#The idea of a being that is from another planet and thus completely unrelated to our human understanding of gender

[shirajellyfish]

Why the gender is vibes

A thought

The thing about nonbinary gender identities is that "nonbinary" isn't a single gender identity. It's a category that contains a likely infinite list of different identities, which have only a single factor in common- not being male or female. Turns out that nonbinary isn't the "secret third option" so much as it is "all of everything that isn't in these two categories."

It's like if you were making a list of all the animals on Earth and said "There are seagulls, and there are whales, and then there's also everything else."

I think this explains why being nonbinary can mean such totally different things to different people, and why so many enbies describe their gender identity purely through vibes. It's why you have people say they feel like they're "clown gender" or "a blue space alien" or "this aesthetic image of colorful sand dunes in the desert."

Sometimes I imagine a world with totally different gender categories from our own. A world in which the genders are something like xemale, umale, and enmale. All of society would be structured around these three genders, and only these genders would have names. People we would in our world define as male or female would become nontrinary in this world. Without a name to call themselves, they'd have to resort to vibes too. Commenting under a picture of a garden, or a dollhouse, or a long skirt with "That's it, that's the gender." Being asked what their identity is and shrugging, saying "Picture a really muscular dude chopping wood in the forest, I guess? Like that." People might laugh and say, "They identify as a lumberjack! Don't be silly, that's not a gender!"

And no, lumberjack isn't a gender. But if someone doesn't have a word that describes their gender identity, vibes might be the only way they have to communicate what they're feeling.

I don't think the solution here is to give every possible identity a name though. That would be like trying to name every grain of sand on the beach. There are too many. A lot of people would probably object to having another strictly defined label slapped on them in general, as well.

I feel like the answer is, like always, to be more understanding of each other. To understand that when someone says "This hairstyle is so gender" they don't literally mean "I identify as a mullet." They're just doing their best to communicate the feeling of a concept with no name- which is awesome btw. That's like having a mantis shrimp explain to you what it's like to see colors your human eyes are incapable of perceiving. Rad as all heck, fill my mind with concepts that would otherwise be beyond my limited understanding.

[paragonrobits]

honestly this whole thing being treated as an exclusive problem to superhero tropes in general, or implying that superheroes as a concept are inherently bad because I guess people assume they were specifically created to Keep The People Down or what-not, REALLY ANNOYS ME A LOT so this seems a good opportunity to make a point:

this trope is not specific to superheroes, and has been a thing for quite a while in fiction overall, specifically in TV and films (and at the risk of being snappy and letting irritation doing the talking, thus in mediums that get the most coverage and it makes people sound like a series doesn't exist if its not in TV or movies)

At its worst, this is basically a low-effort way to give a villain some nuance without putting much thought into it. It's not really meant to imply, at least in most cases, that their goal or motive is BAD, as some people seem to suggest. This is probably an outgrowth of the common idea of a villain being the hero of their own story; its common to suggest that a villain MUST have some kind of moral point or heroic quality to them, and that's basically where this comes up; its a less well-written handling of that concept by using it to get some pathos into a villain that can often be counterproductive.

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and suggest that its not suggesting that their cause is BAD; indeed, the writer implicitly means that their cause is good, because that's where the villains Good Cause Points come from; if it wasn't a good cause to them, they wouldn't be trying to humanize the villain by rooting them in that cause.

It's not exclusive to superheroes by any means, and the general trend predates the modern superhero genre in film and television, at least in the post-MCU sense.

The other point to be made is that sometimes, the supervillain isn't actually concerned by a problem at all, and they're just using it as an excuse to satisfy their own personal grudges, because it gets them support as they pursue their own goals, or because they're cynical manipulators who never gave a damn about that problem but it furthers their own goals to manipulate others who DO care about that problem.

There is also one other aspect; sometimes the villain does genuinely believe in solving a problem, but their understanding of it is completely divorced from reality, or their intended plans are inherently a bad thing. For example, lets take the common idea of Poison Ivy as a heroic eco-heroine fighting corporations who pollute the planet. All well and good, but Ivy actually doing that is an extreme outlier in her established character. More often than not, what she's actually doing it is causing massive destruction that gets a lot of completely unrelated people killed because her explicit end goal is the complete genocide of all human life, and at extremes, all ANIMAL life as well. This makes her a textbook ecofascist of the 'kill all people, especially the ones that have no power to do anything about ecological destruction' kind.

This is closer to the sort of villains you're actually likely to see; their stance on a problem is completely destructive, counterproductive and generally just kind of evil. Thats why heroes stop them; because their entire plan is to kill lots of people while making vague comments about 'x thing is the Real Evil' or something like that.

This, uh, also tends to be the actual nature of villains that fandoms often present as enlightened True Heroes unjustly antagonized by heroes. Almost every time, they only give lip service to any real goal and mostly just want to kill lots of people or do large scale disasters to satisfy their own grudges, and as such they're not really meant to be taken seriously.

And from another point of view, its like this: the reason we don't usually see the hero solving that problem is because that's not the focus of those sort of stories. If you're going in for an adventure story about someone with fantastical powers have action-filled showdowns with larger-than-life antagonists, its not really reasonable to expect it to suddenly swerve into a political treatsie about sociological phenomenon just because the villain of the week makes some vague references to societal ills as they start kicking orphans into a giant blender to fuel their giant robot that's going to burrow to the core of the earth and blow it up.

Its a fairly basic writing bit to give a villain some apparent nuance without having to do much more, and that's basically it. And to follow the metaphor, I don't think its really reasonable to give a go-ahead to the sort of person who kicks orphans into blenders just because they make some vague references to a greater good and then never follow up on it. As a villain, their only real purpose is to be an entertaining roadblock, rather than 'a hero but kinda edgy' as the term seems to become around some fandoms.

[junko-enoshima-in-dark-souls]

i think the reason bl discourse is so unproductive and never reaches even half a point of compromise (though it shouldn't) is that the arguments from either side wre being made in, about, a completely different framework

(i agree with the lesbian one, by the way. not the bi lesbian one.)

when we say 'bi lesbian shouldn't exist as a term' we mean, that- as a term. but bl supporters take this as an attack on, a restrictor of literal human experience. they take it to mean- the experience of someone who describes themselves as bi lesbian is not real.

but it obviously is real! physically, that can't be denied - every experience is real. the experience proposed - 'sapphic attracted to men who mostly identifies with the sapphic attraction' (or variations thereof) are, of course, extant experiences. they are experiences that might even warrant a term of their own. but the term they have been given, proposed, is 'bi lesbian'. a variation of a different term- a term currently, for decades now, understood as 'sapphic not attracted yo men'

both of these descriptions i gave are simplifications, by the way. but this is a tumblr post on the tumblr website. I'm not writing a sociological essay here. the idea of sapphic as 'nonman attracted to nonmen' is not wrong, and people arguing that it is are simply again the same people im complaining about here

this is the problem. the argument is about language not extant experience. i don't think any bl supporter- i hope, rather- believes that 'sapphic not attracted to men' is not a real experience

(who am i kidding. I've had people proudly tell me it in fact isn't.)

it is an extant experience. it's one, in the current world, described by the word lesbian

'bi lesbian' thus proposes that this experience is actually related enough to atrraction to men that it should share terms. not just 'sapphic' - every term. there have been posts made to the end of 'why don't lesbians just make a new unrelated term!' but they're silly- we already have one, and there already is a unifying term- sapphic

instead, what bl supporters' posts propose most often is- that the widespread, commonplace existence of a term for 'sapphic not attracted to men' is restrictive to the attraction to men of some people, because they are arguing in a framework of 'if you deny me certain language, you deny me experience' - and this is both patently not true, and also the actual effect of their own support of the merging of the term lesbian to include attraction to men

terms can't just mean anything. some definitions are contradictory with each other. the experiences? no, of course not. and of course, definitions can change, and i am not saying lesbian literally HAS to mean unattracted to men- no term on this planet has to mean one or another thing. 'apple' could mean 'orange'. it's just a word.

but to fans of apples who aren't crazy about oranges, for 'apple' to mean both 'orange' and 'apple', it would be a bit useless, wouldn't it? 'i like apples' would need to always be appended with 'and i mean only apples. not oranges. just apples, without the oranges part'. and that's just a bit stupid, and telling apple-likers to invent a new term for apples that are only apples- when a unifying term, fruits, already exists-

i think, perhaps, it's all just rabid hatred of the idea some people aren't and can't be and don't want to be attracted to men

[aelaer]

The Blood in Our Veins (a serial)

I had Part 3 partially written out since March, but inspiration struck from the middle of nowhere and I was able to complete it last night. Everyone tagged asked to be tagged months ago, just let me know if you want to be added/removed from the update tag list. Earlier parts linked for convenience as it’s been ages and a lot of you probably don’t remember parts 1 and 2, haha. Apologies for length if you’re on mobile without a working cut tag.

Prompt (via @ironstrangeprompts): Kidnapped to play doctor for a still unseen other prisoner; Stephen realizes there is only one person on the planet who would have palladium in their blood.

This is unbetaed; apologies for any errors.

Part 1 | Part 2 |

Part 3 - Signs Were Not Really That Scarce

Doctor Baar was going to sleep, but Doctors Ferguson and Weston (Jada and Summer, Stephen reminded himself) kept him busy immediately upon waking him up. The former had him prepping more slides and helping input her handwritten data into the computer, while with the latter he started the loose beginnings of a plan for surgery with the incomplete picture they had. 

By the time another two hours had ticked by and he was working again with Doctor Mahajan on prepping yet more samples, Stephen was doing all in his power to focus on the repetitive tasks at hand rather than let his mind wander to consider his circumstances.

He was very good at focusing; he always had been. It was partially his power of intense concentration and attention to detail that he was able to perform surgeries that others simply didn't have the skills to perform. Despite his relatively short career thus far, he was already making a name for himself amongst his peers.

But at this point in Stephen's life, that type of focus was for challenging surgical cases and putting his mind to work towards new and improved techniques in the neurosurgical field. On the other hand, the relative monotony of lab technician work could only distract him from his thoughts for so long. And as the minutes ticked by, Stephen was starting to feel the crawling anxiety of the unknown inch forward.

He forced himself to slowly inhale, then exhale. He did it again for good measure. Then he pushed his wandering thoughts towards something calm and more meditative. This turned him to mentally reviewing as many recent studies as he could recall reading within the larger medical field.

Immediately the papers of his fellow abductees came to mind, and Stephen pushed past those to the unrelated papers he could remember. And there were plenty of those, enough he could recall to categorize them by specialty. His near-eidetic memory certainly helped there—and it was more interesting than listing off the discographies of all artists on Billboard's Top 100 of 1981.

This exercise began helping quickly. His memory did not have these papers memorized word for word, but he could remember the important bits of the study and he began to recite them in his head. What part of his mind wasn't focused on Doctor Mahajan's slides went through the names of doctors, the titles, the summaries, and whatever little details he could recall from his readings over the last year.

The neurology papers came first to mind, naturally. Recalling all new research over the last several months put him at ease; it was in this realm that his own ideas began to take root, drawing from the conclusions of other neurosurgeons to develop his own hypotheses to begin research on later.

But Stephen had no place to jot down his stray musings, which brought reminder to his situation again. Before any anxiety about his situation could take root again, he instead abandoned neurology to remember papers in other fields, even as his nimble fingers continued transferring the blood samples to slides, each labeled accordingly.

He planned on continuing as such without pause until all blood tests had been prepped (and the amount of testing and the speed of results that was being accomplished for a single man was truly phenomenal). But Stephen's hand suddenly jerked, nearly ruining one of the samples.

Doctor Mahajan stood just to his right and, at such proximity, noticed. "Doctor Strange? Are you alright?"

Stephen didn't process her question immediately; his brain was still reeling from his sudden realization. His mind was in the middle of citing a recent cardiothoracic study when he remembered another article. It wasn't even a study in the normal sense of the word, but rather a look at the miraculous ways a body can survive trauma and the modern technology used to help in the process. One part of the article covered the miraculous survival of—

"Tony Stark," he murmured aloud. 

Doctor Mahajan sent him an alarmed look. "Not so loud!" she hissed.

Stephen blinked, then looked back at her. He ignored her comment, but made sure to keep his voice low. "I remember reading about the technology he used to keep shrapnel from his heart. It had a palladium core, the implant. We're trying to keep Tony Stark alive, aren't we?"

"Don't talk about it," she snapped back in a whisper. She refused to look at him.

Stephen paused and frowned at her. What the hell was her problem? "Do you have an issue with me?" he asked the Brit, his voice unconsciously rising in his irritation.

Doctor Mahajan shook her head but continued to avoid looking at him. "Just—just leave me alone."

Before he could say anything (and what could he say to that?) he heard "Stephen," come from behind him. He turned and Jada was there. "Summer needs your help in making out something on an X-ray. I'll continue assisting Doctor Mahajan."

With one last frown at Doctor Mahajan, Stephen nodded to Jada and made his way to the cardiothoracic surgeon on the other side of the room. When he reached her, he asked, "What is it?" There was no X-ray pulled up on the computer.

"Doctor Mahajan is on the verge of a panic attack," Summer explained softly. "Jada recognized it. She'll help calm her down."

Unwelcome guilt edged into his conscience. "I didn't know."

"We know," she reassured him. "We're not blaming you. Meera won't, either. But she has rather bad anxiety that is more sensitive right now for, well, obvious reasons."

Probably what the medication was for, Stephen presumed. "I didn't mean to trigger an attack."

She nodded. "I know," she repeated. "What did you say? We'll want to avoid whatever it was in the future."

He cleared his throat and then lowered his voice further. "I figured out who on earth would have continuous palladium poisoning. His name did it."

Summer exhaled and nodded. "It was only a matter of time before you figured it out."

Stephen frowned once more. "You know the patient is Tony Stark?"

"Everyone does," she answered in a whisper, "but we don't mention it. I'd not say his name again, either; we haven't figured out if there are microphones in here or how strong they might be. We don't know if they care that we've figured it out." And after saying that, she opened the actual X-rays on her computer and shuffled through her notepad to look busy. 

Stephen took her lead and stepped closer to look at her notepad as if reading it. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that others would remember the news—about what was told of the procedure that saved his life," he said. "There was nothing written indicating any reaction to the palladium core, though."

Summer shrugged. "He never mentioned it. I looked through every mention of his procedure I could find when they were first published, and there weren't many. The patient only gave his version of events and never let any doctor closely study it, from my understanding." She pursed her lips. "It was the X-rays that gave it away for me, at least."

"I was reciting medical papers I could remember. A cardiothoracic study nudged my memory to one of those articles that came out last year about his survival." Stephen pressed his lips together into a thin line. "But with the last newscast I heard about the patient a few days ago, I honestly should have thought of him sooner."

She pretended to write something down. "Kidnapped two times in a year's time," she murmured. "That's rough. Do you remember when they reported him missing on the news?"

"March 20th," he said. Stephen recalled easily; Tony Stark's disappearance during a race in India was all anyone was talking about for a week. "So just over a month ago."

She nodded and flipped to another X-ray photo. "Fits the timeline of how long Steffen and Jada have been here, too. They came a few days after that, if I recall correctly."

Stephen nodded and, as he stared blankly at the X-ray, found himself falling into his thoughts. Tony Stark—until very recently a weapons manufacturer, and who, until very recently, Stephen would have turned away if given the chance. Granted, he wasn't quite at the point where he could easily turn away patients to other neurosurgeons. He was certain he'd be there in two to three years in both the level of demand for his services and his influence with the hospital's administration. But even then, even as a neurosurgeon who was still growing in prestige, if someone had asked him a year ago if he wanted to operate on Tony Stark, he would have said no.

