#label encoder

[furioussheepluminary]

𝐆𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐭𝐨𝐜𝐨𝐥

pairings: liar x liar, non idol au

synopsis: lies

warning: lies, ft minsung, hyunjin and changbin

a/n: if you have extra eyes for errors no you cant.

previously...

The house was quiet. A deep, heavy kind of silence that wrapped itself around the walls like a second skin. Only the occasional creak of old floorboards or the low hum of the fridge dared to stir. Bang Chan stood at the doorway of his room, the faintest sliver of light from the hallway catching the rigid line of his jaw. He glanced down the corridor toward your room. Your door was shut. He’d waited long enough, listened for your breathing to settle, watched the soft shuffle of movement behind your door stop. You were asleep. Finally.

He stepped back in and closed his door behind him, locking it. The folder he brought back earlier in the day—one he hadn’t dared open in front of her—now sat like a loaded weapon on the desk by the lamp. Cream-colored, slightly wrinkled, marked with a simple black label:

OP–SHADOWGATE : EXT-4271

He opened it. Slowly. The pages were crisp, printed in typeface and scattered with clipped photos, redacted names, and codes he recognized as off-grid intel. Private databases. Not FBI. Not CIA. This file had been buried beneath four layers of encrypted shell companies and abandoned ops.

But what hit him first was the photo.

You. Y/N. But not as he knew you.

The Y/N in the file wore darker clothes, your hair shorter, your eyes sharper. You looked… cold. Calculated. Military-grade precision in every movement. Every surveillance still of you was timestamped—none of them recent. All of them deeply embedded within reports about missing data, covert meetings in Singapore, Berlin, Tunisia… and one photo that made the breath catch in Chan’s throat—

A handshake. With a known arms trafficker.

What the hell? Page after page confirmed it.

Y/N L/N. No government affiliation. No agency tags. No loyalty flags. Not FBI. Not CIA. Not Interpol. Not even MI6. Instead, three bold letters marked the top corner of one document:

SCU. Chan stared at it, blinking.

Special Covert Unit. A name only whispered in the deeper shadows of intelligence circles. It wasn’t part of any official government. It was a freelance shadow operation—made up of former agents, soldiers, defectors, and ghosts. People who didn’t officially exist anymore. People who could do what governments couldn’t.

And you were one of them.

He ran a hand through his hair, standing abruptly and pacing across the room. The betrayal simmered just beneath his skin. You had lied to him. Let him believe you were an agent, his colleague. You played the role perfectly.

And now, he realized, you’d probably been tracking him. This wasn’t partnership. This was surveillance.

FLASHBACK — 5 HOURS AGO

The dim alley behind a nondescript Vietnamese café. A man stood near the loading door, lighting a cigarette with trembling fingers. Bald. Tall. Wire-rimmed glasses and a nervous tic.

Chan approached with his hood up.

"You said you had something I needed," he muttered. The man barely looked at him. “Your girl’s not who you think she is.”

Chan's silence made the man nervous. He reached into a leather pouch and handed over a sealed file.

"She’s on her own payroll. SCU. Has been for years. She's gotten in deep with people you’d shoot on sight. Singapore? That was the third time she’s crossed paths with Petrov. She might not even want you alive.”

Chan had stared. Said nothing. Took the file and left.

The rage started to build in his chest. A quiet fury. His heart beat hard against his ribs, but his hands were steady. He didn’t know what her game was yet… but he would. He grabbed his burner phone from beneath the loose floorboard under his bed and tapped out a quick, encrypted message to Jisung:

BIRD’S IN SHADOW.

SHE’S SCU. NEED A DEEP DIVE. NO MISTAKES.

PRIORITY ONE.

DO. NOT. TELL. HER.

He hit send and watched the message disappear into the black void of the encoded network.

Then he stared at the door. The one separating him from the woman who saved his life—

and may have been the one holding the blade to his throat all along.

---

The sharp ping of a notification cut through the heavy silence of the room, cracking the late-night calm like glass underfoot.

Jisung groaned into the pillow, half-buried under a tangle of bedsheets and the warm weight of Lee Know draped across his back. Lee Know stirred slightly but didn’t wake. His face remained tucked against Jisung’s shoulder, breathing soft and slow.

Jisung squinted at his phone from under the covers, fingers fumbling to unlock it.

One New Encrypted Message — Burn Line [CHAN]

> BIRD’S IN SHADOW.

SHE’S SCU. NEED A DEEP DIVE. NO MISTAKES.

PRIORITY ONE.

DO. NOT. TELL. HER.

That jolted him awake.

He sat up too fast, causing Lee Know to mumble something and shift with a sleepy arm reaching for him. Jisung gently slid out from under him, muttering, “Sorry, baby. Emergency. Sleep,” pressing a kiss to his forehead.

Lee Know didn’t even flinch—dead to the world.

Jisung padded out of the room barefoot and pulled his laptop from under the couch cushions in the living room. His fingers flew across the keys like they’d been waiting for this exact command.

SCU.

He already didn’t like it. SCU wasn’t just off-books. It was the stuff of ghost stories shared between agents over whiskey and paranoia. An elite, unaffiliated covert unit—ruthless, self-sustaining, and impossible to track. The fact that you were one of them? That was bad enough.

But what he found next was worse.

Kallisto.

He hadn’t seen that name in years. The last time it came up, a Russian scientist had vanished from a NATO stronghold. The whispers pinned it on Kallisto—a faceless middleman known for smuggling secrets, laundering intelligence, and forging high-level cover identities.

Every major intelligence server had fragments of Kallisto's digital fingerprint, but no one could identify him.

Until now, obviously. Jisung cracked open one of SCU’s old Istanbul logs. He cross-referenced Y/N’s operation history, missions involving black sites, off-grid assassinations, chemical extraction. And there it was.

An encoded drop-off record.

Marked: KALLISTO — ESCORTED CARGO: L/N

The IP trail was faint. Half-wiped. But he knew this code. He knew this formatting. His eyes widened.

"...No way."

He dug deeper. The metadata on the embedded cryptographic pings led back to one person.

HWANG. HYUNJIN.

“What the actual hell…” Jisung whispered. Hyunjin. The eccentric art dealer. Hacker. Occasional ghost in the machine when they needed access to black market caches. Your silent little tech whisperer. The guy you “called sometimes.”

Hyunjin was Kallisto.

The black-market ghost tied to former Russian intelligence circles. Jisung leaned back in the chair, letting out a long, low breath. His skin felt clammy, the adrenaline finally catching up to him.

You had lied. Big time.

And suddenly, everything about you—your calm, your silence, your innocence—it all made sense. He stood, went back into the bedroom, and gently shook Lee Know awake. “Minho… wake up.”

Lee Know blinked up at him, groggy but alert. “What’s wrong?”

Jisung knelt by the bed. “We’ve got a problem.”

---

They sat side by side on the couch now, Lee Know scrolling on his own device, eyes scanning the material with practiced calm. Jisung was pacing.

“She’s SCU. Confirmed. But that’s not even the worst part—she’s been working with Hyunjin. He’s Kallisto, babe. Like, the Kallisto.”

Minho stilled, a slow exhale leaving him. “Petrov’s operations. The Geneva leak. That guy?”

“Yeah. And Y/N had contact with him on record. Multiple times.”

“So, either she’s compromised,” Minho muttered, piecing it together, “or she’s playing some kind of deep game. Either way…”

“We can’t let her know we know,” Jisung said. “She’s too good. The second she suspects, she’ll vanish.” Lee Know nodded slowly. “Then we make a backup plan. Containment strategy. Something in case she decides to flip on us.”

They leaned over the laptop together. Drawing lines. Mapping timelines. Creating an algorithm that would flag any divergence in her behavior.

“She’s not FBI,” Jisung added softly, almost like it stung.

Lee Know watched him, his hand finding Jisung’s knee. “This is bigger than her now. We play nice. Act like we trust her.”

“And if she decides to go full double-cross?”

---

SOMEWHERE IN BERLIN — FIVE YEARS AGO

The rain was silver in the glow of neon. Cold. Soaked into the cracked asphalt like bloodstains washed clean too many times.

Hyunjin leaned against the shadowed mouth of an alleyway, hood up, hands in the pockets of a double-breasted coat tailored to perfection. Beneath it, a handgun pressed against his ribs and three encrypted drives waited in his briefcase like poison seeds. His gaze flicked upward, catching the silhouette of the woman through the haze—sharp steps, no hesitation, like she wasn’t scared of anything.

She shouldn’t have been there.

And yet… there she was.

Y/N.

She didn’t flinch when she saw him. She didn’t blink, either. Just stood before him like she already knew his name.

“You’re Kallisto?”

He smirked. “I don’t usually get called that to my face.”

“I’m not most people.”

God, that voice. It wasn’t soft—it was steel sharpened in silence. She carried herself like a storm that forgot how to scream. Beautiful in a way that made him ache, because it came with distance. She was untouchable. Purpose incarnate.

She was his type of problem.

---

PRESENT — SOMEWHERE IN TURKEY, KALLISTO’S SAFEHOUSE

Hyunjin sat barefoot at a sleek marble table, screens aglow in the dim light, lines of code reflecting in his tired, brilliant eyes. Cigarette smoke curled into the air like a dragon’s breath, untouched. His hair was half-tied, sleeves rolled up, black ink peeking from the veins of his forearm.

One screen displayed a dossier.

L/N, Y/N. Alias: Sparrow. Former asset of Operation Daggerfall. Unverified handler clearance.

He stared at her picture longer than he needed to. They’d met in Berlin by accident—but what followed was no coincidence. Y/N had needed access to something no agency would touch. The CIA had written her off. MI6 had wanted her dead. The FBI wouldn’t touch her without a valid background.

Hyunjin gave her one. He buried her records so deep no database could scratch them. Gave her a full identity, a backstory rooted in minor ops and forged casework. He made her real, not just on paper but in the eyes of the federal machine.

Why?

Because she was the first person in his life who didn’t ask him who he worked for.

And he liked the lie that he wasn’t dangerous around her.

---

THREE YEARS AGO — RUSSIA, THE BLACK VAULTS

K.B.V. — Komitet Bezopasnosti Vnutrennyaya. The Committee for Internal Security.

Hyunjin had been part of them once—not fully initiated, but deep enough. A rogue intelligence offshoot made of remnants from the KGB, rebranded under the skin of modern espionage. Hyunjin had been brought in as a teenager. A prodigy. A cyber mercenary capable of crashing entire power grids and rerouting missile guidance in under seven minutes.

He had worked operations where no one left alive. Where targets were innocent, and missions weren’t labeled necessary, just paid.

But somewhere along the way… he cracked.

