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mostlysignssomeportents · 4 years ago

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Recommendation engines and "lean-back" media

In William Gibson’s 1992 novel “Idoru,” a media executive describes her company’s core audience:

“Best visualized as a vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organism craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed. Personally I like to imagine something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It’s covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth…no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote. Or by voting in presidential elections.”

It’s an astonishingly great passage, not just for the image it evokes, but for how it captures the character of the speaker and her contempt for the people who made her fortune.

It’s also a beautiful distillation of the 1990s anxiety about TV’s role in a societal “dumbing down,” that had brewed for a long time, at least since the Nixon-JFK televised debates, whose outcome was widely attributed not to JFK’s ideas, but to Nixon’s terrible TV manner.

Neil Postman’s 1985 “Amusing Ourselves To Death” was a watershed here, comparing the soundbitey Reagan-Dukakis debates with the long, rhetorically complex Lincoln-Douglas debates of the previous century.

(Incidentally, when I finally experienced those debates for myself, courtesy of the 2009 BBC America audiobook, I was more surprised by Lincoln’s unequivocal, forceful repudiations of slavery abolition than by the rhetoric’s nuance)

https://memex.craphound.com/2009/01/20/lincoln-douglas-debate-audiobook-civics-history-and-rhetoric-lesson-in-16-hours/

“Media literacy” scholarship entered the spotlight, and its left flank — epitomized by Chomsky’s 1988 “Manufacturing Consent” — claimed that an increasingly oligarchic media industry was steering society, rather than reflecting it.

Thus, when the internet was demilitarized and the general public started trickling — and then rushing — to use it, there was a widespread hope that we might break free of the tyranny of concentrated, linear programming (in the sense of “what’s on,” and “what it does to you”).

Much of the excitement over Napster wasn’t about getting music for free — it was about the mix-tapification of all music, where your custom playlists would replace the linear album.

Likewise Tivo, whose ad-skipping was ultimately less important than the ability to watch the shows you liked, rather than the shows that were on.

Blogging, too: the promise was that a community of reader-writers could assemble a daily “newsfeed” that reflected their idiosyncratic interests across a variety of sources, surfacing ideas from other places and even other times.

The heady feeling of the time is hard to recall, honestly, but there was a thrill to getting up and reading the news that you chose, listening to a playlist you created, then watching a show you picked.

And while there were those who fretted about the “Daily Me” (what we later came to call the “filter bubble”) the truth was that this kind of active media creation/consumption ranged far more widely than the monopolistic media did.

The real “bubble” wasn’t choosing your own programming — it was everyone turning on their TV on Thursday nights to Friends, Seinfeld and The Simpsons.

The optimism of the era is best summarized in a taxonomy that grouped media into two categories: “lean back” (turn it on and passively consume it) and “lean forward” (steer your media consumption with a series of conscious decisions that explores a vast landscape).

Lean-forward media was intensely sociable: not just because of the distributed conversation that consisted of blog-reblog-reply, but also thanks to user reviews and fannish message-board analysis and recommendations.

I remember the thrill of being in a hotel room years after I’d left my hometown, using Napster to grab rare live recordings of a band I’d grown up seeing in clubs, and striking up a chat with the node’s proprietor that ranged fondly and widely over the shows we’d both seen.

But that sociability was markedly different from the “social” in social media. From the earliest days of Myspace and Facebook, it was clear that this was a sea-change, though it was hard to say exactly what was changing and how.

Around the time Rupert Murdoch bought Myspace, a close friend a blazing argument with a TV executive who insisted that the internet was just a passing fad: that the day would come when all these online kids grew up, got beaten down by work and just wanted to lean back.

To collapse on the sofa and consume media that someone else had programmed for them, anaesthetizing themselves with passive media that didn’t make them think too hard.

This guy was obviously wrong — the internet didn’t disappear — but he was also right about the resurgence of passive, linear media.

But this passive media wasn’t the “must-see TV” of the 80s and 90s.

Rather, it was the passivity of the recommendation algorithm, which created a per-user linear media feed, coupled with mechanisms like “endless scroll” and “autoplay,” that incinerated any trace of an active role for the “consumer” (a very apt term here).

It took me a long time to figure out exactly what I disliked about algorithmic recommendation/autoplay, but I knew I hated it. The reason my 2008 novel LITTLE BROTHER doesn’t have any social media? Wishful thinking. I was hoping it would all die in a fire.

Today, active media is viewed with suspicion, considered synonymous with Qanon-addled boomers who flee Facebook for Parler so they can stan their favorite insurrectionists in peace, freed from the tyranny of the dread shadowban.

But I’m still on team active media. I would rather people actively choose their media diets, in a truly sociable mode of consumption and production, than leaning back and getting fed whatever is served up by the feed.

Today on Wired, Duke public policy scholar Philip M Napoli writes about lean forward and lean back in the context of Trump’s catastrophic failure to launch an independent blog, “From the Desk of Donald J Trump.”

https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-trumps-failed-blog-proves-he-was-just-howling-into-the-void/

In a nutshell, Trump started a blog which he grandiosely characterized as a replacement for the social media monopolists who’d kicked him off their platforms. Within a month, he shut it down.

While Trump claimed the shut-down was all part of the plan, it’s painfully obvious that the real reason was that no one was visiting his website.

Now, there are many possible, non-exclusive explanations for this.

For starters, it was a very bad social media website. It lacked even rudimentary social tools. The Washington Post called it “a primitive one-way loudspeaker,” noting its lack of per-post comments, a decades old commonplace.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/05/21/trump-online-traffic-plunge/

Trump paid (or more likely, stiffed) a grifter crony to build the site for him, and it shows: the “Like” buttons didn’t do anything, the video-sharing buttons created links to nowhere, etc. From the Desk… was cursed at birth.

But Napoli’s argument is that even if Trump had built a good blog, it would have failed. Trump has a highly motivated cult of tens of millions of people — people who deliberately risked death to follow him, some even ingesting fish-tank cleaner and bleach at his urging.

The fact that these cult-members were willing to risk their lives, but not endure poor web design, says a lot about the nature of the Trump cult, and its relationship to passive media.

The Trump cult is a “push media” cult, simultaneously completely committed to Trump but unwilling to do much to follow him.

That’s the common thread between Fox News (and its successors like OANN) and MAGA Facebook.

And it echoes the despairing testimony of the children of Fox cultists, that their boomer parents consume endless linear TV, turning on Fox from the moment they arise and leaving it on until they fall asleep in front of it (also, reportedly, how Trump spent his presidency).

Napoli says that Trump’s success on monopoly social media platforms and his failure as a blogger reveals the role that algorithmically derived, per-user, endless scroll linear media played in the ascendancy of his views.

It makes me think of that TV exec and his prediction of the internet’s imminent disappearance (which, come to think of it, is not so far off from my own wishful thinking about social media’s disappearance in Little Brother).

He was absolutely right that this century has left so many of us exhausted, wanting nothing more than the numbness of lean-back, linear feeds.

But up against that is another phenomenon: the resurgence of active political movements.

After a 12-month period that saw widescale civil unrest, from last summer’s BLM uprising to the bizarre storming of the capital, you can’t really call this the golden age of passivity.

While Fox and OANN consumption might be the passive daily round of one of Idoru’s “vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organisms craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed,” that is in no way true of Qanon.

Qanon is an active pastime, a form of collaborative storytelling with all the mechanics of the Alternate Reality Games that the lean-forward media advocates who came out of the blogging era love so fiercely:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/06/no-vitiated-air/#other-hon

Meanwhile, the “clicktivism” that progressive cynics decried as useless performance a decade ago has become an active contact sport, welding together global movements from Occupy to BLM that use the digital to organize the highly physical.

That’s the paradox of lean-forward and lean-back: sometimes, the things you learn while leaning back make you lean forward — in fact, they might just get you off the couch altogether.

I think that Napoli is onto something. The fact that Trump’s cultists didn’t follow him to his crummy blog tells us that Trump was an effect, not a cause (something many of us suspected all along, as he’s clearly neither bright nor competent enough to inspire a movement).

But the fact that “cyberspace keeps everting” (to paraphrase “Spook Country,” another William Gibson novel) tells us that passive media consumption isn’t a guarantee of passivity in the rest of your life (and sometimes, it’s a guarantee of the opposite).

And it clarifies the role that social media plays in our discourse — not so much a “radicalizer” as a means to corral likeminded people together without them having to do much. Within those groups are those who are poised for action, or who can be moved to it.

The ease with which these people find one another doesn’t produce a deterministic outcome. Sometimes, the feed satisfies your urge for change (“clicktivism”). Sometimes, it fuels it (“radicalizing”).

Notwithstanding smug media execs, the digital realm equips us to “express our mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire” by doing much more than “changing the channels on a universal remote” — for better and for worse.

Image: Ian Burt (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/oddsock/267206444

CC BY: https://creativecommo

ns.org/licenses/by/2.0/

#pluralistic

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clareguilty · 4 years ago

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The Strongest Metal

This is a commission fic! Junkrat/Roadhog Rated: M | No warnings, injury recovery Word Count ~2400

“There’s nothing for you to worry about with me, Mr. Rutledge. To many, I am just as much of a criminal as you are. Turning you in would also result in a sentence for myself.” The voice was unfamiliar. Heavily accented. Stern but soothing. The words floated around, barely making sense.

“I can’t thank you enough. If I had been in your position, I don’t think I would have done the same.” That was Mako. He sounded tired, anguished. Jamison hated that.

He couldn’t remember what happened. He felt terrible, like he’d been on one hell of a bender.

But they had been fighting. He remembered that much. Those guys with the dark armor and the red helmets. Didn’t they know that the outback belonged to the junkers? There may have been no official law in the land, but that didn’t mean they were just going to roll over for any band of soldiers that showed up. They had been fighting to protect their natural resources since before the crisis.

And then those other blokes had showed up. He’d heard about them before. Overwatch. The pride and joy of humanity’s defenders. They’d been shut down last he heard, but he recognized them when they showed up on the battlefield.

Oh. Jamison remembered now. He had died. Been blown to smithereens. Exactly the way he’d always thought he’d go.

Was this heaven? Not where he thought he’d end up, really. But Mako was there, and whoever this lady was. An angel?

Jamison cracked one eye open, wincing at the bright fluorescent lights overhead. Oh yeah. That was definitely an angel.

Wispy blonde hair, piercing eyes, literal fucking wings. She was in all white armor and glowing gold. She looked exhausted.

And Mako was there, looking just as tired. He always looked tired, really, but not like this. He sat slumped in a chair, unmasked and hair down. Jamison had never seen him so miserable. Some sort of afterlife this was.

“Hello, Roadie,” he croaked. His voice sounded terrible. His throat was dry and scratchy. He was starting to think he wasn’t dead.

Both Mako and the angel snapped their heads towards him. “You’re awake!” the angel gasped. She immediately reached for a biotic scanner. “How do you feel?”

Jamison hadn’t really thought about it until she asked. He hadn’t really felt anything if he was being honest, and he told her as much. He was sore, disoriented, but he couldn’t really feel anything.

She frowned. “I guess that’s not the worst thing. Can you move at all?”

He raised his arm, wiggling his fingers with a grin. Then he saw his hand.

“What the hell?! What happened to my arm?” Last he’d checked, only his right hand was cybernetic, and it certainly didn’t look like that. He looked at both of his hands, except these weren’t his hands. They were sleek, polished metal with tiny spindly joints. But they moved when he wanted them too, and he could feel them, even if they weren’t flesh and bone.

He flexed and curled the fingers in front of him. His frown only deepened as he inspected the high quality engineering. It wasn’t scrap, that was for sure. Much too fancy to be a part of him.

“Who did this to me?” He demanded. “Give me my old arm back!” He had made that arm. That arm was a part of him.

“Jamie,” Mako reached out, but he pulled his hand away before he could touch the horrible mechanical monstrosity. “You’re arm is gone. You were in an explosion. Dr. Zeigler saved you.”

“Saved me?” Junkrat looked down at his body. Where there was once flesh and blood and scar tissue, there was nothing but metal and wires and -- still quite a lot of scar tissue. “I look like a fucking omnic!” The angel winced.

“You’re alive,” Mako said. “You owe these people your life.”

“What life?” Jamison spat. “What am I now? Did you give me a fancy new leg too?” He sneered at the doctor, throwing the sheet aside to look at his legs. Thankfully, his peg was still there. And aside from some bandages, his flesh leg was still intact.

The doctor fumbled over her words. “We wanted to wait until you were fully rehabilitated, but there is the option to change your prosthesis, or even try to integrate some cybernetics.”

“I don’t want any of your corpo bullshit tech.”

“Jamie,” Mako scolded him. “You wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for Angela. She did the best she could to save you.”

Jamison glowered, but kept his mouth shut. Mako really did look like shit, and he probably hadn’t left his bedside in days.

“We’re at an old Overwatch outpost,” Mako continued. He knew Jamison would listen to him over the doctor. “Quite a few former agents have come back. They helped us in that fight against the black-suited soldiers. Apparently they come from an organization called Talon.”

“I don’t care about any of that,” Jamison waved his hand. He hated how the motion felt. “I don’t want anything to do with them.”

Mako sighed. “We don’t have a choice. It’s going to be some time before you’re healed. Angela has explained to me what you’re going to need. She has experience with cybernetics, but there isn’t a lot here.”

Jamison said nothing.

Why should he care about Overwatch? Or Talon? Or any of that shit? He wanted his body back. He wanted to be as far away from doctors and agents and civilization as possible.

But he had never seen Mako like this, not even after the worst job.

So he sat through the doctor’s check up, begrudgingly answering her questions and letting her poke and prod at his new body.

“How long have I been out?” he finally asked.

“It’s been nearly a week.” She was gentle, hesitant as she redressed his wounds. “The biotics have helped to heal the most severe of your injuries. But, I have limited resources, so I have to make them count. I know you aren’t… happy with your cybernetics. They’re rudimentary and certainly not where I’d like them to be. If you so choose, we can always modify or upgrade anything once we have access to proper engineering. This outpost has been out of operation since the crisis and-”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jamison cut her off. “Roadie trusts you, and that’s enough for me. But I want nothing to do with your Overwatch.” He wanted to be gone as soon as possible. Back to Junkertown, back the the safety of the outback.

It was another day before they told Jamison the full extent of his condition. He slept fitfully, a combination of biotics and medication and paralyzed numbness. He hated moving in the hours he was able to. It wasn’t his body. It wasn’t him.

He had been caught in an explosion in the fight against Talon. The blast had ignited the gunpowder on his own gear. He hadn't been in very good shape when Mercy -- Doctor Ziegler -- had found him. It was through sheer luck that he had been saved by the one doctor who pioneered full body cybernetics.

