#Satellite Syndicate

[girlactionfigure]

An Excess of Democracy

The State of Israel is more endangered today than at any time since 1948, including 1973. She is tied down in Gaza while her enemies wait their turn in Lebanon, Syria, the PA, Yemen, Iraq, and Iran – which may already have nuclear weapons. An unprecedented campaign of antisemitic incitement is destroying popular support for her throughout the world, and government after government is punishing her by recognizing the “State of Palestine” on her territory. The more genocidal her enemies, the more she is falsely accused of genocide. Her decision to position herself as a satellite of the US has borne bitter fruit, as that country’s policies are increasingly decided by elements that want to see Israel disappear; at the same time, the enemies of the US treat her as an outpost of US power that must be eliminated.

Israel’s political, intelligence, and military elites have shown themselves incompetent. They failed to foresee, prevent, or even effectively react to the invasion of 7 October. They have turned the military successes of the war into what appears to be a surrender to all of Hamas’ demands.

Over the years they have projected an image of Israel as a punching bag rather than the proud and powerful nation that she is. Despite our nuclear-armed military, they have allowed Iran to encircle us with terrorist proxies and even to establish a deterrent force in Lebanon that we fear to challenge. They have allowed Iran itself to obtain nuclear weapons.

On 13 April 2024, Iran launched an attack against Israel that included hundreds of drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles, the largest such attack in military history. All but a few were intercepted by Israel with some help from the US and others; the cost of this defensive operation to Israel was estimated at more than $1 billion. Had the attack succeeded, there would have been great damage to military and infrastructure targets, as well as loss of life. Israel retaliated a few days later by destroying some radar installations in Iran. The weakness of Israel’s response was a result of US pressure and the deterrent effect of Iran’s Hezbollah proxy.

At home, our leaders have allowed the PA to systematically gobble up parts of Area C in Judea/Samaria that are supposed to be under full Israeli control by international treaty. They have allowed, and then legitimized, illegal Bedouin settlement in the Negev. They have allowed the flourishing of Arab crime syndicates in the Negev and Galilee, and in the Arab towns and mixed Arab-Jewish cities.

Tens of thousands of Israeli citizens have fled from their homes: in the south from fear of resurgent Hamas terrorism, and in the north from daily bombardment by Hezbollah with rockets and anti-tank weapons, which have laid waste to cities and towns in the area. As I write this, large fires started by Hezbollah rockets are burning in northern cities.

Our governments are ineffectual, paralyzed by arguments over issues like the judicial reform and the Haredi draft, beset by powerful lobbies and popular groups that are manipulated by political actors. The two largest minority populations, Israeli Arabs and Haredim, maintain autonomous “states” within our state, where the laws and informal understandings that govern the rest of the population don’t necessarily apply.

Many Israeli Arabs, with the notable exception of the Druze and a small number of Bedouins, do not accept the principle that Israel is a Jewish state, do not serve in the military, and in many cases avoid taxation and other responsibilities. Haredim refuse to serve in the military and maintain an educational system in which “secular” subjects like mathematics and modern Hebrew language are not taught.

Because of the war, reserve soldiers are now to serve 90 days a year, which is destructive to family life, jobs, and especially independent businesses. At the same time, tens of thousands of yeshiva students have been exempted from the draft. Attempts to change this have been met by demonstrations which block major roads, and threats by Haredi politicians to bring down the government. Israeli governments have been trying to find a successful compromise to enable the sharing of the security burden for decades without success.

***

What can be done? What must be done to preserve the Jewish state, prevent another Jewish dispersion, and restore Israel’s role as the protector of the Jewish communities of the diaspora? As always, there are short-term and long-term answers. Today our most critical concern must be the war in Gaza. As long as Hamas continues to be in control of the strip, we effectively lose a large chunk of our country that will remain uninhabitable, and the IDF will be tied down and unable to respond to other threats. Even more importantly, if Israel is defeated by the terror tactics of Hamas – and make no mistake, an agreement along the lines of the one announced last week by the US president will be understood by the entire world as a crushing defeat – our enemies on all fronts will bring us more 7 Octobers.

Hamas’ victory strategy depends on two major Israeli weaknesses: the public concern for the hostages (and the manipulation of that concern by political actors that oppose the government), and Israel’s susceptibility to American pressure.

The cruelty of Hamas and the situation of the hostages is tearing at the hearts of all Israelis. But barring a miracle, there is no solution that will bring them home at a price the nation can afford. We must say to their families: we cannot trade the Jewish state for your people. We must do everything that we can to save them, but we cannot surrender to our murderous enemy in order to do so. It’s delusional to think that we can accept a 6-week ceasefire (not to mention the other concessions demanded), given the pressure from America and the other fronts of the war, and then return to finish off Hamas. It will not happen.

The US administration has done and is continuing to do everything it can short of military intervention on the side of Hamas to prevent Israel from achieving a decisive victory. Israeli leaders must understand that we cannot win if we obey the directives from Washington. They must tell the Americans whatever they need to hear, but order the IDF to finish the job, to remove Hamas from power and destroy its military capability.

***

It is painful to write this, but I fear that our present government may be incapable of taking the actions required for the state to survive. Worse, the political structure of our state may be ill-adapted to survival in today’s Middle East.

I would sum up the problem by saying that Israel suffers from an excess of democracy. There are many things that are wonderful about a truly democratic state: in theory, it can behave justly toward individuals with diverse interests and needs. It is a way to align the policies of a country with the “general will” of the populace, in the words of Rousseau. Unfortunately there are some specific situations where democracy is sub-optimal.

One of them is a state of war. In wartime, decisions must be made that will favor victory but which will cause popular suffering, or suffering of influential groups. Such decisions often cannot be made democratically.1 An example is the question of whether Israel should accept a deal that will free some hostages, but also release many imprisoned terrorists and place restrictions on her conduct of the war.

Another problematic case is that of large permanent minorities who utilize democratic institutions like elections to pursue “identity politics” rather than issue-oriented ones. In Israel, in addition to the ethnic and religious divisions, we find entrenched ideological and personality-oriented subgroups. In 2019-21 they combined with our complicated electoral system to produce four parliamentary elections in a period of two years. The tension between the elected Knesset and the independent bureaucracy, which represents Israel’s former ruling elite, guarantees gridlock on important issues. In addition, the almost decade-long attempt to take down PM Netanyahu utilizing the judicial system, and supported by most of the media and the academic establishment, has been a distraction and strain on both sides.

Israel is both almost permanently at war, and blessed with large ethnic/religious minorities. Thus her aspiration to be a democratic state works against the possibility that she will have an effective government. And the challenges to being a tiny Jewish state in the Middle East absolutely require leadership that functions optimally.

Given the power relationships in our political society, it is unlikely that there is a smooth path – for example, a constitutional convention – to a new form of government. But the responsibility of the state to her citizens, and to the Jewish people as a whole, demands that she make this transition in any case, regardless of the disruption of normal life that it is likely to entail. ______________________________________

1But didn’t the democracies defeat the Nazis in WWII? Actually, both Roosevelt and Churchill acted as virtual dictators. And Stalin…

[hallowed-the-silver-gun]

Broadcast from satellite primordial:

Hello! As you may of guessed, the world is no longer ending, currently my team has begun participating in clean up operations globally, and we no longer recommend avoiding water. The elder god which caused this event has been stopped, but the perpetrators of this, the syndicate, have alluded authorities.

