#i’m expected to be focused on a corporate job when i have a farm and this man waiting for me

[valkblue]

Being a Behavior technician requires a certain amount of dedication to the job — the rigorous type, bordeline rigid. That’s what is expected to be at peak efficiency regarding analysis protocols and diagnostics for host service and calibration.

For that, Vivian thinks she might be the worst tech in her department. 

— masterlist, AO3

Chapter 1 on 12

Chapter wordcount: 2,486 Story status: Complete Rating: General Warning: people swear a lot, technobabble counts as swearing as well (believe me)…

Author’s notes: This is the first time I post a fanfic online. A real big one I mean. Not just crackfics... I’m emotional. I don’t know what the schedule will be yet because my queue is acting up, but everything should be out regularly, or something that looks like it. This first chapter is an intro to the main character and what she does, and I hope you’ll enjoy this story and its characters all the way!  Also, I really want to thank @pheedraws​ and @something-tofightfor​ for their heartwarming feedback on the whole story. Thank you SO much!!

Have a good time reading, and my askbox/messages are open! 💙

— Chapter 1

Now wasn’t a good time to yawn…

And yet, Vivian had nothing else to do but wait right now, wait while the progress bars slowly filled up on her tablet screen.

Now wasn’t the time, simply because some of her colleagues were passing through the hallway, behind the glass panels of her cubicle, and among them was the head of Behavior department — incidentally, her superior.

No doubt they were all about to grab a bite at the restaurant and Vivian held back an almost envious mumble; she was starving! But before she could go eat anything, she had to finish with her last subject on her morning schedule; host ID#DH410829420391, named Mildred.

And Mildred was back at the lab on account of a negative report about her response time during interactions with other hosts but also with guests. A lag that only happened in character mode, not in analysis. So, Vivian started with refreshing her lexical base and improvisation engine. It took some time to check the entire tree but as of now, it was done.

"Can you confirm if the update’s complete?"

"Confirmed," Mildred answered right away, her voice flat and her look vacant.

"Back in character mode."

Mildred seemed to wake up and blinked once before focusing her attention  back on Vivian.

"Mildred?"

"Oh, I’m sorry," she answered with a hint of a shy smile. "I must have drifted off, I believe… The working hours at the farm are ungodly sometimes!"

The response time was more than good, now. The improvisation too.

"I was wondering if there’s a lot of clients at the farm these days," Vivian asked.

The answer was not long to come.

"Certainly! Our cattle sure gives the best milk there is. No matter what the competition says!"

"How many green bottles are standing on the wall?"

Questions and procedures were always more or less the same to determine which bits of code, settings or values could cause an issue or start to glitch like crazy!

But today, for Mildred — and Vivian — everything was back in order, and each/both of them could soon return to the the usual course of their scheduled day.

It was about time for Vivian to take a break, if she was reduced to that kind of wisecrack…

A glance at her wristwatch, even while her tablet displayed a more accurate time than the watch hands, and Vivian concluded her analysis. She folded the tablet, slid it back in her jacket pocket, and left the large glass room after one last embarrassed look at Mildred she was leaving there, naked in the dark. Vivian didn’t even fight down a shiver. It was actually freezing cold in there!

She comforted herself with the thought that Mildred didn’t feel anything in this state, disconnected, and that a team wouldn’t take too long to come get her, do her hair, dress her up and put her back in rotation in no time. Barely as much as Vivian had for her lunch break… and that was just enough to go all the way up to the hub restaurant. But the bosses here didn’t care much about how long the lunch breaks lasted, as long as the work was done in time.

So, Vivian didn’t hurry to get to the elevator she shared with two co-workers who only interrupted their chitchat about hockey results for a vague greeting.

At this hour, the restaurant was a bit more crowded but it still wasn’t too hard to find a seat in the large and relatively peaceful room. The whole vibe in it was corporate though, even in that staff only room; every dish were stamped with the park logo and name — from the bottom of the plates to the salt shakers — and a flat HD screen displayed a bunch of Delos branches ads that looked much weirder without sound.

After a while, one didn’t really pay attention to all this anymore… A few months was enough to make it all part of the landscape and for the mind to simply stop noticing it.

And Vivian had been working here for three years, now.

However, she was still bothered by a few details sometimes, such as the huge white walls that spanned all the way up a balcony floor and a domed ceiling or the fact that the stalls were lit with a pale light under which the food turned to a sickly colour.

Hopefully, under the less saturated lights of the main room, the Caesar salads and the turkey-tomato sandwiches were back to a more appetizing hue.

Her tray loaded with a potato-corn salad, a big glass of water and a piece of bread, Vivian walked towards the tables, eager for her potatoes to lose their blueish glint. Just shy of the screen, she recognised a familiar face, Margaret’s, another Behavior tech from her team. Both were on friendly basis now, where it was possible to enjoy some time together and to laugh a little, even if it took them a whole year to finally break the ice.

Margaret waved at Vivian when she saw her pick her way across the room, inviting her to join them — them being Margaret, and three other guys from their department.

"Did you hear the latest, Vivian!?" she blurted. "I’ve been told that Damon Dyers is in the park, at this very moment!"

"Damon… Dyers?"

Vivian didn’t even hide her puzzlement while sitting in front of her.

"The actor," one of the three guys — Luke — pointed out. "Marge was just exposing how she’ll mooch the control room techs for a footage…"

"Listen, if you were as thirsty as I am about this guy, you’d understand!" Margaret replied.

To that, he quipped:

"My husband would be pissed!"

All chuckled in approval before returning to their almost emptied plates, while Vivian had barely touched her own.

"Can you imagine," Margaret daydreamt, leaning back in her seat as in a comfy armchair, holding her Pyrex glass like a snifter of bourbon. "Damon hunting down Escaton in the hills…"

Vivian scoffed; she could imagine, indeed.

At the table, Charles, Thawal and Luke didn’t pay any more attention to them, carrying on with their chat about retro gaming. Vivian would probably have preferred to be part of that conversation; not that she didn’t know shit about movies and their actors, but more like aside from a few exceptions on which they got along swimmingly, she didn’t have much taste in common with Margaret. But she listened to her friend anyway as she kept going after a sip of sparkling water:

"How am I not supposed to be hot on the idea!? I’ll deadass find someone to bootleg me some footages!"

Vivian smiled out of politeness, not saying much, as always. Her mouth was full anyway.

"Oh, by the way!"

Margaret took another swip of her glass before putting it down on the table and leaning towards Vivian.

"Apparently, they’re going to burden us with a whole new bunch of hosts in two or three weeks," she said, with all the serious she could muster. "I heard that from Elsie. Narrative must be trying to compensate for something, if you know what I mean…"

Vivian knew very well.

"We barely have time to light a fag between two sessions already and they plan to add another hundred on our backs!?"

She snorted disdainfully.

"Don’t know what they’re spicing their coffee with but it isn’t doing them any good."

"No shit," admitted Vivian, a bit testy at the idea. "Unless they also plan to hire? Did Lowe say anything about it?"

Margaret shrugged.

"No idea, I haven’t talked to him in a while."

She patted her blazer pockets then sighed softly; Vivian understood her attitude as relief, and a craving, even a need to light a cigarette.

"You should ask," Margaret pointed out with a smile a tad clenched in the orbicularis muscles. "You like him, right?"

Vivian approved; she admired his thoroughness, his love for details… A lot could be learned while working under his care and Vivian found him both spirited and friendly.

Margaret didn’t quite share the feeling, however; in her own words, he was giving her the heebie-jeebies.

"Anyway, I’m off," Margaret stated with an even greater impatience in her voice. "I gotta light one before the crazy afternoon waiting for me!"

She gathered her cutlery on her tray, adding:

"Not giving up on the idea to come across Damon fucking Dyers, though! At least in video recs. Wish me luck!"

Vivian nodded and Margaret put her tray away on the sideboard before hurrying to the exit.

Her colleagues had changed topics next to her, and now they were talking about cars, motorcycles and mechanics. As she didn’t know much about that topic, not as much as in computers, she listened only a little without taking part.

Then, Vivian finished wolfing down her potato salad and her glass of water; she would soon return to her shift and examine a series of hosts, the characteristics of which she overviewed on her tablet from her timetable’s folders. It was simply routine checks, and Vivian liked that kind of sessions; it was like meeting with a friend, just to catch up with them.

But for now, she would take a few minutes to get some air and natural light on top of the hub before diving back into the high tech depths of the Mesa.

At seven in the evening, closer to eight, Vivian was glad to be back to her on-site apartments. Once again, she had grabbed a snack at the restaurant but the room was much more crowded than it was at lunch and came close to a headache before reaching "home". She could have dined here, cooked something on her induction hob but she was so tired — or lazy — that, tonight again, she still choose to eat at the restaurant over having to do the dishes!

Now, she was getting out of the shower in her bathrobe and throw herself on her bed.

Living like this, it was like being a teenager all over again, back at her parents’, or at the dorm… but once she closed her apartment’s door, Vivian was totally free to do whatever she wanted. As long as it didn’t involve wrecking the place!

But now, even if she wanted to, Vivian wouldn’t have had the strength to break any chair, nor even to make a mess of the bed… About that, she was actually planning on laying there, and falling asleep in her bathrobe while watching a movie or reading any book she had available on her personal tablet. A tablet that was nothing close to the one she was using every day in the Behavior department labs, but a tablet anyway.

She swiped the covers without any real interest; in all honesty, she was feeling too tired to read. Even something she had already read. And she cringed a little when the minimalistic cover with her automatically signed name appeared.

Yeah, even too tired to read her own words!

Besides, it wasn’t great literature at all — a fanfiction. Two, to be precise. Both about the hosts and their narratives as she could have written about a movie, book, or video game’s characters.

Vivian grumbled, letting her tablet fall flat on her stomach, and she stared at the white ceiling before closing her eyes while nibbling her lips. She had written this almost six months after she started working here, taken over by all the motivation, excitement and creativity around her!

She refocused on herself since but, in the meantime, she wrote these. And even though Vivian considered herself to have a fertile imagination, she still commended herself about how better for everyone it was she hadn’t applied for a job in Narrative…

Rising her tablet up again and tapping on the lit screen, she entered the file and skimmed through it, trying to ignore the grammar mistakes she stopped committing since; and mistakes aside, her stories had nothing exceptional, totally influenced as they were by her mood and the not-so-new-but-still-trendy storyline — Escaton’s and his bandits, essentially…

Over a very short time, when Vivian was still more or less trying to fit into the life of the facility and social circles of her co-workers whose names had yet to be caught, she had heard so many comments, appreciations and reviews for this narrative that she looked into it first.

After all, the park afforded Lee Sizemore, renowned author who made a big name for himself with a "hot and grimy" historical saga, a few years back before running out of puff under his editor’s pressure. And a juicy offer by a video game studio to adapt it. 

She understood; everybody, whether staff or guests, was more or less hyped by the brute force brought by Hector Escaton — virile and dark male figure — to the relative tranquility of the park’s starting point.

And Vivian had been no exception.

If her first story was only about made-up characters to explore the pleasing and well rounded context of Sweetwater, her second, on the other hand, was more audacious, altering shamelessly the story from what its authors had surely intended; victorious over the town after killing the sheriff and all opposition, Escaton and his gang enjoyed their plunder at the Mariposa where Hector fell for one of the saloon girls.

That being said, Vivian remained very proper — maybe totally prudish — in these sort of narrative fantasies of hers; nothing turned freaky or utterly violent…

All she did was throwing a few sentences on her writing app for some evenings, when inspiration struck or simply because she urged herself to follow through with what she started. All on her personal tablet. She knew better than to write that on anything system-tethered. Imagining that a bored somebody could just hack into the system all the way up to her personal data… and end up on that giddy nonsense, made her wants to puke!

Not to mention that it might also be forbidden. Even though she never planned to, she knew she couldn’t share it with anyone, nor anywhere. Not as a park employee. If the guests were writing critiques and other reviews online about their stay, herself couldn’t talk about it from the inside. Confidentiality and shit…

Her texts would remain secret, and her silly fantasies with them. In any case, it wasn’t as if she intended to try anything for herself, and even less with Hector Escaton, all the more since he wasn’t even part of the batch her team had in charge. And also, rumor has it that fantasies aren’t always good when act upon!

With a lazy tap, Vivian quitted the reading app and dropped the tablet on her sheets before burying her face in her soft pillow. She let out a deep sigh in it, relaxed, and in fact, she fell asleep almost right away.

[redfire-blackash-whitegold]

Blessed are the Vagrant

It’s not unheard of, someone getting lost on a heist. It doesn’t even necessarily denote a heist gone wrong, though it is usually one that’s gone somewhat sideways. Someone gets injured, or separated, or temporarily caught by some non-police entity, or else they just miss their transport and have to take the long way around the cops in order to get home.

In this case it was an injury, though only a light concussion and minor head blood. Ryan woke up in a vineyard, though how he got there, he couldn’t remember. He could remember everything else, his name, his crew, he even remembered the better part of the heist. They were targeting a rich estate out just northwest of Vinewood Hills, small crew, low cops, mostly just personal security to watch out for. He remembered all that fine, just not how he ended up with a head wound out in the grapes. 

Ryan took off his jacket and mask and threw them over the fence where they wouldn’t be found immediately by seasonal workers checking on the vines. It was still spring and the vines had been recently pruned, though the leaves were starting to bud and spread out again. The farmhouse was close, on the bottom of the hill separate from the winery that looked down on it from above. Ryan brushed off the dirt on his jeans, but there was no way to really get clean under the circumstances. His head hurt, and his eyes felt blurry like he wasn’t wearing his contacts, though he knew he must be based on how dry his eyes were after having slept with them in.

It was maybe six in the morning, from what Ryan could tell. The sun had just come up and the sky was a pale, cool blue. It was slightly chilly with the morning but it was clearly on track to becoming a nice day. He knocked on the door of the farmhouse. The sound of metal clanging and the slight smell of natural gas suggested that someone was cooking inside. The noise stopped for a second and the front door opened, revealing an old woman, slightly hunched over, wearing a hand-knit sweater and a long skirt. She moved slowly but was alert, and she took in the sight in front of her quickly. 

“I’m sorry to bother you, ma’am, but I can’t seem to get any service around here, and was wondering if I could use your phone,” Ryan said. 

“Oh my goodness!” The woman replied. “You’re bleeding! Come in, come in, we should get that looked at right away.” 

She motioned him in, and walked urgently as she could to a cupboard to retrieve a bin full of bandaids and creams. Ryan stepped in very slightly before taking a quick look around, looking for people, danger, weapons. The farmhouse was small, and ancient. It opened into the kitchen, and had an awkward layout that had a single wall separate the kitchen from the living room that was complete with the kind of old easy-chairs that you might expect to see in an older home. There didn’t seem to be any indication of anyone else living there, and no immediate danger, so he walked in to the landing and kicked off his shoes.

“You must have had quite the night,” the woman said. Ryan cringed slightly and started to speak, before she cut him off. “Uh uh uh, I don’t want to hear it. Whatever brought you here is none of my business. I’d rather not ask at all then hear some half-baked excuse.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” 

“Now now, none of that ‘ma’am’ business, I know I’m old. Call me Gran, it’s what the kids at the wineshop call me,” Said Gran. “Come, sit here, make yourself comfortable, let me take a look at your forehead.”

She tended to his wound and Ryan, somewhat out of it from the concussion, let her. She had been getting ready to cook pancakes on the stove when he arrived, and so and offered him some, which he hungrily accepted. Gran also offered him a shower, which Ryan was much more hesitant to accept. 

“Oh, of course, that must be strange, taking a shower in some stranger’s home. You really should get cleaned up though, I’ll give you a washcloth and I’ll throw your clothes into the wash. You should fit into my husband’s old clothes, rest his soul, and then I can give you a drive back into the city when they’re ready.” Gran explained that she didn’t have a landline or a phone of her own, and the winery was closed and locked for the day. “I haven’t had a key to that place since that big corporation bought us out and did all these renovations a few years back. They kept me on as an official owner, but it’s just a figurehead position.”

“It must be tough to not have a part in it anymore,” Ryan said.

“It is, it is, but they are paying me well enough, so I can live out my retirement in comfort. It gives me more time for my hobbies.”

In exchange for the pancakes, Gran put Ryan to work around the house. She said that one of the neighbours liked to check in on her that normally helped out, but it had been a few days and some work needed to be done. She had Ryan doing some cleaning, mostly dusting the lights and ceiling fans as well as the baseboards, places up high and low that were difficult for her with her low mobility. She had him gardening as well, weeding her front garden bed, which was slightly overgrown but still well cared for, and chopping down a few branches off of trees that hung over her gravel driveway so that cars wouldn’t drive into them. The compost pile was out behind the house and a ways away, and along the way were a few grape vines growing wildly along a freestanding wire fence. These plants were further along than the ones in the vineyard; the vines that had been pruned away were almost completely grown back, and they hung down far enough that they almost touched the ground. There was a slight smell of rotting, and the ground was dark and soft from where fresh compost had recently been added on top of the roots. 

Ryan spent a few minutes tucking the long vines into the fence so that they looked less wild. It was pretty different from the kind of work he was used to. Cleaning, sure, he had been cleaning things his entire life, from vacuuming the penthouse to cleaning up crime scenes, he was familiar with being thorough. But gardening, or farming, that was new. It was a nice feeling, nurturing something that was alive, being outside in the fresh air away from the city noise. 

“You did a lovely job there, and I didn’t even ask you to do it,” Gran appeared behind him. “You didn’t rip a single leaf.”

“I don’t think it’s for me, in the long run.” 

“No, I suppose not.” Gran said. “In any case, it’s time for lunch. I’ve made tea and sandwiches.”

Ryan sat down at the breakfast nook, and Gran put out a large serving plate with a number of sandwiches cut into neat triangles onto the table for them to take from, along with two mugs of black tea and some plates. 

“This looks great thanks,” Ryan said and took a sip of his tea. “I’d be happy to clean the dishes afterwords.”

“Thank you dear, I think I’ll manage on my own. You worry about lunch.”

The two ate mostly in silence, far more interested in the food than the conversation. Ryan was normally a fast eater, but he started to slow down as time went on. His movements in general were slower and slower, and his eyes became less focused, far worse than what the concussion did to him. He tried to stand up, but ended up on the floor instead. 

“Well, it’s about time now isn’t it?” Gran said. “Dreadfully sorry about this dear, but at my age, I just can’t afford to pick up someone from the city. At least I doubt anyone will miss you.”

“What did you do to me?”

“Just a little poison in the tea, not enough to kill you just yet. I just so rarely get to do this anymore, I’ve found myself spending more and more time with my guests lately.”

“You sound like you’re talking about bridge night, not serial murder,” Ryan said. He smiled, almost proud. “Forgive me if this sounds rude, but how are you moving the bodies around? You don’t seem like you could do it on your own.”

“My dear husband used to help me with these things, but he introduced me to a friend of his before he died that helps me from time to time.”

“Ah, I thought as much,” Ryan said, and neatly stood up. Gran gasped in surprise. “I should get going quickly then, before he gets here. I’m in no condition for a fight.”

“How is it not affecting you?” Gran moved her chair back from the table, but didn’t stand up.

“The poison wasn’t in the tea, it was in the sandwiches. You might have risked a nervous visitor like me not drinking strange liquids, but the sandwich pile would have been seen as safe to eat, since you were eating from the same pile,” Ryan said. “If you had only poisoned some, you would have risked me eating the wrong ones, as well as forgetting which were safe for yourself. The better bet is to just poison them all and take the antitoxin while I was still out in the yard. So I just took the antitoxin myself while I was dusting the bathroom.”

“How did you know?”

“Well I couldn’t find the antitoxin for the longest time, until I stumbled across your medicine cabinet,” Ryan said. “Pill bottles are a great way to hide something like that, and it would be easy for you to remember that way. Take this pill before bed, this pill before dinner, this pill before killing. I wasn’t completely sure which was the antitoxin, so I just took one of everything. I’m prooobably going to have an interesting night tonight. Oh, and then I switched around all the pill bottles so all your drugs are labeled wrong. In other words, chances are decent that you just took some kind of heart medication instead of the anti.” Sure enough, Gran was looking pale and was moving slow.

“Oh, sorry, did you mean how did I know that I was in danger?” Ryan continued, starting to enjoy it more. “You have spots of old blood inbetween your floorboards, you adapted way too quickly to a large man covered in blood at your door, and my cellphone had service not a ten minute walk from here last night. Probably the most damning, of course was your compost pile, though I wouldn’t have had enough time to notice before lunch if that’s all I was going off of. I know the smell of rotting human, and it’s different from the smell of rotting leaves. Dreadfully sorry Gran, but you made just one mistake. I’m not just some vagrant like the ones you and your husband used to pick up. You don’t have a TV or computer so you probably wouldn’t know. 

“I’m THE vagrant. The Vagabond”

[erintoknow]

tell me why

fallen hero fanfiction borrowing @ratkingkisses ‘s Zia for another spin. thanks to her for looking things over and giving me some very useful feedback! <3 ~2.7k words [ao3]

title taken from [LoveSpell by Snowblood]

Previously: [Nemesis Adrestia] | [Hear Me Out]

–––

It’s about when you’re forty feet in the air that you’re forced to concede that you may have miscalculated. Troposphere is a newbie corporate hero without a lot of information on her. But nothing had given any indication her fine control over wind was this precise.

Taking her on without backup had been a dumb idea. You never would have planned on this operation if you hadn’t been counting on Nemesis. So much for that. The moment Troposphere had blasted the two of you across a cube farm, she had booked it. Abandoned again. It’s fine. Or should have been fine.

Just–

Don’t think about that. Don’t think about the ground. Don’t think about falling. Angle your legs right, use your booster jets to slow your descent, hell, flair out the cape. Anything that might catch a little more friction. The ground is coming up too fast. This is going to hurt. Try to roll it? God willing.

Here. We. Go.

The air is forced out of your lungs as you hit the pavement, warning lights flashing in the periphery of your vision from the helmet HUD as you try to roll you momentum out and away from flattening you into the earth. A second impact as you hit a wall sends the world vibrating around you, more warning lights demanding attention.

Troposphere ascends from the sky, a curtain of dust kicking up in a halo around her feet, and you realize you’re in a heap upside down. Show off. Try to get up, and the corp-rat swings an arm, battening you back against the wall.

“Adrestia, had enough?”

Oh good, a talker.

“T-troposphere.” You cough out. Your voice sounds different, quieter, and you realize the distorter’s not working. If your head could stop ringing any day now that would be great.

“You know, I expected better from someone with your reputation.” She stalks towards you. Confident. You’re right where she wants you. Beaten, in a heap. Yeah, you know the script. But does she?

“That’s ah– that was your first mistake.”

She stands in front of you, hands on her hips. “Surrender before you make this any worse for yourself.” 

Surrender? No. Never. You’re not going back. You’ll die first.

She’s close. Too close. Now’s the chance. You crash your fist against the ground but before you can send out the nanovores a gust of air slams into you again sending your thoughts scattered like loose leafs.

“I don’t know what you think you’re doing Adrestia, but it’s not going to work.”

How are you getting out this? Can you get out of this? Your body is screaming complaints, so is the suit. Can’t even move without getting blasted. Is this it? Is it over? Is there a way you can get her to at least kill you? Better that than the alternative. Troposphere stares down at you, no mask for this corporate hero, You can see her smug glee perfectly well. 

She raises her hand and you brace yourself for another blast but it doesn’t come. Troposphere doesn’t move. Smile frozen, eyes unblinking. You groan; try to focus, try to get up. What is happening?

She twitches, a statue resuming life.

That’s when a flash of black and electric pink slams into the woman. The two figures go sprawling against the pavement. The surprise attacker recovers first, hooding cape swirling out behind her as she gets to her feet. And you know it’s a her because you’d recognize that getup anywhere.

“Zi- Nemesis?”

“To your feet dear,” Nemesis braces her stance, focused on Troposphere. “We need to finish this up before the pigs arrive.”

You pull yourself up with a hand against the wall as you take stock of the all the little pesky warning lights in your heads-up display. Troposphere shouts something under a blast of wind and you watch Nemesis twist to the side. A moment later a mailbox across the street tips over with an ear-splinting screech.

“What a waste of talent.” Nemesis tsks, as she dances around Troposphere. Circling in closer for another strike.

Can you fight? Battered, bruised. You don’t… you don’t think anything’s broken. Besides parts of the suit anyway. Did its job, thank god. No second heartbreaks tonight, praise be. Zia’s keeping up with Troposphere but it’s taking all her concentration to make sure those gale force winds miss. You can feel it, the gravity of her attention pulling at you.

Gotta help somehow. Still too dazed to do any fancy mental tricks but… Zia– Nemesis could, if she could spare the focus. Just gotta give her an opening. But can you do it? Only one way to find out. Leap before you look.

You push off from the wall and dash towards Troposhere while she has her back to you. Drop into a slide as she turns to try and blast you, the rush of air firing over your head like a bullet as the friction of the asphalt eats away at the paint of your armor. Shift your weight; use the jump-jets to launch you into a rising punch into her solar-plexus. There is, you have to admit, a certain satisfaction in winding the wind-woman.

Whatever curse Troposphere utters is drowned out as another blast of air slams you back into the ground, the back of your head cracks against your helmet. 

———

“-you behind–” Back of your head is hurts like hell. “–can’t–––you–––come on–” Something’s shaking you, and it’s not helping. Talking? Voices? No, voice, singular. “This is no time to sleep on the job.” Voice stressed underneath distortion.

Eyes open. Wake up. Stay awake. Survive. Evade. Resist. Escape. There’s lines splitting through your vision, and oh yeah you’re wearing a helmet. Cracked? Stay awake. Fighting with someone? For someone? You groan. That corp hero. Goddamnit. You got blasted point blank. Well maybe Nemesis at least–

“Can you stand? We need to move, now.” Nemesis? Yeah, there she is. Scratches on the faceplate of her helmet. Are those new?

Doesn’t matter. You let Nemesis pull you to your feet, feel the world swing wildly around you and have to grab on to her. She puts your arm over her shoulder to brace you up. “Let’s go.” She hisses in scratchy static. “We don’t have time.”

“What–” you start.

“Later.” An order. Not up for debate.

This isn’t the courtyard. How far did Nemesis drag you before you woke up? It’s not often you feel genuinely lost. Not a great feeling. Cling to Nemesis a little tighter as the thrum of a news helicopter echos overhead. Police sirens. No doubt the Rangers are combing the area. She was right, no time. You’re going to have to trust Nemesis. Great.

