#when i was NAGGING YOU to TAKE HER to the EMERGENCY VET

[cinebration]

Skipping Steps (Angel Reyes x Reader)

Requested by: @illbegoinhome​

Angel might be feeling insecure and upset because of EZ so maybe he goes to y/n for comfort and luv 😩 (By EZ I don't mean like he did somthin just his chosen child arch)

This was supposed to be emotional and introspective, but it turned into something else instead. I don’t think you’ll complain, though.

Warnings: sexual themes

Gif Source: xxrouxx

Heavy knocks sounded on your door, startling you awake. Kicking off the sheets, heart pounding in your chest, you plucked the aluminum bat out from underneath your bed and headed to the door, creeping on silent, bare feet.

The knocking resumed—louder. A fist pounded against the door in an uneven staccato.

You flinched with each sound. Raising the bat over your shoulder, you debated whether to open the door at all.

“It’s me,” a familiar voice shouted. “Angel.”

Relief flooded through you, followed by confusion. Letting the bat drop to your side, you unlocked the door with one hand and pulled it open.

Hair disheveled and eyes bloodshot, Angel looked the worst you had ever seen him. He glanced at you sheepishly, as though suddenly second-guessing himself, swaying slightly on his feet.

Drunk, from the smell of him.

You had met Angel in the clubhouse parking lot. Your friend had been working in the clubhouse for the Mayans and had needed a ride that night. While waiting outside, perched on the fender, you had been startled by the deep-throated roar of a Harley-Davidson pulling into the yard. You hadn’t known the Mayans themselves except in passing, your only interaction with them being through your friend.

Yet you had known it was Angel.

He had parked the bike and turned to you, plucking off his helmet as he looked you over, a slight furrow in his brow.

“I’m waiting for Lina,” you had explained, beating him to the question.

“Lina?” He had seemed confused, his gaze boring into you. He blinked suddenly. “Oh, yeah, Lina.” Wandering over to you, he had paused a few steps away. Even at that distance, he still towered over you. “I haven’t seen you around here before.”

“This is the first time she’s needed a ride.”

“Yeah, but, uh, I thought I knew all of Lina’s friends. The club, I mean, knows all of Lina’s friends.”

Part of the vetting process, you had remembered. “I guess you weren’t that thorough.”

He had chuckled, then extended a gloved hand. “I’m Angel.”

You introduced yourself just as Lina emerged from the clubhouse.

“Hey, Angel,” she had said, smiling. “There’s a table meeting happening.”

“Okay.” He hadn’t even looked at her, his attention on you. “It was nice to meet you. Maybe I’ll see you around again?”

Your friend’s busted car resulted in you picking her up every night for a week. For all but one of those nights, Angel had been there, eager to talk to you. Eventually, you had given him your number. That had been several months ago. While you had occasionally met up for coffee and one dinner, you hadn’t gone further than that.

In other words, you hadn’t gotten close enough for him showing up drunk at your door to be acceptable, but sometimes steps had to be skipped.

Angel stepped into the apartment. In the light, you saw the bruise forming on the rim of his eye socket. You gestured at it wordlessly.

“I got into it with EZ.”

“Why?”

Angel glanced around the room, found the couch, and immediately shambled over to it. Dropping onto the firm cushions, he slumped back against it, his head leaning on the back edge of the couch.

“He’s the fucking golden child, man. I never even got the opportunity, you know?” He paused, sucked in a sigh. “I would’ve probably fucking let them down, but at least I would’ve had the chance.”

Setting the bat beside the couch, you sat beside him, unsure what to say or do. Angel stared down at the floor, at his broad hands. He shook his head, sighed explosively, raked his fingers through his hair.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I shouldn’t have come here. But I just needed to talk to someone, you know? I can’t talk to EZ or my dad…”

That was something you could understand. Placing your hand on his shoulder, you murmured, “Why don’t you crash here?”

“Nah, I shouldn’t—”

“You’re in no condition to drive, and it is too late and too cold out there for me to take you home.”

Blinking slowly, those little furrows appearing between his eyebrows, he nodded. You could see that, through the buzzed haze, he realized he had been asking a lot simply by showing up at your door.

Your eyes roamed up to his askew hair. Without thinking, you brushed it back along his skull. It was slick with whatever he put in it, but you didn’t mind. When your hand reached the back of his head and your fingers trailed down behind his ear and down his neck before returning to your side, you glanced at his face.

His dark eyes had grown darker, pupils eclipsing the brown irises. A heavy breath exhaled through his nose.

Then his lips were on yours—sloppy, burning hot, needy. His teeth clanked against yours, sending shivers through your jaw. Your hand clutched at his plaid shirt.

His large hands seized your hips, tried to pull you closer. He tasted like cigarettes and beer, smelled like the leather of his kutte—wherever that was—and exhaust from his Harley.

Beard scratching your chin and mouth, he sucked on your bottom lip, dragging his teeth over it. His hand swept up to your chest, palmed your breast. You gasped, but he ate up the sound and your oxygen.

Suddenly you are on your back, his body above you, hips settling between your legs. His fingers dug into your thighs.

The taste of the liquor on his tongue overwhelmed you. With a groan, you pushed against his chest with both hands, pulling yourself away.

He stared at you, eyes fuzzy with lust and confusion.

“You’re drunk,” you whispered, your voice stuttering. “We shouldn’t…”

Hurt flickered across his tragic features. Exhaling shakily, he dragged himself off you. You sat up, watched him turn away from you. You could see him kick himself mentally—another mistake on his tally sheet.

Seizing his hand, you prevented him from leaving the couch. Those lines in his brow returned as he dared to look at you.

“My life is full of regrets,” you said carefully. “I don’t want you to be one. Not when it’s this important.”

Angel sighed and nodded heavily, not trusting himself to speak. He was still berating himself.

“Angel, you aren’t a fuck-up.”

He jerked his head up as though you had pulled the thought out of his head.

“You aren’t,” you insisted.

He wanted to believe you, but nagging self-doubt held him back.

You quickly grabbed some sheets for the couch and returned before he got it into his head to flee. He glanced up in surprise again.

“You can crash on the couch.”

“You…you still want me to spend the night?”

You nodded. “I meant what I said, Angel. Sleep off the beer. We can…revisit this in the morning.”

“…okay.”

As much as he was perplexed and struggling with endorphins, the moment he rested his head on the couch cushion, he passed out, snoring lightly. You shifted the cushion beneath him until he stopped, then stood over him for several minutes, your fingertips dancing over your lips.

Several steps had been skipped to get here, but you weren’t complaining. Not when there was something to look forward to in the morning.

#Angel Reyes x Reader #Angel Reyes #Angel Reyes imagine #Clayton Cardenas #Clayton Cardenas imagine #Mayans M.C. #Mayans MC

[oftenderweapons]

Cold Nights - Hoseok

Pairing: Hoseok x reader (nicknamed Giggles)

Wordcount: 1.5k words

Genre: (hinted/mild) smut, fluff, lowkey angst

Rating: suggested 18+

Hiya! It’s Hobi’s turn! I have finally finished writing my dissertation, which is currently being checked by my professor. There might be some editing to do, but I’ll have to hand it in on Monday so I’ll feel more relaxed after that. Last step will be presenting it to a commission from my university that will give me my final grade. And then GRADUATION (supposedly November 4th)!

But let’s move on to more pleasant stuff! This fic is set a couple days after Hoseok’s Love Talk and it deals with Hobi’s feels for his Giggles. The end of this drabble is ideally the beginning of Hobi’s Wild Nights.

Word count: around 3k maybe, didn’t check 🤔

Here you can find my Masterlist

Enjoy!

————————————————————

Hoseok stared at his feet.

He had just left your place and he felt messy.

Yoongi opened the door almost immediately. "Hey."

"Hey." He responded quietly.

"Are you busy? Is Kitten around?" He asked as he entered his apartment and took off his shoes.

"No, she's with Angel." He said.

"They're hanging out a lot together." He noticed. "If I were you I'd be worried."

"Who told you I'm not." Yoongi quipped, shaking his head with an exasperated laugh.

They both entered the kitchen and sat down at the table. "Beer or soju?"

Hoseok exhaled. "Beer."

"Cool." Actually, fuck. He silently grabbed two cans. Maybe he should directly go for all six of them. This conversation was about to get heavy. "Listen, I love talking about Kitten--"

"You love Kitten, full stop."

"I do, but that is not the point." Yoongi remarked. "What is going on?"

Hoseok laced his fingers together, placing them on the table. "I think you know by now but I'm seeing someone."

"As in dating or hallucinating?" Yoongi asked with a serious, concerned tone which made him even more hilarious.

Hoseok shook his head.

"Just kidding, go on." Yoongi said, happy that Hoseok was hiding a smile. He was glad he could instill some happiness even though he looked so lost.

"Giggles."

"Oh, is that your Kitten?" Yoongi asked. "I mean is she to you what Kitten is to me?" In the meanwhile he put two glasses and the drinks on the table.

Hoseok laid his forehead on the back of his hands. "I don't know. I think so?" He sat up straight again. "She's a masterpiece. Cute and kind and bright and so, so lovely."

"But?" Yoongi nagged. Usually this was the point when Hoseok said he didn't feel anything or that she was boring or that he needed something different.

Hoseok shook his head, laying down again. It was slightly hilarious. "No buts." He rose up again, skittish. "But maybe it's temporary and I'll grow bored or she'll get tired and maybe it's just too early to find out about buts and maybes."

Yoongi opened his bear and poured some as Hoseok merely mirrored his gestures without really thinking. "How long has this been going on with the two of you?"

"More or less... Three months?"

"Mh." Yoongi meditated. His arrangements were usually a few weeks, maybe a couple months. This was the point where his interest just disappeared. From here on it was all uncharted territory for him. That's why he looked so scared, Yoongi thought.

"I don't know if I've been — like — swept off my feet by the sex or if this is actually affection."

Yoongi pouted and nodded.

"I've never had someone like her, Yoongi. I've never felt this need to protect and just gush all over someone. I want to tell everyone about her. And then I want to keep her all to myself."

"Does she make you happy?" Yoongi asked.

"Yes." He didn't hesitate one second. "I've never felt my life so full. It just... It feels like I don't even have to try. Like she needs to be in my life for some reason because she makes it better."

"What do you expect from your ideal partner?" Yoongi asked taking another sip of beer.

Hoseok looked at the glass and drank too, reflecting on his answer. "I think other than love and respect, maybe... Peace? Serenity? Someone who can pick me up when I feel down? She's just... She's ticked all the damn boxes so far and I can't help but be continuously reminded of how fucking perfect she is." Hoseok scrunched his face. "If she's not the one, then I don't know who could possibly be."

"And I bet you haven't told her about this, huh?"

Hoseok let himself go, his elbows propped on the table, his head in his hands. "How could I? I don't even know what the fuck is going on.".

"You do know though."

"How can I, Yoongi? How can I ask that?" Hoseok raised his voice. "This started as sex, Yoongi. I'm not like you wrapping my emotions in gift paper and handing it to my partner whenever I start seeing someone new."

Yoongi stayed still, blinking.

"Sorry. I overreacted. I think I'm in panic mode." Hoseok frowned. "It's... I'm afraid she'll throw me away?"

"You should be having this conversation with Namjoon. Do you remember what he put himself through for that precise fear?" Yoongi poured all the beer left in his can. "I think you should tell her you want to be with her. Call it what you want. Maybe Kitten and I did it the traditional way, went on dates, did stuff together, said our "I love you"s and got together, but that's not the only way to do that. You know how it went with Joon and Vixen."

"They were dating too. Giggles and I are not like that."

"How did it happen?"

"Mickey's vet was on holiday during an emergency, I took him to the vet and she was the substitute. It sort of spiraled out of control."

"I wanna ask how, but I'm not sure I wanna know." Yoongi snickered.

"I asked her number, she gave it to me. Went to a sort of a date but things got kinky and we hit it off..." He slipped into silence.

"Hobi, I think you should just find the nerves to tell her you want more. I know it's scary as fuck and everything, but I'm pretty sure she's a sweet girl who'd love to be by your side."

"She is sweet." Hoseok said with dreamy eyes. "And caring, and loving and funny and so, so soft."

"Just ask her out already. Simply tell her 'Hey, you, I know we've been going at it like bunnies for months but do you wanna go out for dinner or whatever, see if we work as something more?" Yoongi resolved practically.

"Do you think she'll say yes?" Hoseok asked, a little anxious.

"I think the right way to approach this is, what happens if she says no?" Yoongi reasoned.

"I don't want to think about it."

"In my opinion she would just say 'thanks man, but I'm not interested' and you'd just keep fucking like bunnies."

"And what would I do with my feelings?" Hoseok asked, frowning at his empty glass.

Yoongi smiled bitterly. "I am not the greatest advisor with this but I'd say you either keep them on the low or let them go. If you can." He perched himself on the chair, bringing his knees to his chest. "Personally, if she said no, I would let go of her and find someone new. It hurts but usually you cannot kill feelings for someone. The more you go on, the more it hurts. But just talk it out with her, casually."

Hoseok nodded and stood up abruptly. "I can't keep living with the doubt. I can't go on like this. Gotta go. Thank you, Yoongi."

Hoseok dashed for the entryway, Yoongi at his heels. "Guess if it goes sour you'll text me for a drunk pity party?"

Hobi was already putting his shoes on. "Guess so." Left shoe.

"And if it goes well you'll just go AWOL for a couple hours?" Yoongi suggested.

"More like a couple days, but we'll see." Right shoe. He stood up, grabbing his coat. "Thanks a lot. You know you're the best friend in the world, right?"

Yoongi nodded with a soft smile. "You are, too. Good luck."

"Thanks, see you!" Hoseok sprinted out of the door.

Yoongi simply closed the door behind him, shaking his head with a smirk.

-----------------------------

"Hey." One sweaty, breathless Jung Hoseok stood at your door. His call had caught you by surprise: when you had picked up your phone he asked if you were home so he could stop by. You told him you had just arrived from your shift. And now you were at your doorstep, staring at each other.

"Hello." You said with a confused smile.

"I'm in love with you." He declared, still breathless, hunched down, standing with his knees bent and his hands propped on them for support.

You blinked a few times, asking yourself where all of this was coming from.

Fuck it. "I love you too." You said, ignoring the common sense and reason suggesting you asked an explaination for this.

He went wide-eyed with incredulity, standing up straight. Next thing you knew he was kissing you desperately, pushing you back in your apartment and closing the door with his foot. "I love you." He purred.

"I love you too, Hobi. I'm in love with you, baby."

He growled. "Bedroom. Now."

#bangtan sonyeondan #bts imagine #bts headcanons #hoseok imagine #hoseok scenario #hoseok x reader #sope fic

[mythical-ross]

Puppy Play

Wait! It’s not what you think!

People keep asking when I’m going to be posting the next chapter of Bonds Of Friendship, and the answer is now “2 hours later” because I wrote this instead. It’s not my fault. RandL made me do it.

(I imagine Rhett as an English Springer Spaniel and Link as something like a Manchester Terrier)

_________

Rhett trotted around the yard expectantly. His master had picked him up earlier and excitedly said a bunch of words Rhett didn’t understand, except for one: Link. 

Link was his best friend (though he’d never tell his master that) - a black and brown terrier that Rhett had known his whole life. They could spend hours together, running around the garden, playing on the beach, curled up together in front of the fake electric fire in Rhett’s living room. Every time Link went home, all Rhett could think about what the next time he’d be back.

He paced back and forth at the gate to the driveway, patiently waiting for the sound of Link’s master’s car. When he heard a car coming down the street he immediately started shouting for Link. “Link! Link! Link!” But the car kept driving, it wasn’t the right car.

“Rhett!” his master shouted through the kitchen window, followed by some more words he didn’t understand. He knew he was in trouble from the tone of her voice though. He wasn’t supposed to bark at cars. He curled up and laid down beside the gate guiltily, hoping she wouldn’t stay mad for long.

He immediately forgot why he was feeling guilty as soon as he heard another car coming down the street. “Link! Link! Link!” Rhett shouted through the fence, and to his relief, the car pulled into the driveway. 

Their owners were talking just a few feet away from him, but he couldn’t hear Link. Just then, a car door opened and there came sound of another dog hopping out.

“Link?” he asked through the fence.

“Rhett!” came Link’s reply. Link hopped up against the gate so he could see Rhett through the slats, panting with excitement.

Rhett could hear one of the humans say his name and before he knew it, the gate to the driveway was open and Link was barrelling towards him. Rhett could barely contain himself. They stopped just in front of each other and gave a little bow - the signal for play time.

Link snapped at Rhett’s snout, then immediately bolted across the garden. Rhett growled and took off after him, his curly ears flying out behind him as he gave chase. Link was fast, but Rhett had longer legs and caught up with him quickly. He tackled Link to the ground and bit at his neck.

“Okay, okay! You got me,” Link said happily, struggling slightly under Rhett’s teeth.

Without needing to say anything further, Rhett released him and took off towards the other end of the yard. It was Link’s turn to catch him. He jumped up onto the back porch and hid behind a row of potted plants, thinking maybe Link didn’t see him. 

Moments later however, he heard the scratch of Links nails on the stone and knew he’d been found. Link peered around the side of a pot and Rhett ran out the other side, as quickly as his legs would take him, back onto the grass.

Rhett lay down on his back in surrender before Link could reach him. Link caught up and sat down on the grass by his side.

“Something‘s different,” Link said curiously.

Rhett’s heart sank. He had hoped Link wouldn’t notice anything was wrong. Link sniffed the air for a moment before Rhett stood up, giving him better access to his true goal.

“What kind of different?” Rhett asked innocently, trying not to influence Link in any way. 

Link nosed his way under Rhett’s tail to get a good sniff at his butt. Rhett braced himself, hoping maybe the weird stuff he’d been feeling lately was just his imagination.

Link sat down and tilted his head in confusion. “It’s like something‘s missing,” he explained. “Has something happened?” 

Rhett knew he couldn’t just ignore his problems and hope they’d go away. That wasn’t the case when he piddled in the house behind the couch, it wasn’t true when he got excited and shredded one of his master’s handbags, and it wasn’t the case now. “You know the vet?” Rhett started.

“Yeah,” Link said, and growled in disgust.

“Well, they took me to see the vet and he injected me with something,” Rhett recalled. “Then the next thing I knew, was falling asleep.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad.”

“That wasn’t the bad part,” Rhett said. “When I woke up, I felt kinda funny…” 

“Funny how?” Link asked.

“I think they did something to my parts,” Rhett said, turning his butt towards Link. “Can you check for me?”

Link did as he was asked and poked his nose under Rhett’s tummy. Rhett could feel him poking around in his long curly hair for a moment before he said, “oh my god!”

Rhett’s heart sank. “Is it bad?” 

Link’s head emerged, the whites of his eyes visible. “You balls are gone!”

“What?” Rhett barked. “Don’t I need those?” He knew something felt different down there. Why would his master do that to him? 

“When you said you feel funny…” Link prompted.

“You know that fluffy pillow inside? The one I like to hump?”

“Yeah.”

“I haven’t wanted to hump it once!”

Link’s mouth fell open in surprise. “But you love that thing!”

“And you know how awesome it is to yell at other dogs when they walk past the house?” Rhett asked. “I did it yesterday and it just wasn’t as fun anymore.”

Link opened his mouth like he wanted to speak, but closed it again. He was probably worried the same thing might happen to him. 

Rhett laid down and rested his head on his paws. “Maybe they’ll grow back,” he said, not really believing it.

Link found a comfortable spot and joined Rhett in the grass. “Are you still gonna want to mount me?” he asked quietly. 

“I don’t know,” Rhett admitted. “You can still mount me though, if you want.” They lay in silence before Rhett asked the question that had been nagging him since his trip to the vet. “Link… have I been a bad boy?”

Link lifted his head in surprise. “Rhett, no!”

Rhett covered his snout with one of his big fluffy paws. “I can’t remember the last time my master called me a good dog,” he whined. “What if I was a bad dog and I didn’t even realize it?” 

“No Rhett,” Link said, getting up to stand in front of him. “You’re a good boy. You’re the best boy I know!” 

Rhett lifted his head, already feeling a little better. “Really?” 

“Yes,” Link said firmly. “Let me hear you say it.”

“I’m a good boy,” Rhett said.

“Louder!” Link barked.

Rhett hopped up onto his feet, suddenly having fun with his friend again. “I’m a good boy!” He shouted. 

Link opened his mouth into a big smile. “That’s better,” he said happily. “Now,” he said, glancing across the yard. “I bet I can get that tennis ball before you.”

Link took off in a dark flash over the grass. His problems almost forgotten, Rhett ran after him as fast as he could. Rhett was faster, but Link had a head start and reached the ball first. 

It barely fit in Link’s mouth, but he held it up triumphantly for Rhett to see. Rhett needed the ball back right away and leapt for it, knocking Link to the ground. They fell into a heap with their legs entangled, panting with excitement and the exertion, the ball already forgotten.

“You always know how to cheer me up,” Rhett said, happy to have his best friend by his side.

#rhink #kinda #crack fic #I don't know. Shut up. #You know how I love puppies... #puppy friendship fic

[warriorsfireandwater]

Chapter Three

“Oakheart is dead!”

Rusty was suddenly awakened by the wail. He blinked, and quickly raised his head. For a moment, he forgot where he was, until everything came flooding back. Thistlestar attacked me, and I ended up here. RiverClan saved me.

Then what he had heard hit him like a stone. Dead? Rusty’s eyes widened with horror. Had Thistlestar murdered Oakheart? These wildcats really are savage!

With a glance, he could see that Mudfur was not in his den. Rusty rose, and blinked as he noticed sticky-white webs stuck to his chest, where he’d been scratched. He sniffed at it, and found it smelled like the herbs in the den. Mudfur must've put there.

Rusty padded from the den, slowly, hoping not to attract attention to himself. It was well past nightfall—moonhigh, perhaps—but many warriors were still awake.

Crookedstar emerged from his den. “What?” he demanded. “Oakheart can't be dead!”

A black-furred tom and pale brown tabby molly were dragging a limp body behind the rest of their small group. Gasps of horror rose from the Clan.

“Who did this?” Crookedstar demanded. “Who?!”

“No one,” Dawnwhisker murmured, head low. “Well, Darkstripe chased him under a rock, and they started fighting… I think they jostled smaller rocks that were supporting it. But Oakheart pushed Darkstripe out, and before he could get out from under it…” She swallowed. “He was crushed by it. That's why it took us so long to get back—we were digging him out.”

A young silver tabby pressed herself to Crookedstar’s side, murmuring quietly in his ear. A sob shook Crookedstar’s body before he ordered, “Bring him to the center of camp. We’ll share tongues and bury him in the morning.”

