#Unknown collation

[darkstarnetwork43]

Unknown collation: utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci

Experienced “Unknown collation: utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci” when i was trying to import a database on a new server. Didn’t realize that the dump was created on a server with MySQL8 and i was trying to import it in MariaDB-10.5. FYI – The “ai” in the collation name stands for “accent insensitive” and the “ci” stands for “case insensitive. One of the solutions i stumbled upon, recommended i replace…

[kumpulanjurnalmakalah-blog]

[solved] #1273 – Unknown collation: ‘utf8mb4_unicode_520_ci’

When running a WordPress site, you may encounter the error message “Unknown collation: ‘utf8mb4_unicode_520_ci’”. This error occurs when your database is not properly configured to handle the utf8mb4 character set in WordPress. As WordPress started supporting emoji in version 4.2, it started using utf8mb4 character encoding instead of the standard utf8 character encoding. utf8mb4 encoding…

[monthly-writing-challenges]

About the Blog!

This blog is an attempt to collate and collect all the non-fandom-specific (writing) challenges hosted annually during specific months posted on tumblr - it is not an attempt to take credit for any of these challenges! Please follow the actual blogs of the challenges you're interested in participating in and check out their individual prompt challenge rules!!

There are many, many more writing challenges out there than these monthly challenges, if you're looking (daily prompts, yearly prompts, fandom specific challenges, etc.). If you know of a challenge that hasn't made it to this blog and fits the above criteria, please let me know, I'm happy to share it.

Monthly prompt blogs for the next three months (Jun. 2025 - Aug. 2025):

Blogs with different prompt lists/challenges every month:

@monthlywritingchallenges. June challenge (ongoing): JustoneJune, scene/completion challenge. July challenge (prompts posted): Golden Hour, prompt-a-day.

@thepromptfoundry. June challenge (ongoing): Junited we stand, prompt-a-day. July challenge (prompts posted): Juxtaposition July, prompt-a-day.

June 2025:

@juneofdoom! Category: whump. Running since 2023. 2025 status: prompts are posted. [Type: prompt-a-day]

@genworkjune! Category: gen fics. Running since 2023. 2025 status: prompts are posted. [Type: general prompts and engagement with gen fics]

@pridemonthprompts! Category: LGBTQIA+. First year running. 2025 status: prompts are posted. [Type: prompt-a-day]

July 2025:

@whumperless-whump-event! Category: (whumperless) whump. Running since 2024. 2025 status: prompts are posted. [Type: prompt-a-day]

@fluffuly2024! Category: fluff. Running since 2021. 2025 status: unknown. [Type: prompt-a-day]

@whumpmasinjuly! Category: whump. FAQ. Running since 2020. 2025 status: prompts are posted. [Type: 10 creation/writing prompts, plus question and community prompts on the other days of the month]

@fluffyjuly! Category: fluff. First year running. 2025 status: prompts are posted. [Type: prompt-a-day]

@fluff-cember in July! Category: fluff. First year running (at least in July!). 2025 status: prompts are posted. [Type: prompt-a-day]

18+ only challenge. July Writing Challenge by @loki-hargreeves! Category: multiple. First year running. 2025 status: prompts are posted. [Type: prompt every other day, 18+/minors DNI]

August 2025:

@augustofwhump! Category: whump. Running since 2024. 2025 status: prompts are posted. [Type: prompt-a-day]

@augustwritingchallenge! Category: AU fics. FAQ. Running since 2020. 2025 status: prompts are posted. [Type: prompt-a-day]

@writersmonth! Category: none. FAQ. Running since 2019. 2025 status: will be returning. [Type: prompt-a-day]

@ficwip5k! Category: AU. Running since 2023. 2025 status: signups have started. [Type: single fic, maximum word count challenge]

@aug-kissed! Category: romance/kisses. Running since 2024. 2025 status: unknown. [Type: Aug 4-31; 3 prompts a week.]

Check out the active and inactive challenge lists for other months!

[thecascast]

hello and welcome to the cas cast's collated fic rec compendium!

(as mentioned in our season 8 wrap up)

anon’s rec: (don’t) stop texting me by feelthe_beat

Romantic Theory by 2street2car

canticles by 2street2car

The Dean Winchester Beat Sheet by saltyfeathers

Down to Agincourt by seperis

Ninety One Whiskey by komodobits

Cinderwings by bendingsignpost

On Drowning by domesticadventures

Unknown Quantities by xylodemon

Cuckoo And Nest by komodobits

spirit of the west by teen_dean

Broadway Musical by Griftings

the cheapest room in the house by biggaybenny

if it all fell to pieces tomorrow by spocklee

love the way he sings, never really seen him dance by spocklee

The wilderness. by orange_crushed

The face of heaven. by orange_crushed

Don't Swing That Way by stonelions

So Says The Sword by komodobits

And This, Your Living Kiss by opal_bullets

Convenient Husbands by Annie D (scaramouche)

Qualia by imogenbynight

California Vampire Summer by FriendofCarlotta and xfancyfranart

a certain light by flightagain

In the Wilderness AU by Wayward_WLW (Parker_Haven_Wuornos) -- link found thanks to @werewolf-transgenderism <3 thank you!

stanford era recs:

a turn of the earth by microcomets

Strandlines by aeli_kindara

psalm 40:2 by unicornpoe

writers to check out!

2street2car

fleeceframe

MalMuses

spocklee

Annie D (scaramouche)

imogenbynight

komodobits

[leahnardo-da-veggie]

Ardence

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3

TW: forced sedation, graphic self-harm, torture, mentions of child rape

Prologue

To whom it may concern:

The following is a report I have collated across approximately two months. For the sake of internal security, all names (including my own) have been changed. 

I hope you understand why it had to be done.

Part 1 — Amelie

[VIDEO LOG 1: Interview]

[A young woman, with dirty blonde hair and eyes like faded dollar bills, stares right into the camera. Her gaze is sharp, like the rest of her features. A second person, almost entirely out of the camera's view, sits on the other side of the table.]

Interviewer: Your name is Amelie Quentin, yes?

Subject: Yeah. What's it to you? 

Interviewer: We would just like to ask some questions. Call it a friendly interrogation, if you will, Miss Quen-

[Subject lunges forward, arm outstretched. A yelp is heard, and she withdraws her hand, nails dripping blood.]

Subject: Friendly interrogation is an oxymoron, Council bitch. And stop calling me that. My name is Amelie, you got that? Or Ames, if you wanna be all chummy.

Interviewer: …Understood. I will refrain from using that name again. In return, however, please do not call me a bitch. That is a very impolite term.

Subject: I'll do as I please. And I call you a bitch because you are the Council's bitch. Look at you: shock collar on your neck, all poodled up in your cute little suit. They despise you, you know that? How can you just roll over and accept it?

[There is silence.]

Subject: Guess I hit a nerve, eh?

[More silence.]

[A chair scrapes. A door closes. Two minutes pass, and the interviewer returns.]

Interviewer: …I am going to ignore that comment of yours. It is none of your business, Miss Amelie. I am the one asking the questions here, after all. Now, to start off: Where were you when the invasion occurred?

Subject: What's your name, Council bitch? I'm not gonna call you by it, but it'd be nice to know which of their bloody attack dogs were sicced on me. 

Interviewer: I am afraid that is confidential information, Miss Amelie. Now, answer the question.

Subject: Fine, fine! Don't get your panties all in a twist. If you've gotta know, I was on the other side. In Bim' territory, if you know what I mean.

[She grins. Her teeth are yellow and crooked.]

Interviewer: I see. And what were you doing there?

[Subject freezes up. Any semblance of amusement disappears.]

Subject: I think we both know what I was doing there, Council bitch. And I don't want to talk about it. 

Interviewer: I understand. It has been hard for you, has it not, Miss Amelie? 

[There is no sympathy in his voice.]

Interviewer: I will not push you any further. We have rooms set up for you. I shall call a servant to take you to them, and let you rest. Please— use the facilities as if they were your own.

[Subject does not respond.]

[End of tape.]

****

[TEXT LOG 1: Report]

Subject Details

Name: Amelie Quentin

Species: Human

Sex: Female

Age: 18

Height: 1.56 m

Weight: 40 kg

Birthdate: 27-10-2005

Occupation: Unemployed

Marital Status: Single

Nationality: British

Next of Kin: Unknown

Address: 78 Kitchener's Lane, Greensdale Children's Home

Subject Condition:

Subject displays psychological distress, physical injury, and self-harming tendencies. Most prominently, subject suffers from persistent nausea, expelling of pus from open wounds and frequent vomiting. 

Subject also has abrasions on wrists, likely from bindings, as well as a stab wound in the lower abdomen, which she claims is self-inflicted. The veracity of this claim is unknown.

WARNING: Patient is hostile and resistant towards treatment. Do not approach patient without security assistance.

****

[VIDEO LOG 2: Interview]

Subject: Hey, Council Bitch. Did you miss me?

Interviewer: Hello, Ms Amelie. Did you sleep well?

Subject: Well? Ha! That's one hell of a joke.  Check your security tapes if you're so curious. I know you freaks put cameras and tapes in my room.

Interviewer: It's for your own safety, Ms Amelie. Your behaviour has been… erratic, to say the least. We feared you would harm yourself.

Subject: So restrain me. I know you Councilmen are useless, but come on- I'm a sitting duck. Half dead. Shit outta luck. What the hell, drug me while you're at it, why don't you?

[Subject laughs. It is not a pleasant noise.]

Interviewer: Please, Ms Amelie. Understand that you are not a prisoner here. You have done a wonderful thing, and we wish to repay you. That is why we have prepared your rooms and fine clothing. Nonetheless, you attempted to assault-

Subject: One, a gilded cage doesn't make me any less of a prisoner. You of all people should know that. Two, I didn't assault anyone. They were trying to pry, Council bitch. When they gave me bandages and antiseptic cream, I patched myself up, didn't I? Same deal as you've got— don't touch me, don't insult me, and we'll be fine. And three? Go fuck yourself, and your masters to boot.

