are currently almost 9 million dollars over the cap. This is the offseason, so nobody really cares right now - teeeechnically you can't go over 10% above the cap during the offseason but nobody's really watching. So why are they over 8.8 million dollars over?

Let's review why.

This is the Leafs' forward core. (There's a league minimum deal for Dylan Gambrell too.)

This is the Leafs' forward core with a $5.5m deal to Bertuzzi, $3m deal to Domi, and $1.35m deal to Reaves. And you'd think "oh, they're trying to get tougher, okay" and they really don't, because Bertuzzi and Domi aren't punchers and Reavo is getting old. Bertuzzi is a more expensive Bunting sidegrade on a one-year deal seeking term in next year's free agent market. Domi is a center whose defensive numbers are in the shitter, also hoping for a better deal next year when the cap jumps up. Reaves is honestly just happy someone signed his ass for three whole years. He's 36. This is his second 35+ contract. Massive red flag.

What you're also going to notice is that Matthews, Marner, and Tavares take the lion's share of the cash - over $33m between the three of them. Nylander adds another $7m to the pot, making each of the Core Four average around $10m. Oh, and Nylander is angling for a pay raise when he hits UFA next year. :) And Matthews hits UFA next year too, good luck icing a 12-forward roster that doesn't have two lines' worth of rookies if you keep both! :)

Compare this to, say, the Devils, who have their cap situation under control. How the Devils work is they rely on everyone taking a discount for the benefit of the team (or just signing them to "overpays" before they get good and make the contracts worth it, like Jack Hughes). In the same $40m as the Core Four, the Devils have Timo Meier, Jack Hughes, Jesper Bratt, Nico Hischier, Tyler Toffoli, and Erik Haula. An entire top six. And I'm not even counting Dawson Mercer because he's still on his ELC and that would just be unfair.

There's a saying that "you can't win a Cup with a $10m player". Jack Eichel proved us wrong. However, the idea of that saying applies - if you have too many top guys who are all demanding too much money, your boat is going to capsize because you're not going to be able to get the rest of the team signed. (Unless you're the fucking Rangers and get everyone on league minimum contracts because you're the fucking Rangers and you run a retirement home in New York, but I DIGRESS.)

The main issue with the Core Four, and the idea of the Core Four, is that they're eating up basically half the cap by themselves. And if you look back on it, you can go "Kyle Dubas was a moron", but you've got to remember: Dubas inked those deals thinking the cap wouldn't go flat due to covid. With the cap due to jump next offseason, you're looking at a LOT of 1-year deals because most free agents think they can get more money when there's more money to throw around. Bertuzzi and Domi are no exceptions.

Oh, also, Brad Treliving signed a 4C (David Kämpf) to a $2.5m contract with 4 years of term. You don't sign fourth liners for that money or term, as a general rule, unless they do something for your team that is literally irreplacable. Kämpf is good but he's nowhere near the great that justifies that.

Bertuzzi: Fair value for him, but you had Bunting who just signed for $1m less with short term to the Canes. Possible upgrade but too early to tell, probably a sidegrade.

Domi: Really should learn how to play wing. Inconsistent. A bit of an overpay for a third line center who can't play D at all.

Reaves: Punchy McFourthLine. That's it.

The Leafs' defense doesn't have anything too glaringly awful, on the other hand - except that newly inked $4.15m contract to a John Klingberg who can barely play defense on a good day. When you already had three at least passable RDs on the roster (don't know how good Liljegren or Timmins are). I get the idea of an RD upgrade, but man, that was not it.

Klingberg: We're really in the "outscore your opponents" phase of the meltdown now, aren't we? He is worse than Erik Karlsson at defense. Erik Karlsson, Fourth Forward, is a better defenseman. Good God what I would give to see Klingberg and Rielly on a D-pair together. Threat to score... at both ends of the ice.

So the Leafs are over the cap, but a few shenaniga- Wait, what is that? An unsigned RFA goalie?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA YEEEEEP. THEY QUALIFIED SAMSONOV AND HAVE $-8.8 MILLION IN CAP SPACE WITH WHICH TO GIVE HIM A CONTRACT. Better pray he doesn't get offersheeted because you won't be able to sign a big deal for him. Good Lord.

And now here's your injured reserve.

Note that Muzzin's $5.625m is already coming off the books and there's noooo way they can take him off IR (see the top). They still need to shed $3.2m just to fit under cap. With Sammy needing a contract and being arbitration eligible? Oh boy.

So what's going to happen here?

Firstly, Muzzin has to stay on Robidas Island. He comes back, you're fucked capwise.

Murray needs to go. You can't buy him out because that would put $2m on the cap next season as penalty - $2m that you need to resign Nylander and Matthews. Either you Robidas Island him (break his kneecaps permanently) or you trade him as a cap dump. You can't get value on him because he's already retained salary and with an M-NTC that limits where he can go. So you need to ship Murray out with a sweetener for our good friend Future Considerations or a seventh-rounder. The sweetener in question? Probably a first-round pick. Maybe a third if the team in question needs a netminder. Toronto is fresh out of second-round picks. Sweet.

Even with Murray out, you have $1.4m in cap space, and with Robertson probably drawing into the lineup because he's cheap and hopefully fixed by now, so only $700k to spare for Sammy's contract. You better believe Ilya Fucking Samsonov is not going to take a league minimum contract... especially when he's valued at around $5m.

You can ship out Jarnkrok and/or Timmins (as per the internet, the most likely to be dealt). Even with both gone, you only have $3.9m in cap space, which means Sammy would either need to take a team friendly or get dealt, leaving Woll and Literally Nobody to take the net for Toronto. And even if Sammy takes a $3.5m deal, you have next to no cap space and no 13F/7D.

Did I mention Samsonov can arbitrate? Because Samsonov can choose to arbitrate for a higher salary. For another Devils comparable, the reason we didn't qualify Bastian or McLeod was because they could choose to arbitrate if we did, with the arbitrator awarding a higher salary than Fitz would be comfortable paying. Arbitrator says $5m, Treliving can't pay it, Sammy walks. Great work, Brad.

The other speculation is that these moves are setting up for a Nylander trade, breaking up the Core Four. Don't know who the hell wants Nylander at almost $7m of cap hit - maybe the Senators if they manage to ditch DeBrincat? The Leafs would probably have to retain significant salary. Also don't know who the hell the Leafs would replace Nylander with. I doubt this happens, honestly, especially because Nylander's 10-team no-trade clause can kick the Leafs further in the ass. But who the fuck knows anymore?

So to recap: The Leafs just shopped for a bunch of guys with no defense at all that's going to make them have to get rid of Murray and has made resigning Samsonov tough. They need to let go of some of their depth (Jarnkrok and Timmins most likely) to make it work at all, and that's assuming Sammy does them a favor and signs for cheap. That's not even including the possibility of an offersheet to Samsonov - which, if you're a GM with goaltending issues and cap to spare (Chicago comes to mind), you should seriously consider dropping a $6m offersheet to Samsonov and watching the chaos erupt. If Kyle Davidson is reading this right now, do this and I promise I will stop bringing up the Kyle Beach scandal every time I hear about the Hawks and let your franchise turn over a new leaf. (Or Leaf, as it were.)

@excuseme-jimin @storybook-strange you guys also expressed interest in this :)

#stereanswers #stereanalysis #stereducation

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aurumacadicus · 2 years

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Had a thought. Bear with me.

Tony hasn’t controlled his money since he was twenty-five years old. There’s a reason he tells JARVIS to make lists, to put in orders, to schedule deliveries. It’s why he buys exorbitant gifts and offers jobs and pays for meals. He can’t just offer people money.

Which is why Rhodey has to come in and give his signature when Tony says he wants the team to have emergency credit cards.

“Do you know what constitutes an emergency,” Rhodey asks Tony carefully as he has them fill out paperwork. He is not unkind about it.

“No,” Tony admits.

Rhodey reaches out to the table, and everyone obediently puts their pens down, even though they’re very confused. “I have Tony’s power of attorney over his bank accounts,” he tells them seriously. “I know you won’t abuse the trust Tony is giving you. I just need you to know that I do go over the accounts to know what he’s spending so I know when I need to rein him in, so don’t buy anything on those credit cards that you wouldn’t want me and Tony to know about. Tony is very bad at keeping secrets.”

Clint and Thor go back to filling out their paperwork, shrugging, but Natasha, Steve, and Bruce look deeply uncomfortable, not picking their pens back up. “Why?” Natasha asks simply, frowning.

“When I’m manic, I spend like crazy, and while I can afford it, when the mania fades, I just feel bad,” Tony admits. “I can’t draw out cash specifically so JARVIS can ping Rhodey with abnormal spending habits. One time I tried to buy a ton of almonds.”

“A literal ton, like two thousand pounds,” Rhodey adds.

“Mania?” Steve repeats hesitantly.

“Are you saying—Tony, do you have bipolar disorder?” Bruce asks, eyes wide.

Tony shrugs. “I was told… Manic depression? I was diagnosed twenty years ago though, so the terminology has probably changed. I never kept up on therapy. Always felt like the board was just looking for excuses to commit me,” he admits uncomfortably.

“He gave me control of his accounts after he spent three million on junk cars because he was going to fix all of them. The mania faded before he could, so he just had three million dollars worth of junk cars and no energy to fix them,” Rhodey explains.

Steve’s eyes dart between them. “I don’t know if…” he begins, reaching his hand to push the paperwork away.

“Tony and I came up with the parameters of what should be his ‘normal’ spending together,” Rhodey assures him. “Sat down with a lawyer and accountant and everything. I don’t willfully nitpick every transaction he makes. I just keep my eye out for weird spending habits so he doesn’t attempt to pull out a hundred grand from the bank and pass it out to anyone he meets on the street on the way home.”

“I remember that,” Natasha says suddenly. “So part of the reason you were so pissed about his birthday party when he was dying—”

“His spending was weird and I was worried,” Rhodey confirms. “Like I said. Tony trusts you. I just want you to be aware that I’ll see your spending, too. And I wasn’t kidding about Tony being unable to keep a secret. He has access to the bills too.”

“If he has questions about me buying ten gallons of mustard, that’s his problem,” Clint retorts immediately.

“YOU DON’T EVEN LIKE MUSTARD,” Tony thunders, and Rhodey sighs and puts his head in his hands.

“Do you guys not know what an emergency is?” Steve asks, dismayed. “You think that would be an emergency?”

“I’ll give you the list of guidelines Tony has,” Rhodey sighs. “Although I do appreciate you trying to keep your card specifically for emergencies, Steve. I sort of didn’t expect anything less, but feel free to buy yourself a coffee or something every once in a while.”

“No,” Steve says flatly.

Luckily everyone is very respectful of their cards when they find Rhodey and Tony going over bills together because JARVIS flagged an uptick and they were trying to figure out if it was a “the team is unexpectedly expensive” thing or a “Tony is edging slowly upward and the first sign is that he bought a yacht” thing.

#ideas #bipolar disorder #tony/rhodey brotp #team as family #I’ve noticed a lot of fic where Tony is actively suffering from a mismanaged diagnosis #and I was like ‘but what if he had support from the people he loves’#pepper and happy are in charge while rhodey’s deployed #but they prefer rhodey do it because he has no problem asking ‘why did you spend three hundred dollars at the sex shop’#like Tony wouldn’t not answer them but they know they couldn’t ask without feeling awkward about it

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terrence-silver · 1 year

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What would different era’s of Terry use as a cologne or a scent to make beloved be around him more?

---

― What would Twig do? Hard to tell. But, maybe, just maybe, he's heard old folk stories around Vietnam, during the war, among locals, about ancient concoctions and brews that increased attraction from the wearer to their intended target, bordering on magical properties; something that appealed to the mind and the body. Something that back home might be deemed a love potion by any other name and while he thought it is a load of mumbo jumbo and old wives tales back then, he sure as heck he wishes he had a vial of that to spray all over himself now. Should he rummage through beloved's things and do some well meaning digging when they aren't likely to see, though? Just in case? See what scents and perfumes they use and align himself to that, ensuring he matches with them and ensure a higher probability of their attraction through that? Do some stalking and use observational logic? Use his newfound money and wealth to buy the most expensive thing on the market and hope smelling like raw cash would do the trick for him? Maybe appealing to the soldier in him is the right course of action; maybe smelling fresh and clean and orderly is the best tactic --- honest, good and old fashioned? Or maybe, just maybe, he should get to scheming. To cooking. o a bit of would-be witchcraft, not that he ever figured himself the type. A pinch of his sweat, a droplet of his blood, a lock of his hair, the salt of his tears, various fragrances and herbs he brought home from Korea to make his dish complete. It is not unusual for a soldier to make frag grenades and Molotov cocktails on the field, from scratch, so why would making a scent that appeals to someone's desire be all that strange? He's in love, and he's a little like a girl eagerly making perfume out of roses petals from his mother's garden. He is doing this for a good cause. Is it so bad that he wants you to be around him more than ever? It is not wrong. Not if it actually works.

― See, for 80's Terry Silver, whatever boyish, albeit obsessive innocence Twig would have on this topic with his homegrown solutions dissipates into outright Machiavellianism. In the animal world, he knows, beasts in heat secrete a sort musk that makes the irresistible to any would-be mate that catches their scent, and people are a type of animal too. Jungle rules are valid in civilization. Jungle rules are valid in desire and the arena of courting and conquest. More than any place else, actually. And so, a team of scientists, experts, doctors and chemists are commissioned and carefully vetted by Mr. Silver himself, in a hush-hush operation, to literally design the perfect scent. Just for him. With beloved you in mind. No expenses too big. No excess too excessive. Terry Silver gets what Terry Silver wants. Always. Mind you, he doesn't feel he needs a bottle of anything to already be alluring as he is, without the aid of science, but he supposes there's an undeniable sort of fun to this, an unabashed eroticism, in you thinking he smells so good, that it is physically, on a molecular level, impossible to resist him, felling you entirely under his whim of control and rendering you helpless under his literal spell, with no bullshit or distractions serving as obstacles. Should his people at Dynatox frequently dealing with gasses and toxins get involved with this project? They just might. And after months of genuine research, tens of thousands of man hours invested, nearly a million dollars blown into the ether, anything intrusively perverse, from a sample of his cum in the mixture and the collected venom of a rare Burmese Cobra (A shameless suggestion by Mr. Silver himself), the perfect, addictive, nearly hallucinogenic and entirely unethical cologne is designed. Nobody who sees you can quite explain why your pupils wildly dilate and why you ignore everything else when Terry comes into your line of sight but they suppose it must be love.