“Oakheart was Crookedstar’s brother and closest friend.” Mudfur was suddenly at Rusty’s side, and the young tom jumped in surprise. “That molly is Silverstream, Crookedstar’s daughter.”

Rusty felt a wave of sympathy for Crookedstar, and he was surprised to find that he was saddened himself. I never got to thank him for saving my life. He watched as the two cats pulled Oakheart’s body into the center of the clearing and laid him there gently. One by one, cats came forward, pushing their muzzles into Oakheart’s fur and murmuring before turning away. “What are they doing?” he whispered to Mudfur.

“They are mourning,” Mudfur explained, his voice thick with emotion. “It's how we say farewell before Oakheart’s spirit travels to StarClan. After each cat takes their turn, those closest to him will stay the rest of the night beside him, sharing tongues for the last time before he is buried.”

StarClan? Rusty was full of questions, but felt it would be inappropriate to nag Mudfur any more. After a moment, he quietly asked, “Can… can I go up?”

Mudfur glanced at him oddly. “Why ever would you?”

Rusty looked at his paws. Did I say the wrong thing? “I just—I wanted to thank him. If he hadn't stopped Thistlestar, they would've killed me.”

“That's very kind of you,” Mudfur murmured, though he sounded a little surprised. “But I think you should wait until everyone else has gone before you do. They won't take well to it. You're an outsider, and the rest of us have lived with and fought beside him for seasons.”

Rusty nodded. I owe Oakheart thanks, he thought. He died after saving me. He swallowed, stomach twisting. Would he still be alive if I wasn’t there?

He waited patiently as each cat padded forward to say goodbye, and Mudfur left him for a moment to press his muzzle to Oakheart’s side. When he returned, he sat beside Rusty, and did not speak. After each cat had gone, Mudfur nodded to him. “Go on. Don't let them think you are afraid.”

Easier said than done! Rusty gulped and nodded before he stood and padded towards his body. A few cats hissed, but none moved to stop him until he was nearly to Oakheart. The black tom stepped in front of him. “What do you think you're doing?” he hissed.

“I wanted to thank him,” Rusty mumbled, before recalling Mudfur’s words. He raised his head, looking the tom in the eye. “Let me through, please. He saved my life.”

The tom blinked, surprised, but didn't move. “What?”

“Let him pass, Blackclaw,” Crookedstar rasped. He was sitting near Oakheart’s body, Silverstream still at his side.

Blackclaw scowled before stepping away. Rusty padded closer, staring down at the dead tom. Oakheart’s ribcage looked like it had collapsed, and his spine was bent at an odd angle. What a horrible way to die. He crouched low beside Oakheart, as he had seen the others do. After a moment, he realized the camp had fallen silent as each cat stared at him, watching his every move. “Thank you,” he said, softly. “You saved my life. I'm sorry I can't repay that to you.” He touched his nose to Oakheart’s side before quickly backing away.

The accusing glares and angry mutters seemed to fade as Rusty backed away. Maybe I did do the right thing, Rusty thought hopefully. He returned to Mudfur’s side, who gave him an approving nod.

Crookedstar pressed his muzzle to his brother’s pelt for a few long moments. Then, he raised his head, gazing solemnly around his Clan. “Because it is already moonhigh, I must name RiverClan’s deputy immediately.” He paused, and appeared to be thinking. “I say these words before the spirit of Oakheart, and hope that he approves of my choice. Leopardfur will be RiverClan’s next deputy.”

A dappled golden molly blinked and raised her head, before rising and padding forward. Rusty studied her curiously. Deputy? Is that like… the second to the leader? Whatever it was, it sounded important. Leopardfur seemed cool and composed as she padded towards Crookedstar. She then dipped her head. “Thank you,” she said. “I am honored.”

The Clan, despite their grieving, threw back their heads and yowled their congratulations. “Leopardfur! Leopardfur!”

Mudfur raised his head proudly, yowling as loudly as he could. Rusty blinked, but again felt that it may be inappropriate for him to call her name with them. As the cheering died away, Mudfur licked his chest fur, ears red. “That's my daughter,” he purred. “She used to be afraid of water, you know!”

Crookedstar stared down at the body of his brother before looking up again. “There is one more thing I wish to do.” he fixed his gaze upon Rusty, who stiffened. Was Crookedstar going to change his mind and kill him? “Rusty,” he said. “Please come forward.”

Rusty blinked, but rose again and padded towards the tom. “Y-yes?” Oh, please, don't attack me now!

“I would like to invite you to join our clan,” Crookedstar meowed. Instantly, RiverClan was yowling in surprise and protest. He lashed his tail. “Silence! Oakheart saved this kit before he died. Will you disrespect him before he has even been buried?”

Many cats frowned and stared at their paws guiltily. However, even though the Clan fell silent, there were still a few that continued to glare furiously at him.

“Now,” Crookedstar went on. “This kittypet, despite his origins, shows promise. He escaped Thistlestar’s claws and fled through the forest, a great feat for a cat his age that has been raised lazily.” Rusty bristled slightly at the words before he realized there was no malice behind them. Glancing around, he could see a few cats nodding in understanding, though others muttered unhappily. “He then crossed the river with Dawnwhisker—something few outsiders would willingly do.”

Crookedstar looked back to Rusty. “Rusty,” he asked. “Will you accept? You must understand, training will not be easy, especially since you have not had the conditioning our kits have had. You have not swam in the river before today. You've never hunted for your Clanmates or said thanks to StarClan and to the river. If you are a part of RiverClan, you must work to make these all a part of your life. Will you join RiverClan?”

Rusty was silent for a long moment. What do I say? I don't know anything about this life. For a heartbeat, he considered refusing, but he then realized that wasn't what he wanted. If I go home… if I even manage to get home… I'll never be satisfied. He thought of his dreams, the itch in his claws and pull in his paws that led him to the forest in the first place. He didn't want to be fat and lazy like Henry, or foolish like Smudge.

“Though the training will be hard, the rewards are great,” Crookedstar added, when Rusty had not spoken. “You will remain a true tom, unaltered by the Cutter. You will have the loyalty of your Clanmates by your side, should you earn it. You will know true honor and pride as a warrior, if you make it through training.”

“The Cutter?” Rusty echoed.

“You've seen lazy kittypets, no doubt?” Crookedstar asked. “When toms—and mollies, too, I hear—are old enough, humans take them to the Cutter, and they are never the same. The Cutter steals their strength, and they can no longer bear kits, and they lose any drive or motivation. They sit in the sun and care little for anything but eating and sleeping. That is your future if you return to the human’s place. But you are free to do so. Few outsiders would consider this life.”

The vet, Rusty realized. That's when Henry changed! Though he had already made up his mind, he was certain now. I can always go back if it turns out to be terrible, he told himself. “I—”

“This is ridiculous!” a white tom interrupted, growling. “You can't be serious! How do we know his humans won’t come here looking for him? And that stench will alert all the prey of his presence!”

Rusty flinched at the unexpected hostility. The white tom was now standing, sneering at Rusty. “You will just eat twice your share and work half as hard as anyone else! We all know kittypets, Cut or not, they're useless!”

There were murmurs of agreement from a few cats. Rusty looked back at Crookedstar, unsure of himself.

“Others feel this way?” Crookedstar asked, eyes narrowed.

“I do!” Blackclaw spat. “He's been here long enough. Send him off in the morning and let that be the end of it.”

Silverstream touched her tail to her father’s shoulder. “Perhaps we should cast stones,” she suggested.

Before Rusty could ask what that was, Crookedstar shook his head. “There's no use in having everyone find a stone at this time of night. But I suppose a vote is reasonable for a matter like this.” He pushed himself up to sit. “If you think Rusty should be allowed into our Clan, sit by the nursery. If you think he should be escorted from the territory in the morning, sit near the elder’s den.”

Rusty’s nerves only grew as one by one, the cats began to move to opposite sides of camp. Blackclaw and the white tom immediately hurried across the clearing to one of the reed-dens, where they sat, tails twitching irritably. That was clearly the elders’ den. Those cats made their displeasure obvious. Three more cats crossed the clearing together, though much slowly than the others. Rusty’s heart sank as Leopardfur hesitated, then crossed to the elder’s den.

He turned his head to where the other group was gathering. Mudfur and Dawnwhisker were both there, as was Silverstream. A few more cats begin to join them. Rusty looked back and forth between the two—though another cat was joining the dissents, it was clear the nursery side was larger. Finally, the last cat, an elderly molly, sat with the nursery group, and Crookedstar nodded his head slowly.

Rusty puffed out his chest. They actually want me?

“You are welcome to join,” Crookedstar said. “And the majority of the Clan agrees you are fit to be here. Will you take on the life of a warrior apprentice, knowing all I have told you, and knowing the opinion of my Clan?”

Rusty didn't hesitate this time. “I will!” he replied.

“Very well,” Crookedstar meowed. “Then your kittypet life is no more. You are no longer Rusty. From now on, you will be known as Firepaw. Dawnwhisker will be your mentor.”

There were no cheers, not even from among those that had voted for him. But Dawnwhisker gave him a smile and a wink as the cats began to split up, and that was enough for him.

“Tonight you can rest in Mudfur’s den,” Crookedstar went on. “Tomorrow, your training begins.” He spoke to all cats next. “Anyone who wishes to share tongues with Oakheart may stay, but the rest should go to your nests.”

Most cats retreated to the reed-dens. As Firepaw padded back to Mudfur’s den, a few cats who had supported inviting him nodded approvingly.

Firepaw went back into the secluded den, heart racing. If only Smudge could see me now!

#warrior cats #wc #warriors #warrior cats au #warrior cats rewrite #riverclan fireheart #firestar #chapter three

[crystaljins]

The ‘mum’ friend | 05

Characters: Jin x Reader

Word count: 1.2k

Synopsis:  Jin’s a little tired of being the mum friend  but that won’t stop him from helping you get ready.

Notes: I think this is honestly my favourite one of these so far. EDIT: I’m a dummy and accidentally deleted the last one so this is a reupload RIP

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9

“Are you seriously going to go on a date with that clown?” Jin asks. He stands behind you with his arms folded across his chest. He glares at your reflection through the mirror while you attempt to do your eyeliner. It’s far more difficult with Jin’s attention on you and so it is unsurprising when you mess it up yet again. “Like actually? When you could be driving with me to pick Yoongi up from the airport?”

“As exciting as it sounds to run yet another errand with the group mum, I actually don’t have a choice. My actual mum has insisted upon the blind date and rather than endure her complaining through another hour long phone call, I’m just going to get dinner with the guy and get it over with.” You gripe as you reach for a makeup wipe. Jin watches with fascination for a moment before collapsing on your mattress and sprawling across it.

“Are you going to leave any time soon?” You ask, finally finishing up on your makeup and gazing at the dress you had chosen for the evening.

“I’ll just close my eyes.” Jin yawns in answer. Your gaze softens. Taehyung’s dog had required an emergency visit to the vet last night and Jin had been the one to drive him, and now he’s staying up late once more so he can pick Yoongi up from the airport. Yoongi had offered to just get a taxi but the trip had been to meet with some important business partners and Jin had wanted to be the first to hear how it went. Also the thought of one of his friends paying for a taxi when Jin has a perfectly functioning vehicle stresses him out.

With a sigh, you shrug out of your pyjamas and step into the dress. It is, admittedly, a little risqué for a first date you have no intention on following up on but you had gotten it a month ago and never worn it because Jin refuses to take you anywhere nice. If Jin doesn’t want to take you out on a date, you’re simple going to have to enjoy the fun of dressing up for someone else. It’s his loss, you think to yourself.

Only, when you turn around, Jin is propped up on his elbows on your bed and watching you without shame.

“Jin!” You reprimand, feeling your cheeks heat up. “You said you’d close your eyes!”

He shrugs with a grin.

“I did close my eyes. I just didn’t say how long I’d close them for.” He says. You are momentarily speechless at his audacity.

It is moments like these that make you think maybe Jin does like you. When he stares at you with that unreadable gaze, the one where he could be thinking anything from what he plans to have for dinner tonight to what ridiculous errand he’s going to drag you on next. It is frustrating how unreadable he is sometimes. If you could just crack through that outer facade and catch a glimpse of the feelings beneath, you would have asked him out ages ago but he continues to run hot and cold with you and you are confused.

“You never dress this nicely for me! I’m honestly a little offended.” He complains after a long moment of staring. He collapses back into your bed and glares petulantly at the ceiling.

“I never dress this nicely because your idea of hanging out is us going to pick up Namjoon’s prescription foot cream because he broke his arm and can’t drive to pick it up himself.” You point out rather reasonably.

“You had a good time! I bought you iced tea!” He cries in protest.

You sigh and fight back a smile as you turn to your jewellery box to search for a suitable pair of earrings. It had been fun, going to the pharmacy with Jin, but that was more because you enjoy his company way too much and not because purchasing foot cream is an enjoyable activity. And secretly you kind of like helping people out and Jin makes you reach out to people in a way you never thought you could before him.

“You’re really going to go?” Jin asks, and there is an odd serious tone to his voice. He sits up and stares you down and his gaze is unusually hard. “With me standing right here, offering you a far more interesting and fun evening, you’re going to go on a date?”

“Unless you have some sort of way to get my mother off my back, yes, I’m going on the date. It’s not like I’m seeing anyone at the moment. We’ll get dinner, I won’t organise a second date and I’ll tell my mother it just didn’t work and then voila, I’m free from her nagging until she finds her next victim.” You counter. Honestly, you think it’s unfair to whatever guy this date is with to agree to meet him when you’re so hung up over the guy currently chucking a tantrum in your bed, but you don’t have a choice. Your mother had insisted and hey, maybe getting out into the dating world would be good for you and help you finally deal with this annoying crush. Jin stares at you for a long, tense moment and then suddenly he rolls off your bed and begins rummaging through your drawers.

“Fine. If you’re that set on going on this date, I might as well help you. Where’s the necklace I got you for your birthday?” He demands, and you have half a mind to whack him when he pulls open your underwear drawer and begins sorting through it as if you’re going to keep jewellery in the same drawer as your undies. “It’ll go perfectly with that dress you’re wearing.”

“It’s here!” You snap, reaching into your jewellery box to produce the necklace in question. It’s more to stop him examining your bras with unnecessary vigour than to out of a desire to wear the necklace. Jin pauses it and turns towards you and there is definitely an ulterior motive lurking behind the smile he gives you. He pretty much snatches the necklace from where it dangles from your fingers and steps in far more close than necessary.

“I’ll help you put it on.” He says softly, and his voice pitches oddly low. Confused, you shift your hair off your neck to allow him to do so and for the first time that night you regret the decision to wear a strapless dress. You can feel each puff of his warm breath across the back of your neck and you feel the heat of his hands as he fidgets with the clasp of the necklace. Why is it taking so long to put on a simple necklace? It’s not complicated- delicate, silver chain, pretty pendant inlayed with your birth stone resting against your clavicle and a simple clasp. Still, Jin takes ages and you feel a blush creep along your skin the longer the moment draws out.

Finally he releases the necklace and it rests neatly against your skin. He places a hand on either shoulder and grins at you in the mirror over the top of your head.

“There,” He says. You examine the necklace- honestly it clashes a little with the dress and while you know Jin normally has better fashion taste than that but you cannot bring yourself to take it off. “Perfect.”

He glances at his watch and sighs.

“I better get going. Enjoy your date.” He pauses as he leaves the room. “Oh yeah, and if he asks about that necklace...”

He trails away and you turn to face him curiously. His grin shifts into something mischievous. “Make sure to tell him I gave it to you.”

You end up refusing a second date that night.

#kim seokjin #seokjin fluff #jin fic #seokjin fic #jin x reader #writing

[thelifeoverload-blog]

Life isn’t easy!

Life can be extremely overwhelming, especially when you're a full time college student who works 2 jobs. I realize that there are thousands of people who have it just as hard, if not harder than I do. I've also realized that I'm allowed to feel the way I feel. 

Most of my life I've had a nagging feeling that I shouldn't feel the way I do because there are people you have it wore. And let me tell you how much I hate that damn phrase. Yeah, sure there are people who have it worse than I do, but that doesn’t take away from what I’m feeling. 

The last few years I’ve greatly struggled with anxiety and depression, and I’ve been very open about that with my family. I want them to know that just because I have these issues, doesn’t mean I’m going to stop living my life. That’s why I’ve been seeing a therapist for the last year. 

Most people are embarrassed to talk about being in therapy, because in today’s society its frowned upon. Well I’m here to tell you, if it wasn’t for my amazing therapist, I would have been dead by now. She helped me to realize that there is more than what is right in front of me. 

This tactic really helped this last week. I’ve had a pretty rough week from the start. My weekend started with my mother getting remarried, which was absolutely amazing, I’m so glad that she’s met someone who treats her as amazing as she is. It just made for a long weekend. My best friend was in from Colorado which was absolutely amazing to see her. I don’t get to see her as much since we’re graduated from High school. She came in for my mom’s wedding and decided to stay longer so that she could visit family, and be in for my birthday as well. 

However, this is when things get a little dark. I had just gotten this little kitten about two weeks before. He had a little cold that we were treating, but he just seemed to be getting worse. I took him to the emergency vet on Sunday and he seemed to be doing better. On Monday not so much. He ended up passing away on the way back to the emergency vet. He was an absolute sweetheart, and I already miss him. 

Not only is this sad on it’s own, but it also happened the day before my birthday. It made for a difficult day, because I was sad about my kitten, but then I also had to take my best friend to the airport hotel so they could head home the next morning. It’s safe to say I had a lot to talk about in therapy the next day. 

The point is that life is unpredictable. You can try your best, and you might succeed and you might not. That’s what make’s life interesting. Even if life isn’t easy, at least it’s never boring. 

#personal #depression #anxiety #text post #kitten #wedding #first post #diary #journal

[griffinequestrian]

Heels Down Magazine: Equine Economics: The Horse. The House. The Boyfriend.

How to factor in the cost of your horse when you share the bills with someone you love.

This article first appeared in the April 2018 issue of Heels Down Magazine. For more stories worth reading, subscribe now in the app and get a new issue delivered every month.

By Justine Griffin

If you’re reading this, you already know your hobby or sport of choice is a very expensive one. The amount of money we spend on our largest fur babies is written off as ludicrous to any sound-of-mind human looking in from the outside, like my husband, Alex.

When we started dating in our mid-twenties, he thought it was interesting that I rode and owned a horse. Being an animal person at heart, he bonded with my mare pretty quickly. He was happy to be a good sport around the farm and film me ride, help with the trailer, you name it. As our relationship progressed, he was gradually tuned in to just how much of my paycheck went toward my horse’s expenses.

“Board costs how much? That’s like a second rent!” “Why can’t she keep wearing the shoes you already bought her six weeks ago?” “A saddle costs HOW MUCH?!” “Does your horse really need a professional massage … AND acupuncture?”

Fast forward a couple of years and now we’re married. There’s no hiding a horse-related expense. Luckily we both have good jobs, so having my horse is a luxury I’m lucky to afford. But it ain’t always easy.

Medical issues come up. That means time off work for vet visits and paying the unexpected bills that come with it. Alex is a pretty easy going guy, and we’ve learned to save for emergencies like that. But we also just bought a house this year, which was a hefty expense. Here’s how we’ve come up with a budget and how we manage our priorities in the way that works best for us and our animal children.

Budget. Budget. Budget. Outlining long- and short-term budget goals is key. As a couple, we chart out how much money we plan to spend on groceries each month, on the regular bills, and how much money we have to spend freely. Nearly all of my “free money” and then some is dedicated to the horse. Of course, the majority of the horse expenses come from my end of the budget. Alex picks up the slack a little more with our two dogs (which can also be expensive) and more routine things around the house. But we still set aside money in our savings for long-term purchases and emergencies. For example, I need to buy a horse trailer this year. I’m cutting costs in other places on my personal budget to sock away a little more in savings for that big purchase later this year.

You Can Never Save Enough. I don’t want to come off like a nagging parent, as I’m sure you’re lectured enough at home. But whether you own a horse or a house or both, you literally cannot save enough. Aside from contributing to my 401k at work for retirement (one day) I’m pulling money out of each paycheck that goes into my “animal” savings account and then my “life” savings account. One is for horse or dog emergencies, like vet bills. The other is for routine life emergencies, like a dying water heater or a major car expense. None of these are fun to pay for, but they unavoidable. Save now so it’s not so devastating when something does break or gets sick unexpectedly.

Research Ways To Save. I’m proud to say I have excellent credit. That’s from years of paying my bills on time and never charging too much on my credit cards. I do, however, have a credit card reserved just for my pets (horses and dogs) in times of an emergency. Care Credit is a healthcare financing option accepted by (human) doctors and a network of veterinarians across the U.S. When we had an unexpected overnight stay at the hospital for colic surgery, this credit card helped pay for that big vet bill. Care Credit allows you to make payments for six months without interest, as long as you pay off the expense in that time frame. That’s way better than most other credit cards, where you end up spending more interest on long-term payment plans.

Insurance Is Worth It. Insuring your horse may sound ridiculous to some people (i.e. my husband when we first discussed it) but it does come in handy when preparing to pay for major medical expenses. Some insurance plans cover the cost of many preventative care methods for your horse, too.

Embrace The Sacrifice. Because I own a horse, I go to less “happy hours” than I used to. We still take vacations a couple times a year, but we could take more if we didn’t have our pets. I don’t show every month, but I still make it to a few events a year when I have the extra funds to do so. I buy less clothes and trinkets for myself to make room for supplements that my horse needs. It sucks sometimes, but this is the life I’ve chosen.

Always Be Honest. Alex and I rarely fight over money, and that’s because we’re always honest and upfront with one another about our expenses. I don’t sugar coat it when I need something. My saddle didn’t fit my new horse, so I had to sell it to buy a new one. It was a tough expense, but we talked about it a lot and prepared for it. Communication is the most important thing.

#dating #equestrian dating #equestrian problems #finaces #horse #horses #horse back riding #hunter/jumper #Heels Down Magazine

[lilgreenhouse-blog]

Bob, Agent of Talon

I am a loser with no life to speak of. Yes, this is a play on the character in the Deadpool comics. Also there is a brief discussion of ‘Bloodborne’ which may or may not be factually accurate. Enjoy.

Dave considered himself to be a pretty normal guy. He ate oatmeal with honey for breakfast, had a selection of neutral-toned ties, enjoyed cat videos and collected vintage comic books. His wife was called Allison. He grew up with a dog called Alfie but hadn’t had a pet since – mostly because he was also a member of a terrorist organisation and that really wasn’t conducive to having a pet. Sudden death or imprisonment for breaking international law weren’t really traits adoption agencies considered favourable when vetting potential adopters.

