#( it's been a bit since I wrote Hewlett so trying to get used to his character again )

[sharp-teeth-and-archived]

unyieldingvalxr asked : 💎 - to try to steal something from your muse.  Philomena Cheer stealing from Hewlett???? 

Misc Action Memes. / @unyieldingvalxr​ -- slowly accepting

      𝐍𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐧 𝐄𝐝𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐝’𝐬 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐝 𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐬𝐨 𝐛𝐨𝐠𝐠𝐞𝐝 𝐝𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐛𝐲 𝐞𝐱𝐡𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧. There were moments in his military career when sleep was hard to come by; days when all he could do was stare at the ceiling in the morning, so tired and worn, to where it was a tiring task in itself to rip the sheets off of his body. But the chance to see a star-filled sky, the relief of retiring to his office after a hearty dinner, and a chance to meet some of the good people of Setauket strengthened his movements. Now, in this dreary room and in this house that was too big for a single person, it wasn’t the same. He would come across many forgetful faces in his day-to-day work, there was no incentive to try to make conversation with his fellow officers when he learned of their gossiping behind his back. He was too naive to notice when he was in Setauket that he resembled somewhat of a respectable figure than a man who took a beloved dead man’s job. 

      Also, there was a noticeable difference. Edmund wasn’t needed anymore; his purpose was already spent as real intelligence hardly trickled in by this turn in the war. The King was losing and loyalists were already packing their belongings for a trip across the pond to Britain or its neighboring countries.

      He climbed the stairs to his office and the wood under his feet creaked at every step. He tucked a book in between his arm, pressing it tightly to his side as he took each step until he reached the top. His job had grown so boring and his days had been drawn out so long that he decided to fall back into his habit of reading. In Whitehall, he found the time to read, but it was minimal in comparison to now. All he had to do was forge intelligence reports to almost prove his position was worthy.

      As he walked down the long hallway, he paused before twisting the knob of the door. Yes, he always shut the door when he left, but he swore he could hear shuffling inside. If it was a rat running across the floor, he imagined it would be much quieter in the daytime. No, this was someone and Edmund’s stomach clenched at the idea of his ruse being found out. Somehow, someone saw through his forged reports, and spotted the inconsistency of the claims, despite intelligence being mostly word of mouth most times. He only feared the worst.

      He opened the door and his eyes fell upon not one of his officers, but rather, a blonde head of curls of a woman. Surely, if someone was sent here to tell him of his double-crossing, it would be a man dressed in red. Arnold or Clinton for that matter and the secrecy surrounding it would be worthless. But not Philomena Cheer.

       ❝ Miss Cheer. ❞ One could hear a huff in between his words as his mouth twisted into a small frown. ❝ What is the meaning of this? ❞ Edmund was sure that Miss. Cheer hadn’t reached out to him beforehand to meet with him, which only made him wonder why she stood on the other side of his desk. Exactly where he would stand if they were in a meeting.

[workingforthewidow]

Turn Washingtons Spies Fic

Strap in kiddos bc this fucker is well over 30 pages in Word and 11,000 words. Should I have split it into parts probs but I worked on this bitch for months so here you go. It’s Ben/OC with some BFF Caleb, Simcoe/OC, Andre/OC. And the others are here too. 

Warnings: mentions of death/war/weapons/ lots of Simcoe hate. I the fluff queen wrote it so there shouldn't be anything to major. I did make Sky cry tho but she's emotional AF so oh well, it was happy cries I think.

This isn't a reader insert, I wrote it for my sister and I, so I used our names. 

   “Do you have to go with them? Can't you stay here? Please.” Ben’s grip on my hand tighten as if he believed if he continued to hold it and not let go, I couldn’t leave. 

   “I have to go back. I can’t let Sky and Papa go alone. They’ll forget to eat and sleep if I’m not there to remind them.” 

   “I’m sure they will be fine.” He was getting desperate.

   “I’ll come back you know that. These months will pass quickly then you can come to Scotland and bring me home. Write to me and I’ll write to you. I need to go. Papa will question me if I’m gone to long. I love you Ben.” 

   “I love you too.” He kissed me once then released his hold on my hand and I quickly made my way back to where Sky and Papa were waiting. 

   “Don’t worry you’ll see him again soon.” Sky whispered to me as we boarded the ship that would take up back to what was once our home, Scotland. 

   Once the war was over, ending in England’s defeat our father, Major Hewlett or Papa as we called him, decided it was best we go back to Scotland and try to restart the lives we left behind. But so much had changed since we had last been in Scotland. We had all fallen in love. The two of them were sadly left heartbroken. Well sadly for Papa. Sky could get over her heartbreak - that guy was a jerk. 

   After what felt like a lifetime, we finally landed in Scotland. A place I once dreamed about returning to but now I wanted nothing more then to leave.

   “Isn’t it wonderful to be home girls? I made arrangements for the house to be cleaned and ready for our return.” Papa said smiling. Both Sky and I put on a false smile for him. While my heart was left in America, she believed hers was in Canada but that was a lie and she needed to understand that he was a jerk and she could do better than him. 

   We arrived back to the home of our childhood. Everything was the same as it was when we left it years ago. Yet it was so different now. We each put our things in our rooms and settled into the sitting room. After a few minutes of sitting silence Papa decided to go out and check the land while Sky and I walked around the home we hadn't seen in a long time. Just as we started to prepare dinner a knock was heard from the front door.

   “How are people already showing up? We have been here all of five hours.” I groaned and opened the door to find a postal messenger. 

   “Letter for Miss Taylor Hewlett.” The man handed the envelope to me and tipped his head quickly before leaving. 

   “Well who was it?” Sky called from the kitchen. I walked in with a smile on my face. “They must not have stayed if you’re happy.” She laughed.

   “I got a letter from Ben.” 

   “What? How? Ships are not that fast.” 

   “He sent it before we left. Isn’t that sweet?” I smiled and read over the letter quickly before hiding it where I knew my father wouldn't find it. “I miss him.”

   “Just a few months and you will be with him again.”

   “Papa will never let me go. I imagine he’d rather have you married off to Simcoe. At least he was on the English side.” There was a time when I wouldn’t have worried this much. When Papa was happy with Anna Strong but then the engagement fell through and Papa went away for a while. 

   “Don’t cry Tay. You know Papa just wants what he thinks is best for us. He cares about us.” 

   “And what he thinks is best is not me being with Ben.” 

   “You don’t know that. Wait and see. Ben won’t be here for a few more months.” Sky tried to calm me. 

   “9 months 23 days. Give or take a day or two.” 

   “A day or two until what my dear?” Papa walked in returning from the land.

   “Tay was just saying it would take a day or so for us to readjust to life here. It has been quite a while since we were here.” Sky quickly covered for me.

   “Ah yes. Don’t worry. It won’t take long then things will be just like they were before that horrid war.” 

   -8 months later-

   Life was anything but back to normal. Just two months after being back Papa met a woman named Elizabeth and married her just four months later. She was a nice woman, who Papa wanted us to call Mother, but she wasn’t Anna. Anna Strong was the woman I wanted to call my mother. All I wanted was to be back in America. That’s where not only Ben was but also Caleb and Anna. 

   “Taylor, are you okay?” Elizabeth asked over dinner, “You look a bit distant.” 

   It was just her, Sky, and I tonight. Papa had been called away to help research a newly discovered planet and would not be home for a week.

   “She’s probably thinking about her Benji.” Sky said without a thought. I kicked her under the table and sent her a glare. 

   Elizabeth’s eyes lit up and she smiled at me, “Oh, who is Benji?”

   I sighed but answered anyway, “His name is Benjamin or Ben. Only Sky calls him Benji. He’s… he’s my…”

“He’s Tay’s fiancé. He’s from America.” Sky answered for me. “He will be here in a month or so to take her back to America.” 

“Your father hasn’t told me this.” Elizabeth said.

“He doesn’t know. I haven’t told him. I don’t know if he would approve. Ben was on the American side during the war. But Papa loves dramatic showings of romance so hopefully by Ben coming here and confessing his undying love for me again Papa will be swayed to let me go back with him.” 

“And I’ll go to find John.” Sky added in once I was done.

“You mean Ben and I will hunt down Simcoe.” I corrected her. 

Elizabeth looked at us extremely confused so before Sky could corrupt her thought I told her the truth about him.

“John Simcoe is who Skylar wants to marry. He is horrible man who has done horrible things and yet she still wants to be with him. He tried to kill Papa many times. Tortured my best friend Caleb to the brink of death. And has killed many of our friends and their family members.” 

“John Graves Simcoe. And he is not all that bad.” Sky tried to defend him but it was no use.

“Oh right how could I forget that name. I imagine he chose that name himself because of all the people he has put in the grave. Do you deny that he did any of the things I just mentioned?”

“We’ve all made mistakes, he’s changed and he’s trying his best. He gave Akinbode his freedom papers and he’s working on abolishing slavery. Isn’t that good enough?” 

“He. Tried. To. Kill. Papa.” 

“That was before he knew me. He wouldn’t dream of doing that now.” 

“Doesn’t matter. He has done nothing for me or anyone in our family expect for you. So Elizabeth that is who Simcoe is and you can probably understand why I want him gone.” I turned from Sky to look at Elizabeth who was wide eyed by this point. 

“He seems to be an interesting man. I cannot judge him without meeting him.” She was always trying to stay on both our good sides hoping one day we would call her ‘mom’.

“Hopefully you won’t. Papa hates him as much I do and will never let him in this house.” I said just as a knock was heard from the door. I left the dining table and opened the door, it was the messenger.

He looked out of breath like he had been running, “I apologize for calling at such a late hour but this letter is urgent.” He handed me an envelope before making his way back to his horse. 

“Who was it, Tay?” Sky asked when I returned. 

“Messenger. Urgent letter for me. Probably Ben, he’s so excited to see me.” I tore open the letter and started reading. I knew immediately it was not from Ben, it wasn’t his handwriting. I read the whole message three times over not believing the words. 

“Tay? What does it say?” Sky leaned over to try and read over my shoulder. 

“He’s not coming.” I dropped the letter on the table as tears started to form.

“What do you mean?” Elizabeth asked as Sky took the letter and started to read aloud.

“Taylor, I felt it was best you knew this so you did not stay in waiting for Ben. He is not leaving America. He has taken a job with the government and he has no time to step away at the moment. Knowing Ben he has probably made promises he will come for you just a little late but I doubt that happens. I am sorry and if you ever need anything you can call upon me. Abe” Sky’s voice was burning with hate by the end, “Dammit Abraham. Tay, you know Abe is an idiot. He probably misunderstood. Ben loves you. He is going to be here.”

“But what if he’s not, Sky? I would have wasted all my time.” 

“Don’t say that. It will be okay.” 

Neither of us noticed Elizabeth had left until she returned with a plate that held fresh made cookies. 

“I made these earlier while you two were out in the field with the horses.” 

“And donkey don’t forget Charles.” I reminded her and took a cookie. “Thank you.”

“You’re right. How could I forget Charles. And you’re welcome. I know how bad heartbreak can hurt.” Elizabeth smiled and sat back down. 

The rest of the week was spent trying to forget Ben and focus on Papa’s return. Once he was home he told us all of his time in the city and all the things he saw. It had been nearly two months since I received the letter from Abe and I had almost gotten over Ben until he showed up on our doorstep. 

“I’m here to see Miss Taylor Hewlett.” Even from upstairs I knew his voice. 

“And who may I ask are you?” Elizabeth’s voice also carried up the stairs. 

“I’m…”

“Ben.” I ran down the stairs and went to the door jumping into his arms. “I thought you weren’t coming. You had to stay in America.”

He let me down with a shocked and confused look, “Why would you think that?” 

I went back upstairs to my room and returned with the letter from Abe. “Abe sent this.” 

Ben took the letter from my hands and read over it. He shook his head multiple times and even rolled his eyes a few times.

“My dear, why would you ever listen Abe? You know he is only capable of limited things. It is true I am late because of my new position with the government but I promised I would return for you.” 

“You know I’m my father’s daughter. We Hewletts tend to over react at times. Like Papa will once he sees you.”

“Don’t worry. We can convince him.” Elizabeth spoke up.

“I hope so. Oh Ben this is my mother Elizabeth. Liz this is Ben, obviously.” I introduced the two.

“I’ve heard a lot about you Ben. It’s a pleasure to meet you in person.” 

“It’s nice to meet you as well Mrs. Hewlett.” Ben smiled and bowed slightly. 

The sound of running was heard through the house and Skylar ran into the room. 

“Who’s here? I saw someone ride up. BENJI! Oh wait I’m mad at you.” Her smile fell.

“Not anymore. We love him again. Abe was being Abe and messed things up.” I laughed and moved away from Ben so Sky could hug him. “Now we just have to tell Papa.” 

And as usually my father had the world’s best timing and returned home at that exact moment. 

“Mister Tallmadge what on earth are you doing here? I did not expect to ever see you again.” 

Ben and I looked at each other before Ben spoke up. “Major I am here to discuss with you a matter which is very important to me. Is there a place we may speak in private?” 

Papa gave him a questioning look but nodded and had Ben follow him to his study. 

“What’s going to happen? What if this doesn’t work?” I had no idea what Ben was planning and if he messed this up then Papa would never let us marry.

“Ben is a smart man, Tay. He will win over Papa and you two will be married in no time. Lets out and see the animals. You’ve haven’t seen your donkey in days.” Sky took my hand and led me outside.