― You know what would be a great shortcut when you're old, you find love infuriatingly late in life, feel the rage of not having control of time itself and when such things happen and you wish you could somehow jump through all the social rings of fire that involve the dance of pleasantries with the one you want and actually get down to have them, right away, not a minute more wasted? A love potion. In such times, yes, a literal tonic to induce desire, skip all the nonsense, awaken the senses and make the brain receptive would come in handy. The notion almost amuses old man Terry. It really does. Except, few notions amuse Terry for their own sake without actually formulating into outright plans and possibilities in his head after a while --- as was the case all his life. And sure, he knows his way around fine art. Fine dining. Fine wine. Fine suits. Fine cars. Fine mansions. Fine perfumes and colognes galore, because he's a natural purveyor of the rare, expensive and exotic. Still, he finds most options available for the buyer's purse, self-proclaimed to make you 'irresistible' as poultry marketing tricks --- instead opting for something wrought from his own machinations. You get invited to dinner. You get wined and dined by an ever so charming old man. You get seduced. You get drawn in. You have a wonderful evening. And for some reason, you immediately, against all reason, find yours in Terry Silver's bed, that very night. First date. How? Not unreasonable, seeing as how he is quite alluring on his own, when he wishes to be, but unbeknownst to you, he has sprayed himself and his own environment with every aphrodisiac, incense and fume in the book and ensured his mansion smells like desire. Smells like sex. Invading the mind. Disarming, almost like a drug, to the point that the dinner was cut short and continued in his bedroom before you could even reason why. You supposed...Terry smelled quite nice.

You never realized you stood no chance the minute you crossed the threshold of his estate.

#terry silver #kk3 #cobra kai #dynatox #terry silver twig #twig terry silver #80's terry silver #old man terry #yandere #chemistry #perfume #love potions #tw; dub con #tw; non con #dubious consent #terry silver x reader #terry silver x beloved

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jeffkamikow · 4 months

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You Can Run a Global Sales Team. Jeff Kamikow Explains How

“There’s literally a world of opportunity out there,” says digital marketing expert Jeff Kamikow. “You just have to be in the right place to take advantage.”

Kamikow learned firsthand what a boon international business can be. As a prominent digital marketer who’s developed original revenue strategies for several successful companies and built global sales forces that magnified his efforts here at home — boosting sales, revenue and income in the process.

Many of Kamikow’s fellow entrepreneurs are discovering the power of doing business overseas as well. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration, 98 percent of all U.S. businesses that export overseas are classified as small to midsize enterprises. Exports account for nearly 7 million jobs and nearly 14 percent of U.S. GDP. And U.S. companies that export are about 9 percent less likely to go out of business than companies that focus exclusively on the domestic market.

Perhaps most importantly, 70 percent of the world’s purchasing power is located outside the United States. That proportion is likely to rise, not fall, as time goes on.

Exporting can be complicated, sure. But given these facts, it’s hard to argue that expanding overseas isn’t in a growing company’s best interest, all other things being equal. And since many modern businesses don’t even make physical goods, “exporting” can be as simple as bouncing bits off orbiting satellites or shooting data through overseas cables.

If you’re looking to tap overseas markets for your products and services, you’re likely to need a global sales force that can support your efforts wherever you choose to set up shop. No matter how modest your resources or scale, it’s hard to beat an on-the-ground sales force that (sometimes literally) speaks your prospects’ language and spots threats and opportunities in plenty of time to respond.

Here’s what you need to do to build and maintain an effective global sales force, no matter what your company does.

Plan Before You Expand

A few years ago, when Jeff Kamikow was putting together his first global sales team, emerging markets were the golden children of the global economy. No matter how hard you tried to find an underperforming or politically risky place to grow your firm, you’d find a firehose of eager buyers with fistfuls of cash — at favorable dollar exchange rates, no less.

Those days are long gone. Expanding overseas is a much trickier proposition these days, and the possibility of failure looms large. Former darlings — Brazil, Russia, even China — are struggling to keep their houses in orders. Some smaller players — Greece, Egypt — are on the verge of collapse.

Before you expand your global footprint, take a hard look at what your company brings to the table. Research the markets you’re targeting and determine whether consumers there are willing to buy what you’re selling. (Do they even care?)

If you’re targeting new markets primarily for back-office support for existing operations elsewhere, carefully analyze local political and economic risk. Even if they have favorable tax laws or incentives for foreign-owned firms, politically unstable countries present unacceptable risks. That’s why Jeff Kamikow’s latter-day global sales work tends to focus on relatively stable markets, like France and India.

2. Build a Curious First Wave

When you enter a new market, you’re likely to build your first “wave” of salespeople and managers from trusted home-market employees. As you evaluate the candidates, take care to select culturally curious people who exhibit a willingness to learn about and engage with locals. You don’t want people who just want to hang out in the lobby of your Western hotel or apartment block.

3. Develop Local Talent

Your sales team’s second wave, with few exceptions, should be comprised of talent hired and developed locally. This is particularly critical if you’re expanding into non-English-speaking markets. Establish connections with local civic boosters and talent search professionals to find qualified workers and reduce failure rates. Jeff Kamikow’s team wouldn’t be where it is today without talented natives willing to stick out their necks for him

4. Understand Local Customs

Customs and social norms differ widely from place to place, so it’s critical to conduct exhaustive research prior to entry and to retain an open mind afterwards. Even activities as simple as eye contact between subordinates and superiors, jokes made during presentations, and finger-pointing or other seemingly innocuous gestures can create tension and possibly jeopardize your position.

5. Learn from Your Mistakes

At some point, it’ll become clear that things simply aren’t working out with a particular sales initiative or — unfortunately — an entire territory. Don’t fight a losing battle, particularly when you’re out of your element. Instead, cut your losses, analyze what went wrong, retrench your efforts elsewhere, and vow not to make the same mistake again.

6. Look for Opportunities to Scale

As noted, the first wave of your global sales force may well be from your home country, or perhaps picked from other international markets. As you grow your presence in-country, you’ll then need to hire and develop local talent.

But unless it becomes clear that you’re on a fool’s errand in your new market, you should never stop looking for opportunities to scale quickly and cost-effectively — i.e., by acquiring smaller, local competitors or purchasing in-place assets (if cash flow allows) that align with your goals. For instance, if you catch wind that a local call center operator is looking to sell, consider buying them out, retaining high-potential employees, and retraining them to support your local goals (whether direct sales, inbound support or some other complementary activity.

7. Leverage Your Global Presence

When you’re building a global sales force, it never hurts to brag. Jeff Kamikow is the first to admit that he’s played up his global sales chops in past situations where it’s to his benefit to do so.

Entrepreneurs who successfully build and manage global sales forces, regardless of scale or mission, demonstrate that they’re able to run complex, multipolar organizations outside of whatever cultural comfort zone they might normally occupy. The value of this competency is difficult to quantify, but it often leads to opportunities that weren’t previously on the radar.

Are you working to build a global sales force for your company? What are the biggest challenges and opportunities you’ve identified so far?

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whysojiminimnida · 2 years

Text

My Latest Crazy BTS Military Service Theory: WANNA HEAR IT?LET'S GOOOO --

Here's what I think. I've been thinking it for a second but it took a minute to work its way through my brain SO

This whole Vegas concert date flex has been in the works for awhile. It was planned as soon as they were invited to perform and got hosed in the nominations. BECAUSE.

If the Grammys sees the press and feels the heat and actually AWARDS THEM the Grammy they deserve (and let's be honest, they have deserved it MORE THAN ONCE) - they will be the ONLY Korean group with a Grammy. That qualifies as an international award. That's a gold medal at the Olympics, kids. THAT GIVES PARLIAMENT A LEGAL REASON TO EXEMPT THEIR SERVICE ENTIRELY and keep the cash and influence flowing into Korea.

We can hate the Grammys all day but there is a method to the madness and is is based on Korean law and precedent for exemption of military service.

And Korea wants BTS not to have to serve. It's better for the GDP of the country for them to be out here spinning gold out of thin air while they're in their prime.

But it's tough to get that through Parliament without changing law, and they've already gotten the law changed once with the BTS Deferment amendment. SO in order to protect themselves, the politicos are all like "IF YOU GET A GRAMMY" which let's be honest has been a thing for YEARS. Literally had they gotten one last time we wouldn't even be wondering about military service now. But this is about the LAST YEAR THEY CAN PULL IT and not have Seokjin and Yoongi having to go in anyway. COVID has done a number on the timing, too.

SO. WHAT IF THEY DON'T GET THE GRAMMY? It's a fair question, a really fair question, because we know how the US awards system likes to fuck over our guys. Racist asshats, the lot of them, and jealous into the bargain, but what can BTS do about a system over which they have no control?

THEY CAN FLIP THE GOT-DAMN SCRIPT. Paint the town purple. Call ARMY out of reserve status and into active duty. Combat, if you like. If they can show up on the red carpet and go "yeah that's cute how your capacity venue is now our movie theater for overflow because our fans will pay admission to watch us BE IN THE SAME CITY" and smirk while the American jackwagons get really uncomfortable really fast because WE AIN'T GOT A SINGLE ARTIST THAT CAN DO THAT.

Then, when they go home, they make some calls. They go "look here's the thing, y'all want us to bring in $30-50 MILLION US DOLLARS per tour stop OR you want us to come home and play trumpet in the Korean Army Band like Lee Taemin, because those are your options" and Korea likes money as well as the next country. Also Taemin hasn't enjoyed military service up to this point, government publicity be damned. And SHINEE isn't out there pulling in huge crowds or cash into Korea without him, either. It's a longer shot, conservative politicians are assholes about honor and glory as we all know, but it's better than just enlisting and calling it a day.

And given that BTS is at least, in my brain canon, 4/7ths not heterosexual, it would be really nice if they could just NOT HAVE TO DEAL WITH THE GAY-IN-THE-MILITARY BULLSHIT. That's what I think. So if you are going to Vegas, wear your Borahaegear proudly. Show off your merch. Ask everyone if they know BTS. Talk loudly about the amazing shows, the talent, the flex, the beauty, the How You Learned To Love Yourself. WE ARE ARMY AND if I'm right and I think I am (because I always think I am), our guys need us more than they're letting on right now.

They don't get to do this in the military kids Y'ALL WANT GAY ELVIS-THEMED GAY VEGAS GAY WEDDINGS YOU BETTER GET 'EM OUT OF THE KOREAN MILITARY FIRST IS WHAT I'M SAYING. Am I crazy? Maybe. But what if I'm not?

#told you i had a theory #get me my tinfoil #and my pirin tablets #hi i might be delulu but i might also be right #military service #bts #billboard #india vs west indies 2022 #las vegas 2022 #allegiant stadium #permission to dance concert #concert series #2022 grammy awards #bts got hosed in the nominations #korean military #bts law #deferment #exemption #gay marriage is legal in vegas but not in korea

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puppypeter · 3 years

Text

✨ All fics are complete! ✨

He Loves Me Cause I’m Cute, He Thinks I’m Pretty Funny | 2588 words 📱

He watches it back one more time after it posts, checking for typos in his subtitles and captions, and has to laugh again.

Steve fucking Rogers? His brain thought he could pull Captain America, literal superhero and America’s favorite sweetheart?

“Hello I’m a 35 year old amputee living in New York and I think that I could get Steve Rogers.”

the one where bucky posts a tiktok and steve is utterly smitten.

Summer Slipped Us Underneath Her Tongue | 10712 words 🧳

Bucky is a tour guide who enjoys sharing the rich history and culture of each city they pass through with a bunch of early-20's college students who just want to know the cheapest place to get drunk.

Except for Steve, who asks Bucky for a personal tour around his hometown.

The rest is, as they say, history.

You Make My Heart Skip A Beet | 3853 words 🧑🏼‍🍳

“I made soda bread.” Steve lets out the 6’2” supersoldier equivalent of a squeak. “Oh, I love soda bread,” he says eagerly, rolling forward on the balls of his feet like he does when he gets excited. “My mom used to make it all the time when I was growing up.” The tips of Barnes’s ears turn red, and he mutters something that sounds suspiciously like, “I know.”

Ollie Meets Bagel | 5517 words 🥯

He was a skater boy, Steve said let's get bagels, boy.

Steve wants to start doing this twenty-first century thing properly. He gets help in the form of skateboarding, skateboarders, bagels, and Sam Wilson.

Taxi | 5113 words 🚕

Bucky Barnes was, he hoped, a good taxi driver.

He's so good, he actually tries to return lost property that ends up left in his car and... well. It has some unexpected consequences involving a National Icon.

Enough said.

Leg Day | 12157 words 🏋️‍♂️

“So talk to him,” Sam says.

“I can’t,” Bucky groans. “I can’t, Sam, I. He just.” He fluffs his hair up and stares at Sam, distraught. “I want him to bench press me.”

“Okay, so it’s serious,” Sam interprets. “Got it."

(Or: The one where Sam is Bucky's long-suffering roommate, Bucky is a hot mess of a millennial, and Hot Steve spends far too much time on the Lat Pull-Down machine.)

Love In Aisle Four | 2127 words 🛍️

When Bucky needs to swing by the supermarket after a long, hard day of work, the last thing he expects is to meet a cute grocery clerk named Steve…

Coming Up Easy | 45515 words ✍🏻

“Listen, I was just thinking,” Steve says, his face open, eyebrows raised in a tentatively hopeful expression. “Why don’t you come stay at my place for a while? I’ve got an office that I barely use, and a change of scenery might do you good, right? Help you beat that writer’s block?” With a crooked smile, he adds, “I promise I’m not a serial killer.”

While Bucky would normally crack a joke about how that’s exactly what a serial killer would say, right now, all he can do is blink at Steve in surprise, heart tripping over itself in his chest. Steve wants him to come and stay at his place. In Massachusetts. Just the two of them.

"Oh," Bucky croaks. "I- Wow."

“I mean, no pressure,” Steve says hastily. “Totally fine if you don’t wanna. I just thought I’d offer, in case it might help, y’know?”

“Yeah.” Bucky ignores the little voice in his head that sounds an awful lot Nat and Becca, telling him he’s setting himself up for heartbreak. “I mean, if you’re sure, that would be amazing.”

