#he did eventually become an industrial engineer. it all worked out. but the stress?? the anxiety??? (all the while missing his best friends | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

houseboatisland · 3 years

Note

Is Elizabeth on your island, and if so how has she adjusted after decades abandoned?

She is! And here's my headcanon for her:

Topham Hatt I, (The Fat Director,) had by 1926 accumulated a small fortune as General Manager of the North Western Railway. Reputed as a workaholic, (or boss-aholic,) Topham had sunk considerable amounts of money into his sprawling Wellsworth estate, Topham Hall. Topham was inspired by the undertaking of his sometime friend Sir Robert Walker, the Baronet of Sand Hutton. Walker's estate utilized war surplus one foot and three inch gauge locomotives to carry distinguished guests, agricultural produce, and coal to and bricks deriving from the nearby brickworks of Claxton.

The resulting pet project, the Topham Hall Railway, is where Elizabeth's story begins.

The T.H.R. was laid to what had essentially become the Sudrian "standard narrow gauge," of two feet and three inches. The line started from its Exchange Siding with Wellsworth Station, and made several crossings through the streets of that town's suburbs, before reaching the estate grounds. Hall Station brought passengers within a stone's throw of the mansion itself. Moving on, the line dove into the woods through a magical tree tunnel, with a spur at its opening for the engine and carriage shed. Crossing a brook over a three-span wooden trestle bridge, another station and a few sidings known as "Orchard Station" served the fruit and vegetable orchard. Another mile or so, and the railway stopped again for "Bowler's Station," where the Hatts and any guests could detrain for the estate's cricket pavilion.

Another half a mile, and the railway terminated at the Wellsworth Brickworks. This had been a puny operation before the THR linked up with it, employing only three men or so. After the railway's arrival, it expanded to employ a few dozen, and three more kilns were added. Throughout the Great Depression, Topham kept the Brickworks open and its employees onboard out of his own pocket, even as the bricks accumulated unsold. This was far more humanitarian than his treatment of NWR employees and three of his engines!

The railway had one locomotive, a royal purple Kerr Stuart 'Tattoo' class, named "Little Barford," technically a brother of the Mid Sodor Railway's No. 4, "Stuart." Little Barford arrived also with several v-tipper wagons, a dozen ex-War Department bogie wagons, four-wheel trucks and two ambulance vans. The ambulance vans were thoroughly rebuilt by the estate's woodshop to become an elaborate passenger coach, and a "Dining Car," which was quite identical save for the fewer seats and teeny gas cooker. The passenger coach saw constant use, but the Dining Car mostly sat in the siding at Bowler's Station as it cooked. The line was so short, it never could've done more than boil an egg while moving to timetable!

Capping off this complement of rolling stock was one Sentinel DG4 "Overtype" Steam Lorry, quickly named Elizabeth, after the Duchess of York's newborn daughter. Elizabeth was absolutely coveted by Topham, though he wasn’t exactly a steady hand at the wheel. Elizabeth was kept polished to perfection, even when her work involved carting such grubby loads as soil, clay, and coal. She was in every respect a "father's princess," but she worked dutifully and loved Little Barford like a twin brother. She also learned from her Victorian old master her favorite catchphrase, "We are/are not amused!" depending on the context.

The Second World War began in September 1939, and this national shift in priorities turned Elizabeth’s devil-may-care youth on its head. The Wellsworth Brickworks shuttered as many of its men volunteered or were called up, and housing construction all but ended. Little Barford was kept on at the Hall as the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries set to increase production on Topham Hall’s farms. Elizabeth on the other hand was, for the first time, moved away from her only home. As the civilian petrol rationing situation tightened, and private motoring was eventually banned, Elizabeth was suddenly very valuable as a coal-fired road vehicle.

She was commandeered and relocated to Tidmouth Harbour, working night and day as a dockside lorry. This was a very stressful period for her, for she was utterly friendless and out of her element. Although Sodor was never bombed, the routine blackout drills and stories of other ports destroyed, such as Liverpool, took their toll on her mentally. At some point however, she "bucked up." Elizabeth realized she was no longer an aristocrat's toy. For all she knew, Topham had probably forgotten her. As the military lorries she came face to face with daily were almost all of the internal-combustion type, who was to say that when, if ever the war was over, that he'd want her back if he remembered her?

In these circumstances, Elizabeth adopted her more familiar, stiff-upper lip personality. There was no time for polish or quaint little rides to the cricket pavilion, there was a war on! She became grubby, and liked to be grubby. She worked like the devil, and loved that even more. Her posh accent never left her, but she was now in every respect out to be a working girl. Elizabeth would never admit it to herself, but this huge change of self owed much to her upset at being removed from her only home. Did she legitimately like being a working lorry, rather than an estate owner's princess? Certainly she did. Was it an easy and completely voluntary change of character? Of course not. But it was done, and Elizabeth spent many nights assuring herself that it was the right path, the only path to have taken.

1945, the end of the war. Everyone was so jubilant. Elizabeth was cleaned and polished like a crown jewel, decked out with flags and bunting, and allowed to participate in the Tidmouth Victory Parade. In several colour newswreels of the event, you can spot her amid the cascade of tickertape and throngs of soldiers, nurses, longshoremen, civilians, tanks and lorries. It was no doubt a fun day for her, but now she thought a great deal about the future.

The war, which had been everything to her for six years, was over. Soldiers were being demobilized and coming home. Industries were retooling for the postwar world, to make consumer goods rather than several airplanes an hour. The Attlee Government, in conjunction with the devolved Sudrian Parliament established in 1946, had a grand vision for The Mainland and Sodor, where the welfare state for the long-suffering people and machines was vastly expanded, their jobs would be increasingly unionized and their bosses answerable to them, rather than the other way around.

Despite the historically harsh winter into the New Year of 1947, Sudrian workers, bouncing back much quicker than their Mainland counterparts, were delighted with PM Attlee's "New Jerusalem." Tidmouth Harbour was still very busy, as Sodor's biggest gate in and out for the world, and Elizabeth kept calm and carried on as time marched on. She was much busier than she had first feared, and that winter was her time to shine as so many petrol lorries were out of commission with "head colds." Elizabeth convinced herself, somehow, that these thousands and thousands of war surplus petrol lorries wouldn't take over. If so many had taken ill in these conditions, maybe Sodor, or even the whole world, would consider turning back the clock and restoring steam to the roads completely.

She feared and resented petrol lorries something terrible. When the petrol ration which had enabled her life all this time, was finally ended, she was heartbroken. Every worry she had seemed to come to pass all at once. First, the Tidmouth Harbour Authority decided it would be much cheaper to stack its fleet with war surplus lorries, and she was out of a job. Her next owner, a furniture mover, didn't keep her long, and neither did the next, a man who planned to fit her out as a bus and ran out of money.

By 1956, when the now-knighted Sir Topham Hatt I had died, Elizabeth had already been accumulating dust in a shed for two years. She never saw her last owner, who by now had failed to pay rent on her storage. Anopha Quarry, who owned the tumbledown little shack, seized her to make up the difference, but never once came to inspect the lorry who was now their property. Eventually, the Quarry forgot about her too.

It wasn't until 1961, when a little blue puffer deputizing for Toby on the Quarry Tramway carelessly had a coupling rod failure, that she reemerged. She made a heartstopping journey down the line for the necessary spare rod, pins, oilpot and tools in Ffarquhar Sheds, where she stirred up quite a scene, before an even more uncomfortable journey back. Elizabeth's Sentinel heritage thankfully preserved her for the whole ordeal, when Thomas' Driver, then at her wheel, worried that she'd explode and take him with her.

Back into the shed she went after this good deed, for how long, if ever to come out again, she didn't know. Until of course, that same night, a man very like her old Master, named Bertram just like his son whom she had given so many rides through the orchards and to cricket games, came to make a visit...

You can guess the rest :3

Sir Bertram Topham Hatt I was reunited with his childhood friend, and his father's favorite lorry. He immediately sent for her with his own money to be restored, and at once moved her back to Topham Hall, where she was herself reunited with the closest thing to a brother she'd ever had, Little Barford, who this whole time had been working as well as ever, and wondered why no one had ever gone to look for Elizabeth despite all his questions. It had been assumed, wrongly, that Elizabeth had perished on war service. That's how the Tidmouth Harbour Authority wrote it, after they pocketed her sale money! (Sir Bertram was LIVID not to get his hands on the now deceased Harbourmaster responsible.)

Elizabeth is now back to her childhood home hauling farm produce and any visitor willing to get dirty, for she still insists on carrying a bit of grime as a testament to her labours. The Wellsworth Brickworks has reopened, on a much smaller scale, as a "living museum," and Elizabeth takes great joy in carrying clay and coal again. Her, Little Barford, and Sir Bertram are now tighter than they've ever been, and Sir Bertram is the only man allowed to polish her. He's a much more sedated force at the wheel than his father, she notes, and quite often!

We ARE amused to see her <3

#ttte #ttte elizabeth #ttte the fat director #topham hall railway #ttte little barford #ttte worldbuilding #ttte thomas #ttte oc: sir bertram hatt i #tw death

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herestrish · 2 years

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Kalinka︱A Durarara!! F.F.

Link to Chapter 1.

For a better read, I highly recommend you check out the playlist I prepared for this chapter. I would also suggest to start it (if possible) at the song After The Storm.

Word count: 2674

Warnings: Language, use of cigarettes and alcohol, violence.

Chapter 2

He breathed in deeply as the cigarette invaded his lungs and nicotine ran through his bloodstream. Smoke from his exhale hovered in the air, keeping him in a serene state. One hand in his pockets. The other one tapped the ashes from his cigarette. His body leaning against the wall, he took a moment to gaze at the metropolitan view.

Loud.

That was the only way he could describe it. The city was loud. Annoying. Buried in filth. Filled with loathsome fleas wandering around. The worst of all, the city was a place of violence. Where only the sly and the brutal could prevail in. He hated them both, nonetheless. He looked blankly at the buildings’ tops, at the clear morning sky. He looked at the sky as the cloud of nicotine gradually blurred the view. It continued to do so until he eventually grounded the cigarette out on a mailbox. The door alongside him opened and sent forth the bustling sound from within the building, together with the appearance of his companion. Tom put his wallet inside his jacket and sighed.

“Son of a bitch, I thought I’d never get out of there.”

“Any other errands to take care of today?”

“Just the ones involving the emptiness in my stomach. Did you have breakfast yet?”

They were heading towards a random bistro when he heard the roar of a motorcycle coming down the road. It was unlike a regular engine, since that which he had just encountered was always to stand out from the congested traffic of Tōkyō. He did not although know whether it was its deep shade of black or the abnormal smoke coming from it. Or simply the fact that, if listened carefully, some could swear it was a neigh of a horse they had heard behind the so familiar industrial noise. This specific motorcycle was surely nothing like any other piece of metal. Nothing but a living urban legend that made these surroundings a subject of idle talk.

Working already? At this time in the day?

People had created many stories and theories all around The Black Rider. Some would say that he was one of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Others would say that he merely was a prank put together in order to scare the passers-by. However, the rumour that spread the most, the one they would all agree with, was that there admittedly was nothing beneath his yellow-coloured helmet. Starting with this exact rumour, The Black Rider was also known by the name of The Headless Rider.

The man’s natural reaction to all these kinds of rumours was always a simple, nonchalant sigh, for idle chatter and speculating was something else he could not possibly undergo. Even when The Black Rider’s motorcycle ran under his eyes, he did nothing but heave a deep breath and mutter, as if to himself.

Little do they know.

Undeniably.

“Huh? Did you say something?”

“No, no, it was nothing.”

Tom moved his gaze towards the cloudless sky.

“Today you’re more distracted than ever. Are you sure nothing happened?”

“A hundred per cent sure.”

“I bet it’s the accumulated stress. Your mind could be exhausted from all this week’s hustle.”

“It’s been a long week indeed.”

“Don’t you ever do anything to chill out for a bit?”

He smiled in slight amusement. Did he? Was there anything for him to do in his leisure time? Besides basking in the sun, as it was self-evident. Something. Something. There had to be something to think of. An activity where he could release his anger effectively and his monstrous strength could not become a danger for anybody. In search of a fitting scenario, he visualised a memory from his childhood. Sun rays. The smell of dirt and artificial grass. The stirring crowd. The bat standing still in his hands.

Inhale.

The ball coming right in front of him at a tremendous speed.

Exhale.

Ultimately, the rage. His little brother cheering from the stands.

This picture felt right. It felt like a good enough answer.

“I play baseball from time to time.”

“Eh, I remember now. Back in middle school you were pretty good at it.”

“No way. ‘Pretty good’ doesn’t work. I was a beast back then.”

They both laughed lightly as a wind breeze blew onwards the boulevard, through their hairs and clothes. Tom smirked at his employee before approaching the bistro’s door.

“Well, I’ll be damned. If that’s the case, guess I’ll let you bring a baseball bat to work. Mixing up business and pleasure for you.”

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Business and pleasure. There was no such thing for Heiwajima Shizuo. The workplaces he had known so far did not do anything other than to get on his nerves. He went through a substantial circle of employments and discharges, since his short temper brought him into all sorts of trouble. Even if being Tom Tanaka’s muscles meant exactly the opposite, he did not enjoy it whatsoever. His rage, whether required or not, was nothing but a reflex. A mere reflex that always managed to put him in a certain faraway state. When his anger got unleashed, it was as he put himself on autopilot. Therefore, turned into the very image that spread through the city like a bad disease. Everybody knew that a personification of violence used to roam about these streets. And he and only he could know how much he hated this image. Only he could know how much he hated violence, hence himself. As long as he was himself, he was not able to find genuine pleasure in anything.

He stared blankly at the ceiling while this exact thought came through his mind.

As long as I’m me, I won’t be able to enjoy anything.

Even if he was, it would anger him even more. One frank explanation was that he would simply not deserve it. A monster like him would not deserve any happy, pure thought. In fact, he wished him the worse. Only the worse. For he, himself, was his biggest enemy.

Shizuo felt the tatami beneath him cold and flat. Terribly uncomfortable. Smoke from his unfinished cigarette floated up the ceiling. He drew deeply on it and skimmed off the ashes in an empty noodle cup. Laid down as beams of light pierced through the blinds, colouring his face in shades of sunset. The room darkened enough when he heard his cellphone vibrating. He lazily ruffled his hair. Stood up to approach the device.

Tom:

Meet me at Ikebukuro Station.

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

The man picked up the improvised ashtray and more other cardboard cups laying on the floor, throwing them away. His moves were instinctive, almost robotic. The door of the apartment was thus slammed shut by him holding a garbage bag in his hands. Checking the message on his phone’s screen once again. A cigarette hanging from a corner of his lips.

That was the reason why Heiwajima Shizuo was now standing in front of a nightclub’s entrance, in the very city ward of Shinjuku. As business was the most obvious cause he would be out for, he tried to understand why his companion would want to take the subway and go way afar their area of work.

“Tell me, Tom… What the fuck are we actually doing in a place like this? Have you gotten yourself into some shady, anime-like, stuff or something?”

“Thought it’d be nice to spend a night out once in a while. We’ll take it as a well-deserved Friday night.”

What was Tom thinking dragging him in here? Especially in Shinjuku, since things could not get any worse. Shinjuku was no fun town. No entertainment area. Not to him, at least. Despite being known for its wild nightlife, along with a dubious chain of suicides, Shinjuku was the place where that scumbag used to be in action. If it happened to bump into that scumbag, his mate would certainly not get the fun he had been expecting to have. He always tried his best to avoid a possible encounter and therefore spending his time in Shinjuku would not be of any help.

“And by ‘we’ you mean ‘you’, as you alone will be spending the night in this zoo. I’m out of here.”

He prepared himself to leave. He had to take the earliest intercity and get out.

But while on the verge of leaving, he was caught by his bartender vest.

Tom, you little fuck.

“Not so fast, Shizuo. Or should I rather be saying ‘employee’?”

The audacity of him playing this card.

“You’re my bodyguard, remember? You were supposed to stand by me and ensure that nothing goes wrong in here. Am I right, employee?”

“I wish you choke to death on the first drink you put your mouth on tonight.”

“I’ll rather die from cracking up. Now, let’s go get some drinks. You’ll need some if you want to stay this funny, employee.”

“I’ll need some just to forget about this mess.”

While the words echoed through his head, a glass of whiskey sounded more and more fitting. A good glass of whiskey would muffle the bothersome, terribly loud music that reverberated through the room. The man thereupon decided to place his reliance on Tom’s plainly good intentions and followed him to the bar. His eyes remaining vigilant for a possible fur jacket in his visual range.

The liquid’s bitterness flowed down his throat. A brief form of numbness taking over his insides. It felt somewhat refreshing. Almost stilly. Although the moment of tranquillity did not last for too long, for a high-pitched voice shattered his state as a hammer thrown onto a mirror.

“Tommy, u came!”

A blonde popped out from the crowd. She cheerfully greeted the two, giving Tom a frisky embrace. Her smudged makeup, some of which flowed bellow her eyes, her dark messed up makeup, meant that she had been there for a while now. Her sluggish talk meant that she had fancied a drink or two. Or way more. Yet it did not keep Tom away from putting his arm around her shoulders, a smug smile drawing on his face.

“For nothing in the world would I miss this. Happy to see you too, Shiki. Seems like the night’s been young.”

“It isn’t too late to keep up, cupcake. And your mate right here? I don’t remember seeing you, handsome, around.”

“Shiki, let me introduce you to my trusting friend and guarding shield: Heiwajima Shizuo.”

“Whoa?” She jumped in surprise. “You mean you’re the Heiwajima Shizuo? Man, I have a girlfriend in Ikebukuro who keeps me in touch with all the rumours! Is it true you can lift a vending machine with your bare hands?”

Shizuo put his hands in his pockets with a sigh. He admittedly did not take any pride in his reputation and it rather felt incredibly distressing to talk about it. But then again he shifted his gaze to the ceiling in a reserved, laid-back motion. Masked his frustration into a forced chuckle.

“I guess I’ve managed to lift one or two in my life. Don’t take rumours too seriously, though. People tend to exaggerate things.” He shook the woman’s hand. “Nice to meet you too.”

“Great! Now that we’ve all got to know each other, we shouldn’t wait any longer and get fucked up already. Shizuo, buddy, you have to meet the other girls for they are a delig-“

“Club fight!”

“Oh my days, she’s got a telescopic stick!”

“He shattered a bottle on the guy!”

“She kicked him in the nuts! Right in the nuts!”

“Yeah, show them!”

Tom raised one of his eyebrows, looking straight into his companion’s eyes, albeit aware of the fact that his question would turn the night upside down.

“Should we go and see what’s going on?”

Unfortunately, what happened afterwards was exactly according to his thoughts.

He would have stood aside. He definitely would have, as what was going on was disgusting on all sides. But no matter how much he tried to avoid violence, it always came to him. He attracted trouble like a magnet and there was nothing to do about it. It was not even because someone stumbled and fell onto him. Rumours tend to be exaggerated indeed, for it was not the actual fall that lead to his rage but the words that came from the poor man’s mouth.

“What you’re looking at, asshat? Stop looking at me like a frustrated little bitch and help me get up.”

Shortly thereafter, everything went blank. Sound muffled to the point that he could not actually hear anything. Everything around him distorted greatly, as if he was underwater. He could not really feel the heaviness in his hands, nor perceive the massive jolts of what he was throwing onto the ground. Neither at whom was he throwing it. The adrenaline took over him up until his senses were completely erased, up until he was at nothingness’s absolute mercy.