Thing is, he’s good at being a terrorist. Not in a bombs-blazing, kidnapping women and children, destroying cities kind of way – he’s an undercover guy. Being pretty normal has its perks. People look the other way. No one notices Bob (the most normal code name his handlers could think of) in tech support.

Unfortunately for Overwatch.

Tech support, Dave supposed, was actually an excellent place to put a spy. He had access to all the electronic data at his fingertips, so long as he played it safe and stayed under Athena’s radar. It was an easy enough job to lie about to Allison, who had been nagging him about getting a steady job for ages, having been under the impression he worked for a call centre. Plus, Talon had a dental plan. It was a much better position than the other agent he was aware of – poor Brenda (also a code name, he had no idea what her real name was or any other details about her life, for that matter. For security’s sake, the less he knew the better.) down in laundry had to deal with way more unhygienic conditions. If he played his cards right, he might never get caught. All whilst sending highly classified details of upcoming Overwatch sting operations and missions back to Talon from right under their noses.

He hadn’t, however, expected tech support to be so…hands on.

The first time he was called out of the seemingly endless behind-the-scenes rooms at the Gibraltar base was to fix an ancient video game console. The agent requesting the repair was practically in tears over her beloved antique, insisting that the PS4 really was the only way to play something called Bloodborne, whatever the hell that was. But apparently she had a throwback Thursday livestream coming up or something and needed it fixed. This was apparently relevant enough to the running of Overwatch that actual support staff time and budget was spent repairing an ancient piece of low-tech gear ultimately for the amusement of the viewing public.

This report was well-received by his superiors.

“Excellent,” said a shadowy figure in a sinister voice. “If Overwatch is willing to waste money on such pathetic endeavours, it shows their true weakness.”

Privately Dave wasn’t sure what this true weakness was.

“Indeed,” replied another, equally-shadowy figure. “Such frivolous expenditure is a sure sign that our victory is imminent.”

Dave nodded along in vague agreement, and the check-in quickly ended. As tedious as the fix to the old console had been, it had been a pretty good test of his minor engineering skills. The look on Agent Song’s face when the old box revved itself back into the realm of the living was one of pure gratitude; if she’d known he was actually an enemy agent, she probably would have bashed his head in with it.

Or maybe not. She really did seem to like that crappy old thing.

Somehow this resulted in him being awakened at one in the morning by Athena with summons to the games-slash-movie room. He ruled out being discovered pretty quickly – they wouldn’t invite him to that room if they were going to arrest him and hand him over to Interpol or whatever. It would also be a pretty bad choice of places to bloodily execute him, what with all the electronic equipment spread throughout the room.

Whatever it was, he had to obey. Go along with whatever they want and be prepared to do anything for our cause were two of the many things drilled into him by his Talon handlers.

He could, of course, run away. But that would blow his cover, which would almost certainly ensure his capture. Going along with whatever it was that was happening was rationally the best course of action. He took a deep breath. And then another.

The support staff quarters weren’t far from the room to which he’d been called and he arrived fairly quickly. The door was shut, but a dim glow still emerged from the crack between it and the floor. It slid open as he approached, tonguing his cyanide capsule false tooth.

(As modern as they were, Talon still had some love for the good old fashioned spy staples, cyanide capsule teeth among them. It was only proper for a spy to have one.)

“And here’s Techie Bob!” Cried a voice from within the room, swiftly followed by the cheers of at least two other people.

“Uh, hi?” He said as he stepped further into the room. From what he could tell, it was Agent Song’s usual vlogging set-up, accompanied by Agents Lucio and Tracer. They were all curled up among a pile of blankets and cushions on one of the sofas in front of the biggest screen, boxy old device plugged in and playing some terrible old game with painfully dated graphics. A box in the corner of the screen indicated they were live, comments from viewers popping up rapidly.

“This is the guy I was telling you all about! He totally rescued this poor old PS4 from certain death, and I’d promised you I’d bring it out for tonight’s livestream. So, as I am forever indebted to Techie Bob, as he is henceforth to be known, say hi! Come say hi, dude!” She punctuated the introduction with a snap of very pink gum.

All three agents ushered him forwards into the recording camera’s view. He waved a bit limply; this was the exact opposite kind of exposure he wanted. His handlers were going to be pissed.

“I’m Bob. From, uh, tech support?” He tried. In front of however many thousands of viewers it sounded extremely pathetic. ‘Bob’? Really? Why the hell had they picked him out the fakest sounding name ever? And now his stupid face was going to be plastered across the internet forever for being the nice guy who fixed probably the only functional PS4 in the universe for some stupid gaming vlog. Great. His cover might as well have been blown.

With introductions largely over, the viewers’ attention returned to the game. Agent Song seemed to be finishing up, leaning a little tiredly against the other two agents as her character on-screen somehow turned into some wriggling worm thingy. God, this game was old.

“And that’s a wrap! Ooh, and it looks like – yes! I just broke the world record for fastest completion! I mean, not like there’s any competition since this is probably one of the only remaining copies of this ancient game around, but still. Another world title is another world title!” She shrugged, smiling. A hint of exhaustion was beginning to slip into her smile. “And with that, any closing questions?”

I want more techie bob!!!!

Can Techie Bob play? Hey Bob, do you play??

what’s bob short for and why is he kinda hot

TAKE OFF UR SHIRT TECHIE BOB

That last one was definitely never happening. Ever.

“Calm down, guys! I can’t make Techie Bob come back but…” she paused ominously. “…if you really want, I can try the puppy eyes on him,”

Dave steeled himself. He was an elite espionage agent for the world’s foremost terrorist group. He’d killed dozens of men with his bare hands. He had been specially selected for an incredibly dangerous undercover hacking mission by some of the most dangerous people in the world. He could handle one diminutive internet celebrity-come-Overwatch agent’s attempts at puppy eyes of all things.

Agent Song turned to him with a look in his eye that he’d never seen replicated in any other creature on Earth besides Alfie.

He couldn’t handle it.

“Okay,” his mouth said. Somehow his brain hadn’t passed on the memo to not do this incredibly stupid thing that will put your cover at risk to his body.

And that was how undercover Talon agent Dave became Techie Bob.

“You must find a way to take the situation and use it to your advantage,” said one shadowy figure in its usual sinister voice.

“Be sure to win their hearts so that the Cause may be attained,” another ominous voice concurred, face hidden in darkness.

Once again, Dave wasn’t entirely sure how to do the former and was rather losing sight of the latter. He seemed to be doing a lot more actual tech support work than spying these days – either Athena (and by extension, Winston) was onto him and his security clearance had been tampered with, or he was losing his touch. Less and less vital information seemed to pass through his hands, and most opportunities to transmit it back to Talon HQ vanished overnight.

He was being called to fix random bits of tech all over the base, from an automatic hit counter to an alarm clock to a faulty comm device. It didn’t even occur to him to plant a listening device in the enemy comm. He was definitely slipping. It was almost like a normal tech support job.

It was like the base had decided he was the go-to guy for mundane technological support. He got calls to the tech support office every hour, asking for advice on slow tablets, how to make the televisions go back to normal after someone accidentally changed the interface into a script no one could read, what to do if the Watchpoint’s internet suddenly died and no, it’s definely not a Talon attack just because the wifi has gone down.

The tech-savvy agents seemed to be greatly enjoying not having to do it instead. Hiring support staff was such a good idea.

(At least, it would have been if they hadn’t managed to hire at least two Talon spies. Seriously. God knew who else they’d hired that were spying on them, too. Or what they’d do with them if the base was raided. It was actually kind of a terrible idea.)

He’d also somehow managed to become a minor internet celebrity with the help of Agent Song, who now insisted he call her Hana like everyone else. Techie Bob was another frequent presence on her livestreams, along with both Lucio and Lena, both of whom had insisted that he call them by their names too, since he was calling Hana by her name and it was only fair. It wasn’t like he was particularly good at gaming; it was more that he wasn’t terrible, and his (partially) feigned reactions to horror games were apparently amusing. He could sort of hold his own. Mostly people seemed to want his input on their own tech support-related problems; trying to restore old devices after being inspired by the incident with the old PlayStation, the endless stream of people trying to make their internet faster, general confusion over easily fixed problems.

He got other questions, some of them deeply inappropriate, most just curious as to what he did all day. And he was honest. He even told them about Alfie and his rare Captain America comic collection. It was…easy.

His mission parameters had changed somehow. He was checking in less and less with his handlers, who seemed to be in turn checking up on him less and less. When they did, there was a note of suspicion in their voices.

It all came to a grinding halt when he accidentally interrupted a transmission from Brenda. She had been using the secure link to pass on information about an agent – Agent Song, no less – being injured, thus becoming an easy target if she was deployed within the next month, advising on how best to engineer an incident specifically to exploit her weaknesses. He’d heard the word ‘kill’ in association with the only other living creature that could successfully replicate the puppy eyed gaze of his childhood pet, and that was…unthinkable.

No one who could do the puppy eyes should ever die.

And that was how Techie Bob had become Talon Bob.

The sudden interference with the feed, which, as it transpired, was being monitored by Winston who had verified Brenda’s identity as a spy and was collecting evidence as to that fact, set off every alert Athena had put in place in case said tampering occurred. It was immediately traced back to his computer and in less than thirty seconds at least five agents had him surrounded, cowering at gun-, arrow-, sword-, freeze ray- and hammer-point.

Defecting was definitely the best option here.

After a thorough interrogation about exactly what he was doing and what information he’d passed to Talon, he was, oddly enough, allowed to retain his job in tech support. Brenda was subsequently arrested along with at least two other enemy spies picked up using the same method – it was amazing how befriending enemy agents had a tendency to get them to defect. After a while, Allison even moved to Gibraltar, thoroughly impressed by Overwatch’s dental plan and her husband’s steady job (if not by the endless snooty British expats).

(This was after she’d spent at least four hours intermittently yelling at him for being a fucking terrorist spy, after all these years of marriage you’d at least have thought to mention it at least once, and no that does not count as a steady fucking job!” Intermittent, because he was very good at running away.)

‘Talon Bob’ was at first, at least, a joke.

“Howdy, Talon Bob!” Agent McCree had called across the communal dining area upon his entry.

“Pass the salt, Talon Bob,” the grouchier Agent Shimada had intoned from across the dinner table.

“And tonight, we are joined by…” Hana’s dramatic pause was cut short as he entered the shot before the cue. “Talon Bob!”

She began a speech about how he was actually not just a tech support guy, but a double agent evil tech support guy which was honestly patently unfair. Being a terrorist was a career path, and he was also genuinely a good tech support guy. He briefly tried to explain that his name wasn’t actually Bob, but that got waved away very quickly. It looked like Talon Bob was here to stay.

When Allison found out about Talon Bob, she laughed for half an hour straight and wouldn’t tell him why.

#overwatch #ow #D.Va #d.va overwatch #lucio correia dos santos #lucio overwatch #tracer #lena oxton #tracer overwatch #winston overwatch #bob agent of hydra #but with talon #geddit #ow fanfic #this is nonsense #bloodborne #overwatch crack #ow crack

[oldwarriors-fireandwater]

Chapter Three

“Oakheart is dead!”

Rusty was suddenly awoken by the wail. He blinked, and quickly raised his head. For a moment, he forgot where he was, until everything came flooding back. Thistlestar attacked me, and I ended up here. RiverClan saved me.

Then what he had heard hit him like a stone. Dead? Rusty’s eyes widened with horror. Had Thistlestar murdered Oakheart? These wildcats really are savage!

With a glance, he could see that Mudfur was not in his den. Rusty rose, and blinked as he noticed sticky-white webs stuck to his chest, where he’d been scratched. He sniffed at it, and found it smelled like the herbs in the den. Mudfur must've put there.

Rusty padded from the den, slowly, hoping not to attract attention to himself. It was well past nightfall—moonhigh, perhaps—but many cats were still awake.

Crookedstar emerged from his den. “What?” he demanded. “Oakheart can't be dead!”

A black-furred tom and pale brown tabby molly were dragging a limp body behind the rest of their small group. Gasps of horror rose from the Clan.

“Who did this?” Crookedstar demanded. “Who?!”

“No one,” Dawnwhisker murmured, head low. “Well, Darkstripe chased him under a rock, and they started fighting… I think they jostled smaller rocks that were supporting it. But Oakheart pushed Darkstripe out, and before he could get out from under it…” She swallowed. “He was crushed by it. That's why it took us so long to get back—we were digging him out.”

A young silver tabby pressed herself to Crookedstar’s side, murmuring quietly in his ear. A sob shook Crookedstar’s body before he ordered, “Bring him to the center of camp. We’ll share tongues and bury him in the morning.”

“Oakheart was Crookedstar’s brother and closest friend.” Mudfur was suddenly at Rusty’s side, and the young tom jumped in surprise. “That molly is Silverstream, Crookedstar’s daughter.”

Rusty felt a wave of sympathy for Crookedstar, and he was surprised to find that he was saddened himself. I never got to thank him for saving my life. He watched as the two cats pulled Oakheart’s body into the center of the clearing and laid him there gently. One by one, cats came forward, pushing their muzzles into Oakheart’s fur and murmuring before turning away. “What are they doing?” he whispered to Mudfur.

“They are mourning,” Mudfur explained, his voice thick with emotion. “It's how we say farewell before Oakheart’s spirit travels to StarClan. After each cat takes their turn, those closest to him will stay the rest of the night beside him, sharing tongues for the last time before he is buried.”

StarClan? Rusty was full of questions, but felt it would be inappropriate to nag Mudfur any more. After a moment, he quietly asked, “Can… can I go up?”

Mudfur glanced at him oddly. “Why ever would you?”

Rusty looked at his paws. Did I say the wrong thing? “I just—I wanted to thank him. If he hadn't stopped Thistlestar, they would've killed me.”

“That's very kind of you,” Mudfur murmured, though he sounded a little surprised. “But I think you should wait until everyone else has gone before you do. They won't take well to it. You're an outsider, and the rest of us have lived with and fought beside him for seasons.”

Rusty nodded. I owe Oakheart thanks, he thought. He died after saving me. He swallowed, stomach twisting. Would he still be alive if I wasn’t there?

He waited patiently as each cat padded forward to say goodbye, and Mudfur left him for a moment to press his muzzle to Oakheart’s side. When he returned, he sat beside Rusty, and did not speak. After each cat had gone, Mudfur nodded to him. “Go on. Don't let them think you are afraid.”

Easier said than done! Rusty gulped and nodded before he stood and padded towards his body. A few cats hissed, but none moved to stop him until he was nearly to Oakheart. The black tom stepped in front of him. “What do you think you're doing?” he hissed.

“I wanted to thank him,” Rusty mumbled, before recalling Mudfur’s words. He raised his head, looking the tom in the eye. “Let me through, please. He saved my life.”

The tom blinked, surprised, but didn't move. “What?”

“Let him pass, Blackclaw,” Crookedstar rasped. He was sitting near Oakheart’s body, Silverstream still at his side.

Blackclaw scowled before stepping away. Rusty padded closer, staring down at the dead tom. Oakheart’s rib cage looked like it had collapsed, and his spine was bent at an odd angle. What a horrible way to die. He crouched low beside Oakheart, as he had seen the others do. After a moment, he realized the camp had fallen silent as each cat stared at him, watching his every move. “Thank you,” he said, softly. “You saved my life. I'm sorry I can't repay that to you.” He touched his nose to Oakheart’s side before quickly backing away.

The accusing glares and angry mutters seemed to fade as Rusty backed away. Maybe I did do the right thing, Rusty thought hopefully. He returned to Mudfur’s side, who gave him an approving nod.

Crookedstar pressed his muzzle to his brother’s pelt for a few long moments. Then, he raised his head, gazing solemnly around his Clan. “Because it is already moonhigh, I must name RiverClan’s deputy immediately.” He paused, and appeared to be thinking. “I say these words before the spirit of Oakheart, and hope that he approves of my choice. Leopardfur will be RiverClan’s next deputy.”

A dappled golden molly blinked and raised her head, before rising and padding forward. Rusty studied her curiously. Deputy? Is that like… the second to the leader? Whatever it was, it sounded important. Leopardfur seemed cool and composed as she padded towards Crookedstar. She then dipped her head. “Thank you,” she said. “I am honored.”

The Clan, despite their grieving, threw back their heads and yowled their congratulations. “Leopardfur! Leopardfur!”

Mudfur raised his head proudly, yowling as loudly as he could. Rusty blinked, but again felt that it may be inappropriate for him to call her name with them. As the cheering died away, Mudfur licked his chest fur. “That's my daughter,” he purred. “She used to be afraid of water, you know!”

Crookedstar stared down at the body of his brother before looking up again. “There is one more thing I wish to do.” he fixed his gaze upon Rusty, who stiffened. Was Crookedstar going to change his mind and kill him? “Rusty,” he said. “Please come forward.”

Rusty blinked, but rose again and padded towards the tom. “Y-yes?” Oh, please, don't attack me now!

“I would like to invite you to join our clan,” Crookedstar meowed. Instantly, RiverClan was yowling in surprise and protest. He lashed his tail. “Silence! Oakheart saved this kit before he died. Will you disrespect him before he has even been buried?”

Many cats frowned and stared at their paws guiltily. However, even though the Clan fell silent, there were still a few that continued to glare furiously at him.

“Now,” Crookedstar went on. “This kittypet, despite his origins, shows promise. He escaped Thistlestar’s claws and fled through the forest, a great feat for a cat his age that has been raised lazily.” Rusty bristled slightly at the words before he realized there was no malice behind them. Glancing around, he could see a few cats nodding in understanding, though others muttered unhappily. “He then crossed the river with Dawnwhisker—something few outsiders would willingly do.”

Crookedstar looked back to Rusty. “Rusty,” he asked. “Will you accept? You must understand, training will not be easy, especially since you have not had the conditioning our kits have had. You have not swam in the river before today. You've never hunted for your Clanmates or said thanks to StarClan and to the river. If you are a part of RiverClan, you must work to make these all a part of your life. Will you join?”

Rusty was silent for a long moment. What do I say? I don't know anything about this life. For a heartbeat, he considered refusing, but he then realized that wasn't what he wanted. If I go home… if I even manage to get home… I'll never be satisfied. He thought of his dreams, the itch in his claws and pull in his paws that led him to the forest in the first place. He didn't want to be fat and lazy like Henry, or foolish like Smudge.

“Though the training will be hard, the rewards are great,” Crookedstar added, when Rusty had not spoken. “You will remain a true tom, unaltered by the Cutter. You will have the loyalty of your Clanmates by your side, should you earn it. You will know true honor and pride as a warrior, if you make it through training.”

“The Cutter?” Rusty echoed.

“You've seen lazy kittypets, no doubt?” Crookedstar asked. “When toms—and mollies, too, I hear—are old enough, humans take them to the Cutter, and they are never the same. The Cutter steals their strength, and they can no longer bear kits, and they also lose any drive or motivation. They sit in the sun and care little for anything but eating and sleeping. That is your future if you return to the human’s place. But you are free to do so. Few outsiders would consider this life.”

The vet, Rusty realized. That's when Henry changed! Though he had already made up his mind, he was certain now. I can always go back if it turns out to be terrible, he told himself. “I—”

“This is ridiculous!” a white tom interrupted, growling. “You can't be serious! How do we know his humans won’t come here looking for him? And that stench will alert all the prey of his presence!”

Rusty flinched at the unexpected hostility. The white tom was now standing, sneering at Rusty. “You will just eat twice your share and work half as hard as anyone else! We all know kittypets, Cut or not, they're useless!”

There were murmurs of agreement from a few cats. Rusty looked back at Crookedstar, unsure of himself.

“Others feel this way?” Crookedstar asked, eyes narrowed.

“I do!” Blackclaw spat. “He's been here long enough. Send him off in the morning and let that be the end of it.”

Silverstream touched her tail to her father’s shoulder. “Perhaps we should cast stones,” she suggested.

Before Rusty could ask what that was, Crookedstar shook his head. “There's no use in having everyone find a stone at this time of night. But I suppose a vote is reasonable for a matter like this.” He pushed himself up to sit. “If you think Rusty should be allowed into our Clan, sit by the nursery. If you think he should be escorted from the territory in the morning, sit near the elder’s den.”

Rusty’s nerves only grew as one by one, the cats began to move to opposite sides of camp. Blackclaw and the white tom immediately hurried across the clearing to one of the reed-dens, where they sat, tails twitching irritably. That was clearly the elders’ den. Those cats made their displeasure obvious. Three more cats crossed the clearing together, though much slowly than the others. Rusty’s heart sank as Leopardfur hesitated, then crossed to the elder’s den. If a now-important cat like her didn’t want him, what chance did he have?

He turned his head to where the other group was gathering. Mudfur and Dawnwhisker were both there, as was Silverstream. A few more cats begin to join them. Rusty looked back and forth between the two—though another cat was joining the dissents, it was clear the nursery side was larger. Finally, the last cat, an elderly molly, sat with the nursery group, and Crookedstar nodded his head slowly.

Rusty puffed out his chest. They actually want me?

“You are welcome to join,” Crookedstar said. “And the majority of the Clan agrees you are fit to be here. Will you take on the life of a warrior apprentice, knowing all I have told you, and knowing the opinion of my Clan?”

Rusty didn't hesitate this time. “I will!” he replied.

“Very well,” Crookedstar meowed. “Then your kittypet life is no more. You are no longer Rusty. From now on, you will be known as Firepaw. Dawnwhisker will be your mentor.”

There were no cheers, not even from among those that had voted for him. But Dawnwhisker gave him a smile and a wink as the cats began to split up, and that was enough for him.

“Tonight you can rest in Mudfur’s den,” Crookedstar went on. “Tomorrow, your training begins.” He spoke to all cats next. “Anyone who wishes to share tongues with Oakheart may stay, but the rest should go to your nests.”

Most cats retreated to the reed-dens. As Firepaw padded back to Mudfur’s den, a few cats who had supported inviting him nodded approvingly.

Firepaw went back into the secluded den, heart racing. If only Smudge could see me now!

