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lazycats-stuff · 4 months ago

Note

Since Christmas is coming up, I wanted to request that Aussie reader that gets rly annoyed because he has to celebrate Christmas in the winter and not the summer with prawns and pavlova.

Just batbro getting so pouty because it’s cold and snowy (idk I haven’t rly been in snow) and hates it.

Also wanted to ask you, what season are you celebrating in? Summer or Winter? You don’t have to answer but I’m just curious.

Well my anon... Christmas is long gone, but that doesn't mean we can't have Christmas! Although I am the Grinch, but hey. Also, I celebrate Christmas during the winter, but it's been years since it snowed on Christmas... Also, this gif is adorable. And cool. And thank you all for 1.7k followers... The fact you like my writing is still a mind blowing thing to me.

Summary: (Y/N) is Australian who celebrates Christmas during the winter. He hates it.

Warnings: minor swearing, (Y/N) is grumpy, the fam is amused.

Being from Australia made someone a bit more tougher when it came to certain things. Such as snakes and spiders. (Y/N) was used to them and considered them roommates sometimes. Of course, moving from Australia to the good ol' US of A, wasn't an easy change. First one being the ruckus and sensitivity about alcohol.

While being 18, you can enlist in the army and die for your country, but can't drink? (Y/N) thought it was ridiculous. Despite still being underage, but legally an adult, he loved to sip some wine and beer... But Alfred and Bruce always made a ruckus about it. (Y/N) thought that Alfred would be on his side since Alfred is from the UK and they also drink underage...

(Y/N) has never felt so betrayed before.

Secondly, the summers were bad in Australia, especially on the coastal areas of Australia. (Y/N) grew up in Sydney and summers were pretty hellish back there. Here? For Australian standards, these Gotham summers are bearable. Sure, the summers may be from December to February. Yes, Australia has it all flipped around.

(Y/N)'s brothers thought that he was insane with how well he was handling the heat well. (Y/N) never told them that the heat in Sydney was that bad, but the outback and the central parts of Australia are hell on Earth. As if (Y/N) would reveal his secret. The temperatures were perfect...

But there was only slight issue with living in the USA as an Australian. Only one. It's a pretty big one as well.

Everyone knows that Australians celebrate their Christmas during their summer. A summer that begins in the month of December and where people are actually on the beach, enjoying the warm weather with their favorite classic desserts, one of the best examples being a cake called Pavlova.

That is also (Y/N)'s favorite dessert and often makes it when he wants to feel like Christmas is coming. Especially during the summer when he knew that he couldn't celebrate Christmas during the warm weather. That was his substitute Christmas. Winters in Gotham... Well...

He didn't like it. At all. He absolutely hated it. December should be warm, sunny, warm enough so you can go out and enjoy the warmth, maybe even swim! Make snowmen out of sand... Well, then they would be called sandmen. (Y/N) was depressed and sad, to say the least. You know the term seasonal depression?

(Y/N) felt it every single time when December rolled around. Instead of a beautiful sunny day, day filled with warmth, spent on a beach, not bundled in milion layers of clothes...

Not this Gotham winter... Not this snow either. (Y/N) absolutely hated it. Absolutely. While the entire America was looking forward to Christmas, (Y/N) was grumbling in his room, looking out the window, the way that the snow fell. (Y/N) frowned.

At this time, in Australia, he would be eating his Pavlova and his beloved prawns. That's what he would be doing... Just sunbathing. Making sandmen. Eating his beloved Pavlova... And his prawns...

He prefers warmth over this stupid snow. He would give anything to go back to Australia, to Sydney and enjoy Christmas on a sunny beach... Maybe he can take one of Bruce's private jets... Pull something off as well... But only Bruce is allowed to even use them and has numbers of the pilots...

And where is (Y/N) going to find a pilot? Craigslist?

Hell no.

So he quietly puts up with it. December, with January and February, are the hottest months in Australia... And here, on the other side of the world, they are the coldest.

And that's why (Y/N) was moping the kitchen while the rest of the family decorated the tree. He hated this festive feeling in this cold weather.

His Australian mind couldn't comprehend this. Just... Happy in the cold? What is that type of bullshit?

" (Y/N)? Why are you moping? And why do you look so sad, as if someone killed something you enjoy? " Bruce asked as he came into the kitchen, getting a cup of coffee.

" Someone did kill something I enjoy. " (Y/N) muttered.

" Oh? " Bruce asked, smile appearing behind his mug, knowing exactly what (Y/N) was talking about, but choose to stay quiet about it. " And what that might be? " Bruce asked, making (Y/N) scoff.

" You know exactly what I mean B and what makes me so pissed during this winter. " (Y/N) grumbled, crossing his arms.

" Well, it's not my problem that Australia is so messed up. " Bruce said and (Y/N) raised his eyebrows.

" The hell is that supposed to mean? " (Y/N) asked, not sure to be offended or amused, since Australia is pretty weird, that much was true.

" The seasons are all twisted. Australian summer is in the winter months, the winter is in summer months... You get my gist. " Bruce said and (Y/N) scoffed. " And besides, what is so bad about snow? " Bruce added, making (Y/N) scoff even louder.

" What is so bad about snow? It's cold, it melts, it's not fun, it's gross... Do you want me to keep going? It's better when I was back in Australia, celebrating it on the beach, in the sand... " (Y/N) stated and Bruce laughed, ruffling (Y/N)'s hair.

" I know, I know. But it's not that bad here. Snow is not that bad. Sure it is the pure opposite of sand and it's warmth during the summer. You can make snow angels, snowmen, throw snowballs at your brothers... " Bruce said, trying to appease to (Y/N).

" Well, I can't go swim can I? Everything is cold and frozen. I can't do anything in the snow. I can only freeze to death and stay inside. " (Y/N) grumbled, still not happy with this type of Christmas. " It's bullshit. That's what it is. "

" You are lucky that Alfred isn't here, otherwise you would have gotten an Alfred glare for that swearing. " Bruce said, sipping more of his coffee. " Also, is some sort of coldness really that bad? Is snow that bad? " Bruce asked, making (Y/N) laugh.

" For an Australian, snow on Christmas is sacrilegious. Like, a cardinal sin. We celebrate the Christmas on our beaches, during hot weather. Not during this snow and winter... Complete and utter bullshit this is."

" You just need to adjust. " Bruce said and (Y/N) rolled his eyes, just as everyone else walked in.

" Oh (Y/N), snow is not that bad on Christmas. " Jason stated.

" It is! " (Y/N) retorted.

Tim and Dick chuckled and Damian shook his head in amusement.

" I can't believe that you can't understand me! " (Y/N) whined and Damian chuckled quietly.

And that's how the evening was spent, teasing (Y/N) about his hatred for snow. And they even let (Y/N) put the star on the top of the tree.

" Come on, lets watch Home alone. " Bruce said, patting a spot on the couch next to him. (Y/N) laughed sarcastically, but he complied, making sure to wrap himself in a warm blanket, making sure to have his beloved Pavlova nearby. "

" I want my prawns tomorrow. " (Y/N) stated out of nowhere, making everyone laugh.

" Of course, I'll get some for you. " Bruce said, putting his arm over (Y/N)'s shoulders, making sure to bring him closer, to try and give him some comfort.

" Wait, where is Alfred? " (Y/N) asked, confused.

" Went home to see his family. " Bruce explained briefly.

" Ah. "

#dc comics #dc x male reader #x male reader #batfamily #bruce wayne x male reader #batman x male reader #jason todd x male reader #red hood x male reader #dick grayson x male reader #nightwing x male reader #tim drake x male reader #red robin x male reader #damian wayne x male reader #robin x male reader

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weemssapphic · 10 months ago

Note

Could I request a fluff fic for Miranda :0?

Maybe the weathers getting colder, cuffing szn etc Miranda falls for one of her neighbors who keeps bringing her baked goods, she’s unaware that said neighbor likes her!!! (unaware queen). Literally anything cute and sweet to get me thru the treacherous winter of Northern Europe HAHA

A/N: Hello! Sooooo a. this became a bit more of a Christmas fic than a winter fic, I hope that's okay, and b. I also failed to finish it before Christmas as I had originally planned 🥴 buuut I do hope you enjoy anyway! HUGE shoutout to @autumn-leaves-chasing-breeze and @agathaandgwenslesbian for beta'ing and hyping me up to post this, I love you both 🥺💖

Merry Christmas, Baby

Words: ~6.3k | ao3 link in title Warnings: mentions of alcohol/drinking, cigarettes/smoking

You’ve been living in your new apartment for about three months now, after leaving home and moving all the way to Australia for work. You like to think you’ve settled in well: you’re starting to get into a routine, you’ve managed to decorate most of your apartment and make it feel like home, Sydney isn’t as daunting as it was in the beginning - you were even able to give a tourist directions the other day.

The only thing missing is, well, friends. You get along well enough with your coworkers, they’ve been welcoming and have even started to invite you out. But more weekends than not you find yourself exploring the city on your own or hanging out on your couch with takeout, watching Netflix and thinking about your friends back home. You try to FaceTime them as often as you can, but the time difference makes it hard, and sometimes it makes you sad to ‘see’ them and know you can’t just meet up like you used to.

To stave off some of the loneliness you’ve been feeling, you’ve spent the past few weeks attempting to meet more people - and one person in particular has caught your eye: your neighbor, Miranda. You met her in the hallway during your first week in the building - she’d come up the stairs as you were fumbling with your keys, struggling a bit as your arms were full of groceries. She’d immediately offered to help, her eyes wide and her smile bright as she’d rushed over to you and grabbed the grocery bags right out of your hands. The way she looked down at you, watching your every move with great interest as you unlocked your door, brought a flush to your cheeks that only got worse during the subsequent small talk.

