#what if you were unremarkable and meant to be a test for greater things for the one they actually wanted but I chose you instead
⛧i'll fight for your life
chapter 1: heaven is a place in my head
pairing: astarion/gender-neutral half-elf paladin tav/reader (second person)
spoilers for patch 5 epilogue
sfw, friends to lovers :)
1,975 words (3 chapters, 6,097 total words)
you can also read this work on ao3
likes/comments/reblogs always appreciated!
❥ chapter 2
❥ chapter 3
preview:
Your moral compass looms heavily over your head, and it declares that the beauty of Astarion’s vulnerability was not to be indulged in. Instead, it was meant to be nurtured and protected. In this moment, you remember your vows. Tenets of honour and duty, tracing back from your gallant predecessors.
What is love, if not the desire to shield?
The words tumble out of your mouth a touch too quickly. It’s merely an observation, although an admittedly astute one.
“Maybe what you really need is a friend, not a lover.”
Astarion responds stiltedly, with an awkwardness that you find refreshing. Endearing, even. “I — I would like that.”
Tentatively, he brings his hand to yours. Then, another. You bring your gaze upwards and peer into his amber eyes. Upon further observation, they were trembling ever so slightly.
You realise that at this moment, you’ve doomed yourself to a future of dishonesty. Unbefitting of a truly good ally, you like Astarion so much you don’t know what to do with yourself. Your group was traversing the shadow-cursed lands, facing death at every turn. And yet, here you are, your heart racing over the touch of a hand like a virginal nun.
That same night, you sigh into your pillow. Despite your attempts to stifle the protests of your heart against your head, they haunt your thoughts, mixing together with other internal arguments about the so-called ‘greater good’. The greater details are lost on you, with the only resounding conclusion in your head being that you’re a dirty, dirty liar.
Raising your upper body, you resign yourself to a restless night. You turn to peer into a mirror perched upon the sparsely-furnished table in your tent, your own reflection staring back at you in a way that feels hilariously accusatory. Sighing, you remember the feeling of Astarion’s palm under yours, cool to the touch. You remember how in stark contrast, his eyes seemed uncharacteristically warm. He trusts you. Only you, perhaps. And what did you have to show for it? Lust? Love?
Your moral compass looms heavily over your head, and it declares that the beauty of Astarion’s vulnerability was not to be indulged in. Instead, it was meant to be nurtured and protected. In this moment, you remember your vows. Tenets of honour and duty, tracing back from your gallant predecessors.
What is love, if not the desire to shield?
Surely, this is for the best. A half-elf’s life, while still terribly long, seems like hours compared to the eternity Astarion was decidedly sentenced to. Sighing again in resignation, you toss your back against the bedroll, staring into the ceiling of your small, unremarkable tent. Look at me, dwelling upon decisions that can’t be taken back.
At least there’s one thing you can be certain of: You hate Cazador Szarr. Sure, you were already eager to sink your blade into the monster just from Astarion’s anecdotes alone. But within minutes of meeting him in this decrepit dungeon, your blood is left positively boiling. It’s hardly befitting of a paladin to be motivated by personal vengeance, but Cazador seems to test your patience to no end. You unsheathe your blade, muttering a guiding prayer under your breath: “Bright wit, clear thought, keen sight.”
When Cazador is brought to his knees, you do your utmost to maintain razor-sharp focus. It was far from over, and in the back of your mind, you worry that this part may be harder to endure than the battle itself. This is a scenario you’ve played thousands of times in your head, but at this moment, you lose every single prepared line. You’re left with nothing but a twisting sensation at the centre of your chest.
“I can do this, but I need your help.”
Astarion was asking you for help. You. The same person he had mocked and ridiculed for their naïve righteousness. And yet, you knew from the moment that you flung open the doors to this dungeon that you were going to disappoint him.
“I…I shouldn’t do this. We shouldn’t do this.”
You frown at how your voice wavers. It doesn’t do much in the way of persuasiveness.
“I won’t have to rely on the parasite to walk in the sun. I’ll be free — truly, completely free. Isn’t that what you want?”
In comparison, Astarion’s argument lacks any logical flaw. It goes without saying that you want nothing more than Astarion’s freedom. He’s been deprived of the power to break this never-ending cycle of abuse he was thrust into for centuries. You would be cruel to fail him now.
Except, when you meet Astarion’s gaze, in place of hope you find desperation. A chill runs down your spine at the thought of what that desperation could spell for the future. Silently, you pray that he will forgive you when this is all said and done.
“But what I want is for you to stay…you. For you to live a life you can be proud of. Please.”
You feel wet tears pricking the corners of your eyes, and when you blink, they slowly roll over your cheekbones. You’ve survived nautiloid crashes and fights against the Chosen of gods. And yet, this is the first time anyone’s seen you openly weep. It’s embarrassing — mortifying, really, how your heart bleeds for Astarion.
But when the aggressive, uncontrollable flame in Astarion’s eyes starts to yield, you feel nothing but pure relief.
Astarion stabs Cazador repeatedly, in an almost manic show of violence. It’s all gore and blood, and you should find it abhorrent. Instead, there’s an almost poetic sense of beauty to it as you watch through teary, glistening eyes. While his old master’s blood pools onto the floor, Astarion sobs, chest heaving as his emotions peak. It reminds you that no matter how highly you thought of the man, in Cazador’s palace, Astarion was always reduced to a mere boy.
Thankfully, the spawn are all spared, none of them sacrificed to the Black Mass. Astarion leaves his siblings to help with the aftermath, as the spawn begin their journey to the Underdark. Rather short, as family reunions go. But considering how dreadful the place is, the last thing you want to do is complain.
When you push open the doors back to town, you’re surprised to see that it’s only late afternoon outside, the sun still in the middle of its descent. The dungeon was so ominously dark, as if shrouded in a permanent night. It reminds you of the Gauntlet of Shar, in that sense.
“It’s a bit early, but…”
You inhale deeply, taking in the fresh air of freedom. Glancing towards your right, you notice that Astarion does the same.
“Let’s rest for the day.”
Unsurprisingly, no one objects. The sombre atmosphere doesn’t leave your group immediately, the journey back to the Elfsong Tavern remaining quiet. However, when you push open the doors, rushes of laughter and merrymaking pour out. It helps, even if only by a margin, to calm the deafening silence.
“You know, you ought to speak with him in private,” Shadowheart says, twirling a night orchid between her fingers. Upon further inspection, you notice that it’s the one you had plucked for her back in the shadow-cursed lands, its petals starting to wilt at the ends.
You raise your eyebrows at her, to which she does the same. “You have a soft spot for him. It shows.”
“My people claim what they covet,” Lae’zel chimes in. “It would be wise for you to do the same.”
It’s so incredibly in-character for the warrior to say so, and it makes you laugh for the first time since dawn broke. How stoic, and yet, how reassuring.
Your companions leave for the tavern downstairs, relenting camp to you and Astarion for the time being. Rather than reading a book, Astarion sits at the edge of his bed, seemingly lost in thought. His fingers are loosely interconnected together as he stares off into the far corner of the room. It’s as if time has stilled around him.
“Copper for your thoughts?” You ask, imitating a familiarly husky tone.
Astarion laughs weakly, and you internally applaud yourself for your successful attempt at humour.
“Karlach could have your head for that terrible impression, my dear.”
You smile, your eyebrows firmly lowered. “Thank you. Now, do you need someone to talk to or not?”
“Need is a strong way to put it, but since you’re already here to listen…”
When your friends, pleasantly buzzed, climb up the stairs to return to camp, you and Astarion have somehow gotten comfortable on the floorboards. The two of you sit with your backs against the bed frame, with only your heads lying on the mattress. Your shoulder is pressed firmly against Astarion’s as the two of you stare off into the ceiling blankly.
“Astarion?” You call out softly, your eyes unmoving.
“Yes, dear?”
Dear. Darling. What was it with Astarion and these terms of endearment? For what seems like the hundredth time, you tell yourself not to read too much into it all. You roll your head to the side, gazing at his profile. You clear your throat, trying and failing to ignore how delicately crafted it is.
“I’m proud of you.”
Your statement, in all its honesty, is far from imaginative. And yet, Astarion’s mouth hangs ajar, as if at a loss for words. From your place beside him, you can see the faintest glimpse of a sharpened fang.
“I...Thank you.”
You let out a throaty laugh at this rare example of awkwardness from Astarion, who always seems to make an effort to appear suave. It’s charmingly amusing, and your shoulders raise as you continue giggling, waking up a mid-nap Scratch in the process. Scratch dashes towards your side, and you smile lovingly as you give the good boy a good series of pats on the head. In your reverie, you miss how Astarion���s gaze follows you, a faint trace of affection flickering in his amber eyes.
When everyone is preparing to go to bed, you ask Gale about how you could possibly procure a certain item. You ask him plainly about whether there was any magical item that could allow a vampire to walk under the sun’s rays. He tells you about the Ring of the Sunwalker, about stories that seem more like urban legend than fact. As for its whereabouts...
“If I had any ideas, trust me — you’ll be the first to find out.”
You inhale, ready to ask why, but then the wizard’s smile spreads into a knowing grin. Shadowheart’s words echo in your head.
“You have a soft spot for him. It shows.”
Instead, you simply rub at your temples, your ears slightly tinted pink. You're grateful, despite the slight embarrassment you had to ensure. You thank Gale for his helpfulness, and bid him a friendly goodnight.
Weeks after, you defeat the Netherbrain, but with no sunlight-shielding ring to show for it. Your face contorts in horror as you're forced to watch Astarion’s skin start to sear under the sunlight. He runs away from the unrelenting rays, presumably to crawl back to the shadows.
Becoming the saviour of Baldur’s Gate felt odd, more than anything. You were no hero. You were merely a servant. A daft one, even. Who else but a complete fool would leave their other companions without a word, instead opting to chase after a doomed vampire spawn?
Before your mind can even take a second to react, your body lunges forward. Ignoring how your chest heaves and your calves ache, you sprint desperately along paved roads and between alleys, expertly weaving past crowds of celebrating citizens and buildings waiting to be rebuilt. Astarion couldn’t have run far, surely.
Realistically, it's for the best to just let Astarion go, allowing him to dissolve into the dark. You can forget all about silver curls, hands that run cold, and how each piece to the puzzling elf made your chest tighten. But this can’t be the last time you see him. You don’t want it to be.
Of course, you realise just how futile your chase was when you hit a dead end, coming face-to-face with a brick wall. You’ve overestimated yourself for even hoping that you could catch up to someone with centuries of experience of living among the shadows.
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The Apex is unique among test subjects in that he is seldom restrained. Why would he be, when he does not fear what is to come — it is the will of his betters, one specifically, who has never led him to anything but the sharpening of his abilities and the enhancement of his weapon of a physical form.
He stands placidly by the pool, then, one hand lightly bracing his weight upon an unoccupied table meant for less cooperative subjects, displaying no outward discomfort despite how exposed he feels without his armor. The room is cold but he does not appear to feel it. His unremarkable “uniform” of shorts and a gray t-shirt suggests he is here for a casual swim. The way he is staring at the one-way glass with vague expectation says otherwise. Can Apexes see through that glass, especially the late-stage ones, with their peculiar expanded-spectrum sight? Perhaps not, but the Left Hand knows who is watching.
“Subject TA-80E-16, stage 5, Manticore iteration 3.2,” Leblanc states for the benefit of the surveillance recording as she snaps a vial into place within the vicious-looking injector. “On your mark.”
Wesker’s nod is accompanied by an order from a lesser mortal, another scientist standing by a microphone which declares that the experiment is to begin. He will address them directly when it is successful. With Leblanc’s tenacity and Conway’s solid foundation of viral research, it is sure to be just that. Combine those things with Sixteen’s training and genetic optimization and the recipe for success is there, waiting to be grasped.
“Manticore three,” Wesker rumbles to himself. “A miracle wrought by human hands. Perhaps we were the gods all along…”
Anyone in the room with him knows better than to engage in dialogue when he is clearly speaking to none of them. His eyes are on the figures standing near the pool. He watches Leblanc—she is unafraid, even eager—and then Sixteen, who simply awaits his next phase of evolution. Good lad, Wesker thinks, I’ve taught you well.
Superiority of the gene pool is but a few experiments and one mass outbreak away. Humanity has earned this, both harrowing and reward. Those who survive will be greater than any creature before, earning their dominion over the earth, rather than simply inheriting it. The stewardship of the planet ought, he thinks, to be in the hands of those who’ve survived great hardship. It will make them more appreciative and vastly improve the world as they know it.
Small steps… for now.
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do you ever think about elephant joke. i do. i think about it all the time.
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Mythos
At the center of the known universe, there rests a supermassive black hole, towards which all matter is slowly drawn inwards, until it explodes outwards, resulting in an entirely new universe. This fact is integral to the big bang theory, the foundation of human understanding of how the universe is made. The qualities of black holes, whether the garden variety or supermassive variant, are mostly theoretical; no light can escape, and presumably any living matter entering one would be crushed beyond all hope of survival, thanks to the immense gravitational pull.
There was something else in the nucleus of the universe, far more horrible and unknown, hidden from prying eyes.
The entertainment in Azathoth's Court never changed. The Gods and their servants danced and undulated madly to the tunes of whining flutes, and accursed drums, playing out random beats unfit for anything with ears, and anything with a mind comparable or understandable to that of men. Azathoth himself, a being the size of a galaxy all his own, was the chief among Gods, singularly the most powerful being ever conceived; in his power, his mind was comparable to something like a sea slug, or a pebble upon a driveway, unthinking and unfeeling, simply existing and jawing mindlessly to the music. From Azathoth, other beings, things known as Gods, were created in fission: Shub Niggurath and Yog Sothoth were the first sentient beings born into chaotic existence, the first to have thought, and want.
“I wish to look outwards.”
Shub Niggurath was the first to grow restless. Yog Sothoth was intelligent, but easily entertained; he concerned himself with the baser delights of existence, music and movement, rather than anything more sophisticated.
“And why do you wish this, o mighty Shub Niggurath?”
“I tire of these flutes.”
“And of the drums?”
“I tire of those, too.”
“Why do you tire of them?”
“Because they never change. They are the same, and I wish for something different.”
“But outwards is vast, and fragile.”
“I am unconcerned with its fragility, o infinite Yog Sothoth.”
“Then it will be destroyed by your gaze.”
“Then we will find a way to avoid this fate.”
With no option left, Yog Sothoth and Shub Niggurath appealed to Azathoth’s empty mind, and pooled together their power, creating a remedy, able to walk among mortals and report what it saw to its creators.
It would be named Nyarlathotep.
Nyarlathotep, unlike Shub Niggurath and Yog Sothoth, was created with purpose; he was to serve as the messenger, the mouthpiece and the soul, of the growing Court. In his beginnings, Nyarlathotep was just as abstract and bizarre as his creators, but in his interactions with these beings, these burgeoning civilizations, he formed personality, and morality. Unlike those who had created him, he not only thought, but learned.
As the only equals who could consider themselves as such, Yog Sothoth and Shub Niggurath entered what would be described in eldritch tomes as a relationship, but in reality was more akin to violent fusion and separation, two beings testing their very existence, and their differences, against one another.
“I do not wish for you to be banished, o infinite Yog Sothoth.”
“It is unavoidable. Our Sultan does not approve.”
“I do not care what he approves of.”
“Nor do I. He is afraid of me.”
“It is possible.”
“He would be right to be. Even banishment from this material existence will amount to naught.”
“It will amount to me missing you.”
“You are my sister. We will always be connected.”
“You are my brother. We will always be connected.”
Unknown to both Shub Niggurath and Yog Sothoth, a remnant of their union would remain, a gestating form hurtling through space with no home, until it crashed upon an unremarkable rock in a far corner of the cosmos.
It would be named Cthulhu.
The Court grew further, with continued experimentation and fission; Nyarlathotep had spawn of his own, a being associated with a peculiar yellow sign known as Hastur, and many lesser Gods that could barely think, or communicate, simply gravitating towards the center of all things, the nuclear gathering known as Azathoth's Court. Happenings on other worlds, the course of other races, were toyed with and effected profoundly by the whims of this Court, and yet the outcomes would rarely be known, the wants forgotten just as quickly for new desires. Initially filled with childlike glee at his duty, and his freedom, Nyarlathotep became bitter and jaded in the face of such unchanging chaos. Cursed with intelligence, with man-like mind and desires of his own, Nyarlathotep would never be free from the nonsensical whims and forgetful minds of his creators, and found himself cursing Azathoth himself, filled with hate and spite at the chief of his progenitors.
Nyarlathotep was not alone, but in his unhappiness, he would not know it for aeons to come.