Anywhere The Wind Blows | 8845 words 👨‍🚒🎖️

After a catastrophic fire that shakes him to his core, Steve Rogers quits his job as a Brooklyn firefighter and relocates to a cabin in the remote Canadian wilderness, wanting quiet and solitude and to maybe never have to speak to another human being ever again. He gets his wish, more or less, until a recently injured Bucky Barnes is discharged from the Army and rents the cabin next door.

The Safer Course | 7918 words | Part 1 of Won’t You Be My Neighbor 🏡

When Steve moves to the suburbs in 2033, he intends to retire from superhero life.

He does not intend to fall in love with his pain-in-the-ass neighbor.

Every Year I Have You | 7064 words | Part 2 of Won’t You Be My Neighbor 🏡

Steve set the bar pretty high, as birthday presents go.

Bucky is determined to outdo him when July 4th comes around.

Beneath The Mistletoe | 21203 words 🎄

Bucky had a bet with his sister that if he didn’t have a boyfriend to bring home for Christmas by the time he was 25, he had to give her $200 and go blonde for a year. But now he's 25, it’s nearing December, and not only is Bucky as single as ever, but he’s also running low on cash. He doesn’t exactly want to bleach his hair, either.

At least Steve is willing to upgrade their relationship from best friends to fake boyfriends.

The Settler | 52203 words 🍞

“What do you want to do?”

Steve pauses and looks at them.

What he wants is to stay with them. He doesn't have any family left, they all died before he even joined the war and became... this. Captain America turned whatever he is now. But Natasha and Sam have become his family over the years. Not just because they're on the run together, fugitives and vigilantes, but way before that too.

He doesn't want to leave that.

But he knows that, realistically, he can't stay with them and they can't stay with him.

So he looks at them with a smile and lies. “I don't know.”

OR; In which Steve retires and finally finds a place to call home.

You Can’t Put Your Arms Around A Memory | 1148 words 🐈

"Alright, Bucky," Steve slows his steps, watches his neighbour stop at the bottom of the next flight of stairs. There's a canvas bag in his hand that Steve didn't notice earlier, cream coloured with the figure of a sleeping, black cat painted on it. "Have a good day."

He thinks Bucky's cheeks pink up a bit right then and there, but Steve can't tell. He's too distracted by his pounding, foolish heart, by the way Bucky smiles bashfully, and ducks his head. The way he seems like he wants to stay.

To Believe In Tomorrow | 3959 words 👨🏻‍🌾

Bucky's mornings at the community garden get a little more interesting when the new guy shows up.

Maybe This Christmas | 24873 words | Part 1 of Maybe ❄️

Bucky’s not going home for Christmas. But it’s fine. He’s spending Christmas alone in his apartment, but it’s cool. He’s not feeling up to seeing his family after his accident anyway, plus he has to work. He’s totally fine with it. But then he runs into Steve, literally, and suddenly his Christmas isn’t looking so empty after all.

-----

Hurrying was a bad idea. Bucky’s foot hits a patch of ice and slides out from under him in what would have been a comical cartoon banana-peel-like trip, if it wasn’t happening to him, and he braces himself to hit the ground. This is going to hurt.

“Fuck,” Bucky screeches, but as he lands on his back, it’s not the cold hard concrete he expected, but a solid mass beneath him. Oh god, Bucky thinks as he realises he smacked into the person behind him and took them down with him.

Maybe This Year (Will Be Better Than Last) | 133868 words | Part 2 of Maybe ❄️

Last year, Bucky Barnes met Steve Rogers. Well actually, he slipped and fell on him. What followed was the best Christmas either of them had ever had. But what happens when Christmas is over and life returns to normal? What happens after the Christmas miracle?

-----

Bucky should have known. He did know. When things seem too good to be true, they usually are. And Steve is the best thing that has happened to him in a long time, possibly ever, so of course it couldn’t last.

Maybe This Time (I Hope I Get The Chance To Say Goodbye) | 34561 words | Part 3 of Maybe ❄️

Steve and Bucky Barnes are happily married. They've made it through some hard times and come out stronger and happier, together. Then Steve gets called on to come out of retirement for the most important mission of his life and everything changes. Everything.

-----

“Have yourself a merry little Christmas…” Steve starts singing along softly, and Bucky chuckles, before leaning his head onto Steve’s shoulder, always happy when he’s in Steve’s arms.

“From now on, our troubles will be miles away…” Bucky joins in.

Dancing round their living room, just as in love as ever, their troubles seem light-years away, if not non-existent.

Sadly, they’re closer than they think.

The Unexpected Gift | 9504 words | Part 1 of When Winter Comes 🐕

Steve Rogers is fine.

After ending a long-term relationship with Sam Wilson, Steve moves back to New York. He's tired and lonely but depressed? No. At least, that's what he thinks.

From the window of his apartment, he watches a dark-haired man and his service dog sitting in the park, wondering what his story is.

The Winter Storm | 2218 words | Part 2 of When Winter Comes 🐕

"If I could give you one thing in life, I would give you the ability you see yourself through my eyes, only then would you realize how special you are to me."

After Bucky and Steve confessed their feelings for each other, life has its own twisted way to challenge the most profound love.

One January Night | 4213 words | Part 3 of When Winter Comes 🐕

Before going back to work, Steve Rogers still has things to learn: 1- Depression is a bitch and the battle against it isn't an easy one. 2- Dating a person with disabilities comes with its share of challenges.

Bucky Barnes Has His Shit Together (And Other Lies He Tells Himself) | 14159 words 🔒

You’d think a guy who owns one of the most successful bakeries in Brooklyn, has a million-dollar smile and that antiquated good ol’ boy charm, blond hair and blue eyes and biceps for days, would know what’s what.

But don’t let that fool you: Steve Rogers is a mess.

Obvious | 917 words ☕

"Oh, I have a prompt! So, it makes me laugh how painfully obvious Steve and Bucky's feelings are to everyone when they're in that pining, slowburn, does-he-doesn't-he phase. But imagine Steve and Bucky working in a coffee shop together and constantly bickering, nudging and playfully flirting with each other. And all the employees and patrons are so invested in their relationship and just want them to kiss already but no one realizes that Steve and Bucky have been married since they got out of HS."

#stucky #steve rogers/bucky barnes #bucky barnes/steve rogers #stucky fics #stucky fic #stucky fic rec #stucky fic recs #stucky fics rec #stucky fics recs #stucky fan fiction #stucky fiction #stucky ao3 #stucky complete #stucky au #adorable stucky fics

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batfamscreaming · 3 years

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So I've been thinking about this post a lot and how to make it and I figure I'll just throw a shot out in the dark

Reasons why Bruce Wayne is a multi-millionaire, rather than a billionaire:

pays his workers a reasonable wage with benefits.

the post could literally end here but we'll keep going

a billion dollars is the new shorthand for 'big amount of money' but you don't actually need to be a billionaire to be stupid rich. In mid 2021, Caitlyn Jenner's net worth is $100 million. Beyonce is $500 million. Keanu "I have enough money for the next few centuries" Reeves? $360 million.

Harris Rosen, who provides free preschool and college tuition, living, and educational expenses for any kids in Tangelo Park who gets into post-highschool education in Florida? $200 million.

A 'net worth' is different then 'how much does someone have in the bank.' It includes properties (so most of Harris Rosen's money is probably actually the chain of hotels he owns and the land they are on, which is why the scope of his program is a specific town) and intellectual property licenses (like the Beatles' Discography), etc. This all falls under the title of 'assets,' which are things that are expensive without actually being spendable cash. You could use the worth of an asset to buy things, in the same way you can use your gamestation to pay rent-- you sell it. So Bruce's net worth is going to be a combination of how much he is actively making from his CEO job, and the combined assets he owns. If he owns any stocks or bonds (he has children, he absolutely has a few saving bonds for them) those are also part of his net worth.

Things Bruce owns:

1 v big mansion house & surrounding property

probably a few vacation homes/safehouses in other states and countries

Several tall buildings and research facilities

at least one processing plant but probably more

that's probably at least like. 500 million or whatever in assets. To set up a lab building right now, it's probably 150mil just for the structure, but again, he only owns one very fancy house, and most of Wayne Industries has been built up over a few generations, so it came cheaper to him over time; he didn't buy all of this at once. You wouldn't call someone rich for affording to eat, after all, but if you had them buy all the food they would eat over the course of their life at once? It would be a stupid huge amount of money. So the actual cost of the land and equipment are counted in assets, but the labor, setup, amenities, etc are not. They're part of the cost.

As for income generated, I'm gonna admit right now that I do not know how much any specific business may be worth, but Walmart claims to have made 548 million in revenue in 2020 (revenue is all money taken in; it ignores wages and expenditures like actually buying things to stock shelves with) and that's literally the top of the Fortune 500 list. Sam Walton had a net worth of 8.6 billion in 1992 when he died. Costco, 10th on the list, has founder James Sinegal, whose net worth is.... 1 billion. There are 490 other spots on the list. The CEOs are taking a paycheck out of that revenue gained, minus again, all employees and expenditures. Over time, the CEO paycheck has built up their networth.

"but wait" you say. "Bruce Wayne does the justice league's financials. what about all the JL stuff he's bought?"

So Bruce Wayne does eventually come out as the JL's benefactor, which probably makes his taxes a lot easier to file, but for a long time people didn't know about it, and as they're also I guess a separate business? Or a charity?? they don't count towards his personal wealth. So the JL is absolutely a sinkhole of money, especially because of the Fucking Space Station. This man goes through a lot of money. James Sinegal, while a defender of the 1.50c costco hotdog, has never funded a Fucking Space Station or Zod's damage bill. This bitch literally can't save up that much money.

Like, you could argue that the Watchtower and all the batmobiles/computers/etc aren't assets on paper because of hidden identities, and you might have a point there, but for him to sell them (and thus make money off them) he'd have to first come out as owning them, putting them on the paper, so it feels like a bit of a stalemate for me. Like, you can steal the mona lisa, but you can't count the mona lisa as an asset without admitting you have possession of the mona lisa (which you shouldn't, thus getting you in Trouble.)

So I'm not counting the Bat and Friends stuff. Very strictly the public-facing stuff. That means also that Bruce Wayne has a lot of either very strange purchases on his accounts, or he's hidden the purchases for the JL somehow, which is impressive, considering he had to hide enough money over time to create the Fucking Space Station.

So what I'm saying here is: is Bruce Wayne a billionaire? No. A billion is more than we think and he is too busy spending to hoard that much wealth. But is Bruce Wayne a money launderer? Yes.

#money #long post #bruce wayne #it turns otu a billion dollars is a stupid amount of money #you can do a LOT with less #1 million? not much money #1 hundred thousand million? what the Fuck.#batman #but also #not strictly batman #while researching this i found out nikki minaj is worth 80k mil and went 'lol poor'#and while that was a joke i feel like that's what happens when bruce is less than a billionaire #like no actually he doesn't have to be the richest man in the world to not be poor #he can fund it without being a billionaire #because unlike SOME governments he has Actual Spreadsheets on Spending and Deals With his Internal White Collar Crime >:(

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pynkhues · 3 years

Note

Prompt 47!

Sorry this one is so late! I hope you like it!

47. Cuddling under blankets

It takes her two days to cave.

Two days to feel the frost in her joints, her perspiration crystalise, her breaths escape in clouds of bitten mist, and god, Beth thinks, staring up at the roof of the cabin, half expecting stalactites. This is not what she had in mind when Rio said safe house.

Not that she was entirely sure what she did have in mind before - - well. Just before. Had never spent all that much time thinking about where it was Rio went when everything had gone south, but if – gun to her head – she’d had to guess, she’d have thought: luxury apartments, sundrenched holiday houses, riverside lodges.

A place his G Wagon would look at home in the driveway, the parking lot, pulled up on the curb.

Somewhere he’d look at home.

The thought makes her wet her chapped lips, sink deeper into the threadbare blankets on top of her still-trembling body, and her gaze dart sideways to where Rio crouches stoking the last flickering embers of the fire.

It’s raining. or rather, it’s sleeting. Shards of ice colliding with the thick glass windows, escaping down the chimney to make the flames spit and smoke below, and when it had first started, Beth had watched Rio cuss. Watched him prod balls of tattered newspaper and sticks she’d collected and tried to dry yesterday, but it hadn’t done much good. The rain had gotten heavier and the fire smaller and she’d seen the chill find him. Pink his nose, ears, stiffen his fingers, and she’d though good, she’d thought he deserves it, but she’d still left him the last of the hot water in the flask even as her own fingers were turning blue.

Now, she holds them close to her mouth, exhales, but her breath is barely warm, and she can’t stop trembling, so she shoves them between her legs instead, and looks at him across the tiny, dim cabin, and says what she’s been saying for the last half hour:

“It’s going to go out.”

He’d ignored her the last time, and scoffed the first time, but now at least it’s enough to make him spin around and look at her, bundled upright on the only bed in the place, the look on his face like he’d forgotten she was even there, and Beth huffs, tilting her chin towards the fire.

“Poking at it isn’t going to miraculously fix the chimney leak,” she adds this time, a shiver rolling up her spine as Rio stares back at her, the erratic glow from the dying flames licking across his features – his plush lips and sharp nose and swollen eye, but god, it’s not that. It’s just - - it’s the cold. That’s all, and when his nostrils flare a little, it’s too easy to add: “Well, it’s not,” because she’s right.

Across the room, Rio finally drops the fire poker back to the tray and stalks his way towards the tiny sofa where he slept last night, tucking his arms high up into his armpits as he drops onto it, leaving his back to her as he hunches forwards, making himself as small as possible in the frigid space of the cabin.

And she doesn’t feel bad.

She doesn’t.

This entire situation is his fault.

It was him who showed up three weeks ago with a new plate, telling her to print two million dollars cash. It was him who’d had that spring to his step while he told her about a new client, and it was him who had her show up at a hotel bar with a suitcase full of fake cash to meet a guy who turned out to be an old-partner-turned-bitter-rival of Nick’s.

She still doesn’t really know what happened, just suddenly it was a few days later and Rio was back at her place with a black eye and a limp and an order.

Bring the plates.

He’d driven them through the night.

Now, across the cabin, he drops a hand to rub at his bad leg, and Beth’s frown deepens as she wriggles back into the dusty mattress, her gaze holding on the narrow line of him, and here’s the thing.

