#(I mean. Khan feels courted definitely)

[respondedinkind]

your name: Tony Stark

Romantic or platonic?: Either works

A night in or dinner out or an activity?: A night in so that we don't have to deal with the world's press knowing our business

Ice cream or chocolate covered strawberries?: Both, always. Unless you're allergic?

What's your perfect date?: One that involves excitement. Sometimes it's fun to just say fuck it, shall we hop on a jet to somewhere more exotic to have our date?

Would you cook for me?: I could, can't promise that it will be anything fantastic though

Would you let me cook for you?: Sure, I'm willing to let that happen

Can we make-out?: Of course.

Make out in private or in public?: Private works best, unless you're ok with being in the newspapers?

Do you like to cuddle?: ...yes, just don't tell anyone.

Blankets or no blankets for cuddling?: Either. But blankets makes things extra cosy.

Couch or bed?: For cuddling? Couch first, bed second.

What are at least 3 hobbies of yours?: Does saving the world count? If not - classic cars, building tech and.... i do enjoy karaoke ok?

Tell me something about you no else knows: I really enjoy watching romcoms.

Why do you want to be my valentine?: Because I think we could get along well and I'm fascinated by you and your life. Plus you're hot ok?

What makes you a good Valentine?: I might not seem like it but i always take note of what my partner likes and try to incorporate it into our lives. So for example, you tell me that you like when a partner plays with your hair, I'll do that. I'm a bit of a hopeless romantic even if I don't show it.

(@mxrvelouscreations

Valentine's Applications || Accepting

"---Sounds intriguing, all things considered. Most things I'm quite pleased about..."

"...I shall accept this one. Looking forward to find out whether the man behind the application lives up to the expectations he's created."

[irithnova]

Do you think Mongolia misses his children? (Assuming they're all dead)

Hi thank you for this ask!

Yes they are all dead haha, all fell at different times and some much sooner than others but they're dead (the main 3, Golden Horde, Chagatai Khanate and Ilkhanate).

Hm, this is a good question. I like to think that Mongolia isn't always moping about the past and has his mind on the present as much as most other nations do. Though, that doesn't mean he never thinks about it or reflects on it.

I think it depends on what one we're talking about and his feelings towards them if that makes sense? So like around the time they appeared Mongolia was pretty powerful at that point anyways and was riding that high for a while, and when they came about he took them for granted I guess in the sense that he saw them as simply extensions of himself rather than individuals who will grow to have their own interests and will want to pursue them - even if it meant going against him (except for Ilkhanate really).

Don't get me wrong I mean in the early stages they quite literally were the extensions of the Mongol Empire so yeah technically they were extensions of him but they became independent Kingdoms in their own rights and Mongolia who I guess could be described as young and inexperienced with this sort of stuff never really thought forward enough to think "maybe they wouldn't want to be seen as simply extensions of me at some point." Also, Mongolia did kind of treat them more like little brothers for a while instead of his children (again, young + inexperienced) whereas his children always saw him as their father, when he did try and instill some paternal authority over GH and Chagatai Khanate when they started to act out it obviously didn't work.

It is kind of funny though because you could argue to an extent that they did somewhat see Mongolia as an authority but only really symbolically. They'd ask for the Yuan courts approval of certain things or to take part in certain ceremonies but again - this was all done symbolically, even if Mongolia refused they still would have gone ahead with it. I think this did make Mongolia feel validated in the sense that "haha you guys know that my approval matters still" but it was just cope to be honest.

I think sometimes he regrets how things turned out but at the same time, sees their deaths or the division of the Mongol Empire as... inevitable? All nations are self interested, and this was no different to the Khanates who he initially saw as simply being extensions of himself. Once the breakaway Khanates were officially established, it was only a matter of time until shit hit the fan, and it did.

Though unrealistic for numerous reasons, I think at times he wonders what could have been if they all worked harmoniously (or at least mostly harmoniously), the outcome, how much longer would it have lasted. This is also a thought process he goes through when thinking about what could have been if he got along with the Oirats. He does admit to some faults of his own for why things didn't work out sure, but there are also a bunch of political and petty reasons he'd list as well.

He is definitely reminded of them sometimes but I don't think he immediately feels sad when he does. And to be honest I don't think all emotions he feels towards them when remembering them are negative or sad, I think he does actually feels proud towards them and what they were able to achieve (despite turning against him/becoming independent) and because they're not around to talk about those achievements he'll happily claim them on their behalf of course-

He did have contact with his children even after they became independent, there were periods of conflict and friendly relations. The Golden Horde for example opened friendly relations with the Yuan in 1284 and again in 1326 under Ozbeg Khan, and from 1339 onwards he received money annually in the form of Yuan paper money. So it's not like they all went their own ways and never talked to each other at all, they were neighbouring each other so it was inevitable.

