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nep-neptune-0 · 13 days

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Seeking You

Dan Heng x Reader

Summary: Dan Heng never liked to be disturbed in his room, especially when he was sleeping. Even the slightest disturbance outside the door easily woke him up, much to his dismay. But he never felt troubled when you were the one who disturbed him.

Content: fluff, reader is injured, description of injury (not too detailed), male Trailblazer mentioned (sorry I luv him)

Word Count: 2k

a/n: I'm not a medical expert or anything like that, sorry if I got it wrong 😭

It was rare for the archivist of the Astral Express to get quality sleep. If he wasn’t out and running into all sorts of trouble with the Trailblazer and March 7th, you could find him in his room, so immersed in his work that he often forgot to sleep. The only semblance of rest he got was from blacking out from fatigue, but he never felt truly energized from it. He was also unfortunate enough to be a light sleeper, so during those rare times he decided to actually sleep in his bed and not pass out on his chair, all passengers made sure to take another route to their destination if their original path crossed his door. Of course, there were instances when they didn’t know he was sleeping, and later during that day his team would notice his fighting became just a tad more jagged, irritated. Though he never got properly upset at any of them.

Tonight was one of those rare nights where all Dan Heng wanted was to sleep, new data be damned. He had been pulled along for some new trouble the Trailblazer found himself in, which obviously triggered a chain reaction of even more trouble, as it always did. The archivist wasn’t sure how long they spent outside the Astral Express before they decided to call it a night.

As soon as his head hit the pillow, he was out, and he intended to be out for at least a couple of hours if possible. Since both March 7th and Caelus had fatigue clinging on to them before they went to their rooms, it was safe to say he would remain undisturbed. But he failed to take another potential factor that would threaten his sleep time into consideration.

That factor was you.

His door was slammed open, a thud following close after. At first, he thought it was one of the troublemakers. He sat up, ready to tell them he wasn’t in the mood for another adventure.

All words he had thought of died in his throat. There was a lot of blood pooling under you, who collapsed onto your stomach. The faint light pulsing from the data bank illuminated your knitted eyebrows, trembling lips, and the sheen of sweat over your skin.

It wasn’t the first time you visited his room in the dead of night. Both of you had gotten into some rhythm of keeping each other company without saying much whenever you visited his room. While he was updating and refining data entries, you would be at his desk, sketching and scribbling notes of the new plants and enemies you had found during missions.

You were a curious soul with a thirst for knowledge that could rival any high-esteemed scholar or researcher. The first time you were there, you merely stood on the other side of the doorstep, asking him with a quivering voice if there were any data entries that matched something particularly eye-catching you had seen on your latest mission. When he had given you an answer, you had scurried away to your room after thanking him.

The next time you were there, you had bravely stepped into his room to observe him while he found the correct file. And before long it became a common occurrence for you to swing by after a mission, sketches in hand and questions burning at the tip of your tongue. After a few more times, Dan Heng had told you you were free to look through the information yourself.

At first, you thought he was telling you to stop bothering him, but the newest troublemaker on the express had other thoughts about it. He had pointed a shaking finger at you, sputtering about how the coldest person on the Astral Express had given you permission to touch his precious data without any consequences, something that he never thought was possible. Not that others weren’t allowed to, of course, but Dan Heng usually kept an eye on Caelus whenever he wanted to check something. A laugh had escaped you at that, and you waved his words away, saying that it was natural since Caelus somehow managed to cause trouble wherever he went. You weren’t special. In response you got a smug look from him. Whatever that meant.

One day, you were too caught up in information hunting you didn’t notice how much time had passed since you sat down by his desk. But before you could gather your papers and bolt out of the room with a flurry of apologies, he had stopped you and said you were allowed to stay as long as you wanted, so you sat back down.