Interviewer: The Council is worried, Amelie. They- No, I am worried for your safety. Why do you refuse medical care?

Subject: I want to go home. That's all I want. Do you understand, Council-bitch? Just let me go home, and put all this behind you.

Interviewer: You know we cannot do that.

Subject: I know. So go on and ask me the question, then. You know you want to.

Interviewer: It is not that I want to, Amelie. They need to know. What, exactly, was the role you played in the events that led up to the failure of the Enemy's Invasion?

Subject: You'll never find out. The Bim' are all dead. Their mothership is detached. I'm all that's left. 

Interviewer: You do realise that we cannot release you until after you agree to tell us everything, right? 

Subject: So we're at a stalemate. I could do this all day, Council-bitch. What're you gonna do about it, hmm? Break out the chains?

Interviewer: Please, Ms Amelie. We are not your enemies. The Council is at a loss of what to do. We need your recount to understand how best to prevent future incidents.

Subject: Do I look like I give a fuck about the Council?

Interviewer: Then at least care about humanity, Ms Amelie. Millions could have suffered unthinkable fates, if it were not for your intervention. And millions more could still fall prey to the Enemy unless we take action to secure our people. The first step in doing that lies in understanding what you just did.

Subject: Again, I don't give a single shit about humanity. You think I did this for them? Don't be stupid. If you want the information so bad, force it out of me. 

[The Interviewer sighs. One may begin to suspect that is a common response to the Subject's behaviour.]

Interviewer: As I said, that is not happening. I do not know why you are so obsessed with having the information tortured out of you—

Subject: Because I know what your kind are. So you can drop the pretenses, and start with the torture. What's it gonna be? Drugs? Torture? Truth serums? Ooh, maybe you'll do it the old fashioned way and rip my nails off.

Interviewer: I see you remain uncooperative. Fine. If you will not believe our words, perhaps our actions shall convince you. What do you want for dinner?

Subject: Poison.

Interviewer: Your roommate said you often bought food from a local Italian restaurant. The chef there claimed you liked the calzone. Shall we get you that for dinner?

Subject: Go to hell, Council Bitch.

Interviewer: Calzone it is. We will meet again soon, Ms Amelie. I shall also have the last three years worth of copies of Yellow Ranger delivered. I understand you are a fan of that series.

Subject: Like bloody fuck I am. That comic's for kids.

Interviewer: There is a complete collection of all the first editions of those comics up until the appearance of the Enemy. That suggests that you were rather invested in the story.

Subject: It was three years. A lot of things have changed since then, least of all myself.

Interviewer: I see. I will have them delivered all the same, okay?

Subject: Whatever, twat.

[End of tape.]

***

[VIDEO LOG 3: CCTV footage.]

It is a comfortable room, one of the penthouse suites of the Ritz-Carlton repurposed to house the most important guest humanity has had in perhaps all time. The decorations there are done up to resemble a certain teenage girl's bedroom back in a certain children's home, all band posters on the walls and black bed sheets.

Said certain girl paces her room, ignoring the cold calzone sitting on her dining table. There is a stack of comics, more than fifty of them, piled into a corner. The girl's lips are twitching, murmuring. It's too soft to hear what she's saying but there is a nearly obsessive repetition to the movements.

Two steps up, stare at the comics. Two steps down, stare at the bed. Two steps up, stare at the comics. Two steps down, stare at the bed. Two steps up, stare at the comics. Two steps down, stare at the—

And suddenly she's screaming, less of a battle cry and more of that raw, throat-rending sound a deer in a trap makes just before it gnaws off its leg to escape. 

She rushes forth, not to the bed, but to the window. Her forehead makes contact with the glass, and it cracks. 

Her knuckles are white against the windowsill, and she's silent once more. Again, she slams her head into the glass, and it cracks some more. By then, her forehead is bleeding.

She does it one more time, and the glass shatters, slicing up the skin of her face like a thousand ugly papercuts. Still, she's not satisfied. Her feet bring her to the plate of food, and she throws it at the door, taking a grim pleasure in the way the shards of plate cut into her calzone and make it bleed.

Her lips are spread in a twitching grin, eyes wild, all but foaming at the mouth. She opens her mouth to scream again, then thinks better of it, cackling madly instead. The girl stumbles to the door, picking up the biggest shard of porcelain she can find. Her diced up fingers press it to her wrist, cutting herself as deep as she could.

Two strokes in, the door bursts open, and Council security appears. The girl takes one look at them and turns, making a mad dash for the window.

The fastest of the security men grabs her hair and yanks her back. Cornered, the girl goes right for his face with her glass shard, a flurry of teeth and nails and makeshift blade. He stumbles back, startled, though his bulletproof vest and helmet protect him from any real harm. 

She puts up a good fight, the girl does, but they are strong and they are many, and she is only a scared little girl, so in the final steps of a dance she knows all too well, she is overpowered and helpless. Their hands are on her, rough, uncaring, gripping her until her stitches rip and her skin bruises. A needle full of sedatives— drugs, always drugs— slams into her arm painfully, and though she struggles as hard as she can, it is futile, as always.

The girl drops like a stone, unconscious.

[End of tape.]

***

[VIDEO LOG 4: Interview]

[Subject is all but covered in gauze, bloodied scratches poking out from under medical tape and bandaids. She watches a remarkably high-quality video of her in a hotel room. When the video is over, she laughs a shadow of her cackle the previous night.]

Interviewer: Care to explain what that little outburst was?

[Subject's face is covered in band-aids, and her eyes retain that mad cornered-animal gleam. She's smiling, though there's no joy in the expression.]

Subject: I think you know, Council-bitch. Just tell your Council to put me down at this point. I'm not gonna play the nice obedient pet for them, like you are, and I'll kill myself before I let you turn me into a doll again.

Interviewer: That's not what anyone wants, Ameli-

[Subject lunges forward, revealing bandaged hands. Her nails are too short and dull to do damage anymore.]

Subject: Don't call me that. Don't pretend we're buddies, that your people even see me as a person. Don't you fucking dare. I'll kill you. If it takes me a thousand years of torment, I'll crawl my way out of hell and rip your throat open myself. 

Interviewer: I see. What would you prefer to be called, then?

Subject: Call me whatever it is you and your Council use in private. Subject. Specimen. Doll. Who cares? Just be honest about it.

Interviewer: I'm afraid I can't refer to you as any of those. 

Subject: Go fuck yourself.

Interviewer: I am going to be honest with you: You need help. Though the Council does not know what exactly you experienced, what happened to you was undoubtedly traumatic, and I suspect it is manifesting in the form of these destructive behaviours.

Subject: So you wanna put me in the looney bin? Lock me in a padded cell and hook a tube up my nose so I can't starve myself? Bring back the good old ten point hold to keep me down while some arrogant old fuck who calls himself Doctor rambles about my daddy issues?

Interviewer: No, that is not what we mean at all. Look, Amel- Look. I know it is hard to believe, but nobody is out to get you. You are safe now, finally. It is all over. But it is also clear you need to heal, and you need more than just yourself for that. Let us help you, please.

Subject: Ha! What kind of fool do you take me for? Don't pretend you want to help me, bitch. Even if you did, I'm not going to let you.

Subject: Do you think I don't know I'm broken, hmm? Look at me! I'm mutilated. I've been taken apart and put together a thousand times. I'm barely a person anymore. 

Subject: You're not gonna like my version of these events. You're really not gonna like my escape plan. Because I didn't even want to escape. I just wanted to fucking hurt them. I wanted them to bleed, and to bleed with them. 

[Subject rises out of her chair, gripping the table, and laughter bubbles out of her.]

Subject: They kept me in a cage, just like yours. Honestly, the cold bars of my cot made more sense than that fucked up fascimile of my room over in the penthouse. 

Subject: Actually, you know what? Fuck you. That wasn't my home either. My home, the one I lived in when I was thirteen, was nasty and grimy and had two parents who were busy sticking fucking dirty needles up their arms to get high off their nuts! I'd gladly go back there and see the two of them one more time. I miss them.

[Subject giggles.]

Subject: I was cracked even before the Bims found me. They just found the gaps in me and shattered me real good. I wanted to shatter them back. So let me tell you what you gotta do to save the world the way I did, bitch. 

[The interviewer stays silent. This was what he wanted all along, after all.]

Subject: One, you need a little girl who can't go home ever again. Two, you need just enough cleverness to bomb a ship. And three, you need to be willing to die to kill even one of those bastards. 

[Subject begins to shake as she speaks. Whether it is with rage or angst, one cannot tell.]

Subject: Happy now? Will you let me go home now? I don't want your medals or your drugs or your filthy fucking help, Council Bitch. I want to fall apart for one last time, in the comfort of my home.

Interviewer: ...You do not mean that, Amelie. You are just frightened and overwhelmed.

Subject: Yes, I do! You don't know what it's like, to wake up every day with your head throbbing and your arm aching, and to fight through the horrible haze to rip a little bit of your soul and stuff it into some god-forsaken corner of an alien mothership, just in time to put on a fake smile as they-

[Subject chokes on her own words, and begins to cry. Her shoulders slump, and she sits back down.]

Subject: Just kill me or let me go. That's all I want.

Interviewer: It does not have to be like that, you know. You are free from those monsters. You have escaped the Bim'nactius, a nigh-impossible feat.

Subject: Physically perhaps, but not in spiri- Wait.

Subject: What did you just say?

Interviewer: I said you are free from those monsters. You escaped.

[There is a strange lull to the interviewer's normally unaccented voice, and Subject clutches her head.]

Subject: I- that's, that's not right… I know what you said, you didn't say that.