Your interactions since then have been a bit sparse - you keep hoping you’ll catch a glimpse of her in the hallway, but you rarely do. Sometimes you’ll hear her apartment door fall shut late at night as you’re falling asleep, or you’ll hear her footsteps on the stairs early in the morning while you’re still getting ready - wherever she works, she seems to have irregular shifts.

~~~

It’s a Sunday evening and you’re spending it alone (again). When your friend back home had canceled your scheduled FaceTime call at the last minute, you’d decided to distract yourself by baking. As you put together the ingredients for blueberry muffins, you find your mind wandering to your tall, blonde neighbor - wondering what it is she does for work, where she’s from (you thought you caught a British accent but you weren’t sure anymore), whether or not she’s seeing anyone…

The sound of the timer pulls you out of your thoughts and you turn off the oven and pull the muffin tray out, setting it on the counter. Your heart sinks when you realize there’s no way you’re going to finish them all by yourself. You suppose you could bring some to work… You bite your lip, your brow furrowing as you stare down the baked goods. Perhaps you could bring Miranda some? Butterflies erupt in your tummy when you picture her opening her front door, her lips stretching into a smile that reaches her bright blue eyes. Perhaps she would invite you in, perhaps the two of you would spend the evening on her couch, getting closer by the hour as you get to know one another. Perhaps…

You shake your head, trying not to get ahead of yourself. You’ll just stop by with a few muffins and see what happens. Maybe she’ll be busy. Or she won’t even be home and you’ll be forced to leave them next to her door.

After preparing a small basket of baked goods and changing from your rattiest sweatpants into a pair of jeans, you slip out of your apartment and cross the hall. Your heart begins to pound, your hands turning clammy as you bring your fist up to Miranda’s door. After a brief moment’s hesitation and a deep breath, you knock.

At first, you’re met with silence - your heart sinks a bit, and you try to ignore the little pang of disappointment that begins to creep up on you. But just as you’re about to turn around, you hear a shuffling behind the door. It opens just a crack - you hear an “Oh!” - and then it swings open fully, revealing Miranda in a navy bathrobe. Her hair is wet, slicked back - one strand falls over her eyebrow and she pushes it back, a smile growing on her lips as she looks down at you.

“Hello,” she says, sounding a little breathless. You feel yourself flush as you realize you must have caught her just out of the shower - perhaps it took her so long to answer the door because she wasn’t dressed yet, and the thought makes you slightly dizzy.

“Hi.” You can’t help but gawk a bit, and the thought of just dropping the muffins at her feet and leaving before you can make a fool of yourself briefly crosses your mind.

Her brows furrow slightly and so do yours, before you realize that you should probably say something else.

“I just wanted to…” You gesture vaguely at the basket you’re holding. “If this is a bad time, I can come back later,” you manage to stutter out, focusing all your efforts on keeping your eyes on her face.

“Oh, you’re alright,” Miranda says, craning her neck a bit to catch a glimpse at what you’re holding. “Are those muffins?”

“Yeah. For you.” You thrust your arms out, holding the basket towards her. Her eyes widen, darting between you and the basket as she takes it from you.

Her entire face seems to light up with excitement - she looks positively giddy. “Did you make these?”

“Yes! Yeah. I like baking. And I made too many. So I thought I would see if you want some.”

The smile that’s broken out across Miranda’s face is one you wish you could save and put in your pocket to look at on your worst days. It lights up her entire face, making her eyes sparkle and her nose crinkle - it’s the most beautiful sight you’ve ever seen. You’re so distracted by it that you nearly miss her next words.

“Would you like to come in? I was going to make some tea.”

“Sure.”

You blush as Miranda steps aside, allowing you to step over the threshold of her apartment. She shuts the door behind you then walks past you into her kitchen. Even the way she walks is attractive to you - the mesmerizing sway of her hips, the way she pushes her shoulders back and swings her arms, her long strides. Taking a deep breath, you follow her and lean against the door frame, watching as she sets down the muffins on the counter and puts on the electric kettle.

“I didn’t know if you’d be home,” you say, breaking the silence. You’re a bit embarrassed that your voice comes out hoarse, and you clear your throat. “I don’t see you around much. Do you do shift work?”

Miranda glances back at you as she rummages through the cupboards for two mugs. She smiles softly. “Sort of. I’ve been on call a lot lately.”

“Oh.” You cock your head to the side. “What do you do?”

“I’m, uh, a police constable.”

Your eyes widen as you process the information. It makes sense, you realize - and then you feel your mouth go dry as you picture Miranda in a police uniform.

“What do you do?”

Her question breaks you out of your trance, and you can feel your cheeks turn red. “Oh, um, that’s… I work in accounting.” You swallow back your embarrassment at having a “boring” desk job, your eyes darting around Miranda’s kitchen - anything to avoid meeting her gaze.

“Steady work then,” she says - you can hear the smile in her voice and you dare to steal a glance at her face. Her expression is soft, completely at ease, and you can’t help but feel your shoulders relax a little. “How come you moved to Sydney? Did you move here for a guy?”

A sound between a snort and a chuckle escapes your lips and you quickly look away again. “Nope.” You want to say that you’re more into women, but you get nervous and something stops you. “I just needed a change of scenery. I figured moving to an English-speaking country would be easiest, and I thought the weather here would be nicer than in the UK.”

Miranda laughs a full-belly laugh, throwing her head back. “I’m from the UK, you know.”

“Tell me I’m wrong then,” you tease with a grin.

Her eyes flicker briefly over your form, an amused grin on her face. “You’re… you’re not wrong.” She ducks her head in surrender - then the kettle goes off and she turns to busy herself with preparing the tea.

“So why did you move to Sydney then?”

“My boyfriend at the time was Australian.” Miranda hands you one of the mugs, then leans back against the counter, taking a sip of her own tea and observing you carefully. You try not to let on to the way that your stomach sinks when you hear the word “boyfriend” - it doesn’t mean she’s straight, you remind yourself (and besides, even if she did like women - it doesn’t mean she’d like you). You nod and hum in acknowledgment, hoping to come off as casual and unaffected as you sip your tea.

Miranda sets down her mug and reaches over the small kitchen table to grab a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Once again you find yourself mesmerized as long, slender fingers pull a cigarette out of the pack, placing it between her pale lips as she lights it.

For a moment, she seems unaware of your presence - she takes a deep drag from the cigarette, her fingers playing with the lighter as she exhales a cloud of smoke. Then her eyes fall to your face and widen slightly. “Oh, God, sorry. Do you mind?”

You shake your head - it’s not your apartment so it’s not like you have a say anyway, and, if you’re honest, you find it a bit hot. “Go ahead, it’s your apartment.”

She shoots you a grateful smile and takes another drag from the cigarette. “You want one?”

You nod and she tosses you the pack. Once you’ve plucked a cigarette from it, she steps towards you. “Here, let me,” she says, moving to light it for you as her own cigarette dangles from between her lips. She gets closer than would probably be necessary and her proximity makes you feel a little faint - you can smell the shampoo in her still-damp hair, and the smoke on her breath. Your eyes are trained on the lighter - when the flame goes out, you glance up, only to be met with the brightest blue eyes you’ve ever seen. They’re even lighter than you initially thought and her gaze is intense - it’s slightly overwhelming.

“Thanks,” you whisper hoarsely, forcing yourself to blink and take a step back. Miranda’s eyes are fixed curiously on your face as she plucks her cigarette from between her lips. She tilts her head, her lips parting into a smile.

“What?” There’s a playful edge to her voice and her eyes sparkle with mischief. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

You freeze, your cheeks turning pink. “Like what?”

“You find me intimidating, don’t you?” You open your mouth to argue but she cuts you off, gesturing down the length of her body. “It’s my height, isn’t it? I get that a lot.”

“It’s not- I mean…” You shrug lamely, taking a sip of your tea to give yourself a moment to think. “It’s not you, I’ve just had a long day. A long few months, actually.” Okay, so you’re deflecting - but it feels way too nice just to bask in Miranda’s presence, and you don’t want it to end so soon by making things awkward.

Miranda’s face softens in an instant, little creases appearing between her brows. “From the move? It can be so hard to uproot your life like that.”

It’s a phrase you’ve heard before - people trying to sympathize with you, looking for something meaningful to say. But with Miranda, it feels different. With the way she’s looking at you, it feels like she truly understands.

~~~

In the past few weeks you’ve gotten into the habit of bringing Miranda baked goods - always on the pretext of having made extras for work and other neighbors (though you never have any intention of giving them to anyone except Miranda). It’s more than worth the hours spent in the kitchen to see the smile that lights up her face when she answers the door. Sometimes she invites you in for tea and a cigarette, sometimes there’s only time for a bit of small talk before one of you needs to get going - but each time, butterflies erupt in your belly and you find yourself wishing you were brave enough to make a move.

What you don’t know is that Miranda finds herself wishing the same thing. Sure, she loves everything you make her (nothing you’ve ever baked her has lasted more than 2 days at most), but the real reason her face breaks into a splitting grin when she answers the door is because it’s you who’s standing there.

Miranda can’t get enough of you - you’re easy to talk to, you make her laugh, you seem to take her as she is. And you’re damn beautiful. The most exciting part of her week is wondering on which evening you’ll come by unannounced after work, and she finds herself praying she’ll have the time to talk to you.

One such evening, you’ve come over with a tray of red velvet cupcakes - decorated with festive little Christmas tree sprinkles. Miranda’s just gotten off a shift and has the evening off, and she’s never been more grateful as she leads you into her kitchen and turns on the kettle. You make yourself right at home, settling on a kitchen chair and tucking your legs underneath you as you reach for the pack of cigarettes on the table - it’s almost become a routine now, and you look like you belong there. Miranda likes that thought more than she’d care to admit.

Still, despite how often you’ve come by lately, she feels there’s still some sort of barrier between the two of you. Your conversations are the best part of her week, yet they tend to feel a bit… shallow. She’s desperate to get to know you better but she’s holding herself back - the fear of driving you away, of being too much for you to handle, causes her to freeze up. You’re just being nice, trying to make new friends in Australia, and here she is, falling for you one red velvet cupcake at a time.

“Mir?” Your voice pulls her out of her thoughts and she looks at you like a deer caught in headlights. She tries desperately to remember what you were talking to her about, but she realizes quickly that her efforts are futile - she was too busy admiring the lock of hair falling across your cheek, the way you ran your fingers through your hair to push it back.

“Sorry.” She offers you a sheepish smile, her cheeks slowly turning scarlet.

You smile back, and her heart skips a beat. “I asked if you’re staying in Sydney for Christmas or if you’re going back to London?”

“I’m staying here. I work on Christmas, so…” She frowns slightly - she hasn’t gone home for Christmas in a few years. Usually, she works and spends her off-hours curled up in bed watching Christmassy rom-coms by herself. She’s gotten used to it. “Are you? Going home for Christmas?”

“Nah. I blew all my savings in the move, can’t afford the plane ticket.” Something about the way you shrug your shoulders, your gaze dropping to the floor, tells Miranda that your nonchalance is a front.

“Would you like to come over?” Miranda, what are you saying? “We could cook something and watch a movie together.” Miranda, shut up! “Maybe you could sleep over and we could keep each other company.” Oh, great, now you’ve done it! Miranda’s eyes widen as she realizes what she’s saying, but she can’t take it back now - and, to be honest, she doesn’t want to take it back. Her heart hammers wildly against her ribcage as she waits for you to reply. It only takes you seconds, really, but those few seconds might as well be hours as time slows and Miranda begins to find it hard to breathe.

“Oh, it’s fine, you don’t have to take me in! I’ll be okay, I wouldn’t want to impose.” Your words come out in a rush and your cheeks are turning pink - Miranda’s heart starts to sink and she scrambles to find the right words to save the conversation.

“You wouldn’t be imposing, I’d have just had a few beers by myself after work anyway.” She chuckles nervously, before adding, “I could use the company.”

She quickly looks away from you, finding the brief moment of vulnerability too much to handle - she couldn’t bear to see the look in your eyes at the moment, certainly one of pity or judgment.

“Oh… Well in that case, I’d love to spend Christmas with you. If that’s okay.”

Miranda’s eyes widen and she glances over at you to see you smiling shyly - her heart stutters in her chest and she feels her stomach flip pleasantly. She lets out a shaky breath, unable to stop the wide smile that’s creeping up her face. “Okay then.”

~~~

Ever since that evening in Miranda’s apartment, you’ve been buzzing with excitement. She’d ended up giving you her number so that you could plan when to come over, and it’s taken all of your restraint not to bug her every waking second - you wouldn’t want her getting sick of you and regretting inviting you over.

But as Christmas is just a few days away, you decide to shoot her a text as you’re lying in bed at night.

Y/N: Hey there, it’s Y/N! I just wanted to ask what time you wanted me to come over on Christmas? :)

You toss your phone aside, not expecting Miranda to text back anytime soon - it’s already late, after all. When your screen lights up moments later, however, your heart begins to pound.

Miranda: Hey! Miranda: I work until 4 Miranda: So evening I would say

Y/N: How does 6 sound? Is that too early?

Miranda: That sounds perfect :)

Y/N: Great! Should I bring anything?

Miranda: Just yourself ;) Miranda: Wait Miranda: Actually Miranda: Do you remember the cookies you brought me last week?

Y/N: What, am I not enough for you? ;) Y/N: (I’ll make some more)

Miranda: Are you sure?

Y/N: Absolutely!! Anything for my favorite neighbor.

Miranda: You’re too good to me

By the time you’re done texting her, you’re grinning down at your phone like an idiot. The screen goes black and you catch sight of your reflection - you blush and bury your head in your pillow. For the first time since you moved, you’re actually starting to get excited for Christmas.