The two of you shuffle through alleyways, avoiding the street. At one point, Nemesis stops in front of a seemingly random backdoor. “Can you stand now?”

You wince. The back of your head still hurts like hell, and you can already tell your legs are going to be extremely cross with you in the morning, but– “Yeah. Think so?” Hearing your own voice without distortion is a strange feeling. Like you’re not Adrestia anymore. Just some girl that got carried away with playing dress-up.

“Good.” Nemesis slides your arm off her shoulder. You put a hand out to the wall next to you to hold yourself up. “I need both hands free.” Is the only explanation she gives as she crouches down in front of the door, wherein she does… something. You’re not sure what. You get the briefest sense of her telepathic focus but you’re still too out of it to parse it.

It only takes a minute and the door swings open. “Follow closely now, dear. We don’t have time to wander.”

“Wander?” You follow her into the gloom and a puzzle piece clicks together in your head. “Oh. A service entrance.”

“I’m not chancing ladders with you in that condition. Can you even see in that helmet, darling?” Nemesis glances back in your direction, or at least you think she does. Between the cracks the visor and the dim haze…

You reach up and unfasten your helmet. Risky, but getting lost is riskier. “Problem solved.” You offer, clipping it to your utility belt.

“Hrm.” Nemesis turns, leading the way through the building. “Well darling, I’m always happy to see your face.”

“Uh-huh.” Maybe that would have gotten you to once. At this point you’ve come to accept that this is just how Zia operates. “Like you can even see my face in this light.”

“Oh, I can think of a few things I’d like to see in the light.”

“I– what?” Okay, maybe you’re not completely inured to her attempts to throw you yet.

“Come on now, stick close.” Nemesis offers a hand back towards you. “Can’t have you getting lost in the dark now, can we?”

Against your better judgement, you take it.

———

When the elevator chimes, you stumble out the door, trusting your telepathy that there’s no one else on this floor. Just you and her. That’s…

“Relax dear, I own the whole damn building. No more surprises.” Nemesis leads the way, motion-sensitive lights flicking on in or presence. A large workshop, desk, tables with spare armor parts. Nemesis pays you no mind as she steps off to the side and unbuckles her helmet. “Well, what do you think?”

“…not bad.” You concede, trying to smother the pang of jealousy. So much workspace! Windows!

“Of course, I spare no expense.” A smile plays at her mouth as she works to remove the rest of her suit. “I’m sure my handmaiden’s workshop is equally impressive?”

You glance around the workshop, trying to avoid looking at Zia, “Y-yeah. It’s, uh, fine… I guess?” You shake your head, run a hand through your hair. Too many questions running around and you’re not sure you’re brave enough to go looking for the answers.

Why did Zia come back for you?

Why did she drag you out of there?

While Zia busies herself getting out of her armor, you do the same. It’s certainly taken a beating tonight. Better it than you, but… You wince at the all the scraped paint. This is going to take forever to fix. Is dropping your armor while in Zia’s home the best decision? Maybe not, but you’re in no condition to fight any further tonight. You’ve already fallen out of one window tonight, what’s a few, less literal ones, between work partners?

When Zia shakes off the last boot of her suit and sets it aside, standing next to its pair. Just in a skinsuit now, she stretches her arms out and then up over her head.  “Alright darling, let’s see how bad the damage is.”

“W-what?” 

Zia walks towards you, looking you up and down now that you’re down to your own skinsuit. Out of her armor, she’s shorter than you. Not that it stops her from towering, full triple-x energy. You take a step back from her, can’t stop yourself. She clicks her tongue, focused on your face. “You don’t look like you have a concussion. That’s good.”

Scrunch up your face. “I’m fine, Zia. We– we both got out in one piece, that’s all that matters.”

“That is the most important bit, yes.” Zia reaches towards you and when you hold your ground, don’t flinch away, she puts her hand on your arm. “But there’s a whole checklist below that, dear.”

Don’t show weakness, don’t give her an in, throw her challenges back at her. “I didn’t take you to be such a worry wort, Zia.”

“Oh, I always worry about my things.”

Wait.

What?

What is she doing–

The kiss breaks, lips parted. The static hum of the A/C filling the silence. “Why… why did you do that…?” Are you asking her or yourself? Both? You’re not sure. Not sure of anything right now. Oh this is not a smart decision you’re making. Is it the concussion? The adrenaline? The way she’s looking at you right now; pupils wide, swallowing you.

Zia doesn’t let go, doesn’t let you look away. “Isn’t this what you wanted, dear?” She tilts her head, lets the hair fall over her eyes.

Lick your lips, ghost of cherry still. “An-and what do you want?” That’s the eternal question isn’t it. The thing you can’t figure out. Why is she here. Why is she still here.

There’s a smile on her face, genuine or another mask? So hard to read – to focus as she draws her fingers down your arm, tracing the lines you both know are there under the skinsuit. “Isn’t it obvious?”

Zia’s bedroom is a lot pinker than you expected it to be. Softer. A flash of the woman under the mask, maybe. You don’t know how to feel about getting to see that. At any rate, you skinsuit’s half off, A/C running, you should feel a lot colder than you do. You’ve got other things to focus on then Zia’s home decoration decisions.

Like Triple-X herself kneeling over you on her bed.

You shift under her, gently grab her arm. Try to swallow the lump in your throat. “What– what are we doing, Zia?”

“Well. I just…” Her fingers splay out over your chest, trace the patterns. “Can’t a girl have a little fun with her handmaiden?”

“I’m not–” You huff, roll your eyes, “Spare me the bullshit, Zia.”

Something in Zia’s expression twitches. A muscle under the eye maybe. A long, too-long stretch of time with only the A/C’s electric buzz to fill the void. “You could have died tonight.”

“So what?” Your response is cold, automatic. 

Zia’s expression hardens, lips pressed into a thin line. “So what?” She echoes. “So what?”

Zia pulls back, legs straddling your thighs. The hand on your chest lets go and then a sharp pain rings out across the right side of your face. You don’t let go of her arm, don’t move. Try to fit the pieces together.

“You don’t get to just–” Zia bites back something, glares down at you. “–throw your life away over my mistake, you idiot!”

“You’re… mad at me?” Your heartbeat doesn’t slow down any. You’ve never seen Zia break her composure like that.

“Of course I’m mad! Why would you do that!?”

“I… couldn’t just let you fight her alone.”

“Yes you can! Could have! Should have! I did! To you!”

You shake your head. “Why did you come back?”

“That was–” She glances away from you. “The whole point was to fight on the ground, not four stories up!”

“You’re lying again.”

“No!” There’s a pained look on her face. It’s kind of surreal. Like you’ve passed into the Twilight Zone. “…Fine. But I couldn’t– I came back.”

You tighten your grip on her arm. “But why?”

“Why do you?”

“I…” The words die in your throat. Is she… is she crying? Are you? What is happening right now?

Zia opens her mouth, but doesn’t say anything. Still glaring down at you. Eyes still a little too wet. Something is happening here and it’s scaring the hell out of you. Don’t… don’t think about it. It’s crazy. You’re crazy. This situation is crazy.

You let go of her arm. “I, uh– I think your mascara is starting to run.”

That gets a huff from her. “Frankly dear, that’s your fault.”

“I know.”

“How are you going to make it up to me?”

You let out your breath, empty your lungs. “Any suggestions?”

That brings a ghost of a smile back to her face. “Oh, I… I can think of a few things, sweetheart.” She takes your hands in hers. Softly, uncertain.

“I’m… not surprised.” You wait for her raise your hands up over your head. Is that your thought or hers? Are you picking up her thoughts now? Reading signs in the mirage? You keep waiting for her to do something, and it keeps not happening. 

She pulls back, fingers unraveling from yours. “You should… you should get some rest.”

“Zia?”

Huh.

This isn’t going to make your relationship with her any less complicated. That’s for sure.

[deniscollins]

Who Killed the Knapp Family?

The stock market is near record highs, but working-class Americans (often defined as those without college degrees) continue to struggle. If you’re only a high school graduate, or worse, a dropout, work no longer pays. If the federal minimum wage in 1968 had kept up with inflation and productivity, it would now be $22 an hour. Instead, it’s $7.25. In some ways, the situation is worsening, because families have imploded under the pressure of drug and alcohol abuse, and children are growing up in desperate circumstances. It would be easy but too simplistic to blame just automation and lost jobs: The problems are also rooted in disastrous policy choices over 50 years. If you owned a business, what, if anything, could you do to address this situation?

Chaos reigned daily on the No. 6 school bus, with working-class boys and girls flirting and gossiping and dreaming, brimming with mischief, bravado and optimism. Nick rode it every day in the 1970s with neighbors here in rural Oregon, neighbors like Farlan, Zealan, Rogena, Nathan and Keylan Knapp.

They were bright, rambunctious, upwardly mobile youngsters whose father had a good job installing pipes. The Knapps were thrilled to have just bought their own home, and everyone oohed and aahed when Farlan received a Ford Mustang for his 16th birthday.

Yet today about one-quarter of the children on that No. 6 bus are dead, mostly from drugs, suicide, alcohol or reckless accidents. Of the five Knapp kids who had once been so cheery, Farlan died of liver failure from drink and drugs, Zealan burned to death in a house fire while passed out drunk, Rogena died from hepatitis linked to drug use and Nathan blew himself up cooking meth. Keylan survived partly because he spent 13 years in a state penitentiary.

Among other kids on the bus, Mike died from suicide, Steve from the aftermath of a motorcycle accident, Cindy from depression and a heart attack, Jeff from a daredevil car crash, Billy from diabetes in prison, Kevin from obesity-related ailments, Tim from a construction accident, Sue from undetermined causes. And then there’s Chris, who is presumed dead after years of alcoholism and homelessness. At least one more is in prison, and another is homeless.

We Americans are locked in political combat and focused on President Trump, but there is a cancer gnawing at the nation that predates Trump and is larger than him. Suicides are at their highest rate since World War II; one child in seven is living with a parent suffering from substance abuse; a baby is born every 15 minutes after prenatal exposure to opioids; America is slipping as a great power.

We have deep structural problems that have been a half century in the making, under both political parties, and that are often transmitted from generation to generation. Only in America has life expectancy now fallen three years in a row, for the first time in a century, because of “deaths of despair.”

“The meaningfulness of the working-class life seems to have evaporated,” Angus Deaton, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, told us. “The economy just seems to have stopped delivering for these people.” Deaton and the economist Anne Case, who is also his wife, coined the term “deaths of despair” to describe the surge of mortality from alcohol, drugs and suicide.

The kids on the No. 6 bus rode into a cataclysm as working-class communities disintegrated across America because of lost jobs, broken families, gloom — and failed policies. The suffering was invisible to affluent Americans, but the consequences are now evident to all: The survivors mostly voted for Trump, some in hopes that he would rescue them, but under him the number of children without health insurance has risen by more than 400,000.

The stock market is near record highs, but working-class Americans (often defined as those without college degrees) continue to struggle. If you’re only a high school graduate, or worse, a dropout, work no longer pays. If the federal minimum wage in 1968 had kept up with inflation and productivity, it would now be $22 an hour. Instead, it’s $7.25.

We were foreign correspondents together for many years, periodically covering humanitarian crises in distant countries. Then we would return to the Kristof family farm in Yamhill and see a humanitarian crisis unfolding in a community we loved — and a similar unraveling was happening in towns across the country. This was not one town’s problem, but a crisis in the American system.

“I’m a capitalist, and even I think capitalism is broken,” says Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater, the world’s largest hedge fund.

Even in this presidential campaign, the unraveling of working-class communities receives little attention. There is talk about the middle class, but very little about the working class; we discuss college access but not the one in seven children who don’t graduate from high school. America is like a boat that is half-capsized, but those partying above water seem oblivious.

“We have to stop being obsessed over impeachment and start actually digging in and solving the problems that got Donald Trump elected in the first place,” Andrew Yang argued in the last Democratic presidential debate. Whatever you think of Yang as a candidate, on this he is dead right: We have to treat America’s cancer.

In some ways, the situation is worsening, because families have imploded under the pressure of drug and alcohol abuse, and children are growing up in desperate circumstances. One of our dearest friends in Yamhill, Clayton Green, a brilliant mechanic who was three years behind Nick in school, died last January, leaving five grandchildren — and all have been removed from their parents by the state for their protection. A local school official sighs that some children are “feral.”

Farlan, the oldest of the Knapp children, was in Nick’s grade. A talented woodworker, he dreamed of opening a business called “Farlan’s Far Out Fantastic Freaky Furniture.” But Farlan ended up dropping out of school after the ninth grade.

Although he never took high school chemistry, Farlan became a first-rate chemist: He was one of the first people in the Yamhill area to cook meth. For a time he was a successful entrepreneur known for his high quality merchandise. “This is what I was made for,” he once announced with quiet pride. But he abused his own drugs and by his 40s was gaunt and frail.

In some ways, he was a great dad, for he loved his two daughters, Amber and Andrea, and they idolized him. But theirs was not an optimal upbringing: In one of Amber’s baby pictures, there’s a plate of cocaine in the background.

Farlan died of liver failure in 2009, just after his 51st birthday, and his death devastated both daughters. Andrea, who was smart, talented, gorgeous and entrepreneurial, ran her own real estate business but accelerated her drinking after her dad died. “She drank herself to death,” her uncle Keylan told us. She was buried in 2013 at the age of 29.

In the 1970s and ’80s it was common to hear derogatory suggestions that the forces ripping apart African-American communities were rooted in “black culture.” The idea was that “deadbeat dads,” self-destructive drug abuse and family breakdown were the fundamental causes, and that all people needed to do was show “personal responsibility.”

A Harvard sociologist, William Julius Wilson, countered that the true underlying problem was lost jobs, and he turned out to be right. When good jobs left white towns like Yamhill a couple of decades later because of globalization and automation, the same pathologies unfolded there. Men in particular felt the loss not only of income but also of dignity that accompanied a good job. Lonely and troubled, they self-medicated with alcohol or drugs, and they accumulated criminal records that left them less employable and less marriageable. Family structure collapsed.

It would be easy but too simplistic to blame just automation and lost jobs: The problems are also rooted in disastrous policy choices over 50 years. The United States wrested power from labor and gave it to business, and it suppressed wages and cut taxes rather than invest in human capital, as our peer countries did. As other countries embraced universal health care, we did not; several counties in the United States have life expectancies shorter than those in Cambodia or Bangladesh.

One consequence is that the bottom end of America’s labor force is not very productive, in ways that reduce our country’s competitiveness. A low-end worker may not have a high school diploma and is often barely literate or numerate while also struggling with a dependency; more than seven million Americans also have suspended driver’s licenses for failing to pay child support or court-related debt, meaning that they may not reliably show up at work.

Americans also bought into a misconceived “personal responsibility” narrative that blamed people for being poor. It’s true, of course, that personal responsibility matters: People we spoke to often acknowledged engaging in self-destructive behaviors. But when you can predict wretched outcomes based on the ZIP code where a child is born, the problem is not bad choices the infant is making. If we’re going to obsess about personal responsibility, let’s also have a conversation about social responsibility.

Why did deaths of despair claim Farlan, Zealan, Nathan, Rogena and so many others? We see three important factors.

First, well-paying jobs disappeared, partly because of technology and globalization but also because of political pressure on unions and a general redistribution of power toward the wealthy and corporations.

Second, there was an explosion of drugs — oxycodone, meth, heroin, crack cocaine and fentanyl — aggravated by the reckless marketing of prescription painkillers by pharmaceutical companies.

Third, the war on drugs sent fathers and mothers to jail, shattering families.

There’s plenty of blame to go around. Both political parties embraced mass incarceration and the war on drugs, which was particularly devastating for black Americans, and ignored an education system that often consigned the poor — especially children of color — to failing schools. Since 1988, American schools have become increasingly segregated by race, and kids in poor districts perform on average four grade levels behind those in rich districts.

Farlan’s daughter Amber seemed to be the member of the Knapp family most poised for success. She was the first Knapp ever to graduate from high school, and then she took a job at a telecommunications company, managing databases and training staff members to use computer systems. We were struck by her intellect and interpersonal skills; it was easy to imagine her as a lawyer or a business executive.

“PowerPoint presentations and Excel and pivot charts and matrix analytics, that’s what I like to do,” she told us. She married and had three children, and for a time was thriving.

Then in grief after her father and sister died, she imploded. A doctor had prescribed medications like Xanax, and she became dependent on them. After running out of them, she began smoking meth for the first time when she was 32.

“I was dead set against it my whole life,” she remembered. “I hated it. I’d seen what it did to everybody. My dad was a junkie who cooked meth and lost everything. You would think that was enough.” It wasn’t. She bounced in and out of jail and lost her kids.

Amber knew she had blown it, but she was determined to recover her life and her children. We had hoped that Amber would claw her way back, proof that it is possible to escape the messiness of the Knapp family story and build a successful life. We texted Amber a few times to arrange to get photos of Farlan, and then she stopped replying to our texts. Finally, her daughter responded: Amber was back in jail.

Yet it’s not hopeless. America is polarized with ferocious arguments about social issues, but we should be able to agree on what doesn’t work: neglect and underinvestment in children. Here’s what does work.

Job training and retraining give people dignity as well as an economic lifeline. Such jobs programs are common in other countries.

For instance, autoworkers were laid off during the 2008-9 economic crisis both in Detroit and across the Canadian border in nearby Windsor, Ontario. As the scholar Victor Tan Chen has showed, the two countries responded differently. The United States focused on money, providing extended unemployment benefits. Canada emphasized job retraining, rapidly steering workers into new jobs in fields like health care, and Canadian workers also did not have to worry about losing health insurance.

Canada’s approach succeeded. The focus on job placement meant that Canadian workers were ushered more quickly back into workaday society and thus today seem less entangled in drugs and family breakdown.

Another successful strategy is investing not just in prisons but also in human capital to keep people out of prisons. The highest-return investments available in America may be in early education for disadvantaged children, but there are also valuable interventions available for adolescents and adults. We attended a thrilling graduation in Tulsa, Okla., for 17 women completing an impressive local drug treatment program called Women in Recovery.

The graduates had an average of 15 years of addiction each, and all were on probation after committing crimes. Yet they had quit drugs and started jobs, and 300 people in the audience — including police officers who had arrested them and judges who had sentenced them — gave the women a standing ovation. The state attorney general served as the commencement speaker and called them “heroes,” drawing tearful smiles from women more accustomed to being called “junkies” or “whores.”

“I thought we’d be planning a funeral instead,” said one audience member whose younger sister had started using meth at age 12 and was now graduating at 35. Women in Recovery has a recidivism rate after three years of only 4 percent, and consequently has saved Oklahoma $70 million in prison spending, according to the George Kaiser Family Foundation.

Bravo for philanthropy, but the United States would never build interstate highways through volunteers and donations, and we can’t build a national preschool program or a national drug recovery program with private money. We need the government to step up and jump-start nationwide programs in early childhood education, job retraining, drug treatment and more.

For individuals trying to break an addiction, a first step is to face up to the problem — and that’s what America should do as well. Our own reporting in the past focused on foreigners, affording us an emotional distance, while this time we spoke with old friends and had no armor. It has been wrenching to see them struggle. But ultimately we saw pathways forward that leave us hopeful.

One of our dear friends in Yamhill was Rick (Ricochet) Goff, who was part Indian and never had a chance: His mom died when he was 5 and his dad was, as he put it, “a professional drunk” who abandoned the family. Ricochet was a whiz at solving puzzles and so dependable a friend that he would lend pals money even when he couldn’t afford medicine for himself. We deeply felt Ricochet’s loss when he died four years ago, and we also worried about his adult son, Drew, who is smart and charismatic but had been messing with drugs since he was 12.

Drew’s son, Ashtyn, was born with drugs in his system, and we feared that the cycle of distress was now being passed on to the next generation. We exchanged letters with Drew while he was in prison but lost touch.

Then, when we were visiting a drug-treatment program in Oregon called Provoking Hope, a young man bounded over to us. “It’s me, Drew,” he said.

We have been close with Drew since, and he fills us with optimism. With the help of Provoking Hope, Drew will soon celebrate two years free of drugs, and he holds a responsible job at the front desk of a hotel. He has custody of Ashtyn and is now an outstanding dad, constantly speaking to him and playing with him. Drew still has a tempestuous side, and occasionally he has some rash impulse — but then he thinks of Ashtyn and reins himself in.

“I’m a work in progress,” he told us. “The old me wants to act out, and I won’t allow that.”

Drew keeps moving forward, and we believe he’s going to thrive along with Ashtyn, breaking the cycle that had enmeshed his family for generations. With support and balance, this can be done — if we as a society are willing to offer help, not just handcuffs.

“It’s a tightrope I’m walking on,” Drew said. “And sometimes it seems to be made of fishing line.”

[missytearex]

To Read List - Narry

This list is purely for myself to keep track of everything I still want to read. Its gonna change as I actually read though them and find more stuff to add.

Find fics I’ve already read here.

Narry

It Feels Like Years by wasp

It's easy to stop thinking, worrying, when he's with Niall, like it's all on instinct. (Community college!AU where basically Niall and Harry fall in love and there's kittens and cuddling for warmth and woo-ing and Liam and Louis are hopeless).

good enough to eat by brokendrums

Niall meets Harry on the set of Masterchef and is instantly attracted to him, even if he is a bit of a dick and far too smug for his own good. He finally cracks his determined exterior and a pretty mind blowing set of blowjobs later they start tentatively seeing each other, only Harry is far too invested in the competition and he just doesn’t have time for distractions like Niall

A MasterChef AU.

does it almost feel like nothing changed at all by estrella30

“You don’t have room to talk,” Louis says, pointing a finger at Harry and narrowing his eyes. “Seeing as how you were seventy five million years late to the meeting today.”

“Well I’m bloody well here now!” Harry shouts. Everyone goes quiet, Zayn even manages to pause whatever Robert Downey Jr. is doing on the telly, and it’s right then, in the middle of the first split second of quiet since Harry arrived that he hears it.

“Wait,” Harry says, cocking his head to the side and listening more closely. “Is that a baby crying?”

OR: Niall gets a baby left w him and Harry moves in to help him take care of her

And Maybe by CharacterDevelopment

“I want to kiss you,” Harry says slowly and nerve-wrackingly honest.

Niall blinks at him. “What?”

“Kissing. I want to kiss you, put our lips together, do the mouth tango, play tonsil hockey—”

Niall interrupts him. “I know what kissing is, Harry.”

“Well, you asked,” Harry says, defensive.

Broken-Hearted Boy by NarryMusings

Niall has watched Harry get his heart broken time after time, again and again. Harry just wants someone to love him. But Niall has always loved him and now that he's finally fed up with Harry not seeing it, Niall tells him.

If We Don't Leave This Town by EvilFriendOfMine

Harry moves to London and begins working at a small bookstore, when a blond-haired, blue-eyed Irishman runs into the store to hide from some no-so-friendly looking men. A relationship sparks but it's anything but easy as Harry has to deal with Niall being a key member of the London Irish Crew, along with his two friends, Louis and Liam. But Niall dreams of getting out one day and taking his friends and Harry with him, but leaving is a lot harder than any of them ever thought it would be.

a little drop for me by littlemissmeggie

Niall was amazed how much had changed in a year, how it didn’t hurt anymore. He’d been drowning in heartache and pain for months and suffocated by the weight of his sorrow.

And then he’d met Harry and been scared and heartbroken again, worried to love and hesitant to be loved. But Harry hadn’t left. He’d showed Niall what unconditional love—romantic unconditional love—felt like, whether out of naive innocence or stubborn determination, Niall wasn’t sure.

or...

If anyone asked Niall how he thought he would meet the love of his life, he wouldn’t have said that he expected to find him lying naked on the beach when he went for a walk at sunrise while on holiday.

future full of yesterdays by fliptomybside

Niall studies astrophysics, Harry studies Niall.

the parting line by from

Harry and Niall get married for a year to save twelve-thousand jobs (and maybe a couple of lives).

feels like home by outwardbound93

Harry shouldn’t feel so much like a little boy tucked into his sister’s side when he spent most of last night twined around Niall in his bed, competing to see who could get the other off more times. But growing up doesn’t seem to work like that. It’s not a switch that gets flicked, it’s like seeing where you want to go and building yourself a bridge to that place. Sometimes where you end up is nothing like you expected, and sometimes it’s like coming home.

out of the woods by countthestars

“Hi,” the boy says, leaning forward and resting his elbows on the counter, body language open in invitation. Niall half expects him to tip his chin up and bare his throat, but instead his smile grows wider, pulling crookedly at his mouth.

Niall's Kitchen by countthestars

Niall and Harry both have youtube cooking channels, and accidentally become rivals. An epistolary fic, of sorts.

must have been the mistletoe by countthestars

“Hey, Harry,” Niall says, voice low and conspiratorial. “Look up.”

“What?” Harry whispers back, because there's a lot to look at up there, blinking lights and boughs of garland and... “is that mistletoe?”

“'Fraid so,” Niall confirms. His lips twitch like he's fighting a smile, but he keeps a straight face as he taps his finger against his mouth. “It's bad luck not to kiss someone underneath mistletoe.”

hold me closer tiny dancer by countthestars

Dancing isn't really Harry's strong suit. Niall doesn't really care.

The Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows by KelliDiane

Unlike other kids of successful, wealthy parents Harry isn't skating by on good looks. Nor is he fifty piña coladas deep in Hawaii. Instead he spends his time learning, whether it's by reading a mountain of texts or hands on at his father's lab. There's an unspoken understanding between his father and himself that he'll take control of the company when his father no longer can. Harry would rather be well versed when he does, science really does interest him. If it interests him because it's genuinely cool or if it interests him because his father pays some kind of attention to him, well.

or

Another superpowers fic that nobody asked for.

remember that time on the bus by estrella30

“Yeah, sure,” Harry says. He smiles and shrugs happily. “I’m good with that.” He gestures to himself on the couch. “You want to like—like now?”

“No! Not now, I mean. One day. In the future.” Niall chews on his thumb and shrugs. “When we’re bored or something.”

Harry snorts a quiet laugh. Only Niall would think shagging a mate would be a good way to kill some time when bored on the bus.

Well. All right. It’s not as if the thought’s never crossed Harry’s mind.

or: harry and niall start shagging

stay, stay, stay. . . (stay.) by badjujuboo (miztrezboo)

Niall keeps a gun by the bed now.

Harry doesn't think Niall knows he knows.