That was a year ago. That was before Tony Stark got kidnapped by terrorists for three months and came back ending all weapons production in his company. That was before he became some sort of—Stephen didn't want to use the word superhero, but he didn't know what else to call it.

Stephen had no idea what he thought of Tony Stark now. He had little reason to consider him beyond the gossip on TV and within the office. But now here he was, forced to be part of a team to help keep him alive.

Mind boggling.

He exhaled softly and focused again on the cropped X-ray on the screen. His opinion on the billionaire, whatever it was, hardly mattered right then. Whether he wished it or not, Tony Stark was his patient and as such, he would do his best to perform his duty as a doctor. Whether that meant simply helping out with samples or performing what would be a long and complicated surgery remained to be seen.

— — — — — —

The race in India is from a ridiculous limited edition tie-in comic that I could only find information about on the 2010 timeline on the MCU Wiki. It made a great plot device though.

I figure I’ll also say that Tony’s coming in the next chapter. I have a few hundred words written on that, but I’m still trying to figure out just how badly I want to treat the protagonists and if I’m the bad guys are just going to start murdering doctors. And all named characters in this series, canon and OC, have PhDs, so there’s lots of doctors to potentially murder.

Lil tidbit: When I realized that this prompt fill was going to become A Monster, I knew I wanted each part to have a name. So before publishing the first part, I went through my Spotify favorites and wrote down all my favorite lyrics in a document. This document has now grown into nearly 5,000 words of possible lyric titles for chapters and fics.

(Feel free to try and guess where the titles come from if you want. The serial name and each part are full or partial lyrics from favorite songs)

Tag list: @sobeautifullyobsessed, @tashacumberbitch @babywarg, @nishtha3012, @ragingstillness, @walkin-in-the-cosmos, @lafourmii20, @asexualchemist, @iveneverbeenmorestressedinmylife, @oo0-will-of-the-wisp-0oo , @animefanfreak45

Let me know if you want to be tagged for future updates in a comment (as it won't be on AO3 for a while and has no steady update schedule planned). Or let me know if you want to be removed.

[icannotreadcursive]

Cats 2019, Dir. Tom Hooper

Overall Quality ⭐️1/5

Entertainment Value ⭐️1/5

Story ⭐️1/5

Visuals and Craft ⭐️⭐️2/5

There is so much potential for artistic and cinematic greatness in a modern, high budget film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's beloved, though admittedly peculiar, musical Cats. Tom Hooper's attempt squanders every drop of that potential. I expected it to be bad, just based on the trailer. I was prepared for it to be an unmitigated disaster. Somehow it managed to be worse that I ever imagined. It is the worst movie I have ever seen.

Cats is a very weird musical—among theatre folk it's pretty strictly a you love it or you hate it show, with some people falling in a third camp where it's not really their cup of tea and they're really not fans, but they can't help but acknowledge that the show is high quality theatre, regardless of how kitschy and odd it is.  There are a lot of people, myself included, though, who love this musical. They are a built in audience of thousands, possibly millions, and they are who this movie should have been made for. The filmmakers' first mistake among many was that instead of making a Cats movie for the people who love Cats as it is, they tried to make a Cats movie for the people who don't get it and don't like it. That was an incredibly stupid decision. You're never going to bring those people around, it's a waste of time and resources to try, and the most damning thing is that all the baffling changes the filmmakers made to the musical and its story to try and make it more palatable to those who don't like the show as it exists, only serve to alienate the diehard Cats fans who should have been their strongest supporters.

Every problem in Tom Hooper's Cats comes down to gross misunderstanding of the source material and what people enjoy about it, and a shocking degree of disrespect for the show and its characters.  I can comfortably call myself something of an expert on Cats in the theatre—I've seen several productions, been in one, written academic papers about the show, and the book of poetry upon which its based, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Eliot, sits on the shelf about ten feet from me as I type this review. I do not expect anyone to have the same intensity of interest or depth of understanding for Cats as I do; it wouldn't be reasonable. But I do expect anyone making a film adaptation of anything to put effort and serious thought into their project, and to care for and appreciate the source material they're working with. No one in decision making positions on this film seems to have done that. I wouldn't be surprised if I learned that neither Tom Hooper nor screenwriter Lee Hall had ever even seen the show.

Where even to begin with all the bizarre and terrible choices that went into this dumpster fire of a film?  This is going to take a while; there's a lot bad filmaking to break down on several levels.

Broad strokes, the movie completely misunderstands what the plot of the stage show actually is, then proceeds to shoehorn in new and unnecessary scenes in what I can only imagine is an attempt to make the plot make more sense. This fails spectacularly, since they're wrong in the first place about what the plot is, thus they succeed only in destroying the actual story of the show, muddying the overcomplicated and misguided narrative they've hamhandedly cobbled together, and interrupt the natural flow of what is supposed to be a sung-through musical such that the entire thing drags on like a last hour math class on Friday before school break.  This is worsened by the fact that the film stops dead in the middle of musical numbers several times for the sake of uninspired, usually offensive, and extraneous gags.

To be clear, the plot of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats, as spelled out fairly explicitly by Munkustrap early in the show, is that every year, one night on the full moon, all the members of a tribe of cats called the Jellicles get together to have a big party called the Jellicle Ball, at the end of which their leader, Old Deuteronomy, selects one member of the tribe who has lived a full life and can now be reborn. Over the course of the Ball, several prominent members of the tribe get songs sung about them.  The general vibe is very much big family reunion where your uncles, siblings, grandparents, and cousins tell stories about what they've been up to since you last saw them, or about how things were back in their day, depending.

The plot of Tom Hooper's Cats is that every year, one night on the full moon, a bunch of cats get together, allegedly to have a party called the Jellicle Ball, even though most of the movie they seem to be more or less aimlessly wandering the same two or three streets, and over the course of the party some of them sing songs about themselves as part of a competition to try to convince their leader, Old Deuteronomy, that they are the one she should pick to be reborn so they can come back and be “who they really want to be.” This year, it just so happens that a completely unrelated cat has been abandoned in the exact back ally where the Jellicles are hanging out before the Ball. Oh, and this year this one other cat, Macavity, has decided to kidnap all of the other cats that are competing to be chosen to be reborn, so he'll be the only contestant left and Old Deuteronomy will have to pick him.

The idea that the cats with individual songs about them are competing to be chosen to be reborn is a pretty common misunderstanding of the show, but it's one that doesn't hold up to much scrutiny.  For one thing, several of the individual songs take place before Old Deuteronomy arrives at the Ball, so the songs clearly are not being presented to Deuteronomy for judgment. For another, most of the characters who have individual songs come across as quite young, only one (Gus) is elderly, and if you pay any attention to the lyrics of their songs, these cats are loving their lives. It makes no sense that they would want to die and give up the lives they are still living to their fullest. Clearly no one involved in this movie bothered to take even two seconds to think that through. As for the idea that the chosen cat comes back as “who they really want to be,” I have no idea where the filmmakers got that.

The central themes of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats are identity, community, and dignity. The film kind of, sort of keeps the theme of identity, at least as far as they kept in most of the song “The Naming of Cats,” which is about identity, sense of self, and the difference between how one is seen by others and how one sees oneself. They omit roughly half the song.

The theme of community is mostly lost, and what little of it remains is twisted strangely by the decision to make Victoria an outsider. In the stage show, all the cats are Jellicles, they are tribe, a family, and they are proud of it. Grizabella is ostracized because she left a long time ago and, it seems, abandoned the tribe. So, now that she's old and lonely and wants to come home, they don't want her back. The emotional climax of the show is when, after the iconic lament of lost youth and righteous demand to be respected as an individual that is “Memory,” Victoria reaches out and touches Grizabella, accepting her back into the tribe and recognizing her as a fellow with the first feline contact Grizabella has had the entire show. This moment is robbed entirely of its power in Tom Hooper's film, largely because all of Grizabella's agency has been taken from her and given to Victoria. Instead of Grizabella stepping up for herself and asserting that she is still a part of this community and deserves to be treated with respect, Victoria physically escorts her in and instructs her to sing. Bear in mind that in the context of the film, Victoria is not a member of the tribe, she's just been inexplicably allowed to tag along, and thus is in no position to be the one accepting Grizabella back.

When it comes to dignity, Grizabella suffers as well. Not only is she stripped of her agency, but “Memory” is turned into a melodramatic self-pitying mess. Bad directoral choices remove every bit of strength and self esteem Grizabella has, especially during that song, which is an unforgivable waste of Jennifer Hudson. Almost every other character is treated as badly, or worse.

Macavity is taken from a truly frightening and threatening—but sexy—figure of mystery and demoted to pathetic, desperate cartoon villain that I think was supposed to be funny. He wasn't funny. This was a waste of Idris Elba, an excellent actor who could have brought refreshing and terrifying depth to what is an often neglected character.

Rum Tum Tugger does not have his usual badboy rockstar jerk with a heart of gold persona, he's just an egotistical asshole.

Grizabella, Macavity, and Tugger are the only characters in the film who visually read as POC through all the CG. They are all pathetic, unlikable, or both. Intentional or not, that feels really racist.

Bombalurina loses her entire character. Instead of a lovable rogue, member of the tribe who knows a questionable amount about Macavity, which gives her her own air of mystery, she's reduced to a flat, weirdly sexualized henchman. This may in part be due to Taylor Swift being too expensive to give more screen time, so they couldn't allow the character to breathe. If that's the case, they should not have cast Taylor Swift—she's not a bad choice for the role, but she is not worth destroying the character for. She certainly hasn't helped the film so much as break even on its budget.

Gus the Theatre Cat is played by Sir Ian McKellen, who is probably the best actor alive on the planet for that role, they could not have cast anyone better, and yet they waste him as well. Gus is old, Gus is physically and mentally feeble, but—on stage—the tribe still love and respect him. In the film, he's framed as pitiable, even laughable.  The ageism isn't as overt as it could have been, but it is sickening.

Bustopher Jones (James Corden) and Jennyanydots (Rebel Wilson) are treated worst of all. Both characters are usually portrayed as on the heavy side. Bustopher is directly described in his song as “remarkably fat,” and Jennyanydots tends matronly by theatre tradition. Both characters are unambiguously described as very proper and clean freaks. The filmmakers elected to ignore this characterization in favor of making them both crude, messy, food obsessed slobs, which is shockingly fatphobic.

The only characters who come out more or less unscathed are Old Deuteronomy and Munkustrap. I personally do not agree with the casting of Dame Judy Dench as Old Deuteronomy, the gender flip strikes me as unnecessary and a cheap grab at woke points, but I love Dame Judy and she is a fantastic actor. She brings the grace and poise the role requires and embodies the character as well as anyone could in the middle of such a mess. For his part, Robbie Fairchild as Munkustrap benefits from neglect. The filmakers don't seem to have given Munkustrap much thought or much direction—the role is unchanged from the stage show, except, maybe in that the film doesn't allow him to be as central a character, since it's so obsessively focused on Victoria. Fairchild himself clearly studied Munkustraps in other productions. He feels like the same character, even in how he moves, while still making the role his own.

Several characters are simply deleted. Jemima is awkwardly combined with Victoria, who keeps getting other characters' agency and purpose bestowed upon her, yet isn't allowed to have her crowning moment of awesome in the White Cat Dance to herself. Demeter supposedly exists in the film, played by Daniela Norman, but gets left out of her main musical number so that Taylor Swift can hog it. Jellylorum is omitted entirely, which leaves Gus seeming both isolated and full of himself.

The visual effects are awful. Trying to make the cats look “realistic” was a horrible choice, and poorly executed. The faces are all far too human, and everyone looks uncomfortably naked.  The ears and tails aren't an inherently bad idea, but the tails are too long and move too much and just wind up being creepy. Frequently, characters' feet do not look like they're in contact with the floor—Gollum in Lord of the Rings was better rendered and incorporated eighteen years ago. On the subject of feet, some cats have shoes, all of which look somehow wrong, and those that are barefoot have extremely unsettling hybrids of human feet and cat paws. Once, Victoria seems to dance en pointe barefoot on those mutant toes, which illicited in me a visceral body horror. Much of the character design is just baffling. Victoria, whose defining physical characteristic is that she is the one white cat in the tribe, is not a white cat. She has spots now for some reason. Jennyanydots takes off her skin to reveal bedazzled fur, hot pants, and a halter top underneath. Skimbleshanks looks like a rejected member of the Village People. I can't tell if Deuteronomy's fur is supposed to be her fur or a coat.

The cats are inconsistent in size with relation to the world around them, and that world is inconsistent is seeming like it's for humans or for cats played by humans.

The music from the show is great, and should have been a redeeming quality in the film, but they managed to screw that up too. Almost every song has the life drained out of it, which is not the fault of the actors, all of whom I know from their previous work to be strong enough performers to carry their roles, if only they had been directed well. I've already discussed how “Memory” was ruined. “Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer” is unrecognizable, the tune and many lyrics are changed. Despite the 1930s-ish setting, several songs have been pop-ified or hiphop-ified seemingly at random. There are weird lyric changes throughout, often taking the form of altered verb tense, that serve no discernible purpose. The film is apparently allergic to group musical numbers, so sections that are usually sung in groups get split up one line at a time, which does not work, and all the cats that have individual songs sing about themselves rather than their peers singing about them, which makes them all come across as self centered and narcissistic.

Cats is a musical usually marked by having a huge among of excellent dancing. The dancing here is all awkward and often unsettling. Additionally, the language of movement companies of actors performing cats usually exhibit that lets them read as feline is entirely lacking. Robbie Fairchild is the only one who seems to try at all. To his credit, he succeeds.

The best we can hope for this film is that it quickly fades of public memory. To the cast, I hope they at least had fun making fools of themselves. To T.S. Eliot, I'm sorry this happened. To Andrew Lloyd Webber, how did you let this happen? To Tom Hooper, your movie is bad and you should feel bad.

The worst thing about this unredeemable disaster of a film is the handful of times you can just catch a glimpse through all the bad decisions and worse CGI of how good it might have been.

[moistwithgender]

(Overdue) Media round-up (January 2019)

Feb’s almost over and I was gonna write about what I’ve processed when I realized I only posted about the anime I watched, I think? So this is a catch-up post for manga and games, before the end of this month in a few days. If you want to read the January anime round-up, it’s in my “curry watches anime” tag.