~~~

Three days later you’re wrapping up a pair of Christmas pajamas (red, covered in little white snowflakes - you have a matching pair) to give to Miranda - you want to give her something for Christmas, but you don’t know her all that well yet to get her something personal. Still, you think (or at least, you hope) she’ll find the pajamas silly and fun.

Armed with the gift, a huge tupperware box full of candy cane cookies, your keys, and your phone, you pad across the hall and knock gently on Miranda’s door. You hear her muffled voice yell “coming”, followed by the sound of hurried footsteps, before the door swings open. Miranda’s eyes flick briefly down your body, over the wrapped gift and the cookies, before she finally meets your gaze. She’s slightly out of breath, and her lips curl up into a smile that meets her eyes. What you would give to kiss those lips…

“Merry Christmas,” you say, smiling back and forcing your eyes to remain trained on her own.

“Right! Merry Christmas!” You could swear you see Miranda’s cheeks turn pink, but before you have time to question it she’s ushering you into her apartment, her hand coming to rest on your lower back as she steers you towards the kitchen. “I did some food shopping the other day. I wasn’t sure what you’d want to eat, I’m not usually big on holiday foods and I didn’t have time to prepare anything because of work.”

Miranda’s rambling has you swooning - you can tell she’s nervous, though you aren’t sure why. If only she knew you’d happily eat frozen pizza or cereal for Christmas dinner, as long as you get to spend it with her.

“It’s fine, I don’t care much about Christmas dinner, we can eat anything.” You hope that you’re coming off as reassuring, though you can’t really tell as Miranda blushes again and lights up a cigarette.

“Maybe a curry?” she asks, chewing at her bottom lip.

“Yeah, that sounds great. Just tell me what you need help with.”

She seems to relax a bit, heading over to the fridge and pulling out ingredients. “What do you drink? Do you want a beer?”

“Please.”

The two of you spend the next 45 minutes side by side in the small kitchen, cooking, drinking, talking - mostly it’s Miranda, telling you about her workday. When she’s done chopping vegetables, she reaches for the pack of cigarettes again - “sorry, nerves,” she says with a faint smile. You still can’t fathom what she’s nervous about but you don’t want to push her, so you shrug it off and turn your attention to the curry that’s simmering in the pan. You dip a spoon into the sauce to try it, humming in delight the second the flavors explode on your tongue.

“This is really good, try it!” Without thinking you bring the spoon to Miranda’s mouth and, without thinking, she closes her lips around it. Her eyelids flutter shut and she lets out a little noise of pleasure that’s dangerously close to a moan. Heat pools in your stomach, your eyes glued to her lips as you slide the spoon out of her mouth - it’s the first time you notice a little scar above her lip, and you swallow thickly.

You quickly avert your gaze as Miranda’s eyes open again, taking a sip of your beer as you check on the rice.

“I was thinking we could just eat in the living room and watch a movie?” Miranda suggests when the curry is done cooking. You agree and help Miranda carry the bowls and a couple bottles of beer into the living room. It’s small, like yours, and a little cluttered. There’s a string of fairy lights above the window and a small Christmas tree sat atop a side table. Miranda’s eyes follow your gaze and she chuckles.

“I actually put that up two days ago, I panicked when I realized I didn’t have any Christmas decorations up at all.”

“You didn’t have to decorate on my account,” you tease, earning yourself a laugh.

“Oh but what kind of Christmas would it be without a tree?”

“Can’t argue with that.”

Miranda smiles at you as she settles on the couch, crossing her legs and setting her bowl in her lap. She gestures for you to join her. You tuck your knees underneath you, angling your body towards her. As you eat, you fall into an easy conversation - you find yourself getting even more comfortable in Miranda’s presence, feeling right at home in her apartment. You can tell she’s relaxing as well - she stretches her legs out, her toes (clad in Christmas-themed socks) touching the side of your thigh.

“I got you something, by the way,” Miranda says suddenly, leaning over to place her almost-empty bowl on the table. You follow suit, a smile lighting up your face.

“I got you something, too - wait here!” Miranda looks somewhat surprised as you jump up and rush into the kitchen, returning with the gift you’d brought. She now has a gift of her own on her lap, and she’s picking at the edge of the wrapping paper as you settle back down beside her, a soft smile on her face.

You exchange gifts and Miranda’s chewing nervously at her bottom lip as she watches you tear open the wrapping paper. It’s a cookbook for baking - you can’t help but laugh, and you look up to see Miranda’s cheeks turn pink.

“Is this meant to be a hint?” you tease, and Miranda chuckles nervously.

“Sorry, I-”

“I love it,” you cut her off, setting the book down beside you and leaning over to wrap your arms tightly around her torso. She returns the hug - her arms are strong and comforting and you’re immediately enveloped in her scent. It takes everything in you not to kiss her.

After pulling away, you gesture eagerly to the gift that’s in her lap. She has a look of nervous excitement on her face as she begins to unwrap it - her smile widens when she takes the pjs out of the wrapping paper and holds them in front of her.

“I hope they fit, I guessed your size. I have the same ones and you seem like the type of person who would like them.”

Miranda’s eyes widen as she looks over at you, her expression nothing short of giddy. “You have the same ones? Wear them! We can match.”

Her reaction is exactly what you hoped it would be. The prospect of wearing matching Christmas pjs is both adorable and a little intimate, and you’re filled with nervous anticipation as you head across the hall to your apartment to get changed.

When you get back to Miranda’s apartment a few minutes later, the blonde is sitting on her couch with her legs tucked underneath her. She smiles so widely that her nose crinkles, and she opens her arms to you. Without a second thought, you allow yourself to be pulled into a tight hug.

“Do you like them?” you ask as you pull away.

“I love them!” The smile on her face is genuine, her eyes shining brightly, and you can’t help but blush, your entire body tingling a bit as your eyes drift down her body.

~~~

You’re about an hour into the second movie of the night and you’re already several beers deep (you’ve lost count, to be honest). You’ve scooted closer and closer to Miranda as the evening has worn on, and now you’re practically on top of her - your legs are bent at the knee, tucked against your body and resting on the outside of her thigh, your shoulder is all but glued to her own.

You drain the rest of your beer, then pout at the bottle. “It’s empty,” you say, more to yourself than to Miranda, who chuckles and shifts beside you.

“I can get you another one?”

“It’s fine,” you say with a giggle. “Maybe I should stop drinking.” You’re not drunk but you’re definitely tipsy - you turn your head to face Miranda a little too quickly and, for a brief moment, the room spins, causing you to burst into another fit of giggles.

Your eyes meet Miranda’s, before dropping to her lips and getting stuck there. They’re curled into an amused smile as she chuckles at your inebriated state - though the smile slowly fades as her brows begin to crease. Her tongue darts out to wet her lips and your own laughter quickly dies in your throat, your mouth going dry. You can tell Miranda’s breathing has gone shallow, her eyes falling to your lips. The air around you becomes thick and heavy, and Miranda’s gaze darts away.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbles, scrambling to scoot away - before she can get very far, your arm shoots out and holds her in place.

“What are you sorry for?” you whisper. The only sound you can hear is the pounding of your own heart in your ears as you wait for Miranda to respond. Her gaze flickers between your eyes and your lips, a lovely shade of pink rising in her cheeks.

“I-” she starts, cutting herself off as she swallows visibly.

“Do you want to kiss me?” You don’t know what prompted you to be so bold (probably the alcohol), but when a soft, barely audible whimper escapes Miranda’s throat, you can’t say you regret asking.

“Yes.”

You definitely don’t regret asking.

“I want to kiss you, too,” you whisper, leaning in slightly as you fix your gaze on soft-looking, pale pink lips that glisten slightly in the dim light of the living room. Then you stop yourself, hesitating as the room spins again. You’ve dreamed of kissing those same lips for weeks now but something is off.

The alcohol, you realize - you don’t want your first kiss with Miranda to be clouded by alcohol. You want to appreciate and remember the moment fully, you want to savor every second. So, as much as you’re dying to close the gap and absolutely ravage the lovely, beautiful woman sitting next to you, you decide to pull back. “But I’m going to wait until tomorrow. I want to be completely sober for that. And… if you still want to kiss me tomorrow… then I’ll kiss you.”

Miranda nods slowly, looking a bit dazed. “That’s, uh,” she starts, her voice hoarse. She clears her throat. “That’s a good idea.” She shifts in her seat, crossing one thigh tightly over the other. The air is still thick and heavy, and it takes everything in you not to say ‘fuck it’ and push her back onto the couch - but you mean it, you really do want to be sober for that. So you lean back, putting a few inches of distance between yourself and Miranda for the remainder of the film.

You feel yourself becoming more and more tired, and by the time the credits are rolling, you’re struggling to keep your eyes open. Pushing yourself up off the couch, you sway slightly as you make it to your feet, and immediately decide to sit back down so that you don’t fall over.

“You sure you can make it back down the hall okay?” Miranda teases, her eyes sparkling with amusement as she watches you lean back against the sofa.

You roll your eyes and shoot her a playful glare. “I’m not drunk. I’m just tired.” As if to emphasize your point, you yawn widely as you finish your last sentence - Miranda laughs.

“You can sleep here if you want,” she offers - then her face goes pale and she rushes to explain herself. “Not with me of course, but the couch is quite comfortable. Or you can take the bed and I’ll take the couch, that’s fine, too-”

She’s talking a mile a minute and it’s the most charming thing you’ve ever heard - especially since you definitely would sleep with her. You’d just prefer to do it sober. Giggling, you decide to show her mercy and cut her off. “Thanks for the offer. I think I’ll take the couch if you don’t mind.”

“Of course, let me get you some blankets.” She turns off the tv and stands, leaving the room for a minute and coming back with a pillow and an armful of blankets. You get up and try to help her to make a makeshift bed for you, but your movements are a bit sluggish and you realize you’re just getting in her way, so you end up perching on the edge of the coffee table until she gives you the go.

You snuggle into the blankets - they smell like Miranda, and it takes everything in you not to bury your nose in them and moan out loud. Instead, you shoot Miranda a smile and mutter a sleepy ‘thank you’ - she nods, telling you to yell if you need her, then turns to leave.

“Oh, Miranda?” You lift your head off the pillow and crane your neck towards the blonde.

She pauses in the doorway, turning back to face you as she runs a hand through her hair. “Hmm?”

“Merry Christmas.” You beam at her, even as your eyes threaten to close any second. The evening was far from a traditional Christmas celebration, but it was the best Christmas you’ve had in a long time.

“Merry Christmas,” she replies, her smile soft and genuine, before turning around and disappearing into her bedroom, closing the door quietly behind her.

~~~

You’re out like a light the second Miranda is gone, completely oblivious to the internal struggle she faces as she curls up in her own bed. She tries to close her eyes and force herself to sleep, but she’s not tired at all - her mind is racing and her heart is pounding, her entire body responding to the evening she’s shared with you. The laughter, the sense of familiarity and peace, the tension when you nearly kissed her. And, God, does she want to kiss you. But you’re tipsy, and you probably just said that in the heat of the moment - she gets it, sometimes alcohol makes her flirty and a little horny as well. You probably won’t remember that conversation in the morning - and you probably won’t want to kiss her anymore either.