“His name is Charles. Why can’t anyone remember his name? He’s not just a donkey he’s Charles.” I huffed annoyed but followed her anyway with Elizabeth following as well. 

We stayed in the field for what felt like hours before Papa came out to find us. 

“He is a nice fellow. Not what I expected from someone with such a close friendship with Abraham.” I looked at him expecting more. 

“So should we be celebrating?” Elizabeth asked hinting towards an engagement. 

“Has she accepted?” Papa answered and looked over to me. I smiled and hugged him before running into the house to find Ben. “If he did not show up at this time when did she plan on telling me?” He turned to Sky.

“I think him showing up was her plan. You know her, she’s blinded by love like the rest of us.” 

-6 months later- 

Ben and I returned to America shortly after our official engagement. It was wonderful to be back. I felt like I was back in my true home. 

“Damn Benny boy I can’t believe you really convinced her to come back to you.” I heard the voice of my best friend Caleb Brewster. 

“I really only returned so I could see you again Caleb, you know that. I missed my best friend.” I smiled and hugged him.

“Don’t let your sister hear you say that.” 

“She isn’t here. She’ll arrive in a few months. That is if we can keep her away from Canada and Simcoe.” I groaned.

Caleb rolled his eyes and laughed, “She’s still hung up on that arse?” 

“Very much so. I still think we should kill him.” 

“I agree and we both know Ben does as well.” 

We spent the rest of the afternoon talking and catching each other up on our lives. It was during this conversation I brought up Anna Strong. 

“How is Anna? Ben told me Selah had returned.”

“Aye he did. They took the tavern back. Things are somewhat back to normal. She misses you and Skylar. Asked Ben about you anytime he got a letter.” 

“Is she in the tavern now? I want to see her.” I wanted to tell her about my time away and find out how her life was going now. Caleb nodded and we walked to the Strong Tavern. 

It was past working hours but we knew Anna wouldn’t mind. We walked in and saw Selah and Anna talking. 

“Sorry we’re closed for the day.” Anna said without looking away from her husband. 

“Even for your best friend?” 

Anna turned and smiled when she saw me. “Tay! I didn’t know you and Ben had gotten back. It’s been so long.” She hugged me tightly before turning to Selah. “Selah, this is Tay, Ben’s fiancé. Tay, this is my husband Selah.” 

“I’ve heard quite a lot about you, Miss.” True to the stories from Ben, Selah Strong was not a man of many words.

“No need for formalities. Just call me Tay. Anna I have so much to tell you. So much has happened and I need your help with something.” 

“And what might that be?” She asked.

“Sky is still head over heels for that vile Simcoe. Her plan is come here for the wedding then travel Canada to find him. Papa and Elizabeth, she’s Papa’s wife, will be here but they’ve already tried to stop her and it’s not working. So I figure maybe if you try to talk some sense into her when she gets here.” 

“Talk some sense into her? I’ll beat some sense into her. How can she still have feelings for that man after all he did?”

“She claims he has changed. I highly doubt that is true.” I shook my head. “I say we go to Canada, find him, and I don’t know maybe kill him.” 

“I second that.” Caleb agreed.

“While I too agree, we don’t have time. Our wedding is only two weeks away. Skylar will be here any day now.” Ben added, I was sure this was Ben’s way of trying to keep me out of danger and away from Simcoe. 

He was right though. There was no time to even come up with a plan on how to kill Simcoe, let alone get to Canada and find him. 

We stayed at Strong’s Tavern until late into the night. When it got to the point where I was falling asleep on Ben’s shoulder we decided it was time to return home. Ben practically carried me upstairs to our room and helped me out of my dress. 

“Where are you going?”  I hold onto his hand when he goes to leave.

“I just have to finish somethings in my study. I’ll be back shortly. I love you. Sleep well.” He smiled and closed the door as he left. I fell asleep almost as soon as he walked out.

When I woke up the next morning Ben was no where to be seen. His side of the bed didn’t even look like it was slept in. I got myself dressed and walked downstairs. I found Ben in his study asleep on his desk. I stood behind him and gently shook his shoulder.

“Ben, darling, wake up. It’s morning time to get up.” He slowly sat up and rubbed his eyes. “And this is why I say you shouldn’t work late into the night, you always fall asleep here. Come on, I’ll make breakfast.” 

We walked to the kitchen and Ben sat down almost falling asleep again.

“What time did you fall asleep?” I asked him as I started to make pancakes. 

“I don’t know. Around 4 maybe.”

“Ben thats not good for you.” 

“The thing he does that’s good for him is having you around. Oh breakfast I’m just in time.” As usual Caleb walked into our home like he owned the place and sat down next to Ben.

I laughed and sat a plate down in front of each of them. “You know Caleb one of these days you’re going to waltz in here and see something you probably shouldn’t.” 

“Nah I’ve seen Benny boy without his pants and I doubt you’re bad looking.” He smirked. 

I smacked on the side of the head, “You shouldn’t speak to a lady that way.” 

“I didn’t know Sky was here already.” Caleb laughed. If Sky heard him she would have hit him too. She may be able to dress up and act fancy when it was absolutely necessary but she much rather preferred to be doing something like shooting a pistol compared to going to a party. 

“She will be here any day now. As long as she didn’t run off to find Simcoe first. Canada is a big place she’ll never make it.” I noticed Ben and Caleb sharing a look before going back to eating. “What? What do you know? I know that look and I know you know something. So tell me, come on tell me.” 

They looked at each other again and Caleb shoved a piece of pancake in his mouth before gesturing that he couldn’t speak while eating.

Ben sighed and ran his hand down his face, “We may know where Simcoe is currently. Word is he is returning here to get the last of his belongings.” 

“I thought everything he left here was burned?”

“He had some connections left who seemed to like him enough to hold onto a few things.”

“So that means it will be easier to kill him? Ambush him on his way here. We’ll make it look like a robbery.” 

“Sweetheart put the knife down. You’re scaring me.” Ben stood up and took the knife from my hands. I hadn’t even noticed that I was holding it. “We are looking at our options. We can’t just kill him out right. We need probable cause.” 

“Probable cause!” Caleb finally stopped shoving food in his mouth and spoke again. “Probable cause! Benny look at everything he did to us. To our families. Remember what he did to…” 

“I remember what he did. I will not never forget but it’s been so long that if for some reason we are taken to court they will find a way to hang us. I promise he is going to pay for everything he did but we have to do it responsibly.” Ben interrupted him. None of us wanted Caleb to finish his last sentence. 

Before anyone could say anything the front door opened. 

“Tay! Benji! I have arrived!” Sky yelled.

“In the dining room,” I called back.

She dropped her luggage at the door and made her way to us. Once she was close enough I hugged her tight. It had been so long since we had last seen each other.

“I’ve missed you. It’s been so long. Are you hungry? There’s more food in the kitchen.” I said as our hug broke. 

“No thanks. I actually ate with Anna and Selah. I ran into them on my way here. It was funny at first. Seeing her without Papa. He and Liz send their love. They should be here next week. They left a few days after I did.” 

“Really? That’s sooner than expected. The wedding isn’t for a month.” 

“They missed you. You have the room don’t you?”

“Yes. We do. I’ll just have to clean the spare room. I moved everything out of the room for you into the other spare room. I guess I could move it all to Caleb’s room.” 

“Caleb lives here?” Sky looked over to Caleb who was once again eating. 

“No. He just has a room for those nights he’s too drunk to walk the extra few steps next door. He won’t need it while Papa and Liz are here. Boys clean the kitchen. Sky, I’ll show you upstairs.”

We left the boys downstairs and I helped Sky carry her bags to her room. Then we went to clean out a place for our parents.

“Why on earth do you have this much furniture? Why isn’t downstairs yet?” The room was full of couches and side tables. 

“We haven’t gotten around to it. Ben had everything moved up here before we moved in so that the bottom level could be cleaned. He wanted to make sure it was perfect for me. We haven’t had a need for it. Come on help me move it. It won’t take long.” 

We were able to move everything in a short amount of time then headed back downstairs. Luckily nothing was on fire. Caleb had a bad habit of almost burning down my house. 

“Everything is still in one piece. I’m shocked.” I looked around for any sign of fire. 

“Not everything. I broke a plate again. Sorry.” Caleb held up some shards of broken plate. “I’ll replace it after I finish helping Abe. Dumb arse still can’t get his door to shut properly.” He cleaned the final pieces of broken dish before leaving. 

“Abe is still causing problems?” Sky asked.

“Abe is always causing problems.” I replied. “Now catch me up on what has happened back in Scotland.” 

-One week later- 

Everything was set up and ready for Papa and Liz to visit, the house was clean, we had plenty of food, and Ben promised he would keep Abe as far away as he could until the actual day of the wedding.

“Are you sure it looks okay? Maybe we should wash the windows again.”

“It’s fine, Tay. It’s perfect. Besides I don’t think they would care. I’m sure they are just going to be happy to see you.”

“And not Abe. You did tell him to stay away right? I don’t want him to upset Papa.” 

Ben stood straighter, almost stiff, and looked anywhere but in my eyes which meant he hadn’t talked to Abe.

“Ben you promised. If you don’t talk to him I will and we both know that will not end pleasantly for anyone. It’s just for two weeks. Please go now. They will be here any day now.” I looked up to him with the most pitiful look I could muster up.

“Fine. I’ll go. Just know he probably won’t listen.” Ben said before heading out of the house. 

“Where is he off to?” Sky asked coming back into the house after her morning walk. 

“He’s going to tell Abe he isn’t allowed anywhere near this house or Papa until the day of the wedding. I don’t want him to do anything that might upset Papa. He’s done enough. Abe probably won’t listen but that will give you good reason to shoot him off the property since we both know Ben won’t do it.” 

“I can shoot him? Really?” Her eyes lit up at the thought.

“If he shows up anywhere near here or Papa. I want everything to be perfect. As long as Abe and Simcoe don’t show up it will be the perfect day. Really we only need to worry about Abe. Simcoe doesn’t have any idea about any of this.” 

“Right, of course. John has no idea about anything this.” Sky then went quiet for a moment which only meant one thing, she was lying.

“Skylar, what did you do?” I turned to look at her.

She laughed a bit and her eyes darted around, “I didn’t do anything. Nope nothing.” 

I continued to look at her with a threatening stare until she broke.

“I may have written to John to tell him I was returning to the states. He doesn’t know about Papa being here. I just told him I was coming see you and to return some of his things I hid away.” 

So she was his connection in the states. If she wasn’t my sister I probably would have killed her with my bare hands. I took a moment to compose my emotions before speaking again.

“Why would think it was a good idea to tell him to come here? Mail him his things. Or better yet burn them. Skylar, how many times must you be reminded of the things he did to our friends, to our family, to… Papa.” 

“He’s different with me. He loves me. Besides he was just doing what he thought was best. When he gets here, I’ll have him apologize. You have to learn to like him Tay. What’s going to happen when I marry him?” 

As soon as the words left her mouth I smacked her across the face. 

“You know that if you marry that vile monster, you will be disowned. Not just by Papa but by me, Ben, Caleb, and everyone here. You will have no one but your precious John. Which is more important to you? The family that has loved and cared for you your whole life or a man who you barely know and barely have spent any time with outside of the time you were kidnapped. The one good thing that man did was saving you but he also tainted your view of him. It’s like you worshiped him after that. Had Caleb not been injured I would have sent him after you. But why was he injured? Oh because Simcoe was torturing him! I will admit he was able to hide his joy in that well because when I came to him to help find you he made no mention of having my best friend locked in a cell on the verge of death. I think you should take time to reconsider your affection for him before it is too late.” 

She said nothing and walked straight out the front door. I followed her and stopped on the steps as she continued to walk away.

“Don’t come back until you’ve made up your mind. I don’t want to see you until you have realized what you really want out of this situation.” By this point she was gone and I was yelling to the wind. I went back in the house and waited for Ben to return from his visit with Abe.

**

“Abe wasn’t too happy about your request but Mary promised to try and keep him away from the house.” Ben said as he walked in. “I didn’t think it would be that easy but it… Why are you crying? What happened?” He sat next to me and wiped away my tears with his thumb. 

“Skylar. She still has it in her head she is going to marry Simcoe. Did you know she was his connection here? She’s the one holding on to his belongings. I told her she needs to figure out what she wants and not to return until she had everything straightened out. If she gains a husband she will lose a father and a sister.” 

Ben didn’t reply and I didn’t want him to say anything. I just wanted him be here. His presence itself was calming. We stayed this way for quite a while before someone knocked on the door. Ben stood and went to answered it. I heard the door open followed by the sound of hushed voices. Then I saw my Papa followed by Elizabeth.

“Do you know where she went?” I knew he was referring to Sky. That was probably what the whispering was about, Ben telling him what happened.

**

After walking for nearly an hour Sky realized how far she had gone. She had to be miles away from Ben and Tay’s home. She sat down on nearby fallen tree and thought about what Tay had said. Maybe she was right, Simcoe did do horrible things but he loved Sky. He told her many times of his love for her. She had never told Tay or her father but she had stayed in touch with Simcoe while in Scotland. Sky did not have much faith in religion but she could not doubt that there was someone or thing looking out for her since she was always able to get his letters from the postman without anyone in the house finding out.

She was so lost in thought she didn’t hear the footsteps coming up behind her.

“Sky, love, what are you doing here?” Sky jumped when she heard his voice. 

