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xwing-baby · 4 years ago

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The Guide: Chapter 1/? (Ezra x f!Reader)

gif from @spectroscopes

word count: 5.2k

chapter warnings: reluctant saviour to lovers, injury to reader, one mention of rape, little angst, world building :)

summary: The Guide to Everything Ever is expanding, you are sent out to the furthest reaches of Nowhere to catalogue the planets there. What should have been a quick research mission quickly turns to disaster when you crash on a small forest moon. Injured, with no means of communication, you have to rely on the good will of a mysterious stranger...

a/n: first ever Ezra fic lets gooo!! i am super hyped for this i hope you all enjoy it as much as i do <3

masterlist // asks are always open :)

While The Guide to Everything Ever did cover everything ever, it was a little misleading in the boundaries of everything. History was no issue, there was even a large section of the book on prophecy, millions of consequences mapped out on a fold out flow chart. No, the issue was with physical boundaries of everything.

A long time ago the boundaries of the civilised universe were drawn up. From Eden to Xion-5, trillions of stars and quadrillions of planets all included inside the red line separating us from the somehow even more vast expanse of Nothing. There was nothing in Nothing, that much was well known. That was until a group of explorers did what explorers do and found Something. Something in Nothing makes Nothing impossible so the leaders of this great universe came together and decided The Guide to Everything Ever had to include this new Something in their Everything.

That is where you come in.

The Guide to Everything Ever has always relied on first-hand experience. The first edition was a disaster. It only contained the things everybody knew: how to fold a bedsheet and how to get your dog to not hump the postman. The only vaguely interesting part of the Guide was the planetary comments. Even those could send the most interested scientist to sleep! They tried using robots for the first edition, a mere collection of data from far away planets. This was not successful and The Guide only sold four copies.

The next edition was more ambitious. The editors worked out people were a lot more interested in different planets than they were in barbarian fortifications but they did not want to read reams of boring data from a robot called Steve. They wanted a real Steve to give his experience on these new planets. Honest, often humorous, and yet entirely educational extracts of missions across the stars. It didn’t matter that space travel was accessible to everyone. It saved everyone a lot of time waiting in those cold and boring shuttles to get from one side of the universe to another. They could sit in the comfort of their own homes and learn about the man-sized carnivorous plants of Ereta, the beautiful fabrics created on Lii, or which drinks to avoid if you ever find yourself in a Beetjing bar.

The Guide was a success from that point onwards and expanded each year. Soon the job of researcher became a coveted occupation. You were lucky to get into the academy. Only ten new researchers were added each century. You worked your entire life to get in and it paid off, you were off on your first mission into the furthest reaches of Nothing to report back on the wild ‘verse that filled it.

A long time ago space travel was thought of as the most exciting thing anyone could ever do. It was for a few decades but two centuries later it was commonplace. A lot like the London Underground, you just stuck your headphones on and let that distract you until you reached your far more interesting destination.

For your trip you had chosen to watch Anzarch Hospital. A rather cheesy Martian holovid show, it had been going for years. You were on season 85, with only ten episodes left until you were entirely caught up ready for the season finale which was due to air when you returned from this trip. You would rather be at home watching the episodes but this trip to the end of the line was necessary. It wouldn’t take long, a few rotations at least and then you could go to Annie’s party and watch everyone’s favourite doctor finally find out who killed her robot nurse wife.

Nobody ever said Martian holovids were high class, but they were fun.

The computer interrupted your binge, alerting you with a ding that you were within range of your destination and would be stepping out of hyperspace. You pressed a few buttons, accepted the action, and went back to the episode.

It wasn’t until a few moments later when the lower pitch dong did not sound to let you know you had dropped out. Confused, you switched off the holovid and moved back to the cockpit. It was a new ship, it shouldn't have hyperdrive issues yet. But well versed as you were with glitchy hyperdrives you knew what to do. You pressed some buttons, pulled a lever, dragged the ship out of autopilot and twisted one final knob to drop out safely and without panic.

Your routine was correct. The ship dropped out of hyperspace but as the darkness cleared so did any sense of calm. You were already in the thermosphere, hurtling down to the forest covered grounds at electric speeds. Alarms blared as soon as the devices registered the new atmosphere and severe lack of control.

“Please slow down, your destination is ahead at 750 km,” The computer said cheerfully.

“Stupid thing! You’re going to kill me!” You yelled over the alarms.

“That’s not very nice,” The computer replied, “It’s not my fault the hyperdrive isn’t working,”

“You knew?” You shouted. The sides of the ship rumbled and rattled as the change in air density dragged along the surface. The holoprojector vibrated off the table, crashing to the ground and smashing into pieces. There goes all your holovid downloads, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Destination in 400km,” Every minute of your training was coming back as you worked through every combination of buttons and levers on your dash. Nothing was working.

“Computer? Is there still a parachute in this model?” It was archaic but you prayed that your ship was old enough to still be fitted with one. If it, wasn’t you were never going to slow down fast enough?

“Yes, would you like me to deploy it?” The computer asked.

“Yes!” You shouted at the machine.

“Deploying parachute,”

The parachute erupted from the back of the ship with a loud hiss and pop as it opened into the air. The sudden draw backward lurched you forward, smacking your head onto the metal dash in front of you.

You groaned, holding your hand to the injury immediately. A good splattering of blood now set across the screen and was dripping down your face into your eyes.

“Destiable approach im one minu,” The computer said. You frowned, trying to concrete over the throbbing pain in your head. “Systeeee affectabed,”

“Please tell me I’m not having a stroke,” You pleaded. You were not. You could speak and understand language perfectly. The computer, however, was not okay.

Computers are all well and good, very helpful things to have around that is until their processors are catapulted out by a poorly fitted fabric parachute.

You didn’t have time to worry about the broken computer as the trees below were coming closer and closer.

“Fourteenth millennia remaaaa,” The computer slurred. You ignored it. You didn’t need a reminder of how closer to being impaled by a huge tree you were. Instead of panicking you did the only thing you could, strap in and hope that it was all over quickly.

You pulled the straps of the pilot’s seat down tight over your arms, gripped the armrest tight and shut your eyes. The ship whistled through the air, the drag of the parachute doing very little to slow it down. You screwed your eyes shut, cursing every god you have ever known at your terrible luck. You would never see your family again, never see your friends again, and even more importantly you would never find out who killed the nurse in Anzarch Hospital!

The first contact with forest sent the ship off its course, spinning wildly out of control as the craft hit branch after branch. You screamed as the ship tumbled to the ground.

Finally, you came to a stop. Upside down, hanging from a tree, your ship rocked from side to side. You groaned, aching all over from the rough treatment of your descent. You spat out the blood that had pooled in your mouth and tried to think of a plan. Much like the now dead computer you couldn’t really think in words. More drawled sentences drowned out by pain.

The smell of fuel was the thing to get you moving. You gently unbuckled yourself from the seat, careful to not drop yourself on the ceiling and injure yourself anymore. You climbed around the small circular pod to reach the door.

Inhospitable atmosphere. Air unfit for external respiration, respirator advised.

You grumbled and cursed as that warning meant you’d have to climb up the wall of the still swaying pod to reach your kit. It was heavy and difficult to put on at the best of times, this was quite possibly the worst of times.

With a sharp tug the suit and helmet fell out of the cupboard above your head, narrowly missing you as it fell. Carefully, so as not to trip on the steel beams of the ceiling at your feet or cause the ship to swing and fall any further, you pulled the suit on. It was soft, having never been worn before, lightweight and fit you well. The helmet was heavy, a seal at the bottom to prevent any toxins leaking in and the filter was attached to the back of the dome. It was not ideal but you hoped you could find civilization quickly and would be able to take it off fast.

Helmet on. Bag on. Boots tied. Out the door.

In the small amount of luck, you still held, the ship was only six feet above the ground. You sat on the top of the door and jumped out, landing gracefully on your feet in a large patch of unusual plants. The air filter quietly hummed as it set to work cleaning the air around you and you inspected your surroundings. That was where your luck ran out, as you gathered yourself together you looked to your wrist, to the screen of your watch to look at a map to discover the direction you should go, only to find it smashed beyond repair. You had no guidance.

Dark forest was all you could see in any direction. The canopy was so dense only a small sprinkle of light made its way to the floor. Bouncing off the particles in the air, the space around you glittered in the light. It was silent, only the wind rustling through the grass and twigs under your boots made any noise. You picked a direction and walked, hoping you would come across someone soon.

You found a single well-trodden path after an hour of walking through waist high grass, the pollen of which had now covered your suit in a green blue film that made your hands itch terribly when you touched it, bringing up red rashes almost immediately.

The path made its way through the trees, more light coming through as you made it to the edge of the forest. You couldn’t make out much beyond the break in the trees as the contrast between the darker interior showed the outside in white light. You smiled; open space probably meant civilisation!

As you approached the light your eyes began to strain. Sharp pain cut into your eyes, you groaned and squinted bringing your hands to your helmet to cover them automatically. It was no use as a migraine was quickly taking hold. You continued forward, finally breaking the tree line, feeling the heat of the sun through the thin fabric of your suit.

