#the voyage: year 1

[writingmochi]

ｌｏａｄｉｎｇ ｉｎｔｅｒｆａｃｅ．．．

you have reached year 1

lissie: hello from space and time! if you don't know who i am, i am the owner (aka flight director) and writer of the blog and this post is in celebration of the one-year anniversary of me creating stories and posting them here. i don't think i can't express the gratitude i have for everyone who has read my works, silently or with feedback, and all the people i have interacted with here. so this is a recap for me and maybe for new visitors that come to know what has happened on this blog.

p.s. yes, the anniversary of this blog is enhypen's jake's birthday because my first work was released for his birthday.

let's get to it!

all research done (read: works written and released)

a story of two broken hearts | enhypen's jake (9.5k [novellete])

time wave | txt's yeonjun (8 chapters; 72.8k [novel])

smirch episode 1: heeseung | enhypen's heeseung (25.7k [novella])

crossroads | enhypen's jay (39.3k [novella])

ashen | txt's beomgyu (18.7k [novella])

total: 12 works (8 chaptered series, 4 oneshots) and 166k words written

all the navigators connected (read: mutuals)

@kookthief

how are you doing, ellie? hope you have a very nice day whenever and wherever you read this message!

@orpheyeux (via @ujunxverse)

camille! it’s sad to see you go and enhablr losing a great writer but it has been an enjoyable time to discuss with you about your stories (though i haven’t read all of them :( ). hope you enjoy life cause it seems that you are and i hope you’ll succeed with all your endeavors, especially with your zine and college !!

@euphor1a

hi aleyna! how are you doing these days? hope you’ll have a fantastic day/night and you can reach out to me whenever you want 💕

@heartandfangs

P! idk if you’re online or not but if you do, how are you?? hope you’re doing a-okay :D though i miss your writing but pls take your time!

@jeongwins

lin i swear i still reread you review for crossroads asdfghjkl sad to know that life is hectic for you but i’m giving you my energy! i’ve also seen that’s you posted your wip and i’m sure i’m gonna read it! take your time and hope you have a great day!

@s-ngh8n (via @s-ngh8n-main)

lemon! losing passion is normal and i really don’t mind if you decide to stop altogether. hope you have a fine day seeing as you’re opening new chapters in life <3

@boba-beom

hey smiles! don’t worry uni is also as hectic for me (a month before finals asdfghjk). with that said, take your time and have a nice day :D

@dim-sun

hi zu!! so excited to see a new writer coming (no pressure though) + i’m also sad about treasure :( take your time and enjoy the process, i swear you won’t regret it! have a great day!

director's journal entries (read: all the rants i have thought out the past year. some are genuine, some are sarcastic):

is it normal to have such a parasocial relationship with a mutual because you're excited to talk to them but they don't seem to care for you? just me? okay

yall are very dirty istg! i even block some of yall who literally thirst for them irl cuz i felt so uncomfy. i'm currently hiding behind the fictional story blanket

bruh it would be so embarrassing to know that your idols lurk here (esp related to the previous entry)

as much as i love my followers, pls interact with me... i felt like i'm talking to a void if i post anything other than a fic

the discourse istg yall are petty

ignore them. don't be a boot licker. they'll ignore you anyways

as much as i love tropes, can we get more stories that innovate on those tropes??

the difference in the number of notes between a smut fic and non-smut fic asdfghjkl all of yall's hormones are shaking

hey! i'm happy to see that the ratio between written fic and smau are decreasing from time to time (love smau but as someone who doesn't use the main social medias other than youtube, i'm out of touch)

a gray asexual's note to a great smut fic at tumblr dot com: 1.smut fic whose smut isn't the main part of the fic (give me substance, give me a story, give me LORE!) 2.let it be realistic, let the reader be tired after being obliterated all night (they're hurting outside and inside genuinely) 3.we can see how horny you are for the idol based on how you write your fic. you can chill down and let the story flow~

i'm freaking jealous w/ writers who have high interaction. i wanna have one myself but for it to be genuine so i don't have to be a pretentious ass/attention seeker

as much as i understand the amount of writers who hates empty blogs (aka w/o pfp or name), if they interact w/ your fics then there is a human behind it (unless it's a p*rn bot than f u)… hmm but maybe it’s just be me thinking positively…

notable moments from the past year

blogs open!

joining @indigoseasons as a writer

reaching 100!

first series ever (time wave) complete!

what’s next?

lissie: well, of course i’m going to write the ones in my wips post and even though i have some that has been pulled out from the list, it doesn’t mean that i will not write them. it will move to the back of my wips instead.

i also have a plan to create a kpop ff recommendation and writer’s club blog. the climate of kpop ff writing and reading in general has been too serious (imo) so i want to create that blog with the emphasis of the fun of writing a story and reading a story. so, stay tune to that!

lissie: with all of that said, i cannot thank all of you enough for the support, the kind words, the criticism. cheers!