@f4y3w00d5 @monsterfucker-research-wizard @gobodegoblin @blooper-malte @symbiosis-enjoyer

[alfredsolos]

I have been impatiently waiting for a certain comic to start and it's finally here.

Adventures of Superman: Jon Kent.

Now, let me give you a short summary of it's plot: Ultraman is killing Supermans from every single multiverse one by one. And Jon Kent travels to find him and stop him.

At the beginning of issue 1, we see Ultraman killing a Superman:

We can see that he is very strong now, and will be a tough opponent.

Next panel, we see Jon and Jay walking around together and Jon is happy that his identity is secret again. (For those of you who don't know, Lex admitted that the world needed a Superman and decided to build a machine that wiped everyone's memory of the Superfamily's identity.) Jay, though, is still known as Superman's boyfriend and is a bit grumpy 'cause of that. Anyways Jon detects something that is falling from the sky and sees that it's thousands of satellites merged together. He tries to stop it with the help of Oracle:

He doesn't need to, however. Because the next moment we see Val-Zod, a Superman from Earth-2, arrive and save the day:

Val is not alone though, he brings a Red Tornado with him.

Jon takes him back to his house, along with Mister Terrific greeting them. Val explains to everyone that Ultraman is killing Supermans and they need Jon's help. Lois, however, does not want Ultraman near his son after what he did to him.

(For those of you who don't know; when Jor-El took Jon to space, Jon got sucked through a black hole and landed in Earth-3 with the Crime Syndicate. Ultraman then saw him and kidnapped him. He kept Jon inside a volcano for 6 years and abused him both physically and mentally.)

And later on, Red Tornado reveals herself to be Lois Lane from another Earth, to convince this Earth's Lois Lane:

After some convincing, they finally make a plan and track Ultraman to an unknown Earth. They also talk about other versions of Jon Kent, which most of them are 11 years old except for the DCeases version. (Which if you know this comic, it's so freaking good. Read it.)

Ultraman becomes aware of their appearance and immediately attacks them, injuring Red Tornado fatally. When he realises that Jon is his Jon, he uses the projector and teleports Val and Red Tornado to another Earth and plans to kidnap and throw Jon into a volcano again:

They have a fight, and Jon unleashes his new mysterious power which he gained during Lazarus Planet. Although he manages to injure Ultraman really good, he feels drained after using it and almost passes out:

Ultraman crawls on top of him to beat him up while saying horrible things. But before he can hurt Jon, someone stops him:

And at that moment, it's revealed that which Earth they're currently in:

It's the Injustice Universe and that Superman snaps Ultraman's neck as if he's nothing more than a toy.

(A bit information on who this Superman is: in the Injustice Universe, Joker destroys Metropolis killing millions of people and gasses Superman with fear gas. Superman doesn't know this and comes across Doomsday. He immediately attacks and kills Doomsday, but he later on realizes that he was gassed with something and it wasn't Doomsday he had just killed. It was his pregnant wife Lois. After that he goes batshit insane and ends up killing the Joker. He then decides to create his own regime and starts executing criminals. The whole JL gets divided after this. Batman's team and Superman's team. With the former trying to stop the latter from killing criminals.)

We get a pretty emotional scene where Superman immediately knows who Jon is.

And this is why I was so excited for this comic. This could be very good if the writer manages it properly. The writer also stated that we will see Injustice! Damian (who after accidentally killing Dick, takes up the Nightwing mantle and sides with Superman) and Jon together.

And I can't begin to tell you how excited I am for Superman and Jon's interaction together.

[linesonscreens]

Let's Read Peanuts (Only 45 more years to go!) – October 1955

There are lots of great strips I just don't have room to comment on. I strongly encourage everybody to read the full month at the official GoComics page. Today's month starts HERE.

October 2 1955

I like it! That kid gets things done.

October 4, 1955

Why Are they in class together?

Why are they in class together!?

WHY ARE THEY IN CLASS TOGETHER!?!?

October 13, 1955

I actually did a quick dig through the archives to see if Linus had ever interacted with snow up until now and couldn’t find anything. I might have just missed it, but Linus not knowing about snow is actually plausible.

October 16, 1955

This is a bit of a red flag, right? I get that kids like to pretend shoot stuff but flipping out and unloading an imaginary M134 into the nearest source of his frustration seems to be his go-to reaction to stressful situations.

Just saying, if I were his dad I’d probably be keeping an eye on it.

October 18, 1955

Another strip that's pretty cool for historical reasons. It's so weird to think about a world where going to the moon was some sort of fantastical pipe dream.

Also, like with the satellite program, the Soviets beat us to this one as well. The U.S. got the first ~manned~ mission, but the Soviet Union was the first one to to get ~any~ rocket to the moon in 1959 with Luna 2.

October 20, 1955

Nice callback!

October 31, 1955

I love the idea of kids having Halloween turf like some kind of organized crime syndicate.

Wait a minute.

The Peanuts "GANG”, you say?

My God... It's all starting to make sense.

[adventure-showdown]

What is your favourite Doctor Who story?

ROUND 1 MASTERPOST

synopses and propaganda under the cut

The Book of the War

Synopsis

The Great Houses: Immovable. Implacable. Unchanging. Old enough to pass themselves off as immortal, arrogant enough to claim ultimate authority over the Spiral Politic.

The Enemy: Not so much an army as a hostile new kind of history. So ambitious it can re-write worlds, so complex that even calling it by its name seems to underestimate it.

Faction Paradox: Renegades, ritualists, saboteurs and subterfugers, the criminal-cult to end all criminal-cults, happy to be caught in the crossfire and ready to take whatever's needed from the wreckage… assuming the other powers leave behind a universe that's habitable.

The War: A fifty-year-old dispute over the two most valuable territories in existence: "cause" and "effect."

Marking the first five decades of the conflict, THE BOOK OF THE WAR is an A to Z of a self-contained continuum and a complete guide to the Spiral Politic, from the beginning of recordable time to the fall of humanity. Part story, part history and part puzzle-box, this is a chronicle of protocol and paranoia in a War where the historians win as many battles as the soldiers and the greatest victory of all is to hold on to your own past…

Propaganda

Is it about Dr Who? I mean, sort of. Arguably. You could say the Doctor is present in it. Somewhat. Not by name tho because that would be illegal. But definitely there are uh. well. there's definitely stuff in it that's DWesque. It's Dr Who Adjacent. It's Dr Whoish. Strong Dr Who vibes. (@eighthdoctor )

Experimental sci-fantasy that defined the Time War and started a whole series of its own. (anonymous)

This Town Will Never Let Us Go

Synopsis

From up here you can see it all, hear it all, taste most of it and feel the rest when the electric lights and the satellite signals prickle against your skin. The town, from midnight to six, marked out in headlights and the flash-fire of a culture in War-time. Séance-messages written in the patterns of the road signs, and ghost-transmissions scrambled into the background noise of the traffic. Animal scent-signals from the fried food stands. All describing something, buried under the tarmac and the street-geometry.

Down there, a girl in a fake-bone mask is working on a ritual to bring it to the surface. A popular performing artiste with a navel stud and serious identity problems is finding herself stalked — literally — by her own image. An ambulance crewman is about to find his own way of getting involved in the War.