Then everything went black

“What a curious creature,” A low voice woke you. Slowly you gained consciousness, immediately aware of the throbbing pain throughout your body, you pushed to sit up only to feel a heavy weight on your shoulder, “Careful now,” The stranger warned you. You peeled your eyes open and looked up at the creature that spoke. Dome headed in a yellowed fabric suit, Light reflecting off his head obscured his face. The creature spoke kindly and you would have believed the tone too if it weren’t for the pressure of his foot on your forearm and gun in your face. “What’s a thing like you doing in these parts?”

“I-I’m injured,” You tried to speak confidently but your pain overtook your tone as you opened your mouth, “My ship crashed not far from here,”

“Curiouser and curiouser,” The creature mused.

“Please,” You choked out as darkness threatened your vision once more, “Help me,”

The creature frowned, contemplating his decision as if he were choosing a candy bar at a corner store. You tried to move from under him but the effort was too much and you fell into unconsciousness again.

As your eyes closed and breathing softened, the stranger released his foot from your shoulder. His boot left a muddy footprint on the white material that covered your arm. He watched you for a few more seconds, then presuming you were dead he stepped over your body to the blue rucksack that had fallen just behind you. He was in desperate need of medical supplies and clean clothes wouldn’t hurt either.

The stranger rooted through the rucksack, pulling all kinds of things out. Clothes and food, writing equipment and a flip up device that he did not recognise as anything useful. There were no weapons, and no survival equipment of any kind. You were packed for a Sunday stroll, not a trip to the Green. Whoever you were, you were not like the usual people who came here.

The stranger’s cool demeanour changed when he saw your identification card. A gold card, approximately the size of his palm fell out of the bag and into his lap with a soft tap. He picked it up and inspected it, instantly knowing he was screwed. The Guide’s golden emblem was easy to recognise, while he couldn’t read the language that inscribed the card, he could make assumptions. You were a researcher. It was a well-known fact that Guide researchers were protected. If anyone found out you were dead, he would be convicted no matter what he said. There would be no planet in the entire universe he could hide on from the Guide.

Begrudgingly, he had to save you.

Without any other option, he shoved the contents of your bag back inside its original case and threw it over his shoulder. Then came the difficult task of moving you. It wasn’t for lack of strength that the stranger had difficulty with this task, more to do with the fact he had only one arm. He knew it wasn’t far to his camp, he had only been walking for five minutes before you fell into his path.

He couldn’t carry you. With only one arm it didn’t matter how strong the man was he could never hold you up well enough. He tried to wake you first, it would be far more helpful to him if you could walk. He shook your shoulders to try and rouse you but you were out cold. He had no choice but to drag you.

A quick assessment of your body told him you were not injured too badly, apart from the sores developing on your hands from exposure to pollen and a wound on your forehead inside your helmet. He checked your pulse again, feeling it strong through his gloves he was happy that you were not dead and would not be wasting his time. He grabbed the fabric around your shoulders and pulled you back to his camp.

It took a while but he made it there safely without cracking your helmet or injuring you anymore. He set you down on the floor of his tent, pulled his helmet off for comfort, then got to setting up a recovery bed for you.

The stranger pulled a rolled-up mat from under his cot and placed it on the ground and finally rolled your body in its final place on top and he waited for you to wake up again. It wouldn’t take long, he heard you mutter something as he carried you back and even in the low light of his tent, he could see your eyes moving behind your eyelids. The stranger sat on the edge of his cot, watching you carefully with his weapon in hand in case you woke up violent.

After a few moments, you began to stir. The first thing you noticed as you gained consciousness was the pain in your body. Every inch of your body throbbed but nothing more than your head. You felt hard ground beneath you, but no leaves or dirt, it was cold to touch. You peeled your eyes open, met with a low orange light bouncing off dark tent like material.

“Do not be alarmed,” A man said from across the room. You immediately turned your head to see but saw nothing more than a dark blob, “You are safe,”

You found it very hard not to be alarmed. The last thing you remembered was getting out of your ship into a forest, now you were in a small dark tent lit by one single golden lightbulb with a strange blob sat across from you.

Carefully, you pushed yourself up to sit up from your position on the floor. Noticing the blob was more of a man, and without a helmet, you figured it was probably safe to remove yours. With a sharp tug and a hiss from the oxygen tank you were open to the air and you set the helmet down next you. You rubbed your hand across the back of your neck, screwing your eyes shut as a headache shot through your skull.

You studied the man in the soft light. You could not guess his age, simultaneously old and young, you guessed he was a little older than you. He had tanned skin and dark hair with a curious white, blonde streak in the front. A surprisingly well-kept moustache and a spattered beard covered his lower face and a white scar on his left cheek all together created an intriguing character.

“Are you comfortable?” He asked. You nodded. His kindness was unsettling. There was a gentle tone to his voice and a kindness in his eyes but everything outside of that was the complete opposite. You could not remember how you got here; all you knew was the pain your body was in. Had he attacked you? Had he saved you from something else? He could have killed you, but he didn’t. Something must have enticed him to save you and bring you here. Then you saw it.

In the stranger’s hand, he held a gold card. Your identification card. The golden emblem projecting from the card flickered in the poor light, showing your name and number and rank.

“Should I be asking for an autograph?” The stranger looked back up at you, a smirk on his lips, “I’ve always wanted to meet an author,”

“I-I am not an author,” You coughed, clearing your throat before speaking, “I’m a researcher,”

“You pen those books though, don't you? The Guide?” He asked, “There’s not that much literature being produced this day and age,”

“Technically, but we like to think it’s a team effort,” You shrugged, “I just collect the data and write preliminary reports,”

“Does your team know you’re lost here?” The stranger asked.

“No, I… I don’t know,” You said sadly. The computer had broken before you could send a distress call. With no way to get a message to them from the outer ‘verse it would take weeks for anyone to realise anything was wrong, “I would have to find a signal strong enough to send a distress message but the only way I could do that was with my ship,” You thought aloud. You paused for a moment, trying to remember what actually happened when you fell from the sky, “Where is my ship? Where are we?”

“I never saw your transport I’m afraid,” The stranger said, “You must have walked a considerable distance before crossing paths with me,” You frowned, without your ship you were stuck, “I brought your backpack, if that's of any aid to you,”

You immediately lit up. Taking that as a yes, the stranger reached over the cot and pulled up your rucksack. It was caked in mud and a lot less full than you know it should have been, but you ignored his looting and grabbed the bag from his hands.

The only things left inside were your underwear and a hygiene kit. Your stomach twisted at the thought that you had lost the most important item in the bag. Dumping the contents on the floor you searched through every pocket. The Stranger watched you, one brow raised, wondering what you were looking for.

“Did you take it?” You asked, “It won’t work for anyone but me, you might as well give it back,”

“I do not understand,” The stranger looked puzzled, looking down at the things on the floor to see what had upset you.

“My Guide, where is it? I don’t care about the other things, I need that back,”

“There were no books in there,”

“That is Federation property,”

“You’re going to have to explain what it is you’re so agitated about; I do not know what your Guide is,”

“You do, because you stole it!” You exclaimed. Raising your voice made your head hurt more, you flinched and screwed your eyes shut again.

“I am many things but I am not a thief,” The Stranger was offended by your accusation. You scowled at him. He was a liar and a thief, “I took the food from your bag as payment for my saving you,”

“The Guide uses my biometrics, it won’t be of any use to you or anyone you could sell it to,”

“Hold on, do you mean the flip device?”

“Yes!”

“That thing’s important?” He seemed genuinely surprised, “You can have it, it’s no use to me,”

The stranger stood up and walked the two steps to the other side of the small space. From a cluttered table he picked up the black computer. You sighed in relief, there could be some hope for you yet. He passed you the gadget which to your amazement was still in working order. It had got a little scratched in the crash but you pressed your thumb to the lock and it opened it instantly.

Every researcher had their own personal guide. Similar to an ancient flip phone, used commonly on Earth in the early 2000’s, each Guide was a little bigger than your palm. Though small, it was very mighty. Not only did it store every piece of information a researcher collected, but it also allowed communication through text, audio and holo. Through the System there was unlimited access to other researchers' files, yet unpublished information and access to the ‘verse's existing records. There were maps and history of every planet, and more importantly to you at that moment, census records.

As you had expected, you had no signal on the surface of the moon to send a message to headquarters for a rescue. Instead you focused on what you could find out.

From the corner of your eye, you noticed the man’s suit. Though a little hard to read in the dim light you could make out what looked to be an ID number. You had to know who your captor (or saviour) really was. 875-162.

You typed in the worn black ink digits and waited. Nothing was notorious for its poor reception. The stranger was no longer interested in you know you were engrossed in the computer and not trying to attack him, he got up and was rustling around out of view.

Finally, the page loaded. A photo matching the stranger, though a little younger looking, flashed up in holo. You quickly covered the beam with your finger so as not to alert the man with you. You swiped down to read the information.

“Ezra,” You said under your breath as you read the page.

“I don’t remember giving you my name,” Ezra spoke, making you jump. You looked up, cheeks growing hot as you realised you had said it out loud.

“I searched your ID number,” you said, embarrassed you’d been caught, you told the truth. Ezra frowned, looking around him to see where you had seen it. You pointed to the suit piled up on the floor. The numbers were faded and hard to make out from the distance but you had worked it out. Ezra followed your finger and chuckled lightly.