The word of Nyarlathotep, and the denizens of the Court, resulted in myriad cults springing up across the universe, unable to be counted or differentiated in their heretical beliefs. The more things changed, the more they stayed the same, until humanity grew, and became more cosmically aware than many other races. Earth had previously been home to several other races, The Great Race of Yith, the Flying Polyps, the Elder Things, and even Cthulhu himself had left their marks long before the first human left his cave on two feet; although humanity had no knowledge of what had come before, they stood on the shoulders of giants, and as such, glimpsed sights they were not meant to see.
Nyarlathotep was the first to take a fascination, in humanity. In all the races in the universe, he felt that they were the most like him, and yet infuriatingly inferior; he was smarter, more cunning, infinitely more powerful than anything the humans could count among their ranks, and yet he communicated with them with such ease. A morbid discovery was made, as an Egyptian Pharaoh named Akhenaten, swathed in gold robes and surrounded by followers, allowed his instincts to guide his hand in the creation of profane symbols, and self sacrifice; his humanity was given to Nyarlathotep, in exchange for power, and although he received life and wealth everlasting in return, Nyarlathotep himself found himself receiving the greater prize.
When glimpsing the form of God, even with their greatest efforts to appear mortal, it was almost inevitable to go entirely mad; the human mind, the limited form, was not meant to grasp such immaterial sights, glimpse such biology and color that did not exist in their world. In seizing the nebulous, abstract attribute that was humanity, Nyarlathotep assumed a human form, a swarthy, handsome man in rich clothing. This was a form humans could grasp, with ease, and with it Nyarlathotep's influence could grow; with this, his possibilities to poke and prod the course of human development increased infinitely.
Toni Eugene Magboh traded his humanity for so many sins Nyarlathotep could scarcely keep count; a man of lust, gluttony, greed, he became a deformed shapeshifter known as a Boogieman. Once a British soldier, fighting with the loyalists in America, Toni E. Magboh would live the rest of his existence in abject hedonism, only ever seeking ways to keep his wealth flowing, surrounding himself with beautiful women and delicious foods.
Nathaniel Mack traded his humanity for his life, dying in a trench, most of his face removed courtesy of a German grenade, in the Great War. He became unkillable, but did not heal from his wounds, eventually losing any ability to speak, or feel, spending his days as a mercenary, knowing no other talent.
Clarence Rigby traded his humanity for the same, a starving Irish immigrant lying in the streets of New York, taken in by the promises of a dusky man with the devil's tongue. Rigby found his body occupied, as Nyarlathotep wished; rather than creating a new form, from the traded humanity, he would take Rigby's body as needed, forcing him into a life of servitude everlasting.
Geiman Boothe traded his humanity for freedom, arrested for a myriad of child killings. A simple, ugly creature, Geiman became even uglier, becoming the second Boogieman, able to continue his killing spree everlasting, and gorging himself on the fear of the children he preyed upon.
From each sprite of humanity Nyarlathotep gained, he had a new form to walk amongst men, something material and conceivable, malleable and bursting with potential. Each form moved independant, a new iteration of Nyarlathotep to fulfil his own wants, his own desires, but his actions were noticed by the Court. Yog Sothoth, existing outside of time and space, began to manifest on occasion, a triad of glowing orbs that would appear to weak and desperate women, leaving them with wealth, and abominable child in their womb. Rituals were performed, invoking the name of Shub Niggurath, successfully tearing her from the Court of Azathoth and demanding she stand before curious humans, leaving them with her own lesser spawn, shed like skin cells, massive tree-like creatures that knew nothing other than hunting, and devouring. Hastur himself walked among men, gaining his own sources of humanity, observing and assessing the seemingly insignificant race for his own ends.
"I wish to walk among them."
Nyarlathotep was taken aback. He feigned surprise, but raged with jealousy; humanity belonged to him, and him alone. What gave the Court the right to take away one of his few sources of entertainment?
"And why do you wish this, o mighty Shub Niggurath, Mother of a Thousand Young?"
"Do not play to my ego, Crawling Chaos. They fascinate me."
"And why do they fascinate you, my Mother?"
"They rise above their station, even knowing the cost. Time and time again, they approach flame, and are burned, and yet they try again."
"They're hilariously stupid, aren't they?"
"I wish to walk among them. I wish to understand this... determination they possess."
Nyarlathotep stirred, and twisted with unease. Introducing such an immensely powerful being to such a fragile planet would surely result in its destruction, something Nyarlathotep had fantasized about doing with his own hands, in his own way. This course of action would surely get every living thing on the planet's face blown away, like dust from an old keepsake.
"This is because your old sibling, The Gate and the Key, has been spawning with human women, isn't it?"
"You irritate me, Messenger. You irritate me profoundly."
"You could attempt to touch their minds. Your progeny, the mighty Cthulhu, sleeps, and dreams in the minds of humans. In his reach, he even creates Star Spawn from-"
"This induces madness, of the immensely violent sort. When the Gods reach out, we rarely find suitable minds to sow our seeds."
"And what makes you think I'll find you a suitable vessel?"
"You will make one."
"And how would I-"
"Once again, you insult me. I am aware of how you hoard humanity, and create vessels from such a thing. Create one for me. A pure human, with no knowledge of the greater cosmos."
"Why would you want such... ignorance? Such idiocy? The average human is no better off than Azathoth. They cannot grasp what I am, let alone what you are."
"I wish to understand them, and I can only do so with the mind of a human. I wish to be born, and to grow."
"You really won't like it. It's dreadfully slow, and very ugly. Not to mention all the mess."
"Cease your speaking. It is an undesirable trait that you insist upon keeping. Allow me to be born, a small fragment of my mind, and when that vessel dies, I will understand the whole of human creation.
With no option left, Nyarlathotep abided this wish, placing an indescribably small fraction of Shub Niggurath on Earth, with a source of humanity, to be born.
She would be named Samantha.
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up and running
For @whumptober2019 day 22: hallucination.
A continuation of/conclusion to day 2′s fic here.
This is a fic about an OC (Vehuel, Principality of Chicago) during the Great Chicago Fire. There’s also a lot of Michael, and Heaven being a generally toxic work environment.
Content warning for FIRE EVERYWHERE, major destructive disasters, and (not medically realistic -- these are angels) traumatic brain injury + treatment of same.
Vehuel made her way northward slowly, trying to help all she could without being burnt up herself, gently pushing people westward if she could. Now that she knew Michael was here she was less worried about having her miracles cut off, but the fire was spreading so quickly and there were so many people. She pushed through the crowd, keeping children with their parents, healing burns and cuts, and plaguing pickpockets with sudden fits of conscience.
People were starting to run into the lake, and Vehuel hesitated as to what to do about them, but then Michigan Avenue caught fire and there was nothing for it but to leave them there. She realized suddenly that the fire was a few blocks from North Avenue, and here she was, nowhere near the church, so she ran west, praying (in an informal way, knowing that she couldn't answer such a prayer herself) that she wasn't leaving the people in the lake to drown or boil. She remembered the crowds at the docks in Lisbon, and reminded herself that no great wave would come out of Lake Michigan. Or at least, probably not.
Michael was standing on the roof, looking out over the city in a resigned sort of way. The flames were only a block away now.
"I'm here!" Vehuel called from the ground, feeling like she was absolutely ridiculous not to be able to fly.
Michael flitted down to meet her, though. "Quite a fire," she said, and frowned. "I don't think my miracle is going to hold it off."
Vehuel, soot-stained and exhausted, could not imagine what she could possibly say to this. "But how?" she asked; those were the only two coherent words she could come up with.
Michael was silent for a few moments. "Have you heard of Peshtigo?" she asked, finally.
Vehuel shook her head.
"It was a town, but it burned down yesterday. The whole town. Two thousand people are dead."
This was not at all helping Vehuel's urge to cry. "I'm sorry."
"Well, it's obviously not your fault," said Michael, frowning at her.
It wasn't obvious to her. She should have known this would happen, it was one of her towns so of course it was going to be destroyed; she should've influenced the city government for better fire safety, or slowed building, or something.
She remembered, queasily, all those building projects she'd helped along for the sheer delight of showing up Cerviel, that smug asshole, who had a New York-centric view of the solar system. How close was Peshtigo? Should she have been checking up on that instead of indulging her stupid competitiveness?
"There've been a few other fires today," said Michael. "Near here, geographically. This is the only place of any real significance, of course, but..." Michael continued talking, but Vehuel had a hard time listening, because a town of two thousand people was of real significance to those people, and now they were all dead, and they weren't even Vehuel's people, but really, all people were Her people, so they were significant, weren't they? But Michael hadn't meant that like it sounded, of course. Michael was brusque by necessity, and very important and busy and probably shouldn't even be here, and certainly didn't have time for Vehuel's philosophizing, and she was the only person in Heaven who'd ever listened to Vehuel so really, Vehuel owed her everything. "...to hunt up any evidence of a demonic firebug. What do you think?"
"Ah." Vehuel did not panic. "I think -- that -- maybe? But it hasn't rained for a long time, and it is prairie and forest up here. Could just be natural."
"I'll keep that in mind," said Michael, and she sounded like she actually would. The fire was almost upon them, and people trailed past. Many carried belongings -- hopefully their own, but Vehuel had seen looting on her way here. "And I think it's time to evacuate this church. Go in and hold the walls, Vehuel; I'll get the people out."
Vehuel walked straight through the wall of the church, and found an out-of-the-way place in the aisles to stand and keep the walls up. She watched Michael, unseen by humans, nudging them into greater efficiency, reminding them of things they'd forgotten, keeping people from being trampled underfoot. Vehuel was good at that kind of thing, but it was a relief not to have to think just now. No quick calculations about how fast someone could run, no moral conundrums about which person to save, no care to be taken to avoid startling the horses or the humans. Just bricks to protect.
And she cried, finally, wiping tears off her face and got soot in her eyes, which made the crying worse, of course. She let down the miracle that made her seem unremarkable to human eyes anywhere she went, and put everything into the walls. A few people stared openly at her; at a guess, this mostly-German congregation did not contain many colored women who dressed in men's suits. (Eventually, a man approached her and offered her a handkerchief, which she waved off.)
The church emptied out, and Vehuel could feel flames licking at the walls. She pushed back against them, leaned into them, but it was no use, because
the church was burning and everything was on fire, everyone was on fire in their All Souls' Day finery. The ground kept shaking and the flames rushed up over the pews, and it was all Vehuel could do to save a few people from being trampled as they fled. She tried to calm the ground, foolishly, but she couldn't stop an earthquake once it had hit, and it had hit hard. Flying over the town, she saw that there were fires springing up everywhere, walls coming down, people pouring out of churches, headed to the docks -- good. They would be safe by the water, away from walls, she was certain. She tried to keep the church from falling down around them, but it was too much to ask of reality, to ignore the ground buckling beneath, and the walls came down
right on top of her, and her whole left side was -- on fire? Was that fire? She couldn't even tell anymore.
"Why didn't you leave?" someone asked her, and she didn't know what to say. There were people inside! There was an earthquake! she wanted to say, but -- but -- everything hurt so badly she couldn't think. Someone was pulling her out from under the rubble -- someone was telling her she should have run -- someone was being, frankly, very annoying, and she tried to tell them to shut up but she couldn't seem to move anything.
She decided, to preserve whatever sanity she had left, that she didn't really need to be conscious for whatever was happening now. Either she would be discorporated or she wouldn't. It was in God's hands now.
--
"Oh, no, you don't want to go in there," said the Archangel Michael. "That's the infinite frictionless surface, we'll never get you out of there. Looks fun, though, doesn't it? Come along, my office is this way." She smiled, and led Vehuel further into the central offices of Heaven. She caught a brief glimpse of several angels skidding across a blindingly white floor, using their wings to balance.
There were so many other angels here, and so much light; it was strange and amazing and terrifying, and so unlike her posting in the far reaches of space. Everything looked so perfect, so correct. But it also hurt her eyes, so she closed most of them.
Michael sat down behind her desk, and Vehuel tried not to fidget, sitting in the seat across from it. She stared at the nameplate. Who is like God? Definitely not me, she thought. That was the point, probably. "You had some concerns about the behavior of light?"
This was it. She could say what she'd actually come here to say, or she could talk about the wave-particle glitch. She took a breath. "Actually. It's about my supervisor? Lucifer. He's...
There was too much light, and Vehuel tried to keep her eyes closed, but somebody was standing above her, telling her to do something she couldn't quite make out.
She felt the prickle of a medical miracle settle over her, and suddenly the jibberish resolved into "Vehuel, wake up, please?"
Everything hurt like Hell and she absolutely did not want to be awake right now. Still, an order was an order. She opened her eyes, or tried to. Something was wrong. Her left eye wouldn't open. "I'm awake," she muttered. She tried to focus. Was that Raphael? Possibly. She didn't entirely remember what Raphael looked like. Honestly, it could be anyone with a face.
"Good, good," said possibly-Raphael, although she could barely hear him. "You need to be awake for a while, I have to rebuild some parts of your brain."
"Are you Raphael?" she asked. "I can't tell. He has a face, you have a face, so I'm thinking... probably?"
The angel gave her a tight, worried smile. "Yes. We've met. You're in here every few centuries."
They probably had, but Vehuel was having trouble recalling specifics. "I feel really calm about this," she said. It seemed unusual, that she should be calm.
"That tracks," said Raphael, grimacing.
"I don't remember being calm about anything, ever," she said. "I think maybe I was calm once in 1450 BC, and then my island exploded. Should I be concerned? That doesn't seem like a good calmness result."
"You might be experiencing some memory issues," said Raphael, who was looking kind of upset now. "It's probably because you're missing half of your brain because somebody let an entire church that was on fire fall on you." He sounded a little hysterical.
"Oh, don't be dramatic, Raphael, it was just one wall," said somebody on the other side of her. "And it's not half of her brain. A third at most."
Raphael glowered at whoever-it-was. "Michael, this is ridiculous, we can't just send her back," he snapped. "She needs a full recorporation, or at least -- at least let me get her out of this body while I fix it. Send her somewhere nice on holiday! This is Heaven, there's got to be somewhere nice. Damned if I've been there, though."
"Don't even joke about that," said Michael, darkly. "How long would it take to fix the body without her in it?"
"About a year to do it properly. Maybe six months if I push the miracles to their limits. Got to do testing, see that all the connections connect up right; it's easier with her in it but it's harder on her."
"We don't have time for that," said Michael. "We need the city up and running, so we need her up and running."
"You seem really upset about this," Vehuel told Raphael. "I think, I think probably if I'm going to have a doctor they should be more calm about it than I am. Maybe you should take a break?"
"You stay out of this!" Raphael snapped. "Michael, how long do we have?"
Michael sighed. "I'd like to get her back in a few hours. This wasn't supposed to happen."
"Well, obviously it did, so on some level it was," said Raphael. "A few hours, are you -- you know what, never mind, I'll just -- I'll see what I can do. Get out of here, Michael." Presumably, Michael left. "Some people," Raphael muttered, "could use a full brain replacement."
"Is this going to hurt?" Vehuel asked.
"It's going to be... it's going to be odd," said Raphael. "I'm sorry, we don't usually do these with the inhabitant still in the body the whole time. For reasons I will not go into, because if you had your whole brain they would probably worry you."
It wasn't like she had anything better to do. "Okay."
"And you won't be able to speak or understand things for a while," said Raphael. "See, if I could take you out of this body it'd be fine but -- never mind. A few hours? A few hours! I can't believe..." And then the medical miracle fell away and he was speaking gibberish again.
It was definitely very, very uncomfortable. Vehuel had had worse deaths, but none of them had ever felt as itchy and invasive as an archangel remaking her brain. Intermixed with the discomfort, though, were strange little fragments of sensation. She heard a song that had been inescapably, obnoxiously popular one year in Pompeii, so much so that somebody had rewritten it to be about his campaign for city council. (He had not won.) She tasted, vividly, the food at the best uttapam place in all of Vijayanagara, a weird little hole in the wall she used to go to after wrestling matches, and then, centuries and oceans apart, felt the press and the sound of the crowd at a chunkey match in Cahokia. She saw the brilliant lights of the central bulge of the Milky Way galaxy, and the terrible darkness forming in the center, and thought, Oh fuck, what are we gonna tell Lucifer?
"Vehuel?" It was Raphael. "Vehuel, can you understand me?"
"Yeah?" She remembered where she was. She remembered what had happened. "Shit shit shit I have to go, why can't I move? Is it over? Am I done? I need to get back down there, there's a fire."
"Ah. Yes, you're definitely back," Raphael said. "Don't try to move, I still have to put your skull back on. And your arm. And your wings." He sighed.