And bringing them all together, in one neat little urban mythology, there's Faction Paradox - part cult, part subculture, part pop phenomenon, and part criminal syndicate, either watching-without-being-seen or simply not existing at all (at least until someone invents it). Assuming they're not wholly imaginary, the archons of the Faction seem like the only ones who know what this town really is - what every town really is — and what's bound to happen when it wakes up.

Propaganda no propaganda submitted

Of the City of the Saved…

Synopsis

For Humanity, the War is over...

We all remember Resurrection Day. Even now, three centuries later, we cannot forget that awakening: our bewilderment, our terror and our joy. Each of us had experienced death, imagining ourselves bound for oblivion, Heaven or Nirvana, according to taste. Instead, we found, each member of the many human species — from tool-wielding australopithecines to posthuman philosopher-gods — had been harvested, gathered here by the Founders’ unfathomable technologies.

Reborn in our countless immortal bodies, we were given the freedom of the City of the Saved. A single conurbation as broad as a spiral galaxy, she has been our sanctuary from the ravages of the War. That monstrous conflict between inhuman cultures cannot touch us here: we live our afterlives beyond the end of time, in perfect safety.

We may be certain, therefore, that these rumours of a murder (the brutal stabbing of a City Councillor, no less!) are nothing more than lurid fabrications. The supposition that the murder weapon is missing, or that it could have been — as hysterical conjecture has claimed — a "potent weapon", capable of injuring a Citizen within the haven of the City, is equally absurd. The idea that a guerrilla war has already begun in one of our less harmonious enclaves need not be dignified with refutation.

Please go about your business, Citizens, as normal. We are perfectly safe, here in the City. Humanity has never been safer.

Propaganda  no propaganda submitted

Doctor Who and Shada (fan novelisation)

Synopsis

The Doctor and Romana visit Professor Chronotis, a retired Time Lord living at Cambridge University. The Professor wants to return an ancient and very powerful book to Gallifrey - but the book has gone missing.

Skagra, an evil scientist, steals the book and the Professor's mind - and also takes Romana and the TARDIS.

In order to stop Skagra, the Doctor must discover the secrets of a notorious Time Lord criminal, and a long forgotten prison called Shada...

Propaganda

The first ever adaption of Shada and one of the only fan novelisations (anonymous)

Harvest of Time

Synopsis

After billions of years of imprisonment, the vicious Sild have broken out of confinement. From a ruined world at the end of time, they make preparations to conquer the past, with the ultimate goal of rewriting history. But to achieve their aims they will need to enslave an intellect greater than their own...

On Earth, UNIT is called in to investigate a mysterious incident on a North Sea drilling platform. The Doctor believes something is afoot, and no sooner has the investigation begun when something even stranger takes hold: The Brigadier is starting to forget about UNIT's highest-profile prisoner. And he is not alone in his amnesia.

As the Sild invasion begins, the Doctor faces a terrible dilemma. To save the universe, he must save his arch-nemesis... The Master.

Propaganda

An amazing 3rd Doctor story that feels very much like the typical Delgado!Master stories of the time! Featuring: UNIT, Original Characters, a poster with the Master’s face on it stating to remeber him, and more! (anonymous)

[megamanrecut]

Alright, I've been busy and it's taking me awhile to get the next part of Diamond in the Rough up, so here's a little drabble/teaser for a short Become the Night interlude/sequel. (Note: I am in in a rush so apologies for the roughness/spelling errors lol also possible some details may change later for better continuity with everything)

Become the Night 2 Teaser (Now on Ao3)

It was a warm summer day outside Dr. Light’s laboratory. Dr. Light was away at a work conference, Rock and Roll had taken Rush into the city to go shopping, while Proto had stayed behind to work on the skycycle and be on call if Dr. Wily and Snake Man were to strike.

But the emergency satellite scanner remained quiet. Proto was bored—Dr. Wily hadn’t attacked in over a month, and his armor was sitting unused in a heap in his room, collecting dust. He was wondering if he should have gone into the city after all with Rock and Roll—shopping and malls weren’t his thing, but playing at the arcade with Rock and teasing Roll over her music tastes could be fun—

The doorbell rang.

Normally, Proto hated answering the door. Though Dr. Light’s laboratory was located in the country and didn’t receive many visitors, Proto preferred to ignore the few that came, who were mostly salesmen anyway. But today, Proto put down his tools, put on a pair of aviators, and answered the door.

Outside stood a man with short auburn hair. Despite the heat, he was dressed in a formal, tight-collared suit of black wool with orange embroidery and gold buttons. Everything about him looked extremely expensive, as though he were royalty—a strange visitor for Dr. Light’s boring, quiet laboratory in the country. He glanced around furtively, checking the lawn, then stared at Proto with familiar piercing pale eyes.

“Are you Proto?” he asked in a low voice, his lips barely moving, as though afraid the welcome doormat might be eavesdropping.

“Uh, yeah,” responded Proto without really thinking as he stared back (he was not dressed as ‘Break Man’, his public-facing hero identity, after all, nor did many know who ‘Proto’ was). 

The man (or android, as Proto had instantly figured out, despite the flawless disguise) nodded curtly. “My name is Mr. Turner. We haven’t met—“

“Oh I know who you are,” Proto interrupted, grinning broadly at Turner. There was no mistaking the resemblance of those pale eyes. “You’re Elec Man’s little brother!”

“I—what?” Turner wrinkled his nose. “I’m not—that’s not—“ He gave a small, annoyed cough, then changed the subject. “…Are you alone?”

“Yes.“ Proto opened the door wider. “Here, come in.”

Turner stepped warily over the threshold into the brightly lit foyer. After glancing around with a still expression, apparently listening to make sure Proto was actually alone, he began to walked around with perfect, straight backed grace, hands clasped behind his back.

“Checking for bugs,” Turner informed Proto in a cold, crisp tone as he inspected the dull knickknacks on the perfectly ordinary accent tables.

“Good idea, always forget to do that,” Proto replied, hiding a smirk. He was reminded a little bit of a peacock or a very self-conceited show dog.

Then he noticed Turner’s eyes were lingering on the framed pictures, and grimaced slightly inside. He wasn’t proud of this collection, especially not around a Syndicate member—most were family photos both dorky and domestic, yet it was a bit difficult to tell what Turner was thinking as he stared at them.

“So uh, what brings ya to this neck of the woods?” Proto prompted.

Turner turned his cold piercing stare on Proto. “I have a mission for you from your former employer. Top secret. I heard you used to do work for us…as some sort of assistant, or something.”

“Special asset, in the end—a mission from the Syndicate? Really?” Proto asked keenly, taking a step toward Turner.

A mission from the Syndicate would be dangerous—Syndicate missions were always dangerous. Proto missed the danger—fighting Dr. Wily and his goofy inventions didn’t have quite the same thrill as risking his life battling murderous scrappers and powerful mobsters. Yet, he had been placed in a forced retirement from vigilantism a year ago…still a bit of sore spot.

Turner’s eyes fell away from Proto to glance out a window. “Yes, but you must know, I can’t pay you for your work.”

“No problem. I will do it pro bono.”

“Then you accept?”

“Sure.”

“If you double cross me, I’ll make you regret every day for the rest of your short life.”

At this point, Proto was trying very hard not to laugh. The android was clearly trying to act both as impressively tough and coldly professional like Elec Man—a nigh impossible feat. “Of course. But…listen, junior, me and your older brother go way back. There’s no way I’d do anything to hurt you guys!”

“My name’s not ‘junior…’ Turner replied, bristling.