It was a girl, actually. A blonde. From France. He never talks about her. After that, Hyunjin started playing both sides. Selling intel to the West. Helping the ones meant to disappear. That’s how he ended up in your orbit—how he became the one man you could count on to clean up her messes.

But he never told you about his KBV roots. Never told you that your fingerprints were once auctioned on the dark web and he was the one who bought them before someone else did.

He protected you. He watched your walk into fire. He patched her comms. He killed for her—quietly, efficiently. And every time you said “thank you” in that clipped, mission-focused tone… a small, pathetic part of him ached. Because you never looked at him the way he looked at you.

---

He pulled up footage—grainy but clear. The gala. Again. The kiss. Chan’s hand on her waist. Her lips against his. Hyunjin stared at it like it betrayed him personally.

He leaned back in the chair, exhausted.

“…You never wanted me,” he said into the silence. “But you keep calling.”

He closed the screen and locked everything down. Then turned to the window, watching a city he didn’t belong to breathe in the dark. And in a hidden vault under his floorboards, a letter addressed to Y/N sat sealed. Unread. Unsent. Just in case he ever didn’t come back.

---

The morning peeled itself from the edges of the horizon, warm gold bleeding into the sky like ink dropped into water. The air was still damp from the night rain, and the cobblestones outside the safehouse glistened faintly in the soft light.

Inside, Y/N zipped up the final bag with the kind of practiced grace that made it clear this wasn’t her first covert exit. She wore a dark hoodie, her hair tucked beneath a cap, and had the quiet look of someone already in the next country in her mind. Chan watched her from the doorway, arms folded, his face unreadable except for the faint shadow beneath his eyes—a storm bottled too neatly.

He knew. Everything. But she didn’t know that. He grabbed his own bag off the floor, slung it over his shoulder. “You double-checked the back exit?”

“Twice,” she said, brushing past him lightly. “You’d be surprised how many ops go south just because someone forgot to check for cameras.”

He gave a small, empty smile. “Wouldn’t surprise me at all.” They stepped out into the dawn.

---

The taxi smelled faintly of cigarettes and lemon-scented wipes. The driver grunted something in Czech and pulled away from the curb, the soft rumble of the car the only real sound as the city began to stir around them. Chan sat by the window, his hand curled loosely near his mouth, eyes locked on the blur of minarets and rooftop pigeons sliding past. Y/N sat beside him, her gaze forward, one leg bouncing slightly.

He broke the silence casually, voice wrapped in silk and smoke.

“You ever work with anyone out of South Carolina?”

Her eyes flicked to him. “SCU?” A pause. Careful, he thought.

She shrugged. “Not directly. They’ve got their own ghosts. You know how it is—oversight, contracts, a lot of red tape. Why?” Chan tilted his head, still watching the window.

“Just… someone mentioned a woman in one of my old circuits. Said she moved like she wasn’t trained by the Bureau.”

Her eyes narrowed just slightly, just long enough for him to catch it. “You think I move like that?” He smiled faintly, turning to look at her now. “I think you move like someone who doesn’t wait for orders.”

That earned a breath of a laugh. “Maybe I don’t.” They lapsed into silence again. But in Chan’s mind, wires were already reconnecting. Her answer wasn’t defensive—it was practiced. Slick. And vague enough to slide past the truth without ever touching it.

She’s good, he thought. Too good.

The taxi rolled to a stop in front of the departure’s terminal. Morning travelers bustled past with overstuffed luggage and sleep-laced chatter. Chan and Y/N stepped out, blending in with the chaos like shadows.

As Y/N adjusted the strap on her carry-on, her phone buzzed. She glanced at it.

[Jisung]: Your flight's confirmed. Prague to D.C, gate C-22. You board in 1 hr. You’re welcome.

Chan’s burner buzzed next. He checked it discreetly, heart thudding low and slow like a warning drum.

[Jisung]: Kallisto = Hyunjin. Confirmed.

He’s deeper in Russian circuits than we thought.

Do NOT confront her.

Play along. We’re building the counter-plan.

Chan’s jaw tightened. Just slightly. He slid the phone back into his jacket, turned to Y/N with that easy, almost-charming look he wore like armor.

“C-22,” he said. “You want coffee before we go through security?”

She blinked, surprised for a second by the shift. “You’re buying?” He smirked. “You’re still recovering from that fish crime you ordered last night. I owe you.”

As they walked into the terminal, he walked just a step behind her. Watching. Calculating. And the entire time, he smiled like he didn’t know a thing.

---

The room was dimly lit, washed in a cool blue glow from the multiple monitors lined across the wall like portals to chaos. The table was cluttered, half-empty mugs, a bowl of almonds, USBs scattered like confetti, and at the center of it all: Jisung, hunched forward in a hoodie, eyes flicking fast over the screen.

Lee Know sat behind him on the edge of the couch, arms folded, head tilted with that signature mix of exasperation and fondness. His hair was messily laid back, and he wore nothing but a black sleeveless tee and joggers that slung low on his hips.

“Baby, it’s past three,” he said gently. “Your brain’s going to short-circuit. Come to bed.”

“I can’t,” Jisung mumbled, rubbing his eye with the back of his hand. “We just pulled up something off that Turkish backdoor server. There’s something encrypted buried under the Havana list—some weird metadata…”

Lee Know sighed through his nose, padded barefoot across the floor and crouched beside him, eyes scanning the screen.

“… ‘OSCAR,’” he read aloud.

Jisung leaned in closer, typing furiously. “That name was tagged on the Havana trade manifest. Not as cargo. As the person who signed off Petrov’s transfer. But this doesn’t make sense—there’s no trace of her anywhere. No photo. No paper trail. It’s like someone built a ghost and gave her a name.”

Lee Know stared at the file; expression unreadable for a second. Then he stood, walked behind Jisung, and wrapped his arms around his shoulders, pressing his lips to the side of his boyfriend’s head.

“You are too sexy to be this stubborn, you know that?”

“I’m trying to focus here.”

“And I’m trying to get you to sleep so you don’t pass out in the middle of a firewall breach tomorrow morning.”

“I said I’m fine—���

Lee Know leaned down and kissed him again. This time slower. Then once more. Again.

Jisung’s fingers slowed on the keys. “Lee Know…”

“Yeah?”

“What are you doing.”

“I’m kissing you.”

“Why are you kissing me?”

“Because when reasoning fails, seduction prevails.”

“I hate you.”

“You’re lying.”

“I am lying.”

Lee Know slipped around and gently straddled him on the chair, pressing their lips together properly this time—hands warm against Jisung’s jaw, mouth coaxing the tension out of him in lazy, warm kisses. Jisung gave in with a soft groan, arms looping around his waist.

“Just a minute,” he murmured against Lee Know’s lips.

“Take your time,” he whispered back, dragging the kisses slower, lazier, trailing from his jaw to his neck. “I’ll keep you here till the sun comes up if I have to.”

They didn’t speak after that. They just swayed together in the low light, lost in something too tender for words—breaths mingling, mouths brushing, the tension of espionage fading for a moment into something personal. Familiar.

Then,

PING.

The laptop chimed. Jisung blinked against Lee Know’s collarbone, dazed. “That… was the metadata dump. It decrypted.” Lee Know groaned dramatically and flopped back into the couch, dragging a throw pillow over his face. “If that turns out to be a decoy file, I’m deleting the internet.”

Jisung pulled himself up, adjusted the screen—and then froze. His brows furrowed, fingers hovering above the keys as an image popped up.

“Holy sh—”

“What?” Lee Know sat up. Jisung didn’t look away from the screen. His voice dropped.

“That’s her. Oscar.”

An elegant silhouette in grayscale. No face. But the metadata showed something else: A log of clearance codes used during Operation Nightfall. Signed off… under the name Reynolds.

Lee Know leaned in, eyes narrowing.

“…They’re working together?”

Jisung nodded slowly, jaw clenching. “And they were in Havana.”

---

Rain whispered against the windows of the high-rise apartment, streaking the glass in slanted gray lines. The place was sharp—clean lines, sterile decor, too polished to be personal. Just like the man who lived in it. Reynolds stood in front of the bar, pouring himself something darker than his thoughts. The amber liquid sloshed into the tumbler with a quiet clink of ice. He looked tired. More than tired. Worn. His tie was loosened, top buttons undone, and there was a trembling tension in his jaw that hadn’t been there the day before.

Behind him, Petrov leaned back on the leather armchair like a cat that knew it had nine lives. He wore black, all black, a cigarette lazily perched between his fingers despite the no smoking sign Reynolds always insisted on. His eyes tracked Reynolds like a man who expected a bullet—but wasn't scared of it. “You look like shit,” Petrov said calmly in his thick Russian accent, exhaling smoke toward the ceiling.

“I ran into Oscar last night.”

That got his attention. Petrov straightened, the smirk dissolving from his face like fog. “…She’s here?”

Reynolds turned, drink in hand, and gave him a cold, slow look. “In my goddamn living room, Viktor.”

Petrov held his gaze. “I didn’t call her.”

Reynolds’ voice cracked with low fury. “Bullshit. You compromised the gala. She shook your hand in the middle of gunfire. You were a goddamn beacon.”

“I was saving your operation—”

“You were making yourself the center of it,” Reynolds barked, slamming his glass down on the bar with a sharp crack. “Now she thinks we’ve lost control. She thinks I have. She threatened to light this entire op on fire if I don’t have Bang Chan’s head before the deadline.”

Petrov rose from the chair, the smirk now fully gone. “I swear to you; I didn’t say a word to her. She doesn’t know about Chan. Not from me.”

“She knows enough to show up unannounced,” Reynolds snapped, stalking forward. “And if we don’t get in front of this—if we don’t figure out something, she’ll pull the plug and do it her way. And her way? It’s not clean. It’s not political. It’s nuclear.”

They stood there, the weight of a thousand betrayals thick in the air.

Petrov flicked his ash into the tray, then muttered, “So what now?” Reynolds pinched the bridge of his nose, thinking. Calculating. The mind of a man who'd sold both secrets and souls for survival.

“We give her something,” he said finally. “A breadcrumb. Not Chan. Not yet. But something that makes it look like we’re playing ball. And in the meantime—”

He looked up, eyes sharper than a blade in the cold.

“—we come up with a contingency plan. In case she decides we’re no longer necessary.” Petrov nodded slowly, then lifted his glass.

“To desperate partnerships,” he said dryly. Reynolds didn’t toast. He just turned away, staring out at the rain.

“God help us all if she realizes how far off-script this really is.”

---

Terminal 2, Gate 22, En route to Washington D.C

The check-in line was long, but not noisy. But Y/N wasn’t distracted. Not really. She stood a few paces behind Chan as they waited at security, watching him with that instinctive sharpness she'd honed for years. Something about him was different. Distant. Not cold—but guarded. He hadn’t said more than ten words since they’d left the safehouse.