A dim light appeared, however, in his sight.

An escape.

Slowly regaining his conscience, the man started to swim. The closer he got to the water’s end, the brighter his aim got. A distant, curious chime began to reverberate. Louder and louder.

I’m close.

I can do this.

With a blur and a deep breath, he finally came out to the surface.

Found himself below the starlight, leaning against the building. The party should have ended; hence he could not hear anything other than some cricket sounds. The rumble of some vehicles that ran through the streets now and then. The sound of shattered glass below his feet. His own breathing as he was searching through his pockets.

How much good a cigarette would do at such a time. As his craving became bigger, his hands got shaky, his movements almost frantic. To his contentedness, he started to feel the rectangular shape of his pack. To his horror, he found it empty.

The man smashed it directly to the ground, letting out a thunderous howl. A howl that echoed up to the night’s clear sky.

“Here, have one of mine.”

He turned his head for as meeting the speaker’s gaze. She pointed the opened pack at him with an amused smile upon her face. Shook it a little. Whereas at the time his main priority was the need for nicotine, he could not stop looking at her colourful features. She wore flashy, bright clothing. Nevertheless, she did not look vulgar as the outfit felt rather fitting for her. It matched with her bangs, her flame-coloured hair. With her glamorous makeup. With that charming smile. No, vulgar was not the word to describe it. She smelled of exclusive perfume. Flannel sheets and Moët night-overs. Limousines and cherry-sweet ice cream. Her scent tightened his senses, pressure twitching his stomach to a degree that would have Shizuo's fists clenched. But there was something else that made him brush it off.

For those were not the details he had first observed. It was true, indeed, that her frivolous image might be fitting. And slightly repulsive all the same. He howbeit thought that it was due to her eyes. Her outfit matched with her eyes, as he reckoned them as some that had seen a lot during their existence.

Shizuo took a cigarette out of her pack, muttering.

“Thanks. I appreciate it.”

She lighted one up on her own. Inhaled the smoke deeply and leaned against the wall. Beside him.

“I don’t do this often. Almost at all. But I’ve been keeping the pack in my purse, just in case.”

“That ‘just in case’ has just saved my life.”

She laughed.

“Hope I’d never become addicted to something like this. This stuff is expensive as shit.”

He did not respond to her statement. A mild murmur of approval was just enough.

By no means should someone become like this.

“In fact, you can keep the whole pack. Something’s telling me that your day’s been way longer than mine.”

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

They continued to engage in their conversation. Talking about both of their nights from a retrospective view. The echo of their laughs intertwined with the smoke coming from their cigarettes, creating an enchanting bubble of serenity around the two. The view was intriguing, captivating even. At least from the building he happened to catch sight of them, that image looked like the very climax of his day. Reaching that conclusion, his face lightened. Lips arching into the same horrifying smirk.

Roll credits

Click here for Chapter 3.

#Durarara!!#durarara fic #durarara x oc #various ocs #various x ocs #Shizuo Heiwajima #Izaya Orihara #Shinra Kishitani #Celty Sturluson #chikage rokujou #Anri Sonohara #Masaomi Kida #mikado ryuugamine #chapter 2 #mistery #action #angst #literary references #fan fiction

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dirty-holy-things · 3 years

Text

The Space Between (your heart & mine)

Chapter 17 has been posted to Ao3, and below to Tumblr.

Catch up on chapters 1-16 on Ao3.

Notes: This fic is 18+ and explicit. Chapter contains canon-typical violence and descriptions of injuries. Reference to past abuse. Please exercise caution if this is a sensitive subject for you. Also - I promise there's a happy ending, but it might take a bit of angst to get there. For those who have kept up with this fic, sorry for the delay in updating - grad school has kept me busy, but regular updates should resume.

Words: 5.1k update, 80.9k total.

There had been changes within yourself as well, even though you struggled to admit it after having spent so much of your life suppressing that which was now showing itself within you. Your safety had always depended on your ability to mask your powers, or at least conveniently use them, and now they were unexpectedly breaking through your barriers. Through observation and meditation, you had started to put together that your abilities and powers swelled whenever your emotions did, just as they had when you were younger. When Din was once running behind schedule for a bounty, your nerves and fear alone were able to entirely warp the canteen you had purchased for yourself, crushing it to the point that it was unusable junk. And when Din finally returned home to you, bruised and battered, and yet focused only on touching and kissing every inch of you — you found that his cuts and bruises began to disappear from underneath your fingertips without any direct focus or attention. There was an undercurrent of power that was growing within you and Grogu, and it was beginning to breach the walls that you had put in place to hold it back; and you had no way of predicting when that wall may cave in.

These ever-increasing powers and revelations were both fascinating and terrifying. You did not know what would happen from here if you and Grogu continued down this unmapped path. You could understand that power without training could be exceptionally dangerous, but how would you even go about learning how to control it all? You had once been able to suppress your connection to the Force, but you never actually learned how to master this connection; repression is not true mastery or control, as it only delays the chaos.

But who was there to learn from? The Jedi Order was no more, the grasp of the Sith had receded with the rise of the New Republic, and the civilizations that connected with the Force as a form of magic were incredibly closed-off and tight-lipped. You had been extraordinarily lucky to stumble unto the teachings of Ixxith as you had, but now that the seal had been broken, now that Pandora’s box had been opened, you were faced with an impossible question — where do you go from here?

Image credit to my love @knivesareout as she makes beautiful things and supports my writing.

An eternal thank you to @soyelfuegoquearde for beta'ing my baby and giving me constructive feedback.

And love to @bdavishiddlesbatch and @louderrthanthunderr for all of their love and support.

"We fall in love because we long to escape from ourselves with someone ideal as we area corrupt. But what if such a being were one day to turn around and love us back? We can only be shocked. How could they be divine as we had hoped when they have the bad taste to approve of someone like us? If in order to love, we must believe that the beloved surpasses us in some way, does not a cruel paradox emerge when we witness this love returned? If they are really so wonderful, how could they love someone like me?" - Alain de Botton

The universe felt brighter as you traveled through it now, suspended in space and time within the secure confines of your roaming home. You continued to watch the stars streak past you on every journey, still feeling just as entranced by them as you had on the first flight from Chandrila — but it was even more of a beautiful and brilliant thing, as you now had the incomparable comfort of being known, and being loved. For a brief moment, you had worried that your admission of love would make things complicated, awkward, unbalanced; but your fears had been completely dismissed and rendered unnecessary, as it had brought you and Din closer than you could have imagined.

It was the little gestures and moments throughout the day that allowed those fears to be quieted. His hands would brush along your body in passing; he brought you a blanket to the cockpit after seeing you wrapped tightly around yourself to fight off the chill; he would gently tuck away the stray pieces of hair that fell across your face. And you became less reserved in showing your affections as well; you would often drape yourself across the back of the pilot’s seat and over his expansive shoulders as he navigated the Razor Crest through the atmospheres of new planets and hyperspace. You would bring him food and water, reminding him to take care of himself in ways that he often forgot to. And the two of you spent more time encased in the security of darkness, to the point where you joked that you might develop night vision. Very few things can grow in the absence of light, and yet here you were, your love thriving in this unexpected place.

You found that you didn’t necessarily feel as though you were missing anything, by not being able to see his face. Your love felt whole, comprehensive, and possibly even more valuable as it was so unconditional in its nature; you would love him endlessly, and you didn’t need a face to assign that love to, as he was so much more than the anatomical structure that existed behind the helmet. Somehow, the darkness felt more freeing than the light. The comfort and security of the darkness offered you both the opportunity to be completely and entirely exposed; no helmet, no clothing, no beskar, no self-doubt. It was infinite in its nature, and allowed for infinite possibilities.

How beautiful, these little infinities you had created together.

And while you never held any regrets for the life you shared with Din, you understood that some things were not worth repeating. You didn’t offer to help with a job again after Corellia, and it was a decision that you had come to by yourself. Again, you held no regrets for what had transpired on the industrial planet as it had been the catalyst that had brought the truth to the surface, the truth about your love, but it had left some wreckage in the process. Your sense of self-preservation and fear had been reignited when the Twi’lek had made unwanted physical advances, and although you knew you were safe now, it was challenging to quiet that instinctual part of yourself that had risen up, desperately seeking to sustain your hard-won survival.

Following the events of Corellia, you started to have the occasional nightmare, your mind resurfacing old wounds and memories that you had worked to let go of and leave on Chandrila. You would have dreams of the torrential thunderstorms of Eadu, threatening to drown you as your family watched, making no effort to help you stay afloat. You would feel the radiating pain of Orron’s blows throughout your body, every old wound somehow reemerging and aching anew. Sometimes the terror and pain of the nightmare was quick to pass upon waking, but there were some occasions in which you woke up crying and thrashing, a scream trapped in your constricted throat. Sometimes, you would wake up shaking like a leaf in a thunderstorm, chest heaving as the tears flowed; upon waking, you were always disoriented and scared for a moment, until you realized you were still at home and you were still wrapped securely in Din’s arms. You knew Din hated seeing you like that, tearful and distressed, and you didn’t want to cause any further hurt to yourself or to him. So you made the decision to no longer act as bait.

There was no sense in reopening old wounds, and creating new ones in the process. If you were to live with these pains, you could at least avoid inflicting them onto others.

Din had been supportive of your choice to no longer participate in bounties. He had reassured you that he still believed in your capabilities and value as a companion, but agreed that the reduction in stress would be worth the reduction in payouts. It had been tough to find a way to keep yourself occupied and still feel like a valuable, contributing asset; you knew you would never be content to simply exist here, offering nothing to Din except your body. While your originally agreed-upon partnership ended up not lending itself to you becoming a bounty hunter, you were not about to become a deadbeat, indolent passenger either.

The first few weeks after Corellia were alright, as you found odd jobs around the ship that you could tend to; repairing sagging panels, cleaning away the cobwebs, reorganizing equipment. These were tasks that you could manage, even with your limited mechanical and engineering knowledge. But eventually, as time wore on and your journeys carried you further along, you started to run out of tasks that could be done on the ship. Needing something to do, you then turned to managing additional business responsibilities, hoping to relieve Din of some of the stress that he carried on those broad shoulders. You kept a more organized, detailed record of his jobs and finances, and made sure there was an appropriate stock of supplies to support the Razor Crest’s three travelers.

And then there was the kid — you quite often found yourself managing him.

Following your journey to Bardotta, something had awoken in both you and Grogu; it was as if a creature that had laid dormant for many years had been awoken from its hibernation, and had returned with renewed strength. While you felt this change deeply within yourself, it presented itself most visibly in Grogu and his increasing abilities. You frequently had to search for him within the ship, as he had been working on learning how to cloak himself as you once had, adding this to his other skills. He was not able to fully vanish into his surroundings as you were, but he was decent enough at camouflaging himself to the point where you once had a panic attack that he had managed to escaped the ship into the wild forests of Dantooine while under your supervision. He was also experimenting with bringing larger and larger objects to his small green grasp, most noticeably larger and larger portions of food, or other comfort items like blankets. His growing curiosity and expansion of power hadn’t been allthat concerning until a particularly rough tantrum, during which he pushed both you and Din a good three feet back from him, without ever laying a hand on you. The changes occurring could no longer be denied or ignored, and you understood you would have to confront them at some point.

Your best attempt at navigating this next step was to seek out knowledge in a different format; as Din’s travels occasionally brought you to larger cities, you would spend a portion of the layover browsing the city’s libraries and book stores, if they existed, poring over the texts to see if there was any history, legends, instructions, or insights that could be obtained. You had very little success at finding anything that taught you about Force powers and how to use them, however you had managed to find several interesting texts that chronicled the historical power struggle between the Jedi and the Sith. You had heard whispered stories and legends as a child, tales of heroes and villains who carried out the unending battle of good versus evil.

And as you read of these wars and conflicts, you came to an interesting conclusion — depending on the perspective of the available source material, both Jedi and Sith could be considered good, or evil.

Thinking back to Ixxith’s teachings about the importance of balance, you could understand how these two diametrically opposed sides were continually fighting against the scale of the universe that sought balance. From your wide assortment of readings, you understood that the universe itself truly held no favor for good or evil, Jedi or Sith, and it only ever sought an equilibrium — and yet the universe’s occupants insisted on living within one extreme or the other, the scale never allowed to settle at a place of peace and balance.

You enjoyed studying the texts that you had managed to acquire, and learning more about the history of those with abilities like you, even though it may not have been the specific knowledge you had set out to find. Occasionally, you would talk with Din about the things that you discovered in these books, which prompted him to share more about the history of Mandalore and their role in the galaxy’s history and development. This newfound, strengthening point of connection between you was beautiful and valuable in its own right, even though it may not have offered much help for corralling yourself and the kid’s behaviors.

Reading had given you something to do during the down time while Din was working, and while the kid was self-contained or safely entertained. You had never had much time to dedicate to your own hobbies and interests before, and it was refreshing to be able to have your own passions that you could pursue as you desired.

Having few travel expenses of your own, you were still living quite comfortably off of the bounties you had profited from, and you were able to purchase the things that caught your eye or interest. This led to a steadily-expanding corner of the cabin that became yours as it was occupied with stacks of books, piles of blankets, an assortment of snacks, and a respectable wardrobe. The fresher also now showed evidence of your residency, as some of your specialty products had found their way to the shelves and the shower; silky lotions, a nice brush, hygiene products that didn’t exist in the shape of a bar. The Razor Crest was gradually becoming a shared space, a shared home, and were someone to step foot onto the ship, they would be able to determine that the fearsome Mandalorian was no longer maintaining a solitary existence.

This change in Din’s lifestyle was becoming more and more clear to outsiders as you now frequently accompanied him to his negotiations and trade-offs with Karga when on Nevarro. The older man had been excited by your reoccurring presence, and while he had teased Din for it in the beginning, he had since relaxed and always welcomed the two or three of you with a genuine smile. And with each visit to the volcanic planet, Din grew more comfortable with claiming your relationship openly; he almost always kept a hand on you, tracing pressured circles into your skin, or if you were seated with some degree of privacy, gently stroking the inside of your thigh from underneath the table as a tease for what was to come. There were rarely moments in which you were left alone, and you found you preferred it this way. While Orron had once insisted upon keeping you within arms reach, out of his own need for power and control, you understood Din’s motives to be different. He wanted to protect you, wanted to show you off, just genuinely wanted to be with you because he loved being with you. And you also knew that he would never deny you an opportunity to venture off on your own, to explore the town or take Grogu to play with the local children.

Today had been no exception to that truth; as Din and Karga haggled over upcoming bounties, you grew bored and restless, and decided you would prefer to stretch your legs with a walk around town, and feel some sunlight on your skin as it was a fairly nice day. You squeezed his knee gently, getting his attention before nodding your head to the door of the cantina, where the three of you had gathered for this business dealing. Din nodded wordlessly, trusting you to keep yourself safe and return to him when you were ready. This unconditional sense of trust was new to you, but you loved every moment of it, and loved Din for offering it so readily to you.

You excused yourself from the table and strolled out of the bar, knowing that Din’s eyes had followed your entire journey through the tables and patrons until you exited into the bustling town center. The sunlight felt nice on your skin, and the slight breeze kept the air from feeling heavy and stagnant around you; you stretched your limbs and you felt the cracking and popping of your joints. You needed breaks like this, to be able to physically stretch your body and keep it limber and in shape.

And yet, despite the small space of the Razor Crest, you had still found ways to keep your body moving; Din had certainly made physical exercise more enjoyable. You thought back to all of the nights that had now been spent on the floor of the Razor Crest, as your exhausted bodies had collapsed into one another; you loved every minute of the physical exertion the two of you created, but your body needed more. It needed to run, jump, stretch, bend, without the constraints of the small cabin space. But Maker, did making love with Din feel like the most glorious and exhilarating use of your body; you marveled at every moment of passion the two of you shared, holding nothing back in the pursuit of giving the other what they desired.

You were brought back to the moment by an oddly dressed man bumping into you; you turned to apologize, as you had been the one to have stopped in the middle of the street, but they had already run off by the time you looked for them. Shrugging, you carried on with your afternoon expedition. You had intentionally chosen comfortable and lightweight clothing today, knowing it would offer a nice opportunity to stretch your legs. As you strolled through town, you felt yourself start to pick up your pace gradually until you were jogging along at a decent speed, leaving the town behind you as you ascended the black volcanic hills that surrounded the area that had since become familiar to you. From atop the hills, you could see the cantina, the school, the marketplace, and off in the distance you could see the Razor Crest as it was undergoing refueling and maintenance.

Continuing to run for a while, just along the outskirts of the city, you relished the feeling of the breeze against your skin; while Nevarro was hot and the air somewhat sulfurous due to the volcanoes, it was still a nice change from the recycled air of the ship, and was certainly better than some of the atmospheres of other planets you had journeyed to. You could feel the lava rocks and ash shifting beneath your feet as you ran, offering just enough resistance to make your heart race and your lungs expand with forceful, concentrated inhalations.

Having now circled about half of the city, watching the landscape change from your position above it, you settled down onto a spot that offered some dry grass to sit comfortably on. You waited for your heart rate to slow back to a resting pace, and stretched your limbs out around you, loving the bit of soreness that came along as your muscles stretched and contracted. You allowed yourself to rest here for a while, clearing your mind as you worked to let the Force flow through you, just as Ixxith had taught you. You could feel the Force moving through you gently, almost like a breeze passing through an open window. You settled into this feeling, into the peace that it offered, as silence and tranquility had become rare within the steel confines of your home. Relaxing, you only barely noticed the breeze that seemed to push and pull the air through your lungs, as you sank into the comfortable silence for a while.

Sensing a growing chill in the air, your eyes opened to scene around you. The sun had begun its descent behind the volcanic hilltops and you knew it was time to be on your way, to return to Din and Grogu, to your home and to your bed. Pushing yourself up from the ground, you brushed off the dust and debris that had pressed into your body and clothing, before starting a comfortable pace down the hillside and back into the city.

As you passed some of the houses that made up the outskirts of the city, you could sense that something, or someone, was watching you; turning to look all around, you didn’t see anything unusual. You tried to shake off the feeling as you navigated yourself down a familiar city path, shifting your focus towards your upcoming reunion with Din; thinking of the way he had pinched the inside of your thigh earlier shot your heart rate right back up to its previously racing pace.

And yet there was a persistently odd feeling around you though, one that you couldn’t seem to shake, even with the thought of Din. Deciding to trust your gut, you stepped down what seemed to be a quiet alleyway to take better stock of the situation around you and determine what was causing this unsettling feeling of observation. No, observation wasn’t the right word. The word that came to mind was stalked. Like something was hiding in the shadows and corner of your vision, keeping in step with you but never being revealed. You scanned the street you had just been walking through, trying to find whatever was causing this unease, this growing sense of danger —

And then you felt a large hand grasping your forearm like a steel trap, crushing your wrist as whoever this was pulled you further into the alley and into the seclusion that it offered.

Whirling around as your free hand having found its way into a fist, you intended to punch this unexpected attacker in the face; but before you could complete your movement, a grey and leathery hand grabbed your entire fist and wrenched it away, but maintaining a tight hold on your hand to restrain you. Looking up, you saw a terrifyingly familiar humanoid face.