I will say though in the final stages of the Yuan, Mongolia get entrenched in his own conflicts with trying to keep a hold of China and the other Khanates also were going through their own shit.

At the time, when Ilkhanate died in the mid 1300s, I do think Mongolia was legitimately distressed/upset by it because Ilkhanate was the one son that didn't turn against him and was the most obedient to him, and of course Mongolia loved that and Ilkhanate was quickly put on a pedestal. Also the youngest son in Mongol culture was expected to stay closer to the family anyways and kinda take care of them and he fulfilled that duty I guess by remaining close to the Yuan . I think even now Mongolia can get a little upset when talking about Ilkhanate in particular if you really prod him on it.

With Chagatai Khanate, he always kind of butted heads with him I guess (which I guess makes sense because they had similar personalities lol) and was furious at how much of a shit stirrer Chagatai Khanate came to eventually be but I guess he does acknowledge that he probably should have given him more attention and supposes that if he wasn't his son or something then they could have potentially been good friends because of their similar personalities and interests or that. He could have indulged Chagatai Khanate more on his interests regardless LOL

And then with Golden Horde, I think he has the most,, melancholy feelings towards him if that makes sense? I mean GH was his first born so he's always going to that special status in his heart, not only that but Golden Horde carved out an impressive legacy for himself and became this kind of,, hard to read, aloof figure. Yes Ilkhanate was the wealthiest and you could argue the most "developed" out of his sons but he's kind of seldom talked about because he didn't last too long, whereas the Golden Horde is still talked about to this day and has captured the interest of historians and ordinary folk alike, for both good and bad reasons. I think he did tell GH he was proud of him in the 1330s when friendly relations were open again but he probably did so somewhat drunkenly LMAO.

So, I don't think he dwells on them often and when he is reminded of them it doesn't like. Cause him to spiral or something, he just has some complex feelings about them when he does actually reflect on them.

Whether he "misses" them or not is kind of debatable because missing them would also be missing an era that is long gone because that's really the only context he can remember them in - it'll be hard to picture them returning in the 21st century or something and as I said, Mongolia is just as occupied in the present as all other nations are (along with everything else I've said about Mongolia accepting the fact that an outcome like that was inevitable or at least a possibility because of the inherent self-interested nature of nations).I think maybe he thinks it would be interesting to say one last thing to them or have one last conversation with them though.

[sentofight]

Basillio is gonna lean in to press a lingering kiss to Feiruz as they lay together in bed. Complete with Basilio brushing her shaken hair. "Now, you will stay put and rest, okay? You flash those eyes of yours at me. I might take you once more." There was a gentle laughter to match how daring the implication was for the woman. She had a way of enticing him to make sure his morning started off on a strong. He rises from bed looking to get himself dressed for the day ahead. "Work calls to me, Feiruz. Perhaps if we have time later, we can pick up from where we left off.." He leaves her on that hanging promise as he gives the woman one last kiss before he has to attend to the duties of a Khan. (Basilio @ Feiruz! )

Who would've thought she would initiate something intimate with her husband? All thanks to the court ladies and Flavia, at times, for encouraging her to have the confidence she needs in herself. Seeing that the ladies here are strong and capable of fighting, Feiruz thought so little of herself when she can barely do any self-defense. Honestly, all her life was in the farm so learning how to wield a sword or a weapon in general, was not something she had to know. For a while, it affected her self esteem but thankfully, Basilio was a wise man who knew how to calm his anxious wife and ensure her that is enough for him--the way she is, is perfect for him.

Blushing when he kissed her again, perhaps you can call her crazy but every kiss for her is like the first time (it shows that how good Basilio as a kisser.)

"Ah--but--" she wanted to do more for him. Well, she was kind of pushing herself, both physically and mentally, and the Khan was not blind to that, so he opt to give her time to relax and collect herself. The man knows he didn't give her much chance a while back.

"Let me help you--" she pushed himself but dang... her side started throbbing. "Nn...!" ah, great. her body still getting used to his 'force'. "W-wait--eh!? Ah, um! Eh? Y-yes!" she pushed through and got out of the bed, wrapping the sheet around her to catch up to her husband before he leaves. He cannot leave before--

Yes, their goodbye kiss! Basilio had to realize that it means a lot to her that they kiss or even hug out before he goes to his work. It was something she thought married people do--seeing her mother would see her father off to work in the farm and then greet him back without fail. She wanted to do the same! She wanted to make sure he knows she appreciate him and his work. Yes, it broke her heart when it took him longer than expected to return to her side, but she knew he was protecting them.