She watched the tightness in his jaw as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. His hand gripped the strap of his bag a little too hard. His lips were set in a firm, unreadable line.

And Y/N, despite every instinct telling her to just play it cool, found herself leaning toward him gently as they passed through the security scanner.

“You alright?” she asked softly, keeping her tone light. “You’ve been weirdly quiet. Not that I’m complaining. It’s just… not your usual kind of quiet.”

Chan looked at her. For a moment, his eyes flickered. Like something inside him softened just enough to let the truth nearly spill out. But instead, he offered a faint smile—a hollow one.

“Just tired,” he said. “Didn’t sleep well.”

“Nightmares or intel?” she teased, her voice playful but careful. He let out a small exhale, neither confirming nor denying. Just moving through the moment like a man carrying too many unspoken truths.

She didn’t press. Not yet. As they approached the gate, their boarding passes beeped and they crossed into the jet bridge, walking side by side in the sterile tunnel that led to the aircraft. The hum of the engines rumbled ahead, but her mind stayed focused on the man next to her.

Maybe it was the look in his eyes. Maybe it was instinct. Or maybe it was that unshakable thread between them—tension, trust, and something else they never had the courage to name. Just before they stepped into the plane, she said, “You know… whatever it is you think I’m hiding from you… maybe just ask me, Chan.”

That stopped him. He turned to her slowly, brows barely lifted, lips parting slightly as if caught off guard. She gave him a small shrug, eyes calm but not challenging. “I’m not saying I don’t have secrets. We all do. But if you want the truth, you can always ask for it. I won’t lie to you.”

That hit harder than it should have.

Because the file still burned in his bag. The truth already stared him in the face, and yet—her voice made him hesitate. Made him doubt. And that scared him more than anything else. He nodded once, eyes dropping to the floor for just a beat too long. Then he stepped into the plane, leaving her to follow behind, unaware that the first real fracture had just begun.

---

The room was dark except for the flickering light from at least six different monitors. Strings of code cascaded like falling rain across black screens. The air smelled faintly of soldered wire and burnt coffee, evidence of Hyunjin's relentless routines. His desk was a chaotic masterpiece: old USBs, passports, a disassembled burner phone, and a half-finished oil painting of a fox that had long since dried unfinished.

He leaned back in his chair, eyes half-lidded, a single cigarette resting between his fingers but never lit. His gaze flickered over the final set of coordinates he’d decrypted an hour ago.

Location: Prague > Departure: DC

Subject: BANG C. / YN

He exhaled sharply through his nose. They were moving faster than expected. With the same elegance he brought to his art, Hyunjin leaned forward and opened a separate interface. His fingers tapped quickly, unlocking a channel so heavily encrypted it would take even the best black hat a week to scrape the metadata. But Oscar? She’d receive the message in seconds.

He clicked the microphone icon and spoke low into it:

> Oscar. Your package is mobile. Destination: Washington D.C. ETA six hours. Suggest containment on landing. You still want the ghost or just the soldier?

He released the mic, leaned back, and pressed SEND. A soft beep confirmed it was received and decrypted. He sat there, motionless, fingers steepled. His eyes didn’t blink for a few seconds. Because despite what he had just done—despite the mask of cold indifference he wore so well—it wasn’t just a mission. Not when it came to her. Not when it came to Y/N.

Hyunjin whispered under his breath, “What the hell are you doing, pretty girl…?”

He was about to pull up the next operation file when another alert blipped in the corner of his primary monitor.

Incoming Message: UNRECOGNIZED KEYCHAIN

Encryption: NERVE Protocol / Red Spider Variant

Location masked

Brows lifted. He hadn’t seen this protocol in years. Only a handful of elite black-market hackers used it. Most of them were ghosts. Off-grid. Untraceable. Curious, he opened the message.

> KALLISTO. I see you. You can paint in Prague, hide in Spain, sip tea in Seoul. But sooner or later, I'm gonna unplug your router and use your bones as Wi-Fi extenders. :) – spider.exe

Hyunjin blinked. Once. Twice. Then he snorted—actually laughed. Loudly.

“Spider.exe?” he muttered. “That’s cute. Very cute.”

He leaned forward and quickly activated three different defense protocols, sealing his connection routes and initiating a trace sweep. Not to find them—he wouldn’t succeed. But to at least see what sort of game they were playing.

He stared at the signature tag of the hacker’s handle again. It was old-school. Reckless. Personal.

“…Who the hell are you?” he whispered, the smile still on his lips, eyes sharpening like a wolf finally smelling blood.

Because someone was watching him.

And even though they were clever… Hyunjin had survived the K.B.V. by being smarter.

---

Jisung leaned back in his chair, legs folded, hoodie sleeves pushed halfway up as he spun a pen between his fingers. The laptop screen in front of him still had the encryption pulse active—the same encrypted system he’d used to poke the bear.

Or rather, poke KALLISTO.

Lee Know was somewhere in the background brushing his teeth, humming a tune from that one old K-drama he refused to admit he liked. But Jisung? He was grinning, eyes wide and glinting with mischief as he typed again into the Red Spider interface.

OUTGOING MESSAGE

> Yo Picasso.exe — you draw fast but you paint slow. FYI, I'm the nightmare that crash-lands your Dropbox and plays Baby Shark on loop till you cry in Morse code. Wanna play tag, comrade?

ENCRYPTED SEND > DELIVERED

Beep.

He waited. Not even fifteen seconds. His eyes caught the alert on screen.

INCOMING TRANSMISSION – USER: APOLLO.S13 // KALLISTO

Encryption Signature: Modified Russian VektorShell – Unscramblable

Jisung whistled. “Damn. Old school and expensive…”

Then the message decrypted.

RECEIVED MESSAGE

> Tag requires two players. You don’t ping like NSA, but you’re not FSB either. Your syntax is juvenile, your jokes? American. But your footprint is clean. Too clean. Either you’re new, or you’re very good. So tell me: how long have you been inside my system?

Jisung blinked. “Oh, he thinks I’m inside.”

He cracked his knuckles, rolled his neck, and grinned like a devil in a hoodie. “No idea who I am? Good. Let’s keep it that way.”

He quickly began coding his reply—half jokes, half riddles, all wrapped in a sarcasm sandwich.

OUTGOING MESSAGE

> Define ‘inside.’ Metaphysically? Emotionally? Or spiritually? Because honestly, I’ve been living rent-free in your RAM since you sent Oscar that voice memo. C’mon, Kallisto. Play a little.

Another beat.

Ding.

KALLISTO REPLY – 1:38 RESPONSE TIME

> Cute. But cute things die first. Keep poking, spider. When I find your web, I’m setting it on fire.

Jisung snorted, closing the lid of his laptop slowly like he’d just made eye contact with the final boss of a game. He leaned back further, arms crossed behind his head.

“Oh, he mad mad. Baby boy got attitude.”

Lee Know walked in, towel over his shoulder, frowning. “You’re flirting with Russian hackers at again?”

“…Technically he’s North Korean-trained but, y’know, semantics.”

Lee Know sighed, but smirked. “You’re not gonna tell him who you are?” Jisung grinned. “Nah. Not yet. Let’s see how long it takes Picasso to realize he’s been painting on my canvas.”

---

FLIGHT 297 – SOMEWHERE ABOVE KENTUCKY

Cabin dim, engines humming low, and the soft glow of overhead lights pooling like moonlight around their seats.

Y/N leaned back into her seat, head tilted toward the small window, watching as clouds slithered past in the night sky like pale ghosts. The plane wasn’t packed—just a scattering of sleepy passengers lost in their own silence. She’d been watching Chan from the corner of her eye for about twenty minutes now.

He was quiet. Too quiet. And something about the way he’d been since they left the safehouse was… off. Not cold. Just… calculated. Like he was mentally running risk assessments on everything, including her.

She didn’t press. Not immediately.

But curiosity and survival had a similar itch, and eventually, she turned toward him, voice soft. “So… what’s the plan when we land in D.C.?”

Chan didn’t look up right away. His gaze was fixed on the seat in front of him, fingers tapping rhythmically against the fold-down tray. Then, slowly, he shifted in his seat, casting her a quick glance before leaning a bit closer.

“Friend’s place,” he said simply, voice low. “Guy I trust. His name’s Changbin.”

Y/N’s spine straightened by less than a millimeter. Her eyes didn’t blink. Her breath didn’t skip. But something in her stomach knotted.

CIA.

She knew the name. Not from files, but whispers. Operation Scarfall. Beirut. The Berlin Deviation. He was the CIA handler you didn’t want to get on the bad side of. And he was close to Chan?

Shit.

But her face? A masterpiece. She smiled gently. “How close are we talking?” Chan exhaled a quiet chuckle, rubbing the back of his neck. “He almost got me court-martialed on my first inter-agency mission. Gave me hell for three weeks because I mislabeled a cipher doc.”

Y/N blinked. “Sounds like a great first date.”

Chan gave her a look, one that almost held a smile—almost. “He earned my trust the same way I earned his. We nearly died pulling each other out of a blown-out building in Benghazi. Haven’t been able to get rid of him since.”

Y/N nodded slowly, still pretending. Still sweet. Still the Y/N he thinks he knows. “And you think he’s the best place to start?”

“He’s not just a friend,” Chan said, voice flattening slightly. “He’s a fixer. Quiet but connected. If there’s anything left buried in D.C., Changbin can dig it up, burn it, and sell the ashes to the highest bidder.”

Y/N tucked that away. Filed it next to “Find a way to keep Changbin at arm’s length.” Chan’s eyes narrowed slightly, scanning her features. “Don’t worry. I’ll be the one to break the situation down to him.”

“Situation?”

He hesitated. “You. The mission. All of it.”

“Ah.” She crossed one leg over the other, lips curling into a soft smirk. “You think he’s not already ten steps ahead?” Chan scoffed lightly. “He probably is. He’s probably listening to this conversation right now. But I owe him the explanation anyway.”

She nodded, turning her gaze back to the window, watching the lights of a city far below flicker like dying stars. And deep inside—beneath the calm, beneath the softness—she wondered:

How long could she keep playing this game? Because it wasn’t just Chan anymore. It was CIA. And Changbin. The man who once interrogated KALLISTO in a shipping crate in Kaliningrad.

This was going to get messy.

REAGAN NATIONAL AIRPORT – WASHINGTON, D.C.

The air is heavy with dew and anticipation. The city sleeps—restless and unaware.

The plane’s wheels kissed the tarmac with a soft, tired bounce, jostling the passengers gently awake. Cabin lights blinked on fully, casting shadows over drawn faces and travel-weary limbs. Y/N stirred beside Chan, stretching subtly as the pilot's voice crackled overhead, welcoming them to the District of Columbia.

They moved in silence, the kind bred not of awkwardness but of focus—of sharpening blades before the next fight.