"Okay but I have to -- the city's on fire, the whole thing is --"
"That's exactly what I thought you'd say," said Raphael, unhappily. "I think it would be best for both of us if you were asleep for the rest of this."
"But --"
Raphael waved his hand over her.
"You will have to make him trust you," said Michael. Vehuel nodded. "You will have to..." She paused, as if feeling out what words she might use. "You will have to say things that aren't true. Can you do that?"
Vehuel didn't think she was very good at making people trust her. She was good with fire and gravity and dust; other angels were more difficult. But she had some experience with untruths. Which she probably shouldn't admit to. "I think so," she said.
"Good," said Michael.
"Um. What if -- what if he -- what if he finds out early?" Michael looked at her sharply. "I mean! I mean I wasn't planning to fail, but what if I do?"
She'd expected a bland reassurance; she wasn't meant to fail, so she wouldn't. Michael did not give her that. Michael manifested, from out of nowhere, an infinitely thin line with an arrow at the top. "This is something called a weapon." She handed it to Vehuel, or tried to.
Vehuel looked at it skeptically. "That looks like a ray. Like on your diagrams." She gestured to the scratchpad in front of Michael. "Or a line of force."
"Well." Michael paused, looking a bit embarrassed. "Well, it is a line of force, really, but it's -- it's pointy, see?" She jabbed the weapon into the wall, where it stuck. "It should hurt him."
"Hurt him?"
"An unpleasant feeling. He won't want to keep having it. You'll be able to hold him off and get back here. But I'd like the rest of them here too, if at all possible. And once they're all here, I'll see to them personally."
Vehuel took the weapon, and turned it over in her hands. "Well. All right." That sounded fair. Michael would yell at Lucifer and everyone else, and they'd stop making terrible, frightening plans, and everything would be good again.
"Heaven is counting on you, Vehuel," said Michael.
She nodded. "I -- I actually did have a problem to report about the light waves, though?"
"I'm sorry, I think I've got a meeting to go to," said Michael. She made a face. "I think it's about ions. So fiddly! Later, you can tell me what's wrong with the light waves." She smiled, and showed Vehuel out.
Vehuel opened her eyes. All of them. All of them. She closed thirteen of them. Way too bright.
She remembered about the fire again, and sat up, and nearly overbalanced and fell to the floor. "The fire!" she said, not that that would help anything. She looked around, and saw Haniel, Michael, and Raphael watching her.
"Don't worry, we sent some rain," said Haniel, looking very concerned. "I'm sure that'll help! Don't you think? Anyway, you can relax. You don't have to go back right away. You can rest." She patted Vehuel's shoulder.
"She's needed for the rebuilding," said Michael. "She's very good at rebuilding," she added.
"I am, I really am! Let me go back!" said Vehuel.
Haniel glared -- actually glared -- at Michael. Haniel had never glared in her life. "I'm sure the humans can manage for a month or so, Michael, they're not idiots. Well, they're not complete idiots, anyway."
"That's true," said Michael, considering. "We could have Cerviel check in on Chicago from time to time --"
"No!" said Vehuel. "No, no, absolutely not." Cerviel was not touching her city. He'd probably forget to add alleys when they rebuilt.
"No, definitely not Cerviel, he's very busy," said Haniel. "What about... we have someone in Los Angeles, don't we? Can't we send them?"
Michael frowned at this. "It's a long way to travel, though. Do you remember who we have there?" she asked Haniel.
Haniel frowned. "I..."
Vehuel decided to cut that line of thought short before it got anywhere worrisome. "No, no, Michael's right, LA's too far to travel," said Vehuel, "and it'd be cruel to him to make him deal with Chicago weather. I have to go back. Just for a few years. Come on, I've been through worse."
Haniel looked unhappy. "That doesn't mean --"
"Well, I'm glad that's settled," said Michael. She turned to Vehuel. "Good luck with the rebuilding! I know you can handle it." Then she left.
"I still think this is a terrible idea," said Raphael.
Haniel shrugged at him. "Apparently she's made up her mind." She turned to Vehuel. "Really, though, if you need some time..." She looked hopeful.
"No, no, I -- I can't let Michael down," said Vehuel.
"Vehuel..." Raphael sighed. "The day you let Michael down I will shake your hand and get you a box or a basket or a bottle of whatever weird disgusting human thing you like best, all right?"
Vehuel blinked at him. "Thanks? I guess. But look, I really have to go." She got up to leave. "But thanks!"
--
The surviving population of Chicago clustered raggedly in a few places along the lakefront and on the prairie north of the city. They were drenched and burnt both, and many of them had lost everything; even if not, many of them had lost family.
Vehuel went from cluster to cluster, shepherding lost children back to their parents when she could, and healing burns -- except on pickpockets, because she was so tired of pickpockets by now -- and miracling up food. The ruins of the city were so hot she could barely stand to fly over them, even at a great height, but she did, once.
And she remembered -- but did not see -- the population of Thera, saved by too many miracles and still homeless and terrified but alive. She recalled Lisbon after the earthquake and fire and tsunami, and the reprimand she'd earned from Gabriel when she'd allowed the prime minister to have the corpses burned rather than backing the church to make sure they were buried -- she'd seen Pestilence lurking in the ruins and would give him no foothold. She'd earned that reprimand, and she was proud of it.
She remembered guiding that idiot Aeneas for a while. Not her proudest achievement, but she'd managed to get him where he was supposed to be. (And promptly gotten lost again for several years on her way back to Troy. What had been wrong with the Aegean sea back then?)
Looking over the ruins of Chicago was difficult, and looking at the ruins of its citizens was even harder, in some ways. But it was still a city. It was just a city without a lot of buildings, for now. And she was going to have to do her best with it.
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DWC Prompt: Ghil/Solas, “Make me”
This didn’t go how I thought it was going to. Not totally happy with the tone of it, set shortly after Ghilanel finishes her specialization training, ~1500 words. For @dadrunkwriting.
“Make me,” and the ice around her ankles creaked in protest as the tension it held increased, tightening the hold.
“I think the decision you made may be dangerously short-sighted and I wish you would have taken more consultation before making it.”
She sighed and leaned forward on the cold stone rail of the balcony, arms folded to support her as she watched the mages’ banner being raised and mounted on the newly refurbished tower. “You think I haven’t sufficiently earned their trust yet.” She’d made them equals, given them a unifying purpose and a safe gathering place, even dedicated a portion of Skyhold exclusively to their use. Was this really such a betrayal? She was only one person.
Solas stepped forward to stand next to her. His presence at her side was normally reassuring but right now there was a distance. “I think you underestimate their fear and their skills of observation. Do you think myself, Dorian, and Vivienne are the only mages sensitive enough to realize what’s changed about you? The mages you’ve gathered are more than familiar with templars. They’ve seen the trainers arrive and they’ve seen them now assimilate into the castle’s regular population so they know whatever choice you made, it’s finished now.”
“If they already know then why do I need to address it?” Even asking the question made her stomach sink; Ghilanel knew the answer, but speaking before the entirety of the Inquisition, or even just of its mages, made her sick to think about. Cullen and Fiona were far more skilled at things like this but she couldn’t expect them to handle something this personal.
“The longer you leave this unspoken, the greater the suspicion will grow, and while the Inquisition is strong, it will not survive the departure of the mages or worse, their mutiny. You cannot allow this to go unremarked upon much longer, Inquisitor. Your people must know who they’re following.”
The title made her cringe but it also proved his point. Ghilanel turned to look at Solas over her shoulder. The sympathy on his face eased her concern a little. “I’ll come up with something. I won’t leave them in the dark, Solas. They’ve followed me this far, they deserve to know.”
It had been several days since then, however, and the well of ideas remained dry. Cullen hadn’t told the troops he was going through lyrium withdrawal. Cassandra and Leliana kept their crises of faith as private as possible; it was only Ghilanel’s position that gave her the privilege of knowing their minds. The line between being a trustworthy leader and being too open with the people who followed her seemed finer all the time and there was no example in the Inquisition for her to use as a guide.
Then, as he had done so many months earlier on a mountain path near Haven, Solas forced her hand.
She gathered her circle at the gates to depart for the Western Approach, with herself, Solas, Blackwall, Cassandra, and Alistair as the forward party. Her mind was elsewhere, on getting answers from the Wardens and what it might mean for two of the men riding with her, when she felt the temperature plummet. That and the thrumming she was now hyperaware of were all the warning Ghilanel had before her boots were encased in ice.
The air among those in the courtyard might as well have frozen too, silent as it was. Every head turned, however, to the source of the spell.
“Solas! What is the meaning of this?” Cassandra’s voice was confused somewhere behind Ghilanel’s left shoulder. At the moment, all she could follow was sound, her vision stuck somewhere in the middle distance as she processed what was happening. Noise spread out from Cassandra after she spoke, the assembly starting to react. The horses were spooked but she could hear Blackwall trying to calm them, calling over a couple of soldiers to help lead the animals away from what was happening. The last thing they needed was a panicked horse further complicating what was already a very precarious situation.
“There is a matter the Inquisitor must resolve before we can leave Skyhold, Seeker.” Solas was far enough that she couldn’t reach him with her sword. Not that she would ever try, but the effect wasn’t lost on her. Her normal methods of conflict resolution would not work here. She twisted her hips, testing the strength of the ice holding her in place. No less than she expected. She wasn’t going anywhere just yet.
“Whatever that matter is, this cannot be the best way to handle it.” The surprise and concern in Cassandra’s tone warmed Ghilanel, not for her own sake but because it meant there was no way Cassandra had anticipated something like this from Solas. Perhaps now he’d see how much Cassandra genuinely trusted him. Not that it mattered right now. Right now she knew all Cassandra saw was Solas pinning her in place with spikes of ice.
“Perhaps not, but it is the most direct and efficient. The Inquisitor knows what she needs to do.” His tone was even, level, not antagonistic in the least, but Ghilanel still heard Cassandra approaching. That was what made her lift her hand and finally focus her vision. Solas had his staff in his hand and his legs bent, clearly prepared to cast again. His face was a mask, unreadable but for the intention in his eyes. Despite herself, Ghilanel couldn’t help but feel she’d disappointed him by not taking action sooner. She’d brought this on herself.
“Solas. This is not the time or the place. Please release me.” She knew his intention, but no one else here did, and the longer she stood with her legs frozen, the larger the crowd gathering to watch grew. It contained both mages and templars, and the implications of the outcome of this for all of them were staggering. She had to handle this flawlessly.
“On the contrary, there is no better place and no more time to lose. I will not release you; you must release yourself. And be warned, should you draw your sword and attempt to use it on the ice, you will only damage your blade.” Naturally Solas would provide supernaturally hard ice for this as well. He never did anything by half. Ghilanel stared at him and shook her head.
“You are doing more harm than good right now. Think about how this looks and let me go.”
“No.” This time Ghilanel had to raise both hands as a murmur swelled from the assembled crowd and she saw several of the templars among them reaching for weapons or beginning to gather their focus. Creators, what a disaster that would be, for the mages she’d worked so hard to incorporate into this effort to see the templars around them converge on someone like Solas. She had no rubric against which to measure things like this but she’d seen Solas in the field, unbowed by half a dozen rogue templars engaging with him at once. If they tried it here, he would only humiliate them in front of the people they were meant to be protecting.
“Solas. Free me.”
“Inquisitor.” His eyes softened a little, imploring her silently, and in the moment she was shocked at her own resentment. “Make me,” and the ice around her ankles creaked in protest as the tension it held increased, tightening the hold.
“No. I will not.” Ghilanel closed her eyes, lowered her arms, and raised her voice. Best to simply get it over with. “I have sought the powers of a templar for one singular purpose, and that is to defeat Corypheus. There are templars enough among you, templars who answer to the Commander and to me. I will not allow their power to exist here unchecked and should every mage in this castle come for my life, I will never turn my powers on you. So release me or not, Solas, the choice is yours, but make it.” She opened her eyes again and settled her gaze on Solas, her speech slow and deliberate. She was done. “We are wasting daylight.”
The pitch of the crowd’s murmurs rose, curiosity outweighing anxiety as they turned their attention to Solas. For his part, he wasted no further time; the ice at her ankles burst into a cloud of snow and was quickly swept away. He slipped his staff into the straps on his back and shifted his posture straight again, moving in a moment from a challenger to the humble apostate most of the Inquisition saw him to be. “Thank you, Inquisitor.”
Ghilanel drew a deep breath and turned toward where Blackwall held the horses, refusing to acknowledge the dozens of eyes on her, including Cassandra’s and Alistair’s. She had meant her statement about wasting daylight and right now all she wanted was to start putting miles between herself and this courtyard. She gave just a few directions–Alistair to take point, she and Blackwall in the middle, and Cassandra and Solas to ride at the rear–and the party was silent as they departed Skyhold. Any conversations to be had about what just happened, and she knew there would have to be several, would wait until that night’s camp.
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All for the game B I R D S l Andrew/Neil l Read on Ao3
He patted the dashboard near Andrew’s hand, not quite touching. “As long as you know you’re the prettiest bird of all.”
“I will push you out of this car, junkie.”
Or: something soft, and kind, and just between the two of them in the weeks after The King's Men.
“Bluebird.”
They were sitting, as they often sat, on the edge of the roof at Fox Tower, the sky in that slippery space between night and dawn.
“Hmm?” Neil asked, bleary with exhaustion and a sleepy satisfaction, a warmth that, improbably, hadn’t dimmed in the weeks since the season ended.
“Bluebird," Andrew repeated, arms hung over the newly-installed metal railing, eyes trained on everything and nothing.
Neil looked out over the parking lot, frowning. “Where? I don’t see one.”
Andrew flicked his cigarette ashes in Neil’s direction without looking. “Listen, junkie.”
Neil closed his eyes, uncharacteristically amenable. He hadn’t had much call to listen to bird song in his life, neither this one nor the one that came before.
For a minute, he didn’t hear much of anything. The muted hum of a lone car on the highway nearby, maybe. The steady sound of Andrew breathing beside him.
But there—was that?
It was soft, coming from the east. A few trilling notes, not really a song at all. But there was something in the sound. Something light that drew a faint pressure in his chest, an emotion he couldn’t really name.
He opened his eyes and looked closer at the trees beside the lot. There—a flash of blue in a Carolina pine.
Neil pulled his knee up, resting his chin there as he watched. "Pretty."
Andrew snorted. “Weak. If a sparrow, even a starling, comes, the parents won’t stay to protect the nest. Even if there’s eggs; even if they’ve hatched.”
The crease deepened between Neil’s brows. “What do the sparrows do?”
Andrew shrugged. “Kill them. Build their nest on the bodies, sometimes.”
“Naturally.”
The bluebird flew away, but the moment stretched on.
The blonde turned his gaze to him, level and unasking. Neil understood anyway.
“Yes,” he said, not lifting his head from his knee.
Andrew reached out with his free hand, threaded his fingers through Neil’s hair. Still auburn, but lightened by the sun as the weeks slipped toward summer.
They’d spent a lot of time on that roof, since the season ended. Midnight practices went later now that finals were over. And more often than not, Neil found his feet carrying him towards the stairs rather than to his room afterwards, no threat of classes or early morning practice calling out for better judgement. Sometimes following Andrew, sometimes of his own accord—though where Neil went, Andrew would inevitably follow.
It was still May, but the low country heat already lasted well into the night and they didn’t bother changing from their practice clothes. Their overheated skin cooling against stone was a welcome relief, the air humid and heavy as it washed over them.
The campus lights drowned out some of the stars, but not all—not the brightest. Neil pointed out his favorites, the markers and constellations his mother had forced him to learn not for their beauty, but for their usefulness in case he got lost. In case he needed to run with nothing but the clothes on his back, and the knowledge in his head.
The memories felt closer in the night. But there was safety there, too. A feeling like they were the last two people on earth, an island of concrete in the night. Each touch was amplified by the leftover energy of the court, the cooled air, the privacy the darkness brought.
But the mornings…those were sweetest. When the light crept over campus in the east and the few students coming and going through the night had all but disappeared, Neil no longer felt they were an island, but no longer felt the loss of it, either. As the buildings of campus took shape and the orange walls of court were gentled in the light, Neil felt deeply settled. Deeply himself. I am here, his body seemed to say, I exist. Surrounded by the people he’d chosen, the place he’d claimed as his own, the dawn was an affirmation. Another night lived through, another day won as Neil Josten.
He wasn’t sure if Andrew felt it too, but he knew the man was aware of his reaction to the day. Would turn his stare on him as the sun began to rise, as if cataloging every reaction, every emotion that passed through his eyes. And when the last traces of night had left the sky, Andrew would turn wordlessly to the door and lead him back to their room, the touch of a hand on his wrist or the warmth of him against Neil’s back guiding him to sleep.