“I forgot such identification exists,” He said, “You have good eyes to make it out from there,” He added.

You hummed in agreement. You were in perfect condition, had to be for the work. Perfect condition except for the concussion and various bruises on your body.

“Well now you know my name, can I enquire as to yours? I doubt that everyone calls you Researcher 42,” Ezra read your name from the ID card beforehand. Leant against the shelves next to him, he looked down at you.

“Some do,” You said plainly.

“That ‘some’ includes me, does it,” He raised an eyebrow, not expecting you to become so cold.

“Seems like it,”

“42 seems a little impersonal considering I just saved your life,”

“I’m meant to stay separated from my subjects. Anonymity helps with objectivity,” You explained. That wasn’t entirely true. You had always made friends with at least one person in every planet or city you researched. It was how you got the inside scoop, the local knowledge that made your articles so popular. Guide Guidance said that researchers stay anonymous for objectivity, but your popularity said otherwise. You just didn’t want to get any closer to Ezra, even just a quick glance at his record told you that he was not someone you wanted to be friends with.

As he had already shown you, he was a thief. He had been convicted of fraud, arson and two counts of murder. No wonder he was here. Most of the places in Nothing were hot beds for criminals like him. Nowhere in Everywhere would hire him, you expected that he had been hired by a contractor to come here and work for his freedom. There wasn’t much freedom stuck on the green though.

“Whether you give me your name or not, you’ve not got much choice in staying separated. A helpless thing like you will need protection here,”

“And you’ll offer that for free, will you?” You asked sarcastically, immediately knowing he would want something from you in return. You were already indebted to him for saving your life.

“There are a few things I desire,” He looked over your body, smirk twitching on his lips. You curled your lip and moved away from him.

“If you’re going to rape me, I’d rather try my luck out there by myself,”

“Oh no! No, little mouse I would never. I have done some felonious acts but I am not a savage!” He exclaimed quickly covering for himself. You regarded him sceptically. He had supposedly killed two people; he’d already crossed a line most people would not. You didn’t believe he wouldn’t step over that line too. “No, The Guide will want you back, I imagine anyone who returned you would be well rewarded,”

“Possibly,”

“Here’s my offer. I provide protection and shelter whilst you are here, and come that fateful day your deliverance arrives, you will negotiate considerable compensation for me,”

“What compensation would you want?”

“Enough money to live comfortably for the rest of my days free of obligation, a ship to get me off this rock and a clear record,”

“And if I say no?”

“Then you can see how well you fare in the forest alone. Food is pretty scarce this time of year and I wouldn’t put it past a few of them to push some more… basic human morals,” Ezra smirked as your eyes double in size. In all your travels you had never encountered cannibals, not human cannibals anyway.

“I- I can’t promise anything,” You stumbled over your worlds as you accepted faster than you should have. You didn’t know there was anyone other than Ezra on this planet, but you were not in the mood to find out.

“We will discuss details when the time comes,” He said. You nodded. “Now we have all that out the way,” He stood up from the floor, “I have to get to work,”

“What about me?”

“You aren’t coming with me,” He said like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“But you just said-,” you started to protest until Ezra pulled a gun from seemingly nowhere, you immediately shut your mouth and flinched, “What is that?”

“Protection,” He held the gun out, waiting for you to take it.

“No, no, no! You said-“

“Until your people come to your aid, and give me my money, I’ve got to keep working. Any time wasted is money lost out here,” He explained impatiently. He stepped back closer to you and dropped the gun in your lap, “I assume you do know how to use that even if you don’t carry one yourself?”

You looked at the gun, assessing it properly. It wasn’t complicated, a barrel you assumed was already full of bullets and a trigger. Nothing you hadn’t seen before, apart from the electrical tape that was holding it together. With no more protest from you, Ezra assumed it was fine and stepped away, resuming his routine.

“I will be back at sundown. Help yourself to some food,” He told you.

“My food,” You corrected him.

“Remember who is dependent on who here, 42,” He said scornfully. With that he put his helmet back on to his head and left the tent leaving you all alone.

You waited a few moments to make sure he was gone before making your move. You couldn’t stay with a murderer. You were safer in your ship, wherever it was. You could make a distress call and be rescued. Ezra would never know.

You pushed the gun from your lap onto the floor and tried to stand up. Sat down you could feel how sore your limbs were, your back ached from just sitting up for a few minutes and you were pretty sure you could feel every bone in your feet. A light touch to the forehead told you there was a sizable egg growing on top.

Standing up the pain was worse. You immediately became dizzy, gripping onto the metal shelf quickly to stop yourself from falling. You cursed under your breath and took a deep breath. You could do it.

Or maybe you couldn’t.

You took one step towards the table of things Ezra kept, and fell back on your ass. You were lucky not to pull the shelves down with you as it rocked forward slightly. A few items fell off, narrowly missing you. You dodged the heavy items, cringing as the metal thumped to the ground.

Listening to your screaming body, you gave up. You shuffled back to your previously comfortable position against the wall of the tent and looked around you for something to keep yourself occupied.

There at your feet lay a small book. Ezra wasn’t lying when he said he wanted to meet an author, he apparently was a bibliophile. You picked the paper up, stretching to reach it over your bruised and aching legs. It was well worn, obviously water damaged as the pages curled and the image on the front as warped beyond recognition. The title: “Welcome to the Green”.

You were not going anywhere.

sooo what do you think? i had so much fun writing this fic, i hope you guys enjoyed it too. let me know if you want to be tagged in the next part :D

TAGGING usuals and interested people :): @hunters-heathen @peterssweetpea @beskarbabs @wille-zarr @fandom-blackhole @writeforfandoms @dindja @amneris21 @yespolkadotkitty

#ezra (prospect) x reader #ezra x f!reader #ezra x reader #ezra prospect #x reader #ezra prospect angst #enemies to lovers #prospect movie #ezra #pedro pascal character x reader #pedro pascal character #pedro pascal #the guide #molly writes

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eternium-complex-blog · 7 years ago

Text

Eternium Basement: Robot Rock

The cramped one roomed apartment echoed with the ending theme of the "Robo-Hero" animated series. Davis quietly hums along. On his desk, next to his small monitor, lays an unfinished model of the "Dragon-Rex". Legacy edition; the gold and black version. When not watching, studying, or designing his own mecha; Davis enjoys collecting and assembling various model kits of his favorite me has. His room is a shrine to this passion.

"The show is simple, but it's a classic. Robo-Hero is the standard of all mecha heroes." He's in the middle of a lecture given to no one. Inside his head he is a professor, but outside he’s as quiet of a student you can get besides not being in class at all. "Nowadays the shows focus more on the drama of the pilots. Which allows for more interesting stories and giving credit to the pilots finally. Robo-Hero had like four and hardly anyone even knew... But nothing is going to beat Robo-Hero fighting a new monster of the week while giving insightful wisdom."

He walks from his apartment building to the college. It's a short walk. Saves him a fortune not having to get a car. It's always colder in the mornings than the rest of the day. However, weather rarely dictated his wardrobe. He always wore his replica mecha pilot jacket. It bore some of the patches of his favorite mecha pilots like DinoCzar, Ace, Overlord, and of course an old Robo-Hero patch.

"The culture changed. People wanted less aliens and giant monsters, and more realism and internal struggle. Of course this wasn't just happening to mecha shows, but all facets of media. Though I think if you want realistic mecha fights you should just watch the actual mecha league tournaments. The shows are just there to promote toys and Saturday morning entertainment. The point I'm trying to make is... leave my cartoons alone."

Davis arrives on campus. What follows is a montage of sitting in classes, listening to professors, walking to classes, and completing homework as it's being turned in. His first class is Art Theory. They are currently going over character design and how to tell a story through a character's appearance. The teacher, harmlessly joking, points out Davis and how him always wearing the pilots jacket shows his commitment and passion. Davis nervously chuckles along not knowing how to respond. The other students also playfully laugh, but then begin analyzing themselves on what they wore.

"Take someone like the classic Robo-hero." The professor continues her lecture. "Just looking at him and you get everything you need to know about him. Broad shoulders, big arms and legs, and of course his cape. Waving heroically behind him. Now look at the current champion, Overlord. Much more intricate with spikes and more accurate proportions, and horns resembling a crown. He also has a cape, but his silhouette is much more foreboding isn't it. This fits his character. The contrast to the classical heroes of before. This will be important for all you future mecha designers and engineers." She looks again to Davis.

It is a small class, so she always singled out students. Davis liked the class and her, but hated being used as an example. The next class after this is an advanced math course. A mandatory for engineer majors.

After the class Davis has a waiting period of 40 minutes. So he goes to the commons.

"The show actually gets the colors wrong on Robo-Hero. He has a more orange coloring to him. Where as the show gave him a red paint job to appeal more to kids." Davis imagines himself saying back in his art class. He wishes he could be quick witted and able to say something whenever he's put on the spot. When he's with friends he's sharp, but around strangers and in public he shuts off.

His internal lecture is interrupted by the empty seat across from him becoming inhabited.

"Hey you finish the homework?" His best friend, Matt, asks hopeful. Hoping to copy off of him.

"Yeah... before I turned it in." Davis responds.