#chapter three #warrior cats au #warriors: fire and water

[xiajin]

finding strays sugakookie; werewolf!au

/

jungkook wouldn’t say that he has a bleeding heart, necessarily, but that’s what jimin and taehyung say about him every time he ends up in a situation like this. it’s not really his fault - tiny animals and household pets love him, and in turn, he loves tiny animals and household pets. they’re just so fun and interesting to hold and play with; he’s always thought this, even as a child. as a twenty one year old, that doesn’t change. instead of sneaking in kittens settled inside cardboard boxes from his sleeping parents, it’s setting out plastic bowls of milk for the cat that prowls outside his apartment building.

he has an affinity for cats, even though he’s always been more of a dog person himself. for some reason there are always more felines out on the streets, and they’re always willing to rub up against jungkook’s hand for some affection. he’s not really complaining.

but he’s always swayed by a pair of tiny animal eyes and a small body left by itself with no one to take care of it. that might be where taehyung and jimin come off calling him a bleeding heart, but he thinks it’s just being a good human being.

so here he is, with the situation at hand - he’s just finished setting down a plastic bowl of milk for the cat outside his apartment building. it’s 1am and it’s raining pretty heavily; he has his favorite ironman umbrella out over his head but his shoes are still wet. he pets the street cat on her head, watching her purr contently. he stays as long as it takes for her to finish her bowl of milk, and then she prances away to her hiding spot. jungkook fondly watches her go; he reaches down to pick up the bowl when he notices the drain that’s at the foot of his apartment complex. the water rushes down into the drain but - but there’s red streaked in between. alarmed, jungkook shoots back up, walking toward the drain.

that definitely looks like blood; it turn the water pink. when he breathes, it condenses in front of him; cold, still, wet. jungkook follows the drain - and the blood - to wherever it takes him. it takes about a minute walk, but he comes across an alley that he’s walked past millions of times. the source of the blood is coming from there.

he steels himself, the back of his neck prickling. thankfully he has his phone; he can call for emergencies. jungkook opens up the flashlight on his phone and walks in, saying out loud, “hello?”

no answer. he flashes his light around, hoping that something will catch his eye. “hello? is anyone here? does anyone need help?”

his voice catches as his light gets caught on large, huddled figure. it’s definitely not a human being - he counts four paws and a snout snuffling into itself. it’s too large to be a dog, too furry, but jungkook doesn’t know what else it can be; the animal has coarse, dark fur and vivid eyes, staring straight at jungkook without an ounce of remorse. it looks guarded.

he gasps at the sight of a huge slash of red on the creature’s side; someone definitely tried to hurt it. jungkook isn’t sure if it’s still bleeding or not, but the large dog doesn’t seem like he wants jungkook to come any closer.

“hey,” he starts, yelling at himself in his head. “hey, i’m not here to hurt you. i just want to help you; that looks really bad. can i touch you?” he knows logically that the animal doesn’t understand what he’s saying, but he knows that a change in the tones of one’s voice can be helpful enough. he sets his phone in his pocket, making sure that it peeks out from the top of his pocket to help give some light; umbrella in one hand, he reaches out the other.

jungkook hovers over the creature, unsure about touching, and when he goes any closer the dog snarls at him. jungkook jumps a little, not expecting that, but gives a reassuring smile. “i promise i won’t hurt you.”

they meet eyes for a little while longer. the dog reaches forward and whiffs his snout against jungkook’s hand; he’s warm, even in this cold and dreadful weather, nuzzling against jungkook for a moment before slumping down to the floor. jungkook swallows, heart thumping in his ears. he reaches forward and inspects the bloodied area on the wolf’s side, but in the torrential downpour and minimal light, he can’t make out the wound properly. taking a deep breath, jungkook rubs a comforting hand over the dog’s  - is he really a dog? he’s much too large to be a dog - head.

jungkook entertains the idea of leaving his umbrella here and getting something that will help bring the animal back to his apartment, but he has a nagging feeling that if he left the dog here then he’d never see him again. jungkook bites his lip in thought before sighing, squeezing his eyes shut in what’s going to be a painful ten minutes.

he sets his phone shut and puts it in the inside pocket of his jacket so it won’t get wet; he closes his umbrella and hooks it to another pocket of his, where it hangs precariously. jungkook pulls up his hood before reaching down to try and take the animal into his arms. he’s fairly strong, but even then, this dog is huge - and heavy. he’s warm and his fur tickles jungkook’s nose, making it hard to see as he walks down the street. somehow he manages, wetly walking into his apartment building with a wince.

he’s thankful that there’s no watchman right now, and that it’s late enough that no one is up. with a bit of maneuvering, he presses the elevator button with his hip.

inside is an old man who seems to stop thinking when jungkook manages to squeeze himself and his new, enormously large dog inside. still shocked, jungkook has to nod toward the floor for him to leave before he can punch in his floor.

jungkook has to set down the dog to open his apartment door, but picking him up again is fine. he eventually sets the dog on top of a couple of towels he set out to dry, near the heater. jungkook winces and rubs at his arms, feeling them ache and burn, before he goes to the kitchen to get himself a glass of water. there’s a minute he takes to compose himself.

“i have a huge dog in my house,” he mumbles to himself, and then shakes himself out of it. he’s just going to clean the wound up a little and do some basic first aid, and then he’ll take the dog to a vet.

after changing clothes, he goes to look for his extra first kit from his time working at a vet’s office; it’s stuffed in a closet, dusty, but still useable. jungkook washes his hands and wipes himself down with antiseptic before settling beside the huge dog.

he hesitates - in the proper lighting, the animal looks more like a wolf than a dog.

jungkook leans forward to check the bloodied area he saw before; he cleans the fur fastidiously, making sure that all the blood that’s been caked in the fur has been washed out. when he goes to check for a wound, however...he finds that there is none.

jungkook leans in close to make sure, and when he still can’t find any wound or cut, he pulls back with a confused sound. by chance, he looks towards the animal’s face, as if it can give him any answer, and nearly jumps out of his skin when he sees a pair of bright blue eyes looking back at him. his throat closes up as he realizes that he’s this close to a probably rabid animal’s claws, but the dog doesn’t seem like he’s angry or hostile at jungkook. in fact, he looks a little wary but genuinely calm, content with watching jungkook’s every move.

instead of commenting about the lack of wound and the mysterious appearance of blood - what good would it do, anyway? - jungkook says, “you’re awake!” and reaches out a hand. the dog moves back a little, looking displeased, and jungkook remembers that he’s wearing gloves with strong antiseptic on them. he takes them off sheepishly, again moving his hand toward the dog’s snout. he’s met with another nuzzle.

“i found you in the rain,” he starts, voice quiet. “i wonder how you got there. i hope no one tried to hurt you...it seems like someone did, though.” jungkook rubs his fingers behind the dog’s ears, and he - it’s a he, jungkook checked - lets out a low whine. “want something to eat?”

he sets out a bowl of water, a bowl of rice, and manages to scrounge up a banana. the dog’s ears perk up at the sight of food. slowly, he manages to get up and trot over to the bowls settling down first to drink the water before slowly starting on the rice. jungkook marvels at how large he is - larger than any other dog he’s ever seen, even while working at the vet. jungkook peels the banana and cuts it into slices, leaving it on the empty rice dish.

“i wonder what breed you are,” he marvels to himself,  reaching forward to reverently pat down his coat. “i might still have my grooming brush. let me go find it... it might help you feel better.”

he kicks aside his shoes as he goes to his room, looking into the top drawer of his dresser. after a few moments, the dog trots in after him, a bit of banana stuck near it’s mouth. he looks so expectant at jungkook that he just has to laugh, wiping down his face with a tissue. he finds the brush and hops onto his bed, patting the space next to him. surprisingly, the dog hops on as well, curling into a resting position; jungkook knows now that this dog must belong to someone.

he starts brushing all of the dog’s wonderful, midnight-dark fur, starting from his head down to his back. it’s peaceful and takes jungkook’s mind off of things. it’s only until later that he remembers that he left his bowl outside with the cat. he lets out an aborted giggle at himself, rubbing his temples, before shaking his head.

“i’m tired,” jungkook announces at large. “i’m going to sleep. let me get out some blankets for you - “ he’s cut off by the dog tugging on his shirt, held between his teeth. “what?”

the dog makes a great big show of getting up and padding over to one half of jungkook’s bed, settling down, and putting his snout back into his arms. jungkook hides a smile and says, “alright, well. one night can’t hurt.” he hasn’t slept with a dog in a while, but jungkook will never say no to a nice source of warmth. he would be more cautious usually, but this dog seems like he’s extremely well behaved, so jungkook believes that nothing will happen to him.

he runs his fingers through the dog’s warm, clean fur, before bringing a pillow close to himself and sleeping, a line of warmth at his back. he’ll go to the vet tomorrow.

/

jungkook comes to with the sensation of something around his stomach, as well as something pressing against his back. he blinks crusty eyes open, groaning into his pillow and wiping at them haphazardly; a reminder that he has to wash his face. he lets himself sink into the morning warmth a bit longer, glints of sunlight peeking through his windows, and the hand around his waist curls into his shirt.

panicked, his eyes open wide. hand?

he practically throws his pillow across the room to turn around; he comes face to face with a pair of closed eyes, a strong jaw and nose, a pair of pale lips. the man has dark hair and - and no clothes -

jungkook yells.

he’s trying to say who the hell are you get out of my bed but what comes out is a squashed amalgam of words that ends up turning into incoherent sounds. jungkook jerks backward so quickly that he falls off the bed, scratching his arm on the side table, blanket tangled around his bare legs.

the man in his bed shoots up at the slightest sound, eyes glowing unnaturally blue.

jungkook stares at him in shock, the beginnings of a splutter working up in his throat, and the man raises an eyebrow at him lazily, his eyes fading back to black before he also stiffens, looking down at his hands. he has square shoulders and is lithely defined; jungkook wants to say something but his heart is still jackrabbiting.

“uh,” the man in his bed starts in a deep voice like gravel, “i can explain.”

jungkook throws him a pair of clothes that belonged to jin that last time he stayed over at jungkook’s apartment (during finals week, because his place is closest to school) and sits all the way across the room, holding onto a bat that he got for free for winning a competition at a batting range. it probably won’t do anything, but he feels strangely out of his element, knowing that this guy was touching him intimately a couple of moments earlier.

“how’d you get into my house?” he asks suspiciously. “why were you in my bed? why were you spooning me?”

“uh - “

“are you a molester? a sleep walker? i know all of my neighbors, i don’t remember you - “

“my name’s min yoongi,” he starts slowly, standing awkwardly as he sees jungkook holding onto the bat loosely, “i promise i won’t hurt you, okay, just - i’m sorry about that. really.” he holds out his palm like - like the way jungkook had to the dog yesterday, as if trying to placate a scared animal. his voice isn’t soft but it is soothing, and once jungkook makes that link in his mind, he can’t help but put the bat away.

“you’re,” jungkook starts, blinking terribly, “you’re?” it’s not possible. his voice pitches a little higher. “you’re the dog?”

“i’m a wolf,” yoongi says a little grumpily, and jungkook feels a little lightheaded when - right in front of him, yoongi shifts back into the dog that jungkook had saved, fed, and washed last night.

he has to get the second pair of clothes jin hyung left at his place for yoongi to wear.

“thanks for finding me,” yoongi says once he’s clothed again, all blasé but also with a hint of contrition. “honestly i had healed by then, but...it was nice not to sleep in the rain.”

“yeah, well,” jungkook hears himself saying faintly, “i guess no one likes sleeping in the rain.”

yoongi’s mouth tilts upward in a half smile, half smirk. “definitely liked my new sleeping arrangements better.”

jungkook thinks it’s completely justified for him to throw a pillow at yoongi’s face.

in the end, he tells yoongi to stay over for pancakes. they talk about yoongi’s lycanthropy - gosh, that’s a real fucking thing - and jungkook keeps his lightheadedness at bay long enough for yoongi to prove himself to be an actual human being and not some figment of jungkook’s overactive imagination. it becomes more so apparent when jungkook finds yoongi’s number in his phone long after the man himself leaves, and then again the next night when yoongi comes by in a leather jacket and black boots to return the clothes he borrowed. jungkook lets yoongi stay for a cup of coffee.

yoongi ends up staying much longer than that.

#sugakookie #yoonkook #jeon jungkook #min yoongi

[redditnosleep]

Mimicry

by Pippinacious

I was worried when I first inherited Claudette that she would be lonely and depressed. I knew parrots were supposed to be social creatures, but I was barely equipped to handle one, much less get her a companion. Aunt June, who had "generously" given the bird to me after discovering how loud and energetic she could be, assured me that Claudette was an independent sort and would be fine on her own.

Claudette and I had a rocky start. I was timid around her large beak and sharp claws and she was slow to trust yet another new person. She'd apparently had a number of homes in her twenty-five years, all of whom had given her up much the same as Aunt June had. That was mostly why I kept her; I felt sorry for her and wanted her to finally have a home, even if it meant a steep learning curve.

We had what felt like a very long period of adjustment, during which I learned that getting bitten, while painful, could have been much worse and she started to at least recognize me as the hand that fed her. When I discovered she was happiest in my small, screened-in porch, I moved her cage there and gave her free run of it, which also improved our relationship.

It took a lot a time, patience, and treats, but eventually it got to the point that she would fly over to me whenever I went out and sit on my arm while she inhaled whatever I'd brought her.

If I had been worried about her getting lonely while I was away, those concerns were quickly banished when I realized she was making fast friends with the mockingbirds who nested in a tree behind my apartment. They'd trade calls and squawk at each other throughout the day, which sometimes got me in a little trouble with my more noise-sensitive neighbors, but that wasn't anything a few homemade cookies and apology cards couldn't smooth over.

I'd never considered getting a parrot before, but Claudette proved to be a sweet, smart girl once you got past her initial orneriness and I learned that she had a fairly extensive (and sometimes colorful) vocabulary and was an excellent little mimic. I also found out that, over the course of a few months while I was at work, she'd apparently been teaching the mockingbirds a thing or two.

I was sitting on the porch one evening, giving Claudette a little neck scratch before going in to make dinner, when I heard a soft, but very distinct voice coming from somewhere over head.

"Shit!" It said.

I jumped, having not seen or heard anyone approach, and looked around, but my little corner of the apartment complex was quiet and no one was outside. In my lap, Claudette started to bob her head, her feathers ruffling ever so slightly.

"Shit!" The voice said again.

"Shit!" Claudette answered.

She and the voice went back and forth a few more times, enthusiastically shouting one of her favorite words, until I rushed her inside in embarrassment and to keep whoever was taunting her from going any further. It wasn't until I saw one of her mockingbird friends swoop by the porch a few times, obviously in search of Claudette, that I realized the voice I'd been hearing hadn't been someone encouraging her naughty behavior; it had been the mockingbirds mimicking her.

Claudette had taught the wild birds to swear.

It was going to take a lot more cookies to get back on my neighbors' good sides when they figured that one out.

Instead of moving her inside, I decided to try and encourage her to use sweeter phrases that I hoped the mockingbirds would pick up on.

"Hello!" I said, over and over again.

"Hello!" Claudette said.

"Shit!" The mockingbirds said.

Shit indeed.

I hadn't even known mockingbirds could "talk", much less how to get them to pick up new words, so I scoured the Internet and asked around, hoping for some insight.

They just repeat what they hear often. One bird enthusiast replied when I left a comment on a forum. They'll pick up something else soon! A mockingbird near me constantly called my dogs for ages until it picked up a new bird song. Good luck!

Ok, I told myself, I could wait them out.

In the meantime, I kept working with Claudette to clean up her own language and spent a bit of time every night repeating words to her and rewarding her when she got them right. It took a few more weeks and months, but the swearing was definitely on a decline and I hadn't heard the mockingbirds repeating her anymore, so I was counting it a victory.

One morning, when I went out to feed her before I left for work, she bobbed and paced along her rung with her usual enthusiasm, but I noticed she was making these odd, raspy noises, like she couldn't quite catch her breath.

I took her up on my arm and gave her a quick once over while stroking her back. "You ok?" I asked.

"Hello!" She said and the odd breathing stopped.

I waited for a little while, almost enough time to make me late, but she seemed fine and I rushed out to get to work.

The next morning, however, the low, rasping noises were back. She again came over to me and fluffed and bobbed, all the while making the ragged breathing sounds.

Outside, the mockingbirds were responding with unusual clicking noises. I didn't pay much attention to them, too concerned for my poor parrot.

Unable to leave her again when she was in such an obvious state of distress, I called my boss to let her know I had a family emergency and hurried Claudette to the nearby vet. I told them in a quavering voice that I was sure she had some kind of serious illness and explained that she was having trouble breathing and they ushered me into a room to wait for the doctor.

When he came in, I again told him about the sounds and begged him to listen to Claudette. She was sitting in her travel cage, preening quietly, completely undisturbed by the fact that her life was hanging in the balance.

"I swear, she sounded horrible yesterday and today." I insisted.

"Sometimes these things come and go." Dr. Graham said gently. "Can you do me a favor? Imitate the sound she was making."

I quickly did as he asked, hoping I'd be accurate enough for him to understand the severity of the situation, and immediately, Claudette started to mimic me.

Dr. Graham hid a small smile behind his hand before catching himself and becoming serious again.

"She's fine, Stacey. It seems she may have uh...overheard you during some nighttime activities and is just repeating those sounds."

"What?"

"I think she's heard you with a partner. You know...during intimate moments."

Claudette emphasized his statement with an unmistakable little moan.

With my face burning a bright red, I packed up my bird, mumbled an apology and thanked him, and practically ran out of the office.

"You've been listening to the neighbors." I accused a now whistling Claudette on the way home. "Or has someone been playing their TV too loud? How did you learn to make those noises?"

It certainly hadn't been from me, that much I knew. Whatever it was, it must have been going on for a while if she was starting to mimic it. I couldn't just go around asking my neighbors if they were getting down and dirty with the windows open, so for now, I'd just have to try and keep a closer eye on what she was getting exposed to.

When I released her back onto the porch, she squawked a chorus of hellos to the mockingbirds, who sang back, and then settled on top of her cage for a nap in the sun.

I sat on the porch with her for a good portion of the day, but didn't hear anything particularly telling, and eventually gave up when it became uncomfortably warm outside. I still poked my head out in occasion, but the most unusual thing I heard was the mockingbirds making their newly picked up clicking sound. While it was familiar, I couldn't quite place where I'd heard it before and dismissed it.

Claudette's heavy breathing sounds started to become a more frequent part of our morning, along with the occasional moan, and every so often, she'd mumble to herself.

"Pretty, pretty, pretty."

At least that was an improvement on "shit".

She and the mockingbirds continued their back and forth and I got used to their clicking noises the same way I had their swearing. It was especially bad in the morning when Claudette was doing what I came to call her "breathing exercises".

Ragged breathing

Click click

Moan

Click click

Rinse and repeat until midday.

I just had to wait them out and they'd eventually move on to some new sound to try and drive me crazy with.

But the more I heard it, the more I realized there was something about the click, which was becoming more refined and distinct every day, that kept nagging at me. I knew the sound and, given a bit more time, I was sure I'd pinpoint exactly what they were imitating, but it continued to elude me.

"How's Claudette doing?" My sister asked while we drank wine and had our weekly Thursday night phone call.

I was sitting in my living room in my pajamas, little more than a tank top and a pair of shorts that were too small to wear out in public, with my phone in one hand and my glass in the other. I'd left my sliding glass door leading out to the porch opened just wide enough for Claudette to waddle inside if she wanted to join me.

"She's fine, still doing that nasty breathing thing."

"You figure out who's taught it to her?"

"I'm leaning towards the Johnsons; they've always struck me as exhibitionist types."

Raina giggled. "Aren't they the old people?"

"Yeah and they need some lovin', too!"

While we laughed, I heard a series of very soft clicks through the opened door.

"Oh! Oh!" I said. "The mockingbirds are doing the thing I told you about! Maybe you can hear them and tell me what this damn noise is!"

I sprang up from my couch and crossed the living room to yank back the sheer curtain hanging across the slider.

The clicking stopped immediately.

Beside me, Claudette paced back and forth across her cage top, mumbling all the while.

"Pretty, pretty, pretty."

A bush on the other side of the screen shook just slightly.

The light from inside my apartment reflected off the porch screen, making it difficult to see outside, and I froze.

"I can't hear them." Raina said in my ear. "Stacey?"

The bushes rustled again.

Claudette started to make the shuddering, raspy breathing sounds.

From the trees overhead, the mockingbirds responded with their clicks.

I now recognized the sound with sudden, chilling clarity.

"Raina," I said as calmly as I could, "I think someone's in my bushes."

As soon as the words left my mouth, a dark figure sprang upright and was making a mad dash around the side of the apartment building. It happened so quickly that I couldn't make out much, no features, nothing significant, just dark clothes and maybe a hat, and then he was gone.

Raina was asking me in a near panic if she should call the police while I was too stunned to answer.

It had taken months for me to teach Claudette words, months for her to pick up new sounds, months for her to learn to mimic accurately. No doubt it would have taken the same amount of time listening to someone breathing heavily and moaning to repeat the sounds accurately.

My stomach dropped, fast and far, and I thought I might vomit.

She hadn't learned those sounds from noisy neighbors or a television show. She'd learned it from the man who'd been hiding outside my apartment, panting like a dog while he watched me.

I stumbled back against the slider and scrambled to get inside again.

Over my shoulder, one of the mockingbirds called out into the night from a treetop.

Click click

The perfect imitation of a camera shutter.

#creepy #horror story #author: Pippinacious

[silversnaffles]

Okay so whilst I wanted to vent about this, I didn’t want to just in case but my mum’s been telling people irl so I’m gonna do it. (this is super, super long so idc if no one reads, I just wanna get it off my chest).

I’m annoyed at Star’s (and Amber’s) loaners. The family who loan them are a mother and her two young daughters (a 9 year old and 13 year old). They’ve been having a hard time, and mum wanted the old girls to have some attention so she offered them on loan with the only ‘payment’ being mucking out the girls’ paddock. Initially this worked out well, Star had a little girl gushing over her and they were both being lightly ridden (I had still been hacking Star out so she was fine). But then the mucking out started to slip, as well as the actual care itself.

We stupidly took it for granted. They were always gushing over how much they love the mares and mum had known the mother for years, so we assumed the mares were being properly cared for. We’d check on them in the paddock and do their water and stuff, but that was it. 

Alarm bells should’ve rung when I brought Amber in a couple of months ago to change her rugs when I found her hair falling out of her belly, and loads of scabs and dried puss underneath. I assumed it was a simple mistake, I sometimes forget to check the bellies too. I cleaned up and applied some silver spray and told them and my mum to keep an eye on it.

Now, since then we’d been concerned with how the mother had started to leave the girls to do their own things with the mares, despite wanting to loan them to teach the girls to ride. The 13 year old is fine left to her own devices as she just likes to groom Amber (and with Amber being 32, this is fine). However, the 9 year old has started trotting Star constantly. Just up and down in straight lines. Even under Star’s thick cushings coat, you can see her condition isn’t great from the winter and her back legs are stiff from the arthritis (the mother told me she’d look into joint supplements but never did), but the kid just keeps trotting.