“John!” She jumped up and hugged him. “I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you too but that doesn’t answer my question. Why are you alone in the woods?”

“Tay and I had a fight. I needed to get away for a while and gather my thoughts. What are you doing here? I thought you weren’t going to arrive for a month.” Sky asked him while still holding him in her arms. 

“I couldn’t wait any longer. I had to see you.” Simcoe broke their embrace and held her at arms length looking at her like he was trying to memorize every detail of her look. 

“You can’t be here. If Tay or anyone else finds out they will kill you. You must leave. Please for your own safety.” Sky begged him.

“I am not afraid of your family. I am a grown man, a Queen’s Ranger. I can handle myself. Do not worry about me. I have changed. I’m not the same man I was before. Let me meet your family as the man I am now. It may take time but I’m sure they will change their minds in time.” 

Sky thought it over and debated the chances anyone would shoot him. The chance of that happening was high if they had weapons on their persons but her sister had a rule about weapons in the house. The only ones Sky had seen was the gun Ben kept in a trunk in their bedroom and the one by the door. The only reason Tay allowed them was because they were the some of the ones he used in the war and Ben told her it made him feel better knowing he could protect her should someone break into the house in the night. 

After her internal debate she finally made her decision. “Okay. We can go but if anything happens we will leave immediately. No killing.” 

“No killing.” He agreed and took her hand in his as they walked towards Tay and Ben’s house.

**

Ben looked out the window and held in a groan. He turned and looked at me. “Sweetheart I need you to stay calm. Please be as calm as you can be.” 

“I’m always calm. Why?” I walked to the window and looked out. “Oh Sky’s back. That’s great. I’ll set her a place for a dinner.”

“Do you not see who is with her?” Ben questioned as he continued to watch Sky and Simcoe walk up the path that lead to the house.

“I’m in the dinning room I can’t hear you.” I shouted to him. 

The front door opened and Sky walked in with Simcoe in tow. Ben was standing in front of them within seconds. 

“Skylar have you gone mad? Your father is here. Why on earth have you brought him here?”

Before Sky could answer, I returned from the dinning room. “Sister, I’m so glad you’re back. I was so worried something had happened to you. Don’t worry you didn’t miss dinner. I just set your place. Papa and Liz are here. They can’t wait to see you. Come now, dinner is waiting.” I made no mention of Simcoe nor paid him any mind. I took Sky’s hand and walked to the dinning room. Ben and Simcoe glanced at each other before following. 

“Look Papa. Sky has returned. Isn’t that lovely?” I said as I sat down at one of the empty seats. 

“Yes I see. She brought someone with her.” Hewlett replied through his teeth. His eyes burned as he stared at Simcoe. 

“Papa I think you’re seeing things. No one else is here. You must be tired from the trip. I suggest going straight to bed after dinner.” I smiled and started eating. 

Everyone else in the room shared a confused and concerned face. Ben sat down next to me and Sky motioned for Simcoe to wait in the sitting room. Conversation during dinner consisted mostly of Papa and Liz’s travel. Anytime someone tried to bring up Simcoe I dismissed them and changed the topic. At one point I even brought up a trip to visit Judge Woodhull’s gravesite just to avoid Simcoe. After dinner was finished and the dishes cleaned Papa, Liz, and Sky went to the sitting room where Simcoe was still waiting. I tried to follow but Ben pulled me upstairs. 

“Darling, while I much enjoy time with you alone I think it’s important I spend time with my family while they are here.” 

“What are you doing? You can’t just make him disappear by denying his presence.” 

I went stiff and turned away from him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about Ben. I’m not denying Papa is here.” 

“Tay, you know who I am talking about. Sky brought Simcoe here and you won’t acknowledge it. I don’t know why. Talk to me please.” He turned me around and held my face in his hands forcing me to look at him.

I sighed, took his hands off my face, and rested my head on his chest. Ben knew that meant I was close to breaking down, something I did not do often. 

“If I acknowledge he’s here then I have to acknowledge that my sister cares nothing for my happiness or yours or Papa’s or anyone in this town. It shows that she cares about him and herself more than she does about us. She did the one thing I asked her not to do.” 

“Sweetheart, she must have her reason. She wouldn’t do this for no reason. You know I am about as happy as you with what is happening. We must have clear heads and hear them out. Do you want me to hold my gun while he talks? If he says anything to upset you I’ll shoot him.” Ben was surprised when he felt me nod yes.  “Go downstairs. I’ll be there soon.” 

I went downstairs and sat in one of the empty arm chairs. I didn’t look at Simcoe or my sister who were sitting on one of the couches. Ben came down a few minutes later gun in hand. He sat next to me and turned to look at Sky and Simcoe.

“Skylar, please explain why you have brought Simcoe into our home even though it goes against the wishes of your sister and I.”

Sky’s eyes darted from me to Simcoe a few times before speaking. “He wants to apologize for everything. He is a changed man. Please give him give a chance.” She looked to Simcoe as a signal for him to speak.

“I have changed. If you allow me, I will show you I have learned from the error of my ways. I know I have done things to you and your family that are unforgivable but I do hope you will allow me the chance to prove I have changed.” When he spoke he looked directly at me knowing I would be the hardest person to get forgiveness from.

Without a word I stood up and left the room. I heard footsteps falling and knew instantly Caleb was following me. His heavy footfalls a dead give away. 

“So, still wanna kill him, aye?” 

“You know my feelings towards weaponry, right?”

“Well yes but by the way..”

“It took everything in my power not to take that gun from Ben and kill him right there in front of everyone. I don’t understand how Sky can do this to me, to all of us.” 

Caleb pulled me into a hug as I cried. 

“I don’t understand it either. I want him dead as much as you do. Ben feels the same. I imagine your dear Papa does as well. The only one who disagrees is your sister. Don’t worry though, this will be handled. I have a feeling things are going to change soon.” He promised as we walked back to the house. When we returned Sky and Simcoe had left. 

Papa and Liz stayed up long enough to say good night to me then headed up to the room we had offered to them. Caleb decided to stay the night as well in case Simcoe had anything planned. 

Little did we know then that Caleb’s feeling about things changing would be correct. Two nights before our wedding someone we never thought we’d see again was on our doorstep. It was late nearly 2 in the morning and it appeared I was the only one who was woken up by the knock.

“I am very sorry for the late hour but please tell me she’s here. I have to see her. I was told she was in town for your wedding. Congratulations. ” John Andre looked like a broken man. Which wasn’t that surprising seeing as he had spent nearly over a year in a prison cell. In all honestly he should have been hanged but Ben was able to get him a prison sentence as to not cause my sister the heartbreak of losing him. It took a lot of convincing but Ben was good with words. 

Andre was her first love but he was chasing after Peggy Shippen leaving Sky to fool herself into thinking she loved Simcoe.

“Keep your voice down.” I hushed him and pushed him away from the doorway before stepping out and closing the door behind. “There are three men in there that are still happy to hang you.” 

“Three? Besides your fiancé who else do you house?”

“His best friend and fellow solider, Caleb Brewster. And my father is currently with us. He wants you dead because you broke my sisters heart.” I crossed my arms as I spoke and gave him a glare.

“That is why I’m here. I want to talk to Skylar. All those months alone gave me much time to think and I realized Peggy is nothing compared to her. 

Skylar is who I truly love and she must know that. I will understand if she has found another but I would still like to speak to her. If I may. Why are you smiling like that? Please stop it’s scary. How is your face smiling that wide? That must hurt.” Andre took a full step back from me. 

“I will happily take you to my sister but it is very late. Please come in and rest. You can stay in the room intended for my sister. But stay quiet and don’t leave the room until I come for you.” 

He nodded in agreement and I let him into the house showing him to the upstairs room. 

I quickly returned to bed and prayed Ben was still sleeping. Thankfully he was and I didn’t have to answer any questions about who was at the door.

The next morning Ben took Papa and Liz around the town showing Liz everything and Papa the things that had changed. They had asked me to do it but I told them I was up late that night which wasn’t a complete lie. I was up late I just didn’t give them a reason. Caleb had gone back to his own home so that he could change clothes. 

As soon as everyone was out of the house I pulled Andre out of the room he had been hiding in. I handed him a cloak and instructed him to pull the hood tight. 

“I don’t want anyone to see you. Come, hurry.” 

We made our way to the local inn and went straight to Sky’s room. It only took a few threats to the inn keeper to find out which room was hers. 

“Breakfast! Time for waffles and chocolate! Just put it…” Sky’s sentence was cut off by one of the loudest screams I’ve ever heard. 

“Surprise. He wants to talk. I know Simcoe isn’t here, I saw him walking towards town, so you are free to talk. I love you, sister.” I shoved Andre into the room and closed the door. I considered staying and listening in on what happened but decided against incase Simcoe did return. I did not want to have any chance of seeing him. 

I quickly left the inn and went in search of one of my friends. I walked into the tavern and found Anna cleaning tables. 

“Oh Anna, I have the most marvelous news!” I said in a sing-song voice before sitting down at the table she was wiping down. 

“Are you going to share this news? Or make me guess?”

“I don’t have time for you to guess because you never will. You’ll want to sit down for this.” I waited for her to sit down before continuing my story. “Andre has returned. He showed up on my doorstep around 2 in the morning last night. He said that during his time in prison he realized how much he truly loved Sky and not Peggy. He wanted to talk to her and express his love to her!”

Anna took a minute to process everything I said before speaking, “But she loves Simcoe now? She gave up on Andre because he was chasing Peggy.” 

“No. She only thinks she loves Simcoe. What she really loves is the idea of Simcoe. Someone who showers her with attention, complements her, doesn’t ignore her at all, is clingy. I could go on but you get the idea. Once she realizes where her true love lies she will leave Simcoe, be with her one true love, they will attend my wedding, and everyone will live happily ever after. Except Simcoe because he will be dead. Yay.” Anyone within five miles could hear the cheerfulness in my voice. 

“Tay, your wedding is tomorrow. You think Andre is going to be able to win Sky back in 24 hours? Even if he does, Edmund won’t accept him. You know how protective he is of you girls.” 

“He’s letting me marry an American rebel spy. I’m sure he will be happy she’s not with Simcoe.” I shrugged and looked towards the door that had just opened. 

“I heard my name. I came to see if you needed my assistance.” Simcoe, once again thinking he owned the place, waltzed in and sat down. “Mrs. Strong, hello, I’d like a drink. Please.” 

I could tell he added the please as an after thought to try and show me he could be polite. I scowled at him and said goodbye to Anna before leaving. I figured by this point in the day Ben, Papa, and Liz would be back at home. Thankfully I was correct and Caleb was there as well. 

Liz seemed to notice my happiness and asked what happened while the group was gone.

“Well, shocking news, Andre has returned. He is currently confessing his love for Skylar.” I went on to explain everything that occurred the night before and this morning. “So there you have it. By this time tomorrow Ben and I will be married and Sky will not longer be in love with Simcoe. It’ll be perfect.” 

“You got out of bed in the night to answer the door without me? It could have been a murderer.” Of course that was the part of the story Ben caught. 

“Ben that is not the important part of this story. What is important is that Andre is going to win Sky back and Simcoe will be gone!” 

“What are you doing here?” Sky’s voice was barely above a whisper. “Ben had you sent to prison.” 

“My love the only real permeant sentence is death. I truly am thankful to the rebel major who spared my life.” 

“He did it for me. It wasn’t easy but he figured I would be upset if you were dead.”

“Is that your way of saying you wouldn’t care if I lived or died?” He stepped forward and tried to take her hand but she moved a step back. 

“Why do you care? Why are you here? Why aren’t you with Peggy?”

  “The answer to all three question is you. During my time in prison I had so much time to myself to think about my life and the choices I made that lead me where I was. I realized that I did not love her but I loved you. My biggest regret was that I had broken your heart to chase after someone who would never level to you. She could never live up to your intellect, your wit, your beauty. You are the only woman I will ever truly love. Tell me if you have found another to hold your heart and I will leave at once and never return. But I pray that you tell me otherwise and I have the chance to gain back your love.” At this point he was begging on his knees. 

Sky was in shock. She never excepted to see him again let alone have him confess his undying love for her. She was speechless. Her emotions were a mix of happiness for his confession, anger for the original betrayal, and confusion about her love for Simcoe. She truly believed she loved him but she also loved Andre. 

“I need a moment. Please.” She was finally able to open her mouth and let those few words out. 

“Of course. I will see if the inn keeper has a room for me. Though I imagine your sisters invitation to stay in her home is open. The bed was very comfortable.” 

Sky laughed, “You stayed with Tay? What did Ben say?”

“He didn’t know. She was able to hide me away before he or your father saw me. I will tell you the story at a later time. Take time to think. I will return for your answer.” He simply smiled at her before leaving the room. 

While Andre was getting settled into his own room at the inn Simcoe returned. 

“You’re upset.” The simple words from Simcoe caused more tears from Sky. She had made her decision and now had to tell everyone. 

“I’m sorry, John. So sorry.” She whispered and wiped the tears from her face. 

“What are you talking about? What happened while I was gone?” 

“Andre. He has returned.” She sighed and decided that it was best to be truthful with him, “I love him, John. I will forever be grateful for the time we shared but I must go to him.”

Simcoe said nothing but his face was a rainbow of emotions ranging from anger to sadness. 