You had wondered if he was actually alright with it. Occasionally, you would glance at him, trying to read his body language or facial expression for any sign of annoyance. At one instance, your eyes met his, and you couldn’t look away, but after a few seconds, you forcefully tore your focus away from him, back to the photographs. You felt the tips of your ears burning as intensely as the sun.

While you promised yourself to not look again in fear of embarrassing yourself, you couldn’t help but sneak some longing gazes at him. And if you had rested your eyes at him for a bit longer, you would have noticed his eyes being drawn to you more than a few times too.

That night, you had fallen asleep on his desk, face planted on all the photos you printed out to analyze. His coat had been draped over your frame as a makeshift blanket when you woke up and your phone had an unread message. You’re welcome to continue looking through the database even if I’m not there. I hope you slept well, it said. You remembered feeling flustered, not only from the message but also the faint smell of him lingering in the coat.

Soon enough an additional chair was placed by his desk. The surface was spacious enough to fit two people working on their own thing, only occasional talk filling the otherwise silent air. Sometimes, only you were there when he was out with Caelus and March 7th. The Database practically became your second room.

There were also times you opened the door to find him sleeping, and despite being a light sleeper that became grumpy the day after, he didn’t seem to be moody at all during the days after he was briefly woken up by you. He would merely peer up at you before shutting his eyes again, hand lazily beckoning you in. You had asked him more than once if your visits while he was resting disturbed his performance the day after, but every time he had told you not to worry about it. So you continued to visit him whenever you were finished with a mission, even if he happened to be sleeping. Though, you became more careful when opening his door.

Dan Heng would never admit that he slept better when you were in the room. The comforting sound of your pen scratching against paper and the occasional sighs or hums you let out somehow made him feel warm, a stark contrast to the coldness that enveloped him when he slept alone in the room. He really didn’t mind you waking him up more often in the middle of the night if it meant he got to experience that warmth.

Although, you had never arrived when he was sleeping with a gash on your stomach.

A metallic smell had spread through the air. Your breathing was shallow, body twitching from hiccups.

“What the hell happened?” Dan Heng breathed, though he didn’t expect a response. Before he could think, he was out the door, heading to the infirmary. He gathered all the supplies he could think of getting.

Detrimental thoughts swirled in his head like a typhoon. What mission were you sent to? Did they not check the danger levels before dispatching you? Did you get distracted? He should’ve come with you, but you were already gone by the time he met up with the troublemakers in the Parlor Car. You could’ve gone to him before heading out and he would gladly have accompanied you to the mission. What if you were gone by the time he came back?

When he had everything he needed, he hurried back. You still seemed to be in some state of consciousness when he entered his room, not dead. Good.

Dan Heng started wiping off the sweat that collected on your forehead, then he tentatively rolled you onto your back. The wound wasn’t as deep as he thought it was, it wasn’t life-threatening. You’d survive.

“I’m gonna clean your wound.” He shut the door and gave you a towel to bite on before unscrewing the bottle of antiseptic. “... it’s going to hurt.”

Guttural whines and sobs escaped your throat as soon as the alcohol touched your wound. Biting down hard on the cloth, your hand flailed to find purchase in anything that could ground you. The victim happened to be Dan Heng’s thigh. You were sure it would leave crescent shaped indents at the end of the procedure, but you could not be less bothered to care.

How you managed to stay somewhat lucid was beyond you. The shock probably helped you through the stitching part. Though Dan Heng’s gentle voice, mumbling something you could not quite make out, tethered you the most. If you had heard, you definitely would have been reeling from the profanities and apologies he was spewing out of concern.

When it was time for him to bandage you up, the pressure on your abdomen relieved you. Your jaw slackened and the archivist removed the now soggy towel.

“Sorry about the floor,” you slurred. “I’ll clean it up tomorrow.”

“You will not. Now, care to tell me what happened?”

“Hm.” Tiredness washed over you like a wave. The worst was over, and now you just wanted to sleep. “Found a treasure map, didn’t expect a Reaver to be in the way.”