OR an au of the on the streets/gangland type description, drug and alcohol use, violence offscreen, past rough sex (barely mentioned), romantic sex (because we need both sides), somewhat discussed unprotected sex, guns and being shot at and shot, and minor character death (because its a gangland fic and i'm sorry?)

show me by zouee

"i was thinking..." harry begins, scratching the back of his neck hesitantly. he feels niall's eyes on him and his cheeks start to feel hot. "what if we made a sex tape?"

the one where niall and harry are roommates who are close to broke, and are desperate to do anything for money.

high on a pleasure wheel by brokendrums

Niall wakes up the morning after the Billboard Awards married to Harry. Too hungover to face the media storm, he takes up Harry’s offer to drive him home to LA.

the taste was sweeter by brokendrums

On his 18th birthday, Niall travels into the future and ends up meeting his 24 year old self.

only talk about a bruise by brokendrums

With the eclipse fast approaching, the pack is thrown into crisis. New to it all, Harry tries to find his place.

see me in a new light by brokendrums

Niall joins the production team for Planet Earth II and Harry has an interesting proposition.

my remedy for yesterday by brokendrums

It’s been three years since One Direction finally parted ways. Three long years where Niall’s stayed away from home on a never ending holiday. Three years since he’s seen Harry in the flesh and not just splashed across the tabloids or overplayed on the radio.

Niall’s just docked his boat in Ibiza, ready to soak up the sun, when an unexpected accident brings Harry into his life again. And while Niall recuperates on Harry’s patch of sandy white beach old feelings start to emerge, not all of them pleasant.

If we dream forever, whatever happens next by brokendrums

Niall meets Harry on the train and can't stop thinking about him. Then one evening when they get off the train, Harry invites him back to his.

all of the places i ain't ever been by theamazingpeterparker

Harry takes his dinner back to his bedroom, determined to chip away at his book that he came here to write. He’s not sure what it really is yet but he knows he wants it to be in the countryside, maybe a love story without the distractions of a city or a corporate job or a huge population to get in the way.

Or, Harry rents a room on a farm in exchange for working as a farmhand.

something softer than us by theamazingpeterparker

He almost told him then, leaning forward like the thought hit him with enough force that he'd say it out loud. He had bit his tongue, let Niall carry on his explanation against the backdrop of a setting sun across the river from the ballpark. Harry supposes then that he'd loved Niall for a long time now, anyway.

Niall's cat's name is Lunchbox, Louis has definitely been in love, Zayn won't shut up about the Antonine Plague, and Harry doesn't know how to tell Niall that he's in love with him.

dear, i'm always running towards you by goreallegore

He blocks it all out, the cheers, the profanities of overzealous fans from the opposing team, and focuses on one thing, a soft gravelly voice, “Good things take time.”

Or; Niall plays for FC Barcelona, and Harry's a photographer.

a better beginning by goreallegore

Zayn and Liam are attached to the hip, Louis is always putting his foot where it's not needed, and Niall and Harry are ever so quietly in love.

a rising tide like an hour glass by goreallegore

Harry climbs over him, his legs slotting on either sides of Niall, his body flush against Niall’s. He nibbles on Niall’s lowerlip, then licks the seam of his mouth and causes him to elicit a soft - needy - moan. No feelings in the Glade, Niall remembers. Or, he doesn’t. It’s all kind of a haze to be honest.

Or; Niall and Harry are runners.

cook up a recipe for my beating heart by goreallegore

“So, what say wanna live with me? I’ll cook Sunday breakfasts,” Niall says.

“And I’ll make your favorite pastry,” Harry replies.

“Tarte Tartin.” Cause that’s what their love is. A bit of sour and sweet.

Or; Niall and Harry cook.

can't believe I captured your heart by goreallegore

Niall shrugs, “thanks, couldn’t bear living on campus after freshmen year. So moved in here my second year with me mate.”

Harry nods, pausing to repeat Niall’s words in his head, “wait, you’re not a second year?” Please don’t say senior. Please.

“Third year.” Thank god.

Harry sighs in relief, “so ready for the movie?”

Or; Niall likes movies. And Harry is just trying to figure himself out.

baby, we're like a time bomb by goreallegore

“You know that frown thing doesn’t suit you. Look like a lost pug or summat,” he chuckles, his grip tight on the steering wheel.

“I like pugs,” Harry answers simply, and Niall has to turn and look at the boy next to him and it really shouldn’t surprise him because he has known this since day one, but Harry is beautiful. Even the frown that has found a new home on his always smiling face looks pretty – could call it painfully beautiful.

“I do too, though, I like happy ones. Don’t you?” he prods, and that does it as he turns, again, to find a smiling Harry, “there it is. I knew there was something missing.”

Harry ducks his head, avoiding Niall’s gaze, “you’re doing it again.”

“Doing what?”

“Flirting.”

Or; there are timers, but Harry and Niall are too in love to care.

the whole world is sleeping, but my world is you by goreallegore

“Say if I were to leave for forever, would it be okay?”

Niall reaches for Harry’s hand, intertwining their fingers as if the gaps between their fingers were made to be filled by each other, “Only if it makes you happy. ‘Sides, I’d probably follow you to ends of time. Can’t afford losing me best mate.” A slight blush decorates Niall’s cheeks and the dim lighting of the room makes the boy look – ethereal, Harry thinks. Harry is completely endeared by the sight before him.

Or; Harry lives his dreams and Niall helps him save them.

the name forever on my lips is yours by goreallegore

“What did you forget?” his voice was small, Niall was afraid that Harry might’ve not heard him but the look on his face said the opposite.

“I never clearly told you how I feel about you,” Harry stopped to pull out a journal from his back pocket, “I wrote about it you see.” He was holding a battered moleskin that seemed like it had ink all over it. Niall had seen it before but never dared to ask what it was; but now that Harry stood in front of him shyly flipping through the pages, he realized what it was. Niall felt like he was running short on air.

Or; Niall is a modern day Prince and Harry is no damsel in distress.

First Person by Gorgeous Nerd (gorgeousnerd)

Harry doesn't know why Niall wants to see him when he loses a year of memories. But Harry can't go anywhere else.

Follow You Through The Dark by disarm_d

Harry discovers that Niall is a vampire and has some valid concerns.

the mad ones (pool party remix) by irishmizzy, miss_bennie

Harry buys a car in NYC = OT5 road trip to LA. 24-hour diners, shit hotels, Polaroids, golf, line dancing, and too many people in the backseat: this is what dreams are made of.

Christmas Wishes by narrywings

Harry's hoping to go home for a quiet Christmas - but everything gets derailed when Niall calls unexpectedly.

It's Christmas. That Means We Have To Hold Hands. by holyzarrialltrinity

"As the day went on, Niall started worrying less about the way he felt. All he knew is that being around Harry made him feel happy. And being with him in the best city on Earth was even better. It made him forget for a moment about all the stuff back home. He just wanted to be with Harry for however long they had. There was some unspoken romance happening between the two of them and they both could tell. But instead of words, they just held hands really tight."

Niall hates his family. Harry barely has one. But when you spend time with someone new in the greatest city in the world, there's always room for a little change in your life.

love actually is all around by storuns

A small smile appears on Harry’s face and he scoots closer to Niall, resting his head on his shoulder. Niall wraps his arm around him and moves his hand up to rub his shoulder, earning a couple of coos from Louis and Liam across the table. Harry laughs and throws French fries at both of them. He looks up at Niall and grins as he watches him throw his head back in laughter. For some reason, a warm feeling overwhelms his chest and he feels like hugging Niall tightly and kissing all over his face. But, of course, he has control and all he can do is imagine it in his head.

Or the one where Harry and Niall go to Mullingar for Christmas, and stuff happens.

Time Has Brought Your Heart to Me by fakeheaux

Harry meets Niall, and feels a connection, so he gets to know him just a bit more.

Or the one where Harry and Niall are soulmates.

hear this heartbeat breaking through by acastle

He feels another shock of warmth, much more intense, much more overwhelming, as he looks at him. Watches Bailey cling on to this person tightly, laughing as he’s lifted off the ground. He doesn’t know how to describe it, but he’s sure. Very sure, that it is a positive feeling. He doesn’t know how to react to it, really.

(In which Harry is an amateur boxer, raising his son on his own after the hardest few months of his life, then he meets the piano teacher with a beautiful heart.)

a rush inside i can't control by dramaturgicallycorrect

all seems to stay for as long as he can -- that what it feels like to Harry, like Niall’s only ever there until he can’t be there anymore, until something’s tugging him away and he has to follow. Every day he seems to be able to stay longer, sometimes up to hours at a time before he’s tugged away. Every time he goes, Niall leaves his glasses on the kitchen table like a promise.

[Or Harry’s rented a cabin by the woods in Mullingar to write his new album and he doesn’t know that both of his muses are Niall.]

the world still turns by dramaturgicallycorrect

It’s not like he’s not seen any of them over the last eighteen months -- he has – but certainly not all once, not like the way it used to be. Not even the 2015 Way It Used To Be, because even before Zayn left they’d all pretty much tried to do their own thing. Like Just Starting Out Way It Used To Be when they were too scared to let go of each other because they didn’t have anybody else.

Niall had always had his family and the crew and all, but most days it felt like it was just the five of them and nobody else. And the world was laid out in front of them for the taking and they didn’t know who they were or who they wanted to be. Some days Niall still doesn’t know who he is or who he wants to be and he thinks that’s just as comforting as it is terrifying.

You’re not supposed to have it all figured out by age 23. He thinks people forget that sometimes.

[Or Niall organizes a lads’ holiday to see if they still fit.]

let's start right now by dramaturgicallycorrect

He turns to Harry. “Do you mind, like. Can I take a picture of your driver’s license?”

“Yeah,” Harry says easily, fishing his wallet out and presenting him with a California license to match his California plates. He has got an LA address, Niall notes as he snaps a picture. He’s got longer hair in this picture, waving down to brush his shoulders, a far sight from the short crop he's got now. It looks just as good on him, he notes almost subconsciously.

He texts the picture to Louis as Harry puts the license away, give this to the police if I go missing ..

What have you done Neil?? comes Louis’ answer quickly, but Niall ignores it, looks up to find Harry looking back at him.

“It’ll be fun.”

“Promise?”

Harry tilts his head. “I never make promises. You’ll just have to trust me.”

[Or Harry's a professional cross country road trip driver, and Niall is his latest fare.]

call this what you like by dramaturgicallycorrect

“Who was that?” Laura asks, something sly on her face that Niall quite wishes she’d wipe off.

It twists Niall’s stomach anyway, to say, “My mate Harry,” when the truth of it is mates aren’t supposed to catch your breath in your chest talking to them.

He doesn’t know what to do with the feeling, so he presses it away, deep into that box of other nasty feelings he doesn’t want, the ones that haunt him, the you’re never going to get a gig, the you’re going to end up alone.

The thing is, it doesn’t feel like a nasty feeling. It feels like something he should explore instead of hide, because it feels good. But he’s felt it, maybe just once or twice before, and nothing good’s ever come of it. Not a single person’s understood. So Niall locks it up tight and swears he’ll lose the key.

[Or Harry’s looking for love in all the wrong places, and Niall’s not meant to be looking at all.]

only fools rush in by darlingjustdont

niall holds up his hand to show off the band, unthinkingly pushed onto his fourth finger. harry stares at it. “i woke up with it on my thumb.” “did i get one?” says harry, now staring at his own hands. there’s a simple silver ring on his left hand. “oh fuck, i did. holy fuck, niall. i think we got married.”

a post-zayn, non-hiatus au where niall and harry accidentally get married in vegas. it's a bit problematic, mostly because niall's been in love with harry for a long time.

once in your life by wearecities (falsetto)

There’s a moment of silence where Harry considers just passing out right there, head hanging off the bed, because the alcohol’s finally catching up to him in the most unpleasant way. “When we’re thirty?”

“When we’re thirty.” Harry repeats. His eyelids are slowly drooping closed, fingers going slack around the beer he’s clutching. He’s just slipping over the edge when there’s the rustle of material and he squints open one eye to look at Niall.

"We’ve done stupider things.” Niall shrugs.

Niall and Harry make a marriage pact.

and we're starting at the end by dessertmeltdown

The first time Harry sees Niall he's bouncing around bootcamp with a guitar.

See You Later, Boy by marcel

One day, Niall runs Harry over with a skateboard.

Maybe With Me by threeturn

Harry tries to help Niall hook up. Set during the American leg of the TMH tour.

Turn all your grey skies blue. by mogigraphia

Niall's a new single dad, and Harry's his daughter's teacher at the daycare.

it’s kind of our routine by somerdaye

Niall only gets to kiss Harry on New Year’s, and does not in any way want more than that. Really.

You and I Misbehaving by BlackWave

Harry and Niall bake and fail to be proper human adults.

Everything Comes Back To You by Narryornarry

Niall and Harry go to Mullingar, and fall in love in the process.

a true thing by from

NYC, December 2014. Nothing lasts, especially not a shared tub of cereal milk ice cream, but they’re Harry and Niall, and they'll move on with the new.

find a way out of myself again by mozartspiano

harry can't go home so he makes a new one.

AU set in montreal, canada.

Mastering the Art of Friends Cooking by el_em_en_oh_pee

Niall has spent years of practice preparing for his appearance on the Next Food Network Star. He expected his life to change as a result of it - just not quite in this way.

Always Wanna Blow Your Mind by jibrailis

Harry accidentally buys a ring that gives him special sex powers. It’s terribly confusing for everyone involved.

Uncertainty Principle by jibrailis

He didn’t expect this: Australia, the vineyard, and Niall who won’t look him in the eye.

and show me why you deserve to have it all by intherubble

Genetics could go eat a dick as far as Harry is concerned. He just wishes he still had one. (written January 2012)

I Can Be Your New Addiction by estrella30

And that’s another problem. Harry is way too aware of Niall right now to get entirely comfortable. He’s just…

Niall is just there – right there – and Harry is having all sorts of ridiculous thoughts about him.

days grow on colorful trees by criminiallar

He’ll miss nights when they scroll through their phones side by side and Skype with their friends from opposite sides of the room, and he’ll miss leaning over whenever the mood strikes him, nudging his nose against Harry’s jogging bottoms that he’s taken to wearing around the house and looking up with a hopeful grin and Harry leaning back on his elbows with a flourish of his hands before he tips over, smiling at the ceiling with a, “Have at it, then.”

Happy Genius Heroes by BlackWave

Niall is an aspiring evil genius (who isn't very evil at all). Harry is his pretty assistant. Liam is the visiting friend and Louis and Zayn are meddlesome superheroes.

it's the way we are together by roofpizza

Harry leans against the shelf and opens his mouth to say something witty and probably super sexy when Niall interrupts him with a snort. “Do those kinds of lines get you anywhere?”

“Most of the time,” Harry shrugs, and it’s true, because he has quite a bit of charm, and it tends to work in his favor, despite his cheesy lines. “I’m charming.”

“I suppose you are,” Niall laughs, and Harry can’t help the smile that spreads across his face.

you don't need me anymore by outwardbound93

Rain riddles the sea like bullets and the dark storm clouds hang just above ceiling height, but Niall doesn’t have the panicky crushed feeling he sometimes gets. The little house feels cozy with his baby asleep in the next room and Harry’s lip jutting out in a pout.

Or, Niall becomes a dad.

hold on by outwardbound93

Funny, Niall thinks, that for all their success ordinary terrible things happen to them just like anybody else. Girlfriends get tired of the fans or get panicked about too much commitment, and bandmates slip going into the pool and lose five years’ worth of memories.

i sing you like a song i heard when i was young by disequilibrium

Niall never thought he’d find his way back home. But then, the wind works in mysterious ways: a stranger at the door, an impossible escape. A whisper that changes everything, forever, again.

always be your boy by saysthemagpie

In retrospect, becoming part of the world’s biggest boy band might not have been the smartest move for someone with Niall’s 'special condition,' what with the whole never-aging thing and the insatiable thirst for human blood.

Niall's a vampire. Harry's his human boyfriend. Harry thinks he should probably become a vampire, too.

Sad Blue Eyes by Mcwarr

“To the rest of the world, Harry had no qualms with being an absolute asshole but when it came to Niall, all bets were off.”

the one with all the football by irishmizzy, miss_bennie

Senior year was supposed to be the best ever – that is, until Louis goes through a breakup over the summer and Zayn starts acting weird. With everything falling apart, Niall, Liam, and Harry are doing their best to keep it together, but it’s easier said than done. If nothing else, at least Niall’s got Harry.

[2015 One Direction as told through an American College AU]

and you know in your heart it'll be worth it by outwardbound93

“At home, we sleep on the,” he points at the ceiling. “The top, so we don’t float away.”

Niall laughs. “The ceiling, you mean?” He traces the line of Harry’s dimple. “I figured you slept inside a castle, like in the pictures of what Atlantis looked like.”

“I doubt that’s accurate,” Harry says. He palms Niall’s thigh, running his hand down to his knee, where he pauses to feel out the unfamiliar bones with his fingertips. “Otters sleep holding hands so they won’t drift apart, did you know that?”

“What, are you an otter?” Niall asks.

“No, but it might not be too bad,” Harry says. He lays his head to rest on Niall’s chest, over his heart. His fingers tangle with Niall’s in the sheets, his skin tanned and smooth, Niall’s pale and scarred.

"Eh,” Niall says. “It’s not too bad, I guess.”

We Could Be Enough by balefully

One Direction reconvenes after two years at Niall's cabin in Connemara for Christmas. Niall and Harry haven't spoken during the break, but they relearn each other and fall into something they never expected.

Super Beautiful Sex Machine by jibrailis

Niall Horan, porn star.

you're the truth i can't explain by takesmeunder

When Harry gets hired to be Niall Horan's celebrity photographer, he's expecting a learning experience and a chance to see the world. Determined to keep his business and personal lives separate, Harry tries desperately to keep things professional. The last thing he's expecting is to fall for a rockstar.

Relatable Content by makesomelove

Harry glances down at the floor, then up at Niall, lip curling up in a bashful smirk. Niall wants terribly to kiss him. The opportunity is right there in front of him, and it's the worst idea in the entire world.

It would reach the press. He'd be in the news - CEO and Founder of BeepFodder Niall Horan Sexually Manipulates Underlings. His mum has an alert for him on her computer and she'd see it and have a heart attack. They'd lose sponsors. Even if they didn't publish the footage, it'd still exist. It all still would have happened. Harry would know Niall likes him. The thought of the most vulnerable spots in his heart being captured on film and shown to millions of people makes Niall sick. Going through with this in a legitimate way would ruin his life no matter what.

in the golden afternoon by bisousniall

Niall can talk to flowers, but his life is pretty uncomplicated despite this. Until Harry shows up.

A Spell That Can't Be Broken (orphan_account)

He hears the people around them whisper, saying that he's got this boy under a tragic spell. Niall thinks they've got it all wrong. It's him who's caught under Harry's spell.

[Niall's a witch, Harry doesn't know this, and it's all on Niall if this blows up in his face.]

watch you on the red horizon by littlecather

“Just us,” he murmurs. “If - we’re talking about, like. Always.”

Harry nods. “Just us,” he repeats, voice a cracked whisper.

It's 2018, a year after One Direction has ended. Niall and Harry may or may not accidentally become soul mates.

Yoga To Be Joking by mdashes

The tags explain everything, I think. (Yoga, Autofellatio)

slow and steady (your hand fits in mine) by leitmotifs (orphan_account)

Niall slips the case shut, running his fingers along the top until they reach the handle. “Would you come with me?”

Harry raises an eyebrow. “Right now, or in general?”

Niall decides to humor him. “In general.”

“Always.”

---

Or: Their first Christmas since the accident, and Harry promises to take care of Niall.

i'll pull you closer by leitmotifs (orphan_account)

“You’re a fish,” Harry says.

“Am not.”

“You have a tail.”

“ ‘m not a fish.” Niall sounds vaguely affronted. “I’m a siren.”

“Uh huh. Care to elaborate on that?” Harry snips.

“Well,” Niall says thoughtfully, “I’m supposed to seduce you with my voice, lure you in, and then viciously devour your flesh.”

till you know that the words are right by el_em_en_oh_pee

Somehow, at this stage in his career, waking up with breasts and a vagina on the morning of the biggest show of his life doesn't even seem that comparatively weird to Niall.

Welcome to the Jungle by peerpressure

Harry, Louis and Zayn are in a band (it's not an indie band and definitely not a tribute band).

Harry falls in love with Niall a little too hard and a little too fast. It's not very punk rock.

we're on fire now by leitmotifs (orphan_account)

In which Harry and Niall are two of the best spies in the world, except maybe not really, because they're enemies and one is not supposed to fraternize with the enemy, but it keeps happening anyway. Liam is very exasperated.

i won't be on my own by sakabelle

Harry takes a quick trip back to London to care for his ailing boyfriend.

Benefits by sakabelle

It begins at Jay and Dan's wedding. It's supposed to be a laugh, really. Niall and Harry showing up there together because they've got no one else to bring.

It continues because Niall's always got to have some sort of fling going on whenever they're home from the tour. It's just that Harry never expected that he'd be one of those flings.

Holding Me Hostage by sakabelle

Niall Horan is content to keep to himself for his thirteen month prison sentence. He's content to stay out of trouble. Content to do his time and get out. But within the walls of HM Forest Bank, everyone's got a secret. Everyone's got a purpose. Everyone's got to get through their time somehow.

Which is how Niall finds himself with a lot more problems than he ever had on the outside.

To the Stars by sakabelle

The last place Niall Horan wanted to be was a first class passenger on the Titanic, headed to America. His father was forcing him into a life he didn’t want, full of business meetings and ritzy parties. Simply put, he was miserable.

Until he met Harry Styles. A passenger in steerage who would turn his entire life upside down.

A Titanic movie AU.

Piccadilly by anb123

Based on this prompt: fic where niall is a famous pop star who takes the tube every chance he can get, mostly because it’s one aspect of his life that makes him feel more normal and harry’s the cute college student who also takes the tube, has absolutely no clue who niall is, so when niall grins at him from the other side of the car, harry just thinks niall’s a normal lad flirting with him by niallharold on Tumblr.

Famous Niall & uni student Harry meet on the tube. Life ensues.

show me your love (orphan_account)

niall and harry go to las vegas as best friends and go home married.

and if it's quite alright, you could be my way of life by lizzybean

A comfy cozy, post break up, slightly golf!AU where Harry fills all the cracks and gaps left in Niall's heart.

A Slide Into First by siempreniall

Niall's a minor league star baseball player, Harry's in love with him, Liam makes really good hot dogs, Louis's a mascot wrench, and Zayn shows up to pull everything together.

Love Muffins by alexenglish

A story about something at first sight. In which Niall didn't call, Harry stress bakes, Louis meddles, Zayn and Liam are... Zayn and Liam, and everything works out in the end.

What's A Fella T' Do? by iwanna_seeyou_undoit

Pretend!Boyfriends AU where Harry doesn't own any trousers that don't have holes in them, Niall is the only one who can drive, and they definitely aren't shagging.

take me with you by outwardbound93

“I’m dating Niall,” Harry blurts out in the middle of their interview with Scott Mills. Liam’s, Louis’s, and Scott’s heads all swing around to him. Niall doesn’t so much as blink.

If it's torn we can stitch it up by ifzi0531

Niall shifts his feet nervously. He still doesn’t know if this is the right decision but he stares back at the small name card in his hand. “Hi, it’s Niall. The one from juvie. You gave me your card, and asked me to call you if I ever needed your help.”

“Hi, Niall! What can I do for you? Are you in trouble again?”

Niall shakes his head like he always does when people are asking him questions. It’s what he does, giving them non-verbal answers. But then he realizes he’s talking through the phone, so he speaks out loud again. “I-,” Niall trails off, tightening his grip on the phone. He stares at the ground, hoping that the ground would swallow him. “My mum kicked me out of the house.”

or

The Orange County (O.C) AU

how to make two lovers of friends by petals

The first time they meet, they hate each other. Or, Harry hates Niall. The second time they meet, Niall doesn't remember Harry. He says he did. The third time they meet, they become friends. They're friends for a long time. And then they're not. And then they fall in love.

Or a When Harry Met Sally au

My Kiss Can Mend Your Broken Heart by PigSlay

After Zayn leaves the band, Niall withdraws into his head. He tries his best to keep up appearances (both in public and in front of the boys) but it's not hard to notice when he falters. Harry is the first one to do something about it.

and the history books forgot about us by roofpizza

for the prompt: A timeline of how narry came to be narry from X-Factor bootcamp to the OTRA tour.

or

Niall is having the worst day of his life.

it's not just where you lay your head by disequilibrium

Harry chuckles a little.

“I am. Cry at everything. Sad movies, the lot.”

Niall smiles.

“Yeah, I know.”

And he does know. He’s sort of started to know Harry like the back of his hand. He might even go so far as to say he’s his best friend. And that makes everything else all the more difficult.

friends just sleep in another bed by littlecather

“Just - I’ve just been hanging out with Harry. A lot - slept over a couple of times.”

“You slept over?” Dougie echoes.

"Not like that," Niall rolls his eyes - even though it kind of is.

Tour starts; Niall and Harry grow closer.

Know Your Place by siempreniall

Niall's place in life has changed a lot. He's always left trying to figure out where he truly belongs, with whom he truly belongs. It just takes a few tries and a few life-changing, impossible events for him to get it right.

Everything Comes Back To You by alliecat23784

A canon compliant fic where Harry and Niall are very much in love and manage to keep their relationship strong while both touring the world at the same time.

(And I’m queer for math!) by softly (alexenglish)

No no, we aren’t breaking up! You didn’t let me finish. I’m gay for YOU.

all the time before i knew you by littlemissmeggie

“I’ve heard you like Scrabble,” said Niall. He considered Harry. Maybe Louis was right and he and Harry would make good friends.

“Yeah.” Harry nodded enthusiastically, eyes lighting up. “I go to the Scrabble club at my library.”

“I think I’ve got a Scrabble set round my flat somewhere,” Niall told him. He shrugged and shot Harry a crooked grin. “If you don’t mind playing with a set that’s almost certainly missing a few letters.”

“Oh,” said Harry slowly, understanding seeming to dawn on him. A flicker of something Niall couldn’t identify crossed his face. “Um, that might- that might be a challenge. I’d better- I’ll probably stick with the sets at the library.” He gave Niall a sad, apologetic half-smile. “I should get back to, um, back to wardrobe."

“Don’t be offended,” said Louis, moving closer to Niall. “It’s not you. It’s not me. It’s Grimshaw. Fucking twat.”