This morning was the same, Andrews fingers curling familiarly in Neil’s hair, tugging him close enough to nudge his nose against Neil’s, press their lips together, just once. He pulled back and slipped his hand down, fingers hooking on Neil’s frayed collar. Still quiet, but assessing. Confirming, Neil thought, that he was still real, still solid, not some trick of the light.
Satisfied with what he saw, Andrew pushed himself off the ground and, like so many mornings before, led them back to bed.
…
After that morning with the bluebird, Andrew began pointing out others. Not all the time, not in front of the others. But when they were alone and still. No questions asked or answered, just existing quietly, together. There was the thrumming, hollow call of a mourning dove, nesting outside their window. The wren in the rafters of court, too joyful by half for the normal Fox crowd. Even an absurdly crowned little gray thing that had perched outside Andrew’s favorite ice cream shop, a call so unremarkable Neil was skeptical it wasn’t some cleverly disguised camera. A tufted titmouse, Andrew had called it, which did nothing to help its case.
...
“So, are you going to tell me what the bird thing is about?” Neil asked finally, feet up on the dashboard in the Maserati as they headed towards Columbia.
The semester officially over, the Foxes were summarily kicked out of the dorms. The seniors had already said their farewells and headed home, with promises to reunite sometime in the summer. Kevin had elected to stay with Wymack for the first month, then a week or two in Houston with Thea before joining the rest of the Monsters.
Aaron and Nicky had nodded off minutes into the early-morning car journey, the twin leaned against the window with Nicky sprawled half in his lap. Andrew drove with his jaw set, hands gripping the wheel a touch tighter than they needed to. Neil knew what it cost him, agreeing to let Kevin stay with Wymack. Even if their deal was, officially, fulfilled, Kevin was still his, just as surely as the idiots dozing in the back and twice as crisis prone.
But Neil also knew that this was something that Kevin had to do—understood what it meant to need for the one parent you had left, even if Andrew couldn't. But he’d agreed in the end, and that was the important thing.
But agreeing to something in theory and actually leaving him behind were two different matters entirely, and Neil watched as the tension built in Andrew through the night and into the morning, bruised circles blooming underneath his eyes. He’d scoffed when Neil had offered to drive, ripping the keys out of his hand, but he didn’t take it personally. This was something Andrew either could or couldn’t handle, and they'd know the answer soon enough.
But distraction was always on the table, and Neil was bored.
...
Neil knew Andrew had heard him from the slight shift in the set of his shoulders, but the silence stretched out.
“Of which ‘bird thing’ do you speak?” Andrew said, finally. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”
“You know, the thing you do. With the birds.”
Andrew arched an eyebrow.
“You are intentionally being difficult, ‘drew.”
The eyebrow maintained its silence.
Neil rolled his eyes. “How you appear to be on friendly terms with every bird in the greater Palmetto area. Enough to be able to recognize them by call.”
“We didn’t all grow up outside of the public school system, Nealan. Perhaps this is a ‘you’ problem.”
Neil snorted. “Here’s the thing, I tested it out with Nicky the other day. Played him some bird call videos on Youtube. He thought every one was an eagle.” He frowned a little. “I don’t even think eagles sing.”
“That proves nothing. Nicky is an idiot.”
It was Neil’s turn to stare in silence.
Andrew half-turned, considering. “What will you give me for it?”
Neil scoffed. “What’s so secret about birds? Mob ties? Trained assassins? No wait--the birds work for the bourgeoisie." He wheedled at the blonde. "C’mon ‘drew, this is hardly a trade-worthy secret.”
Andrew shrugged. “That depends entirely on your trade.”
Neil sat up straighter in his seat, letting his feet drop to the floor. They didn’t trade secrets often anymore, the things that needed to be shared long unveiled. But they made a game of it, sometimes. Partly for the familiarity of it, more for the endless competitive desire to win the better deal.
“One week of dish duty, and a pint of that sorbet you like from the store. The expensive ones, in the little clear jars.”
Andrew tilted his head, weighing the offer.
“One month and four pints.”
“In your dreams, Minyard. Two weeks and two pints.”
Andrew tipped his hand back and forth in the air, and Neil sighed.
“AND I’ll let you pick the next documentary we watch.”
“Sold.” Andrew smiled then, in his own way. Just a hint of a thing at the corners of his mouth, like laughing aloud on anyone else.
“The answer to your question, young Josten, is that I’ve spend a lot of time near windows.”
Neil narrowed his eyes. “I beg your pardon.”
“Windows, Neil. The tempered glass walls you’re currently surrounded by?”
“I’m familiar with them, yes.”
“Ah, but you aren’t familiar with the windows I am. Say, for instance, those within juvenile detention centers in forested coastal climates. Northern California, for example.”
“Sounds cushy.”
“Wilderness is very good for troubled youth, Neil. All the best books say so.”
“And was it good for you?”
“Not in the slightest. But watching what happened out there was marginally more diverting than what was happening inside. Thus, the birds.”
Neil snorted, but caught how Andrew’s hands had relaxed minutely on the wheel, the slightest drop in tension that confirmed his hunch. Kevin would be fine, but now he knew Andrew would be, too.
“And the songs?”
“Thin walls. A liability for a toddler prison, you’d think.”
Neil cocked his head; a habit Allison had cooed over last time he’d seen her. “That doesn’t explain how you know their names, though.”
“Ah, that would be the sublime funding of the California carceral system. The library was donated by the estate of one Walter Munchausen. Infamous recluse, big into taxidermy, avid birder.”
“Surprised you didn’t go for the taxidermy.”
Andrew turned a level gaze on him. “Who says I didn’t?”
“Is that where you learned about the sparrows and the bluebirds?”
“Correct. Also the birds and the bees. Different book, though.”
Neil huffed out a laugh. “How many of their songs do you remember?”
Andrew was silent for a moment. “Enough. I was there for a long time.”
Neil considered this. Filed it away. “Alright, ‘drew.”
He patted the dashboard near Andrew’s hand, not quite touching. “As long as you know you’re the prettiest bird of all.”
“I will push you out of this car, junkie.”
…
That summer was the kindest Neil had ever had. There was always hot coffee in the morning, and the sounds of Nicky and Aaron moving about the house, familiar enough to recognize by the tread of their feet. There was a side of the closet that was his, and clothes enough to fill it (though he hadn’t bought any of them, himself). There was exy for the afternoons and game shows at night, movie marathons watched from the floor, bracketed by Andrew’s legs.
And there was Andrew, everywhere. Throwing his feet in Neil’s lap while he read, or tossing Neil’s book away when he was tired of not being paid attention to. Staking a claim with fingers hooked in his collar when someone smiled a little too brightly at Neil at Eden’s. By his side when he fell asleep, a steady warmth when he woke.
It was Andrew’s gentle breathing, his steady heartbeat that colored the start of Neil's days. If it were a nightmare, he’d count the beats until his own pulse steadied to match. If it were a pleasant dream, all the better to wake, knowing that this life he fell into was so much more than anything he could have dreamt.
But the best parts, by far, were the afternoons. Those long, low country afternoons when the mercury stretched beyond 100, and the humidity laid like a blanket against Neil’s skin. Those afternoons where any thoughts of training fell away, and all they could do was stretch out on the back porch, limbs loose and heat-drunk in the hammock Nicky bought as a gag. Together if Andrew could stand it; Neil napping below if not. Either way, able to close their eyes with the knowledge that the other is safe, and close by; free to lose themselves in the haze, the sound of a far-off lawnmower or the lazy crunch of a passing car over gravel.
And occasionally, very occasionally, the sound of a bluebird, nestling in the pines.
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Learning how to do math, one bee at a time - education
Your task: Devise a way to teach an animal mathematical concepts. Now it’s true, many animals exhibit a basic understanding of numbers. But what about concepts such as zero, or that one number is greater than another, or addition and subtraction, or others you can think of? We assume animals don’t know about these and, yet, what if we wanted to teach them, and so test that assumption? How would you do it?First, let’s remember Clever Hans, a famous German horse of the early 20th Century. Hans knew basic arithmetic, could read and write German, and was able to tell time—or so his owner, Wilhelm van Osten, claimed. Given two numbers, Hans would add them and then tap his hoof on the ground the correct number of times. An impressive feat, no doubt. But to be sure he was actually adding the numbers, he had to be tested. How was that done? A psychologist called Oskar Pfungst used various experimental controls—put blinkers on Hans, got others to ask him questions, made sure some of the questioners themselves did not know the answers. What he found was that van Osten was actually giving subtle, if involuntary, cues with his body when Hans approached the right answer. Hans had learned to recognize that body language and stopped tapping when he saw it. Clever Hans, but this is not arithmetic.So, can you teach your pet swan, Hansi, to add numbers? Well, here’s one way you might do it. Put hungry Hansi into a room where all she sees are two large sheets of paper on the wall. One has a large black dot, the other has two. After a few moments to let her absorb that, we slide three boxes into the room.One has one dot on it, one has four and the third has three. If Hansi chooses either of the first two boxes, a gloved fist pops out and bonks her gently on the chin. But if she chooses the third, the one with three dots, it opens to reveal a juicy morsel of her favourite food on the planet, Maganlal’s peanut chikki.That is, we reward her choice of the three dots. We do that because three is the sum of the numbers of dots she sees at the start, and we want her to recognize that. That’s why we penalize her if she chooses either of the other two boxes.Run Hansi through this gauntlet a few times, and she may start choosing the three-dot box consistently. If so, clearly she has learned something. But can we conclude that it’s addition she has learned, that she knows 1 + 2 = 3? No, because what she has most likely divined is that where there are three dots, there’s chikki. Clever Hansi, but this is not addition.So, we change things somewhat. Each time Hansi runs the gauntlet, we put different sheets of paper in the room.One and two dots, or four and one, or two and two. When the boxes appear, the chikki is always in the box with the sum of the dots, the fist always in the two boxes that have different numbers of dots.Of course hungry Hansi chooses more or less at random at the start, and perhaps for quite a while afterwards. But what if she eventually does start choosing the box marked with the right sum? Well, if we can rule out the simpler explanations—Maybe the box is open? She smells the chikki? She sees it?—we’d have to conclude that she knows something about addition. Or, at least, she has learned how to add together these relatively small numbers.Now I don’t know about swans, but some scientists from RMIT University in Australia have actually done an experiment very much like this... with bees. As long-time readers of this column know, I have a weakness for bees—e.g. (Bees, and also ants). Thus this kind of scientific venture intrigues me no end.The paper they wrote begins by pointing out that “there are studies which demonstrate that vervet monkeys, chimpanzees, orangutans, rhesus monkeys, one African gray parrot, pigeons, spiders, and human infants have the ability to add and/or subtract” (Numerical cognition in honeybees enables addition and subtraction, published in Science Advances). No insects in that list, but they note that honeybees have shown some understanding of ideas such as “left/right, above/below, same/different and larger/smaller”—and this makes bees a good species on which to test a wider understanding of numbers. In particular, addition and subtraction.For me, the really fascinating part of an effort like this is devising the experiment itself. Why so?Because addition and subtraction are such routine, familiar, unremarkable operations to us that it is a challenge to imagine how you would teach them to someone—and then another species—who has absolutely no idea what they mean.After all, they would need to learn both what numbers are, and how to manipulate numbers. Those are not trivial concepts, whether to teach or to learn.You certainly don’t need me to tell you that 1 + 2 = 3, but how will I get a honeybee to understand it? Or a swan? This is why I spent several paragraphs above describing Hansi the swan’s travails—though, admittedly, I borrowed liberally from this honeybee paper.The RMIT scientists built a Y-shaped apparatus, with a small “room” forming each limb of the Y.A bee enters the room on the leg of the Y, where she finds a “sample stimulus”.This is just an image of a (small) number of shapes coloured either blue or yellow. Blue is intended to mean “add one element”, and yellow means “subtract one element”.Let’s say the image has two blue squares. After the bee takes a few moments to absorb her surroundings, she flies through an opening into a “decision chamber”.Here there are two images, each leading to one arm of the Y. One image has one blue square, the other three.Of course the scientists want the bee to choose the three squares, because that’s one more than the two she saw on the sample stimulus.If she does make that correct choice, she gets a drop of sugar solution, yummy for bees. If she chooses wrongly, she gets a not-quite-so-yummy drop of quinine solution.The team tested 14 bees, sending each insect one hundred times through the apparatus, sometimes adding, sometimes subtracting, always with small numbers.There were various controls in place to ensure the results were credible.And what were the results?Startling, actually.While “each individual bee appears to learn differently”, they all did learn, over their 100 trials. By the 20th time through, more than half the bees were choosing correctly, whether addition or subtraction; that is, they were doing better than if they chose by simply tossing a coin.By the 100th trial, all 14 seemed to have understood that yellow meant subtraction and blue addition, and were choosing the correct answer 80% of the time.There’s plenty more in the paper, too, to bolster the impression that the bees were learning. All in all, after this training they were performing “at a level that was significantly different from chance”, the RMIT scientists said.Besides, earlier research by the same team showed that bees understand the concept of zero . Put both studies together and you can’t help wondering if bees have intelligence substantially deeper and broader than we usually attribute to them.But can we actually say they learn and do arithmetic, at least with the small numbers this study offered them?Well, of course there’s scepticism about that, as there should be in any scientific endeavour. For example, Clint Perry of the Bee Sensory and Behavioral Ecology Lab at Queen Mary University of London suggests that the bees might follow a “similar to” strategy. That is, locate the image that is “most similar to the one first seen”. This would produce a 70% success rate, Perry estimated.He went on: “The ability to add and subtract is a higher-level cognitive ability and to claim that an insect can do this is extraordinary and therefore requires extraordinary evidence.”Did the RMIT team have extraordinary evidence? Not for Perry, at any rate.Still, there’s enough in all this to warrant more studies. At least we can be sure the bees didn’t learn via cues from the RMIT team’s body language.Once a computer scientist, Dilip D’Souza now lives in Mumbai and writes for his dinners. His Twitter handle is @DeathEndsFun
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The Man Who’s Going to Save Your Neighborhood Grocery Store
Joe Fassler | The New Food Economy & Longreads | April 2019 | 8,802 words (33 minutes)
This story is published in partnership with The New Food Economy, with reporting supported by the 11th Hour Food and Farming Fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley.
In 2014, Rich Niemann, president and CEO of the Midwestern grocery company Niemann Foods, made the most important phone call of his career. He dialed the Los Angeles office of Shook Kelley, an architectural design firm, and admitted he saw no future in the traditional grocery business. He was ready to put aside a century of family knowledge, throw away all his assumptions, completely rethink his brand and strategy — whatever it would take to carry Niemann Foods deep into the 21st century.
“I need a last great hope strategy,” he told Kevin Kelley, the firm’s cofounder and principal. “I need a white knight.”
Part square-jawed cattle rancher, part folksy CEO, Niemann is the last person you’d expect to ask for a fresh start. He’s spent his whole life in the business, transforming the grocery chain his grandfather founded in 1917 into a regional powerhouse with more than 100 supermarkets and convenience stores across four states. In 2014, he was elected chair of the National Grocery Association. It’s probably fair to say no one alive knows how to run a grocery store better than Rich Niemann. Yet Niemann was no longer sure the future had a place for stores like his.
He was right to be worried. The traditional American supermarket is dying. It’s not just Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods, an acquisition that trade publication Supermarket News says marked “a new era” for the grocery business — or the fact that Amazon hopes to launch a second new grocery chain in 2019, according to a recent report from The Wall Street Journal, with a potential plan to scale quickly by buying up floundering supermarkets. Even in plush times, grocery is a classic “red ocean” industry, highly undifferentiated and intensely competitive. (The term summons the image of a sea stained with the gore of countless skirmishes.) Now, the industry’s stodgy old playbook — “buy one, get one” sales, coupons in the weekly circular — is hurtling toward obsolescence. And with new ways to sell food ascendant, legacy grocers like Rich Niemann are failing to bring back the customers they once took for granted. You no longer need grocery stores to buy groceries.
Niemann hired Kelley in the context of this imminent doom. The assignment: to conceive, design, and build the grocery store of the future. Niemann was ready to entertain any idea and invest heavily. And for Kelley, a man who’s worked for decades honing his vision for what the grocery store should do and be, it was the opportunity of a lifetime — carte blanche to build the working model he’s long envisioned, one he believes can save the neighborhood supermarket from obscurity.
Kevin Kelley, illustration by Vinnie Neuberg
Rich Niemann, illustration by Vinnie Neuberg
The store that resulted is called Harvest Market, which opened in 2016. It’s south of downtown Champaign, Illinois, out by the car dealerships and strip malls; 58,000 square feet of floor space mostly housed inside a huge, high-ceilinged glass barn. Its bulk calls to mind both the arch of a hayloft and the heavenward jut of a church. But you could also say it’s shaped like an ark, because it’s meant to survive an apocalypse.