“Well, until you tell me your real name,” Proto responded with a lazy shrug. “And junior, no offense, while you’re earning extra credit in acting lofty and superior, you’re only a B in intimidation and a D in lying. Honestly I’m afraid if I even touched you you’d break like a china doll. Nice try, but lets can the gangster talk and cut to the chase.”

Turner looked affronted. “What do you mean?”

Lowering his voice, Proto took a step toward Turner, his amusement fading. “Junior…you’re supposed to be on a mission in California. You’re a long way from California. Call me crazy, but I don’t think you’re supposed to have any contact with me at all, least of all giving me orders! What the hell is going on? Where’s Elec Man?”

“I—I—” Turner appeared to be valiantly clinging on to his tough Syndicate facade, but a slight shiver shook his shoulders.  “I don’t know,” he admitted finally.

“…Is he in danger?”

Turner’s head almost made a small jerk, as though he were about to nod, but he quickly controlled it and said, sounding genuinely lost, “I don’t know. We—I—need Cypher’s help.” 

For a brief moment, Turner had looked imploringly at Proto, but then his gaze had darted away again.

Suddenly, the situation seemed much less fun, though Proto gave Turner a reassuring smile. “Well you got 'im. C’mon. We’ll take our air raider.”

Continued in Part 2

[dimalink]

Robotized Police 2100 - case at New Earth IV

Pixel art for today based on videogame Metal Mech - Man & Machine for game console Nes 8 bit. It is a game about a robot. Shooter. About sci fi theme. Sci fi action. You can also to get out of a robot.

And this is my drawing about the same theme. Year 2100. Artificial satellite of Mars. New Earth – IV. It is going to the end last clashes with pirates and outsiders of galaxy. Pirate fleet is broken. There is no more smuggling.  And pirates has no income. Powers of outsiders are defeated. And they are pushed to the most distant asteroids of Kuiper belt.

All that powers of federation are required – it is to enter a robotized police. And eliminate rest of pirates and bandits. You are a pilot of a robot police. And you have landed at New Earth 4.  You are came here from Mars.

Main aim – it is to search for leaders of pirates in every sector of a city. And eliminate. Also, to find the main from powers of outsiders. And eliminate too. It should be some cyborg.

Good news are came just about your arrival. Pirate fleet is run into mine field ahead of Mars. And was destroyed. Powers of outsiders are partially shadowed in Kuiper belt. As it was expected. But they have no resources.

At the New Earth IV it is still exists big syndicates and cartels from pirates and outsiders. So, with them you will have a thing. You are allowed to use rockets, machineguns, blasters. And everything you can to use.

[lboogie1906]

Claudia Angela Jordan (born April 12, 1973) is a talk show host, actress, model, businesswoman, and reality television and radio personality. She is known for appearing as a model on the US version of Deal or No Deal and The Price Is Right, and for competing on seasons 2 of Celebrity Apprentice. She appeared on The Real Housewives of Atlanta for its seventh season.

She was asked to return to compete on the All-Star version of Celebrity Apprentice. She was hired by the Apprentice host to co-host the Miss Universe 2009 pageant from the Bahamas. Her first hosting job was for Fox Sports West as a red carpet correspondent for 54321 and appeared on The Best Damn Sports Show Period. She then went on E! and The Style Network as the co-host of The Modern Girl’s Guide to Life for two seasons. After that, she was asked to join BET’s late-night sports show Ballers. She was a stand-out on the satellite radio show The Foxxhole, which gave her her weekly show on Sirius/XM Radio on The Foxxhole, called “The Claudia Jordan Show”. She co-hosted “Reach Around Radio”. She was a co-host on Tameka Cottle’s talk show Tiny’s Tonight. The television pilot aired in December 2012 on VH1. She hosted the travel show for AT&T called The Summer of Adventure. She was a co-host on the nationally syndicated Rickey Smiley Morning Show. She often appears as a contributor on CNN and HLN. She went on to star in TV One’s The Next 15 and lead her morning show in Dallas, The Morning Rush, which was the top-rated R&B Morning Show in Dallas. She hosts two talk shows on Fox Soul: Cocktails with Queens and Tea G-I-F. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[dominickeating-source]

What Satellite Issue 228 (2005)

BOLDLY GONE 

Star Trek: Enterprise is nearly over. Elise Harris talked to actors Dominic Keating and Connor Trinneer about the end of an era.

After only four series Star Trek: Enterprise, the fifth of the Star Trek franchise series, is over. To slightly misquote the theme song, it hasn't been a long time getting from there to here. The last episode of all is controversial. There is a major character death and, metaphorically speaking, some appearances from the ghosts of Enterprise crews past (or yet to come). It may not be what you want to see. 

Dominic Keating (Malcolm Reed) and Connor Trinneer (Trip Tucker) think there was a lot of unexplored potential in the show. Dominic particularly feels there was more to see with his character. "I never got a love interest. I got a couple of fling-ets, that were treated as a joke - and I wouldn't have minded - but Trip Tucker got all the top tottie." 

Connor focuses more on the stories themselves. "I think there was an opportunity to see what they could have done with the introduction of these alien species. They always glossed over the first contact - we never investigated the first contact, which I thought we could have had a lot of mileage with." 

The much-derided theme tune and rather tight all-in-one uniforms were not a problem for either, though. Connor agrees the outfits were "like gas station jumpsuits" but feels they fitted the tone of the show, especially the dark sets. Dominic says: "The idea was it was a sort of retro feel and the whole bridge and the ship itself was Das Boot-ish, that sort of thing. I didn't mind the costumes. Though Monday morning was always a bit tricky because they'd wash them over the weekend." 

He says he really quite liked the theme and the sentiment behind it. "I loved the endeavour and the images that went with the credits, 'It's been a long time getting from here to there...this time I'm going to make it.' Alot of stalwart fans didn't want to hear the captain whimpering about that, though." 

Connor thinks the fans would have preferred a heraldic theme more in keeping with the other shows in the franchise. "Yeah," adds Dominic, "the Third Reich march. We will conquer the space." Altogether, 98 episodes of Star Trek:Enterprise were made - every other Star Trek series but the original made 100. Connor says that is enough to syndicate the series on US TV. "Ultimately, that was what they were looking for. There was no point to go five years - if you were going to go five years you were going to go seven. There's nothing for them - they were going to get their package." 

Dominic says: "I'm disappointed. I would have done three more series probably - I would certainly have done two. We signed for seven, so we're three short of what we signed for. I loved going to work, to be honest, I really did. Lovely camaraderie and great crew and just regular employment with a nice cheque at the end of every 10 days. Can't beat it with a short stick." 

He also feels the show was just beginning to find itself. "The other series that came before really found their stride round about where we found our stride and I think season one and season two are pretty good too - at least 75 per cent of it is." Dominic credits new executive producer Manny Coto with this turnaround. "He was very hungry and ambitious and talented. He was a huge Star Trek fan from his youth and knew all the lore of Star Trek; he righted some wrongs. They'd taken some liberties in the first two seasons with some of our time lines, which certainly ticked of some of the hard-core Trek fans. He tipped some of those around and made it look as though they were intentional. It was clever stuff, man." 

There are no immediate plans (if any) for an Enterprise film, but both actors think it's only a matter of time before there's another Star Trek project in the planning stages. Dominic says: "There is talk about a Star Fleet Academy movie, but I think they got burnt badly on Nemesis, all things considered." 