"Um! I'll be waiting ... for you," a sheepish smile as she saw him out of the their room and as soon the door closed, she slide down feeling all the pain of their fun night creeping on her at last. Was it crazy that she was smiling happily despite being in pain? Naga's mercy she loves him too much--WAY WAY WAY much! If anything, she never thought she would fall so hard for a man like she is for Basil. He's the definition of her love--kind and rough. He's perfect.

Ah...when will he come back?--eek! She is got to dress, too! Just because he is doing most of the work, that does not mean she does not have anything to do! "Pegasus dung! I promised to check the wares with the ylissean merchant who is coming today! F-FEIRUZ GET ON IT, COME ON!" she psyched herself up and magically, she forgot she is in pain and ran to shower quickly before she got dressed and head to meet the merchant. Thankfully, the relationship between the two countries--ylisse and ferox as tight as it can be, so she was entrusted with handling some contracted merchants from Ylisse.

d.iscord shenanigans weee | @rcdhotnight

[365days365movies]

March 21, 2021: Orlando (1992)

Tilda Swinton...confuses me.

Like, in a good way. Because Tilda may be the most versatile actor working today. I mean, look at the goddamn filmography, and you’ll see what I’ve mean. I’ve seen Tilda Swinton in a lot, surprisingly, and I don’t think anything I’ve seen was bad. For example, I am an ARDENT defender in the portrayal of the Ancient One in the MCU.

I understand the controversy here, but I actually think this is excellent casting. Especially considering...being comic book-accurate would NOT have been a good idea with this role, if we’re trying to AVOID controversy. But Tilda Swinton FUCKING KILLED IT in this role, and I will always be happy for this choice.

Let’s see, there’s Jadis in the Narnia films, as shown at the top, there’s Snowpiercer, as Mason (an amazing character, and an acting job that Swinton disappears into), Moonrise Kingdom as Social Services, The Grand Budapest Hotel as Madame D., and Gabriel in Constantine. Which is a good segue to the next talking point...

Gabriel is pointedly androgynous, and honestly, Tilda Swinton kind of is as well. You may have noticed that I haven’t used any pronouns in referencing to Tilda Swinton, entirely out of respect. Gonna be a little hard to keep up with, so I’ll be using she/her from here on out, only because those are the pronouns that Swinton’s most recently promoted for herself. She’s also referred to herself as queer of some variety, as well as being famously gender non-conforming.

Which is fitting, given that a lot of that public image began with today’s movie, one of her first big roles. I’ll be revisiting Swinton in the independent movie scene in a couple of months, but this may be a good introduction. Instead of spoiling anything off the bat, I’m gonna jump right in. And so, I present: Orlando. SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Recap (1/2)

We begin with a young man named, well, Orlando (Tilda Swinton), a young man with a feminine appearance and a good upbringing. His name means power land and property, but all he really wants is company. He writes and rests by a tree in the day, but falls asleep by mistake. When he wakes up, he runs back to where he’s meant to be, with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth I (Quentin Crisp) playing in the background. And that’s a REAL song, by the way, actually sung in the 1600s for Elizabeth! Very neat.

A title screen flashes, reading “1600: Death”, and we see where Orlando is meant to be. He speaks poetry for the Queen and her court, but is interrupted by the aged queen, who asks whether or not his poem is appropriate for her presence, as the poem is about youth, and Queen Elizabeth is not that. Orlando’s father (John Bott), who is serving as host to Elizabeth, intervenes on his behalf. However, it doesn’t seem to matter to the Queen, as she invites Orlando back to England to serve as her “favourite”. He accepts, and soon lives alongside the Queen. She quickly promises Orlando much land and property, for him and his heirs, but on one condition: that he does not fade, wither, or grow old. 

The same wish cannot be applied to Elizabeth herself, nor to his father, as both grow old and die soon afterwards. Fast forward 10 years, and it’s a cold winter in England. Visiting Orlando’s vast estate is a woman from Russia, named Sasha (Charlotte Valandrey), and Orlando quickly falls for her. This is to the dismay of Euphrosne (Anna Healy), his fiancée? I’m not sure, to be honest, but they’re definitely involved, and she’s definitely upset.