She can’t help the way her heart sinks as she comes to that realization, and it keeps her up for the better part of the night. She feels like she’s just managed to nod off when the morning light starts to filter in through the curtains and she groans, burying her face in her pillow.

Thud.

Miranda freezes for a moment, her blood going cold as she hears a noise coming from her living room. Then she remembers that you’re sleeping on her couch and her body relaxes again. She’s nervous, wondering if you’ll be awkward about the previous evening’s sexual tension, but her curiosity about whether or not you’re already awake wins out and she pushes herself off the bed, smoothing a hand over her hair and wiping the sleep out of her eyes before creeping into the hallway, careful to be quiet in case you’re still sleeping.

There’s a clattering coming from the living room though, and she finds you collecting the beer bottles from last night that are still scattered across the coffee table.

“Hello,” Miranda says, her voice still a little hoarse from sleep.

Your head whips around towards the doorway and your cheeks turn pink. “I’m sorry, I just wanted to clean up a bit. Did I wake you?” The way you’re chewing at your bottom lip is adorable and makes Miranda want to kiss you senseless. She chuckles and shakes her head.

“No, I was awake anyway. Here, let me help.” Miranda helps you clear off the coffee table, heading into the kitchen with an armful of bottles and her empty bowl from dinner. You’re right behind her with the rest of the dishes and you immediately make your way to the sink and start washing them - it feels so domestic that it makes Miranda’s heart flutter, and she has to look away and focus on something else so that you can’t see the blush on her cheeks or the yearning that’s surely shining in her eyes.

“Do you want coffee?” she asks, waiting for your affirmative hum before starting to make some. She’s so focused on preparing the coffee machine that she misses you turning off the sink and padding over to her - she yelps as you press against her back, placing your hands on the counter on either side of her and boxing her in. Her heart is racing, skipping beats left and right as your body heat warms her from behind. Drawing in a sharp breath, she turns around to face you.

“Miranda?” Your voice is low and a little shaky, and your cheeks are flushed - gorgeously so, Miranda finds her mouth going dry.

“Yes?” she croaks out.

“Remember how I said I’d kiss you today if you still wanted to?”

All Miranda can do is nod, her mouth hanging open as all the blood rushes to her face.

“Well, I guess I wanted to ask you if you still wanted to kiss me? Because I’m sober now and I still want to kiss you.” You look just as nervous as Miranda feels - she nods again, afraid her voice will betray how badly she wants you.

“Please, say it,” you plead, your eyes wide and earnest. “I need to hear you say it.”

“Y-yes. I- I want to kiss you.”

Your lips curl up into a soft smile and your hands move from the counter to Miranda’s waist, your grip firm as if you’re afraid she’ll run away from you. You press yourself up onto your toes until your face is mere inches away from her own. She can feel your breath on her face, warm and shallow. Her eyes are glued to your lips, wondering when you’ll close the gap - then you do, your lips soft and plush as they press gently against hers.

She allows her eyelids to flutter shut and kisses you back, her own hands reaching out tentatively to cup your cheeks. You smile into the kiss and she takes the opportunity to deepen it - you groan softly into her mouth as her tongue brushes against yours, and she swallows the sound, groaning back in return.

“I didn’t think you’d remember,” she murmurs, her thumb stroking your cheek.

“As if I haven’t been thinking about that since the moment I first met you,” you tease with a seductive grin, before wrapping your arms around her neck and pulling her down for a second kiss, even more passionate than the last.

@alexusonfire @brienneswife @pro-weems-places @bigolgay @kimiinou @imprincipalweemspet @h-doodles @bychrissi @katie-bennet @giogwensversion @gela123 @friskyfisher @justcallmelittleone @michi2504 @scream-queenlover @a-queen-and-her-throne @sequoirius @anne-lister @winterfireblond @imgayforwoman69 @Ssappling2004 @fictionalized-lesbian @i-like-reading @aemilia19 @milfsloverblog @missdowling @billiedeansbitch @The_Demon_of_your_Dream @agathaandgwenslesbian @http-sam @Cute-catx @saltrage @renravens @opheliauniverse @zillahofviolets-bayolet @scarlettssub @catechristiestuff @niceminipotato @barbarasstar @women-are-so-ethereal @thevillagegay @willowshadenox @lilfartbox1 @larissaoftarthweems @dovesintherain @fallenbutch @lunala-rose23 @ahauandthesun @thenazwife @lvinhs @sweetderacine @daydream-cement @ilovetlcc @wastdstime @ladylarissaweems @spacetoaim22 @m1lflov3rrr

#miranda hilmarson x reader #miranda hilmarson #top of the lake #top of the lake: china girl #i haven't posted in almost 2.5 months and i'm ANXIOUS #hype a girl up 😭#i also clearly couldn't be arsed to come up with a better title i'm SORRY 🥲

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ciaomarie · 7 months ago

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Waiting on my AO3 invite. Here's a one shot Sydcarmy story. Canon compliant. Post season 2. Please excuse the grammar/spelling mistakes. I need season 3 to get here quickly!

Title: Won't You Be My Neighbor

It was her break and for the 89th time in the last three days Sydney reassessed the apartments within 15 minutes walking distance from The Bear. As CDC she no longer wanted to depend on the train should there be some kind of accident, strike, or weather event. There were three that she could afford on her own and many more options if she were willing to become a roommate. She wasn't. If inspiration for a recipe struck her at 2am she wanted to get up and cook if she wanted. She loved the freedom of walking around naked after a shower, picking out her clothes or getting a snack. Most of all she missed turning up her music and dancing like an inflatable tube man in private.

She had sent a message to each leasing office to schedule an appointment next Monday and two of the three had confirmed a 10a and 11a showing. It had been more than 48 hours since she messaged the third so she called. The leasing agent informed her that the specific unit she wanted was no longer available, but they had a gorgeous 2 bedroom for $3800 a month if she was interested. "Okay, now that's just two options" Sydney muttered after getting off the phone.

"Hey mija, what you looking at?" Tina asked sitting down to eat lunch.

"Just apartments. I finally have the funds to move" Sydney answered with a sigh.

"What's wrong? Aren't you happy to be getting out on your own?"

"Oh, yeah for sure. It's just I'm really picky"

"Well, it doesn't have to be forever. Just make sure to read the reviews. You don't want roaches or bed bugs".

"Oh, I can't stand bugs! My dad still has to kill them for me, but I better get a fly swatter and spray now that I'll be on my own soon."

Break was over and Sydney stood up to resume her duties. First she needed to talk to Natalie about the upcoming private party. A celebrity had reserved the entire restaurant next Thursday evening. The names of all staff members on duty that night had to be submitted ahead of time with signed NDAs. It was all happening so fast and The Bear's debt was likely to be paid less than a year after opening. First there had been a Grio article about her being a rising black chef. That led to Keith Lee, the TikTok restaurant reviewer, raving about his to-go order that included the T-Bone and the Michael cannoli. It went viral and suddenly, they were booked for the next three months with a waiting list. She was working harder than ever, getting paid pretty well, and she deserved a place of her own.

After talking to Natalie, she found Carmy working on her prep.

"Hey, thanks! I can take over that now if you want"

"Actually….it's done. I wanted to take you somewhere for like 30 minutes" he said finishing up and cleaning the station.

Sydney folded her arms, her eyebrows raised high.

"Okay, where are we going?"

"I know you've been looking for a place and I think know the perfect apartment for you. Just a 10 minute walk from here. The landlord gave me the key so I could show you today" Carmy said trying to sound casual, but a deep pink flush rose in his cheeks.

"Why is he being weird?" Sydney thought but simply said "Okay, that's dope."

The Chicago air was soft and warm, the clean sunlight making everything look new. Summer afternoons like this made you forgive the brutal winters here. Carmy directed Sydney when to turn left and right, but refused to tell her where exactly they were going. Soon they were standing in front of his building.

The reason for his weirdness was now perfectly clear to Sydney and she felt so flattered that she had to avoid looking at Carmy when she said "So, there's an open unit in your building?"

"Uh, yeah. The people who lived just above me moved and I, uh, thought you might want to see it".

The apartment was on the fourth floor. Carmy unlocked the door and let Sydney go in first. The walls were freshly painted in "Cloud White" and the oak hardwood floors creaked comfortably under their feet. The layout was the same as Carmy's apartment with plenty of windows to let in natural light and a shockingly large kitchen for a 1 bedroom place in Chicago. As Sydney inspected the appliances and bathroom, she decided that if the rent was going to eat up even half of her check it was worth it. She had always admired Carmy's spacious apartment and with her sense of style she could make hers, a cozy bohemian oasis filled with plants, wall art, and actual furniture (eventually).

Carmy had let her roam around in silence for a few minutes, muttering and emitting tiny sounds of joy to herself. When she met him in the living room again, he said trying not to grin too widely, "If you like it, it's already yours."

"How? I know places like this are snatched up fast" Sydney said her eyes finally able to meet his again.

"The landlords, they're a couple, and their 20th wedding anniversary is coming up. They want reservations at The Bear." Carmy explained, desperately hoping to sound nonchalant about it.

"Oh, that's nice work, Carmy."

Then Sydney squealed and cried "This is just what I wanted!!" and she flung her arms around his shoulders in a wild hug. Carmy commanded his body not to shudder as he hugged her back. She was just wearing a t-shirt and without her usual layers of clothing he felt her delicate frame, her slim shoulder blades imprinting on his fingers.

In a moment Sydney pulled back shly and let her arms fall to her sides, her face burning. She made a mental note: Hugging Carmy. Not a safe activity for those who want to cook along side him using sharp objects or sleep peacefully at night dreaming innocent thoughts.

"Thank you. Thank you. Thank you!" Sydney said taking another step back and making another turn around the room.

Carmy nodded and concentrated on not melting into the floorboards.

"You're okay with this? We already spend 60+ hours together at the restaurant every week and now I'd be in your building! And literally living on top of you."

"Yeah, well, I want you to. You deserve everything you want, Syd."

"Then I'll take it! Just a warning though. If you hear someone belting out Kpop and an occasional thud, that's just my weekly one woman concert, which will be over no later than 10pm. I'm not being murdered."

Carm was no longer unable to contain the width of his smile. This girl is so cute, his body physically ached. How would he get through service tonight?

With a happy shake of his head, he replied, "Thank you, for the heads up!"

With that Sydney marched towards the door and exclaimed "Take me to your landlord!"

Carmy floated behind her.

Cue: Maxwell's "Whenever, Wherever, Whatever"

#sydcarmy #sydney x carmy #carmy x sydney #carmen berzatto #syd adamu #the bear #fanfic #fan fiction #one shot

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mostlysignssomeportents · 9 months ago

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The CHIPS Act treats the symptoms, but not the causes

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/07/farewell-mr-chips/#we-used-to-make-things

There's this great throwaway line in 1992's Sneakers, where Dan Aykroyd, playing a conspiracy-addled hacker/con-man, is feverishly telling Sydney Poitier (playing an ex-CIA spook) about a 1958 meeting Eisenhower had with aliens where Ike said, "hey, look, give us your technology, and we'll give you all the cow lips you want."

Poitier dismisses Aykroyd ("Don't listen to this man. He's certifiable"). We're meant to be on Poitier's side here, but I've always harbored some sympathy for Aykroyd in this scene.