The hospital at the Australian Overwatch outpost had been… lacking, but between the doctors and engineers on hand they had managed to stabilize Jamison and fit him with rudimentary cybernetics.

Jamison knew he should be grateful. He was alive because of their generosity. But he couldn’t tamp down the resentment. He didn’t ask for this. Why would they go through all that trouble just to save some lowlife junker?

But he couldn’t leave Mako. If any of the two of them was going to be left alone it was going to be Jamison, he had resigned himself to that. Maybe he would have to pull through just for the old bastard.

The doctor -- he had taken to calling her blondie just to see how much it annoyed her -- fixed the nerve receptors and recalibrated the movement on his cybernetics. He knew how tedious the process was, he had done it all himself when he lost his arm the first time.

But that had been on his terms. He had gotten himself blown up and he had fixed it. None of these battles or fancy hospitals or strange people practically dissecting him every damn day.

Every time he tried to throw a fit, Mako would shoot him a look that would guilt him into playing nice. Mako would say thank you when the doctors finished up for the day. Mako would help clean him and dress him and feed him. He felt like a damn baby.

They finally let him out of the hospital after a few days. He wasn’t perfect -- not that he was anything special before this whole shitshow. But he doubted he would ever feel right again.

He staggered down the halls to the room Mako had been staying in. The Overwatch base was nice, but it felt too sterile, too civilized. Jamison and Mako were used to their little shack in the outback, they had never needed any fancy bells and whistles.

“Roadie,” Jamison whispered, “Maybe we could slip out of here tonight. Steal one of them fancy all-terrains and head back home.” He had seen the vehicles they came in one. They would scrap for some nice parts or sell for a good bit of money.

“No,” Mako didn’t even blink. “You’re still not well. The doctors here will look after you. We’re not leaving until you’re better.”

Jamison scowled. “Fuck them. I don’t need them. I can build everything I need out of scrap at home. I’ll just need your help.”

Mako was unfazed. “It’s too dangerous. You barely survived as it is, and the stuff they pieced you back together with isn’t going to last very long.”

He knew that. He knew he was on a timer. Without access to any real, up to date medical equipment he was just wasting away on the temporary machinery. He wanted to say it didn’t matter, that he’d rather go out on his own terms than be strung along from one set of parts to another, but he couldn’t do that to Mako.

“I hate it here,” he said.

“That’s fine,” was all he got in response.

The room was cozy, dusty, impersonal. It had been decades since Overwatch had any real presence on the continent, something that showed in every part of the base. The dorm was small and empty, a little run down, but the bed was big enough for both of them.

There was a small pile of gear on the desk, Mako’s gun and mask, some biotic canisters. None of Jamison’s gear had survived the explosion.

“I’m going to have to build a new gun, aren’t I?” Jamison asked. He was going to have to start over on everything. There was nothing left.

Then he caught his reflection in the mirror. It was jarring, to see his own face on an unfamiliar body. The wires and the plates and the joints. He was staring at the stranger in the glass when something soft smacked him in the face. One of Mako’s shirts.

Jamison unfolded the soft, faded material. He couldn’t even feel the texture of the cotton. “I’m pretty hideous now, ain’t I, Roadie? Uglier than ever.” He pulled the shirt over his head, wincing at the ache and pull of his healing muscles.

“I don’t care how you look, Jamie,” Mako said quietly. “As long as I have you here with me.”

Frowning, Jamison washed his face in the sink. He liked being away from the constant supervision of the hospital room. All he wanted was to be left to his misery. He didn’t care about calibration or pulmonary function or anything like that.

He flopped onto the bed, glowering at the ceiling. Mako lay beside him, sighing and resting his hands on his stomach. “You don’t have to like this,” he said.

“Good. ‘cause I don’t.”

“You should be nicer to Doctor Ziegler.”

Jamison snorted. “Why?”

“For me.”

That wasn’t fair. Jamison would have continued being an asshole with no regrets if it weren’t for those two words. Because he would do anything for Mako, even if it meant letting some doctor make him miserable every damn day.

He would survive. Just for Mako. Even if he hated what he had become. It’s not like when he lost his leg, lost his arm. That had been before he had Roadie, and he had fixed himself up on his own. On his own terms. He had still felt whole, even with a peg leg and a scrap arm.

Now he was premium alloys and advanced sensors, and he had never felt more broken. Even Mako wouldn’t look at him, wouldn’t touch him. They treated him as though he was fragile, made of glass and not the strongest metal his body could carry.

He woke in the night panting and sweating. The same nightmares that had followed him for years. Metal fingers scrabbling at the plates on his chest, the wire channels running to his neck. He needed it off.

Two massive hands closed around the thin metal joints of his wrists. Calloused fingers, chipped nail enamel. Mako.

“Jamie,” he said.

“Roadie,” Jamison croaked. They had done this before. Countless times.

He was surprised when Mako threw his arms around Jamison, pulling him close. It was the first time he had truly touched him since he woke up in that damned hospital.

“I’ve got you,” Mako whispered. He didn’t even wince at the feeling of metal against his skin. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Jamison huffed in disbelief, but nuzzled into Mako’s chest. The familiar sound of Mako’s raspy breathing helped to ground him. “I’m the one who almost croaked. I just didn’t want to leave you with all these Overwatch weirdos.”

“They’ve been good to us.” Mako murmured. “We owe them.”

“You’re too nice. We don’t owe them shit, and the first chance I get im going to rob them.”

Mako chuckled. “They could help get rid of those soldiers.”

“I’m done with soldiers,” Jamison groaned. “I’m done with everything. I just wanna go back to the shack and drink my weight in beer.”

“We will.”

#roadrat #junkrat #roadhog #junkrat/roadhog #mako rutledge #jamison fawkes #roadhog/junkrat

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adventseven · 3 years ago

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Sub Rebellion: An Underwater Adventure that Swam under the Radar

It’s no surprise to anyone who plays and collects older games that prices have been on the rise across the board. While the cost of buying older games has been steadily climbing for around a decade now, the pandemic forced many people to turn to hobbies they could enjoy while shut inside their homes, dramatically increasing the demand on the supply of old discs and cartridges and causing prices to jump—in some cases, even double. Some of us with a love for old games but a limited budget for obtaining them have had to turn away from the established classics and start digging through the bargain bin, in search of those less-famous games that might hold just as much fun for $15 instead of $150.

And it just so happens that Racjin’s Sub Rebellion (known as U: Underwater Unit in Japan) is such a game. Released to little fanfare in the states for a mere $10 new (if what I’m reading on the internet is correct), it went more or less overlooked by well… everybody. A far cry from the lesser-known studio’s charming chibi graphics from games like Snowboard Kids, Final Fantasy Explorers, or their remake of Saga 2 on the Nintendo DS, Sub Rebellion puts you behind the wheel of a powerful experimental submarine. In the not-so-distant future, the world has suffered a cataclysmic earthquake, sinking the majority of dry land into the ocean.

With human society in shambles, new forces have arisen to battle for control of the seas. Your sub is the last-ditch hope of the Allied Forces, who are desperately losing the war against an evil empire.

While the story holds some interest for me, it’s told almost entirely through text dumps at the beginning and end of each level. So for those who’d prefer to just get right to shooting torpedoes, it’s generally easy to skip without much consequence.

Dive, Fight, and Explore

The core gameplay feels something like a cross between Starfox and Ecco: Defender of the Future. You’ll explore underwater environments all over the globe, fighting enemy subs but also searching for buried treasure left behind by an ancient civilization. Maneuvering your sub feels great and really gives you the sensation of underwater movement. You can steer the sub forward easily, but also quickly rise or dive through use of the shoulder buttons, which is invaluable when trying to escape enemy torpedoes. At some points in the game, you’ll need to surface to defeat foes in the air or on dry land, where your sub will transform and gain alternate forms of attack. While you start out with only a basic set of weapons, finding hidden artifacts will allow you to unlock custom parts for your sub. You can pick between a variety of different guns and torpedoes, but also shields and engines that will change what kind of damage you’re resistant to and how your sub handles. Generally speaking, the newer items will be better, but most of the unlocked gear will have a niche use even later in the game.

When not in battle, you can use the sub’s radar to search for hidden foes or buried treasure. Pressing the button sends out a ping that displays a wireframe of everything in view, allowing you to see through walls and identify foes deep in murky waters. This is one of the more charming aspects of the game to me—even though it’s a small mechanic, it’s not something I’ve seen done before, and I found it very useful and even fun to ping the area around me and see what lies around a turn.

Always a Fresh Catch

While the core gameplay never changes, Sub Rebellion does a great job of never getting stale. Every mission is a little bit different, and you’ll fight in a wide variety of oceanic environments, from deep trenches, to tropical shallows, to ice-covered arctic waters and more. Boss fights are also widely varied. You might find yourself in a dogfight with another agile sub, shooting down a giant warplane straight out of some shoot-‘em-up, or struggling to survive against a giant monster. To me this variety is really what makes the game stand out—no part of the game feels like padding, and no two missions feel the same, meaning I never got bored of what I was doing. The music in the game is also quite varied, and well used. Dreamy tracks that encapsulate what it’s like to explore a long-abandoned underwater ruin and harsh electronic tracks that prepare you for a hopeless-seeming battle all fit the mood of every moment in the game. Oceans of Fun

I’d love to make this review seem less like an ad by coming up with something bad to say about the game, but the truth is that I really have no major complaints. I loved this game from start to finish, and I think I’m really likely to sit down and play through it again in the future. I think for some people, the lack of cutscenes and all the story being delivered through text dumps might rub them the wrong way. Others might balk at the slower-paced combat compared to similar games. But me? I wouldn’t change a thing.

For those of you who have played all the PS2 classics and are looking for something worth your time that won’t cost you a fortune, I can’t recommend Sub Rebellion highly enough. The game masterfully balances it’s combat and explorations and manages to keep showing you something new with each and every level you play. It’s a real shame Racjin never made anything else quite like this; I would pick up a sequel in a heartbeat. For now though, I think I’ll likely have plenty of fun revisiting this great title every few years or so.

- Edward

Follow Edward on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MysteriousSilvr

He’s got Instagram too: https://www.instagram.com/silveranything/?hl=en

Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/AdventSevenMedia

#sub rebellion #ps2 #review #playstation #irem #Metro3D #retro #U: Underwater Unit #Racjin

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dirty-holy-things · 4 years ago

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The Space Between (your heart & mine)

Chapter 17 has been posted to Ao3, and below to Tumblr.

Catch up on chapters 1-16 on Ao3.

Notes: This fic is 18+ and explicit. Chapter contains canon-typical violence and descriptions of injuries. Reference to past abuse. Please exercise caution if this is a sensitive subject for you. Also - I promise there's a happy ending, but it might take a bit of angst to get there. For those who have kept up with this fic, sorry for the delay in updating - grad school has kept me busy, but regular updates should resume.

Words: 5.1k update, 80.9k total.

There had been changes within yourself as well, even though you struggled to admit it after having spent so much of your life suppressing that which was now showing itself within you. Your safety had always depended on your ability to mask your powers, or at least conveniently use them, and now they were unexpectedly breaking through your barriers. Through observation and meditation, you had started to put together that your abilities and powers swelled whenever your emotions did, just as they had when you were younger. When Din was once running behind schedule for a bounty, your nerves and fear alone were able to entirely warp the canteen you had purchased for yourself, crushing it to the point that it was unusable junk. And when Din finally returned home to you, bruised and battered, and yet focused only on touching and kissing every inch of you — you found that his cuts and bruises began to disappear from underneath your fingertips without any direct focus or attention. There was an undercurrent of power that was growing within you and Grogu, and it was beginning to breach the walls that you had put in place to hold it back; and you had no way of predicting when that wall may cave in.

These ever-increasing powers and revelations were both fascinating and terrifying. You did not know what would happen from here if you and Grogu continued down this unmapped path. You could understand that power without training could be exceptionally dangerous, but how would you even go about learning how to control it all? You had once been able to suppress your connection to the Force, but you never actually learned how to master this connection; repression is not true mastery or control, as it only delays the chaos.

But who was there to learn from? The Jedi Order was no more, the grasp of the Sith had receded with the rise of the New Republic, and the civilizations that connected with the Force as a form of magic were incredibly closed-off and tight-lipped. You had been extraordinarily lucky to stumble unto the teachings of Ixxith as you had, but now that the seal had been broken, now that Pandora’s box had been opened, you were faced with an impossible question — where do you go from here?

Image credit to my love @knivesareout as she makes beautiful things and supports my writing.

An eternal thank you to @soyelfuegoquearde for beta'ing my baby and giving me constructive feedback.

And love to @bdavishiddlesbatch and @louderrthanthunderr for all of their love and support.

"We fall in love because we long to escape from ourselves with someone ideal as we area corrupt. But what if such a being were one day to turn around and love us back? We can only be shocked. How could they be divine as we had hoped when they have the bad taste to approve of someone like us? If in order to love, we must believe that the beloved surpasses us in some way, does not a cruel paradox emerge when we witness this love returned? If they are really so wonderful, how could they love someone like me?" - Alain de Botton

The universe felt brighter as you traveled through it now, suspended in space and time within the secure confines of your roaming home. You continued to watch the stars streak past you on every journey, still feeling just as entranced by them as you had on the first flight from Chandrila — but it was even more of a beautiful and brilliant thing, as you now had the incomparable comfort of being known, and being loved. For a brief moment, you had worried that your admission of love would make things complicated, awkward, unbalanced; but your fears had been completely dismissed and rendered unnecessary, as it had brought you and Din closer than you could have imagined.

It was the little gestures and moments throughout the day that allowed those fears to be quieted. His hands would brush along your body in passing; he brought you a blanket to the cockpit after seeing you wrapped tightly around yourself to fight off the chill; he would gently tuck away the stray pieces of hair that fell across your face. And you became less reserved in showing your affections as well; you would often drape yourself across the back of the pilot’s seat and over his expansive shoulders as he navigated the Razor Crest through the atmospheres of new planets and hyperspace. You would bring him food and water, reminding him to take care of himself in ways that he often forgot to. And the two of you spent more time encased in the security of darkness, to the point where you joked that you might develop night vision. Very few things can grow in the absence of light, and yet here you were, your love thriving in this unexpected place.

You found that you didn’t necessarily feel as though you were missing anything, by not being able to see his face. Your love felt whole, comprehensive, and possibly even more valuable as it was so unconditional in its nature; you would love him endlessly, and you didn’t need a face to assign that love to, as he was so much more than the anatomical structure that existed behind the helmet. Somehow, the darkness felt more freeing than the light. The comfort and security of the darkness offered you both the opportunity to be completely and entirely exposed; no helmet, no clothing, no beskar, no self-doubt. It was infinite in its nature, and allowed for infinite possibilities.

How beautiful, these little infinities you had created together.