It’s not like she hasn’t thought about it.

Last night had been bad enough, but tonight with the rain and the sleet, without any real insulation and no fire, they’re practically case studies for hypothermia. For the bone chill and the frost bite and the slurred speech and the shuttered eyes and the slip towards a forever sort of unconsciousness.

And like, she knows that the best ways to avoid hypothermia are warm drinks, food, blankets, getting off the ground, and body heat, and just - -

Look.

They finished the cocoa hours ago.

Beth sniffs, rolls her eyes to the ceiling, feels a jittery tension in her body as she blinks hard and finally just says it:

“Come here.”

Rio twists his neck back instantly at that, his eyebrow arched, but he doesn’t make any indication that he’s likely to move, and right, Beth huffs. Why should this be any easier than literally anything else? Her head’s already starting to feel heavy, her thoughts tangled, and she figures the best way forwards is to - - well.

Be the danger.

With a trembling hand, Beth slowly unwraps the blanket from around herself, revealing her stiff jeans and loose sweater, the cold washing through the thin fabric like a rinse, and her teeth are already chattering when she says:

“Body heat.”

His other eyebrow raises to join the first, gaze dropping to her chest where she knows her nipples are peaked in cold, and Beth scowls.

“Not like that. Just - - we’re both freezing right and now, and this - - look. It works.”

“Yeah? You learn that at Journey Scouts?”

“Got the badge and everything,” she bites, and she’s sure she’s visibly trembling now, can feel it, and she sees Rio stare at her, shake his head, start to tell her to bundle up before she kills herself or something, and she adds: “You either come over here and get in the blanket with me or we’re both going to freeze to death right now, and what are your gang buddies gonna think of that, huh?”

Outside, the wind howls and the sleet is starting to get heavier, thicker, careen into hail, and god, it’s cold, and Beth can barely feel her anything anymore, and Rio’s still staring at her, his eyes (or, well, the one she can see below the swelling) dark, and she’s halfway to giving up and flinging herself back on the dusty mattress and trying to shiver her way to any sort of warmth, when Rio suddenly pushes up off the couch and beelines towards the bed.

Which - - right, Beth thinks. This is good, this is what she wanted. In her head, there are vague flashes of real warmth, his body pressed into hers, a memory of heat and desire twisted up and around and over and over, and something drops through her like a lick of flame, and she swallows only to suddenly find herself being gripped around the waist and pushed sideways. Within moments, Rio’s slipped his body beside hers and laid them both down, the mattress frigid beneath them, as Beth desperately tries to adjust the thin blankets back across them both.

She inhales sharply when she feels Rio’s leg press sideways against her own.

His arm against hers.

Both of them suddenly pushed like fish fingers against each other on their backs.

Or like corpses.

The thought makes her swallow.

Makes her gaze flick up to see his swollen face, his pink nose, his unusually pale features.

God, it’s cold.

Beth sniffs, looks down as she wriggles further beneath the blankets, curling her socked-toes to try and hold the blanket to them.

“So,” she tries. “How long are we going to be here?”

“I dunno,” he answers instantly, voice light, like he’d been waiting for her to ask. “How much holiday leave you got?”

Beth scowls, twisting to look at him, and then away, and then back, fixing on the way he hasn’t taken his gaze off the ceiling. It leaves her with little to look at but his swollen eye, the skin darkened with bruises around his temple, and she can’t quite keep the edge out of her voice when she asks:

“Did your brother give you that?”

“Cousin.”

He sniffs as he says it, nose wrinkling, and if she didn’t know any better, she’d swear he winced too at the motion of it. Pressed against her own, his arm feels tight, stiff, his leg cold against hers, and fine, if that’s the way he wants to play it.

“Oh, sorry. Did your cousin give you that?” Beth asks, correcting herself, and at least now, Rio does twist his neck to look at her, his eyes wide in the dark, the whites of them near luminous, and god he is - - he is too close. So close she can feel the cool of his breath against her cheek.

He doesn’t reply, and Beth swallows, something in her gut twisting, fingers trembling as the silence pulses between them, and she doesn’t know if it means yes, or if Rio’s insulted she’d even think that (Nick had just seemed - - and Rio - - something. There was something, that’s all), and it makes her look away. Makes her stare up at the ceiling like he’d been doing, like she had earlier too, watching the timber roofing tremble and listening to the shatter of sleet.

She thinks her toes are going numb.

She thinks her lips are.

She thinks the cold is starting to wrap its fingers around her ankles and pull her into its clutches, starting to leave her tired, and suddenly she’s grasping at anything to distract herself. Anything to keep her head above the threat of frigid oblivion, and she’s halfway through the chorus of Do You Wanna Build a Snowman? before she even realizes what she’s humming.

It’s not until Rio snorts beside her that it means anything to her slow turning head.

Beth’s gaze fixes back on him, and it’s sudden then – the memory of Jane and Marcus singing it to each other through the laundry room door while they played, back when Rhea still came around, back when Beth thought - -

After - -

Beth blinks.

A shiver wracking her chest as she clutches the blankets a little tighter.

“Does Marcus like Frozen?” she asks, like she doesn’t know, and from the way Rio makes a low noise of affirmation, she knows that he doesn’t.

Something in Beth loosens, tightens, loosens again.

“He really likes that snowman,” Rio says, sniffing again. “Olaf.”

His lip twitches – something between a smile and a grimace, and Beth can’t help but grin in reply, her own gaze holding now on the twist of his mouth.

“Jane had a stuffed one that sang the song from the movie. The Summer one. I took out the sound box and stitched it back up.”

Rio barks on a laugh, even as Beth cringes at the memory. It probably wasn’t her finest parenting moment, but after hearing the same song for the thirtieth time in a day, she was about to start tearing at the wallpaper.

“I told her he just wasn’t feeling well,” she adds. “But secretly I’m hoping she forgets he ever sang.”

It’s weird, the voice in her head that tells her it’s not a secret anymore.

Not now that she’s told him.

She doesn’t know why that leaves her pressing her arm to his a little tighter.

“Damn, you’re doin’ better than me,” Rio tells her, his voice low, a little slurred, hoarse with cold. She thinks that’s one of the symptoms of hypothermia, isn’t it? God, she can’t remember. “I gave Marcus’ to one of his cousins.”

Beth laughs.

Looks at him.

Vaguely, something in her head tells her to listen to his chest. Check for a rattle. Is that for hypothermia? No. Pneumonia, she thinks. Tries to summon up her badge training. God, she feels drunk suddenly. Woozy. She lifts her head and places it on his chest anyway, and if he’s surprised, he doesn’t act it. Instead, his arm circles around her shoulders, pulling her into him, which is silly, she doesn’t need the rest of her to hear the ba-dum-ba-dum-ba-dum of his heart beneath her ear. Doesn’t need to drop his mouth to the crown of her head, doesn’t need to inhale either, but she shivers at the warmth of his exhale there when he does that and when his freezing hand finds her shoulder, it’s too easy to reach back.

To pull it around her arm and under, squeezing his fingers into her armpit to warm them, and when his fingers creep forward to squeeze her breast, she doesn’t move them, couldn’t, she doesn’t think, not with his heartbeat so close, and his chest isn’t rattling but it might, she thinks, and god, it’s so much warmer like this, so she shouldn’t move her head just yet.

Just to be sure.

Just to warm them up a little.

Just for now.

#beth x rio #intimacy prompts #thanks anon!#this was a fun one and let me write one of my fave tropes which i have written tragically little of haha #beth boland #rio #my fic

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mostlysignssomeportents · 3 years

Text

Aviation bailout cost $666k/job

Since January of 2001 - 20+ years! - I've been digesting all the news I read that seems significant by writing summaries and analysis on a blog, first on Boing Boing and then on pluralistic.net, my solo project.

This is an incredibly useful exercise, one that converts the fragmented and chaotic news-cycle into a series of puzzle pieces that slowly click together, building up a coherent picture of what's happened, what's happening, and what might happen.

About a decade in, I started reviewing my older posts every morning, going back one year, five years and ten years. I still do it, only now, it's #1yrago, #5yrsago, #10yrsago, #15yrsago, and #20yrsago. I repost the most significant of these each day in my blog and newsletter.

Today's edition contains a link to this one-year-old post, "American Airlines blew billions, now it wants a bailout ," describing how AA accumulated $30b in debt, mostly through stock-buybacks, and as begging for billions more in public funds.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/18/diy-tp/#aa-crashes

This was - and is - outrageous. Over the period that AA was liquidating its cash-reserves through financial engineering schemes that made millionaires out of its stock-compensated C-suite, it was turning its service into flying garbage.

Prices went up, seats got smaller, routes got centralized around inconvenient, delay-plagued hubs. They lost bags. A year ago, Tim Wu catalogued these sins and more for the NY Times.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/opinion/airlines-bailout.html

Wu proposed that a bailout for airlines (not just AA, but the whole monopolized sector, which had all committed AA's sins to varying degrees) should come with strings attached - ending surprise fees, minimum seat standards, and an end to common ownership.

Common ownership? Yes. All the airlines' cap tables have high degrees of overlap - that is, they all belong to the same investors. Or rather, investor. Single. Warren Buffett is nipple-deep in each of the American aviation giants.

Maybe you see Buffett as a folksy grampa. He's not. Don't let the old car and modest home fool you. Buffett's a pure Rockefeller sociopath, minus the flash. He only buys into monopolies, then squeezes customers and suppliers, destroying their lives.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/10/folksy-monopolists/#folksy-monopolists

The airlines were no paragons before Buffett bought giant slices of all the major aviation companies in the US, but afterwards, they got *much* worse. They withdrew from routes they competed on, leaving one supplier for each, who could raise prices without fearing competition.

They merged with one another. They squeezed their pilots, flight attendants, mechanics and baggage handlers. They introduced absurd fees, charging you for the privilege of selecting your seat in advance so you could be sure you got to sit wiht your small children.

The seats themselves shrank. So did the meals - which now cost a pretty penny. Canceling or changing a ticket became a luxury that cost more than the ticket itself. But the airlines could cancel or reroute you, or strand you on a runway.

If you didn't like it, they'd bring in uniformed thugs to literally beat you bloody and drag you out of your seat.

https://consumerist.com/2017/10/18/two-chicago-aviation-officers-fired-for-role-in-dragging-united-passenger-from-flight/

Even if you thought that the US government should take measures to ensure that there were still airlines plying the American skies after the crisis ended, only Warren Buffett and other major airline shareholders wanted this system to continue.

Well, it's been a year to the day since Wu's op-ed, and the NYT's Andrew Ross Sorkin is back in the paper, assessing the bailout that Big Plane got and what the public got in return.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/16/business/dealbook/airline-bailouts.html

All told, the airlines got $50B in public funds and saved 75,000 jobs. That's $666k per job. Now, obviously, the airlines didn't spend three quarters of a million dollars per employee over the past year - that money has gone to their shareholders, not their employees.

The shareholders are happy about this. Shares in United have tripled during the crisis. For United execs - paid in stock - that's a massive payday. For Warren Buffett, who owns far more stock that United's C-suite, it's a vast, permanent fortune.

The past year has seen the transfer of most of $50b from the federal government to the wealthiest execs and investors in America. The airlines weren't punished for squandering their pre-pandemic warchests on buy-backs. They were rewarded for it.

The right likes to wring its hands about "moral hazard":

"If we ensure people who lose their jobs don't starve or end up homeless, why would they show up for work?"

This is just cruelty dressed up as rationality.

But moral hazard IS real, and applies exclusively to remorseless plutes. With the aviation bailout, the US government has signaled to airline execs and investors that if you spend the company dry while enriching yourself, Uncle Sucker will bail you out, no strings attached.

Other travel-related sectors - hotels, rental cars, restaurants, travel agencies - didn't get bailed out. The airlines, meanwhile, got so much money they literally can't figure out how to spend it all.

How else to account for United blowing $20m on a daffy electric helicopter startup that went public through a scammy SPAC (the reigning speculative garbage fire - until NFTs arrived on the scene).

The airline bailout did come with strings, but they were illusory. Capping exec pay is meaningless when bailout money can be used to inflate share prices and make overnight millionaires out of top management. The warrants given to the Treasury are infinitesimally cosmetic.

The airlines aren't too big to fail. No company is. The lesson here is that if Congress offers a blank check to a monopolist to save jobs, the monopolist will charge the federal government $666,666.66 per job, and pocket 90%+ of that.

#pluralistic

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hockeyboysiguess · 4 years

Text

impatient | m. tkachuk

a/n: a little bit of pining, a lot a bit of other things. this was super fun to write even if it killed me a little to do.

warnings: smut, swearing, alcohol, and more smut

(this is a new and optional (no pressure but I think it will add to your experience reading my fics) thing I’m starting where all of my fics now come with a recommended wine pairing to drink while you read. full disclosure, I know absolutely nothing about wine and don’t intend to learn a damn thing about it while doing this. i order by the color and price per glass. these recommendations are based off how I feel and nothing else)

wine pairing recommendation: pink moscato, because we’re all basic bitches for matty tkachuk and pink moscato is the basic bitch wine. you know you like it. don’t lie.

word count: 5.3K

“Fuck, Matty,” you breathed out between moans as your fingers threaded deeper into the mess of curls between your thighs.

“Oh, like that?”

His hot breath fanned out across your hot, sensitive core and you groaned at the sensation. Matthew leaned in closer to you, his broad shoulders pushing your legs further apart. He still stopped short of putting his mouth on you.

“Matthew, please,” you whined, your body stiffening as you tried to grind your hips down to get more contact.

“Patience,” he kissed the inside of your thigh, a few inches from exactly where you wanted his mouth, “is a virtue, honey.”

“I fucking hate you,” you complained, but it came out empty.

“Mm, that’s hot,” was all he said before his tongue finally touched your clit and you couldn’t help but let out an embarrassingly loud moan.

Your body decided that moment you finally felt the tension start to unfold was the perfect moment to wake you up from a dream you haven’t asked for, but decided to enjoy anyway.

“Oh, fuck me,” you groaned as you pulled the covers up over your face. “He’s everywhere.”

You stumbled slowly out of bed to the bathroom. Your inability to be patient meant you washed your face with water that was verging on ice cold, which luckily today came in handy and helped you cool you off from your dream. Matthew had found his way into a lot of your thoughts when you were by yourself. He was becoming absolutely unavoidable.