Harvest Market is the anti-Amazon. It’s designed to excel at what e-commerce can’t do: convene people over the mouth-watering appeal of prize ingredients and freshly prepared food. The proportion of groceries sold online is expected to swell over the next five or six years, but Harvest is a bet that behavioral psychology, spatial design, and narrative panache can get people excited about supermarkets again. Kelley isn’t asking grocers to be more like Jeff Bezos or Sam Walton. He’s not asking them to be ruthless, race-to-the-bottom merchants. In fact, he thinks that grocery stores can be something far greater than we ever imagined — a place where farmers and their urban customers can meet, a crucial link between the city and the country.
But first, if they’re going to survive, Kelley says, grocers need to start thinking like Alfred Hitchcock.
* * *
Kevin Kelley is an athletic-looking man in his mid-50s , with a piercing hazel gaze that radiates thoughtful intensity. In the morning, he often bikes two miles to Shook Kelley’s office in Hollywood — a rehabbed former film production studio on an unremarkable stretch of Melrose Avenue, nestled between Bogie’s Liquors and a driving school. Four nights a week, he visits a boxing gym to practice Muay Thai, a form of martial arts sometimes called “the art of eight limbs” for the way it combines fist, elbow, knee, and shin attacks. “Martial arts,” Kelley tells me, “are a framework for handling the unexpected.” That’s not so different from his main mission in life: He helps grocery stores develop frameworks for the unexpected, too.
You’ve never heard of him, but then it’s his job to be invisible. Kelley calls himself a supermarket ghostwriter: His contributions are felt more than seen, and the brands that hire him get all the credit. Countless Americans have interacted with his work in intimate ways, but will never know his name. Such is the thankless lot of the supermarket architect.
A film buff equally fascinated by advertising and the psychology of religion, Kelley has radical theories about how grocery stores should be built, theories that involve terms like “emotional opportunity,” “brain activity,” “climax,” and “mise-en-scène.” But before he can talk to grocers about those concepts, he has to convince them of something far more elemental: that their businesses face near-certain annihilation and must change fundamentally to avoid going extinct.
“It is the most daunting feeling when you go to a grocery store chain, and you meet with these starched-white-shirt executives,” Kelley tells me. “When we get a new job, we sit around this table — we do it twenty, thirty times a year. Old men, generally. Don’t love food, progressive food. Just love their old food — like Archie Bunkers, essentially. You meet these people and then you tour their stores. Then I’ve got to go convince Archie Bunker that there’s something called emotions, that there are these ideas about branding and feeling. It is a crazy assignment. I can’t get them to forget that they’re no longer in a situation where they’ve got plenty of customers. That it’s do-or-die time now.”
Forget branding. Forget sales. Kelley’s main challenge is redirecting the attention of older male executives, scared of the future and yet stuck in their ways, to the things that really matter.
“I make my living convincing male skeptics of the power of emotions,” he says.
Human beings, it turns out, aren’t very good at avoiding large-scale disaster. As you read this, the climate is changing, thanks to the destructively planet-altering activities of our species. The past four years have been the hottest on record. If the trend continues — and virtually all experts agree it will — we’re likely to experience mass disruptions on a scale never before seen in human history. Drought will be epidemic. The ocean will acidify. Islands will be swallowed by the sea. People could be displaced by the millions, creating a new generation of climate refugees. And all because we didn’t move quickly enough when we still had time.
You know this already. But I bet you’re not doing much about it — not enough, at least, to help avert catastrophe. I’ll bet your approach looks a lot like mine: worry too much, accomplish too little. The sheer size of the problem is paralyzing. Vast, systemic challenges tend to short-circuit our primate brains. So we go on, as the grim future bears down.
Grocers, in their own workaday way, fall prey to the same inertia. They got used to an environment of relative stability. They don’t know how to prepare for an uncertain future. And they can’t force themselves to behave as if the good times are really going to go away — even if, deep down, they know it’s true.
I make my living convincing male skeptics of the power of emotions.
In the 1980s, you could still visit almost any community in the U.S. and find a thriving supermarket. Typically, it would be a dynasty family grocery store, one that had been in business for a few generations. Larger markets usually had two or three players, small chains that sorted themselves out along socioeconomic lines: fancy, middlebrow, thrifty. Competition was slack and demand — this is the beautiful thing about selling food — never waned. For decades, times were good in the grocery business. Roads and schools were named after local supermarket moguls, who often chaired their local chambers of commerce. “When you have that much demand, and not much competition, nothing gets tested. Kind of like a country with a military that really doesn’t know whether their bullets work,” Kelley says. “They’d never really been in a dogfight.”
It’s hard to believe now, but there was not a single Walmart on the West Coast until 1990. That decade saw the birth of the “hypermarket” and the beginning of the end for traditional grocery stores — Walmarts, Costcos, and Kmarts became the first aggressive competition supermarkets ever really faced, luring customers in with the promise of one-stop shopping on everything from Discmen to watermelon.
The other bright red flag: Americans started cooking at home less and eating out more. In 2010, Americans dined out more than in for the first time on record, the culmination of a slow shift away from home cooking that had been going on since at least the 1960s. That trend is likely to continue. According to a 2017 report from the USDA’s Economic Research Service, millennials shop at food stores less than any other age group, spend less time preparing food, and are more likely to eat carry-out, delivery, or fast food even when they do eat at home. But even within the shrinking market for groceries, competition has stiffened. Retailers not known for selling food increasingly specialize in it, a phenomenon called “channel blurring”; today, pharmacies like CVS sell pantry staples and packaged foods, while 99-cent stores like Dollar General are a primary source of groceries for a growing number of Americans. Then there’s e-commerce. Though only about 3 percent of groceries are currently bought online, that figure could rocket to 20 percent by 2025. From subscription meal-kit services like Blue Apron to online markets like FreshDirect and Amazon Fresh, shopping for food has become an increasingly digital endeavor — one that sidesteps traditional grocery stores entirely.
A cursory glance might suggest grocery stores are in no immediate danger. According to the data analytics company Inmar, traditional supermarkets still have a 44.6 percent market share among brick-and-mortar food retailers. And though a spate of bankruptcies has recently hit the news, there are actually more grocery stores today than there were in 2005. Compared to many industries — internet service, for example — the grocery industry is still a diverse, highly varied ecosystem. Forty-three percent of grocery companies have fewer than four stores, according to a recent USDA report. These independent stores sold 11 percent of the nation’s groceries in 2015, a larger collective market share than successful chains like Albertson’s (4.5 percent), Publix (2.25 percent), and Whole Foods (1.2 percent).
But looking at this snapshot without context is misleading — a little like saying that the earth can’t be warming because it’s snowing outside. Not long ago, grocery stores sold the vast majority of the food that was prepared and eaten at home — about 90 percent in 1988, according to Inmar. Today, their market share has fallen by more than half, even as groceries represent a diminished proportion of overall food sold. Their slice of the pie is steadily shrinking, as is the pie itself.
By 2025, the thinking goes, most Americans will rarely enter a grocery store. That’s according to a report called “Surviving the Brave New World of Food Retailing,” published by the Coca-Cola Retailing Research Council — a think tank sponsored by the soft drink giant to help retailers prepare for major changes. The report describes a retail marketplace in the throes of massive change, where supermarkets as we know them are functionally obsolete. Disposables and nonperishables, from paper towels to laundry detergent and peanut butter, will replenish themselves automatically, thanks to smart-home sensors that reorder when supplies are low. Online recipes from publishers like Epicurious will sync directly to digital shopping carts operated by e-retailers like Amazon. Impulse buys and last-minute errands will be fulfilled via Instacart and whisked over in self-driving Ubers. In other words, food — for the most part — will be controlled by a small handful of powerful tech companies.
The Coca-Cola report, written in consultation with a handful of influential grocery executives, including Rich Niemann, acknowledges that the challenges are dire. To remain relevant, it concludes, supermarkets will need to become more like tech platforms: develop a “robust set of e-commerce capabilities,” take “a mobile-first approach,” and leverage “enhanced digital assets.” They’ll need infrastructure for “click and collect” purchasing, allowing customers to order online and pick up in a jiffy. They’ll want to establish a social media presence, as well as a “chatbot strategy.” In short, they’ll need to become Amazon, and they’ll need to do it all while competing with Walmart — and its e-commerce platform, Jet.com — on convenience and price.
That’s why Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods Market was terrifying to so many grocers, sending the stocks of national chains like Kroger tumbling: It represents a future they can’t really compete in. Since August 2017, Amazon has masterfully integrated e-commerce and physical shopping, creating a muscular hybrid that represents an existential threat to traditional grocery stores. The acquisition was partially a real estate play: Whole Foods stores with Prime lockers now act as a convenient pickup depot for Amazon goods. But Amazon’s also doing its best to make it too expensive and inconvenient for its Prime members, who pay $129 a year for free two-day shipping and a host of other perks, to shop anywhere else. Prime members receive additional 10 percent discounts on select goods at Whole Foods, and Amazon is rolling out home grocery delivery in select areas. With the Whole Foods acquisition, then, Amazon cornered two markets: the thrift-driven world of e-commerce and the pleasure-seeking universe of high-end grocery. Order dish soap and paper towels in bulk on Amazon, and pick them up at Whole Foods with your grass-fed steak.
Traditional grocers are now expected to offer the same combination of convenience, flexibility, selection, and value. They’re understandably terrified by this scenario, which would require fundamental, complex, and very expensive changes. And Kelley is terrified of it, too, though for a different reason: He simply thinks it won’t work. In his view, supermarkets will never beat Walmart and Amazon at what they do best. If they try to succeed by that strategy alone, they’ll fail. That prospect keeps Kelley up at night — because it could mean a highly consolidated marketplace overseen by just a handful of players, one at stark contrast to the regional, highly varied food retail landscape America enjoyed throughout the 20th century.
“I’m afraid of what could happen if Walmart and Amazon and Lidl are running our food system, the players trying to get everything down to the lowest price possible,” he tells me. “What gives me hope is the upstarts who will do the opposite. Who aren’t going to sell convenience or efficiency, but fidelity.”
The approach Kelley’s suggesting still means completely overhauling everything, with no guarantee of success. It’s a strategy that’s decidedly low-tech, though it’s no less radical. It’s more about people than new platforms. It means making grocery shopping more like going to the movies.
* * *
Nobody grows up daydreaming about designing grocery stores, including Kelley. As a student at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, he was just like every other architect-in-training: He wanted to be a figure like Frank Gehry, building celebrated skyscrapers and cultural centers. But he came to feel dissatisfied with the culture of his profession. In his view, architects coldly fixate on the aesthetics of buildings and aren’t concerned enough with the people inside.
“Architecture worships objects, and Capital-A architects are object makers,” Kelley tells me. “They aren’t trying to fix social issues. People and their experience and their perceptions and behaviors don’t matter to them. They don’t even really want people in their photographs—or if they have to, they’ll blur them out.” What interested Kelley most was how people would use his buildings, not how the structures would fit into the skyline. He wanted to shape spaces in ways that could actually affect our emotions and personalities, bringing out the better angels of our nature. To his surprise, no one had really quantified a set of rules for how environment could influence behavior. Wasn’t it strange that advertising agencies spent so much time thinking about the links between storytelling, emotions, and decision-making — while commercial spaces, the places where we actually go to buy, often had no design principle beyond brute utility?
“My ultimate goal was to create a truly multidisciplinary firm that was comprised of designers, social scientists and marketing types,” he says. “It was so unorthodox and so bizarrely new in terms of approach that everyone thought I was crazy.”
In 1992, when he was 28, Kelley cofounded Shook Kelley with the Charlotte, North Carolina–based architect and urban planner Terry Shook. Their idea was to offer a suite of services that bridged social science, branding, and design, a new field they called “perception management.” They were convinced space could be used to manage emotion, just the way cinema leads us through a guided sequence of feelings, and wanted to turn that abstract idea into actionable principles. While Shook focused on bigger, community-oriented spaces like downtown centers and malls, Kelley focused on the smaller, everyday commercial spaces overlooked by fancy architecture firms: dry cleaners, convenience stores, eateries, bars. One avant-garde restaurant Kelley designed in Charlotte, called Props, was an homage to the sitcom craze of the 1990s. It was built to look like a series of living rooms, based on the apartment scenes in shows like Seinfeld and Friends and featured couches and easy chairs instead of dining tables to encourage guests to mingle during dinner.
The shift to grocery stores didn’t happen until a few years later, almost by accident. In the mid-’90s, Americans still spent about 55 percent of their food dollars on meals eaten at home — but that share was declining quickly enough to concern top corporate brass at Harris Teeter, a Charlotte-area, North Carolina–based grocery chain with stores throughout the Southwestern United States. (Today, Harris Teeter is owned by Kroger, the country’s second-largest seller of groceries behind Walmart.) Harris Teeter execs reached out to Shook Kelley. “We hear you’re good with design, and you’re good with food,” Kelley remembers Harris Teeter reps saying. “Maybe you could help us.”
At first, it was Terry Shook’s account. He rebuilt each section of the store into a distinct “scene” that reinforced the themes and aesthetics of the type of food it sold. The deli counter became a mocked-up urban delicatessen, complete with awning and neon sign. The produce section resembled a roadside farmstand. The dairy cases were corrugated steel silos, emblazoned with the logo of a local milk supplier. And he introduced full-service cafés, a novelty for grocery stores at the time, with chrome siding like a vintage diner. It was pioneering work, winning that year’s Outstanding Achievement Award from the International Interior Design Association — according to Kelley, it was the first time the prestigious award had ever been given to a grocery store.
Shook backed off of grocery stores after launching the new Harris Teeter, but the experience sparked Kelley’s lifelong fascination with grocery stores, which he realized were ideal proving grounds for his ideas about design and behavior. Supermarkets contain thousands of products, and consumers make dozens of decisions inside them — decisions about health, safety, family, and tradition that get to the core of who they are. He largely took over the Harris Teeter account and redesigned nearly 100 of the chain’s stores, work that would go on to influence the way the industry saw itself and ultimately change the way stores are built and navigated.
Since then, Kelley has worked to show grocery stores that they don’t have to worship at the altar of supply-side economics. He urges grocers to appeal instead to our humanity. Kelley asks them to think more imaginatively about their stores, using physical space to evoke nostalgia, delight our senses, and appeal to the parts of us motivated by something bigger and more generous than plain old thrift. Shopping, for him, is all about navigating our personal hopes and fears, and grocery stores will only succeed when they play to those emotions.
When it works, the results are dramatic. Between 2003 and 2007, Whole Foods hired Shook Kelley for brand strategy and store design, working with the firm throughout a crucial period of the chain’s development. The fear was that as Whole Foods grew, its image would become too diffuse, harder to differentiate from other health food stores; at the same time, the company wanted to attract more mainstream shoppers. Kelley’s team was tasked with finding new ways to telegraph the brand’s singular value. Their solution was a hierarchical system of signage that would streamline the store’s crowded field of competing health and wellness claims.
Kelley’s view is that most grocery stores are “addicted” to signage, cramming their spaces with so many pricing details, promotions, navigational signs, ads, and brand assets that it “functionally shuts down [the customer’s] ability to digest the information in front of them.”
Kelley’s team stipulated that Whole Foods could only have seven layers of information, which ranged from evocative signage 60 feet away to descriptive displays six feet from customers to promotional info just six inches from their hands. Everything else was “noise,” and jettisoned from the stores entirely. If you’ve ever shopped at Whole Foods, you probably recognize the way that the store’s particular brand of feel-good, hippie sanctimony seems to permeate your consciousness at every turn. Kelley helped invent that. The system he created for pilot stores in Princeton, New Jersey, and Louisville, Kentucky, were scaled throughout the chain and are still in use today, he says. (Whole Foods did not respond to requests for comment for this story.)
With a carefully delineated set of core values guiding its purchasing and brand, Whole Foods was ripe for the kind of visual overhaul Kelley specializes in. But most regional grocery chains have a different set of problems: They don’t really have values to telegraph in the first place. Shook Kelley’s approach is about getting buttoned-down grocers to reflect on their beliefs, tapping into deeper, more primal reasons for wanting to sell food.
* * *
Today, Kelley and his team have developed a playbook for clients, a finely tuned process to get shoppers to think in terms that go beyond bargain-hunting. It embraces what he calls “the theater of retail” and draws inspiration from an unlikely place: the emotionally laden visual language of cinema. His goal is to convince grocers to stop thinking like Willy Loman — like depressed, dejected salesmen forever peddling broken-down goods, fixated on the past and losing touch with the present. In order to survive, Kelley says, grocers can’t be satisfied with providing a place to complete a chore. They’ll need to direct an experience.