Games:

Puresabe’s 2019 New Year Rockman Hack (NES): Puresabe does one of these every year and they are always pretty hard! But I think the last few years have been much more balanced than their older projects. They are always just boss fights, but with complex patterns and sometimes multiple phases. Being just a boss fight (or two) means they are super short, but you will spend most of your time learning them. Also there are no checkpoints, so every death means you’re back to phase one. It’s very fun when it’s a good hack, and this was a good hack. I had a very rough start to the year and considered giving up, but went back and beat it, for good fortune in the new year. (Beaten 1/2/19)

The 2nd Super Robot Wars (NES): I decided 2019 would be the year I got into SRW, and so I started here, because the first game actually has no hard plot. I enjoyed it to a point, but the difficulty climbs to an absurd degree, and I wish I’d cut my losses and just youtubed it. The game allows you to save at any time during a turn, and resetting the console means it recycles the RNG and you can get different luck. This is...required. Most of the way into the game, I was having to reset twenty times in a row per unit action, just to make sure I could survive an enemy attack, or successfully hit an enemy. The funniest thing is that when I finally beat this, I almost immediately started up one of the later games, so clearly the kernel of value was visible to me through all that bullshit. (Beaten 1/13/19)

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: World of Light (Switch): I had been chomping at the bit for what felt like forever just to play this mode of this game, and not only was it good, it surpassed my expectations multiple times. This mode has a lot of twists for something that mostly implies narrative, or otherwise ignores it. I’m the rare person who mostly plays Smash Bros solo because I have NO FRIENDS, and this was worth the price of admission for me. I don’t consider Smash Ultimate itself beaten yet because I haven’t beaten Classic Mode on 9.9 difficulty yet. I have finished with 9.8, like, four times. Please kill me. (Beaten 1/18/19)

PaRappa the Rapper (PSP): While taking care of my cat, I found an opportunity to actually use my PSP for the first time since...2008 or 09? When I bought it secondhand? Jesus. Anyway, it turns out that PaRappa actually has absurd input detection and an equally hard to parse system for what counts as “freestyling”, which ultimately results in a final stage where you’re...required to play notes that are completely unrelated to what it says to do on-screen? I still beat the game (in a single sitting, too. it’s short), but I was pretty frustrated. Greenblat’s aesthetic is iconic, and the songs are very fun to listen to (this game has maybe the only potty humor I actually enjoyed), but the game part is actually the problem. (Beaten 1/25/19)

Patapon (PSP): I played PaRappa spontaneously, but I’ve actually meant to play the Patapon series for quite a while. This is less a song-performing rhythm game and more of an action/strategy type of rhythm game where you consistently keep a beat to keep morale up. It’s pretty good, but missions can be 3-6 minutes of consecutively hitting four notes and then waiting four notes, and while that itself sounds doable, I am just terrible at rhythm and messed up a lot of good opportunities. The difficulty curve in this is high in the beginning, lowers over time, before hitting a huge spike and then being a cakewalk for the last four or so missions. There’s also a lot of grinding, which means this rhythm game came out to almost a 16 hour run. A bit tiring. Not sure when I’ll jump on Patapon 2, but I hope it’s easier to play, since my impetus for picking up the series was the intro FMV for the third game. (Beaten 1/30/19)

Games beaten in January: 5 Games beaten in 2019 thus far: 5

Manga:

Getter Robo Vol 2 (Finished): I didn’t feel like plowing through 51 episodes of the old 70s anime, so I decided to just read the much shorter, and somewhat unrelated manga. In the show, the heroes are what they are, heroes. Likable mains for kids to watch on Saturday mornings. In the manga, as per Go Nagai’s influence (and the main author, Ken Ishikawa, who I LOVE and who was Nagai’s assistant), the heroes are violent asshole moron sociopath terrorists who gradually become more unhinged as they are exposed to the very radiation that powers the machine they use to fight dinosaurs (though said gradual descent is more of a thing in the later manga/OVAs). Also, the villains are dinosaurs. Turns out they had the original ancient civilization and Getter Rays chased them into the Earth’s core and they want to planet back. That’s Getter Robo! It’s very good.

Getter Robo G Vol 1-3 (Finished): This is kind of more of the same as the first, and again, I didn’t want to watch the 39 episodes, I wanted the primer so I could play SRW. As I’ve approached the later games, it turns out they prefer to take influence from the shows, not the manga. Oops! Whatever. In this sequel, it turns out the Dinosaur Empire was a pawn or something to It Was Aliens, the Hyakki Empire, and it’s...more of the same. In both the GR and GR G mangas, I found the occasional chapter with wildly different art, and I figured that those were Ishikawa’s gorgeous art, and the majority was Nagai’s. But, I’m not sure, and I wonder if those were revised or extra chapters done years later. Idk. Anyway, they are both very fun reads, even if they serve more as primers of the lore.

Shin Getter Robo Vol 1-2 (Finished): HERE’s where things start to get really good, and surreal, and bleak. This manga is not adapting a tv series (though later OVAs would reference it. This manga is actually I think where a lot of the inspiration for Gurren Lagann came from, and if you like that series, you should read this to see the connection. I can’t really explain without spoiling either (though if in 2019 you don’t know what happens in Gurren, you are super lucky and need to go watch it all asap). NOTE, this takes place after the 7 volume Getter Robo Go manga, which has a show but I think is unrelated, but more importantly is probably the BEST Getter Robo series. I read that before knowing a thing about Getter and still loved it (though I think having context will really benefit it). GR Go is the biggest justification for getting into the series. If any friends of mine want to look into this series, I’ll actually help give them a guide. Interestingly, the most modern Getter series (of which the most recent was in 2004 (please come back)) all take reference from the darker mangas, not the old 70s show.

Mazinger Z Vol 1-5 (Finished): I think Go Nagai’s works are weird, melodramatic, gross, and just kinda badly drawn. They are great experiences, if you go in with a grain of salt and also avoid the *most* transgressive ones. Don’t google Iron Virgin Jun. Just. Don’t do it. Devilman is probably his best work, but Mazinger Z is another series with a much more famous long-running 70s cartoon (92 episodes!!!) and burned itself into the nostalgia of Japan. Whereas Devilman eventually becomes traumatizing, Mazinger Z is pretty laid back and goofy, while also being Nagai’s brand of The Most Dramatic Thing Ever. If you follow me, you might’ve seen me post pages in my manga tag. It’s a LOT. Though, actually, I don’t think this manga is all that great. It can be *really* funny, but I don’t even remember if the series actually ends. If you read one or two volumes and want to put it down, I think you’re safe to. You got most of the lore. The biggest events seem to take place in later series that I haven’t delved into yet.

UFO Robo Grendizer Vol 1 (Finished): I actually haven’t been able to find anywhere to read Great Mazinger, the sequel series, so I skipped to Grendizer, which is the second sequel. It’s pretty unrelated continuity-wise, so it’s easy to pick up. This is only one volume and yeah they really just want you to watch the 74 episode show, but I’m good. Still, this is a fun book, and Nagai throws in his batshit ideas. The main character is an alien prince whose tragic backstory is literally that the villain kidnapped his younger siblings and all the country’s children and just! Dropped them all from the sky to their death in the middle of the city! And they don’t censor it! GO NAGAI! I really need to read the autobio manga Gekiman because of what snippets I’ve seen, Nagai is actually a super mild-mannered dude who doesn’t really get where his ideas cross lines. If you want to say “oh that’s just wacky Japan”, it’s really not, he was public enemy #1 with parents all over the country for a long time.

Super Robot Retsuden Vol 1 (Finished): This is a single volume crossover of Nagai super robot IPs including Mazinger Z, Getter Robo, Great Mazinger, Grendizer, and Steel Jeeg (a guy who’s more Ultraman-adjacent than super robot), and there’s no real plot beyond “oh no new bad guy! buy the toys, kids!” It’s throwaway, and I mostly read it to see who Jeeg is without getting into his own series. Also, it was drawn by Ishikawa, so I felt a bit obligated. His art is just so pretty.

Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer Vol 1 (and maybe 2?): Satoshi Mizukami is a godly storyteller who uses the language of shonen to tell deeply mature and introspective stories for adults and if you follow my posts you might remember me gushing about Spirit Circle and Planet With. I actually haven’t touched this series since February started but I need to get back in because the first two volumes out of ten are amazing (warning, though: there’s a pet death and it’s real sudden and was hard for me to handle). Please read Mizukami’s works.

Manga volumes read in January: 14-15 Manga volumes read in 2019 thus far: 14-15

---

Okay that’s everything. I wrote a lot more than I expected to. If you read all that, thanks. If you are interested in any of the things I wrote about, great! If you decide to play through SRW2, don’t, stop, don’t do that. In a few days I’ll be writing about a much better SRW game.

[rochellespen]

Watching Doctor Who Season 37 (Series 11), Episode Four

Ok, I’m going to have to say it: Doctor Who has a checkered past in regards to spiders.

I mean, I understand the temptation to go with arachnid-like monsters. Spiders often creep people out, so giant, mutant spiders should have an even greater horror vibe to them. Unfortunately, it seems arachnids of all sorts never fare well when appearing in Doctor Who. 

Thus we have comically stiff spiders with goofy voices in Planet of the Spiders. We have genuinely threatening, but also drama-queen diva spiders in the meh  The Runaway Bride. And then you have  what could have been truly creepy spider-like creatures in Kill the Moon which were wasted by being featured in a dire episode like Kill the Moon.

So when I saw the title of this one, I had to resist the temptation to roll my eyes. And not just because we got another music pun/reference in an episode title (first Bowie and now the Sex Pistols...). I figured we could be in for some very first class cheese with this one.

All that said, I decided to give Arachnids in the UK a go with as open of a mind as possible.

As usual, spoilers from here onward....

Episode Thoughts

This episode went back to the season opener’s structure of having things happen that appear unrelated at first, but quickly fit together into a main plotline well before the episode ends. It’s a smart technique as it can help to cover any thinness to the plot. 

We start with Robertson, a guy who is suspiciously similar to another hotel-owning, multi-millionaire businessman with a crass, harsh personality who decided to run for president. Seriously, not since The Happiness Patrol have we been given such a painfully obvious reference to a real-life political figure on Doctor Who.

 And wait, is that Chris Noth? Why yes, yes it is. That’s something I seriously did not expect and it’s fun to see him in this. XD

Anyway, Citizen Robertson here rants about a possible threat to his political future and fires a random employee for being at the wrong place at the wrong time. This actually turns out to be not so random later on....

(Side note: They do name drop Trump later in the episode with Robertson mentioning that he can’t stand the guy. I guess that’s one way to deflect the obvious....XD)

Meanwhile, the Doctor actually manages to get her companions back to their correct time and place and soon appears to regret her efficiency. Fortunately for her, Yasmin is up for inviting everyone to tea which everyone immediately accepts.

After wonderfully awkward moments with Yasmin’s family and some poignant moments alone with Graham, we finally get to the spiders. Well sort of. We just get one spider to start out with, but there was plenty of foreshadowing before that to let us know that it won’t just be one spider.

Soon, the plot ties together when we realize that it was Yasmin’s mother who got fired and a neighbor of Yasmin’s family has a friend/co-worker/? who is a specialist in regards to spiders and who is worried that she hasn’t shown up for a few days. This eventually leads to a showdown in the lavish, recently finished hotel between humans and arachnids. 

Some more quick side notes....

The hotel they chose for the principal location is a good one. It has the right Overlook Hotel vibe to it which is perfect to accentuate the horror in this episode.

Ok, having Yasmin’s mom be the one who got fired by Robertson is a solid way to tie the plot together. Having an arachnid expert be friends with someone who lived in the same building as Yasmin’s family and having her show up just as the Doctor starts to investigate teeters dangerously toward deus ex machina territory.

But on a much funnier note, did anyone else notice someone (Ryan, I think?) making shadow puppets in the background while the Doctor and McIntyre were talking about Serious Spider Stuff in McIntyre’s lab? That’s the sort of offhand detail that I just love...

Now, back to the rest of the episode...

As can be expected with someone like Robertson, all of his employees are taken out by the spiders leaving the Doctor, her companions, Yasmin’s mom, Naija, and our new friend, Dr. McIntyre to find out that there’s is both abandoned coal mines underneath the hotel (which is niffty for the spiders to get around) and a toxic landfill that was very poorly managed.

Ok, at this point I need to stop to consider something that’s bothering me about the plot. 

I think we can all agree that Robertson is a terrible person and was horribly negligent in allowing the landfill to combine stuff willy nilly. But if we’re going to assign blame for the mutant spiders, shouldn’t some of it be placed on McIntyre and her lab? These scientist are manipulating spider DNA and apparently not being careful enough in making sure the specimens are dead before disposal. Even if Robertson didn’t have an unusually toxic landfill mutating these spiders further, those half-dead “super spiders” could have wrecked havoc on local ecosystems. Thus, I hardly think McIntyre should be acting like she’s on some sort of moral high ground compared to Robertson.

In the end, it’s decided that it’s more humane(?) to suffocate/starve all the baby spiders in Robertson’s panic room and drive the huge mother spider out of the hotel...to where, I don’t know. However, Robertson clearly wanted a chance to kill something and thus, shoots the giant spider before it can asphyxiate. 

This leads to another little issue I have. The Doctor and McIntyre were just going to watch that giant spider slowly suffocate and die. Robertson shot it once and put it out of its misery quickly. I guess I’m at a loss as to how Robertson’s solution in and of itself is crueler than a slow death. 

And the thing is, I think the writers missed an opportunity here. Having Robertson clearly show no remorse for what he did was chilling enough. But I think we could have added an even more sinister edge to his character if it was made clear that his decision to shoot the spider would be considered merciful and correct by many and that it wasn’t a black and white decision. 

That way, the horrifying aspect of his character would not have been what he did but instead the mindset and motives of why he did it. Few things are more evil that someone who hides their malevolence under the guise of good intentions. 

After that painfully abrupt ending, the Doctor prepares to leave and discovers, much to her surprise and delight, that Graham, Ryan and Yasmin aren’t ready to say goodbye to her and traveling through time and space. 

So did Arachnids in the UK avoid the usual trap of tacky spider themed episodes? Well.....

The thing is, there are several things this episode did right. The number one was a wonderful mix of humor and lowkey scares. We get moments like Ryan and Graham’s two man comedy act leading up to a terribly creepy shot of several giant spiders skittering toward them. The atmosphere of the hotel and some well placed jump scares are balanced by the hilarious sight of mutant spiders gravitating a energetic grime tune (actually listened to it again while writing this, and it really set the mood). 

The problem for me has to be the easy out the plot took. I get wanting to keep this an Earth-bound problem (and making an eco-statement). But the separating of the so-called “good guys” and “bad guys” wasn’t neatly done and the ending felt far too much like the writers couldn’t think of a good solution in the time they had left. 

Thus, this episode works far better as a showcase for humor, atmosphere and characterization than it does as a carefully plotted story.

Character Thoughts

So how about that characterization then?

Two things were well defined in this episode. 

The Doctor is going to continue to be socially awkward, high-energy goofball.

This Doctor is not one who wants to brood by themselves somewhere even for a few moments. She clearly is one of those Doctor who vastly prefers to travel with companions.

Continuing in the tradition of each Doctor often being a “reaction” to the previous one, Thirteen is certainly far less prickly and much more openly social than Twelve. She seems to thrive on the “family” environment a crowded TARDIS creates. The only Doctor I can compare that to is probably Five who also seemed very invested in traveling with a group although there is far, far more harmony on Thirteen’s TARDIS than there ever was on Five’s. 

Myself, I’m enjoying a return to the idea of the Doctor being warmer and more familial as I never thought being difficult and prickly were necessary solely to create a sense of “otherness” about the Doctor. Whittaker still manages this with Thirteen’s scattershot, quirky approach to experiencing new places, people and events.

A lot of the humor in this episode was pulled off nicely by Whittaker whether it’s the cringing moments of awkward around Yasmin’s family or her sudden thought that The Spider Mother in the Ballroom could be “the best novel Edith Wharton never wrote.” 

Meanwhile, Ryan and Graham also have some wonderful bits together as they (very reluctantly) keep having to go out on spider-related missions in the hotel. The two of them continue to be a fun team who are slowly trying to figure out this family “thing” they have been thrust into.

Funnily enough, while on the surface this could look like an episode that would focus more on Yasmin since we are spending time with her family....it really doesn’t. The most we get is some insight as to why she wants to travel with the Doctor: because she loves her family, but clearly doesn’t always get along with them that great. I think this is another opportunity the writers missed as we could have gotten a bit more insight into how her family played a role in the person she became. Instead, their presence seems to mainly service the plot (Naija) or try to add to the humor (the rest of her family). 

The Last Word

I’m afraid Doctor Who may never have a completely solid episode featuring spiders....even with this effort. This is episode is a fun ride most of the time with some great moments of humor and characterization, so it manages to not be truly cringe-y. However, it would have been nice if the writers had put more thought into how to end the main plotline and found more interesting ways to develop Yasmin’s family and by extension Yasmin herself.