That's because I often hear echoes of Aykroyd's theory in my own explanations of the esoteric bargains and plots that produced the world we're living in today. Of course, in my world, it's not presidents bargaining for alien technology in exchange for cow-lips – it's the world's wealthy nations bargaining to drop trade restrictions on the Global South in exchange for IP laws.

These bargains – which started as a series of bilateral and then multilateral agreements like NAFTA, and culminated in the WTO agreement of 1999 – were the most important step in the reordering of the world's economy around rent-extraction, cheap labor exploitation, and a brittle supply chain that is increasingly endangered by the polycrisis of climate and its handmaidens, like zoonotic plagues, water wars, and mass refugee migration.

Prior to the advent of "free trade," the world's rich countries fashioned debt into a whip-hand over poor, post-colonial nations. These countries had been bankrupted by their previous colonial owners, and the price of their freedom was punishing debts to the IMF and other rich-world institutions in exchange for loans to help these countries "develop."

Like all poor debtors, these countries were said to have gotten into their predicament through moral failure – they'd "lived beyond their means."

(When rich people get into debt, bankruptcy steps in to give them space to "restructure" according to their own plans. When poor people get into debt, bankruptcy strips them of nearly everything that might help them recover, brands them with a permanent scarlet letter, and subjects them to humiliating micro-management whose explicit message is that they are not competent to manage their own affairs):

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/07/hr-4193/#shoppers-choice

So the poor debtor nations were ordered to "deregulate." They had to sell off their state assets, run their central banks according to the dictates of rich-world finance authorities, and reorient their production around supplying raw materials to rich countries, who would process these materials into finished goods for export back to the poor world.

Naturally, poor countries were not allowed to erect "trade barriers" that might erode the capacity of this North-South transfer of high-margin goods, but this was not the era of free trade. It wasn't the free trade era because, while the North-South transfer was largely unrestricted, the South-North transfer was subject to tight regulation in the rich world.

In other words, poor countries were expected to export, say, raw ore to the USA and reimport high-tech goods, with low tariffs in both directions. But if a poor country processed that ore domestically and made its own finished goods, the US would block those goods at the border, slapping them with high tariffs that made them more expensive than Made-in-the-USA equivalents.

The argument for this unidirectional trade was that the US – and other rich countries – had a strategic need to maintain their manufacturing industries as a hedge against future geopolitical events (war, but also pandemics, extreme weather) that might leave the rich world unable to provide for itself. This rationale had a key advantage: it was true.

A country that manages its own central bank can create as much of its own currency as it wants, and use that money to buy anything for sale in its own currency.

This may not be crucial while global markets are operating to the country's advantage (say, while the rest of the world is "willingly" pricing its raw materials in your country's currency), but when things go wrong – war, plague, weather – a country that can't make things is at the rest of the world's mercy.

If you had to choose between being a poor post-colonial nation that couldn't supply its own technological needs except by exporting raw materials to rich countries, and being a rich country that had both domestic manufacturing capacity and a steady supply of other countries' raw materials, you would choose the second, every time.

What's not to like?

Here's what.

The problem – from the perspective of America's ultra-wealthy – was that this arrangement gave the US workforce a lot of power. As US workers unionized, they were able to extract direct concessions from their employers through collective bargaining, and they could effectively lobby for universal worker protections, including a robust welfare state – in both state and federal legislatures. The US was better off as a whole, but the richest ten percent were much poorer than they could be if only they could smash worker power.

That's where free trade comes in. Notwithstanding racist nonsense about "primitive" countries, there's no intrinsic defect that stops the global south from doing high-tech manufacturing. If the rich world's corporate leaders were given free rein to sideline America's national security in favor of their own profits, they could certainly engineer the circumstances whereby poor countries would build sophisticated factories to replace the manufacturing facilities that sat behind the north's high tariff walls.

These poor-country factories could produce goods ever bit as valuable as the rich world's shops, but without the labor, environmental and financial regulations that constrained their owners' profits. They slavered for a business environment that let them kill workers; poison the air, land and water; and cheat the tax authorities with impunity.

For this plan to work, the wealthy needed to engineer changes in both the rich world and the poor world. Obviously, they would have to get rid of the rich world's tariff walls, which made it impossible to competitively import goods made in the global south, no matter how cheaply they were made.

But free trade wasn't just about deregulation in the north – it also required a whole slew of new, extremely onerous regulations in the global south. Corporations that relocated their manufacturing to poor – but nominally sovereign – countries needed to be sure that those countries wouldn't try to replicate the American plan of becoming actually sovereign, by exerting control over the means of production within their borders.

Recall that the American Revolution was inspired in large part by fury over the requirement to ship raw materials back to Mother England and then buy them back at huge markups after they'd been processed by English workers, to the enrichment of English aristocrats. Post-colonial America created new regulations (tariffs on goods from England), and – crucially – they also deregulated.

Specifically, post-revolutionary America abolished copyrights and patents for English persons and firms. That way, American manufacturers could produce sophisticated finished goods without paying rent to England's wealthy making those goods cheaper for American buyers, and American publishers could subsidize their editions of American authors' books by publishing English authors on the cheap, without the obligation to share profits with English publishers or English writers.

The surplus produced by ignoring the patents and copyrights of the English was divided (unequally) among American capitalists, workers, and shoppers. Wealthy Americans got richer, even as they paid their workers more and charged less for their products. This incubated a made-in-the-USA edition of the industrial revolution. It was so successful that the rest of the world – especially England – began importing American goods and literature, and then American publishers and manufacturers started to lean on their government to "respect" English claims, in order to secure bilateral protections for their inventions and books in English markets.

This was good for America, but it was terrible for English manufacturers. The US – a primitive, agricultural society – "stole" their inventions until they gained so much manufacturing capacity that the English public started to prefer American goods to English ones.

This was the thing that rich-world industrialists feared about free trade. Once you build your high-tech factories in the global south, what's to stop those people from simply copying your plans – or worse, seizing your factories! – and competing with you on a global scale? Some of these countries had nominally socialist governments that claimed to explicitly elevate the public good over the interests of the wealthy. And all of these countries had the same sprinkling of sociopaths who'd gladly see a million children maimed or the land poisoned for a buck – and these "entrepreneurs" had unbeatable advantages with their countries' political classes.

For globalization to work, it wasn't enough to deregulate the rich world – capitalists also had to regulate the poor world. Specifically, they had to get the poor world to adopt "IP" laws that would force them to willingly pay rent on things they could get for free: patents and other IP, even though it was in the short-term, medium-term, and long-term interests of both the nation and its politicians and its businesspeople.

Thus, the bargain that makes me sympathetic to Dan Aykroyd: not cow lips for alien tech; but free trade for IP law. When the WTO was steaming towards passage in the late 1990s, there was (rightly) a lot of emphasis on its deregulatory provisions: weakening of labor, environmental and financial laws in the poor world, and of tariffs in the rich world.

But in hindsight, we all kind of missed the main event: the TRIPS (Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights). This actually started before the WTO treaty (it was part of the GATT, a predecessor to the WTO), but the WTO spread it to countries all over the world. Under the TRIPS, poor countries are required to honor the IP claims of rich countries, on pain of global sanction.

That was the plan: instead of paying American workers to make Apple computers, say, Apple could export the "IP" for Macs and iPhones to countries like China, and these countries would produce Apple products that were "designed in California, assembled in China." China would allow Apple to treat Chinese workers so badly that they routinely committed suicide, and would lock up or kill workers who tried to unionize. China would accept vast shipments of immortal, toxic e-waste. And China wouldn't let its entrepreneurs copy Apple's designs, be they software, schematics or trademarks.

Apple isn't the only company that pursued this strategy, but no company has executed it as successfully. It's not for nothing that Steve Jobs's hand-picked successor was Tim Cook, who oversaw the transfer of even the most exacting elements of Apple manufacturing to Chinese facilities, striking bargains with contractors like Foxconn that guaranteed that workers would be heavily – lethally! – surveilled and controlled to prevent the twin horrors of unionization and leaks.

For the first two decades of the WTO era, the most obvious problems with this arrangement was wage erosion (for American workers) and leakage (for the rich). China's "socialist" government was only too happy to help Foxconn imprison workers who demanded better wages and working conditions, but they were far more relaxed about knockoffs, be they fake iPods sold in market stalls or US trade secrets working their way into Huawei products.

These were problems for the American aristocracy, whose investments depended on China disciplining both Chinese workers and Chinese businesses. For the American people, leakage was a nothingburger. Apple's profits weren't shared with its workforce beyond the relatively small number of tech workers at its headquarters. The vast majority of Apple employees, who flogged iPhones and scrubbed the tilework in gleaming white stores across the nation, would get the same minimal (or even minimum) wage no matter how profitable Apple grew.

It wasn't until the pandemic that the other shoe dropped for the American public. The WTO arrangement – cow lips for alien technology – had produced a global system brittle supply chains composed entirely of weakest links. A pandemic, a war, a ship stuck in the Suez Canal or Houthi paramilitaries can cripple the entire system, perhaps indefinitely.

For two decades, we fought over globalization's effect on wages. We let our corporate masters trick us into thinking that China's "cheating" on IP was a problem for the average person. But the implications of globalization for American sovereignty and security were banished to the xenophobic right fringe, where they were mixed into the froth of Cold War 2.0 nonsense. The pandemic changed that, creating a coalition that is motivated by a complex and contradictory stew of racism, environmentalism, xenophobia, labor advocacy, patriotism, pragmatism, fear and hope.

Out of that stew emerged a new American political tendency, mostly associated with Bidenomics, but also claimed in various guises by the American right, through its America First wing. That tendency's most visible artifact is the CHIPS Act, through which the US government proposes to use policy and subsidies to bring high-tech manufacturing back to America's shores.

This week, the American Economic Liberties Project published "Reshoring and Restoring: CHIPS Implementation for a Competitive Semiconductor Industry," a fascinating, beautifully researched and detailed analysis of the CHIPS Act and the global high-tech manufacturing market, written by Todd Achilles, Erik Peinert and Daniel Rangel:

https://www.economicliberties.us/our-work/reshoring-and-restoring-chips-implementation-for-a-competitive-semiconductor-industry/#

Crucially, the report lays out the role that the weakening of antitrust, the dismantling of tariffs and the strengthening of IP played in the history of the current moment. The failure to enforce antitrust law allowed for monopolization at every stage of the semiconductor industry's supply-chain. The strengthening of IP and the weakening of tariffs encouraged the resulting monopolies to chase cheap labor overseas, confident that the US government would punish host countries that allowed their domestic entrepreneurs to use American designs without permission.

The result is a financialized, "capital light" semiconductor industry that has put all its eggs in one basket. For the most advanced chips ("leading-edge logic"), production works like this: American firms design a chip and send the design to Taiwan where TSMC foundry turns it into a chip. The chip is then shipped to one of a small number of companies in the poor world where they are assembled, packaged and tested (AMP) and sent to China to be integrated into a product.

Obsolete foundries get a second life in the commodity chip ("mature-node chips") market – these are the cheap chips that are shoveled into our cars and appliances and industrial systems.

Both of these systems are fundamentally broken. The advanced, "leading-edge" chips rely on geopolitically uncertain, heavily concentrated foundries. These foundries can be fully captured by their customers – as when Apple prepurchases the entire production capacity of the most advanced chips, denying both domestic and offshore competitors access to the newest computation.