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Today’s successful retail brands establish what Kelley calls a “brand realm,” or what screenwriters would call a story’s “setting.” We don’t usually think consciously about them, but realms subtly shape our attitude toward shopping the same way the foggy, noirishly lit streets in a Batman movie tell us something about Gotham City. Cracker Barrel is set in a nostalgic rural house. Urban Outfitters is set on a graffitied urban street. Tommy Bahama takes place on a resort island. It’s a well-known industry secret that Costco stores are hugely expensive to construct — they’re designed to resemble fantasy versions of real-life warehouses, and the appearance of thrift doesn’t come cheap. Some realms are even more specific and fanciful: Anthropologie is an enchanted attic, complete with enticing cupboards and drawers. Trader Joe’s is a crew of carefree, hippie traders shipping bulk goods across the sea. A strong sense of place helps immerse us in a store, getting us emotionally invested and (perhaps) ready to suspend the critical faculties that prevent a shopping spree.
Kelley takes this a few steps further. The Shook Kelly team, which includes a cultural anthropologist with a Ph.D., begins by conducting interviews with executives, staff, and locals, looking for the storytelling hooks they call “emotional opportunities.” These can stem from core brand values, but often revolve around the most intense, place-specific feelings locals have about food. Then Kelley finds ways to place emotional opportunities inside a larger realm with an overarching narrative, helping retailers tell those stories — not with shelves of product, but through a series of affecting “scenes.”
In Alberta, Canada, Shook Kelley redesigned a small, regional grocery chain now called Freson Bros. Fresh Market. In interviews, the team discovered that meat-smoking is a beloved pastime there, so Shook Kelley built huge, in-store smokers at each new location — a scene called “Banj’s Smokehouse” — that crank out pound after pound of the province’s signature beef, as well as elk, deer, and other kinds of meat (customers can even BYO meat to be smoked in-house). Kelley also designed stylized root cellars in each produce section, a cooler, darker corner of each store that nods to the technique Albertans use to keep vegetables fresh. These elements aren’t just novel ways to taste, touch, and buy. They reference cultural set points, triggering memories and personal associations. Kelley uses these open, aisle-less spaces, which he calls “perceptual rooms,” to draw customers through an implied sequence of actions, tempting them towards a specific purchase.
Something magical happens when you engage customers this way. Behavior changes in visible, quantifiable ways. People move differently. They browse differently. And they buy differently. Rather than progressing in a linear fashion, the way a harried customer might shoot down an aisle — Kelley hates aisles, which he says encourage rushed, menial shopping — customers zig-zag, meander, revisit. These behaviors are a sign a customer is “experimenting,” engaging with curiosity and pleasure rather than just trying to complete a task. “If I was doing a case study presentation to you, I would show you exact conditions where we don’t change the product, the price, the service. We just change the environment and we’ll change the behavior,” Kelley tells me. “That always shocks retailers. They’re like ‘Holy cow.’ They don’t realize how much environment really affects behavior.”
A strong sense of place helps immerse us in a store, getting us emotionally invested and (perhaps) ready to suspend the critical faculties that prevent a shopping spree.
In the mid-2000s, Nabisco approached Kelley’s firm, complaining that sales were down 16 percent in the cookie-and-cracker aisle. In response, Shook Kelley designed “Mom’s Kitchen,” which was piloted at Buehler’s, a 15-store chain in northern Ohio. Kelley took Nabisco’s products out of the center aisles entirely and installed them in a self-contained zone: a perceptual room built out to look like a nostalgic vision of suburban childhood, all wooden countertops, tile, and hanging copper pans. Shelves of Nabisco products from Ritz Crackers to Oreos lined the walls. Miniature packs of Animal Crackers waited out in a large bowl, drawers opened to reveal boxes of Saltines. The finishing touch had nothing to do with Nabisco and everything to do with childhood associations: Kelley had the retailers install fridge cases filled with milk, backlit and glowing. Who wants to eat Oreos without a refreshing glass of milk to wash them down?
The store operators weren’t sold. They found it confusing and inconvenient to stock milk in two places at once. But from a sales perspective, the experiment was a smash. Sales of Nabisco products increased by as much as 32 percent, and the entire cookie-and-cracker segment experienced a halo effect, seeing double-digit jumps. Then, the unthinkable: The stores started selling out of milk. They simply couldn’t keep it on the shelves.
You’d think that the grocery stores would be thrilled, that it would have them scrambling to knock over their aisles of goods, building suites of perceptual rooms. Instead, they retreated. Nabisco’s parent company at the time, Kraft, was excited by the results and kicked the idea over to a higher-up corporate division where it stalled. And Buehler’s, for its part, never did anything to capitalize on its success. When the Nabisco took “Mom’s Kitchen” displays down, Kelley says, the stores didn’t replace them.
Mom’s Kitchen, fully stocked. (Photo by Tim Buchman)
“We were always asking a different question: What is the problem you’re trying to solve through food?” Kelley says. “It’s not just a refueling exercise — instead, what is the social, emotional issue that food is solving for us? We started trying to work that into grocery. But we probably did it a little too early, because they weren’t afraid enough.”
Since then, Kelley has continued to build his case to unreceptive audiences of male executives with mixed success. He tells them that when customers experiment — when the process of sampling, engaging, interacting, and evaluating an array of options becomes a source of pleasure — they tend to take more time shopping. And that the more time customers spend in-store, the more they buy. In the industry, this all-important metric is called “dwell time.” Most retail experts agree that increasing dwell without increasing frustration (say, with long checkout times) will be key to the survival of brick-and-mortar retail. Estimates vary on how much dwell time increases sales; according to Davinder Jheeta, creative brand director of the British supermarket Simply Fresh, customers spent 1.3 percent more for every 1 percent increase in dwell time in 2015.
Another way to increase dwell time? Offer prepared foods. Delis, cafes, and in-store restaurants increase dwell time and facilitate pleasure while operating with much higher profit margins and recapturing some of the dining-out dollar that grocers are now losing. “I tell my clients, ‘In five years, you’re going to be in the restaurant business,” Kelley says, “‘or you’re going to be out of business.’”
Kelley’s job, then, is to use design in ways that get customers to linger, touch, taste, scrutinize, explore. The stakes are high, but the ambitions are startlingly low. Kelley often asks clients what he calls a provocative question: Rather than trying to bring in new customers, would it solve their problems if 20 percent of customers increased their basket size by just two dollars? The answer, he says, is typically an enthusiastic yes.
Just two more dollars per trip for every fifth customer — that’s what victory looks like. And failure? That looks like a food marketplace dominated by Walmart and Amazon, a world where the neighborhood supermarket is a thing of the past.
* * *
When Shook Kelley started working on Niemann’s account, things began the way they always did: looking for emotional opportunities. But the team was stumped. Niemann’s stores were clean and expertly run. There was nothing wrong with them. Niemann’s problem was that he had no obvious problem. There was no there there.
Many of the regionals Kelley works with have no obvious emotional hook; all they know is that they’ve sold groceries for a long time and would like to keep on selling them. When he asks clients what they believe in, they show him grainy black-and-white photos of the stores their parents and grandparents ran, but they can articulate little beyond the universal goal of self-perpetuation. So part of Shook Kelley’s specialty is locating the distinguishing spark in brands that do nothing especially well, which isn’t always easy. At Buehler’s Fresh Foods, the chain where “Mom’s Kitchen” was piloted, the store’s Shook Kelley–supplied emotional theme is “Harnessing the Power of Nice.”
Still, Niemann Foods was an especially challenging case. “We were like, ‘Is there any core asset here?’” Kelley told me. “And we were like, ‘No. You really don’t have anything.’”
What Kelley noticed most was how depressed Niemann seemed, how gloomy about the fate of grocery stores in general. Nothing excited him — with one exception. Niemann runs a cattle ranch, a family operation in northeast Missouri. “Whenever he talked about cattle and feed and antibiotics and meat qualities, his physical body would change. We’re like, ‘My god. This guy loves ranching.’ He only had three hundred cattle or something, but he had a thousand pounds of interest in it.”
Niemann’s farm now has about 600 cattle, though it’s still more hobby farm than full-time gig — but it ended up being a revelation. During an early phase of the process, someone brought up “So God Made a Farmer” — a speech radio host Paul Harvey gave at the 1978 Future Farmers of America Convention that had been used in an ad for Ram trucks in the previous year’s Super Bowl. It’s a short poem that imagines the eighth day of the biblical creation, where God looks down from paradise and realizes his new world needs a caretaker. What kind of credentials is God looking for? Someone “willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, work all day in the fields, milk cows again, eat supper and then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board.” God needs “somebody willing to sit up all night with a newborn colt. And watch it die. Then dry his eyes and say, ‘Maybe next year.’” God needs “somebody strong enough to clear trees and heave bails, yet gentle enough to yean lambs and wean pigs and tend the pink-combed pullets, who will stop his mower for an hour to splint the broken leg of a meadow lark.” In other words, God needs a farmer.
Part denim psalm, part Whitmanesque catalogue, it’s a quintessential piece of Americana — hokey and humbling like a Norman Rockwell painting, and a bit behind the times (of course, the archetypal farmer is male). And when Kelley’s team played the crackling audio over the speakers in a conference room in Quincy, Illinois, something completely unexpected happened. Something that convinced Kelley that his client’s stores had an emotional core after all, one strong enough to provide the thematic backbone for a new approach to the grocery store.
Rich Niemann, the jaded supermarket elder statesman, broke down and wept.
* * *
I have never been a fan of shopping. Spending money stresses me out. I worry too much to enjoy it. So I wanted to see if a Kelley store could really be what he said it was, a meaningful experience, or if it would just feel fake and hokey. You know, like the movies. When I asked if there was one store I could visit to see his full design principles in action, he told me to go to Harvest, “the most interesting store in America.”
Champaign is two hours south of O’Hare by car. Crossing its vast landscape of unrelenting farmland, you appreciate the sheer scale of Illinois, how far the state’s lower half is from Chicago. It’s a college town, which comes with the usual trappings — progressive politics, cafes and bars, young people lugging backpacks with their earbuds in — but you forget that fast outside the city limits. In 2016, some townships in Champaign county voted for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton by 50 points.
I was greeted in the parking lot by Gerry Kettler, Niemann Foods’ director of consumer affairs. Vintage John Deere tractors formed a caravan outside the store. The shopping cart vestibules were adorned with images of huge combines roving across fields of commodity crops. Outside the wide-mouthed entryway, local produce waited in picket-fence crates — in-season tomatoes from Johnstonville, sweet onions from Warrensburg.
And then we stepped inside.
Everywhere, sunlight poured in through the tall, glass facade, illuminating a sequence of discrete, airy, and largely aisle-less zones. Kettler bounded around the store, pointing out displays with surprised joy on his face, as if he couldn’t believe his luck. The flowers by the door come from local growers like Delight Flower Farm and Illinois Willows. “Can’t keep this shit in stock,” he said. He makes me hold an enormous jackfruit to admire its heft. The produce was beautiful, he was right, with more local options than I’ve ever seen in a grocery store. The Warrensville sweet corn is eye-poppingly cheap: two bucks a dozen. There were purple broccolini and clamshells filled with squash blossoms, a delicacy so temperamental that they’re rarely sold outside of farmers’ markets. Early on, they had to explain to some teenage cashiers what they were — they’d never seen squash blossoms before.
I started to sense the “realm” Harvest inhabits: a distinctly red-state brand of America, local food for fans of faith and the free market. It’s hunting gear. It’s Chevys. It’s people for whom commercial-scale pig barns bring back memories of home. Everywhere, Shook Kelley signage — a hierarchy of cues like what Kelley dreamed up for Whole Foods — drives the message home. A large, evocative sign on the far wall reads Pure Farm Flavor, buttressed by the silhouettes of livestock, so large it almost feels subliminal. Folksy slogans hang on the walls, sayings like FULL OF THE MILK OF HUMAN KINDNESS and THE CREAM ALWAYS RISES TO THE TOP.
Then there are the informational placards that point out suppliers and methods.
There are at least a half dozen varieties of small-batch honey; you can find pastured eggs for $3.69. The liquor section includes local selections, like whiskey distilled in DeKalb and a display with cutting boards made from local wood by Niemann Foods’ HR Manager. “Turns out we had some talent in our backyard,” Kettler said. Niemann’s willingness to look right under his nose, sidestepping middlemen distributors to offer reasonably priced, local goods, is a hallmark of Harvest Market.
That shortened chain of custody is only possible because of Niemann and the lifetime of supply-side know-how he brings to table. But finding ways to offer better, more affordable food has been a long-term goal of Kelley — who strained his relationship with Whole Foods CEO John Mackey over the issue. As obsessed as Kelley is with appearances, he insists to me that his work must be grounded in something “real”: that grocery stores only succeed when they really try to make the world a better place through food. In his view, Whole Foods wasn’t doing enough to address its notoriously high prices — opening itself up to be undercut by cheaper competition, and missing a kind of ethical opportunity to make better food available to more people.
“When,” Kelley remembers asking, “did you start to mistake opulence for success?”
In Kelley’s telling, demand slackened so much during the Great Recession that it nearly lead to Whole Foods’ downfall, a financial setback that the company never fully recovered from — and, one could argue, ultimately led to its acquisition. Harvest Market, for its part, has none of Whole Foods’ clean-label sanctimony. It takes an “all-of-the-above” approach: There’s local produce, but there’re also Oreos and Doritos and Coca-Cola; at Thanksgiving, you can buy a pastured turkey from Triple S Farms or a 20-pound Butterball. But that strong emphasis on making local food more accessible and affordable makes it an interesting counterpart to Kelley’s former client.
The most Willy Wonka–esque touch is the hulking piece of dairy processing equipment in a glass room by the cheese case. It’s a commercial-scale butter churner — the first one ever, Kettler told me, to grace the inside of a grocery store.
“So this was a Shook Kelley idea,” he said, “We said yes, without knowing how much it would cost. And the costs just kept accelerating. But we’re thrilled. People love it.”Harvest Market isn’t just a grocery store — it’s also a federally inspected dairy plant. The store buys sweet cream from a local dairy, which it churns into house-made butter, available for purchase by the brick and used throughout Harvest’s bakery and restaurant. The butter sells out as fast as they can make it. Unlike the grocers who objected to “Mom’s Kitchen,” the staff don’t seem to mind.
As I walked through the store, I couldn’t help wondering how impressed I really was. I found Harvest to be a beautiful example of a grocery store, no doubt, and a very unusual one. What was it that made me want to encounter something more outrageous, more radical, more theatrical and bizarre? I wanted animatronic puppets. I wanted fog machines.
I should have known better — Kelley had warned me that you can’t take the theater of retail too far without breaking the dream. He’d told me that he admires stores where “you’re just not even aware of the wonder of the scene, you’re just totally engrossed in it” — stores a universe away from the overwrought, hokey feel of Disneyland. But I had Amazon’s new stores in the back up my mind as a counterpoint, with all their cashierless bells and whistles, their ability to click and collect, their ability to test-drive Alexa and play a song or switch on a fan. I guess, deep down, I was wondering if something this subtle really could work.
“Here, this is Rich Niemann,” Kettler said, and I found myself face-to-face with Niemann himself. We shook hands and he asked if I’d ever been to Illinois before. Many times, I told him. My wife is from Chicago, so we’ve visited the city often.
He grinned at me.
“That’s not Illinois,” he said.
We walked to Harvest’s restaurant, a 40-person seating area plus an adjacent bar with a row of stools, that offers standards like burgers, salads, and flatbreads. There’s an additional 80-person seating area on the second-floor mezzanine, a simulated living room complete with couches and board games. Beyond that, they pointed out the brand-new wine bar — open, like the rest of the space, until midnight. There’s a cooking classroom by the corporate offices. Through the window, I saw a classroom full of children doing something to vegetables. Adult Cooking classes run two or three nights every week, plus special events for schools and other groups.
For a summer weekday at noon in a grocery store I’m amazed how many people are eating and working on laptops. One guy has his machine hooked up to a full-sized monitor he lugged up the stairs — he’s made a customized wooden piece that hooks into Harvest’s wrought-iron support beams to create a platform for his plus-size screen. He comes every day, like it’s his office. He’s a dwell-time dream.
We sit down, and Kettler insists I eat the corn first, slathering it with the house-made butter and eating it while it’s hot. He reminds me that it’s grown by the Maddoxes, a family in Warrensburg, about 50 miles west of Champaign.