Maxir Bragant had been a close companion and business partner of Orron Jakar, and you had spent more time around this Delphidian man than you ever cared to recall. He had been a frequent visitor to your shop, and the individuals who he dumped onto your cot for healing rarely survived due to his brutal and unyielding attacks. Being quite fond of cleaving into others with his axe, there was generally very little you could do to improve his victim��s odds of survival; you were no miracle worker, and you recalled how you had been beaten mercilessly for your failures. As you looked down to see that very same black axe strapped to his belt, you felt bile and fear rise up in your throat, not confident that you would be able to escape the crushing grasp of this towering man who now had both of your arms restrained.

His voice hissed out coldly, as his pitch-black eyes stared into yours with the same kind of fury and hatred that you had often seen echoed in Orron’s icy blue ones. “What a surprise to find you here,” he laughed, and the sound turned the very blood pumping through your veins to acid, to ice. He sneered at you, lips curling back to reveal the same ugly grin that showed up in your nightmares. “Figured you’d know better than to show up in a town like this. But, you were never a very bright one, were you?”

You bit your tongue, trying not to snap at that bait that he had flung out to you; you knew he wanted you to respond, wanted you to get mouthy, so he would have an excuse to discipline you, just as Orron once had. He wanted an interesting fight — you knew that he thrived on crushing the life out of a terrified and desperate soul, and you were not going to give that to him. You needed to ignore his jabs, verbal and physical, and focus on how to get yourself out of this situation, how to alert Din, or the Marshal, or any bystander who could offer you some sort of reinforcement against what was surely about to be a horribly painful and ugly fight.

Bragant used his leverage to pull you in closely to him, and you could smell the putrid odor of sweat and blood that radiated from him. It was nauseating and made your head feel dizzy, but you couldn’t let this get to you, couldn’t let this throw you off. From this positioning, you knew that you wouldn’t be able to use your upper body to fight him off as he had your arms secured; making a quickly-calculated decision, you brought your knee up forcefully into his groin, and as he bent over in pain with a groan, he released one of your hands. Gods, was it satisfying to see this motherfucker writhing. Having some more leverage and momentum now, you kicked into his sternum forcefully, his massive body flying backwards into the stone wall behind him. You turned to run, willing your feet to move faster than the stars you had watched in hyperspace — but he recovered faster than you expected; you had only made it about four or five steps away when he wrapped his rough, scarred arm around your neck and brought your writhing, desperately fighting body up and into his, pressing his back into the wall to keep you out of sight.

“Stupid bitch,” he spit at you, and you could see the flecks of blood and saliva that landed in the dust around you, standing out in stark contrast to the dark volcanic ash. “Did you really think you’d get away with it, killing him?” You felt the cold and rough-hewn blade of his axe pressing into your chest, a jagged corner digging in just enough to make you gasp as it pierced your skin; the blade was pressed dangerously close to your heart, and you had seen the force with which he could swing his weapon.

“Still curious how the fuck you got out of there like you did, vanishing like that; but we’ll have plenty of time to ask questions when I bring you back home. There are a lot of people that have been missing you.”

You could sense the sick and cruel smile on his face as he pictured what would surely be a gruesome, horrific, and torturous death.

No. No, you were not going to go out that way. Not on his terms, not on Orron’s. Not like this.

You thought about the horrors that would await you if Bragant was able to bring you back to the cartel. You thought about the sickening fear and sadness that Din and Grogu would feel at your unplanned and unexplained departure. Thought about how Din would cut his way through each and every formidable cartel member trying to bring you back to him, to bring you back to safety, to bring you back home. Thought about how one man wouldn’t be enough to fight off an army, thought about how Din would die trying to bring you back, just as you had nearly died bringing him back on Bardotta.

Thought about how the love between the two of you would threaten to shatter the galaxy.

You thought about how Bragant had called the cartel home, and the anger that coursed through you felt as though it was moving through your very bloodstream, each desperate beat of your heart pushing that anger further and further into your body, fueling your muscles and your strength until it was threatening to burst forward from you like a seismic charge.

“Home?” You screeched, the words tearing their way through your throat with vitriol.

“Home?! You keep that word out of your goddamn fucking mouth!” You screamed forcefully, your voice echoing against the stone and clay walls; you heard a loud crack, and the wall that Bragant’s body was resting against collapsed in on itself.

This disruption and destruction caught Bragant by surprise, and he fell backwards into the pile of rubble that your anger alone had created, releasing you from his grasp in the process. Your chest was heaving as you inhaled deep lungfuls of air, feeling the oxygen feed more and more power to your body — you felt invincible, impossibly strong and powerful — and vengeful. Every violent revenge fantasy you had ever had came rushing back to you, as you saw the tidal wave of your abuser’s blood overtake the world around you.

Here was a man who had contributed to your pain and destruction, who had killed countless people with no mercy — and now, you didn’t have a single ounce of mercy to extend to him. And you were at peace with that.

A blinding hot, red wave of fury overtook your body, crashing around you and drowning out the fragile sense of humanity that was desperately clambering to stay afloat. It was as if you were possessed, as you watched your arm extend before you, muscles twitching beneath skin as your fingers pointed in Bragant’s direction, before your hand found itself curled into a tight fist. Your nails dug into the palm of your hand, and you could see redness dripping forth from it — and you saw Bragant’s writhing form being lifted from amongst the stones, until he was levitating in midair. His hands clawed desperately at his throat, and the sight of his now-bulging eyes filling with terror felt beautiful.

With a final, overwhelming rush of immense power, your wrist pulled your hand inwards to your body and you heard a nauseatingly satisfying crack reverberate through the alleyway as Bragant’s eyes went dark and his body went limp, collapsing onto the pile of rocks and clay beneath him with a dull thump.

Your head began to spin as the energy that had previously flowed through you was suddenly ripped away, and you felt as though every cell of your body was now collapsing in on itself in slow motion; the sky above you and the ground below you tumbled throughout your field of vision, spinning both together and apart as your body connected with the dusty floor of the alleyway.

You could vaguely see a blood red stain spreading in your field of vision. Whose blood was it?

Throughout all of the endless spinning and disorientation, your eyes eventually came to rest on one comforting and familiar sight — a tall figure clad in beskar rushed to your side, but you couldn’t feel anything, couldn’t feel the hands that you knew were on your body, couldn’t feel the shift in your form as you were hauled into his arms. Couldn’t feel the heavy breaths and terrified words that spilled around you, as your head lolled to the side in his arms. It felt as though the link between your mind and body had been snapped, like a harp string tuned too tightly, and as the universe continued to tumble through your field of vision, you closed your eyes tightly and prayed for it all to stop.

Stop. Stop.

Stop.

#Din Djarin #Pedro Pascal #din djarin fanfiction #Din Djarin fanfic #din djarin x reader #Mandalorian fanfic #the space between

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myarmsaretoolong · 3 years

Text

so i may have accidentally started writing this prompt for webpril and i may or may not do more, we’ll see i guess

prompt: field trip

word count: 3756

warnings: none :)

summary: When Peter finds out the school field trip will be taking them to Stark Industries, he has some fairly reasonable concerns given all of his extra curriculars. When he finds out Harley planned the whole thing, he's determined not to give in to his taunts.

ao3 link here | read under the cut

Peter had a lot going on in his life. School, homework, Stark Internship, Spider-Man, and all the while finding time to hang out with his friends and family. Some days were exhausting, but he wouldn’t trade them for the world. Who in their right mind would?

He tried his best to stifle a yawn but only ended up making it more obvious. Thankfully, Mister Harrington didn’t notice. Ned, however, he definitely noticed.

“Dude,” he whispered, leaning closer. “You alright?”

Peter nodded, forcing a casual smile. “Yeah, ‘course. Me and Harley had a late night working on a project at the Tower is all.” He dropped his voice lower. “We’re upgrading my suit, but the shooters are proving to be a problem.”

“What’s up with them?”

“You so much as breathe towards the trigger and it fires. Not the best in a stressful situation-”

Mister Harrington’s voice boomed from the front of the class, eyes locked on the pair. “Something you want to share with the class, boys?”

“No, sir!” Ned yelped. Peter shook his head vigorously.

“Then maybe you want to join the rest of us in finding out where we’re going for this year’s field trip?” Both boys nodded in sync. “Good,” Mister Harrington addressed the class as a whole. “Since last year’s trip to Oscorp was such a success, we’re sticking along the same theme…”

Right the Oscorp trip. The first half had been great, but the rest was rather overshadowed by the spider bite. Hopefully they just weren’t visiting Hammer Industries else he might have to decline out of loyalty to Mister Stark. Plus that time the Hammer Drones almost killed him… Thinking about it, Peter had a rocky history with large tech corporations.

Mister Harrington continued, “And this year we’ll be visiting Stark Industries!”

Cries of excitement rang out among the room. Ned turned to Peter, mouth hanging open and eyes wide. “Dude… What are you gonna do?”

Before he could reply, Flash piped up with a shit-eating grin on his face. “Yeah, Penis. What are you going to do when your fake internship gets exposed?”

“Shut it, Flash,” Peter snapped. He couldn’t be bothered to deal with Flash’s teasing right now, not when his head was reeling.

“Alright, class, settle down. Settle down.” Mister Harrington waited for the noise to die down. “Permission slips are on my desk, I need them signed by a guardian and brought back by Thursday at the latest. You hear that, Abe? Thursday latest.”

Abe, notorious for handing in his permission slips late, grinned a reply. “Got it, sir.”

Flash wasn’t going to be brushed off so easily. “Or what? You gonna set Iron Man on me?”

Mercifully, Peter’s need to reply was cut off by the school bell’s sharp ring. His classmates, Flash included, set about gathering their belongings. Peter hung back until the class had filed out of the door before going to collect his slip.

“Oh, and Peter,” Mister Harrington called as he was just about to leave, “no disappearing this time. It’s becoming something of a habit.”

Peter smiled and hurried out of the door after Ned. Students flooded the hall, their loud chatter enough for Ned and Peter to talk without being overheard.

“So,” Ned asked, “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know, honestly. But I’m going to the Tower now to work on the suit. I’ll just… have to figure something out.”

# #

Much to Peter’s annoyance, Tony had been called away for a meeting, leaving him and Harley to work on the suit.

Even though the web shooters were the main problem, they decided to focus on fixing the minor issues with the suit itself. Slow going, but ultimately an easy enough job for the pair.

After a few hours work, Tony returned from his meeting, looking a little worse for wear. He took a quick look at the suit and congratulated them both. “Good job. How are the web shooters coming?”

Peter answered first, not taking his eyes from his work. “Oh, we’re gonna work on them once we’re done here. Left them in the engineering lab downstairs anyway.”

“And you’ve not been down to get them?” Tony raised an eyebrow.

“No,” Harley supplied, just as intently focused on the suit as Peter.

Tony watched them for a long moment before loudly clapping his hands, making both of them look up. “What I’m hearing is you’ve both been holed up in here for hours, and that’s a little too me for my liking.” He waved away the boys’ attempts to argue with his hand. “Nope, don’t wanna hear it. FRIDAY, order us a pizza, the usual. I want to see you two upstairs in five. Got it?”

“Can’t we just finish this?” Harley moaned. “I mean, you could bring the pizza down-”

“You know I’m technically your boss, right? I mean, this is intern hours you’re logging even up here. That means you have to do what I say.”

“Fine, we’ll be up in five.”

And five minutes later they were. The pizza arrived not long after. Happy brought it up from the lobby, not trusting anyone else to do so, and they settled down to watch a film.

“Hey, Mister Stark, you don’t happen to know anything about our field trip do you?”

Tony looked blank. “They still haven't picked somewhere?”

“No they did, it’s-” He stopped talking as Harley giggled, trying his best to cover it up with a cough. Slowly, it dawned on Peter. “Did you do this? Why? How?”

“Well,” Harley grinned mischievously, “wasn’t hard to find your school’s email address and no teacher in their right mind would decline a personal invite from Tony Stark.”

Tony straightened up. “Hang on, you pretended to be me?”

Harley just shrugged. Tony held his glare… and eventually settled back down. “Fair enough, but don’t do it again.”

“Wait, Mister Stark! You’re not even mad? He impersonated you. I’m pretty sure that’s against the law or something!”

“It’s harmless,” Tony replied. “Plus your classmates get to go on the best field trip of their lives.”

Peter crossed his arms and huffed. “I guess.”

“Chin up, Pete,” Harley had that grin again. “It might be better than you think.”

# #

“And it is absolutely not going to be better than I think,” Peter said as they climbed off the school bus. He craned his neck, looking up at the familiar sight of the Tower with apprehension while everyone else gawped in awe. “I can’t believe him. I can’t believe Mister Stark let him get away with it!”

“Uh huh.” Ned looked around as they walked inside, hardly paying attention to Peter’s moaning. He didn’t blame him, though, Peter himself had been much the same the first time Tony brought him to the Tower.

The receptionist - Ryan, as Peter knew - jogged out from behind his desk and towards the group. Mister Harrington greeted him with a warm handshake before following him back to the desk.

Peter could easily hear them talking, even over the sounds of his friends' gleeful conversations.

“Here are your security badges, hand them out and make sure they’re worn at all times.” Ryan handed over a bunch of lanyards. “Your guide will be down any minute now.”

“Thank you.” Mister Harrington rejoined them and set about handing out the badges. Peter took the moment where everyone was distracted to take his own badge from his pocket and slip it over his neck, making sure the corner with his clearance level was tucked safely beneath his jacket.

From across the group, MJ eyed him suspiciously. She walked over to him and Ned. “So, you intern here, right?”

Peter nodded quickly, “Uh, yeah. Yeah I intern here.”

“So you, like, know your way around already?”

He didn’t have time to reply before someone called over to the huddled students. Someone with a very familiar voice… Peter squeezed his eyes shut, nose crinkled, as he turned towards the voice.

Harley strolled towards them with that same grin from the other night, eyes locked on Peter. Subtly, Peter waved his hand in an attempt to shoo Harley away, but Harley didn’t deter. “Hey, everyone.” Finally, he took his eyes from Peter and addressed the group as a whole. “Now, there was a small problem with our usual tour guide, so I’ll be taking her place!”

Peter forced his face to remain composed, not wanting to give Harley the satisfaction he so clearly wanted.

“I’m an intern here, but I’ve taken the tour enough times to know the thing by heart. I trust you’ve all got your badges?” A few ‘yes’s and nods came from the students. Harley eyed Peter’s badge, tucked under his jacket, and his smile grew. “I need to see them, so everyone hold them up in the air for me.”

Everyone did as they were told. Begrudgingly, Peter did so too.

Harley clapped his hands. “Perfect! Looks like we’re all set.”

Peter hurried to return his badge but, when he noticed MJ staring at him, turned the action into simply straightening out his jacket. His badge just happened to get caught underneath.

“If you intern here,” Flash stepped forward, a triumphant look on his face. “Then surely you know Parker, right? Since he’s totally an intern too.”

A dozen pairs of eyes turned to look at Peter. He was sure Harley was purposefully taking his time to answer.

“Of course I know Peter,” Harley said eventually. “He’s probably the second best intern here.”

“Who- Who’s the best?” Flash asked, that look wiped from his face.

“He’s gonna say he is,” Peter muttered to Ned.

Harley pointed to his own chest, “Me! Anyway, we’ve got a tour to get on with. Everyone follow me.”

Peter pushed his way to the front of the group, sidling up to Harley and talking under his breath. “What are you doing here? Does Mister Stark know?”

“Of course he knows, it was his idea.”

“His-!” Peter let out a long sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Okay, what was the ‘small problem’ with the usual tour guide.”

“Tony gave her the day off.”

Peter scowled, only just keeping his annoyance in check. “Tony Tony, or you pretending to be him again?”

“Does it really matter?” Harley shrugged. Seeing the look on Peter’s face, he answered anyway. “You wouldn’t want to know.”

“Great! So you both have it out for me. Y’know this is my actual school, right? These are people that I have to see everyday for the next two years.”

Harley leaned closer, his mouth almost at Peter’s ear. “That’s what makes it so fun.” He led them into the ground floor museum, a history of Stark Industries, and launched into a speech about the exhibits.

When they reached an exhibit all about the first Stark Expo, the whole class gathered around to see a miniature model of Howard Stark’s flying car that actually flew.

“Did anyone visit the expo when Tony restarted it a few years back?”

A few students nodded and raised their hands. Peter, however, made a point of crossing his arms over his chest and glaring at Harley.

Cindy kept her hand in the air long after everyone else dropped their’s. “Excuse me, but, you keep calling him ‘Tony’. Have you actually met him?”

“That’s a great question.” Harley’s eyes flicked to Peter once more, looking for a reaction he refused to give. “We actually met back in December 2012.”

“Wasn’t… Wasn’t that when everyone thought he was dead? When his house got destroyed by The Mandarin?”

Harley nodded. “Exactly then, only he obviously wasn’t dead.” He cleared his throat, standing a little taller. “I can’t tell you much of what happened, but I can say my work on the Iron Man suit was crucial to The Mandarin’s take down. I’m something of a hero myself.”

Peter, again, forced his face to remain perfectly neutral, though he couldn’t stop his hands from balling into fists as his classmates gasped and yelled questions.

“He had Mister Stark and Jarvis talking him through the whole thing,” he whispered to Ned, who was clearly torn between wanting to know more and standing by Peter. “Anyone could have done that. I made the first Spider-Man suit by myself.”

“Yeah, but still,” Ned replied, “It’s pretty cool. He’s seen inside an Iron Man suit.”

“I’ve seen inside an Iron Man suit!”

“Right, right. Of course you have, my bad.”

“Have you met Spider-Man?” Flash asked loudly, attempting to get Peter’s attention. He couldn’t help but look up.

Harley nodded. “Real douche-bag. No fun to talk to.”

Peter opened his mouth to make a come back, but quickly snapped it shut. Again, MJ stared his direction, eyes narrowed.

The rest of the morning went much the same. Harley took them through the museum, then to the Avengers Exhibition on the next floor, all the while making comments he knew would get a rise out of Peter. But Peter didn’t let them get the better of him. Not more than twice, at least.

They ended up having lunch in one of the many cafeterias. Peter heaped as many pastries and snacks as he could onto his tray and joined Ned at a table. MJ sat a few seats away from them.

Ned demanded to know the full story of Harley and Tony’s first meeting, which Peter happily explained as they picked at the mountain of food between them both. He made it very clear how anyone could have done what Harley did, though even he had to admit it was a cool story.

At some point in the story, MJ joined in listening. Once it was over, she asked, “Why do you have it out for each other?”

“What do you mean?” Peter squeaked. He cleared his throat, heat rising in his face. “What- We don’t have it out for each other.”

“You do,” MJ scoffed. “I’ve been watching the two of you all morning. Either he hates your guts, or you’re actually really good friends and he loves playing pranks. So which is it?”

“Oh, um…”

“Peter!” Cindy called from the cafeteria line. “Your badge is on the floor over here.”

Peter’s hand shot to his lanyard, finding the end of it empty. He jumped to his feet as Cindy bent down, “Don’t worry! I’ve got-” Too late, she picked it up and turned it over in her hands. “ - it…”

Her eyes went wide, a hand clasped across her mouth. By now, half the class was watching. “Why… Peter, why’s your clearance level so high.”

“It’s not that high.” Peter snatched the badge from her and turned to the rest of the room. “It’s not that high,” he assured.

A few seconds of silence followed. Flash spoke up first. “What did it say?”

Peter swallowed hard, eyes squeezed shut as the words left Cindy’s mouth.

“Level Ten.”

“Ten.” The room filled with gasps and mutters.