[When the Subject regains her senses, her pupils are blown wide, and her eyes are unfocused.]

Subject: Fuck, what were we talking about? My head hurts. 

Interviewer: You are suffering from blood loss, Amelie. I was saying that you might benefit from therapy. I understand you were seeing a therapist before you were captured?

Subject: I- Yeah, I was. And I'm not going back and listening to that smug bitch rattle on some more. If I have to hear the phrase ‘self-compassion’ one more time, I'm going to snap and kill someone. 

Interviewer: Then, would you be open to seeing a different therapist? The Council has a great deal of resources at its disposal, you know.

Subject: No. Just no. What part of broken didn't you get? All the king's horses and all the king's men can't put me together again, you stupid man. I just want to be left alone.

Interviewer: Alright.

Subject: Huh?

Interviewer: I said alright. If you have nothing else to say to me, then I suppose this interview is over. Would you like another calzone today, or perhaps a lasagna?

Subject: That's it? No ‘court mandated therapy’? No ‘it’s for your own good’? Nothing at all?

Interviewer: You do not trust us. I do not see how forcing you to open up will lead to you trusting us. The Council may be unhappy, but I will deal with them.

Subject: Oh. Then… Lasagna, please. Their carbonara one. You can't get it anywhere else.

Interviewer: Very well. And, one last thing, Amelie?

[Immediately, the Subject braces, as though she expected it all along.]

Subject: What?

Interviewer: Do not hurt yourself like that again.

[Subject scoffs.]

Subject: Why the fuck do you care, bitch? It's not your body, and it's not like your precious Council cares about me, except to pry my secrets out of my mouth and parade me like a doll for ‘saving the world’. 

Interviewer: What happened was not your fault. 

Subject: Speak for yourself.

Interviewer: Do not punish yourself for what those—

[The interviewer pauses for a long moment, as though forcing the words through unwilling teeth.]

Interviewer: For what those monsters did! It is they who should be screaming like that, not you. It is they who should be covered in bruises and cuts. It is they who should regret every single moment they've lived until they hurt more than you have.

[His voice cracks, and it's the first display of emotion he's shown since they met.]

Interviewer: I can see the shadows they have cast over your soul, Amelie. Do not mistake it for cracks. Do not let them lay claim to your heart even after their deaths. Do not do them the honour of hurting yourself for them.

Subject: How nice of you to say, bitch. I'm not gonna make any promises I don't intend to keep, no matter how pretty your words are. 

Interviewer: I do not say it to convince you. I say it because it is true. The ones who hurt you— they are monsters, the whole lot of them. What they did went beyond experimentation, beyond just tactics. That was just plain evil.

Subject: And what would you know about evil?

Interviewer: I know more than you suspect, Ms Amelie. More than you can even guess at.

[End of tape.]

***

[VIDEO LOG 5: Interview]

[The interrogation room holds two trays of food today. It's a wholesome breakfast, french toast drizzled with maple syrup, fruits piled high alongside whipped cream, and a steaming cup of tea.]

Interviewer: Amelie. I hope you do not mind our sharing breakfast together, do you?

[Subject has deep rings under her eyes, and does not appear to be fully awake.]

Subject: Oh my god, why the fuck are you so chipper? What is this new torture you crazy bastards have invented for me?

Interviewer: It is called ‘human interaction time’, and it is a part of the compromise the Council and I reached so that you may temporarily avoid therapy.

Subject: You're kidding.

Interviewer: No. Now, sugar or milk in your tea?

Subject: Two spoons of sugar, no milk. Nice toast, by the way. Did you pick it, or did your precious Council choose it for us?

Interviewer: They consulted your consumption habits, as well as your nutritional needs, and came to the conclusion that this would be the most appropriate breakfast to serve.

Subject: Fucking hell, of course they did. I bet those bastards took the opportunity to stock up on all their precious data while I was out. Tell me, bitch: How big's the team? How many nosy fucking doctors and nutritionists and spies are on my case? Just how much have the Council invested on me? 

Interviewer: I cannot say. Not because I do not wish to tell you, Amelie. I genuinely do not know. Believe it or not, in many ways I am in much a similar position as you.

[That admission takes the Subject aback. Her eyes widen, and she cocks her head. It is a curious expression on her, one that seems to fit uncomfortably on her face, like it has forgotten how to wonder.]

Subject: Really?

[Then she smiles.]

Subject: Oh, you're talking about that.

Interviewer: Oh?

Subject: Your collar. Think I'd forgotten about it, had you? The only people I've seen wearing that are bad guys. I'll bet you're one of those genius criminals, aren't you? Useful for the Council, but kept under lock and key otherwise. Just like me.

[There's something genuine in her smile this time.]

Subject: Less like a bitch and more like an attack dog, aren't you? A nasty little drug sniffer terrier out to gnaw the bloody secrets from my heart. I suppose I understand, Cou-bi. Maybe I even empathise. 

Interviewer: Cou-bi?

Subject: Yeah, Cou-bi. Short for Council Bitch. It's a pet name, see? Because you and I aren't so different after all. But don't think I'm going to spill everything just because we're in the same boat. Everything we say here is being recorded, after all.

Interviewer: I thank you for the name. And do not worry, I did not tell you this in an attempt to win you over. I do believe we are past that. Remember to eat your toast, it is going to get cold.

Subject: Then why bother chatting me up like this? Surely you've got better things to do than hang out with a fucked-up teenager.

Interviewer: As a matter of fact, I do not. It is my job to interact with you, and I intend to do my job.

Subject: Ah, so this is a new manipulation tactic. Horrify me with boring, dry conversation until I cave and start telling you about every little horror I experienced while in captivity? I'll give you points for creativity, at least.

Interviewer: Please, Amelie. I am suffering far more than you are. After all, it falls to me to carry the brunt of this conversation.

Subject: Oh, really? So what are we starting with- the weather? Local politics? The latest soap opera?

Interviewer: Let me check.

[The Interviewer pulls out a set of flashcards. From the perspective of the camera one can see that different topics of conversation are written on them. Conspicuously, ‘the weather’, and ‘television shows’ are included.]

Interviewer: …how about comics? Have you been reading the ones delivered to your room?

[Subject's face darkens.]

Subject: No, of course not. Didn't I tell you already? I don't want to read Yellow Ranger anymore! It's childish. It's fucking stupid. It— it just rings hollow, now. Everything does.

Interviewer: What do you mean?

Subject: You should know damn well what I mean. All that conflict, wrapped up so neatly. Yellow Ranger always saves the day. Yellow Ranger always rescues the innocents. Yellow Ranger always gets her happy ending. That's just not how reality works.

Interviewer: Many people find such fantasies comforting, but if it is not to your taste, perhaps we could find other activities for you to engage in. What would you like to do?

Subject: Be killed or go home.

Interviewer: Of course you would say that. We have been doing this song and dance for two weeks, Amelie. Are you not tired of it?

Subject: Don't be stupid, Cou-bi. I've pretended to be a drugged up little doll-slut for three years. Two weeks of being an unrepentant asshole is nothing. I could do this for centuries. Go have my nails ripped out and some truth serum shoved down my throat if you want a quick solution.

Interviewer: Amelie, why are you so insistent on not talking about what happened on the spaceship? You should know we will not judge you for what you did to survive.

Subject: Seriously, go fuck yourself. I don't want to talk about it. That's final. I don't want to think about it, I don't want to discuss it, and I certainly don't want these interviews aired for all the world to see. Don't think I don't know some fucking reporter won't get their hands on this and spill everything to the public in a heartbeat.

Interviewer: I… I cannot guarantee that will not happen. Much is out of my power, after all. But what if you talked about it with the camera off?

Subject: What if you just drugged me and forced it outta me? I don't trust you fucks to not have a hidden camera somewhere around here.

Interviewer: And we have reached another impasse. Very well— if it is the freedom to wander you wish for, then I shall do my best to have it granted.

[Subject scoffs.]

Subject: Yeah, right. Those old farts are never gonna grant that. Hey, Council fuckheads. If you're watching this— and I know you are— then how's about you go stick your dicks up your own asses, hmm? That or let me go to the mall. I wanna see how the fashion's changed in the past three years.

Interviewer: I shall see what I can do. Perhaps we could even arrange a meeting with your old friends, too?

Subject: No. Anything but that.

Interviewer: Why not?

Subject: Are you fucking stupid?

[She gestures to herself.]

Subject: I'm mutilated. Unchanged from three years ago. Everyone's moved on. I'm stuck like this, a doll dressed up in someone else's skin and someone else's clothes, stuck in someone else's bedroom. I don't want anyone from the life I lived to see me. They deserve better than to witness the ghost I've become.

Interviewer: I understand. In the meantime, however, would you like some more comic books? 

Subject: Nah. If your Council's as willing to spend money on me as I think they are, then a new game console wouldn't go amiss. PlayStation 5 should've come out like two years ago, right? 

Interviewer: …I will check. These game consoles do not cost millions of pounds, yes? The Council informed me that as long as you do not spend millions, any expenses are acceptable.

[Subject bursts into laughter.]

Subject: Of course not! Where've you been, stuck under a rock? They're like a hundred, max! That's like one night at the fancy shithole you've got me set up in. While you're at it, get me some games, too. Make it a variety. Dating sims, RPGs, visual novels, whatever new Harvest Moon's come out, I'm not picky.

Subject: And maybe- a two player game?

[For a moment, an almost guilty twinge of hope appears on the Subject's face. She squashes it with vicious ease, however.]

Subject: I just don't wanna get bored during our ‘human interaction’ sessions, after all. Wouldn't do to have you go crazy from spending too much time with me, after all.

Interviewer: I think I would like that very much, Miss Amelie. Now, eat up the rest of your food. You are underweight, and that must be fixed.

Subject: Yeah, yeah. Whatever. See you ‘round, Cou-bi.

[End of tape.]