Also Star has started to be aggressive towards the kid. Star has never bit anyone. She is essentially a little quiet push button pony, a total angel. But she’s started biting. I found this to be bizarre as she’s great with kids (even when she was a nervous wreck she was great with kids on the ground). So I checked the saddle they had for her (which we gave them in the summer when Star was overweight). It was huge on her, because she dropped weight I had to find out her narrow saddle. If they had checked the saddle and told me, I’d have sorted this out much earlier. Anyway Star kept biting, she just started to move a bit better from the saddle change. So, something else was bugging her, and it seems it’s the kid as she runs Star around constantly and is always screeching.

There is also the issue of the stiff legs and bad fitting saddle, I suggested to the loaner to get the physio out for at least one session as it’ll really help Star. Now it’s like £40 a session and she told me she didn’t have the money for that which I thought was fair enough and decided I was going to do it when I was next paid. But then she went and got a license to own a zebra?? That’s right, she wanted to buy a zebra. And then started to ask my mum and our friend if either of them would loan a share horse with her, OR if she could bring onto the land a 11.2hh loan pony for the kids? Like no? You can only come up at weekends, and even then it’s always late in the afternoon/evenings and you barely muck out so we’d end up caring for it, and you can’t afford one physio session what makes you think you could afford another pony?

There’s also the issue of Star’s coat. Normally Star is clipped all the time since she was a show pony, and it also helped manage her cushings. But last autumn, our clippers broke so we weren’t able to clip her. This didn’t bother us too much since the temperature was dropping anyway, and when the wet came we threw waterproof rugs on to keep her dry. However, as we’ve been approaching Spring, I’ve been essentially nagging the loaners to get her clipped as she’s going to start to overheat in that coat. It took like two months for her to actually reach out to someone to get her clipped and that was two weeks ago, and she still hasn’t worked out a date. Luckily, we made an emergency buy and bought some clippers due to what I found the other day.

When I was mucking out the field with Star and Amber in (and Amera now as Tara has recently started being stabled), I noticed Star’s eye was extremely gunky. So I dropped everything and took her (or dragged her since she’s now lost all enthusiasm since the loaners started) to the yard to clean up her eye and give her eye drops, and I also decided to take off her rug as it was clear it was too warm for her and the rug was pulling on her withers. Whilst she was with me I decided to give her a groom, and the one side was alright, but then I got to the next side and all of her belly was covered in matted fur. So, I ended up sitting on the floor cutting away at all of it. Then I found multiple bald patches. HUGE ones. like the size of my hands. And she was so so quiet. It’s clear that these patches and matted fur have developed over a few weeks, and they’ve still been tacking her up so I have no idea how they never noticed. My mum reckons that the kid only grooms the one side if that. 

In a state of panic, we called out the vet. Turns out, after the mini break out of lice we had last year (which me and my mum thought we got on top of), they didn’t treat the mares for lice. So amongst Star’s extremely thick cushings coat she had thousands of lice and they didn’t notice. It also explains how Amera’s suddenly become itchy again, I put it down to shedding. 

Anyway, the vet recommended getting her clipped asap and then applying some of this strong lice treatment and to treat all of our other horses again. She also did bloods, as for the past five years we’ve been naturally managing Star’s cushings but it’s clear that she now needs meds.

So since, Friday, I’ve been bringing Star in myself every day to treat her eye, groom her, feed her, and also applied some lice powder to keep her going until the clippers arrive (hopefully tomorrow), and she’s started to perk up a bit. Her eye is now pretty much clear, and yesterday when she finished her dinner she picked up the bucket between her teeth and threw it at me and then proceeded to bite the lead rope and pull at it. The fact she’s doing these small things again, shows she’s slowly getting back to her old self again. She was also a little git earlier and ran away when she realised I wanted to sort her eye out (but then realised she could only be fed if she had her eye done so let me catch her).

I do feel awful complaining like this, they are nice people (except for the 9 year old I honestly cannot stand her. I love the 13 year old, she’s a sweetheart but I’m always super close to strangling the youngest) and I do love the mother, and I do think they love the ponies. BUT I can’t let this slide. That is my pony that isn’t being cared for properly. And even if the bald patches had only suddenly developed in a couple of days, that doesn’t excuse the matted fur. My mum was livid and so was our friend on the yard with us (she owned Star from the ages of 9 months to 3 years old before she gave her to us). 

We’ve told them that Star can’t be ridden anymore because of her arthritis, which is pretty true atm. We’re hoping we can get her condition back and she can be shown in-hand again next year (this year is obviously going to be a no-go) as she loves going out. And maybe, if she does get better and the physio helps, I’ll lightly hack her out again to keep her busy. Whilst I’m tall, I’m still quite light (which I don’t look, I know, but I promise I’m under 10 stone, nearly 9 stone - I was 9 stone but I put on a bit of weight over winter), and through only riding her for years I know to move with her so she’s not put off balance. I just need her weight and condition back, but we’ll have to wait till all of that fur is gone so we’ll have a better idea on how to feed her.

We also have a new stable being built so Merlin can move out of her stable into his own, and she can be stabled with Merlin, Tara and Arthur. Then we can feed her as much as we want and have better control of her diet. We would put her own more grass but because of her lami/cushings we can’t risk it. 

I’m just hoping they return her tack soon as we told them she can’t be ridden but they still have her saddle, bridle, girth, saddle pads, new market exercise fleece and brushing boots. My mum and friend don’t quite trust them not to ride her, and tbh the way the kid kept taking on and off her bridle the other day and begging to ride, I don’t either.

If they do decide to stop loaning her and Amber, I seriously hope they return all of our tack. Whilst a lot of it is old, all of it together is still worth a fair bit (not so much Star’s narrow saddle, that thing is falling to pieces) and would be difficult to replace (or pointless since the mares are getting on). 

We do hope the novelty will wear off soon and they’ll move on, we don’t want to end on bad terms so we won’t do it ourselves (fingers crossed they’ll give me my tack back if they do leave)

Honestly though, I cried on Friday when I found out how Star is. She was right under my nose the whole time and I assumed they looked after her properly and left them to it, but I was wrong, and now I feel like a bad mom. I’m going to make up for it to her. That pony is going to be super pampered from now on (which she was before tbh, it was them that I stopped pampering her for as I thought they'd do that for them)

#honestly #a fucking zebra license #where the fuck would she have kept it #it wasn't coming on our land #we'd become a fucking spectacle #also why another horse when you can't even look after the two ponies you have #rant

[gokinjeespot]

off the rack #1149

Monday, January 30, 2017

 It's the Chinese Year of the Rooster folks and there's a cock in the White House. We are living in interesting times indeed. I am trying my best not to get riled up by the d-bag but it's difficult. The empathy I feel for others means I cannot ignore the affect the changes have on everybody. I just hope we all get through these difficult times relatively unscathed.

 I'm going to have a fun Sunday on February 5. I'll be at the Walkley Arena for the Capital Trade Show where my partner Chris and I will be flogging old comic books. Then it's Super Bowl 51 with two gun slinging quarterbacks. I am cheering for a high scoring affair.

 Civil War II: The Oath #1 - Nick Spencer (writer) Rod Reis, Raffaele Ienco, Szymon Kudranski & Dono Sanchez-Almara (art) VC's Chris Eliopoulos (letters). Didn't see that coming. While it makes sense to appoint Captain America as the new Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. (again) the surprise is that I don't think it's Steve Rogers under the mask. I don't particularly like the new political landscape that the Marvel U is headed towards but it does make for some easy enemies for the good guys to fight with. Nick put in a lot of rah, rah patriotism in this book so it was a tough slog trying to get through it but the payoff at the end is worth it.

 Kamandi Challenge #1 - Part One: Dan Didio (writer) Keith Giffen (pencils) Scott Koblish (inks) Hi-Fi (colours) Clem Robins (letters) Part Two: Dan Abnett (writer) Dale Eaglesham (art) Hi-Fi (colours) Clem Robins (letters). He's the last boy on Earth and he's going on a wild adventure to find his parents. One of Jack Kirby's creations is getting a round robin of comic book creators to excite fans like never before. Each part of the story will be done by a different team that will end with a cliffhanger that the next team must find a way to resolve. I have a nagging feeling that this stunt has been done before but I can't remember when so I'm going to tag along to see who does what. I'm not a fan of Kamandi but I want to see who all are going to be involved on the creative side.

 Loose Ends #1 - Jason Latour (writer) Chris Brunner (art) Rico Renzi (colours). The cover says that this 4-issue mini is a southern crime romance. They got that right. We're looking at a trailer dwelling war vet whose friend gets him mixed up in running drugs. You can expect that the vet and the friend get into a heap of trouble and they do. I like how Sonny and Rej each wind up where they do at the end of this first issue so you bet I'm going to keep reading. Not much romance so far but I'm sure Jason will get to that.

 Star Wars #27 - Jason Aaron (writer) Salvador Larroca (art) Edgar Delgado (colours) VC's Clayton Cowles (letters). Yay Yoda. Root for him I will.

 Batgirl #7 - Hope Larson (writer) Chris Wildgoose (art) Mat Lopes (colours) Deron Bennett (letters). Part 1 of "Son of Penguin" introduces Ethan Cobblepot and I don't care if there is no reference to him anywhere else in the DCU because he's going to be a great adversary for Barbara Gordon. I like how Chris draws her older than Rafael Albuquerque did. This is going to be fun.

 Briggs Land #6 - Brian Wood (writer) Mack Chater (art) Lee Loughridge & Jeremy Colwell (colours) Nate Piekos (letters). I really like Grace Briggs. The risks that she is taking will hopefully keep her people safe. Brian has crafted a story fit for cable TV.

 Totally Awesome Hulk #15 - Greg Pak (writer) Mahmud Asrar (art) Nolan Woodward (colours) VC's Cory Petit (letters). Greg continues to feature heroes of the Asian persuasion in this story about Amadeus hanging out with Jake Oh, Kamala Khan, Cindy Moon, Shang-Chi, and Jimmy Woo. It does play on some stereotypes but I think it's okay because they're true for these guys.

 Odyssey of the Amazons #1 - Kevin Grevioux (writer) Ryan Benjamin (pencils) Richard Friend (inks) Tony Washington & Tony Avina (colours) Saida Temofonte (letters). This 6-issue mini has a lot of women but not a wonder one in sight. Kevin features Diana's sister Amazons in a tale worthy of Homer. If you like classic sword and sorcery, you'll like this.

 Dead Inside #2 - John Arcudi (writer) Tony Fejzula (art) Andre May (colours) Joe Sabino (letters). The plot thickens like congealed blood and murder suspects start to emerge. Linda has plenty to deal with inside the prison but she's surprised when she gets home after work by a sight I did not expect to see. This mystery is crazy good.

 Inhumans vs. X-Men #3 - Charles Soule & Jeff Lemire (writer) Javier Garron (art) Andres Mossa & Jay David Ramos (colours) VC's Clayton Cowles (letters). There are three more issue to this mini but it seems to me that Charles and Jeff have already come up with a solution to the Terrigen cloud that would end the war. The mutant Forge has built a machine that can collect the Terrigen gas and compress it into a solid in this issue. Wouldn't that solve the problem of the gas killing the mutants? Works for me.

 Justice League vs. Suicide Squad #6 - Joshua Williamson (writer) Howard Porter (art) Alex Sinclair (colours) Rob Leigh (letters). All is well that ends well. Both teams join forces to defeat Eclipso and Max Lord is at the mercy of Amanda Waller. Batman sees the light and gathers another team together to fight evil forces. Get ready for a new Justice League of America #1 hitting the racks on February 22. DC is sure spreading Bats pretty thin these days.

 Skybourne #3 - Frank Cho (writer & artist) Marcio Menyz (colours) Ed Dukeshire (letters). The identity of the bad guy was a nice surprise. I like Frank's comic books because they're simple stories about good versus evil that are beautifully drawn.

 Hulk #2 - Mariko Tamaki (writer) Nico Leon & Dalibor Talajic (art) Matt Milla (colours) VC's Cory Petit (letters). Waiting for Jennifer to Hulk out is one of the things I like about the new book. She has a lot more self control than I have. The scary thing about the eventuality of her losing control is that this new Hulk will be an uncontrollable creature of rage but we'll have to wait and see what happens. Until then I'm enjoying Jen's life so far.

 Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps #13 - Robert Venditti (writer) V Ken Marion (pencils) Paul Neary & Dexter Vines (inks) Alex Sollazzo (colours) Dave Sharpe (letters). Now that the planet Xudar has been saved, what now? It's time for a bedtime story that's what. This is a nice interlude issue before we launch into the next story. I've been enjoying this team book now that my loyalty to the Avengers has waned. We'll see if Robert can keep me hooked with his next adventure.

 Saga #42 - Brian K. Vaughn (writer) Fiona Staples (art) Fonografiks (letters). And fade to black. No, really. It's hiatus time again but this issue didn't leaving me screaming profanities about the long wait until the next issue hits the racks. There is a new character introduced who I will be very interested to find out more about.

 Doctor Strange #16 - Jason Aaron (writer) Chris Bachalo with Cory Smith (art) Al Vey, John Livesay, Victor Olazaba, &  Tim Townsend (inks) Antonio Fabela & Java Tartaglia with Chris Bachalo (colours) VC's Cory Petit (letters). Dormammu is finally going to get his chance to kill Doctor Strange after he has been weakened by his fight with the Empirikul. Jason does find a neat way to save Stephen however. The next bit of nastiness involves someone close to the Doc. Oboy.

 Wonder Woman #15 - Greg Rucka (writer) Liam Sharp (art) Laura Martin (colours) Jodi Wynne (letters). Part 1 of "The Truth" finds Diana in a mental hospital. How she got there has yet to be explained but I'm sure I can handle it.

 Punisher #8 - Becky Cloonan (writer) Laura Braga with Iolanda Zanfardino (art) Frank Martin (colours) VC's Cory Petit (letters). That little old lady toting the double barrelled shotgun from last issue is named Ethel. She looks scary but she's not what you think. The change in art took some getting used to but it isn't bad enough to make me bench this book. I do have a couple of complaints though. If you're going to call a motorcycle a Harley, don't show what looks like a BMW logo on the gas tank. Also, draw the bad guy from the chest up when Frank says that he opened up his guts, not a full body shot that clearly shows an abdomen without any wounds at all. I don't know if the art had to be rushed after Steve Dillon passed away unexpectedly but that's just shoddy editing.

 Action Comics #972 - Dan Jurgens (writer) Stephen Segovia (pencils) Art Thibert (inks) Ulises Arreola (colours) Rob Leigh (letters). Trust Dan to come up with a non-violent way to stop Lex from being executed by the bad guys. It also served to show what possible futures are in store for this new Superman. DC has managed to revive my interest in this iconic character.

 Daredevil #16 - Charles Soule (writer) Goran Sudzuka (art) Matt Milla (colours) VC's Clayton Cowles (letters). We find out why Daredevil put out a hit on himself to lure out Bullseye. There's some soul searching this issue which leads into the next storyline. I liked how Charles sets it up.

 Detective Comics #949 - James Tynion IV & Marguerite Bennett (writers) Ben Oliver & Szymon Kudranski (art) Ben Oliver, Gabe Eltaeb & Hi-Fi (colours) Marilyn Patrizio (letters). The finale of "Batwoman Begins" is a very good prelude to Batwoman's solo book which hits the racks on February 15. It looks like James and Marguerite are going to have a Raymond Reddington and Agent Keen thing going on between Kate and her dad. That's got me interested.

 Infamous Iron Man #4 - Brian Michael Bendis (writer) Alex Maleev (art) Matt Hollingsworth (colours) VC's Clayton Cowles (letters). Brian must have a thing for mother and son stories. He did it in International Iron Man where he introduced Tony's biological mother. Now he's showing us Victor's mom. I really do believe that Doom has reformed and I hope he stays a good guy.

 Spider-Man/Deadpool: Monsters Unleashed - Joshua Corin (writer) Tigh Walker (art) Rachelle Rosenberg (colours) VC's Joe Sabino (letters). The boys save Toronto eh.

 Thanos #3 - Jeff Lemire (writer) Mike Deodato (art) Frank Martin (colours) VC's Clayton Cowles (letters). It's the Imperial Guard of the Shi'ar versus Thanos. A perfect opportunity to give a history lesson on the life of the Mad Titan.

 Spider-Woman #15 - Dennis Hopeless (writer) Veronica Fish (art) Rachelle Rosenberg (colours) VC's Travis Lanham (letters). Jessica subdues the new Porcupine and finds out who put the hit out on her friend Roger. Now she's gunning for the Hobgoblin but he's protected by an army of super villains. I hope little Gerry doesn't become an orphan.

[katebushwick]