Meanwhile, the less powerful, "mature node" chips command minuscule margins, and are often dumped into the market below cost, thanks to subsidies from countries hoping to protect their corner of the high-tech sector. This makes investment in low-power chips uncertain, leading to wild swings in cost, quality and availability of these workhorse chips.

The leading-edge chipmakers – Nvidia, Broadcom, Qualcomm, AMD, etc – have fully captured their markets. They like the status quo, and the CHIPS Act won't convince them to invest in onshore production. Why would they?

2022 was Broadcom's best year ever, not in spite of its supply-chain problems, but because of them. Those problems let Broadcom raise prices for a captive audience of customers, who the company strong-armed into exclusivity deals that ensured they had nowhere to turn. Qualcomm also profited handsomely from shortages, because its customers end up paying Qualcomm no matter where they buy, thanks to Qualcomm ensuring that its patents are integrated into global 4G and 5G standards.

That means that all standards-conforming products generate royalties for Qualcomm, and it also means that Qualcomm can decide which companies are allowed to compete with it, and which ones will be denied licenses to its patents. Both companies are under orders from the FTC to cut this out, and both companies ignore the FTC.

The brittleness of mature-node and leading-edge chips is not inevitable. Advanced memory chips (DRAM) roughly comparable in complexity to leading-edge chips, while analog-to-digital chips are as easily commodified as mature-node chips, and yet each has a robust and competitive supply chain, with both onshore and offshore producers. In contrast with leading-edge manufacturers (who have been visibly indifferent to the CHIPS incentives), memory chip manufacturers responded to the CHIPS Act by committing hundreds of billions of dollars to new on-shore production facilities.

Intel is a curious case: in a world of fabless leading-edge manufacturers, Intel stands out for making its own chips. But Intel is in a lot of trouble. Its advanced manufacturing plans keep foundering on cost overruns and delays. The company keeps losing money. But until recently, its management kept handing its shareholders billions in dividends and buybacks – a sign that Intel bosses assume that the US public will bail out its "national champion." It's not clear whether the CHIPS Act can save Intel, or whether financialization will continue to hollow out a once-dominant pioneer.

The CHIPS Act won't undo the concentration – and financialization – of the semiconductor industry. The industry has been awash in cheap money since the 2008 bailouts, and in just the past five years, US semiconductor monopolists have paid out $239b to shareholders in buybacks and dividends, enough to fund the CHIPS Act five times over. If you include Apple in that figure, the amount US corporations spent on shareholder returns instead of investing in capacity rises to $698b. Apple doesn't want a competitive market for chips. If Apple builds its own foundry, that just frees up capacity at TSMC that its competitors can use to improve their products.

The report has an enormous amount of accessible, well-organized detail on these markets, and it makes a set of key recommendations for improving the CHIPS Act and passing related legislation to ensure that the US can once again make its own microchips. These run a gamut from funding four new onshore foundries to requiring companies receiving CHIPS Act money to "dual-source" their foundries. They call for NIST and the CPO to ensure open licensing of key patents, and for aggressive policing of anti-dumping rules for cheap chips. They also seek a new law creating an "American Semiconductor Supply Chain Resiliency Fee" – a tariff on chips made offshore.

Fundamentally, these recommendations seek to end the outsourcing made possible by restrictive IP regimes, to undercut Wall Street's power to demand savings from offshoring, and to smash the market power of companies like Apple that make the brittleness of chip manufacturing into a feature, rather than a bug. This would include a return to previous antitrust rules, which limited companies' ability to leverage patents into standards, and to previous IP rules, which limited exclusive rights chip topography and design ("mask rights").

All of this will is likely to remove the constraints that stop poor countries from doing to America the same things that postcolonial America did to England – that is, it will usher in an era in which lots of countries make their own chips and other high-tech goods without paying rent to American companies. This is good! It's good for poor countries, who will have more autonomy to control their own technical destiny. It's also good for the world, creating resiliency in the high-tech manufacturing sector that we'll need as the polycrisis overwhelms various places with fire and flood and disease and war. Electrifying, solarizing and adapting the world for climate resilience is fundamentally incompatible with a brittle, highly concentrated tech sector.

Pluralizing high-tech production will make America less vulnerable to the gamesmanship of other countries – and it will also make the rest of the world less vulnerable to American bullying. As Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman describe so beautifully in their 2023 book Underground Empire, the American political establishment is keenly aware of how its chokepoints over global finance and manufacturing can be leveraged to advantage the US at the rest of the world's expense:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/10/weaponized-interdependence/#the-other-swifties

Look, I know that Eisenhower didn't trade cow-lips for alien technology – but our political and commercial elites really did trade national resiliency away for IP laws, and it's a bargain that screwed everyone, except the one percenters whose power and wealth have metastasized into a deadly cancer that threatens the country and the planet.

Image: Mickael Courtiade (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/197739384@N07/52703936652/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

#pluralistic #chips act #ip #monopolies #antitrust #national security #industrial policy #american economic liberties project #tmsc #leading-edge #intel #mature node #lagging edge #foundries #fabless

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uncharismatic-fauna · 7 months ago

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A Night Out with the Eastern Firefly

The eastern firefly, or North American firefly (Photinus pyralis), is a popular sight throughout the United States and southern Canada east of the Rocky Mountains. They are commonly associated with the beginning of summer, as they spend the winter hibernating underground and emerge only when the weather begins to warm. They are commonly seen in deciduous forests, grasslands, gardens, and backyards.

Contrary to their name, the eastern firefly is actually a type of beetle with well-developed wings. Adults are quite small, only 10-14 mm (0.39-0.55 in) long. They have a yellow and red head and a dark brown body with a narrow yellow stripe marking the outline of the wing casings. The main difference between the two sexes is the length of their wings; males have longer wings and are capable of flight, while females have shorter, less functional wings. Both sexes have a special organ on the end of their abdomens that produce light; however, the female's light tends to be weaker. The North American firefly produces its light by combining oxygen with a chemical called luciferin; the resulting chemical reaction gives off a glow which is amplified by special reflective cells in the firefly's abdomen.

Like all fireflies, P. pyralis uses its light producing ability to attract a mate. Males flash only while flying, in bursts about 6 seconds apart. Once a female signals her interest-- also by flashing-- the male lands near her and offers her a package called a spermatophore made of sperm, protein, and nutrients. If the female accepts, she inseminates herself and buries the rest of the package with her clutch of about 500 eggs. These eggs, which glow slightly during development, hatch about 4 weeks after being laid, and the larvae feed on the remains of the nutrient-rich spermatophore. The larvae can take one or two years to develop, and spend most of their time underground or near sources of fresh water like lakes and streams. Once the larva pupates and develops into an adult firefly, they only live in this stage for about a month before dying.

Both larva and adult eastern fireflies are predators, feeding on other insects like worms, snails, and other fireflies. However, larva spend almost all their time hunting for food, while adults spend the majority of their time seeking out a mate. To avoid predation, P. pyralis can emit foul-smelling odors and excretion of sticky substances; they also emit a chemical called lucibufagin that repells spiders. However, other species of fireflies will actually mimic the light patterns of the eastern firefly in order to predate upon them.

Conservation status: The North American firefly is currently considered Least Concern by the IUCN. However, they are threatened by light pollution, pesticides, and habitat loss.

Photos

Judy Gallagher

Katja Shultz

Sydney Penner via iNaturalist

#eastern firefly #north american firefly #Coleoptera #Lampyridae #rover fireflies #fireflies #beetles #insects #arthropods #deciduous forests #deciduous forest arthropods #grasslands #grassland arthropods #urban fauna #urban arthropods #animal facts #biology #zoology #ecology

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digenerate-trash · 7 months ago

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Gonna call this the "forgotten" AU.

Though some kind of military force dolvile is fucked. Either by their own goverment or something else. It doesn't really matter because the town doesn't actually know what's happened. No one knows why they're targeted but in an instant the world is changed.

Suspiciously there's no human military. It's all turrets and disembodied attacks-

But all that matters is that you need to survive!! And luckily for you everyone wants you in their faction. So you have options.

Whitney. Probobly has the biggest faction. He demands absoloutle loyalty. Weather your a scout or part of the inner circle. Whitney doesn't hesitate to throw people off the roof if they don't comply. He's not the most friendly leader. But he's a strong one. And even though people in his group fail to get a lot of food and water- everyone is protected. Your safe from other students in whitneys faction.

Robin is probobly the second biggest (but there's a lot of in and out) everyone is welcome here and Robin has control of the cafeteria and the water main. He was one of the only people who grabbed keys when the chaos started. This means that everyone in his faction has easy acsess to water. And Robin isn't afraid of sharing. He even trades water for books and other forms of entertainment from sydneys faction. Robin also isn't opposed to sharing with whitney. But whitney keeps threatening to take over the water supply. And Robin thinks that's good for no one. Still whitney sends scouts to "steal" water from Robin. But Robin is still happy to share. His main priority is making sure people stay calm. He firmly believes that they'll be rescued. But they need to be alive for that to happen.

Sydneys cult faction is the smallest. And sydney is rarely seen. People in his faction are relatively healthy. Though no one knows why. When the members leave the library for supplies they're mute. Students who used to be lively and happy people now refusing to talk. Memberß also seem to be marked up. Writing on their arms and faces. Joining sydneys group is rumored to be harsh. And some members are never seen again.

Kylar is a Rouge. But he's happy to accommodate. Rouges are allowed to do what they want. Though they're only welcome in Robin's territory and the unclaimed parts of the school. Rouges will sometimes get paid in food by Whitney to venture into more dangerous areas of the school and report back. Or sometimes even Sydney's territory. Though usually Rouges are seen as pretty expendable.

#dol #whitney the bully #sydney the faithful #kylar the loner #robin the orphan #forgotten au

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hd-junglebook · 9 months ago

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Neutral

Part 1 : In the Shadow of Greatness

word count - 3,813

You stand in your mother's room, the familiar surroundings offering little comfort as you contemplate your future. Your eyes roaming over the family mementos lining the shelves - relics of a simpler past.

The weight of her expectations hangs heavy in the air, a suffocating reminder of the greatness you're expected to live up to.

You're tempted to change your mind, to refuse the mission and defy your mother's wishes. But before you can voice your doubts, she interrupts your thoughts with a sharp command.

"You have no choice but to go," she declares, her voice leaving no room for argument. "Our people need you. You must do this for them."

Her words strike a chord deep within you, stirring a sense of duty that you can't ignore. Despite your reservations, you know she's right. You may have doubts, but you also have a responsibility to your mother.

You drew in a shaky breath, gathering what courage was left in your body. "I just don't know if I'm ready for this..."

Before she can respond, the door swings open, and a guard enters the room, their presence a reminder of the reality of your situation.

"It's time," they announce, their voice devoid of emotion.

With a heavy heart, you follow the guard out of the room, your mother trailing behind you. As you make your way through the corridors of the Ark, you can't help but feel a sense of finality settling over you.

Outside the drop ship, the guard motions for you to board, their expression unreadable. You hesitate for a moment, a thousand thoughts racing through your mind.

A flicker of movement catches your eye, and you turn just in time to see a curly-haired guard slip onto the drop ship in front of you, but before you can react, they vanish into the shadows of the ship's interior.

Ignoring the nagging feeling in the pit of your stomach, you push the unsettling sight to the back of your mind as you glance back at your mother, her eyes filled with determination, you know there's no turning back.

With a resigned sigh, you step onto the drop ship.