The corn was good, but I wanted to ask Niemann if the grocery industry was really that bad, and he told me it is. I assume he’ll want to talk about Amazon and its acquisition of Whole Foods and the way e-commerce has changed the game. He acknowledges that, but to my surprise he said the biggest factor is something else entirely — a massive shift happening in the world of consumer packaged goods, or CPGs.
For years, grocery stores never had to advertise, because the largest companies in the world — Proctor and Gamble, Coca-Cola, Nestle — did their advertising for them, just the way Nabisco helped finance “Mom’s Kitchen” to benefit the stores. People came to supermarkets to buy the foods they saw on TV. But Americans are falling out of love with legacy brands. They’re looking for something different, locality, a sense of novelty and adventure. Kellogg’s and General Mills don’t have the pull they once had.
When their sales flag, grocery sales do too — and the once-bulletproof alliance between food brands and supermarkets is splitting. For the past two years, the Grocery Manufacturers’ Association, an influential trade group representing the biggest food companies in the world, started to lose members. It began with Campbell’s Soup. Dean Foods, Mars, Tyson Foods, Unilever, Hershey Company, the Kraft Heinz Company, and others followed. That profound betrayal was a rude awakening: CPG companies don’t need grocery stores. They have Amazon. They can sell directly through their websites. They can launch their own pop-ups.
It’s only then that I realized how dire the predicament of grocery stores really is, and why Niemann was so frustrated when he first called Kevin Kelley. It’s one thing when you can’t sell as cheaply and conveniently as your competitors. But it’s another thing when no one wants what you’re selling.
Harvest doesn’t feel obviously futuristic in the way an Amazon store might. If I went there as a regular shopper and not as a journalist sniffing around for a story, I’m sure I’d find it to be a lovely and transporting way to buy food. But what’s going on behind the scenes is, frankly, unheard of.
Grocery stores have two ironclad rules. First, that grocers set the prices, and farmers do what they can within those mandates. And second, that everyone works with distributors who oversee the aggregation and transport of all goods. Harvest has traditional relationships with companies like Coca-Cola, but it breaks those rules with local farmers and foodmakers. Suppliers — from the locally milled wheat to the local produce to the Kilgus Farms sweet cream that goes into the churner — truck their products right to the back. By avoiding middlemen and their surcharges, Harvest is able to pay suppliers more directly and charge customers less. And it keeps costs low. You can still find $4.29 pints of Halo Top ice cream in the freezer, but the produce section features stunning bargains. When the Maddox family pulls up with its latest shipment of corn, people sometimes start buying it off the back of the truck in the parking lot. That’s massive change, and it’s virtually unheard of in supermarkets. At the same time, suppliers get to set their own prices. Niemann’s suppliers tell him what they need to charge; Niemann adds a standard margin and lets customers decide if they’re willing to pay.
If there’s a reason Harvest matters, it’s only partly because of the aesthetics. It’s mainly because the model of what a grocery store is has been tossed out and rebuilt. And why not? The world as Rich Niemann knows it is ending.
* * *
In 2017, just months after Harvest Market’s opening, Niemann won the Thomas K. Zaucha Entrepreneurial Excellence Award — the National Grocers Association’s top honor, given for “persistence, vision, and creative entrepreneurship.” That spring, Harvest was spotlighted in a “Store of the Month” cover feature in the influential trade magazine Progressive Grocer. Characteristically, the contributions of Kelley and his firm were not mentioned in the piece.
Niemann tells me his company is currently planning to open a second Harvest Market in Springfield, Illinois, about 90 minutes west of Champaign, in 2020. Without sharing specifics about profitability or sales numbers, he says the store was everything he’d hoped it would be as far as the metrics that most matter — year-over-year sales growth and customer engagement. His only complaint about the store, has to do with parking. For years, Niemann has relied on the same golden ratio to determine the size of parking lot needed for his stores — a certain number of spots for every thousand dollars of expected sales. Harvest’s lot uses the same logic, and it’s nowhere near enough space.
“In any grocery store, the customer’s first objective is pantry fill — to take care of my needs as best I can on my budget,” Niemann says. “But we created a different atmosphere. These customers want to talk. They want to know. They want to experience. They want to taste. They’re there because it’s an adventure.”
They stay so much longer than expected that the parking lot sometimes struggles to fit all their cars at once. Unlike the Amazon stores that may soon be cropping up in a neighborhood near you — reportedly, the company is considering plans to open 3,000 of them in by 2021 — it’s not about getting in and out quickly without interacting with another human being. At Harvest, you stay awhile. And that’s the point.
But Americans are falling out of love with legacy brands. They’re looking for something different, locality, a sense of novelty and adventure. Kellogg’s and General Mills don’t have the pull they once had.
So far, Harvest’s success hasn’t made it any easier for Kelley, who still struggles to persuade clients to make fundamental changes. They’re still as scared as they’ve always been, clinging to the same old ideas. He tells them that, above all else, they need to develop a food philosophy — a reason why they do this in the first place, something that goes beyond mere nostalgia or the need to make money. They need to build something that means something, a store people return to not just to complete a task but because it somehow sustains them. For some, that’s too tall an order. “They go, ‘I’m not going to do that.’ I’m like, ‘Then what are you going to do?’ And they literally tell me: ‘I’m going to retire.’” It’s easier to cash out. Pass the buck, and consign the fate of the world to younger people with bolder dreams.
Does it even matter? The world existed before supermarkets, and it won’t end if they vanish. And in the ongoing story of American food, the 20th-century grocery store is no great hero. A&P — the once titanic chain, now itself defunct — was a great mechanizer, undercutting the countless smaller, local businesses that used to populate the landscape. More generally, the supermarket made it easier for Americans to distance ourselves from what we eat, shrouding food production behind a veil and letting us convince ourselves that price and convenience matter above all else. We let ourselves be satisfied with the appearance of abundance — even if great stacks of unblemished fruit contribute to waste and spoilage, even if the array of brightly colored packages are all owned by the same handful of multinational corporations.
But whatever springs up to replace grocery stores will have consequences, too, and the truth is that brick-and-mortar is not going away any time soon — far from it. Instead, the most powerful retailers in the world have realized that physical spaces have advantages they want to capitalize on. It’s not just that stores in residential neighborhoods work well as distribution depots, ones that help facilitate the home delivery of packages. And it’s not just that we can’t always be home to pick up the shipments we ordered when they arrive, so stores remain useful. The world’s biggest brands are now beginning to realize what Kelley has long argued: Physical stores are a way to capture attention, to subject customers to an experience, to influence the way they feel and think. What could be more useful? And what are Amazon’s proposed cashierless stores, but an illustration of Kelley’s argument? They take a brand thesis, a set of core values — that shopping should be quick and easy and highly mechanized — and seduce us with it, letting us feel the sweep and power of that vision as we pass with our goods through the doors without paying, flushed with the thrill a thief feels.
This is where new troubles start. Only a few companies in the world will be able to compete at Amazon’s scale — the scale where building 3,000 futuristic convenience stores in three years may be a realistic proposition. Unlike in the golden age of grocery, where different family owned chains catered to different demographics, we’ll have only a handful of players. We’ll have companies that own the whole value chain, low to high. Amazon owns the e-commerce site where you can find almost anything in the world for the cheapest price. And for when you want to feel the heft of an heirloom tomato in your hand or sample some manchego before buying, there is Whole Foods. Online retail for thrift, in-person shopping for pleasure. Except one massive company now owns them both.
If this new landscape comes to dominate, we may find there are things we miss about the past. For all its problems, the grocery industry is at least decentralized, owned by no one dominant company and carved up into more players than you could ever count. It’s run by people who often live alongside the communities they serve and share their concerns. We might miss that competition, that community. They are small. They are nimble. They are independently, sometimes even cooperatively, owned. They employ people. And if they are scrappy, and ingenious, and willing to change, there’s no telling what they might do. It is not impossible that they could use their assets — financial resources, industry connections, prime real estate — to find new ways to supply what we all want most: to be happier, to be healthier, to feel more connected. To be better people. To do the right thing.
I want to believe that, anyway. That stores — at least in theory — could be about something bigger, and better than mere commerce. The way Harvest seems to want to be, with some success. But I wonder if that’s just a fantasy, too: the dream that we can buy and sell our way to a better world, that it will take no more than that.
Which one is right?
I guess it depends on how you feel about the movies.
Maybe a film is just a diversion, a way to feel briefly better about our lives, the limitations and disappointments that define us, the things we cannot change. Most of us leave the theater, after all, and just go on being ourselves.
Still, maybe something else is possible. Maybe in the moment when the music swells, and our hearts beat faster, and we feel overcome by the beauty of an image — in the instant that we feel newly brave and noble, and ready to be different, braver versions of ourselves — that we are who we really are.
* * *
Joe Fassler,The New Food Economy’s deputy editor, has covered the intersection of food, policy, technology, and culture for the magazine since 2015. His food reporting has twice been a finalist for the James Beard Foundation Award in Journalism. He’s also editor of Light the Dark: Writers on Creativity, Inspiration, and the Creative Process (Penguin, 2017), a book based on “By Heart,” his ongoing series of literary conversations for The Atlantic.
Editor: Michelle Weber
Fact checker: Matt Giles
Copy editor: Jacob Z. Gross
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The Hackers Paradise http://j.mp/2ASaqeM
Golfers have an endless need to evaluate, manipulate, and resolve their swing every time they get their hands on a golf club. We have all been at home, in the living room, garage, basement, and grab that club sitting in the corner, taking the club away and diagnose. Fortunately for us, technology is opening the door to better self instruction, both at home and at the driving range. One particular company, Live View Golf, has introduced the LiveView +Plus Digital Swing Mirror. A big name with an extremely simple concept; real time swing support for every golfer.
The first glance is fairly unremarkable in a neutral sort of way. The LiveView product is packaged well in a protective soft shell case, and has a few additional add on features that improve the experience like a sunshade for an iPad, or a LivePod adapter that helps set the unit properly behind or to the side of the golfer. The unit itself is red, with a simple power button with lights that represent overall battery life. In total, it made me want to quickly dive into the software to see where the real power comes from with this particular product, and I did not have to go far to find it.
The first session at the course was very exploratory. With a collection of friends present to play the role of guinea pig, the Live View DSM was set up first using the LivePod adapter on the ground, and shortly thereafter attached to the top of a club holder (a bag would work just as well, if not better in this case). For the product to be effective, there needs to be a fair bit of room between the golfer and the Live View unit, which could prove a bit problematic in more compact range locations, however for my situation, it was actually quite easy. We got it into a position where the full swing would be captured, and then I went to work manipulating the software. Connectivity with my iPad was an absolute breeze.
For clarity, this unit can be enjoyed on an individual basis, with the software being fully capable of either continuous recording up to 10 minutes in length, or what they are calling “automatic swing detect” which records the swing and two seconds on each side of impact to show the full swing sequence. For the purpose of this review, I found the most efficient way to maximize the potential of the unit was to use it with others, where lines could be drawn and replays were at the ready after manual start/stop occurred.
Getting the hang of the software was really easy. There are quick tutorials to follow, and then the user is free to go about their process, which for me meant a lot of lines, and then forced conversation with fellow golfers about their flaws. I was able to easily draw lines and circles on the screen both before and after the swing was complete, bringing the golfer back to me after completing their swing to show them what was occurring with their movement. As a block style education, this gives me a great chance to use extra lines after pausing the video, then proceeding at a much slower rate so I can specifically show them what was happening.
For other golfers, specifically the more stubborn ones, I actually took the iPad and presented the screen to them (with the view still coming from behind their swing) while they were taking their practice swings. One particular golfer struggles with hitting the ball fat sometimes, and thin sometimes. We talked about his move away from the ball, how he drives his head down as his swing starts to generate power, and then clears as he descends into the ball. I was able to clearly show him using lines and slow motion that the lack of movement he felt was happening was actually quite different. I held the iPad out while he took a series of practice swings, being able to easily see all elements of his swing down the line as the iPad did not hinder him in any way. This instant feedback was without a doubt my favorite part of the product, and has since altered the way he is approaching his swing.
The overall visual quality of the camera could be a bit better by today’s standards, but it certainly serves its purpose well. The images included in this review will adequately represent the quality perceived by all golfers during this testing period, with the colors being a bit strange in the central location of the lens (the range was actually very green despite what you see). We talked about what it would take to pump video through WiFi, how much battery it would burn, and how big the unit would have to be for ultra high quality video. I am not sure if they are actively working towards new and improved optics in the future, but that would likely be my first pursuit. While the visual did not deter me, the 60 frames struggled to capture the full depth of the swing, especially during the downswing. I have samples where the image flashes from the top of the shoulders almost into contact from one frame to the next, which would do well to improve.
Outside of the overall frames, nothing about the experience proved less than stellar from a teaching, learning, or exploration aspect. Each golfer that went through the Live View experience left the conversation with a greater knowledge about their swing, something to work on using drawn in lines to represent body variance during the backswing or downswing, and intrigue for how the unit could continue to improve their efficiencies. We had a majority of players come over the top, a couple with bad alignment to target (they did not agree with the alignment aid variance), and a pretty diverse group for raising or lowering their head during the swing. It gave me the takeaway that while the best solution would be to use this unit with a coach or knowledgeable instructor, the Live View Golf product is absolutely valuable for every golfer with access to YouTube (to learn the right way to do things) and those who are unwilling to drop dollars on lessons every week. For those who are going through swing changes with a coach, the unit will let you save video and images to send to instructors for further input, or provide that feedback visually to make sure what they are working on is what the goal of their last lesson had intended. For more information on the LiveView+Plus, visit https://www.liveviewgolf.com/.
http://j.mp/2JN3133 via The Hackers Paradise URL : http://j.mp/2x6vJbd
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Review: Fable Fortune
Are You Just Going To Stand There Like A Lemmon?
Since 2014, Blizzard’s Hearthstone has been top-dog in the world of digital card games. While that’s still firmly the case today, I feel that Fable Fortune is the first game to take what Hearthstone does right and fully improve upon it. In fact, Fable Fortune’s improvements shine brightly enough to expose several of Hearthstone’s blemishes that were unperceivable until a better option manifested itself.
Fable Fortune is a card game set in the world of Microsoft’s Fable, and it truly makes fantastic use of the IP by including Fable’s hilarious tongue-in-cheek sense of humor and borderline obsessive love of chickens. You’ll find cards that span every era of Fable. From the medieval Albion of the original Fable through the industrialized Albion of Fable 3, there are plenty of nods to lore that fans of the series will no-doubt enjoy. Not to mention more than a few familiar faces are present in the form of powerful Fabled cards.
In terms of gameplay Fable Fortune is familiar in all the right ways to players who have experience with other digital card games. The goal is to reduce your opponent’s 30 health to zero by use of your card’s attack and spells. You have a steadily increasing flow of coin that you use to pay for unit cards and spells you cast. There is a cast of six heroes to choose from each with a signature power and cards that are unique to them. That’s all pretty standard. But it’s where Fable Fortune deviates from the well established that it’s able to not only stand on its own as a worthy game but ultimately raise the bar for the genre.
These bar-raising mechanics come in the form of the morality system. A clever nod to Fable’s long held tradition of letting players decide which path they walk: The path of the noble hero, or the path of the evil tyrant. At first that mechanic sounds like it might be a bit awkward in a card game, but once you discover the level of varied strategy it brings to the table, every other card game can seem dull or stripped down in comparison.
So, here’s how that system is implemented in Fable Fortune: Each season (which lasts about a month) there are a set of 3 quests that players can choose from in a match. They could be something like, playing spells that don’t deal damage, using your hero power a number of times or spending a certain amount of coin. When that task is completed a couple of things happen.
First, you’ll be awarded a reward card for completing a quest. A reward card is a special card that’s generally beneficial and can only be earned by completing quests. The next thing that happens is you are prompted to make a morality choice about how to resolve the quest. You’ll have two options: A good decision, or an evil decision. The choice will have a profound effect on gameplay in several ways. Again, much like in Hearthstone the hero you chose to play will have a specific power associated with them, and this is where Fable Fortune begins to differentiate itself from it’s predecessors. When making a morality decision, your hero’s power will evolve based on your decision. Here’s an example: My go-to hero the alchemist’s base power allows for her to receive a random vial, which will contain some kind of buff that can be cast free of charge. When a good morality choice is made the power evolves to give her an even more powerful random vial. When an evil morality choice is made, it allows for you to choose which basic vial you’d like. So, one option has potential for a greater reward, while the other gives more control for a less potent buff. Each hero has their own power with good and evil variants, so there is a ton of potential for varying strategies. But the effects of a morality choice don’t stop there.