[spockvarietyhour]

Parallels and Divergences "Before and After" & "Year of Hell Pt. 1"

[thedawntreaders]

thinking about how we don't give eustace nearly enough credit for his initial reaction to coming to narnia — like the crew shits on him for being grouchy on the dawn treader but imagine if his first trip to narnia happened along with the pevensies' first trip and he didn't stick up for jadis's bullshit (aunt letty style)

jadis, attempting to appear threatening: you, son of adam, will face the wrath of my-

eustace: don't address me are you crazy?

[emillungs]

my laptop is broken so i offer you a traditionally inked janeway with an old pen

[larkspurglove]

Maybe if I cope hard enough song 21 or 22 is Man of the House-

[bumblingbabooshka]

Young Teacher Tuvok Patreon | Ko-fi

[thecurioustale]

Neptune BLUE!

I spent a day-and-a-half on Friday and Saturday researching the planet Neptune in order be able to write a scene in Galaxy Federal about a Neptunian planet.

All my fiction entails a high degree of research, since I am an expert in nothing other than writing itself yet I seek to convey great verisimilitude and accuracy in my work. One of my greatest hopes for my fiction is that people will be able to read it and, when my prose touches on their areas of expertise, they'll be able to nod in satisfaction and say "That's how it really is." And, so, I am ever researching things as I write.

But most of this stuff is just flesh for the background. When, in contrast, a scene comes around where I have to research literally every part of it, it becomes a much more demanding exercise! In this case I wanted to be able to describe Cherry standing on a platform at the top of a Neptunian world, and, while this may sound like a simple ask—"It's blue, right? And cloudy?"—it's definitely not.

What is the composition of the atmosphere? What color is the sky above? What color are the clouds? Are there different types of clouds? Are they above or below? What are their shapes? What are the wind conditions? Relative to what? What are the temperature conditions? At different altitudes? What are the pressure conditions? What consequences of extremely low-pressure environments should I be aware of? Where do all the different sky and cloud colors come from? How do the colors compare to one another? What do the near-infrared and near-UV look like? Might there precipitation? What would it be like? What would the air smell like? How would sunset affect the colors of whatever happens to be visible? Is there any relevant photochemistry affecting atmospheric conditions, and if so what is it? Can the planet's rings be inclined outside the equatorial plane? What is its gravity? How bright is its sun?

Most of these questions need to be answered not in order to literally convey the information in prose, but simply to make sure that I don't accidentally get the narrative details wrong. There are resources that describe Neptune's highest clouds as reddish; others say white; others still say bluish—and all of them are referring to those clouds as seen from above, not below.

I do have some control over the variables. A question like "How windy is it?" can be answered "Right now, it's whatever you need for it to be." But that's sloppy, and I like to minimize my slop. So, for precision, someone like me would have to go and learn a little bit about the Neptunian winds—all while taking care not to overgeneralize Neptune's specific example. (Thankfully we have Uranus for a comparison, but unfortunately Uranus isn't always so helpful, as it basically looks like a sleeping kitten.)

Another confounding factor is that the Internet seems to be becoming a worse and worse medium for doing this kind of esoteric fact-based research. Many resources are simply not reliable (being little more than unaudited discussions on message forums), and the search results are forever clogged with irrelevant or insufficiently detailed results. ("Hey, kids! Did you know that Neptune is a PLANET and that it is BLUE?!") At one point I thought about just buying a whole book on Neptune, but I discounted that because, for one thing, scope creep, and, for another thing, Neptunian planetary science is a surprisingly active area of research and we are still learning fundamentally new things about Neptune's atmosphere even today. Lots of books about it are already outdated!

I enjoy research, thankfully, and I certainly put in a tour-de-force for this one, reading dozens of webpages and watching hours of videos. I dodged a lot of bullets because of my research, like not accidentally having my characters' blood boil by setting the air pressure below the Armstrong Limit. And in the end, I wrote a good, solid, 2,500-word scene. It's beautiful, and, I hope, it's breathtaking.