[aeniith]

Bayën origin theories

I’m kind of too high strung right now to do much writing/creating without getting really antsy. Kind of in that high-alert mode because of the impending storm....so I’ve been going through my old writing/files and reading stuff from before. I wanted to share this piece about the various theories throughout Aeniith about what is the deal with the Bayë, because they are markedly different from the other humanoid species on the planet. They live for hundreds to thousands of year. They have six fingers on each hand. They have a bizarre circulatory system. The have nictitating membranes. They can’t interbreed with other species at all. Anyway, here are some of the theories of various groups about what’s up with the Bayë. 

Please note: none of these are necessarily canonically accurate. These are ideas about what people in Aeniith think about the Bayë. 

There is much mystery surrounding the origins and history of the Bayë species. They appear, from all existing evidence, to be almost completely unrelated to any other sentient Aeniith species. Even their relationship to other, non-sentient Aeniith species is suspect at best.

What makes Bayën history even more puzzling is the evidence of Bayën fossil remains. Since no Aeniith civilization has developed technology sufficient to accurately date fossil remains, it is very unclear as to the exact age of Bayë fossils. However, it is quite clear that the age of some excavated remains date back into the millions of years, which seems to defy all explanation.

For centuries, anthropologists, archeologists, and historians from all over the globe have attempted to piece together the mystery of Bayën origin. To this day, no one theory has been proven, but there are a few that have become the most popularly accepted. These theories vary by region and race, each nation or culture adopting their own theory or mythology to explain the Bayë's existence.

Evolutionary Stagnation Theory

The Tosi have the simplest explanation: the Bayë are simply incredibly slow to evolve. There is some merit to this theory, since the Bayën generational cycle is magnitudes slower than other Aeniith species (around 250 years), it makes sense that the genetic mutations required for evolution would be greatly slowed down. However, this alone does not explain the almost ceasing of evolution for hundreds of millions of years. Tosi researchers suggest that the nature of Bayë physiology has made them practically immune to mutation, that some time around 200,000,000 years ago, Bayë evolution practically stopped. This still does not explain the fact that the Bayë have not evolved technologically in this time either. Most Tosi write this off as a flaw of Bayën intellect, but this has very little scientific bearing.

Hibernation Theory

In recent years, Gotevian and Lomi researchers have compiled together what they call, "Hibernation Theory". It is also accepted among some Tosi and Selupa, though not quite as abundantly. This theory tries to explain why Bayë remains can be found dating back millions of years, while their oral history and technological advancement seems to only date back some 50,000 years (approximately 200 generations). Researchers theorize that the Bayë are an extremely ancient species with a history dating back into the hundreds of millions of years. Their ancient ancestors, for disputed reasons, were able to put themselves into a form of long-term hibernation, and kept themselves asleep for millions of years. During this time, the other sentient Aeniith species, quite possibly evolved from ancient Bayën, came into existence.

Other speculations are that the Bayë were put into hibernation as embryos, which would explain the lack of any oral history of the civilization from before hibernation. Another possible explanation is that the hibernation process imposed a sort of amnesia on the individuals, which caused them to lose all memory of their ancient lives.

In 577 E.K, Lomi archeologists happened upon one anomalous baa fossil which appears to be only some few hundred-thousand years old—within the great gap of Bayën fossil record. The fossil was found in the silt of what used to be an ancient estuary, suggesting that it was washed ashore from the ocean. Some Lomi researchers made the leap of suggesting that this was evidence of deep-ocean Bayë hibernation. Many Gotevian and Lomi researchers have scoffed at this idea as an unfounded conclusion; however, it has started gaining popularity in Lomilin, and is currently the most popular explanation.

Some of the most eccentric ideas stem from the notion that the Bayë once had a highly technologically advanced civilization that was threatened by some sort of global catastrophe. The Bayë put themselves into some sort of long-term hibernation in order to save their species from genocide, through the aid of their advanced technology. While there is no evidence to contradict this theory, there is little to support it either, and one would expect to find some sort of evidence of this civilization, even after millions of years.

Extra Planetary Theory

This is a theory most prevalent in Selupa, whose contact with the Bayë is one of the more recent, and where the Bayë still seem incredibly mysterious. The Selupa have come to believe that the Bayë are not of Aeniith at all, but originate from another world entirely. They point to the lack of evidence between Bayën physiology and other Aeniith species (including non-sentient). For instance, only two existing Aeniith species, living in limited numbers, possess anything resembling the iconic Bayën "blood-ropes". One of these animals is a small mammalian feline-like creature (often referred to as the "Bayën Cat"). The other is a large lizard found in southern Elta, and only in limited numbers. The Selupa suggest that these animals were imported, possibly as pets, from the world from which the Bayë originally came.

This theory, alone, however, does not explain the existence of Bayë fossil records dating back into the millions of years. The Selupa, faced with this new conundrum, have turned to other theories to explain this problem, (while still maintaining that the Bayë are aliens). The most prevalent idea is that the Bayë do not evolve at all, that the same genetic mutations that cause Aeniith species to evolve do not occur in Bayë, that maybe their mutations were silenced millions of years ago, in a world far away from Aeniith, possibly by advanced technology, or possibly by some kind of evolutionary stagnation.

In recent years, however, more and more Selupan scientists have come to believe in the Quariosian view that the Bayë are not evolutionarily stagnant, and that there was some sort of great hibernation. Some have even begun abandoning their insistence that the Bayë are of another world, though the vast majority still believes this to be the case.

Karkin Religion

The Bayë are an essential part of Karkin Religion, and thus the Karkin have very different views as to their origins. Karkin religious texts tell that the Bayë were created by the Gods in order to pass down their inevitable teachings. However, the teachings given to Bayë will only be passed along at a specific time, when the world is on the brink of global disaster. Until that time comes to pass, however, the Bayë are non-divine beings. Most Karkin treat the Bayë with respect similar to that of other cultures. Some of the more radical Karkin, however, believe that Bayë to be empty vessels, to be used simply for Karkin interests; some even advocate slavery. Others see the Bayë as divine beings and worship them as demi-Gods.

Since Karkin religion vastly predates their knowledge of Bayën fossil remains, the Karkin have not had a pleasant time coming to terms with these new findings. Most of the Karkin do not even care about the fossils, seeing them as simple error or even heretical diversions. However, others have begun to believe the fossil records, and have pushed back the date of the world's origins to support these new findings. Some believe that the Bayë were put to sleep by the Gods, in order to preserve themselves for the time when the rest of Aeniith civilization would need them.

The Bayë Perception of Themselves

Ironically, the Bayë do not seem to concern themselves with their own origins as much as their neighbors do. Few talk about it at all, believing the questions to be irrelevant to their current nature and civilization. Obviously, some Bayë do contemplate their origins, but there seems to be little consensus, as very few Bayë are willing to commit to one theory or another. Many times, the Bayë in a certain region will take on the theory that is most prevalent in that particular culture.

Conclusion

The reality is, Aeniith science is still in its infancy and there is much to learn before any concrete hypothesis can be made as to the origins of the Bayë people. The current trend is in acceptance of multiple theories: that the truth is a combination of a number of different ideas. This may, however, simply be a reflection of the times, where Aeniith cultures tend to be more concerned with making alliances than starting conflict. The truth may turn out to be something quite different, or something even mundane. Only continued research into the fields of biology, chemistry, and archeology will be able to answer these questions.

[apparitionism]

Road 6

I thought this was finished a couple weeks ago. Like done, locked, and I was just doing the final copyedit… but it didn’t feel right. So I started a new draft, and here’s how it ended up. As I said to @beatricethecat2 , it’s ironic, or maybe just stupidly appropriate, that I had to back up and take another, um, route. Also my car was in the shop earlier this week, though I swear what was wrong with it was unrelated to any of the things in this story. Well, okay, not completely unrelated, given that it’s, you know, a car. And actually even less unrelated than that, now that I think about it, given that the problem was with the starter. Anyway, this is the end of the, ahem, road. (Sorry.) It started in part 1 and ran through part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5. All the way to here.

Road 6

One year later

It’s a long walk to get away from a several-thousand-person tent city, if you want some true desert peace. It’s a walk that stretches, stretches long, when you aren’t following any footsteps, when you’re just walking toward silence, not sure of when you’ll find its fullness.

Myka likes to take this walk. This year, she’s particularly liked to take it, and she’s done so, every evening as night has faded the day, before the cars have demanded her attention.

She has breathed in the stillness, breathed it out, let the weight, and the wait, settle on her. She would not have believed, not years ago, not even a year ago, that the desert could sit this gentle—or rather, that its heaviness could sit to the side. Present, but a sleeping animal. Settled in for the night.

****

Helena had left Colorado Springs after far too few days, but she had said she would come back. She needed to work out precisely when, she said—she was not in fact a teacher, Myka learned; instead she somehow facilitated international movements of money—but she had promised she would. “If only for a long weekend to start,” she’d said, but she had promised.

Myka had let her simple happiness at the idea have its way.

She told herself later that the difficulty they had in working out that “precisely when” should have raised a flag. Should have. Didn’t, because Myka was listening to Helena’s voice on a telephone and wrapping herself up in it, wishing the body that voice belonged to were present to be wrapped up in as well. Helena proposed a date first, but Myka said, “No, that’s right before Labor Day weekend, and my dad and I are going to a car show down in Alamosa.”

“I’ve never been to a car show. Couldn’t I go with you?”

Myka considered that for a second, but she said, “Not quite yet on that with Dad. If that’s okay.”

“Of course it is.”

And it did seem okay—the temperature of Helena’s voice had not changed—so Myka said, though she had not planned to say it, “I’ll come to you instead. To make up for it. The next weekend after, what about that?” When Helena didn’t immediately say yes or no, Myka hadn’t thought anything of it. Anything. Anything at all. She went on, “If you’ve got something to do then, it’s all right. I understand.”

That had been followed by yet another pause. But then Helena said, “I don’t have anything to do. It’s a date on the calendar, isn’t it.” Before Myka could say anything, Helena went on, “So buy a plane ticket. Or I’ll buy one for you.”

“It doesn’t matter who buys,” Myka told her. “This won’t be the only planet ticket, so it doesn’t matter.” She’d felt a little silly, how fervent she must have sounded, but Helena’s “yes” in response seemed equally so.

And in the subsequent rush of information regarding arrivals and departures and fares and layovers and seat assignments, Helena’s pauses, and any significance they might have had, migrated to a noninstrumental holding space in Myka’s head. The instrumental spaces were busy anyway, working hard to redefine Myka as someone who told someone else, with regularity, about her days. Who heard about that someone else’s days. Who felt a little heart-leap at a particular ring on the telephone. Who marveled at the warmth of the voice that greeted her, the voice that always at some point asked, “And what sorts of cars did you fix today?”

Helena would learn about Escapes and Accords, Quests and Sonatas. Myka would in turn hear of dollars, euros, yen, rubles. Rupees, kroner. Dirhams—or darahim, Helena would sometimes say, the Arabic plural. Her voice would dip low, quiet. Anything to do with Morocco, she said soft. They both said soft.

On the day before Myka was to leave for London, right as she and Alicia and Manny were starting to get everything squared away to close up the shop, as Myka was asking them yet again “and you’re sure you’ve got everything under control? because I’m sure I could put this off, if I need to,” as Alicia was threatening “Manny’s still got that arm could probably pitch you halfway there and I’ll make him do it nevermind his rotator cuff,” Myka’s phone buzzed. A text. From Helena, and so the heart-leap.

“I can’t,” it read.

Six in the evening in Colorado was one in the morning in London. Myka texted back: “Can’t what? Sleep?”

She waited. No response.

And so she texted again: “Seriously, what can’t you do?”

No response.

Her thumbs shook a little as she typed, “Are you okay?”

It was one in the morning, but she called. No answer—and Helena’s phone wasn’t off; it rang and rang before going to voicemail. Myka left a worried message—“Please let me know you’re all right”—and waited. Nothing.

“What does this mean?” she asked Alicia. “Is it a brushoff? Am I supposed to not go?”

“How should I know what you’re supposed to do?”

“But what if that’s what it is? What if I go, and then that’s what it is?” What if what if what if.

“Then I bet they got planes fly this direction too. Remember, though, she stalked you.”

“You want me to stalk her? But how do I even—I mean what would I even do—”

“You know what? From now on my mouth is shut, ’cause I don’t want you to do nothing but leave me out of it.”

Myka said, “I don’t know what to do. What do I do? This is what I was afraid would happen.” But it wasn’t at all what she had been afraid would happen. Not at all. She was trying not to let herself settle into her immediate thought, that this was the least damaging way it could end, with her just not getting on a plane. The least damaging.

Alicia was taking off her gloves, paying far more careful attention to her manicure than to Myka. “What’d I just say? I look like your therapist? Your pastor? Maybe if I’m your sponsor I tell you to go to a meeting, but I don’t know which church basement hardcore stalkers anonymous meets in. You two are messed up. Do me and Manny both a favor and go find out if you keep being messed up together or what.”

And it was true: Alicia was not Myka’s therapist, or pastor, or thank god sponsor, because Myka thank god hadn’t needed a sponsor for anything, but thank god there wasn’t really any hardcore stalkers anonymous, because she might have gone to that meeting. That night, she might have gone.

But there was no meeting. So after a night that was probably always going to have been sleepless—but that Myka had never expected to be filled with unanswered texts and calls, with the anxiety of this incomprehension rising higher and higher—she went to the garage. Four in the morning, and she would have had to be at the airport in four hours. She got under the hood of a Ford Escort station wagon.

Manny had shown up at seven. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” Myka told him. “Working on this Escort.”

“With the cracked insert, that one valve?”

“Yeah.”

“It beat up the piston bad as you thought?”

“Yeah.”

“You gonna fix it in half a hour?”

“Probably not.”

“Leave it for Bobby. Needs to try a job like that.” He paused. Tongued his lip. “You leaving straight from here?” Myka didn’t answer. “You got your stuff with you? In the truck?”

She shook her head.

“Better speed good on your way home then. To the airport too.” He handed her a full paper bag. “Don’t starve.” And Myka would have turned to go, but he was working on some more words. He put his hand on her shoulder. “Remember, some people. They don’t know what to say.”

That hand felt like a full-body embrace. So Myka responded, “I know what to say. I’m saying if Bobby blows that piston job, he’ll hear about it from me for the rest of his natural life. And so will you.”

Manny’s hand went to his hat. His full bottom lip curved up. “Yeah,” he said.

The trip was fourteen hours. Plane, layover, plane, layover. So much sitting. So much waiting. So little information about what she might be walking into. She went back through all the texts she and Helena had sent each other, since April, all the emails, tried to reconstruct all their phone conversations. Something was knocking at her, but she couldn’t isolate it. Couldn’t diagnose it.

On the last and longest flight, the one to London, she fell into and out of a doze, one in which she did the piston replacement over and over and over in her head, trying to send it telepathically to Bobby. The mangled piston wasn’t even the source of the problem, poor thing; the valve insert had cracked, come loose, and destroyed it… not the piston’s fault…

As she emerged from passport control at Heathrow, she searched the throng for dark hair, for familiar eyes. She was grateful that she could, for she knew plenty of people who couldn’t take too many bodies in a space anymore. Having to pay attention to that much movement, sorting out all the purposes behind all those strides and turns and gestures, meant no safety.

Myka was grateful. But she also knew plenty of people who had been fine—who had thought they knew where safety was—but then, after a while, weren’t. Didn’t.

All she’d done was fix cars, though. She tried to remind and convince herself of this, of the fact that what had happened to her was smaller than, and thus different from, what had happened to other people.