“Good morning!” your long-time roommate and self-identified best friend Kayla sang as you entered the kitchen.

You have her your customary grunt in reply. One of the biggest issues in your friendship with Kayla was that she was a literal ray of sunshine presenting as a human being. She was a blindingly bright, cheery, peppy morning person who wore her heart on her sleeve and believed that everything would be better with a sprinkle of sugar and a little more love. You couldn’t understand how a person older than eight could possibly have the personality Kayla did, but she’d made it this far into life like this, so this was how she was.

“I made you a smoothie bowl. It’s in the fridge next to your coffee that’s chilling so it can be iced coffee,” Kayla informed you, sounding more like she was meant to sing to birds so they would assist her in baking a cake than that she made you, a woman arguably resembling a river troll right now more than a person, a smoothie bowl and coffee.

You grabbed the bowl eagerly, needed something to try to get your mind from replying the self-created imagine of Matty’s shoulders and curly head between your thighs. You sighed as you took your seat at the breakfast bar next to Kayla. You dug in instantly. It was one of Kayla’s better ones.

“Is good, K,” you mumbled around the berries in your mouth.

“Thank ya,” she replied with a bright smile.

“K,” you wiped the corners of your mouth before you turned to her, “can I tell you something if you promise not to tell anyone else?”

“Of course!”

Kayla was lying and you knew it. Loose lips might sink ships, but your friendship was too strong to sink despite Kayla’s knack for spilling all the beans she knew as soon as she was pushed in the slightest of ways. But, you needed to get this off your chest.

“I had a sex dream about Matthew Tkachuk,” you said bluntly.

Kayla’s spoon paused on its journey to her mouth before it dropped back into the bowl aggressively. Little purple droplets of smoothie sprayed across counter due to her sudden movement. Her mouth dropped open as she processed what you said.

“It was like, almost a sex dream, I guess,” you sighed. “He was about to eat me out and his shoulders, god the shoulders and the curls, and it was just, it was so hot and I have no idea what this means.”

“If I start singing that nursery rhyme about you two sitting in a tree kissing are you going to throw your coffee at me?” Kayla was already wincing back in her seat with her hands protectively in front of her face before she finished her sentence. “This cream sweatshirt doesn’t deserve it even if I do for saying that.”

You rolled your eyes at her and turned your attention back to your quickly thinning breakfast.

“Do you maybe like him, like him?” she asked hesitantly.

“He’s super annoying, Kayla,” you reminded her, “and I doubt he’s even into me in the slightly.”

“He’s totally into you and I know you’re into him. Annoying and a big ego is your type. He’s annoying to you because he’s constantly pulling your metaphorical pig tails.”

You rolled your eyes again, wondering if maybe they were going to get stuck up there that your mom had always threatened when you were little, before replying with, “This isn’t elementary school, K. Even if I did have a little crush, he’s not that type of guy and I’m not his type. ”

She shrugged and put her hands up, telling you that her opinion was her opinion and you could like take it or leave it.

“I just told you what I think, that’s all,” she said. “I also think we need to dress you up extra hot for the bar tonight and you better shave, just in case, you know.”

-------

As the first shot of tequila burned down your throat later that night, you were starting to regret telling Kayla. She’d already had three drinks and around four was when the secrets started spilling out and Matthew was bound to show up any minute. The team had lost tonight, but they were still coming out to celebrate someone’s birthday.

“That shirt makes your boobs look amazing!” The last word was sung, entirely unsurprising with your best friend. “Thank god you let me do your makeup tonight too. He’s not going to be able to take his eyes off you.”

“K,” you sighed as you sat the empty shot glass down on the bar, “he’s not exactly a buy-you-roses, take-you-home-to-his-momma, remember-your-anniversary, kind of guy. Pretty sure, if I wanted to, this would be a one and done sort of thing.”

Kayla shook her head after taking another shot that you couldn’t identify the origin of since you didn’t have another. Oh great, four deep.

“I’m telling you, babe. He’s into you. Like, he’s actually into you,” Kayla told you.

“Who’s into you?”

As if on cue, with an actual tug of your ponytail, Matthew was by your side with his classic, every present cocky smile and mop of curly hair, grabbing your attention even though you didn’t want to give it to him.

“No one,” you told him. “You’re just in time to pay for my next drink though.”

“You’re the worst person I know,” Matthew told you with a sigh. “You just talk to me for my money, don’t you?”

“Well, it certainly couldn’t be because of your personality,” you chirped back.

His credit card still hit the bar a few seconds later though, a wide smile on his face. He slid tight up next you, one of his hands gently resting on your back as he threw some cash on the bar along with his card to catch a bartender’s attention. His hand pressed against your back was warm and strong and you wanted to lean into it, into him. You resisted, your body stiffening as you resisted the urge to collapse into him.

“Oh, sorry,” Matthew mumbled as he took his hand away.

“Oh, you’re good! You can keep it there if you want.”

You’d said it a little too quickly and with a little too much pep for you, but luckily the volume of the bar covered it. Matthew just nodded and let his hand gently rest on your back again, his fingers drumming against you, as he ordered his and apparently your next drink.

“Don’t I get to order myself?” you asked him as you tilted your head back to allow for eye contact.

“When you’re paying,” Matthew chuckled before giving your ponytail another quick tug. “So, how’s work? Pretty sure you know how mine went today, so distract me with yours, please.”

You just started to make small talk about your work and his when your drinks arrived. Matthew was already being pulled away from you the second his beer touched his hand.

“Find me in a few!” he shouted over the noise as he was led off to the dance floor.

You definitely didn’t like you if he left that quickly, but you tried to focus on your drink instead of him. You couldn’t figure out what he’d ordered you by the taste. It was strong, but still tasted good, which was about all that actually mattered. You shrugged it off and headed over to mingle among the team and your other friends, mystery drink in hand and thoughts of Matthew in your head.

By the time your ass was back on your barstool, you weren’t sure how much time had passed, but you’d had three of Matthew’s mystery drinks and you were feeling them. Still, even at your worst, you weren’t Kayla who had already been yelled three separate times by security for climbing on a chair, a table, and the bar. She could not hold her alcohol even if you paid her a million dollars to do it.

“Jesus, I’m amazed they haven’t kicked her out yet. I see we’re being boring over here though instead of fun like Kayla.”

Matthew. Of course he’d find you the second you decided to take a little breather. You rolled your eyes at him and he laughed lightly. You knew he was teasing. He was always teasing you, always chirping you. You took the last sip of your drink and began the internal debate on if you could handle one more or not.

“Look, Chucky Cheese, not all girl are table dancing types,” you sighed, settling on the idea that one more would probably more likely than not be one too many.

Matthew slid his stool closer to you as he waved the nearest bartender down to close out his tab, apparently deciding he was also done for the night along with you. The scent of his cologne was engulfing you in a way that made the rest of the world around you slowly start to disappear.

“I’m not into table dancing types,” he informed you as he intercepted your tab before you could glance at how much he was shelling out for you tonight. “More into the roommates of the table dancing types. Especially,” he slid the clipboard with the bill to the opposite edge of the bar as his eyes turned back to lock with yours, “when I have it on good authority that table dancing girl’s roommate is into me.”

If you’d still been drinking, you would’ve choked on it with that statement.

“What?” was all you managed to get out in response.

Matthew chuckled a little and nodded softly, as if he’d been expecting that very response. He pivoted on his stool to face you. Slowly and steadily, Matthew leaned in closer to you. Even sitting, he towered over you and it made your breath hitch in your throat. Him leaning into you like this enveloped you in the feeling of him and the smell of his cologne. His lips came to rest just next to the shell of your ear, accidentally grazing it for a moment. If you weren’t already sitting, your knees would’ve buckled.

“Kayla is a little too drunk to keep your dreams a secret. She said something about how my shoulders would look between your thighs? Could’ve heard that wrong though.” Matthew said softly to you. “It’s okay. I’m happy to make your dreams come true tonight.”

He paused for a second and you weren’t sure if you had breathed the entire time he’d spoke. He took a deep breath before continuing.

“That is, if you’re interested.”

Loose lips sink ships, but maybe, just maybe, Kayla’s loose lips were about to make something float for the first time in her life.

“Don’t worry so much,” he whispered against your ear as he sensed your nerves, his lips ghosting across your sensitive skin as he spoke, “I want you so fucking bad right now.”

He pulled back, settling onto his stool again with practiced ease, and your heart started racing in your chest. You could barely hear the crowd over your heart beating in your ears. You had to think of something to say and you didn’t have a lot of time to do. Your brain was racing, not landing on any thought in particular long enough for it to take hold. Matthew knew he had you exactly where he wanted and his confidence was turning you on in a way that you hated that you loved. He leaned in closer to you, his smirk still strong as he came closer to you, his mouth inches from yours. You wanted to throw him off guard, wipe that cocky smirk right off his face, so you said the first thing that came to mind.

“You’ve got to buy me dinner first, Tkachuk.”

You didn’t know what part of your brain found those words. You didn’t know why they’d come out of your mouth. You didn’t even know how truly interested you were. The last one was a lie to yourself, but those words were a 50/50 gamble. Maybe he wanted to fuck you and take you to dinner. Maybe he just wanted one night to get over a tough division loss tonight. You had no evidence other than Kayla’s pigtail pulling theory to support the idea that maybe he might not just be looking for a one night stand and Kayla was so often wrong.

“Hmm, any chance I can cash in on dessert tonight and take you to dinner tomorrow?” The smirk was replaced with a soft smile, a smile that made you want to fall right into his broad chest and never leave. “Because I’m not exactly super patient here and I know you’re going to look absolutely killer in a tight dress at the stupidly expensive restaurant I’m going to take you to tomorrow night, but you’d also look so fucking good in my bed right now.”

"Is that so?” you asked him, stealing his smirk from earlier. “How nice is this restaurant?”

“Not as nice as I’m going to make you feel in a few minutes if you let me.”

You pressed your mouth against his as your way of answering. Matthew’s hands were on your waist, pulling you off your stool and into him as he took over, his mouth working aggressively against yours. Your hands clasped together behind his neck, securing you against him. Matthew was the one to pull back, surprising you. He released one hand from your waist to pull his phone out of his pocket and open up Uber on his phone.

“Unless that didn’t mean what I think it meant, I’m taking you home, woman,” Matthew said as he ordered the car.

“What ever do you think it could mean?” you countered in the lightest, brightest sarcastic voice you could find.

“Don’t tease me like that,” Matthew smirked, his face inches from yours now that his phone was secured in his pocket again. His forehead dipped down to press against yours. “You want this, right?”

“I’m just in this for the idea that the stupidly expensive restaurant has lobster,” you teased him again.

He shook his head softly and let out a soft breath before kissing you again in a way that told you that you were about to be in for a hell of a night. The Uber to his place was a blur for you due to alcohol and anxiety. You wanted Matthew. You knew for certain he wanted you too. That didn’t mean doubt and insecurities weren’t trying to worm your way in and ruin this for you. Matthew’s arm around your shoulders pulled you back to the present. He was pressing you tight against him in the elevator ride up to his apartment.

“Stop with the mind racing thing you do. I can see the hamsters running up there,” Matthew laughed, his head falling back against the elevator to rest as he looked at you. “You’re not going to have to dream about this anymore. You get the real thing and I’m buying you dinner. You’ve come out on top here, even though you’re not actually going to be on top tonight.”

“Keep chirping me and see if I won’t turn around right now,” you replied as the elevator doors opened.

“Your prerogative,” Matthew shrugged and he pulled his keys out with his free hand, “but I think taking your right hand over me is a poor choice for you.”

“Aw, you think I don’t own a vibrator.” Matthew’s hand stumbled as he tried to put the key into the lock, probably something to do with what you’d just said. “Cute of you.”

“Own anything else I might want to know about?” he asked you curiously as he pushed open his door after successfully wrangling his key.

“All in due time, Tkachuk,” you said with a pat of his broad chest as you breezed past him into his apartment.

Matthew breathed out a long sigh. It turned slowly into a chuckle towards the end as he shut the door, his mind jumping forward to when you’d hopefully let him see whatever you were alluding to that was in the back of your top drawer. You didn’t make it far into Matthew’s apartment before his large hands grabbed your hips and spun you to face him, his mouth crushing against yours moments later. Your hands grabbed the bottom of his t-shirt and started to pull it up.

“Whoa, whoa, easy there, tiger,” Matthew laughed against your mouth while letting his hands take over and pull his shirt up. “We just got here.”

“If you’re in a slow and steady mood, I’d rather go home to my vibrator.”

Matthew pulled back from your mouth, still laughing as he tossed his shirt to the floor. He didn’t answer you, instead choosing to attach his mouth to your neck, nipping at the thin skin there as your hands found purchase on his bare chest. His teeth grazed across the skin over your collarbone as he worked his way down and your nails slid down his chest, leaving red lines down his pale skin.

“Jesus, fuck,” Matthew groaned out as your actions, his voice only deepening due to the sensation.

His hands on your hips gripped hard, the tips of his fingers pressing into the exposed skin where your shirt had rode up. Matthew slowly guided you backwards until you felt the back of your knees hit the edge of a couch cushion. Matthew left a searing kiss on your lips before he gave you a shove so you fell back on the couch.

“Clothes, off,” Matthew told you as he unbuckled his belt.

“You think-”

“I am in charge. Don’t even,” he laughed softly as he yanked his belt from the belt loops in his jeans and dropped it to the floor. “You’re still very dressed by the way.”

You huffed and stuck your tongue out at him, only making him laugh harder, but you listened to him nonetheless, tossing your clothes to the floor along with his. Matthew stopped with just his boxers left, and you followed his lead. His light eyes were darker as he took in the sight of you in just your bra and panties. Kayla had insisted you wear the one matching set you owned tonight and you made a mental note to thank her tomorrow. Matthew’s tongue darted out to lick across his bottom lip.

“Man, that’s a good look for you.” Matthew paused as he climbed over you, holding up his large frame over yours on the couch on his hands pressed into the cushions next to your head. He lowered his mouth to the swell of your breast, biting gently into the soft skin there. He mumbled against your skin, “Don’t wear clothes anymore.”

“I think I need to, to go to work,” you muttered, your mind far more occupied with what Matthew’s mouth was doing at the moment than speaking.