But even so, for all my research I was aware that I am still not actually any closer to being an expert on Neptunian worlds, and I knew that my research was very thin by this measure, and that my depth of understanding remains poor. And so I knew the likelihood for mistakes was high—and that's not even counting the areas where I decided to give up and let slop win. (In the end I just made up an answer for the question of what the air smells like.)

Sure enough, a few hours after I had finished writing the scene on Saturday night, it occurred to me: "Wait a minute, J! What would it sound like to talk in that air, if one were to breathe it in? It's almost entirely hydrogen and helium!"

I rushed back and did a bit of emergency research, and discovered the answer that I had feared, and had to revise the scene accordingly to ensure that anyone inhaling that air speaks in a high pitched-voice. And that, my friends, is why some scenes are better in writing than in movies!

^ _ ^

[blueiskewl]

Voyager Probes Still Going Strong After 45 Years

Most of the space community's attention is on the delayed Artemis launch, but one of NASA's oldest projects is still motoring along, and it could continue for many more years.

As much of the space community’s attention remains focused on the delayed Artemis rocket launch and the return to the moon, two relics of the Space Age continue to  make their way across the void between the stars, sending back valuable information to scientists on Earth.

The Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 space probes launched 45 years ago, the first on Aug. 20, 1977  and the second on Sept. 5, and they are now the farthest human-made objects from Earth, at about three times the distance of Pluto from the Sun.

Measurements indicate both probes left the interstellar bubble of our solar system a few years ago. But they’re getting old, and so engineers have been progressively shutting down their systems in the hope that their fading batteries can provide enough power for just a few more years. After that, the probes will shut down completely, and could coast through space forever.

“The two Voyagers have become our first interstellar travelers, sending back information about a place that we’ve never visited before,” said Linda Spilker, NASA’s deputy project scientist on the Voyager missions at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

It now takes about 22 hours for radio signals from Earth to cover the more than 15 billion miles to Voyager 1, the farthest probe, and another 22 hours to receive its reply. Spilker, who’s worked on the probes since the first launch in 1977, said that keeping contact with them has been a monumental effort using the largest radio telescopes of the Deep Space Network, which NASA uses to relay commands to its spacecraft.

The Voyagers were a big deal when they launched at the height of the Space Age. Their main purpose was to make the first explorations of the solar system’s gas giants and their moons — Jupiter and Saturn by both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 in 1979 and 1981, and Uranus and Neptune by Voyager 2 in 1986 and 1989, respectively.

The high-resolution color photographs they took and the data they recorded are still crucial to scientific studies today. Their final photo was the Pale Blue Dot, a portrait of the solar system taken by Voyager 1 in 1990, at about 6 billion miles away from Earth.

After their dramatic planetary fly-bys, however, the Voyager probes began a quieter phase of their journey, heading for the very edges of our solar system and beyond. Onboard instruments that measure charged particles in space indicate Voyager 1 left the protective bubble of particles emitted by the sun in 2012, while Voyager 2 left it in 2018. That means that both probes are now technically in interstellar space — between stars — and yet they are still sending back vital data from their onboard instruments, Spilker said.

Where the Voyager probes have led, others will follow. A panel to set the nation’s scientific priorities for the next 10 years is considering a proposal for a $3.1 billion Interstellar Probe (IP) that could reach the Voyagers’ current location in as little as 15 years. If it’s approved in 2024, the probe could be launched by 2036.

Ralph McNutt, who heads space science at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, has worked on the Voyager missions for his entire career. He witnessed the Voyager 1 launch in September 1977, and he’s now a leader of the IP project.

“We can get to a speed of about twice that of Voyager 1, and get about twice as far before the Interstellar Probe runs out of power,” he said.

The newer probe would be much more capable than the Voyagers, which were built with 45-year-old technology, and the project’s planners now have a much better idea of what’s possible and what to expect on the journey.

The key transmitter on the new probe and its instruments, including magnetometers and spectrometers, would be many times more powerful than their 1977 equivalents. And the IP could also visit some of the mysterious Kuiper Belt objects in the outer reaches of the solar system, which are thought to be the origins of some comets, McNutt said.

Until the Interstellar Probe gets the green light, however, the Voyagers will be humanity’s foremost representatives in interstellar space. In about 40,000 years, Voyager 1 will get relatively close to another star in the constellation Camelopardalis, while Voyager 2 will near a star in the constellation of Andromeda on its way to the giant star Sirius, which it will reach in roughly 300,000 years.