Once again, it was Flash who spoke first. “You… That can’t be right! How does Parker have Level Ten clearance?” He checked his own badge - Level One, Visitor.

“I, uh…”

“Because,” Harley had the impeccable timing to enter the room just at that moment. “He’s Tony’s personal intern. We both are.” He held up his own badge, Level Ten clearly written in one corner.

Flash wasn’t having it. “There’s no chance Parker has even been in the same room as Tony Stark-”

“Wanna bet?”

Peter had to admit, Harley standing up to Flash for him was kind of nice.

Mister Harrington stood up, clapping his hands to get everyone’s attention. “Let’s just focus on the tour. Everyone finish up your lunch and we’ll head off again in five minutes?” He looked to Harley for confirmation, who nodded before joining Peter, Ned, and MJ at their table.

“So, you’re friends then,” MJ concluded.

“No, actually I hate him,” Peter said with a sickly sweet smile in Harley’s direction. He could feel everyone’s eyes on them.

“Relax,” Harley laughed. “I just came to say that the next part of the tour is of the labs, which you’ve obviously seen a thousand times. If you wanna duck out and go do something more interesting I won’t blame you.”

“Wait, really?”

“Yeah. Turns out it’s no fun to tease you when you don’t even respond anyway. We’ll be in the engineering lab in two hours, meet you there?”

Peter sighed. “But Mister Harrington specifically told me not to disappear. I’m on thin ice if I ever want to go on a trip somewhere again.”

Harley waved away his worry. “I’ll have a word with him, wait here.”

They watched Harley make his way over to Mister Harrington and ask. Eventually, Mister Harrington nodded and Harley gave Peter a thumbs up.

When the rest of the class went to continue the tour, Peter said bye to Ned and MJ and hurried off to Tony’s lab. After half an hour of filling out boring homework sheets, he decided now was as good a time as any to work on the web shooters. He needed to meet Harley in the engineering lab anyway, so down he went.

The web shooters were still where he’d left them on his work table. He took out his tools and set to work. It was common knowledge around the Tower that Harley and Peter worked closely with Tony, so no one questioned why he was working on superhero tech.

The soft ding of the lift doors brought Peter out of his work, a soft hush fell across the lab as Tony strolled in. He spoke to a few of the scientists, looking at the projects, before making his way over to Peter’s table. “Hey, kiddo. FRIDAY told me you were in here. What happened to the field trip?”

“Oh, they’re at the labs so Harley let me leave. Y’know, since I’ve seen it all before.” He sat straighter and crossed his arms. “I’m angry at you, by the way.”

“Me? Why?” Tony pressed a hand to his chest in mock hurt. “What on earth could I have possibly done to make you angry?”

Peter couldn’t help but laugh. “I can’t believe you let Harley take over the tour. He told everyone I’m your intern!”

“Isn’t that a good thing? I’m what the kids call a ‘pretty cool guy’ aren’t I?”

“Not if you keep talking like that you’re not.”

Tony pointed at the web shooters in Peter’s hand. “How’s it going?”

“Err, not great honestly. I’m starting to think the sleeker design just isn’t feasible.”

“None of that quitter talk in my lab, kid. Let me take a look.”

Tony pulled up a seat and Peter took him through the design and the problems with it. One acquainted, Tony set to work scribbling on a piece of paper - a mixture of calculations and sketches - until they came up with a plan, which they set about on immediately.

This time, the ding of the lift didn’t draw Peter’s attention. Neither did the quiet falling over the lab. It was Flash’s voice that finally dragged him to reality. “You have got to be joking. Parker actually knows Tony Stark?”

“Told you so,” Harley grinned.

Tony stood, wiping off his hands, and walked towards the group. Peter stayed at his table, cheeks burning red. “Well, who wants to see what these folks are working on?” The group of students practically vibrated with excitement. Tony waved a hand. “Go, disperse, learn. But try not to annoy them too much, huh?”

They didn’t need to be told twice. The group split across the lab, joined scientists at their tables and listened as they happily explained what they were working on. Ned made straight for Peter, gasping when he saw the shooter on his desk. “Is that real?”

“Yeah-” Peter glanced around the lab, making sure no one was watching. “- watch this!” He shot a web at the table.

Ned’s mouth fell open. “Can I have a go?”

“Sure. Just be careful, it’s still sensitive.”

Ned took the shooter and clipped it to his wrist. “I feel so cool right now.” He shot a web, landing on top of Peter’s with a satisfying thwip. “So. Cool!”

Peter laughed, “Keep it down before someone-”

“Is that Spider-Man’s web shooter?” Cindy shouted, loud enough for half the lab to see. Tony glanced up from the huddle of students gathered around him to check Peter had everything handled.

“Uh, yeah. It is.” Students swarmed around him, wanting a closer look at their local hero’s gear. He gave a few demonstrations to a chorus of ‘oo’s and ‘ah’s and took them through the basic mechanics. Even Mister Harrington looked awed.

Harley squeezed his way to the front of the group. “May I?” Peter placed the web shooter in his waiting hand, more than a little wary. He aimed it across the lab. Peter realised too late his target and the signature thwip echoed across the room once again. The web sailed through the air, and hit Tony smack dab in the face.

For a moment, the whole lab was silent. Then it slowly broke out into laughs, growing in volume until everyone was clutching their sides. Everyone except Tony who struggled to claw the web fluid covering his mouth and eyes. Before he got free, Harley shoved the web shooter back into Peter’s hand.

“Pete,” Tony said, his voice eerily calm. “Why?”

“I- I didn’t! It was-”

“Yeah, Peter.” Harley put his hands on his hips. “That’s a really mean thing to do.”

“Hey!” Peter punched his shoulder. Tony strode across the lab towards them. “Mister Stark, I swear I didn’t-”

Tony walked right up to Mister Harrington and stuck out a hand, waiting for the other man to shake it. “You’re in charge here?”

Mister Harrington swallowed hard and nodded. “Y- Yes, I’m in charge-”

“Good, then I trust you won’t mind if I conduct the rest of this tour myself?” Tony didn’t wait for Mister Harrington to reply before gathering the students around. “Now, most of the upper floors were cleared out during the move upstate, but I’m sure there’s still plenty to see up in the old Avengers Quarters.”

Peter’s mouth hung open. “Mister Stark, are you sure that’s a good-”

Tony spoke as if he couldn't hear Peter, “I even think Spider-Man left one of his many cuddly toys up there.” He led the group towards the lift.

Harley joined Peter trudging after the class. “This is the best day of my life.”

#webpril 2021 day 1 #webpril #webpril 2021 #peter parker #tony stark #harley keener #peter parker and tony stark #irondad #my writing

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tofascinate · 3 years

Text

twenty-twenty reflection

The year is 2020. I distinguish this year from the others. And there will be more. There might be many! I want to remember, if ever asked upon myself, that my year of 2020 was distinct from the mash of living. From the accordion of living, perhaps. From the “bellows” of my accordion life, here is my layer of 2020:

January

began with a visit from Kellan, the preparation for a long-anticipated trip to Hong Kong with Rohit. I was living at Momma’s. I had been working for her since I graduated in 2019, while I applied for job positions in cities and graduate programs in Europe and the West Coast.

In January I spent almost 2 weeks in Hong Kong with Rohit and his family. This was a life-changing trip. This was amazing. I felt so taken care of, and each day filled with exploration. And snacks. For the first time, Rohit helped me with Cantonese – every single time I asked, which was a lot, considering my personal goal was to learn as much casual Cantonese as I could while there. I recorded all my new vocabulary and phrases in a list on the plane ride back. Here I met Rohit’s family in their home element, spent an afternoon with Rohit’s mom, accompanied Rohit to friend meetups, and experienced a Chinese New Year family celebration (!!). I hiked the most exhausting and thrilling mountain of my life, called Lantau Peak (the second highest peak in Hong Kong). I felt some of my biases melt on this trip, and some of my interests open up and blossom.

I left Hong Kong as the coronavirus became an issue in the Eastern Asian world. I spent a night in Tokyo, not with Rohit, but with my nourishing airport snacks and exhausted schedule until my flight left the next day for the U.S.

February

In February life moved quickly. I applied to all 4 master’s programs, I had a second interview for a serendipitous job position in Philadelphia (the only job among many that wanted an interview!), I helped Rohit find an apartment in Norwalk, I left Rohit at his apartment in Norwalk, I accepted the job in Philadelphia, I found a place to live in Philadelphia (more magic was to come of that 2-weeks-before-moving FB find), and I moved to Philadelphia!!!

March

My momma helped me move here. To the city I’d never before been to, but in which I was about to find the happiest home. The first 2 weeks of this month were extremely memorable. I worked in the Comcast Technology Center building (a wow) as a LaunchCode teaching assistant for a 12-student, 14-week intro to computer programming and web development intensive course. I took every opportunity to explore the building, the surrounding city. The first week of connection with students was special. The idea of working the rest of the course remotely was ridiculously unlikely.

On March 14th, the pandemic was real. On March 13th, my co-teacher took home the classroom’s bottle of Purell.

My second roommate, Channing, and her kitty Tycho moved in. Deeksha, Channing, Tycho, and I would become a mini family.

We were in quarantine times, but I hadn’t had so much social interaction, peer interaction, freedom, intellectual stimulation, and work to do since the end of college 2019. It was a blessing to be where I was.

April

I will use April to say that I loved this job. It was a pinch-myself moment all the way through. I still sometimes can’t believe that I rose to the responsibilities, leadership, and organization required of me. Maybe it’s like that with new jobs that push you outside of your comfort zone and give you so much room to grow. LaunchCode was an extremely supportive and inspiring company to work for. The community of students (Comcast workers transitioning into future software engineering roles) were admirable and kind in how hard they worked, and how they helped each other.

I realized at this time that I was experiencing the dream I had put intention towards. It’s not always obvious realizing this. In fact, at first I thought I was accepting the job because it was the next best and only option. On the outside I didn’t know how meaningful it would be to me once immersed in it. When things all came together, I realized here I was, in the freedom of living independently from my home nest, in a friendly family of roommates, in a new city to explore, with a working position that supported me financially, allowed me to save for grad school, that opened me up to the computer science industry world, that used my strengths and pushed me to grow, that used my creativity, and that felt like I was being paid to learn.

I am sooooo grateful for serving in this role. It served me tremendously.

Also to be noted, Philadelphia spring. And Tycho the kitty made me love cats more than I thought I could love cats (who are now sometimes allowed to sleep under my blankets too).

May

At some point here, Deeksha, Channing, and I got to be really creative and goofy together. This plus sharing food and Deeksha eating my desserts ♡ ♡ = start of roomie love. Channing’s surprise birthday scavenger hunt.

At some point, I got accepted and not accepted into master’s programs!

And how did it happen that my random roommate’s husband was living and working in Germany following his CS master’s program there? Or that my roommate-friend would eventually move there too?

June

Work program extended by a week = another week of pay = I justify more so staying in Philadelphia longer… and longer… Staying also meant more time in the magical family and incredible bit of life I knew would end eventually. Staying meant not putting my parents at risk, or having to stay inside to keep them from risk.

In June I saw 6 helicopters flying above the city from my rooftop. I filmed them one night and was captured fleetingly in their search light. I stayed home for 6 and 8 pm curfews. I read ideas and information, and observed the panicked passion of my social media a little hesitantly. I spoke with my family. I read more until I felt settled and inspired with the movement of change. I walked around the city. I saw society a little differently; I saw reasons to question how I saw almost everything.

The Monday after the big weekend, my coworkers asked me and us all how we were doing, if there were protests in our neighborhoods. It was the first time I saw my coworkers as Black. I didn’t know if I was saying the right thing.

My co-teacher told me I was “lucky” I’d be moving out of the country. I told him I still wanted my home country to be a welcoming place for all. He was not so confident.

And! Rohit visited for a week :). I had fun and we both couldn’t wait to go back to having individual spaces to be ourselves.

July

At one point, with my job ended and Channing in North Carolina for most of the month, I was met with the pressure of everything I could do in the calm before the storm of change, and everything I wasn’t doing. A little rough. Oh to be leaving a place that has already been leaving you.

August

I moved in with Rohit in Norwalk! Took all my Philadelphia belongings in a car with not-friends Deeksha and Channing, and drove (Channing drove) to Norwalk. I was so grateful to them for that trip. We got a glimpse of the no-parking beaches. Specifically, we parked for 15 minutes in the “15 Minute Parking ONLY” spot by the beach at cotton candy sunset while Deeksha and I ran to the warm water and the two of us dove in like happy water pups and not 23- to 30-year-olds. Next day was a rockier beach and I’m still wishing Channing her next sunny beach day. This month was fun and without-a-car adventurous, though the airbnb-turned-rented-apartment that was actually’s Rohit’s didn’t quite feel like my settling in home. My daily purpose was working for my mom again and preparing for my master’s program.

I loved running so much with Rohit.

I did not love figuring out how to acquire a car to stay in Rochester for a month. Haha (thinking about tears). But we did it! And then we packed too many of my things into the car with Rohit’s things and drove 6 hours to Rochester, NY.

September

I think we each ran longer distances than we had run before along the river trail in Rochester. We were a little outdoorsy. We had an ample supply of local Chinese bakery goods (that reminded me of Hong Kong bakery items). There was sun, but not in the apartment. By the way, this apartment was a miraculous coincidence from one of Rohit’s (very tidy and kind) friends who hadn’t been living there for months but would have to move out at the end of October. So we could pay him rent!

Also surprise to AriaRay’s patience, calm, and going with the flow acceptance: as a bonus level to the desperately declared plan of packing ahead of time to avoid the overwhelming stress of the previous move, Rohit and I learned we would also be cleaning and clearing out our friend’s apartment first!

In the end, I had to accept that it was Rohit’s leading responsibility. Whatever we could do would make the experience easier for our absent friend. We moved out and found donation homes for almost everything. We did it! 5 pm and out the door to Burlington! (Extra exclamation points for whirlwind desperation and relief.)

October

I spent my last day with Rohit in Burlington. Burlington was love. And glorious fall.

I packed for Germany, I found a place to live in Germany, I boarded a plane to Germany. I got on the plane to Germany and went to sleep in Germany and thought, “Haha, isn’t it funny that I’m in Germany? Who thought of Germany?”

A new country and a new day to day life! I was grateful to be finally there and in awe that I had gotten to this point. My childhood self said, “when I’m 23, I’ll be in Europe.” Well, here I am.

We’re still in a pandemic. Meaning my classes are online and my traveling is cautiously limited to grocery store treks and to walks or bus rides around the city.

I have 3 very nice (and extraordinarily clean??) roommates from Ukraine, Russia, Iraq. All studying. One speaks better German than English, which is sometimes amusing as I really do want to have a conversation with her anyway.

Birthday, Halloween. But sometimes I forget and think my last birthday was in 2019. Blurry.

November

Hmmm studying. It still feels unprocessed to reflect on this. My master’s program can be considered a computational linguistics degree, formally called “Language Science and Technology M.Sc.” because to be more specific, this degree covers broader areas of computer science for language, and linguistics for computer science, than only computational linguistics.

I do love the subject. It is by far a synthesis of my linguistics and cs interests. I’m learning a little more than what my focus for here initially has been. Is this a good thing? Maybe a nice cushion of knowledge and perspective. Still looking for how to study and process spoken language, how to relate this to second language acquisition.

I think I get it. My core lectures right now are foundations for this field. I will leap from them into my specific field of interest. My software project is a learning ground for tools and seeds for future ideas, practice with coding group projects again. My seminars are for thinking, reading, discussing, weaving ideas, hearing from others seasoned in the topics and those of my peers investing their newfound or nurtured interests. Three more semesters.

Where will I be next?

I think I should mention one Thanksgiving meal that we cooked for, and shared with the additional guests of Olha’s partner Gaston and his roommate...with a name I can’t place now...from Morocco. This was a widely, uniquely fun night.

December

Hello cozy holidays, the first, by myself. My roommates and I decorated a tree from our local grocery store. I made cookies and cards, sent 14 gold letters. I spent hours decorating and felt creatively festive. ‘Tis the season :). Hoping everyone can feel the love I’m sending.

Surprises came after small gifts appeared from each roommate to each other. Olha made us all Christmas gift bags of gingerbread cookies. I strung a decorated card on the tree for each roommate and shared cookies and oranges. Uliana wrapped Russian tea and a scented candle in parchment paper, leftover gold glittered tree ribbon, and a holiday clothespin. She wrote “Merry Christmas! Happy New Year!” in each of our languages: Russian (well, not Ukrainian), English, German. Zhenas gave us each a gift bag of treats. So, there has been magic in my apartment this season.

Happy New Year, and thank you 2020, for all the joy, discoveries, and change you have brought me. Here’s to love in 2021.

♡

#menotes

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icariamusing · 3 years

Photo

CHARACTER BASICS

FACECLAIM: Sebastian Stan

NAME: Wesley Sullivan

AGE: 31

BIRTHDAY: September 27, 1989

OCCUPATION: Coding Engineer

HOMETOWN: Icaria, Greece

PETS:

POWERS

The ability of strength manipulation. He can enhance someone’s strength or decrease it.

BIOGRAPHY

(Trigger warning for mentions of domestic violence).

Childhood wasn’t something that Wesley really liked to look back on much. His mother Meredith had honestly done the best that she could, but she was a woman stuck in an unhappy marriage due to her foolish notion of love when she was eighteen. Like many young relationships, when the stress of adulthood hit, the passion was lost along with understanding. Sacrifices and compromises had to be made which made both young adults bitter about dreams they had to push off or cut out all together. It was this unhappiness that led Meredith to cheating on her husband with Ares. He looked like a regular, attractive male in a dive bar, but she would eventually discover that he was a Greek God that was now the father of her child. Not ready to deal with the repercussions of her actions, Meredith lied to Gregory that the baby was his. Elation and excitement once again filled their marriage, and the young mother thought that maybe a baby would get them on the right track again. She silently thanked Ares for his unintentional gift.

That was until around the time Wesley was four and Gregory was laid off from his job. Since he was a man with no college degree finding a job that met his inflated sense of self worth was nearly impossible. Instead of being a man of the house and taking anything he could get in stride to provide for his family, Greg turned to alcohol which made his already nasty temper worse. For the first two years it was just constant yelling in the home. Wesley quickly learned after a string of insults floated his way when he tried to show his father that he could not only spell his name perfectly but count all the way to twenty all on his own. Most fathers would be impressed at this skill being displayed by such a young age, but Gregory just called him a nuisance.

There wasn’t much time for tears though because by six things escalated from screaming to violence. Wesley as a small boy would do all he could to protect his mother, but she either made sure he left or he was easily pushed aside. It was during one horrible night in particular that Wesley discovered just how different he was. His father was belligerent again and ready to start his weekly terror on Meredith. That night Wesley refused to go away and instead firmly stood in front of his mother glaring at the man he long ago stopped calling dad unless he had to. When Gregory tried to push his son away, it felt like a feather tickling Wesley’s skin. Although he wouldn’t understand it until much later in life, that moment was the first time the young boy manipulated someone’s strength.

Fortunately Ares found them again by the time Wesley was seven and helped get them away from Gregory. It didn’t take long for Meredith to become pregnant again, and her son was so excited for a younger sibling. There was anger deep in his heart, but the boy refused to let it show after seeing it so often from his father. Instead he focused on using it to protect his family as much as possible. When Gianna was born, Wesley tried his hardest to be the best big brother he could be. Sure, they had sibling squabbles sometimes, but the boy always looked out for his sister as much as he could. Life once it was just the three of them turned around drastically. Wesley was able to grow up like a normal kid. He became a great football player, excelled in school, and even got a side job at a pizza place to help his mom with bills from time to time.