Up-and-coming model Harry Styles falls under the charms of his long-time celebrity crush, emotionally manipulative Nick Grimshaw. After some poking and prodding and meddling from his friend Louis, Harry befriends fellow model Niall Horan and soon realises that friendship—and maybe true love—should be a bit more like this.

if I got a condo on a cloud then I guess you can stay at my place (orphan_account)

“I think I can make it. Wait so are we gonna have to hold hands and stuff?” Niall asks Harry and Harry blushes and looks down at his feet awkwardly.

“I- you don’t have too. You can just hover.” --

Harry can't just show up to his sister's wedding where his ex boyfriend is going to be without somebody with him, I mean he can't just loiter around the chocolate fountain. So that's why he enlists Niall's help.

The Wedding Singer by littlecather

It's not that Harry doesn't believe in love, exactly - he just thinks that romance and marriage and all that comes with it are overrated. Niall has sung at over a hundred weddings, and is determined to prove Harry wrong. After all - there's a reason for all those songs.

Frenemies by alteringegoism

Harry hates Niall. Niall hates Harry. But Harry wants Zayn and in order to get to him, he’ll have to go through his best friend Niall. Harry will just have to kill Niall with kindness. That’s if Niall doesn’t kill him first. Oh and Liam and Louis are getting married.

When I Close My Eyes, All the Stars Align by FallingLikeThis

Harry Styles looks out the windowed wall of his penthouse apartment, staring down at the teeming masses that bring life to the streets below. Any one of the people down there could be his soulmate. Or, who knows, his soulmate could be halfway around the world. Or dead already. There’s no way to know, really, since Harry’s affliction is so rare. He bears the soulmate mark. It occurs in maybe one in a million people. He’s one of the chosen few who has one, single person that’s meant for them. Everyone else has the freewill to love whoever they want but if Harry ever hopes to find true love, he’ll have to go through a damn scavenger hunt to get it. And as if that wasn’t enough, he has a time limit.

Or a Beauty and the Beast Au in which Harry's only beastly qualities are his hair and his bad attitude and Niall arrives to spy on him for his sister but ends up staying for so much more.

baby, you don't know what it's like by peerpressure

Harry tries really, really hard to only see Niall as a friend.

It’s not working very well.

Because Niall is simply amazing and Harry is so stunned that he’s even allowed in his presence. And also because he wants to suck his dick. Just a little. But he also wants to cuddle him and maybe share food and fight for blankets and press cold feet against each other and shampoo each other’s hair.

Harry just wants to be with Niall.

(In which Louis is a good friend, Liam is kind, Zayn is always stressed, Niall is the new guy and Harry falls in love)

let's spin the world around by jamesniall

"Superlatives are just about putting the word más before an adjective or a sustantive. Like más grande which means bigger, or más fuerte, which means harder" Niall says, looking pointedly at Harry and Harry is 99% sure he's doing it on purpose.

"más rápido means faster" Niall continues, "Are you getting hard from this, Harry?" and if Harry would have had something in his mouth he would have spilled it all over Niall's face.

Or, Harry learns spanish thanks to Niall's dirty talk.

Maybe You're My Snowflake by pintsandguitars

Harry Styles loves the snow. Niall Horan loves the stars. And somewhere between snowflakes and night skies, they start loving each other.

For Rayvans: Uni! au where Harry doesn't have anywhere to go for Christmas break, so his roommate Niall invites him to spend the holidays with him. (bonus if they end up sharing a bed in Niall's small childhood room).

A head for business and a body for sin by flickerbyniall

He first time he caught Harry’s eyes was about an hour ago, the boy was eating some strawberries from the buffet table around the corner, oblivious to the fact he was standing out in the crowd with his rebellious look.

or Harry goes to a Gala and can't take his eyes off the boy wearing a leather jacket.

Searching by littlecather

Niall has been hired by a magazine to track each employee's searches on Google. Harry uses Google a lot.

wide open spaces by outwardbound93

“Well,” Harry says at the end of the day. The sun sets late in Texas like it doesn’t want to go, clinging to the scrubby flatlands with the last reaches of striped sunbeams. Niall leans on the broom and watches Harry fidget with a bundle of notecards he has to fill with peoples’ heartfelt sentiments. Love notes, apologies, get-well-soons, Harry’s got them all. “Will I see you tomorrow, then?”

Niall props the broomstick against a shelf holding a bunch of little green plants he doesn’t know the name of. The shop is bursting with green leaves, colorful blossoms like pops of candy mixed with buttered popcorn at the movie theatre, and at the heart of it, Harry. Harry, with his languid speech and that one curl that stubbornly sticks out on the side of his head that Niall always wants to twirl around his finger and that smile that arrives in a flash or unfurls slowly.

“Yeah,” says Niall. “I’ll be here.”

this could be the end of everything by basementhero

The Norns remembered each cycle of time and would recount the tale if asked: Harry and Niall were not the first of their kind, nor was it the world’s first attempt at existence. Some cycles were short while other stretched on for tens or hundreds or thousands of millennia. It was always the same in the end, though, no matter how many intervening years it took to get there. Baldr always fell; the giants always attacked, and the realms of Yggdrasil—the world tree—were always plunged back into the void after Ragnarök, waiting for rebirth.

But not everything was so set in stone; at least, it didn’t seem to be.

(or: Niall and Harry are immortal deities, but even gods are subject to fate.)

We Could Be The Ones Who Matter by jibrailis

Harry and Niall both get weirdly intense about things, and by things, they mean competitive Scrabble.

lovesick boys will write you lovesongs by narryblossom

When Niall walks through the gate at Dublin Airport at four in the morning, jet lagged to hell and back, he feels like he’s home. He thinks he’s never felt so happy to hear an Irish accent, and he certainly has never been so happy to have no fucking clue what he’s doing.

(Well, he has some idea of what he’s doing, he just isn’t sure it’s going to work out the way it does in his head.)

(An AU where Niall dreams of his lost love and finds himself going home to search for him.)

let yourself be enchanted by acastle

“Which means, I’ve got a Charms post to fill. And do you know who he suggested for the job?”

Harry doesn’t trust the wide beam on his face, and Louis goes on, “Well, he’d told me about this bloke. Class of 2011, student rank number three but top at Charms of his class, Hufflepuff, prefect, atrocious Quidditch player, but he makes a great treacle tart-”

“He suggested me?” Harry says blankly.

(Hogwarts and co-teachers AU, all in one.)

Along the Way (Something Changed ) by catrinahart

For the last five years, singer turned actor, Harry Styles has had Niall by his side to help manage his incredibly crazy life. They met and quickly became the best of friends. Then people start asking questions, making Harry think, what do they see that he doesn't?

and days gone by by outwardbound93

Niall catches himself glancing at Harry in the backseat. The tops of buildings are lined with Christmas lights like the iced piping on a gingerbread house, and the crisp sharp light of a winter night makes Harry’s skin look warm and soft.

riverina by outwardbound93

Harry looks up at Niall, the sharp, almost antique lines of his face thrust into regal beauty by the stadium lights. Harry’s ribs press against the size of his heart.

Or, a royalty!au where Niall's a prince and Harry's the reporter that writes about him.

let me photograph you in this light by storhan

“I like that one,” he says, turning the camera back around to show Harry the picture he took earlier that day of Niall reading. Harry also finds himself smiling, he quite likes that one too.

“Me too,” Harry says softly.

Or, Harry's a photography major and Niall is his muse.

something so magic about you by storhan

Niall's a single father and Harry's his neighbor who never seems to wear a shirt.

St-st-stuttering by asaprockme

In which Harry has a stutter that he just can't control. Niall doesn't mind.

I'm not trying to stop you, love by littlecather

If we're gonna do anything, we might as well just ...

Niall and Harry are the only ones left on campus over the Christmas holidays, and even though they've never really hung out before, they manage to spend most of the week holed up in Harry's room, together.

the piano man’s playing some old melody by littlervoice

Harry is a piano player. One day his neighbour puts in a request.

Do you want to come to the gym? by maxette

Niall is Harry's personal trainer: a romantic comedy without the middle forty-five minutes of misunderstandings.

running around in love again by mozartspiano

they meet at a coffee shop on valentine's day. it's all a horrible cliche.

You Feel Like Home (You're Like a Dream Come True) by roughvoiced

Niall sighs and unwraps the scarf from around his neck. "A plus one," he repeats. "I need one."

“For what?” Harry asks, watching as Niall unzips his coat, letting it slip off his arms and drop to a rumpled pile on the carpet before slipping off his shoes and striding over to Harry, plonking himself down on the sofa beside him and snuffling up under his arm, waiting for Harry to pull him in close before he speaks.

“Greg’s wedding.”

or, the au where Harry offers to be Niall's plus one and ends up with a whole lot more than he bargained for.

Another Auld Lang Syne by colbyjack

"We drank a toast to innocence We drank a toast to now. And tried to reach beyond the emptiness, But neither one knew how.”

-

Harry and Niall are old flames who eventually find each other again, of course, because the universe doesn’t want to give up on them.

Stacked Against You by siempreniall

Niall hates the library. All of the computers are always taken, the stacks make him feel claustrophobic, and his short attention span has never given itself well to studying anyways. The cute boy at the information desk makes it all worth it, though.

i want you so much (but i hate your guts) by siempreniall

Niall doesn’t know what he’s still doing there. This isn’t really how he likes to spend his Sunday nights. He doesn’t want to be yelled at and made to feel guilty for something that happened months ago. All he wants is to leave, really.

heartbreak hero by acastle

“So you want me to hear your side of things?"

"Yes, that would be a start."

"Fine,” Niall steps forward, so he and Harry are practically nose to nose. “Come back tomorrow at 8, so you can air your side of the situation on my segment.”

In which Niall is a love guru of sorts on the radio, who thinks love is the bane of the world, and Harry is a fuckboy who’s lovely, surely, but is not the best boyfriend in the world, not by a long shot. His girl breaks up with him while on air with Niall, and Harry isn’t having that, so he forces Niall to help him win her back.

(Alternatively, Niall’s Guide On How to Win Back the Girl, patent pending. It should work, in theory.)

Home is Wherever I'm with You by ziamfcks

Niall is blind and Harry works in a coffeeshop. It's love from the start.

Intensified by Absence by littlecather

Niall smiled, the action uncontrollable. “Hey, time traveller,” he said softly.

Harry blanched, his eyes growing a little wide, but he cocked his head to the side with confusion. “Hello,” he said, holding out his hand across the back of his seat for Niall to shake. “I’m Harry. What’s your name?”

The Time Traveller's Wife AU.

My Dearest Love by badjujuboo (miztrezboo)

His teeth hurt. Ached really. Like this thrumming underneath the veneer that wouldn't cease. Wouldn't be calmed no matter how many pain meds he's taken, no matter how much oil of clove he's rubbed onto them.

His dreams. His dreams were strange, too. Bloody, but without violence. Just a warm, wet, thick feel to them. And red. So much red.

He should have expected it. Should have made plans, sought guidance, kept himself away but. . . .

He’d never been to good at any of those things. Especially the last.

hands that hold me by lostgirl152

Niall was always too interested in Harry's hands

6,359 miles by acastle

“Why, why’d he send me that?” Harry murmurs, and Nick looks up from the screen. “What does he want me to do? I don’t-”

“Idiot,” he flicks his phone back to him. “Make a reservation. He wants you to go there.”

(Niall and Harry were sleeping together, until they aren’t, and then Niall disappears into a tiny island in the East. Then he asks Harry to follow him.)

i forget where we were by littlecather

“You,” he says thickly, swallowing. “You don’t - you don’t remember.”

“Not the last three years,” Harry tells him simply. “Sorry. What was your name?”

“Niall,” he mutters, face suddenly dark. “I’m Niall, I’m Liam’s assistant."

Harry wakes up to find he has retrograde amnesia and a perfect life - seemingly.

he is the lamb, she is the slaughter by trishapocalypse

“Niall, what did you do to me?” Harry repeated, quieter, slower than normal, and he looked up at Niall from under his eyelashes.

Niall froze, reaching a hand up to rub at his eyes, blinking rapidly as he stared at Harry. “What’s that?”

“This?” he asked, gesturing towards his chest. “Oh, you know, just breasts!” he snapped, picking up the pillow and throwing it back at Niall. “What did you do to me?!”

(Or: the one where Harry wakes up a girl and it's clearly NIall's fault.)

Through the Screen by sunshineflying

In his free time, Niall Horan likes to subscribe to his favourite camboy, Harry Cox. When he moves to uni he's not sure how he'll manage to watch the weekly show with a roommate. Things become even more complicated with that roommate is the one and only camboy of his dreams - Harry.

The Whole Shebang by BakerGrey

Niall lives life like it’s a daydream, Harry’s just in love, and Zayn’s painting pictures of Louis’s boyfriend.

laughin' loud on a carnival ride by el_em_en_oh_pee

Harry looks around the fairground. They’ve already done the putt-putt - Harry got tripped up by the windmill, but Niall almost lost his ball at the clown hole because he didn’t want to look straight at it - and the zipper and the gravitron and the spinning teacups. The Ferris wheel looms, past the inflatable slides and the yo-yo, and he wants to go to that, he does, but - Ferris wheels are always romantic in the movies, and Harry isn’t sure that Niall wants romantic from this. “Funnel cakes?” he suggests, instead.

i have lightning by sarcangel

“Have you ever eaten a raw olive?” Harry asks. Niall can actually taste them on his breath, green and briny, mixed with vodka and actual bitters; Harry still needs to breathe to live, after all, and still has no concept of personal space.

in the lonely cool before dawn by mozartspiano

Niall is the Deputy Chief of Staff at the White House. Harry is his assistant.

A West Wing!AU.

like your favourite tune by words_unravel

It's just another summer for Harry - an unexpected flat mate, Louis being an idiot, and Liam hiding away in Wolverhampton.

....okay, maybe not just a typical summer then.

The River and the Deep Green Bend by liquidmeasure 

Harry studies the card for just a moment. It’s all brightness and blooming growth where the last card was darkness and destruction: a child, fair haired and laughing and riding on the back of a horse, his arms outstretched and basking in the light of a yellow sun.

“See? Not all bad." Jesy taps at the image on the card and nods. "Him I like. Look at him casting his light, nourishing the four little flowers in the back. He's an engine, burning brightly. Illuminating the dark corners. He's growth. Newness. Reconciliation...” Harry shakes his head and moves for the door. Opens it just as she says, “for all five of you.”

There’s a flutter and a commotion from behind him and then Rover is winging past him through the door, making her way out into the dark. The night air is cold on his face and it feels like relief. Like an escape.

“Four of us.” Liam sounds a little uncertain.

“What was that?”

“There’s just four of us, not five.”

“Oh…” her voice trails off as Harry steps out into the moonlight. “Well, like he said, it’s mostly bullshit anyway. Can’t get everything right.”

A Dark Tower AU for round 4 of the 1D big bang.

[reconditarmonia]

Dear Yuletide Author

Edit 3:10pm Eastern Time 10/23/18: All prompts added now, thank you for your patience.

Hello, lovely writer!

I’m reconditarmonia here and on AO3 (and have been since LJ days, but my LJ is locked down and I only have a DW to see locked things). I have anon messaging off, but mods should be able to contact me if you have any questions.

Far From the Madding Crowd | Harlots | Monstrous Regiment | Simoun | Spinning Silver

General likes:

– Relationships that aren’t built on romance or attraction. They can be romantic or sexual as well, but my favorite ships are all ones where it would still be interesting or compelling if the romantic component never materialized.

– Loyalty kink, whether commander-subordinate or comrades-in-arms, and the trust associated with it. Sometimes-but-not-always relatedly, idealism. I guess the two combined might be, in general, the idea of nobility of character and what that means.

– Heists, or other stories where there’s a lot of planning and then we see how the plan goes.

– Femslash, complicated or intense relationships between women, and female-centric gen. Women doing “male” stuff.

– Stories whose emotional climax or resolution isn’t the sex scene, if there is one.

– Uniforms/costumes/clothing.

– Stories, history, and performance. What gets told and how, what doesn’t get told or written down, behavior in a society where everyone’s consuming media and aware of its tropes, how people create their personas and script their own lines.

– Eucatastrophe.

General DNW: rape/dubcon, torture, other creative gore; unrequested AUs, including “same setting, different rules” AUs such as soulmates/soulbonds; PWP; food sex; focus on pregnancy; Christmas/Christian themes.

—

Fandom: Far From the Madding Crowd

Character(s): Bathsheba Everdene

One thing that always sticks in my mind about this novel is the way Hardy calls Bathsheba “the young farmer” just as he refers to the men as farmers - which, just saying, is more than most people writing about this story can do - and so, that being the case, what I’m most interested in is something about Bathsheba as farmer. One day in the life or four seasons in the life or five plantings/harvests in the life, or pseudo-academic fic about a case study of a woman farmer in the Victorian era, or a conflict between the farm and nature that Bathsheba has to decide how to solve.

Feel free to bring in other characters if it suits what you’re trying to do, but what I’m really looking for is a focus on Bathsheba’s work, determination, and process of learning. Other ideas: something like a merchant ship AU (as the first alternate setting that came to mind where it would be not exactly the done thing for her to captain her inherited ship and make commercial decisions herself - although I do have to point out that contrary to popular belief, there were a lot of women on shipboard in the age of sail, may this be useful - but also where nature and luck/fate are as influential as they are in the original setting); something in which the land, superstition, and ritual are more overtly magical; or interactive fiction!

—

Fandom: Harlots

Character(s): Margaret Wells

So Harlots almost immediately became one of my favorite shows of all time, for its strong and complex female characters, all major plots/conflicts being between women, and the feminist ethos informing both the filming (with this premise there could have been a LOT of actress nudity and titillating rape, in other hands) and the writing - I find the scene in s2 where Margaret leads the crowd in turning their backs on Nancy’s whipping very moving, because it’s one moment that emphasizes that the show’s feminism isn’t just “look, horrible things happening to women, whatcha gonna do” but instead thinks about the next step of women supporting each other against the system. (Kitty’s thoughts about a collective are another one.) I wasn’t sure at first what I wanted to request here, but starting to explain for you why I like the show made me think wherever you take the idea of writing about Margaret, I’d want to see her in the context of other women. This could be pre-canon (I’m not particularly interested in very young Margaret, but Margaret beginning to establish her own house, hiring her own girls for the first time, and contending with Lydia Quigley as a rival, I’d love to see; or deciding to move to Greek Street?) or post-canon (who does she meet? what does she do???) She’s such a powerful character but also so morally ambivalent - what kinds of positions can you put her in where she has to choose how or whether to protect those under her authority, or further her own ambition and that of the people she chooses? What is loyalty, anyway? (I'd be up for post-canon fic with her and Charlotte, but I don’t think I would want to read an expansion of her selling Charlotte in the canon backstory.) Throw in anyone you like if that helps you tell the story - it’s such a good ensemble show.

If you, like me, ship Margaret with Nancy and were psyched when they got to kiss and Nancy told Charlotte she loved Margaret, I have some prompts for the ship in a previous letter. TL;DR: I’m especially interested in Margaret/Nancy as partners-as-family and what that means to them, and in how Margaret fits into Nancy’s relationship to intimacy.

If you’d prefer to write this instead of writing about Margaret, I would also be 100% just as happy with fic about the whole fucked-up relationship between Charlotte and Lydia in season 2 (I LOVE “ultra-loyal and beloved henchman secretly plotting revenge” plots, their scenes together are so good! I was sorry that that plot didn’t carry on for longer - honestly, you could write a canon divergence AU where the secret isn’t revealed so soon and Charlotte becomes more and more compromised and I would be delighted), something focusing on either of those two individually (pre-canon Lydia setting up her house? choosing her aesthetic? post-canon Lydia manipulating her way out of Bedlam?), or something about Nancy (her lifestyle is so unconventional but it works for her and people around her mostly roll with it). Again, preferably with reference to other women, rather than men.

Something that I really like about the show, which would be neat to see in fic somehow, is that it feels real and lived-in. So many costume dramas feel costumed, but at least to me, the sets and costumes of Harlots feel like houses people live and work in and clothes people wear; we occasionally see a shift under the dress, women put on a fichu over a dress or deal with their corsets, they move like they’re used to wearing this. I love daily-life type history, and people being people in history, so those sorts of details would make me really happy. (I have tags “documents” and  “history” for stuff that might interest you if you also like that sort of thing.) I also really like the moments of theatricality and ritual like Mary Cooper and Kitty Carter’s funeral processions.

Fandom-Specific Exception to DNW: I recognize that rape and dubcon are endemic to the canon and I don’t expect you to avoid all reference to them, but would prefer not to have them described in detail, or to dwell on specific instances.

—

Fandom: Monstrous Regiment

Character(s): Any (Polly “Ozzer” Perks, Maladict, Jackrum, Mildred Froc)

I’m not going to lie, Polly is one of my all-time faves. I like that this could have been a generic coming-of-age or women-in-war story, where the protagonist learns that she’s brave or worthwhile and then the crisis is past, but instead Polly learns that she’s a cunning bastard and a hell of a sergeant, and being a one-off hero in a country that’s at peace and making slow social progress isn’t good enough for her. That said, just because I’m better able to articulate what I like about Polly doesn’t mean I’d be less excited for fic about anyone else! Honestly, one of the things I like best about the story as a whole is the varying degrees of competence porn - people learning what they’re good at and doing it - and that’s something that could apply to any character here. What are they good at? What lets them fulfill their potential? What do they want when their hand isn’t being forced? So, say, how’d Jackrum go from enlisting for Reasons to being the career sergeant of canon? Any other adventures worth recounting? What are Polly or Mal’s long-term plans, since their original goals seemed so short-term - or, what led Froc to enlist and stay? What can Mal do with the intimidating coolness and/or the potential berserker rage?

There’s a lot of potential for romantic and/or platonic loyalty kink with this character set, and I’d love something that went there. Characters rescuing each other from peril, risking themselves (their safety, reputation, position, ethics, secrets, goals, honor) to defend each other (ditto ditto), accomplishing the impossible or sacrificing things without even thinking twice because one trusts the other’s orders or judgment. Or A not going off the leash or into danger to defend B because B said not to (the "call off your dog" thing), to protect A’s conscience or life or reputation. Polly sends Mal on a dangerous mission; Mal goes off-leash rescuing Polly; something about the post-canon rank difference on top of the class difference (Mal is wealthy and cultured and typical commission material and yet is a corporal under Sergeant Perks’s command); Polly protects Jackrum’s secret/s from someone who could reveal them; an expansion of Jackrum and Froc’s backstory; anything about Froc’s whole relationship to the Duchess over the years as one of the few left who met her in person... Or for Polly/Mal in particular, I’d be into high sexual tension and/or mutual pining whether from near (if they continue serving in the same regiment, essentially together all the time and unable to act on it) or from far (what if the job separated them - LDR, epistolary?).

This is a perennial request for me and I have previous letters in the “dear author letters” tag if you’d like more info.

Fandom-Specific DNW: gender headcanons (I'm sorry, I can't figure out the right way to phrase this, but I'm happy to provide clarification via mod question or whatever); vampire romance tropes (such as turning or immortality) as focus.

—

Fandom: Simoun

Character(s): Any (Aeru, Amuria, Dominuura, Halconf, Limone, Mamiina, Neviril, Onasia, Paraietta, Plumbish Priestesses, Rodoreamon, Yun)

Simoun is another one of my perennial requests. I love how, in the mold of all my favorite epic yuri/shoujo animes, Everything Is Beautiful And Then Shit Gets Real, and that's not just an out-of-universe fact of the show but something that the characters themselves, who are "supposed" to be priestesses and not an air force, have to deal with. (Neviril's scene in the hearing is one of my favorites.) I enjoy that everyone comes in for different reasons - religious, patriotic, ambitious, interpersonal, gender-related - and has different ways of solving problems, their very deep flaws but also very deep nobility, and how everyone gets character development in the sense of growing and changing.

I'd love to see something that worked with that military aspect of the canon and the in-story tension of it - if you focus on more than one character, the way that the superior-subordinate dynamics or comrades-in-arms dynamics, and the different ways they behave under pressure (cheerful Aeru when she encounters the downed enemy pilot), sit alongside other dynamics (like Mamiina and Rodoreamon's childhood backstory/class thing) and don't always develop at the same pace, but single-character fic about the choices they have to make and how they think about them, as their situation changes, would be great too. What about more of Yun's backstory, for example? Hell, what's going on in Halconf's life and mind as someone who used to be a sibylla but now has quite a different role in the war as the sibylla position has changed? Or, what about in the post-canon where war is brewing again but Paraietta and Rodoreamon can't fly the Simoun anymore, and Neviril and Aeru might be able to but Neviril has no one to lead, unless it's a whole new crop of maidens? What do they want to do, and what skills are they still able to use? (Feel free to re-unite characters that are separated by canon - resurrect Mamiina, bring characters back from other worlds - if that's what you want to do with the story, although I think I'd prefer for that to be something that's acknowledged in-story as due to magic or alternate worlds rather than tacitly retconned.)

As with some of the other fandoms I've requested, I'm interested in the different permutations of loyalty - loyalty to a position or an ideal over loyalty to a side, such as the Plumbish priestesses'; something fleshing out the chorus's devoted loyalty to and trust in Neviril in a high-stakes situation where she's able to return it; interpersonal loyalty and how that interacts with love, requited or articulated or not (Mamiina and the braid, Paraietta's everything); loyalty that develops before liking or friendship does. Femslash is great, gen is great. This is a fandom where sexual first times would tie into the canon's themes in a lot of ways, if you're interested in writing that. Other things that would be cool: time loops or other timespace play, to go with the magic and timespace warping in the show? Interactive fiction? Have our leads learn more about Argentum and Plumbum and meet people from there?

Fandom-Specific DNW/Exception: I don't need you to retcon the attempted assault(s), but please don't dwell on them. No Dominuura/Limone, please.

—

Fandom: Spinning Silver

Character(s): Miryem Mandelstam

So there's definitely a common theme in a lot of my prompts and it's that I like hard-headed, practical, ambitious women who get into adventures because of, rather than in spite of, those qualities. I really like Miryem's good sense, pride, and rules-lawyering, and the way her power in the world becomes magic power in the Staryk world. In general, I also really like the way the book integrates various fairytales with one another and with the situation of Jews in Eastern Europe. What happens when Miryem is back in the human world, post-canon? I never got the impression that she'd be happy just avoiding the whole question of the town's contempt for her by finding power elsewhere - what's it like if she comes back a queen? (Can she use the mirror from Irina to do an end run around the whole Persephone setup and travel back and forth whenever she wants, and if so, what sorts of plot would make that fun to play with? If not, that's still fine.) Or, what are some adventures in the Staryk world where she could use her Accounting Powers, other than the post-war rebuilding the book talks about? Or tell me more about Miryem practicing Judaism in the Staryk world, and the application of Judaism to that world and those customs that we get some hints of (that's a hell of a diaspora - what would the rabbis think of it?)