Connor says he is overwhelmed at how the media is reacting to the show's demise. He says: "They're treating it as though the franchise is over. My instincts don't tell me that. I think they're going to put it to rest for a while." 

Dominic adds: "It's the end of an era for the franchise, that's for sure. It's the end of producer Rick Berman's stint. Then another man will put his paw print on another version four years from now. Try his luck - "Starfleet Academy 90210 In Space" - something like that." 

Source: www.dominickeating.com

[disasterghaster]

Millennium City

[Click Image for High Res]

Millennium City is a collaborative RP Location associated with Devang as well small groups of fellow RPers past and present.

The city is on a leyline knot (a concept like the magical lifeblood of the Earth in this lore) making it a receptive location for both supernatural activity and unusual dimensional activity. The history of the city is heavily mingled with organized crime and highly localized unnatural disasters.

The city is fashioned after an ambiguous portion of Northern California. It is on no standard map and does not show up on conventional satellite imaging. It is it’s own place-time and frequently is only found by those actively looking after having heard of it in someway. It is unknown how the city manages to protect itself in this way, but people that are not at least open to the idea of unnatural occurrences are not likely to find it.

Common modes of purposefully entering and leaving the city are either by subway, underground tunnel roads, or stumbling in from the surrounding inexplicable desert that rims the oasis of Millennium itself.

Accidental is much more random rips, slips, jumps, stumbles, gates, portals, and catapults through time-space to it’s location.

The city has two main historical epochs; Old Millennium and New Millennium. Distinguished by long-time inhabitants such as Devang/Sid and literally no one else. (A separation of RP related events which Devang or others that had been involved may or may not divulge.)

The city is very self-aware of supernaturals, criminal activity, and the delicate balance therein. The news is open and actively involved in warning systems for unusual instances of danger and general events. The city also has a city wide response for invasions, enhanced natural disasters, and other large scale disasters which include evacuation procedures to specially designed shelter buildings throughout the city. As well as mobilization of trained armed forces that forms a self-defense militia from police, voluntary citizens, and combined mobster forces. The city is familiar with city-wide attacks and while it is inwardly fractious like a gaggle of violent siblings it will unit into a formidable force in response to outside threats.

Landmarks

The Hill; The Hill is a geographical location that includes more than one notable location. It is the longest standing feature of Millennium City from Old Millennium. The primary feature is Asagi Mansion which is home to the Asagi Familia and associates. They boast the largest number of organized crime members and have had the most longstanding power and influence over the rest of the city. At one time, at the start of New Millennium, Devang was active Dona and rebuilt the city into what it is today. She has since stepped away long before current semi-retirement. She still considers herself heavily connected, but it runs itself without her.

Asagi’s Mansion; Large residential housing of three stories and six basement levels. Current Don lives here and operates the syndicate from this location.

Pops Lake; A small lake cared for by Asagi Familia that features a a few buildings for repose and fishing. The lake is considered private to The Hill.

Asagi Graveyard; A large graveyard that is kept fur burial of individuals of the familia that wish to be buried there or have no predetermined wishes for burial.

Alan Devang’s Cabin; Residence of Alan Devang, brother to the better known Devang. An individual with no deeper association with Asagi Familia.

Knowledge Tree Park; The park is home to a metaphysical tree only seen by those with some form of Sight. It is impossibly large, when Seen, and covers at least 80% of the city with branches adequately high enough to do so without disrupting buildings. The tree is a foreign entity that grew some years ago. The nature of the tree is ambiguous, but heavily guarded. Those without Sight would only see one residential building in a massive field of fenced off greenery. Two people live there, but are rarely seen unless the fence is crossed. The fence features signage ever ten feet that states: “!!!DANGER!!!: Entry At Own Risk. City not liable to personal death or damage if perimeter is crossed without Governing Approval.”

Sunrock Lake; This lake is unique in that it is well lit by a proliferation of ‘sun crystals’ which absorb sunlight in the daylight and emit the same light and rays at night. This makes it a beautiful local attraction. Unless you are sensitive to sunlight...

Century Isle; This island is home to a small nature preserve rimmed in luxury beaches and businesses. Many use it as a local vacation location. To no one’s surprise. It also has, of course, a small docking and warehouse area to support the commerce there.

Notable Locations

Darkside Bar; This is a multi-dimensional establishment that has multiple time-space locations, but one internal building. Leading it to have a diverse clientele. It is owned by Scott Holt who is sometimes and sometimes not a purple star in the sky.

Police Station; The police station doubles as a type of militia force. It must be to contend with internal and external city threats. They do not adhere to US common law and it is not always just. Many positions of power are corrupt at worst and aware that working strictly within a concrete framework is not applicable to a city like Millennium. They are, however, a formidable group aside from the local mobs. Rufus Stone is the current Chief.

Millennium Tower; This is the in-city-limits base of power for the Asagi Familia. It is the tallest tower in the city. It is practically a phallic symbol to the other families in the city vying for power. It is also a symbol to regular citizens of non-political if morally questionable power and protection for the city.

Devang’s Millennium Residence; Devang’s primary residence in the city. A two story with a basement. It’s not very large nor impressive. She has neighbors with a thick tree line between them. Not unlike her New Jersey residence.

Patch’s Pizza; The original opening location of her pizza chain. It hosts a number of supernatural and regular people and the menu is corresponding. She takes some pride in the place.

Gearom Gunn’s Shop; If you need something that bangs, flashes, or slashes, this is the place to go in the city.

Morning Star Shipping & Acquiring; One of several locations throughout the country including New York, Millennium, Las Vegas, New Orleans, and Chicago. It has global branches. It is run by Lucifer and deals in the finding and sale of unusual and unique, otherwise un-acquirable, merchandise. 

Ptah’s Gentleman Club; Owned by a vampire of the name Abydos Cordis. The Club is salacious and frequent party location for the city. Though one of many, it is known for a special and difficult to find drug that offers quite the experience in tandem with the club itself.

The city is somewhat malleable due to it’s RP based nature so this is by no means the start and stop of the city’s contents.

[satur9-if]

[Starkiller MC]

So the gang are in the station called Milkyway's vigil and their getting access (thanks to MC talking with the council that formed after and informing them of the danger of the nanoswarm breaking lose thanks to a wyvern) to important gear for their wyvern hunting mission and are getting reinforcements from the home planet of Cyber Haven (as they call it) which are to monitor and report back to homebase.

So they receive a call from MC telling them to go too the shipyard since their new ship is docked there and they will meet them there, they all reach the shipyard and see the ship and the name is Saturn 9.

They get inside and see a black metal casket in the living room area and they then see and read a note by MC saying they went to self destruct and take the nanoswarm with them but they get surprised when the black casket opens and MC in the form they first took after steping out off the factory being given to their Master/Mistress.

And they say they didn't expect it to be true but they found away for humans and machines (the ones that choose it) to be immortal as long as the chip inside them and the satellites are intact they will not die they will continue switching bodies until they choose to deactivate permanently and ascend to cyber heaven they look at the gang and tell them what they learnt and what they did:

1. They destroyed the prison of the nanoswarm and blew up their old body alongside The Starkiller taking the swarm with them and they also set up a protection field just incase a supernova stuck in an anti supernova force field didnt kill the damn thing.

2. The syndicate clones human and animals for resources they say this as pull off a sheat of a table and see an Android with its braincase open and they see a human brain with chips and wires running through it and human skin over its endoskeleton and MC tells them that's the exact model their using right now and they feel like a human which is kinda freaky since robots don't feel things certain things like touch or heat and cold but they feel that know and also the flesh regenerates in 1 day.