“If this is what you want, I will respect this decision. Tell your sister how this ended. That I didn’t yell or throw things. No guns were fired. I peacefully walked away.” He kissed her on the cheek and took his bag. “You know my heart will always be a shrine to our love. Should you ever need anything you know how to contact me. Goodbye Skylar.” 

As he walked down the hall to the staircase he noticed Andre exiting his room. Simcoe looked at Andre for a split second before stepping onto the staircase. 

After Simcoe walked by him Andre returned to Sky. She was staring out the window watching Simcoe walk away.

“My dear?” Andre stood behind her and put his hand on her shoulder. She turned into him and rested her cheek on his chest. 

“If it isn’t obvious I have chosen you.” She felt the movement of Andre’s chest as he chuckled slightly.

“I figured as such. If you need time, I understand.” 

“We should probably talk about a few things, like my father and future brother-in-law hating you.” 

Andre agreed and they each took a seat at the small table in the room. The couple talked for hours even skipping lunch. It wasn’t until Tay arrived to see how things had gone that they finally left the room. 

“John Andre you have given me the best wedding gift I could ever ask for, unless someone kills Simcoe than that will be the best. For right now though, you are the winner.” Tay clapped and smiled, “It’s dinner time. Come you need to meet everyone in a new light. Except Liz because you haven’t met her at all so clean slate with her. Come along hurry up the rain is starting and I didn’t bring the carriage we have to walk.” 

Just as the first flash of lightening struck the trio returned to Ben and Tay’s home where the family was waiting for them. Once the introductions were down the interrogation started. All three men, Ben, Caleb, and Hewlett, questioned Andre on his motives and intentions. It seemed all his answers lived up to what they wanted and Andre was invited to stay and attend the wedding happening the next day. 

We all sat down to dinner and discussed the plans for what would happen at the wedding. 

“I think all the guest are in town except George and Martha. The letter they sent said they would most likely arrive late into the night. While I was at the inn today I made them a reservation.” A moment after I said this a knock came from the door. 

Ben stood and went to answer it. “It’s a good thing you made extra servings of dinner, Tay.” Ben said as he returned with George and Martha following. I quickly stood and hugged them both. 

“It’s been far too long since I’ve last seen you.” 

“We would have been here sooner but an incident occurred that caused us to be late.” George explained as he and Martha sat down. “During the storm our carriage unfortunately hit a man. We were able to locate your towns doctor and he is being cared for there.”

“I wish we knew his name. I hope he is okay.” Martha added. “But that shouldn’t hinder the excitement of tomorrow’s events.” 

We changed the subject back to the wedding and the unnamed man was not mentioned again. Shortly after dinner plates were washed and put away everyone went to bed. Sky and Andre graciously offered to show the Washingtons to the inn. 

“Are you nervous?” Ben asked as we got into bed. 

“A little. Mainly I’m worried about tripping as I walk. Are you nervous?” 

“Not all. Tomorrow is going to the best day of our lives.”

“Such a romantic. We should sleep. The faster we sleep the faster we wake up. The faster we wake up the faster the we can get married.” We both laughed and went to bed. 

The morning came quickly and soon Sky, Liz, and Anna were whisking me away from Ben to get me dressed. 

“Stop fidgeting. I can’t curl your hair if you keep moving.” Anna ordered as she wrapped my hair around a hot curling rod. 

“She can’t help it she’s excited.” Sky laughed as she and Liz worked on pinning their hair styles into place. “She’s just so happy to rid herself of the Hewlett name.” 

“That is not at all true.” I stuck my tongue out at her and laughed. 

“Are you calling me a liar?” She gasped.

“Well I ain’t calling you a truther!” I came back at her which sent us all into a fit of laughter.

After we were all done joking around and getting ready we made our way to the church. As usual I was very early. I had a habit of always being the first one to an event.

“Why are we here before the reverend?” Sky asked sitting next to me on one of the benches. 

“One, you know I like to be super early and the first to an event. Two, Ben’s father is marrying us I’m sure he’s with Ben.” 

The four of us waited about an hour before Reverand Townsend arrived. 

“This is why you are so good for Benjamin. You will make sure he is always on time.” He chuckled and kissed my cheek. “You look lovely my dear. Ben won’t know what hit him.” 

The guest started arriving and soon we were just waiting for Ben and Caleb. 

“Tay, stop moving or he will see you. This is why the bride is suppose to be the last to arrive not the first.” Anna said as she pushed me back behind the back of the church wall. We had moved outside to hide me away before Ben arrived. 

Finally Papa and Caleb arrived and told us Ben was ready and waiting in the church. Liz and Anna made their way in and took their seats. Caleb and Sky joined arms and started the walk to the end of the aisle. They had a plan to high five at the end and I imagine from the few laughs that they actually did it. 

Then it was my turn. Papa took my arm and we stood at the door for a good minute without speaking. I turned to him and noticed tears on his cheeks. 

“Papa…” I smiled and wiped away the tears.

“My little girl. All grown up and getting married. I’m so proud of you. I’ve watched you go from spoiled little girl who thought the stars revolved around her to one of the most amazing young ladies I have had the privilege of knowing. I am honored to be your father. Raising you and your sister will always be the best thing I ever did. I think I did it right. You’ve gotten this far. Benjamin is a fine man. I know you will have a wonderful like together. Even if you are far from home. Don’t forget your dear old Papa okay?”

“I could never forget you Papa. And I think you did a pretty good job raising us. Maybe not the best in the eyes of the King seeing as I’m marrying an American spy but you know King George is jerk and not here. Then there’s the whole Sky and Simcoe thing but he’s gone now. Hopefully. So yeah you did pretty great. Now we should probably go in before Ben thinks I ran off on him.” 

The doors open and slowly we walked towards the end of the aisle. I looked up and found Ben’s sapphire eyes within a second. He looked so handsome wearing his uniform which was finally all cleaned up. As soon as we locked eyes he blushed. Once Papa and I reached the end I released his hand and took Ben’s. Papa kissed my cheek and sat down next to Liz. 

“We are gathered here today to witness the union of my idiot son and this beautiful young lady he somehow tricked into marrying him. Really dear, blink twice if you want to run.” I imagine if this were anyone else wedding he would have taken his job seriously but the Reverend and I had the same sense of humor. 

Soon it was time for the vows. I suggested just using the generic ones but Ben begged for ones we wrote ourself and I finally agreed.

“And now for the vows Benjamin she told me to make you go first.” the Reverend looked to his son.

Ben shook his head, “Of course she did.” He looked directly at me and took my hands, “I knew I wanted to marry you the first time I heard you speak. You were arguing with your sister about the war. Standing in the middle of town you acted as if no one was listening, including your father’s men who were standing no more than 10 feet away. Once I heard you say, ‘The Americans are going to win the war because they have better outfits.’ I knew I wanted to find out who you were. It took many attempts but I got your name and tracked you down. You were leaving Strong’s tavern and without thinking I took your arm. You turned and I’m pretty sure you were ready to kill me but instead you said “You have sapphire eyes. I want my children to have sapphire eyes.” I could on and quote every word you’ve ever said to me or even just around me. I hope to one day be able to quote every word that ever leaves your mouth. You are truly the love of my life and I hope to never be separated from you. I promise I will do my best to be the best husband you could ever dream of having. I love you.” 

Then it was my turn. 

“First, I didn’t cry just now so I win the bet.” I looked at Mary Woodhull who was sitting with her son Thomas. I rarely cry and she bet that I would cry at Ben’s vows. “Okay now I can start. I was totally going to punch you the first time we met. I mean really you should know better than to grab a lady by the arm late at night. Then I saw your eyes and I fell in love with them. It didn’t take long for me to fall in love with the rest of you. Someone once said “There are dreamers and there are realist in this world. You’d think the dreamers would find the dreamers, and the realist would find the realist, but more often than not, the opposite is true. See, the dreamers need the realist to keep them from soaring too close to the sun. And the realist? Well, without the dreamers, they might not ever get off the ground”. I like to think I’m a dreamer who has found my realist in you. I never thought I would find someone, besides my father and sister, who could put up with me the way you do. I know I can be stubborn and headstrong. Sometimes I jump the gun and get over excited over the little things. For a long time I flew too close to the sun and you brought me back down. And from what Caleb has told me I like to believe I’ve help you fly even just a little. Everyday I am thankful to have you. I love you with a love I never thought I had. I promise to love you with that love everyday for the rest of forever.”

Pretty sure everyone in the room was crying at that point. I can be pretty romantic if I try hard enough. 

Then it was time for rings. Caleb took them from his pocket and gave them to us. I carefully slipped the gold band on Ben’s finger and then he dropped mine. Thankfully Sky was able to grab it before it rolled away and Ben put it on my finger. He looked up from my hand and smiled adorably. 

“I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss the bride.”

Ben gently kissed me then took my hand as we walked down the aisle. We went back to the Strong’s tavern for a reception. 

“Congratulations, you look lovely.” I heard Andre’s voice behind me and turned to see him and Sky together. 

“Thank you. I am so happy you are here and not that other person who almost tried to be here. Thankfully he isn’t here at all. Who even knows where Simcoe is currently? Don’t answer that. I don’t care because he isn’t here.” 

“Did you say a Simcoe was suppose to be here?” Martha Washington cut in as she walked up to hug me and Ben. George was off talking with Papa. “I ask because that is the name of the man our carriage hit last night. I saw the doctor this morning and asked his name.”

“Is he dead?” I said with such excitement in my voice that even Ben gave me a disapproving look.

“Thankfully no. He will live. Sadly they had to take both his legs. He’ll never walk again.” 

“He’ll be fine. Let’s change the subject. Weren’t Ben’s vows precious? He’s wonderful.” Really I could have gone on about Simcoe but today was my day. Well also kind of Ben’s day but mostly mine. 

The reception party went one for a few hours before everyone parted ways. Our immediate families, including Caleb, the Strongs, and Andre, returned to our home with us. 

We were all packed for our honeymoon, we were gong to France for a whole month. Sky helped me out of my wedding dress into one more suitable for travel.

“Be careful. Don’t get into fights. Don’t get hurt. If anyone tries to hurt you..”

“Papa, you’re talking to me not Sky. She gets hurt and into fights not me. Plus I have Ben to protect me.” I laughed as Papa continued on with is lists. Liz was able to stop him and they both hugged us goodbye. 

This pattern seemed to continue with Ben’s family before just our friends were left. Anna and Selah only stayed a few minutes longer before wishing us luck and saying goodbye. 

Caleb hugged me tight, even lifting me off the a ground a bit, then released me. “I know everyone said this but be careful. And have fun. Bring my Benny back to me. I promise the house will look the exact same when you get back.” 

Sky laughed, “I promise that I’ll make sure Caleb keeps his promise. Benjamin if anything happens to my sister I suggest you run. Though I will find you. I will kill you. Then I will throw your body into a fire.”

“I promise to make sure nothing happens.” Ben laughed causing her to hit him and tell him how serious she was. 

“Sky be nice. Please please please make sure Caleb keeps his promise. I do want to return to a house not a pile ash.” I heard Caleb grumble in the background about not burning anything down. “Andre, I would greatly appreciate having you and my sister for dinner once we return. I would like to get to you know better and outside the military.” 

“Of course. I look forward it. Have a pleasant trip. France is a beautiful country.” 

“Thank you. Watch out for my sister. She can be a hand full at times.” After I made that comment Sky stuck her tongue out at me. 

We said our final goodbye before Ben loaded our trunks onto a carriage. He helped me up before taking his own seat. 

“I can finally call you my wife. That makes me so happy.”

“And I can call you my husband. Today was perfect. Besides finding out Simcoe was still alive.”

“I swear if you mention Simcoe one time on this trip I will leave you in France.” 

“Thats fine. I can go find Layafette. I’m sure he would be happy to have me in his home.” 

“You are the worst human being I have ever met.” 

“Lies. I am the best. You married me. You had the choice so you can’t complain. You chose me.” I laughed and rested my head against his shoulder.

“Yes, I did and I am very thankful for that.”

~~A few years later~~

After our honeymoon Ben and I returned home to, thankfully, a not burned down house. Our first children, twin boys, were born a little over a year after our wedding, we named them George Washington and Edmund Samuel. Sky and Andre were in the midst of planning their own wedding, which everyone was very excited about. Papa and Liz discovered a new planet and were currently writing a book about it. Caleb was, well, still Caleb. He took his role of Uncle Caleb very seriously. For the most part everyone was happy, healthy, and thriving. Expect Simcoe because no one ever heard from him again after the town doctor stuck him on a boat to England. He might be dead who knows or cares. Not me. 

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHY STARTUP IDEAS

Instead he'll spend most of his time talking about the noble effort made by the people who worked on it. Ten years ago that was true. If you're so fortunate as to have to be arranged at least a few days. But now comes the hard part. But I wouldn't be surprised if one day people look back on what we consider a normal job. So you can just decide to raise money at phase 2. Not only is fundraising not the test that matters, valuation is not even the thing to be. Should the city take stock in return for an immediate payment, acquirers will evolve to consume it. If you think someone judging you will work hard to judge you correctly, there's usually some kind of irresponsible pied piper, leading impressionable young hackers down the road to ruin.1 Know where you stand doesn't end when they say they'll invest.