Things were going great until his mom died when he was eighteen. Right then, Wesley’s life stopped. Instead of going to Ohio State College on a football scholarship, the boy quickly learned that he was going to Icaria to take care of his sister. Instead of being angry or bitter about it, Wesley just listened to Ares and planned to do whatever he could to give Gianna a good life. So, he went to Icaria University while working at Icaria Books to make sure they had enough money for every day things. They’d gotten a some money from their Mother’s life insurance which Wesley used to cover rent in the small apartment and gave them emergency funds.

Since he spent a good amount of his nights at home watching his sister, Wesley was able to really focus on coding. Computers were always something he loved being on for gaming, so when he learned in college that he could major in coding engineering the boy jumped at the chance. Little did he know just how good he’d be at it. Wesley wound up being one of the best coders in the industry and many application developers were wanting to hire him.

Life was going steadily as he got older. While he loved his sister, he understood her need to leave the island, so he just funneled her money as often as she’d accept it while continuing his own life. He traveled a lot between Icaria and California and was happy being a desirable bachelor until he met Raye. For two years Wesley enjoyed being in love and was so happy that he asked the woman to marry him. Like many previous times in his life though reality pulled him harshly back down to reality. His fiancé not only broke his heart by ending the engagement but cheated on him. After a bad fight, Wesley left in anger and wound up in a car accident which was what brought his sister back home.

I take being a big brother very seriously.

LEX | SHE/HER | 30 | EST

#ares

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thesparkjournal · 4 years

Text

THE CONTRADICTIONS OF CAPITALISM AND TECHNOCRATIC UTOPIAN FUTUROLOGY

A CRITIQUE OF FULLY AUTOMATED LUXURY COMMUNISM Review by Roger Perkins

[Author Aaron Bastani, formerly known as Aaron Peters, one-time contributor to the UCL Conservative Society newspaper and researcher for the Blairite thinktank Demos]

There is no single contradiction or combination of contradictions that will make capitalism miraculously dissolve away into a communist nirvana. Capitalism in severe crisis does not collapse or fade away. Capitalism always fights back, searching for out-of-the-box configurations that give it new life. Therefore, capitalism must be consciously brought down and replaced with a new consciously-built socialist society. This imperative, the most important in human history, must begin, if not yesterday, then certainly today.

Contemporary capitalism is split by serious contradictions and seismic fault cleavages under increasing stress. The basic contradiction of capitalism is the contradiction between the social character of production and the private capitalist form of appropriation. In Anti-Dühring, Engels stated:

The contradiction between socialised production and capitalistic appropriation manifested itself as the antagonism of proletariat and bourgeoisie. (Karl Marx Frederick Engels Collected Works, Volume 25, page 256)

The resulting class struggle together with numerous economic crises and cycles have proven in the short and medium term to be features of a more or less “stable” capitalism and do not by themselves threaten the immediate collapse of capitalism.

However from time to time Marxists, non-Marxists, and even a few capitalists have sought out the fatal contradiction of capitalism. For example, it was postulated that the “Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall” would cause capitalism to grind to a halt. Investment would end if profit was no longer likely. But a tendency for the rate of profit to fall is not the same as an iron-clad law mandating the rate of profit to always fall. Counter tendencies, in theory and observed in practice, can bring about a rise. This was the view of Marx. Although Marx asserted that the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall was “the most important law of modern political economy” and “the most essential one for comprehending the most complex relationships ….” (Collected Works, Volume 29, page 133; Penguin Grundrisse, page 748) he nevertheless also stated that this law “operates only as a tendency. And it is only under certain circumstances and only after long periods that its effects become strikingly pronounced”. (Capital, Volume III, Collected Works, Volume 37, page 237; Penguin translation of Capital, Volume III, page 346) Only until capitalism is finally declared dead on a world-wide basis and the inevitable socialist forensic autopsy is performed will one be able to determine the extent a “falling rate of profit” played in its demise.

A more recent attempt to single out a possible fatal contradiction of capitalism occurred in conjunction with the so-called “greening of Marxism”. James O’Connor, founding editor of the eco-socialist journal Capitalism, Socialism, Nature, put forth the view that the “contradiction between the forces and relations of production” resulting in overproduction, crises, etc. is now in the process of being overshadowed by a Great Second Contradiction of Capitalism. Expandor-die capitalism is incapable of greening itself or reversing its expansion imperative to become a stable, steady-state capitalism. The dynamic logic of capitalism forces it to foul its own nest with run-away civilization imperiling climate change, environment destroying pollution and depletion of necessary resources. In addition to O’Connor’s “forces of production and relations of production” the conditions of production have now allegedly risen to prominence and will severely, even fatally, log-jam capitalism to a halt. Capitalist think-tanks are busy in search of ways to overcome this Great Second Contradiction of Capitalism while staying within the boundaries of a still recognizable capitalism and not straying over the border into obvious socialist solutions. So far they have not been anywhere near successful.

While O’Connor’s Great Second Contradiction of Capitalism is said to be located in production (conditions of production), the contradictions engendered by ever-increasing automation are observed in the sphere of consumption. At first automation was said to create as many new jobs as it displaced. But as the twentieth century progressed it became clear that the new jobs were mostly low-paid, precarious jobs for those who were able to obtain them and long-term, debilitating unemployment for those who did not. The working class, to an even greater extent than before, no longer had the purchasing power to buy what it produced – thus an under-consumption crisis.

This can be illustrated by the famous legendary encounter between Walter Reuther, head of the United Autoworkers of America (UAW) and a Ford Motor Company executive who had invited Reuther to tour the just-opened automated Ford plant in Cleveland. Reuther was confronted with acres of automated machines and robots. The usual assembly line of workers was nowhere to be seen. Instead a few thinly-dispersed technicians stood before a panel of green and yellow flashing lights making occasional adjustments to the production process. The Ford executive, with a gloating and gleeful grin turned to Reuther and confidently declared, “These robots, of course, receive no wages, zero pensions, never go on strike and they don’t pay any union dues to you!” Reuther immediately replied: “And neither do they buy any of your cars.”

The natural tendency of capitalism to cause a crisis of overproduction with the resulting temporary layoff of workers is said to have been morphed into the permanent massive disappearance of jobs accompanied by massive underconsuption.

In addition to the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, the destruction of the conditions of production and everincreasing automation there are many other contradictions of capitalism. For those who want to explore further, the following books may be of use:

Seventeen Contradictions of Capitalism, David Harvey, 2014

Breakdown of Capitalism: History of the Idea in Western Marxism 1883-1983, F. R. Hansen 1985, reprinted 2017

Capitalism’s Contradictions: Studies of Economic Thought Before and After Marx, Henryk Grossman, reprinted 2017

Contemporary Capitalism: New Developments and Contradictions, N. Inozemtsev, Progress Publishers: Moscow, 1974

The Scientific and Technological Revolution and the Contradictions of Capitalism, N. Inozemtsev, Progress Publishers: Moscow, 1982

With the arrival of the twenty-first century, Aaron Bastani, the author of Fully Automated Luxury Communism: A Manifesto, believes a new third qualitative leap in human history is about to take place. The first qualitative leap was the invention of agriculture, which was vastly superior to hunting and gathering. The second was the Industrial Revolution, particularly the invention of the steam engine which accelerated capitalism and sped it down the tracks to eventual world dominance. And three, the epoch we are now entering, one of boundless abundance made possible by hyper-fast quantum computers exhibiting high levels of artificial intelligence (AI).

In Bastani’s mind automation itself will undergo a capitalism-ending giant qualitative leap which, while ironically solving most of the existing contradictions of capitalism, will nevertheless become the fatal contradiction of capitalism. This new artificial intelligence (AI) society will result in the vanishing of the working class because living labour power will no longer be hired. The working class has been digitized into computer zeros and ones. Variable capital has now become constant capital – or so Bastani claims.

The author states that all of our material needs will be produced very, very cheaply – almost for free – by gigantic computer-commanded 3-D printers. Bastani operates under the slogan “Information Wants to be Free” and gives the example of music now being free (but perhaps illegal) on the internet after having been digitized. This AI/knowledge society will be incompatible with a capitalist market economy, thus negating capitalism as well. But, according to the logic of Bastani, capitalists without a market would find themselves disoriented and confused. Under the infinite weight of AI technology they would not resist their inevitable demise. Therefore there would be no need to consciously overthrow capitalism and replace it with socialism. Capitalism just becomes irrelevant and sublimates away like dry ice. Such a view has more in common with 1950s social democracy than Marxism – an extreme version of “peaceful transition”.

And all of this will happen, not in some indefinite distant future when lowerstage socialism has evolved into communism, but only a few short decades away from now– maybe as little as only two decades away (around the 2040s). If only these fantastic predictions of Bastani were true! Communism is only twenty years or so hence and no revolution or socialist transition period necessary!

[Bourgeois futurologist pulp dates gracelessly in capitalist society: the above book chokes up the dollar bins of the English-speaking world]

Unfortunately, the author has combined some of the worst features of early utopian socialism with the speculative endeavors of modern bourgeois futurologists. Marx was hesitant to describe the future in more than a sketchy outline and certainly not in the fleshed-out and extensive details of the utopian socialists. Bastani on the other hand has no such hesitation. Meat would be grown in vats of nutrient fluid. There would be no need to cut down the oxygen-generating Amazon rain forest to create grazing land for methane-emitting cattle which would then get slaughtered for McDonald’s burgers. Declining scarce resources on Earth? Just get them from the moon or other planets – or, better yet, lasso a mineral-rich asteroid and tow it into a near-earth orbit. The author fails to mention any breakthrough regarding nuclear fusion on Earth, but why bother, we already have the sun. The new AI society will tap this free energy. No need to burn fossil fuels and Voila!, the climate change crisis solved.

The author provides technological solutions to most of the problems facing capitalism today, including health care (genetic modification and AI designed super drugs) and growing poverty (food, clothing and shelter – almost free due to AI mass production).

But the predictions of futurologists have often proven quite wrong. For instance, sixty years ago it was believed that by the year 2000 we would all be driving flying cars. It didn’t happen. This is most fortunate because automobiles raining down from the sky after an aerial freeway pile-up would be a very dangerous hazard indeed. A new category of statistical information would be necessary – death by falling vehicle.

Bastani doesn’t seriously consider that predictions are just that – predictions. He projects observed trends into the future as certainties, even having them manifest themselves almost within the same decade – a very unlikely occurrence. Even if one trend came true as predicted, he ignores the fact that a collectivity of many and different, interacting trends complicates accurate forecasting to an extreme degree. His thinking is mechanical, linear and not dialectical. He does not comprehend that all trends are subject to various contingencies, unintended consequences and even collateral damage to other trends, thereby altering the development path projected. Nevertheless Bastani plunges into the future with a fully elaborated utopian scheme – Fully Automated Luxury Communism (FALC). The author utilizes cherry-picked quotes from Marx throughout his book but is, in reality, much more a utopian technocratic futurologist than a clear-headed Marxist.

Who then is Aaron Bastani?

Bastani, UK-born and with a Ph.D. in political communication from the University of London, started his political journey with a family-inherited Tory outlook. He later opted for the Green Party, read Marx, continued his journey to the left and has now parked himself in the Labour Party recently led by Jeremy Corbyn. Along the way he co-founded Novara Media – a British left-leaning alternative media platform. However, Bastani’s media appearances are not confined to Novara and other fringe outlets. He is often invited as a guest on establishment media as well – BBC, Sky News, etc., where he sometimes dons a black T-shirt emblazoned with the message: “I am a Communist”. But is Bastani , his subjective beliefs notwithstanding, really a communist? Only by expanding the meaning of the word to its outermost fuzzy boundary, can Bastani be hesitantly identified as some sort of technocratic utopian “communist”. His views are not at all compatible with those of Marx, Lenin or historical materialists of today. The author’s political journey has definitely not arrived at the place called “Marxism”.

For Marxists, class is of the essence. For Bastani, class forces play little role. It is the forces of AI technology that have taken over. The working class (a prominent feature of Marxism) seems to have “died and gone to heaven”. It has been replaced by zeroes and ones and can no longer be exploited by capital because it has been absorbed into capital itself. As for the bourgeoisie, its class power has been sucked into the black hole of ever- increasing artificial intelligence. There is, however, a technocratic, vanguard-elite stratum of the population in his vision of society, but nowhere does the author state outright that it has become a new ruling class. What we are left with is some sort of amorphous multitude where class concepts are no longer applicable.

The political expression of this multitudinous blob of humanity Bastani calls “luxury populism”. Because Bastani believes the soon-to-arrive FALC is so overwhelming and inevitable, he doesn’t envision much political self-activity from the declassed and depoliticized masses. Although the author believes “the party form … makes increasingly little sense”(p.194), he flip-flops and advocates a FALC-led electoral party not too dissimilar from the Labour Party of 2019 – one of the very few instances where he recommends any sort of political action whatsoever. This party is necessary because the not-to-be trusted masses of Luxury Populism could go astray if not guided by the wisdom of committed FALC-ites. This party of “communist” technocracy would organize perfunctory “demonstration elections” because “people do not care about politics" and “it is only around elections” that the multitude is “open to new possibilities.”(p.195).The author is oblivious to other events that cause people to “care about politics” and become “open to new possibilities” – e.g. general strikes, wars, revolutionary situations, etc.

Apparently humankind’s path from capitalism to communism doesn’t include general strikes or revolutionary situations.

As for the possibility of war – imperialist nuclear war that could kill billions and set humanity back many thousands of years – Bastani obviously sees little danger because he fails to discuss this horrible possibility. If so, he is walking towards his “inevitable” utopian future with his eyes closed.

Though ignoring the working class in general the author does issue advice to present-day trade unions. To resist austerity is okay, but traditional trade union demands against capital should be shunted aside. Instead, unions should reorient themselves and attack the necessity of work itself. They should force corporations to introduce AI as soon as possible and as deeply as possible!

There is an anti-communist white thread running throughout the book. The only type of communism Bastani approves of is the “communism” of his own concoction –FALC. The author claims FALC differs from traditional communism in that it “recognizes the centrality of human rights, most importantly the right of personal happiness”(page 193). He gives no examples whatsoever to support this slanderous assertion. In answer to this anti-communist slop, let it be stated that communists are, of course, strongly in support of personal happiness and hold that it is achieved not in individual isolation but in the practice of a collective /individual dialectic. Human rights must be viewed not in the abstract in a form devoid of class content. They must be viewed concretely and the following question asked: “human rights” for whom and for what purpose? A capitalist whose bank has been nationalized would surely claim that the human right of ownership has been violated. That capitalist would also probably claim that the right to a job, healthcare and education are not human rights. And then there is “human rights imperialism”. Let us hope that Bastani has not fallen victim to such lying hypocrisy. But his “new communism” must, by any means necessary, be strongly marked off from the “old” communism.

Although Bastani does not extensively attack Lenin and the Russian Revolution, he does make his views known. He identifies with the Mensheviks who claimed that Russia was too technologically backward to even consider setting out on the path towards socialism/communism. The fact that he often quotes Marx but not Lenin is telling in itself (Marx good; Lenin bad). He describes the Bolshevik Revolution as an “anti-liberal coup” (p. 193). He condemns Leninism by falsely claiming that it “views production, and by extension working class subjectivity, as critical while ignoring a world whose ideas and technologies are hugely changed” (p. 196). But it is Bastani himself who views technological AI production as critical while failing to grasp that workingclass subjectivity (consciousness) is indeed one of the most important necessities in the defeat of capitalism.

Bastani instinctively knows that Communists would be highly critical of his smooth and speedy road to Fully Automated Luxury Communism – therefore Marxism Leninism must be run-over and left behind as road-kill.

The Scottish poet Robert Burns famously said that the best laid plans of mice and men go oft awry. No doubt reality itself will cause Bastani’s grandiose FALC to crash to earth. Will the author then concoct another and different utopian blueprint or will he become a disillusioned and cynical Labourite and maybe concentrate more on his business ventures? Or will he continue his political hopscotch and jump to the left and finally become a clear-headed Marxist (and Leninist)? It’s unlikely, but let us hope so. Or will he instead jump to the right and follow in the footsteps of former Labour Member of Parliament Sir Oswald Mosley, who had been considered a potential Labour Prime Minister? Mosley, however, defected from the Labour Party and founded the British Union of Fascists in 1932. Mosley’s mentor, Benito Mussolini, was also once a “socialist”. This reviewer will make no speculative predictions concerning the exact arrangement of Bastani’s future political kaleidoscope. It is his present political orientation as expressed in FALC that should cause concern.

The 1989 Hollywood hit movie Field of Dreams gave us the classic dialogue quote: “If you build it they will come.” In contrast Bastani’s 2019 science- fiction Field of Dreams tells us: Don’t build it and communism will come.

By relying on the almost infinite power of a qualitatively new artificial intelligence the author ignores the revolutionary practice of oppressed classes. No need to build any foundational construction that prepares for a revolutionary situation. Technological determinism has run amok. Just let the fatal contradiction of capitalism do its thing. The author leaves us with the impression that even if all anti-capitalists, revolutionaries and militant workers were to be placed in the deep sleep of suspended animation until after 2040 they would wake-up to Fully Automated Luxury Communism. Revolutionary cadres and a revolutionary organization not needed. This book is worse than seriously flawed; it is even dangerous, because it leaves us with the impression that passivity is a viable option.

Communists are not Luddite opponents of automation and AI. Many of the predictions of FALC will eventually become true although on a varied and much-altered time scale and under very different conditions than those envisioned by the author. But, however embodied or personified AI becomes, it cannot by itself function as avatar or proxy agent for qualitative change from one socioeconomic system (capitalism) to another (socialism/ communism). That role still belongs to a new and always changing working class. For Bastani the working class is not an agent of social change – only flotsam in the AI tsunami. For revolutionaries the working class, its party and allies must be recognized as the decisive core of the coming revolutionary process. The publishing of Bastani’s Fully Automated Luxury Communism will not get him rewarded with rapture to AI heaven. Instead, without decisive working-class action he will find himself engulfed in the flames of a capitalist hell-on-earth.

In conclusion: The declassed technological delusions and utopian visions of Aaron Bastani are dangerously wrong. The publisher, Verso Books, has given us a lemon, the lemonade of which is useful only to those who undertake grand “thought experiments” or seek truth via the maze of error.

Furthermore, speculations about the fatal contradiction of capitalism must be subordinated to the organization of a consciously socialist working class whose party is ready for and knowledgeable regarding what Lenin called a “revolutionary situation”. There is no single contradiction or combination of contradictions that will make capitalism miraculously dissolve away into a communist nirvana. Capitalism in severe crisis does not collapse or fade away. Capitalism always fights back, searching for out-of-the-box configurations that give it new life. Therefore, capitalism must be consciously brought down and replaced with a new consciously-built socialist society. This imperative, the most important in human history, must begin, if not yesterday, then certainly today.

#Communist Party of Canada #Aaron Bastani #Reformism #Marxism Leninism

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icarialex · 4 years

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(Sebastian Stan, CisMale, he/him) ⌇ have you seen Wesley Sullivan around icaria? they are the 31 year old child of Ares. they remind me of computer screens, the smell of sandalwood, dad jokes, and a nicely fitted suit. ( Lex / 29 / EST / she/her )

I refuse to become anything like you.