One cold October night in the late 1990s, three Hmong American matsutake pickers huddled in their tent. Shivering, they brought their gas cooking stove inside to provide a little warmth. They went to sleep with the stove on. It went out. The next morning, all three were dead, asphyxiated by the fumes. Their deaths left the campground vulnerable, haunted by their ghosts. Ghosts can paralyze you, taking away your ability to move or speak. The Hmong pickers moved away, and the others soon moved too. The U.S. Forest Service did not know about the ghosts. They wanted to rationalize the pickers’ camping area, to make it accessible to police and emergency services, and easier for campground hosts to enforce rules and fees. In the early 1990s, Southeast Asian pickers had camped where they pleased, like everyone else who visits the national forests. But whites complained that Southeast Asians left too much litter. The Forest Communal agendas, Oregon. A Mien pickers’ encampment. Here Mien recalled village life and escaped the confinements of California cities. 74 Chapter 5 Service responded by shunting the pickers to a lonely access road. At the time of the deaths, the pickers were camped all along the road. But soon afterward, the Forest Service built a great grid, with numbered camping spaces, scattered portable toilets, and, after many complaints, a large tank of water at the (rather distant) campground entrance. The campsites had no amenities, but the pickers—escaping from the ghosts—quickly made them their own. Mimicking the structure of the refugee camps in Thailand where many had spent more than a decade, they segregated themselves into ethnic groups: on one end, Mien and then those Hmong willing to stay; half a mile away, Lao and then Khmer; in an isolated hollow, way back, a few whites. The Southeast Asians built structures of slim pine poles and tarps and put their tents inside, sometimes with the addition of wood stoves. As in rural Southeast Asia, possessions were hung from the rafters, and an enclosure gave privacy for dip baths. In the center of the camp, a big tent sold hot bowls of pho. Eating the food, listening to the music, and observing the material culture, I thought I was in the hills of Southeast Asia, not the forests of Oregon. The Forest Service’s idea about emergency access did not work out as it imagined. A few years later, someone called emergency services in behalf of a critically wounded picker. Regulations aimed only at the mushroom camp required the ambulance to wait for police escort before entering. The ambulance waited for hours. When the police finally showed up, the man was dead. Emergency access had not been limited by terrain but by discrimination. This man, too, left a dangerous ghost, and no one slept near his campsite except Oscar, a white man and one of the few local residents to seek out Southeast Asians, who did it once, drunk, on a dare. Oscar’s success in getting through the night led him to try picking mushrooms on a nearby mountain, sacred to local Native Americans and the home of their ghosts. But the Southeast Asians I knew stayed away from that mountain. They knew about ghosts. Oregon’s center of matsutake commerce in the first decade of the twenty-first century was a place not marked on any map, “in the middle of nowhere.” Everyone in the trade knew where it was, but it wasn’t a Open Ticket, Oregon 75 town or a recreation site; it was officially invisible. Buyers had established a cluster of tents along the highway, and every evening pickers, buyers, and field agents gathered there, turning it into a theater of lively suspense and action. Because the place is self-consciously off the map, I decided to make up a name to protect people’s privacy, and to add some characters from the up-and-coming matsutake trading spot down the road. My composite field site is “Open Ticket, Oregon.” “Open ticket” is actually the name of a mushroom-buying practice. In the evening after returning from the woods, pickers sell their mushrooms for the buyer’s price per pound, adjusted in relation to the mushroom’s size and maturity, its “grade.” Most wild mushrooms carry a stable price. But the price of matsutake shoots up and down. Within the night, the price may easily shift by $10 per pound or more. Within the season, price shifts are much greater. Between 2004 and 2008, prices shifted between $2 and $60 per pound for the best mushrooms—and this range is nothing compared with earlier years. “Open ticket” means that a picker may return to the buyer for the difference between the original price paid and a higher price offered on the same night. Buyers— who earn a commission based on the poundage they buy—offer open ticket to entice pickers to sell early in the evening, rather than waiting to see if prices will rise. Open ticket is testimony to the unspoken power of pickers to negotiate buying conditions. It also illustrates the strategies of buyers, who continually try to put each other out of business. Open ticket is a practice of making and affirming freedom for both pickers and buyers. It seems an apt name for a site of freedom’s performance. For what is exchanged every evening is not just mushrooms and money. Pickers, buyers, and field agents are engaged in dramatic enactments of freedom, as they separately understand it, and they exchange these, encouraging each other, along with their trophies: money and mushrooms. Sometimes, indeed, it seemed to me that the really important exchange was the freedom, with the mushroom-and-money trophies as extensions—proofs, as it were—of the performance. After all, it was the feeling of freedom, galvanizing “mushroom fever,” that energized buyers to put on their best shows and pressed pickers to get up the next dawn to search for mushrooms again. But what is this freedom about which pickers spoke? The more I asked about it, the more unfamiliar it became to me. This is not the 76 Chapter 5 freedom imagined by economists, who use that term to talk about the regularities of individual rational choice. Nor is it political liberalism. This mushroomers’ freedom is irregular and outside rationalization; it is performative, communally varied, and effervescent. It has something to do with the rowdy cosmopolitanism of the place; freedom emerges from open-ended cultural interplay, full of potential conflict and misunderstanding. I think it exists only in relation to ghosts. Freedom is the negotiation of ghosts on a haunted landscape; it does not exorcise the haunting but works to survive and negotiate it with flair. Open Ticket is haunted by many ghosts: not only the “green” ghosts of pickers who died untimely deaths; not only the Native American communities removed by U.S. laws and armies; not only the stumps of great trees cut down by reckless loggers, never to be replaced; not only the haunting memories of war that will not seem to go away; but also the ghostly appearance of forms of power—held in abeyance—that enter the everyday work of picking and buying. Some kinds of power are there, but not there; this haunting is a place from which to begin to understand this multiply culturally layered enactment of freedom. Consider these absences that make Open Ticket what it is: Open Ticket is far from the concentration of power; it is the opposite of a city. It is missing social order. As Seng, a Lao picker, put it, “Buddha is not here.” Pickers are selfish and greedy, he said; he was impatient to return to the temple where things were properly arranged. But, meanwhile, Dara, a Khmer teenager, explained that this is the only place she can grow up away from the violence of gangs. Yet Thong is a (former?) Lao gang member; I think he is getting away from warrants for his arrest. Open Ticket is a hodgepodge of flights from the city. White Vietnam vets told me they wanted to be away from crowds, which sparked flashbacks from the war and uncontrollable panic attacks. Hmong and Mien told me they were disappointed in America, which had promised them freedom but instead crowded them into tiny urban apartments; only in the mountains could they find the freedom they remembered from Southeast Asia. Mien in particular hoped to reconstitute a remembered village life in the matsutake forest. Matsutake picking was a time to see dispersed friends and to be away from the constraints of crowded families. Nai Tong, a Mien grandmother, explained that her daughter called her every day to beg her to come home to take care of the grandchildren. But Open Ticket, Oregon 77 she calmly repeated that she had at least to make up the money for her picking permit; she could not go back yet. The important bits were left unsaid in those calls: Escaping from apartment life, she had the freedom of the hills. The money was less important than the freedom. Matsutake picking is not the city, although haunted by it. Picking is also not labor—or even “work.” Sai, a Lao picker, explained that “work” means obeying your boss, doing what he tells you to. In contrast, matsutake picking is “searching.” It is looking for your fortune, not doing your job. When a white campground owner, sympathetic to the pickers, talked to me about how the pickers deserved more because they work so hard, getting up at dawn and staying through sun and snow, something nagged at me about her view. I had never heard a picker talk like that. No pickers I met imagined the money they gained from matsutake as a return on their labor. Even Nai Tong’s time babysitting was more akin to work than mushroom picking. Tom, a white field agent who had spent years as a picker, was particularly clear about rejecting labor. He had been an employee of a big timber company, but one day he put his equipment in his locker, walked out the door, and never looked back. He moved his family into the woods and earned from what the land would give him. He has gathered cones for seed companies and trapped beaver for skins. He has picked all kinds of mushrooms—not to eat but to sell, and he has taken his skills into the buying scene. Tom tells me how liberals have ruined American society; men no longer know how to be men. The best answer is to reject what liberals think of as “standard employment.” Tom goes to great lengths to explain to me that the buyers he works with are not employees but independent businessmen. Even though he gives them large amounts of cash every day to buy mushrooms, they can sell to any field agent—and I know they do. It’s an all cash business, too, without contracts, so if a buyer decides to abscond with his cash, he says, there is nothing he can do about it. (Amazingly, buyers who abscond often come back to deal with another field agent.) But the scales he lends buyers for weighing mushrooms, he points out, are his; he could call the police about the scales. He tells the story of a recent buyer who absconded with several thousand dollars—but made the mistake of taking the scale. Tom drove down the road in the direction he believed the buyer took, and, sure enough, there was the scale abandoned 78 Chapter 5 by the side of the road. The cash was gone of course; but that was the risk of independent business. Pickers bring many kinds of cultural heritage to their rejection of labor. Mad Jim celebrates his Native American ancestors in matsutake picking. After many jobs, he said, he was working as a bartender on the coast. A Native woman walked in with a $100 bill; shocked, he asked where she got it. “Picking mushrooms,” she told him. Jim went out the next day. It wasn’t easy to learn: he crawled through the brush; he followed animals. Now he knows how to stalk the dunes for the matsutake buried deep in the sand. He knows where to look under tangled rhododendron roots in the mountains. He has never gone back to wage work. Lao-Su works in a Wal-Mart warehouse in California when he is not picking matsutake, making $11.50 an hour. To get that pay rate, however, he had to agree to work without medical benefits. When he hurt his back on the job and was unable to lift merchandise, he was given a long leave to recover. While he hopes the company will take him back, he says he gets more money from matsutake picking than from Wal-Mart anyway, despite the fact that the mushroom season is only two months long. Besides, he and his wife look forward to joining the vibrant Mien community in Open Ticket every year. They consider it a vacation; on weekends, their children and grandchildren sometimes come up to join them in picking. Matsutake picking is not “labor,” but it is haunted by labor. So, too, property: Matsutake pickers act as if the forest was an extensive commons. The land is not officially a commons. It is mainly national forest, with some adjacent private land, all fully protected by the state. But the pickers do their best to ignore questions of property. White pickers are particularly aggravated by federal property and do their best to thwart restrictions on using it. Southeast Asian pickers are generally warmer to government, expressing wishes that it would do more. Unlike white pickers, many of whom are proud of picking without a permit, most Southeast Asians register with the Forest Service for permission to pick. However, the fact that law enforcement tends to single out Asians for infractions even without evidence—as one Khmer buyer put it, “driving while being Asian”—makes it seem less worth the effort to stay within the law. Not many do. Open Ticket, Oregon 79 Vast lands without boundary markers makes staying in approved picking zones quite difficult, as I found from my own experience. Once, a sheriff staked out my car to catch me without a permit when I returned with mushrooms. Even as an avid reader of maps, I had been unable to tell whether this place was on or off limits.1 I was lucky; I was just at the border. But it wasn’t marked. Once, too, after I had pleaded with a Lao family for days to take me picking, they agreed, if I would drive. We chugged through forest on unmarked dirt roads for what seemed hours before they told me we had arrived at the place they wanted to pick. When I pulled over, they asked me why I wasn’t trying to hide the car. Only then did I realize that we were surely trespassing. The fines are steep. During my fieldwork, the fine for picking in a national park was $2,000 on the first offense. But law enforcement is thin on the ground, and the roads and trails are many. The national forest is crisscrossed with abandoned logging roads; these make it possible for pickers to travel across extensive forestland. Young men, too, are willing to hike many miles, looking for the most isolated mushroom patches—perhaps on forbidden lands, perhaps not. When the mushrooms get to the buyers, no one asks.2 But what is “public property” if not an oxymoron? Certainly, the Forest Service has trouble with it in these times. Legislation requires that public forests be thinned for fire protection for a square mile around private inholdings; this requires a lot of public funds to save a few private assets.3 Meanwhile, private timber companies do that thinning, making further profits from public forests. And, while logging is allowed within Late Successional Reserves, pickers are forbidden— because no one has found funds for an environmental impact assessment. If pickers have trouble sorting out which kinds of lands are offlimits, they are not alone in their confusion. The difference between the two kinds of confusion is also instructive. The Forest Service is asked to uphold property, even if it means neglecting the public. The pickers do their best to hold property in abeyance as they pursue a commons haunted by the possibility of their own exclusion. Freedom/haunting: two sides of the same experience. Conjuring a future full of pasts, a ghost-ridden freedom is both a way to move on and a way to remember. In its fever, picking escapes the separation of persons and things so dear to industrial production. The mushrooms 80 Chapter 5 are not yet alienated commodities; they are effects of the pickers’ freedom. Yet this scene only exists because the two-sided experience has purchase in a strange sort of commerce. Buyers translate freedom trophies into trade through dramatic performances of “free market competition.” Thus market freedom enters freedom’s jumble, making the holding in abeyance of concentrated power, labor, property, and alienation seem strong and effective. It’s time to get back to the buying in Open Ticket. It’s late afternoon, and some of the white field agents are sitting around joking. They accuse each other of lying and call each other “vultures” and “Wile E. Coyote.” They are right. They agree to open at the price of $10 a pound for number one mushrooms, but almost no one does. The minute the tents open, the competition is on. The field agents call their buyers to offer opening prices—perhaps $12 or even $15 if they agreed on $10. It is up to the buyers to report back about what is happening in the buying tents. Pickers come in and ask about the prices. But the price is a secret—unless you are a regular seller, or, alternatively, you are already showing your mushrooms. Other buyers send their friends, disguised as pickers, to find the price, so it is not something to tell just anyone. Then, when a buyer wants to raise prices, to beat the competition, he or she is supposed to call the field agent. If not, the buyer will have to pay the price difference from his or her commission—but this is a tactic many are willing to try. Soon enough, calls ricochet between pickers, buyers, and field agents. The prices are shifting. “It’s dangerous!” one field agent would tell me as he stalked around the buying area, watching the scene. He could not talk to me during the buying; it demanded his full attention. Barking commands into his cell phone, each tried to stay ahead—and to trip up the others. Meanwhile, field agents are on the phone to their bulking companies and exporters, learning how high they can go. It’s exciting and exacting work to put the others out of business as well as one can. “Imagine the time before cell phones!” one field agent reminisced. Everyone lined up at the two public phone booths, trying to get through as the prices changed. Even now, every field agent surveys the buying field like a general on an old-fashioned battlefield, his phone, like a field Open Ticket, Oregon 81 radio, constantly at his ear. He sends out spies. He must react quickly. If he raises the price at the right time, his buyers will get the best mushrooms. Better yet, he might push a competitor to raise the price too high, forcing him to buy too many mushrooms, and, if all goes really right, to close down for a few days. There are all kinds of tricks. If the price spikes, a buyer can get pickers to take his mushrooms to sell to other buyers: Better the money than the mushrooms. There will be rude laughter for days, fuel for another round of calling the others liars—and yet, no one goes out of business despite all these efforts.4 This is a performance of competition—not a necessity of business. The point is the drama. Let’s say it’s dark now, and pickers are lined up to sell at a buying tent. They have picked this buyer not only because of his prices, but because they know he is a skilled sorter. Sorting is just as important as basic prices, because a buyer assigns a grade to each mushroom, and the price depends on the grade. And what an art sorting is! Sorting is an eye-catching, rapid-fire dance of the arms with the legs held still. White men make it look like juggling; Lao women—the other champion buyers—make it look like Royal Lao dancing. A good sorter knows a lot about the mushrooms just from touching them. Matsutake with insect larvae will spoil the batch before it arrives in Japan; it is essential that the buyer refuse them. But only an inexperienced buyer cuts into the mushroom to look for larvae. Good buyers know from the feel. They can also smell the provenance of the mushroom: its host tree; the region it comes from; other plants, such as rhododendron, which affect the size and shape. Everyone enjoys watching a good buyer sort. It is a public performance full of prowess. Sometimes pickers photograph the sorting. Sometimes they also photograph their best mushrooms, or the money, especially when it is hundred dollar bills. These are trophies of the chase. Buyers try to assemble “crews,” that is, loyal pickers, but pickers do not feel the obligation to continue selling to any buyer. So buyers court pickers, using ties of kinship, language, and ethnicity, or special bonuses. Buyers offer pickers food and coffee—or, sometimes, stronger beverages, such as alcoholic tonics laced with herbs and scorpions. Pickers sit around eating and drinking outside buyers’ tents; where they share common war experiences with the buyers, the camaraderie may last until late at night. But such groups are evanescent; all it takes is a rumor of a 82 Chapter 5 high price or a special deal, and pickers are off to another tent, another circle. Yet the prices are not so different. Might performance be part of the point? Competition and independence mean freedom for all. Sometimes pickers have been known to wait, sitting in their pickup trucks with their mushrooms, because they are dissatisfied with everyone’s prices. But they must sell before the evening is over; they cannot keep the mushrooms. Waiting too is part of the performance of freedom: freedom to search wherever one pleases—holding propriety, labor, and property at arm’s length; freedom to bring one’s mushrooms to any buyer, and for the buyers, to any field agent; freedom to put the other buyers out of business; freedom to make a killing or lose it all. Once I told an economist about this buying scene, and he was excited, telling me this was the true and basic form of capitalism, without the pollution of powerful interests and inequalities. This was real capitalism, he said, where the playing field was level, as it should be. But is Open Ticket’s picking and buying capitalism? The problem is that there isn’t any capital. There is a lot of money changing hands, but it slips away, never forming an investment. The only accumulation is happening downstream, in Vancouver, Tokyo, and Kobe, where exporters and importers use the matsutake trade to build their firms. Open Ticket’s mushrooms join streams of capital there, but they are not procured in what seems to me a capitalist formation. But there are clearly “market mechanisms”: or are there? The whole point of competitive markets, according to economists, is to lower prices, forcing suppliers to procure goods in more efficient ways. But Open Ticket’s buying competition has the explicit goal of raising prices. Everyone says so: pickers, buyers, bulkers. The purpose of playing with prices is to see if the price can be increased, so that everyone at Open Ticket benefits. Many seem to think that there is an ever-flowing spring of money in Japan, and the goal of competitive theater is to force open the pipes so that the money will flow to Open Ticket. Old timers all remember 1993, when the price of matsutake in Open Ticket rose briefly to $600 a pound in the hands of pickers. All you had to do was find one fat button, and you had $300!5 Even after that high, they say, in the 1990s a single picker could make several thousand dollars in one day. How might access to that flow of money be opened again? Open Ticket buyers and bulkers stake their bets on competition to raise prices. Open Ticket, Oregon 83 It seems to me that there are two framing circumstances that allow this set of beliefs and practices to flourish. First, American businessmen have naturalized the expectation that the U.S. government will apply muscle in their behalf: As long as they perform “competition,” the government will twist the arms of foreign business partners to make sure American companies get the prices and market share they want.6 Open Ticket matsutake trading is much too small and inconspicuous to get that kind of government attention. Still, it is within this national expectation that buyers and bulkers engage in competitive performances to get the Japanese to offer them the best prices. As long as they show themselves properly “American,” they expect to succeed. Second, Japanese traders are willing to put up with such displays as signs of what the importer I mentioned called “American psychology.” Japanese traders expect to work in and around strange performances; if this is what brings in the goods, it should be encouraged. Later, exporters and importers can translate the exotic products of American freedom into Japanese inventory—and, through inventory, accumulation. What is this “American psychology” then? There are too many people and histories in Open Ticket to plunge directly into the coherence through which we usually imagine “culture.” The concept of assemblage—an open-ended entanglement of ways of being—is more useful. In an assemblage, varied trajectories gain a hold on each other, but indeterminacy matters. To learn about an assemblage, one unravels its knots. Open Ticket’s performances of freedom require following histories that stretch far beyond Oregon but show how Open Ticket’s entanglements might have come into being.

The freedom about which so many pickers and buyers speak has far-flung referents as well as local ones. In Open Ticket, most explain their commitments to freedom as stemming from terrifying and tragic experiences in the U.S.-Indochina War and the civil wars that followed. When pickers talk about what shaped their lives, including their mushroom picking, most talk about surviving war. They are willing to brave the considerable dangers of the matsutake forest because it extends their living survival of war, a form of haunted freedom that goes everywhere with them. Yet engagements with war are culturally, nationally, and racially specific. The landscapes pickers construct vary with their legacies of Communal agendas, Oregon. Foraging with a rifle. Most pickers have terrible stories of surviving war. The freedom of the mushroom camps emerges out of varied histories of trauma and displacement. 86 Chapter 6 engagement with war. Some pickers wrap themselves in war stories without ever having lived through war. One wry Lao elder explained why even young Lao pickers wear camouflage: “These people weren’t soldiers; they’re just pretending to be soldiers.” When I asked about the dangers of being invisible to white deer hunters, a Hmong picker evoked a different imaginary: “We wear camouflage so we can hide if we see the hunters first.” If they saw him, hunters might hunt him, he implied. Pickers navigate the freedom of the forest through a maze of differences. Freedom as they described it is both an axis of commonality and a point from which communally specific agendas divide. Despite further differences within such agendas, a few portraits can suggest the varied ways the matsutake hunt is energized by freedom. This chapter extends my exploration of what pickers and buyers meant by freedom by turning to the stories they told about war. Frontier romanticism runs high in the mountains and forests of the Pacific Northwest. It is common for whites to glorify Native Americans and identify with the settlers who tried to wipe them out. Self-sufficiency, rugged individualism, and the aesthetic force of white masculinity are points of pride. Many white mushroom pickers are advocates of U.S. conquest abroad, limited government, and white supremacy. Yet the rural northwest has also gathered hippies and iconoclasts. White veterans of the U.S.-Indochina War bring their war experiences into this rough and independent mix, adding a distinctive mixture of resentment and patriotism, trauma and threat. War memories are simultaneously disturbing and productive in forming this niche. War is damaging, they tell us, but it also makes men. Freedom can be found in war as well as against war. Two white veterans suggest the range of how freedom is expressed. Alan felt lucky when an aggravated childhood injury caused him to be sent home from Indochina. For the next six months he served as a driver on an American base. One day he received orders to return to Vietnam. He drove his jeep back to the depot and walked out of the base, AWOL. He spent the next four years hiding in the Oregon mountains, where he gained a new goal: to live in the woods and never pay rent. Later, when War Stories 87 the matsutake rush came, it suited him perfectly. Alan imagines himself as a gentle hippie who works against the combat culture of other vets. Once he went to Las Vegas and had a terrible flashback when surrounded by Asians at the casino. Life in the forest is his way of keeping clear of psychological danger. Not all war experience is so benign. When I first met Geoff I was overjoyed to find someone with so much knowledge about the forest. Telling me of the pleasures of his childhood in eastern Washington, he described the countryside with a passionate eye for detail. My enthusiasm to work with Geoff was transformed, however, when I talked with Tim, who explained that Geoff had served a long and difficult tour in Vietnam. Once, his group had jumped from a helicopter into an ambush. Many of the men were killed, and Geoff was shot through the neck but, miraculously, survived. When Geoff came home, he screamed so much at night that he could not stay home, and so he returned to the woods. But his war years were not over. Tim described a time when he and Geoff had surprised a group of Cambodian pickers on a mushroom patch Geoff thought of as one of his special places. Geoff had opened fire, and the Cambodians scrambled into the bushes to get away. Once Tim and Geoff shared a cabin, but Geoff spent the night brooding and sharpening his knife. “Do you know how many men I killed in Vietnam?” he asked Tim. “One more wouldn’t make a bit of difference.” White pickers imagine themselves not only as violent vets but also as self-sufficient mountain men: loners, tough, and resourceful. One point of connection with those who did not fight is hunting. One white buyer, too old for Vietnam but a strong supporter of U.S. wars, explained that hunting, like war, builds character. We spoke of then Vice President Cheney, who had shot a friend while bird hunting; it was through the ordinariness of accidents such as this that hunting makes men, he said. Through hunting, even noncombatants can experience the forest landscape as a site for making freedom. Cambodian refugees cannot easily join established Pacific Northwest legacies; they have had to make up their own histories of freedom in the United States. Such histories are guided not only by U.S. bombardment 88 Chapter 6 and the subsequent terrors of the Khmer Rouge regime and civil war, but also by their moment of entry into the United States: the shutting down of the U.S. welfare state in the 1980s. No one offered Cambodians stable jobs with benefits. Like other Southeast Asian refugees, they had to make something from what they had—including their war experiences. The matsutake boom made forest foraging, with its opportunities for making a living through sheer intrepidness, an appealing option. What then is freedom? One white field agent, exalting the pleasures of war, suggested I speak with Ven, a Cambodian who, the field agent said, would show me that even Asians love U.S. imperial war. Given that Ven spoke to me with this introduction, I was not surprised by his endorsement of American freedom as a military quest. Yet our conversation took turns that I don’t imagine the field agent would have expected, and yet it echoed other Cambodians in the forest. First, in the confusions of the Cambodian civil war, it was never quite clear on which side one was fighting. Where white vets imagined freedom on a starkly divided racial landscape, Cambodians told stories in which war bounced one from one side to the other without one’s knowledge. Second, where white vets sometimes took to the hills to live out war’s traumatic freedom, Cambodians offered a more optimistic vision of recovery in the forests of American freedom. At the age of thirteen, Ven left his village to join an armed struggle. His goal was to repel Vietnamese invaders. He says he did not know the national affiliations of his group; he later found it to be a Khmer Rouge affiliate. Because of his youth, the commander befriended him and he was kept safe, close to the leaders. Later, however, the commander fell out of favor, and Ven became a political detainee. His group of detainees was sent to the jungle to fend for themselves. By chance, this turned out to be an area Ven knew from his fighting days. Where others saw empty jungle, he knew the concealed paths and forest resources. At this point in the story, I expected him to say that he escaped, especially since he was beaming with pride about his jungle knowledge. But no: He showed the group a hidden spring, without which they would not have had fresh water. Perhaps there was something empowering about this forest detention, even in its coercions. Returning to the forest draws from this spark—but only, he explained, in the safety of American imperial freedom. War Stories 89 Other Cambodians spoke about mushroom foraging as healing from war. One woman described how weak she was when she first came to the United States; her legs were so frail that she could hardly walk. Mushroom foraging has brought back her health. Her freedom, she explained, is freedom of motion. Heng told me about his experiences in a Cambodian militia. He was the leader of thirty men. But while patrolling one day he stepped on a land mine, which blew off his leg. He begged his comrades to shoot him, since the life of a one-legged man in Cambodia was beyond what he imagined as human. Through luck, however, he was picked up by a UN mission and transported to Thailand. In the United States he gets along well on his artificial leg. Still, when he told his relatives that he would pick mushrooms in the forest, they scoffed. They refused to take him with them, since, they said, he would never be able to keep up. Finally, an aunt dropped him off at the base of a mountain, telling him to find his own way. He found mushrooms! Ever since, the matsutake harvest has been an affirmation of his mobility. Another of his buddies is missing the other leg, and he jokes that together in the mountains, they are “complete.” The Oregon mountains are both a cure for and a connection to old habits and dreams. I was startled into seeing this one day when I asked Heng about deer hunters. I had been picking by myself that afternoon when suddenly shots rang out nearby. I was terrified; I didn’t know which way to run. I asked Heng about it later. “Don’t run!” he said. “To run shows that you are afraid. I would never run. That’s why I am a leader of men.” The woods are still full of war, and hunting is its reminder. The fact that almost all the hunters are white, and that they tend to be contemptuous of Asians, makes the parallels to war yet more apparent. This theme was even more consequential for Hmong pickers, who, unlike most Cambodians, identify as hunters as well as hunted. During the U.S.-Indochina War, the Hmong became the front line of the U.S. invasion of Laos. Recruited by General Vang Pao, whole villages gave up agriculture to subsist on CIA airdrops of food. The men called in U.S. bombers, putting their bodies on the line so that Americans 90 Chapter 6 could destroy the country from the skies.1 It is not surprising that this policy exacerbated tensions between the Lao targets of the bombing and the Hmong. Hmong refugees have done relatively well in the United States, but war memories run strong. The landscapes of wartime Laos are very much alive for Hmong refugees, and this shapes both the politics of freedom and freedom’s everyday activities. Consider the case of Hmong hunter and U.S. Army sharpshooter Chai Soua Vang. In November 2004, he climbed into a deer blind in a Wisconsin forest just as the white landowners were touring the property. The landowners confronted him, telling him to leave. It seems they shouted racial epithets, and someone shot at him. In response, he shot eight of them with his semiautomatic rifle, killing six. The story was news, and the main tenor in which it was told was outrage. CBS News quoted local Deputy Tim Zeigle, who said Vang was “chasing after [the landowners] and killing them. He hunted them down.”2 Hmong community spokesmen immediately took their distance from Vang and focused on saving the reputation of the Hmong people. Although younger Hmong spoke up against racism in the trial that followed Vang’s arrest, no one publicly suggested why Vang might have assumed a sharpshooter’s stance to eliminate his adversaries. The Hmong I spoke with in Oregon all seemed to know, and to empathize. What Vang did appeared utterly familiar; he could have been a brother or a father. Although Vang was too young to have participated in the U.S.-Indochina War, his actions showed how well he was socialized in the landscapes of that war. There every man who was not a comrade was an enemy, and war meant to kill or be killed. The elder men of the Hmong community still live very much in the world of these battles; at Hmong gatherings, the logistics of particular battles—the topography, timing, and surprises—are the subject of men’s conversations. One Hmong elder whom I had asked about his life used the opportunity to tell me about how to throw back grenades and what to do if you are shot. The logistics of wartime survival were the substance of his life. Hunting recalls the familiarity of Laos for Hmong in the United States. The Hmong elder explained his coming of age in Laos: as a boy, he had learned to hunt, and he used his hunting skills in jungle fighting. Now in the United States, he teaches his sons how to hunt. Hunting brings Hmong men into a world of tracking, survival, and manhood. War Stories 91 Hmong mushroom pickers are comfortable in the forest because of hunting. Hmong rarely get lost; they use the forest-navigation skills they know from hunting. The forest landscape reminds older men of Laos: Much is different, but there are wild hills and the necessity of keeping your wits about you. Such familiarity brings the older generation back to pick each year; like hunting, this is a chance to remember forest landscapes. Without the sounds and smells of the forest, the elder told me, a man dwindles. Mushroom picking layers together Laos and Oregon, war and hunting. The landscapes of war-torn Laos suffuse present experience. What seemed to me nonsequiturs shocked me into awareness of such layers: I asked about mushrooms, and Hmong pickers answered by telling me of Laos, of hunting, or of war. Tou and his son Ger kindly took my assistant Lue and me for many a matsutake hunt. Ger was an exuberant teacher, but Tou was a quiet elder. As a result, I valued the things he said all the more. One afternoon after a long and pleasurable forage, Tou collapsed into the front seat of the car with a sigh. Lue translated from Hmong. “It’s just like Laos,” Tou said, telling us of his home. His next comment made no sense to me: “But it’s important to have insurance.” It took me the next half hour to figure out what he meant. He offered a story: A relative of his had gone back to Laos for a visit, and the hills had so drawn him that he left one of his souls behind when he returned to the United States. He soon died as a result. Nostalgia can cause death, and then it’s important to have life insurance, because that allows the family to buy the oxen for a proper funeral. Tou was experiencing the nostalgia of a landscape made familiar by hiking and foraging. This is also the landscape of hunting—and of war. As Buddhists, ethnic Lao tend to object to hunting. Instead, Lao are the businessmen of the mushroom camps. Most Southeast Asian mushroom buyers are Lao. In the campgrounds, Lao have opened noodle tents, gambling, karaoke, and barbeque shops. Many of the Lao pickers I met originated from or were displaced to Laotian cities. They are often lost in the woods. But they enjoy the risks of mushroom picking and explain it as an entrepreneurial sport. 92 Chapter 6 I first started thinking about cultural engagements with war when I was hanging out with Lao pickers. Camouflage is popular among Lao men. Most are further covered by protective tattoos—some gained in the army, some in gangs, and some in martial arts. Lao rowdiness is the justification for Forest Service rules that disallow gunfire in the campgrounds. Compared with other picker groups, the Lao I met seemed less wounded by the actual moment of war—and yet more involved in its simulation in the forest. But what is a wound? U.S. bombing in Laos displaced 25 percent of the rural population, forcing fleeing refugees into cities—and, when possible, abroad.3 If Lao refugees in the United States have some characteristics of camp followers, is this not also a wound? Some Lao pickers grew up in army families. Sam’s father served in the Royal Lao Army; he was set to follow in his father’s footsteps by enlisting in the U.S. Army. The fall before his recruitment he joined some friends for a last hurrah—picking mushrooms. He made so much money that he called off his army plans. He even brought his parents to pick. He also discovered the pleasures of illegal picking one season when he made $3,000 in one day by trespassing on national park lands. Like white pickers, the Lao I knew looked for out-of-bounds and hidden matsutake patches. (In contrast, Cambodian, Hmong, and Mien pickers more often used careful observation in well-known common spots.) Lao pickers also—again like whites—took pleasure in boasting of their forays outside the law and their ability to get out of scrapes. (Other pickers went outside the law more quietly.) As entrepreneurs, Lao were mediators, with all the pleasures and dangers of mediation. In my own inexperience, I found the entrepreneurial grasp of combat readiness a confusing set of juxtapositions. Yet I could tell it somehow worked as advocacy for high-risk enterprise. Thong, a strong and handsome man in his mid-thirties, seemed to me a man of contradictions: a fighter, a fine dancer, a reflective thinker, a judgmental critic. Because of his strength, Thong picks in high, inaccessible places. He told of his encounter with a policeman who stopped him for speeding one night more than forty miles from the mushroom camp. He told the policeman to go ahead and impound his car; he would walk through the frozen night. The policeman gave in, he said, and let him go. When Thong said that mushroom pickers are in the War Stories 93 forest to escape warrants, I thought he might be speaking for himself. So, too, until quite recently he was married. In the process of getting a divorce, he quit a well-paying job to pick mushrooms. At the least, I believe he aimed to escape the obligations of child support. The contradictions multiply. He went out of his way to express contempt for pickers who abandon their children for the forest. He is not in touch with his children. Meta thinks a lot about Buddhism. Meta spent two years in a monastery; returned to the world, he works to renounce material things. Mushroom picking is a way to do this work of renunciation. Most of his belongings are in his car. Money comes to him easily but disappears just as easily. He does not mire himself in possession. This does not mean he is ascetic in a Western sense. When he is drunk, he sings a tender tenor karaoke. Only among Lao pickers did I meet children of mushroom pickers who, as adults, became mushroom pickers themselves. Paula first came picking with her parents, who later moved to Alaska. But she maintains her parents’ social networks in the Oregon forests, thus earning the room for maneuver claimed by much more seasoned pickers. Paula is daring. She and her husband arrived ready to pick ten days before the U.S. Forest Service opened the season. When the police caught them with mushrooms in their truck, her husband pretended that he couldn’t speak English, while Paula berated the officials. Paula is cute and looks like a child; she can get away with more sass than others. Still, I was surprised at the chutzpah she claimed. She said she dared the police to interfere with her activities. They asked her where she found the mushrooms. “Under green trees.” Where were these green trees? “All trees are green trees,” she insisted. Then she pulled out her cell phone and started calling her supporters. What is freedom? U.S. immigration policy differentiates “political refugees” from “economic refugees,” granting asylum only to the former. This requires immigrants to endorse “freedom” as a condition of their entry. Southeast Asian Americans had the opportunity to learn such endorsements in refugee camps in Thailand, where many spent years preparing themselves for U.S. immigration. As the Lao buyer quoted at the beginning of this chapter quipped in explaining why he picked the United States rather than France: “In France they have two 94 Chapter 6 kinds, freedom and communist. In the U.S. they just have one kind: freedom.” He went on to say that he prefers mushroom picking to a steady job with a good income—he has been a welder—because of the freedom. Lao strategies for enacting freedom contrast sharply with those of the other picker group that vies for the title “most harassed by the law”: Latinos. Latino pickers tend to be undocumented migrants who fit mushroom foraging into a year-round schedule of outdoor work. During mushroom season many live hidden in the forest instead of in the legally required industrial camps and motels where identification and picking permits might be checked. Those I knew had multiple names, addresses, and papers. Mushroom arrests could lead not just to fines but also to loss of vehicles (for faulty papers) and deportation. Instead of sassing the law, Latino pickers tried to stay out of the way, and, if caught, juggle papers and sources of legitimation and support. In contrast, most Lao pickers, as refugees, are citizens and, embracing freedom, hustle for more room. Contrasts such as these motivated my search to understand the cultural engagements with war that shape the practices of freedom of white veterans and Cambodian, Hmong, and Lao refugees. Veterans and refugees negotiate American citizenship through endorsing and enacting freedom. In this practice, militarism is internalized; it infuses the landscape; it inspires strategies of foraging and entrepreneurship. Among commercial matsutake pickers in Oregon, freedom is a “boundary object,” that is, a shared concern that yet takes on many meanings and leads in varied directions.4 Pickers arrive every year to search out matsutake for Japanese-sponsored supply chains because of their overlapping yet diverging commitments to the freedom of the forest. Pickers’ war experiences motivate them to come back year after year to extend their living survival. White vets enact trauma; Khmer heal war wounds; Hmong remember fighting landscapes; Lao push the envelope. Each of these historical currents mobilizes the practice of picking mushrooms as the practice of freedom. Thus, without any corporate recruitment, training, or discipline, mountains of mushrooms are gathered and shipped to Japan.