His hands were coasting up and down your skin, over your thighs, across your stomach. He was touching every part of you and your body was coming alive under his touch. You opened your mouth to add something, but Matthew had used that same moment as his opportunity to pull one of the lace cups of your bra aside and quickly take your now exposed nipple into his mouth. Your open mouth turned into a loud moan as his tongue rolled across the sensitive nub smoothly. You were already almost seeing stars when he gingerly took it between his teeth for a moment.

The bra which had previously been something he appreciated, was now in his way, so it ended up on the floor with the rest of your clothes. Matthew groaned at the site of you without it. He’d decided that naked was your best look, before he’d even gotten you completely naked. You could feel his eyes drinking you in and you would have felt self conscious if not for the fact that Matthew shifted over you, pressing his hardness against your thigh in a desperate attempt for friction.

“Why didn’t we,” Matthew took your other nipple into his mouth mid sentence, letting one of his hands finally stop moving across your skin, to pinch your other nipple between his fingers. He repeated his actions from the other side, tongue rolling your nipple softly before taking it between his teeth. His fingers pinched the other roughly as he did this, making your whine underneath him. He finally finished after releasing your nipple with a soft pop, “do this sooner?”

“I don’t know, but I really need you to touch me,” you whined, your hands flying to his shoulders to push him down.

He didn’t budge. After all, he was a professional athlete with the strength and weight to match the job title. He relented though without much effort on your part, after throwing you a teasing grin, and pulled your panties down your legs with two fingers hooked into each side. He sank onto the couch between your thighs. You gasped as you could feel his hot breath on your wet slit. Matthew looked at you, taking in everything that was in front of him.

“You,” he pressed a kiss to the left side of your inner thigh, “are,” he kissed the opposite side, “so,” he kissed higher up on the left side, closer to where you wanted him, “fucking,” he kissed the opposite side at the same distance from your slit. His mouth moved closer, hovering an inch above your core and he added, “Sexy,” before pressing his tongue between your folds and licking in one firm line up to your clit.

Your eyes rolled back in your head at the contact and your hips bucked up toward his mouth to try and get more contact. One of Matthew’s hands came down low on your stomach and pushed you flat back onto the couch.

“Easy, easy,” he soft softly, giving your clit a gentle, chaste kiss. “I’ve got you.”

You let out a deep breath as you tried to get your body back under your control. Your control held until Matthew’s tongue started to circle your clit for the first time. He was pulling moans from your throat that you didn’t know you made as he worked your clit slowly and steadily. Matthew was brash and bold and fast on the ice, but he was steady here, taking his time. You were his guide as he let the noises he was causing you to make guide him.

You took notice when he flatted his tongue against your clit and looked up at you, his blue eyes locking with yours for a moment. He slowly and purposefully applied more pressure on your clit before shaking his head back and forth, dragging his tongue across your clit firmly. Your eyes slammed shut and your hands flexed into his curls at the sensation.

“Matthew, fuck,” you managed to break out, your voice cracking between the words. “Holy fuck.”

“Easy, baby. Easy,” Matthew reminded you softly before returning to you.

He ran his tongue down your slit again, dipping it ever so slightly into you, making you squirm and whine, before returning his attention to your clit. He started moving his tongue faster, sliding left to right against the sensitive bundle of nerves as he could hear the noises you were matching shift and build. You were becoming more restless under him as your orgasm starting building, desperate to feel that release. Matthew was impatient to get you into his bed, or onto his couch, earlier but he was so very patient now, milking you slowly and gently, making sure to savor every taste of you he was getting, making sure you were enjoying yourself.

“Matthew, more, please,” you begging softly, tugged his curls to try to push him more into your core.

He listened, suddenly taking his clit into your mouth and sucking softly on it. You were seeing stars by the time he released it, his tongue moving in quick circles over it. You were so distracted that you didn’t noticed his hand move from your stomach until you felt two of his fingers slide into you. The new feeling pulled you over the edge almost instantly. Matthew’s fingers pumped in and out of you as his tongue continued his movement on your clit to bring you through your orgasm.

“Oh, my, god,” you breathed out, your chest heaving, as Matthew slowly pulled back from you.

“I don’t think god had anything to do with that actually,” he joked in reply, throwing you a wink that made you remember exactly the kind of guy he really was.

You were about to throw that back in his face, until he slid the two fingers that had been in you into his mouth, sucking them clean in front of you. Your mouth was slack as you watched him, drinking in the sight in front of you.

“Dessert was fucking delicious by the way,” he told you after releasing his now clean fingers.

He pushed up off the couch and disappeared down the hallway. You heard a drawer open in what you assumed was his bedroom and shut quickly after. You were still catching your breath by the time he was back, foil packet in hand.

“Yes?” he asked, lifting the condom up slightly to you as his way of checking with you.

“Please,” you simply replied.

Your dream hadn’t even gone as what he’d just finished, but you can’t say you hadn’t imagined this before. You desperately wanted to know what it felt like to have him inside you. Matthew nodded in response before dropping his boxers to the floor, quickly ripping open the foil packet and rolling the condom down his hard shaft. He sighed happily as he looked you over, stroking himself a few times.

“Hands and knees,” he told you as he crossed the room to you.

You obliged, flipping over onto your knees, bracing your arms on the back of the couch for more leverage. You felt Matthew sink onto the couch behind you before one of his large hands gripped your ass roughly, squeezing it. He gave the now reddened skin a soft tap before his hand slid to your hip to steady himself as he lined up with you. You both moaned as he slowly slid into it, your wetness allowing for him to enter you in one smooth motion until his hips were pressed against your ass.

“Jesus, shit,” Matthew mumbled before taking a deep breath. “You feel so fucking good. Christ, woman.”

“You going to lose it or are you actually going to be able to-”

You didn’t get to finish that sentence as Matthew pulled almost all of the way out before roughly slamming his hips forward until they met your ass again. You gasped at the sudden and now unrelenting movement as Matthew moved at a rough, fast pace, thrusting in and out of you quickly. You gripped the back of the couch and began to push off from the couch slightly, meeting his thrusts with small movements of your own, making him curse between his teeth at how deep he was inside of you each time.

One of Matthew’s hands was digging into the skin of your hip, steadying him to you and his other was on your shoulder, fingers slowly sliding over from the back of your shoulder to the front, inching ever so slightly toward your neck. You knew what he wanted, but wouldn’t ask for this time around, but you could offer it. You steadied yourself with one forearm on the back of the couch before sliding your free hand up to grab his. His rhythm flattered a little until he realized what you were doing, and then he almost fell apart far too early. You gently guided his fingers until they were wrapped around your throat.

“Tell me if it’s too much,” he spat out between thrusts.

You nodded and he slowly and steadily applied pressure to your throat, the side of his hand from his index finger to his thumb pressing in just the right spot to restrict your breathing, but not cut it off dangerously. You started moaning louder with the added sensation and Matthew’s thrusts were becoming sloppy. You knew he wanted to last longer, but he got caught off guard by your assertiveness in the best way possible and wasn’t going to be able to hold out much longer.

“Fuck, fuck,” Matthew mumbled before his breathing hitched in his throat.

He groaned, his hand squeezing down hard on your throat, as his thrusts started to slow as he came down from his high. He collapsed down onto your back when he was finished, releasing your throat so he could wrap his arms around your stomach and give you a quick squeeze. Matthew pressed a soft kiss to your shoulder before slowly pulling out of you. You sighed as you flipped over so you were sitting up on the couch, giving your knees a break.

Matthew climbed off the couch and headed back down the hallway, returning a few moments later with a damp washcloth for you. You were surprised by the gestured, but grateful for it nonetheless.

“I meant it,” Matthew told you as he dropped down on the couch next to you, a water bottle in hand.

You gave him a curious look, trying to figure out what he was referring to in that moment. He took a swig from the bottle before answering.

“Taking you out tomorrow,” he continued when he saw your confusion. He passed you the bottle, before continuing, “I meant it.”

"I didn’t think you weren’t,” you replied with a shrug before popping open the bottle to take a few swigs, grateful for the cool water since you’d both managed to work up a sweat during that.

“Good,” he nodded, curls bouncing with his movement.

The moment was sweet, too sweet for how the rest of the evening had gone. The teasing tone that covered not only the evening, but your friendship with Matthew needed to return. Matthew was also too sure of himself to miss the opportunity at his feet.

“So, did I live up the dream?” he asked you, a cocky grin on his face that matched his tone. “Actually, I know I was better. But how much better was I?”

#Matthew Tkachuk #matthew tkachuk imagine #matthew tkachuk fanfic #nhl fanfic #nhl fanfiction #nhl fic #nhl blurbs #nhl imagine #Hockey Fanfiction #hockey writing #hockey imagine

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anothertimdrakestan · 4 years

Text

Light Of My Life Jason Todd x Reader

LINK TO PT 2

Words: 2.7k

Requested? Yes! From a lovely anon!

“Hello! May I have a Jason Todd x reader where the reader is a really powerful superhero from the avengers and is well known and she met Jason when she was hopping on rooftops in Gotham (for fun idk haha) and the reader feels lonely and they bond over that with Jason and they start dating and when Jason’s brothers find out they’re dating (a few months later) they freak out and say things like “YOURE DATING THEM?! How did this happen?!” Thank you!”

LINK TO PROMPTS -> REQUESTS ARE STILL OPEN!

Ok so I took this as a new avenger I hope that’s okay :). It’s mostly selfish that I wanted to write my own badass hero for Jason to simp for... can you blame me? She’s basically a heroin Livewire for those of you that watched Supergirl. Also you really set me up for a long fic so strap in anon, you did this to yourself by giving me an amazing request! Hope you enjoy! xoxo

“You’re kidding right. Gotham? Mr. Seclusive Bat Brat’s turf? Not a chance in hell.” you groaned hearing your newest mission. “Sorry Y/H/N you’re headed to nut-case capital” your comm buzzed back and you rolled your eyes. At least it was a short trip right? Confirm with Dr. Strange exactly the newest magical item you needed to look for, find it, and get out. Maybe zap a couple villains for shits n giggles. Grabbing your motorcycle you headed out, praying for a short trip.

Arriving at your hotel you began to set up, having powers meant no bulky suit which was nice but Strange had set you up with about a million photos, books, and what looked like scrolls about a stupid helmet. Apparently all the helmet did was let the wearer float and see in the damn dark, half of the avengers could do that shit already. But when THE Dr. Strange makes a request of the Avengers, they comply.

You’d heard about a drug leader with an eye for shiny objects, and you decided to start there hoping you could really give him a show. Waiting for night to fall you headed out, appreciating the constantly terrible weather in Gotham, lightning cracked in the sky exhilarating you, taking it as a sign from your gods that they liked this mission you felt the electricity run through your veins as you sped towards the ring a friend of yours had tipped you off about. Propping your bike up on the side of the building you felt the electricity dancing through the wires of the building and you zapped into them, travelling in to the main room.

Jason just about pissed his pants. He watched this hot motorcycle chick park her (sexy ass) bike outside the drug ring he was busting that night and right when he was about to put on some Red Hood Charm™ he watched her turn into a giant spart and shoot into the building through the camera system. Realizing she was going to do his job for her he decided to watch from above, trying to figure out who the mystery meta was. As he sat perched on the top of the building he couldn’t help but hope it was Y/H/N, one of the most prominent new Avengers but what was she doing in Gotham? Regardless he sat, ready for the lightshow.

What you saw inside the building was horrific. Disgusting men were throwing cash around to take home young, terrified girls. Disregarding the mission at hand you flashed into the middle of the “show”. Immediately guns were out but that had never stopped you. Dissapaiting into one of the lights you enjoyed how some of the men shrieked at your powers. “Shit dog I think it’s Y/H/N but what’s she doin in Gotham?” never able to pass an opportunity to boast you appeared behind the group smirking “hey boys. Don’t there girls look a little young for you? That said, you should let them go or I’ll get angry. And you’d be shocked with how angry I can get - literally.” you held up a hand letting sparks dance in you palm. What you didn’t expect was to see a blundering idiot in a red mask crash through the ceiling.

Before you could light him up he called “uh hey! It’s Y/H/N right? Big fan. Red Hood pleasure to meet you. See, this is usually my territory, drugs and all, but I’d be happy to share with a lovely lady like you so-” you scoffed. “Shut up BatBrat I don’t intend on swinging minor league with you tonight, I just want these girls out of here and to talk with you” you gestured to the drug lord, annoyed this Red Batman or whatever his name is was getting in your way. “Minor leagues huh? Princess if you think this is any type of game you’re wrong, we don’t play by the rules here.” and he pulled out two guns and began firing. This shocked you. You thought the bats held the same standards as the majority of the Avengers, no killing. This clearly went down the drain as you watched him blow the brains out of the majority of the drug dealers.

Deciding this wasn’t the night for you to successfully capture the man you needed, especially because Stark would kill you if you got in a fight with another vigilante on an away mission. While Red Mask went hand to hand with the guards you helped the girls escape, shooing them towards the exit and making them promise to be safer. After securing the public’s safety you took a moment to watch Red Armour fight. He was trained you had to admit, he ducked and punched like he’d been doing in for years, he was refined in skill but reckless and practice, it was fascinating. “You gonna help or is that not in the Avenger’s handbook?” you smirked as he got pinned by a couple guards. As he was preoccupied you zapped to the drug lord, shocking him enough to put him down long enough to move him. Forming an electric rope around his limbs you began dragging him out. “Sorry RedBat I got what I came for, you make a good side kick though” with a wink you walked out, not before hearing him shout “ITS RED HOOD SPARKY”

In one of the Avenger’s safe houses you’d tied up your captive. “This is super easy buddy, all I need to know is where to find the Helmet of Razadazar” what a stupid fucking name, it doesn’t even sound cool. Knowing he’d feign innocence you prepared yourself for light, pleasure for you, not so much for him...

“You’re. Lying. Todd.” Tim’s fingers flew across the BatComputer. “Y/H/N in Gotham? EPIC!” Jason rolled his eyes. “Drake she definitely wasn’t all that amazing, plus she gave the impression she wasn’t long for Gotham so it’s probably nothing. Newbie training for the A list.” Tim sighed, Jason was probably right, the Avengers left Gotham to Batman, no one wanted a piece of it. “Alright, but you gotta tell me everything, I think she shorted all the camera footage so you better use all the detail.” Jason agreed, secretly excited to recount his experience, maybe fangirl a little. All he knew was that he was going to find you, the only game he wanted to play was chasing you.