And while you never held any regrets for the life you shared with Din, you understood that some things were not worth repeating. You didn’t offer to help with a job again after Corellia, and it was a decision that you had come to by yourself. Again, you held no regrets for what had transpired on the industrial planet as it had been the catalyst that had brought the truth to the surface, the truth about your love, but it had left some wreckage in the process. Your sense of self-preservation and fear had been reignited when the Twi’lek had made unwanted physical advances, and although you knew you were safe now, it was challenging to quiet that instinctual part of yourself that had risen up, desperately seeking to sustain your hard-won survival.

Following the events of Corellia, you started to have the occasional nightmare, your mind resurfacing old wounds and memories that you had worked to let go of and leave on Chandrila. You would have dreams of the torrential thunderstorms of Eadu, threatening to drown you as your family watched, making no effort to help you stay afloat. You would feel the radiating pain of Orron’s blows throughout your body, every old wound somehow reemerging and aching anew. Sometimes the terror and pain of the nightmare was quick to pass upon waking, but there were some occasions in which you woke up crying and thrashing, a scream trapped in your constricted throat. Sometimes, you would wake up shaking like a leaf in a thunderstorm, chest heaving as the tears flowed; upon waking, you were always disoriented and scared for a moment, until you realized you were still at home and you were still wrapped securely in Din’s arms. You knew Din hated seeing you like that, tearful and distressed, and you didn’t want to cause any further hurt to yourself or to him. So you made the decision to no longer act as bait.

There was no sense in reopening old wounds, and creating new ones in the process. If you were to live with these pains, you could at least avoid inflicting them onto others.

Din had been supportive of your choice to no longer participate in bounties. He had reassured you that he still believed in your capabilities and value as a companion, but agreed that the reduction in stress would be worth the reduction in payouts. It had been tough to find a way to keep yourself occupied and still feel like a valuable, contributing asset; you knew you would never be content to simply exist here, offering nothing to Din except your body. While your originally agreed-upon partnership ended up not lending itself to you becoming a bounty hunter, you were not about to become a deadbeat, indolent passenger either.

The first few weeks after Corellia were alright, as you found odd jobs around the ship that you could tend to; repairing sagging panels, cleaning away the cobwebs, reorganizing equipment. These were tasks that you could manage, even with your limited mechanical and engineering knowledge. But eventually, as time wore on and your journeys carried you further along, you started to run out of tasks that could be done on the ship. Needing something to do, you then turned to managing additional business responsibilities, hoping to relieve Din of some of the stress that he carried on those broad shoulders. You kept a more organized, detailed record of his jobs and finances, and made sure there was an appropriate stock of supplies to support the Razor Crest’s three travelers.

And then there was the kid — you quite often found yourself managing him.

Following your journey to Bardotta, something had awoken in both you and Grogu; it was as if a creature that had laid dormant for many years had been awoken from its hibernation, and had returned with renewed strength. While you felt this change deeply within yourself, it presented itself most visibly in Grogu and his increasing abilities. You frequently had to search for him within the ship, as he had been working on learning how to cloak himself as you once had, adding this to his other skills. He was not able to fully vanish into his surroundings as you were, but he was decent enough at camouflaging himself to the point where you once had a panic attack that he had managed to escaped the ship into the wild forests of Dantooine while under your supervision. He was also experimenting with bringing larger and larger objects to his small green grasp, most noticeably larger and larger portions of food, or other comfort items like blankets. His growing curiosity and expansion of power hadn’t been allthat concerning until a particularly rough tantrum, during which he pushed both you and Din a good three feet back from him, without ever laying a hand on you. The changes occurring could no longer be denied or ignored, and you understood you would have to confront them at some point.

Your best attempt at navigating this next step was to seek out knowledge in a different format; as Din’s travels occasionally brought you to larger cities, you would spend a portion of the layover browsing the city’s libraries and book stores, if they existed, poring over the texts to see if there was any history, legends, instructions, or insights that could be obtained. You had very little success at finding anything that taught you about Force powers and how to use them, however you had managed to find several interesting texts that chronicled the historical power struggle between the Jedi and the Sith. You had heard whispered stories and legends as a child, tales of heroes and villains who carried out the unending battle of good versus evil.

And as you read of these wars and conflicts, you came to an interesting conclusion — depending on the perspective of the available source material, both Jedi and Sith could be considered good, or evil.

Thinking back to Ixxith’s teachings about the importance of balance, you could understand how these two diametrically opposed sides were continually fighting against the scale of the universe that sought balance. From your wide assortment of readings, you understood that the universe itself truly held no favor for good or evil, Jedi or Sith, and it only ever sought an equilibrium — and yet the universe’s occupants insisted on living within one extreme or the other, the scale never allowed to settle at a place of peace and balance.

You enjoyed studying the texts that you had managed to acquire, and learning more about the history of those with abilities like you, even though it may not have been the specific knowledge you had set out to find. Occasionally, you would talk with Din about the things that you discovered in these books, which prompted him to share more about the history of Mandalore and their role in the galaxy’s history and development. This newfound, strengthening point of connection between you was beautiful and valuable in its own right, even though it may not have offered much help for corralling yourself and the kid’s behaviors.

Reading had given you something to do during the down time while Din was working, and while the kid was self-contained or safely entertained. You had never had much time to dedicate to your own hobbies and interests before, and it was refreshing to be able to have your own passions that you could pursue as you desired.

Having few travel expenses of your own, you were still living quite comfortably off of the bounties you had profited from, and you were able to purchase the things that caught your eye or interest. This led to a steadily-expanding corner of the cabin that became yours as it was occupied with stacks of books, piles of blankets, an assortment of snacks, and a respectable wardrobe. The fresher also now showed evidence of your residency, as some of your specialty products had found their way to the shelves and the shower; silky lotions, a nice brush, hygiene products that didn’t exist in the shape of a bar. The Razor Crest was gradually becoming a shared space, a shared home, and were someone to step foot onto the ship, they would be able to determine that the fearsome Mandalorian was no longer maintaining a solitary existence.

This change in Din’s lifestyle was becoming more and more clear to outsiders as you now frequently accompanied him to his negotiations and trade-offs with Karga when on Nevarro. The older man had been excited by your reoccurring presence, and while he had teased Din for it in the beginning, he had since relaxed and always welcomed the two or three of you with a genuine smile. And with each visit to the volcanic planet, Din grew more comfortable with claiming your relationship openly; he almost always kept a hand on you, tracing pressured circles into your skin, or if you were seated with some degree of privacy, gently stroking the inside of your thigh from underneath the table as a tease for what was to come. There were rarely moments in which you were left alone, and you found you preferred it this way. While Orron had once insisted upon keeping you within arms reach, out of his own need for power and control, you understood Din’s motives to be different. He wanted to protect you, wanted to show you off, just genuinely wanted to be with you because he loved being with you. And you also knew that he would never deny you an opportunity to venture off on your own, to explore the town or take Grogu to play with the local children.

Today had been no exception to that truth; as Din and Karga haggled over upcoming bounties, you grew bored and restless, and decided you would prefer to stretch your legs with a walk around town, and feel some sunlight on your skin as it was a fairly nice day. You squeezed his knee gently, getting his attention before nodding your head to the door of the cantina, where the three of you had gathered for this business dealing. Din nodded wordlessly, trusting you to keep yourself safe and return to him when you were ready. This unconditional sense of trust was new to you, but you loved every moment of it, and loved Din for offering it so readily to you.

You excused yourself from the table and strolled out of the bar, knowing that Din’s eyes had followed your entire journey through the tables and patrons until you exited into the bustling town center. The sunlight felt nice on your skin, and the slight breeze kept the air from feeling heavy and stagnant around you; you stretched your limbs and you felt the cracking and popping of your joints. You needed breaks like this, to be able to physically stretch your body and keep it limber and in shape.

And yet, despite the small space of the Razor Crest, you had still found ways to keep your body moving; Din had certainly made physical exercise more enjoyable. You thought back to all of the nights that had now been spent on the floor of the Razor Crest, as your exhausted bodies had collapsed into one another; you loved every minute of the physical exertion the two of you created, but your body needed more. It needed to run, jump, stretch, bend, without the constraints of the small cabin space. But Maker, did making love with Din feel like the most glorious and exhilarating use of your body; you marveled at every moment of passion the two of you shared, holding nothing back in the pursuit of giving the other what they desired.

You were brought back to the moment by an oddly dressed man bumping into you; you turned to apologize, as you had been the one to have stopped in the middle of the street, but they had already run off by the time you looked for them. Shrugging, you carried on with your afternoon expedition. You had intentionally chosen comfortable and lightweight clothing today, knowing it would offer a nice opportunity to stretch your legs. As you strolled through town, you felt yourself start to pick up your pace gradually until you were jogging along at a decent speed, leaving the town behind you as you ascended the black volcanic hills that surrounded the area that had since become familiar to you. From atop the hills, you could see the cantina, the school, the marketplace, and off in the distance you could see the Razor Crest as it was undergoing refueling and maintenance.

Continuing to run for a while, just along the outskirts of the city, you relished the feeling of the breeze against your skin; while Nevarro was hot and the air somewhat sulfurous due to the volcanoes, it was still a nice change from the recycled air of the ship, and was certainly better than some of the atmospheres of other planets you had journeyed to. You could feel the lava rocks and ash shifting beneath your feet as you ran, offering just enough resistance to make your heart race and your lungs expand with forceful, concentrated inhalations.

Having now circled about half of the city, watching the landscape change from your position above it, you settled down onto a spot that offered some dry grass to sit comfortably on. You waited for your heart rate to slow back to a resting pace, and stretched your limbs out around you, loving the bit of soreness that came along as your muscles stretched and contracted. You allowed yourself to rest here for a while, clearing your mind as you worked to let the Force flow through you, just as Ixxith had taught you. You could feel the Force moving through you gently, almost like a breeze passing through an open window. You settled into this feeling, into the peace that it offered, as silence and tranquility had become rare within the steel confines of your home. Relaxing, you only barely noticed the breeze that seemed to push and pull the air through your lungs, as you sank into the comfortable silence for a while.

Sensing a growing chill in the air, your eyes opened to scene around you. The sun had begun its descent behind the volcanic hilltops and you knew it was time to be on your way, to return to Din and Grogu, to your home and to your bed. Pushing yourself up from the ground, you brushed off the dust and debris that had pressed into your body and clothing, before starting a comfortable pace down the hillside and back into the city.

As you passed some of the houses that made up the outskirts of the city, you could sense that something, or someone, was watching you; turning to look all around, you didn’t see anything unusual. You tried to shake off the feeling as you navigated yourself down a familiar city path, shifting your focus towards your upcoming reunion with Din; thinking of the way he had pinched the inside of your thigh earlier shot your heart rate right back up to its previously racing pace.

And yet there was a persistently odd feeling around you though, one that you couldn’t seem to shake, even with the thought of Din. Deciding to trust your gut, you stepped down what seemed to be a quiet alleyway to take better stock of the situation around you and determine what was causing this unsettling feeling of observation. No, observation wasn’t the right word. The word that came to mind was stalked. Like something was hiding in the shadows and corner of your vision, keeping in step with you but never being revealed. You scanned the street you had just been walking through, trying to find whatever was causing this unease, this growing sense of danger —

And then you felt a large hand grasping your forearm like a steel trap, crushing your wrist as whoever this was pulled you further into the alley and into the seclusion that it offered.

Whirling around as your free hand having found its way into a fist, you intended to punch this unexpected attacker in the face; but before you could complete your movement, a grey and leathery hand grabbed your entire fist and wrenched it away, but maintaining a tight hold on your hand to restrain you. Looking up, you saw a terrifyingly familiar humanoid face.

Maxir Bragant had been a close companion and business partner of Orron Jakar, and you had spent more time around this Delphidian man than you ever cared to recall. He had been a frequent visitor to your shop, and the individuals who he dumped onto your cot for healing rarely survived due to his brutal and unyielding attacks. Being quite fond of cleaving into others with his axe, there was generally very little you could do to improve his victim’s odds of survival; you were no miracle worker, and you recalled how you had been beaten mercilessly for your failures. As you looked down to see that very same black axe strapped to his belt, you felt bile and fear rise up in your throat, not confident that you would be able to escape the crushing grasp of this towering man who now had both of your arms restrained.

His voice hissed out coldly, as his pitch-black eyes stared into yours with the same kind of fury and hatred that you had often seen echoed in Orron’s icy blue ones. “What a surprise to find you here,” he laughed, and the sound turned the very blood pumping through your veins to acid, to ice. He sneered at you, lips curling back to reveal the same ugly grin that showed up in your nightmares. “Figured you’d know better than to show up in a town like this. But, you were never a very bright one, were you?”

You bit your tongue, trying not to snap at that bait that he had flung out to you; you knew he wanted you to respond, wanted you to get mouthy, so he would have an excuse to discipline you, just as Orron once had. He wanted an interesting fight — you knew that he thrived on crushing the life out of a terrified and desperate soul, and you were not going to give that to him. You needed to ignore his jabs, verbal and physical, and focus on how to get yourself out of this situation, how to alert Din, or the Marshal, or any bystander who could offer you some sort of reinforcement against what was surely about to be a horribly painful and ugly fight.

Bragant used his leverage to pull you in closely to him, and you could smell the putrid odor of sweat and blood that radiated from him. It was nauseating and made your head feel dizzy, but you couldn’t let this get to you, couldn’t let this throw you off. From this positioning, you knew that you wouldn’t be able to use your upper body to fight him off as he had your arms secured; making a quickly-calculated decision, you brought your knee up forcefully into his groin, and as he bent over in pain with a groan, he released one of your hands. Gods, was it satisfying to see this motherfucker writhing. Having some more leverage and momentum now, you kicked into his sternum forcefully, his massive body flying backwards into the stone wall behind him. You turned to run, willing your feet to move faster than the stars you had watched in hyperspace — but he recovered faster than you expected; you had only made it about four or five steps away when he wrapped his rough, scarred arm around your neck and brought your writhing, desperately fighting body up and into his, pressing his back into the wall to keep you out of sight.

“Stupid bitch,” he spit at you, and you could see the flecks of blood and saliva that landed in the dust around you, standing out in stark contrast to the dark volcanic ash. “Did you really think you’d get away with it, killing him?” You felt the cold and rough-hewn blade of his axe pressing into your chest, a jagged corner digging in just enough to make you gasp as it pierced your skin; the blade was pressed dangerously close to your heart, and you had seen the force with which he could swing his weapon.

“Still curious how the fuck you got out of there like you did, vanishing like that; but we’ll have plenty of time to ask questions when I bring you back home. There are a lot of people that have been missing you.”

You could sense the sick and cruel smile on his face as he pictured what would surely be a gruesome, horrific, and torturous death.

No. No, you were not going to go out that way. Not on his terms, not on Orron’s. Not like this.