Everything about Open Ticket surpris ed me, but especially the feel of Southeast Asian village life in the middle of the Oregon forest. My disorientation was only amplified when I found a different group of matsutake pickers: Japanese Americans. Despite many differences from my Chinese American background, Japanese Americans felt familiar to me, like family. Yet this ease struck me sharply, a splash of Communal agendas, Oregon. Preparing matsutake for a sukiyaki dinner at the predominantly Japanese American Buddhist Church. For Japanese Americans, matsutake picking is a cultural legacy and a tool for building cross-generational community ties. 98 Chapter 7 cold water. I realized that something huge and perplexing had happened to U.S. citizenship between early- and late-twentieth-century immigrations. A wild new cosmopolitanism has inflected what it means to be an American: a jostling of unassimilated fragments of cultural agendas and political causes from around the world. My surprise, then, was not the ordinary shock of cultural difference. American precarity—living in ruins—is in this unstructured multiplicity, this uncongealed confusion. No longer a melting pot, we live with unrecognizable others. And if I tell this story within Asian American worlds, do not think it stops there. This cacophony is the feel of precarious living for both white and colored Americans—with repercussions around the world. It is most clearly seen, however, in relation to its alternatives, such as assimilation. The first people to go “matsutake crazy” in Oregon were Japanese who came to the region in that short window of opportunity between the banishment of the Chinese in 1882 and the “Gentlemen’s Agreement” stopping Japanese immigration in 1907.2 Some of the first Japanese immigrants worked as loggers and found matsutake in the forest. When they settled into farming, they returned to the forest every season: for warabi ferns in the spring, fuki shoots in the summer, and matsutake in the fall. By the early twentieth century, matsutake outings—picnic lunches with matsutake foraging—were a popular leisure activity, as celebrated in the poem that opens this chapter. Uriuda’s poem is a useful signpost of both pleasures and dilemmas. The matsutake hunters drive cars into the mountains; they are enthusiastic Americans even as they retain Japanese sensibilities. Like others who ventured out of Meiji Japan, the immigrants were serious translators, learning other cultures. Beside themselves, they became children—in both American and Japanese ways. Then something changed: World War II. Since arriving in the United States, Japanese had struggled over bans against citizenship and land ownership. Despite this, they had succeeded at farming—especially with labor-intensive fruits and vegetables, such as cauliflower, which needed to be shaded from light, and berries, which needed hand picking. World War II broke that trajectory, removing them from their farms. Oregon’s Japanese Americans were interned in “War Relocation Camps.” Their citizenship dilemmas were turned inside out. What Happ ened to the State? 99 I first heard Uriuda’s poem sung in Japanese in a classical style during a gathering of Japanese Americans celebrating their matsutake heritage in 2006. The elderly man who sang it had first learned classical singing when he was interned in the camps. Indeed, many “Japanese” hobbies flourished there. But even as it was possible to pursue Japanese hobbies, the camps changed what it meant to be Japanese in the United States. When they came back after the war, most had lost access to their possessions and their farms. (Juliana Hu Pegues notes that the same year Japanese American farmers were sent away to camps, the United States opened the Bracero program to bring in Mexican farm laborers.)3 They were treated with suspicion. In response, they did their best to become model Americans. As one man recalled, “We stayed away from everything Japanese-y. If you had a pair of [Japanese] slippers, you left them at the door when you went out.” Japanese daily habits were not for public display. Young people stopped learning Japanese. Total immersion into American culture was expected, without bicultural extensions, and children led the way. Japanese Americans became “200 percent American.”4 At the same time, Japanese arts had flourished in the camps. Traditional poetry and music, in decline before the war, were revived. Camp activities became the basis for postwar clubs. These would be private leisure activities. Japanese culture, matsutake picking included, became increasingly popular, but it formed a segregated addition to the performance of American selves. “Japanese-ness” flourished only as an American-style hobby. Perhaps you can catch a glimmer of my disconcertment. Japanese American matsutake pickers are quite different from Southeast Asian refugees—and I can’t explain the difference away by “culture” or by “time” spent in the United States, the usual sociological stories of differences among immigrants. Second-generation Southeast Asian Americans are nothing like Japanese American Nisei in their performance of citizenship. The difference has to do with historical events—indeterminate encounters, if you will—in which relations between immigrant groups and the demands of citizenship are formed. Japanese Americans were subject to coercive assimilation. The camps taught them that to be an American required serious work in transforming oneself from inside out. Coercive assimilation showed me its contrast: Southeast Asian refugees 100 Chapter 7 have become citizens in a moment of neoliberal multiculturalism. A love for freedom may be enough to join the American crowd. The contrast hit me in a personal way. My mother came to study in the United States from China just after World War II, when the two countries were allies; after the triumph of communism in China, the U.S. government did not let her go home. Through the 1950s and early 1960s, our family, like other Chinese Americans, was under FBI surveillance as possible enemy aliens. Thus my mother, too, learned a coercive assimilation. She learned to cook hamburgers, meatloaf, and pizza, and when she had children, she refused to allow us to learn Chinese, even though she was still struggling with English. She believed that if we spoke Chinese, our English might show the trace of an accent, revealing us as not quite American. It was unsafe to be bilingual, to carry one’s body in the wrong way, or to eat the wrong foods. When I was a child, my family used the term “American” to mean white, and we watched Americans carefully as sources of both emulation and cautionary tales. In the 1970s, I joined Asian American student groups whose participants were of Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino origin; even our most radical politics took for granted the coerced assimilation each of these groups had experienced. My background thus prepared me for an easy empathy with the Japanese American matsutake pickers I met in Oregon: I felt comfortable with their way of being Asian American. The elders were second-generation immigrants who spoke hardly a word of Japanese, and who were as likely to go out for cheap Chinese food as to prepare traditional Japanese dishes. They were proud of their Japanese heritage—as witnessed in their devotion to matsutake. But that pride was expressed in self-consciously American ways. Even the matsutake dishes we cooked together were cosmopolitan hybrids that violated every Japanese culinary principle. In contrast, I had been utterly unprepared to discover the Asian American cultures of Open Ticket’s matsutake camps. Mien camps struck me with particular force because they reminded me not of the Asian America I knew but of some combination of my mother’s remembered China and the villages in Borneo where I had done fieldwork. Mien come to the Cascades in multigenerational groups of kin and neighbors with the explicit aim of recuperating village life. They remain committed to differences that mattered in Laos; because Lao sit on the floor, Mien sit on What Happ ened to the State? 101 the low stools my mother still longs for as a reminder of China. They refuse raw vegetables—that’s for Lao—but prepare soups and sautés with chopsticks, as do Chinese. No meatloaf or hamburgers are cooked in Mien mushroom camps. Because so many Southeast Asians are gathered together, deliveries of Asian vegetables from California family garden plots arrive all the time. Every evening, cooked dishes are exchanged with neighbors, and visitors talk over smoking bongs into the night. When I saw one of my Mien hosts squatting in a sarong and shelling overripe yard-long beans or sharpening her machete, I felt transported to the upland villages in Indonesia where I first learned about Southeast Asia. This wasn’t the United States that I knew. The other Southeast Asian groups in Open Ticket are less dedicated to recreating village life; some are from cities, not villages. Still, they have one thing in common with these Mien: a lack of interest in—even an unfamiliarity with—the kind of American assimilation with which I grew up. I wondered, How did they get away with this? At first, I was awed, and perhaps a little jealous. Later, I recognized that they had been asked to assimilate too, in a different mode. This is where freedom and precarity come back into the story: freedom coordinates wildly diverse expressions of American citizenship, and it provides the only official rudder for precarious living. But this means that between the arrival of Japanese Americans and the coming of Lao and Cambodian Americans something important has changed in the relationship of the state and its citizens. The pervasive quality of Japanese American assimilation was shaped by the cultural politics of the U.S. welfare state from the New Deal through the late twentieth century. The state was empowered to order people’s lives with attractions as well as coercion. Immigrants were exhorted to join the “melting pot,” to become full Americans by erasing their pasts. Public schools were a venue for making Americans. The affirmative action policies of the 1960s and 1970s not only opened schools but also made it possible for minorities educated in public schools to find professional placements despite their racial exclusion from networks of influence. Japanese Americans were cajoled as well as prodded into the American fold. It is the erosion of this apparatus of state welfare that most simply helps to explain why the Southeast Asian Americans of Open Ticket 102 Chapter 7 have developed such a different relationship to American citizenship. Since the mid-1980s, when they arrived as refugees, all kinds of state programs have been dismantled. Affirmative action has been criminalized, funds cut for public schools, unions chased out, and standard employment has become a vanishing ideal for anyone, much less entrylevel workers. Even if they had managed to become perfect copies of white Americans, there would be few rewards. And the immediate challenges of making a living loom. In the 1980s, the refugees had few resources and needed public assistance. Yet welfare in the strict sense was being radically downsized. In California, the destination of many Open Ticket Southeast Asians, eighteen months became the limit for state assistance. Many of the Lao and Cambodian Americans in Open Ticket received some language education and job training, but rarely of a sort that actually helped them get a job. They were left to find their own way in American society.5 For those few who had Western-style educations, English, or money, there were options. The rest were in the difficult position of finding traction for the resources and skills they had, such as, for example, surviving a war. The freedom they had endorsed to enter the United States had to be translated into livelihood strategies. Histories of survival shaped what they could use as livelihood skills. It is a tribute to their resourcefulness that they used them. But this also created differences among the refugees. Consider some of these differences. A Lao buyer from a family of businesswomen in the capital city, Vientiane, explained that she decided to leave because communism was bad for profits. Vientiane is on the Mekong River, across from Thailand, and leaving meant finding a night to swim the river. She could have been shot; she had a young daughter to carry. Still, despite the danger, the experience showed her that she must seize opportunities. The freedom that pushed her toward the United States was the freedom of the market. In contrast, Hmong pickers were adamant about freedom as anticommunism combined with ethnic autonomy. Older Hmong in Open Ticket had fought for General Vang Pao’s CIA army in Laos. The middleaged had spent years after the communist victory going back and forth between refugee camps in Thailand and rebel camps in Laos. Both these life trajectories combined jungle survival and ethnopolitical loyalty. These were skills that could be used in the United States for kin- What Happ ened to the State? 103 based investments, for which Hmong Americans have become known. Sometimes such commitments need to be revived—by life in the wild. Everyone I talked to dreamed about livelihood strategies self-consciously tied to their ethnic and political stories. No one in Open Ticket thought immigration meant erasing one’s past to become an American. An ethnic Lao from northeastern Cambodia would like to run trucks between Cambodia and Laos. An ethnic Khmer from Vietnam, whose family crossed the border to defend Cambodia, thought his family’s patriotism made him a good candidate for a military career. While many of these dreams would remain unfulfilled, they told me something about dreaming: these were not the new start we still call “the American dream.” The more you stare at it, the more the idea that you should start over to become an American seems strange. What was this American dream then? Clearly, it was more than an effect of economic policy. Might it have been a version of Christian conversion, American-style, in which the sinner opens up to God and resolves to banish his former sinful life? The American dream requires relinquishing one’s old self, and perhaps this is one form of conversion. Protestant revivalism has been key to composing the “we” of the American polity since the American Revolution.6 Furthermore, Protestantism guided the twentieth-century project of American secularization—designed to reject illiberal Christianity while promoting unmarked liberal forms. Susan Harding has shown how U.S. public education in the mid-twentieth century was shaped by projects of secularization, in which some versions of Christianity were promoted as examples of “tolerance,” while other versions were parochialized as exotic remnants of earlier times.7 In its secular forms, then, this cosmological politics exceeds Christianity; to be an American, you must convert, not to Christianity, but to American democracy. In the mid-twentieth century, assimilation was a project of this American Protestant secularism. Immigrants were expected to “convert” by taking on the full array of white American bodily practices and speech habits. Speech was particularly important—the speaking of the “we.” That’s why my mother wouldn’t let me learn Chinese. It would be a sign of the devil, so to speak, peeking out of my American habitus. This is the conversion wave that hit Japanese Americans after World War II. 104 Chapter 7 It did not necessarily mean becoming a Christian. The Japanese Americans I worked with are mainly Buddhists. Indeed, Buddhist “churches” (as some participants call them) help tie the community together. The one I visited is a curious hybrid. The hall for weekly worship has a colorful Buddhist altar in front. But the rest of the room is an exact model of an American Protestant church. There are rows of wooden pews, complete with holders on the seatbacks for hymnals and announcements. The basement has space for Sunday School classes and for fundraising dinners and bake sales. The core congregation is Japanese American, but they are proud to have a white pastor, whose Buddhism augments their American identity. The congregation’s “American” conversion sponsors religious legibility. Contrast Open Ticket’s Southeast Asian refugees. Thinking through cosmological politics, they were also “converted” to American democracy. They each had a conversion ritual in a Thai refugee camp—the interview that allowed them to enter the United States. At this interview, they were required to endorse “freedom” and to show their anticommunist credentials. Else they would be enemy aliens: outside the fold. To enter the country, a rigorous assertion of freedom was necessary. The refugees might not know much English, but they needed one word: freedom. In addition, some of Open Ticket’s Hmong and Mien Americans have converted to Christianity. Yet—as Thomas Pearson has shown for Vietnamese Montagnard-Dega refugees in North Carolina—they have, from a U.S. Protestant point of view, a strange kind of Christian practice.8 The point of conversion for an American Protestant is to be able to say, “I once was lost, but now I have accepted God.” Instead, the refugees say, “Communist soldiers pointed at me, but God made me invisible.” “War scattered my family in the jungle, but God brought us back together.” God operates like indigenous spirits, warding off danger. Instead of needing interior transformation, the converts I met came under protection through endorsing freedom. Again the contrast: A centripetal (in-spinning) logic of conversion drew my family and my Japanese American friends into an inclusive, expansive United States of assimilative Americanization. A centrifugal (out-spinning) logic of conversion, held together by a single boundary object, freedom, shaped Open Ticket’s Southeast Asian refugees. These What Happ ened to the State? 105 two kinds of conversion can coexist. Yet each was carried on a distinct historical wave of citizenship politics. It seems quite predictable, then, these two kinds of matsutake pickers do not mix. Japanese Americans picked commercially at the beginning of Japan’s import boom; but by the late 1980s, they were overtaken by white and Southeast Asian pickers. Now they pick for their friends and family rather than to sell. Matsutake is a treasured gift and a food that confirms one’s Japanese cultural roots. And matsutake picking is fun—a chance for elders to show off their knowledge, for kids to play in the woods, and for everyone to share delicious bento lunches. This kind of leisure is possible because the Japanese Americans I accompanied had entered a class niche of urban employment. When they returned from the camps after World War II, as I explained, they had lost their access to farms. Still, many resettled as close to the places they knew as they could. Some became factory workers and were able to join newly integrated unions. Others opened small restaurants or worked in hotels. It was a time of growing wealth for Americans. Their children went to public schools and became dentists, pharmacists, and store managers. Some married white Americans. Yet people keep track of each other; the community is close. Matsutake help maintain the community even though no one depends on them to defray living expenses. One of the best-loved matsutake forests of this community is a pinestudded, moss-covered valley, as smooth and clean as the grounds of a Japanese temple. Japanese Americans are proud of how carefully they maintain the area for both people and plants. Even the foraging areas of the deceased are remembered and respected. In the mid-1990s, a bold, white bulker-buyer from Open Ticket brought a load of commercial pickers to this area. The commercial pickers were not used to careful harvesting; they needed to cover a lot of ground to make the day’s pick. They tore up the moss and left the place a mess. A confrontation ensued. Japanese Americans brought in the Forest Service, who advised the buyer that commerce inside national forests is prohibited. The buyer accused the agency of racial discrimination. “Why should Japanese have special rights?” he reminisced to me, still sore. Finally, the Forest Service closed the area to commercial picking. The buyer went back to Open Ticket. But without enforcement, commercial pickers still sneak in, and hostilities between Japanese and Southeast Asian Americans 106 Chapter 7 still smolder. Clearly, they are different kinds of Asian Americans. As one Japanese American picker unself-consciously quipped, “The forests were great until the Asians came.” Who? Let me return to Southeast Asian pickers’ freedom. Certainly, it includes sneaking into forbidden places when one can get away with it. But freedom is more than personal daring; it is an engagement with an emerging political formation. I am sure I am not the only product of integration who was taken by surprise by the strength of twenty-firstcentury resentment of this program, particularly by rural whites, who feel left out and left behind. Some white pickers and buyers call their position “traditionalism.” They oppose integration; they want to savor their own values, without contamination from others. They also call this “freedom.” This is not a multicultural plan. And yet, ironically, it has helped bring to life the most cosmopolitan cultural formation the United States has ever known. The new traditionalists reject racial mixing and the muscular legacy of the welfare state that made mixing possible—through coercive assimilation. As they dismantle assimilation, new formations emerge. Without central planning, immigrants and refugees hold on to their best chances to make a living: their war experiences, languages, and cultures. They join American democracy through that single word, “freedom.” They are free, indeed, to continue transnational politics and trade; they may plot to overthrow foreign regimes and stake their fortunes on international fashions. In contrast to earlier immigrants, they need not study to become American from inside out. In the wake of the welfare state, this concurrence of freedom agendas—in all its unruly diversity—has seized the time. And what better participants in global supply chains! Here are nodes of ready and willing entrepreneurs, with and without capital, able to mobilize their ethnic and religious fellows to fill almost any kind of economic niche. Wages and benefits are not needed. Whole communities can be mobilized—and for communal reasons. Universal standards of welfare hardly seem relevant. These are projects of freedom. Capitalists looking for salvage accumulation, take note.