"Shit you turned it in?" Matt asks desperately.

"Yes. I have the class before you. What you expect me to not turn in my work just so you can copy?"

"Yeah..."

"No, screw you. Don't make me your last chance to get your work done. Hell I was barely finishing it when I was turning it in."

They both laugh and continue talking to eachother over their typical topics; mechas, shows, people they don't like, and classes. The two of them have been friends since middle school. They shared the passion for mechas and both agreed to follow their dreams together.

Their passion however stemmed from slightly different motives. Davis saw them as real life heroes, and desperately desired to be just like them. Matt however was slightly less noble. Matt puts it simply; "chicks dig giant robots."

"Anyways, there's this bonfire party thing on the beach tonight. We should go. It should be fun. Get us out for a bit. Maybe find you a girl." Matt hops his eyebrows up and down.

"Ehh... I don't know." Davis thought about it. Parties really weren't his scene. "Besides, Uncle Mac is making sloppy Joes tonight."

The man they were referring to isn't actually their uncle, but the overseer of their apartment building. Since most of the residence there are students who can't or for some reason refuse to live directly on campus; he took it upon himself to look after all of them. Wether it be simply feeding them, or waiving certain fees the students couldn't afford.

The two of them debate about it. Their need for free food greatly out weightes their need for a social life. Despite this however, Matt came up with a compromise.

"Well the thing is like all night. We can go check it out after we eat."

They both agree on the plan and go their separate ways when classes resume. They only share one class through out the whole day, Mecha engineering. Since Davis started earlier than Matt, his day ends sooner. He's back at the apartment by 3 o'clock. He stops by the community kitchen in the building on his way to his room. Uncle Mac is already in there slow cooking the pork. Another resident is also in the kitchen talking to Uncle Mac, Tai.

Uncle Mac notices Davis and greets him.

"Ayy, Davy! How was your day?"

"Good." Davis never really knew how to answer that question. Even if he did have a bad day, he felt it easier and better to just say "good" anyways. Not mix anyone in his problems. "Matt told me about this bon fire party thing. So I guess we're going to that later."

"So you tellin me I made all this food for nutin?" Uncle Mac responds with fake agitation.

"Oh no. Believe me there isn't much that we'd miss your food for. Nah, we decided we'd check it out after we eat."

"Yeah you best not be skippin out on my meals." He laughs to himself as he goes back to stirring some gravy in a pan. "Tai you going to this party too?"

"No, no. I... i don't party." Davis could be quiet and shy when around new people or put on the spot, but this was nothing compared to Tai all the time.

"Boy what you mean you don't party? You too cool to party?" Uncle Mac begins to shimmy to music only he can hear. "Everybody party's. When I was your age you'd only find me at a party." Uncle Mac and Davis laugh together as he begins to show them how he would party. Within the confined space of the kitchen. Even Tai got a kick out of it.

"I just have a lot of homework and studying. Can't really party." Tai responds.

"Yeah no, that's important. Keep it up... I'm just saying don't be afraid to let loose a little. Shack em bones of yours. You're young use that energy.

Davis remembers that he too has homework he has to get done before heading to the party. He takes his leave and heads for his room. He sits down at his desk and begins to work. He tells himself not to turn on the TV, listen to music, or use his phone until he at least finishes 2 assignments.

Once he feels as though he's done enough to not feel guilty. He turns on his TV and starts work on his "Dragon-Rex" model, hoping to finish it finally. After awhile he checks his phone and sees a message telling him that food is ready. He heads downstairs to the kitchen and gets his plate. They eat outside in front of the building. This was their typical dinning area since they don't have one inside. Matt shows up a bit later and starts eating with them.

Once they finished eating, Matt and Davis left for the beach. As they approach they could the various sounds of the party going on. They finally arrive and it goes about how they expected. The two of them off to the side together complaining about everything and making fun of everyone. Matt occasionally breaking off to get a drink or talk to someone.

Things start to pick up when a "rival" of theirs, Gary a fellow mecha engineer major, showed up in a small mecha he "built himself".

"Wow look, Gary brought his own walker." Davis remarks enthusiastically.

"Yeah it's be impressive if it could the one thing you know... walk." Matt responds sharply.

It is true the self-made monstrosity could barely work. Anytime it actually tried to walk it struggled and a loud grinding noise could be heard.

"Like why go bi-pedal if you don't know how to properly install hydraulics? Go treads and save yourself the embarrassment. I'm surprised he even got the balancing right." Davis comments taking a sip of his drink that he only filled once.

"You think Gary knows the meaning of 'embarassment'? Nah, he'd eat a bowl of shit if you told him it was gourmet." They both laugh and watch on.

"If you guys know so much why don't you go and tell him something." The voice caught them by surprise.

"What-?" They both respond turning their heads to the left where the voice came from.

Instead of a formal response they are answered with the flash of a camera. Temporarily blinding them for a brief moment. The person holding the camera is a girl, taking a picture of the scene in front of them. Gary pathetically piloting his mecha with a crowd of drunk college students cheering him on. The girl lowers her camera and reveals her face. Her hair is a medium length and green with a cynical face.

"Why don't you guys go and show him up if you know so much? Or are your majors in talking shit and drinking?"

Davis and Matt just stared at her for a second. Both trying to think of something witty to say. Davis is mostly taken back by her beauty.

"It's a minor." Matt finally spoke. Davis thought of the same thing but a second too late.

"How long have you been standing there?" Davis asks.

"Long enough to pick up your guys characters."

"Oh... so you're some edgy sociology major huh?" Matt asks defensively to someone proclaiming of knowing him.

"Maybe..." she takes another picture. Blinding Matt again. Davis saw it coming and closes his eyes in preparation.

Davis sees his chance and wishes to talk more to her. She's the first girl he's talked to at the party and the first in months. However, he isn't quiet sure how to do so. He doesn't want to ask something stupid and scare her off.

"Umm... you want a drink?" He nervously asks her.

"Yours?"

"Wha-No, no someone else's." Davis quickly realizes his mistake and tries to correct himself. "I mean like another. Like a drink that hasn't been drink."

"Drunk, and sure." She gives an almost unnoticeable glance up and down. Checking out Davis.

Matt seeing his friend trying to make a move takes his leave.

"You know what, you've inspired me camera girl. I'm going to go over there and apply my expertise to Gary's monstrosity." Matt steps forward out of their side-by-side line they formed. "Ayy Gary, looks like you could use some help..." Matt's voice trails off as he walks toward Gary and the crowd.

"Oh so what drink you want?" Davis asks.

"Oh, I really didn't want a drink... but I'll walk with you to go get you one."

"Okay," Davis looks at his drink. It's still halfway full. Davis not wanting to blow any chance he has begins chugging down all of it. He finishes and tries to hold in a burn, but it comes out as he speaks. "...let's go."

The two of them walk and talk. Devils refilling his drink, but not taking anymore sips. As they continue to walk, she reveals that her name is Sora. Named after her parents favorite vid3o game character. Unfortunately Sora did end up having the same hair color as the protagonist. Prompting her to continuously dye it.

"It's actually suppose to be red." Sora adds.

"Well it still looks good. Green really looks good on you." Davis compliments her. Nervous about every word he says, but steadily becoming more comfortable. He enjoys her company.

"Thanks." Sora smiles at him.

"How come you don't just change your name?"

"Well... I don't want to spoil their fun. I think the dying is defiance enough. How about you? How are you with your parents, if you don't mind me asking?"

Davis takes a moment to think. He didn't have some tragic background or interesting quirk about him. His family worked and never had to worry about money too often, and both his parents were alive and happily married.

"Umm, strict but supportive. When I told them I wanted to be s pilot, they said "go ahead, but be smart. Get a degree in something you can make money from" so... mecha engineer. One day maybe though, I'll have my own, but..." Davis stops. He doesn't know what else to say. The more he talks about his future the scarier it seems. A dream that's getting further away.

"Well that explains the jacket." Sora pinches the sleeve of his jacket. "But why settle for engineer? Why not just try to be a pilot?" The question strikes Davis harder than Sora intended.

"It-if... there isn't a lot of money. Only if I somehow become super successful. At least with engineering I have something to fall back on." Davis isn't even sure if he believes that. Part of him didn't want to admit that he was just scared to try.

"Yeah, but isn't it the same kind of risk? Being a successful engines for pilot. You're always going to risk something. So why not have it be on a dream?"

"What if a fail?" Davis asks trying not to show his cowardice.

"That's going to have to be up to." She responds sympathetically. She understands how he feels. She too feared the consequences of following a dream. An English major betting everything on being an author. The only difference being she had the tenacity to follow through. "Better to die trying, than to live having never tried at all" she tells herself everyday. "You have to start eventually... a mech isn't going to fall out of the sky for you."

"Mecha." Davis corrects.

He takes a moment to digest everything they've disgust thus far. He looks around and realizes how far away they had walked from the party. Almost to end of the beach. To their right, away from the water, is a Forrest like area. It connects to a park not too far away. Davis remembers a shack inside the woods that he and Matt frequent months ago.

"Hey there's this totally awesome shack nearby, want to check it out?" Davis asks hoping to change the mood.

"I-is that like code for something?" Sora responds hesitant.

"No, it's just this random, abandoned shack out here that me and Matt would always check out."