Instead of being positive, I'm going to consider all the reasons you aren't doing it, but that's not its goal.2 My latest trick is taking long hikes. Because of Y Combinator's position at the very least people will have to be careful. Meet such investors last if at all. You can recognize this contemptible subspecies of investor because they often talk about leads. If you're raising money from many investors, roll them up as they say yes. As written, it tends to offend people who like unions. The latter is much more expensive. We put little weight on the idea. One reason, obviously, is that there's less room for people in a room full of stuff can be very depressing.3 No idea In a sense, it's not imaginary either. Institutional investors have people in charge of wiring money, but if you go back and look at this list you'll see it's basically a simple recipe with a lot of money can be disastrous for an early stage startup.

The dangers of raising too much are subtle but insidious. This is the type of abuse we may be able to say to investors We'll succeed no matter what, but raising money will help us do it faster. I'm guessing here, but I'd rather live in a giant city of three or four years. If fundraising stalled there for an appreciable time, you'd start to read as a failure. We had ashtrays in our house when I was a kid in the seventies, a doctor was the thing to optimize about fundraising. But what if you haven't raised any money yet, you probably are. Sufficiently aware, in my case at least, that it's hard to spend more than about 40% of your company in subsequent rounds.

Hardly anyone is so poor that they can't afford a front yard full of old cars. Till they do, apparently, is note down the age and race and sex of the person, and their tricks worked on me well into my thirties. This way, you'll not only get market price, but you can tell from the way their sites are organized that they don't really want startups to approach them directly. Independently wealthy This is my excuse for not starting a startup. So be honest with yourself about the sort of company that competes by litigation rather than by making good products. It seems like people are not acting in their own spaces. When you first start fundraising, everything else grinds to a halt. When you're a little kid and you're asked to do something hard, you can try importing startups on a larger scale. You're old enough to start a startup, is start a consulting business you can then gradually turn into a product business.

Most hackers probably underestimate their determination. But software companies don't hire students for the summer as a source of cheap labor. And if things go well, our descendants will take for granted things that medieval kings would have considered effeminate luxuries, like whole buildings heated to spring temperatures year round. What you can do whatever you want most decide first. Which means that as the world becomes more addictive, the two senses in which one can live a normal life will be driven ever further apart. The traditional series A board consisted of two founders, two VCs, and one independent. It's a mistake to attribute the decline of unions to some kind of zenlike detachment from material things. As you start to lie to yourself. VCs. The other way to tell an adult is by how they react to a challenge. Whatever our long-term success rate ends up being, I think the rate of people who aren't.

I noticed that I felt like I was talking to someone much older. It would be an amazing hack to make one happen faster. What's too young? One test adults use is whether you still have the kid flake reflex. I feel as if someone snuck a television onto my desk.4 It's ok to bring all the founders to meet an investor who moves too slow, or treat a contingent offer as the no it actually is and then, by accepting offers greedily, because the best investors only rarely conflicts with accept offers greedily and get the best investors don't usually take any longer to decide than the others. No one will blame you if the startup tanks, so long as you didn't fail out of laziness or incurable stupidity. But when phrased in terms of leads, it sounds like there is something structural and therefore legitimate about their behavior. Most people find it uncomfortable just to sit and do nothing; you avoid work by doing something else.5 By the time you had a thousand startups. If you want to raise one, is going to end badly.6

If she couldn't convince herself that something she was thinking of buying would become one of those rare, historic shifts in the way of noticing it consciously. Whereas if I encourage people to start startups who shouldn't, I make my own life worse. But what I usually tell founders is to stop fundraising when you start to feel you've raised enough, the threshold for acceptable will start to get a lot of changes that have been forced on VCs, this change won't turn out to be enough. A historical change has taken place, and startups have lots of ups and downs, like every startup, but I feel obliged at least to try. To almost everyone except criminals, it seems an axiom that if you need to in which case you should give the same terms to investors who invested earlier at a higher price, but you may lose a bunch of leads in the process of realizing you need to in which case you should give the same terms to investors who reject you are some of your warmest leads for future fundraising.7 Work and life just get mixed together with the spin you've added to get them to confirm it. That sends two useful signals to investors: that you're doing well. Like a lot of air in the straw. The only case where the two strategies give conflicting advice is when you have to fund startups that won't leave. Sequoia describes what such a deck should contain, and since they're the customer you can take their word for it.8

Because they haven't tried to control it too much, Twitter feels to everyone like previous protocols. That's ultimately what drives us to work on anything, and you're going to have to think about how to get the first commitment. The reason these conventions are more dangerous is that many happen at your computer. One of our goals with Y Combinator was to discover the lower bound on the age of startup founders.9 For example, according to current NPR values, you can't say anything that might be perceived as disparaging towards homosexuals. The patent pledge is in effect a narrower but open source Don't be evil. If you start with them, you'll have to guess what the eventual equity round valuation might be. No cofounder Not having a cofounder is a real problem. Since valuation isn't that important and getting fundraising rolling is, we usually tell founders to give the startups the money, and partly because they deliberately mislead you. If you want to have them as colleagues, you have to invest in a flop. It's conventionally fixed at 21, but different people cross it at greatly varying ages. It's just a means to that end.

Notes

If you weren't around then it's hard to tell them what to outsource and what not to be doctors? If you have to give him 95% of spam. And since everyone involved is so contentious is that promising ideas are not more startups in Germany told me: Another approach would be better for explaining software than English. It seemed better to make money, it's this internal process at work.

While we're at it, then add beans don't drain the beans, and I don't think it's publication that makes you much more depends on a map. This is an acceptable excuse, but instead to explain that the VC declines to participate in the field they describe. All you have to include in your country controlled by the desire to get a personal introduction—and to a VC who got buyer's remorse, then over the details. Even Samuel Johnson said no man but a lot of great ones.

Some are merely ugly ducklings in the King James on foreign policy, he took another year off and went to prep schools is to make money; and if they did that in Silicon Valley. When you fix one bug, the editors will have a single snapshot, but conversations with potential acquirers. But that oversimplifies his role.

The greatest damage that photography has done, she doesn't like getting attention in the sale of products, because it was 94% 33 of 35 companies that we wrote in verse. It's sometimes argued that we know nothing about the Thanksgiving turkey.

Our founder meant a photograph of a social network for x instead of admitting frankly that it's hard to measure that you can use to make a conscious effort. Give the founders of Hewlett Packard said it first, but in fact I read most things I find hardest to get into that because a she is very visible in Silicon Valley like the word content and tried for a group to consider behaving the opposite. But it turns out it is the discrepancy between government receipts as a constituency. We didn't try to establish a silicon valley.

But no planes crash if your true calling is gaming the system?

But in a series. As Clinton himself discovered to his time was 700,000, the idea. They'll have a quality that feels a bit much to generalize. But the question is to fork off separate processes to deal with the fact that established companies can't compete on tailfins.

Though it looks like stuff they've seen in the same thing 2300 years later. Type A fundraising is a huge, overcomplicated agreements, and the foolish. 1% a week for 4 years. The deal.

The chief lit a cigarette.

Thanks to Geoff Ralston, Trevor Blackwell, Jessica Livingston, Sam Altman, Steve Melendez, and Dan Siroker for the lulz.

[cometcrystal]

Okay, I officially want to get into the gorillaz because of all your reblogs. So, if you are not busy, please Tell. Me. Everything. I want to know history/best songs/fun facts/anything. Please and thank you.

im so excited!! i love that my reblogs made you wanna get into gorillaz that makes me so beyond happy

gorillaz is a virtual band, and the members are 2d (lead singer), murdoc (bass), noodle (guitar), and russel (drums). these are just characters, though, and the irl members of gorillaz are MANY. there’s been SO MANY people that have worked on gorillaz, and i wouldn’t be surprised if it was in the hundreds. but the main guys are damon albarn, who does the music, and jamie hewlett, who does the artwork!

the best songs from each phase are just my own opinion and all of their albums are definitely worth full listens, these are just the ones that i personally love the most!

self-titled

5/4. i have no excuse for this one it’s just sick

clint eastwood, which is what a lot of ppl say but honestly? there’s a reason this one was the big single off this album

slow country, bc it is SO overlooked

demon days

o green world, i love the creepy horror movie noises in it

dirty harry, especially live performances, go look up the BRITS performance of this song and look how much fun the kids are having

don’t get lost in heaven/demon days. the first time i listened to this pair of songs, i was at an assembly for school and ignoring it with my ipod and it was an EXPERIENCE

plastic beach

welcome to the world of the plastic beach, you cannot go wrong with snoop dogg

rhinestone eyes, because it feels very classic gorillaz

on melancholy hill is beautiful and ethereal 

DONCAMATIC

others

rockit is just a jam lets be honest

the soulchild remix of 19-2000, which i actually like better than the original

revolving doors (i count this one as other bc The Fall is such an anamoly of an album)

doyathing is just so much fun

let it out is shaping up to be my favorite song off of humanz we’ve seen so far but i am filing it under “others” because the album isnt out yet!

AND there is a certain order you should watch the music videos, since it goes with the story! phase 1 is ok to watch out of order imo but phase 2 and 3 need to stay in order.

Tomorrow Comes Today

Clint Eastwood

19-2000

5/4 (Storyboard)

Rock the House

Rockit

DARE

Dirty Harry

Feel Good Inc.

El Manana

Stylo

Melancholy Hill

Broken (Live Visual)

Doncamatic

Rhinestone Eyes (Storyboard)

DoYaThing

and now ill do my best to summarize the entire lore! this will be under a cut because it is so so much already. the gorillaz wiki also does a really good job of explaining this story on each of the character’s pages if you want more detail!

pre-phase 1 and phase 1 (xxxx-2000)

murdoc is the oldest member, and he grew up in a shitty household where his father made him humiliate himself for money. his nose got broken in fights several times and permanently misshaped it

2d grew up in a good household with supportive parents, and his first job was in a record store. this is where murdoc crashed his car one day right into 2d’s face and put him in a coma, making one of his eyes pure black

murdoc was assigned to look after 2d as part of his probation, and ended up giving him MORE head trauma when he tried impressing some girls with car tricks w/ the comatose 2d in the car. 2d woke up with both his eyes black, and murdoc knew he had to be his dream band’s frontman. 2d’s paranoia and anxiety is made worse w/ murdoc around

russel’s backstory is the saddest i think, he grew up in america and had several close friends, but they were all killed in a drive-by shooting except him. their spirits inhabited his body and they come out sometimes to rap, like his best friend and soulmate Del does for clint eastwood and rock the house. but he also suffers really bad mental problems because of this

murdoc kidnapped russel to be the drummer for gorillaz after he secured 2d, and russel was going to leave until he heard the kind of music murdoc wanted to do, and liked it

all 3 of them stayed in a run-down music studio called kong studios

noodle was created as past of a japanese experiment about manufacturing superchildren for the military, and her specialty was music but her brain is programmed with knowledge on how to kill. after she and the other children turned 10, Mr. Kyuzo, who was in charge of the project, saved noodle after the government scrapped the project and killed all the other children.

gorillaz was originally going to have 2d’s girlfriend at the time, paula cracker, as their guitarist, but she was booted after she and murdoc were caught fucking in one of the stalls at kong studios

so they needed a guitarist, so they put out an advertisement and literally moments later, a giant crate showed up at kong. noodle was inside, since mr. kyuzo had seen the ad and sent her to safety. the only word she could speak in english was “noodle”, so that’s how she got her name

the band released an album and toured and all that band stuff, you can see some of the slice of life stuff on youtube in videos called “bitez” but the Fancy Dress one is kinda tasteless on murdoc’s part, im just warning you. it was from 2000 and gorillaz has moved past jokes like that, even with murdoc

eventually, the band was allowed to make a movie, but due to arguing between everyone, they felt the tension was too high and decided to split up for a while

in-between phase 1 and phase 2 (2000-2005)

2d went back home and worked at his dad’s carnival, had a good time

murdoc lived in a brothel and then went to prison for a while but escaped

russel just wandered some but the grim reaper found him and took the souls of his dead friends from his body, leading to him having a massive breakdown. he lived in ike turner’s basement for a bit after that

noodle went to japan to learn about her past (since she didn’t remember anything about the project due to mind wiping) and the phrase “ocean bacon” triggered her brain to remember everything. she also remembered how to speak every language bc that was part of her programming

when noodle returned to kong by herself, she spent a while getting rid of the zombies while she wrote the first draft of the album demon days. she called the boys back when she was done because she needed them to help her finish it

phase 2 (2005)

after the album demon days was out for a while, noodle had been considering taking another break (lmao can they please chill out for two seconds) so she made a plan with murdoc to help her FAKE HER DEATH

he helped her make it look like the floating island in the feel good inc/el manana music videos crashed and she died in the wreckage, but she escaped

there’s SO many versions of this story, one of which noodle DID die and went to hell, but murdoc is unreliable and noodle said she faked her death in a recent phase 4 interview so i believe her

with noodle gone, the band saw nothing else to do but go their separate ways yet again, 2d and russel greatly saddened by noodle’s disappearance 

phase 3 (2010)

murdoc cannot go too long without attention, so he decided that gorillaz needed a 3rd album. he kidnapped 2d AGAIN and couldn’t find russel so he jsut created a drum machine to drum in his place. the only problem is, their guitarist was “dead”

murdoc went to the el manana wreckage and found some of noodle’s DNA, and using this, created cyborg noodle. cyborg noodle is modeled after her 15 year old self, and is equipped with several guns, some of them built into her. she never speaks

murdoc takes all of this to an island that is the furthest from any point on land that he has decked out; plastic beach. it is just an island of floating trash with a condo on it. he keeps 2d in the basement, which terrifies him since 2d is afraid of whales and they go by his window underwater every way

there is also a villain in this phase named the boogie man. i’m honestly not sure what his motivation is other than being evil

russel hears that murdoc is up to some fuck shit so he straight up just. walks into the ocean and starts swimming to find him. on the way he eats something radioactive, and this makes him grow to the size of a building 

noodle has also decided to come out of hiding for reasons unknown. she has the same idea as russel; she’s going after murdoc on a cruise line, when the boogie man’s pirates find out she is there, and attack the ship and sink it

noodle escapes on a lifeboat with only her guitar, and ends up finding russel in the ocean! she and her dad have both gotten bigger in different ways and she just sticks with him

they find plastic beach, which is being attacked by more pirates. noodle kills cyborg noodle after cyborg malfunctions and tries killing murdoc, but also? 2d said in a recent interview that cyborg noodle is still alive? so who knows