3. Some of The Humans and Androids upload their consciousness to a cloud when they die and comeback as nothing ever happened if they have extra bodies.

(Here's The ask after all the drible) How would the RO react to all this information and MC's appearance and the new things they can do with their new body like taste food.

Well... I asked for fanart just now, but fanfiction works too I guess.

As to answer the question, I think "How on Earth do you just destroy Dusk?" would be the question on everyone's minds. And I mean on Earth literally here; Having been left alone with the planet for 990 years, the Dusk nanoswarm most likely is Earth at this point. It's not going down easily.

[scruffyplayssonic]

Are the ArchieSonic comics actually an 80's/90's syndicated cartoon? Episode 53: Henchman joins heroes for one time only

Welcome back to my look at the ArchieSonic comic series, and how it shared a lot of the same story tropes as a typical ‘80s or ‘90s syndicated cartoon! In most cartoons the contrast between the heroes and the main villain is pretty black and white. Good is good, bad is bad, and never shall they be able to find common ground. But what about the lesser villains? The henchmen, the mooks, the hired help? Sometimes those guys are portrayed in shades of grey instead…

Episode 53: Henchman joins heroes for one time only 

There could be any number of reasons a henchman might temporarily team up with the good guys. They could be a victim of memory loss or brainwashing, they might have had a disagreement with their boss that drove them into the arms of the heroes before they decide to go back to being a bad guy, they might need the heroes’ help to defeat an even bigger bad that’s usurped their boss, or they might join up with the heroes while claiming to have been reformed but secretly planning to stab them in the back. 

So what about in ArchieSonic? The best example we have here is a scheming little weasel of a man (not literally) named Colin Kintobor Jr, but who is better known as Snively Robotnik.

Hoo boy, now here’s a guy whose loyalties seemed to change at the drop of a hat in ArchieSonic. Let’s take a look at this guy’s history, shall we? 

During the Great War Snively came to Mobotropolis to join his Uncle Julian, supposedly in service of King Acorn. But they were actually plotting a coup and successfully took over the Kingdom, exiling the King to the Zone of Silence and transforming most of the populace into robotic slaves.

Snively remained in the service of the newly rechristened Dr. Robotnik afterwards as his right hand man, although that role was often seen being fulfilled by the badnik Crabmeat in the early issues before Snively was introduced (and sometimes even afterwards). As the years went by Snively started to become more disillusioned and less trusting of his uncle, as Robotnik suffered defeat after defeat at the hands of the Freedom Fighters and started growing more abusive towards Snively. Snively longed to take control of Robotnik’s empire and prove that he could do better, and took full opportunity to try and do so in Sonic #30 when Robotnik was accidentally trapped in another dimension called the Void.

Robotnik soon returned though and the status quo returned to normal (aside from Uncle Chuck having regained his free will and joined forces with the Freedom Fighters). Snively started scheming about how to once again remove his uncle from power and was finally given the chance in Sonic #50 when Robotnik tried to use his superweapon, the Ultimate Annihilator.

The device was programmed to erase Knothole Village from existence, but Snively sabotaged it so that it instead fired on Robotnik himself. Snively didn’t have long to enjoy his self-promotion to CEO of All Things Evil though, as he was captured just a few days later when the Freedom Fighters came a-knocking at the front door.

Snively was imprisoned in the Devil’s Gulag, which led to the stuff I mentioned in one of the recent previous episodes. First there was the mysteriously engineered prison breakout, after which the other escapees put Snively in charge as they believed he was one who had freed them. Following that came the kidnapping of Nate Morgan, and Snively’s supposed death from a giant squid explosion when Nate’s rescue team barged in to save the day. However what actually happened was that at the last possible second he was teleported away and ended up in the clutches of none other than his supposed murder victim.

Maybe he would have been better off with the squid.

So, here’s the bit where I get to the topic of the day. In Sonic #73 the Freedom Fighters finally figured out someone was using a series of satellites to wreak havoc on the planet - causing meteor showers, earthquakes, prison breaks, the re-enslavement of all the formerly freed Robians, fun stuff like that - and went into orbit to investigate. This led to them discovering that the satellites had now combined to form a large space station, run by none other than the very much not-dead Dr. Robotnik. Except surprise, it was a trick!

After taking an accidental acid bath and melting off his fake skin, the big bad revealed himself to actually be Robo-Robotnik, the alternate dimensional counterpart of Robotnik who had tried to rule over all of reality with the Giant Borg. The Freedom Fighters were captured in an electric prison forcefield, but to their surprise Snively released them.

He explained that he needed their help to escape, as Robo-Robotnik intended to roboticise him too. The Freedom Fighters weren’t exactly keen on teaming up with Snively, but they let him escape with them before blowing Robotnik’s space station up and heading back to the surface. Once back on the ground, Snively pointed out that their plan to evacuate back to Knothole Village was doomed to failure, as Robo-Robotnik would have escaped the explosion by downloading his memory into a new body back in Robotropolis (giving birth to his modern Eggman design) and would have a file telling him Knothole’s exact location.

In exchange for keeping him safe from Robotnik’s shadowbots, Snively reluctantly agreed to join Sally and Sonic to sabotage Robotnik’s database and infect him with a virus (literally). 

After that Snively disappeared for awhile, going out on his own and not reappearing until after the Sonic Adventure arc. Robotnik’s army recaptured Snively in Sonic #94, and he agreed to go back to working for Robotnik when he was offered the chance to deal with his previously unmentioned daddy issues.

Having gotten that out of his system - and again, I mean that literally, as Snively willingly let himself be robotocised until the Bem intervened and deroboticised him - Snively stayed in his uncle’s employ until the Xorda invasion of the planet in Sonic #124, during which he mysteriously vanished. For awhile it was believed that Snively had been roboticised again, but this turned out to just be a duplicate that Eggman built for… some reason?

He got bored of it pretty quickly though and had the “Silver Snively” project scrapped. The real Snively resurfaced in Sonic #152 though, when Sonic and his “Angels” (ew) were investigating a city made of nanites that had popped up overnight and was rapidly spreading across the land.

Snively had developed some EMP detonators to halt the nanites, and after he explained himself to Sonic he worked with them to try and end the threat. Surprisingly, after this incident he actually joined the Knothole “Brain Trust” and continued his work on nanite experiments with them for a time.

But he soon wondered what he was doing there and felt that it really didn’t suit him that well. So it was no surprise that when Eggman came sniffing around Knothole and offered Snively his old job back that he accepted the offer.

But what was surprising was that this opportunistic, back-stabbing, power-hungry little man actually did have a moment of hesitation, because he was concerned for the well-being of his “step”sister Hope, who had been living in Knothole as a refugee ever since Eggman had roboticised her father and grandmother.

Snively actually caring about anyone other than himself was something that hadn’t really been seen in the series before, but here he was trying to convince her to leave Knothole so that she didn’t get wiped out with everyone else when Eggman attacked, although of course he didn’t tell her that was the reason. After ensuring Hope’s survival Snively returned to the Eggman Empire, and this time he got a spiffy new uniform to go along with his new position.

Snively stayed on the side of evil all the way through the rest of the pre-reboot era of the series, and ended up paying the price for that when he tried to break from the Eggman Empire and begin his own evil regime.