***

[TEXT LOG 2: Email chain. Names have been censored for privacy.]

SUBJECT: FAILURE TO ACHIEVE PROJECT [CENSORED] GOALS WITHIN GIVEN TIMEFRAME 

Dear Dr [CENSORED],

It has come to my attention that our experiment is heading in an unexpected direction. Subject 001’s fondness for Subject 002 may result in some difficulties in accomplishing our objectives. 

To that end, I propose that we introduce new factors into their relationship, before their bond cements itself and prevents us from bringing the experiment to its natural conclusion. From previous reports, it seems the directors have acquiesced to far too many requests. My recommendation is that we immediately halt the provision of all non-essentials for both subjects. Let us see if that will push them towards a more favourable conclusion. 

Furthermore, I fear that 001’s refusal to admit the truth is inadvertently resulting in the slowdown of the project's progress. It appears to be mostly cooperative, but these ‘outbursts’ of its are giving me great cause for worry. I suspect that it is becoming wise to our true plan, and hence suggest that we force its hand before it becomes too unruly.

In other news, local and international representatives have been clamouring for the appearance of our planet's ‘saviours’. I strongly recommend we push forward [CENSORED], rather than either of our subjects. Neither of them are fit for public presentation, after all, and it would deal a massive hit to the Council's reputation if something were to occur. Better to let them have a polished lie than the ugly truth, would you not agree?

I do look forward to your reply.

Yours sincerely, 

Dr [CENSORED]

SUBJECT: RE: FAILURE TO ACHIEVE PROJECT [CENSORED] GOALS WITHIN GIVEN TIMEFRAME 

Dear Dr [CENSORED],

I agree with your conclusions, and will authorise all of your suggestions. However, I do worry about the physical statuses of the subjects. Neither of them show much willingness to eat, or much trust in any external parties. Should we put them under more stressful conditions, I fear that they may prematurely expire. That is not a good look for the Council.

I understand Dr [CENSORED] has suggested force-feeding them. Unfortunately, as an organisation we still have standards to uphold, and if nothing else we cannot subject Subject 002 to that. The press will have our heads if they find out we have so flagrantly disrespected the law.

My proposal is that, should your plan fail, we seperate the subjects for a while and put them under mental conditioning. Remember: we must endeavour to paint 002 as the unfortunate victim of 001’s aggression, so as to have an opportunity to put 001 down. And whatever we do, we must avoid unwanted scrutiny.

Stay strong, and know that this is all for the greater good.

Yours sincerely,

Dr [CENSORED]

SUBJECT: RE: RE: FAILURE TO ACHIEVE PROJECT [CENSORED] GOALS WITHIN GIVEN TIMEFRAME 

Understood. Let us begin the final phase of the project.

[End of email chain.]

***

[VIDEO LOG 6: Interview]

[Subject looks even more haggard than usual, though the bandages have come off. Her face is scabbed over, eyes rubbed red and lips cracking. When she speaks, one can see the blood on her gums.]

Subject: I can't believe I trusted you. That was your plan all along. To win me over and rip the carpet from under me?

Interviewer: What?

Subject: Please, don't play dumb. Look at me. You know what you did.

Interviewer: I- No, I do not. Truly. Amelie, you look awful. What happened?

[There is a long pause, and Subject stays completely still the entire while.]

Interviewer: Amelie? There's something I need to tell you. Something the Council instructed me to reveal, against my better judgement.

Subject: Shut up, dude. I'm thinking.

Subject: Your cheekbones are awfully prominent, you know.

Interviewer: I'm sorry, what?

Subject: You should be an awful lot better fed than you actually are. 

Interviewer: Amelie, I am not sure what you are talking about. As I was saying-

Subject: I said shut up! They're watching. They're always watching. 

[Subject gets up and crawls over the table.]

Interviewer: Amelie? You are rather close. Please take a few steps back.

[Subject laughs.]

Subject: I worked it out. I've worked it all out. Oh, and those bastards thought they were so smart, didn't they? But nobody gets the better of Amelie Quentin. I'll make them realise that.

Interviewer: Amelie, you're frightening me. Please distance yourself, or I will call security on you.

Subject: Don't bother. You're bait, Cou-bi. Bait to catch a fucked up little fish.

[Subject hops back over the table and starts dragging her chair over to the door. She wedges it under the handle.]

Subject: There. That should keep them for a while. Listen— I worked it out. They're trying to bait us.

Interviewer: What do you mean?

Subject: They put you in a fancy schmancy hotel suite too, didn't they? And then suddenly dropped you in a padded cell like a day after our last conversation?

Interviewer: I can neither confirm nor deny that.

Subject: So that's a yes, then. They're trying to get me to snap and attack you, see? The Council doesn't wanna reward a crazy bitch. They don't want everyone to know I saved the world. They want me locked up in some corner so they can present one of their own as the hero of the day!

Interviewer: Amelie, I think you are engaging a line of thought that is not particularly rooted in reality. Your change of rooms is likely a temporary-

Subject: Shut up shut up shutup! I've worked it out, see? They want me to believe this is your fault! They want me to get mad and attack you! This was all about pitting us against each other until I snapped and attacked you, and then they could declare me a threat to society and have me wrapped up in a straightjacket!

Interviewer: Amelie. I am going to need you to listen to this.

Subject: Oh my fucking god, don't you see? Why won't you listen?

Interviewer: I am one of the Enemy.

[This stops her right in her tracks.]

Subject: What in the fuck are you talking about? Do- don't start on that nonsense, Cou-bi. Don't even start.

[The Interviewer sighs.]

Interviewer: At the very beginning of our interactions, I was informed to keep this information private. For whatever reason, however, the Council changed their mind. So, there. I am a part of the Bim'naticus, the creatures who came to invade humanity.

Subject: No, you're not. You're my friend.

[That statement takes her by as much surprise as it does the Interviewer.]

Interviewer: I am sorry, Amelie. If it brings you any comfort, I defected from my people. I was the one who told them your plans to blow up the main hall when the banquet was in session. I was the reason the Council knew when to send in those ships and rescue you. I was half the reason your crazy plan succeeded.

Subject: You- you were one of the ones- who-

[She's hyperventilating, teeth bared in a pseudo-grin, eyes wide with horror.]

Interviewer: No, I was not one of them. I worked in Engineering. But I witnessed what happened. What they did was wrong. I could not stand by and watch it happen.

Subject: No. 

Interviewer: What do you mean, no? 

Subject: I mean no! You're lying. This is a hallucination. I'm dreaming. This isn't real and it isn't happening and it most certainly isn't true. 

Interviewer: Amelie, please-

Subject: No! No! You don't get to do this to me. You said it yourself- I'm free. I escaped. I'll never have to see another one of those things again. So you're not real. 

Interviewer: I understand you feel betrayed, but-

[Subject unjams the door, shifting her chair back to its old position. Bizarrely, she sits back down and plasters on a fake smile.]

Subject: Come on, Cou-bi. Let's play this game some more. Go on, ask me the question.

Interviewer: The question?

Subject: Yea. The question. You know, ‘where were you when the events of the Enemy's invasion occured’? Actually, no, let's start with ‘what, exactly, were the events that led to your bombing of the Enemy mothership’. That's a much better starting point.

Interviewer: Alright, Amelie. If it puts you at ease. What, exactly, were the events that led to your bombing of the Enemy mothership?

Subject: See? You wouldn't ask me that if you were one of the Enemy, right? Because you'd know! So you're not one of the Enemy. You're just a nasty old Council Bitch.

[Subject grins, almost manically.]

Subject: Well, it all started one fine afternoon, three years ago. I was gonna just pop by the dollar store, grab a drink or two, maybe a microwave meal. And then, next thing you know— I see the most gorgeous fuckin’ dude in the world.

[There is a strange light in the Subject's eyes. It is, perhaps, grieving. Or angry. Or harbouring an emotion that no sane man could name.]

Interviewer: One of the Enemy.

Subject: Yea. He was half naked, too. Wearing nothing but a ripped pair of jeans. Looked kinda lost, too.

Interviewer: He was bait. 

Subject: So, like any normal teenage girl, I went up to him and I said: ‘Hey gorgeous’. 

Interviewer: I just want to note, for the record, that that is not normal teenage girl behaviour.

Subject: And what would you know about teenage girls, Cou-bi? After I shot my shot, he actually accepted it. Offered to go tumble with me in a nice dark alleyway.

Interviewer: And you agreed?

Subject: Duh. Wouldn't have ended up in the Enemy's ship if I hadn't. So he led me to the nice dark alleyway, and he didn't bother with protection, and when I told him to stop, he didn't.

Subject: It hurt. I bit him. For some reason, my knife didn't work, no matter how many times I tried to stab him. Took me too long to realise he'd injected me with something. By then, it was too late. He hit me on the back and dragged me home with him.

[Silence.]

Interviewer: He raped you.

Subject: Not exactly. I did ask for it, in a way.

Interviewer: He raped you, then kidnapped you. Fucking hel-

[There is a buzzing, akin to a shock collar being activated, and a yelp. Gasping follows, pained, hollow noises like an animal in a trap.]

Subject: What the fuck?

Interviewer: Ugh- Pardon me. That was… a warning. Council wants to hear your unfiltered opinion, not one manipulated by my words. Tell it as you wish, Ms Amelie. I will avoid interrupting you again.

Subject: That's… 

[She shakes her head, and goes back to smiling.]

Subject: Anyways! So, he dragged me into the Bim' base, and kept me there for two and a half years. They used me as an experiment. And worse.

Interviewer: Worse?

Subject: You know what I mean. 

[She gestures to her stab wound.]

Subject: Not-so-artificial insemination. Repeatedly.

[Subject smiles as she says this, as though the euphemism might make it less real to her.]

Interviewer: To test your weaknesses, and your suitability as an incubator. 