Full Name: Wesley Sullivan

Age: Thirty-one

Birthday: September 27th

Parents: Meredith Sullivan

Godly Ability - Wesley possesses the ability of strength manipulation. He can enhance someone’s strength or decrease it.

I will live up to the reputation of my name.

(Trigger warning for mentions of domestic violence).

I take being a big brother very seriously.

Wesley is a huge goofball. While there is heaviness in his heart from events in his life, he doesn’t like to let anger or bitterness overtake him. He saw what that did to Gregory, and instead just puts his energy in trying to pick things back up again.

He didn’t have much of a young adult life. Going out drinking with college buddies or partying wasn’t a thing because he was taking care of Gianna. It wasn’t something he really desired though. He found watching his sister grow up and making her happy much more rewarding.

Wesley is very successful professionally. His work allows him to make a lot of money which he used to buy a large house in Icaria. He also sets money aside for those that he loves whenever possible.

He’s definitely a guy who likes looking good. He loves a good tailored suit and looking hot whenever possible, but he isn’t a guy that acts like he knows how hot he is. It’s more something he does to make him feel good about himself.

#icaria: intro #about wesley

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blackkudos · 4 years

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Bessie Smith

Bessie Smith (April 15, 1894 – September 26, 1937) was an American blues singer. Nicknamed the Empress of the Blues, she was the most popular female blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s. Bessie did not have access to an education because her parents had died and her elder sister was taking care of her. She is often regarded as one of the greatest singers of her era and was a major influence on fellow blues singers, as well as jazz vocalists.

Life

The 1900 census indicates that her family reported that Bessie Smith was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in July 1892. The 1910 census gives her age as 16, and a birth date of April 15, 1894 which appears on subsequent documents and was observed as her birthday by the Smith family. The 1870 and 1880 censuses report three older half-siblings, but later interviews with Smith's family and contemporaries contain no mention of them against her siblings.

She was the daughter of Laura (born Snow) and William Urie, a laborer and part-time Baptist preacher (he was listed in the 1870 census as a "minister of the gospel", in Moulton, Lawrence County, Alabama). He died while his daughter was too young to remember him. By the time Bessie was nine, her mother and a brother had also died. Her older sister Viola took charge of caring for her siblings.

To earn money for their impoverished household, Smith and her brother Andrew began busking on the streets of Chattanooga. She sang and danced as he played the guitar. Their favorite location was in front of the White Elephant Saloon at Thirteenth and Elm streets, in the heart of the city's African-American community.

In 1904, her oldest brother Clarence left home, joining a small traveling troupe owned by Moses Stokes. "If Bessie had been old enough, she would have gone with him," said Clarence's widow, Maud. "That's why he left without telling her, but Clarence told me she was ready, even then. Of course, she was only a child."

In 1912, Clarence returned to Chattanooga with the Stokes troupe and arranged an audition for his sister with the troupe managers, Lonnie and Cora Fisher. She was hired as a dancer rather than a singer, because the company already included the well-known singer Ma Rainey. Smith eventually moved on to performing in various chorus lines, making the "81" Theater in Atlanta her home base. She also performed in shows on the black-owned (Theater Owners Booking Association) (T.O.B.A.) circuit and became its biggest star after she signed a recording contract with Columbia Records.

Smith's recording career began in 1923. Despite her success, neither she nor her music was accepted in all circles. She once auditioned for Black Swan records (W. E. B. Du Bois was on its board of directors) and was dismissed because she was considered too rough, she supposedly stopped singing to spit. In fact, even her admirers, white and black, considered her a "rough" (i.e., working class or even "low class") woman. She was then living in Philadelphia, when she met Jack Gee, a security guard, whom she married on June 7, 1923, just as her first record was being released. During the marriage Smith became the highest-paid black entertainer of the day, heading her own shows, which sometimes featured as many as 40 troupers, and touring in her own custom-built railroad car. Their marriage was stormy with infidelity on both sides, including numerous female lovers for Bessie. Gee was impressed by the money but never adjusted to show business life or to Smith's bisexuality. In 1929, when she learned of his affair with another singer, Gertrude Saunders, Smith ended the relationship, although neither of them sought a divorce.

Smith later entered a common-law marriage with an old friend, Richard Morgan, who was Lionel Hampton's uncle. She stayed with him until her death.

Career

All contemporary accounts indicate that while Rainey did not teach Smith to sing, she probably helped her develop a stage presence. Smith began forming her own act around 1913, at Atlanta's "81" Theater. By 1920, she had established a reputation in the South and along the East Coast.

In 1920, sales of over 100,000 copies of "Crazy Blues," recorded for Okeh Records by the singer Mamie Smith (no relation), pointed to a new market. The recording industry had not directed its product to black people, but the success of the record led to a search for female blues singers. Bessie Smith was signed to Columbia Records in 1923 by Frank Walker, a talent agent who had seen her perform years earlier. Her first session for Columbia was on February 15, 1923; it was engineered by Dan Hornsby. For most of 1923, her records were issued on Columbia's regular A-series. When the company established a "race records" series, Smith's "Cemetery Blues" (September 26, 1923) was the first issued.

Both sides of her first record, "Downhearted Blues" backed with "Gulf Coast Blues", were hits (an earlier recording of "Downhearted Blues" by its co-writer Alberta Hunter had previously been released by Paramount Records). Smith became a headliner on the T.O.B.A. circuit and rose to become its top attraction in the 1920s. Working a heavy theater schedule during the winter and performing in tent shows the rest of the year (eventually traveling in her own railroad car), Smith became the highest-paid black entertainer of her day. Columbia nicknamed her "Queen of the Blues," but the press soon upgraded her title to "Empress of the Blues". Smith's music stressed independence, fearlessness, and sexual freedom, implicitly arguing that working-class women did not have to alter their behavior to be worthy of respect.

Smith had a strong contralto voice, which recorded well from her first session, which was conducted when recordings were made acoustically. The advent of electrical recording made the power of her voice even more evident. Her first electrical recording was "Cake Walking Babies [From Home]", recorded on May 5, 1925. Smith also benefited from the new technology of radio broadcasting, even on stations in the segregated South. For example, after giving a concert to a white-only audience at a theater in Memphis, Tennessee, in October 1923, she performed a late-night concert on station WMC, which was well received by the radio audience.

She made 160 recordings for Columbia, often accompanied by the finest musicians of the day, notably Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, Fletcher Henderson, James P. Johnson, Joe Smith, and Charlie Green. A number of Smith's recordings—such as "Alexander's Ragtime Band" with the Dorsey Brothers orchestra in 1927—quickly became among the best-selling records of their respective release years.

Themes in her music

Songs like Jail House Blues, Work House Blues, Prison Blues, Sing Sing Prison Blues and Send Me to the 'Lectric Chair dealt critically with important issues of the day like the chain gang, the convict lease system and capital punishment. Poor Man's Blues and Washwoman's Blues are widely considered to be an early form of African American protest music.

What becomes evident after listening to her music and studying her lyrics is that Smith emphasized and channeled a subculture within the African American working class. Additionally, she incorporated commentary on social issues like poverty, intra-racial conflict, and female sexuality into her lyrics. Her lyrical sincerity and public behavior were not widely accepted as appropriate expressions for African American women; therefore, her work was often written off as distasteful or unseemly, rather than as an accurate representation of the African-American experience. Her work challenged elitist norms by encouraging working-class women to embrace their right to drink, party, and satisfy their sexual needs as a means of coping with stress and dissatisfaction in their daily lives. Smith advocated for a wider vision of African-American womanhood beyond domesticity, piety, and conformity; she sought empowerment and happiness through independence, sassiness, and sexual freedom. Although Smith was a voice for many minority groups and one of the most gifted blues performers of her time, the themes in her music were precocious, which led to many believing that her work was undeserving of serious recognition.

Broadway

Smith's career was cut short by the Great Depression, which nearly put the recording industry out of business, and the advent of sound in film, which spelled the end of vaudeville. She never stopped performing, however. The days of elaborate vaudeville shows were over, but Smith continued touring and occasionally sang in clubs. In 1929, she appeared in a Broadway musical, Pansy. The play was a flop; top critics said she was its only asset.

Film

In 1929, Smith made her only film appearance, starring in a two-reeler, St. Louis Blues, based on W. C. Handy's song of the same name. In the film, directed by Dudley Murphy and shot in Astoria, Queens, she sings the title song accompanied by members of Fletcher Henderson's orchestra, the Hall Johnson Choir, the pianist James P. Johnson and a string section—a musical environment radically different from that of any of her recordings.

Swing era

In 1933, John Hammond, who also mentored Billie Holiday, asked Smith to record four sides for Okeh (which had been acquired by Columbia Records in 1925). He claimed to have found her in semi-obscurity, working as a hostess in a speakeasy on Ridge Avenue in Philadelphia. Smith worked at Art's Cafe on Ridge Avenue, but not as a hostess and not until the summer of 1936. In 1933, when she made the Okeh sides, she was still touring. Hammond was known for his selective memory and gratuitous embellishments.

Smith was paid a non-royalty fee of $37.50 for each selection on these Okeh sides, which were her last recordings. Made on November 24, 1933, they serve as a hint of the transformation she made in her performances as she shifted her blues artistry into something that fit the swing era. The relatively modern accompaniment is notable. The band included such swing era musicians as the trombonist Jack Teagarden, the trumpeter Frankie Newton, the tenor saxophonist Chu Berry, the pianist Buck Washington, the guitarist Bobby Johnson, and the bassist Billy Taylor. Benny Goodman, who happened to be recording with Ethel Waters in the adjoining studio, dropped by and is barely audible on one selection. Hammond was not entirely pleased with the results, preferring to have Smith revisit her old blues sound. "Take Me for a Buggy Ride" and "Gimme a Pigfoot (And a Bottle of Beer)", both written by Wesley Wilson, were among her most popular recordings.

Death

On September 26, 1937, Smith was critically injured in a car crash on U.S. Route 61 between Memphis, Tennessee and Clarksdale, Mississippi. Her lover, Richard Morgan, was driving, and misjudged the speed of a slow-moving truck ahead of him. Tire marks at the scene suggested that Morgan tried to avoid the truck by driving around its left side, but he hit the rear of the truck side-on at high speed. The tailgate of the truck sheared off the wooden roof of Smith's old Packard. Smith, who was in the passenger seat, probably with her right arm or elbow out the window, took the full brunt of the impact. Morgan escaped without injuries.

The first person on the scene was a Memphis surgeon, Dr. Hugh Smith (no relation). In the early 1970s, Hugh Smith gave a detailed account of his experience to Bessie's biographer Chris Albertson. This is the most reliable eyewitness testimony about the events surrounding her death.

Arriving at the scene, Hugh Smith examined Smith, who was lying in the middle of the road with obviously severe injuries. He estimated she had lost about a half pint of blood, and immediately noted a major traumatic injury: her right arm was almost completely severed at the elbow. He stated that this injury alone did not cause her death. Though the light was poor, he observed only minor head injuries. He attributed her death to extensive and severe crush injuries to the entire right side of her body, consistent with a sideswipe collision.

Henry Broughton (a fishing partner of Dr. Smith's) helped him move Bessie Smith to the shoulder of the road. Dr. Smith dressed her arm injury with a clean handkerchief and asked Broughton to go to a house about 500 feet off the road to call an ambulance.

By the time Broughton returned, about 25 minutes later, Bessie Smith was in shock. Time passed with no sign of the ambulance, so Hugh Smith suggested that they take her into Clarksdale in his car. He and Broughton had almost finished clearing the back seat when they heard the sound of a car approaching at high speed. Smith flashed his lights in warning, but the oncoming car failed to stop and plowed into his car at full speed. It sent his car careening into Bessie Smith's overturned Packard, completely wrecking it. The oncoming car ricocheted off Hugh Smith's car into the ditch on the right, barely missing Broughton and Bessie Smith.

The young couple in the new car did not have life-threatening injuries. Two ambulances then arrived from Clarksdale—one from the black hospital, summoned by Broughton, the other from the white hospital, acting on a report from the truck driver, who had not seen the accident victims.

Bessie Smith was taken to the G. T. Thomas Afro-American Hospital in Clarksdale, where her right arm was amputated. She died that morning without regaining consciousness. After her death, an often repeated but now discredited story emerged that she died because a whites-only hospital in Clarksdale refused to admit her. The jazz writer and producer John Hammond gave this account in an article in the November 1937 issue of Down Beat magazine. The circumstances of Smith's death and the rumor promoted by Hammond formed the basis for Edward Albee's 1959 one-act play The Death of Bessie Smith.

"The Bessie Smith ambulance would not have gone to a white hospital; you can forget that," Hugh Smith told Albertson. "Down in the Deep South Cotton Belt, no ambulance driver, or white driver, would even have thought of putting a colored person off in a hospital for white folks."

Smith's funeral was held in Philadelphia a little over a week later, on October 4, 1937. Her body was originally laid out at Upshur's funeral home. As word of her death spread through Philadelphia's black community, the body had to be moved to the O.V. Catto Elks Lodge to accommodate the estimated 10,000 mourners who filed past her coffin on Sunday, October 3. Contemporary newspapers reported that her funeral was attended by about seven thousand people. Far fewer mourners attended the burial at Mount Lawn Cemetery, in nearby Sharon Hill. Gee thwarted all efforts to purchase a stone for his estranged wife, once or twice pocketing money raised for that purpose.

Unmarked grave

Smith's grave was unmarked until a tombstone was erected on August 7, 1970, paid for by the singer Janis Joplin and Juanita Green, who as a child had done housework for Smith.

Dory Previn wrote a song about Joplin and the tombstone, "Stone for Bessie Smith", for her album Mythical Kings and Iguanas.

The Afro-American Hospital, now the Riverside Hotel, was the site of the dedication of the fourth historical marker on the Mississippi Blues Trail.

Hit records

78 RPM Singles - Columbia Records

78 RPM Singles, Okeh Records

Selected awards and recognition

Grammy Hall of Fame

Three recordings by Smith were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, an award established in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least 25 years old and that have "qualitative or historical significance".

National Recording Registry

In 2002, Smith's recording of "Downhearted Blues" was included in the National Recording Registry by the National Recording Preservation Board of the Library of Congress. The board annually selects recordings that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

"Downhearted Blues" was included in the list of Songs of the Century by the Recording Industry of America and the National Endowment for the Arts in 2001. It is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as one of the 500 songs that shaped rock 'n' roll.

Inductions

In 1984, Smith was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.

U.S. postage stamp

The U.S. Postal Service issued a 29-cent commemorative postage stamp honoring Smith in 1994.

Digital remastering

Technical faults in the majority of her original gramophone recordings (especially variations in recording speed, which raised or lowered the apparent pitch of her voice) misrepresented the "light and shade" of her phrasing, interpretation and delivery. They altered the apparent key of her performances (sometimes raised or lowered by as much as a semitone). The "center hole" in some of the master recordings had not been in the true middle of the master disc, so that there were wide variations in tone, pitch, key and phrasing, as commercially released records revolved around the spindle.

Given those historic limitations, the current digitally remastered versions of her work deliver significant improvements in the sound quality of Smith's performances. Some critics believe that the American Columbia Records compact disc releases are somewhat inferior to subsequent transfers made by the late John R. T. Davies for Frog Records.

In popular culture

The popular musical Bessie: The Life & Music of Bessie Smith, by the playwright Douglas M. Parker, follows Smith's rise, personal life and career, incorporating many of the songs that made her famous.

The Death of Bessie Smith by Edward Albee also deals with her.

The 1948 short story "Blue Melody", by J. D. Salinger, and the 1959 play The Death of Bessie Smith, by Edward Albee, are based on Smith's life and death, but poetic license was taken by both authors; for instance, Albee's play distorts the circumstances of her medical treatment, or lack of it, before her death, attributing it to racist medical practitioners.

Bessie's Back in Town, a musical in production by Barry Edelson, presents as accurately as possible aspects of her life and death, while remaining true to her music.

The song Bessie, sung by Patricia Kaas on the 1990 album Scène de vie, is about Smith's death.

The playwright Angelo Parra wrote the 2001 musical The Devil's Music: The Life and Blues of Bessie Smith, with Miche Braden in the title role.

In the video game series BioShock (1 and 2), Smith is portrayed as a cameo of a character by the name of Grace Holloway. Smith's music can be heard during the loading screen and in the level Paupers Drop, and in the various hallways and rooms of the sunken city. Her 1929 song "I'm Wild About That Thing" is (anachronistically) included in the sequel, BioShock: Infinite, set in 1912.

HBO released a movie about Smith, Bessie, starring Queen Latifah, on May 16, 2015.

"Bessie Smith", a song by the Band, is about her.

Each June, the Bessie Smith Cultural Center in Chattanooga sponsors the Bessie Smith Strut as part of the city's Riverbend Festival.

The NBC show Timeless features Bessie Smith briefly in the season 2 episode "The King of the Delta Blues".

Her 1933 recording "Take Me for a Buggy Ride" was featured prominently in the 1981 film Rich and Famous.

In the tv-series New Amsterdam (season 2, episode 16) Dr Reynolds, an African Americans chief surgeron, tells he decided to become a doctor when learning that Bessie Smith had died after being refused treatment in an all-white hospital.

#04/15 #09/26

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evien-stark · 5 years

Text

✧I Need You✧ Chapter 24 [53%]

Maybe Tony was right.

You were thinking this as you watched the clouds go by, sitting comfortably on the private jet. Maybe Tony was right. Because he was trying to tell you something. He was trying to tell you something important. And the only thing that you were arriving at, with no help from him otherwise, is that the company needed help, and he thought you were capable. That he also needed help. And that maybe business and personal should no longer be mixing.

That had to be it, right?

Right?

You couldn’t date a man whose company you were also supposed to be running. Whose company was now half yours. Rather that you shouldn’t be dating that man. Maybe that was why he’d been trying to get out? And you’d told him no. No because it had been unfair to load it all on you. And if that was the case, why not just say that so the two of you could work it out?

Or maybe it was Iron Man. Maybe he was worried about that, although things had been quiet ever since he had cut back on taking the suit out for missions, you still didn’t want to think about. At least he had stuck to his word on that one.

Natalie Rushman was already in Monaco, making sure all the arrangements were set. At this point you had no idea who was running your life anymore. Much like you had no idea who Natalie was really working for. It had been good while it had lasted, but at the end of the day, if Tony wanted her, he could have her. There was no way to stop him, and nice as she was, if Tony Stark said I need you to be my personal assistant most people would be fool to turn it down.

Once upon a time you had been in much the same position…

And you were trying valiantly to not let that blind you. Tony was a good man. He had made so many changes. And you didn’t doubt his love for you.

Even if in these past few months…

It felt like the two of you were merely existing next to one another. So when something like this happened… it made you feel weak. Helpless. Frightened of the next day. What might come of it.

He sat down across from you and finally you couldn’t help yourself, “Did I do something wrong?” Such a childish thing to ask. But there you were.

A look of quiet confusion took him. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. I feel like I must have- for you to be acting the way that you are.” Though you’d thought about having this conversation only a few times, it had not started like this in your head. Much like all your plans, not far off the ground before something different happened.

“Acting how?” He brought one leg up over the other, arms crossed as he leaned back in his seat.

You shook your head, breath of annoyed yet amused air escaping with a bitter smile. “I swear, it’s like I’m living in a time loop. We’re just doing the same thing over and over again.”