Following the reboot Snively eventually showed up again, now sporting a beard (possibly to prove he could at least grow hair on his face? LOL) and working as a scientist for GUN.

Commander Tower was rightfully suspicious of his motives, as Snively and Eggman had both previously worked for GUN as a step to creating the Eggman Empire and overthrowing King Acorn while trying to prevoke a war between the Kingdom of Acorn and the United Federation. In this timeline Snively left Dr. Eggman’s service much earlier than in pre-reboot. In fact, he returned to GUN right after the events of Sonic and Knuckles, claiming he’d been forced into working for Eggman and that he had in fact been spying on him the entire time and looking for an opportunity to escape.

Commander Tower let him come back to work for them, expecting that he was planning something shifty and that he would try to stab them in the back, but hoping to catch him in the act. Sure enough, Snively did have some sort of evil plan in the works.

Unfortunately the series was cancelled before we got to see exactly what he had cooking.

I would also like to give a brief shoutout to Bean and Bark for this segment. It’s true that they weren’t part of the Eggman Empire, but they did take on jobs for Eggy as mercenaries for hire - in fact, they were working for him for almost the entirety of the post-reboot series. But there were a couple of times where they briefly joined forces with the heroes too. In Sonic #187 Mammoth Mogul put out a bounty on Sonic, and pretty much every scruffy ne'er do well Sonic had ever fought joined forces to try and take him out.

During this battle Sally offered Bean and Bark double whatever they were being paid to take out Sonic if they helped her fight back against the other mercenaries instead. They quickly agreed and started attacking their former allies, but when the mercs managed to capture Sonic Bean and Bark decided to cut their losses and quickly switched sides again, figuring they might as well get paid by someone. Bean and Bark later also briefly joined forces with Blaze, Marine, Amy and Cream in the Sol dimension to take on the dreaded Captain Metal. Having been sent to the Sol dimension during the second Genesis wave that came with the comics’ reboot, Bean and Bark had initially joined forces with Captain Metal.

But after they stole Captain Metal’s Sol Emerald they came into conflict with both his pirate crew and that of Captain Whisker, and so they ended up working with Blaze’s team against their common enemies.

Are there any other instances of henchmen briefly joining forces with the good guys in ArchieSonic that I missed? Let me know in the comments! Next time I’ll be looking at - what is it again? Let me see here… “Random child rescues hero. The episode’s all about him now.” Hmmm, that’s another tricky one. I’ll have to think hard on that one and see what I can come up with.

[1997thebracket]

Round 1B

Princess Diana's Legacy: Listen. We here at 1997 The Bracket do not wish to trade in the tasteless or the macabre, gentle reader, but rather strive to bring you the most representative, influential, and dare I say undeniable pop culture of the year for your voting pleasure. With that, respectfully, it must be said that 1997 was... not a good year for Princess Diana, and the omnipresence of that fact was undeniable.

Lady Diana Spencer became Diana, Princess of Wales through her marriage to Prince Charles in 1981; the royal union would be spotted with dysfunction and infidelity, and would come to an end in 1996. In the final days of the busy Parisian summer, Diana would have her life cut short in a paparazzi-driven automobile accident on August 31st, 1997. Note, however, that this is not a vote for Diana's death, but for her legacy.

Diana captured the world's attention with an openness and compassion that the royal spectacle seen in papers and television often lacked. Her charitable work, particularly her emphasis on the human reality behind the epidemics of AIDS and homelessness, earned her breathless news coverage as well as earnest and enduring admiration. Though she would face crushing media scrutiny in her personal life, Diana's legacy sees her cited today as a humanitarian, a martyr, and most quotably as the People's Princess.

(Surely it's not at all awkward to transition to...)

GoldenEye 007: For England, James. GoldenEye 007 is a classic first-person shooter released for the Nintendo 64, and one of the most beloved games of the decade. Based on the 1995 James Bond film of a similar name (but released just in time for the 1997 sequel Tomorrow Never Dies) the player controls pop culture's least-secret secret agent, aiming to prevent a looming criminal syndicate from using a satellite weapon to disastrous effect. Young gamers had the choice between a single-player campaign that faithfully recreated key scenes from the movie, or an innovative multiplayer mode, allowing up to four players compete in deathmatch scenarios via split-screen. Although it faced low expectations from games media during development, it received critical acclaim and sold over eight million copies, making it the third best-selling Nintendo 64 game of all time. GoldenEye 007 proved the viability of and set the standard for console-based first-person shooters, and would in time become an ever-present feature on nostalgic game lists.

[wufflesvetinari]

i need to convince myself i'm making SOME progress with this godforsaken short story so i'm going to post a bit of the draft here. just to say it exists, three friggin weeks later

-

Red smoke like a sunrise, the air of this strange planet choked in the soot of our victory. The battlefield bright with mech debris: fertilizer drones commandeered from our home colony, reprogrammed, weaponized. Sent with us in the forward dropships; keyed to our command. 

We would not have bombs, otherwise. We would not have poison.

We are farmers. We are a gentle people.

Our organic-glass tubing spreads like strawberry runners over the scorched alien terrain, its density determined by algorithm. At home, this latticework would have delivered nutrients and treated the soil. It would have brought life to barren ground, a resource available to all by sacred human right. Enshrined in our charter and constitution: life. The right to it.

But the dose makes the poison. My new compound spreads quickly; contaminates enemy soil.

Some of us have fallen. Our exosuits, designed for solar satellite repair work, apply coagulant and brace bones. Our respirators, meant for deep-sea environmental preservation missions, work to filter out the blight we’ve brought. In this way our fragile psyches are insulated from the shocking scent of death. 

But not the topography of it. Not its shape.

We’ve pulled the enemy out by the root. The General told us we didn’t have a choice. They’d tortured our ambassador, destroyed our lunar seed vaults, attempted a blockade. They were coming for us. We had to. 

We had to.

The General strides across ruined plains, his body like a scar against the sun. A sharp and sudden light reflects from some piece of him: his exo, his command glove, the clasp of his cape. The light of him drives straight through me.

He is a colossus. He saved us. He needs me and he saved us and I want to go to him, but I can’t even stand. 

Smoke plumes rise like distant grain silos. I vomit into my respirator, trapped with the scent of myself; the scum. I fade.

-

“Can I ask what you’re making, sir?” Lieutenant █████ asks, sitting in the patient bed next to mine. Since the surgeons woke her an hour ago, she’s done nothing but yank on her fingers like she wants them removed: first the right hand, then the left.

“A gown for a newborn,” I croak past a damaged throat. “My wife’s in the third trimester back home.”

 “Oh. Is this your first?”

“The first I haven’t carried myself.” I wrap homespun wool around my hook, offered by our neighbors in exchange for my help reprogramming their fertilizer lattice during the last dry season. I brought skeins of it with me in the forward fleet; an entire basket in my quarters. “I owe my older boys new sweaters. They need clothes whether there’s a war on or not.”

█████ giggles, a little manic, as though I’ve told a joke. 

Her hemp bag boasts the emblem of the Weather Shaper’s Syndicate: a civilian expertise that earned her a hasty officer rank in my Specialist Corps. Her leg ends just above the knee, but she’ll be fitted with a biosynth soon. The doctors probably completed a full vitamin rebalance when she was under. Probably countered a genetic susceptibility or two, just because they could. 

“At least there isn’t anymore,” she says. When I look at her, she clarifies: “A war. We ended it? Just now? Or at least once the talks end.”