You may be Diana Sydney's daughter, but you're also so much more. You vow to make your mark on the world, to carve out a legacy of your own, one that shines as brightly as the stars themselves.

---

The drop ship shuddered as you and the other prisoners were herded aboard. The floor trembled beneath your feet as you were strapped into your seat, the metallic clang of restraints echoing through the cramped compartment. You were the last one to board the ship.

The hatch closing behind the guard echoing in the cramped space. You found yourself seated beside Clarke and Wells, their expressions mirroring your own mix of apprehension and determination.

Chancellor Jaha's voice boomed over the intercom, his words heavy with gravitas as he addressed the assembled prisoners.

"Prisoners of The Ark, hear me now. You've been given a second chance, and as your Chancellor, it is my hope that you see this as not just a chance for you, but a chance for all of us, indeed for mankind itself.," he declared, his tone solemn.

“We have no idea what is waiting for you down there If the odds of survival were better, we would've sent others. Frankly, we're sending you because your crimes have made you expendable."

The significance of his words hung heavy in the air as the drop ship's engines roared to life, drowning out any further explanation. With a lurch, the ship lifted off from the Ark, hurtling towards the distant planet below.

Clarke leaned in closer, her eyes wide with disbelief. "Return to Earth? But how?"

Jaha's voice swept over the group once more. " The drop site has been chosen carefully. Before the last war, Mount Weather was a military base built within a mountain. It was to be stocked with enough non-perishables to sustain three hundred people for up to two years. But make no mistake, this is a one-way trip. There will be no return journey."

The turbulence of re-entry rattled the shuttle around you, sending a jolt of fear through your body. Shocks from the atmosphere shook through the vessel as it descended through Earth's atmosphere, jostling you and your fellow prisoners in your seats.

Clarke gripped the armrests tightly, her knuckles white with tension, while Wells tried to maintain a facade of calm despite the worry etched into his features.

Abruptly Wells broke the silence speaking to Clarke as the ship continued its descent, “Clarke, there's something I have to tell you. I'm sorry I got your father arrested.”

Just as turbulence around you reached its peak, Clarke's voice cut through the ship, sharp and accusing. "Don't you talk about my father, Wells!" she spat, her eyes blazing with anger. "If it weren't for you, my father would still be alive!"

Wells flinched at her words, his expression pained. "Please, I can't die knowing that you hate me," he shot back, his voice tinged with regret. "You know that."

Their argument filled the compartment, adding to the already palpable discomfort as the drop ship hurtled towards its destination.

Despite the chaos around you, you couldn't shake the feeling that this was only the beginning of the challenges you would face on Earth.

Wells reached out and squeezed your hand, his eyes locking with yours in silent reassurance. "We can do this," he said, his voice steady despite the chaos around you.

And as the drop ship hurtled towards the surface of Earth, you couldn't help but wonder what awaited you below.

With a final jolt that sent a shockwave through your body, the drop ship touched down on the planet's surface, kicking up a cloud of dirt that enveloped the vessel in the patch valley on earth.

---

**On the Ark**

The sterile walls of your mother's room felt suffocating as she laid out her plan, her expression grave and determined. She spoke with a fervent intensity, her eyes shining with determination as she sat in front of you.

"Our society is facing a crisis unlike any we have seen before,” she began, her voice echoing off the metal walls of the cramped quarters. "The Ark can't sustain us much longer. We need to find a solution, and we need to find it now."

You listened in silence, your heart pounding in your chest as you tried to comprehend the magnitude of what she was proposing. To be sent to Earth, the very planet that had been deemed uninhabitable for generations, was a death sentence. And yet, there was a glimmer of hope in your mother's eyes,

“We have no choice," she Diana declared, her steely gaze boring into yours. "You must be the one to lead this mission. To sacrifice yourself for the greater good."

You shook your head weakly, "You're asking too much. I can't...”

“I know it's a lot to ask, but you are the only one who can do this for me. You must get arrested and be sent to Earth.”

Her words hung heavy in the air, and you felt the weight of your mother's expectations bearing down on you. To be the one to leave the safety of the Ark, to journey to Earth.

“I can't”

She gripped your shoulders firmly , her nails digging into your shoulders. “You can, and you will. Think of the legacy you will leave behind, the hero who saved humanity from extinction.”

You jerked away from her. "I don't care about glory, Mom! I care about..." you faltered, emotions choking your voice.

Her eyes darkened. “About what y/n? About your own selfish desires? This is bigger than you. This is about the future of our people, about ensuring that generations to come will have a chance to live.”

You stared at the floor, despair and frustration simmering within your body. "There must be another way..."

"There is no other way," she interjected harshly. "Either you accept this mission, or you condemn us all to oblivion."

You finally met her piercing gaze again, anger inside your chest. "And if I refuse? What then? Will you cast your only daughter out like garbage?"

“Refusal is not an option y/n.” she snapped at you, struck by your defiance.

"But why me?" you finally managed to ask, your voice barely above a whisper.

Diana's expression softened, a mixture of pride and sadness crossing her features. "Because you're the bravest person I know," she replied, her voice catching in her throat.

"Because you have the strength and the intelligence to succeed where others have failed.” She lifted your chin gently. “Because... because I believe in you."

Her words stirred something deep within your soul. Despite the fear and uncertainty gnawing at your insides, you knew that your mother was right.

“You don't have a choice, my dear. You are my daughter, and you will do as I say. You will accept this mission, or you will be condemning our family to death.”

"I'll do it," you said, your voice steady despite the turmoil raging inside you. "I'll go to Earth."

Diana reached out, taking your hand in hers, her grip tight with determination. "Thank you, my child," she said, her voice trembling with emotion. "You're the best hope we have."

Squaring your jaw, you gave her a single firm nod.

---

Consciousness slowly seeps back into your mind, you find yourself disoriented, the lingering effects of the drop ship's bumpy descent still echoing in your senses.

Blinking away the haze, you realize you're still strapped into your seat, the unfamiliar restraints digging into your skin.

Pushing yourself upright, you glance around the compartment, noting the absence of your fellow travelers. Panic grips your chest as you realize they must have already disembarked, leaving you behind.

With a sense of urgency, you unstrap yourself and stumble to your feet, swaying slightly as you brace yourself against the nearest surface. The drop ship is eerily quiet now, the only sound the faint hum of the engines as they slowly wind down.

Taking a deep breath to steady yourself, you make your way to the ladder that leads down to the first floor. The sound of your rings clanging off the metal of the bars.

You jump off the ladder searching the crowd for any familiar faces when your eyes catch sight of someone unexpected—a guard stationed at the door, his gaze fixed on the approaching delinquents.

Despite the disorder unfolding around him, he remains calm and composed, a striking figure amidst the turmoil.

For a moment, time seems to stand still as you lock eyes with the guard, his presence commanding your attention in a way you can't quite explain. There's something magnetic about him, something that draws you in despite never seeing him.

You begin to push through the crowd, your eyes catch sight of the guard speaking to a raven-haired girl by the doors. Their exchange is terse, tension simmering just beneath the surface as they trade words.

Clarke's voice rang out in warning from her place in the crowd, her concern evident as she spoke. "No, we can’t just open the doors.” She continues, “stop! The air could be toxic."

The guard dismissed her concerns breezily, his confidence unwavering, “If the air is toxic, we’re all dead anyway.”

“Do you mind? I haven’t seen my brother in a year.” The raven-haired girl snaps back at Clarke, her words sharp with frustration

A ripple of dissent passes through the crowd as the delinquents anonymously challenge her claim, “No one has a brother!”

“That’s Octavia Blake, the girl they found hidden in the floor," someone explained.

The pressure threatens to escalate as the delinquents continue to pitch in, but the guard intervenes, his authoritative voice cutting through the chaos,

“Octavia. Octavia no. Let’s give them something else to remember you by,” he says as he smiles at his younger sister.

Reluctantly, the raven-haired girl nods, her defiance tempered by the realization that she has little choice but to comply. “Yeah, like what?” she bites back.

The guard's voice swelled with pride. “Like being the first person on the ground in a hundred years.”

Octavia considered this for a second, the gears turning in her head as she headed to the door with a determined stride, her hand outstretched as she prepares to step onto the unknown surface below.

The crowd watches in silence, holding their breath, the girl's boots makes contact with the ground. For a moment, nothing happens, the world holding its breath in anticipation.

“We’re back bitches!” Octavia exclaims, sending a ripple of relief through the crowd.

You're greeted by the sight of your fellow delinquents racing ahead as your feet touch solid ground, their figures disappearing into the distance.

---

You and Wells climb down from the top of the dropship while you both discuss the concerning state of the wires atop the Ark, Clarke approaches with urgency etched into her features.

“We got problems. The communications system is dead. We went to the roof. A dozen panels are missing. Heat fried the wires.” You remark, voice tinged with worry.

Clarke wastes no time in redirecting the focus to their immediate priority. "Well, all that matters right now is getting to Mount Weather," she asserts, her voice resolute as she gestures to the map spread out before them.

"See? Look. This is us. This is where we need to get to if we want to survive."

You exchange a glance with Wells, a knot of worry tightening in your stomach at Clarke's words.

Wells, though concerned about the malfunctioning communications system, is quick to acknowledge the urgency of Clarke's point. "Where'd you learn to do that? Your father," he muses.

Jasper, ever the optimist, interjects with a lighthearted remark, eager to lighten the mood despite the gravity of their situation. "Ah, cool, a map. They got a bar in this town? I'll buy you a beer," he quips, a hint of humor in his voice.

"It's not about beers, Jasper," you say with a wry smile, trying to inject some levity into the conversation. "It's about survival." You admired his positive attitude in such unfortunate circumstances.

Wells, however, remains focused on the task at hand, his expression serious as he turns back to Clarke. "You mind?" he asks, seeking permission to take a closer look at the map and join in the planning for their journey to Mount Weather.

Before you can respond, Bellamy Blake inserts himself into the conversation with his characteristic rudeness. "We're on the ground. That not good enough for you?" he challenges, his tone dripping with skepticism.

Wells, undeterred by Bellamy's hostility, presses on. "We need to find Mount Weather. You heard my father's message. That has to be our first priority."

Clarke, however, refuses to be drawn into their petty squabbles, ending their fight.

"Do you think we care who's in charge?" she retorts, her voice cutting through the tension. "We need to get to Mount Weather because the longer we wait, the hungrier we'll get and the harder this'll be."

Bellamy, ever the provocateur, offers his own suggestion with a sneer. "I got a better idea. You three go, find it for us. Let the privileged do the hard work for a change."

Without a second thought, you step forward, closing the distance between you and Bellamy until you're mere inches from his face.

"Privileged? You think we're privileged?" you shoot back, your voice sharp with indignation. "We're all in this together, Bellamy. Every single one of us has to do our part if we want to survive."

Bellamy's sneer only fuels your anger. "We're alive. That’s what matters, that not good enough for you?" he retorts, his tone dripping with disdain.

"You have a better idea, Bellamy? Or are you just too afraid to get your hands dirty?" you retort, your voice laced with equal parts anger and defiance.

The tension between you crackles like electricity, the heat of your argument fueling an unexpected and undeniable attraction.

In spite of the gravity of your situation, there's a palpable energy between you that neither of you can ignore.

Bellamy's jaw tightens, his gaze challenging. "You think you know what's necessary? You think you're the one in charge here?" he scoffs.

Before your argument can escalate further, a voice interrupts from above. "Enough!" Finn's commanding tone cuts off your voice as he jumps down from the dropship, his presence immediately shifting the dynamic.