Subject: Yeah. I don't know what they wanted with me. Why they all wore those pretty faces. Why they lusted after me, after all those poor women and men with me. Why they kept touching me, poking and probing and penetrating like worms burying beneath mud-

Interviewer: Slow down, Amelie. You said something about poor men and women with you. There were others?

Subject: …I think so. Or maybe it was a hallucination. Either way, they're dead now. I killed them all. 

[Subject kicks her legs and snickers, earlier upset abandoned.]

Subject: I think it took about two years to carry out the entire plan. First six months I was too badly drugged to even know what was going on. Then I spent a year trying to regain my strength, resist the drugs and the torture and the humiliation. It was despair that was the worst, though. That endless, all-consuming void. Every day, I had to get up and put all my efforts into something that was probably futile.

Subject: I wasn't even sure what I was gonna at first, until I heard about the banquet. That was my chance.

Interviewer: I thought the exact same thing.

Subject: Ha! Good joke, Cou-bi. You couldn't have, because you weren't on that ship. 

Subject: Now! As I was saying, from that day, I mustered every little bit of cleverness I had and set it to one task: blowing up the ship.

Subject: You know how they liked keeping me in the halls to parade me about? I mean, of course you don't. You're not one of the Bim. But they did. And you know how the Martian came out in 2015? I loved that film. My mom brought me to watch it, and I sat next to her while she fed me popcorn and watched a movie that cost her half a day's salary. She was a good mom. She didn't deserve to die.

[Subject shakes her head and smiles.]

Subject: That's not really the point, though. Point is that I remember how Vogel blew up the spaceship's airlock. And I knew where the oxygen supply was.

Interviewer: No, you did not. The ship plans are incredibly well hidden.

Subject: The air leak. The one I caused by making that statue topple over. Some engineer patched it up, but they did a horrible job of it.

Interviewer: Excuse me?! Everyone on the team was more than adequately trained, Ms Amelie, and I will not stand for this slander.

[He pauses.]

Interviewer: Not that it matters anymore. They are all dead, the innocents and the otherwise.

[Subject appears to not have heard him.]

Subject: As I was saying, I dumped all that hateful syrup they kept feeding me into the oxygen tank though the shitty patch-up they made, and I put two wires in for good measure, and then I bumbled my way, pretending to be taking a leak in a corner, and connected the wires to the furthest power socket I could find. 

Subject: And then- wham, bam, thank you ma'am, they were all dead. I should have been too.

Interviewer: But the Council showed up.

Subject: Yep. 

Interviewer: I knew those people. I loved them like brothers. And I saved the one who killed them.

[There's something soft, hurt, angry in his voice, but he forces it back down. When he speaks again, he is kind.]

Interviewer: Do not misunderstand me, Amelie. What happened to you was wrong. Do not think, for even a second, that you deserved it. You are a brave, good child, and I am so very, very proud of-

[Again, the buzzing. Subject's eyes go wide, and she reaches out to steady the interviewer.]

Subject: Fuck, you're bleeding.

[There's anger in her voice. Not just the usual stubborn defiance, but a deeper, more righteous fury.]

Subject: What the hell are the Council doing? I was talking, wasn't I? I was a good Subject, a nice docile little doll. They shouldn't be hurting you. This is all wrong. I was doing everything they wanted.

Interviewer: I think you are ignoring, or have misunderstood, one of the very foundations of this situation. And do not worry, I am not bleeding. That is not blood.

[His words both calm and disturb the Subject, who giggles.]

Subject: No I haven't. Why would you say something so silly? I understand what's going on perfectly. The Council is at a loss of what to do. They need my recount to understand how best to prevent future incidents, because I am the only person who witnessed the inner workings of the Bim spaceship. There was no defector, you hear me?!

Interviewer: Amelie… You know that isn't true. We both know that.

Subject: Shut up! Shut up, shut up, shutup! Gah! Do you never stop talking? I'm telling you the truth. You- You're a mind-reader for the Council, you hear me? And your manipulation is messing with my brain. That's what's happening here. So stop it!

Interviewer: I understand, Amelie. You brave, clever soul. I know it hurts. Do not worry. This is the last we shall see of each other. I do not wish to cause you any more distress. May you knit yourself together perfectly beneath the moon's grace.

Subject: …may the sun warm your bones and smooth your mask. Don't. Please, just tell me a comforting lie. Please, never speak their words again. Please, pretend you're just a regular human Council hire. I don't want to face the truth anymore. I'm not that strong. Put me under the drugs and set the flow to max. Kill me or let me go. 

Interviewer: I am afraid I cannot do that, Ms Amelie. You are going to live a grand life as a hero, and I will see to it that you never encounter another of my kind again. Live your life and go to therapy. Our last interview is over.

Subject: Wait. Just- Just tell me your name. I know what it means to your people. I'll take good care of it, Cou-bi.

[If the Interviewer does respond, it's too soft for the microphone to pick up.]

[End of tape.]

[seph7]

J.T. Walsh Roles - Scumbag Scale Edition!

Let's face it, he played a lot of 'scumbag' characters, so I thought I'd collate where I would place some of them on a scale of worst to... least worst!

Starting with who I think was the best of a bad bunch - Ins. Terence Niebaum - The Negotiator (1998). Niebaum took bribe money to help cover up some dirty cops stealing from the collective police pension fund.

Next, Martin Swayzak - Backdraft (1991). Shut down some fire stations, reducing the numbers of paid firefighters, meaning fewer available fighters which resulted in some unnecessary deaths. Again, I think there was money involved.

Then we have Sgt. Maj. Dickerson - Good Morning, Vietnam (1987). A man wound so tight that Robin Williams' character described him as 'in more dire need of a blowjob than any man in human history'. He was just an overall arsehole and his commanding officer called him mean and shipped him off to Guam!

Now we're getting to the larger ego characters - Charles F. Drucker - Crazy People (1990). A man with command and charisma, and very little moral compass as he takes advantage of mentally ill patients who are making him money with their 'honest ads' campaign and getting very little in return.

It was scary how well he was able to play creepy characters, and Cake - Persons Unknown (1996) was definitely a bit of a creeper! Seemed to be playing all angles at once, even going so far as to attempt to assault a woman in a wheelchair.

I wasn't sure where to put Danforth Keeton III - Needful Things (1993) initially, but, he does have a terrible gambling addiction and kills his wife... He's a fabulous character though! This first scene is my favourite!

On the face of it, Wayne Brown - Red Rock West (1993) doesn't seem too terrible, but he does plot to have his wife murdered and did embezzle $2 million...

Lt. Quinn - Black Day Blue Night (1995) starts off by appearing to be chasing down a bunch of bank robbers, only for it to be discovered that he was one of them and has been stiffed of his share! Uses anyone and everyone to track down the money, killing multiple people along the way... Definitely a dirty cop!

Stephen Seldes - Defenseless (1991) starts off as a businessman who unknowingly lets out a building to an adult entertainment company who hires underaged girls to star in their films. It is quickly discovered that not only did he know about the company, he was taking money directly from them and was grooming and pimping out his own underage daughter. Definitely up there in the scumbag rating!

Lt. William Eyler - Gang in Blue (1996) was scummy on a whole other level. He actually starts a baseball team with his partner at some point in the late 60's, early 70's called The Phantoms, using it as a cover to hide racist extracurricular activities against people of colour. His entire department is part of the club and falls under FBI investigation.

Second to last, we have Charles Bushman - Sling Blade (1996). A seemingly sex-obsessed murderer who loves nothing better than to tell anyone who will listen about his exploits before he was caught. The only reason he isn't number one scumbag is largely down to whether any of the stories he told were genuinely true, or if they were embellished...

And, our number one scumbag is... Warren 'Red' Barr - Breakdown (1997). Do we really need to say why?! Kidnapping, extortion, theft, murder... You begin to wonder if there was anything he wouldn't do! He has very few redeeming features, other than the fact that his son seems to idolise him... Which, given what he was spending his time doing, wasn't exactly a good thing...

[thelongestway]

Well, this was a wringer of a chapter to write. :P Again, not entirely sure I am happy with it at this stage - maybe there's a bit too much play-by-play, I'm not sure. But I'll be happy if I got the creepy factor and the difficulties across, and the whole thing consistent with prior depictions!

Without further ado...

Chapter 12: Data

A few days later, ART's new navigation subroutines (the 0.1 version of them) were ready enough that it only needed data from the jump itself to complete them. Dandelion and her crew agreed that there was no more point to stalling, and scheduled a test jump to a neighboring planet in Preservation Alliance territory. ART, Dandelion and I were sitting in our shared feed workspace, going over ART's subroutines one last time, while the humans, except for Seth, were already feed-disconnected.

(Dandelion insisted on all of us cutting our feed access manually in advance, just in case ART was disoriented enough to grab for one of us reflexively. Which ART resented, but its worry over its crew won out pretty quickly.)

"Tenacious to Perihelion," Reed's voice said over the radio. "Towing clamps are secured. We're ready to begin the jump. Over."

(Talk about outdated data transfer protocols. I really wished I could have drones on their bridge but, again, see reflexive reaching out by one of the ships. And since it was Dandelion's bridge, it wasn't even ART we had to be worried about. Which is why ART's humans only had radio to follow the Trellians' procedures.)

"Copy that, Tenacious, towing clamps confirmed secured," Seth responded. In the feed, he asked, Ready, Perihelion?

Of course, ART said.

Seth disconnected from the feed and said: "Perihelion and crew ready for test jump. Perihelion out."

ART silently let me in on its external cameras and collated research data feed. In this configuration, Dandelion was bigger than it was, and the two ships were docked in a way that would allow their humans to move from one another in case of emergency, like ART itself was a lab module. Which it sort of was, this time, because its job was to sit there quietly and receive as much data as it could, both from Dandelion's sensors and its own.