"'Matt and I', and sure..."

Davis leads her through the trees towards the shack. Sora begins to ask questions about it.

"What's so cool about this shack?"

"There's just always random stuff appearing in it. A couple of months ago me an-Matt and I were strapped for cash, so we started selling stuff we found in there."

"It ever occurs to you that it might be someone's storage?"

"Of course, but we never saw anything being moved and no one else seemed to know about it. Hey it saved our weekend."

Sora laughs at how ridiculous the story sounds. They get closer to the clearing where the shack is. Though they are met with a surprise. Seemingly as if dropped on top of the shack, laid a mecha.

At least 50ft tall, a white and blue paint job with red markings on the face plate. Most striking though about it, is it's figure. It looks very feminine in its design. Davis just stands in awe of seeing it. Easily the coolest thing to appear at the shack. Sora walks up next to Davis with her camera ready.

"You recognize it?" Sora asks him. He nods no unable to fully speak. He starts to walk towards it and Sora lifts up her camera ready to snap a photo.

As she does however, the flash suddenly seems to activate the mecha somehow. It's massive body convulsing, like a person struggling to breath. This startles Davis and causes him to drop his drink. He starts to back pedal but stops. The mecha's arms flail around and knock what's left of the shack down. It starts to grab at it's face plate. Attempting to raise it up. After a brief struggle it finally retracts up and the mecha's true face is revealed. Pale white skin, with sharp blue eyes and no nose. It's mouth, a simple slit with no lips, but what appear to be uniform teeth hiden in its mouth. It looks around terrified and scans it's current location. As it does, it locks eyes with Davis.

#short story #original story #first chapter #mechas #mech #sci fi & fantasy #scifiseries #critique

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deltaengineering · 8 years ago

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Spring Anime 2017 Part 1: woke up late

This time I prepared so I could get to the procrastinating right with the first post! Yay! Let’s get this show on the road.

See also:

• spring anime 2017 part 2: girlfriendship is magic

• spring anime 2017 part 3: comfy and easy to wear

• spring anime 2017 bonus round: things you already knew were good

Alice to Zouroku

So get this, a pretty girl with psychic superweapon powers escapes from a lab she’s been in her whole life and now has to adapt to the real world with the help of a guy she stumbles upon, all while being chased by her superweapon former friends. But in a shocking twist, this is actually better than Elfen Lied! Not being written by someone as brutally incompetent as Lynn Okamoto is a start, but the real change here is that our heroine is less murder machine and more genuinely cute, and more importantly the guy she ends up with is not a harem ringleader dorklord, but a grumpy elderly florist. Yeah, we’re skipping the recent trend of dadfeel anime and diving headfirst into granddad feels (I don’t know if aging otaku are quite old enough to fully self-insert yet, but the same principle applies). It’s a low hanging fruit, but that’s what makes it work; a deliberate, contemplative pace and delightfully whimsical music by TO-MAS also help. So far, so good, were it not for the fact that this is only one aspect of the show. Of course a show like this would have an action half as well, and that one’s pretty garbage. Not only is it directed with zero impact or excitement, it also relies on horrible CG a lot - I really don’t want to be reminded of Hand Shakers this quickly again, thank you very much. Plus, it runs with a Alice in Wonderland metaphor, which is baby’s first literary reference and doesn’t bode well about the intellectual ambitions of the project. So we have one half that’s admittedly effective, but also very predictable and which desperately needs to go somewhere to pay off. The other half just plain sucks and has little chance to improve. I think I’ll give this one a few more chances to sort out its priorities, but it’s definitely not a sure thing.

Busou Shoujo Machiavellianism

A cocky guy walks into a school full of pretty girls with weapons who have managed to sissify all the dudes by forcing them to crossdress. He then proceeds to troll them with his rugged charm. You know, it’s really not that easy to offend me but damn this show is trying. Apart from bottom-tier harem crap setup, this show also looks like ass and is tremendously boring; a few well done action cuts do not in fact excuse “fights” that mostly consist of exposition about special attacks, or terminally uninspired direction. Macchiavellism is the worst of shounen fightmens crossed with the worst of harem LNs, plus some of the worst jokes bad anime comedy can come up with. It’s not even audacious enough in its badness to boggle the mind; I could watch this if I was interested in adding another 1/10 to my MAL, but that’s about all I can appreciate about it.

Frame Arms Girl

Speaking of unholy combinations, here’s Gundam Build Fighters x Rozen Maiden x Strike Witches: A girl stumbles into a sentient mecha musume model kit that spends its time explaining the technical details of model building to her and attracts other model kits that want to fight. It’s an ad for model kits, what do you expect. There’s no characters, the plot is utterly uninteresting, the action’s bad, it looks subpar to bad, and the only high point is how brazenly it reads to you from the manual.

Gin no Guardian

Here’s your latest Chinese webcomic adaptation from your friends at Haoliners Animation League (Shanghai) Inc., whose output has been asymptotically approaching the quality level of a bad Japanese cartoon for years now: Closer than ever, but still not quite there. Maybe they should stop picking bad webcomics with incomprehensible nonsense plots as source material, just sayin’. So this is about a dude who beats up CG zombies in the spirit world but the actual story is how he got there? Or something? It manages to look barely alright and even has some visually striking design work, but its half-length run time prevents it from forming any semblance of coherence and I’m not about to ask for further clarification.

Oushitsu Kyoushi Haine

In a vaguely 18th century Germanic kingdom, a grown ass man with the body of a ten year old and a snarky disposition is hired to become the tutor of an instaharem of fabulous princes. I really don’t get who this is for; obviously the harem is straight out of a PSP otome dating sim, but it’s lacking the obvious self-insert dimwitted main girl, and no, it isn’t gay romance either. Even though it’s a comedy, that aspect does not seem to be played for outright parody. The source material is running in GFantasy, a shounen title (but not one as specifically elementary schooler-focused as Jump, it also carries fujo favorites such as Black Butler). Dubious provenance aside, Haine is moderately funny if nothing else, mainly due to the deadpan reactions of the main character to these ridiculous dreamboats. It just also drags more than a little, with long conversations that aren’t very entertaining all the time. It’s watchable compared to a lot of the stuff out this season, but I remain unconvinced.

Rokudenashi Majutsu Koushi to Akashic Records

After Macchiavellism already obliterated the battle harem bingo, here’s our next winner. The setup’s more or less the same and in some respects it’s even more formulaic (the school is actually a magic school for magic people, princesses, duels, &c), but Akashic Record is not quite as odious simply by focusing on being a comedy first and foremost and pulling that off at least on a technical level - it has good visual execution and comedic timing. The question is just how much credit you want to give it for that when the jokes themselves still suck, and that’s of course ignoring the entire setup being Light Novel as all fuck. Kinda seems familiar actually, because this is not entirely unlike to what KonoSuba did to the isekai genre, and people keep trying to tell me that that was totally great. Well, go watch this one then, motherfuckers.

Sagrada Reset

But there’s always the other kind of light novel, the one where high schoolers talk about life, people and the world. Think Bakemonogatari or OreGairu. Sagrada Reset wants a slice of that pie and starts by stealing the magical realism conceit from classic™ visual novel Wind ~A Breath of Heart~: There’s a remote town in Japan where everyone has superpowers, but if they leave the town they instantly forget about it. Oops, i guess I just spoiled Wind’s midgame, but I have to since Sagrada Reset puts this stuff right upfront because it has to discuss technicalities (at length) to make its plot work. Yeah, that’s how I like my magical realism, thoroughly explained and conceived by people who should write wikis, not fiction. There’s a girl who can reset time, but only once per arbitrary period of time and also including herself, which means she only finds out she already did it once it doesn’t work again. So that’s pretty useless, except there’s a guy whose superpower is having his memory unaffected by this. They have to work together to solve... some problems, I suppose. This whole idea seems to have potential in a JoJo subplot sort of way, but it’s completely sunk by the way the thing is written, since apparently the writer has never met a human being in his life. It’s entirely made of these pseudo-deep highschool stoner philosophy conversations presented in a lifeless inflection by people who stand around like robots on battery saver mode. This seems to be intentional (at least the term “robot” is thrown around a couple of times, which is certainly ominous), but it also makes for an excruciating and interminable watching experience.

Sakura Quest

Since Sakura Quest was announced, I have been gleefully throwing water on the hype of people who expected this to be the next Shirobako. After all, how likely is it for lightning to strike twice, especially considering Mizushima is not in the director’s seat? Surely it was all just wishful thinking, I want a S2 of Shirobako as much as everyone but I just don’t trust anime. Well consider me fucking told, since apparently among the parties wishing for more Shirobako is P.A. Works, and unlike the anitwitterati they can make it happen. The actual brand name seems to be reserved for a Mizushima project, but I would have no trouble believing that Sakura Quest is a spinoff about Aoi’s sister in the boonies; Shirobako Sunshine, if you will. The initial setup is mirrored here; Yoshino is not a young professional starting her dream job, but a young professional unable to score a dream job (or any job) so she settles for a random one she’s very skeptical of, but will undoubtedly learn to love. Apart from that, well, it’s Shirobako: The positive tone, the large cast of likeable oddballs, the relatable writing about post-highschool problems, and it even looks completely identical. I’ll still be realistic about it: Shirobako isn’t great for what its ideas were, but for how thoroughly it delivered in the long run, and this is by no means guaranteed to also happen with Sakura Reset Quest. For an episode 1 though, it’s like a dream come true, and P.A. are setting themselves up for seasonal double domination with this and Uchouten Kazoku S2.