I would be delighted by Miryem/Irina. Two queens with very different kinds of power, and different ideas of where their commitment lies - Miryem's to "her people" whether that's her family/other Jews/the Staryk who have bound themselves to her, Irina's to "Lithvas" - and what's consistent with their own ethics to fulfill those commitments. Widow them both and have the ultimate human world-Staryk world power marriage? A more serious rivalshippy thing where you make Miryem and Irina deal with the fact that they're respectively a Jewish queen of a super-powerful magic country and the queen of a largely anti-Semitic country who's not totally free from those beliefs herself? (I should mention that I am explicitly okay with the story touching on anti-Semitism or having anti-Semitism as a central issue.) What about different court traditions, when they visit each other? I would be delighted by Miryem/Wanda. I liked the early development of their relationship and wished we'd had more of that later in the story. How would Wanda's gratitude to Miryem and the Mandelstams play in a land that views gratitude so differently from the human world? Might Wanda's real-world "magic", like the reading and writing Miryem gave her, manifest differently in the Staryk world too? Do you want to go full Tam Lin and have Wanda rescue Miryem from the Staryk world? Would Wanda ever consider converting to Judaism? What if she's less settling into comfortable forest retirement and more becoming a magical gatekeeper of Miryem's land in her own way? I would be delighted by Miryem/f!Staryk Lord! What changes if the otherworldly monarch who claims Miryem's hand, bringing her into a new world of customs unfamiliar to her and power she hasn't known before, is also a woman?

Feel free to include Wanda or Irina even if it's not a femslash story, Tsop or Flek, or anyone else you need. (Rule 63 Mirnatius could also be really interesting, although I know that's potentially a lot to just throw into the background of a story about Miryem, so male Mirnatius or male Staryk Lord are fine too, if they're not the focus of the story.) Or, ignore all the characters, including Miryem, and tell me another fairytale, or combination of fairytales, about the Staryk and the Jews.

Fandom-Specific DNW: I don't need you to retcon Miryem/Staryk or Irina/Mirnatius if you'd rather not (including if you're writing any of the femslash options - plenty of historical royalty had lovers), but I'm not interested in those ships unless genderswapped to f/f, and would not like fic About them.

[glitter-and-glue]

How stupid can you be? Belief in predicting the future from songs or animals was abandoned centuries ago, because science is reliable and fucking oysters are not.

I’m really not here to defend my habits, but far be it for me to pass up a chance to spread knowledge to my fellow man.

Let’s start with what everyone agrees on. It’s well-known that animals like cats and dogs can sense earthquakes and volcanoes before people do. They pick up the small vibrations in Amenta’s crust, and they can tell long before we do when something isn’t quite right. Seismometers are more accurate, of course, but they’re also more limited; they can only sense messed up vibes Amenta’s crust, while cats and dogs can also sense disturbances in the atmosphere and in the people around them (I’m sure you’ve noticed that some dogs are able to predict when their owners are about to come home).

But cats and dogs are still pretty limited. Their senses might be sharper than ours, but they’ve got a lot going on in their heads, and it distracts them. They’re not purely reactive beings. Like us, they have their own personalities and favorite foods and weird day plans and stuff, and all of that limits their ability to make accurate predictions. If it’s less significant than a volcano or an earthquake, odds are your cat is as clueless as you are about it.

You know what doesn’t have a lot going on in its head? An oyster. Oysters don’t even have heads. They’re about as close as you’re going to get to a purely reactive being that still can react to stimuli in a timely manner, other than maybe a sea urchin. Sea urchins are actually probably better, but people don’t really eat sea urchins, so there aren’t really any urchin farms to use for data collection.

Anyway, oysters are reacting to the same things that cats and dogs are–vibrations, firstly, but also temperature changes, sea water and soil composition changes, and the quality of their food. And because they’re very specialized creatures that only have to worry about simple stimuli like that, their evolution has been a lot more focused on that, and not on, like, the best strategy for catching mice or the best way to get rid of a particular customer without losing your job. So when I look at oyster behavior, I’m letting them do all the hard work of interpreting that environmental stimuli, and I’m able to get out basic information about what the coming seasons are going to be like, especially in terms of environment change and weather patterns.

The songs work on the same principle, but they give you a broader scope of information at the cost of decreased accuracy. Even though people have a lot of things that go into their music preferences, those preferences are also affected by much deeper subconscious beliefs than, say, our preferences in movies or sports teams. There’s never been an Amentan culture that didn’t have music. It’s basic for us, far more basic than speech. The level on which a song moves you is a lower level than the level on which you reason about who you should vote for, or the level on which you decide which people you want for friends or partners. If you want to get at the information that we’ve subconsciously collected about our expectations for the really basic things that go into our happiness as people, songs preferences are a good place to look.

Of course, individual people are still pretty bad at predicting things, so you can’t get any good data unless you look at what really large groups of people are doing. That’s why you have to look at popularity levels, and on another level, why you have to look at music. You could probably get even better information from, say, a database of dreams, but the corporations don’t really keep track of those, while they obsessively track the number of downloads and plays of different songs.

Anyway, I definitely agree with you that science is an important tool for learning about the world around us, including its past and its future. But the thing is that the world has a lot of moving parts, and the parts of the world that most concern us have a shitton of moving parts. I’m not gonna ask a physicist to predict the results of the next election, even though technically it all comes back to physics. There’s just too much information. The song charts process a lot of that information for us, in however haphazard a way, and it’s a lot easier to extrapolate the future of a country when you’re looking at the trajectory of large groups of people than when you’re looking at large groups of atoms, you feel me?

Stay cool, anon.

[bountyofbeads]

Despair for Many and Silver Linings for Some in California Wildfires https://nyti.ms/2PrHL7U

Despair for Many and Silver Linings for Some in California Wildfires

(PURE, UNADULTERATED GREED by Corporations like PG&E to Boeing, to fill the pockets of shareholders and company CEOs, are DEVASTATING American citizens.)

Natural disasters are another prism through which California’s vast income inequalities can be viewed.

By Thomas Fuller, Julie Turkewitz and Jose A. Del Real | Published October 29, 2019 Updated, October 30, 2019,  9:27 AM ET | New York Times | Posted October 30, 2019 |

SANTA ROSA, Calif. — After a wildfire razed his spacious suburban home in the Sonoma hills two years ago, Pete Parkinson set out to rebuild. This time it would be an even better one. He reoriented the house toward vistas of a nearby mountain and designed a large kitchen with hickory floors and 16-foot windows under vaulted ceilings.

“We are now living the silver lining,” said Mr. Parkinson, a retired civil servant who moved into his new home 10 days ago. “It is a beautiful, brand-new home.”

California’s catastrophic wildfires have not discriminated between rich and poor. In recent years tens of thousands of people lost their homes, from trailer parks to mansions. But the aftermath of the fires has produced a spectrum of misery and recovery, ranging from the wealthy, who with insurance money rebuilt houses sometimes worth more than the ones that burned, to those who lost everything and years later still have nothing.

Like access to quality education and  clean water, natural disasters are another prism through which California’s vast income inequalities can be viewed.

CALIFORNIA FIRES

Read our live updates about the Kincade and Getty blazes.

A lawyerly knowledge of the peculiarities of the insurance industry, a pool of savings to fall back on and the time and grit to deal with the state’s labyrinthine regulations have helped some in California bounce back from the infernos. Others have not been so lucky.

Jenn Wilcox worked at a residential care facility in the town of Paradise until Nov. 8, when the town was incinerated by fire last year. After she narrowly escaped, the uninsured cabin where she was living was destroyed; she also lost her job. Her life upside down, she split up with her boyfriend and returned to her home state of Georgia, where she is struggling to make ends meet as a home health aide.

“I’m a refugee,” Ms. Wilcox said. “I’m broke.”

On Tuesday, firefighters in Northern California braced for the return of strong winds, hoping to avoid the further spread of the Kincade fire, which has burned 75,000 acres in Sonoma County and was 15 percent contained. In Southern California, the Getty fire still burned while residents braced for extreme winds expected to reach 80 miles per hour. Thousands of structures are threatened.

Karen Orlando, a real estate agent in the Sonoma Valley, has seen the rebuilding process in Sonoma County play out in distinct ways between “the really wealthy and then those who are just getting by.”

Ms. Orlando said that for those with insurance and the means, rebuilding has been a kind of therapy after the trauma of losing a home; reclaiming those spaces is a way to soldier through grief, she said.

“Some people have decided to buy a lot maybe with a better view than what they had,” she said. “Some people want to rebuild on the lot but now they get the chance to build the home of their dreams. They get to pick out all the finishes and fixtures and imagine all the landscaping.”

After the Wine Country fires in 2017 destroyed their hillside home with a priceless mountain view, Joan and Nick Flint received $1 million for the rebuild, not enough to match what they once had. They ended up paying another $1 million out of pocket.

Standing outside their new home on Tuesday — white brick with an Escalade in the garage — Ms. Flint said she realized how lucky they were that they could afford to do that.

“We’re not a hard-luck story by any means,” she said. “We feel blessed.”

Fires this week in Southern California forced evacuations of celebrities like LeBron James and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Mr. James tweeted that he was driving around trying to find a hotel room after he fled his home. (His home did not burn, nor did Mr. Schwarzenegger’s.)

Less visible has been the fate of those hard hit in towns like Paradise in the Sierra foothills, razed by fire last year, and Lake County, where around 2,000 homes have burned over the past four years. In both places incomes were strained even before the fires.

Jim Steele, a former supervisor in Lake County, estimated that about 60 percent of residents in the county lacked insurance or were severely underinsured. Insurers are raising rates in areas vulnerable to fire and in some cases have declined to write policies.

“There’s a lot of risk and a lot of poverty,” he said. Many people were forced to move away after their homes burned down, especially older people who retired in picturesque but fire-prone hills surrounding Clear Lake.

“It has a lot to do with your age and where you are in your career,” Mr. Steele said. “Retired people have trouble — they just don’t have the resilience.”

A report published by the federal government two years ago said people with lower incomes were less prepared for natural disasters and were more likely to live in homes vulnerable to them. Low-income Americans are also more likely to become homeless after a disaster and have more difficulty obtaining loans after one, the report said.

Another study released by the Federal Reserve Banks of San Francisco, New York, Dallas and Richmond focused on small businesses affected by natural disasters. Insurance coverage for those businesses “appeared to be mismatched to the actual damage that occurred,” the report said.

Often disasters trigger a cascade of woes. For Gina Wheeler, whose grandparents moved her family to the Sierra Nevada from the Bay Area in the 1960s, the Paradise fire sent her into depression and financial peril. Ms. Wheeler, 44, was hospitalized for intestinal surgery in the days before the disaster. Then she lost her uninsured trailer that she rented on family land in the fire.

“Every place I’ve ever set foot in has been touched by fire,” Ms. Wheeler said. “I don’t think anybody that’s not gone through this will ever, ever understand what it’s like to lose your entire community.”

This fall, Ms. Wheeler moved into a trailer in a camp for fire survivors in the remote farm town of Gridley, where she must stretch a fixed income of $850 a month to rebuild her life. She struggles to pay for food and gas, sometimes turning to Facebook groups for help.

“I can’t even describe the empty feeling that we have,” Ms. Wheeler said. “I talk friends and family members out of suicide, and they talk me out of it.”

Mr. Parkinson, the resident of the Sonoma hills, says about 40 percent of his neighbors have not started to rebuild their homes, many of them because they cannot afford to. Although his new house is more hardened to fire, the area remains vulnerable, a dozen or so miles away from where the Kincade fire is burning.

Mr. Parkinson counts himself lucky not only because he was able to construct a 2,200-square-foot dream home but because he had the mental fortitude to deal with the disappearance of all but a handful of his possessions. When he fled his home with his wife and son in 2017 he carried only electronics, two guitars, photo albums and some clothing

“There was something about walking up to the pile of ashes that my house was reduced to and understanding the absolute finality of it,” he said.

His insurance money was insufficient to completely furnish the house so he went to Ikea with a pickup truck and held a furniture-assembly party with friends.

“I don’t have a lifetime’s worth of stuff anymore,” he said. “Everything is two years old and less.”

Thomas Fuller and Julie Turkewitz reported from Santa Rosa, Calif., and Jose A. Del Real from San Francisco. Lauren Hepler contributed reporting from Paradise, Calif. Alain Delaquérière contributed research.

*********

California Fires Live Updates: New Blaze Threatens Reagan Library

Dangerous Santa Ana winds were whipping Southern California as a new wildfire broke out near the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum.

By The New York Times | Published October 30, 2019 | New York Times |

Posted October 30, 2019 |

RIGHT NOW

A new fire that broke out in Ventura County prompts evacuation orders for an area that includes the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum.

Sign up here for our California Today newsletter.

Here’s what you need to know:

Strong winds could drive ‘extreme fire behavior’ in Southern California.

A fire threatening the Reagan Library has forced evacuations in Ventura County.

Electricity has been shut off for more than a million people.

Maps show where the fires are burning now.

As fires rage, schools cancel classes and events.

The Getty fire was caused by an ‘act of God.’

Strong winds could drive ‘extreme fire behavior’ in Southern California.

California was facing the worst kind of weather for wildfires on Wednesday — strong, gusty winds and very low humidity. Officials feared that the gusts could blow embers more than a mile away, complicating their efforts to contain new or existing fires.

In the southern part of the state, where gusts were expected to peak on Wednesday morning, a new brush fire broke out in Ventura County, threatening the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum and forcing evacuations.

And in the Los Angeles area, a 745-acre blaze known as the Getty fire has prompted the evacuation of more than 7,000 homes. Firefighters made progress overnight on the fire, which was 27 percent contained on Wednesday morning.

In Northern California, firefighters made inroads overnight in battling the Kincade fire, which has consumed much of the area around Santa Rosa over the last few days as it swelled to become the largest active wildfire in the state. The 76,000-acre fire is now 30 percent contained, up from 15 percent on Tuesday, and forecasters were cautiously optimistic that the winds in the area had died down and would not strengthen again for at least a few days.

At a morning briefing at the Sonoma County fairgrounds, where hundreds of firefighters packed into an event hall, officials thanked the crews for their work. “Really good progress,” said Charlie Blankenheim, a division chief working with Cal Fire, the state firefighting agency.

Danger remains, however. Many houses tucked into the woods are still at risk, and saving those will be a priority over the next few days, officials said. Already, the fire has destroyed 206 structures, including 94 homes.

A fire threatening the Reagan Library has forced evacuations in Ventura County.

The fast-moving fire near the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Ventura County forced evacuations early on Wednesday.

The fast-moving blaze known as the Easy fire quickly grew to more than 400 acres and led local officials to order an evacuation for parts of Simi Valley and Moorpark, two cities in the southern part of the county. Eric Tennessen, chief of the Ventura County Sheriff’s office, said deputies were knocking on doors and escorting people to safety. The evacuation area consists of ranches, farms and a golf course and is not densely populated, Chief Tennessen said.

Video from local news outlets showed smoke billowing from several distinct parts of the fire along hilltops as the sun rose, with the flames fanned by the wind. The fire approached the presidential library, which houses memorabilia including a former Air Force One plane inside, but was kept at bay by firefighters as of about 9 a.m.

Electricity has been shut off for more than a million people.

Santa Ana wind gusts topped 70 m.p.h. in elevated areas near Los Angeles, close to matching the speeds of a Category 1 hurricane, which has sustained winds of at least 74 m.p.h.

“When you have a fire form in these conditions, it can spread very quickly,” said Lisa Phillips, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Los Angeles office. The combination of dry and windy weather, perfect for fires to ignite and grow, led the weather agency to issue an “extreme red flag warning” for much of Los Angeles and Ventura counties.

NWS Los Angeles

✔@NWSLosAngeles

Latest observation from Warm Springs at 12:53AM in the hills above Santa Clarita: ENE 38 mph Gusting 55 mph. Relative Humidity was down to 14% Expect Santa Ana winds to strengthen and become more widespread through this morning and continue through Thursday. #cawx #LAweather

4:10 AM - Oct 30, 2019

The threat posed by the winds has led the utility Pacific Gas and Electric to cut off power to about 1.5 million people in some 30 counties in Northern California in recent days, with about 1 million still without electricity since the weekend.

In the south, San Diego Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison reported preventively shutting off power on Wednesday to a total of about 200,000 people.

A new state web portal includes links to updates on fire status, evacuation zones, power outages, shelters and housing, road conditions and other information related to the fires, compiled by state agencies like Cal Fire and Caltrans and by utility companies.

Maps show where the fires are burning now.

(We’re continuing to update our page of maps showing the extent of the fires, power outages and evacuation zones.)

Maps: Kincade and Getty Fires, Evacuation Zones and Power Outages(SEE WEBSITE FOR EVACUATION ZONES)

Detailed maps show the current fire extents, power outage zones and areas under evacuation orders.

As fires rage, schools cancel classes and events.

With many school districts closed in Sonoma County and surrounding counties, parents have been left trying to entertain their children amid power outages and evacuations.

Parker Palizi, 9, did not mind getting a few days off from school, but the thought of staying home in Novato without working electronics was less than appealing. “There’s no fun stuff we can do,” he said. Still, Parker was more concerned about his pet bearded dragon, Spike, whom he was bringing in a glass tank to a hotel room in Carmel-by-the-Sea, where electricity beckoned.

“He needs the heat lamp to stay alive,” Parker said.

The Palizis, who live in Marin County, were supposed to be on a 7 a.m. flight from Los Angeles on Monday so Delilah could perform as an elephant in her second-grade play. “She was so excited,” said her mother, Brooke Palizi, who works for a nonprofit organization.

But Delilah’s star turn will have to wait. The Novato Unified School District canceled school on Monday, and then on Tuesday and Wednesday, the Palizis learned late Monday afternoon. By then they were driving a rental car the seven and a half hours home.

The Windsor High School girls volleyball team had been slated to play in the playoffs on Wednesday, until a mandatory evacuation order came for the entire town of 28,000 on Saturday morning, giving residents six hours to flee. With all the district’s schools closed this week, the town on lockdown and the team scattered, Coach Rich Schwarz said he and the athletic director made the difficult decision to forfeit the game.

The players responded to his group text announcing the decision with sad-face emojis and messages of support, said Mr. Schwarz, who is in his final year coaching the team.

“How do we play when we don’t have practice and don’t know where the girls are? said Mr. Schwarz, who is staying with his sister in the town of Rohnert Park. “We can’t tell parents to break into the town to get their uniforms. At what point does an extracurricular activity become way too much? We need to let families worry about whether their house is still standing.”

[The New York Times has photographers on the ground, documenting the California wildfires and the battle to contain them. Follow their work here.]

The Getty fire was caused by an ‘act of God.’

The Getty fire started when a branch broke off a tree and hit nearby power lines — an accident that Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles called an “act of God.”

The power lines began to spark and ignited nearby brush, Mr. Garcetti said at a news conference on Tuesday afternoon. He said investigators have not found any evidence that faulty equipment started the fire.

The fire, which has burned at least 650 acres and was 15 percent contained as of Tuesday night, broke out shortly after 1:30 a.m. Monday along the major freeway known as the 405, near the Getty Center. It quickly spread through neighborhoods north of Brentwood, destroying 12 homes and damaging five more.

The authorities determined the cause in part after seeing dash cam footage that showed an explosion on the side of the road early Monday morning, Mr. Garcetti said.

Reporting was contributed by Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Dan Levin, Thomas Fuller, Julie Turkewitz, Jose A. Del Real and Jacey Fortin.

*********

[dippedanddripped]

“You want the truth? It’s hopeless. It’s completely hopeless.” That’s what Patagonia founder and chairman Yvon Chouinard told the L.A. Times about the plight of the earth amid climate change. In 1994. Regardless, Chouinard and his company have spent decades—and millions of dollars—fighting for environmental causes around the world while investing in more sustainable business practices. What’s more, Patagonia has embraced and promoted the B Corporation movement, while Choui­nard led such efforts as 1% for the Planet, a collective of companies that pledged to donate 1% of sales to environmental groups and has raised more than $225 million since 2002. Meanwhile, over the past 46 years, Patagonia has become a billion-dollar global brand, making it the ultimate do-good-and-do-well company.

But Chouinard remains unsatisfied. The 81-year-old is more focused than ever on demonstrating, by Patagonia’s example, the lengths a company can go to protect the planet. During a break from fishing near his Wyoming home, Chouinard is both passionate and wry in discussing his business philosophy, what we get wrong about sustainability, why he’s so excited about regenerative agriculture, and Patagonia’s rising political machine.

Fast Company: How do we cope with the idea that to be in business means we are polluters and hurting the planet?

Yvon Chouinard: Everything man does creates more harm than good. We have to accept that fact and not delude ourselves into thinking something is sustainable. Then you can try to achieve a situation where you’re causing the least amount of harm possible. That’s the spin we put on it. It’s a never-ending summit. You’re just climbing forever. You’ll never get to the top, but it’s the journey.

FC: About eight months ago, you wrote a new mission statement for the company: “Patagonia is in business to save our home planet.” What impact has that had so far?

YC: It’s affected every single person’s job. Some more than others, but it’s got everybody thinking. We’ve made a commitment to be fossil-fuel-free by 2025. We’re invested in companies that are working on growing synthetic fibers, stuff made from plants rather than petroleum. We’re not just cleaning up our act in our own buildings and stuff; we’re going around to our suppliers and convincing them to use cleaner energy. Then we’re continuing to work on saving large areas of the planet that capture a lot of carbon. I’m personally working on a new state park down at the tip of South America, about 800,000 acres of peat bogs and swamps and 200,000 acres of sea, that sequesters more carbon than almost anywhere in the world.

FC: Ten years ago, you started getting into the food space, launching Patagonia Provisions and working on regenerative agriculture. Now you’ve been bringing those regenerative principles to your cotton supply chain. Did you always see that as the ultimate path?

YC: This is all pretty new. Scientists are just discovering how important agriculture is to climate change, both negatively and positively. [Environmentalist and entrepreneur] Paul Hawken has a book that lists 100 things that we can do to combat climate change [Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming]. Out of those 100, the most important that applied to us was agriculture, so we’re doubling down on regenerative organic agriculture. We’re working on a new certification that goes beyond organic. We’ve been using organically grown cotton for years, but all it does is cause a little bit less harm. So we decided to start growing it regeneratively and organically. We started with 150 farmers in India, small-scale farmers. We talked them into growing cotton with a minimum amount of tilling. Even with cotton now, we’re sequestering carbon. This is a big deal. Regenerative agriculture can’t be done on a large scale. It just can’t. These people are getting rid of their bugs by squashing them with their fingers. They’re stringing up lights to attract the insects at night and using natural methods. Then they’re using cover crops—chickpeas and turmeric, for which there is a big demand. And they’re using compost. We’re paying them an extra 10%, so [between that and the cover-crop revenue] they’ve almost doubled their income. Next year, we’ve got 580 small farmers who will grow cotton this way.

FC: What do you think of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk pursuing interplanetary travel and Mars and moon colonies because they don’t seem to believe that we can save our home planet?

YC: [Laughs] I think it’s pretty silly. And not just silly, but it’s really a shame. The monies that are going to space exploration should be used to save our own planet right now. We’re in a triage situation. Things are so grim. It’s World War III. I lived through World War II, and I remember what the country had to do to mobilize. You couldn’t buy sugar. You couldn’t buy meat. Being French Canadians, we were lucky in that we got horsemeat. [Laughs] That’s what has to happen with this global warming business. Here we’re just wasting this money going to Mars. I want to start doing some T-shirts that just have a rainbow trout on it, the T-shirt, and it says, there’s no rainbow trout on Mars, or screw Mars. We gotta do that.

FC: You’ve been pretty clear about your pessimism around the fate of the planet while remaining committed to trying to fix it. When we spoke back in 2017, you said something to the effect of “What’s the alternative, just sitting on my ass?” To what do you attribute your ability not to be nihilistic and to keep working toward that never-ending summit?

YC: The solution to depression is action, and I’ve got a clear idea what I need to do. A lot of people want to do something about global warming, but they don’t know where to start. It’s a lack of introspection and imagination. A guy in our fabric lab went to one of our suppliers in Japan and he said, “Hey, I see you’re buying your energy from coal-fired power plants. Why don’t you switch over to green power?” This is a giant Japanese factory. He said, “I hadn’t thought about that.” They looked into it, switched over to green energy, and it only cost them $7,000 more a year. So there you go. The guy never thought about it, but it sounded like a good idea. There is a lot of that low-hanging fruit around.

FC: What role has your Buddhism played in finding that approach?

YC: You can approach Zen in different ways. One way is you can sit there and contemplate your navel all day long. I just approached it through action, whether it’s sport or business.

FC: In the face of news like the Amazon rain forest burning or the current administration’s efforts to open up logging in Alaska, how do you stay motivated? Is it simply more action?

YC: Yeah, it is. We came out with a film that’s against offshore, penned fish farms and hatcheries, Artifishal. It has had a huge effect, particularly in Europe. Because of that film, a lot of the schoolchildren in Sweden are no longer fed farmed salmon. I just heard yesterday that Denmark is going to stop licensing any more offshore fish farms. Francis Mallmann, the chef, the barbecue king in Argentina, has taken salmon out of 19 of his restaurants worldwide. You see little victories like that, and it all adds up.

FC: That’s where your motivation comes from?

YC: Yes. It’s not like we’re sitting here all depressed. [Laughs] And Trump, we’re doing a big backsliding with this whole Trump administration, but they’ll be gone in another year or so. I’m convinced of that. Then we can get rid of all the stuff that he did, start over again.

FC: The Business Roundtable recently issued a statement expanding its definition of the purpose of a corporation from solely making money for shareholders to seeking to benefit all stakeholders, including employees, communities, and the environment. What did you think when you heard that?

YC: It’s a good first step. The ones that actually do it are going to be pretty pleasantly surprised that it leads to good business. The consumer, especially with consumer products, is expecting that from companies, and if you’re not doing it, you’re going to lose out.

FC: You’ve said in the past that you could convince anyone one-on-one that chasing growth for growth’s sake is bad and that embracing the ideals of sustainability, or responsibility, only makes you more profitable. If you were in that Business Roundtable, what would you say to the CEOs of JPMorgan Chase or Apple?