After taking a short lecture from Captain A about aggressive torture techniques and why they should be AVOIDED you had gotten your answer. Apparently an underground auction with other-worldly treasures was the place to be. At least Gotham’s wealthy were making everything easy for you tonight.

Jason adjusted his bowtie as he waited to enter the auction. Attending as Bruce Wayne was easy, he did owe Damian a barn now, but it was a worthy pay off for Damian to endure some father-son time as a cover up while Jason played billionaire. Finding an excuse to go other than finding Y/H/N wasn’t hard either, and now here he was, hoping you’d stand out. Let’s just say fate helped a little.

Sitting at a table with your fake identity as Ms. Stark was equally as easy. Excited to be meeting Mr. Wayne the Gothamite who was seated next to you. As he sat down he looked younger than the paparazzi pictures showed. You stuck out a hand to shake and he took it gently, kissing it, to your surprise. He looked at your smirking, “looking lovely tonight Sparky” you’re jaw dropped. Mr. Wayne I had no idea Red Cap was your speed” you whispered, shocked, but slightly comforted to know you had your sidekick here.”It’s. Red. Hood. And just as you Ms. Stark, this identity is not my own.” it made sense, but it was still impressive.

Having exchanged pleasantries with the table the auction began. Item after item went, you and Hood slid in low bets to seem interested, but you wondered why he had came. Then the helmet was up. You sucked in a breath knowing the plan was to win the bid then snatch the helmet. You bid politely against someone at table 37 until it was yours. “Going once” “Going twi-” the auctioneer stopped as Mr. Wayne raised his paddle, tripling your bet. The auctioneer looked shocked at the amount, not letting you bid again before he shouted “SOLD to the sir at table 14!” For the second time that night your jaw dropped. “I need that helmet!” you whisper yelled. “That old thing? Sure princess. You just have to get dinner with me tomorrow” you realized he just spent millions and millions of dollars just to win your time. “Deal” you hissed.

Jason decided not to tell his brothers about his date. Feeling like it was a once in a lifetime opportunity he wasn’t ruining it. After hiding the helmet in the BatCave he was waiting for you at a candle lit table for two. When you walked in he knew it was love at first sight. Sitting down across from him you smirked. “You clean up nice..” he finished for you “Todd. Jason Todd.” taken aback you’d heard about him, the kid that lived, part of the Wayne family. “Well if we’re going real names Mr. Todd what do I have to lose, y/n l/n” you smiled, drinking in his appearance. He was dashing you had to admit, confident and laidback it was alluring. “Beautiful name to fit a gorgeous girl” he winked, to your shock, making you blush.

The two of you spent the night throwing snide comments, compliments, and flirtation between you. Something about Jason just clicked, it felt right. After hours at the table you and Jason went for a walk around Gotham while he showed you his most memorable spots. Somehow the two of you wound up on the top of a skyscraper staring at the stars. Finally having a person who understood the burden of heroism but wasn’t judging you for being new was refreshing. Only knowing each other for hours it felt like it had been years, confiding in each other about some of your deepest secrets. Jason was amazed with your powers, but you explained that they were hard to control, bottling electricity up in anything was difficult, batteries rotted, lightbulbs broke, and sometimes it felt like you were no different. He watched as you showed him how sparks danced across you skin and though he didn’t tell you, they’d been sizzling around you since dinner, an aura vibrating around you as you laughed, cried, and smiled with him.

“So Lightning McQueen, what do the sparks do when you’re happy?” you grimaced at another of his nicknames and explained how they crackle and pop sometimes taking on certain weather-like patterns. “Huh, well let’s see some lightning then” Jason grabbed your hand pulling you into his chest, using the other hand to lift your eyes to meet his as he leaned in. You sped up the process, hands wrapping around his neck, crashing his lips on yours. He was right, lightning struck across the sky as sparks danced between the two of you. Pulling away he grinned as he breathlessly looked at you. “Beautiful” You pulled him in for more, deciding maybe Gotham wasn’t so bad if he was here.

“Why does Y/H/N always get the Gotham missions?” Peter Parker groaned. “Well seeing as she practically lives there it’s easy” the rest of the gang retorted as you blushed. “I guess I just really like the weather” you grinned while everyone rolled their eyes knowing the reason Gotham was having more lightning than ever was no coincidence.

“Honey I’m homeeeeee” you squealed as you zapped into your kitchen. Jason had learned not to be alarmed when you appeared out of thin air and he opened his arms as you fell into his embrace. “Hello to my favorite double A” he grinned when you gave him a zap, he knew you loved all his nicknames. He pulled you out of his embrace looking you dead in the eyes. “Sparky it’s time you meet my family, you know Tim is going to kill me for hiding you” You were so excited, timing never aligned or one of you was injured or not on Earth but finally, it was time to meet the family.

You’d snuck into the manor before, but everytime it seemed to get bigger. Jason squeezed your hand warning you about how annoying his family was. As you entered you took in everything. The cutest little boy was chasing a grown man with a sword, a teenage boy sat on a kitchen cupboard shotgunning an energy drink, all while a nice elderly man chopped carrots calmly in the kitchen. Breaking the silence you began to name each boy “Uh hi guys! I’m y/n you probably know me as Y/H/N but I’m so excited to be here! I’m guessing Damian, Dick, Tim, and the wonderful Alfred!” all the boys froze. Alfred smiled and continued chopping. “Oh my god oh my god oh my god” Tim jumped off the cupboard wide eyed staring at you. “Todd how do you know her?” Dick looked at you, shocked to see an Avenger not in costume next to his brother.

“Actually guys I’ve known Y/N for a while, remember Tim that night? We’ve kept in touch since and I’m lucky enough to be her boyfriend!” Jason kissed you on the cheek and immediately Tim passed out. As Dick poured water on the teen Damian walked up to you and you bent down to look him eye to eye. “Prove you’re Y/H/N because I don’t believe Todd could pull a famous hero like Y/H/N” Jason started “No y/n it’s fine” but you wanted to make a good impression so you zapped into the light fixture, counted to 5, then appeared on the cupboard Tim had been on, only to zap back nex tot Jason. “TT I’m impressed Todd. Y/n let me say I’m impressed with your recent activity with the Avengers. I know what it is like to be surrounded by older, entitled idiots.” Damian stuck out a tiny hand and you shook it, making sure to give him a little shock.

Having woken up Tim began rapid fire questions. “So Todd lied you’re here? And you like him? Can I just say you’re so cool. Would you let me run some tests on your powers? What’s the biggest lightshow you’ve done? What is spiderman like? I feel like I’m quicker than him but I don’t know. Do you love Jason?” you tried to take in all the questions. “Yes I’m here, yes, thank you, sure I guess, biggest was cracking a small moon in half - don’t asl I was mad, spidey is cool kind of a dweeb but, he’s pretty quick but I haven’t seen you, and yes I do love Jason” you took a deep breath. Jason smiled at you, glad you could keep up with Tim’s q & a. Suddenly Tim grabbed Dick’s arm and started running to the BatCave, “okay y/n I’m gonna go set up some tests come down in a minute. Todd you lucky asshole you bring her down in five okay?” before you could reply he was gone.

Taking a deep breath Jason wrapped his arms around you. “I’m so glad you can deal with them, but if Drake gets really bad knock him out cold” you chuckled, knowing that dealing with the Wayne’s was more difficult for Jason than it was for you. “Anything for you babe” you grinned. “Always the light of my life y/n” you rolled your eyes knowing the jokes would never stop, one of the many reasons you loved Red Hood with all your heart.

haha I never do A/N but do y’all get the pun in the title hehehehe wow I need to go to bed. Also check out the pun in my masterlist lolz. Now, dear reader, that you read this post we have an inside joke together hehe... love you! xoxo

#jason todd #jason todd x you #jason todd x reader #jason todd fluff #red hood #red hood x reader #tim drake #dick grayson #damian wayne #avengers #dc x marvel #batboys

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wannajointhecrabcult · 4 years

Text

Reckless Rescuer

I literally just came up with this idea at midnight last night when I was just starting to go into fever dream mode so... This will be interesting. You asked to be tagged so here you go @justconfusedperiod!

Imagine that Marinette never became Ladybug.

Master Fu chose actual adults to go save Paris while Sabine and Tom gave Marinette combat training.

Despite not being a hero Marinette was still caught up in a lot of akuma attacks (Because Hawkmoth is a bitter ass) so she learned how to use everything and anything to her advantage.

Even though she's crafty Marinette still dies in akuma attacks and gets revived by the Miraculous Cure at the end of the day.

As sad as it is, she becomes used to dying.

That doesn't mean that she TRIES to get hurt during attacks, it just means that she expects her life to end one day because of an akuma or something and for her to not come back, so dying isn't a fear for her anymore.

She also builds a tolerance for pain during attacks where she doesn't die, but still gets very injured.

It's amazing how trauma can practically destroy someone's life while others are just so desensitized that it doesn't affect them anymore.

One day the Dupain-Chengs move to Gotham to both expand their business, and to get away from a certain magic fueled fashion disaster.

I mean, seriously.

You're supposed to be a designer but here you are walking around looking like a cardboard candy cane beige toothpick of a man.

Don't get me started on what the heck happened with Hawkmoth's costume.

What is that?

Are you wearing a silver condom on your head or what??

Anyways, Marinette attends Damian's school and they bond over being the only one's not overly worried about danger in certain situations.

At one point Damian thought that she might have been a hero or something but threw that thought away when he witnessed her somehow fall UP a staircase. (I've actually done this before. Surprisingly it's pretty fun.)

All was fine and dandy until one afternoon when they were walking to Neti's place after school to work on a project.

They were walking through a less populated part of the city and were passing a shoe store when two thugs held them at a gunpoint demanding for their cash.

The youngest Wayne was fully prepared to attack the men when Marinette started scolding them for being rude?

Marinette: Hey! You can't just do that! Do you know how rude it is to interrupt someone's conversation?! Apologize right and leave us alone right now OR ELSE.

The two men just looked at her for a moment before doubling over and bursting out in laughter.

After all, what can this tiny school girl do to hurt them?

The first guy calmed down and was about to threaten them again when all of a sudden a pink flat was thrown at his face.

Because of he was unprepared and because of the force behind the flying shoe, he was knocked over and fell to the floor with a thud.

The second guys turned to look at the girl who just threw her shoe at his partner when he was suddenly wacked in the face as well.

So there they were.

Two teenagers, one with no shoes on, in front of a show store with two thugs at their feet.

Truly a sight to behold.

Marinette turns to Damian and asks him for his shoes.

When he doesn't respond (he's in shock) Marinette just shrugs, turns around, and SMASHES HER ARM THROUGH THE GLASS WINDOW OF THE SHOE STORE TO GRAB A CROC AND CHUCK IT AT THE FIRST GUY AGAIN BECAUSE HE WAS GETTING UP.

She then turns to the second dude who was on his knees and says in a dark tone, "You better go and leave us alone before I get my hands on a pair of iceskates. Got it?"

He nods his head and scrambles to run away from the short girl with pigtails that just single handedly smashed her arm through glass and was somehow not wincing in pain from her many bleeding cuts and she threw shoes at them.

His partner frantically got to his feet and followed him.

After making sure that the two would-be-muggers are far away Mari turns to Damian and waves her still bleeding hand in front of his face.

"Heelllooooo? Anybody home?"

She then shakes his shoulders a bit.

Damian, now no longer in shock, starts freaking out about her injuries.

"oh...my...gosh....oh my gosh... oH MY GOSH YOU'RE BLEEDING EVERYWHERE!! OHMYGOSH THAT WAS SO RECKLESS OF YOU, YOU COULD HAVE DIED AND OH NO YOU JUST STRAIGHT UP BROKE A GLASS WINDOW WITH YOUR BARE HANDS!! YOU FUCKING IDIOT YOU'RE HURT! WE NEED TO GETYOUFIRSTAIDOHMYGOSH!!!"

She tries to get him to calm down but that honestly makes him freak out even more.

"HOW ARE YOU NOT REACTING TO THE PAIN OF CUTTING YOUR ARM WITH MULTIPLE PIECES OF GLASS?!? YOU FREAKING THREW SHOES AT THEM! SHOES! WHAT IF YOU FREAKING DIED FROM THAT?!?"

"Well that would make it the 2615th time."

"...."

"....."

"Excuse me but wHAT DO YOU MEAN THAT WOULD'VE BEEN THE 2615TH TIME YOU DIED?!??!??"

Marinette was trying to get him to breathe since he was almost on the verge of a panic attack when the owner of the shoe store came out with a first aid kit.

The elderly woman proceeded to patch up Marinette's arm while thanking her for scaring away the muggers.

"Those two just keep scaring the customers away so I cannot thank you dearie enough!"

"Oh, it was no problem ma'am. They really needed to learn some manners anyways!"

"They really are so rude aren't they. And there we go! Your arm is all bandaged up. I would be careful with it if I were you."

She old lady then turns to Damian who has calmed down a bit now that Marinette's arm is bandaged.

"You've got quite a wild girlfriend here. Be sure to watch out for her safety or else you're gonna lose her."

That causes the two teens faces to burn red.

"Oh no you've got it wrong. She's not my girlfriend although I do agree that I should start looking out far her health more." He turns to Marinette as he says the last bit.

She just replies with a sheepish smile and a shrug.

"She's definitely going to give me gray hairs early."

The store owner gave Marinette and Damian a knowing look before sending the two on their way.

On the walk to Marinette's house Damian kept scolding her for her brash decisions and worrying over her arm at the same time.

At one point Damian asked her if she could actually feel the pain from her cuts or not and she just replied with "I got injured a lot when I lived in Paris so I have a high pain tolerance. This isn't even the worst wound I've ever gotten."

Needless to say, that did not reassure Damian at all.

When they did reach their destination they ended up deciding to finish the project on another day to let Marinette's arm heal a bit.

He calls Alfred to pick him up and when faced with the butler's questioning stare he just replies with "Too much excitement for today."

Before the limo drove off Marinette ran outside to the car and handed Damian a bag full of pastries.

"Consider this an apology for making you freak out so much."

He nodded and took the bag but still told her "You're an idiot you know right?"

"Haha. Or so I've been told." She shrugs. "See you tomorrow in class if you're not too traumatized!"

"Tt. We live in Gotham. It's gonna take more than that to truly scar me. Although I have to say, that's the closest someone's gotten in a long time. Don't do it again."