Souryo to Majiwaru Shikiyoku no Yoru ni

Enough gushing, here’s 5 minutes of porn. Okay, it’s josei porn so there may still be gushing involved if you know what I mean, nyuk nyuk. Er, sorry about that. Sooooo there’s a sexually frustrated woman who meets her school crush who’s now a priest, and then they fuck. With a staff made up mostly of (non-josei, but hey) hentai OVA veterans, there is really only one way this could go. I appreciate the brazenness as usual, but I really don’t know how much steamy harlequin romance tailored to TV broadcast standards I want to watch.

Tsugumomo

I’ve seen some warnings about Tsugumomo based on its source material which is a manga with 1. a very high level of art quality and 2. content that has been described as “makes To-Love Ru Darkness look family friendly”. This may explain why it has not been licensed. It doesn’t explain why this first episode is fairly tame though; sure, it’s very much an ecchi comedy, but you get those from time to time and Tsugumomo is not any more raunchy than what I’m used to seeing (and it accomplishes this even without obvious BD-advert censoring). That incidentally also removes any reason to watch it: The plot is as basic “guy gets magical girlfriend for purposes of fights and/or walking in on her naked in the bath” from 15 years ago as they come, and it’s suspiciously well animated, but not well enough for that to be a selling point. Maybe it will get real skeevy eventually, I won’t be around to find out.

Warau Salesman NEW

Warau Salesman starts strong with ultra cool, Saul Bass-inspired opening credits, but that’s about all it has to offer. It’s based on a “black comedy” manga from the 60s by one of the Doraemon authors, and oh boy can you tell. Not only are the character designs 60s-tastic (so at least the Osomatsu-san fujos can schlick to something while they wait for the S2 of that), but so are the sensibilities: The titular salesman goes around tempting frustrated office workers with doing something moderately irresponsible, such as drinking in your lunch break or spending above your means, and then ruins their life when they actually do it. It’s like Twilight Zone written by your HR department. In the 60s. This stuff would have been outdated even in 1989, when it was animated for the first time – hence the “NEW”. I don’t know, it just seems mean-spirited, obvious and pointless, and most importantly I put the “black comedy” in quotes because in addition to not being very black, it’s not funny in any way, and unlike regular anime comedy I can’t even see what’s supposed to be funny.

#anime #impressions #spring2017 #Alice to Zouroku #Busou Shoujo Machiavellianism #Frame Arms Girl #Gin no Guardian #Oushitsu Kyoushi Haine #Rokudenashi Majutsu Koushi to Akashic Records #Sagrada Reset #Sakura Quest #Souryo to Majiwaru Shikiyoku no Yoru ni #Tsugumomo #Warau Salesman NEW

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newssplashy · 7 years ago

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Opinion: Piece by piece, a factory-made answer for a housing squeeze

VALLEJO, Calif. — California is in the middle of an affordable-housing crisis that cities across the state are struggling to solve.

Here, in a football-field-size warehouse where workers used to make submarines, Holliday recently opened Factory OS, a factory that manufactures homes.

In one end go wood, pipes, tile, sinks and toilets; out another come individual apartments that can be trucked to a construction site and bolted together in months.

“If we don’t build housing differently, then no one can have any housing,” Holliday said during a recent tour as he passed assembly-line workstations and stacks of raw materials like windows, pipes and rolls of pink insulation.

Almost a decade after the recession flattened the housing industry, causing waves of contractors to go bankrupt and laid-off construction workers to leave the business for other jobs, builders have yet to regain their previous form. Today the pace of new apartment and housing construction sits at a little over half the 2006 peak.

The United States needs new housing, but its building industry isn’t big enough to provide it. The number of residential construction workers is 23 percent lower than in 2006, while higher-skill trades like plumbers, carpenters and electricians are down close to 17 percent. With demand for housing high and the supply of workers short, builders are bidding up prices for the limited number of contractors.

Construction prices nationwide have risen about 5 percent a year for the past three years, according to the Turner Building Cost Index. Costs have gone up even faster in big cities and across California, according to RSMeans, a unit of Gordian, which compiles construction data. In the Bay Area, builders say construction prices are up 30 percent over the past three years — so much that even luxury projects are being stalled by rising costs.

“It’s reached the point where you cannot get enough rent or you cannot sell enough units to make it a viable deal,” said Lou Vasquez, a founding partner and managing director of Build, a real estate developer in San Francisco.

The surge in construction prices is coming at the worst possible time for booming cities like New York, Seattle and San Francisco, already dealing with an affordable-housing crunch that has increased the homeless populations and stoked acrimonious debates about growth and gentrification. City and state legislators have tried to tackle their housing problems with proposals to increase subsidized affordable housing, reduce building regulations and make it legal to build taller.

But even if every overpriced city suddenly overcame the thicket of zoning rules and neighborhood opposition that make it difficult to build new housing in the first place — which seems doubtful — today’s diminished building industry would lack the capacity to build at the needed pace. This affects the rich as well as the poor, because it raises the cost of high-end condos and affordable housing alike.

This year, Californians will vote on a proposed $4 billion bond to build more subsidized affordable housing. In San Francisco, where developers say the per-unit construction cost is edging toward $800,000, that would buy about 5,000 units, a relative blip. “Costs have risen so much that it is not possible to build homes where people want to live at the prices and rents they can afford,” said John Burns, founder of John Burns Real Estate Consulting.

All this has prompted developers like Holliday to go scrambling for cheaper and less labor-intensive construction methods — and investors to pour money into startups that promise to do just that. Katerra, a 3-year-old prefabricated building company in the Silicon Valley city of Menlo Park, has raised $1.1 billion in venture capital. A number of other building startups including Blokable, based in Seattle; Kasita, based in Austin, Texas; and RAD Urban, based in Oakland, California, have all popped up over the past five years.

“The current system can’t meet demand and that’s resulting in a lack of opportunity for some folks and a major hit to the economy,” said Stonly Baptiste, a co-founder of Urban Us, a Brooklyn-based venture capital firm that invested in Blokable. “These aren’t small problems, and they aren’t small markets.”

The technologies vary but generally involve simplifying construction through prefabricated panels that can be assembled like Ikea furniture and modular apartments that can be stacked together like Lego bricks. A recent survey by FMI, a management-consulting and investment banking company focused on the engineering and construction industry, found a third of respondents said they were looking at some form of off-site construction, a steep rise from 2010. The interest extends from housing to hotels to medical facilities, industrial companies and even fast-food restaurants.

“It’s one of those things that looks like an overnight success but it’s taken 10 years and hundreds of people toiling,” said Chris Giattina, chief executive of BLOX, a Birmingham, Alabama, company that builds hospitals with modular components.

Brokers of Risk

The global construction industry is a $10 trillion behemoth whose structures determine where people live, how they get to work and what cities look like. It is also one of the world’s least efficient businesses. The construction productivity rate — how much building workers do for each hour of labor they put in — has been flat since 1945, according to the McKinsey Global Institute. Over that period, sectors like agriculture, manufacturing and retail saw their productivity rates surge by as much as 1,500 percent. In other words, while the rest of the economy has been supercharged by machines, computers and robots, construction companies are about as efficient as they were in World War II.

To understand this, consider how buildings are actually built. It all starts with the developer, who doesn’t actually build anything but instead secures a piece of land and a loan, and gets the project approved by the government. At that point the money is passed to the general contractor that made a successful bid to build the project, who passes it to subcontractors that won the bidding for things like plumbing and sheet metal work, which often pass it to even more subcontractors.

Contractors describe this handoff as “brokering risk.” What they mean is that while everyone in the chain has agreed to build a certain piece of the project for a set amount of money and in a given amount of time, none of them are sure they can do so as cheaply or quickly as they’ve promised. They broker that risk by paying someone else to do it for them, minus a small fee.

“Say you’re a general contractor and your subcontractor agrees to do a job. Once we have a contract I don’t care how many man hours you put into it because that’s your problem now,” said Randy Miller, chief executive of RAD Urban, describing the thinking behind the process.

The goal of prefabricated building companies is to turn this model on its head. Instead of offloading risk, the contractor assumes all of it. Instead of sending jobs to subcontractors, they hire their own factory workers. “The general contractor says, ‘Oh my God, construction is scary, let me broker all that risk,'” Miller said. “I’m saying, ‘Oh my God, construction is scary, let me plan and control it.”

The basic concept isn’t new. In 1624, Massachusetts settlers built homes out of prefabricated materials shipped from England. The pattern was repeated in Australia, Africa and India as the British Empire shipped colonists and structures wide across the globe, according to “Prefab Architecture,” by Ryan E. Smith, a professor at the University of Utah.

Over the next few centuries, new versions of the idea seemed to pop up anywhere people needed to build lots of homes in a hurry — during the California Gold Rush, after the Chicago fire, and through America’s westward expansion. In the early part of the 20th century, Sears sold tens of thousands of kits for Sears Modern Homes, which consisted of prefabricated parts and panels that buyers assembled.