When I give her no answer, she goes back to pulling at her fingers. Her sunken eyes dart from my bandaged ribs to the baby’s sleeve taking form under my hands. 

The medi-ship’s plant wall generates a cocktail of pristine air and corticosteroids. Beneath us, the wreckage of a planet turns.

She tries again: “It—it was terrible. As inhuman as they tell you in the ethics practicums as a kid, like something out of the old world. I saw—but the General said it was worth it. To protect everyone. Back home?”

Her gaze asks for my authority as a substitute for forgiveness. She looks very young, and I become very angry.

“What was worth it?” I say it calmly. I don’t know why I say it at all. 

“I…the General said—”

“Which part do you mean? Specifically.”

Her smile trembles; she presses the button for pain reliever. She doesn’t fully understand it yet, the scale of what we’ve done, but her body feels it like a fever. 

I make my voice bright and effusive. “No need to be so modest. Your team did well punching holes in their ionosphere. Between that and the typhoon seeding, how many did you take down before the dropships even landed?”

“Sir?”

“Let’s talk in planetary percentages. Let’s talk in long-term damage.”

Our founding charter, the General’s steel voice says in my head—like he’d said to the Colony Council, two years ago—allows for militia muster in self-defense. It allows for the ethical deployment of minimum effective force. If you grant me the authority—

I smell my own vomit again, its own kind of ghost.

“Sir—Commander ██████,” the weather shaper says faintly. “I carried out your orders.”

“You did.” I rip back a row to fix a dropped stitch. My sheets are hand-sown and clean. “You’re right. He’s right. We had to protect ourselves.”

A gift box looms at the foot of my bed. It had taken me some hours to work up the courage to open it. Inside sits a bottle of wine from my home syndicate—the General knows I like good wine—and some kind of complicated artisan decanter, constructed as a tangle of glass roots as tall as my forearm. 

The decanter leans by design, like a lurching soldier. It casts sharp-twisted shadows. It traps the light.

Swift recovery, my friend, the letter says, his cursive a series of slashes across the page. My heart races like a north-rabbit in flight. Like lying in the melting snow of a battlefield, watching his presence eat up the horizon like an Alexander of our own making. Like the line between love and fear.

I ask a nurse to decant the wine for his team as my thanks. The liquid works through branching blown-glass roots. A maze of red, like the fertilizer lattice I programmed to poison a hundred thousand miles of enemy farmland. Like strawberry runners.

-

I do not want the decanter. 

Its complex and scarless surface speaks to the work of a master artisan. At home I would have had to trade a lattice designed from scratch in return for a product so fine. But people—people who meet him, understand him—give the General things for free.

I visit the General’s quarters on the Plethora, my ribs still aching, planning to explain that my dogs would just knock his gift from its shelf. That my boys play rowdy. That the house my great-grandfather built in the first days of the Colony is small, each space designed for function (solar power and a heat pump and green-growing walls). The better to keep to the Charter; give back to the land.

Instead, I stand at his doorway and fail to knock. I’ve found I can’t picture his face anymore, not outside of that one half-conscious moment: the battlefield, the hard red horizon. 

A superimposition of my other memories. An invasion.

The door slides open and I jump. His shadow swallows mine. His massive shoulders fill the doorway.

He looks at me and I’m wrung out clean, a piece of fabric on the line. His eyes are deepest green. 

“██████,” he greets me softly, and invites me in.

[adventure-showdown]

What is your favourite Doctor Who story?

ROUND 2 MASTERPOST

synopses and propaganda under the cut

This Town Will Never Let Us Go

Synopsis

From up here you can see it all, hear it all, taste most of it and feel the rest when the electric lights and the satellite signals prickle against your skin. The town, from midnight to six, marked out in headlights and the flash-fire of a culture in War-time. Séance-messages written in the patterns of the road signs, and ghost-transmissions scrambled into the background noise of the traffic. Animal scent-signals from the fried food stands. All describing something, buried under the tarmac and the street-geometry.

Down there, a girl in a fake-bone mask is working on a ritual to bring it to the surface. A popular performing artiste with a navel stud and serious identity problems is finding herself stalked — literally — by her own image. An ambulance crewman is about to find his own way of getting involved in the War.

And bringing them all together, in one neat little urban mythology, there's Faction Paradox - part cult, part subculture, part pop phenomenon, and part criminal syndicate, either watching-without-being-seen or simply not existing at all (at least until someone invents it). Assuming they're not wholly imaginary, the archons of the Faction seem like the only ones who know what this town really is - what every town really is — and what's bound to happen when it wakes up.

Propaganda no propaganda submitted

Unnatural History

Synopsis

""They called it the Millennium Effect"", said the Doctor. ""But the millennium was only beginning.""

San Francisco has changed since the start of 2000. The laws of physics keep having acid flashbacks. There are sightings of creatures from outside our dimensions, stranded aliens and surrealist street performers. The city has become a mecca for those who revel in impossible creatures — and those who want to see them pinned down and put away.

Sam's past is catching up with her — a past she didn't know she had. The Doctor is in danger of becoming the pièce de résistance in a twisted collection of creatures. And beneath the waters of the Bay, something huge is waiting.

With time running out, the Doctor must choose which to sacrifice — a city of wonders, or the life of an old and dear friend.

Propaganda

You too want to read a full novel explanation of why Dr Who canon is Like That (hint: it's little assholes who opt to look like 10 year olds wearing skull masks). Also unicorns in San Francisco. Unsurprisingly does feature Fitz being astoundingly gay for 8. (@eighthdoctor )

The villain of the week wants the Doctor to have a consistent backstory. This is bad because it’s not Doctor Who without plotholes and inconsistencies. Plus, it was published in 1999 (?) and there’s a line about how Gallifrey is always destroyed and un-destroyed. They didn’t even know… (anonymous)

[dig-it-like-a-spigot]

Playlist inspired by the first Gorillaz album, Gorillaz (2001) -> phase one style - YouTube

Hugo Montenegro & His Orchestra The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Skitz Cordless Mics at 20 Paces

Rockers Hi Fi Now I Deliver

Handsome Boy Modeling School Metaphysical (It's A Good Day)

Manu Chao Bongo Bong/ Je Ne T'aime Plus

Underworld Bruce Lee

DJ Shadow Mashin' On The Motorway

Suga Bang Don't Test/Wu Stallion

Roots Manuva Inna

Tricky Girls

DJ Shadow Six Days

Up, Bustle & Out Rebel Satellite

Wire Raft Ants

Cibo Matto Lint Of Love

Dub Syndicate Night Train

Terranova Bombing Bastards

Deltron 3030 Deltron 3030

The Dirtbombs Kung Fu

The Herbaliser It's Just For You

Finley Quaye Even After All

Handsome Boy Modeling School Rock n' Roll (Could Never Hip Hop Like This)

Albarn, Boucoum & Diabate Le Relax

Curve Come Clean

Black Knights Zip Code

Tricky Evolution Revolution Love

Roots Manuva Clockwork

Beck Soul Suckin' Jerk

Ibrahim Ferrer Buenos Hermanos

Rockers Hi Fi Uneasy Skanking

Manu Chao Mama Call

Cibo Matto Blue Train

Deltron 3030 Time Keeps On Slipping

DJ Shadow You Can't Go Home Again

I did try putting this together on spotify but not all the tracks were available so it's on youtube instead. enjoy!