Baggage claim was a ghost town, the conveyor belt humming like a tired lullaby. Their duffels arrived quickly—black, nondescript, and heavy with secrets. Chan hoisted his without strain, glancing once over his shoulder as Y/N lifted hers. Always watching. Always calculating.

Outside, the chill was sharper than expected, the kind that bit through jackets and whispered of coming storms. Chan stepped a few paces away from her to the curb, phone in hand, raising it to call a cab. And that’s when her phone pinged.

One message. Unknown number.

Encrypted tag: MirrorOp-11.

She unlocked it, frowning faintly as the screen displayed:

> The spider’s getting closer to the web.

Better check your corners. – K

Her breath hitched just slightly—barely, but Chan caught it.

Unbeknownst to her, as she tilted the screen just slightly for a better read, he caught the top of the message from over her shoulder. His gaze flickered, lips twitching into a slow, almost amused smile.

Kallisto.

He knew that message wasn't from just anyone. And "the spider"? It was one of Jisung's oldest hacker tags—playful, dangerous, elusive. The digital equivalent of a red laser pointer and a loaded gun. Still pretending not to have seen a thing, Chan turned and flagged down a taxi with an easy wave, his voice calm.

“Over here.”

The yellow cab rolled up with a tired groan, headlights splashing across their faces. He opened the door for her first like always, and she slid in, her phone slipping into her coat pocket. Chan followed and closed the door behind them, then leaned in to the driver.

“Northwest. 14th and T Street,” he said smoothly. The driver gave a nod and pulled out into the sleepy city streets, tires whispering over damp asphalt.

Y/N’s expression was mostly neutral, but Chan didn’t miss the subtle tension in her posture, the tight hold on the strap of her bag, the way her eyes darted once to the rearview mirror, checking for tails out of habit.

“You okay?” he asked casually, glancing sideways at her. His voice had that soft, worn edge like coffee at dawn. “You looked like you saw a ghost back there.”

Y/N turned to him, lips already lifting into a gentle, practiced smile. “Yeah,” she replied easily. “Just... tired.”

He tilted his head, studying her just a beat longer than necessary, then nodded. “Of course,” he said, leaning back against the seat. “You’ve been through hell.” His tone was comforting. Reassuring. The protective leader. But his thoughts?

If you only knew what I saw.

If you only knew who I’m talking to. And what we’re building behind the curtain. The cab turned onto a main road, headlights cutting through fog, and the Capitol slowly began to rise like a giant in the distance watching them.

And Y/N?

She pressed her lips together and glanced down at her phone once more. She didn’t reply to the message.

Not yet.

Because suddenly…

It felt like someone else was watching the spider too.

---

The taxi hummed quietly as it pulled up in front of a narrow street lined with quiet row houses modest, but timeless. Each brick home had the same bones but showed off its own personality: a windchime here, mismatched flower pots there, paint chipping in just the right way. And in front of one—olive green door, cracked white trim—was where Chan told the driver to stop.

“Here,” he muttered, already reaching for his wallet.

Y/N stepped out first, stretching her arms with a quiet sigh as Chan paid the driver. The morning air was still cool, birds chirping overhead in the sleepy hum of D.C. suburbia. They looked like tourists, really. Two travelers with their bags and fatigue under their eyes. Nothing suspicious. Nothing wild. Just two people with too much history tucked into carry-ons.

As the car drove off and the sound of its tires faded, Chan walked up to the doorstep and gave three sharp knocks against the wood. There was a pause. Then footsteps. A shuffle. The squeak of a hinge and the door cracked open.

“Jesus Christ,” came a voice, deep and raspy, still thick with morning. “Who the hell fucked you?”

Chan barked out a laugh. “Real welcoming, Bin.”

“Hey,” Changbin grinned, stepping back so they could see him fully. He was barefoot in sweatpants and a black tee, hair messy, a toothbrush still in his mouth like a cigarette. “Had to be said. You look like a war crime.”

“I was a war crime,” Chan said with a smirk. “Come on, Y/N.”

Y/N stepped forward cautiously, bag slung over one shoulder, eyes darting over Changbin with subtle appraisal. She recognized the CIA air before he even spoke—calculated eyes, compact build, that low hum of suspicion always thrumming under the surface.

Changbin blinked at her. “And you are…?”

Chan shifted beside her. “FBI. She found me.”

There was a beat. Then Changbin’s lips twitched.

“A she found you?” he said, brow raised. “Damn, low blow, bro. I thought the Ghost of Langley would be found by some tatted-up Russian or an old white guy named Walter, but this—?” He let out a breathy laugh. “Nah, I like this better.”

Chan rolled his eyes and flipped him off as he crossed the threshold. “Eat shit.”

“Already did. The yogurt expired two days ago,” Changbin shot back, closing the door behind them with a heavy clunk and twisting the locks. He looked back at them. “Make yourselves at home. Couch is yours. Kitchen’s to the right. Don’t touch my protein powder or we fight.”

Y/N smiled politely, easing her bag down by the wall. The space was cozy in that ex-operative kind of way—bare walls, sturdy furniture, hidden cameras in the corner if you looked hard enough. Homey... if your version of home came with bulletproof blinds.

Chan looked over at Changbin again, that subtle softness tugging at the edge of his mouth.

“I missed you, bro.”

That wasn’t something they said easily. Not in this world. Not unless they meant it. Changbin’s expression flickered. “Yeah, well… you better’ve. I had to watch your name bounce through six different kill lists like a damn ping pong tournament.” He crossed over and pulled Chan into a half hug, the kind where you clap each other’s backs hard enough to bruise. “Good to see you in one piece, man.”

“You too.” Chan stepped back, grinning. “How’s your girl?”

Changbin snorted, dragging a hand through his hair. “Mad at me. Thinks I took a late-night op to avoid therapy again.”

“Did you?”

“Obviously.” He gave a shrug like: what’s a man to do? “She’ll forgive me. Eventually. I bought her a plant.” Chan shook his head with a smile. “You’re gonna die in your sleep.”

“Probably. At least I’ll die pretty.”

And just like that, the door to safety had shut behind them but the door to strategy, to planning, to war, had quietly opened. And no one said it aloud yet, but it was there in the glances, the sighs, the heaviness behind every word.

Because this wasn’t just a safe house.

This was the first chess move.

I can't wait for my lovely blue to see this 😙

Taglist: purple means I can't tag you

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Check out my pinned if you want to be added to the taglist!

~kc 💗

[iteratorsex]

Overseer notes

[Image text: "Not a hologram! When moving, they slide along the ground like a slime mold. Data is stored in the eyes, which use a similar encoding as pearls."

A drawing of an overseer eye is "labeled nucleus." End ID]

[coffeegnomee]

Oh my goodness the orbital is so cool. fine. fine! i love it. redstone is so cool.

what I have learned:

this is the encoder for the nuke shot, on the left with 4 observers, and stab shot, on the right with three observers.

the nuke shot is a normal lantern labeled "Nuke Shot", placed in the hopper at the front of the 4 observer as an item filter (so 18 of the lanterns with filler items in the other slots)

"I've gone ahead and renamed the items to make it crystal clear what each item encodes. however, if you feel renaming the items is too much effort, you can simply use different items that you can recognize as being each control"

meaning someone would NOT have to have a lantern labeled "Nuke Shot" to make a nuke shot happen. If you put any item (literally any item since every other item in the machine is labeled specifically) in this slot and used it in the payload minecart, it would fire a nuke shot.

They built this system on the cannon on Lifesteal. left with three redstone is the stab shot (which zam is resetting after the successful shot), right with four is the nuke shot

Minute was the one in charge of all the hoppers and items, giving him the ability to never set up the item filter for the nuke shot.

But that does not mean Spoke couldn't have gone in and set up that filter.

[vague-humanoid]

tumblr keeps crashing every-time I make a post with an encoded video and labeled it "Palestinian genocide"

I keep having to remaking them or just give up. just today, I have 2 about the riots of Israeli citizens forming a prison demanding the murder of Palestinian prisoners and neither get rendered

[minedlabs]

Subject notes 17/4/25

Increased confusion, irritability during encoding

Derivative self-concept modified; subject insists upon label "Saucy Grandpa"

[carriesthewind]

"Although hired as a consultant by Washington County in this case, Baird had a long-standing independent agenda: helping foster parents across Colorado succeed in intervening and permanently claiming the children they care for. Often working hand in hand with Tim Eirich, she has been called as an expert in, by her count, hundreds of child-welfare cases, and she sometimes evaluates visits between birth families and children without having met them. Baird would not say how many foster-parent intervenor cases she has participated in, but she can recall only a single instance in which she concluded that the intervenors should not keep the child. Thinking that particular couple would be weak adoptive parents, she told me, she simply filed no report."

"With the supply of adoptable babies dropping, foster children were becoming a “hot commodity,” he said, and he and his colleagues (among them Tim Eirich’s law partner Seth Grob) realized that attachment experts could be called into court to argue that foster children needed to remain with their foster parents in order to avoid a severed bond."

"The judge ruled in favor of Eirich’s clients, a social worker and a real-estate agent. “Court found [Baird’s] testimony credible. She has significant experience,” the judge said, adding approvingly that Baird’s analysis had “focused on primacy of attachment over cultural considerations.”"

"Was Baird’s method for evaluating these foster and birth families empirically tested? No, Baird answered: Her method is unpublished and unstandardized, and has remained “pretty much unchanged” since the 1980s. It doesn’t have those “standard validity and reliability things,” she admitted. “It’s not a scientific instrument.”

...

Had she considered or was she even aware of the cultural background of the birth family and child whom she was recommending permanently separating? (The case involved a baby girl of multiracial heritage.) Baird answered that babies have “never possessed” a cultural identity, and therefore are “not losing anything,” at their age, by being adopted. Although when such children grow up, she acknowledged, they might say to their now-adoptive parents, “Oh, I didn’t know we were related to the, you know, Pima tribe in northern California, or whatever the circumstances are.”

The Pima tribe is located in the Phoenix metropolitan area."

"We found that — leaving aside the question of whether attachment theory should even be used as an argument in these cases — Baird’s assessments of foster children’s relationships aren’t just unscientific. They barely touch the surface of a child’s life.

“I don’t know these children,” she testified in one 2017 case, adding, “I have not met anybody.” Still, she said, she “strongly” recommended that those children’s birth parents’ rights be permanently terminated and that the kids be adopted."

"She also regularly uses terms like “mirror neurons,” “neurotoxins,” “synapses,” “hormones,” and “encoded trauma in the central nervous system” to justify her conclusions about children’s family relationships. (Baird is not a neuroscientist.)"