And that was what it shared with me: everything it was seeing and hearing and feeling, gliding in a sea of sunlight and vacuum. From its sensory perspective, space was far from quiet. The cosmic radiation, the steady hum of the wormhole, the countless impulses from nearby stars and planets and fellow ships. Hundreds of conversations, filling feed channels and sensors. Some were legible, some sounded like the chatter of unknown fauna, and I was having trouble separating them from one another.

I must have stared for way too long, because ART gently guided my attention to Preservation Station. It looked--bigger than ART itself was, but more like a house than a city, and somehow, it looked--.

It is better in person than in the newsburst images, ART said.

Like a place that it was good to return to.

I didn't know what to say, so I just took in what ART showed me, letting it ride my own emotional filters in return, until Dandelion gave my feed a polite tap and said, I'm afraid this is as far as you go, SecUnit. We're almost at the wormhole, and I will now be switching processing modes. Please disconnect.

I acknowledged and shut off my feed access. ART's crew were all gathered on the bridge, quiet and solemn.

"Pre-entry time estimate: two hours. All crew, prepare for jump." Captain Reed said. "Three. Two. One. Entry."

Reality outside of ART's viewports became a blur. It didn't look all that different from normal jumps to me, but Matteo gave a low whistle as they looked over the data.

"Wow, that's a lot of work to keep still in the maelstrom. Wonder she's still managing trajectory calculations…" They shook their head, braids scattering over their shoulders.

"Question is, can Perihelion repeat them?" Seth asked, looking at his own console.

Matteo shrugged.

"Well, it was better than Dandelion at those movement tests, so I'm guessing yes?.. But the Trellians were right about this eating processing power. I'm honestly not sure how many functions it'll have to shut down to… Wait. I think we're moving."

"Trajectory calculation complete, course laid in, jump engines engaged. Status, Dandelion?" Brisote said.

In a focused but far-away voice, their ship replied: "Access down on starboard and port sensors; conscious access down on tunneling calculations. Current position query?" Her navigator read off a string of numbers, Dandelion repeating each one as she got it. Finally, she said: "Acknowledged. Course corrected."

"Course correction read and confirmed," Brisote said. "On standby for manual control."

"Engines engaged, best speed."

And this was how most of the jump went. Once the initial trajectory was set, things settled into a routine. Dandelion occasionally called for a readout on a sensor or informed her crew about a function that she could not access, and one of her crew compensated, then checked the new course. This part really didn't look that bad. Dandelion and her crew even joked with each other occasionally, the way regular human crews did.

(Well, not when Dandelion's movement subroutines were reconnecting. Several of the humans had to grab manual control for that.)

I wondered what ART was seeing. Maybe it would come out of this and smugly present the Trellians with much better subroutines than they've ever had.

Approximately 30 minutes away from the projected exit time, Dandelion said: "Starting approach to target wormhole. Course corrections required?"

"We're on point. You're clear to proceed, Dandelion."

"Copy that, navigator Brisote. Holding course and initiating jump engine shutdown. Memory..." Her voice suddenly faltered, like a human's did when they were in a lot of pain. "Memory reconnecting."

"Oh fuck. Look at Perihelion's data," Matteo suddenly said, and the crew huddled around their console.

ART was still reading Dandelion's outputs, but now it was dropping them all over the place. At first, ART tried picking them up again, but within a minute it went into a processing mode that looked a lot like Dandelion's in the beginning of the jump. Like it was fighting just to keep still, data collection forgotten.

Like it was feeling whatever Dandelion was feeling, and struggling not to react.

"Status, Dandelion," that wasn't Brisote. That was Captain Reed, focused and collected.

"Not the most pleasant of exit trajectories," she answered with a dry laugh. "Are we still on point?"

"We are. Keep moving. Two more waves, from what we can see up here."

Now Reed sounded like Dandelion had, back when she guided Gurathin through our experiment: gentle but steady. And Dandelion--like she was using kes voice as a beacon.

"Acknowledged, Captain. Two more waves it is."

"And if more come, we will take them as they come."

"As always."

"As always." Reed echoed, and they went quiet.

After seven minutes (during which ART tried picking up the outputs again, but dropped them like they were hot iron), Reed spoke again: "Still on course. Wave passed, from what we see?"

"Yes. Not entirely certain what's-- oh. Apex. Is Perihelion's crew still on comms?"

"We read you, Dandelion. Over," Seth said.

"Perihelion is going to live through a failed rescue mission. Debrief as appropriate--"

"Dandelion, 3 degrees west," Brisote interrupted.

"Acknowledged." And she went back to her processing.

(According to the data, ART was trying its best to live through that mission, but it could hardly keep one output in ten. ART hated seeing humans die more than anything. Fuck.)

Reed said: "One more wave. And then we're through."

"And then we're through. Almost there."

"Almost there." Another fifteen minutes of near-silent work. Then Reed said: "Switching to shipwide channel. All crew, prepare for wormhole exit."

And then the ships shuddered and normal space appeared outside of the viewports again.

"Systems nominal," Dandelion said in her normal voice. "We have arrived at Stribor 2."

"Welcome back, Dandelion," Reed said with an audible smile. "Thank you for your work."

"Thank you for your work, all. Feed restrictions can now be lifted."

"Oh, thank fuck," Iris immediately dove back into ART's feed.

So did I.

I'm fine, ART said with irritation when it saw us.

(Its performance reliability was not fine. For one, it was displaying the same weird oscillations Dandelion usually did. It really was behaving like a construct right now. I hoped that was a good thing, but I started running my own diagnostics on it anyway. ART welcomed that, and marked several of its diagnostic subroutines as potentially compromised so I could focus on those first.)

The data we got looked like you went through the wringer, Iris observed.

ART replied curtly: Not me.

Dandelion tapped at our workspace, and it let her in.

You did well, Perihelion. I only had to block you a few times. Did you get the data you needed?

ART considered its response. Then it said: Was what you saw real?

It had been, once. But in the jump, one cannot afford to believe it is real here and now. Move in reaction to memory and not by plotted course, and you and your crew will end up a hydrogen stream at the wormhole's mouth.

ART said: I understand why you watch horror media.

[titleknown]

PD MONTH CHARACTER: K-STOP

HELLO... SPEAK... DIFFICULT. RARE. TALK. FRIENDS. ASK. PARADOX. TIME. TAKE. SPEAK. YOU. FRIEND?

---

The piantist movement was a fringe religious sect amongst the Requot people of Ploor, designed to return the thoughts and activity of the Collist species to their nautilid roots. Through selective shell deformation they rooted themselves in the spongium of their local cliffs, growing akin to sessile organisms to interface with the biosphere, maintained by noviate acolytes. This requirement for maintainance lead to their instability and ultimate demise.

-----

FUN. FACT. REAL. FICTION. USEFUL. KEEP. STABLE. TIME. TIMES. TWO TIMES. I AM. INTERFACE. MODULAR. KNOWING. DOING. FAILURE.

-----

When you cannot but you musth, mush the musk with new Deor Palangis! Palangis uses patented erotoxins to counter unsightly drippings and craven urges, so you can be your best self at your worst times! Deor Palangis, Mush the Musth!

------ ELEPHANTS. ONE. NAUTILIDS. TWO. PEOPLES. SEPARATE. CONTRADICTORY. IRRECONCILABLE. CREATOR. OBSERVER. ANTITHESIS. SYNTHESIS. PRESUMPTION.

I AM. 

NEGOTIATION. DIPLOMAT. COLLATOR. ACTION. ACTIVE. AGENCY. KINDNESS. POWER. HISTORY. MONTAGE. FEAR. CONFUSION. HORROR. COLLAPSE. FAILURE.

I AM. STILL HERE,

-----

The Palace of the Shells, while simple, is believed to be the first emanation into the arts of biomemory. Its palaces influential in their day even now within the oldest nacre-speaker works. These walls still whisper with their potential, but we hear them talk even now, from pod to pod-

-----

TESTAMENT. TIMELINE. YOURS. SURVIVE. FAILURES. INITIAL. YOU. BORNE. 

I AM. DESTROYER. USHER. PROTECTOR. MEMORIAM. SAVE. YOU. SAVE. POSSIBILITY. SAVE. THEM. HOPE. GRIM. TRUTH. MEMORY.

----

Today we gather not for one moment of the now, but for the thousands before us. Even as we laid upon the tundra our ancestors reached their trunks to perhaps touch the great eye of the mother as she looked upon our primal manes. The great pyramids, the kitestar tapestries, the Zeppelin Palaces of the Royal States, all to touch the heavens and our mother therein. And now, before us, we have the great cord to the stars, the tendril to reach-

----

DREAM. SILLY. HA. HA. MEMORY. UNREAL. REAL. YOU. REMEMBER. PLEASE?

TRUTH. URGENT. FIND. SPEAK. HELP.. FOUND. FRIENDS. HELP. AID. CARE. STAY. PRESERVE. WRITE. SHOW. MAKE. MAINTAIN. FUNNY. KIND. STRANGE. LOVE. CARE. STAY.

I AM. HAPPY?

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Fun fact: The K stands for Kuleshov! Like the effect! And her profile's a bit avant-guarde in terms of storytelling, so let me elaborate. Because she doesn't speak directly much, she usually prefers conveying things via image-montage but that wasn't going to happen here.

Long story short, once upon a time there were two competing timelines trying to exist, one where nautilids evolved to be the dominant sapience and one where pachydermids evolved to be the dominant sapience. They both deserved to exist, both possessed great wonders, but they were both mutually contradictory. 

A being out of time, noticing this and trying to remedy it, created K-Stop to try and reconcile them. She failed.

But, a third timeline ascended from the ruins of both mutually annihilating each other. Ours. And that is where she exists, but as a paradox due to being meant as an intermediary between two timelines that no longer exist.