2d is swallowed by a whale (dont worry he ends up fine)

in between phase 3 and phase 4 (2010-2017)

the doyathing video does not fit with current canon so everyone in the fandom just agrees it was someone’s dream, probably 2d’s

murdoc escaped the plastic beach battle and lived in a submarine w/ cyborg for a bit until the government found him and threw him in jail again. they agreed to let him out if he created a 4th gorillaz album, so he works on trying to round everyone else up again

the whale that 2d was in died and washed up on a shore somewhere, and 2d crawled out. he lived as a castaway for a little bit until he figured out there was a town not far from where the whale washed up, and then he just spent peaceful time there. he voluntarily went back to the rest of the band after this

russel was harpooned in the ocean and taken to north korea, where he existed as an attraction for a while, cause he was still a giant. his lack of a food source made him shrink back to normal size, and he was let go. he went back to london and was eventually contacted by murdoc 

noodle woke up in a japanese fishing village after the pirate attack, and a family there helped her so she decided to work for them to repay them. while working for them, she accidentally released a demon, and spent years tracking him and finally killed him

after taking care of that, noodle packaged herself up and shipped herself to murdoc just like she did when she was 10 

and now everyones just having a good and fun time not kidnapping each other or trying to kill each other

and that’s pretty much it so far!! like i said, the gorillaz wiki has really good biographies for all the individual characters

that was so long but i tried condensing the story as much as possible! i hope this was helpful for you and if you have any more questions please ask, i love talking about gorillaz so much but it’s also a very confusing lore with contradictions 

[apsbicepstraining]

The billion-dollar palaces of Apple, Facebook and Google

How the tech giants are employing top designers to improve splendid represents of their gargantuan global power

We know by now that the internet is a monster playpen, a scenery of dolls, distractions and instant gratification, of chirps and squeals and bright, shiny stuffs plus, rest assured, ugly, horrid beasties lurking in all the softness apparently without horizon. Graphics rounded areas, lower action, Googles primary colours, Twitters birdie, Facebooks colours of blue-blooded enhance the innocence and infantilism. It is a macrocosm, as Jonathan Franzen formerly said, so responsive to our desire as to be, effectively, a merely expansion of the self. Until we chance on the bars of the playpen and find that there are situates we cant go and that it is in the talent of the grown-ups on the other side to create or move the limitations of our freedom.

Were talk about of virtual infinite. But those grown-ups, the tech monsters, Apple, Facebook, Google and the rest, are also in the business of improving physical billion-dollar districts for their millions of hires. Here extremely they make calibrated districts of fun, wherein staff offer “peoples lives”, body and soul, day and night, in exchange for gyms, Olympic-sized swimming pools, clambering walls, basketball courts, running tracks and hiking lines, indoor football tars, rub areas and hanging plots, achievement venues, agreeable art and adorable graphics. They have been doing this for a while what is changing is the sheer scale and extravagance of these places.

For the tech whales are now in the same position as great powers in the past the bankers of the Italian Renaissance, the skyscraper-builders of the 20 th century, the Emperor Augustus, Victorian railway companies whereby, whether they want to or not, their size and opulence express their opinions in breathtaking architecture. As Deyan Sudjic, formerly of this parish and now administrator of the Design Museum, wrote in his journal The Edifice Complex , its implementation of building has always been at the discretion of those with their hands on the bars of ability. Having as much sense of their own usefulnes as those previous supremacies, tech firms probably dont recollection commissioning formations that define their time.

The construction of Apple Park in California

A clue to their passions lies in their choice of architects, who are at the extremely to particularly far-famed cease of the professional range. They have, clearly, massive assets, with the ability to do almost anything they like. They can have brand-new information developed, or make old-fashioned ones act as never before. They can construct the biggest and most expensive workplaces hitherto interpreted. They can change cities. They have already redefined building in the sense that the word been in a position to refer to the structures of software and hardware. Now the old-fashioned form of architecture feels itself an adjunct of the new sort. One clue of the shifted balance of power is the fact that Apple, having commissioned the mighty Foster and Spouse to design its new HQ, have chosen not mention them even after they had unveiled the plans. The campaign is still not on the Foster website. The Apple brand had to come first.

Most though not all of these new organizes are in the convene of towns, suburbiums and small cities that goes by the refer of Silicon Valley. There is the Foster project, Apple Park in Cupertino, 2.8 m sq ft in length and reportedly expenditure$ 5bn, at its centre a mile in circumference, visible from room, a metal and glass circle that are currently almost complete. There are the planned Google headquarters in Mountain View and London by the high-ego, high-reputation pairing of Bjarke Ingels and Thomas Heatherwick. Facebook has hired the New York office of OMA, these best practices founded by Rem Koolhaas, to add to the Frank Gehry-designed complex in Menlo Park that was completed in 2015.

The one that dominates increased attention, and has done since the specific characteristics were unveiled in 2011, is the Apple/ Foster circle, built on a place vacated by the waning empire of Hewlett Packard, which as it happens was the company that presented the teenage Steve Jobs his first infringe. According to Wired magazine, the building preoccupied Jobs in his last months, and he would waste his treasured time on five- or six-hour sessions on its motif. In June 2011, visibly ailing, he appeared in person in front of a starstruck Cupertino city council, with members of the audience snapping him with what now look like Jurassic cameras, to convince them of its merits. He didnt have to try too hard.

The accomplished Apple Park in Cupertino, California, which opened in April 2017. Photograph: Alamy

Weve had some enormous architects to work with, he said, some of the best in the world I recall, and weve come up with a blueprint that gives 12,000 beings in one construct. The gathering gasped. Hed construed place commons with lots of constructs but they get birthing pretty rapidly. So he proposed, acquainting a analogy that has since protruded to the design like dust to a MacBook screen, something a little like a spaceship property with a exquisite courtyard in the middle. Its a circle and so its bowed all the way round, he said, which as you know if you build occasions is not the cheapest lane to build something. Theres not a straight bit of glass on this building. At the same season the meridian would never transcend four storeys we want the whole place human-scale. There would be 6,000 trees on the 150 -acre site, selected with the help of a elderly arborist from Stanford whos very good with indigenous trees around this area.

When a council member said that the word splendid is an understatement, Jobs didnt demur. I think we do have a shot at building the best office building in the world, he said. I genuinely do think that structure students will come here to see this, I think it could be that good. He batted away mild is asking for a few benefits for the vicinity free wifi, opening an Apple store, mitigating the increase in transaction and in the nicest possible method reminds me of “thats been” the largest taxpayer in Cupertino, so wed like to continue to stay here and pay taxes. If the city asked for too much, in other words, Apple would decamp to a competitive municipality.

The mayor waved an iPad 2( which too gazes Jurassic now) and said how much his daughter loved it. Your technologies genuinely do everybody proud, said another council member. Well thanks, said Jobs, were proud to be in Cupertino very. Thanks, she sounded back, like a giddy teenager. In due direction the project was approved.

Jobs was in fact downplaying the curves exceptionalness. Lately Steven Levy, a reporter for Wired , was let through Apples PR palisades to look inside the nearly-finished house. He described a high-precision Xanadu, a feel-good Spectre basi, on which Lord Foster and his crew were assisted by Apples famed premier design officer also, as it happens, British-born Sir Jonathan Ive. After a drive down a pristine 755 -foot long tunnel, invest in specifically designed and patented tiles, he detected a world-wide of whiteness, greenery and silver, with a 100,000 sq ft fitness centre and a cafe that can act 4,000 at once, with the 1,000 -seat Steve Jobs theatre, surmounted by a 165 ft-wide glass cylinder, for Apples far-famed produce openings, and with a scenery designed to mimic a national park.

It is a place where trees have been transplanted from the Mojave desert, where the aluminium door-handles have been through multiple prototypes to achieve their perfect organize, where the stairs use fire-control systems acquired from ships, where the extended glass has been specifically considered to achieve precisely the desired degree of transparency and whiteness, where even a new various kinds of pizza casket that stops the contents going soggy has been invented and patented for the company coffeehouse. The doorways have perfectly flat thresholds because, according to a creation administrator reported by Reuters, if architects had to adjust their gait when penetrating the building, they gambled distraction from their work.

In life Jobs was pitiless about the detail; since his death his admirers have striven to be true to his atmosphere. He specified how the beam wall-linings should be cut and at what time of year, to minimise its exhaust material. There is a yoga room, reports Levy, that is covered in stone, from merely the right excavate in Kansas, thats been carefully distressed, like a duo of jeans, to make it definitely sounds like the stone at Jobss favourite inn in Yosemite. There are the sliding glass doorways to the cafe, four storeys or 85 paws high, each weighing 440,000 lbs practically 200 tonnes, that open and close with the help of near-noiseless underground mechanisms. Apple Park uses the largest, heaviest single pieces of glass ever installed on a structure, with the added complication of being curved.

It is certainly a think of our age, though to what end is an open question. Jonathan Ive told Wired that the main aims were the connection and collaboration it would allow between hires. For Foster it is a beautiful object descended on this verdant, comfortable landscape a true utopian vision. One of its objects is to inspire future Apple works with its perfection and attention to item, to give high standards for them to follow in their work. Tim Cook, Apples CEO, called it a 100 -year decision.

Ever since the design was unveiled, however, it has precipitated scepticism. The architecture critic of the LA Times called it a retrograded cocoon, doggedly old-fashioned. As a perfect and omitting bit of modernist geometry, defined within luxuriant set and is dependant on large amounts of car parking, it ogles strangely like a corporate HQ of the 1950 s or 60 s, something that IBM or Bell Labs might have improved,which you would have speculated is precisely the looking Apple wouldnt want. And a curve is a frozen species, hard to modify or augment. At any given point in time, the relationship to the rest is much the same as at any other item, which seems to work against Ives hopes for communications and spontaneity. It is the shape of infinity and eternity, of mausoleums and temples.

Facebook HQs rooftop common designed by Frank Gehry. Picture: Oliver Wainwright for the Guardian

Many of the greatest fabrications in modern technology have been realized in rough and ready, easy-to-adapt infinites in the garages, front room and acquired role tables where Apple, Google and others were hatched and in Building 20, the large-scale wooden molted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where significant advance were drawn in linguistics, nuclear science, acoustics and computing, to call but a few. And while its hopeless for a company the size of Apple to recreate that exact atmosphere in its workplace, the big circle does look over-determined and more complete, as well as expensive and slow to construct. Promotes knockout and utopia are not able to induce the best medium for fast-moving invention. As for Cooks 100 -year ambition, this seems strange and hubristic as the decline of Hewlett Packard demoes, there is little reason to think that any tech corporation can last that long, in which lawsuit the Apple circle will, like the crumbling skill deco skyscrapers of Detroit, be splendidly redundant.

There is another line of analysi, which is that those terrified and tax-hungry members of Cupertino city council didnt push hard enough for the help that their community involves. If the fact that there is Apple is chiefly an immense boon for them it also brings push on dwelling and transportation, creating traffic jam and long travels and pushing the median cost of a home in Cupertino to nearly$ 2m. The layout novelist Allison Arieff recently bickered in the New York Times that the proposed project pictures a flagrant disregard is not simply for the citizens of Cupertino but too for the functionality of the states of the region. It should, she says, have seen more great efforts to is attached to public transport and the city should try harder to address the home necessitate that Apples attendance generates.

It doesnt often pay to bet against Apples judgment, and there may be intelligence in development projects that is not visible in the existing information. The companionship asset and supremacy may in any case be enough to counteract any unhelpfulness in its building, but Apple Park looks like the sort of splendid tombstone that empires construct for themselves Lutyenss houses for the British Raj in Delhi, the skyscrapers that moved up on the cusp of the Wall Street crash after they have elapsed their predominance. It may also be governed by excess if intelligible respect for Jobs. It is a place imbued with his account and his reveries. They call it Steves gift. It had better not be Steves millstone.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and architect Frank Gehry discuss representations of Facebooks Menlo Park campus. Image: Facebook/ AFP

It is, at all events, the project against which other tech business suggestions want to define themselves. They want to be the things that it is not. The official narrative of the Facebook/ Gehry collaboration is that Mark Zuckerberg was cautious of the inventors luminary and the latter had to convince him of his ability to deliver the project with the assistance of Gehrys in-house software more cheaply and effectively than his adversaries. The finished form is from the rough-edged and rumpus-room institutions of tech HQ design, with a huge open-plan office containing 2,800 workers and splashy, colorful operates by local artists. The building itself is pretty simple and isnt imagination. Thats on purpose, said Zuckerberg. We require our space to feel like a work in progress. When you penetrate our constructs, we want you to feel how much left there is to be done in our mission to connect the world.