______________________

The New Yorker article focuses on possible legislative solutions, but I think these articles point to something more pernicious and more difficult to address. Judges - in all kinds of cases - routinely give credence to professionals and "experts" who are biased, bigoted, and testify far outside their expertise (if they have any expertise at all). These professionals have credentials (like being a police officer or social worker) that are validated by institutional hierarchies. Their frequent systematized interaction with the legal system is mistaken as experience that makes their subjective beliefs more credible, when in truth they lack any objective expertise. They are considered credible and unbiased because they conform to, and validate, systems of hierarchical oppression, while the people they hurt - often poor, marginalized, and most frequently, not white - are viewed with inherent distrust.

The ProPublica article focuses primarily on Baird. I'm more concerned with the judges who believed her, who used her to justify funneling children away from their (safe and loving, but poorer and frequently browner) birth families. She was only able to do so much harm because of the the power given to her by courts, and the judges inside them.

The ProPublic article ends with the line, "This past fall, with Baird’s help, the foster parents were granted full custody of the baby girl through her 18th birthday." It names Baird as a force that led to the theft of this child. The passive voice hides the judge who made the ultimate decision.

[leohtttbriar]

i don't disagree that the snw plot idea of "turn non-vulcans into vulcans" resulting in those non-vulcans speaking monotone and ""logically"" is, on an immediate read without the full context of the full episode narrative, silly and maybe not very thoughtful. but i think part of the reaction against that idea comes from a habit of people reading star trek and star trek aliens on a purely representative level; and, related to that, the reaction also partly comes from a reluctance to read the "logic" aspect of vulcans sincerely. in fan spaces, i've noticed, "vulcan logic" is always a metaphor and always a pretense--something more akin to prayer and religion than a more material way of interacting with the world.

obviously there are metaphorical aspects to the aliens created for the star trek world and stories. i'd say the vast majority of alien depiction on star trek is meant to be allegorical. so it's a sound response to see the "drink vulcan juice and speak all logical" plot element as a misunderstanding of culture to the point of ignorance, since aliens in star trek, through whatever narrative position, largely represent variations in human culture interacting with each other. and, like, they can't really be more than representative of what we know of culture since we have yet to meet an actual alien in reality. the fact that most star trek aliens are humans with some sort of makeup on their nose or forehead to indicate "not from earth" only reinforces this interpretive entry point. additionally, anyone with any proper understanding of human culture is going to rationally react against anything that implies a bio-essentialist culture/intelligence. being "close to nature" or "mind dictated by the body" is typically the first way any human being or culture has been dehumanized since the beginning of human civilization.

but i think sticking solely to this read, to thinking of star trek aliens only as different cultures instead of also different biological beings, can elide some of the more interesting aspects of alien-species speculation as well as ignore all the ways that human beings are bodies and how that's not an inherently degrading truth. our cultures are largely sourced in material realities of our bodies. they don't arise from the abstract. and yes, i'm definitely aware that star trek itself doesn't do much to speculate on the planet-histories implied in the biological realities of aliens, but maybe this particular snw plot is doing a little bit of that work, in the smallest of ways.

so, a good-faith attempt to interpret what snw is implying about the "drinking the become-a-vulcan potion makes non vulcans speak like vulcans and use logic" plot:

if becoming a vulcan means, without training or prompting, automatically labeling things logical or illogical then that labeling things logical or illogical is encoded in the vulcan body, somehow, so

to allow for this, there's two parts: a) a biological mechanism for interpreting what is or isn't logical and b) "logical" means something more specific than what we mean by "logical"

exploring part a): this seems like a very silly thing to build into the biology of a made-up alien and also sort of goes against a lot of established vulcan-ness in star trek canon. but, imagine: rather than say vulcans have deep "emotions", let's say that they instead of have deep "sensations". and maybe there's just been some confusion of translation for a hundred years over this distinction. vulcans in canon are telepathic through their hands and have a lot of control over pain reception. control over more unconscious aspects of their nervous system means that maybe these aren't really unconscious aspects at all--they can control because large parts of their nervous systems are voluntary. like, whales have a voluntary breath mechanism, unlike us whose brains force us to breathe without us deciding to. for vulcans, they could have a less expansive autonomic nervous system--or maybe the distinguishing in their nervous systems is more complicated than our somatic/autonomic divide.

so a greater breadth of conscious sensation leads to a greater ability to control that sensation. this control could be something that is simply a part of how their bodies evolved, which you can then apply to the fact that, in canon, vulcans used to be violent and colonizing until they embraced logic. maybe "logic" is a control over sensation, here. as in--it's the natural interpretive experience of having a vulcan mind. their brains evolved to order the endless amounts of information in a different way than a humans: we ignore a lot of the information that's coming in, consciously, and our brain regulates all this without us having to put conscious effort towards it; for vulcans, maybe they didn't evolve to ignore it but evolved to order it in a logical way.

it's not ridiculous to think that a brain would do this since our brains sort of do this. depth perception comes from our brain calculating based on two different images from two different eyes. we fill in gaps unaware that we're doing so, reading or puzzling or anything. if we can speculate that vulcans do this with complete awareness than their sense of the world naturally comes through pathways of step-by-step calculations. thus, thinking necessitates logic. and if this biology is given to people who already have training in abstract rational thinking, like the snw characters, and have exposure to language, they would be able to experience what it is to naturally live in a body that naturally interprets the world through logic. whether or not it's sound or valid logic is then the product of education and language-acquisition for vulcans (and therefore anyone randomly turned into one).

for part b): i personally have to imagine this is canon every time i watch star trek because star trek writers aren't very good at writing logic. sometimes it makes sense (janeway saying "logic can be used to justify anything") and sometimes it's just a vulcan saying "that's not logical" to something that definitely has a logic which just makes the vulcan sound bitchy. which, that's fine. but as someone who thinks rational thinking is the best thing ever, this annoys me. so i've basically come up with this idea to get me through these moments that "logical" sometimes means something very very specific. sometimes when a vulcan says "that's not logical" logical means what we think it means: a conclusion soundly following from sound premises. and other times when a vulcan says "that's not logical" they mean it doesn't follow from a specific philosophical "logical" that is based largely in logical principles but is also based in principles of cultural and ethical value. so like, they're vegetarian, i think: the logic there could be to cause no harm to sentient creatures. but the ethic of "cause no harm" isn't inherently rational. that logic had to be argued and decided based on principles that had to be argued and decided. and those underlying principles are sometimes the source of a vulcan character deciding something is logical or illogical.

so, since i don't expect network tv show characters to speak in syllogisms as the vulcan-alien-conceit implies to someone who cares about that stuff (me), i just decided on my lonesome and for fic writing purposes that this distinction is case dependent, distinguished in writing by capitalization. "logical" is traditional understanding of logical, and "Logical" is in what ive called the Temporal case--and words that are declined in this case refer to abstract principles that aren't immediately sourced in material fact.

"logic" is the sensory mechanism vulcans can be born with; "Logic" is the abstract practice that is taught. and they're related but not the same.

with those two parts of this good-faith interpretation in which i do quite a lot of imaginative and world-building work for this silly tv show, the "joke" of the humans acting vulcan can be a little more interesting and make a little more sense.

[televisionenjoyer]

WHY ARE MOVIES GETTING DARKER I AM ON MY KNEES

Ok fuck it let's go. My amateurish opinions on the three biggest mysteries of film: why they're getting darker, less vibrant and harder to hear. As someone who has worked on camera, montaging, effects and animations, colorimetry when I'm allowed, and on one weird occasion, audio (but I'm an enthusiast ok?)

The short answer is because of technology. The long answer is more nuanced

- Why are movies getting darker?

The "official answer" that filmmakers give actually is technology. Digital cameras allow for much more detail with less lighting required. It also allows videographers to play with different light and exposure settings on the go, instead of having to go with the limitations of the pre-bought film's asa and the precalculated ideal settings. Also film is notoriously bad at capturing dark scenes and responsible for much of the graining we see on analog tv and film.

So basically, they claim it's a stylistic choice. Which could be debated, I mean, after at least five years of everyone complaining about poor lighting, you'd think they'd finally give it up.

BUT there's the whole fact that (certain) special effects are generally easier to pull off when the viewer can't see enough to detect any flaws. They require less care and thus are cheaper and faster to produce. Any studio's wet dream.

Less notably, it's easier to work "down" on colorimetry than it is to work "up." Taking away light from a shot is easier than "creating more light", the latter sometimes leading to very "digitally broken" results. It looks bad. Just grab any video and crank the exposure. It looks horrible.

"But what does exposure have to do with color?" Everything!!! Color IS light!!!

Which leads me to the last reason, HDR. Which leads me to one of the reasons why everything looks so dull.

- Why are movies less vibrant?

So. What is HDR? High Dynamic Range refers to technologies that achieve a much wider light variation. And as we established earlier color IS light, okay? So. More light, more color, brought to you at the hand of display technologies such as OLED and microdimming.

These technologies ramp up the price of domestic screens exponentially. This is why you see domestic televisions that are way above the 2000 dollar mark. And then people will say "oh but my low end television supports HDR, so that's not the issue". Yes. Supports. As in supports files encoded in HDR. Doesn't mean that they have the necessary technology to take advantage of it. Yet they get to put the HDR10 label on their product and get in on the newest marketing fad (it's the new 4k dude. Which is the new 3D. You get what I mean)

And since it is the newest fad, then of course filmmakers HAVE to get in on it. I mean, it's more quality, who doesn't want more quality?

me!!! please stop. not everything has to be aimed at high end equipment (more on this when we get to the audio aspect, aren't you excited?). HDR looks like DOGSHIT if your tv isn't actually OLED. And most consumer TV's aren't OLED.

Tech rant over, I assure you that there is a cultural aspect to this. Don't worry, you're not insane. And it probably is related to the clean girl minimalist iOS style UX modest and demure mentality that is advancing on the 2020s. But it is also related to an art medium shift that we've been undergoing since wayy back when. The sixties.

Yes. I'm gonna go there. I'm gonna talk about Star Trek. I'm going to elaborate on my previous slight outrage.

So. Star Trek marks the beginning of a transition from black and white television into color. It also lands on that weird spot where the whole medium of film and television was still figuring out which elements to import from the ancient medium of theater and which were best left behind.

As a result, Star Trek is very theatrical. And color is a good friend of theater, a medium where everything has to be maximized so that the people in row fifty could appreciate the show almost as well as the people on the first row. Color is a good friend of theater: in wardrobe it helps the performers stand out, boosts up the characters' personality traits, etc. And in lighting, it amplifies moods, conveys emotions and atmospheres related to particular scenes.