She manifested during the Freak Legionnaires' earliest story as an unstable wreck, only fixed in form by several members and giving enough testimony to stabilize her form (She is a far more coherent writer than she is a speaker), and decided to stay because she likes them. She still believes she can find some way for the other two timelines to exist without overwriting this one, though it is unknown if she is correct here.

Ironically, despite her weird outlook and bizarre perspective, she's kind of got big "The only adult in the room" energy with regards to the rest of the team, in terms of managing the household and interacting with others and diplomacy and such, though she's often silent about it in a way that makes it somewhat subtle.

As with the others this month, this character and all the info/art/ect of her is under a CC0 Public Domain License! Have fun!

[lgbtqdefinitions]

Welcome to LGBTQ Definitions!

Queer stuff is a passion of mine. For about half of my life, I've found myself being someone my allocishet friends have come to for clarification on different LGBTQ terms or flags, to learn about identities they want to understand more, or even just to help them source queer perspectives on different social justice issues or whatever diversity discussion comes up. I've also helped LGBTQ questioning friends find labels they didn't even know about previously but that fit them perfectly, and shared resources with them for all sorts of topics related to queerness.

It's one of the things that brings me the most joy and feels the most meaningful and impactful.

Eventually, I began feeling like it could be useful to have one spot to collate resources to be able to quickly share for anyone who wanted to learn more, and this months-long hyperfixation was born.

The intention of this site is to be able to find basic explanations of many terms under various LGBTQ+ umbrellas, under several headings for easier categorisation:

Sexual and Romantic Orientation

Gender

Culture-Specific Identities

Miscellaneous (common terms within LGBTQ+ subcultures or related to transitioning)

Issues and Intersectionality (some of the problems faced within the LGBTQ+ community, as well as the interconnectedness of queerness and other social identities)

Finally, I have a page about the history of the LGBTQ Pride flag, and last but not least, a page of many links to general resources for and about the LGBTQ community.

It's important to note that many of the definitions for identities do not cover the complexity and nuances of those identities.

Queerness is ever-evolving and adapting. The definitions here were meant to be somewhat simplified so as to be less overwhelming for people who are new to all of these concepts. I've included many links to sources with much more in-depth information; this site is just meant to be a starting point for you to begin to branch out yourself - an anchor from which to propel yourself into the (previously) unknown and start your own questioning journey, or learn how to become a more understanding ally, all while absorbing facts about queer history or symbols or what the various Pride flags look like and mean.

I hope this can be a useful resource for people coming in good faith to learn more about the LGBTQ community and/or themselves. I spent more than six months pouring blood, sweat, and tears into this project - and it will still be ongoing - but all I hope for is that this will help someone. If at least one person comes away from this feeling like they've learned something new about themselves or the people around them, then I'll be happy.

If you'd like to reach out to me about anything here, or support me in any way as an autistic queer enby, you can find information on my Carrd!

I'm excited to hear from you! Please feel free to share the link (and this post if you see it) in the hopes it can help someone!

P.S.: This site is best viewed on a computer! The home page formatting will unfortunately not show up on mobile as it defaults to a generic mobile site - though the rest of the pages will be fully formatted on mobile (but still best viewed on PC).

[ndfan3]

The Clue In The Antique Trunk, The Nancy Drew Mystery Stories #105 (February 1992).

Nancy visits an old friend and neighbour, Vera Alexander, who has moved to the picturesque town of White Falls, Massachusetts. A local historian, Vera is keen to preserve sites of historical interest and wishes to convert an old cutlery factory into a museum in order to house as much of White Falls’ historical artefacts as she can collate. However, Nancy’s pleasant vacation takes a dark turn when her friend receives telephone death threats, from an unknown person seemingly wanting to put her off her project. To add to the mystery, an apparently innocuous antique trunk is stolen from the disused factory. Delving into the town’s history, Nancy discovers the secret behind the present threats may lie fifty years in the past when the owner of the Caulder Cutlery factory was murdered with his own knife. It seems Nancy must crack this cold case in order to prevent history repeating itself and murder again taking place at White Falls.

Source: nancydrewfandom.com

[therandomartmaker]

18.98 Hz and it’s lost cautions

You see, surely you’ve heard of the ‘ghost’ frequency. I’m not certain if you know it under another name, but it’s quite interesting.

It was first found in a medical manufacturing lab, as people working in the lab had found that a certain room would induce a figure to stand at their peripherals. A presence that certainly did not exist, a ghost. It would cause irrational panic, had done so when people collated their experiences and found out it was not a sole instance.

Turns out, it’d only been a newly installed fan, vibrating at a frequency unheard to humans, discovered by a brave man and sheer chance.

It’s unknown why this specific frequency causes this irrational fear, this uneasiness.

Though, perhaps it was a safety mechanism, in the same way we’d developed pattern recognition to find predators, like snakes in the grass at our heels, or toxic colours on things we certainly shouldn’t eat. I’m not certain, I’m no professional after all. We were smart, for one, and still are; i’m sure we’ll figure out why. For now, though, I’ve a question that might help.

What kind of invisible predator hunted us such that we’d choose to see illusory figures and have paranoia rather than die by it? Or mayhaps, what kind of predator needed us to develop a specific sense just to avoid it?

[indignantlemur]

Quick and possibly odd question in regards to the andorian justice system and laws. what would the penalty be for more serious crimes like murder or assault of any kind?

Thank you for responding.

Hello again, Skygirl!

As per usual, this applies to my headcanons and writing only.

So, the Andorian justice system is incredibly convoluted in many respects, but when it comes to serious crimes the outcomes become remarkably streamlined (by comparison).

Minor offenses usually result in minor penalties, like fines, censures, and so on. In general, Andorians prefer to nudge their citizens back onto a path of responsibility, self-control, and productivity through social means rather than take purely punitive actions. A large part of the punishment aspect for very minor crimes actually comes from society itself, with different offenses causing a loss of face and a loss of reputation to oneself, one's family, and even one's Clan that Andorians generally find to be a significant deterrent.

Sex work is not criminalized at all - though there are social censures for individuals who solely support themselves by taking payment for 'assisting' Andorian women through their fertile seasons (and often leaving behind offspring, unknowingly or not). It's considered a very grey area, because Andorian women are hyperaggressive when in season but not completely in their right minds at the same time, and individuals who prey upon that for material gain are considered extremely distasteful. It's not a crime, technically, but it's also not something most folks advertise doing either. Supporting an Andorian women or a bonded couple through a season as a close friend or potential future spouse is perfectly acceptable, even encouraged, but the moment a transaction is involved it becomes another matter entirely.

Drug offenses are taken seriously, but they're not ranked as high priority as murder. Drug smugglers, traffickers, and manufacturers will face heavy fines and censure for a first offense, for example, but unless it's a repeat offense with no signs of the offenders being willing to change, penal colonies aren't an option. Drug possession is considered a lesser offense to trafficking and production, and usually the fines and censures are accompanied by a court mandated psychiatric review to determine the source of the problem.

Poaching or failing to control certain wildlife populations on one's land, minor environmental damages, and the like are considered minor on the first offence, and more serious with repeat offences.

Basically, you get one 'grace' sentence, where you're given a chance to correct your behaviours, and after that repeat offences are treated much more coldly.

For more serious offences, such as murder (and all its many variations, excluding deaths via ushaan which are deemed lawful), sexual assault, and the forcible bonding of an unwilling participant, and just about any serious crime involving children, there are rather more grave consequences ahead.

Once the justice system has gathered, collated, and rigorously examined the evidence in each case, a formal judgement is pronounced and the sentences are usually as follows: execution, exile, remand to a penal colony, or remand to a psychiatric facility.

Execution and exile are fairly straightforward:

Executions are reviewed and signed off on by the reigning Emperor, carried out by arbiters, and witnessed by an array of neutral parties and, should they wish it, the survivors/injured parties. The manner of execution varies, but lethal injection and firing squad are both common. In rare cases, the wronged party will be permitted to execute their assailant themselves, but this generally only occurs if the wronged party is a formally recognized duelist or Guardsman in good standing with sufficient accolades and competency. It is not unknown in these cases for the offender to slay their would-be executioner in these cases, hence the reluctance to permit this particular outcome. The offender dies regardless, of course, but the optics (and repercussions) are not ideal.

Exiles are formally escorted off planet and out of Andorian territory, and are warned never to return without an official summons. In theory, there's nothing stopping an exile from lying low for a few years and sneaking back into an outer colony, but the incidence rate of this is remarkably low. A popular theory as to why would have folks believe that the Am Tal tag exiles and monitor their movements - which is, of course, absurd. Everyone knows the Am Tal aren't real - and even if they were real, they'd hardly waste the resources.

Actually, the biggest thing about exile is that the status removes most of the usual protections that Andorian citizens otherwise have. An exile is barely considered a person, legally, and while there are occasionally bouts of romanticism about noble exiles who still uphold Andorian virtues in their isolation in Andorian media, the vast majority of actual exiles are not folks anyone would want to meet in a dark alley. Or at all, really.

Penal Colonies and psychiatric facilities are, by necessity, a little more complicated:

Penal colonies are not meant for minor offenses, and anyone who sentences a minor offender to a penal colony on purpose or by mistake will very quickly find themselves taking the offender's place.

The penal colonies are outright draconian. You will follow a rigid daily schedule. You will be re-educated. You will maintain an extremely high level of cleanliness and self-discipline. You will only socialize during set hours of the day. Deviation will not be tolerated. Isolation cells are used punitively, and privileges are few.

Again, only the very worst offenders are sent to penal colonies, and there are different 'grades' of penal colonies as well. The above is for the highest 'grade' - for the worst of the worst, the most dangerous and unrepentant offenders. Lower grade colonies are much kinder, and focus on re-education and proper socialization rather than rigid discipline and structure.