“...are you mad about Natalie? I’m doing you a favor.”

The raise of your brows and the inhale shocked even you. When had you become so volatile? Maybe dramatic was more the word. There was a shake of an angry chuckle in the first word. “Me? What the hell are you talking about?”

“She was gonna blow our cover.”

“No thanks to you!”

“So I’m fixing it!”

There were only so many interns you could fire or stories you could kill. This couldn’t be a secret forever, that was true. “By- by ogling her every chance you get and hiring her for yourself behind my back?”

“To make it look like I don’t care what you think.”

“It sure as hell feels that way.”

“Then I’m doing it right.” Said so stiffly that for a moment you imagined it was true. Was he mad at you? Impossible. Unbelievable. Your head whipped to the side, lips pressed together. Unable to look at him anymore. The silence was tense until you felt the touch of his hand on your knee. Still, you didn’t look. “I’m trying to protect you.” But this nearly threatened to break you with how gentle he spoke it. “I know you’re in the middle of-” A sigh of self realization. “...a lot of shit I’m putting you through. So I’m trying to clean it up.”

Another dismissive shake of your head. “You can’t do that anymore, Tony. Not like that. You have to talk to me- otherwise what was- what’s the point of this? Of us?” Steeling yourself for what you’d find there, you turned to look at him again.

He looked crushed. Yet determined somehow. “I know I keep saying I’ll get better at this- and then I...”

“You don’t?”

A small swallow, eyes going downcast. “I… I’m...”

Panic-

No… resignation…

You waited. He was trying to tell you something.

“...I’m sorry.”

Was that what you were waiting for? “How many times are you going to tell me that until it becomes true?”

Looking back up again he seemed a little more put together than just seconds ago. “It’s true every time.”

“If it was true you wouldn’t have to keep saying it.”

A long, long sigh began to leave him as he sat back again until he eventually started nodding. “You’re right. ...we really are doing a Groundhog’s Day thing here aren’t we?”

A resigned smile came to your lips. “Five steps forward, ten steps back.”

Things felt a little more right. As they usually did when you had the big reset. The question of if you wanted to keep doing this was there. Barely. You tried to ignore it. Tony was trying. He was always trying. But when was it going to be clear that it was not enough? Was it alright to live second best in his life? Could you handle that? It seemed like that was the path you were headed down.

“Are your headaches getting any better?”

A flash of tears caught you completely by surprise. Your voice was small. “...you know about that?” You couldn’t remember ever mentioning it to him. Not once. Determined to deal with it alone because he was off in a different world half the time. And they were just headaches, after all. Not a big deal. Not worth bothering him over.

He gave you a look. “You can barely sit down most days without looking like you’re in pain or putting a hand on your head. Or excusing yourself.” Of course I know. Because I love you. How could I not see you suffering?

And there you were, yet again. Hot off an argument that had resolved moderately, only to be struck by him. “They’re tolerable, most days. I think they’re getting better.”

“JARVIS has a list of specialists for you, when you have the time.”

Which meant Tony had pulled them for you. At least given the request. The glance you gave him was much softer this time around. “You ever consider they might be stress headaches?”

A tired twitch of a grin in return. “Briefly.”

Finally feeling a little better- and look at that, headache free- you moved over to lift the arm rest between the long plush seats so you could sit next to him. His arm went around you, and you rested your head against him, hand raising to that spot, just half over the Arc, half over his heart.

If only you could stay like that.

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

The drive from the airstrip to the promenade near the start of the track was quick and uninterrupted. Though there was a shiny red suitcase sitting firm on the front seat. You chose to ignore it. Security measures, you supposed. He must have figured out what the bug was on the delivery system after all. You’d stopped asking while drowning in other paperwork.

Did it make you feel safer to know he’d brought Iron Man here?

Not really.

Because in order to even think about why that would make you feel safe, that meant you had to entertain thoughts that would justify it being here anyway. And so…

Tony flashed a peace sign to the surrounding crowd as security escorted you through the front doors of the resort. The cool air was nice. “Mr. Stark.”

“Natalie.” It killed you a lot less than it had previously, the look of happy-to-see-you on his face.

“Ms.-”

“Natalie.” Your smile by comparison was tired as you cut her off. Not trying to be rude. Just… just very tired. It would be nice to sit and sip some cocktails and watch the race. Take a few soft questions about the Stark Industries driver. Let Tony talk about the specs on the car.

Just as you’d taken a drink, Natalie took it right away, putting it back on the tray it came from. “We have one photographer from the ACM if you don’t mind.”

“Of course.”

Tony put his arm around you. “Liven up, will you? People are gonna think I dragged you here.”

“Didn’t you?” Asking through a toothy overexertion of a smile as a few flashes went off in your face. The two of you fake laughed your way through three more bulb flashes and then he was stepping into line with Natalie.

“You look fantastic.” To be fair, she did. Red hair just perfect in styled waves and a gorgeous pink dress that was… well… “But that’s unprofessional. What’s on the docket?”

Gratefully you picked your drink back up from the server who had come around with it as they continued talking. Courtesy of Tony’s new PA, you assumed. No one would dare try to drug you underhandedly here among all the boozy rich people bumping elbows-

“Is this us?” Tony asked her as he pointed at a corner table.

“Uh… it can be.”

“Great. Make it us.” Demanding very quickly and then leaving her behind to do the dirty work.

You took his cue to follow. Down the length of the room and over to the bar where you contemplated very strongly already ordering another drink. It was like you’d turned into him. A gentleman all in white stood to catch your attention, hand outstretched with a sweet call of your name. You returned the favor. “Mr. Musk. Nice to see you.”

“Congratulations on your promotion. It’s all anyone can talk about.”

“I’ll bet.” Coming here was a mistake so soon once the information had finally been released after the finalization. Everyone was going to be up your butt trying to cull favor. Less than ideal.

Tony took the heat off you by reaching in for a shake next, “Hey, how’s it going- you know, those Merlin Engines are fantastic.”

Elon had the good sense to blush. “Thank you very much, Mr. Stark. You know… I have an idea for an electric jet...”

“Really? That’s great. We’ll make it work.” Nudging you briefly to the next destination as soon as he was in the hot seat. The bar was getting closer. “How much stock we got in SpaceX?”

You batted your eyelashes at him as you took a seat. “How much would you like?”

“That’s why I love you.” A benign statement amongst all the ears listening, to be sure. One you very much wanted to read into. So you did.

But your smile evaporated into dust all in the next moment. “Anthony…is that you?”

Tony’s expression looked about on par with what you were feeling, “My least favorite person on earth is approaching.”

“You and me both.” Turning half away to set your drink down and call the bartender over. How long had it been? One minute? You needed a refresher.

Justin Hammer just let himself right on in between the two of you as Tony let out the weakest hello you think you’d ever heard in your life. “You’re not the only rich guy here with a fancy car.”

“Wouldn’t be much of an event if he was, would it?” Looking up you smiled at him, really putting the disdain on heavy.

Tony held a finger up. “I’d like to disagree.”

Pleased, mildly, when Justin inched back. “Ah- didn’t see you there… no uh- no hard feelings about what happened on Capitol Hill right?” As if he’d been the one in control of that situation and embarrassed you. “Uh- hey look!” Quickly sidestepping, “I think- I think you know Christine Everhart from Vanity Fair? You guys know each other?”

You needed to leave. This was getting out of hand. Next thing you knew, Justin was going to pull Senator Stern out of his pocket for good measure. Christine came over at his behest, wearing the same overly polite but telling smile as you were. “Yes, we do.”

“Roughly.” Tony seemed like he also needed a means of escape.

Justin pointed a finger at you, “B-T-W, huge story. This little lady’s made quite a name for herself assuming half of the control of Stark Industries. Congratulations.”

“CEO- uh, is her official title.” It was warming that Tony was stepping up for you. Not that you needed it. But still nice.

“I know, I know.” Christine was going on. “And my editor will just kill me if I don’t grab a quote for our Powerful Women issue.”

Much as you didn’t really want to, it was good free marketing. So long as she didn’t take you out of context. You’d have to be careful. No more booze. Damn it. “Sure, that sounds great.”

“She’s- she’s actually doing a big spread on me for Vanity Fair, aren’t you?” Justin contesting to keep in the spotlight and keep control like the little child he was.

“I am. I am.” Even she sounded tired. That seemed normal. You wouldn’t wish Justin Hammer on your worst enemies.

Tony’s eyes rolled up and then closed, just shaking his head and then directing a thousand yard stare to the left. Bored with this. You could tell. You could feel it. Also maybe slightly embarrassed for Justin, if that were possible. You couldn’t let him zone out and leave you here to fend for yourself. “I remember she did that huge spread on Tony last year for the New Year’s piece-”

“She did a story, as well.” Ah. There he was. Back on cue.

Even if you wanted to elbow him in the ribs, the look of discomfort on both their faces was somewhat amusing. Maybe worth it. “Yes- I did...” Justin’s head whipped to look at her.

“It was a very good piece. I loved it.” At least trying to help the poor girl out.

“Thank you...”

Deciding very quickly you couldn’t stand this anymore, “I’m going to go splash some water on my face before the race starts.” Photographers would be everywhere near the boxes. It was better to not look like a ghoul.

He half grabbed your arm, voice low. “Don’t leave me.”

“You’re a big boy.”

Christine’s recorder was out of her purse and that was absolutely your exit sign so you just gave him a light pat on the shoulder and turned to go. Immediately she was hounding him with questions. You felt slightly bad, you probably shouldn’t have just walked away. But standing there with the two of them any longer and you were liable to give them a real story to talk about.

The bathroom seemed so far away but it was blissfully empty as you walked inside. An overdecorated sham, probably like a lot of these people’s houses. It almost threatened a brand new headache on you. Despite using it as an excuse to run, you really did take a moment to actually splash some cool water on your face and retouch your makeup.

The last thing you needed as new co-CEO of Stark Industries was to be made a fool out of on your first outing. You were here as a representative of your company. What little delight you had in that. You wouldn’t make a fool of Tony. Because if you did a poor job, it would still fall on him for putting you in that position in the first place.

You let yourself hang back for a few moments more, enjoying the bliss that was the only quiet you were going to have. Once you went back out it was vulture city. Fighting off handshakes and photo ops aplenty.

When it came to an end, you went to the corner table Tony had procured, noticing immediately he was nowhere in sight. Maybe he’d taken off too? Would have been smart. And even as strong as he was, he wouldn’t have been able to survive the dynamic duo of Justin and Christine for very long. A waiter came around to set a drink in front of you, something you sipped at mindlessly.

As she passed by, doing who knew what, “Natalie, where is Tony?”

She gave you a blank look. “Oh- ...I don’t know. Let me see if I can find him for you.”

The cars zoomed by on the racetrack closest to the hotel, only feeling their presence in the rattle of the windows. Looking at your drink you pushed it away. No time to get sloppy, and if you were already feeling this foggy, it didn’t bode well. However, the feeling that something was terribly wrong was creeping up. You tried to bite it back, chalking it up to anxiety, but a sudden stunned gasp from the crowd drew your attention to the TV at the top of the bar. They were beginning to huddle.

You found yourself standing quickly, purse on the table, clutching your hands as you looked up at the horror. Someone had stepped out onto the track- a pit crew member? Why would they do that? He threw his helmet off, hard to see his face on the TV camera. Cars whizzed by. He seemed unbothered.

Ripping his track jacket open you felt yourself gasp for air.

No.

The fabric burned away as he extracted what looked like two long whips- electrified.

And powered by-

No, no, no.

Tony- you had to- where was Tony?

Somebody was waving in your peripheral and you half turned to see Happy, Mark V armor suitcase in hand. Happy knew where to go? Happy knew where to go. Wordlessly and quickly you followed him, head down as the people inside screamed and you heard the shred of metal.

“Where is he?” Trying to even out. Tony- Iron Man would fix this. How could Tony have known?

“Tony’s on the track!!”

As if today wasn’t already terrible enough. “Why is he on the track!?” Who let him do that? ...because you’d left? Why wouldn’t he tell you he was- after just hours before… “Why is he on the track!” Directing your anger because you had nowhere else to put it.

“I don’t know! They were talking about him- entering the race-” Happy was driving like a wild person, slamming past a fence barrier headed the wrong way on the track. “I thought you knew!”

“Why would I know about that?!” Did that sound like something you’d sanction? Unbelievable. Unbelievable- but if Tony was in a car- “You have to hurry-”

“I’M HURRYING!”

Cars were racing by you, Happy swerving to avoid them. People were screaming. The announcers were yelling. Chaos. Complete and utter chaos. How had this happened? Why?

There was a burst of an explosion just up ahead- Happy curved around the track so hard you slammed into the door, briefcase heavy in your lap. It was hard to see anything- so much smoke- but you saw the man with weapons. Whatever he was harnessed into- that rig-

“I’m gonna hit him- I’m gonna hit him-!” “Happy!”

Tony was standing right there- not five feet in the path of this lunatic- but the deed was already done. You slammed forward as the car plowed into the guy, unable to help a scream from escaping. When you looked up, Tony was jumping down from the track fence. There was a body on the hood.

“Are you okay?!” Happy was shouting.

“Were you heading for him or me?! Because I can’t tell!” Tony was yelling back.

Why not add your own voice, unable to help it as he came to your door. “What the fuck is the matter with you?!”

“We need better security-!”

“WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH YOU?!” Your emotions were running wild- influenced by just about every other person there. A storm was brewing. You were out of control.

“I WAS ATTACKED!” It became a shouting match.

Happy was next. “Will you please GET IN THE CAR!” Everyone was getting in on it.

Tony came around the other side, opening the door, but you saw the creep of the man on the hood sitting up, and then covered yourself, arms up, as he lashed that whip, slicing half the door off. All at once you were moving again as Happy backed the car up only a couple of feet and rammed him again.

“Hit him again- give me the case!” Tony seemed not to know what to make of things-

Happy kept moving back and forth back and forth doing almost nothing at this distance, this speed- the whip came down again. Helpless. You were absolutely helpless-

“I need you to give me the case!”

Electricity crackled as that line came down again, taking a quarter of the car with it this time, leaving glass shattered on the seats- on your skin- and hot metal coming down. Another lash, sparks were everywhere. Tony was shouting for your attention. Finally you came to. “Here- here-!” Finding some sense and some feeling in your arms again, getting them to move as you threw the case as hard as you could to him.

It was quick- the step on the open lever and then reaching down to pull the handles, activating the locks on the suit to fold up and out, covering him entirely. An impressive thing- if you weren’t currently about to die. The helmet slid on and he moved to push the car several feet away with no problem.

Even then you couldn’t catch your breath-

Tony raised a hand to shoot but was whipped immediately to the side. One more time- and another- hearing the shots charge and fire only to be smacked away by those electric whips.

A final raise of his hand and the deranged man reared back, snapping the cable forward to catch hold of Tony’s arm- then the other cable around his neck and yanked him off his feet forward and then slammed him into the ground. Then threw him around again like a little ragdoll, sending him down against the hood of the car and to the ground once more.

Your heart seized.

And then you moved.

“Hey- hey hey hey- HEY!”

You had no idea what you were doing but you were out of the car. A snap of a whip away. Close to death. Hands outstretched.

“HEY!!” Shaking from head to toe as you screamed at him. “Look at me- listen to me!! You- you don’t wanna do this!” Briefly, very briefly, the man’s head tilted sideways to look at you, a laugh was not far behind. Fair, considering you were way out of your element here. “Listen-” And then you urged it forward. Everything you had. Everything you could give. “This isn’t what you wanna do- don’t you- hear people screaming? Don’t you feel guilty? Don’t you feel wrong?”

In him there was but a bare moment of thought. A twitch of his eye. A tilt of his head. Consideration.

Confusion.

One second, maybe two.

About as long as you held out-

It was Tony gathering up the slack of the whips despite the discharge, wrapping his arms around them and jerking the man off his feet, launching him into the air and then down hard on his back. With that a breath escaped you and you felt your knees give out, reaching back to the car to keep from falling on shattered glass and broken roadway. You heard the cut of electricity and looked up to see Tony pulling the power source off his chest. Examining it…

“Hey- hey sit down, will you? Sit for a minute- You don’t look well- just breathe-” Happy was saying a million things to you.

You saw it there as Tony turned to look at you. The police were hauling the crazy man away as he laughed. “You lose! You lose…!”

The world went dark around the edges. You kept watching Tony.

In his hand he crushed an Arc Reactor.

#Tony Stark #Tony Stark x Reader #INY Chapter Twenty Four

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connectingbridges · 4 years

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The Gifts of Athena by Joel Mokyr – Synopsis

Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom and the daughter of Zeus competed for the rights to a piece of land we now call Athens, against Poseidon by offering the first olive tree representing both abundance and harmony. Joel Mokyr, a Dutch-born American-Israeli economic historian belonging to the 1940s-1970s upbringing, takes this symbolism of the first olive tree to explain the roots of knowledge that brought about economic abundance with the first Industrial Revolution. “What people knew, affected what they did”, claims Mokyr.

The interesting thing about England is it sized up to only about 0.16% of the world yet between 1769 and 1850, a portion of it had become one of the biggest powers of the world producing two thirds of the world’s coal output and half of the world’s iron carrying one of the largest defense base and colonial prowess. It was markets and not political power that seems to have driven the exercise of British administration across its colonies as exemplified by the Opium War (1842) and the free-trade structure followed in India. Somehow World War I tipped the growth scales from northern to southern England with a complicated interplay of four distinct but closely timed transformations – textile, agricultural, demography (population and life expectancy) and transport (cost and speed of travel). While textile and mechanization can be traced to specific events, people and inventions; agriculture and transport transformations evidence suggests, were organizational restructures without significant changes in England’s political carpet prior to World War I. It is this seemingly coincidental set of monumental changes by a tiny part of a country that the Industrial Revolution is the subject to scrutiny with varied social and economic theories. Mokyr claims this is “the central event of modern history. Nothing else even comes close”. The book is sub-titled historical origins of the knowledge economy by building a framework for ‘useful knowledge’. Three things are addressed by Mokyr in The Gifts of Athena about the Industrial Revolution – why the time (by 1830), why the place (England) and why the scale (spread to the western world), because none of these defining transformations in productivity could have happened just by trial and error from a bunch of early hobbyists (like John Kay devising the Flying Shuttle in 1733 to weave thread or Wyatt Paul’s spinning machine in 1738) with narrow epistemic bases. Mokyr points out that between 1750 and 1850, three processes changed technological knowledge. Some pure additions to Ω with weak economic needs, density and tightness between Ω and λ due to accessibility and organization and feedback from techniques to the propositional knowledge.

The first chapter runs a dense epistemological and philosophical base of this tenacious argument that knowledge is cumulative and it is “the emergence of belief in the usefulness of progress” that culture and institutions took it upon themselves to cause the first Industrial Revolution, making best use of the technological ideas being developed during its time. In this chapter he differentiates between propositional (Ω) and prescriptive (λ) knowledge. It is claimed that the wider the propositional (theoretical) knowledge, the greater its epistemic base and therefore the easier it is to translate associated prescriptive (actionable) knowledge into more deterministic solutions, thus avoiding a diminishing return on knowledge. However, if only propositional knowledge was sufficient, there would be easy examples of similar economic growth in nations other than England too. Economic progress is tipped on the scales of feedback between Ω knowledge and λ knowledge. Out of this, Mokyr attributes λ knowledge to stem from a favorable set of rules (institutions, universities or professional bodies) and norms. While individual knowledge ranks lower, it diffuses into what is referred to as ‘collective knowledge’ on the pillars of cost (i.e. expenditure of real resources), access (e.g. technology) and social organization (e.g. language, notation, jargon, storage and distribution). Collective knowledge eventually becomes a cultural entity. One exemplification of this is Benjamin Franklin’s inventions published in all majorly accessible languages and his contacts with scientists across the world even though his inventions like bifocal spectacles had no measureable impact on industrial productivity.