“Hmph.” His disappointment was evident. “You’re lucky your wound wasn’t that dangerous. Who knows what could’ve happened. Did you go to that place alone? I would have gone with you if you wanted to find the treasure. You could’ve died, [Name]. Why didn’t you just go to Natasha when–”

“I couldn’t think straight,” you muttered, letting your eyes flutter shut. Your voice dropped down to a fragile whisper. “After I got injured– I don’t know– all I could think about was getting back to you first. I wanted to see you.”

There, you said it. A few seconds went by and he had nothing to say back. Great. When you had gathered enough energy you were heading – crawling if you needed to – straight to your room and–

“You absolute idiot.” Gentle hands lifted you up, trying to avoid agitating your wound. You were half-expecting him to carry you back to your bedroom, but you felt him taking a few steps before you were lowered again, onto something soft. His bed.

Dan Heng laid himself slowly beside you in fear of making you uncomfortable. He laid on his side, using his arm as his pillow as he gazed at your side profile. His free hand inched forward to brush some hair away from your face.

“I’ll always be here,” he murmured. “Next time you get injured, which I rather wouldn’t happen, give me a call and head to Natasha’s immediately. I will be there as quickly as I can.”

Your eyes hesitantly cracked open. Upon seeing the worry etched onto his face you brought your hand to intertwine with his.

“Promise?” you asked meekly.

“I promise.” His lips ghosted over your cheek before he casted his blanket over the both of you with the utmost care. “I’ll clean the blanket tomorrow, so don’t worry about it. Now, get some sleep. After the troublemakers roping me into their schemes and you nearly giving me a heart attack, I really need some rest. We’ll go to Natasha’s Clinic tomorrow.”

“Yeah… good night.”

“Good night, love.”

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zvaigzdelasas · 7 months

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You can’t buy the Seagull in the US. But I bet you wish you could.

A small hatchback around the size of a Mini Cooper, the Seagull is a fast-charging electric car and claims a range of up to 250 miles [...] BYD, its Chinese manufacturer, claims it can go from 30 percent to 80 percent charged in a half-hour using a DC plug. It’s hardly a luxury car but it’s well-equipped, with a power driver’s seat and cruise control. “If I were looking for an inexpensive commuter car … this would be perfect,” veteran car journalist John McElroy said after taking a drive.

The best part? Its base model costs about $10,700 in China.

That’s about a third of the cost of the cheapest EV you can buy in the US. In South America, it’s a little pricier, but still fairly affordable, at under $24,000 for a top-trim version. Even in Europe, you can get an entry-level BYD for under €30,000. These are absolutely screaming deals — exactly the kind of products that could turbocharge our transition away from gas and toward electric vehicles.[...]

The problem for Americans? The Biden administration is hell-bent on preventing you from buying BYD’s product, and if Donald Trump returns to office, he is likely to fight it as well.

That’s because the BYD cars are made in China, and both Biden and Trump are committed to an ultranationalist trade policy meant to keep BYD’s products out. [...] Shipments to Europe have increased astronomically; Chinese companies sold 0.5 percent of EVs in Europe in 2019 but they’re already over 9 percent as of last year. Companies like BYD make cheap, reasonably good-quality cars people are eager to buy.

In 2018, Trump imposed, and Biden has since continued, a special 25 percent tax on Chinese-made autos, on top of the ordinary 2.5 percent tax on foreign-made cars.

That has so far prevented BYD and its Chinese peers from trying to enter the US market. US customer tastes are different enough that Chinese manufacturers would probably prefer to make cars tailored to them — but US policy has been so hostile toward cheap Chinese EVs that so far, the companies haven’t wanted to bother.

So, the result is that we’re left out of the bounty of cheap EV options created by BYD and others. “If you’re a consumer right now, the best place to be right now is China, because you have the best choice of EVs,” Ilaria Mazzocco, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and an expert on Chinese EVs, says.[...]