I have been arguing that commercia l mushroom picking exemplifies the general condition of precarity—and in particular of livelihood without “regular jobs.” But how did we get into a situation in which so few jobs with wages and benefits are available, even in the world’s richest country? Worse yet, how did we lose the expectation and taste for such jobs? This is a recent situation; many white pickers knew such jobs, or at least such expectations, from their earlier lives. Something changed. This chapter makes the bold assertion that the view from a neglected commodity chain can illuminate this surprisingly abrupt—and global—change. But isn’t matsutake economically negligible? Shouldn’t it offer only the view from a frog in a well? On the contrary: the modest success of the Oregon-to-Japan matsutake commodity chain is the tip of an iceberg, and following the iceberg to its underwater girth brings up forgotten stories that still grip the planet. Things that seem small often turn out to be big. It is the very negligible quality of the matsutake commodity chain that hid it from the view of twenty-first-century reformers, thus preserving a late-twentieth-century history that shook the world. Translating value, Tokyo. Matsutake, calculator, telephone: still life at an intermediate wholesaler’s booth. 110 Chapter 8 This is the history of encounters between Japan and the United States that shaped the global economy. Shifting relations between U.S. and Japanese capital, I argue, led to global supply chains—and to the end of expectations of progress aimed toward collective advancement. Global supply chains ended expectations of progress because they allowed lead corporations to let go of their commitment to controlling labor. Standardizing labor required education and regularized jobs, thus connecting profits and progress. In supply chains, in contrast, goods gathered from many arrangements can lead to profits for the lead firm; commitments to jobs, education, and well-being are no longer even rhetorically necessary. Supply chains require a particular kind of salvage accumulation, involving translation across patches. The modern history of U.S.-Japanese relations is a counterpoint of call-and-response that spread this practice around the world. Two bookends frame the tale. In the mid-nineteenth century, U.S. ships threatened Edo Bay in order to “open” the Japanese economy for American businessmen; this sparked a Japanese revolution that overturned the national political economy and pushed Japan into international commerce. Japanese refer to the indirect upending of Japan through the icon of the “Black Ships” that carried the U.S. threat. This icon is useful in considering what happened—in reverse—150 years later, at the end of the twentieth century, when the threat of Japan’s commercial power indirectly upended the U.S. economy. Scared by the success of Japanese investments, American business leaders destroyed the corporation as a social institution and propelled the U.S. economy into the world of Japanese-style supply chains. One might call this “Reverse Black Ships.” In the great wave of mergers and acquisitions of the 1990s, with their corporate reshufflings, the expectation that U.S. corporate leaders ought to provide employment disappeared. Instead, labor would be outsourced elsewhere—into more and more precarious situations. The matsutake commodity chain linking Oregon and Japan is just one of many global outsourcing arrangements inspired by the success of Japanese capital between the 1960s and the 1980s. This history was quickly covered up. In the 1990s, American businessmen reclaimed preeminence in the world economy, while the Japanese economy fell drastically. By the twenty-first century, Japan’s economic power had been forgotten, and progress, fueled by American Between the Dollar and the Yen 111 ingenuity, appeared to account for the global shift to outsourcing. This is where a humble commodity chain comes in to help us cut through obfuscations. What economic models allowed its organizational forms to emerge? The only way to answer this question is to follow twentiethcentury Japanese economic innovations. These were not created in isolation: they formed from tensions and dialogues across the Pacific. The matsutake commodity chain places us firmly in U.S.-Japanese economic interactions, and from here we can notice this chunk of forgotten history. In what follows, I let the thread of the story unroll quite far from matsutake. Yet at each step I need the chain’s reminders to resist the lull of current erasures. This is not just a story, then, but also a method: big histories are always best told through insistent, if humble, details. Money can open the tale. Both the U.S. dollar and the yen came into being in a world dominated by Spanish pesos, minted since the sixteenth century from the exploitation of Latin American silver. Neither the United States nor Japan were early players, as the United States only came into existence in the eighteenth century, and Japan was ruled by inward-looking lords, who strictly regulated foreign trade, from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. The grand futures of neither the dollar nor the yen were evident at their births. By the mid-nineteenth century, however, the dollar had gained the clout of imperial gunboats deployed in its name. U.S. businessmen resented the tight control over foreign trade exerted by the Tokugawa shogunate.1 In 1853, Matthew Perry, commodore of the U.S. Navy, took up their cause by leading a fleet of armed ships to Edo Bay. Intimidated by this show of force, the shogunate signed the Convention of Kanagawa in 1854, which opened ports for U.S. trade.2 Japanese elites were aware of the subjugation of China in the wake of that country’s opposition to British “free trade” opium. To avoid war, they signed away their rights. But domestic crisis followed, resulting in the toppling of the shogunate. A new era opened with the brief civil war known as the Meiji Restoration. The winning group looked to Western modernity for their inspiration. In 1871, the Meiji government established the yen as the Japanese national currency, intending it to move within European and American circuits. Thus the dollar, indirectly, helped give birth to the yen. Meiji-era elites were not satisfied, however, to let foreigners control trade. They quickly worked to learn Western conventions and to establish 112 Chapter 8 their own firms as domestic equivalents to foreign ones. The government brought in foreign experts and sent young men abroad to study Western languages, laws, and trading practices. The young men came home and established professions, industries, banks, and trading companies, which flourished in Japan’s push for “the modern.” The new money was embedded in new contract laws, political forms, and debates about value. Meiji Japan was full of entrepreneurial energies, and international trade quickly emerged as an important sector of the economy.3 Japan lacked natural resources for industrialization, and the importation of raw materials was seen as an essential service for the building of the nation. Trading was among the most successful Meiji enterprises, and it became associated with rising new industries such as the production of cotton thread and textiles. Meiji-era traders saw their job as mediating between Japan and foreign economic worlds. Traders were trained through experience in foreign countries, gaining the doubled cultural agility that allowed them to negotiate across radical difference. Their work exemplifies Satsuka’s concept of “translation,” in which learning another culture both bridges and maintains difference.4 The new traders learned how commodities were traded in other places, and they used that knowledge to make advantageous contracts for Japan. In the terms economists use, they were specialists in “imperfect markets,” that is, markets in which information is not freely available to all buyers and sellers. Meiji-era traders coordinated markets across national borders; they also worked across incommensurable value systems. As Japanese have continued to imagine a “Japan” that exists in dynamic difference with something called “the West,” this understanding of international trading as translation has persisted, informing contemporary business practices. Trading creates capitalist value through its work of translation. Meiji-era traders associated themselves with industrial enterprises. Industry needed raw materials gained through trade; trade and industry flourished together. In the early twentieth century, the boom economy associated with World War I allowed large conglomerates to form, encompassing banking, mining, industry, and foreign trade.5 In contrast to twentieth-century U.S. corporate giants, these conglomerates, the zaibatsu, were coordinated by finance capital, not production: Banking and trading were central to their mission. From the first they were Between the Dollar and the Yen 113 involved with government business (Mitsui, for example, had provided the money to overthrow the shogunate);6 in the run-up to World War II, pressed by Japanese nationalists, the zaibatsu became increasingly entangled with imperial expansion. When Japan lost the war, the zaibatsu were the first targets of the U.S. occupation.7 The yen lost its value; the Japanese economy was in shambles. In the first days of the occupation, it seemed that the United States was favoring smaller firms, and even the advancement of labor. Soon enough, however, the American occupiers arranged for the rehabilitation of once-disgraced nationalists and rebuilt the Japanese economy as a bulwark against communism. It was in this climate that associations of banks, industrial enterprises, and specialists in trade formed again, although less formally, as keiretsu “enterprise groups.”8 At the heart of most enterprise groups was a general trading company in partnership with a bank.9 The bank transferred money to the trading company, which, in turn, made smaller loans to its associated enterprises. The bank did not have to monitor these small loans, which the trading company used to facilitate the formation of supply chains. This model is well made to stretch across national borders. Trading companies advanced loans—or equipment, technical advice, or special marketing agreements—to their supply chain partners overseas. The trading company’s job was to translate goods procured in varied cultural and economic arrangements into inventory. It is hard not to see in this arrangement the roots of the current hegemony of global supply chains, with their associated form of salvage accumulation.10 I first learned about supply chains in studying logging in Indonesia, and this is a place to see how the Japanese supply-chain model works.11 During Japan’s building boom in the 1970s and 1980s, Japanese imported Indonesian trees to make plywood construction molds. But no Japanese cut down Indonesian trees. Japanese general trading companies offered loans, technical assistance, and trade agreements to firms from other countries, which cut logs to Japanese specifications. This arrangement had many advantages for Japanese traders. First, it avoided political risk. Japanese businessmen were aware of the political difficulties of Chinese Indonesians who, resented for their wealth and willingness to cooperate with the more ruthless policies of the Indonesian government, were targets in periodic riots. Japanese businessmen evaded 114 Chapter 8 such difficulties for themselves by advancing money to Chinese Indonesians, who made the deals with Indonesian generals and took the risks. Second, the arrangement facilitated transnational mobility. Japanese traders had already deforested the Philippines and much of Malaysian Borneo by the time they got to Indonesia. Rather than adapting to a new country, the traders could merely bring in agents willing to work with them in each location. Indeed, Filipino and Malaysian loggers, financed by Japanese traders, were ready and able to go to work in cutting down Indonesian trees. Third, supply-chain arrangements facilitated Japanese trade standards while ignoring environmental consequences. Environmentalists looking for targets could find only a grab bag of varied companies, many Indonesian; no Japanese were in the forests. Fourth, supply-chain arrangements accommodated illegal logging as a layer of subcontracting, which harvested trees protected by environmental regulations. Illegal loggers sold their logs to the larger contractors, who passed them on to Japan. No one need be responsible. And—even after Indonesia started its own plywood businesses, in a supply-chain hierarchy modeled on Japanese trade—the wood was so cheap! The cost could be calculated without regard to the lives and livelihoods of loggers, trees, or forest residents. Japanese trading companies made the logging of Southeast Asia possible. They were equally busy with other commodities and in other parts of the world.12 Let me return to the early post–World War II period when these arrangements were emerging to see how this system developed. Some of the first postwar supply chains from Japan made use of ties with Japan’s former colony, Korea. At this time, the United States was the world’s richest country and the best destination for every country’s wares, but it had imposed a strict quota on goods imported from Japan. Historian Robert Castley tells the story of how Japan helped build South Korea’s economy to avoid U.S. quotas.13 By transferring light industry to South Korea, Japanese traders could export more products freely to the United States. Yet Japanese direct investment was resented in Korea. Thus Japan adopted what Castley calls a “putting out” approach. “It involved merchants (or firms) supplying subcontractors with loans, credit, machinery and equipment to produce or finish goods, which would be sold in distant markets by the merchant.”14 Castley notes the power of traders and bankers in this strategy: “the Japanese Between the Dollar and the Yen 115 offered long-term contracts with overseas suppliers and frequently loans for the development of resources.”15 This form of expansion, he says, was a form of political as well as economic security in Japan. The putting-out system transferred less profitable manufacturing sectors and older technologies to South Korea, clearing the way for Japanese businesses to upgrade. According to this model, which Japanese proponents later graced with the image of “flying geese,” Korean businesses would always be one cycle of innovation behind Japan.16 But all would be flying forward, in part because Koreans could then transfer their own outdated manufacturing sectors to the poorer countries of Southeast Asia, allowing Koreans to inherit new rounds of Japanese innovation. South Korean elites were happy to benefit from Japanese capital—some of it transferred as war reparations. The resulting business networks formed models for the transnational expansion of capital in Japan, including the work of the Japanese-controlled Asian Development Bank. By the 1970s, many kinds of supply chains snaked in and out of Japan. General trading companies organized cross-continental supply chains for raw materials, becoming some of the richest companies in the world. Banks sponsored enterprises across Asia with links to Japan. Meanwhile, producers had organized their own supply chains, sometimes called “vertical keiretsu” in the English-language literature. Car companies, for example, subcontracted the development and manufacture of parts, saving costs. Mom-and-Pop suppliers made industrial components at home. Salvage accumulation and supply-chain subcontracting had grown together. The combined result was so successful that U.S. businesses, and their government supporters, could feel the heat. The success of Japanese cars was particularly painful to American pundits who had become used to thinking of the U.S. economy in relation to its cars. The appearance of Japanese cars in the United States, and the related decline of Detroit’s car companies, sparked public awareness of Japan’s rising economic fortunes. Some business leaders jumped to learn from Japanese success, showing interest in “quality control” and “corporate culture.”17 Other business leaders sought U.S. reprisals against Japan. A wave of public fear emerged. One index was the 1982 murder of Chinese American Vincent Chin, mistaken for a Japanese by unemployed white autoworkers in Detroit.18 116 Chapter 8 The threat posed by Japan unleashed a U.S. revolution. Reverse Black Ships overturned the U.S. order of things, but through U.S. efforts. Empowered by public fears of U.S. decline, a small group of activist stockholders and business school professors, who might otherwise have never gained a hearing, were allowed to dismantle American corporations.19 The activists of the 1980s “shareholders’ revolution” reacted to what they saw as the erosion of U.S. power. To regain it, they aimed to take back corporations for their owners, the stockholders, rather than leaving them in the hands of professional managers. They began to buy up corporations to strip them of assets and resell them. By the 1990s, the movement had won; the radical chic of “leveraged buyouts” became the mainstream investment strategy of “mergers and acquisitions.” As corporations rid themselves of all but their most profitable sectors, most of what had once been inside those corporations was contracted to distant suppliers. Supply chains, and thus commitment to their distinctive form of salvage accumulation, took off as the dominant form of capitalism in the United States. This worked so well for investors that by the turn of the century, U.S. business leaders had forgotten that this shift was part of a struggle for position and had recast it as the leading edge of an evolutionary process. They were busy cramming the world into this process, and had, indeed, made headway in enforcing an American version in Japan.20 To understand how Japan’s threat had faded requires going back a bit—and allowing money to emerge as a protagonist of the story. In the 1980s and 1990s, lots of things shifted because of confrontations between the dollar and the yen. In 1949, the yen was pegged to the U.S. dollar as part of the Bretton Woods agreements. As the Japanese economy flourished, in part through nonreciprocated exports to the United States, the U.S. balance of payments with Japan suffered.21 From the U.S. perspective, the yen was “undervalued,” making Japanese goods cheap in the United States and U.S. exports to Japan too dear there. U.S. anxieties about the yen were one small part of the situation in 1971 that led to the U.S. abandonment of the gold standard. In 1973, the yen was allowed to float. Then in 1979, the U.S. raised interest rates, attracting investment in the dollar and keeping its value high. Because the Japanese economy continued to export to the United States, the Japanese government bought and sold Between the Dollar and the Yen 117 U.S. dollars to keep the price of the yen low. In the first half of the 1980s, capital flowed out of Japan, keeping the yen weak in relation to the dollar. By 1985, U.S. business leaders had panicked about this situation. In response, the U.S. engineered an international agreement, the Plaza Accord. The value of the dollar was lowered, and the yen rose. By 1988, the yen had doubled its value in relation to the dollar. Japanese consumers could buy almost everything abroad—including matsutake. National pride rose; this was the moment of The Japan That Can Say No. 22 However, the situation made it difficult for Japanese companies to export their goods, which now were priced too high. Japanese companies responded by sending more production abroad. So did their suppliers in South Korea, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia, also reeling from the change in currency values. Supply chains traveled everywhere. Here’s how two American sociologists describe the situation: Faced with the sudden increase of the dollar value of their factor inputs, and eager to keep their prices low and thus maintain their contracts with American retailers, Asian businesses quickly began to diversify. Most of Taiwan’s light industries . . . moved to . . . mainland China, but also to Southeast Asia. . . . Large segments of Japanese export-oriented industries moved to Southeast Asia. In addition some firms, such as Toyota, Honda, and Sony, established portions of their business in North America. South Korean businesses also moved labor-intensive operations to Southeast Asia, as well as to other developing countries in Latin America and central Europe. In each place that they established their new businesses, low-price supplier networks began to form.23 The Japanese national economy went into shock—first with the “bubble economy” of inflated real estate and stock prices in the late 1980s, then the “lost decade” of recession in the 1990s, then the further financial crisis of 1997.24 But supply chains took off as never before: not just Japanese-sponsored chains but chains from all Japan’s supplier sites, which now had their own chains. Supply-chain capitalism became a presence around the world. But Japan was no longer in charge. One company’s history sharply etches the change between Japanese and U.S. leadership of global supply chains: Nike, the trendsetting brand of athletic shoes. Nike began as a U.S. outpost of a Japanese distribution chain for athletic shoes. (Distribution is an element of many 118 Chapter 8 Japanese supply chains.) Subject to the disciplines of the Japanese trading regime, Nike learned the supply-chain model. But Nike slowly began to transform it, American style. Instead of making value through trade as translation, Nike would use American advantages in advertising and branding. When Nike’s founders established their independence from their Japanese chain, they added style—in the form of the Nike “swoosh” and advertisements featuring black American sports heroes. Learning from their Japanese experience, however, it never occurred to them to manufacture shoes. “We don’t know the first thing about manufacturing. We are marketers and designers,” explained one Nike vice-president.25 Instead, they contracted with the proliferating supply networks developing across Asia, making good use of the post1985 profusion of “low-price supplier networks” mentioned above. By the early twenty-first century, the company had contracts with more than nine hundred factories, and it had become a symbol of both the excitement and the terrors of supply-chain capitalism. To speak of Nike evokes the horrors of sweatshops, on the one hand, and the pleasures of designer brands, on the other. Nike has succeeded in making this contradiction seem particularly American. But Nike’s rise from a Japanese supply chain reminds us of the pervasive legacy of Japan. That legacy is clear in the matsutake supply chain, too small and too specialized to attract the intervention of American big business. Yet the chain stretches to North America, enrolling Americans as suppliers rather than as chain directors. Nike on its head! How were Americans convinced to take on such a lowly role? As I have explained, no one in Oregon thinks of him- or herself as an employee of a Japanese business. The pickers, buyers, and field agents are there for freedom. But freedom has come to mobilize the poor only through the freeing of American livelihoods from expectations of employment—a result of the transpacific dialogue between U.S. and Japanese capital. In the matsutake commodity chain, then, we see the history I have been describing: Japanese traders, searching for local partners; American workers, released from the hope for regular jobs; translations across aspirations, allowing American freedom to assemble Japanese inventory. I have been arguing that the organization of the commodity chain allows us to notice this history, which otherwise might be obscured by Between the Dollar and the Yen 119 hype about U.S. global leadership. When humble commodities are allowed to illuminate big histories, the world economy is revealed as emerging within historical conjunctures: the indeterminacies of encounter. If conjunctures make history, everything rests on moments of coordination—the translations that allow Japanese investors to profit from American foraging, just as pickers take advantage of Japanese wealth. How are mushrooms that are foraged for freedom transformed into inventory? I return to Open Ticket—and its commodity chain.