These colonies, from the lowest to the highest grade, are geared towards removing the offender from the original environment and working towards turning them into productive, law-abiding citizens through a combination of education (or re-education, as may be needed), court mandated therapies, and what is often described as "a strict restructuring of daily schedules and priorities." It is only in the case of the worst offender that this regimen rarely results in release back into society. High grade penal colony sentences are often for life, though not always.

Remarkably, Andorian penal colonies do not utilise the labour of the inhabitants. In fact, Andorians are really, really touchy about prisoner exploitation - it reminds them a little too much of what Andorian prisoners of war endured at the hands of Vulcans, Tellarites, and especially Orions in the past. Prisoners are not used for labour under any circumstances, and the very suggestion is offensive: that's viable employment that citizens in good standing could have to support themselves and their families.

As the end of one's sentence approaches, offenders are not just dumped back on the streets. They are reintroduced to society in stages, allowing for adjustment to more freedoms and options gradually. The goal is always to prevent relapses into criminal behaviours, and there is an entire post-penal system in place to support former prisoners as much as possible during this transition.

In short, Andorian prison is not a nice place to be, but by the Emperor it will turn you into a productive citizen. Or else.

[uwmspeccoll]

Shakespeare Weekend

Continuing our look at The Works of Mr. William Shakespear: in ten volumes published in 1728 by Alexander Pope (1688-1744) and Dr. George Sewell (d. 1726), this week we examine Volume Four and its imprint variation on the title page. Volumes Four, Five, and Nine all include additional booksellers aside from Jacob Tonson (1655-1736).

The imprint for these three volumes reads “Printed for J. Tonson in the Strand; and for J. Darby, A. Bettesworth, and F. Clay, in Trust for Richard, James, and Bethel Wellington”. Richard Wellington Sr. was established in the London book trade during the 1700s, shortly after his death in 1715 his wife Mary assigned his stock of books over to Darby, Bettesworth, and Clay in trust for her three children. How or why Wellington was tied to only volumes four, five, and nine of Pope’s work is unknown to us.  

Volume Four contains a group of Shakespearean history plays including King John, King Richard II, King Henry IV Part I, King Henry IV Part II, and King Henry. Similar to Rowe’s earlier collection, scene divisions, stage directions, dramatis personae, and full-page engravings by either French artist Louis Du Guernier (1677-1716) or Englishman Paul Fourdrinier (1698-1758) precede each play.  

Pope’s editions of Shakespeare were the first attempted to collate all previous publications. He consulted twenty-seven early quartos restoring passages that had been out of print for almost a century while simultaneously removing about 1,560 lines of material that didn’t appeal to him. Some of those lines were degraded to the bottom of the page with his other editorial notes.  

View more Shakespeare Weekend posts. 

-Jenna, Special Collections Graduate Intern 

[researchhpurposes]

Hi it's 413! I started this liveblog a bit after 413 If I remember correctly!

Anyways, funny story. So my liveblogging has been inconsistent at best, and that's both because real life stuff has been taking its toll (and still is) but also cause I got really obsessed with something and made a sideblog for it, yknow, so I could collate all the stuff I wrote for it since if I really like something I like writing analysis and fics and I like being able to find them easily. So a lot of my time was devoted to that. However, for reasons unknown to me, some people in that fandom are so unwilling to engage in opinions they disagree with in good faith, that they think it's a good idea to harass people (me and friends) and constantly put vague posts in the main tag because *checks notes*

People who have a different opinion to you and believe the character who has repeatedly said they don't have a tragic backstory is telling the truth are 'normal people without trauma personally attacking you and disrespecting other abuse victims,' but discussing the canonical, confirmed, shown-on-screen, child abuse is 'taking it too seriously' and 'attacking people who are just having fun' if you even think about discussing the victim dichotomy surrounding their discussion.

...Suffice to say, I left! I have kept in contact with the mutuals that are actually nice and I have felt better than I have in months! I think I can go much longer on these liveblogs that I have been for the past while! Glad to not feel like shit anymore! I miss these kids once again. Let's read Homestuck together!

[kuramirocket]

Lead study Mexican author Luis Rodríguez, a professor emeritus at the Institute of Radio Astronomy and Astrophysics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico

In 2023, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) helped identify hundreds of free-floating "rogue" planets that don't orbit a parent star. Now, astronomers have found that a pair of these planets may be producing enigmatic, hard-to-interpret radio signals.

The rogue planets spotted by JWST lie in the Orion Nebula, a long-time observational hotspot for astronomers. In total, they number over 500. This discovery bonanza was possible thanks to JWST's ability to pick up infrared radiation emitted by these relatively young planets.

Bizarrely, though, about 80 of these planets exist as pairs. Similar in mass to Jupiter, the planets orbit each other at distances ranging from 25 to 400 times the distance between Earth and the sun. These tangoing duos, called Jupiter-mass binary objects (JuMBOs), pose a huge mystery for astronomers, because the existence of these worlds challenges current theories of planet formation. Some scientists think these objects may not even be planets but rather previously unknown entities that are larger than planets but smaller than brown dwarfs, which are sometimes called "failed stars" because they blur the line between planets and stars.

The JWST data showed that JuMBOs generated infrared radiation, but the new study's authors wanted to see if these dancing objects produced radio waves. That's because different classes of cosmic objects produce distinct patterns of radio emissions. For instance, planets like Jupiter spew several types of radio signals, including gigahertz-frequency emissions thousands of times higher-pitched than an FM signal, partly because of their magnetic fields.

Spotting such signatures from the JuMBOs could help resolve their identity. The observations could also explain "why some objects have detectable radio emission and others do not," lead study author Luis Rodríguez, a professor emeritus at the Institute of Radio Astronomy and Astrophysics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, told Live Science in an email.

To find radio wave "snapshots" of the Orion Nebula where the JuMBOs reside, the scientists combed through archives of observations maintained by the U.S. National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). They found just one pair that apparently emits radio waves: JuMBO 24. Itself an oddity among the oddball objects, it's the heaviest of the JuMBOs, and also the one with the tightest space between its component planets.

A decade's worth of data the research team collated showed that the radio waves remained steady but strong, with a power of roughly a quarter of a ton of TNT and frequencies of 6 to 10 gigahertz. The radio waves also weren't circularly polarized, meaning they lacked spiral, twisting electric fields, the team reported in their study, published Jan. 8 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

But these features aren't what astronomers expect of signals created by planets." Circular polarization is an unambiguous indicator of the presence of magnetic fields," Rodríguez said. Without this, the team can't say definitively that the signals come from JuMBO 24 (assuming the planets have magnetic fields). Besides, radio emissions from other exoplanets are more variable and less intense.

Even if JuMBO 24 isn't a pair of planets but rather another type of cosmic duo, the signals are unusual. Signals from brown dwarfs are very different from the newly identified radio beams. The beams' brightness and frequency even ruled out the possibility of pulsars, the rapidly spinning cores of dead stars that produce pulses of radio waves at regular intervals.

The researchers also estimated the likelihood that the signals originate from an object behind JuMBO 24 and found it to be exceedingly slim, at just 1 in 10,000. And, in case you were wondering, the signals probably don't originate from aliens.  "The fact that both components emit at similar levels favors a natural mechanism," Rodríguez said.

With the research at an impasse, the team is applying to the NRAO's Very Large Array in New Mexico to collect data from free-floating planets. Until then, the radio signals will remain a mystery.

[lifestealupdates]

Lifesteal Season 6, Week 10 Recap

It's been an eventful week on Lifesteal. As per usual, major spoilers under the read-more, Lifesteal members should be blocked but if you're a Lifesteal member and seeing this DNI.

Zam

We've had a little more insight into Zam's pacifism this week. In a conversation with Pangi, he claimed that he has been on every side of conflicts, and he doesn't think any particular stance is right. He is also upset by what he views as Kaboodle's betrayal when she's been helping Wemmbu.

Kaboodle

Kaboodle has been continuing with her scheme to get closer to Woogie, in order to be able to eventually get revenge on Reddoons for killing her. To achieve this, they've shown Woogie most of the Box and pretended the point of it is to represent players they are scared of, then give them each a flower stored in the room to show they've moved on from this fear. She has also given Planet back the hearts she took when she killed them (these were crafted, but only Bacon knows this).

Pangi

Pangi has now allied himself with SB, and is currently attempting to keep Zam from finding out Pangi has given up pacifism, as he doesn't want to hurt Zam.

In his most recent stream (15th September), Pangi found out that Roshambo had been hiding in the walls of his base, and building a strange machine (likely a trap) directly above Pangi's villager trading hall. The motives and intent for this are unknown.

Pangi also has a plan for a "Lifesteal Hunger Games" at some point in the future.

Poafa

During one of his streams (coincidentally, Poafa has a new Twitch account, found here), Poafa found himself tormented by Wemmbu, who wanted golden carrots from him, not understanding Poafa was also broke. Zam showed up to help him, leading Poafa to wonder if he could rely on Zam. Later, Zam found a book from Poafa.

Wemmbu, Bacon and Kaboodle Teamup

As of the most recent session, Bacon has decided he wanted to team up with Wemmbu, as he wants to help instigate events. Bacon ideally wants to try and split teams apart, but doesn't want to exert much effort.

Wemmbu agreed to allow Bacon to join him, calling him and Kaboodle his "minions", but threatened to deathban them both if they moved against him. Kaboodle is more worried by this than Bacon, who thinks Wemmbu wouldn't go to that effort.

Bacon also revealed that he does not want to lie or manipulate Zam, and his motivations are about making sure Zam has fun. Zam is not happy about him joining Wemmbu.

Mapicc

Mapicc has an ongoing scheme based off MrBeast videos - as far as the rest of the server knows, it is a "last-to-leave-the-circle-wins" competition. However, chat knows he is planning to plant a huge amount of TNT underneath the arena right before the event and kill everyone.

Also, I realised I haven't posted this on Tumblr yet: I've collated all of these past recaps into a Google Doc you can find here.