Along the way, the construction industry absorbed manufacturing concepts such as the assembly-line techniques that were utilized by Levitt & Sons, the pioneer of mass-built subdivisions. But the idea of factory-built housing was never adopted long enough or widely enough to make an impact, at least in the United States.

One reason the United States has lagged behind Europe, Australia and Asia — which all have well-established companies doing modular and prefabricated building — is that it is a predominantly suburban nation, and the vast supply of open land has kept the cost of single-family-home building relatively low. Another is that the construction industry has slim profit margins and invests little in research and development.

The chances of being burned are high, and each high-profile failure leads to a furlough of the concept. In the mid-2000s housing boom, Pulte Homes, one of the country’s largest builders, opened a prefabrication plant that aimed to revolutionize how homes were built. The company closed it with the onset of the housing bust in 2007.

Now, instead of single-family homes, companies doing prefab building are focusing on higher-density condominiums and apartments. That’s because, while single-family home construction remains well below its level before the recession, multifamily condominium and apartment buildings have rebounded strongly. “Our goal is to be able to do a 40-story tower in 12 months, at half the cost of traditional construction,” said Randy Miller of RAD Urban.

Still, even if builders are able to reduce construction costs, that doesn’t necessarily mean they will be successful. Behind each of these companies is a bet that they can build far more efficiently than current methods. That bet has yet to be proven, at least on a large scale.

Efficiency vs. Workers

Holliday of Factory OS started thinking about modular housing about four years ago, when he was struggling to build a project in Truckee, California. The idea was to build 800 to 1,000 high-density apartments and condominiums, but “the numbers wouldn’t work,” he said. “You couldn’t get the construction costs down enough.”

Holliday floated the idea of modular building to his longtime contractor, Larry Pace, from Cannon Constructors, who over the past four decades has built various projects from one-off homes to office towers. “I said ‘modular jobs have been a fiasco — we don’t need that in our lives,'” Pace recalled, adding an expletive for emphasis.

But Holliday persisted, and he and Pace used modular technology from two manufacturers to build four projects in the Bay Area. They are planning to do the same with the original Truckee development. Pace became so comfortable with modular that he suggested that they find some investors and build their own factory.

On a recent afternoon, Pace laid out the factory’s process. At the first station, just past the door, four workers toiled above and below a raised platform to build what would eventually become the floor. The two men up top laid down flooring while a man and woman stood below simultaneously installing pipes.

From there the unit would move steadily down the line, and, over 21 additional stations, would acquire toilets, indoor walls, outdoor walls, a roof, electric outlets, windows, sinks, countertops and tiling. It takes about a week to finish a unit, Pace said. The goal is to churn out about 2,000 apartments a year, which would be turned into four- and five-story buildings with 80 to 150 units each.

For workers, factory building seems to mean lower wages but steadier work. Factory OS pays about $30 an hour with medical insurance and two weeks of vacation. That’s about half what workers can make on a construction site, but the work is more regular and, for many, requires less commuting.

Tony Vandewark, a 51-year-old foreman at Factory OS, is OK with the trade-off. He lives a few minutes from the factory in Vallejo, where homes cost less than half what they do closer to San Francisco. Contrast that with a job he once had in the Silicon Valley city of Sunnyvale. He drove two hours to work and three hours home before deciding to rent a room so he could stay closer to work on weekdays.

“On a job site, you can go do piece work and make really big money, but then the job is gone,” he said.

In addition to not being rained on, one of the key differences between a construction site and Factory OS is that any worker can be trained to do any job. And for old-school trade unions, that is a declaration of war. “The business model is ‘Hooray for me,'” without regard for anyone else, said Larry Mazzola Jr., business manager of UA Local 38, a San Francisco plumbers union with about 2,500 members across Northern California.

Factory OS is not anti-union: It has a contract with the Northern California Carpenters Regional Council, which has organized other modular factories and is banking on the technology’s continued growth. The issue is that builders are laid out like a Detroit auto factory, where one union represents all of the workers, and workers can be trained to do any job within the company walls.

That is a huge departure from construction sites, where unions representing plumbers, electricians, carpenters and various other trades each control their piece of the building process. Last year Mazzola wrote a letter to San Francisco’s mayor, Ed Lee, a month before he died, urging him to deny any city business — such as contracts for subsidized housing — to Factory OS.

“Any decision to use Factory OS shows a blatant disregard for the other craft unions,” he wrote. He asked the mayor to refrain from contracting with the company unless it allowed craft unions to do their pieces of the work. “We realize modular is coming and we want to be part of it, but not at the expense of our workers, which is what’s happening right now,” Mazzola said.

Jay Bradshaw, director of organizing for the carpenters council representing Factory OS workers, said that would be impractical. Think back to that first station, where four people worked above and below the floor. In Mazzola’s world, a plumbers union would represent the workers installing pipes, while other unions would represent the workers up top.

“It would never work to have upward of 10 or 15 labor organizations at a single employer in a factory setting,” Bradshaw said.

For Bradshaw, the real fight isn’t defending job titles but making sure construction workers remain part of a union at all. A short drive from Factory OS, at a carpenters training center, the union is developing a program to train housing-factory workers — something that, it hopes, will prepare more people for an industry that it has come to see as inevitable.

“It sure blows the hell out of building in China,” he said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

source https://www.newssplashy.com/2018/06/opinion-piece-by-piece-factory-made.html

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perfectzablog · 8 years ago

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10 Tips for Creating a Fertile Environment for Kids’ Creativity and Growth

The excerpt below is from the book “Lifelong Kindergarten: Cultivating Creativity through Projects, Passion, Peers, and Play” by Mitchel Resnick, published by MIT Press.

TEN TIPS FOR PARENTS AND TEACHERS

There’s a common misconception that the best way to encourage children’s creativity is simply to get out of the way and let them be creative. Although it’s certainly true that children are naturally curious and inquisitive, they need support to develop their creative capacities and reach their full creative potential.

Supporting children’s development is always a balancing act: how much structure, how much freedom; when to step in, when to step back; when to show, when to tell, when to ask, when to listen.

In putting together this section, I decided to combine tips for parents and teachers, because I think the core issues for cultivating creativity are the same, whether you’re in the home or in the classroom. The key challenge is not how to “teach creativity” to children, but rather how to create a fertile environment in which their creativity will take root, grow, and flourish.

I’m organizing this section around the five components of the Creative Learning Spiral: imagine, create, play, share, and reflect. I propose strategies for helping children imagine what they want to do, create projects through playing with tools and materials, share ideas and creations with others, and reflect on their experiences.

Creative Learning Spiral (Courtesy of Mitchel Resnick)

For each of the five components, I’ll suggest two tips. That’s a total of 10 tips. Of course, these 10 tips are just a very small subset of all of the things you might ask and do to cultivate children’s creativity. View them as a representative sample, and come up with more of your own.

1. IMAGINE : SHOW EXAMPLES TO SPARK IDEAS

A blank page, a blank canvas, and a blank screen can be intimidating. A collection of examples can help spark the imagination. When we run Scratch workshops, we always start by showing sample projects—to give a sense of what’s possible (inspirational projects) and to provide ideas on how to get started (starter projects). We show a diverse range of projects, in hopes of connecting with the interests and passions of workshop participants. Of course, there’s a risk that children will simply mimic or copy the examples that they see. That’s OK as a start, but only as a start. Encourage them to change or modify the examples. Suggest that they insert their own voice or add their own personal touch. What might they do differently? How can they add their own style, connect to their own interests? How can they make it their own?

2. IMAGINE : ENCOURAGE MESSING AROUND

Most people assume that imagination takes place in the head, but the hands are just as important. To help children generate ideas for projects, we often encourage them to start messing around with materials. As children play with LEGO bricks or tinker with craft materials, new ideas emerge. What started as an aimless activity becomes the beginning of an extended project. We’ll sometimes organize mini hands-on activities to get children started. For example, we’ll ask children to put a few LEGO bricks together, then pass the structure to a friend to add a few more, then continue back and forth. After a few iterations, children often have new ideas for things they want to build.

3. CREATE : PROVIDE A WIDE VARIETY OF MATERIALS

Children are deeply influenced by the toys, tools, and materials in the world around them. To engage children in creative activities, make sure they have access to a broad diversity of materials for drawing, building, and crafting. New technologies, like robotics kits and 3-D printers, can expand the range of what children create, but don’t overlook traditional materials. A Computer Clubhouse coordinator was embarrassed to admit to me that her members were making their own dolls with “nylons, newspapers, and bird seed,” without any advanced technology, but I thought their projects were great. Different materials are good for different things. LEGO bricks and popsicle sticks are good for making skeletons, felt and fabric are good for making skins, and Scratch is good for making things that move and interact. Pens and markers are good for drawing, and glue guns and duct tape are good for holding things together. The greater the diversity of materials, the greater the opportunity for creative projects.

4. CREATE : EMBRACE ALL TYPES OF MAKING

Mitchel Resnick

Different children are interested in different types of making. Some enjoy making houses and castles with LEGO bricks. Some enjoy making games and animations with Scratch. Others enjoy making jewelry or soapbox race cars or desserts—or miniature golf courses. Writing a poem or a short story is a type of making, too. Children can learn about the creative design process through all of these activities. Help children find the type of making that resonates for them. Even better: Encourage children to engage in multiple types of making. That way, they’ll get an even deeper understanding of the creative design process.