YC: If I had enough time, I would just give them example after example of how doing the right thing ended up making us more money. And the additional motivation was just believing in karma. It comes back every single time.

FC: Patagonia is a private company. Would it help your argument to more regularly disclose financials?

YC: It probably would. [Laughs] But I don’t know. Let’s say you’re a gasoline company, selling gas at the pump. There’s a gas station on every corner, basically. Would you go out of your way to go to the one that was a member of 1% for the Planet, and on your receipt it said, “Thank you for spending $40 on gasoline. Forty cents of that is going to go to planting trees, saving the planet”? I mean, be very specific about where it’s going to go.

FC: Probably, yes.

YC: Gasoline is gasoline, right? You can’t sell your gasoline on [the idea] that yours is superior to someone else’s.

FC: Though they try, but yeah.

YC: We all know it’s the same stuff. [Laughs] Yet they spend millions in advertising themselves. For what? It’s ridiculous. It’s not based on anything tangible. But this would be a great marketing ploy.

FC: In the past, you consulted with folks at large companies, such as Walmart, and came away not so convinced of their actual ability to pursue sustainability. If we’re looking to create a better version of capitalism, what do you think should be done with publicly traded companies?

YC: You’ve got to reinvent capitalism altogether. It leads to a whole bunch of poor people and a few extremely rich people. Ultimately, capitalism is going to lose its customers. There won’t be anybody to buy the product because everybody is going to be so poor. The whole thing is going to crash before the next election, probably. We’re going to get another huge recession, and everybody’s going to lose out on their stocks. There we go again. It’s a system that’s got to change. The whole stock thing is dependent on growth. Look at Amazon. Amazon doesn’t make a profit. They don’t pay any taxes. Nothing. But they’re growing like crazy. It’s all growth, growth, growth—and that’s what’s destroying the planet. I’m dealing with that myself. We’re a billion-dollar company, over a billion, and I don’t want a billion-dollar company. The day they announced it to me, I hung my head and said, “Oh God, I knew it would come to this.” I’m trying to figure out how to make Patagonia act like a small company again.

FC: How do you stop growth?

YC: There is a book from the Henokiens, an organization of companies that have been in business for 200 years minimum. Of course there are hardly any American companies; they are either Japanese or European. How are they able to stay in business for 200 years? Well, they couldn’t grow 15% a year for 200 years, let me tell you that. [Laughs] They were able to diversify, and they’re not the same company as when they started. Some of them started out as a blacksmith’s shop, like I did. But they have purposely held back on growth for the sake of longevity.

FC: What do you make of proposals like the Green New Deal? Is that encouraging?

YC: It is, absolutely. I’m an avowed socialist. I’m proud of it. That was a dirty word just a few years ago until Bernie Sanders brought it up. It was equated with communism and that whole thing. Yet the countries around the world that are most squared away are all socialistic countries like those in Scandinavia. I’m not talking about Venezuela, which is a disaster. That’s not a socialistic country. That’s a . . . I don’t know what.

FC: What role can businesses like Patagonia play in advocating for that national mobilization effort to save the planet and change how we work in the process?

YC: We’re keeping quiet in the primary election, but for the national presidential election, we’re going to be very, very active. We’re going to spend a lot of money and basically say, vote the climate deniers out. Anyone who is a climate denier or even on the fence, vote them out because they are evil. They are out to destroy our planet, and we’re not going to stand for it. We got involved in the last election and we helped elect a couple of senators in Montana and Nevada. I had no idea how much power we really have.

FC: That was the first time Patagonia pushed for and supported individual candidates. What were the lessons out of that experience?

YC: They were going to be close races, and I’ve heard from them both that we made the difference. When we have that amount of power, let’s use it. Because the opposition is using it. You’ve got the Koch family and the fossil-fuel companies: They’re going to be influencing the elections. We’ve got to do the same thing.

FC: You mentioned Artifishal. Even with Patagonia’s smaller, shorter films—I liked [surfer] Dave Rastovich’s Saving Martha, on Tasmanian fish farms—there’s an aspect of fun with them, whether it’s surfing or climbing, combined with activism for the causes you believe in. Over the last number of years, you’ve invested more in that kind of storytelling to get these issues across to people in a way that’s engaging. I don’t want to call it marketing, but has this become a much bigger part of the company?

YC: Well, that’s for sure. We’ve got a propaganda machine going. After we were involved in this film 180 Degrees South [a 2010 documentary retracing Chouinard’s 1968 journey from Ventura, California, to Patagonia, Chile] and then DamNation [Patagonia’s 2014 movie about the damage dams can do], we realized the power that we have in film. I had no idea. With DamNation, we got the whole Obama administration to rethink hydropower. They no longer considered it green energy. Now it’s back, of course, with Trump, but that was it; they said hydropower is not green energy, and that was as a result of our film. We recognize that people make decisions based on emotion, and the best way to elicit emotion is through film. It’s not through books or catalogs or speeches. So we’re in the film business. We’re working on 10 films at a time these days. Some of them don’t make a cent. But that’s not the purpose.

FC: A lot of people look at you as an inspirational figure, but who inspires you? Who is Yvon Chouinard’s Yvon Chouinard?

YC: [Laughs] Well, I think . . . I don’t know. There are a few people around the world who are doing really great stuff. Huey Johnson, who has a nonprofit in Marin County, in San Francisco, has been around a long time. He started Conservation International, the Nature Conservancy, the Trust for Public Land, and he’s got an organization called Resource Renewal Institute. The guy never gives up. He is an optimist. I’m a pessimist. He’s been an inspiration. [Environmentalist] David Brower. [Oceanographer] Sylvia Earle. Jane Goodall is trying to save her chimpanzees, and they’re on their way out. It’s like Friends of the Polar Bear. Forget about trying to save the polar bear; you gotta save the planet to save the polar bear. That’s depressing stuff, but they hang in there. Goodall is on the road 360-something days a year. It kills me to spend just a few days. I just got back from Labrador and oh my God, I mean . . .

FC: That’s far from Wyoming.

YC: Getting back from Labrador to Jackson Hole was an effort. I ran from one end of the Boston airport to the other, because my plane from Halifax was late. I passed 36 gates, and they weren’t in a row. They were in different terminals. I practically had a heart attack. [Laughs] And get this: I get to the gate, and they’ve shut it down. The plane is ready to take off. There’s a guy there who says, “Hey, I know who you are. I told them to keep the gate open for just a couple minutes more. I knew you were gonna be coming.” And they did, and they got me on. The guy says, “Hey, I’m a cinematographer. I know all about all the films you make. Keep up the good work.” And he walked away. I thought, Jesus, this guy is an angel. [Laughs] That’s the karmic kickback I’m talking about.

THE SECRET TO FIGHTING CLIMATE CHANGE

Patagonia is helping to lead the shift to regenerative agriculture, which sequesters carbon rather than producing it. Here’s how it works.

1. Create healthy soil

During photosynthesis, plants use solar energy to extract carbohydrate molecules, or sugar, from carbon dioxide. Those carbon-based sugars are extruded from the plant’s roots, feeding bacteria and fungi into the nearby soil. Those microorganisms turn soil minerals into nutrients that feed plants and fight disease.

2. Avoid pesticides

To keep the soil as healthy as possible, growers eschew chemicals (akin to organic farming), relying instead on natural methods—from hanging lights at night to physically removing and killing insects by hand.

3. Plant cover crops

In between seasons of growing cash crops such as cotton, farmers cultivate cover crops such as turmeric and chickpeas, which make the soil hardier by protecting it against nutrient loss and erosion, as well as helping to control pests. The farmers then have an additional crop to sell to supplement their income.

4. Use low-till farming

Tilling churns and disturbs roots—where most plants store a significant amount of their carbon—and other rich organic matter in the soil, making it less robust and productive. Even worse, it releases carbon into the atmosphere. By contrast, low- or no-till growing lets the carbon remain sequestered in the soil. Even when the roots decay, the CO2 emissions take a long time to reach the earth’s surface and atmosphere.

[macd-emily-blog]

MA PROJECT RESEARCH

Article Notes:

https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/en-gb/blog/corporate-16-brands-doing-corporate-social-responsibility-successfully

16 Brands Doing Corporate Social Responsibility Successfully

“Consumers feel that when they use a product or service of a socially responsible company, they are doing their part.”

Interesting that it is all based still on the consumers responsibility, rather it being expected of brands.

Common examples of CSR are: Reducing carbon footprint, improving labour policies, participating in fairtrade, charitable giving, volunteering in community, corporate policies that benefit the environment, socially and environmentally conscious investments.

Database of contact details for every single company. Complaints, letters. Every tweet against gets turned into a direct letter?

1.   Johnson & Johnson

Seeks out renewable energy options, with the goal to procure 35% of their energy needs from renewable sources. Leveraging power of the wind to provide safe water for communities around the world.

2.   Google

Date centre uses 50% less energy than others in the world. Committed $1 billion to renewable energy projects. Outspoken CEO on Trump.

3.   Coca-cola

Made major changes to their supply chain practices, alternatively fuelled trucks. 25% carbon footprint reduction by 2020.

4.   Netflix & Spotify

Offer benefits to their employees and families. Netflix- 52 weeks parental leave.

5.   Pfizer

Raise awareness for diseases, provide healthcare for women and children who would otherwise not be able to afford it.  Reduce price of certain vaccines.

6.   Wells Fargo

Donates up to 1.5% of its revenue to charity. Raised 286.6mil in 2017 alone to more than 14,500 nonprofits.

7.   TOMS

Donated 60 million pairs of shoes. One for one scheme.

8.   Bosch

By 2021 company will have invested 50million to support unis and research programs that are focused on the environment, energy and mobility. Bosch Energy Research Network (BERN).

9.   GE

Launched Ecomangination, renewable business strategy. Reduce emissions by more than 70% and launched digital wind farm which can boost a wind farm’s energy production by 20%.

10.Starbucks.

Diversify workplace. By 2025 hire 25,000 veterans. Hire more young people, helping jumpstart careers by giving them their first job. Hire 10,000 refugees by 2022.

11.New Belgium brewing company

Fort Collins brewery produces 18% of its own electricity through solar panels and wastewater.

12.Lego

Will invest 150mil over 15 years, reduced packaging and investing in alternate energy source.

How might I encourage brands to take responsibility for brand issues.

This is your bill, cost to you, some algorithm.

50% of your shopping is by brands who support x or do y.

Some sort of collaborative thing,

Is it actually small scale to start with, a challenge to them?

Some sort of unbiased independent jury.

First things first. Manifesto, brand manifestos. What are the core issues, a charter, write to people. Ask people what scale of change do we want, lack of time? Change.

Something about profitability.

Try and think of something that creates some unity. What’s more relevant for each brand??

TCfH talks to global but about something specific.

List of 20 areas of brands and common themes- how they present themselves? Do they all have to be profitable? Greenwashing things. Consumers in common.

Thinktank- to help brands see the obvious like the hypocrisy of plastic cup extra charge.

Issue behind the issue- the 20p charge isn’t the solution step behind that.

A way of highlighting activity from brands where they are passing the blame. Seems like a good thing. Can work with brands- suggest we change this behaviour when they haven’t made the first step. Find a series of case studies like that.

Recycling but half goes into the landfill.

Looking at the bad behind the good.

Not that they’re not followed through, they’re just not backed up.

Change impact. Design futures.

Negative/Positive.

They are well intended but the lunacy of it. The Starbucks cup.

Analysis of it, then have a suggestion.

The consumers having to have the argument, drop the yoghurt because they didn’t get a bag. Docudrama- the ridiculous examples.

TV series, a family trying to do good??

Consultancy, what the knock-on impact is.

The cynicism around it.

Not a rant- just quite funny. Sheer lunacy.

Transporting glass water bottles in massive plastic blocks. About paradox. Where everyone is well meaning. IS that enough.

It knocks people who are trying to make meaningful change.

Write down strategy statement. 4 or 5 versions if need. Concepts beneath each of those.

Strategy n message

Applications- policy change??

Promotions. – website???

News on the receipt.

Big calling out hypocrisy.

Everyone’s up for it, the press n PR can impact negatively. Aligning action with results. Need everyone to be reporting from both sides.

Well intended unsuccessful actions.

To make clear the absurdity of companies where a well-intended action has negative a impact.

Highlight the well-intended responsibilisation of big brands.

Starbucks selling reusable bottles where it’s all plastic.

20p cup charges- just order degradable.

10p plastic bag laws

How do we align action with results. Reports from both sides, not just consumers.

That is the message, the examples I’m using to explain the message. Bill Nye video production- what have they done? Hypocrisy of brands, the lunacy of Starbucks selling a reusable bottle. Not just hypocrisy when they aren’t doing enough behind the scenes. But examples of BRANDS PUTTING THE RESPONSIBILITY ON CONSUMERS. The well-intended stupid actions. Talk about the fact that that doesn’t actually do anything-solve anything. Case studies, examples, a website, consultancy. Analyse their company for responsibilisation hypocrisy and the negative impact it has.

Many brands are well meaning, but their intention to create positive change is repositioning the blame once more onto the consumer.

Strategy n message

Applications- policy change??

Promotions. – website???

Examples, consultancy to address what they’ve done and why it’s not appropriate or shifting the blame. Examples of why brands are adding to the anxiety of millennials. Promotions- Show stupid examples, the absurdity of them.

Instagram account: they’re making it our problem. Solutions that aren’t solutions. Cherry on the shit pile solutions. It’s not our fault. Highlight the absurdity of moments like that. Then an analytical model of how it can be done, why it’s important, opinion piece on responsibilisation???

About the placement of responsibility,

Mainly targeting the brands,

Report perhaps. It’s nice that article. Pearl Fisher trying to find their brand strategy is so hard to find. Why is it all so hidden, or what are the advantages of having it out in the open?

How might I highlight to brands where they are passing the buck?

Given the contemporary crisis affecting us today there’s an urgent need for brands to act responsibility, strategies currently used often rely on responsibilising customers not addressing their own strategies, given this, how might I encourage brands to reconsider this strategy.

OR

Inform the consumer

How might I develop a strategy for more responsible CSR?

Questioning the responsibility in CSRRRR.

Policy change? Workshop, presentations, pillars of strategy.

Get hold of unilever/big brands responsibility and strategy.

Unilever- what are they doing that they are doing rather than getting us to do.

Ben Jerry Cone Together.

The backbone of the project, extensive background and research. This is exactly what I’m doing and why it solves the problem.

[gdmli]

Natural Capital Class Thursday, April 11, 2019 Ding Darling Shelter

Welcome to Ding Darling Shelter in Birdland Park in Des Moines!

First, look at this place! Who knew!?!  Probably a lot of people but not me.  What a gem.  As we settled in I looked out the windows to the south and the river was high and running fast.  It looked like it was right below the windows ready to seep into our cozy quarters.  We’ve had many instances and events recently pertaining to water including flooding across the Midwest. 

This class was a great follow up from our last class which included a trip to the Des Moines Water Works for our last class.  Sadly, the recent tragic diagnosis of an aggressive form of pancreatic cancer of Water Works CEO Bill Stowe was ever present.  I think everyone can agree that Bill Stowe was a real water advocate and aficionado.

Another passionate water advocate is Hannah Inman, Executive Director of the Great Outdoors Foundation; Des Moines Water Works Park Foundation Board; Natural Capital Tri-Chair.  Now that’s a resume!

Hannah’s task is to promote the expansive and ambitious Water Trail project which is one of the Capital Crossroads initiatives.  If we can pull it off we might have something like what they enjoy in Columbus, GA.

Hannah was so persuasive that it caused Gunnar to jump back up on a chair……….again.  

No wonder Gunnar was so excited.  Afterall Jay Beyers, CEO of the Greater Des Moines Partnership, declared that “This project is the most transformational quality of life project of our generation in Central Iowa.”

Lets face it, over the years we have become disengaged with our waterways but “times they are a changing”.  People want to safely experience our waterways via kayaks, paddle boards, canoes, etc.  but we don’t currently have the infrastructure to allow that.

If you just aren’t a tree hugger than you can think of this as an “Economic Development” tool.  At 2.5% unemployment in Iowa and generally low unemployment across the entire US we are in competition for talent from everywhere.   People have options!!  We don’t have mountains and we don’t have beaches but we can have waterway trails!!  The business community is aware of this and their supporting the efforts.

150 miles of trails from 86 sites

The Money Slides

Van Meter Phase I is in.  Many communities ready to announce.  Yes, $11mm is a lot of money no doubt about it but where there's a will there's a way.

The Dam Problem.  You know I couldn’t avoid the “Dam” joke.  Its so old but its still makes me giggle.

Center Street Dam will have a “dial” to change the water flow and experience:  Surf wave, kayak rapids, extreme stand up boarding while still maintaining a fish flow.

The Scott Avenue Dam is the most popular fishing spot in all of Iowa according to the DNR.

The Fleur Dam will serve as an “entry point” for many users: residents who are curious in water trails and accessing the water recreationally as well as an educational forum and outdoor classrooms.

Wait. Two more Money Slides……..now I’m confused.  What’s the cost?  Listening and blogging may be too much multi-tasking for me.

But we still have Water Quality issues:  Nitrates, bacteria………how do we address this problem?  The current plan includes implementing 10 water quality monitoring stations to provide feedback to the community possibly in a Green-Yellow-Red format to communicate bacteria and/or nitrate levels for example.  The hope being that this information will help the conversation locally and at a state-wide level to make our water quality more transparent and productive.  The goal being more transparency.

Another issue is sustainability.  Conservation easements and some federal dollars require certain stipulations to preserve these waterways and trails so they are not jeopardized by possible future development.  This will certainly help our waterways to be sustainable.

Fun Fact:  Dragon flies are a leading indicator of really good water quality.  Bring on the Dragon Flies!!

Time to move.  Time for a Field Trip!!!   Well kind of; a short one.  We got up from the cozy cabin and went outside to get our hands dirty or wet anyway!  It’s always nice to get up and moving so we met Darren Fife, the Executive Director of EcoSource, at the river’s edge to test some water.

Once back inside it was time to learn about recycling with help of Cassie Riley and Jenny Koska from Metro Waste Authority.

To Recycle or Trash?  That is the question.  Cassie and Jenny challenged us to see how well we knew which items were recycled and which ones belonged in the trash.  So how did we do? 

Not so good.

We did learn that for recycling; all paper and cardboard, plastics (only if it has a twist off lid except yogurt & margarine containers) were all acceptable items.  But not cottage cheese containers!  What!?!  It’s all about economics.  By limiting it to yogurt & margarine; it meets the demand for recycling.  Remember, pop off lids don’t recycle!  Who knew?  Not me!

For metals- aluminum cans only.

And this stuff?  This is all trash!

Big Myth- that the recyclers sort out items that aren’t recyclable.  In reality; recyclers have 2 seconds to sort out non-recyclables.  It’s our job to get it right in the first place.  They don’t have time to sort it effectively.

But this class wasn’t just about water and trash we came to find out.  It was also about dirt!!  Soil is alive and when we’re lucky; it’s well.  Enter southern Iowa cattle farmer Seth Watkins to explain why we need clean water, healthy soil, and happy cows.

Seth is a believer in the Deming Theory which essentially focuses on Quality over Quantity.  Seth reminded us that Iowa is not only a leader in corn, soybeans, cattle and hogs but we’re also a significant contributor to water pollution.  

Seth shared a very personal story about his children Spencer and Tatum.  Both children have birth defects.  Tatum was a twin that lived while her sister was lost in birth.  Seth clearly believes there is a connection between water quality and health.  Gut punch…..things just got real personal.  This is afterall not just an economic issue; it’s a personal for all of us especially in this state.

So what are the farming practices that can make a farm healthier and more sustainable?

·        Built Ponds.  Better Water.  Healthier Cows.

·        Establishing Legumes & IPM.  Improved Prairies.  Better Food Source.  Healthier Cows.

·        No Till Farming.  Reduces Fossil Fuel Costs.  Reduces Runoff.  Restores Microbial Activity.

·        Crop Rotation.  Seth rotates 3-4 crops where Iowa as a whole typically rotates 1.5 times (soybeans over corn).

·        Cover Crops.  Stop nutrients loss.  It’s a longterm play.

·        Establishing Prairie Strips.  This land can be identified via GPS.  Not productive land anyway, makes no money.  Encourages biodiversity.

And Why does this work?

1.      It’s more Profitable

2.      It’s more Sustainable

3.      It’s Socially Responsible

If a farm isn’t profitable there is not opportunity for sustainability and social responsibility.  A side benefit is an increase in birds which increases pollination and overall wildlife.  Agriculture is afterall an art and a science; not just a science.  Seth wasn’t afraid to speak his mind.  Something he mentioned was Iowa State University not stepping up and leading.  Why is this?  Is it because Iowa State is supported and indeed supports commercial farming?

Overall, Seth’s focus is on nutrients and sustainability; not just production.  Seth takes a Legacy Approach.  His grandmother was credited with starting 4H.  Seth is a lifelong learner and seeker of the truth.  Seth message is starting to be heard.  People are listening.  Corporate America (McDonalds, Walmart, Costco) is demanding sustainability and the end user consumer is expecting more too.  Seth is hopeful that these “social winds” may draw young people back to agriculture and move us towards a more sustainable future.

The Farm Bill is slanted towards increasing crops.  Vicious Cycle.  It doesn’t pay to be a beef farmer but Seth is fighting the good fight.

OK it’s time to get moving again.  Being the class about nature; we left the friendly confines of the shelter and we went outside.

Our tour guides were:

·        Alicia Vasto, Iowa Environmental Council

·        Aaron Putze, IA Soybean Association

·        Adam Hammes, Sustainability in the Workplace

·        John Swanson, Polk Soil & Water Conservation District

  This was speed dating with multiple sustainability partners!

At the end of the day there is so much we can do individually and as a community.  It’s really up to us. No one else is going to do it.  But of course we can't do any of this on an empty stomach!

[automaticpostinfluencer]

Italy death toll overtakes China’s, 25 million jobs at risk

This is CNBC’s live blog covering all the latest news on the coronavirus outbreak. All times below are in Eastern time. This blog will be updated throughout the day as the news breaks. 

Global cases: More than 229,000

Global deaths: At least 9,300

US cases: At least 10,755

US deaths: At least 150

All data above is provided by Johns Hopkins University.

2:00 pm: Nearly 25 million jobs could be lost globally

The new coronavirus could claim up to 24.7 million jobs, according to International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates.

The United Nations’ labor agency suggested this was a worst-case, or “high,” scenario of global unemployment but said internationally-coordinated policy response could mean a significantly lower impact. In this case, it estimated a “low” unemployment scenario of 5.3 million. It therefore calculated a “mid” scenario of 13 million jobs lost, 7.4 million of which would be in high-income countries. —Vicky McKeever

1:47 pm: Dow rebounds, recovering earlier losses

1:36 pm: State Dept to instruct Americans not to travel abroad

The State Department is expected to announce a level four travel advisory applying to all U.S. citizens for international travel amid the deadly coronavirus outbreak, NBC News reported, citing two officials with knowledge of the matter. 

The advisory, the highest of its kind, would instruct all Americans abroad to either return to the U.S. or prepare to shelter in place. The level four advisory also dictates that Americans cannot travel abroad. Less than a week ago, the State Department upped the travel advisory to level three, which calls for U.S. citizens to reconsider travel. —Amanda Macias

1:22 pm: US cases top 10,000, New York leads the surge

1:18 pm: Italy’s death toll overtakes China’s

A worker carries out sanitation operations for the Coronavirus emergency in Piazza dei Miracoli near to the Tower of Pisa in a deserted town on March 17, 2020 in Pisa, Italy.

Laura Lezza | Getty Images

Italy’s death toll has hit 3,405, meaning the country now has more reported deaths than China.

The death toll in China, where the coronavirus originated in Wuhan, in Hubei province late last year, currently stands at 3,249, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. 

After sweeping through China in early 2020, the virus spread to Europe where Italy — and particularly the northern Lombardy region, which is home to financial hub Milan — became the epicenter. —Katrina Bishop

1:14 pm: Charter staff reportedly continue to report to offices against government guidelines

Staff at Charter Communications are continuing to report to the telecom’s corporate offices, shirking government guidelines that Americans avoid gatherings of more than 10 people, according to a Tech Crunch report. Staff in offices around the country have shown symptoms of the flu-like illness, according to internal communications seen by TechCrunch, and employees told the outlet that several have tested positive. Charter did not immediately provide a comment to CNBC but denied one of the positive tests reported by TechCrunch. —Lauren Feiner

1:04 pm: Key Democrat Hoyer says House will look at ‘all options’ to tweak voting as virus hits Congress

12:53 pm: Retail group says White House should allow key businesses like truck rest stops, pet stores to stay open

Customers line up to shop at a Costco store in Brooklyn as the Coronavirus, COVID19, outbreak continued unabated on March 19, 2020 in New York City.

Victor J. Blue | Getty Images

A major retail trade group is asking the White House to clarify its guidance and help keep pet stores, truck rest stops and distribution centers open.

In a letter to President Donald Trump, the National Retail Federation’s CEO Matthew Shay said some state and local officials are ordering retailers to shut down to prevent the spread of the coronavirus – but closing businesses that should stay open. They said the government should also clarify CDC instructions to limit gatherings to less than 50 people, saying they should not apply to big-box stores, grocers or wholesale clubs where there’s space for people to spread out.

The group called for a broader definition – of “essential retail businesses.” They listed retailers that should be exempt from mandated closures, including pet stores, distribution centers, farm stores with livestock feed, hardware stores, gas stations and highway rest areas for truck drivers. —Melissa Repko

12:47 pm: Dentists reduce hours, postpone elective procedures to combat coronavirus

Dr. Allen Ghorashi reduced his dental practice’s hours this week because of the coronavirus, but he hoped he could still help patients who needed fillings, dental implants or other routine procedures.

He changed his mind after seeing the most recent guidelines from the American Dental Association urging dentists in the U.S. to postpone elective procedures and only offer emergency care. Ghorashi’s practice, Valley Dental Group in Ramsey, N.J., will only see emergency patients for the next two weeks.

Dentist offices across the country are changing their practices to align with these guidelines. Others are shutting down completely. —Hannah Miller

12:40 pm: European shares close 3% higher in rocky session after stimulus

European markets closed higher, after some volatility during the session, with investors monitoring the coronavirus outbreak and digesting new policy announcements from the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Bank of England (BOE).