You thought about the horrors that would await you if Bragant was able to bring you back to the cartel. You thought about the sickening fear and sadness that Din and Grogu would feel at your unplanned and unexplained departure. Thought about how Din would cut his way through each and every formidable cartel member trying to bring you back to him, to bring you back to safety, to bring you back home. Thought about how one man wouldn’t be enough to fight off an army, thought about how Din would die trying to bring you back, just as you had nearly died bringing him back on Bardotta.

Thought about how the love between the two of you would threaten to shatter the galaxy.

You thought about how Bragant had called the cartel home, and the anger that coursed through you felt as though it was moving through your very bloodstream, each desperate beat of your heart pushing that anger further and further into your body, fueling your muscles and your strength until it was threatening to burst forward from you like a seismic charge.

“Home?” You screeched, the words tearing their way through your throat with vitriol.

“Home?! You keep that word out of your goddamn fucking mouth!” You screamed forcefully, your voice echoing against the stone and clay walls; you heard a loud crack, and the wall that Bragant’s body was resting against collapsed in on itself.

This disruption and destruction caught Bragant by surprise, and he fell backwards into the pile of rubble that your anger alone had created, releasing you from his grasp in the process. Your chest was heaving as you inhaled deep lungfuls of air, feeling the oxygen feed more and more power to your body — you felt invincible, impossibly strong and powerful — and vengeful. Every violent revenge fantasy you had ever had came rushing back to you, as you saw the tidal wave of your abuser’s blood overtake the world around you.

Here was a man who had contributed to your pain and destruction, who had killed countless people with no mercy — and now, you didn’t have a single ounce of mercy to extend to him. And you were at peace with that.

A blinding hot, red wave of fury overtook your body, crashing around you and drowning out the fragile sense of humanity that was desperately clambering to stay afloat. It was as if you were possessed, as you watched your arm extend before you, muscles twitching beneath skin as your fingers pointed in Bragant’s direction, before your hand found itself curled into a tight fist. Your nails dug into the palm of your hand, and you could see redness dripping forth from it — and you saw Bragant’s writhing form being lifted from amongst the stones, until he was levitating in midair. His hands clawed desperately at his throat, and the sight of his now-bulging eyes filling with terror felt beautiful.

With a final, overwhelming rush of immense power, your wrist pulled your hand inwards to your body and you heard a nauseatingly satisfying crack reverberate through the alleyway as Bragant’s eyes went dark and his body went limp, collapsing onto the pile of rocks and clay beneath him with a dull thump.

Your head began to spin as the energy that had previously flowed through you was suddenly ripped away, and you felt as though every cell of your body was now collapsing in on itself in slow motion; the sky above you and the ground below you tumbled throughout your field of vision, spinning both together and apart as your body connected with the dusty floor of the alleyway.

You could vaguely see a blood red stain spreading in your field of vision. Whose blood was it?

Throughout all of the endless spinning and disorientation, your eyes eventually came to rest on one comforting and familiar sight — a tall figure clad in beskar rushed to your side, but you couldn’t feel anything, couldn’t feel the hands that you knew were on your body, couldn’t feel the shift in your form as you were hauled into his arms. Couldn’t feel the heavy breaths and terrified words that spilled around you, as your head lolled to the side in his arms. It felt as though the link between your mind and body had been snapped, like a harp string tuned too tightly, and as the universe continued to tumble through your field of vision, you closed your eyes tightly and prayed for it all to stop.

Stop. Stop.

Stop.

#Din Djarin #Pedro Pascal #din djarin fanfiction #Din Djarin fanfic #din djarin x reader #Mandalorian fanfic #the space between

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greatworldwar2 · 5 years ago

Text

• Hanna Reitsch

Hanna Reitsch was a German aviator and test pilot. Along with Melitta von Stauffenberg, she flight tested many of Germany's new aircraft during World War II and received many honors. She set more than 40 flight altitude records and women's endurance records in gliding and unpowered flight, before and after World War II.

Reitsch was born in Hirschberg, Silesia (today Jelenia Góra in Poland) on March 29th, 1912 to an upper-middle-class family. She was daughter of Dr. Wilhelm Willy Reitsch, who was ophthalmology clinic manager, and his wife Emy Helff-Hibler von Alpenheim, who was a member of the Catholic Austrian nobility. Hanna grew up with two siblings, her brother Kurt, a Frigate captain, and her younger sister Heidi. She began flight training in 1932 at the School of Gliding in Grunau. While a medical student in Berlin she enrolled in a German Air Mail amateur flying school for powered aircraft at Staaken, in a Klemm Kl 25. In 1933, Reitsch left medical school at the University of Kiel to become, at the invitation of Wolf Hirth, a full-time glider pilot/instructor at Hornberg in Baden-Württemberg. Reitsch contracted with the Ufa Film Company as a stunt pilot and set an unofficial endurance record for women of eleven hours and twenty minutes. In January 1934, she joined a South America expedition to study thermal conditions, along with Wolf Hirth, Peter Riedel and Heini Dittmar. While in Argentina, she became the first woman to earn the Silver C Badge, the 25th to do so among world glider pilots. In June 1934, Reitsch became a member of the Deutsche Forschungsanstalt für Segelflug (DFS) and became a test pilot in 1935. Reitsch enrolled in the Civil Airways Training School in Stettin, where she flew a twin-engine on a cross country flight and aerobatics in a Focke-Wulf Fw 44. At the DFS she test flew transport and troop-carrying gliders, including the DFS 230 used at the Battle of Fort Eben-Emael.

In September 1937, Reitsch was posted to the Luftwaffe testing centre at Rechlin-Lärz Airfield by Ernst Udet. Her flying skill, desire for publicity, and photogenic qualities made her a star of Nazi propaganda. Physically she was petite in stature, very slender with blonde hair, blue eyes and a "ready smile". She appeared in Nazi propaganda throughout the late 1930s and early 1940s. Reitsch was the first female helicopter pilot and one of the few pilots to fly the Focke-Achgelis Fa 61, the first fully controllable helicopter, for which she received the Military Flying Medal. In 1938, during the three weeks of the International Automobile Exhibition in Berlin, she made daily flights of the Fa 61 helicopter inside the Deutschlandhalle. In September 1938, Reitsch flew the DFS Habicht in the Cleveland National Air Races. Reitsch was a test pilot on the Junkers Ju 87 Stuka dive bomber and Dornier Do 17 light/fast bomber projects, for which she received the Iron Cross, Second Class, from Hitler on March 28th, 1941. Reitsch was asked to fly many of Germany's latest designs, among them the rocket-propelled Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet in 1942. A crash landing on her fifth Me 163 flight badly injured Reitsch; she spent five months in a hospital recovering. Reitsch received the Iron Cross First Class following the accident, one of only three women to do so.

In February 1943 after news of the defeat in the Battle of Stalingrad she accepted an invitation from Generaloberst Robert Ritter von Greim to visit the Eastern Front. She spent three weeks visiting Luftwaffe units, flying a Fieseler Fi 156 Storch. On February 28th, 1944, she presented the idea of Operation Suicide to Hitler at Berchtesgaden, which "would require men who were ready to sacrifice themselves in the conviction that only by this means could their country be saved." Although Hitler "did not consider the war situation sufficiently serious to warrant them...and...this was not the right psychological moment", he gave his approval. The project was assigned to Gen. Günther Korten. There were about seventy volunteers who enrolled in the Suicide Group as pilots for the human glider-bomb. By April 1944, Reitsch and Heinz Kensche finished tests of the Me 328, carried aloft by a Dornier Do 217. By then, she was approached by SS-Obersturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny, a founding member of the SS-Selbstopferkommando Leonidas (Leonidas Squadron). They adapted the V-1 flying bomb into the Fieseler Fi 103R Reichenberg including a two-seater and a single-seater with and without the mechanisms to land. The plan was never implemented operationally, "the decisive moment had been missed."

In her autobiography Fliegen, mein Leben Reitsch recalled that after two initial crashes with the Fi 103R she and Heinz Kensche took over tests of the prototype Fi 103R. She made several successful test flights before training the instructors. "Though an average pilot could fly the V1 without difficulty once it was in the air, to land it called for exceptional skill, in that it had a very high landing speed and, moreover, in training it was the glider model, without engine, that was usually employed." In October 1944, Reitsch claims she was shown a booklet by Peter Riedel which he'd obtained while in the German Embassy in Stockholm, concerning the gas chambers. She further claims that while believing it to be enemy propaganda, she agreed to inform Heinrich Himmler about it. Upon doing so, Himmler is said to have asked whether she believed it, and she replied, "No, of course not. But you must do something to counter it. You can't let them shoulder this onto Germany." "You are right," Himmler replied. During the last days of the war, Hitler dismissed Hermann Göring as head of the Luftwaffe and appointed Reitsch's lover, von Greim, to replace him. Von Greim and Reitsch flew from Gatow Airport into embattled Berlin to meet Hitler in the Führerbunker, arriving on April 26th, as the Red Army troops were already in the central area of Berlin. Reitsch and von Greim had flown from Rechlin–Lärz Airfield to Gatow Airfield in a Focke Wulf 190, escorted by twelve other Fw 190s from Jagdgeschwader 26 under the command of Hauptmann Hans Dortenmann. In Berlin, Reitsch landed a Fi 156 Storch on an improvised airstrip in the Tiergarten near the Brandenburg Gate. Hitler gave Reitsch two capsules of poison for herself and von Greim. She accepted the capsule.

During the evening of April 28th, Reitsch flew von Greim out of Berlin in an Arado Ar 96 from the same improvised airstrip. This was the last plane out of Berlin. Von Greim was ordered to get the Luftwaffe to attack the Soviet forces that had just reached Potsdamer Platz and to make sure Heinrich Himmler was punished for his treachery in making unauthorised contact with the Western Allies so as to surrender. Troops of the Soviet 3rd Shock Army, which was fighting its way through the Tiergarten from the north, tried to shoot the plane down fearing that Hitler was escaping in it, but it took off successfully. Reitsch was soon captured along with von Greim and the two were interviewed together by U.S. military intelligence officers. When asked about being ordered to leave the Führerbunker on April 28th, 1945, Reitsch and von Greim reportedly repeated the same answer: "It was the blackest day when we could not die at our Führer's side." Reitsch also said: "We should all kneel down in reverence and prayer before the altar of the Fatherland." When the interviewers asked what she meant by "Altar of the Fatherland" she answered, "Why, the Führer's bunker in Berlin ..." She was held for eighteen months. Von Greim killed himself on May 24th, 1945. Evacuated from Silesia ahead of the Soviet troops, Reitsch's family took refuge in Salzburg. During the night of May 3rd, 1945, after hearing a rumour that all refugees were to be taken back to their original homes in the Soviet occupation zone, Reitsch's father shot and killed her mother and sister and her sister's three children before killing himself.

After her release Reitsch settled in Frankfurt am Main. After the war, German citizens were barred from flying powered aircraft, but within a few years gliding was allowed, which she took up again. In 1952, Reitsch won a bronze medal in the World Gliding Championships in Spain; she was the first woman to compete. In 1955 she became German champion. She continued to break records, including the women's altitude record (6,848 m (22,467 ft)) in 1957 and her first diamond of the Gold-C badge. During the mid-1950s, Reitsch was interviewed on film and talked about her wartime flight tests of the Fa 61, Me 262 and Me 163. In 1959, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru invited Reitsch, who spoke fluent English, to start a gliding centre, and she flew with him over New Delhi. In 1961, United States President John F. Kennedy invited her to the White House. From 1962 to 1966, she lived in Ghana. The then Ghanaian President, Kwame Nkrumah invited Reitsch to Ghana after reading of her work in India. At Afienya she founded the first black African national gliding school, working closely with the government and the armed forces. The West German government supported her as technical adviser. Reitsch's attitudes to race underwent a change. "Earlier in my life, it would never have occurred to me to treat a black person as a friend or partner ..." She now experienced guilt at her earlier "presumptuousness and arrogance". She became close to Nkrumah. The details of their relationship are now unclear due to the destruction of documents, but some surviving letters are intimate in tone. In Ghana, some Africans were disturbed by the prominence of a person with Reitsch's past, but Shirley Graham Du Bois, a noted African-American writer who had emigrated to Ghana and was friendly towards Reitsch, agreed with Nkrumah that Reitsch was extremely naive politically. Throughout the 1970s, Reitsch broke gliding records in many categories, including the "Women's Out and Return World Record" twice, once in 1976 (715 km (444 mi)) and again, in 1979 (802 km (498 mi)), flying along the Appalachian Ridges in the United States. During this time, she also finished first in the women's section of the first world helicopter championships. Reitsch was interviewed and photographed several times in the 1970s, towards the end of her life, by Jewish-American photo-journalist Ron Laytner.

Reitsch died of a heart attack in Frankfurt at the age of 67, on August 24th, 1979. She had never married. She is buried in the Reitsch family grave in Salzburger Kommunalfriedhof. Former British test pilot and Royal Navy officer Eric Brown said he received a letter from Reitsch in early August 1979 in which she said, "It began in the bunker, there it shall end." Within weeks she was dead. Brown speculated that Reitsch had taken the cyanide capsule Hitler had given her in the bunker, and that she had taken it as part of a suicide pact with Greim. No autopsy was performed, or at least no such report is available.

#ww2 #world war 2 #second world war #world war ii #wwii #history #german history #biography #aviation #womens history #women in history #germany #airforce history #test pilot

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cyberwolfwrites-fanfiction · 4 years ago

Text

a family's bond - chapter one

(https://archiveofourown.org/works/29878746/chapters/73527165)

words: 6630

summary:

"I hate it here," Peter whispered.

"I know," said Harley tiredly. They were curled up on the top bunk of their bunk bed together. They craved genuine physical affection after too many months of being touch-starved or physically hurt—there was no in-between—and being on the top bunk meant that they were harder to reach.

Dan was in his bedroom down the hall snoring off the alcohol. He'd gotten rejected for the promotion he'd been working towards for the past year and he'd drowned his sorrows in a bar somewhere before coming home to take out his frustration on them. He'd been too drunk and uncoordinated to cause any lasting harm—or harm that should have obviously still been there a day later—but the encounter had shaken them, Peter especially.

He'd come from a loving home, but in the matter of minutes both of his remaining family members had bled out in front of him and he'd been tossed in the system. He wasn't used to the harsh cruelties of the world—though he'd gotten a taste of it when he was four and eight, respectively—and it had left him reeling.

"I wish we could just... leave," Peter mumbled.

"Me, too."

Peter's fingers drummed against his desk in boredom as he looked out the window. The skies were clear, as they usually were during late winter in New York, and he boredly watched as a bird jumped across a small tree branch before taking to the skies. His eyes left the bird to linger on the distant skyscrapers of Manhattan. He could just about spot Stark Tower in the distance, and even half-way blocked by other smaller buildings, it still managed to appear tall and imposing.