She sat down. Tried to manufacture some clarity on whether to go upstairs to the ticket counters and start getting herself back to Colorado.

But even as she sat there, her eyes still picking through the crowd, stopping briefly on any dark hair, on any wisp of a womanly body… even as she sat and looked and tried to decide, the knock began to resolve: “It’s a date on a calendar,” Helena had said.

The difference between what had happened to her and what had happened to other people. Other people in the service—but also, other people, such as Helena. Because what happened to Myka didn’t have anything to do with a date on a calendar. But what happened to Helena did.

The taxi ride was a blur in which she texted and called again and again—“I know, I know now, I didn’t understand before and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry”—and then she was standing on a front stoop, hammering on a door, and Helena had to be there, she had to be, because Myka didn’t know exactly when, during that taxi ride or at any point before, she had decided she could not tolerate the idea of never seeing Helena’s face again, never hearing her voice, but that decision had been made.

“I will not accept this,” she shouted. “You came to Colorado to show me that there were consequences—and now I’m here to show you the same thing. Open this door!”

Nothing. She sat down on the stoop, her back to the door. Exhausted, desolate. Thinking about the date on the calendar.

She might have fallen asleep, right there on the cold stone steps. Might have, because the door creaked behind her, and surely that was a dream. She stood up, though. Turned around. Saw a face just as hollowed as the one she’d grown accustomed to in Morocco, its cheekbones sharp enough to carve the air, its eyes dark with no spark.

Myka opened her duffel, took out the paper bag that she had not touched, through all of those fourteen travel hours. “Manny would’ve wanted me to give this to you,” she said. “If he saw you.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know.”

At the table in Helena’s kitchen, they shared the bag’s contents: a honey-mustard chicken sandwich, several strips of homemade beef jerky, and an apple. Three oatmeal cookies rounded out the strange breakfast, which, Myka was sure, had started its life intended to be Manny’s lunch. “He thinks he’s no good at baking,” Myka said, after she and Helena had each eaten a cookie.

“I disagree,” Helena said, and Myka handed her the third. Helena ate it fast, like an animal. Like she was afraid it would be taken away.

“Alicia and I do too,” Myka said. She watched Helena pick up the now-empty paper bag with spindly, spider-leg fingers and fold it flat. “I’ll leave if that’s what you want. If you really can’t do this. Because of what happened, or any other reason.”

“This isn’t what I can’t do. Well. Most likely it is, also, but it wasn’t what I meant.”

“Feel like telling me what?” Myka asked.

Helena sighed. “Can’t do, couldn’t do. Shouldn’t have done: look forward to this day. Of all days. I was hungering for your presence, wanting this day. But how could I? And then there was the possibility that you wouldn’t come. That you would decide you couldn’t.”

“Alicia said she was going to make Manny pitch me halfway here. I guess he sort of did that.”

Helena didn’t say anything.

“Wanting this day. I understand: that’s you betraying her. So you set me up to not show up, and I understand that too, so I could betray you, instead of you betraying her.” Myka wanted to add, with sarcasm, pretty high opinion of me you’ve got there, but she had no right to make that kind of accusation.

Helena still didn’t say anything.

“You should have told me. Yes, I should’ve figured it out sooner—a lot sooner. But you should have told me, so I wouldn’t have had to.”

“I couldn’t. Not on the telephone.” Right. I didn’t want to mediate it, she had said, of showing up in Colorado rather than using the phone. “And I thought—I suppose I did think I was better. Better able. To. Given even more time and therapy since a year ago, I thought. And a year ago, it wasn’t good, but it was better than this.”

“But a year ago you weren’t looking forward to it. To the day.” Helena dropped her head, and Myka said, to that hung head, “I don’t want to hurt you like this. Or make you hurt yourself like this. I’ll leave and come back tomorrow.” Then she added, “Or never, if that’s what you need,” because she would have to accept that. Front-stoop declaration aside, she would have to, and would, accept it. If that was what Helena needed, she would go back to Colorado and take herself apart, take out all the pieces that were coming to rely on Helena, and sell them for scrap.

Helena said, “Don’t be sweet to me. I was so cruel to you. Don’t be kind.”

“Right now it’s hard not to be. You’re an animal, and you’re starving and in pain. We all have instincts. We hand over our oatmeal cookies.” That got her no change in facial expression at all, as if all the dates on the calendar, the ones between those days in Morocco and now, had not passed at all. “Why’d you open the door?”

“What?”

“You didn’t have to open the door. I would’ve gone away eventually.”

Helena sat silent for a moment. Then she said, “Some instinct for self-preservation, I suppose. And I did feel, as a new weight, that there was only a door between us, rather than an ocean as usual.”

“And most of a continent.”

“And most of a continent,” Helena said.

Three or four days’ worth of newspapers sat in a haphazard pile at one corner of the table. Myka began aligning their corners, edges. “Why didn’t Leena check up on you?” she asked.

“She’s seeing to some business in France.”

“I would think she’d want to make sure you were okay. Today.”

“I told her I would be fine.”

“Were you lying?”

Helena grimaced. “No more than I was to you, when I said that you should buy a plane ticket.”

“She and I really need to coordinate. Make sure somebody’s around to bring you oatmeal cookies. Or maybe Manny can just throw them at you; he’s still got that arm.” Across most of a continent, and an ocean. “A table,” she said, as she squared the last section of newsprint. It wasn’t very satisfying.

“A table what?” Helena asked.

“Is between us. Will you let me fix that? You can say no. Today or any day, you can say yes or you can say no. It isn’t a test.”

“I’m so selfish.”

Everybody is, Myka might have told her. We’re animals, and we want to stop the pain. We have some weird ways of trying to—but that’s what we want. And in the end, whatever we do, it’s almost always going to be some betrayal. Somebody. Something.

What Myka did tell her was, “That doesn’t really answer my question.”

A slight eyebrow. “I thought it wasn’t a test.”

“Maybe of listening comprehension.”

“I’m selfish and tired,” Helena said, and was that the beginning of a smile?

“Me too. Both those things. That’s a long trip from Colorado.”

“Did you get no sleep at all? That’s my selfish fault as well.”

“Not just you. I was thinking about a car.”

And that was what got her a real smile at last. “Of course you were,” Helena said.

Myka stayed for her scheduled five days, but those days weren’t easy. That might have been entirely due to the near-disaster of the beginning. Then again something else might always have been lurking that would have tripped them up, no matter the date on the calendar. They had easy moments—a conversation would click perfectly, a touch would glide into silken intimacy—but they seemed at other times to be trying to grope their way backward to some version of tenderness they had felt before. Backward, not forward.

At the airport, at the end of those uneasy five days, they couldn’t seem to get the goodbye right. They couldn’t even get the goodbye kiss right. It was all bad aim and mismatched intentions.

Myka said a rueful “I keep telling you I’m terrible at everything but fixing cars.”

Helena frowned. “You are fishing for compliments,” she said. But then she quirked the corners of her lips upward. “Again.”

One little smile, one small word, and then they were getting a kiss, one only disguised as goodbye, very very right.

“We don’t start well, do we,” Myka said. “Ever.”

Helena shrugged. “We finish all right. I’d rather that than the reverse.”

“You know what I think the real problem was, this time?”

That made Helena’s smile fade. “I have a guess.”

“You’d be wrong.”

“All right, then. Tell me your theory.”

“We didn’t watch any sunsets. Five whole days and no sunsets.” Myka shook her head. “I don’t even know who we are anymore.”

That yielded yet another small smile, which in turn led to yet another embrace, one that didn’t bother pretending to be anything other than itself.

Myka eventually boarded a plane. But she and Helena never did quite get the goodbye right.

****

Myka has particularly liked to take this walk, this year, and not just because of the way her footsteps create a path to tranquility. She’s liked to take it because every night, Helena has followed those footsteps and met Myka at the end of them, often in the moonshadow of a dune.

“Assure me you asked no one for sunscreen,” Helena had said, the first night.

And Myka told her, “I am your property.”

Helena had made very clear how much she appreciated that. “My property tastes like sand,” she breathed into Myka’s mouth.

They leaned together against the dune’s concave slip face, against the cool top layer of sand, its heat already stolen back by the setting of the sun.

Tonight, Myka says, “Essaouira tomorrow.” Helena nods against her, a bit of grit and grate, sandy skin on sandy skin. Myka can’t see the difference between Helena’s arms, in the dusk, but she can feel it in their temperature: the radiant heat of the burnt left; the soft mineral cool of the right. “Are you ready for this to be over?”

“It’s been… intense.” Helena’s hands have found a strip of velcro on Myka’s vest, and now a slight, sharp rip, rip, rip echoes in the sliver of space between their bodies. Myka feels the press, just below her sternum, preceding each rip. Helena goes on, “But yes. I’m ready.”

“And has it given you what you wanted? What you needed?”

“I think so.”

****

Myka had not realized how much she had wanted—maybe even needed—to see Driss again, but to be reunited with him was a small miracle in itself.

The first story that tumbled out of him, as they sat in the truck together, had to do with his recent acquisition of Nike basketball shoes: “Airjordan!” he exclaimed, as if it really were just one word, and then, similarly, “Oldschool!” The second story (and that it came second made Myka laugh, then sigh) concerned the fact that he had fallen in love, but the family of the object of his affections happened to be unimpressed with the idea of a son-in-law with grease and oil under his fingernails, and so he and his intended would have to elope if there was to be any hope for their destined-to-be-epic romance, but her father seemed a vengeful sort, so they would need to elope to the very moon! And stay there! Myka told him there was a garage in Colorado—slightly closer than the moon, but probably beyond a vengeful father’s reach—where she could put in a good word for him, given that she owned the place.

She’d thought she was joking with him, but instead of laughing, he blinked at her. In disbelief? “Je suis propriétaire,” she assured him. “Vraiment!” I am the owner. Really!

It became clear that he had never seriously considered eloping to any place other than the moon—and possibly that he had not seriously considered eloping, or even marrying, at all. Yet he did with great seriousness begin practicing his extremely poor English on Myka and interrogating her about every aspect of life in the United States. The hip-hop is very good, she found herself assuring him in response to his anxious query, though she knew nothing of the sort.

“It, is, oldschool?” he asked, like she might be able to tell him there really was a Santa Claus after all.

She was pretty sure Alicia and Manny didn’t know or care much more about hip-hop than she herself did. She was also pretty sure that if Driss did come to the States, everyone was likely to receive a lot of education about a lot of things.

When Myka and Driss received a call for assistance, on the second day of the first two-day leg, Myka didn’t think anything of it; Driss was the one who said, “Peut-être ton p’tit fantôme et sa belle amie, comme l’autre fois?” Maybe your little ghost and her beautiful friend, like the other time?

Myka noted that he probably shouldn’t be attending quite so closely to other women’s beauty, given that he was involved in a destined-to-be-epic romance. He squinted at her and pointed out that Myka’s little ghost and that little ghost’s friend were in fact very beautiful, and how did romance affect the factual elements of this situation or any other?

She conceded the point.

The picture that greeted them as they approached the vehicle in distress was uncanny in its similarity to the one from two years ago—this black woman and this white woman, sitting in the sand, on the shade side of their 4x4. Time doesn’t move backward, Myka had to remind herself. There was a slight difference in that this time, a flat tire marred the visual. It was the only thing that did, for Driss was correct about the factual elements of this situation: Helena and Leena were, in fact, very beautiful.

“I’m just as glad you didn’t blow a shock again, even for the symmetry,” Myka called to Helena, “because I’d prefer the both of you stay in one piece. But how’d you manage to engineer it so we were closest?”

“Completely by chance,” Helena said. She smiled as Myka neared her, and there could have been no more acute a reminder that time did move in only one direction.

Myka said “I don’t believe you,” but she kissed Helena anyway. Driss made a high little ululation, clearly his version of a wolf-whistle. Myka told him, “Regardes la voiture, mec.” Look at the car—and she was unsure what she meant in English with that “mec.” Something like “you big-hearted oversharer.”

“Cette voiture-là? Pfft, ennuyeuse,” he said. The car there? Boring.

“Hm,” said Leena, “mais que penses-tu d’elles?” But what do you think of them? She waved her hands at Myka and Helena.

Driss nodded. “Interessantes. Très interessantes.” Interesting. Very interesting. Then, as if he were a film director, he called out, “Mais un peu de modestie s’il vous plaît! Sinon ce spectacle donnera à ce timide marocain une crise cardiaque!” But a little modesty, please! Otherwise this spectacle will give this shy Moroccan a heart attack!

Leena was at pains to explain that this spectacle did not even qualify as a spectacle where these two were concerned. Driss promptly faked a heart attack. Then he winked at Myka, a big-hearted I’ll deal with the tire, Romeo wink.

“It’s probably good that they both feel like they can make jokes,” Myka said to Helena.

“Probably. I suppose you should be pleased she isn’t talking about your machete. I’m not sure Driss would fully appreciate the humor.”

It was true that it was now a joke: when Leena had joined Myka and Helena in Tangier, right before the driving teams were to claim their vehicles, Myka had said to Leena, as her first words after hello, “Now don’t disappoint me,” and Leena had known precisely what her own line was: “Did you bring your machete?”

“It isn’t a machete,” Myka said. A sentence she had certainly never expected to utter with a grin on her face.

“Oh well,” Leena said, “I guess I’ll have to find somebody else to track down this stray”—she nodded toward Helena—“when she wanders off into the desert.”

“Don’t you dare,” both Myka and Helena had said.

****

Tonight, Myka and Helena walk back together. Driss is waiting, and he gives Myka his customary tch-tch chide. “Les camions nous attendent.” The trucks are waiting for us. Then he says to Helena, “Ça va, petit fantôme?”

“Je suis fatiguée,” Helena tells him. “De conduire.” I’m tired. Of driving.

“Mais demain, aaaahh,” he says. “Demain la mer.” Tomorrow the sea.

****

They had met in Tangier, she and Helena, a day before the vehicles arrived. Because, Helena had said, when would Myka be inclined to go to Morocco again?

“Maybe every year again,” Myka had countered. “You don’t know.”

“Nor do you.”

So a day early, they went to the Fondouk Chejra, as Myka had never had time to do. They watched the weavers—rather, Helena watched the weavers. Myka watched Helena watch them: her slight twitch at each clack of the pedal that separated the threads of the warp, her little nostril-flare of an inhalation when the man on one side of the loom would slide-toss the spool of wool through those threads. The way her hands echoed, with barely perceptible finger movements, each catch of the spool by the man on the other side. And back again the other way, and back again: clack, toss, catch; clack, toss, catch; over and over, faster and faster.

Helena had stood here a year ago, most likely watching just like this, her body reacting involuntarily just like this, all these precious movements wasted,  unobserved, as Myka waited for her under the hoods of cars, all unaware that she was waiting, unable to see beyond the next minute.

Myka said, “I want—” She stopped.

Helena turned away from the weavers. “What do you want?”

“I don’t mean it as a demand.” And she didn’t. Only as a want.

“What do you want?”

As a want, and as a plaint: “To spend more time with you.”

And in response, a dispensation. “I want that too.”

****

Under a truck in a tent city in the middle of the desert, Myka is replacing a broken exhaust hanger. These hangers, nothing more than rubber bands on steroids, play a disproportionately large part in the exhaust system. That system is based around the exhaust manifold, a large piece of cast iron whose job is to funnel hot exhaust away from the engine and into the pipes that convey it out of the car. The pipes are held up by the exhaust hangers—but if the hangers break, then the manifold has to support the entire system. And cast iron is strong and long-lasting, but it’s also very, very heavy. The manifold can barely hold up its own weight; give it more responsibility, and it will begin to crack.