"No promises!" Marinette yells as the limo drives off.

That night Damian got a nightmare filled with shoes.

Marinette is now known and feared throughout the more amateur criminal community.

True to her word, Marinette tried to reduce the amount of risky choices that she took.

I mean, there was that incident with the llamas, trumpets, and skateboards but we don't talk about that.

Her safety streak ended when Damian was kidnapped.

And by the Joker no less.

Ya, no.

She's not just gonna stand by while her friend litteraly gets kidnapped by a clown man thing when she could do something about it.

The Joker called the Waynes through a video chat and threatens the dump Damian into a pool filled with unidentified and possibly contaminated water until they give him half a million dollars.

And because it's a two way video chat and all of the Waynes (except Damian) are there they can't 'call the batfam' to save him.

Because they were all so busy panicking and Joker was busy laughing, no one but Damian noticed a dark silhouette sneaking around in the shadows.

The moment he saw them he immediately knew who it was.

'Oh no. ThaT'S MY IDIOT!!'

Marinette noticed Damian's panicked stare on her and just, gave him a thumbs up? Before going back into the darkness.

'Oh no oh no ohnoohnononono what's she doing?!' He thought to himself as he heard quiet shuffling in the shadows.

Going back to the screen, Bruce was about to send the money when all of a sudden a bright light was turned on from behind the Joker to the left.

And they weren't expecting what they saw.

There under the light was someone in a Barney the Dinosaur costume sitting in a rainbow bumper car with a radio and a bag filled with something strapped in the passenger side.

TrULy RaDiAnT.

The purple dino turned on the radio, (which was playing the Barney theme song) made eye contact with the clown, and promptly said "Beep beep bitch." in a robotic voice (there was a voice changer in the costume) before driving full speed at him.

At first the Joker tried to run away from the vehicle but for some reason the bumper car was extremely fast and RAN HIM OVER before turning around,

AND FUCKING DOING IT AGAIN!!

Double oof.

They did this around 12 times before the Joker managed to push up from under the bumper car at the perfect time.

Marinette did a backflip (dramatics are guaranteed) as she jumped out of the rainbow ride while simultaneously throwing the radio at the Joker at full force.

The Joker, not expecting that, was thrown against the base of a wall.

He got up just in time to see his attacker pull out a shoe from the bag and chuck it at his nuts.

*cue everyone either laughing at his pain or wincing in sympathy*

The Barney pulls out a sandal from the bag and throws it at his face and uses a black stiletto to pin the clown's arm tO THE FRIGGING WALL when he reaches to touch where the flip flop hit him.

(Is there a difference between sandals and flip flops?)

She then uses another stiletto (a red one this time) to pin his other arm and pulls out YET ANOTHER SHOE (a rainboot) to hit his face.

...again....

This time he gets knocked out though so there's that.

...

....

.....

The power of FOOTWEAR!!

The purple and green dinosaur goes to untie Damian while his family just watch through the screen with their jaws on the floor, still processing what the actual heck just happened.

They get snapped out of their shock when the youngest Wayne launches himself into the Barney's arms and starts rambling about how worried he was and did the store owner give you all those shoes and why the heck did you follow me here.

They don't know what they were expecting the person under the Barney costume to look like but they definitely weren't expecting a young girl with pigtails wearing stilts to come out.

Apparently she needed them to fit into the suit.

Damian: How did you even know I was in trouble?

Marinette: I sorta have a six sense for this kind of stuff. It's disappointing that I didn't get to use all of my amo though :(

Damian: Wait. You brought MORE shoes?

Marinette: Yep! And a couple other things as well. Like this trumpet case, and this bowling ball, and this duck themed alarm clock (I have one lol), and oh! Wait a moment would ya?

*walks over to the pool and dumps around 30 bath bombs in*

Marinette: There! Now this place will smell super nice!

Damian: Did you just dump a ton of bath bombs into a pool of unidentified liquid?

Marinette: Yep!

Damian: Let me rephrase that. Did you just dump a ton of bath bombs into a pool of possibly chemically contaminated water which could possibly have a bad reaction to the bath bombs which could possibly explode or just generally be the death of us?

Marinette: ........

Damian: ........

Marinette: ......

Damian: ........

Marinette: ....well it wouldn't be the FIRST time I-

Damian close to tears: yEs I KnOw PLeaSe StOp ReMinDiNg mE.

Ya so this was just a random idea I had and that I will probably not be adding to but y'all reading this are more than welcome to! If you do continue or make your own little spins on this please tag me! I would love to read them :D

#this is what happens when i think of shoes at like 2am #Barney is a boss bitch #maribat #maridami #damimari #marinette x damian #damian x marinette #daminette #miraculous crossover #mlb x dc #miraculous x dc #chaotic marinette

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Squid Game’s Scathing Critique of Capitalism

https://ift.tt/3kOEMpF

This Squid Game article contains MAJOR spoilers.

From the very first game of ddakji out in the real world with Train to Busan actor Gong Yoo, Squid Game poses the question: how far would you go for money? How much of your body, your life, would you trade to keep the wolves at bay and to get to live the life you’ve always dreamed? Once you start, could you stop, even if you wanted to? And in the end, would it even be worth it? While Squid Game depicts an attempt to answer these questions taken to the extreme, they are the same essential questions posed to everyone living under capitalism: What kind of job, what terrible hours, what back-breaking labor, what level of abuse, what work/life imbalance will we tolerate in exchange for what we need or want to live? Unlike many examples of this genre, Squid Game is set in our contemporary reality, which makes its scathing critique of capitalism less of a metaphor for the world we live in and more of a literal depiction of life under capitalism.

Squid Game’s Workers

At the most basic level, the entire competition within Squid Game would not exist without extreme financial distress creating a ready pool of players. It’s no coincidence that Gi-hun’s hard times started when he lost his job, followed by violence against the workers who went on strike. Strike-breakers and physical violence against striking workers may feel like an antiquated idea to an American audience. South Korea, however, has something of an anti-labor reputation, with only 10% of its workers in unions and laws limiting unions to negotiating pay, among other restrictions. In the US, the anti-labor fight is alive and well, though transformed, where it takes the shape of the deceptively named “Right to Work” laws, which benefit corporations and make it harder for unions to operate.

As noted in our review, (most of) the players choose to leave and then willingly return to the arena, which separates Squid Game from other entries in the genre like the Hunger Games series and Escape Room. This element of volition contributes to the series’ primary critical goal. As Mi-nyeo and others brought up early on, they’re getting killed in the real world too, but at least inside they might actually get something for their troubles.

As an anti-capitalist parable, the only ways to fight back or upend the game in some small way are through acts of solidarity or by turning down the allure of the cash. The final clause in the game’s consent form states that the game can end if a majority of players agree to do so. After the brutal Red Light, Green Light massacre in the first, they do exactly that. The election might as well be a union vote. It’s shocking that the contract for the game included an escape clause at all, but it seems the host and his ilk enjoy at least allowing the illusion of free will if nothing else. The players who didn’t return after the first vote to leave the game, though unseen in this narrative, are perhaps the wisest of all.

Squid Game’s Most Heartbreaking Hour is Also Its Best

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Squid Game Ending Explained

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During tug of war, Gi-hun’s team surprises everyone by winning. Their teamwork, unity of purpose, and superior strategy help them defeat a stronger adversary, which is a basic principle of labor organizing, albeit usually not at the expense of the lives of other workers. Player 1 (Il-nam) and Player 240 (Ji-yeong) each find their own way to beat the game by essentially backing out of the competition during marbles. In exchange for friendship and choosing the circumstances of their own deaths, Ji-yeong and Il-nam each make their own, ethically sound choice under this miserable system. Il-nam gets an asterisk since he was never going to die, but he still found a choice beyond merely “kill” or “be killed” by teaching his Gganbu one “last” lesson and helping him continue on in the game.

In the end, Gi-hun confounds the VIPs and the Front Man by coming to the precipice of victory and simply walking away. Under capitalism, this group of incredibly rich men simply could not understand how someone could come so close to claiming their prize, and choose not to. But for Gi-hun, human life always had greater value. Gi-hun followed (Player 67) Sae-byeok’s advice and stayed true to himself, refusing to actively take anyone’s life, especially not the life of his friend.

Squid Game’s Ruling Class

Since the competition only exists because of the worst aspects of capitalism, it’s not surprising that in the end, it is itself a capitalist endeavor. Ultra-wealthy VIPs, who mostly seem to be white, Western men, spectate for a price and bet on the game. In their luxury accommodations, they lounge on silent human “furniture” and mistreat service staff. In one notable example, a VIP threatens to kill a server (who the audience knows to be undercover cop Hwang Jun-ho) if he doesn’t remove his mask, even though the VIP knows it would cost the server his life.

Perhaps most enraging of all is what Player 1, who turns out to actually be the Host, has to say to Gi-hun a year after the game ends. It all circles back to the game’s existential connection to economics; on the one hand, there is the unshakeable link to a population in which a significant portion of people suffer from dire financial woes. On the other hand, there is the Host and his cronies, the ultra-rich who are so bored from their megarich lives that they decided to bet on deadly human bloodsport for fun just so they could feel something again, as though they were betting on horses.

In spite of the enormous gulf between the two, the Host attempts to draw comparisons between the ultra-wealthy and the extreme poor, saying both are miserable. His little joke denies the reality of hunger, early death, trauma, and many other ways that being poor is actively harmful, both physically and mentally. It’s the kind of slow death that makes risking a quick one in the arena seem reasonable. He and his buddies were just kind of bored. Moreover, the Host denies the role of economic coercion in players taking part in the game, insisting that everyone was there of their own free will. But what free will can there be for people who owe millions, with families at home to care for and creditors at their back, when someone comes along and offers a solution, even a dangerous one? Anyone who has taken a dodgy job offer to get away from a worse one, or because they’re unemployed and the rent and college loans are due, knows that there is a limit to how truly free our choices can be when we need money, especially if there’s little to no safety net.

Why Are Squid Game’s English-Language Actors So Bad?

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Best Squid Game Doll Sightings

By Kayti Burt

Throughout the series, it is clear that someone had to be funding Squid Game at a high level. Unlike science fiction or fantasy takes, the show is grounded in our current reality, so the large-scale, high-tech obstacles and the island locale must have cost a pretty penny. Of course for any who see it as unrealistic, consider the example of Jeffrey Epstein, a man who bought an island from the US government and ran a sexual abuse and human trafficking ring not entirely disimilar (though far more pedestrian in its purpose) from this one.

The Host is able to pay for everything because he works in – you guessed it – banking. It’s a profession where he gained wealth by moving capital around. Given the Korean debt crisis – South Korea has the highest household debt in the world, both in size and growth – his profession makes him a worthy villain, in the same way the Lehman Brothers were after the 2008 crash. The bank executive calls in Gi-hun to offer him investment products and services, because of course someone with 45 billion won can accrue significantly more money passively, and who wouldn’t want that? Gi-hun’s decision to walk away is a callback to his earlier attempt to walk away from Squid Game when millions of dollars was within his grasp.

Throughout the series, the people running the game actively pit the players against one another in much the same way capitalism pits workers against one another. Whether they’re giving the players less food to encourage a fight overnight, the daily influx of cash every time another player dies, or giving them knives for the evening, the mysterious people pulling the strings want the players to fight each other like crabs in a barrel so they can’t work together to figure out what’s going on or take on the guys in red jumpsuits. Though there are notable examples of the players working together to succeed, it is always within the rules of the system. It is never treated as a viable or likely option for the players to team up and take the blood money literally hanging over their heads or to prevent death, merely to redirect it or choose how they will die. No, to win that, they must play the Squid Game’s rules.

In our society, this kind of worker-vs-worker rhetoric takes the form of employers telling workers their workload is harder or they can’t go on vacation or get a raise because of fellow employees who leave or go on maternity leave.. In reality, these are all normal aspects of managing a business that employers should plan for, and their failure to do so is not the fault of their workers. Much like in Squid Game, it benefits managers and owners if workers are too busy being mad at each other to have time or energy to fight the system and those who make unjust rules in the first place.

Squid Game’s Managers

The Front Man insists the game is fair, gruesomely hanging the dead bodies of those involved in the organ harvesting scheme because they traded medical knowledge for advanced intel on the game. However, like capitalism, there are many ways that the system is clearly rigged, no matter what the people at the top insist. There’s the obvious corruption in the organ harvesting ring, but even at its “purest” form, the game is not equitable. Sometimes the managers and soldiers in red jumpsuits stand by when unfair things happen, like Deok-su and his cronies stealing food. At other times, the people in charge intervene in player squabbles, like enforcing nonviolence during marbles and elections but encouraging violence at other times. They especially set things up to their own advantage, such as cutting the lights so the players couldn’t see the glass in the penultimate game, or the way they set up the election. Everyone knew how everyone else voted, they shared the total amount of money immediately beforehand, in an attempt to sway votes, calling to mind Amazon’s scare tactics before the recent unionization vote.

Culture

Squid Game Competitions, As Played By BTS

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Movies

Squid Game: Best Deadly Competition TV Shows & Movies to Watch Next

By Kayti Burt and 3 others

Ultimately, much like any manager/employer, the Front Man’s insistence on fairness has nothing to do with the actual value of equality, but rather the capitalist need to ensure betters are happy with the stakes and their chance at a favorable outcome.

Even the workers, soldiers and managers in red jumpsuits, who seem to be in charge, are ultimately only in power (and alive) so long as they serve the needs of the system. Like so many low-level managers, many wield their tiny amount of power ruthlessly, shooting players with impunity or running their organ harvesting side gig. It soon becomes clear that they’re as expendable as players, if not moreso, and the Front Man shoots them without hesitating. A player asks (and it’s too bad we never learned) what “they” did to the people in red jumpsuits to get them to run this game, but it’s not too hard to guess. They seem to be very young men, who likely needed money and wouldn’t be missed if they never returned.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

The biggest trick capitalism ever pulled was convincing workers it’s a zero-sum game, that anything we want but don’t have is the fault of someone else who “took it” from us. Within the game, that means every player was a living obstacle to the money, and that Gi-hun should kill his childhood friend to succeed and celebrate when he’s done. But as we see after he “wins,” even without taking Sang-woo’s life himself, the money isn’t worth it. The greater success would have been both men walking out of the arena alive.

The post Squid Game’s Scathing Critique of Capitalism appeared first on Den of Geek.

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