The Tower had gotten yet another remodel, this time as a result of the Avengers's "civil war" as the media dubbed it half a year ago (though Peter had a feeling it had to do with the incident during Homecoming and Harley agreed with him), and it was once again sporting the Stark name on it instead of the stylized Avengers "A." It now stood as Stark Industries's headquarters, and despite the events that happened the last time he'd visited a major science and tech company, Peter hoped that Mr Harrington somehow scored a field trip there for the Academic Decathlon team.

After all, Mr Harrington had somehow managed to get a field trip to Oscorp, which was only a tier or two below SI.

(If you had asked him two years ago, Peter probably would've said that Oscorp's biochemical engineering and progress on limb regeneration made them equal with Stark Industries’s green energy and neurological prosthesis engineering (though Harley would've disagreed since he was the more techy type of the two), but he kind of changed his mind after the whole got-bit-by-a-spider-and-nearly-died episode. And even though he and Harley became Spider-Man out of it, he was a little bitter. That and the whole Green Goblin fiasco a month or so ago. He and Harley both got pretty hurt in that one…)

The back of Peter's neck buzzed slightly and he caught a glimpse of Harley tossing a small crumbled ball at him. Peter looked up at his foster brother, who nodded subtly in Mrs Warren's direction. As teachers often did, she was looking around to make sure that everyone was doing their classwork. Just as Mrs Warren turned in his and Harley's direction, Peter picked up his pencil and filled in a question on his worksheet. There was a slight prickling on the back of his neck, telling him that Mrs Warren was looking at him, but it faded swiftly after she looked away.

The worksheet was on something that Peter had more than enough knowledge on—pendulums—due to his "job" as Spider-Man. He was out there six times a week (three days a week as well as three nights) and he often did pendulum swings for fun. The worksheet was boring, but Peter continued to fill it in because he knew that Mrs Warren would comment on it otherwise. He, along with Harley, had skipped more than a few classes when they first started out as Spider-Man, and not to mention simply not paying attention in class, and that had led to some trust issues and disappointment amongst their teachers.

After a few more minutes—and a completed worksheet which led to Peter staring at the skyline again—Harley nudged Peter's foot again. When he looked over, Harley tapped on his old watch and Peter glanced up at the clock, letting out a sigh of relief. There were only a few more minutes left of class.

Harley, easily spotting his relief, quirked his lips up in a slight smirk. Peter rolled his eyes. He was bored and wanted to get out of school already, so what? It wasn't as if Harley wasn't itching to get out, as well. He knew as well as anyone that his foster brother would rather be outside (even in the cold) than sitting in a classroom. It was too bad that they weren't even halfway through the school day. Peter had Spanish next class—which wouldn't be too difficult as Aunt May had taught him Italian and Spanish wasn't too far off from it—and then lunch, but there were four more classes after that before school got out for the day.

A minute before class was due to end, Mrs Warren gathered everyone's attention. "Bell's going to ring everyone so whatever you didn't finish is due on Monday," she informed them all. Peter huffed a breath of amusement as more than a few people let out relieved sighs. He knew that this was AP Physics and all, but this stuff was easy.

Though they knew it was coming, both Peter and Harley cringed when the bell rang loudly with a nasally buzzing sound. Where the bell had been an annoyance before his spider bite, it was now almost painful. Their senses were dialled up to eleven and they often got sensory overloads, which they had to work through since they couldn't miss any school, and the bell was one of the highest annoyances there were.

As he started to put away his stuff to leave, Mrs Warren called out, "Peter, Harley, can you two hang back for a few moments?"

Peter hunched in slightly on himself as Flash sniggered on his way out the door. He couldn't help the way his hands trembled slightly. Were he and Harley in trouble? The last time they skipped had been a few weeks ago, they were careful about that now, so she couldn't be worried about their attendances, could she? And they've been on top of their homework ever since they got their patrols levelled out. Where Peter patrolled during the day, Harley patrolled during the night, giving them both ample time to do their homework.

"Yeah, sure," Harley answered Mrs Warren for them both, his southern accent completely gone. Harley had been in the city since he was twelve, he was sixteen now, and he'd had enough time to completely smother any bit of southern drawl he'd had. He'd been bullied for it, Harley had told Peter when he first caught Harley slipping, and so he did his best to hide it.

Doing his best to calm his nerves, Peter shoved his Physics binder into his beaten backpack. He'd lost his older one during patrol and Ned had been kind enough to lend him an old one of his. Peter had gotten into trouble after that since all of his homework, including an English essay, had been in it. There was no reason to be nervous, Peter tried to tell himself. It was just Mrs Warren! She was a good teacher, a fun one, and she was kind enough to not call on him often, not forcing him to speak.

Peter rarely ever spoke freely much these days since his aunt and uncle's murder and the trauma he experienced in foster care, the only people he truly spoke to being Harley or Ned, and sometimes a word here or there for MJ (they were mostly apologies for stupid things). He tended to stay quiet unless he was talking to Harley alone or if he was on patrol; the rest of the time he didn't talk.

It was a common coping mechanism for him, and it wasn't new.

When his parents had died when he was four, Peter had stopped talking. It had taken some (read: a lot) coaxing from May, Ben, and his therapist, and some dance classes, to get him to start speaking again. It had happened again when he was around eight when Skip had—when he'd had Skip as a babysitter and he—well, when Skip was his babysitter. Ned, who'd he'd befriended at the time because he didn't bully him and didn't force him to talk, had been the one to get him to talk that time.

He'd slipped back into the habit when May and Ben died two years ago. His foster homes hadn't cared—in fact, they loved not having a mouthy kid—but some of his teachers hadn't been that accepting. They'd given him some leeway due to his twice-over-orphan-ness, but he'd still needed to do presentations and answer questions. He'd tried but most of the time he just couldn't force the words out. The words got stuck in his throat. It wasn't until he'd met Harley the summer before freshman year did he manage to work up the courage to speak. He still didn't talk that much in public, and he didn't speak much at home, but Harley had managed to break down his walls to the point where he could speak to teachers if needed.

(There was also Spider-Man, but when he was Spider-Man he wasn't Peter, the nerdy orphan, he was a bad-ass crime-fighting hero, and a chatterbox. Spider-Man talked where Peter didn't. That's how it worked and he was comfortable with that.)

Taking a breath to calm himself, and reminding himself that Harley wouldn't leave him, Peter stood up and slung his backpack over his shoulder. Everyone was out of the classroom at this point beside him, Harley, and Mrs Warren, and Peter knew that it was Mrs Warren's break so no one should be coming in for anything. It both relieved him—because if he and Harley had done something wrong and were getting in trouble, then no one would be there to see the epic scolding they were about to get, Peter knew that personally—and worried him—because if they weren't in trouble, then what did Mrs Warren need to talk to them about, and in private, too?

"Are we in trouble?" Harley asked in his usual quiet voice. Mrs Warren looked up with a kind smile that had Peter relaxing marginally.

"No boys, you're not in trouble this time," she said. "I actually wanted to ask for your opinion on something." Peter's brow furrowed and he exchanged a puzzled look with Harley. Mrs Warren pulled open a drawer in her desk and she pulled out a packet of some kind, handing it to Peter who was the closest of the two. He glanced down at it with Harley peering over his shoulder—the jerk had the gall to be taller than him—and blinked stupidly at the logo on the top left of the page.

"Stark Industries?" Harley blurted as Peter stared at the packet in surprise.

Mrs Warren was beaming at them. "Yes," she said. "Stark Industries is holding a competition at their company as a sort of entrance exam for high school interns. Every STEM school in the area received five forms each to pick for a student and I was wondering if you two were interested? You're both very intelligent, and despite the troubles you've had recently," Peter was chagrined at the mention of their recent dip in attendance and their grades, especially paired with Mrs Warren's stern look, "I believe you two have the chance to win the competition together."

"Wait, two?" Harley said, "as in both of us, and together? Is that even allowed? And ma'am, there's only one packet here and you said only five students per school were chosen."

Mrs Warren's answer was to pull out another packet from her desk. "Yes, both of you, Mr Keener. Two people are allowed to team up, and despite the poor attendance and the missing assignments both of you had a few months ago, you both made up the work and you're grades and GPA are some of the highest of your year. And I know for a fact that you two are capable of the work Stark Industries is looking for. I've spoken with your STEM teachers and you two are bored in class. And Mr Hapgood went as far as to show me the projects you two are working on in shop class. Your projects are very intuitive and creative, even your potato gun, Harley."

Peter felt a blush creep up his ears at the praise, it'd been a while since anyone had genuinely complimented him, and Harley grinned sheepishly.

"Thanks, Mrs Warren," Harley said. Peter nodded to show that he felt the same and he ducked his head at Mrs Warren's amused grin.

Peter flipped through his own packet, eyes skimming the information on the contest, before he looked at the last page with the permission form on it. His lips turned down slightly at the edges. They needed a parent's or guardian's permission to enter the competition and Peter wasn't sure if their faster father, Dan, would allow them to participate. They already had to beg him to continue Academic Decathlon a few months ago, and he'd forced them to quit their other extracurriculars (band and robotics club for Peter and the soccer team and robotics for Harley) because of their absences and the steep drop in grades got him in trouble with their social workers. And even if Dan allowed them to participate, there was no way that they would be able to afford materials to even create something of their own.

Harley must've been thinking the same thing because he asked, "Do we have to buy the materials ourselves?"

Mrs Warren, who knew their home situations and that they couldn't afford brand new, expensive materials like the rest of their classmates, nodded sympathetically. "I'm afraid that the school won't be able to provide either of you with materials because then the school would have to be able to provide every student participating with materials, and the school doesn't have enough funds to cover everyone's projects and provide the materials used in our tech classes. However, students will be allowed to use the workshop's tools and anything bought in bulk—like wiring or screws, for example—and the computer labs for coding."

That was better than nothing, Peter thought. Harley's lips thinned, Peter was sure he was thinking on the glass half empty side rather than the glass half full, and he nodded.

"Now, you two don't have to say yes right away," said Mrs Warren. "Take some time, talk amongst yourselves, talk with your foster parents, figure things out. The competition is in a little more than a month—not long, I know, but a part of SI's competition is making a fully working project in a limited space of time—but knowing you two, you should have enough time to whip something up. I do need an answer by the end of next week, though, okay?" They both nodded. "Good, now let me get you two some passes so you can get to class."

Mrs Warren swiftly filled out some hall passes for them and they were on their way.

Peter and Harley walked slowly down the hall, both preoccupied with their own thoughts. Peter flipped back to the front of the packed he'd been given and he read the information a little slower. Just like Mrs Warren said, the competition was for high school students at STEM schools, and that specialists and other people at SI would more or less be grading their project—their idea, presentation, and how well executed the idea was—for a chance to become an intern at the company. There was also a bit about how SI would sponsor and-or donate to the schools where the interns were chosen from, which was intimidating to think about because that meant that Mrs Warren thought they were worth representing the whole of Midtown to Stark Industries for future interns to be chosen from. He swiftly shelved that thought and read the rest of the paper. Oh! The internship was paid, too. That was nice and would help a lot. Still, he came back to the same thought earlier.

"Do you think Dan will let us compete?" he murmured. He didn't bother speaking at a normal level; Harley had the same enhanced senses he had, which meant that he'd be able to hear him whisper from all the way across the school.

Harley frowned at his own packet. "I honestly don't know," he said. "Dan hasn't been stressed lately and we've been careful to keep our grades up so he hasn't gotten any more worrying calls from the social workers. I'm more worried about the fact that we won't be able to buy anything brand new. I know we've got some money saved up from helping around the neighbourhood and our part-time jobs, but we're saving that for stuff we need like extra food and first aid supplies."

"Dumpster diving, then?" Peter suggested quietly. "Not like we haven't done it before."

Harley snorted. Almost everything they owned (or created) was thrifted or pulled from dumpsters. Their laptops, their phones, an old tablet that they'd neglected because they've been so busy making up work and doing homework and patrolling, and even some clothes. Even their webshooters were made from stuff out of dumpsters, their wires coming from broken DVD players and various other parts coming from lighters and other trash that they'd found.

"Look at the schools competing," Harley pointed out, gesturing to a section on the form. "These are all schools, most of them being private schools, where a lot of rich kids go to. Hell, this is a school for rich kids and the only reason we got in was because of that entrance exam we took and they made a special case because we both got the highest grades and we're orphans. Everyone competing will have the money for expensive parts and we'll be entering with literal trash."

"Doesn't matter anyway," Peter muttered, shoulders slumping. "Not like Dan'll let us compete."

Harley whirled around in front of him, stopping him in place by clasping both hands on his shoulders. Instead of flinching away from the movement, Peter leaned into the steady hands of his foster brother. He and Harley had been together for a year and a half, they'd been in similar shitty situations, and they felt like they were brothers in all but name and blood.

"Chin up, Parker," Harley said reassuringly, tipping Peter's head up with a slight nudge to his chin. "We've been good little boys and Dan doesn't have to know that materials won't be provided. Quindi smettila di preoccuparti, capisci?"

Peter smiled slightly at the casual use of Italian. He'd grown up speaking it with Aunt May and it was a way to remind him of her. Harley had overheard him speaking to himself in it while doing homework not long after they met and he had all but demanded that Peter teach him it. Peter, after a little prodding, had agreed to do so. He surprisingly loved teaching Harley how to speak his aunt's native tongue; there wasn't much to do in a small apartment and pointing out the names of everyday things to Harley got his mind off of things. Harley had slowly but surely picked up the language, probably out of boredom and daily use, and he often spoke to Peter in it. He wasn't completely fluent in it yet, especially since Peter's lessons faded when their workload picked up, but he'd no doubt realized that Peter calmed when he heard the language.

"Si, I understand," Peter murmured. Harley clapped him on the shoulder before steering Peter in the direction of his next class and Peter said, "Ci vediamo a pranzo con Ned e MJ."

It only took a second or two for Harley to translate and he smiled. "Yeah, see you at lunch," he confirmed. He saluted Peter before spinning on his heel and heading back down the hall to his class.

Just as Harley rounded the corner, someone from behind him said, "Señor Parker, as much as I admire your ability to speak Italian, this is Spanish and you're late." Peter jumped slightly and spun to face his Spanish teacher.

"Lo siento, Señor," Peter apologised quietly, easily switching from Italian and English to Spanish. "I got held up in Physics."

Señor Mendez merely raised a brow, took his hall pass, and waved him to his seat. With his enhanced hearing, Peter could hear Harley snickering to himself at Señor Mendez's comment.

***

"You're so mean," Peter huffed as he plopped down next to Harley, his lunch tray clattering against the table. Harley merely smirked at him, easily knowing what he was talking about.

"What'd he do?" Ned asked.

"He got caught speaking Italian with me in the halls when he was supposed to be in Spanish," Harley told him.