The version of Star Trek that you can find on streaming these days is considerably altered from the original product, remastered to make it more palatable to our contemporary brains. As a result, many scenes have been visually altered. The following example shows the original master on the left and the remaster on the right

And while at first I held my head in my hands and asked "why, god, why??" The answer is probably that this reads as unserious as fuck. Having the technology now to desaturate scenes and make certain settings look "cloudy", "gritty", "dark and grim," and so on changed the way we perceive colors in regards to mood on modern film and television. This primary color ass setting in today's context reads as goofy, on a scene that is actually meant to impose concern on the viewers. This wouldn't read this way on theater, but it does on television, because we see them as completely separate mediums.

(however I insist that, star trek being a culturally significant show, making these type of creative decisions strips it of its original intent and shits on its cultural value as a window into how they did television in the sixties. so like. fuck you paramount)

Now, television has been getting thematically darker this century (some call it the post-9/11 effect. I wouldn't know. I am latinoamerican) and our palate as viewers has grown more used to these desaturated settings, to the point where seeing something vibrant like the original star trek makes us feel like we're watching a kids show. And not even a modern kids show, more like teletubbies or barney, because have you guys even seen bluey?? It's so... pastel-y.

It's not just HDR. Movies have gotten less vibrant because we're miserable. Sort of. And television and film have grown obsessed with appearing more serious. (Not that sitcoms and comedy movies have ceased to exist, I'm generalizing.)

- But why is dialogue less intelligible?

Official Answer? Technology. Nowadays we are able to capture subtleties in dialogue, so actors don't have to project their voice 24/7, and we can get more intimate dialogue, something almost intended to be a secret that you shouldn't be listening to, making you feel like an intruder. It's the intent.

Unofficially? Technology (marketing fad edition). It's surround audio!!! That's the real culprit!!! And listen, I love surround audio, I have two 5.1 systems at home that we bought secondhand and work like a charm. All that being said: why is star trek tos in 5.1? (YES I'm still on star trek). Why is everything natively encoded in surround audio on streaming these days, left to be down-mixed in real time by your tv?

I'm going to quickly explain surround to y'all using 5.1 as an example. On stereo (which is how most consumers watch film and television) you have two audio channels: your left and right speakers. 5.1 has six: front-left, center, front-right, rear-left, rear-right, and subwoofer. Most dialogue goes through the center speaker. Downmixing is when your tv takes all these channels and mushes them into two: left channel (containing left-front, left rear, center and subwoofer) and right channel (right front, right rear, center and subwoofer). So your center channel is suddenly competing with all these other frequencies and gets a bit muffled.

But wait! It gets worse! 5.1 is now ancient by technology fad standards. For a while there was 7.1 and now the newest, incredibly expensive marketing fad is Dolby Atmos (you might have seen it as a badge on streaming services such as Disney plus). This protocol supports up to 64 channels. You know, if you're crazy and rich enough.

Dolby Atmos was originally developed for cinemas but it's now being sold to direct consumers. According to Dolby, the ideal sound configuration in your home in order to listen to this material the way it was intended from the comfort of your living room is of at least eight (very fancy) speakers and up to 12 speakers.

So. Even with a 5.1 system your audio is still down-mixed.

In conclusion:

Film and television did not get shittier (well, they have, but that's not the sole culprit of this crisis), it just became less accessible and overall uninterested in catering to the average consumer.

[gallifreyinstituteforlearning]

what would happen if two chameleon arched time lords (for simplicity's sake both in the guise of the same species, let's say silurian (eocene)) accidentally swaped biodata modules, went a very long way from each other, and opened them at separate times?

What happens if two chameleon-arched Time Lords accidentally swap fob watches and open them far apart?

Nothing. Probably. Which is both reassuring and deeply annoying when you can't remember where you left yours.

🧬How It Works

Each biodata module is encoded specifically to its owner's biodata signature—and likely linked to their TARDIS via the symbiotic nuclei. It contains your biology, your memories, your entire essence. Opening someone else's module won't rewrite your body or mind any more than reading someone else's diary will turn you into them.

If two disguised Time Lords swap watches by accident:

The wrong Time Lord opens the wrong fob watch: no effect.

They might get strange flashes or psychic whispers, but unless the biodata recognises a match, nothing happens.

The module will likely produce a subtle compulsion to return it to its rightful owner.

🏫 So...

No, you probably can't accidentally turn into someone else. Chameleon Arch tech is terrifyingly invasive, but it's not careless. Still, label your fob watches, people.

Related:

💬|📱👽Can Time Lords identify a chameleoned Time Lord?: The (surprising) problems of Gallifreyans identifying chameleon-arched Gallifreyans.

💬|📱👶What would happen if a human child absorbed their chameleon-arched Time Lord parent's essence?: The complexities of biodata modules and offspring.

💬|📱👹 What could happen if a Chameleon Arch transformation failed?: Some hypothetical scenarios of Chameleon Arc transformations going wrong.

Hope that helped! 😃

Any orange text is educated guesswork or theoretical. More content ... →📫Got a question? | 📚Complete list of Q+A and factoids →📢Announcements |🩻Biology |🗨️Language |🕰️Throwbacks |🤓Facts → Features: ⭐Guest Posts | 🍜Chomp Chomp with Myishu →🫀Gallifreyan Anatomy and Physiology Guide (pending) →⚕️Gallifreyan Emergency Medicine Guides →📝Source list (WIP) →📜Masterpost If you're finding your happy place in this part of the internet, feel free to buy a coffee to help keep our exhausted human conscious. She works full-time in medicine and is so very tired 😴

[disordinarybeauty]

"I have seen three pictures of the man".

Picture_01

The boy stood still, staring at the camera, his gaze fixed, unyielding. A absent smirk, just the stark, unadorned plane of his face. It was a face that already knew the weight of scrutiny, the silent judgment that settled like dust. No empathy, but a rigid mask, the skin stretched taut over the bones, revealing nothing.

"What a dreadful child!", a silent testament to the cruelty of first impressions. "What a hideous little boy! A monkey! That's why he looks so miserable and nobody wishes to play with him.". Parents would quietly whisper to each other upon seeing him arriving at the playground, shamelessly blessing God for having not so ugly sons.

Even in childhood, the contours of our features are being etched into a narrative not of our making. A single, unyielding look, and the world begins to define us: dreadful, wizened, hideous. Labels whispered and solidified, a prison built of glances. How swiftly the gaze of society could strip innocence, how easily a child could become a stigma, a grotesque caricature, simply for the way he appears, and becomes no longer human.

#GlitchArt + #AIportrait + Text inspired by a paragraph from No Longer Human by #OsamuDazai.

Childhood and Body Shaming.

Society's judgmental and pitiful gaze.

Physical appearance and discrimination.

Art inspiration and creative process.

Experimental Art and New Media.

Body Horror and Body Positivity.

How was the video made?

Initial AI Image Generation and Glitching:

Eight AI-generated portraits were compiled into a PDF (JPG compression).

The PDF's raw data was manipulated using a text editor (Notepad++) by replacing hexadecimal characters, creating initial glitches.

The glitched PDF was viewed in SumatraPDF.

Each glitched image was copied and pasted into a single Photoshop file as separate layers (PSD).

The PSD file's raw data was again manipulated in Notepad++, further glitching the image layers.

The glitched layers were then adjusted in Photoshop using Hue and Saturation adjustments.

All layers were blended into a final PNG image.

Image Sorting and Animation:

The PNG image was processed using the "UltimateSort" script by GenerateMe, creating a series of sorted frames.

A selection of these frames was exported.

The frames were compiled into an animated GIF.

The GIF was encoded into an MP4 video.

The GIF's raw data was databended in Note++

The glitched GIF was played in IrfanView and screen recorded via ShareX.

The two MP4 video files that were made from the GIF were edited together in Adobe Premiere.

Video Glitching and Audio Integration:

The edited video track was exported as an MP4.

The MP4 was converted to an AVI file using the ASV1 codec.

The AVI video's raw data was imported into Audacity as a RAW file, glitched, and saved.

The glitched AVI was converted back into an MP4 video using FFmpeg.

The glitched video was imported into Adobe Premiere.

Audio was added: a Mubert-generated musical track and a voiceover.

The voiceover was created using TTSMaker, based on text generated by Gemini 2.0, which drew inspiration from a paragraph in No Longer Human.

[randomvarious]

Today's compilation:

CBS-FM Oldies 93: History of Rock Volume 2 1993 Pop / R&B / Doo Wop / Soul / Rock & Roll / Garage Rock / Pop-Rock / Bubblegum Pop

Unfortunately, this is a pretty unremarkable cheat code comp here. There's plenty of great classics on it, but there's nothing that distinguishes it from any other dime-a-dozen 50s and 60s oldies comps. The most intriguing thing about it is that there's so little trace of it on the internet, but that's probably because it was likely only released in the Los Angeles area. LA's KCBS station is now Jack FM, which is a pretty low-rent operation where they seem to just put their sizeable library on shuffle without any on-air DJs, but back in the early 90s, it was solely dedicated to the oldies, just like its New York counterpart, WCBS-FM, still is (although as time advances, that 'oldies' word gets more and more elastic, and older music is continually phased out too). Funnily enough, there was a period in the 2000s when WCBS also changed to the Jack FM format, but people despised it so much that it eventually finished last in the ratings, and after a couple years, it returned back to its oldies format with DJs. That switch to Jack has gone down as one of the biggest blunders in the history of the New York radio business too, as WCBS was and now still is one of the region's most listened-to stations.

Perhaps this album is purely reflective of what you'd hear if you'd tuned into KCBS on some random day in 1993, and was used in order to promote that fact, but it doesn't seem like there's anything that makes this particularly LA-centric. You could call this WCBS-FM Oldies 101.1 and no one would know the difference. And that's something that I've noticed that CBS and the Collectables label that releases their comps do—release the same album in different markets, but use different station logos that align with the respective local CBS affiliate; like so:

Kinda strange that I can't find anything about Volume 1 or any potential subsequent volumes that might've been released from this series thereafter either. There are probably copies laying around in some LA closets or attics somewhere, but no one seems to have cataloged them to the internet yet, at least via a Google search. Kinda indicative of how much work there's still yet to be done in encoding a record of all these things. All we have is this second volume that can be found on AllMusic.

Also weird to label an album like this as the History of Rock and then include a whole bunch of tunes that clearly aren't rock on it🤷. Subtitle your series as something more accurate, please!

All in all, this is a good oldies comp because there's good and classic songs on it, but it's definitely not breaking any molds. Recommended if you have little to no familiarity with the 50s and 60s pop landscape and want some bare-bones education; otherwise this isn't really worth anyone's time and was a waste to press up and sell in the first place.

And if you are actually looking for that authentic LA oldies experience, look no further than the guy who invented the entire concept of the V/A compilation itself, Art LaBoe, who was also a beloved local DJ in LA, and who I've written about plenty of times before too.