Still, China’s price advantage is big enough that even the extreme Trump-Biden import tax might not be enough to deter companies like BYD from entering the US market. Even with the tariffs, Chinese cars might be cheaper than their rivals. “Subsidies most likely won’t be enough; Mr. Biden will need to impose [more] trade restrictions,” climate journalist Robinson Meyer predicted recently. The Biden administration is already making noise about imposing even more draconian taxes or trade restrictions against these vehicles. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo has described Chinese-made cars as a national security threat, and recently announced an investigation into the vehicles’ data collection abilities and the possibility they could send movement data to Beijing.

On the one hand, Biden is offering Americans up to $7,500 per vehicle to buy EVs (provided they meet certain made-in-North America rules). On the other hand, he’s imposing massive taxes to keep Americans from buying EVs. It’s a bizarre policy that makes no sense from a climate perspective.[...]

[The Biden Administration] has proven shockingly willing to sabotage its own climate policy if it gets to stick it to the Chinese in the process.

“There’s almost an across-the-board apprehension about Chinese EVs, even though they would make an important contribution to [lower] CO2 emissions,” Gary Clyde Hufbauer, a veteran trade expert at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, says.[...]

Realistically, Helveston argues, BYD might not sell something like the Seagull in the US because it’s smaller than most cars Americans buy. They’d probably build plants in the US instead, or its free-trade zone partners Canada and Mexico, to build vehicles tailored for Americans. “If you’re going to really enter a market, you have to make it locally,” Helveston explains. “US automakers like GM sell and make millions of cars in China to sell in China.” BYD would do the same. Indeed, it’s already reportedly scouting sites for factories in Mexico.

If they ever were to set up shop in North America, BYD and other Chinese car companies would still have a major price advantage versus American EVs. They have years more experience and a much more successful track record of building batteries and EVs at low cost.

“Part of why they’re so successful is they’ve been thinking outside the box on cost reduction for a long time,” Mazzocco says. They took the “opposite of the Tesla approach”: starting not with luxury vehicles but ultra-cheap cars fit for taxi fleets and not much else, and constantly improving their early inexpensive prototypes. The result is that Chinese firms have gotten extremely good at making inexpensive EVs, at a time when Ford, by contrast, lost $28,000 for every EV it sold in 2023.[...]

“If you have more affordable EVs in the United States, no matter where you come from,” Gopal says, “that’s better for the climate.”

Still, the Biden administration reportedly wants to restrict Chinese car companies’ access to the US even if they do set up shop in North America. Bloomberg reported earlier this month that the Biden administration is formulating rules that would limit US sales of Chinese-made parts, even if they’re in vehicles ultimately assembled in the US or Mexico.[...]

But the Biden administration’s objections to Chinese EVs are also ideological. The Biden administration represents the victory of a protectionist, trade-skeptical wing of the Democratic party that was relegated to the sidelines during the Clinton and Obama years.[...]

[O]ver 90 percent of American households have a car, and surging car prices were a huge contributor to the 2021–2023 rise in inflation.

Barriers to importing cheap cars make inflation worse and reduce the real incomes of the middle class.

Not only are the administration and other left-leaning institutions opposed to Chinese EVs, but hardline conservatives at places like the Heritage Foundation are calling for outright bans on Chinese EVs as well. Their rationale is security, another theme the Biden administration evokes often. On Thursday, the Commerce Department announced it was beginning a process to “investigate the national security risks of … PRC-manufactured technology in [internet-connected] vehicles.”

6 Mar 24

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gothhabiba · 10 months

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The historical link between meat and colonisation in Israel

In her PhD thesis on the historical role of Tel Aviv under the British Mandate for Palestine, Dr Efrat Gilad shows that while Zionist technocrats promoted a diet of little to no beef, urban settlers enjoyed their steaks and stews. Furthermore, their love for meat led them to play a key role in the colonisation of Palestine. (23 March 2021).