"You two didn't try to skip again, did you?" MJ said from a few seats away from them, looking up from her book, which was on the Black Dahlia murder. Harley scoffed in offence.

"No," he huffed. "We got held back in Physics. Mrs Warren wanted to talk to us about something."

"What for? You guys didn't get in trouble, did you?" Ned said in worry. He didn't know that they were Spider-Man but he was aware that they got in trouble a few months ago for skipping school a lot and not turning in any assigned homework. He hadn't been able to wiggle any information out of Peter, who he'd known longer than Harley, and Harley was better at keeping secrets or lying, not that Peter wasn't getting up there in skill.

Harley fished through his backpack for the permission form, slapping it on the lunch table for Ned and MJ to read. Ned gasped. "You're getting an internship at Stark Industries!?" he squealed, causing a few heads to turn their way.

Peter shushed Ned loudly. "No! It's a competition for an internship," he said, tapping the title of the document, which read Stark Industries Internship Competition.

"Oh…"

MJ just rolled her eyes at them, refocusing on her book.

"Basically," Harley began to explain, putting his form back in his bag, "a bunch of these STEM schools were given five forms each to give to five students to compete. We each have to make a project to present to the 'esteemed heads' and specialists at Stark Industries. They'll be grading how it works and stuff and they'll decide who gets an internship."

"That's so cool! What about Peter?" Ned asked, turning to glance at Peter. "Did he get a form, too?"

"Mine's in my bag," Peter said after swallowing a bite of his food. Ned grinned widely at them.

"Out of five of the forms, both of you got one? OMG, guys, that's so cool!" Ned was loud again but Peter didn't bother shushing him this time, despite the attention on them. He was grinning at Ned, who'd been one of his best friends for years, because his friend was so excited for them. In fact, Ned was all genuine. He didn't even look remotely jealous or upset that they'd been chosen over him.

"You're not upset?" Peter asked suddenly, voice quiet. "That you didn't get one?"

"Well, I'm jealous, yeah. I mean, both of you guys are going to be interns at Stark Industries!" He ignored Harley's correction that they were going to get the chance to be interns at Stark Industries, that they weren't already interns. "Like you get to work with some of the best minds and you might even get to see Tony Stark! Iron Man! How could I not be jealous?"

"But you're not… mad?" Peter was nervous. He didn't want Ned to be mad at him for getting picked over for a chance at winning an internship at Stark Industries. Ned was super smart and he'd idolized Tony Stark just as much as he did, though Peter had to admit that Ned idolized the Avengers, the superheroes, more than Tony Stark and his company itself.

"No! You've always been better at that stuff than me, you know that. All I do is code and make robots. Stark Industries makes, like, medical equipment and stuff. And dudes, when you start your internship, tell me all about it! I want to live vicariously through you."

Harley chuckled. "Ned, we don't even have an idea yet."

"Well, what about a drone?" Ned suggested. "Even though Stark Industries doesn't sell the military weapons anymore, they still provide them and the police with other types of tech. You could make a small drone for search and rescue missions?"

"It would have to have some extra stuff on it," Harley mused. "SI is already working on drones. What about something with a thermal camera or some type of scanner? The military could use drones to search for landmines, couldn't they?"

"If I was you guys, I'd be tempted to make R2D2," said Ned.

Peter smiled slightly at the idea of making something from Star Wars. His mind whirled with different types of things they could build for the competition before an old idea flickered through his mind. He rifled through his backpack and pulled out two notebooks, a new one he'd gotten recently and one that was for ideas like his webshooters or robots rather than schoolwork. He hadn't been able to come up with any ideas during Spanish, he'd been too worried about the fact that Dan might not even let them complete, but Ned and Harley had sparked an old idea he'd had. He flipped through the pages, looking for the idea that he'd come up with a few months ago when he and Harley first became Spider-Man and one of them got really injured without the other knowing.

Ned and Harley had stopped talking when he'd pulled out his notebook and began flipping through it. Without bothering to tell his friend and foster brother what he was doing, Peter began to scribble in his notebook, occasionally glancing over his old notes to make sure he was writing down the correct information.

Harley leaned over to read the scribbles as Peter began to jot down ideas and a few chemical compounds. It didn't take Harley long to make sense of his notes.

“A pressure sensor?” he asked.

Peter nodded, and after glancing at Ned—who was watching him idly, used to his idea frenzies—and MJ who was ignoring them—said, “I came up with the idea a while ago. It's a sensor to detect injuries based on different pressure ratios. It could be used in clothes or something. Could also probably send the information remotely with a program, maybe."

Harley blinked in surprise, easily realizing that he was thinking of a Spider-Man suit that could detect what injuries they had, as well as tell the other what injuries they gained. Peter knew it was something that Harley would like, because while Harley didn't hide injuries from Peter, Peter didn’t want to worry Harley and so he hid when he was hurt. It usually backfired on him, though, since Harley could see through him easily, but Peter still tried to hide his injuries. But with a suit that could detect injuries and also transmit them remotely? Harley wouldn't even have to try and get Peter to tell him he was hurt, he would know immediately.

“I like this idea,” Harley declared, making Peter snort. Harley pulled Peter's notes over to him and read them over. “Would something like this work, though?”

"The sensors are easy to make," Peter murmured, "and we have that old tablet and free run of the computer labs. We're both pretty good at coding, so that would work."

“We can’t just show up at a competition with a multimeter if sensors are this easy to make,” said Harley with a frown. His eyes flicked over Peter's notes before lingering on a chemical compound he wrote down. "What's this?"

Peter tapped a section of notes, specifically the word Cloth??? that was circled, and made a hand motion—it was the one they used for shooting webs, though to anyone else it would look like he was signing "I love you" with his hand down. Harley's lips formed an O.

"You're going to try and make cloth out of them?" Harley asked, making Peter nod. "Make sure they don't dissolve then." Peter winced at the thought of their project dissolving mid-presentation and made a note to add a stabilizer to the mixture. He would have to end up testing various amounts of stabilizer, along with different amounts of chemicals, to make sure that the cloth would hold up.

The rest of the school day was spent with Peter and Harley swapping notes on what they wanted to do for the project in their shared classes or when they passed in the halls. Harley was already working on the coding for the app and ideas on how to fix the tablet they had. They would probably have to go dumpster diving or go to pawn shops for parts, though. Peter was scribbling down various chemical compounds as they came to mind, all of them based around his web formula. He would have to find a way to get the chemicals; half of them weren't cheap or available on their own and he didn't feel comfortable stealing that much from the school. He had a make-shift chemistry lab in an abandoned building where he and Harley had originally practised Spider-Manning (and still did, sparring was fun), but he would have to still buy various cleaners to separate some of the chemicals needed.

As it was Friday, Dan got home from work early, so Peter and Harley didn't have any time to set up their makeshift lab. They'd stashed a lot of their Spider-Man stuff there, along with a lot of the electronics and tools they had gotten from thrift stores or dumpster diving. There was no room in Dan's apartment to store anything—and the man didn't want any of their junk lying around—and they had no access to the roof unless they wanted to use their spider-powers, which they both agreed was a dumb idea to use in broad daylight. Due to Dan getting off work early, Peter and Harley also couldn't patrol during the day, so they ended up doing their homework, discussing their ideas a little, and doing chores.

Out of all of their chores, Peter disliked cooking the most. Cooking reminded him too much of May and Ben; Ben had been the chef of the house, and he'd taught Peter how to cook, and May had been a terrible cook. She'd often burn the noodles she tried to boil for her mother's Carbonara. But it had been endearing and something he loved about her. However, as Harley didn't know how to cook anything past PB&J (Peter was slowly teaching him when they had free time before Dan got home), he had to make the dinner tonight.

He didn't bemoan this chore, it beat cleaning the bathroom, and he instead made the best damn spaghetti he'd made in a while to butter Dan up. While Peter was nervous about telling Dan about the competition, Harley had argued that it was best to tell Dan about it tonight. The man should be in a decent mood—because he was never in a good mood—since he had work off tomorrow.

They were just finishing cleaning up and setting the table when they heard Dan walking down the hall. He wasn't a very quiet walker, instead his steps were loud and echoed in the apartment, and the sound of them instinctively had Peter's heart speeding up. Dan was an average man—he was five-ten, probably weighed around a hundred and sixty pounds, and he had dirty-blonde hair and boring brown eyes—and there was theoretically nothing intimidating or threatening about him.

But, there was this thing about Dan—he wasn't nice.

Oh, he could play nice for the neighbours or for their social workers, but he certainly wasn't nice to them. They'd live with Dan long enough (a year and a half), that they'd experienced almost every single emotion that the man could express. And most of that was hate or anger. And violence. Violence towards them.

Peter could remember numerous times where a beating had started with loud, thumping footsteps.

"Calmati," murmured Harley under his breath, taking the wet pot that Peter was rinsing off before he'd frozen. Peter let out a slightly shaky breath before taking in some slow calming ones. The doorknob rattled before twisting open, revealing Dan. Peter's eyes followed Dan as he moved throughout the apartment, kicking off his shoes and loosening his tie, hanging up his coat on the coat rack.

Peter took his eyes off Dan and put away the pots and pans he'd used, keeping tabs on the man with his ears. Dan came out of his room after a few minutes and stood near the table.

"What's for dinner?" he said gruffly, sitting in his usual seat.

"Spaghetti and garlic bread, sir," Harley answered politely, his voice quiet. Dan liked the quiet and so dinner was the only time to talk to him. He tended to work a lot of overtime, probably in hopes of getting a promotion at work, and so he was often tired when he got home. Peter and Harley had to be quiet when moving around for school and after dinner, since that was the only time Dan got to relax; it was that or aggravate Dan, which led to getting punished. They'd only made that mistake a few times.

"Smells good," said Dan grudgingly, plating himself some.

"Thank you," Peter thanked him. Usually, he wouldn't talk at all during dinner, but he figured being polite should give him some points. Dan just grunted. When plating their own food, Peter and Harley made sure not to give themselves too much. Their metabolisms ran much higher than they'd done before, meaning that they had to eat more to stay healthy, but if they started to eat more than expected, then Dan would get suspicious and-or grouchy that they were "eating him out of his house." Both of them had lived with foster parents who didn't want to waste money feeding them much and so they took what they could get without complaining. They used their spare money to buy protein bars and those kept them full-enough.

Dinner was quiet for the most part. The only sounds were the sounds of them eating, their forks scraping across their plates, and the downstairs neighbours fighting like they usually did. They were a few floors down so Dan couldn't hear them, but Peter and Harley could. Peter couldn't tell if the relationship was abused, though, since they went from screaming at each other to acting lovey-dovey within hours.

When Dan was sharing signs of finishing his dinner, Peter and Harley shared a swift glance.

"Sir?" Harley said, setting down his fork. Peter did the same and brought his hands to his lap, fiddling with his hoodie sleeves nervously. He watched from beneath his lashes as Dan looked at Harley and grunted, which Harley took that as permission to speak. "Our Physics teacher held us back in class today and—"

"You didn't skip or anything did you?" Dan said harshly with narrowed eyes. "You remember what I said would happen if you got in trouble again, right?"

"Yes, I remember, but we didn't do anything wrong!" Harley rushed to say. "In fact, our teacher actually held us back to tell us that our grades are so good that we've got an internship opportunity."

"An internship," Dan deadpanned, setting down his fork and giving them his attention. Peter wasn't sure if having Dan's full attention on them was good or not. He hoped "good."

"Yes, sir," Harley said, bobbing his head. "The top STEM schools in New York were given permission slips for a competition at Stark Industries. The competition takes place next month and depending on what you make and what the specialists at the company say, you could end up with an internship. Sir."

"It's a competition?" Dan said with a frown. "Not an actual internship? And you two want to compete?" Peter kept his expression neutral when Dan sent a glance his way, but his fingers tightened around his sleeves.

"S-Sir," Peter jumped in to help Harley. "E-Each school was only given five forms. Since Stark Industries will sponsor the schools who they choose the interns from, the schools will pick only the, um, best students?" Peter winced slightly at his wording but continued speaking despite the slight shaking of his voice. "S-Sir, Harley and I both got forms. W-We're some of the best students in our grade, w-we wouldn't have been chosen to represent Midtown if we, uh, weren't capable?"

Dan's lips thinned as he thought. "What… is this competition, exactly?"

"Each student is supposed to create and make a prototype of working tech, sir," said Harley, taking Dan's attention of Peter. "It's the same type of thing we're doing in shop class so it wouldn't be too difficult. The school is allowing us to use their computer labs and materials after school—" There was no need to tell him what those materials were, exactly. "—and we'd still be able to do our chores and homework. We'd just have to stay at school for an extra hour or two to work on our project in order to get it done for the competition."

"When is the competition?"

"In a month, sir. Transportation to Stark Industries is provided." That was a lie but there was no reason to tell Dan that they had the extra money to pay for a sub across the city. Or the fact that their project would be small enough that they could just swing to the Tower if they needed to.

"Both of you are competing?"

"Yes, but we're allowed to work on the same project and enter it together," Harley clarified.

"And this internship, how many hours after school would you be gone? I can't have your grades dropping and making me look bad."

"Only a few hours a week, I think," Harley said. "We could probably ask, but I don't think the workload would be too much since we're only high school students and they know we go to demanding STEM schools."

Dan was silent for a few moments. Peter resisted the urge to fidget, instead choosing to dig his nails into his arm to distract him. Below him, Mr and Mrs Fights-A-Lot were getting into another row that Peter was sure would either end up in one of them storming out to the bar or in hot, passionate, cringe-inducing sex. He'd rather it be the former rather than the latter since there was only so much sex sounds that he could listen to without it making him want to curl up in a ball, vomit, or both. He just hoped that he was asleep before it happened, if it happened.

Dan let out a gusty sigh, making Peter jump. "Well?" he demanded. "Are there permission forms or something?"

"Oh, uh, I-I'll go get them, sir," Peter stammered out, stumbling to his feet. He ran into the edge of the table in his haste to get out of the room and tensed in preparation for a reprimand that never happened. Peter and Harley had put their forms on their shared desk just in case Dan allowed them to compete, so he was back in the kitchen not twenty seconds after he'd left. He also provided a pen and Dan signed off on both forms with a glance to make sure what he was signing was actually a form for an internship and not something else.

Not long after, Peter and Harley cleaned the dirty dishes before being dismissed to their room for the night.

Peter laid up in the top bunk of the bunk bed, staring up at the watermarked ceiling, his through whirling loudly through his mind. He couldn't believe that Dan was actually allowing them to compete. Now all they had to do was actually make their project and they only had a month to do it! What if it wasn't good enough? What if it wasn't original? What if someone made a better working one? What if it didn't work?

And, what if they won?