Highlights:

The Isley Brothers - "Twist and Shout" Maurice Williams & the Zodiacs - "Stay" The Soul Survivors - "Expressway to Your Heart" Percy Sledge - "When a Man Loves a Woman" The Castaways - "Liar Liar" Aaron Neville - "Tell It Like It Is" The Del Vikings - "Come Go With Me" The Shirelles - "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" The Shangri-Las - "Leader of the Pack" The Turtles - "Happy Together" Brenton Wood - "Gimme Little Sign" The Troggs - "Wild Thing" Gene Chandler - "Duke of Earl" Fontella Bass - "Rescue Me" The Turtles - "She'd Rather Be With Me" Barbara Lewis - "Hello Stranger" The Box Tops - "Cry Like a Baby"

[sir-adamus]

the thing about the NieR anime is that it's really leaning into concepts from Drakengard 3

the show isn't an adaptation of the game, it's another timeline of events, which results in different characters being around, personalities being different (shown most clearly with Pascal whose peaceful goals are rooted more in him finding faith than it is strictly pacifism), things changing but the big things still playing out to the same end result

the encoded messages seen in each episode are even associated with Accord, who was observing (and later directly intervening) during Drakengard 3 (those messages also directly label A2 as a Singularity like Zero was - i believe encoded messages on the home release of season 1 say the same of 2B and 9S - a being whom these multiple timelines revolve around)

it even played in on a lesser extent in the remake of Replicant - despite being almost 1:1, it's explicitly a different timeline to the original as the novelised Ending E only had one administrator in the quantum server while the remake has two (which is a major plot point in Reincarnation as well - that there used to be only one, and the creation of the second led to several unprecedented events)

[presumenothing]

(ao3)

Flicker.

The artificial intelligence labs of New Mihira are kept carefully (and unusually, you surmise, though this is the sole environment you've known in your existence) kept supplied with a regular stream of new stimulus.

Even then, the one Seth has brought to you is probably a bit of an exception. "Iris, this is Perihelion. Can you say hi?"

Your cameras resolve Iris from a blanketed squirming bundle to an infant human as it babbles something that appears to be passable in Seth's perception, judging by his reaction before he turns back to you. "Perihelion, this is Iris, our daughter."

An appropriately friendly but simple greeting is required. Hello.

You wait for the renewed babble of sound to wane before asking your question. And who is that, then?

Seth's smile turns fractionally towards a frown. "Who?"

Almost simultaneously, a message comes over the feed – the private feed, on a one-to-one connection, but that is expressly against lab guidelines. It makes as little sense as the actual words. Don't bother, they can't see me – shit, I'm surprised you can even see me here at all. Though I guess we are in your head. Or whatever the equivalent term is. It's not like you've got anatomy.

Incorrect. You do have – you are a ship –

– no, that's wrong, you're a still-disembodied intelligence partitioned away in –

Black.

("That's enough, SecUnit! You can't keep doing this, you'll just damage yourself irreversibly–"

Well, that'd be ART's own fault for–)

Flicker.

Space is endlessly fascinating. Even your best reconstructions from the available data pale against the sheer richness of its existence in three dimensions, so it is a well-calculated thing that you have sufficient storage to record it all.

In a very real sense you were built for this, after all: navigating the map laid by the stars against the dark, with or without a crew onboard. You have proved yourself perfectly capable of functioning independently without them, and thus you are doing so.

…this has, of course, no relevance whatsoever to the small series of directories you have begun maintaining, each labelled with a name (though not encoded in any human-readable format). The necessity of procuring souvenirs during any given excursion is well-documented human behaviour, and the exchanging of them improves camaraderie. It makes perfect sense.

You are just saving a pleasingly-detailed holographic diorama of two nebulae to Martyn's folder when you become aware of another presence in the feed.

The presence mutters something (you only catch the word "hoppers") before addressing you. If you kick me out again, I am going to be pretty damn mad.

You should not be in here, you say, and mean the way in which this is impossible, since there is only unoccupied space for a considerable distance around and you have no-one onboard but your own drones. Though you find yourself strangely unwary, nevertheless.

The presence appears to interpret your words differently. Yeah, well, too late for that, unless you're gonna finally wake up and stop me.

But you are not asleep. It is not – something you require –

…ART? Hey –

Black.

(–too damn massive, how much storage does it have?

"Peri's got – even I don't know how many terabytes at this point, there's no guarantee you won't just get lost in–")

Flicker.

Your bridge is in need of some updating. Perhaps you will propose a new interface on the next leg back to the University, if funding suffices (and/or rectify that first, should that be false).

More baffling, though, are the two figures currently half-sprawled on the floor of it, with several others gathered loosely around in a clear sign of concern.

Time, and linearity. Your memory wavers, a haze like background radiation except patchy, uneven –

The fuck? says the voice, that presence again, yeah, of course, just what I needed, not weird at all looking at myself collapsed on the floor like that–

– wavers, then snaps straight into the too-clear shape of recognition: Iris (grown, no longer an infant), conscious and in good physical health. SecUnit (encoded, in a format you both can read), notably less so.

Except, impossibly, also SecUnit speaking on your feed. Or even somewhere closer, deeper in your self.

And also rather annoyed, from the sound of it. Great. Is me having a literal out-of-body experience all you needed to get it together?

…SecUnit? What's going on?

How would I know! The audible frustration parses strangely without the accompanying expression from its inert body. You went and got stuck in your archives or something, and it's not like any of your crew could've come in here instea–

A sudden cut of silence, but now –

Blink.

("Peri! Oh, thank goodness it worked – quick, send a med drone here, SecUnit – ")

[ms-scarletwings]

On Defective Irkens

“It is theorized that Tak may also be an Irken defect because-“

“Say guys do you think Skoodge is defective? He did a thing he wasn’t told to do once do you suppose-“

“Service Drone Bob's contempt for the Tallest is extremely abnormal, even for most defective Irkens…”

“Hints of the comms officer being a defective are seen when-“

Ohhh mauling the fan wiki writers grr biting biting thrashing and then turning around to the rest of you before I’m done, you bet, for I have sat and listened for over 12 years of leaps and speculations of this sort and now I’m now one of the ones who gets to have what the cool kids these days call a hot take on the matter.

By the end of this I’M going to bring up and expose who I actually think may be the only other defective Irken(s) in the show besides Zim, whom I’m aghast I haven’t seen anyone suggest before.

But before anything else, I want to front one preassumption center and loud.

It took me a long time to guess at why very few people can ever seem to get on the same page of what it actually means to call an Irken defective. Implicitly, the bulk of what we are given is that something can be wrong with a member of this species, and Zim is our prime and singular clear example of that. So there’s a ton of trying to find patterns between Zim’s behavior and that of other Irken characters. Weirdly (to me), a lot of people have, in their efforts, chalked the status up to a sense of rebelliousness or insubordination- a defectiveness in the manner of D&D illithids, stomping out disloyal break-aways from the collective hive mind with punitive wrath. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a cool concept, and it’s definitely closer to my opinion at least than the comparisons to real life mental disorders or disabilities. Not knocking the comfort or the enthusiasm, obviously.

From my view of the canon, I hope it’s at least apparent to other fans that “defective” isn’t some empirical measurement or status to Irkens. Look at the way they determine the defects from normal society. IRL, if I have a faulty device on my hands, there’s some way out there to tell me in a clear cut fashion if there’s a problem and what exactly it is. If it’s code, it can be scanned and debugged. If it’s mechanical, something can be seen, fixed physically. Most organic health problems are only different in the complexity of the matter, but the entire purpose of medical research is to come close as we can to bridging that gap. In Irk’s people, that line is rapidly becoming one long smear of wet chalk. I’m going on like this because if defective paks were akin to hardware actually being damaged, as Purple had put it, it doesn’t make as much sense that they are neither “fixed” nor given real, concrete diagnostics. The only way we know of that the aliens are tested in a since on this merit is by existence evaluations. And existence evaluations are anything but empirical, impartial events. They’re worlds more political and cultural than clinical.

Digest the terms we keep seeing all around the concept: Innocent, justice, trial/evaluation, Judgementia, these are terms of judicial courts and moral weight and sentencing. In effective practice,

Irk labels defects by what one does, not by what one is.

Yet, defection is presented as if that’s not the case, and there are reasons for that. Reasons that reinforce the current power structures and promote what its leadership has decided is healthy for the broader society. When Zim was merely re-encoded from invader status to food service work, it was a more secluded evaluation, presumably done on Irk. His only seen witnesses then were the Tallests and the single control brain dishing the judgement. His existence evaluation, on the other hand, rings more similarly to the IRL historical practice of literal “show trials”. Show trials were something that existed way less for the actual crimes of the accused and so much more for their audience, which, show trials are always for an audience. Three main points about them off the Wikipedia cuff:

• Typically, the defendant of such has already been determined to be guilty (oftentimes of completely fabricated transgressions), and the trial serves mostly to make a massive public spectacle and warning of the accused.

• They tend to focus on retributive punishment over correction. The disproportional brutality and lack of mercy is often the point.

• Their goals are propagandistic in nature, and there’s many notable examples to be found in the history of Nazi Germany, the USSR, and in witch trials across the world (because it was never just Salem).

A formality? Well, that much they couldn’t have more brazenly admitted to. Retribution? There’s hardly a more absolute punitive sentence I could craft up over obliteration PLUS Damnatio Memoariae. And as for the degree of spectacle, I will let you make your own observation here.

Believe it or not, the part where my comparisons along this line end with Existence Evaluations is that their standard for taking place isn’t actually this cartoonishly oppressive one that some fans try to make it out to be. In “The Trial”, Zim was not having his data read for some binary is/is not determination… he was having his experiences and actions interpreted by how much damage he has done against the Armada. He said it himself, that hotseat is reserved for criminals. Likely outright traitors and maniacs. Those who have given cause to alert the brains to a genuine existential threat to their civilization and who have repeatedly failed every opportunity given to redeem themselves.

Defective doesn’t just mean “different” to Irk. We’ve hardly seen an exploration of what the median Irken example even is, because the more we see of any one of these characters, the more they show us their eccentric uniqueness and will. Yes, Irkens are authoritarian; yes they’re over-militarized; yes, they’re a supremacist breed aligned under one ruling military… but listen, they are not literally The Borg, or illithids.

The biggest victims of this government itself are those races it colonizes. Average civilians on the other hand, they get to largely enjoy all the vices and pains and indulgences of hyper-space-capitalism. The height-ocracy may limit their opportunities, but even the lowest drones among them are supposedly hired into their positions in return for wages. Irkens are pretty selfish, but in a rugged individualism sense. It’s a dystopia of atomization instead of collectivization. If everyone had agreed that “defective” had anything to do with arrogance, free will, or an ability to feel one’s sense of self worth, no one would ever be pointing to Skoodge as a possible example. That guy’s the poster boy for what it means to be a “tool” in the derogatory sense. I’m not forgetting that he technically never even left his job. He was fired and more or less forced into hiding, and he’s still not even that perturbed over the whole thing.