Clarke steps in, her voice firm. "We don't have time for this, Bellamy. Finn's y/n's right. We need to focus on finding Mount Weather."

Wells nods in agreement. "Let's get moving. The longer we wait, the harder this'll be."

Jasper, ever the optimist, chimes in. "I'm with you guys. Let's find that place and get some answers."

---

Your group ventured deeper into the unfamiliar woods, you couldn't help but feel a sense of awe at the sheer vastness of nature surrounding you.

Towering trees stretched their branches towards the sky, their leaves filtering the sunlight to create dappled patterns on the forest floor. The air was thick with the scent of earth and pine, and the sounds of birdsong and rustling leaves filled your ears.

Clarke led the way, her eyes scanning the underbrush for any signs of danger as finn followed closely behind. Jasper and Octavia walked side by side, their laughter and banter breaking the quiet of the forest.

"You know, I've never seen anything like this," you remark, taking in the scenery with wide eyes. "It's like something out of a storybook."

Monty nods in agreement, his eyes sparkling with excitement. "It's amazing, isn't it? I never thought I'd get to see something like this."

As you continue along the winding path, you stumble upon a picturesque lake nestled among the trees. Its surface glimmered in the sunlight, inviting and serene.

Octavia's eyes light up at the sight, and before anyone can stop her, she's stripping off her clothes and diving into the cool, clear water.

“Octavia what the hell are you doing?”

You watch in awe as Octavia swims gracefully through the lake, her movements fluid and effortless. She's like a mermaid, ethereal and otherworldly in her beauty.

The water around her glistened in the sunlight as she continued to glide in the Lake.

But your admiration is short-lived as a sudden commotion erupts from the water. “Oh… Octavia, get out of the water! Get out of the water now!” Jasper screams from beside you, you run towards the edge contemplating jumping in. Octavia's joyful laughter turns to screams of terror as a snake slithers out from the underbrush and strikes at her.

Without hesitation, Jasper springs into action, leaping down the rocks to reach Octavia's side. You watch in horror as he runs to save Octavia from its grasp.

"Jasper, be careful!" you shout, your heart pounding in your chest as you scramble down the rocks to join them.

Jasper focused solely on the task at hand, his face a mask of determination. With a final, desperate push, the group manages to push a boulder into the other side of the clear water, sending the serpent away from Octavia, it’s large figure slithering back into the water.

You rush to Octavia's side, helping Jasper pull her out of the lake and checking her for injuries. She's shaken but barely harmed, thanks to Jasper's quick thinking and bravery.

"Thank you, Jasper," Octavia says, her voice trembling with emotion. "You saved my life."

Jasper smiles weakly, his breath coming in ragged gasps. "Just doing what anyone would do," he replies, his gaze never leaving Octavia's face.

"Note to self, next time, save the girl."

---

** On the Ark**

The air in your room on the Ark feels heavy with tension as you watch your mother enter. Without a word, she fixates on you with a piercing intensity that sent a shiver down your spine.

Diana's expression is dark as she strides towards you, her movements calculated and precise.

There's a fire in her eyes, a dangerous spark that sends a shiver down your spine. "Well, well, well. Look what we have here. The daughter who thinks she knows better than her own mother."

"Mom, what's wrong? Why are you here?"

"Why am I here? Why do you think y/n? Because of you, that's why."

You recoiled at the venom in her words, the accusation hanging heavy in the air between you. "Because of me? What do you mean?"

"Don't play dumb with me. You know exactly what I'm talking about. It's because of you that I've been removed from the council." She continues.

“It's because of your disobedience, your insolence, that I've been removed from the Council."

"Mom, please, you know I would never intentionally hurt you," you plead, your voice trembling with emotion. "I didn't mean for any of this to happen."

Her voice rises with each word, a crescendo of rage and frustration that threatens to consume you whole. You shrink back, feeling like a small, insignificant creature in the face of her wrath.

"Oh, I don't want to hear your pathetic excuses. You think you're so clever, so independent, but you're nothing but a fool. A foolish child who thinks she knows better than her own mother."

You feel the sting of tears prickling at the corners of your eyes, but you refuse to let them fall. You refuse to give her the satisfaction of seeing you break.

“You've always resented me, haven't you? Resented the fact that. I'm more powerful, more influential than you could ever hope to be." Her words cut through the silence like a knife, each syllable dripping with scorn and resentment.

"That's not true!” You feel frustration and anger bubbling up inside you. "I'm not responsible for your mistakes, Mom. You brought this upon yourself."

"Don't make me laugh. You've always been jealous of me, jealous of my success, my power. And now you've finally gotten what you wanted, haven't you? You've finally managed to bring me down. Just like your father."

The mention of your father's name sends a pang of sadness through you as Diana's jaw clenches, her fists tightening at her sides. "You've always been so quick to shift the blame onto others. "

Her accusations hung in the air, poisoning the space between you as you struggled to find the words to defend yourself.

"He would never have wanted things to end up like this," you retort, your voice tinged with sorrow.

Diana's expression softens for a moment, a flicker of regret crossing her features. But then, just as quickly, it's replaced by a steely resolve. "It doesn't matter now.”

---

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iinsertblognamee · 1 year ago

Text

it wasn't meant to go like this

summary ― a split second and your world comes crashing down

pairing ― sam kerr x reader

warning/s ― fluff, angst?, injury

masterlist

The 2011/2012 Women’s A-League was a promising year, Caitlin and you put on the blue jersey again. The season went on, Sydney FC taking on win after win.

Sam had come to watch your game in Newcastle, the weather was a little rough for this time of year but the game continued. The grass had soft patches throughout the whole field, rain from the night before not helping at all.

It was one wrong move and you were down, the pain rippled through your ankle as you fell to the ground. You vividly hear the blowing of the whistle, and teammates surrounding you as you let out a groan.

You knew long before the medics confirmed. You’d done it bad. The official report said you had a grade three lateral sprain in your ankle - a complete tear of the muscles. That was your season over.

They carried you off the field, teammates clapping you off the field as the medics continued to work on your ankle. The pain was only getting worse, the shock wearing off as tears spilled. It doesn’t take long for you to be placed in the medical room, Sam joining soon after.

She held your hand as they wrapped you up, explaining your rest period as well as getting you in contact with the team physio. They mentioned surgery but explained that they wanted to keep that as the last resort.

Sam kept you grounded throughout it all. Rubbing her hands up and down your back to keep you relaxed, talking about anything and everything under the sun to get your attention off the pain - and it worked. She even managed to get a smile and some giggles.

The following weeks were hard, you were constantly in pain. You weren’t sleeping well, your ankle wasn’t getting better as fast as you had hoped. Putting a damper on your recovery. Once the swelling had gone down you had been approved for air travel, taking the first plane back home to Perth.

Like many times before your families were standing there with ‘Welcome Home’ posters and balloons. Sam rolled both your suitcases towards your families as you hobbled over with your crutches.

Hugs and kisses were given all around, Sam’s sister taking the bags off her so she could help you through the airport and towards the cars. As much as you wanted to be able to do it all by yourself, you knew that extra support would be needed.

Physio appointments were booked within the week, and your mum, Roxanne and Sam shared the load of getting you to and from. It got worse before it got better. You were so overly tired that you became snapping, Sam receiving the brunt of it.

Fights were becoming a normal occurrence and on multiple occasions either you or Sam would stomp away. The fighting was pointless, arguments about who used the last bit of butter and where did you put my jumper? becoming a constant in your lives. It was pathetic but both of you were too stubborn to admit to being wrong.

Your most recent fight had been about you taking your painkillers, you had been refusing to take them the past few days because you believed you didn’t need them anymore. You knew the faster you were off the painkillers the faster you were to recovering and getting back on the field. Sam, on the other hand, knew you were lying straight through your teeth. She saw the way you would wince every time you put a little bit of pressure on your ankle, she heard you crying at night trying not to wake her up.

Sam had left with the front door slamming behind her, you watched through the front window as she walked across the street to her parent's house. You let out a scoff as you shook your head. If she wanted to throw a fit you’d much rather she do it in her own house, not yours.

You stay seated on the couch, the TV playing in the background as you played on your phone, temple run your new favourite game (thanks to Caitlin). An hour went by, and your legs started to cramp from staying in one place for too long. You felt around from your crutches, your eyes moving around the room to see they were leaning up against the dining table.

An annoyed groan leaves your lips, the distance way too far for you to make it. You turn your attention back to your phone, switching to another game to keep your mind off the cramps.

It worked for twenty minutes, but the cramping was now a dull ache. You looked up at your crutches once again, your brain trying to work out how exactly you were going to get from here to there without injuring yourself further.

Your best option was to get up and go as fast as you could, hoping that the speed would cancel out the fact that you would be using your ankle. Giving yourself a countdown, taking a deep breath before you pull yourself up from the couch. You take one step and then another, the shooting pain through your ankle winds you for a second but you’re determined. You take a second step, placing your bad ankle down once again. You think you have it, a cheer almost leaving your lips before you feel the muscle tighten before it snaps.

The scream leaves your lips before you hit the ground, tears streaming down your face as you lay on the floor. You don’t attempt to move, the pain taking over any attempt to get yourself back up again.

You don’t know how long you lay there, tears streaming down your face. You know you’ve done more damage. You can already hear the physio telling you we’re back to square one, you’re even further away from getting back on the pitch.

Outcome after outcome rumbles in your mind, the thought that you might have fucked it up so bad that you can never play again grows and grows.

You miss the sound of the front door opening again, as well as the bouquet of flowers Sam had bought as an apology hitting the ground as she lets out a scream. She runs towards you, her knees hitting the ground as she grabs your face making you look at her.

“Sam?” you cry out, grabbing onto her arm. The tears don’t stop as she runs her hand over your hair attempting to calm you down. “Sam, I hurt it. I made it worse”

You choked on more tears, closing your eyes as you brought your hands over your face. You can feel her checking over your body, you know her attention is purely focused on your ankle.

She gets herself comfortable next to you, her hand never leaving your hair as she pulls out her phone, the ringing tone enough for you to fall away from your face.

“Who are you calling” You hiccup out, watching Sam as she brings the phone to her ear.

“Your physio, we need him to look over you to see if there’s more damage or not” She doesn’t sound angry as she explains it to you, she uses her hand on your hair to bring your hand to her lips, kissing each knuckle.

“Hi, I’m Sam Kerr calling on behalf of Y/N L/N”

The physio came within the hour, and with the help of Sam, they moved you to your bed, as he looked your ankle over. You hissed as he pressed in, your hand gripped with Sam’s. After his assessments, you wait for the bad news. You wait for the ‘I’m sorry but you’re never going to play again’ but instead he gives you a smile.

“Everything seems okay, no further damage from what I can tell, but I’m more than happy to do another assessment in a few days once the swelling has come down again.”

“Wait. It’s okay?”

He lets out a small laugh as he nods his head “I think you scared yourself more than any damage you caused. It’s just a stress fracture from using it at such a high level after so long of not using it at all. Your foot just wasn’t ready for that much pressure quite yet. I reckon though in a week or two, with your exercises we might be able to take one of the crutches away”

You cry again, Sam pulling you into a hug as she kisses your forehead.

It was going to be okay.

You get the all-clear to play in March.

Your first goal since the injury equals Matilda's tie with New Zealand in a friendly match.

#sam kerr x reader #sam kerr imagines #sam kerr imagine #woso imagine #woso imagines #woso x reader

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