As the cracks widen, the noises start. At first nothing more than clicks and whistles, little sounds that might be anything. Easy to ignore. Easy, for a while, to tolerate, even as those little sounds begin to gather together, to gain volume, to clamor for attention, but at last even accustomed ears have no choice but to recognize the roar for what it is: a herald of catastrophic failure.

Myka executes this small fix—broken rubber donut off, new one on. It rescues the manifold, but it’s only a temporary save. Heat will get it in the end, or rather, heat cycles will. Heat, cool, heat, cool, expand and contract. Everything that expands and contracts will eventually, inevitably break.

It might happen today; it might happen tomorrow. It’s impossible to know. Might as well stay on the road till it does.

****

When Helena had said, during a telephone conversation not long after Myka’s London trip, “What about the Gazelles,” Myka had responded, “What about them? I thought we decided they’re mythical.”

Helena huffed the start of a laugh. Then she asked, “Would you go back?

“Back? You mean back to working it every year?”

“Not necessarily every year. Just this next one.”

“You want me to go back to fixing cars in the desert.”

“Just for a little while.”

“Would you be driving around in that same desert?” Myka asked, with skepticism.

“Well. Yes.”

“But why? You didn’t seem to like it that much the first time. Even aside from the circumstances.”

“Well, Leena did, and I know she wants to try navigating it once more. But there is another reason.”

“Is there?” She had no idea what Helena was heading for.

“It’s what you said: we don’t start well.” Helena paused. “So I would like some closure.”

“Closure of what?” Myka asked, with rising panic, because if that were the end it would not be the least damaging, not at all, and Myka could feel that damage taking hold, right in her office, her phone at her ear. How could Helena say this kind of thing over the phone? Helena was hardly happy to say hello over the phone, so how could she—

Helena’s voice, its warmest version, took away all that panic: took it right away and replaced it with hope, as she said two very simple words: “The beginning.”

****

What can anyone give you that you don’t already have?

These lists. These lists, these things, and purposeful time to apprehend them.

Moroccan hip-hop artists that an auto mechanic considers oldschool. The polishes, paints, and protections that may be applied to fingernails. Statistics of minor-league pitchers. (Two no-hitters, pre–rotator cuff.) Techniques of navigation, and its oldest tools: moon, stars, sun. The setting of that sun. A scarf woven from all the colors of Essaouira. One imperfectly tied knot. A beginning, and that beginning’s end. The verb connecting I and you.

Tomorrow, the sea.

END

[worryinglyinnocent]

My Thoughts on Star Wars Episode VIII

Opinions, observations on The Last Jedi and predictions for episode 9 below the cut. Naturally there are spoilers ahead.

Before I start, please be aware that whilst this post is not at all focussed on shipping, there are anti-reylo sentiments at a couple of points and the post is generally anti-Kylo. 

So, I saw Star Wars last night. Before we went, my friend and I were discussing some of the things we had predicted, or had seen predicted online, that would happen in this episode, our main theories being:

Kylo and Rey would swap places, with Rey being seduced by the dark side and Kylo moving back towards the light. It nearly happened and I’m incredibly relieved it didn’t.

Reveal of Rey’s parents as Luke and Mara Jade Skywalker, with Kylo having killed Mara Jade in the massacre at the Skywalker training temple, and Luke having rescued Rey and taken her to Jakku for her own protection. I don’t know anything about the expanded Star Wars universe so I leave this one in Miran’s hands. 

Since neither of these actually came to pass, I’ll move on quickly to my thoughts on the film. 

I think this film can be summed up thus: “The Resistance spends 2.75 hours running away from the First Order in the universe’s slowest space chase.”

OH MY GOD THIS HAS TO BE THE LONGEST FILM I’VE EVER SEEN. Seriously the film was great but it was just too long. Every time I thought that they were coming to a logical ending point and thought I could foresee an ending taking shape, they tacked on another climax point. This film could have ended sensibly five times before it actually did. 

Five possible alternate ending points were:

Finn and Rose’s mission to turn off the tracking string is successful with various other mishaps along the way; Poe has to perform incredible feats of flight to make sure they get back on the resistance ship before it jumps to light speed and leaves them behind, as well as the three of them getting Rey from Snoke’s ship and getting her back as well. 

Everything proceeds as with the film, but the evacuation to the mine planet is done successfully and the film ends with them in hiding on the mine planet. 

Everything proceeds with the film as expected until the sonic boom cannon thing makes an appearance; I was honestly expecting Rose to shove Finn’s speeder out of the way and take the suicidal run to blow up the cannon herself. I didn’t want her to because I like Rose and want to see her in future films, but considering she’d already lost everything, it seemed like it was going that way. 

Resistance allies arrive and deal with First Order ground troops either before or after the cannon fires.

End on a cliffhanger with Luke appearing in the base and/or going out to meet Kylo. 

It just felt that every time they could have ended the film, they decided to add more on. 

Other observations:

 - ALL OF THEIR PROBLEMS (well most of them) COULD HAVE BEEN SOLVED IF POE AND HOLDO HAD JUST FUCKING TALKED TO EACH OTHER!!!!! If they had actually talked to each other about their plans, then everything would have been solved. 

 - I loved how anticlimactic and ignominious Snoke’s death was. 

 - I am incredibly, incredibly glad that they decided to completely subvert Kylo’s redemption arc and not fall into the trope of ‘pretty white girl’s tender affection is what redeems problematic white boy’. They came so close and I was there with head in hands fully expecting it to go that way, but they didn’t. 

 - I almost feel sorry for Hux in that his leader is now basically a whiny teenager, only this whiny teenager has the ability to force-choke him whenever he gets angry. 

 - Does Kylo even have a plan moving forward? His only plan seems to be ‘wipe out the resistance’, but if he doesn’t have a plan for the resistance to resist... What’s the point?

 - Finn v. Phasma = two thumbs up from me. One of the best fights of the film. 

 - The entire thing with the codebreaker just jarred me. Maz told them to find the guy with the red buttonhole. They found the guy, and randomly decided to go off with another guy whom they had no idea who he was and who had not been vouched for by Maz instead. Sure, he got them out of jail, but they had no proof that he could do any of what he said he could, they literally met him two minutes before, and they were discussing delicate military tactics in front of him which ultimately cost them hundreds of lives. It just felt like the characters were making stupid decisions for plot purposes. They could have easily broken out, found the buttonhole guy they were meant to find, and still run into a whole ton of problems and ended up the same position, but it would not have been as a result of blindly trusting the wrong people. 

 - I am sure that there is more to Rey’s story than meets the eye, because why did she see her younger self being left on Jakku when she touched Luke’s lightsaber in Force Awakens? All the other images she saw were through Luke’s eyes, which is why I assumed that Luke had been there when she was left on Jakku for some reason. WE HAVE TO GO BACK TO JAKKU!

 - At first I thought they were setting it up for Poe to be the new Han, Rey and Finn together to be the new Luke, Kylo to be the new Vader and Snoke to be the new Palpatine. Now it looks like they’re setting up Poe to be the new Leia, Rey to be the new Luke, Finn to be the new Han and Kylo to be the new Palpatine, with Snoke as a red herring. 

 Major theories and predictions for episode nine. 

Miran and I came up with the theory that the final trilogy is mirroring the original trilogy, but in sort of in reverse, thus ending up where the series began (in chronological order of film release, not in actual film order)  and bringing the films full circle, with the prequels standing alone as a history. Fantasy and sci-fi sagas very often move in cycles (it’s a major plot of the Belgariad and Mallereon), and it’s not too much of a stretch to believe that Star Wars is moving likewise and is on its second cycle now. 

As such we’re predicting various events of episode nine based on events of episode four. 

This is just our personal theory and we’re probably reading way, way too much into it, but we’re having a lot of fun with it. Also, it made us see just how similar in plot New Hope and Return of the Jedi are.

So far, Force Awakens mirrors New Hope in various ways (find a jedi on a desert planet, escape in the Falcon, droid in charge of delicate information vital to rebellion etc), but also mirrors Return of the Jedi thus:

 - Junkyard/scavenger society on Jakku sort of mirrors Hutt society on Tattooine. 

- Resistance base in TFA is on a planet very similar to Endor in RotJ.

-  In TFA  they know what they’re up against (Starkiller) and pretty much know already how they’re going to defeat it. It’s a huge space station that destroys planets. In ANH, the Death Star was something new, the likes of which they had not seen before. By RotJ, they know what they’re up against and how to defeat it: It’s a huge space station that destroys planets.

 - A very well-known and pivotal character dies - Vader in RotJ and Han in TFA. Arguably Han’s death mirrors Obi-Wan’s in ANH, but at the time of release, Obi-Wan was not as well-known and pivotal as he later became. 

The Last Jedi mirrors Empire Strikes Back thus:

- Ahch-To mirrors Dagobah. Complete with sunken x-wings!

- Rey learns from Luke mirroring Luke learning from Yoda.

- In both, the hero (Luke/Rey) is tempted by the dark side but chooses the light (Luke throws himself off a radio tower, Rey chooses to fight Kylo).

 - In both we meet the big bad and find he’s not actually all that impressive close-up.

- Both begin with an evacuation and end with the rebels on the back foot. 

- Both have major parentage reveals, but here’s where the reversal starts coming in - Luke’s parent who was assumed to be no-one particularly special turns out to be Vader. Rey’s parents who were assumed to be important are revealed not to be. 

- ESB starts with the rebels escaping a white planet and ends with them drifting in space. TLJ starts with them drifting in space and ends with them escaping a white planet. 

So based on these parallels and reversals, our predictions for episode 9 mirroring and reversing New Hope. 

- Mentor figure will die - Obi-Wan in ANH, naturally this will be Leia in Ep9. I think it likely that she will die off screen between the two films and her passing will be referred to in the opening text scroll. 

- They will face something they have not faced before. The Death Star was something new in ANH; they were ready for it by RotJ. They were ready for Starkiller in TFA, so they’ll face something brand new and even deadlier in Ep9. 

- We’ll end up back on Tattooine, where it all started. Or, if Jakku is now standing in as resident desert planet, we’ll end up back on Jakku, where this particular story cycle started.

- ANH begins with Luke losing his family;  we predict Ep9 will end with Rey getting closure about her own, I am sure that we’ve not heard the full story. 

- ANH opens with the government being disbanded, we predict Ep9 will end with government and democracy being restored. 

Unrelated to the story cycle:

 -  We also think that the distress signal that went out to the resistance allies that was ignored was not in fact ignored - the resistance allies knew that if Leia was using her personal call then pretty much all hope was lost to the main resistance band, and instead of helping that little core group that would most likely be lost by the time they arrived, they used Leia’s signal as a rallying cry for the rest of them to come together and form a much larger resistance elsewhere.

 - Linked to this, I like the idea of the Resistance not having a major base somewhere but actually being based out of the Falcon, able to pack up and move on at a moment’s notice, but just with little outposts here and there where they store munitions, supplies, fighters, fuel etc. I also like the idea of the Falcon being a decoy figurehead, with the Resistance still mobile on a different ship, but Chewey flying the Falcon all over the galaxy sending Kylo on a wild goose chase, whilst the Resistance move on in another direction. 

Only another couple of years to wait to see if we’re right! 

[furvillaheadcannons]

Failed Terraforming Experiment Mastertheory

You may have seen this one on FV itself, but some of the first posts I’m going to be making will be compiling some headcannon/theory things I’ve said around the forums. A lot of my personal theories and headcannons tie back into this one, so I figured this would be a good one to make the first post. I’m going to try to keep this one compatible with any on-site lore, so this theory may change as official lore is added. Enjoy!

The world of Furvilla is the modern remains of a failed terraforming experiment, started by humans. The Minipets and the Villagers were both created as tools to eventually make the planet of Furvilla suited for human use. The project was abandoned thousands of years ago, and humans have long gone extinct from this world. Let's start at the beginning... Humans decided to expand their reach in the galaxy by habiting a new planet, something they may or may not have done before. This planet was specifically chosen for its resemblance to Earth, with a similar star, orbit, and temperature. The only two issues with this planet were 1, humans couldn't survive in the atmosphere without the use of oxygen tanks and bio-suits, and 2, the planet was already inhabited by a thriving ecosystem. Four bases were eventually set up, each in a unique biome and strategic location that would be pivotal to destroying the existing ecosystems and molding the world for human habitation. The first and most important base was underwater, as this location was the safest from local fauna attacks. Long after the base and its buildings had rotted away, this area would later become Oceandome as later settlers found it just as safe as the humans had many eons ago. Later bases were made in the regions that would eventually become Olde Foxbury, Dragonsmaw Manor, and Tigereye Peak. In every case, these bases and most of the buildings that were part of them were slowly eroded away by weather and aggressive monster attacks, eventually leaving only manmade objects such as metal pieces and toxic waste. (Quetzal Palace was settled much later) But, let's get back to the past. After establishing themselves on this hostile planet, the humans got started on changing the planet to fit them. Logically, it made the most sense to tackle the 'simpler' problem first: destroying the native life. It would reduce the risk to the humans if the planet was wiped clean of hostile fauna, so that they could change the planet's atmosphere and native floral life in relative peace. On top of this, the 'monsters' were just not aesthetically pleasing to humans. Enter the "Minipet". Technically just called "animals", minipets were genetically engineered to be the ultimate invasive species. Every minipet was created to occupy the same niche as a native 'monster', aggressive or non-aggressive, and drive it into extinction by out-competing it. This is why minipets breed so quickly and are born almost fully formed, only needing a full breeding cooldown to go from newborn to maturity. However, this had an unintended consequence. Though most of the monster species were driven to extinction, there were many gigantic predators that seized this new opportunity and thrived. Many of the worst of the aggressive monsters ended up coming even closer to the encampments than before, chasing their new food source like a fox chasing chickens right back to the farm. This is why most of the monsters you know are so belligerent and come close to your modern villages. Your excess minipets are monster chow. If you've ever wondered why minipets and monsters look so very different, the artificial creation is the reason why. The two groups are completely unrelated, minipets were created to resemble Earth-concepts and be aesthetically pleasing to the humans while monsters evolved totally independently in an atmosphere different from Earth. Thanks to their engineering, minipets were able to survive in this environment without a bio-suit just like a native monster, and this ended up being more useful than the scientists ever thought they would be despite the extra monster attacks, which gave the humans a new idea... Enter the Villager. A genetically engineered creature didn't need a bio-suit to work, it didn't need to eat human rations, and it was disposable if it got injured. They had already made animals, the next step was to give them a useful upright gait and make them intelligent enough to take human orders and do human work. After a few experiments with minipets and making them more intelligent (one of these experiments lead to the Quetzal Palace serpent), the first Villager was born. The Villagers were created to be the servants and workers of the human colonists. This is why Villagers have a deep desire to expand, explore, and colonize. Another big upgrade from the minipets was the ability to change to fit any scenario. At every villager's core is a Shifty, and morphing potions were a quick way to change a villager from one form into another form that better fits the task they needed to complete. A human could quickly change their flying corvid into a strong bear when a monster attacked, without the need to bring multiple Villagers. Every human only needed a few loyal Villagers thanks to the potion system, and towards the end of their stay, they needed even less when the Shifty potion was eventually created, giving Villagers the ability to freely transform into anything they could personally imagine. The shifty potion was the last potion to be created, all other potions and forms were created before the Shifty potion but are just being re-discovered. But, the human civilization did not last. Perhaps the project ran out of funds, perhaps the encampments failed from repeated monster raids, perhaps the Villagers revolted. The terraforming experiment was abandoned, and the humans evacuated. While many of them took their personal Villagers and minipets, far many more Villagers and minipets were left for dead on a wild planet. Without the creators, the creations were aimless. Little more than 'servants' or tools to their human owners, very few Villagers knew how to read and even less know how to work the leftover technology, and thus they were essentially sent back to the stone age. They had to go back to using spears and axes, and created tribes as they tried to survive. Any humans who got left behind eventually either died from bio-suit malfunction, monster attacks, or just plain old age, despite the best efforts of their Villagers to keep them alive. This is why human skulls can be found all over the world, especially near the colonized areas, and why they're super-rare. That was thousands of years ago. Humans and their accomplishments are barely a memory, remembered only by ancient remains and leftover technology such as amulets or the impressive Quetzal Palace serpent. The sites of great civilization were uninhabited for centuries, but no longer! It has been a slow climb, but Furvilla is on the cusp of a great technological revolution. Five major cultures have appeared, and with them, five great nations. Education, new careers, and a greater standard of living is within Villagerkind's grasp, scattered all about the places they currently call home. The game we are all playing is the start of a golden age, and things are finally looking stable on this unnamed planet we've been calling Furvilla.