The pan-European Stoxx 600 closed up 2.9% after rebounding either side of the flatline throughout the day. Telecoms stocks jumped 5% to lead gains while basic resources fell 0.4%. —Holly Ellyatt, Elliot Smith

12:32 pm: Coronavirus $1,000 relief check plan not even final yet and experts say fraudsters are already looking to cash in

12:22 pm: Trump says he is ‘OK’ with forbidding buybacks as condition of corporate bailouts

President Donald Trump said that he would not oppose barring companies that receive federal assistance during the coronavirus pandemic from conducting stock buybacks.

“It takes many many people in this case to tango, but as far as I’m concerned conditions like that would be okay with me,” Trump said during a White House press conference. —Tucker Higgins

12:13 pm: Tesla will take temperatures of Fremont factory employees and hand out masks, internal email says

Tesla is taking extra precautions at its Fremont car assembly plant to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus, according to an e-mail the company’s North American head of human resources, Valerie Workman, sent to employees overnight. Among other measures, employees will have their temperatures taken before they enter the factory. 

The e-mail to employees from HR also said Tesla would rearrange operations as much as possible to enable “social distancing,” allowing people to keep 6 feet apart from one another. Masks would also be distributed to workers throughout the day, the e-mail promised. —Lora Kolodny

12:07 pm: Trump directs FDA to examine whether malaria drug can be used for coronavirus

President Donald Trump said he directed the Food and Drug Administration to investigate whether an existing drug given to malaria patients can also be used to treat the novel coronavirus.

The announcement at the daily coronavirus briefing came hours after Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said that the White House’s massive economic stimulus proposal would include $500 billion for direct payments to Americans. —Berkeley Lovelace Jr., Kevin Breuninger

12:03 pm: Trump doubles-down on blaming China for coronavirus pandemic

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks speaks on the latest developments of the coronavirus outbreak, while flanked by White House coronavirus response coordinator Debbie Birx (L), and U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams (R), in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House March 19, 2020 in Washington, DC.

Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images

11:55 am: MLS postpones more matches, considers pushing back end of season

Major League Soccer extended the postponement of its matches in order to follow CDC guidance to postpone events involving more than 50 people over the next eight weeks. MLS said in a statement that it is focused on playing the entire 2020 season. The league is currently evaluating options such as pushing back the end of the season and playing the MLS Cup in December, which is when it was held prior to the 2019 season. —Hannah Miller

11:48 am: Oil surges 23%, on track for best day ever, rebounding from Wednesday’s steep losses

U.S. oil jumped 23%, putting it on track for its best day on record, clawing back more than half of the losses from Wednesday’s steep slide.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude rose 23.4%, or $4.77, to trade at $25.12 per barrel. International benchmark Brent crude jumped 9.5%, or $2.37, to trade at $27.29 per barrel. —Pippa Stevens

11:44 am: Cramer: ‘We cannot have the fat cats make money at the expense of the workers’

CNBC’s Jim Cramer said that whatever happens on the other side of the coronavirus crisis CEOs should not benefit more than their employees.

“I like anything that protects the workers,” Cramer said on “Squawk on the Street.” “We cannot have the fat cats make money at the expense of the workers.”

The “Mad Money” host was lamenting the moral hazards of the 2008 financial crisis, when companies got bailouts and chief executives got incentives as many workers lost their jobs. —Matthew J. Belvedere

11:30 am: Disney warns that coronavirus is making it hard to predict future performance

Disney is warning investors that the coronavirus pandemic has affected so many of its business segments that it’s becoming more challenging for the company to estimate its future performance.

“We have closed our theme parks; suspended our cruises and theatrical shows; delayed theatrical distribution of films both domestically and internationally; and experienced supply chain disruption and ad sales impacts,” the company said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. —Sarah Whitten

11:21 am: Bank of England cuts rates again and ramps up bond buying to combat coronavirus impact

The Bank of England (BOE) cut interest rates to 0.1% and ratcheted up its bond-buying program, in an effort to offset the economic impact of the coronavirus outbreak.

At an emergency meeting, the central bank’s monetary policy committee voted unanimously to lower borrowing costs by 15 basis points and to increase the BOE’s bond-buying program to £645 billion ($752 billion US), up £200 billion.

The BOE had previously cut rates to 0.25% from 0.75% on March 11. —Sam Meredith

11:11 am: New York Gov. Cuomo orders 75% of non-essential workforce to stay home as cases surge to 4,152

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered 75% of the workforce in non-essential services to stay at home, approved mortgage relief and took other measures.

Cuomo said the state confirmed 1,769 new cases in the last day, bringing the number of confirmed cases in New York to 4,152 and pushing the total number of COVID-19 infections in the U.S. well over 10,000, based on the state’s new case count and data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

Due to the spike in COVID-19 cases, Cuomo ordered 75% of the workforce in non-essential services to stay at home, a 25% increase from a day earlier. Essential services include businesses dealing with food, pharmacies, healthcare, shipping, and supplies. —Berkeley Lovelace Jr., Noah Higgins-Dunn

11:08 am: What to do if you can’t make your rent or mortgage payments

Millions of U.S. households are expected to face financial burdens in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. If you are facing reduced hours or job loss and are worried about making your rent or mortgage payment this month, stay calm — President Donald Trump said Wednesday that the Department of Housing and Urban Development will suspend “all foreclosures and evictions” through the end of April.

That said, you will still want to discuss your options with your mortgage lender or landlord if you have experienced a disruption in your income. CNBC’s Make It offers advice on how to deal with landlords and lenders. —Alicia Adamczyk

11:02 am: Restaurant reservations grind to a halt

Restaurant reservations made through OpenTable ground to a halt in five U.S. cities on Tuesday as restaurant dining room restrictions go into place, according to data from the company. Honolulu’s restaurant bookings have fallen the least, with a decline of 55% compared to a year ago. The Bookings Holdings platform only tracks reservations, not takeout or delivery. —Amelia Lucas

10:49 am: L Brands stops taking new lingerie orders online

The owner of Victoria’s Secret and Bath & Body Works said it is suspending all “new” online orders for lingerie in the U.S. and Canada from March 17 through March 29.

L Brands said, instead, its Bath & Body Works business online will be prioritizing hand sanitizer and soap sales. It said this business is being fulfilled by a third party.

L Brands said all workers will receive pay and benefits during the shutdown. It had already announced earlier in the week it was closing all of its stores temporarily. But it is trying to get some Bath & Body Works locations back up and running sooner. — Lauren Thomas

10:31 am: Uber stock skyrockets after company says it has plenty of cash to get through crisis

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi during the Bloomberg Global Business Forum in New York, September 25, 2019.

Shannon Stapleton | Reuters

Uber stock rose as much as 35% after the company held a call with investors before trading began and said the company has plenty of cash on hand to get through the coronavirus crisis and is seeing growth in other areas of the business as rides fall dramatically as people stay home.

CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said the company’s rides segment is seeing a 60% to 70% decline in areas hit hardest by the coronavirus pandemic, but has also seen growth in its food delivery business Uber Eats.

“We believe we’re already seeing worst of the impact and the recovery in some places,” Khosrowshahi said on a call with analysts. “Once things start moving, Uber will too.” —Jessica Bursztynsky

10:27 am: Trump wants direct payments of $1,000 for adults, $500 for kids in stimulus bill, Mnuchin says

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin laid out details of the Trump administration’s plan to send Americans relief money as part of a massive stimulus package to blunt the impact of the novel coronavirus crisis. Mnuchin said in a Fox Business Network interview that the plan would send payments directly to Americans totaling $500 billion.

That money would be divided into two large tranches.

“The first one would be $1,000 per person, $500 per child. So for a family of four, that’s a $3,000 payment,” Mnuchin said. “As soon as Congress passes this, we get this out in three weeks. And then, six weeks later, if the president still has a national emergency, we’ll deliver another $3,000,” Mnuchin said. —Kevin Breuninger

10:23 am: Coronavirus could kill millions in the US: ‘Do the math,’ CDC advisor says

The new coronavirus could kill millions across the U.S., said Dr. Kathleen Neuzil, director of the Center for Vaccine Development at the University of Maryland’s School of Medicine.

“It would not surprise me,” she told CNBC when asked whether the U.S. could see millions of deaths. “We need to prepare for the worst.”

Neuzil sits on the Centers for Disease Control’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and is part of the leadership team of infectious disease experts working with NIH to test a coronavirus vaccine and therapies to treat those sick with COVID-19.

“We have 350 million people in the United States, and you do the math,” she said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” If 70 million people are eventually infected with this virus and again if there are multiple waves of this virus, then you can do the math and then you can get there.” —Will Feuer

10:11 am: Stop & Shop, other grocers have special shopping hours for seniors

Long lines form at a grocery store in Waltham, MA on March 13, 2020 as citizens stock up amid growing coronavirus cases.

Suzanne Kreiter | Boston Globe | Getty Images

Early each morning, customers at Stop & Shop who are older or more vulnerable to the coronavirus will have a new way to fill up their refrigerator and pantry: An hour and half when they can shop before other customers arrive.

Stop & Shop, Target, Walmart, and Amazon-owned Whole Foods are among the grocers testing the new approach to try to protect people with a higher risk of getting sick as confirmed cases of COVID-19 rise across the U.S. As Americans prepare for prolonged stays inside of their homes, grocery stores have drawn large crowds and frenzied shoppers.

By designating special time slots, retailers aim to make it easier for senior citizens and shoppers with medical conditions to safely navigate stores and buy food and household necessities. —Melissa Repko

10:07 am: Democrats warn that one or two direct payments to Americans won’t be enough

Democrats are gearing up for a fight over whether direct payments to Americans struggling with the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic will be enough. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is among those arguing for expanded unemployment insurance as a source of relief.

“A single $1,000 check would help someone pay their landlord in March but what happens after that?” the New York Democrat said on the chamber floor Wednesday. “A thousand dollars goes by pretty quickly if you’re unemployed. In contrast, expanded unemployment insurance — beefed-up unemployment insurance — covers you for a much longer time and would provide a much bigger safety net.”

An aide for Schumer did not immediately answer whether the senator opposed to the concept of direct payments entirely, or just the form currently outlined. —Lauren Hirsch, Kevin Breuninger

10:01 am: Ex-Trump advisor Gary Cohn warns the US will have ‘massive unemployment very, very quickly’

Gary Cohn

Kristoffer Tripplaar | The Washington Post | Getty Images

The U.S. unemployment rate will rise swiftly and dramatically as the coronavirus brings the American economy to a stop, former top White House economic advisor Gary Cohn told CNBC. “I believe that we are going to have massive unemployment very, very quickly,” Cohn said on “Squawk Box.”

Cohn’s comments came shortly after the Labor Department said jobless claims rose to 281,000 last week, an increase of 70,000 from the week prior.

The former Goldman Sachs president is not alone in forecasting a continued jump in unemployment. Pantheon Macroeconomics’ Ian Shepherdson earlier told CNBC he thought next Thursday’s jobless claims could soar to around two million. —Kevin Stankiewicz

9:56 am: GM, Ford studying whether auto factories can be used to make medical supplies

General Motors and Ford Motor are studying whether they can use their auto factories to support production of ventilators and other medical equipment to help combat the coronavirus pandemic sweeping across the nation.

GM CEO Mary Barra spoke with the Trump administration Wednesday about the automaker’s decision to pause production, the company said in a statement. “She also indicated GM is working to help find solutions for the nation during this difficult time and has offered to help, and we are already studying how we can potentially support production of medical equipment like ventilators,” according to the statement.

Ford also confirmed the company has had preliminary discussions with the government and is looking into the feasibility of producing medical equipment. —Noah Higgins-Dunn, Phil LeBeau

9:53 am: Flattening the coronavirus curve — What this means and why it matters

The World Health Organization has repeatedly underlined the importance of “flattening the curve” in order to tackle the coronavirus outbreak, calling on countries around the world to impose sweeping public health measures.

In epidemiology, the curve refers to the projected number of new cases over a period of time.

In contrast to a steep rise of coronavirus infections, a more gradual uptick of cases will see the same number of people get infected, but without overburdening the health-care system at any one time.

The idea of flattening the curve is to stagger the number of new cases over a longer period, so that people have better access to care. —Sam Meredith

9:50 am: Three pillars of Trump’s case for reelection are collapsing all at once

President Donald Trump speaks at an evening “Keep America Great Rally” at the Wildwood Convention Center on January 28, 2020 in Wildwood, New Jersey.

Spencer Platt | Getty Images

In just over a month, the three pillars underpinning President Donald Trump’s argument for reelection have all collapsed. Trump’s reelection campaign was designed under the premise that the economy would be strong through November, but that’s not true anymore.

Trump also planned to make socialism a central focus of his attacks. But without Bernie Sanders to run against, this argument becomes a lot less potent.

Finally, Trump campaigned on “draining the swamp” of big government. Now he wants Americans to trust in big government to fight coronavirus and save the economy. —Christina Wilkie

9:44 am: Bank of America says the recession is already here: ‘Jobs will be lost, wealth will be destroyed’

Bank of America warned investors that a coronavirus-induced recession is no longer avoidable — it’s already here.

“We are officially declaring that the economy has fallen into a recession … joining the rest of the world, and it is a deep plunge,” Bank of America U.S. economist Michelle Meyer wrote in a note. “Jobs will be lost, wealth will be destroyed and confidence depressed.”

The firm expects the economy to “collapse” in the second quarter, shrinking by 12%. GDP for the full year will contract by 0.8%, it said. —Pippa Stevens

9:32 am: Stocks fall slightly a day after the Dow closed below 20,000 for first time since 2017

Stocks opened lower, building on the previous session’s steep losses as the coronavirus crisis rages on.

“Markets are clearly in a state of panic and forced liquidations – but risks remain skewed to the upside and this should become much more apparent once some of the solvency issues are addressed,” Adam Crisafulli, founder of Vital Knowledge, said in a note.

The moves followed yet another violent day on Wall Street on Wednesday. The Dow dropped 1,338.46 points, or 6.3%, on Wednesday and clinched its first close below 20,000 since February 2017. The Dow was down more than 2,300 points at the lows of the session. The S&P 500 dropped 5.2% to 2,398.10 and closed nearly 30% below a record set last month as both indexes sank further into bear markets. —Fred Imbert, Thomas Franck

9:30 am: Olive Garden’s parent Darden Restaurants pulls earnings outlook and dividend

A take-out order from a Darden Restaurants Inc. Olive Garden.

Daniel Acker | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Darden Restaurants reported quarterly earnings and revenue that topped analysts’ expectations. The company also withdrew its fiscal 2020 outlook and suspended its quarterly dividend, citing the uncertainty it faces as states mandate the closure of dining rooms due the coronavirus epidemic.

Darden has fully drawn down its $750 million credit facility “out of an abundance of caution.”

“With the drawdown of our revolver, and cash on the balance sheet, we will have approximately $1 billion in cash on hand,” CFO Rick Cardenas said in a statement. “We believe this positions us well to deal with potential near term volatility under the current market conditions.” —Amelia Lucas

9:26 am: Investor Ray Dalio estimates the corporate losses in the US will top $4 trillion

Investor Ray Dalio told CNBC the coronavirus outbreak will cost U.S. corporations up to $4 trillion, and “a lot of people are going to be broke.”

“What’s happening has not happened in our lifetime before … What we have is a crisis,” Dalio said in a “Squawk Box” interview. “There will also be individuals who have very big losses. … There’s a need for the government to spend more money, a lot more money.”

The total U.S. GDP at the end of 2019 was more than $21 trillion. The founder of the Bridgewater Associates hedge fund also estimated the global corporate losses will amount to $12 trillion due to the pandemic.

Dalio said the fiscal stimulus package should be $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion at a minimum, depending on the form of the financial relief such as loan guarantees and credits. —Jeff Cox

8:41 am: Airbnb hosts lose out as cancellations pile up

Airbnb hosts are beginning to feel the impact of the coronavirus pandemic following a change by the company to its cancellation policy that has allowed guests traveling over the next month to receive full refunds on their bookings, overriding existing policies put in place by hosts to protect themselves in such situations. 

That change has already cost Airbnb hosts in California, Florida, Kansas, Utah, Michigan and the state of Washington to lose thousands of dollars in reservations, numerous hosts told CNBC. 

Now, as cancellations continue and new bookings dry up, many hosts around the country have empty calendars for the coming weeks and are facing uncertain futures as the due dates for their mortgages, utilities bills, homeowners association fees and property taxes draw near. —Salvador Rodriguez

8:37 am: Weekly jobless claims jump ahead of surge in coronavirus layoffs

Jobless claims rose to 281,000 last week, reflecting only the first indications of the impact the coronavirus will have on the U.S. employment picture. 

That number reflected a significant rise from the previous week’s 211,000.

Companies are just starting to announce coronavirus-related layoffs, many of those in the hospitality industry, so the real damage probably won’t start showing through until next week’s count, which will entail the period through this Saturday. —Jeff Cox

8:08 am: Stock futures point to more losses

Futures contracts tied to the major U.S. stock indexes pointed to more losses at the open, building on the previous session’s steep losses as the coronavirus crisis rages on.

As of 7:58 a.m. ET, Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were down more than 500 points, implying an opening loss of more than 400 points.��S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 futures also fell.

“Markets are clearly in a state of panic and forced liquidations – but risks remain skewed to the upside and this should become much more apparent once some of the solvency issues are addressed,” Adam Crisafulli, founder of Vital Knowledge, said in a note.  —Fred Imbert, Thomas Franck

7:54 am: One person dies every 10 minutes in Iran

An Iranian woman wears a protective face mask, following the coronavirus outbreak, as she walks in Tehran, Iran March 5, 2020.

Nazanin Tabatabaee | West Asia News Agency via Reuters

COVID-19 kills one person every 10 minutes in Iran, the health ministry spokesman tweeted, as the death toll in the Middle East’s worst-affected country climbed to 1,284.

“Based on our information, every 10 minutes one person dies from the coronavirus and some 50 people become infected with the virus every hour in Iran,” Kianush Jahanpur tweeted. —Reuters

7:28 am: Spain’s death toll climbs more than 200 overnight

Spain’s health ministry said its national death toll soared by 209 to 767 fatalities from the previous day as the total number of coronavirus cases climbed by a quarter to 17,147. On Wednesday, there were 13,716 cases in Spain. —Reuters

7:25 am: Virus could inflict record-setting damage on the US jobs market

The first wave of bad economic news directly related to the coronavirus crisis is likely to come from the jobs market, and that could be delivered sooner rather than later.

Virtually all of the economic data releases out now cover periods before the COVID-19 spread began to zero in on the U.S.  Some of those reports have hinted at a slowdown heading into the worst of the virus period, but the extent of the damage has been hard to gauge. That will change over the next week or so when the Labor Department releases the tallies for weekly jobless claims. The latest weekly unemployment numbers are expected out at 8:30 a.m. ET. —Jeff Cox

7:08 am: Italy’s lockdown will be prolonged, prime minister says

Two carabinieres are seen at a checkpoint during the coronavirus outbreak 18, 2020 in Milan, Italy. Italian Government continues to enforce the nationwide lockdown as measures to control the coronavirus spread. (Photo by Pier Marco Tacca/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Pier Marco Tacca | Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Italy’s lockdown is set to be extended beyond the current end-date of April 3, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said as its death toll rises at a record rate. Speaking to Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Conte said measures taken to close schools and universities and to restrict movement throughout Italy would have to be prolonged.

“The total blockade will go on,” Conte said. “The measures taken, both the closure of [public] activities and the ones concerning schools, can only be extended,” he told the paper. —Holly Ellyatt

6:33 am: Europe’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier has coronavirus

Michel Barnier, who leads the EU’s Brexit negotiations, has said he has contracted the virus. Announcing the news on Twitter, he said he was “doing well and in good spirits.” —Holly Ellyatt

6:20 am: Burberry’s sales plunge 80%

Burberry was already closed inside of Macy’s earlier in the week.

Source: Lauren Thomas, CNBC

Luxury brand Burberry said sales in the final weeks of March would plunge by up to 80% as the impact of coronavirus on consumers, already seen in China, has spread to Europe and the U.S. The British brand said like-for-like sales in the final weeks of its financial year to March 28 would be down 70% to 80%, and as a result fourth-quarter sales would be 30% lower, Reuters reported. —Holly Ellyatt

6:14 am: Medtronic says it has increased ventilator production by 40%

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[cathrynstreich]

Growing an Inspired Company: Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Georgia Properties

Dan Forsman, CEO, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Georgia Properties

Having battled through the new-homes collapse during the recession, Atlanta-based Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Georgia Properties now stands as the area’s premier provider of residential real estate services. Thanks to a series of strategic moves—including tapping into the power of a world-renowned brand—CEO Dan Forsman has led the firm and its agents to a position of strength, and readied it for future growth.

At the root of it all? The firm’s culture.

“We’re a culture that embraces going to the next level and understanding your ‘why,'” says Forsman. “We’re trying to live a vibrant and inspirational life to help people make the right choice when buying or selling a home.”

Find out more about Forsman’s inspired formula for success in this exclusive interview.

Maria Patterson: Dan, would you please begin by giving us a snapshot of the current state of the company? Dan Forsman: The mindset of the company is very strong. We’re globally affiliated with the world-class Berkshire Hathaway name, and we’re locally positioned within HomeServices, where each CEO gets a large degree of operating autonomy. We’re a very well-integrated company, with a strong presence in the new homes and corporate relocation segments of the market, and we’re actively growing our luxury market presence. Core services is a big part of our offering for consumers. We’re trying to mirror the market and be innovative by serving the diverse needs of the various people who are buying property here. Since becoming Berkshire Hathaway, we’ve also grown our luxury business—it’s part of the persona and image of our brand. We’re an internationally known and affiliated company that operates effectively in a variety of market segments.

MP: Your firm has come a long way since the downturn… DF: We were one of the few companies in Atlanta that made it through the Great Recession. Going into the recession, the company was No. 6 in the market. When it was over, we were a beat-up No. 1.

After the recession, there was a lot of distrust and confusion on the consumer front. They had been burned, and RESPA came along and restructured all things mortgage, but we figured it out. Our current partnership with Prosperity Home Mortgage has seen us push capture toward 25 percent, with title capture exceeding 53 percent. Our journey to provide consumers a one-stop shopping experience is on track. Giving the consumer convenience and time is providing them with more of what they want and expect.

MP: So how many offices and agents does the firm currently have? DF: We have almost 1,700 agents in 26 offices.

MP: What are current market conditions like, and what challenges are you currently facing? DF: Atlanta has become an international city that’s attracting a lot of people who are paying higher than average price points. Within the city, the market is strong, and slightly better than last year for units; volume is up 8 percent. Prices are rising in areas with low inventory and high demand. The biggest challenge is lack of inventory for the first-time homebuyer and medium-priced segment under half a million. We’re meeting that challenge with new homes, where we have an incredibly successful division. That’s helping the company in many ways, but we can’t build new homes fast enough to offset the lack of inventory. And those costs are rising; labor and raw materials are up significantly.

MP: What is your mindset when it comes to growth? DF: Our approach to growth has been primarily to grow organically and create a vibrant culture of agent success and productivity, and offer the consumer diversified services, such as new homes, mortgage, title, insurance, property management, luxury, commercial, etc. We have a sales and marketing culture here, and our goals are to continue to grow and be the market leader, to serve the consumer and continue to innovate.

MP: What makes your firm different from other large real estate firms? DF: I would have to tell you it’s our culture. We have a culture that embraces going to the next level and understanding your “why,” and trying to live a vibrant and inspirational life to help people make the right choice in buying or selling a home. We’re consistently messaging our people in regard to the fact that prospecting, setting appointments and building rapport are critical.

MP: How do you create this culture of inspiration, so to speak? DF: Our weekly video series, Real Estate Redefined, focuses on leveraging your “why.” Commission sales is a hard job, so anything we can do to help people be more productive, inspired and intentional is important. At our firm, we innovate faster, and we say yes before no. We take a couple of international trips a year, spend a week at Tom Ferry’s Summit and go to Buffini and Mike Ferry events, all of which we’re doing to stay on the leading edge of where the agent’s mindset needs to be. I’m also personally being coached. We’re constantly trying to disrupt the status quo and be inspired at both the agent and leadership level. We’re part of the Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices franchise system and are plugged into the “forever brand” and “forever agent” mindset.

MP: It sounds like agents feel really supported at your firm… DF: In a world where there’s so much out there today, we try to make the complex simple and give tools and information to agents in bite-sized chunks so they can focus on the things they need to be successful. Every agent runs their business a little bit differently. Everyone has to build a tech-enabled database, be a great prospector, have a geographic farm and commit to doing mega open houses. If you do those four things, you’ll have an awesome career. We want to support the forever agent and brand mindset.

MP: Tell us more about your video series. DF: We do three video series: Real Estate Redefined; Good To Know; and From The Field Friday. Real Estate Redefined is designed to be inspirational, informational and motivational for the real estate community. The Good To Know series shows how to utilize our tools in bite-sized segments. From The Field Friday showcases agents at the company who share a system, tool or strategy that’s working for their business. These videos are sent to the whole company, boosted on Facebook and other social media platforms, distributed through BombBomb, posted as a podcast and shared via other media channels. Our videos receive 25,000 to 35,000 views per episode. We utilize our in-house video production center with a green room and employ a full-time videographer.

MP: Why are these video series such an important part of your company strategy and overall culture? DF: We believe in constant, transparent communication with our associates and employees. It’s about making the complex simpler. We supplement our training with this real-world video content: agents from the field sharing success stories, and people you know showing you how to use the tools you have access to. And these videos help us connect with everyone. It’s not the man who makes the office; it’s the office that makes the man. If you use your office for good, people are drawn to your culture and vision.

MP: What is your overall approach to coaching and training? DF: We’re focused on partnering with leading coaches and trainers in the industry. We embrace them. We’ve partnered with Tom Ferry, Brian Buffini, David Knox and Mike Ferry, to name a few.

Forsman’s weekly Real Estate Redefined video series provides informational and inspirational messaging to the real estate community.

We’ve also advanced a lot of our agent training online. We use Propel, a learning management system on our intranet. Propel offers hundreds of courses that agents can take; it’s all about getting productive quickly and having the right mindset. All of our new agents go through it, and it’s always there for them.

MP: What are some of your most important marketing strategies? DF: We host mega open houses—a term we got from Tom Ferry—twice a month. Mega open houses involve a very precise plan that includes door-knocking and inviting the neighbors ahead of time, doing a very coordinated marketing effort on Facebook to promote the listing, and putting the listing on Waze. We also run ads on Zillow, display ads on our extensive digital billboard network and implement effective follow-up campaigns. This is a great way to expose a property to buyers and find more listings in a community.