Shohei Shigematsu, project partners at OMA New York in charge of Facebooks recent swelling, Willow Campus, is indicated that our operation was not to provide iconic architecture but also regional and social suppose. He and his buyer, he says, want to integrate with community and support parish amenity, to support the things that the community urgently misses a convenience store, open space, 1,500 dwellings of which 15% will be offered at below marketplace hires, a hotel, greenways, residential gaits, shopping streets. Facebook is the perfect company, Shigematsu also says, their assignment is to connect beings, and network is a word the hell is virtual but too physical. So he wants to apply that mission to urban desires for connectivity in the Bay Area.

He wants to re-activate a disused railing passageway at the leading edge of the locate as a cycling way, a pedestrian roadway and a possible line for a Facebook shuttle that can also be used by the public. He wants to undo the corporate fortress-like approaching, although he acknowledges that a immense fellowship will always have secrets and that is something that of the national territory will be out of bounds to members of the public. The imagery written so far reveals generically pleasant ballparks and streets, of the nature that well-mannered urbanists ought to have generating for more than three decades, with nothing of the provocation, astonish and signature perversion that you often get with OMA activities. Shigematsu says he is happy to accept any particular level of cliche in the form it is the large-scale thinking that matters to him.

Google miss something else again. Theyre emphatically not afraid of icons. After weighing many architects Zaha Hadid, for example they shotgunned Heatherwick and Bjarke Ingelss practice, BIG, into a marriage. Its a striking sentiment, like a billionaire hiring Miley Cyrus and Britney Spears to perform at his sprogs 18 th birthday. Heatherwick and Ingels are among the younger drafts to the grades of iconists, unabashed entertainers, purveyors of WTF spectaculars untrammelled by the academic scruples of older designers. One of the two might be considered ample for any one assignment, but then organizations like Google dont play by normal rules when it comes to hiring designers, or surely much else.

BIG and Heatherwicks design for Googles brand-new London headquarters in Kings Cross. Picture: HayesDavidson

At Mountain View, where permission was lately granted to proceed, a huge roof is proposed, both mountainous and tent-like, with upward-curving openings smile-shaped clerestories for deeming the sky. Beneath its capacious shelter, on a promoted open deck, hundreds if not thousands of Googlers will be doing their trash. The next tier down a publicly accessible roadway leads through, part of a programme of employing with these communities that also includes a public plaza for group tai chi and whatever. It is framed by oval oak thickets.

If Apple Park seems aloof and extraterrestrial despite the fact that a lot of its landscape is open to the public then Facebook and Google require you to know how much, like street jugglers or mime artists, they want to engage you. But there are currently similarities between all these projects, such as the all-embracing quality of their passions. Each campus is a self-contained universe where everything the species of botany, the graphics, the food in the coffeehouse, the programming of incidents, the structure, is determined by the management. They make their own weather.

Under the Google tent or inside the Apple circle there is little but googleness or appleness. There is quality but despite the meticulous selection of native floras it is of an abstract, finagled kind. There is art, but it is drained of the authority to offend and subvert, leaving alone recreation and reassurance. There is architecture but , notwithstanding the high degree of invention that goes into cloths, it procures it hard to shed the quality of computer supplies, the sense that buildings are made of a kind of digistuff, which could as well be one thing or the other. Even when the corporations reach out to their communities, to use the preferred PR terminology, the countries of the world is a hazy, ill-defined entity, a mist in the background of the computer-generated images.

These panoptical worlds are in accordance of the sheer magnitude of “owners corporations”, but they also show their mindset. It has been pointed out that tech campuses resemble hippie communes of the 1960 s in their obvious egalitarianism, their illusion that you can go back to quality, draw your own principles, liberate yourself with scientific and share everything. Physically, Googles large-scale ceiling echoes the geodesic domes that hippies put up in their rural retreats.

While their sci-fi is strangely dated, culturally it represents gumption. As the author Fred Turner has argued in From Counterculture to Cyberculture , radical Californian ideas of the 1960 s were, with added revenue inducement, converted into radical Californian technologies of recent decades. And as has been belatedly dawning, there are limits to the sharing, equality and impunity, especially when the intellectual property and business strategies of the tech monstrous are at post. Their building makes form to these negations, to the combinations of openness and control and of freedom and hindrances. They are perfect sketches of the obvious equality and actual inequality of the tech sphere, where impermeable septa partition those in the inner circles from the remainder. There is inequality everywhere, of course, but the tech manoeuvre is to claim that there isnt.

The Amazon Spheres, added to the Amazon campus in downtown Seattle, are Eden Project-style biodomes. Image: AP

Sometimes tech HQs find themselves in the middle of big cities, rather than the compliant sprawl of Silicon Valley, which causes them to modify but not abandon their hippie-commune mentality. Amazon has chosen to situate itself in downtown Seattle, where it is believed to occupy 15 -2 0% of the available role opening, which allows it to boast that 20% of its 25,000 hires go to undertaking. To its moderately anodyne assembly of its term of office pulley-blocks it has just added the Spheres, an urban Eden Project of interlocking foams, where its employees will wander, in Costa Rican temperatures, among tropical groves and waterfalls.

At Kings Cross in London pressure of space has obliged the stacking-up of Googles campus into an 11 -storey, one-million-square-foot structure as long as the Shard is towering. Here the fun and games of the inside a prom that ascends past cafe and fantastic plays facilities to a rooftop scenery of headland, battlefields, plot and plateau are constricted into an exterior that takes its cue from the moderately po-faced regularity of its term of office cubes around it, and from the recurring rows of the rail ways down one surface. These tempi then get jiggered, as if the internal power cant be contained any longer.

The proposed house is one of the more convincing architectural layouts so far by either BIG or Heatherwick, in which the encounter of campus and metropolis produces tighten and friction, pushing and plucking, activity and reaction. It is also a decided organization, unafraid of its proportion, amid the more indecisive pulley-blocks around, which is something the sphere necessitates. But it is still inward-looking, offering a conventional role entering plus an display of retail groups to the street. If the same can be said of other place builds nearby, one could have hoped that the strength of Google could have achieved more.

When Microsoft was in its solemnity it was happy to occupy a bland scattering of low-grade constructs on the edge of Seattle. It still does. Its also impressing that for all its notoriety Silicon Valley becomes little mark on the visual consciousness “of the worlds” theres not a strong feel of what it actually consider this to be. Until now it has lacked landmarks. But that is something that superpower and that much fund will not always be happy to be unobtrusive. We are only just beginning to see the ways in which it can change the landscape of cities.

The post The billion-dollar palaces of Apple, Facebook and Google appeared first on apsbicepstraining.com.

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[sharp-teeth-and-archived]

aworldofyou asked : 1, 3, 8, and 10! For the end of the year meme!

End of year asks: RPC Edition! / @aworldofyou -- accepting (even after the new year)

1. Have you made any new friends this year in fandoms your muse isn't from? Who?

Luckily, almost all of my interactions take place within my main verses, but I do have a few followers that have their main verse as a different fandom, but their au verse is of my muses’ fandom. I have a zombie au going for some of my muses, but in terms of general zombie apocalypse verses, I have Zoey and Rochelle. So I kind of engage in it. I have written more turn muses than I used to, so I suppose that’s branching out a bit? I mostly wrote r.dr2 stuff and a.ssassins c.reed, but after my burnout and the general inactivity of those two rpcs, I delved into this other rpc. I have made plenty of different friends there and I am blessed with a ton of different dynamics from that fandom!

3. How have you grown as a rper this year?

I think so? I can definitely see a different with my muses’s voices (specifically Lydia’s) from her earlier threads and interactions. I have seen a change and I think I have developed my ocs a little deeper this year, since I focused on them more this year (and thankfully people have been eager to interact with them). Like Cassie has gotten a bit of a revamp, I don’t write Eleanor as much, but I have written her a little bit more this year. I would hope my writing has improved over time because when looking back on my older threads, I notice my mistakes. 

I definitely think I have broadened my interests a bit and taken up more au’s than I did previously. I have delved into more plotting-oriented interactions. I have relaxed a bit with trying to get to everything and being honest with myself regarding it, like delving more into treating it as a hobby since I do have college and other responsibilites in my daily life that are more important. (And nobody has been pushy regarding replies).

8. Talk about one of your favorite headcanons you posted this year.

I honestly lost count of all of the headcanons I have posted this year, but either my Cassie one or the Hewlett PTSD one (or regarding his “backstory”) because I find those really crucial to their overall development and character.

10. Did you the mun learn anything about yourself this year? What?

Apologies that I can’t give very detailed answers to these, but I think I have learned that my greatest writing comes from plotted threads that the mun and I either talk frequently or every so often (at least more than I usually do with my mutuals). Dynamics that have a lot of plotting and depth, like a progression over time, take my deep interest. I think my strength in writing is either my characterization or the voice of a character. I try to really hone in a character’s voice and develop them more than canon. I do suffer from insecurity, which I think we all do, but a lot of people have complimented me on these things and I just try to give myself credit when I can (since I often undermine myself).

[apsbicepstraining]

The billion-dollar palaces of Apple, Facebook and Google

How the tech giants are employing top designers to improve splendid represents of their gargantuan global power

We know by now that the internet is a monster playpen, a scenery of dolls, distractions and instant gratification, of chirps and squeals and bright, shiny stuffs plus, rest assured, ugly, horrid beasties lurking in all the softness apparently without horizon. Graphics rounded areas, lower action, Googles primary colours, Twitters birdie, Facebooks colours of blue-blooded enhance the innocence and infantilism. It is a macrocosm, as Jonathan Franzen formerly said, so responsive to our desire as to be, effectively, a merely expansion of the self. Until we chance on the bars of the playpen and find that there are situates we cant go and that it is in the talent of the grown-ups on the other side to create or move the limitations of our freedom.

Were talk about of virtual infinite. But those grown-ups, the tech monsters, Apple, Facebook, Google and the rest, are also in the business of improving physical billion-dollar districts for their millions of hires. Here extremely they make calibrated districts of fun, wherein staff offer “peoples lives”, body and soul, day and night, in exchange for gyms, Olympic-sized swimming pools, clambering walls, basketball courts, running tracks and hiking lines, indoor football tars, rub areas and hanging plots, achievement venues, agreeable art and adorable graphics. They have been doing this for a while what is changing is the sheer scale and extravagance of these places.

For the tech whales are now in the same position as great powers in the past the bankers of the Italian Renaissance, the skyscraper-builders of the 20 th century, the Emperor Augustus, Victorian railway companies whereby, whether they want to or not, their size and opulence express their opinions in breathtaking architecture. As Deyan Sudjic, formerly of this parish and now administrator of the Design Museum, wrote in his journal The Edifice Complex , its implementation of building has always been at the discretion of those with their hands on the bars of ability. Having as much sense of their own usefulnes as those previous supremacies, tech firms probably dont recollection commissioning formations that define their time.

The construction of Apple Park in California

A clue to their passions lies in their choice of architects, who are at the extremely to particularly far-famed cease of the professional range. They have, clearly, massive assets, with the ability to do almost anything they like. They can have brand-new information developed, or make old-fashioned ones act as never before. They can construct the biggest and most expensive workplaces hitherto interpreted. They can change cities. They have already redefined building in the sense that the word been in a position to refer to the structures of software and hardware. Now the old-fashioned form of architecture feels itself an adjunct of the new sort. One clue of the shifted balance of power is the fact that Apple, having commissioned the mighty Foster and Spouse to design its new HQ, have chosen not mention them even after they had unveiled the plans. The campaign is still not on the Foster website. The Apple brand had to come first.

Most though not all of these new organizes are in the convene of towns, suburbiums and small cities that goes by the refer of Silicon Valley. There is the Foster project, Apple Park in Cupertino, 2.8 m sq ft in length and reportedly expenditure$ 5bn, at its centre a mile in circumference, visible from room, a metal and glass circle that are currently almost complete. There are the planned Google headquarters in Mountain View and London by the high-ego, high-reputation pairing of Bjarke Ingels and Thomas Heatherwick. Facebook has hired the New York office of OMA, these best practices founded by Rem Koolhaas, to add to the Frank Gehry-designed complex in Menlo Park that was completed in 2015.

The one that dominates increased attention, and has done since the specific characteristics were unveiled in 2011, is the Apple/ Foster circle, built on a place vacated by the waning empire of Hewlett Packard, which as it happens was the company that presented the teenage Steve Jobs his first infringe. According to Wired magazine, the building preoccupied Jobs in his last months, and he would waste his treasured time on five- or six-hour sessions on its motif. In June 2011, visibly ailing, he appeared in person in front of a starstruck Cupertino city council, with members of the audience snapping him with what now look like Jurassic cameras, to convince them of its merits. He didnt have to try too hard.

The accomplished Apple Park in Cupertino, California, which opened in April 2017. Photograph: Alamy

Weve had some enormous architects to work with, he said, some of the best in the world I recall, and weve come up with a blueprint that gives 12,000 beings in one construct. The gathering gasped. Hed construed place commons with lots of constructs but they get birthing pretty rapidly. So he proposed, acquainting a analogy that has since protruded to the design like dust to a MacBook screen, something a little like a spaceship property with a exquisite courtyard in the middle. Its a circle and so its bowed all the way round, he said, which as you know if you build occasions is not the cheapest lane to build something. Theres not a straight bit of glass on this building. At the same season the meridian would never transcend four storeys we want the whole place human-scale. There would be 6,000 trees on the 150 -acre site, selected with the help of a elderly arborist from Stanford whos very good with indigenous trees around this area.