Long before then, however — in as little as 10 years — both Voyager probes will completely run out of power, Spilker said. Each probe is powered by plutonium batteries, but they’ve already started to weaken, and every few months NASA engineers order the probes to shut down a few more of their onboard systems. Their hope is that they can eke enough power out of the batteries so some of the instruments can keep working, at least until the 50th anniversary of the twin launches in 2027.

After that, who knows?

“Fingers crossed, if everything goes as planned, we could get to the 2030s,” she said.

Whenever their power does finally run out, the Voyager probes will serve as “silent ambassadors” to the stars, Spilker said. Each probe is carrying a record, imprinted on gold, of sounds on Earth, including a baby’s cry, a whale’s song, music by Mozart and Chuck Berry, and greetings in 55 different languages.

“Maybe some other civilization will find them, and will want to know more about the Earth,” Spilker said.

By Tom Metcalfe.

[thresholdbb]

Year of Hell

It’s only 257 days of hell

Almost 37 weeks of hell

8 1/2 months of hell

3 seasons of hell

[wonderofasunrise]

The kiss lasts only a few seconds at most, though for both of them it feels like an eternity has passed. They have kissed many times before, yet this one feels even more special as it signifies another step forward in their relationship, a step that neither expected to ever take. They both know that from this time on there is no going back, nor do they ever want to, and as they pull away and stare at each other they know that they have found home.

[fullmetal-angelgrace]

bro wtf, shouldn't janeway have immediately recognized the Krenim from what kes told her about them??? and they didn't know anything about the chroniton torpedoes??? is it because the krenim messed with time? or???

[spockvarietyhour]

3 different encounters with a border guard "Year of Hell Pt. 1 & 2"

[cidthecoatrack-blog]

Y'all, the world is sleeping on what NASA just pulled off with Voyager 1

The probe has been sending gibberish science data back to Earth, and scientists feared it was just the probe finally dying. You know, after working for 50 GODDAMN YEARS and LEAVING THE GODDAMN SOLAR SYSTEM and STILL CHURNING OUT GODDAMN DATA.

So they analyzed the gibberish and realized that in it was a total readout of EVERYTHING ON THE PROBE. Data, the programming, hardware specs and status, everything. They realized that one of the chips was malfunctioning.

So what do you do when your probe is 22 Billion km away and needs a fix? Why, you just REPROGRAM THAT ENTIRE GODDAMN THING. Told it to avoid the bad chip, store the data elsewhere.

Sent the new code on April 18th. Got a response on April 20th - yeah, it's so far away that it took that long just to transmit.

And the probe is working again.

From a programmer's perspective, that may be the most fucking impressive thing I have ever heard.

[xipe-slayground]

[walkthevalley]

It's my 1 year anniversary on Tumblr 🥳

This blog was started in the beginning of the absolute darkest season of my life. I thought it might act as a sort of sanity project. I figured if someone could get something good out of this God-forsaken time of my life, then at least it wouldn't be COMPLETELY pointless. Because I couldn't imagine that all this suffering, all this pain, all this aftermath of being robbed of what I held most prized and precious, could be for no purpose. It just COULDN'T be completely irrational, without reason, a random senseless act of spiritual and emotional violence with no rationale. I knew I'd always been unlucky despite being part Irish, but this was a new level of bad luck and I couldn't swallow the idea that it was a random targeted hit of abuse without some sort of purpose. Martyrdom seemed more tenable than whatever it was I was going through, because at least martyrs are considered special and noble and get posthumous honor for their sacrifice. So I decided to start this sanity project in case someone, somewhere out there in the great big wide world, needed something that I could provide in this damned season, which is the point of my life at which I knew I was damned to live without joy, without goodness, without fulfillment. I was responsible for picking up the pieces of all my broken dreams and putting them in the recycle bin in case someone else could use a piece to build their perfect life. Then my hollow and hopeless future may at least have a tiny dose of purpose...for someone else. Always for someone else. Never for me. I was a fool to think I could enjoy my life for me.

My first few posts on Walk the Valley were, admittedly, masks. I was pretending to be okay, or at least better than I actually was. I was pretending to be well forward on my journey of healing, putting out the image of a strong woman who don't need no man, who may get knocked down but gets right back up and spits on the ground he walks on. I was just pretending. I mean--don't take that the wrong way, what I said was absolutely honest, and I was actually trying to heal, and I don't think what I said before needs to be thrown out--but I was fooling myself. I was trying to put up the image that I was okay, when the truth was that every day I was faced with how dead I was inside and how merciless it was to force my body to carry on when my soul was gone. I was, not to put too fine a point on it, the walking dead. Twice in this season of my life, I flirted with the idea of allowing my body to match my soul. For more on that, read The Flames of Advent: Hope here on Walk the Valley. Probably should come with a trigger warning, as if what I've said so far hasn't needed one as well.