In your thesis you studied colonisation in Israel through attitudes towards meat consumption. What gave you this idea and why was it a worthwhile one?

There were various indicators that meat would be a useful entry point to the history of Jewish settlers in Palestine. One indicator had to do with a surprising statistic I came across. In 2019, according to OECD statistics, the world’s leading beef consumers were Argentina, the United States, and almost tied for third place were Brazil and Israel. Israel is an anomaly on this list. The other countries that tend to lead in meat consumption are also global meat producers and exporters. Their meat industries evolved over centuries, beginning with European settlers who used cattle to colonise. As cowboys or gauchos drove livestock across vast territories dominating the land, producing and consuming meat became linked to national identity.

Israel, however, does not produce the majority of the beef it consumes; rather, it mostly relies on imports. While colonisation is part of Israel’s past and present, Jewish settlers did not drive herds of animals to dominate Palestine’s landscape as did the cowboys and gauchos of the Americas. The ecologies and economies of livestock in Palestine were vastly different than in the above-mentioned countries. This does not mean there is no historical link between meat and colonisation in Israel – my research actually shows that there is – but that the historical trajectory that led Israelis to consume as much beef as Brazilians was different, and thus required further investigation. My dissertation is the first comprehensive history of meat in Palestine/Israel grounded in extensive archival research.

Can you describe your research questions and the methodology you used to approach those questions?

As a historian, my methodology involves archival research and analysis of historical documents. Early on I noticed a gap between two types of sources. On the one hand, there was a clear correlation between the growing numbers of European Jews settling in Palestine in the 1920s and 1930s and the soaring demand for meat. This was evident in many sources including data on livestock imports and slaughter, newspaper articles on the price of meat and its availability, the building of new slaughterhouses in Palestine’s cities, and multiple disputes between consumers, butchers and cattle dealers. On the other hand, when reading through sources produced by Zionist technocrats – such as economists, agronomists and nutritionists – I noticed a vastly different attitude to meat. While urban settlers were preoccupied with gaining more access to meat, Zionist technocrats seemed determined to convince Jewish settlers to adopt a diet of little to no beef.

My work then focused on three interconnected questions: Why did Zionist technocrats oppose meat consumption? How did urban settlers create systems to allow them access to meat in a country of limited supply (and in defiance of national experts)? And finally, how did urban settlers – in creating those systems – promote the colonisation of Palestine?

What are your answers?

First, I found out why Zionist technocrats opposed meat consumption, and this was entangled in ideas about climate, nutrition and economy. Zionist technocrats adopted an idea rooted in colonial medicine according to which consuming meat was harmful in Palestine’s heat. This was a significant finding because it highlights European Jewish settlers’ alienation from Palestine’s environment, and resonates with histories of other settler colonies, allowing us to think comparatively and transnationally about colonisation. The second layer in the discourse against meat was linked to the settler colonial economy. Beef consumption depended on Palestinian breeders and regional Arab livestock merchants, and increasingly also on overseas imports. This threatened Zionist leaders’ aspirations for a self-reliant Jewish settlement, which they believed was essential to its expansion. Thus, technocrats believed, high levels of beef consumption obstructed Zionist goals.

My second major finding shows how urban Jewish settlers ignored technocrats by generating a booming meat economy. Settlers first supported Palestine’s existing meat economy but gradually also created separate systems of import and slaughter. Because local supply chains of beef were deemed insufficient and firmly in the hands of Arab and Palestinian merchants, Jewish butchers and cattle dealers tapped into their connections to the European trade and created new networks of overseas cattle import. In creating their own meat infrastructures, especially in Tel Aviv, settlers worked to dominate Palestine’s meat trade. Whereas the literature often focuses on ideologues or rural “pioneers”, I show how urban settlers are historical agents who were perhaps oblivious or defiant of national ideologies pertaining to the meat trade but who nevertheless played a key role in a national endeavour: the colonisation of Palestine.

#Israel #food #Palestine #meat

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