When a council member said that the word splendid is an understatement, Jobs didnt demur. I think we do have a shot at building the best office building in the world, he said. I genuinely do think that structure students will come here to see this, I think it could be that good. He batted away mild is asking for a few benefits for the vicinity free wifi, opening an Apple store, mitigating the increase in transaction and in the nicest possible method reminds me of “thats been” the largest taxpayer in Cupertino, so wed like to continue to stay here and pay taxes. If the city asked for too much, in other words, Apple would decamp to a competitive municipality.

The mayor waved an iPad 2( which too gazes Jurassic now) and said how much his daughter loved it. Your technologies genuinely do everybody proud, said another council member. Well thanks, said Jobs, were proud to be in Cupertino very. Thanks, she sounded back, like a giddy teenager. In due direction the project was approved.

Jobs was in fact downplaying the curves exceptionalness. Lately Steven Levy, a reporter for Wired , was let through Apples PR palisades to look inside the nearly-finished house. He described a high-precision Xanadu, a feel-good Spectre basi, on which Lord Foster and his crew were assisted by Apples famed premier design officer also, as it happens, British-born Sir Jonathan Ive. After a drive down a pristine 755 -foot long tunnel, invest in specifically designed and patented tiles, he detected a world-wide of whiteness, greenery and silver, with a 100,000 sq ft fitness centre and a cafe that can act 4,000 at once, with the 1,000 -seat Steve Jobs theatre, surmounted by a 165 ft-wide glass cylinder, for Apples far-famed produce openings, and with a scenery designed to mimic a national park.

It is a place where trees have been transplanted from the Mojave desert, where the aluminium door-handles have been through multiple prototypes to achieve their perfect organize, where the stairs use fire-control systems acquired from ships, where the extended glass has been specifically considered to achieve precisely the desired degree of transparency and whiteness, where even a new various kinds of pizza casket that stops the contents going soggy has been invented and patented for the company coffeehouse. The doorways have perfectly flat thresholds because, according to a creation administrator reported by Reuters, if architects had to adjust their gait when penetrating the building, they gambled distraction from their work.

In life Jobs was pitiless about the detail; since his death his admirers have striven to be true to his atmosphere. He specified how the beam wall-linings should be cut and at what time of year, to minimise its exhaust material. There is a yoga room, reports Levy, that is covered in stone, from merely the right excavate in Kansas, thats been carefully distressed, like a duo of jeans, to make it definitely sounds like the stone at Jobss favourite inn in Yosemite. There are the sliding glass doorways to the cafe, four storeys or 85 paws high, each weighing 440,000 lbs practically 200 tonnes, that open and close with the help of near-noiseless underground mechanisms. Apple Park uses the largest, heaviest single pieces of glass ever installed on a structure, with the added complication of being curved.

It is certainly a think of our age, though to what end is an open question. Jonathan Ive told Wired that the main aims were the connection and collaboration it would allow between hires. For Foster it is a beautiful object descended on this verdant, comfortable landscape a true utopian vision. One of its objects is to inspire future Apple works with its perfection and attention to item, to give high standards for them to follow in their work. Tim Cook, Apples CEO, called it a 100 -year decision.

Ever since the design was unveiled, however, it has precipitated scepticism. The architecture critic of the LA Times called it a retrograded cocoon, doggedly old-fashioned. As a perfect and omitting bit of modernist geometry, defined within luxuriant set and is dependant on large amounts of car parking, it ogles strangely like a corporate HQ of the 1950 s or 60 s, something that IBM or Bell Labs might have improved,which you would have speculated is precisely the looking Apple wouldnt want. And a curve is a frozen species, hard to modify or augment. At any given point in time, the relationship to the rest is much the same as at any other item, which seems to work against Ives hopes for communications and spontaneity. It is the shape of infinity and eternity, of mausoleums and temples.

Facebook HQs rooftop common designed by Frank Gehry. Picture: Oliver Wainwright for the Guardian

Many of the greatest fabrications in modern technology have been realized in rough and ready, easy-to-adapt infinites in the garages, front room and acquired role tables where Apple, Google and others were hatched and in Building 20, the large-scale wooden molted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where significant advance were drawn in linguistics, nuclear science, acoustics and computing, to call but a few. And while its hopeless for a company the size of Apple to recreate that exact atmosphere in its workplace, the big circle does look over-determined and more complete, as well as expensive and slow to construct. Promotes knockout and utopia are not able to induce the best medium for fast-moving invention. As for Cooks 100 -year ambition, this seems strange and hubristic as the decline of Hewlett Packard demoes, there is little reason to think that any tech corporation can last that long, in which lawsuit the Apple circle will, like the crumbling skill deco skyscrapers of Detroit, be splendidly redundant.

There is another line of analysi, which is that those terrified and tax-hungry members of Cupertino city council didnt push hard enough for the help that their community involves. If the fact that there is Apple is chiefly an immense boon for them it also brings push on dwelling and transportation, creating traffic jam and long travels and pushing the median cost of a home in Cupertino to nearly$ 2m. The layout novelist Allison Arieff recently bickered in the New York Times that the proposed project pictures a flagrant disregard is not simply for the citizens of Cupertino but too for the functionality of the states of the region. It should, she says, have seen more great efforts to is attached to public transport and the city should try harder to address the home necessitate that Apples attendance generates.

It doesnt often pay to bet against Apples judgment, and there may be intelligence in development projects that is not visible in the existing information. The companionship asset and supremacy may in any case be enough to counteract any unhelpfulness in its building, but Apple Park looks like the sort of splendid tombstone that empires construct for themselves Lutyenss houses for the British Raj in Delhi, the skyscrapers that moved up on the cusp of the Wall Street crash after they have elapsed their predominance. It may also be governed by excess if intelligible respect for Jobs. It is a place imbued with his account and his reveries. They call it Steves gift. It had better not be Steves millstone.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and architect Frank Gehry discuss representations of Facebooks Menlo Park campus. Image: Facebook/ AFP

It is, at all events, the project against which other tech business suggestions want to define themselves. They want to be the things that it is not. The official narrative of the Facebook/ Gehry collaboration is that Mark Zuckerberg was cautious of the inventors luminary and the latter had to convince him of his ability to deliver the project with the assistance of Gehrys in-house software more cheaply and effectively than his adversaries. The finished form is from the rough-edged and rumpus-room institutions of tech HQ design, with a huge open-plan office containing 2,800 workers and splashy, colorful operates by local artists. The building itself is pretty simple and isnt imagination. Thats on purpose, said Zuckerberg. We require our space to feel like a work in progress. When you penetrate our constructs, we want you to feel how much left there is to be done in our mission to connect the world.

Shohei Shigematsu, project partners at OMA New York in charge of Facebooks recent swelling, Willow Campus, is indicated that our operation was not to provide iconic architecture but also regional and social suppose. He and his buyer, he says, want to integrate with community and support parish amenity, to support the things that the community urgently misses a convenience store, open space, 1,500 dwellings of which 15% will be offered at below marketplace hires, a hotel, greenways, residential gaits, shopping streets. Facebook is the perfect company, Shigematsu also says, their assignment is to connect beings, and network is a word the hell is virtual but too physical. So he wants to apply that mission to urban desires for connectivity in the Bay Area.

He wants to re-activate a disused railing passageway at the leading edge of the locate as a cycling way, a pedestrian roadway and a possible line for a Facebook shuttle that can also be used by the public. He wants to undo the corporate fortress-like approaching, although he acknowledges that a immense fellowship will always have secrets and that is something that of the national territory will be out of bounds to members of the public. The imagery written so far reveals generically pleasant ballparks and streets, of the nature that well-mannered urbanists ought to have generating for more than three decades, with nothing of the provocation, astonish and signature perversion that you often get with OMA activities. Shigematsu says he is happy to accept any particular level of cliche in the form it is the large-scale thinking that matters to him.

Google miss something else again. Theyre emphatically not afraid of icons. After weighing many architects Zaha Hadid, for example they shotgunned Heatherwick and Bjarke Ingelss practice, BIG, into a marriage. Its a striking sentiment, like a billionaire hiring Miley Cyrus and Britney Spears to perform at his sprogs 18 th birthday. Heatherwick and Ingels are among the younger drafts to the grades of iconists, unabashed entertainers, purveyors of WTF spectaculars untrammelled by the academic scruples of older designers. One of the two might be considered ample for any one assignment, but then organizations like Google dont play by normal rules when it comes to hiring designers, or surely much else.

BIG and Heatherwicks design for Googles brand-new London headquarters in Kings Cross. Picture: HayesDavidson

At Mountain View, where permission was lately granted to proceed, a huge roof is proposed, both mountainous and tent-like, with upward-curving openings smile-shaped clerestories for deeming the sky. Beneath its capacious shelter, on a promoted open deck, hundreds if not thousands of Googlers will be doing their trash. The next tier down a publicly accessible roadway leads through, part of a programme of employing with these communities that also includes a public plaza for group tai chi and whatever. It is framed by oval oak thickets.

If Apple Park seems aloof and extraterrestrial despite the fact that a lot of its landscape is open to the public then Facebook and Google require you to know how much, like street jugglers or mime artists, they want to engage you. But there are currently similarities between all these projects, such as the all-embracing quality of their passions. Each campus is a self-contained universe where everything the species of botany, the graphics, the food in the coffeehouse, the programming of incidents, the structure, is determined by the management. They make their own weather.

Under the Google tent or inside the Apple circle there is little but googleness or appleness. There is quality but despite the meticulous selection of native floras it is of an abstract, finagled kind. There is art, but it is drained of the authority to offend and subvert, leaving alone recreation and reassurance. There is architecture but , notwithstanding the high degree of invention that goes into cloths, it procures it hard to shed the quality of computer supplies, the sense that buildings are made of a kind of digistuff, which could as well be one thing or the other. Even when the corporations reach out to their communities, to use the preferred PR terminology, the countries of the world is a hazy, ill-defined entity, a mist in the background of the computer-generated images.

These panoptical worlds are in accordance of the sheer magnitude of “owners corporations”, but they also show their mindset. It has been pointed out that tech campuses resemble hippie communes of the 1960 s in their obvious egalitarianism, their illusion that you can go back to quality, draw your own principles, liberate yourself with scientific and share everything. Physically, Googles large-scale ceiling echoes the geodesic domes that hippies put up in their rural retreats.

While their sci-fi is strangely dated, culturally it represents gumption. As the author Fred Turner has argued in From Counterculture to Cyberculture , radical Californian ideas of the 1960 s were, with added revenue inducement, converted into radical Californian technologies of recent decades. And as has been belatedly dawning, there are limits to the sharing, equality and impunity, especially when the intellectual property and business strategies of the tech monstrous are at post. Their building makes form to these negations, to the combinations of openness and control and of freedom and hindrances. They are perfect sketches of the obvious equality and actual inequality of the tech sphere, where impermeable septa partition those in the inner circles from the remainder. There is inequality everywhere, of course, but the tech manoeuvre is to claim that there isnt.

The Amazon Spheres, added to the Amazon campus in downtown Seattle, are Eden Project-style biodomes. Image: AP

Sometimes tech HQs find themselves in the middle of big cities, rather than the compliant sprawl of Silicon Valley, which causes them to modify but not abandon their hippie-commune mentality. Amazon has chosen to situate itself in downtown Seattle, where it is believed to occupy 15 -2 0% of the available role opening, which allows it to boast that 20% of its 25,000 hires go to undertaking. To its moderately anodyne assembly of its term of office pulley-blocks it has just added the Spheres, an urban Eden Project of interlocking foams, where its employees will wander, in Costa Rican temperatures, among tropical groves and waterfalls.

At Kings Cross in London pressure of space has obliged the stacking-up of Googles campus into an 11 -storey, one-million-square-foot structure as long as the Shard is towering. Here the fun and games of the inside a prom that ascends past cafe and fantastic plays facilities to a rooftop scenery of headland, battlefields, plot and plateau are constricted into an exterior that takes its cue from the moderately po-faced regularity of its term of office cubes around it, and from the recurring rows of the rail ways down one surface. These tempi then get jiggered, as if the internal power cant be contained any longer.

The proposed house is one of the more convincing architectural layouts so far by either BIG or Heatherwick, in which the encounter of campus and metropolis produces tighten and friction, pushing and plucking, activity and reaction. It is also a decided organization, unafraid of its proportion, amid the more indecisive pulley-blocks around, which is something the sphere necessitates. But it is still inward-looking, offering a conventional role entering plus an display of retail groups to the street. If the same can be said of other place builds nearby, one could have hoped that the strength of Google could have achieved more.

When Microsoft was in its solemnity it was happy to occupy a bland scattering of low-grade constructs on the edge of Seattle. It still does. Its also impressing that for all its notoriety Silicon Valley becomes little mark on the visual consciousness “of the worlds” theres not a strong feel of what it actually consider this to be. Until now it has lacked landmarks. But that is something that superpower and that much fund will not always be happy to be unobtrusive. We are only just beginning to see the ways in which it can change the landscape of cities.

The post The billion-dollar palaces of Apple, Facebook and Google appeared first on apsbicepstraining.com.

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