[kinetic-elaboration]

June 13: 2x22 By Any Other Name

I remembered By Any Other Name not being so good but either I enjoyed it more this time or I was actually thinking of another episode not really doing it for me. Because I really enjoyed it this go!

Ah ha, another mysterious distress call scenario.

But it’s just an excuse to freeze them and conquer them! I will say the aliens froze Spock and McCoy in the most hilarious and appropriate positions: McCoy arguing and Spock looking curious and lightly skeptical.

Teleplay by D.C. Fontana, okay, maybe it will be all right.

Kelvans you say!!! Kelvans?!

Kirk’s like “We don’t do invasion and colonialism in this house.”

Spock hears about all this advanced science and is very interested.

The inter-generational ship concept is (always) very interesting.

“We rule.” Sure you do, stuck on some rando planet. You’re winning for sure.

And despite all this, Kirk still wants to help them.

Huh, so they are not really humanoid. Verrrry interesting.

“We are creatures of outer space.... We must return to the comforting closeness of walls.” Hmmm, lot to unpack there. I wonder if this is related to their real form and/or home planet experiences or (imo more likely) it’s specifically about their generation. They, specifically, were born in space. That’s what they know.

Kirk and crew figuring out the aliens aren’t humanoid.

Ah, yes, the good ol’ Vulcan Mind Probe. Melding with the wall... And a reference to A Taste of Armageddon!

Bones holding on to Spock way more than necessary after he falls.

The sproing sound when they freeze people is rather hilarious.

Oh no, what a way to go... turned into a cube and then crushed to dust. These aliens are very cruel.

“I saw a series of bizarre and exotic images.” And tentacle aliens. I’m discerning another alien sex fantasy...

“Immense beings with a hundred tentacles would have difficulty operating the turbo lift.” Sure, they would.

“Mr. Spock! I love you!”

Or not quite. The urgency was there though. I like when Kirk has a plan that involves lying and Spock doesn’t immediately understand it.

Kirk sure knows a lot about Vulcans. Suspicious.

Pure rest is more relaxing than “your so-called vacation.” Please Spock, we all know you like your camping trips.”

I can’t believe this dummy. He takes a few moments to prepare to enter his trance but doesn’t bother to sit down or even warn anyone that he’s about to fall right the hell over.

McCoy’s a good actor! This man’s about to die!!

Lol at Spock opening his eyes too soon and then having to close them again.

Spock 100% snuck out of his parents’ house as a teenager and left behind pillows under the blankets in the vague shape of a body.

I really like this scene with the alien discovering flowers. She likes them! It really merges the way she’s getting used to the human body, and the accompanying aesthetic values of it, getting used to being outside of the ship, and feeling nostalgic for her own planet, even though she’s never seen it.

Also, Kirk, look, she will be susceptible to her charm! Use your charm on her!

This ship goes to 11.

It’s always fun when Spock and Scotty work together. Spock is so good at engineering. He probably does more engineering than science lol. I also like when he talks about “the Captain.”

The “nah-celles.”

“Are you mad? I can’t just explode the ship! Unless it’s the only way to save Spock’s life, in which case, to hell with the ship!”

When Rojan started talking about the food synthesizers not being able to produce enough for everyone, thus necessitating the need to turn the crew into cubes that don’t eat, I legit thought he was going to suggest eating the cubes. As in, the synthesizers won’t produce enough food, so we need another food source.

Everybody’s turning into cubes! You’re a cube! And you’re a cube! And you’re a cube!

The cubes are kind of funny actually.

Wow, only 4 essential personnel. Kind of insulting, isn’t it?

“They’ve reduced the whole crew!”

When the alien told McCoy to “assist” him with the food, I thought he meant, like... feed it to him, put it in his mouth.

They’re going to defeat the aliens by distracting them with the pleasures of the human body, aren’t they? In a non-sexual way.

Or possibly a sexual way.

Looks like they’re eating some kind of weird fruit salad with like... blue alien fruit.

So the aliens are super duper smart but they had to give up everything else in exchange, including sensations, senses, and emotions. Vulcans on Crack.

“They’re taking human form and are therefore having human reactions.” That actually is fascinating.

“If he keeps reacting like that, he’s going to need a diet.” Lol Bones he’s had 3 pieces of fruit, I think he’s okay.

Brainstorming ways to stimulate the sense and Scotty IMMEDIATELY goes for the booze lol; so on brand.

The decorations in Scotty’s room... a kilt... a knight’s head...

And Kirk’s like “and I shall be the honeypot in this scenario.”

“Kissing is meant to express warmth and love.” That is actually very romantic and adorable.

“We enjoy it.” / “Literature?” If this is not me.

Hilariously, this is the second episode in which the Enterprise teaches aliens about sex.

Little Scottish jig as Scotty and the alien keep drinking.

Spock lol... He’s such a mean girl under that Vulcan facade. Trying to bait Rojan into being jealous. This scene almost reads like the start of a romcom in which two aliens team up to break up a couple so they can both date one half.

“It’s... it’s green.” Thank you Scotty.

The alien calling McCoy out on his use of the royal “we.”

And Scotty keeps the old whiskey IN the knight. Of course. Where it’s safe. I want to know what he was saving it for.

“And I haven’t seen Scotty in hours!”

McCoy is way too gleeful about drugging that guy.

That cute little way Spock hit McCoy to get his attention. “Stokalne, I said!! Stokaline!”

“The cultural mystique surrounding the biological function.” Got to work that into my vocabulary.

...I’m pretty sure her “secondary reading” was erotica.

“Hanar, go to your room.”

Honestly, Spock is such a catty pot-stirrer. “Hmm, I seem to recall seeing your girlfriend. With Captain Kirk. Alone. Maybe she just...likes him more than you? I don’t know, just a possibility.”

Scotty successfully drank the alien under the table.

And of course he has bagpipes too.

Captain Kirk, out to steal your girl. “If you can’t keep her, that your problem.” This is the closest to a bad boy that he has EVER been.

Oh no, he slapped Rojan, now he has to kiss it better. Really would have been fun if someone had suggested Kirk “apologize” after the fight.

Omg, he just pushes Kirk right into the arms of his two besties, and Kirk says “I’m stimulating him,” and then they just push him right back. And the expressions on their faces. Absolutely perfect moment.

I feel like Keliinda is like Quinn in Daria: “Oh no, they’re fighting over me, how awful!”

“You’re stuck in these bodies. You and your descendants for 300 years.” Wow.

I like how Kirk has him in a headlock and is like "You will submit to DIPLOMACY. You will let the space U.N. solve your problems!!!!!!"

“You would accept invaders?” / “No, but we would welcome friends.” Now kiss.

Spock knows a bit about establishing his own destiny.

Robot ship! Robot ship!

Oh well, guess Kirk didn’t steal his girl after all. He seems pretty relieved about that. The charm can be a gift and a curse after all.

And McCoy is so happy! That little toe raise thing he does! Smiling so big! Look Spock, we fixed it!

That was actually a really great ep. Maybe I was thinking of a different one. I liked all the triumvirate + Scotty moments. There was some pretty scary stuff and some truly hilarious stuff. Loved the alien concept. Great Kirk command ep. Interesting Spock and McCoy moments sprinkled in. Rollicking adventure. The ending was a little abrupt (we don’t see the crew returned from cube form, which feels weird...and how are they gonna get back through the barrier?) But all in all, quite interesting and fun.

I especially like the aliens. That these particular individuals have never known their home land, but are just fulfilling this mission, with the expectation that they will not even see the conclusion--like Spock says, just a link in the chain. That’s rather touching in and of itself. Even if they do see themselves as conquerors. But then when you combine that with their use of the human form... the idea that the form changes the personality because it provides different sensations and abilities, and that one form may be more necessary than another, or ultimately more pleasurable than another. They would have to be humans, as Kirk says, to use the ship--and then their children would also have to be humans! So in what sense will their descendants be alien? Are they not most definitely human? And would they ever be accepted by their people again? What is the plan actually going forward? If they returned to the planet they landed on before, one assumes they could go back to tentacle form. But they also don’t seem to want that. Will the other aliens colonize an empty planet as tentacle beings or as humans? And finally, think of it from the other side... imagine sending out humans on a multi-generational mission to search out other planets, and while they’re gone, they and their descendants take on an alien form, prefer it, and then return! As aliens! That would be wild.

On a completely unrelated note,. I am convinced that Spock has faked sick before. He was probably always doing stuff like that to sneak out of his parents’ house as a teenager. I thought this in The Menagerie Part One, also, when he was using that recording of Kirk’s voice to steal the ship. Like... he has experience in these kind of cons. (Even though in this ep, it was Kirk’s idea. But he took to it well.)

Next is The Omega Glory, which Amazon says I’ve watched, but which I have no memory of. Could it be the disappointing ep?

[accidentaldeath3-blog]

Masturbate and Feel Good

Masturbate and Feel Good

best pocket pussy "Masturbation... is not approved of the actual Lord neither this church, regardless of what may be said by those as their 'norms' are lower", Director Kimball of the Church of Jesus Christ involving Latter-Day Heureux (1981) "Every sperm is actually sacred. Each and every sperm is extremely good. If a sperm is wasted, The almighty gets quite irate. inch Monty Python's This is involving Life. A offer often used by various church buildings in an effort to contain illicit serves amongst its people. Each arenga on masturbation will price it, at least all of the sermons I have noticed. Beneath the circumstances, is the idea difficult to think about masturbation as one of the actual biggest taboos in our society? Even today? Medical education has done any little to alter it. Does that mean men and women have a tendency masturbate? Certainly not. 00% of men and 70% of females masturbate according for you to various research. 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" Unfortunately, often the social conditioning is definitely wrong. It is seeing that wrong as the social situation in 18-19th century Of india, where widows had been pushed to burn in existence using their husbands. As incorrect as the church has been in burning up Galileo intended for implying our planet was definitely not the centre in the whole world. Lily Tomlin put it very best, "We have great think that man first stepped upright to free their hands for masturbation! inches If god didn't desire us to masturbate, perhaps we would still end up being walking such as dogs and also horses! Often the social health and fitness is a result connected with quite a few myths, lies and also frauds perpetrated by quite a few individuals regarding personal profit. Unfortunately, this conditioning is usually like a hard enthusiast, very tough to fracture. However, with effort and also chanelising your energies, you are able to break it. Remember, often the nuts that crack the hardest, are often the types that taste the very best! An individual must be wondering, how a hell does it subject if you believe guilty about masturbation. Thinking about spend time bursting this covering? Certain research psychologists believe that guilt cognizant, whether sexual remorse as well as in any other form, is the most dangerous element on your mental wellbeing. Others believe that it is one regarding the most destructive. However the very best effect associated with guilt conscious if you ask me has been a lack of confidence with self. At this point you are an clever reader. I don't have to have to reveal you the particular importance of self self-confidence. Be it your career, relationships or any different aspect of life, lack associated with assurance can bring your current downfall. Now I am not necessarily implying that ought to you start off to feel more cozy with regards to masturbation, you would likely succeed in all of features of life. But the idea will be nice step in order to take. An useless sense of guilt that should, and can be gone from your mind. Remember, an ocean is produced of tiny droplets associated with water. Remove a decline at a time and due time, the marine would be empty! Of course it could take a number of millennia! Fortunately, you no longer have an ocean full of guily! Just some naggings in many places! The first phase towards eradication of this guilt is knowledge. You will find hundreds of myths around masturbation. Most of them perpetrated by religious beliefs, unfortunately. Yet some perpetrated through rip-off runners. Lets take a look at the most important ones. one particular. Masturbation is against the particular will associated with god. Hoke. At one point often the church deemed anyone who also was overtly ardent to be able to his wife an adultrater. Follow that educating and also your wife would become doing adultery! Several clergymen have visited on record in order to say that will not only the church's theories in relation to sexuality were unrelated in order to the scriptures, but that they caused more harm than good amongst people. In addition to, nowhere in the spiritual coaching of any important religions is masturbation viewed as completely wrong. 2. Masturbation may cause impotency. Most men and even several females seem to think thus. Wrong again. Lets deal with the males first. It can be understandable that seeing their particular sperm flow out associated with themselves, they think that may end sometime. Effectively, it will end one day... maybe when you are generally 100 years old. Nevertheless until then don't get worried. Your sperm bank is rather unlike Standard Chartered. You may have unlimited credit here! Orgasm is a completely replenishable learning resource, renewable on the hourly basis! For females, well, there is zero schedule in the hypothesis. Probably perpetrated by previous ladies who have never got an ejaculation in their very own entire life! three or more. Masturbation causes acne, thinning hair, pores and skin diseases. This one is definitely my favorite. Mainly mainly because it is among the much better scams of all moments! Your own personal social conditioning would certainly have you think that that masturbation is bad for your health. But negative how? No-one would supply you a satisfying solution! Now some scam musicians saw this as an very good opportunity to easily sell their products similar to curly hair growth lotions, etc. Because most people start masturbating in their teens, (the moments of pimple and other skin problems), they will get you believe that this particular is attributable to masturbation! Unluckily for them, this can be seeing that untrue as the sunrays rising from the western! Fleshlight has no physical side effects! some. Masturbating will make you slender and skinny! Then there is no need for diet pills and health and fitness regimes my friend! And the majority of definitely 70% of USA more than likely be overweight! 5. Just Kids masturbate! The reason why can you say that? I wonder! Well quite false, most older people masturbate... you got it even after marriage! a few. Masturbation is for guys. And it is for 70% from the women too. That's right, two thirds of all females masturbate! 8. Only losers masturbate! One more of my favorites. Merely goes to show merely how much of the taboo is masturbation! Right off the bat, 99% of males as well as seventy percent of females have masturbated at least once inside their lives. Now that is a hell of your lot of losers no longer you feel! Nothing considerably more that I can also add truly... this is really often the epitome of insecurity amongst individuals with regards to self pleasure. 7. Masturbation is for homosexuals. Wow. Exactly where did that will one originate! Somebody should make a etymology of such myths, would make regarding an useful read! Just simply as untrue because just about all these myths, masturbation along with homosexuality have nothing in accordance. Some people masturbate for you to their dreams of reverse sex, others to their own fantasies of same sex. That's it. in search of. Masturbation will make you shutter! Others claim that fleshlight is actually bad for your personal eyesight. But their states are unsupported by specifics and health-related advice. My spouse and i suggest you talk in order to your standard physician in addition to he will clarify anyone what a load associated with bull this is. 12. Masturbation changes the condition of your penile Properly, it does make it firm. But believe my family, when you finally orgasm, the hardness is finished! So no. Fleshlight features absolutely no influence on how your penis appears.

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Web Design In Bergen county

Here are some tips to find the correct individuals for the duty and a few issues to be taken into consideration.