5. PLAY : EMPHASIZE PROCESS, NOT PRODUCT

Throughout this book, I’ve emphasized the importance of making things. Indeed, many of the best learning experiences happen when people are actively engaged in making things. But that doesn’t mean we should put all our attention on the things that are made. Even more important is the process through which things are made. As children work on projects, highlight the process, not just the final product. Ask children about their strategies and their sources of inspiration. Encourage experimentation by honoring failed experiments as much as successful ones. Allocate times for children to share the intermediate stages of their projects and discuss what they plan to do next and why.

6. PLAY : EXTEND TIME FOR PROJECTS

It takes time for children to work on creative projects, especially if they’re constantly tinkering, experimenting, and exploring new ideas (as we hope they will). Trying to squeeze projects into the constraints of a standard 50-minute school period—or even a few 50-minute periods over the course of a week—undermines the whole idea of working on projects. It discourages risk taking and experimentation, and it puts a priority on efficiently getting to the “right” answer within the allotted time. For an incremental change, schedule double periods for projects. For a more dramatic change, set aside particular days or weeks (or even months) when students work on nothing but projects in school. In the meantime, support after-school programs and community centers where children have larger blocks of time to work on projects.

7. SHARE : PLAY THE ROLE OF MATCHMAKER

Many children want to share ideas and collaborate on projects, but they’re not sure how. You can play the role of matchmaker, helping children find others to work with, whether in the physical world or the online world. At Computer Clubhouses, the staff and mentors spend a lot of their time connecting Clubhouse members with one another. Sometimes, they bring together members with similar interests—for example, a shared interest in Japanese manga or a shared interest in 3-D modeling. Other times, they bring together members with complementary interests—for example, connecting members with interests in art and robotics so that they can work together on interactive sculptures. In the Scratch online community, we have organized month-long Collab Camps to help Scratchers find others to work with—and also to learn strategies for collaborating effectively.

8. SHARE : GET INVOLVED AS A COLLABORATOR

Parents and mentors sometimes get too involved in children’s creative projects, telling children what to do or grabbing the keyboard to show them how to fix a problem. Other parents and mentors don’t get involved at all. There is a sweet spot in between, where adults and children form true collaborations on projects. When both sides are committed to working together, everyone has a lot to gain. A great example is Ricarose Roque’s Family Creative Learning initiative, in which parents and children work together on projects at local community centers over five sessions. By the end of the experience, parents and children have new respect for one another’s abilities, and relationships are strengthened.

9. REFLECT : ASK (AUTHENTIC) QUESTIONS

It’s great for children to immerse themselves in projects, but it’s also important for them to step back to reflect on what’s happening. You can encourage children to reflect by asking them questions about their projects. I often start by asking: “How did you come up with the idea for this project?” It’s an authentic question: I really want to know! The question prompts them to reflect on what motivated and inspired them. Another of my favorite questions: “What’s been most surprising to you?” This question pushes them away from just describing the project and toward reflecting on their experience. If something goes wrong with a project, I’ll often ask: “What did you want it to do?” In describing what they were trying to do, they often recognize where they went wrong, without any further input from me.

10. REFLECT : SHARE YOUR OWN REFLECTIONS

Most parents and teachers are reluctant to talk with children about their own thinking processes. Perhaps they don’t want to expose that they’re sometimes confused or unsure in their thinking. But talking with children about your own thinking process is the best gift you could give them. It’s important for children to know that thinking is hard work for everyone—for adults as well as children. And it’s useful for children to hear your strategies for working on projects and thinking through problems. By hearing your reflections, children will be more open to reflecting on their own thinking, and they’ll have a better model of how to do it. Imagine the children in your life as creative thinking apprentices; you’re helping them learn to become creative thinkers by demonstrating and discussing how you do it.

CONTINUING THE SPIRAL

Of course, the Creative Learning Spiral doesn’t end with a single cycle of imagining, creating, playing, sharing, and reflecting. As children move through the process, they get new ideas and continue to the next iteration of the spiral, with another cycle of imagining, creating, playing, sharing, and reflecting. With each iteration of the spiral, there are new opportunities for you to support children in their creative learning.

Mitchel Resnick, an expert in educational technologies, is Professor of Learning Research at the MIT Media Lab. He has worked closely with the LEGO toy company for thirty years, collaborating with them on such innovative projects as the LEGO Mindstorms robotics kits, and he holds the LEGO endowed chair at MIT. He leads the team developing the Scratch programming software and online community, and he is cofounder of the Computer Clubhouse project, a network of after-school learning centers for youth from low-income communities.

10 Tips for Creating a Fertile Environment for Kids’ Creativity and Growth published first on http://ift.tt/2xi3x5d

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bisoroblog · 8 years ago

Text

10 Tips for Creating a Fertile Environment for Kids’ Creativity and Growth

The excerpt below is from the book “Lifelong Kindergarten: Cultivating Creativity through Projects, Passion, Peers, and Play” by Mitchel Resnick, published by MIT Press.

TEN TIPS FOR PARENTS AND TEACHERS

Supporting children’s development is always a balancing act: how much structure, how much freedom; when to step in, when to step back; when to show, when to tell, when to ask, when to listen.

Creative Learning Spiral (Courtesy of Mitchel Resnick)

1. IMAGINE : SHOW EXAMPLES TO SPARK IDEAS

2. IMAGINE : ENCOURAGE MESSING AROUND

3. CREATE : PROVIDE A WIDE VARIETY OF MATERIALS

4. CREATE : EMBRACE ALL TYPES OF MAKING

Mitchel Resnick

5. PLAY : EMPHASIZE PROCESS, NOT PRODUCT

6. PLAY : EXTEND TIME FOR PROJECTS

7. SHARE : PLAY THE ROLE OF MATCHMAKER

8. SHARE : GET INVOLVED AS A COLLABORATOR

9. REFLECT : ASK (AUTHENTIC) QUESTIONS

10. REFLECT : SHARE YOUR OWN REFLECTIONS

CONTINUING THE SPIRAL

10 Tips for Creating a Fertile Environment for Kids’ Creativity and Growth published first on http://ift.tt/2y2Rir2

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freepcbdesignsoftware · 8 years ago

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Top 3 Electronics You Can Easily Build From Home

Every year, there are more and more people who are choosing to pursue the field of robotics or technological design. This is because the world is heading towards a more tech-friendly future, and the younger generations wants to grown with it not against it. However, not everyone who is interested in robotics is going to pursue it professionally. Which is why there are so many hobbyists looking for fun and easy DIY projects. The following are the top electronics one can easily build from home for a very low cost.

A Radio

While the thought of building a radio might seem a little overwhelming, it is actually one of the easiest electronics to build from home. This is because many of the necessary materials can be found in nearly every household. Should someone not have these needed materials, however, they can strip them from inexpensive recyclable materials, and order cheap pcbs from trusted online manufacturers. Put simply, all someone needs to build a radio is a cheap pcb, a 9 volt battery, black and red insulated wires, a small speaker, an amplifier, capacitors and resistors, a coil, and an antenna. Most of these materials can be found by stripping older electronics of their parts.

A Sunrise Alarm Clock

Building an alarm clock is also a very easy and achievable goal for any interested do-it-yourselfers. Much like the radio, an alarm clock can be fabricated by using old materials. In order to properly make a sunrise alarm clock, one needs to use a box, a plug, an old phone charger, a light bulb, extension cords, a DC motor, and a timer. This type of alarm clock is special because it wakes people up by means of light and not only sound.

A Lamp

Not everyone is going to be interested in building their own lamp, but knowing how to do so can make one’s understanding of robotics quicken. Building a lamp is relatively easy as long as one has the proper tools and materials. Usually, however, one doesn't need to spend too much money to achieve building a lamp. In order to successfully create a lamp, one should gather the following equipment together:

The lamp’s base ( a toy, a wine bottle, etc.)

A detachable harp

A finial

Nuts and bolts

A cord set

Most of this equipment can be found at home by simply taking apart an older lamp. Should this not be an option, however, one can usually purchase a Lamp Kit from a local hardware store.

There are many routes one can take when choosing to create a electronic from scratch. Depending on the complexity of the model, it is sometimes required to purchase a cheap pcb in order for the device to function properly.

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newssplashy · 7 years ago

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VALLEJO, Calif. — California is in the middle of an affordable-housing crisis that cities across the state are struggling to solve.

Here, in a football-field-size warehouse where workers used to make submarines, Holliday recently opened Factory OS, a factory that manufactures homes.

In one end go wood, pipes, tile, sinks and toilets; out another come individual apartments that can be trucked to a construction site and bolted together in months.

Brokers of Risk

Efficiency vs. Workers

“On a job site, you can go do piece work and make really big money, but then the job is gone,” he said.

“It would never work to have upward of 10 or 15 labor organizations at a single employer in a factory setting,” Bradshaw said.

“It sure blows the hell out of building in China,” he said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

via NewsSplashy - Latest Nigerian News Online

#IFTTT #NewsSplashy - Latest Nigerian News Online

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