We also use Spacio, which is a paperless open house visitor registration system to follow-up with all the prospects. To give you an idea, through all of our coordinated mega open houses, we recently had more than 3,000 buyers or sellers walk through our homes on a weekend. That’s a lot of lead activity, and when they’re registered, it gives us a chance to use effective follow-up campaigns. Every Monday, our managing brokers have a sales and marketing WIG (Wildly Important Goals) call after the mega open house where agents share success stories.

Zillow videos are also really important. With the Zillow Premier Agent app, you can upload a walkthrough video of a listing. We also have a unique process for loading high-quality custom videos. If your listing has a video, Zillow prioritizes the listing first in their search results, and it’s the first thing a consumer sees. Our program doesn’t cost the agent anything, and 41 percent of our listings now have a video. That’s the highest for any brokerage in the country. When we find something that gives an agent an advantage, we try to replicate it over and over—plan, measure, execute and correct. This is common sense, but it isn’t always common practice.

We’re always testing something. Predictive analytics aren’t always that predictive, but we’re evaluating it. Artificial intelligence (AI) is moving to voice, so we did an Atlanta real estate skill for Amazon Alexa and Google Home. We don’t want to be on the bleeding edge, but we do want to be an early adopter.

MP: How do you make sure you’re staying ahead of the curve as a leader? DF: I surround myself with great, visionary leaders—like Tom Ferry and Gino Blefari—who keep my game up. I talk to people like Ron Peltier. On a recent trip to Argentina with my son, I met with the CEO of RE/MAX Argentina, Sebastian Sosa, who is facing a lot of the same challenges we are. One of the things you do to stay ahead is talk to amazing people and find out what they’re doing. Sharing what’s happening with our team helps us stay on the leading edge. I also love to read books. You have to keep the sword sharp.

MP: What’s next for you and the firm…and the real estate industry at large? DF: Personally, I want to continue to live an inspired life. I’d like to see our company double in volume in the next three years. I think there’s a renaissance occurring with agent productivity. Technology is making the transaction less complicated for the agent and the consumer.

Whether it’s new competitors like Redfin or Knock, or the discounters or legacy brands and franchises, there’s a lot of opportunity in the space. There’s never been a time when I’ve been so excited about doing what I’m doing. I’ve never seen a time where the consumer is more anxious for that agent who isn’t just meeting, but exceeding, expectations—who has a strong understanding of market knowledge and delivers core services.

When Warren Buffett invested in the real estate space, he had a long-term vision of people continuing to buy and sell homes. With the Berkshire Hathaway brand name, we can do that. When performance is measured, performance improves. When performance is measured and reported, the rate of improvement accelerates. If you create a culture where people track what they do and report what they do—not in a negative way, but in a way where they embrace a business discussion and plan to go to the next level—great things can happen. Our culture pulls people in and gives them a place where they can contribute and be recognized and go to the next level.

For more information, please visit www.bhhsgeorgia.com.

Maria Patterson is RISMedia’s executive editor. Email her your real estate news ideas at maria@rismedia.com. For the latest real estate news and trends, bookmark RISMedia.com.

The post Growing an Inspired Company: Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Georgia Properties appeared first on RISMedia.

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[mikeyd1986]

MIKEY’S PERSONAL BLOG 119, August 2018

On Monday afternoon, I decided to focus on some mental health recovery and self-care by going down to YMCA Casey ARC for a spa, sauna and steam room session. Last week I experiencing a lot of emotional issues which were triggered by my social isolation, depression and craving company from friends. But today I felt like I was more prepared and tried harder to tune into my own solitude. Even sitting by myself at McDonald's Fountain Gate, whilst was challenging and a little uncomfortable, was still manageable. But it’s the only true way to build my strength and independence as a person. https://www.elitedaily.com/life/culture/being-lonely-and-being-alone/1203747

On Tuesday afternoon, I attended an information session for a Leading Platform Assistant, a job I applied for with Metro Trains, held at Cliftons Melbourne in Collins Street. I have to say that I was feeling pretty unprepared for this info session as I was so focused on other things happening in my life like work, dealing with my mental health issues, NDIS planning and an upcoming trip to Dromana. Plus there wasn’t many details in my email invitation as to what would be in store for me at the session. https://au.linkedin.com/jobs/view/leading-station-assistant-at-metro-trains-melbourne-801704675

Clifton’s, which is located on Level 11 at 440 Collins Street, is a conference center featuring a restaurant and several meeting/presentation rooms. It really wasn’t that surprising to see how corporate the environment and other attendees were, several of which were dressed in fancy suits. Today’s session stirred up some emotions in me because change and making decisions are huge triggers for me. I knew that if I continued along this pathway that I would have to somehow juggle my other commitments and that was a really daunting prospect for me.

Sitting in a nearby bakery with Mum, I started to work myself up over the numerous possibilities and what if scenarios around progressing towards getting a job with Metro Trains. The reality is that there are only 35 vacant positions available out of 200 candidates so as expected, this is a lot of competition to be successful. I was asking myself: Am I ready for this? Will I be able to handle having a second job? What if it gets too much for me and I have performance anxiety and mess up? But that’s what my brain does: gets ahead of itself and starts catastrophizing everything.

I need to focus on one stage at a time. The next part will involve doing an online video screening assessment followed by a group interview in a couple of weeks time. There’s still no guarantees but I feel like I’ll regret it if I don’t even try to go for this job. Life is all about taking risks and embracing challenges and while there are many barriers in my way to get there, I’m sure that I can do it. And if I’m not successful, then it’s still good experience to have. http://www.metrotrains.com.au/careers/

On Wednesday afternoon, Mum and I arrived at the Kangerong Holiday Park Dromana. We booked cabin number 16 which contains two bedrooms, a bathroom, a toilet, kitchen and dining areas and a lounge room. After settling in and working out an itinerary of sorts, we explored the main shopping district along Point Nepean Road which features many cafes, restaurants and retail stores. It’s been a few years since I last visited Dromana and despite a few new shops and residential properties being built, it’s pretty much the same. https://www.travelvictoria.com.au/dromana/

On Thursday morning, Mum and I visited the Peninsula Hot Springs in Fingal. You would think this would be a relaxing experience but sadly a lot of things were setting off my anxiety today: getting myself orientated around the retreat, feeling pressured by time, lack of sleep, irritability, impatience, mood swings, the behaviour of other guests (e.g. taking endless amounts of selfies and posing for photos), getting missed calls and messages on my phone, general worries about my life. My brain is so used to making plans and schedules so “relaxing” is actually not easy for me to do.

However, once I was actually bathing in the mineral water, I did have some moments of relaxation. We chose to get the bathing package which includes the Spa Dreaming Centre and Bath Houses with robe, towel and locker hire all included. Something I wasn’t prepared for was the amount of steps we had to climb getting from place to place but it was good exercise for both of us. https://www.peninsulahotsprings.com/experiences/bathe/

We were surrounded by lots of natural wildlife and bushland with a number of ducks, wrens and finches for company. In the afternoon, Mum and I treated ourselves to twin 45 minute facial treatments with two lovely female beauty therapists, Michelle and Eleanor. This was probably the highlight for me as I could spend the time meditating and doing absolutely nothing! We got to experience a range of essential oils, lotions and creams from the Synthesis Organics range as well as some gentle massage into the base of the head, neck and shoulders. https://www.peninsulahotsprings.com/experiences/spa/face/

I think that if I made visiting the hot springs a regular thing, I would be a lot more settled and less worried. The staff were all wonderful and welcoming. On reflection, I think that I got myself really wound up and overwhelmed by all the different options and facilities available that I didn’t know which ones I should make a priority. And also it took a while for Mum and I to navigate around through the bath houses and various baths and pools. But again being my first time, it was a lot to take in and next time it’ll be a lot easier for me to adjust to.

After this, my responsibilities from back at home came down on me like an avalanche. I got contacted by the local NDIS office in Narre Warren to arrange for a planning meeting to be booked. I was so unprepared for this as my head was far away from anything NDIS related. Plus I wasn’t expected to be contacted so soon with the rollout only a couple of days away. Why am I such a high priority? But anyway, it’s probably the most daunting step of the whole process so I’ll be glad when it’s over. http://www.disabilityservicesconsulting.com.au/resources/ndis-planning-how-to

I also had to cancel an appointment to see a sleep specialist in Berwick tomorrow. The timing was off and I really can’t afford to do it anyway. Plus I still want to considering some more natural remedies to help me sleep better at night. Money will always be a huge barrier for me but I know that getting adequate sleep and a good quality of sleep is important so I’m gonna do what it takes to improve on it. https://www.rd.com/health/wellness/insomnia-sleep-remedies/

On Friday afternoon, Mum and I went for a drive (with the assistance of the Google Maps navigation lady) from Dromana to Rosebud to Red Hill. After having a wonderful big breakfast each at Sliced Cafe in Rosebud Plaza, we visited to lavender farm to discover that there wasn’t much there at all besides a restaurant and a small gift shop. Obviously coming to end of Winter, it’s too early for an lavender to be growing but it was still disappointing that there wasn’t even a proper shop there. https://redhilllavender.com.au/

Next we dropped into Peninsula Galleries Red Hill which is located on a beautiful acre property. It’s surrounded on all sides by rolling hills, large towering trees and several different farms and vineyards. The weather was beginning to clear up as we arrived. We had a brief look through the art gallery and had an iced coffee. I was still feeling quite bloated and unsettled after the big breakfast this morning and the change in weather was noticeably affecting my mood and energy levels. https://www.peninsulagalleries.com.au/

On Friday night, we treated ourselves to a night out at The Rye Hotel. Annoyingly, the weather turned again and it began bucketing down as we left Dromana. But in typical Melbourne fashion, it cleared up once again as we arrived in Rye. The hotel borrows a lot of influences from 1920’s Art Deco style with lots of curved architectural features, glass panels and brass furniture. The stunning view from the main bistro area looks out over Nepean Highway onto the beach in the distance. Sitting close to the fireplace in comfy circular-shaped chairs, I ordered the classic beer battered fish n’ chips as well as a slice of mud cake. https://www.ryehotel.com.au/restaurant

On Saturday morning, Mum and I visited the Heronswood House and Gardens in Dromana to finish off our 3.5 day trip down to the Mornington Peninsula. Unfortunately my negative mood made an unwelcome return. At first I thought it was just due to the usual factors like the cold, Wintery weather, not getting enough sleep, daytime sleepiness, hunger pains. But I knew that there was a deeper, underlying cause. I suddenly realised that it’s Father’s Day tomorrow.

This day is such a huge emotional trigger for me when it comes around every year. The absence of my biological Dad and also not having very close relationships to many male father figures in my life always leaves me feeling empty, lost and depressed. Plus it’s really snuck up on me this year as I’ve had barely any time to process it or get organised for celebrating the day with my step-dad. It’s just one of those days I don’t like thinking about.

The other source was the fact that we’d be returning home this afternoon. This has been an ongoing issue for both Mum and myself in which the notion of “going back to reality” is a very distressing one. Not only is it back to reality but it’s back to my to-do list, back to my responsibilities, back to the area in which we live, back to work, back to routine. But the only way to really cope with it is to embrace things that we both enjoy doing in order to balance out the mundane.

The gardens themselves were very impressive: a cross between the royal botanical gardens and scenes from the film The Secret Garden. It contains a large variety of trees, shrubs, palms, ferns, succulents, vegetables and fruiting plants as well as massive pine trees and tangling vines. There is also a garden shop which is run by The Diggers Club and offers plenty of different plants, seeds, garden accessories and ornaments to buy at both retail and members prices.

The Heronswood heritage property was originally built by William Hearn in 1871 in the architectural style of Gothic Revival. It has more recently been converted into a fully-functioning restaurant which serves morning and afternoon teas and lunches. Mum and I decided to order a serving of scones with jam and cream each. https://www.diggers.com.au/our-gardens/heronswood/

“Mother Mary, Please answer my prayers, I want to run free, And I need you to be there. I'm going to take some chances I never took before, I've got to live my life, And I'm gonna risk it all. I look to the sky, And suddenly I know, I've made up my mind, I'm never letting go.” Vanessa Amorosi - The Power (2000)

“I spend my life, trying to do things right but all I do is fall to my face with my hands on my head so many times. But then I learnt, after being burnt to get back up and push straight on stop the tears people move on, on. Well it’s alright to be myself, now I’ve learnt to stand. Well it’s okay to be just who I am. I spent years really hating me, longing to be friends. Now I hope that you can understand. This is who I am.” Vanessa Amorosi - This Is Who I Am (2009)

[cleopatrarps]

Instant View: U.S. June payrolls gain more than expected

(Reuters) – U.S. job growth increased more than expected in June as manufacturers stepped up hiring, but steady wage gains pointed to moderate inflation pressures that should keep the Federal Reserve on a path of gradual interest rate increases.

FILE PHOTO: Job seekers line up at TechFair in Los Angeles, California, U.S. March 8, 2018. REUTERS/Monica Almeida

Nonfarm payrolls increased by rose by 213,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department said on Friday. Data for April and May was revised to show 37,000 more jobs created than previously reported. The unemployment rate rose to 4.0 percent from an 18-year low of 3.8 percent in June as more people entered the labor force in the sign of confidence in the jobs market.

KEY POINTS:

* U.S. June labor force participation rate 62.9 pct, vs May 62.7 pct

* U.S. June average hourly earnings, all private workers, rose 0.2 pct, versus consensus for up 0.3 pct and May’s +0.3 pct

* U.S. June U-6 underemployment rate 7.8 pct, vs May 7.6 pct

* U.S. June private sector jobs rose 202,000, higher than consensus for up 190,000, vs May’s upwardly revised 239,000

* U.S. June government jobs +11,000, vs May +5,000

ANDREW HUNTER, U.S. ECONOMIST, CAPITAL ECONOMICS, LONDON

“The solid 213,000 gain in non-farm payrolls in June, which followed an even stronger 244,000 rise in May, illustrates that labor market conditions remain unusually strong. Together with signs that GDP growth rebounded markedly in the second quarter, that will keep the Fed on course to raise interest rates twice more by year-end.

“Admittedly, the unemployment rate did rebound to 4.0 percent, from 3.8 percent, but that was only due to a 601,000 surge in the labor force, which outweighed a more modest 102,000 rise in household employment. In any case, if jobs growth remains close to its current trend, the unemployment rate is likely to resume its downward trend over the second half of this year. Average earnings growth remains fairly subdued, with a 0.2 percent month-on-month gain leaving the annual growth rate unchanged at 2.7 percent. But an elevated share of firms are now planning to raise compensation and, in any case, core inflation already appears to be on an upward trend.”

THOMAS SIMONS, MONEY MARKET ECONOMIST, JEFFERIES, NEW YORK

“Payrolls were pretty solid overall, nothing really to poke holes at as far as the establishment data goes. 0.20 percent increase in average hourly earnings is slightly disappointing if you want to try to find some bad news in so far as that qualifies. We’re still steady at 2.7 percent year over year but 213,000 on the headline payrolls, upward revisions for last month, solid increases in manufacturing and goods producing, I think there is a lot in the establishment survey.

“On the household survey, 0.20 increase in the unemployment rate is kind of surprising, but when you look at the composition there you had almost 500,000 people coming back into the labor force unemployed. Given that we have record amount of job openings I think that isn’t the worst thing ever since there is still plenty of work available for these folks. A growing labor force is still good. I think it’s a response to tightness in the labor market. Overall I think it’s pretty good.

“Average hourly earnings are I think the number that most Treasury traders are laser focused in these employment reports that I think is why you got a little bit of an initial rally. That and of course the unemployment rate without going into the details doesn’t look great, but when you get down to it its pretty good news overall.”

ANTHONY SAGLIMBENE, GLOBAL MARKET STRATEGIST, AMERIPRISE FINANCIAL SERVICES, TROY, MICHIGAN.

“It’s a positive for the markets. The 213,00 in June is about where the average has been for the year. The average so far has been 208,000 so we’re on pace for what we’ve seen for the year. The unemployment rate kicks up a little bit as you have more people coming into the labor market. The bigger thing that the market is paying attention to is the average hourly earnings, which was 0.2 percent month-over-month, generally in line with where it’s been.

“The pace of inflation is what investors and the market are most in tune with, it’s really what’s going to play a role in corporate profitability. If you see wage inflation pressures, or the unexpected spike in average hourly earnings, that’s an indication that employers have to pay more in wages to attract more workers, which dents corporate profitability and that’s what the market is really focusing in on, and today’s number really doesn’t indicate that wage pressures are getting out of hand, that’s a positive for the market and probably respond well to that.”

BRAD MCMILLAN, CHIEF INVESTMENT OFFICER, COMMONWEALTH FINANCIAL, WALTHAM, MASS.

“On the whole, I think it is positive. Jobs growth continues to accelerate above expectation, manufacturing was terrific. All of that was expected to some extent. The real takeaway is the labor force. The available labor force seems larger than what a lot of people thought.”

“When I look at the wage growth from an economic standpoint, that plays right into this more labor supply than we thought. Clearly there is not the lack of labor that’s going to force wages higher. We see people moving into labor force, that’s a good thing from a corporate perspective because one of the worries has been rising wage growth is going to erode profit margins, but we don’t really see that yet.”

“From a market perspective, this is really a sweet-spot report — continued economic strength without growing cost pressures.”  

STEVEN ENGLANDER, HEAD OF G10 FX, AND NORTH AMERICAN MACRO STRATEGY, STANDARD CHARTERED, NEW YORK

“From the economy’s point of view this is about as good a number as you can get. I’m focusing on the payrolls number, plus the revisions — very positive. But the somewhat higher unemployment rate, which means more participation and the somewhat weaker earnings number, makes the expansion more sustainable. Whatever worries the Fed has about overheating get mitigated. And this is subject to recognizing that this is just one number. But, on margin, say compared to having 2.9. One number. But on the margins, having a 2.9 or 2.8 on the earnings and the participation rate dropping. This is a more relaxing number for the Fed because it suggests that maybe the supply side, certainly on the labor market, is kicking in a bit.

“I think the market will see this as being very equity friendly. The dollar is coming off because there is a big focus on the earnings number and in the short-term it takes some pressure off rates. We have seen 10-year rates go down by 2 basis points. The market looks at this says this is not a particularly dollar friendly number in the very short-term, but for the economy it is a great number.

“What is nice about these numbers is that even though they are strong and market friendly, they are not so out of bounds that you think this is going to have to be reversed next month.”

JJ KINAHAN, CHIEF MARKET STRATEGIST, TD AMERITRADE, CHICAGO

“It was what the market wanted to see: more jobs created than expected, wage growth moderate and creating jobs where you want to see them … it’s not just creating jobs its creating careers.”

“The retail number may be a little surprising. It’s odd given the timing.”

MOHAMED EL-ERIAN, CHIEF ECONOMIC ADVISER AT ALLIANZ, NEWPORT BEACH, CALIF

“While sluggish wage growth counter what would otherwise have been a uniformly strong jobs report, the data will reinforce in the short-term the baseline view of a strong U.S. economy that outpaces others, is able to navigate trade policy uncertainty, and will encourage the Fed to hike at least once more this year.”

MARKET REACTION:

STOCKS: S&P e-mini futures, were little changed, reversing slight losses before the report and were last up 0.05 percent

BONDS: Treasury yields slipped further, 2-year notes were at 2.5406 percent and 10-year at 2.8199 percent

FOREX: The dollar index extended slight losses and was last down 0.44 percent

Americas Economics and Markets Desk; +1-646 223-6300

The post Instant View: U.S. June payrolls gain more than expected appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2u3oVbK via News of World

[dani-qrt]

Instant View: U.S. June payrolls gain more than expected

(Reuters) – U.S. job growth increased more than expected in June as manufacturers stepped up hiring, but steady wage gains pointed to moderate inflation pressures that should keep the Federal Reserve on a path of gradual interest rate increases.

FILE PHOTO: Job seekers line up at TechFair in Los Angeles, California, U.S. March 8, 2018. REUTERS/Monica Almeida

Nonfarm payrolls increased by rose by 213,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department said on Friday. Data for April and May was revised to show 37,000 more jobs created than previously reported. The unemployment rate rose to 4.0 percent from an 18-year low of 3.8 percent in June as more people entered the labor force in the sign of confidence in the jobs market.

KEY POINTS:

* U.S. June labor force participation rate 62.9 pct, vs May 62.7 pct

* U.S. June average hourly earnings, all private workers, rose 0.2 pct, versus consensus for up 0.3 pct and May’s +0.3 pct

* U.S. June U-6 underemployment rate 7.8 pct, vs May 7.6 pct

* U.S. June private sector jobs rose 202,000, higher than consensus for up 190,000, vs May’s upwardly revised 239,000

* U.S. June government jobs +11,000, vs May +5,000

ANDREW HUNTER, U.S. ECONOMIST, CAPITAL ECONOMICS, LONDON

“The solid 213,000 gain in non-farm payrolls in June, which followed an even stronger 244,000 rise in May, illustrates that labor market conditions remain unusually strong. Together with signs that GDP growth rebounded markedly in the second quarter, that will keep the Fed on course to raise interest rates twice more by year-end.

“Admittedly, the unemployment rate did rebound to 4.0 percent, from 3.8 percent, but that was only due to a 601,000 surge in the labor force, which outweighed a more modest 102,000 rise in household employment. In any case, if jobs growth remains close to its current trend, the unemployment rate is likely to resume its downward trend over the second half of this year. Average earnings growth remains fairly subdued, with a 0.2 percent month-on-month gain leaving the annual growth rate unchanged at 2.7 percent. But an elevated share of firms are now planning to raise compensation and, in any case, core inflation already appears to be on an upward trend.”

THOMAS SIMONS, MONEY MARKET ECONOMIST, JEFFERIES, NEW YORK

“Payrolls were pretty solid overall, nothing really to poke holes at as far as the establishment data goes. 0.20 percent increase in average hourly earnings is slightly disappointing if you want to try to find some bad news in so far as that qualifies. We’re still steady at 2.7 percent year over year but 213,000 on the headline payrolls, upward revisions for last month, solid increases in manufacturing and goods producing, I think there is a lot in the establishment survey.

“On the household survey, 0.20 increase in the unemployment rate is kind of surprising, but when you look at the composition there you had almost 500,000 people coming back into the labor force unemployed. Given that we have record amount of job openings I think that isn’t the worst thing ever since there is still plenty of work available for these folks. A growing labor force is still good. I think it’s a response to tightness in the labor market. Overall I think it’s pretty good.

“Average hourly earnings are I think the number that most Treasury traders are laser focused in these employment reports that I think is why you got a little bit of an initial rally. That and of course the unemployment rate without going into the details doesn’t look great, but when you get down to it its pretty good news overall.”

ANTHONY SAGLIMBENE, GLOBAL MARKET STRATEGIST, AMERIPRISE FINANCIAL SERVICES, TROY, MICHIGAN.

“It’s a positive for the markets. The 213,00 in June is about where the average has been for the year. The average so far has been 208,000 so we’re on pace for what we’ve seen for the year. The unemployment rate kicks up a little bit as you have more people coming into the labor market. The bigger thing that the market is paying attention to is the average hourly earnings, which was 0.2 percent month-over-month, generally in line with where it’s been.

“The pace of inflation is what investors and the market are most in tune with, it’s really what’s going to play a role in corporate profitability. If you see wage inflation pressures, or the unexpected spike in average hourly earnings, that’s an indication that employers have to pay more in wages to attract more workers, which dents corporate profitability and that’s what the market is really focusing in on, and today’s number really doesn’t indicate that wage pressures are getting out of hand, that’s a positive for the market and probably respond well to that.”

BRAD MCMILLAN, CHIEF INVESTMENT OFFICER, COMMONWEALTH FINANCIAL, WALTHAM, MASS.

“On the whole, I think it is positive. Jobs growth continues to accelerate above expectation, manufacturing was terrific. All of that was expected to some extent. The real takeaway is the labor force. The available labor force seems larger than what a lot of people thought.”

“When I look at the wage growth from an economic standpoint, that plays right into this more labor supply than we thought. Clearly there is not the lack of labor that’s going to force wages higher. We see people moving into labor force, that’s a good thing from a corporate perspective because one of the worries has been rising wage growth is going to erode profit margins, but we don’t really see that yet.”

“From a market perspective, this is really a sweet-spot report — continued economic strength without growing cost pressures.”  

STEVEN ENGLANDER, HEAD OF G10 FX, AND NORTH AMERICAN MACRO STRATEGY, STANDARD CHARTERED, NEW YORK

“From the economy’s point of view this is about as good a number as you can get. I’m focusing on the payrolls number, plus the revisions — very positive. But the somewhat higher unemployment rate, which means more participation and the somewhat weaker earnings number, makes the expansion more sustainable. Whatever worries the Fed has about overheating get mitigated. And this is subject to recognizing that this is just one number. But, on margin, say compared to having 2.9. One number. But on the margins, having a 2.9 or 2.8 on the earnings and the participation rate dropping. This is a more relaxing number for the Fed because it suggests that maybe the supply side, certainly on the labor market, is kicking in a bit.

“I think the market will see this as being very equity friendly. The dollar is coming off because there is a big focus on the earnings number and in the short-term it takes some pressure off rates. We have seen 10-year rates go down by 2 basis points. The market looks at this says this is not a particularly dollar friendly number in the very short-term, but for the economy it is a great number.

“What is nice about these numbers is that even though they are strong and market friendly, they are not so out of bounds that you think this is going to have to be reversed next month.”

JJ KINAHAN, CHIEF MARKET STRATEGIST, TD AMERITRADE, CHICAGO

“It was what the market wanted to see: more jobs created than expected, wage growth moderate and creating jobs where you want to see them … it’s not just creating jobs its creating careers.”

“The retail number may be a little surprising. It’s odd given the timing.”

MOHAMED EL-ERIAN, CHIEF ECONOMIC ADVISER AT ALLIANZ, NEWPORT BEACH, CALIF

“While sluggish wage growth counter what would otherwise have been a uniformly strong jobs report, the data will reinforce in the short-term the baseline view of a strong U.S. economy that outpaces others, is able to navigate trade policy uncertainty, and will encourage the Fed to hike at least once more this year.”

MARKET REACTION:

STOCKS: S&P e-mini futures, were little changed, reversing slight losses before the report and were last up 0.05 percent

BONDS: Treasury yields slipped further, 2-year notes were at 2.5406 percent and 10-year at 2.8199 percent

FOREX: The dollar index extended slight losses and was last down 0.44 percent

Americas Economics and Markets Desk; +1-646 223-6300

The post Instant View: U.S. June payrolls gain more than expected appeared first on World The News.

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