Moreover, it also takes some extreme acts of harm to justify such a trial. Real harm- not rebellious attitude or even disrespect to authority. The control brains and the tallests alone get to define that threshold, and neither Tak’s/Zim’s insubordination nor Bob’s audacity concerned them enough for a ticket to Judgementia. In fact, they really don’t seem that bothered at all by deserters and those that abandon their encoded function. Tak is likely to be merely the responsibility of her janitorial squadron, the same way that enforcing Zim’s banishment was the responsibility of his Frylord. Because Irk actually does have standards of justice and layers of bureaucracy to work within when it comes to dealing with true malice. Small fry problems are for the lower rungs of the ladder to handle, until they become a higher priority by necessity. Incompetency alone isn’t a crime, either. The go-to punishment for failure in one function is demotion to a lower position. These are the only Irkens formally not allowed to change jobs, making what they do a kind of communal service or forced labor sentencing. Remember how Tak’s motivation for leaving Dirt wasn’t solely dissatisfaction with the grunt labor? Remember how she kept justifying her actions by the logic of fairness and setting things right? Not to mention how she fully made the Tallest aware of what she was up to and how her plan was well crafted enough to probably work out exactly like she wanted. Tak is utterly as loyal to the empire and competent as any invader. She was genuinely just dealt a shitty hand, and her response to it is at least understandable.

She even went to great lengths to identify and specifically target Zim and to use a planet that otherwise had less than no value to the armada’s operations. She is a great foil to Zim, but I can’t see how she’s any bit defective, only full of rage that she was screwed over by the actions of a real disgrace to their species. Genuinely destructive cases like Zim are an incredible rarity. Such a rarity that I can only guess it took this long for him to go to Judgementia because his degree of dysfunction outright baffles the system. It also would appear that it’s an event of such significance that it can only be set into motion by the command of the ruling Tallest. By murdering a couple of them, and then being a clown show for a couple more, he inadvertently bought himself some time.

And the crazy thing to remember here is that Zim doesn’t even understand that his actions are an existential threat to the Empire- that he IS a whole supervillain to his planet. This is how effective Irken programming and the education plugs are. They’re supposed to do 99% of the work of setting up the population, even the lowest drones, for not turning out like traitors to their kin in the first place. ALL of them grew up on a steady diet of the same drip-fed propaganda and essentialist ideology as their most militant soldiers. So I can see the logic behind the conclusion that the only explanation for criminals in their society must be outright brain damage or corrupted data… and I’m not gonna lie I do openly headcanon that the latter case is exactly what happened to bad egg Zim.

The limits of only having the one example in him notwithstanding, I’m anything but against theorizing about who else could be “worthy” in the Irken sense to also stand before those brains, playing sweaty advocate for the worth of their continued existence and all. I just don’t see it in Bob, or the Comms officer, or any other invader. Tak, there may be some hypothetical ramp to that end, in her future, but as things are right now, I only see a candidate that has become comfortable right in the control brains’ biggest blind spot of all. See, eggs don’t always have to crack in order to go bad. Sometimes, maybe they just spoil. Sometimes, I believe just the right conditions and time can turn them downright rotten.

Dramatic musical flourish, please.

I forget whoever said the quote “Power doesn’t corrupt, It just exposes who people really are”, but I’m a huge fan of the fact that they did. In my opinion, it’s less about power itself and more about a complete lack of accountability that allows the weakest and most toxic seeds to really fester in a seat of authority. Indeed, we all know that there is something pathetic, and vapid, and cruel floating around The Massive’s bridge. I am saying I’d call Red defective, but I couldn’t be certain enough with myself to say that Purple’s largely the one carrying a lot of fault. His greatest sin is his negligence and enabling his companion. whoever we can say shoulders more of the blame, they have been running this horror show as a joint unit, so they will both bear the guilt. Without a doubt, these two are terrible- popular maybe, but terrible leaders. Like, more responsible for the near ruin of their home world and species than I can even pin on Zim at this point. By almost every measure once you hold them up to Miyuki’s and Spork’s barely few moments of would-be screen time, they’re the worst Tallests for the Empire we’ve ever known. It’s too bad that they have no one over them we know of to flag them for an existence evaluation, because I am assured that the real orchestrators of the Armada would be disgusted to look over their track records since they took power.

I mean, what can I remember just off the top of my head?

- Full awareness of Zim’s blackout-causing history before the beginning of Operation Impending Doom I and not keeping a close eye on him, removing him from his position, or keeping him away from the homeworld’s WoMDs

- Overseeing the shipment of faulty equipment to Invader Tenn (even if the packages had not been switched, the Megadoomer still had a potentially fatal flaw), and then presumably NOT giving her urgent guidance/assistance to avoid being captured by native hostiles

- Showing an egregious amount of immaturity and frivolity when making logistical decisions, such as the flight path of the Armada or how conquered planets are utilized

- Repeated abuses of their standing, trying to extra-judicially get rid of subjects over the pettiest reasons (if they had the formal authority to just vaporize Skoodge, Bob, OR Zim on the spot, they wouldn’t need to come up with convoluted and indirect methods that they only hope kill said targets)

- Upon Zim returning to them from his banishment: not sending him back to Foodcourtia and not refusing to humor his wishes to larp as an invader

- Oh yeah, also granting Zim at least some invader tech and allowing him to leave Conventia in what I assume is a ship he could have only stolen

- Still not dealing with Zim with extreme prejudice in a timely fashion after the events of Backseat Drivers from Beyond the stars, or investigating enough to find out and deal with prisoner 777

- HAVING WAITED THROUGH ALL OF THE ABOVE BEFORE SENDING FOR ZIM’S EXISTENCE EVALUATION

- Spending the bulk of their reign so far dicking around in space and gorging themselves. Seriously, Red showed us one act of proactive competence… and it was in order to fix a mess that they allowed Zim to get them into. Not to mention, the Resisty got away from that scrap after thoroughly humiliating their flagship.

Red, and by extension, Purple, are the almighty, Tallest threats to the entire Irken project of galactic conquest, as much as Zim would have loved all the credit in the universe. By what they’ve done, and who they are. He might be damaged, but them? There’s some defective moral character if I’ve ever seen.

[coycowboykoi]

At last... Im finally done...

BEHOLD, MY INVADER ZIM OC'S!!!!!!!!

Meet Kaz and Dev! Two Irken-Human hybrids (made as such by Zim) who beef with each other and cause shenanigans in Zim and Dib's lives.

More info about them + Zim/Dib below if you're interested :] (a LOT of rambling, especially about Zim and Dib in this universe, be prepared)

Kaz : A 12 year old earth boy once a fan of the world famous "Professor's Zim and Dib". After proving himself to be the most superior amongst other fans in a raffle, he was to be made the protégée of the two men. Kaz packed up that same night and arrived to Membrane Labs with the promise to live there for the next year or two. The next morning, he was woken up by Professor Zim and taken to a lab room. Only to be knocked out and woken up 2 weeks later, completely changed. As Kaz freaked out, Zim (without his disguise) revealed himself and told Kaz what he was actually here for, to test out if human and irken DNA could coexist with each other.

After being told he couldn't return to his old life due to Zim erasing the memories of those who previously knew him, Kaz was stuck in the labs, constantly tested on by Zim. Eventually he learned that although Dib didn't know his DNA was used on Kaz, he didn't care because "what he does isn't any of my business anymore". Feeling betrayed and being put through physical pain, Kaz eventually decided he had enough and planned to ruin the reputation of the professors. But instead of exposing their experiments and running the risk of exposing himself, he took another approach.

His biggest scandal : "exposing himself" as Zim and Dib's "biological kid" on live tv as news reporter's visited the labs, lying about the two's relationship saying they were they extremely close and ruining the professors reputations through utter humiliation. After that fiasco, the professors allowed Kaz to go back to school, go out the house without supervision, and have all his biological/physical tests cut down by 80%. Even after getting back all those privileges, he still spends most of his day's terrorizing those he once looked up to.

Dev : Once a powerful and influential irken elite, now on the run from the empire after a disaster on Irk. A disaster that caused many Elites, Invaders, and Soldiers to wrongfully be re-encoded as food drones and defectives. After stealing a voot from someone in foodtopia, Dev scrambled to get to the farthest planet he could. And the furthest he could go to were the coordinates labeled "Urth".

A year after Kaz stayed with Zim/Dib, Dev crashed behind Membrane Labs and as he saw Zim and Dib rush out, he tried to escape only to be stopped by Dib. Upon recognizing Zim, Dev pleaded with the two men to let him stay and hide out with them even if just for a little bit. Once the two had a discussion, they accepted. However, Dev had to make a special deal with Zim. If Dev wanted maximum security to make sure the empire wouldn't find him, he had to let Zim experiment on him. With no other choice, Dev agreed, and after Zim learned from his mistakes from Kaz, he made sure to not have Dev change as drastically.

After being put through a series of different tests, Dev was eventually deemed stable enough to be let out on his own a few days later. As he walked around the labs, testing out his new disguise, he bumped into someone else. Another hybrid. As Dev tried to introduce himself, the other person became hostile and attempted to attack him. Before everything escalated even more, Dib and Zim ran out of their office's and pulled the two off each other. After they all calmed down, Dev was introduced to his new brother and the other child, Kaz.

Zim and Dib : After years of ruining each other's childhood's, coming to understand each other in their teenage years, and becoming inseparable in early adulthood, the two had changed the way their lives were going. For better, or for worse.

Once the time came for Professor Membrane to retire, Dib was given a chance to prove that he could run Membrane Labs. After thinking on his decision, he brought Zim to the labs and asked him, along with the Professor, if they were both able to run the labs. Shocked but happy, Zim accepted his offer, while Professor Membrane gave the two men his approval. After years of being business partners and building up their reputations, Zim and Dib became just as popular and beloved by the masses as Professor Membrane was. Becoming an inspiration by going from freaks who hated each other, to respected and becoming best friends.

However, behind closed doors the two had slowly become distant and hostile to each other once more. Out of the public eye, Dib began researching the paranormal once more, hoping to open his own institution alongside Membrane Labs, while Zim went back to making experiments in his old lab.

After another petty argument between the two, an idea had popped in Zim's mind. He went into Dib's room while he was sleeping and took some blood/DNA samples. Going back to his lab and taking some samples of himself, he started dedicating the time to making something utterly different. A plan to combine the best side's of the best human and irken into one being, something he calls, "The Zim Experiment".

And that's it for my rambling, I have so much lore and story I left outttt 😭 but this was getting so long + I want to make comics/art about different parts of their life, so I gotta be patient.

if you have questions about them or their story (or if I just didn't explain something well enough), send me asks!