That post about the First Flame of Advent describes the pivotal time in this walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, this blog's namesake, at which my healing became real. Everything before that, well-meaning as it was, was nothing but a band-aid; the Hope candle was the beginning of my real journey of healing, beginning with the super-invasive surgery where they crack your ribs open and butterfly your chest so they can reach your heart, and you basically die for a minute while someone holds your heart in their hands. If you don't like graphic stuff, sorry, go find another blog because here I tell it like it is and imagery is my strong suit.

The heart is a fascinating organ and it can actually legitimately break with enough emotional trauma. This is a great video explaining the relevant heart anatomy and this is a quick detail of the bioscience of why this happens. Enjoy the bioscience behind that, and think before you break another heart.

I guarantee that had someone taken a chest x-ray of me last August, they would have seen tako-tsubo cardiomyopathy, described in the video I linked. Had someone been able to look inside my left ventricular apex, they would have seen those tendons snapped in half. I know what the Hell I felt. My physical heart was broken just as much as my emotional heart was, and the beginning of that healing came the day before Thanksgiving (so, three months later), when I hit rock bottom.

Most people don't realize ... rock bottom is your friend. Be grateful for rock bottom. Rock bottom saves you from being incinerated in the core of the earth.

We call it rock bottom as if it's the worst place you could possibly be. "Nowhere to go but up," somebody remarks glibly, not knowing what else to say but not willing to actually do anything to help either.

But rock bottom has another name. Geologists call it bedrock.

Bedrock is actually the best, most solid, most stable ground you could ever want to build on. Unless you're building on or near a fault line, rock bottom is the absolute best place to start building. It's the most solid foundation you could ask for.

So the next time you're at rock bottom and someone says, "Nowhere to go but up," reply, "Nothing left to do but start building." My smart ass would add, "I don't suppose you'd offer your help?" but you do you, sweetheart. You don't have to be the snarky-shark I am.

So, here we are one year later.

A year of learning the true meaning of healing, of pain, of Hamlet's soliloquy, of rock bottom, of rebirth.

One year later, I now understand that someone did need something out of this blog. Someone did need what I had to say about all this. Someone did need to be understood, to see their own experiences written down to know they're not alone. Someone did need Walk the Valley.

That someone was me.

What say you all, another year?

I believe I have a couple more Flames of Advent to write about.

[bumblingbabooshka]

“As it was in the dawn of our days As it will be for all tomorrows To you, my husband, I consecrate all that I am. T’Pel, my wife. From you I receive all that I am. As it was in the beginning, so shall it be now. Two bodies, one mind.“                                                                   - Pon Farr Ritual Lines

Tuvok can have a little overwhelming guilt, sorrow and heartache as a treat. Also, people need to start talking about that fucking Pon Farr opener because it’s hardcore and so loving. Anyway so I was thinking about the fact that pon farr is a bonding ritual which helps to alleviate fever...how intimate that would be and how it’d feel to have to share that kind of thing with a facsimile of the person you care about.  It’s not just sex, it’s love. And Tuvok loves his wife - to the point that even having sex with a hologram that didn’t look like T’Pel was unacceptable to him. To the point that he noticed that her ears were 4 millimeters too long. It must be difficult knowing that your wife is there, waiting for you, still in love with you, but you can’t reach her.  It must be difficult holding a woman who looks almost exactly like your wife but where she had a mind as familiar to you as your own (a mind which was your own, as yours was hers) this woman has only a static buzz and a voice you half-remember. I think it’d be very complicated and painful! And so so interesting! And I was picturing Tuvok, still under the pon farr’s influence, feeling so bad about not being able to control himself and also missing T’Pel and his children and regretting being trapped in the delta quadrant and just like....crying. All of his emotions from the past few years are just bubbling to the surface. And Holo T’Pel doesn’t know. She can’t help him like the real T’Pel could. She can’t receive his telepathic apology or pain or love and he won’t say it out loud because her inability to respond/understand is painful and in his state he feels the pain is deserved. What use would talking to a hologram be? It would just be even more pathetic. But Holo T’Pel sees that he’s crying she asks what’s wrong and when he doesn’t answer she presses their heads together as if they actually could speak properly, telepathically, and know each other. But they can’t.  They are two bodies, two minds. They will never become one.