1. Introduction

Many businesses seek for an online designer as if they were buying a general trade goods item like a lightweight bulb - i.e. All internetsites are equal and paying the sixteen year previous student on a pc course to create the positioning can reap precisely the same dividend as paying a specialist web development agency. alternative businesses typically feel they need to pay thousands upon thousands of pounds on an internet site for it to achieve success.

Let us dispel these myths

Contrary to what several believe, internet style is barely one element within the production of your web site. Some internet designers will speak day and night concerning however pretty your internet site are often, however if it isn't practical, easy, or capable of serving to you meet your on-line goals, then all the superficial beauty within the world isn't visiting facilitate it serve it's purpose. the look theme of an internet site is barely one element of building a flourishing on-line presence.

Choosing an online Designer isn't a simple task! - Here are some tips...

There is such a lot a lot of to internet style than simply creating some sites look pretty if you wish to succeed. you wish to contemplate your target market, underlying message, content, desired responses, visitant impact, on-line goals, however you're visiting live the success of the positioning and a lot of. there's such a lot a lot of to internet style than simply creating some sites look pretty

Web Design in Bergen county

2. shaping Your needs

If you've got no plan why you wish an internet site or what you want the web site to realize, it's still to sit down down and suppose it through, instead of dashing to place up a "White elephant" that doesn't serve a purpose. each web site should serve a purpose, and that's sometimes wherever several websites falls short. They serve no purpose as a result of the web site owner ne'er gave a lot of thought thereto. It's not the website's fault. an internet site is inanimate. it's solely what you create it. the sole life an internet site has is that the one given thereto by its designer and owner. If the human part doesn't do an honest job of shaping the building blocks, the web site can serve no purpose and eventually die a digital death. each web site ought to have a definite purpose therewith in mind, we'd recommend the primary stage would be to outline the "Goals" of the web site in respect to the necessities and aspirations of the business or organisation concerned.

Defining the Goal

Every web site ought to have a definite goal or range of goals that are measurable. A goal are often something from human action with friends and associates through to creating profits by commercialism product or services on-line (e commerce). Your goal within the initial instance could even be to possess an online presence thus potential purchasers don't regard your organisation as being backward! Once you've got outlined a goal (or range of goals), it's equally necessary to define:

The target market. i.e. World Health Organization you want/expect to go to your web site. The actions you wish to result from their visit. i.e. creating a web sale, obtaining them to form Associate in Nursing inquiry etc. What advantages you're giving and receiving from having the web site. Defining the Key Functions (The actions)

Once the goals of the web site are established, it's necessary to outline the actions needed by web site guests to fulfill the goals. Associate in Nursing action is any traceable sequence of events applied by the tip user.

Examples may include:

Getting in bit - either by phone, email or via a web kind. Disseminating data. Signing up for a account. Completing a form Commenting on a journal Downloading or shopping for product Using a web tool Of course, there are alternative intangible advantages that your web site may offer to Associate in Nursing user that don't end in direct "actions"... i.e. merely providing "peace of mind" to Associate in Nursing existing or prospective client would be thought of in and of itself. If you haven't already done thus, then it's additionally helpful to test out the competition, for ideas, likes and dislikes.

Establishing Your style & Development Preferences

Once you've got developed the goals and practical needs for the web site, it's time to start out building an image of however you anticipate the positioning returning along - with relation to structure and style theme. This doesn't must be a definitive exercise - Your internet designer ought to be ready to add plenty of input and suggestions at a later stage, however it helps to possess some concepts to feed into the necessities you approach the designer with within the initial instance.

As follows are some that we have a tendency to feel ought to be mandatory:

The website ought to adhere to recognised standards. the positioning ought to be written to evolve and validate to the standards outlined by the planet Wide internet syndicate (W3C) - this may successively, mean your web site ought to be cross-browser friendly (i.e. seem the identical across varied differing types of internet browser). The website ought to be accessible. In internet terms, this suggests that it conforms to the incapacity Discrimination Act (DDA). The website ought to be clean, crisp and quick loading. The website ought to be straightforward to use and inoffensive (see below). Our Tip: straightforward to use and Inoffensive - The WOW issue

Webbies typically get asked to provide an internet site with the "WOW factor". The "WOW factor" could be a term meaning various things to totally different individuals. Often, the person or business authorization the web site have grandiose plans for in depth animation, splash screens, cartoons, flash styles... This isn't the WOW issue - A daring flash style with "off the wall" color schemes could appear bold and innovative to some individuals, however could very suspend alternative web site users - notice the happy medium.

If someone needs to shop for a try of shoes on-line then their mission is essentially to search out the fascinating pair of shoes at the correct value within the fastest attainable time. They don't visit Associate in Nursing e-commerce web site to look at an animation of shoes hoofing across the screen. Leave cartoons and uncalled-for animation that add zero worth to those specialists in their own field. individuals watch the Simpsons for that sort of amusement. They seemingly won't be visiting your web site for (or be affected by) to be "dazzled" by digressive tries to square out.

Our own interpretation of the "WOW factor" could be a web site that's terribly easy to use, clean, crisp, user friendly, quick loading with nice content. Basically, the positioning that delivers it's underlying message quickly and briefly is that the best. Google has the WOW issue and you don't see slow loading animation thereon web site. The WOW issue ought to mean Winning on the online and zilch else.

Ok, thus you've delineated some goals and needs... time to start out trying to find the correct guys to travel ahead and implement the answer for you.

3. choosing an online Designer / Developer

Initially, the most effective place to start is by manufacturing a place of designers. you will like better to do that in any range of how however here are some suggestions that you just may need to issue in:

The location of the possible designer. this might or might not be an element for you. Some individuals are happy to figure remotely et al. like some face to face interaction. If the latter is important to you, then you may must concentrate on designers in your native space. The designer's portfolio. this can be sometimes a key think about any shortlisting method. you will like better to favour designers World Health Organization have worked specifically within the sector you're targeting, otherwise you could merely like alternative unrelated websites they need developed. Independent Word of mouth recommendation. you will have received glowing reports on specific designers and their after-sales service. Don't overlook this. The size of the corporate. usually speaking, the dimensions of the corporate offers you with very little plan to the standard or work they'll turn out or the services they can provide. Some SMEs {prefer to|like better to|value a lot of highly to|favor to|opt to|choose to} work on a more personal level with smaller suppliers or freelance designers with larger corporates preferring the alternative. The cost - Most skilled internet designers tend to provide work on a tailor-made basis, tailored unambiguously for every consumer - and therefore the overwhelming majority don't publish costs. (We do). However, Associate in Nursing initial discussion ought to be ready to offer you with a "ball park" figure a minimum of supported your needs define. Some designers also are ready to offer efficient "out of the box" solutions at a hard and fast value. Tip: Get a hard and fast value quote instead of an hourly rate. Let's face it... Associate in Nursing hourly or daily rate is nonmeaningful as a measuring system once your take into account it's going to take one designer doubly as long as another to complete the identical job.

Web designers can sometimes showcase previous work on their own websites, however take care to contemplate that they're gears a site's style and structure to needs given by another party that seemingly won't match your own. It's a lot of necessary that you just are assured that they'll implement your resolution than maybe reading an excessive amount of into alternative style work that you may not essentially like.

Another consideration you will ought to take into consideration is that the perspective a designer shows once you initial create contact. you'll typically gauge whether or not they are genuinely inquisitive about the project and whether they are visiting be proactive - and if they'll supply a high level of support. Designers not providing a phone line signal or a address could also be more durable to contact once you would like them the foremost. Trust your instincts and exercise good judgment.

Tip: Don't base everything on value and confirm you compare "like" with "like". Also, don't be afraid to share your budget with the designers throughout initial discussions then see what they'll deliver at intervals it. Time is usually wasted if you're discussing the project over days or weeks then find yourself being miles apart on valuation expectations.

The a lot of data you offer furnish the designer with, regarding your goals, needs and style preferences, the better. additionally confirm that you just discuss timescales and payment schedules (most designers can invite a deposit direct and a final balance payment once the project is completed. There may additionally  be interim payment milestones for larger projects). to boot, enquire concerning any revenant charges for support, future amends, internet hosting, domains etc. Neither party can wish hidden surprises.

4. queries you may be Asked

It's continuously higher to be ready once you approach internet designers... they're going to even have their own queries to ascertain a the necessities, gauge the work concerned and furnish you with a quote.

Typical queries you would possibly be asked embody the following:

What will your company do? What are the distinctive commercialism Points that your company should offer? What is the aim of the website? How does one see the web site evolving within the future? Do you have any existing branding? i.e. Logo, color schemes or alternative promoting materials? Who are your competitors? Do you need e commerce or a web payment mechanism? Can you offer links to alternative websites that you just like from a style perspective? Can you offer links to alternative websites that you just like from a practicality perspective? (i.e. however they work) What is your budget? Don't be afraid to disclose a budget figure - it will facilitate plenty. If you aren't ready to get a direct quote, request that the designer gets back to you and establish a timescale for this to happen. As you'll in all probability tell, selecting an online designer isn't essentially a simple method if you're seeking the correct fit  your project. The a lot of careful analysis and preparation that you just perform, the better.

5. Going ahead

When you create a call on continuing with a designer, confirm to induce the quote in writing and make sure the it's clear that the copyright of the web site is yours once completed. guarantee all charges (including any future and/or revenant charges) are spelled resolute avoid any ambiguity and issues additional down the road.

Ideally, once you want to proceed, your internet developer ought to produce a take a look at web address, wherever you'll monitor current development and supply feedback throughout.

Part of a wider strategy

Your web site ought to integrate with and complement your alternative promoting activities. Promote your web site address wherever you'll. take into account golf stroke it on your business cards, stationery, merchandise, delivery vans, carrier baggage, client receipts and on your look front. Drive individuals to your web site through on-line adverts, program promoting and active offline promotion.

Owen Gigg is that the Lead internet Developer at the Award Winning internet Agency Westwindmoves.

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Developing Media for 3D Projection Mapping

videomapping In my current practical experience developing for tremendous canvases (the sides of buildings) I have found a lot of handy ideas and tricks. The reason of this article is to examine these discoveries with the intention of creating 3D projection mapping types far more profitable specifically for inexperienced designers. The first point that becomes clear when viewing operate at this kind of a enormous scale is speed. The designs and animation are initially designed and previewed on a pc display - a lot less than 2' x 3'. Even preview projections are seldom greater than 20' across. On seeing the very same sequences perform on a canvas many orders of magnitude much larger the velocity at which gatherings transpire is greatly magnified. As an instance, a 3D projection mapping venture I designed and directed covered all four sides of a 450 foot tall constructing. This represents a more than two hundred fold raise in sizing, thus elements and transitions that crawl at a snail's speed on the pc keep track of, transfer at a pace that looks unrelated when carried out in the actual display. To search at it in another way: relocating one" on the personal computer display screen (a fairly little distance relative to the total monitor) equals a movement of twenty five feet -on a constructing of this measurement, rather a substantial distance for a spectator watching from the audience. Editorial transitions are subject to the very same worries - there is simply more data to be processed when these a massive location of ones area of vision is energetic. The solution is merely to transform types aesthetic position of reference with regards to timing. What seems alarmingly sluggish on a very small laptop monitor will be just good when covering the facet of a large building. A few techniques can be employed to assist in this observe. The very first strategy is borrowed from visible results function for movies, specially 3D types where pacing problems are related (for equivalent good reasons). Make a authentic planet scale reference in your preview window. An excellent addition to this, beside the apparent yardstick and community capabilities, is scale human beings. A straightforward silhouette versus the preview monitor is very useful. Employing the zoom function, preview the animation at different zoom stages paying out interest to the dimension of the silhouette relative to your dimensions. 1:1 will demonstrate real velocity (points will usually zip via the display in a flash - excellent to see), and two:1 etcetera. will give the perception of standing in the again of the viewers with men and women in front of you. This approach can aid in utilizing one more (regular Second animators) procedure - pantomime. Although zoomed at various near ratios, discover the choreography as if you have been pushing the factors all around with your arms like actors generally do with heads-up displays in substantial tech Hollywood films. Right after the rhythm of the motion is learned, you can then get one more pre-visualization assist by getting this 'performance' out to someplace there are incredibly huge structures, and 'perform' the choreography as if it was taking place on the building you are standing in entrance of. Bringing your laptop computer or iPad alongside with the reference motion picture can aid if remembering the rhythms is a new apply to you. A next refinement to this strategy can be additional once a relaxed pacing strategy has been arrived at by way of use of the over approach. This approach includes the addition of seem. A click-keep track of (A recorded metronome employed by musicians to stay in sync on overdubbed recordings) can be very valuable for establishing a 'backbone' pace. This will keep you 'under the speed limit' so to discuss and has the extra advantage of generating an tasteful pacing unity. If the simply click track is far too monotonous only use it as a reference to pick a rhythmic piece of new music at the similar velocity. (For non-musicians search up the time period BPM). The other significant region of issue for reaching good quality on this kind of shows is contrast ratios. It is disappointing (to say the the very least) to have ones finely crafted visuals change flat, gray, and desaturated on viewing them in context. The perfect tactic is to have control of the ambient light-weight in the presentation location. In this remarkably unlikely and ideal case, one particular basically would keep all competing gentle resources off at the time of the show, allowing the projections to engage in in the equivalent of a darkish theatre. The realities of 3D projection mapping demonstrates are fairly different - not often (if at any time) does 1 have the option to current their operate in these a pristine surroundings. Ambient light-weight sources are everywhere and can not be managed at all. There will likely be practically nothing ni your present that arrives wherever shut to the deep blacks of your pc display. In most instances the contrast ratio of the system content must be modified to play agreeably in the context it will look. If at all achievable, check out the venue for the presentation with a camera, and just take as a lot of images of the lights problems as achievable. Whilst the images them selves will distort the lighting ailments, they will even so be a helpful reminder of the resources and degree of ambient light-weight current. Import these images into your preview and use them for reference. Use them as backgrounds. Experiment with improvements in the distinction of your program so that the substance appears presentable in this context. An superb way to take a look at and preview this, regardless of whether on-web-site photography is attainable, is to do little scale projections in adverse lights ailments. Test performing previews in broad daylight or if indoors, with work lights on. Last but not least, in absence of any of these testing processes, play it safe and alter the distinction ratio (stages in Photoshop) by 'crushing the blacks' as significantly as you can with out completely destroying the illustrations or photos. This will raise the saturation as effectively but possibly not sufficient. Up coming use Hue/Lightness/Saturation (also in Photoshop) to boost the saturation as substantially as achievable without destroying the integrity of the pictures. Usually speaking this is a predicament the place hefty-handed will spend off - this is not the location for finesse or subtlety. If the higher than testing techniques are offered, use them to do an A-B comparison amongst the pre-color-corrected product and the publish-corrected product. 9 periods out of 10 you will uncover that the substance presents far better with the blacks and saturation 'crushed' and that no important subtleties will be lost. The magnificence of 3D projection mapping is in the fitting of the materials to to context (floor) and the choreography of the narrative - the true projection alone is considerably far more of a brute pressure exercise and optimizing ones software for the difficulties inherent in the medium will let the finer details of storytelling alongside with the majesty and virtuosity inherent in the medium, to be appreciated to their fullest. In summary: bear in mind to keep the pacing suitable for the scale of the demonstrate. Establish references for relative measurements and use a rhythmic audio device to evaluate pacing. Check out and measure contrast ratios where ever achievable and use prevues in hard lighting conditions for checking. Crush the distinction and saturation of your components, and know that with these essential ideas in place, the inventiveness and spectacle of your display and types will stand out devoid of interruptions.