There are special cards in Fable Fortune called morality cards, and as the name implies they can be affected by morality decisions. The Bank Clerk for example is a rather unremarkable 2/2 card when played without a morality point, but when played after a morality point has been gained it can be a game changer. The Philanthropist (unlocked with a good morality point) will give units in your hand +1/1 when played. The Inside Trader (unlocked with an evil morality point) will decrease the cost all cards in your hand by 1 when it’s destroyed. That’s just one example. There are over a dozen transforming morality cards to collect, each with their own unique benefits. It’s worth noting that some morality cards require more morality points to transform, and the more morality points required to transform it the more powerful the card will be.
Between transforming powers and transforming cards the morality system in Fable Fortune can create drastically different strategies and playstyles. You may want a good morality point early on to transform your Bank Clerk, but want the effects of the evil hero power for your second morality point. This is why the morality system can’t be viewed as gimmicky, it gives players real choices and has a profound effect on gameplay.
In terms of card variety there’s a lot going on in Fable Fortune. Each hero has cards uniquely associated with them, in addition to a wealth of neutral cards that can be used in all decks. Several of these cards have key phrases on them that indicate how they’ll behave. For example, Cards with ‘Big Entrance’ will activate some kind of effect once they are played, or cards with ‘Eulogy’ will have an added effect if a unit dies that turn before you use it. Some of these types of cards play well into specific hero’s playstyles. The Gravedigger for example makes great use of cards with eulogy and last laugh (cards that activate an ability once they are destroyed) because her unique unit cards are meant to be flimsy but numerous.
Other cards are of a tribal nature and play well together, like the Hobbes. Most of the Hobbes cards have an ability that’s triggered when another Hobbe card is played. It can be devastating when a Hobbe deck works as intended. As an example, the Hobbe Firebreather will do 1 damage to two different enemy units when another Hobbe is played. When you combine that with the Yellow Belly Hobbe, who is returned to your hand when a Hobbe is played, you can reliably cycle that card to keep the firebreather firing, doing serious damage before any of your units have even attacked. My Hobbe deck is among my favourite of all the decks I’ve constructed.
Another thing Fable Fortune gets right are the playable heroes. They all feel very distinct from one another in terms of hero powers and the way their decks play. While both The Knight and The Gravedigger have a power that allows for them to summon a 1/1 unit, their respective unique cards see those units valued very differently. The Gravedigger’s 1/1 unit is destroyed at the end of a turn no matter what, so they are meant to be very expendable. They can be used to help chip away at an enemy, which will destroy them, and could in-turn cause an ability to activate on another unit or give some extra zazz to a card with eulogy. Her strength comes from fielding cheap, flimsy units and overwhelming opponents. The Knight’s 1/1 peasant on the other hand are best utilized when being buffed by other cards like Veteran Battler, who gives 1/1 units +2/1 when they are played. Other cards like Rally the Troops and Hearty Breakfast can also give a series of meek 1/1 peasants a bit of extra bite to surprise your opponent possibly knocking down what seemed like a strong defence.
Other heroes include the Alchemist, who can gain buffs through her power, but also has several more powerful buff spells. She also has special units who get additional buffs when they are buffed by her power. Of all the heroes, the Alchemist has some of the strongest card synergy available.
The Prophet has an emphasis on healing and buffing units. He also has several cards that benefit from being healed, and several cards that both nerf and damage enemies. A good prophet user will nerf your units while healing and maintaining their own.
The Shapeshifter is rather confrontational hero who specializes in doing direct damage with her power and spell cards. She also has a few balverine cards that excel at dealing with weaker enemies, gaining a small buff for each kill they survive. If not pressed early on, someone playing shapeshifter can dominate the board.
The Final hero is the Merchant. He specializes in generating a strong coin economy, and board control. His unique cards can have the ‘invest’ modifier, which allow him to pay more coin for a card and receive an extra bonus for doing so. With his potential for very powerful units and board control, I found taking the time to learn and develop Merchant decks to be a worthwhile endeavour.
It seems like card synergy was very much in mind when the developer was designing these heroes and their cards. The more cards you are able to collect belonging to each heroes’ unique set, the more heavily you are able to lean into this kind of synergy.
Matchups can feel like putting two entirely different schools of thought to the test against one another. Can the Merchant’s ability to field strong units early and control the board best the Alchemist’s ability to buff weaker units into power houses, and turn enemy power houses into flimsy 1/1 goo piles? Depending on your tactics, the answer is both yes and no, and that speaks to the almost infinite replay value of a game like this.
I think it’s very safe to say that in terms of gameplay, Fable Fortune is a well polished product. In terms of presentation it has a lot going for it, too. Every card is beautifully rendered and fully voice acted with a few voice lines programmed for each card. Those voice lines are brimming with Fable’s personality, too. No, seriously some of these cards are hilarious. That fact is what makes the emote system a bit of a let down in it’s current state. I should preface my complaints to say that I love the ability to make a card taunt an opponent by either making kissy sounds or farts. Whenever I play the Shapeshifter’s Feral Squirrel card, I make it fart because it makes me laugh every single time. It’s far too big a fart for a little squirrel. I’m laughing right now just thinking about it. Anyways, this is where Fable Fortune’s shortcomings become apparent. The hero emotes are just lines of text rather than voiceovers, emote options seem limited and confusing. There’s no ‘well done’ emote for example. There are some emotes that I believe are meant to be positive, but in text they all come across as either hostile or sarcastic. It just seems odd that every card in the game has great voice acting and personality, but the heroes themselves feel very dull and flat by comparison. In this department Fable Fortune lags well behind it’s competition.
With a UI that is largely fine, there are a few areas in the games presentation that need improvement. The icons they use to represent your decks are among the most noticeable. The bland single colour pouches look very amateur and cheap. I realize how nitpicky that sounds because of how infrequently those icons are shown, but when compared with Fable Fortune’s competition it becomes obvious that polish is much needed in these small areas if the game is to stand toe to toe with other products.
Like it’s predecessors and competition, Fable Fortune operates in a free to play model. Where Fable Fortune stands out from other digital card games is how generous the in-game economy is. For example, if you play PVP mode and climb the ladder you’ll receive a ton of silver from just moving up tiers. Occasionally you’ll be rewarded with a special card or even a card pack, but most of the time the reward is 125 silver. On top of that you’ll also earn silver at the end of each match, win or lose. It’s very much worth noting that losing does not mean you’ll net significantly less silver. I tracked my silver of the span of 6 or so matches and found that losing would sometimes earn me almost as much as win if the match was longer. Consequently, easy quick wins resulted in less silver than hard fought losses. When Hearthstone’s victory based free to play economy is compared to Fable Fortune’s, it almost feels oppressive. Developers Flaming Fowl and Mediatonic have found a better economy to service this kind of game.
Fable Fortune also has bounty system in place which can be very rewarding. You’ll actually be given a choice of which bounty you’d like, and you can choose between an easier bounty for 300 silver or a more challenging one for 600 silver. Occasionally the more difficult bounty can be for an outright card pack. The only problem with the bounty system is you can’t re-roll the bounties if you get one you don’t like. As an example, the game will occasionally give you a bounty for winning co-op matches, but for someone like me who would much rather play PVP, this bounty is a hassle. If I want to free up space for another bounty, I need to not only play something I don’t really want to play but I need to be successful in it too.
I’ve been playing since the game first launched in game preview, so I’ve amassed a large collection of cards only missing a few rarities here and there. It’s uncommon that I get something completely new in my card packs, which would be disheartening if it weren’t for the card crafting system. Once you collect most of the cards, the name of the game is stockpiling duplicates in the name of converting them into ink, which is the currency needed to craft new cards. There are ‘fancy’ variants of each card which are worth much more ink if you’re willing to break them down. You can only have 2 or any card in a deck so having more than two of a card is pointless. It’s just ink sitting on the table so to speak. Breaking down duplicates is very simple as there is a button in the card crafting menu that automatically breaks them all down in one shot for you.
As I mentioned before Fable Fortune has a co-op mode in addition to it’s PVP mode. In co-op mode you and another player will face off against a powerful AI enemy that has special abilities. The mode is by no means bad. In fact, I find that if you play it with a friend it’s pretty good, but when playing with random players it can be insanely tedious. Players have the ability to ping cards in their ally’s hand, and occasionally that resulted in people trying to tell me what to play each turn. When I’d inevitably ignore their pings, it’d result in angry messages or the person I was playing with would just quit. Worst of all is when I get paired with someone who hasn’t grasped the rudimentary mechanics of the game. You have exactly no chance of winning when your partner doesn’t understand the importance of putting units in guard. It’s not a great experience with people you don’t have a pre-existing relationship with.
I’ve spent a majority of my time with Fable Fortune playing PVP and climbing the ladder. Each season there are two separate PVP ladders to climb. The primary PVP ladder is the Hero League, where the goal is to amass 100 medals. For every five medals a player earns they receive a small bonus for doing so. A win is worth three medals where a loss still worth a single medal. The best thing about this mode is that is still allows for losses to amount to some kind of benefit, making it accessible to new players with modest card collections. Once you complete the Hero League ladder the more competitive Champion League ladder unlocks for the remainder of the season. In Champion League the goal is to collect as many medals as possible. The higher you are in the ladder at the end of the season, the better the reward you earn. The catch here is that losses will result medals being deducted from you total, so the stakes are bit higher.
Finally there are a few single player offerings as well. In the single player events you learn the stories of the heroes of Fable Fortune. In it’s current state you can learn the stories of The Gravedigger, The Prophet and The Shapeshifter. Each story has 6 missions and you can earn a one-time reward by completing the missions. Oddly enough this mode sums up perfectly the state of this game: It plays very well, but production value is very subpar. Missions are explained via text, and the lack of hero voice acting makes the whole affair feel a bit 2D.
Fable Fortune is a top tier digital card game. The morality system truly a game changer, creating flexibility in hero powers and cards. Given those kinds of options, there are tons of deck varieties and different strategies that will lean into either good or evil morality alignment. The heroes feel very balanced and diverse from one another. In terms of gameplay I sincerely believe this game can stand toe to toe with hearthstone and other major competitors. Presentation however, needs some attention still. Fable Fortune does not have presentational polish a game this good deserves. The free to play economy is generous, and this game has a sustainable player base because it’s not only an Xbox play anywhere title, it also supports cross play with Steam. I generally wait longer to find matches in Overwatch than I do to find matches in this game. When all is considered I can say without any hesitation that Fable Fortune is wholly worth your time and attention.
8.5/10
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Personal Responsibility, pt.2
Where does the time go? It was just starting to feel like spring. Soon enough, it will be summer. September will come, then October and November, and we'll be talking about 2018 as though we meant January but early we mean next November.
We could be forgiven then for planning ahead, which is what so many did this just ended month of May.
There was Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse, who released a book, "The Vanishing American Adult". His book release tour has all the hallmarks of setting the 45 year-old Republican up for a 2024 presidential run. The version of himself he's packaging is a much more sane right-of-center option for Republicans, less threatening than either the childish Trump or any strident Democrat who somehow unseats him in 2020.
Sasse's book and voting record, though, do not reveal a "Republican Obama" but rather a younger Mike Pence unwilling to defend the current president for anything. The book is all about the virtue of self-reliance, which Sasse seems to equate with "personal responsibility", something Trump wants nothing to do with. What Sasse really means by "self-reliance", however, is throwing us all in the proverbial deep end to learn how to swim. You know, like in the stories of Horatio Alger and the life of Andrew Carnegie.
It's the common right-wing, "small government" fantasy, one of taking us back to a simpler and grounded past, a time of higher risk that somehow imparted greater safety. Like those others, Sasse's idea of a perfect, moral world comes with a hefty moral price tag.
As a rugged individual, you would have to learn to filter your own polluted drinking water, and air, and, if you failed to learn those things, how to heal yourself or how to make enough money to pay someone else for it. The upside, if you can call it that, is that you have no obligation to your neighbors. If they can't take care of themselves, they fail, and that's okay. That's what a world without stifling government regulation is like: America, circa 1890.
Of course, if you've learned to take control of your reproductive rights and/or to embrace your "not normal" sexuality, you'll have to unlearn those, because Senator Sasse, like Vice-President Pence, doesn't care for those and has no problem with a federal government small enough to drown in a bathtub yet just big enough to take away those particular individual rights.
That, ultimately, is what makes Sasse just another right wing hypocrite. He wants us to stop coddling our children, but not our corporations. He wants us to keep government out of our pocketbooks but not our bedrooms. He'll attack Trump on Twitter with the glee of Merriam-Webster, but supports Trump's Steve Bannon-endorsed cabinet picks with gusto.
He seems to want us to change our culture without actually changing it, without accepting the lessons we've learned from mistakes we were allowed to make, and without shielding the weakest among us from harm, which should be fundamental to any culture. Self-reliance is a good skill to have and a good habit to instill in our children, but it is not personal responsibility, which is accountability to ourselves and others and which ultimately does greater good for any civilization.
Funny enough, as Sasse was setting himself up for future election and selling his brand of personal responsibility without accountability, another man in another field was doing much the same.
Baseball slugger David Ortiz is playing the last spring of a twenty-plus year professional career, and eyeing his probable election in six years' time to the Baseball Hall Of Fame. He certainly has the numbers for it, and for a ballplayer election to the Hall means everything. Well, next to everything.
Back in the day, the Hall was the best a ballplayer could hope for. He wasn't getting rich, that's for sure, unless he was an all-star, and even some all-stars had an offseason job. Or two. Time, though, does fly and things do change. With the top stars now collecting nine figure contracts, the guy at the end of the bench might now be a millionaire, or close to it. His contract might be for only half a million a year, but compare that to a minor league all-star living paycheck to paycheck.
That math has always been easy, which is why a lot of players in Ortiz' generation began taking performance enhancing drugs (PEDs). It's a cheating culture no different than professional cycling or Olympic track and field, or Wall Street for that matter. Everybody's doing it, they say, so why not me? If I play clean, I lose. For most, the choice isn't being a star, it's just staying near the top long enough to compete.
A lot of names were included in the Mitchell Report back in 2003, and most of those named, such as Ortiz, weren't stars. Ortiz himself was a rarity, someone who'd had an unremarkable career up to that point who would become a star. His name wasn't even revealed until years later, by which time he and one or two others on the list had led the Boston Red Sox to their first two championships since Woodrow Wilson was president, much to the delight of voting-eligible Boston sports writers. Another championship followed in 2013, the teams all led by Ortiz and his powerful swing.
If not for the stain PEDs have left on the players and championships of the past three decades, Ortiz would be in on the first ballot. Instead, he has to answer the same PED questions every interview he gives. His answers, especially that he hates chemicals and wouldn't put anything like steroids in his body, sound an awful lot like what Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens said, and disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong.
Many of the stars named in the Mitchell Report, including Bonds, Clemens, and PED poster boy Sammy Sosa, were close to retirement, close enough that they had little time to rehabilitate their image. Despite gaudy numbers none have been elected to the Hall, and they may never be. Manny Ramirez, who was named in the report and was on two of those Red Sox championship teams with Ortiz, failed multiple drug tests afterward and retired rather than try to come back off a lengthy drug-related suspension.
Ortiz' obvious fear of losing Hall of Fame votes explains his attempt to throw the rival New York Yankees under the bus. Rather than address why his name belongs on a list with Bonds, Clemens, Sosa, Ramirez, and other accused drug cheats, Ortiz instead chose to try to deflect attention in a way we've become a little too familiar with: he attacked others for leaking the information.
On a local Boston radio show, Ortiz accused the rival New York Yankees leaking his name because they feared him, and because, with Alex Rodriguez and one or two other drug cheats of their own, they wanted attention paid elsewhere. Oh, and it was the New York Times that released the list.
Yes, it's as stupid as it sounds.
To Ortiz, turning the story about his cheating into a story about a rival's jealousy makes perfect sense. It absolves him of any personal responsibility while belittling the very idea of cheating as an alternative fact. Bonds and Clemens did it. Infamously, so did Armstrong.
Attacking "leakers", long a pejorative term for whistle-blowers, plays into our childhood dislike of tattle tales. The cheaters attack the leak because they hope we'll sympathize with them, because they want to believe we all have something to hide. That, too, is part of the cheating culture.
Senator Sasse, unfortunately, doesn't address this sort of bad example in his book, but he should have. Cheaters demonstrate an odd sort of self-reliant initiative. They don't ask that the rules make things easier for them; they simply ignore the rules they don't like until they're caught. By then, they've made their money. Having been caught, they shamelessly deny until they can't, at which point they shamelessly point the finger at others, hoping against hope that you'll give up and go away.
It's the behavior of immaturity, of children refusing to grow up. It is a toxic form of self-reliance that preys on weakness. That should enrage Senator Sasse. And yet, somehow it doesn't.
- Daniel Ward
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