#spiderman #spider man #peter parker #tony stark #iron man #mcu fic #harley keener #irondad #spider son #harley keener is spider man #peter parker is spider man #foster care #foster au #angst #whump #skip westcott

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96thdayofrage · 4 years ago

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The push prompted a series of sweeping apologies and broad action plans, shifting the goalposts for what would be expected of corporations in their relatively new status as “corporate citizens.”

Nearly a year later, many major corporations have assumed a similar posture following Chauvin’s conviction on murder charges, reminding the American public of their purported commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. Amid mounting evidence that many police departments routinely display both implicit bias and outright racism, reports show that corporate America continues to pour millions of dollars into the police.

One way corporations funnel money into law enforcement is through police foundations. As nonprofits, police foundations allow police departments to raise unregulated slush funds from undisclosed sources, generally meaning corporations or private foundations associated with wealthy families or individuals. Police have historically used this money to expense weaponry and special equipment that is not covered by their municipal budgets.

“Police foundations are really good at hiding what they’re actually spending their money on,” Arisha Hatch, vice president of Color of Change, told Salon. “These foundations exist completely off the books.”

According to Nonprofit Quarterly, there are about 251 police foundations across the U.S. A report last year by the government watchdog LittleSis found that a whole host of well-known corporations have been intimately involved with police foundations throughout the nation.

One notable example is AT&T. Last year, Sludge found that AT&T was “an active donor” to the Seattle Police Foundation, which according to IRS filings amassed more than $1.5 million in contributions and grants in 2019 alone. Gothamist reported in 2019 that AT&T made an appearance as a “deep-pocketed donor” at the New York City Police Foundation, which collected $9.2 million in contributions and grants over the fiscal year ending in June 2019. Because these foundations are not subject to typical IRS disclosure laws, neither of them reported how that money were spent.

AT&T is also a “Platinum Partner” of the National Sheriffs’ Association, a pro-police lobbying group that fights to preserve the 1033 Military Surplus Program, a government-run initiative that distributes surplus military-grade weaponry and supplies to police departments throughout the nation. In order to become a Platinum Partner, a corporation must donate at least $15,000.

Asked about the company’s relationship with law enforcement, an AT&T spokesperson told Salon that the company supports “many civil rights organizations” and is “working with them to redefine the relationship between law enforcement and those they serve to advance equitable justice for all Americans.”

Kevin Walby, an associate professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Winnipeg, told Salon that any company that makes strong rhetorical commitments to racial equality should not donate to police foundations at all, saying that in doing so, “they are actually backstopping very racist policing practices.”

Target is another corporate giant with deep ties to the police. On Tuesday, Target CEO Brian Cornell postponed a speaking event in anticipation of Chauvin’s verdict, later telling his employees in an internal memo: “The murder of George Floyd last Memorial Day felt like a turning point for our country. The solidarity and stand against racism since then have been unlike anything I’ve experienced. Like outraged people everywhere, I had an overwhelming hope that today’s verdict would provide real accountability. Anything short of that would have shaken my faith that our country had truly turned a corner.”

One might assume such concern for racial justice would translate to the company’s spending habits. However, according to government watchdog LittleSis and Sludge, the Minnesota-based retail giant has donated to at least nine police foundations since 2015, including those in Atlanta, New York and Los Angeles. Back in 2014, Target quietly donated $200,000 to the Los Angeles Police Foundation so that its affiliate department could gain early access to surveillance software engineered by Palantir, a company accused of whitewashing systemic racism with its supposed data-driven solutions to policing. Target has also supplied thousands of dollars in grant money to various law enforcement agencies throughout the country. The company reported that by 2011, it had given “Public Safety Grants” to over 4,000 law enforcement agencies. In that same year alone, Target said it had distributed more than $3 million in grants to “law enforcement and emergency management organizations.”

A Target spokesperson declined to provide more recent figures on grant money. The company also declined to clarify whether its relationships with police foundations remain active, instead providing the following statement: “We also believe that team members and guests should feel safe in their engagements with law enforcement. We support holistic changes in policing that advance more equitable, community-centric policing that is grounded in innovative law enforcement reform best practices.”

Numerous tech giants, including Amazon, Google, Facebook and Microsoft, also support the police in ways outlined above. Amazon, for example, which claimed to “stand with [its] Black employees, customers, and partners” following Chauvin’s verdict, has supported the police in a variety of different ways. In 2019, the tech giant reportedly donated up to $9,999 to the Seattle Police Foundation. A company representative told Salon that the company has not donated to the Seattle Police Foundation within the last two years. Salon was unable to confirm this, since the foundation reportedly scrubbed all information pertaining to its corporate sponsors shortly after LittleSis released its report.

Additionally, Amazon board member Indra Nooyi serves as a trustee on the board of the New York City Police Foundation, according to digitally archived information on the foundation’s website from last year.

Meanwhile, AmazonSmile, the company’s charity initiative — which allows Amazon to donate 0.5% of proceeds from a sale to the buyer’s chosen charity — has helped pass along donations from customers to numerous police foundations, including those in Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle and Cleveland. (This relationship has been publicly advertised via Twitter.)

A company representative said that Amazon defers to guidance from the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control and the Southern Poverty Law Center on what organizations meet AmazonSmile’s eligibility requirements. These requirements state that eligible organizations cannot “engage in, support, encourage, or promote … intolerance, discrimination or discriminatory practices based on race.” Just this year, however, the SPLC published a feature calling racial bias in policing a “national security threat.”

Neither the Seattle Police Foundation nor New York City Police Foundation responded to Salon’s request for comment.

Coffeehouse giant Starbucks has visibly attempted to go above and beyond in demonstrating its commitment to racial justice. Last year, at the height of the racial unrest following George Floyd’s death, the coffee chain said it would distribute 250,000 shirts bearing the “Black Lives Matter” slogan to employees, flouting its existing ban on any apparel that “advocate for a political, religious or personal issue,” according to the Wall Street Journal. Just this year, Starbucks invested $100 million in “small business growth and community development projects in BIPOC neighborhoods.”

Following the Chauvin verdict, Starbucks the company released a statement from CEO Kevin Johnson, which read in part:

Today’s jury verdict in the murder trial of ex-police officer Derek Chauvin will not soothe the intense grief, fatigue and frustration so many of our Black and African American partners are feeling. Let me say clearly to you: We see you. We hear you. And you are not alone. Your Starbucks family hurts with you … We will be here for our partners in the Twin Cities and for each and every BIPOC Starbucks partner as we try to understand the systemic wrongs that lead to inequality.

One might argue these “systemic wrongs” have been exhibited by the Seattle Police Department. In a 2019 “Use of Force” report released by the Seattle Police, the department revealed that it used force against Black residents at a disproportionately higher rate than white residents. According to the report, more than 31 percent of cases of police force used against males involved Black males, even though they make up around 7 percent of the city’s population. A subsequent “Disparity Review” that year found that residents of color were frisked at higher rates than white residents, even though white people were statistically more likely to be carrying a weapon, and that Seattle officers drew their guns in encounters with residents of color at a higher rate than with white residents.

In that same year, Starbucks donated two grants totaling $15,000 to promote “implicit bias training” within the Seattle police and help the department host its “2019 banquet gala,” a spokesperson told Salon. The company also “contributed $25,000 to the New York City Police Foundation to help provide protective equipment such as masks, gloves and hand sanitizer, and coordinated the delivery of meals to precincts.” The representative did not say whether there were any accountability mechanisms in place to ensure the money was used appropriately, but did note that the company does “not currently have any funding with the Seattle Police Foundation.”

When corporations like Target and Starbucks give money to police foundations, it not only presents an ideological contradiction; it also presents a conflict of interest within the department itself, noted Walby, of the University of Winnipeg. “We only hear about donations” to police “when corporations want to celebrate them,” he said. “They want that halo effect. However, there are lots of instances in which the transfers and purchases aren’t made public. It’s an even bigger problem if they’re spending it on money that pertains to the corporation.”

In 2014, for instance, the Los Angeles Daily News reported that the Los Angeles Police Foundation received $84,000 in donations from stun-gun maker TASER International (now known as Axon) prior to TASER’s contract with the LAPD. In another case, Motorola, a donor to the New York Police Foundation, was later awarded several NYPD contracts, as reported by Politico in 2017. “There’s a real potential for private influence in public policing through police foundations,” Walby said. “It’s appropriate to call this money dark money. Because we can’t really see this money going in. We can’t really see this money going out.”

As the negative impact of police violence and criminalization becomes increasingly apparent in communities of color, Walby and Hatch argued, continuing to donate to police undermines corporations’ claims to awakened social consciousness. “Police departments across this country have plenty of money,” Hatch said. “They are well-resourced in a way that undermines other programs that could lead to safer and healthier communities.”

“Any money for police reform just enhances the power base of police as an institution,” Walby said. “The institution can’t change conduct that is institutionalized. The funds should be given directly to community and social development groups, groups that actually have a chance of creating something like equality in our world.”

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julimond92 · 4 years ago

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The DLC Legacy Challenge

CreatiI wanted to share a legacy challenge that I came up with to change up my own gameplay and explore more content in TS4. Each generation focuses on one DLC. It does not follow the traditional/original legacy rules as I haven’t assigned any points or anything like that. It also isn’t a super elaborated challenge. The player can choose themself what kind of story they want to tell with each generation.

Disclaimer: I do not own Vampires, Realm of Magic, or Star Wars GP packs nor any of the new kits, so any gameplay included in those DLC is obviously not included in the challenge. All other packs are included in the order in which they came out (last generation = Snowy Escape, 14 generations total). If you don’t have all the DLC, you can simply skip a generation. You may share this challenge, but please link to my tumblr.

Have fun and let me know what you think! Happy simming! :)

Rules: Each generation must produce an heir, but there are no rules as to who can be an heir, that’s up to the player. Adoptions are allowed too. You may only proceed with the next generation (= move them out) when the next heir has a) reached the Young Adult life stage, and b) the previous heir has fulfilled all their objectives. You may, however, start working on the succeeding heir’s aspiration etc. while they still live with the previous generation. The objectives do not need to be completed in the order they appear here. If an heir has fulfilled an aspiration, a new one may be chosen. Each new heir starts out with starter funds (§20,000) on a new lot in the world assigned to that generation. You may play in a Tiny Home and use those perks if you own that pack. If you want, you can limit each generation’s CAS and B/B to their respective pack. However, you can always include other gameplay aspects from other packs too. Spares and spouses’ traits and aspirations may be chosen freely. One objective for each generation is to get married. You may opt to neglect that objective and choose to play with other types of families as well. Just make sure to have a subsequent heir for the following generation. The legacy is intended for a normal life span, but you may change to longer/individual. I just wouldn’t recommend short life span :D You may use CC and mods to enhance gameplay as long as it doesn’t give you an advantage with any of the objectives (no cheats allowed!).

Disclaimer: Parenthood GP has not been assigned for a specific generations as I feel those gameplay features will be used anyway in raising generations.

Gen 1: Founder -- Base Game

World: Willow Creek

Career: Writing -- Author

Aspiration: Knowledge -- Bestselling Author

Objectives:

max. career

max. writing skill

max. 1 additional BG skill

fulfill aspiration

(get married)

have at least 1 heir to continue (adoption is OK)

Gen 2: Get to Work

World: Newcrest

Career: Doctor / Police / Scientist (any of the GtW active careers, you choose!)

Aspiration: Love -- Soulmates

Objectives:

max. career

fulfill aspiration

max. baking skill

(get married)

have at least 1 heir to continue (adoption is OK)

finish elements collection

if you own Outdoor Retreat: vacation in Granite Falls at least once

Gen 3: Get Together

World: Windenburg

Career: Style Influencer -- Stylist

Aspiration: Popularity -- Leader of the Pack

Objectives

max. DJ skill

max. dancing skill

max. career

fulfill aspiration

(get married)

have at least 1 heir to continue (adoption is OK)

if you own Spa Day: max. wellness skill

Gen 4: Dine Out

World: San Myshuno (if you own City Living, if not choose a BG world)

Career: Critic -- Restaurant / OR: own and operate successful restaurant

Aspiration: Fortune -- Fabulously Wealthy

Objectives:

max. cooking skill

max. gourmet cooking skill

max. career

fulfill aspiration

(get married)

have at least 1 heir to continue (adoption is OK)

collect all food photos

if you own City Living: acquire all city recipes

Gen 5: City Living

World: San Myshuno

Career: Politics -- Politician

Aspiration: Location -- City Native

Objectives:

max. singing skill

win karaoke contest

max. career

fulfill aspiration

(get married)

have at least 1 heir to continue (adoption is OK)

live in a penthouse

participate in all festivals at least once

collect all posters

collect all snowglobes

if you haven’t done so in Gen 4: acquire all city recipes

Gen 6: Cats & Dogs

World: Brindleton Bay

Career: Vet -- Own and operate pet clinic

Aspiration: Animal -- Friend of the Animals

Obejctives:

max. vet skill

max. pet training skill

fulfill aspiration

(get married)

own pet clinic

breed pets

showcase pet

have at least 1 heir to continue (adoption is OK)

collect all feathers

If you own Bowling Night SP: max. bowling skill

Gen 7: Jungle Adventure

World: Oasis Springs

Career: Secret Agent -- Diamond Agent

Aspiration: Nature -- Jungle Explorer

Objectives:

max. archaeology skill

max. Selvadoradian Culture

max. career

fulfill aspiration

collect all artefacts

explore all caves and hidden places in Selvadorada

get married to a Selvadoradian

have at least 1 heir to continue (adoption is OK)

Gen 8: Seasons

World: Windenburg

Career: Gardner -- Botanist

Aspiration: Nature -- Freelance Botanist

Objectives:

max. flower arranging skill

max. career

fulfill aspiration

(get married)

celebrate all seasons and holidays

successfully change the weather at least once using the weather machine

have at least 1 heir to continue (adoption is OK)

have at least 1 child complete the scouts career

finish gardeining collection

own a ‘farm’ on 64x64 in Windenburg

secretly own a cow plant

Gen 9: Get Famous

World: Del Sol Valley

Career: Actor/Actress

Aspiration: Creativity -- Master Actor/Actress

Objectives:

max. acting skill

max. media production skill

max. career

fulfill aspiration

own a house in the Pinnacles

get married to celebrity

have excellent reputation

be a 5 star celebrity

have at least 1 heir to continue (adoption is OK)

have a child fulfill after school acting

win an accelate

Gen 10: Strangerville

World: Strangerville

Career: Military -- Covert Operator

Aspiration: 1) Location -- Strangerville Mystery; 2) Knowledge -- Nerd Brain

Objectives:

max. fitness skill

max. career

solve Strangerville mystery

fulfill both aspirations

(get married)

have at least 1 heir to continue (adoption is OK)

collect all postcards

Gen 11: Island Living

World: Sulani

Career: Conservationist -- Marine Biologist

Aspiration: Beach Life

Objectives:

max. career

fulfill aspiration

max. guitar skill

marry a mermaid/merman

become friend with a dolphin

have at least 1 heir to continue (adoption is OK)

collect all shells

collect all hidden treasures

Gen 12: Discover University

World: Britechester (you may move to another world once you’ve graduated)

Career: 1) Student; 2) Mechanical Engineer

Aspiration: Knowledge -- Academic

Objectives:

max. research + debate skill

live in a dorm for at least one semester

max. robotics skill

max. career

fulfill aspiration

get a distinguished degree

join an organization / a team

(get married)

have at least 1 heir to continue (adoption is OK)

join secret organization

Gen 13: Eco Living

World: Evergreen Harbor

Career: Civil Designer -- Green Technician

Aspiration: Eco Innovator

Objectives:

max. juice fizzing skill

max. candle making skill

max. fabrication skill

max. career

fulfill aspiration

make world’s footprint green

change all common lots

have self-sufficient home

(get married)

have at least 1 heir to continue (adoption is OK)

If you own Nifty Knitting SP: max. knitting skill and teach your child how to knit

Gen 14: Snowy Escape

World: Mt. Komorebi

Career: Sales Person -- Expert Branch

Aspiration: Athletic -- Extreme Sports Fan

Objectives:

max. skiing skill

max. climbing skill

max. snowboarding skill

max. career

fulfill aspiration

visit all festivals at least once

collect all simmies

(get married)

have at least 1 heir to continue (adoption is OK)

explore all hiking trails

#Sims4 LegacyChallenge julimond92 gameplaychallenge

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billantoinette · 4 years ago

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spaceskam · 5 years ago

Text

a change in the rhythm

day 7 of @alterarnm : future setting! small warning for non-graphic violence

ao3

Michael liked movies.