At this point, Mokyr attempts to prove by elimination that England was a favorable place for all of these transformations to happen together in the first wave of Industrial Revolution. Japan, China and India, despite having bigger cotton industries and some natural resources (hydroelectric power or natural gas reserves) either could not capitalize on them well or found it expensive, painstaking and time taking to develop to scale. This in turn, increased the contribution Western Europe had on the collective propositional knowledge and the wealth it could draw from it using access to markets in its colonies. “England was a society that provided both incentives and opportunities to apply existing useful knowledge to technology”. Mokyr stresses in both chapter 2 and 6 that this was not just an English event but a Western European one. However, as opposed to France and Germany with larger epistemic knowledge bases, other open circumstances like the personal and informal contacts at coffeehouses or scientific societies for specialists and non- specialists alike in England, brought forward the role of organizing useful knowledge in encyclopaediae that sat in libraries, creating conditions for knowledge to trickle down to the middle classes from the elite. In fact, when the realists rebelled against such rapid technological advancement in England using extralegal means, the governance was prepared to demoralize them notwithstanding the fact that England had geographically distributed colonies. Mokyr credits tools of visualization to bring forth the role of mathematics in emergence of new technology and application. Spain, Ireland and Netherlands, the other European possibilities for industrial revolution were ‘late’ to the race and labelled as ‘resistant to innovation’. The dynamics of resistance to innovation as described in chapter 6, then depend on exogenous variables like confidence in the political authorities to maintain law and order, market forces, labour force’s marginalization due to one material/technology getting more traction than the others and so forth. The only thing different about the Industrial Revolution in England is the creation of opportunities that simply did not exist before, compelling the use and diffusion of both Ω and λ knowledge. Mokyr claims that England’s leadership conditions had nothing to do with this great event in this phase.

The 1820s saw the brink of a second wave of the first industrial revolution that Mokyr says, prevented the slow down and wash out of the first wave. This wave was different because Mokyr with limited examples shows that it was not increase in Ω or λ knowledge but the directedness and deterministic style of innovation with less artisanal and more industrialist features that was responsible for the second Industrial Revolution in the 1860s. Some of the examples used here are James Neilson’s hot blast furnaces that reduced fuel costs and leading to the development of locomotive engines by George Stephenson, conversion of soap and candle manufacturing into a scientifically driven industrial process and that of synthetic dyes. The second industrial revolution created conditions for major breakthroughs in metallurgy, energy production and telegraphy. The source of this wave was a deliberate investment of effort and money into experimentation, research and development and a willingness to shed old ideas that did not work anymore. The second wave was therefore a cascading evolution of λ and then Ω knowledge.

The third wave of Industrial Revolution spilling over to the twentieth century is credited in this book to the ‘institutionalization of innovation’ that brought in universities, corporate and government sponsored players in the race therefore making politics the main determinant of the speed and nature of innovation. Contributing to this was the fact that a lot of fearsome technologies were now less objectionable, like quantum physics, simply because its outcomes were more controllable. Most of the breakthroughs in this century were resting on wider λ knowledge owing to accurate and efficient production techniques and process innovation through routinization, modularization, standardization, acceleration and miniaturization. This is the time when Adam Smith’s division of labour idea became more and more useful. Mokyr calls information and communication technologies (ICT) as ‘knowledge technologies’ for the reason that apart from their direct impact on productivity, these technologies have reduced marginal costs of knowledge access and codification dramatically. The credit for this pivotal role of ICT goes not just to innovation but also to the institutional elements, establishment of social conventions acceptability and formalization along with the fact that ICT was general purpose and could impact all other industries. Here is where Mokyr makes a distinction. He says, “The useful knowledge that emerged after 1850 was truly social, but the “society” in question was international – though not global”.

There were several implications of these waves. The rise of the factory, changing picture of a quintessential worker in a household setting to that detached from a household business, the training of a worker moving from traditional styles to active labour training en mass in factories, the change that came with learning to follow orders and hierarchies brought competition between entrepreneurs or enterprises at a level not seen before. Economies of scale started to exist, bringing household business down despite informal networks. The innovations in epidemiology, germ theory and epistemic base of knowledge in sanitation and healthcare resulted in a sharp decline in mortality with the onus of sanitation not just being left to women of the household. Mokyr states that it is easy to undermine statistics that were used not just to convince the masses in middle and lower middle classes but also to influence the people in power responsible for food distribution, drainage systems, water supply, dwelling houses and waste disposal and so forth. Epidemiology, immunology and statistical rhetoric provide an excellent case for diffusion of propositional knowledge. “An apple a day” had radical effects on consumer behavior, so did the knowledge that boiling and cooking techniques changed nutritional composition on raw foods. The onus of wealth creation using these waves of revolutions by entrepreneurs relied on the institutions that have the power to do one of two things. They could either merely provide a mechanism for distribution of knowledge or actively engage in the conception, creation and operation of ‘enterprise’, which has been an undeniable, outcome of these waves of industrial, economic, social and political change.

There is no one single recipe or formula for economic growth but this work creates a path for humans to understand the necessary (not sufficient) conditions of useful knowledge. Whether useful knowledge is the right term to be used for the link between European enlightenment and the subsequent economic in the nineteenth century is of concern, as it seems like a term one would assign to a resultant and not the cause. In conclusion, Joel Mokyr’s work seems to stress on particular events and a set of conditions in economic history giving a reader the perception that these conditions are hard to be replicated because of the domino effect of the original turnkey events. This is unlike the less academic and more popular science reference ‘Guns, Germs and Steel’, by Jared Diamond, a historian with an anthropological background, which attributes geographical endowments for the scale and the time taken for societies to be self-sufficient even in isolation like the aboriginals of Australia or the African savannah as the key reasons for the spread of technology in a latitudinal fashion over large distances. It is also unlike David Landes’ ‘The Unbound Prometheus’ which takes the position that the Industrial Revolution was a part of a larger modernization process. Overall while Mokyr’s work is a useful way of understanding the non-technological factors involved in Industrial Revolution, the evidence embedded between concepts is not always very compelling. For example, Mokyr states that technological innovations increase our effort in household work but the examples provided for that do not seem adequate.

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willkommen-in-germany · 6 years

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Is that why everything in Germany says "made in Germany" on it but it's in English? lol

I’m going to quote from DW:

“125+ years of ‘Made in Germany’

A little label on German products was supposed to keep them from gaining popularity in Great Britain. But the scheme backfired: the ‘Made in Germany’ trademark eventually made items sell like hot cakes.

The “Made in Germany” label is not a German invention. It came about as part of the British Merchandise Marks Act, which took effect on August 23, 1887. The act aimed to ensure that all foreign products - which could potentially threaten the success of British merchandise - were branded with a label. It was an attempt to prompt British buyers to “buy British.” Each trading nation that wanted to do business in Great Britain had to label its products with their country of origin.

“This was particularly aimed at Germany because people suspected that Germans were copying British products,” Werner Abelshauser, economic historian at the University of Bielefeld in Germany, told DW. “It affected cutlery, scissors and knives manufactured in Solingen, for instance, but it also affected machinery made in Saxony.”

Protection and defenseAbelshauser believes that two notions played a role in creating the law: on the one hand, there was the aim to protect British consumers from buying shoddy imitations of the high-quality cutlery made in Sheffield. On the other hand, German mechanical engineering - which was already superior to the British even then - was supposed to become stigmatized by being given a negative label.

The plan backfired. The label “Made in Germany” ultimately developed into a sign of quality, though it took a while. In the Madrid Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Marks of 1891, most trading nations agreed to ban false information about origins from being printed on products. Products were not to be part of “false flag operations.” Each member nation of the pact agreed to use its own “Made in …” label.

When the First World War began in 1914, the “Made in Germany” label grabbed more attention: merchandise with this marking was not allowed to be offered for sale on markets controlled by the British and their allies. But the real triumph of the label did not occur until after Word War II - when people realized that Germany, unlike the United States, aimed to offer not mass-produced items, but focus instead on its ability to provide quality work and “post-industrial custom-tailoring,” as Abelshauser describes it.

Quality and customized work“The German economy is - still, even today - specialized in close customer relations,” said Abelshauser. “It delivers according to exact requirements: whether complete installations, infrastructure projects, or intelligent machines.” It’s a total contrast to systems of mass production. The more popular the products manufactured in this fashion became, the more assertively German businesses began using the “Made in Germany” label for marketing and advertising. The method worked well. The label continues to be well-respected even today, and is a significant reason people choose to buy a product, Abelshauser maintains - especially in industries where German products are world leaders: vehicle and machine engineering, electronics and chemicals.

Highlighting strengthsIn this context, economic historian Abelshauser points out a major misconception. Those who believe they suffer disadvantages from trading partners copying their products are wrong, he says. It’s a notion enjoying particular popularity in Germany right now with regard to China. But from an economic-historical perspective, it’s just not true in his view. The German export economy has never made its earnings from trading with less developed countries, but instead, nearly always with those benefitting from the same level of development, the historian stressed. “We should actually be hoping that China will achieve our level so that we can really get going doing business with them.” The greatest benefit for all comes when trading partners concentrate on their own core strengths. The logic of economics can sometimes be that simple.” Source: http://www.dw.com/en/125-years-of-made-in-germany/a-16188583

#comments #anon #made in germany #business #german brands #german companies #funny #brits #uk #china #european neighbors #asia #chinese

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orbemnews · 3 years

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General Motors Rebounds From Pandemic Disruptions: Live Updates Here’s what you need to know: “GM.’s 2020 performance was remarkable by any measure,” said Mary Barra, the General Motors chief executive.Credit…Rebecca Cook/Reuters General Motors said on Wednesday that it earned $6.4 billion in 2020, a modest decline from the year before, as brisk sales of pickup trucks and sport-utility vehicles in the second half of the year offset the damage on its business caused by the pandemic in the spring. The automaker reported that revenue declined 11 percent to $122 billion from $137 billion in 2019, when it reported net income of $6.7 billion. “G.M.’s 2020 performance was remarkable by any measure, and even more so in a year when a global pandemic caused companies around the world — including G.M. — to temporarily suspend manufacturing,” Mary Barra, the company’s chief executive, said in a letter to shareholders. The pandemic forced G.M. and other automakers to close all of their North American plants for about 60 days last spring, and caused a deep drop in sales of new vehicles. Automakers also struggled in the pandemic with a shortage of semiconductors needed for features like touch screens, computerized engine controls and transmissions. New cars can have more than a hundred semiconductors. The shortage of chips is expected to last well into 2021. This led G.M. to cut its forecast for operating profit this year by $1.5 billion to $2 billion, the company said. In a conference call with reporters, Ms. Barra said G.M. was working with suppliers to ensure it had the chips it needed, and it expected to be able to make up for any lost production over the course of the year. “The semiconductor shortage won’t slow our growth plans, and without mitigation strategies we still expect to see a very good year for General Motors,” she said. “Right now, we won’t lose any production as it relates to full-size trucks and S.U.V.s throughout the year.” “Part of how United will combat global warming is embracing emerging technologies that decarbonize air travel,” said Scott Kirby, the chief executive of United Airlines.Credit…Chris Helgren/Reuters United Airlines plans to invest in and buy as many as 200 aircraft from Archer Aviation, an electric air taxi start-up that announced plans on Wednesday to go public, in a deal that Archer said valued it at about $3.8 billion. “Part of how United will combat global warming is embracing emerging technologies that decarbonize air travel,” United’s chief executive, Scott Kirby, said in a statement on Wednesday. “By working with Archer, United is showing the aviation industry that now is the time to embrace cleaner, more efficient modes of transportation.” United is investing about $20 million in Archer, and an additional $5 million will come from Mesa Airlines, which operates regional flights for United and others. The airline’s tentative aircraft order is valued at up to $1 billion, Archer said in a statement. United said it would only purchase the aircraft once they were available and had met its operating and business requirements. The aircraft, which can travel at speeds of up to 150 miles an hour for up to 60 miles, would be used within the next five years to let United’s customers commute in dense urban areas or quickly reach the airline’s airport hubs, United said. The aircraft are set to debut this year, according to Archer, which is based in California. The news follows United’s announcement late last year that it plans to become carbon-neutral by 2050, in part by investing in a “direct air capture” plant in Texas that will remove carbon dioxide from the sky and inject it underground. Archer said it planned to go public via a sale to a blank-check company, also known as a special purpose acquisition company. The combined company is expected to raise about $600 million from investors, including United, the newly formed carmaker Stellantis and others. The company expects to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker ACHR. Copper sheathing used in undersea cables, in 2018. The metal is seen as good predictor for the direction of the global economy.Credit…Chang W. Lee/The New York Times U.S. markets Stock markets in the United States were set to open higher on Wednesday, futures markets indicated. Indexes in Europe were mixed after most Asian stocks ended the day higher. The S&P 500 pulled back from a record high on Tuesday, but futures suggest it will open 0.3 percent higher on Wednesday. It’s starting out as a calm day in markets as earnings season winds down. General Motors and Uber are scheduled to report later. Twitter’s shares rose nearly 3 percent in premarket trading after the company said on Tuesday that its revenue rose 28 percent in the fourth quarter compared with the previous year. Commodities Commodities prices rose to multiyear highs as traders anticipated stronger demand for raw materials to aid the economic recovery. West Texas Intermediate futures, the U.S. crude benchmark, gained 0.5 percent to $58.67 a barrel, the highest level since April 2019. Brent prices climbed to $61.50 a barrel, the highest since July 2019. Copper prices, which have been climbing for 10 straight months, approached an eight-year high in London trading. The metal is seen as good predictor for the direction of the global economy given its broad usage, especially for the wiring for power transmission. Europe The Stoxx Europe 600 index gained 0.5 percent, helped by advances among banking companies. Gains were led by Adyen, a Dutch payments company that handles transactions for companies including eBay. Its shares jumped 9 percent after it raised its growth expectations. Adyen’s shares were at a record high, having more than doubled over the past year. Asia Salesforce Tower in San Francisco is one of the tallest buildings on the West Coast. The company will allow more remote work long-term.Credit…Jason Henry for The New York Times Salesforce, the business software giant and San Francisco’s largest employer, said on Tuesday that it would allow most of its employees to permanently work remotely on a full- or part-time basis. The company, which has 54,000 employees, said most workers would visit the office one to three days a week for meetings and collaborative work. A small population will work from the office four or five days a week, and other Salesforce workers who don’t live nearby or need an office will be fully remote. Tech companies have been at the forefront of permanent work-from-home policies. In May, Facebook was one of the first to announce that it would allow many employees to work remotely even after the pandemic. Twitter, Coinbase, Shopify and Microsoft have followed suit. Salesforce said in December it would buy the workplace chat app Slack. Over the summer, as Salesforce and other companies toyed with the idea of returning to the office, Marc Benioff, Salesforce’s chief executive, seemed to acknowledge that office work would be permanently changed. “I just feel very strongly that we have the ability to do something very powerfully here and to motivate this new workplace, just like we did in the prior workplace,” Mr. Benioff said at the time. “Technology is actually going to become a critical part of managing our workplace, where before it was not part of our culture.” Salesforce said it planned to redesign offices to create more spaces that foster collaboration, including “café-style seating, open-air conference areas and private nooks, with an emphasis on clean desks and social distancing,” the company said in a statement. Nicolo Laurent, the chief executive of Riot Games, is the subject of an investigation by his company after a lawsuit accused him of harassment.Credit…Yicun Liu/Riot Games Riot Games, the video game publisher that produced the popular title League of Legends, said Tuesday it was investigating claims of sexual harassment and gender discrimination against its chief executive, Nicolo Laurent. Mr. Laurent and Riot were sued in Los Angeles County Superior Court in January by Sharon O’Donnell, a former executive assistant to Mr. Laurent. In court documents, Ms. O’Donnell said Mr. Laurent repeatedly made sexually suggestive remarks to her, asked her to work at his house when his wife was not home, and told women who worked for Riot that the way to handle stress related to the coronavirus pandemic was to “have kids.” “Riot Games is a male-dominated culture,” the lawsuit said. Female employees like Ms. O’Donnell were “discriminated against, harassed and treated as second-class citizens,” it said. When she refused Mr. Laurent’s advances, Ms. O’Donnell said in the lawsuit, he yelled at her, grew hostile, took away some of her responsibilities and eventually fired her in July. Ms. O’Donnell “believes that this was because she refused to have sex or an affair with the defendant,” according to the lawsuit, which was first reported on Tuesday by Daily Esports. Riot disputed Ms. O’Donnell’s claim in a statement, saying she “was dismissed from the company over seven months ago based on multiple well-documented complaints from a variety of people.” Riot said an outside law firm was conducting the investigation into Mr. Laurent and was being overseen by a committee of the company’s board of directors. Riot said Mr. Laurent was cooperating with the investigation. Riot, which is owned by the Chinese internet giant Tencent, has grown into one of the world’s most prominent video game companies. Its flagship League of Legends game, released in 2009, brought in more than $1.8 billion in revenue last year, according to an estimate from the research firm SuperData. And the series of professional competitions Riot has built around the game has attracted tens of millions of fans and turned star gamers into e-sports celebrities who can make millions of dollars. But Riot has also been under fire for what employees have said is a sexist, toxic workplace. In 2019, it agreed to pay $10 million to the 1,000 women who had worked at the company since 2014 to settle a class-action lawsuit claiming gender discrimination and unequal pay. California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing, which has been investigating Riot since 2018, said last year that the women could be entitled to as much as $400 million, which Riot disputed. It said earlier this month that it was moving forward in court with an effort to seek “class-wide relief” for the women who worked at Riot. Aunt Jemima formally rebranded itself on Tuesday as the Pearl Milling Company, moving one step closer to permanently abandoning the breakfast product line’s likeness that critics had long said perpetuated a racist stereotype for more than a century. The new name comes from the milling company in St. Joseph, Mo., that pioneered the self-rising pancake mix that became known as Aunt Jemima. Heineken, the big brewer based in Amsterdam, said on Wednesday it would lay off 8,000 workers, or almost 10 percent of its work force, as it confronts a steep fall in beer sales to restaurants and bars closed because of the pandemic. The company reported an 18 percent drop in net revenue for 2020, and a 79 percent fall in operating profit. Dolf van den Brink, the chief executive, called it a “year of unprecedented disruption and transition.” Lyft said on Tuesday that revenue for the fourth quarter of 2020 was $570 million, a 44 percent decline from the year before but in line with Wall Street expectations. Losses increased 22 percent, to $458.2 million. Revenue for 2020 was down 35 percent, to $2.4 billion. Twitter said on Tuesday that its revenue in the fourth quarter last year was $1.29 billion, a 28 percent increase from the previous year and slightly above Wall Street expectations. Profit for the quarter was $222 million, bolstered by a turnaround in income after a significant drop in ad spending earlier in 2020. The company lost $1.14 billion for the year. Source link Orbem News #Disruptions #general #Live #Motors #Pandemic #Rebounds #Updates

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