Truly, that was the only time he got to see people that looked like him. They all had hair and skin and talked with their mouths‒wasn’t that so cool? He’d never seen another real person in his whole life. Sometimes he had dreams of what it might be like to be in one of his movies. To have strong soldiers sweep him off his feet or have a pretty ladies to kiss in the rain or a group of friends to help him through the trials and tribulations of life. Or maybe just one friend. It’d be a lie to say he hadn’t wondered what a hug felt like.

But that wasn’t really an option. Mother was strict. The outside space was unsafe, uninhabitable. He couldn’t even think of a reason to argue with her though because why else would he be there in the first place? He had to have been put there by another person like him before, even if he was a baby when it happened. This was where it was safe. In all the time that he’d been in here, before and after he was in his pod, no one had come. That was at least 18 years proof that it wasn’t safe.

“Have you finished your meal?” Mother asked, her system rolling into the kitchen area. He remembered when he was young, he’d gotten very upset when he saw the way houses looked in movies. He wanted a kitchen too. So they made one.

“Yes,” he said.

“Good. Time for school.”

His mornings went like this: he woke up early, had his first meal while watching a movie, and then did school for four hours. He’d picked up things quickly with not much else to do and, for the last little while, he’d been working on studying mechanical engineering. That, for the most part, was easy. He already worked on most of the stuff on his home, even helping Mother tinker with any accidentally rusty parts.

After school, he had his second meal and then it was time for self-defense. He never really knew why he needed to know how to fight, but he never questioned it. He was good at it and he liked the way it made him feel.

Later, he would wind down with more movies. Technically, they had a limited supply and it was whatever the real people who put him here had given him. There were fifty different ones, all black and white, and Michael had memorized them all. Sometimes he wanted more. A few years prior, he’d wanted to make his own so they did. So, technically, he had fifty-one.

Then he’d have his last meal, a shower, and then he’d go to sleep. That was it, day in and day out. Every once in a while, Mother would let him do something different, but not often. She said the routine was good for him and, well, she knew better than he did.

Sometimes, though, after she’d shut down for the night, Michael would sneak out of his bunk and go see his pod. He had to be careful not to set off any of the signals that she had around his bunk‒he’d learned that the hard way. Over the years, though, he’d gotten quite good at it.

Because pods, on top of being safe spaces, also gave their owner amplified telepathy. In theory, if someone was near, he could let them know where he was. Mother kept it away from him so he would never get his hopes up, but it was hard. He wanted someone else, someone who was like him, someone who wasn’t made of metal. Just one more person. Just one.

His pod was hidden in a room that was on a completely different level of his home, hidden behind a door that required him to know how to dismantle the computer that locked it. He did that easily this night, slipping into the room and going towards the glow of the pod. He rested his hands on it and closed his eyes, doing his best to reach out to anyone who might hear. He knew that no one would, but, deep down, he begged. He reached for them.

It wasn’t that he was unhappy with Mother or ungrateful for all that she’d done. It was simply that he was lonely. She couldn’t be mad at him for being lonely.

Like every other time, though, Michael didn’t feel anyone else and it further confirmed that he was the only one left.

He went to sleep trying not to let that fact hurt as much as it did.

Michael woke up to the sound of alarms ringing.

He didn’t know how to react, fear seeping into his bloodstream as he looked around. He didn’t see Mother and he didn’t hear her and that was even more scary. She was always right there when something happened. Always.

Nonetheless, he did as he was taught. He jumped out of his bunk and quickly ran down the hall to find his closet, slipping inside and hiding behind his clothes. In a small box behind them were his dagger which he retrieved and held tight. Perhaps this was a test, Mother was making sure he could protect himself in case something bad happened. Hopefully, this was a test.

Michael waited for what seemed like hours, but probably wasn’t nearly that long, listening to the alarm and waiting to hear Mother coming for him. He was prepared to protect himself and then to accept the praise that came with it.

Only, he didn’t hear that. He heard footsteps. Mother didn’t have those.

“The pod is empty but active, so we have the right place,” a man’s voice said, “The Last Antarian has to be around here somewhere.”

“And Manes is handling the AI?”

“Manes? I’m Manes.”

“...the only Manes that can dismantle an AI, our captain, your brother?”

“Just call him the Bloody Baby so I know who the hell you’re talking about.”

“You know he answers to that less than he’ll answer to Captain.”

“He should’ve thought about that before he slaughtered half of the Pax Intelligence at 16 and then got promoted.”

“Just find the Antarian, Manes.”

Michael felt his blood run cold, bracing himself for what was going to happen as he heard things being slammed as they searched. Searched for him. For a moment, he wondered if this was why Mother kept the pod away from him. She was scared he would alert the wrong people.

And here the wrong people were.

He held his breath as they got closer, preparing himself to fight back until he couldn’t. He could do this. He could do this. He could do this.

All too quickly, the closet door swung open and they moved the clothes away.

"Prince Michael, we're here to rescu-"

Michael lunged. He used his daggers recklessly, swinging and hitting anything he could. There were four men, all bigger than him, so he had to do his best. He got at least one solid slash on three of them before they grabbed him by each limb, bitching as he squirmed in an attempt to be let free.

He wanted someone. This wasn’t what he meant.

“Let go of me!” Michael spat, wriggling as best he could.

“He speaks English?” one of them said in bewilderment.

“Does it fucking matter? He stabbed me!” another one said.

“If you stop fighting, we will let go of you!” the one who wasn’t hurt said. Michael didn’t stop.

“We have to sedate him!” the oldest announced.

Before Michael could register much, he was being stabbed in the chest with a long needle and almost immediately passed out.

“Get out.”

“You can’t just lock us out of the miss‒”

“I can and I already have. You seem to be forgetting that I’m your captain. Get out, Flint. When he wakes up, the last thing he needs to see is your ugly ass.”

A door closed, officially reminding Michael what had happened. He startled awake, immediately jumping to defend himself only to see he was on a large bed with his ankle chained to it. A whole new kind of dread filled him as he looked around to see who else was there. It was just one other person: a baby faced man with long, dark braided hair, skin too tan to be from someone who was inside all the time, and warm eyes. His hands were at his side calmly, showing that he had no weapon. His outfit… Well, it was all black, but the garments themselves made no sense to Michael. It covered him well enough on the bottom, but a good portion of his arms and chest could easily be seen. He was beautiful.

“Forgive me for having you chained, but you did stab three of my men and I figured you would wake up just as feisty,” he said, giving a smile that matched some of the movies he’d seen. Like it was meant to be kind. It made Michael feel exposed. “You can call me Alex. Hopefully we can be friends.”

“Where is Mother?” Michael demanded. Alex, Captain, the Bloody Baby, looked confused as he walked closer. The closer he got, the more Michael felt scared. He was in control of bad guys, so he had to be a bad guy. Why couldn’t Michael meet someone that looked like him who wasn’t a bad guy?

“Mother?” he repeated, “The old AI, you mean? It’s programmed to be maternal? Well, that would explain why it put up a fight.”

“Mother,” Michael reinforced, “Where is she?”

“That’s what you want to know? Of all the things, you want to know about the robot that held you captive for your entire life?” Alex asked. Michael glared the best he could and Alex held up his hands in submission. “She’s dismantled, but, if you really care, I can work on her later so she can help you acclimate.”

“Acclimate?” Michael repeated.

Alex came closer, sitting on the bed as well. Micheal moved as far away from him as he could. He didn’t come any closer.

“I don’t know how much you know, so I’ll just fill you in on the crucial details. Hundreds of years ago, a civil war was wiping out the Antarian people. That’s what you are. There was a legend that the infant Antarian prince was put on a ship for his safety and launched into the depths of space, but there were no facts. This was simply legend, you see, passed down from the few Antarian refugees who survived. This prince was said to be the most powerful being in the galaxy, but no one was sure he was real. Until two weeks ago, when I saw your little telepathic ping on my radar.

“I kept it to myself, I thought it was a fluke or maybe a different species, but then last week that little ping showed up again and I knew it wasn’t a mistake. So I alerted my home planet that I’d found something. Regardless of who you were, it was a rescue mission. No living being is meant to be alone like that, but I wanted to keep it to my crew until I knew for sure who you were. And, after the blood test, I know for sure,” Alex filled in, giving him that same warm smile, “Welcome to civilization, Prince Michael.”

Michael couldn’t make sense of what he was being told. That didn’t sound right. That sounded like a lie. He wasn’t powerful, he wasn’t a prince, he wasn’t special.

“That’s not me,” Michael insisted, “I’m just Michael. I don’t have any powers. I want Mother.”

Alex nodded. “And I’ll get her for you soon, I just have to fix her up a bit, alright? And you do have powers, you just don’t know it yet. We found strong traces of Sulfaparinmycin in your system. It seems Mother has been suppressing your powers since you left your pod.”

That didn’t make sense either. Why would she do that and still teach him to fight? If he had powers, wouldn’t she want him to be able to protect himself to the best of his ability?

“Hey, listen, I know you’re scared, but I’m here to answer any question you have, alright?” Alex promised, “We’re friends here.”

“That man who grabbed me first, he said you were called the Bloody Baby. You’re a bad man,” Michael told him. Alex flinched just a little, removing himself from the bed.

“Right,” he sighed, “That’s true, somewhat. I was a bad man. I was told from a young age that people who were even slightly a threat needed to be killed and I got good at that, but I learned that that isn’t the way to live. I stopped as soon as I heard someone call me that name, even though it led to me getting my status as Captain. But, I promise, I’m not that way, you’re safe.”

“I don’t trust you.”

“That’s alright, I haven’t given you a reason to,” Alex agreed. Still, Michael eyed him. “But I plan to earn that trust. I spoke to my home planet and alerted your retrieval, but I’m not sending you there. Instead, you’ll stay here where I can bring Mother back to help you, and I’m having an Antarian descendant come to help you learn to work your powers. Once you adjust, you can decide what you want to do. This isn’t forever.”

Alex pulled a key from his clothing, making sure he saw it before he came closer to unlock the cuff around his ankle. The warm hand on his leg sent chills up his spine. When he’d fought those men, it hadn’t given him a moment to really think about the fact that it was another person, but now he could. He was warm.

Michael realized that, while this wasn’t ideal, if Alex was telling the truth, then he might get what he wanted. Companionship. Kisses. A hug. He could meet someone and understand what it was like to be with someone. Just like in the movies, he just had to be nice to him.

“You’re warm,” he said out loud after Alex freed him.

“I’m sorry?” Alex asked, laughing softly. Michael folded his legs beneath himself and tried to relax as best he could as he reached towards Alex with both hands. He looked confused but stepped a bit closer. “I don’t know what you’re asking for, Prince Michael.”

Michael leaned forward and grabbed his arm, pulling it into his space. He was scarred all over, but he was real. He was real. Michael let out a helpless little laugh, extending his fingers and touching each one. Then he did like what he saw in the movies, putting his hand up Alex’s so they were flat against each other and it became so clear that he was similar.

“Wow,” Michael breathed.

“You got over your fear quickly,” Alex noted. Michael shook his head.

“The movies say you have to be nice,” he explained. He realized he wasn’t very nice when he stabbed those men, but they weren’t very nice by coming in unannounced. It felt a bit even now.

“Movies, huh?” Alex asked, “You had movies?”

“That’s all I had,” Michael explained.

“I see,” Alex said, shifting his hand just a little to lace his fingers with his. Michael’s eyes widened involuntarily and he gasped, marveling at how they fit together. Alex laughed. That was even more beautiful. Perhaps he was closer to the men he'd seen in his dreams, the strong soldiers who rescued him. Maybe this was a rescue after all.

"This is beautiful," Michael told him, making sure he really understood how amazing it was that their hands fit like that. Alex kept smiling, warm and fond.

"I think I'm going to really enjoy having you around if you see everything that way," Alex said. Michael nodded. He couldn't deny it, he probably would. This amazing thing was so easy, he couldn't even imagine all the bigger amazing things that could happen.

"I think you will."

“How about we go see what kind of movies we have? Maybe I have something you haven’t seen, a little bit newer, to help you get caught up to the rest of the galaxy.”

“Really?” Michael asked, feeling more than a little eager to see something new. Alex nodded and tugged on his hand a bit, gesturing for him to get off the bed. When he did, he noticed that one of the legs Alex was standing on was metal. "You're metal like Mother?"

"No," Alex said with a soft laugh, "This comes off. It's to help me walk."

"Can I see it come off? I like things made of metal."

"Not right now," Alex told him, "Maybe later."

Michael complied, more sure now than ever that Alex truly was that soldier in his dreams.

“Come, I’ll give you a tour.”

Alex kept a hold of his hand as he led him out of the room, showing him around the ship. Everything was so much different, so new, so foreign. He was mesmerized. And, sure enough, Alex did answer any question he had. It was so strange, but he couldn’t even hide his excitement.

Even when the went back to the room after he was tired from all the new stuff, they put on a new movie. It was all so… good.

Maybe he really would be okay.

#alteraroswell2020 #malex #malex fic #michael guerin #alex manes #roswell new mexico #my fic

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