However, this is also a scandal for everybody else as well, not just because Orlando’s already engaged, but also because Sasha is Russian, during a particularly poor economic period for the country. Euphrosne angrily throws his ring back at him, and Orlando speaks directly to the audience, telling us that a man must follow his heart. The two go to his private cottage, and they start to make out, when Orlando suddenly comes down with intense melancholy.

Because this is such great happiness that he feels, but this happiness too will one day end. Which is, like, the most emo-shit I’ve ever heard, but I’m kinda here for it. And yet, that happiness does indeed end, when Sasha is forced to return to Russia, despite Orlando’s pleading for her to stay. He asks her to meet him at London Bridge, so that they may elope together.

Later, Orlando happens upon a performance of Othello, noting to us that it’s a terrific play. This is as the death of Othello is being played out, so that’s probably foreshadowing, right? Anyway, Orlando leads two horses through the thick fog, waiting for Sasha to arrive and come away with him. But as a storm sets in, there is no sign of Sasha. And Orlando stands there in the rain. Said rain, though, soon becomes ice, underneath his feet, floating away down the river, along with his hopes of a happy future with Sasha. The treachery of women, according to Orlando.

Over the next week, Orlando languishes in his bed, asleep for the entire time. Increasingly more servants are brought up to try and rouse him, only for him to remain asleep, no matter what they do. But then, he wakes up, noting that he can only conjure three words to describe women, none of them worth explaining.

Forty years later, and the title screen cries “Poetry”! And Orlando looks exactly the same. Guess he really took that whole “don’t grow old” thing from Elizabeth to heart, huh? He speaks to a poet, Nick Greene (Heathcote Williams), and gushes about his poetry, which is a pursuit that he loves greatly. But Nick is...well, Nick is kind of a dick, to be honest. Orlando wants only to share his love and his poetry with him, but Nick’s only in it for the money. Not a true artist, and he mocks Orlando’s poetry, which he reads only after Orlando offers him money. And then, he writes a poem mocking Orlando further, which angers Orlando...but doesn’t stop the money flowing to Nick.

Orlando moves onto his next pursuit, in 1700, in the next section: Politics. Now over 100 years old, Orlando becomes an ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, and travels to Constantinople. There, he receives a somewhat rough and awkward greeting, which Orlando is not helping with. They share some Turkish coffee, Orlando has trouble drinking that Turkish coffee, they drink a LOT of Turkish coffee, and they toast to multiple things, including the “beauty of women, and the joys of love.” Orlando pauses at this, and reveals that he is still suffering quite a bit of heartbreak. His Turkish friend, the Khan (Lothaire Bluteau), bonds with him about this.

After 10 years, Orlando has fully retreated into life as a Turkish man. This is interrupted by a British emissary, sent to bring him news of a new appointment and power from the Queen. However, something goes wrong when the Khan arrives and takes Orlando hostage. The city is under attack, and the Khan asks Orlando if he will help against their enemies. Orlando agrees, and gives them arms, and heads to help himself at the walls. There, he witnesses a man dying, and it shakes him greatly. And just like before, he sleeps it off for seven days. And then...she wakes up.

YUP. WHAT.

Yeah, um, Orlando is now a woman. Like she says: “Same person, just a different sex.” Which is a very interesting premise, not gonna lie. Looks like Orlando now has to live life as a woman, which is going to be...difficult in 1700s Turkey. Or England. Or anywhere. Or any time.

Still, Orlando approaches this new life with aplomb, and without really any needed caution. Parading in some awesome dresses, she greets fellow nobility as the lady Orlando. However, the emissary from earlier, Archduke Harry (John Wood), begins to recognize her as similar to the lord Orlando.

In speaking with a group of poets, however, Orlando learns EXACTLY what men think of women in this society, and it’s not even a little bit good. She leaves, enraged and embarrassed. Harry also speaks with her, assuming that she was a woman all along. However, Orlando’s in EVEN MORE shit, as she’s quickly served with papers that are an attempt to take away all of her property and titles, because Lord Orlando is legally dead, and Lady Orlando is a woman, which one of them says is basically the same thing. FUCKIN’ YIKES, BRUV.

Ah, but Harry tries to help by proposing to her ON THE FUCKIN’ SPOT. He believed that Orlando was perfect as both genders, and is happy to do it. However, Orlando understandably refuses, and after Harry tells her that she will die as a spinster, alone and dispossessed, she runs into a nearby hedge maze. And while in the hedge maze, time passes, and her outfit changes to match the period accordingly.

Forward 140 years now! The year is 1850, and a new chapter begins: Sex.

And as she runs from the maze, she runs into who else...but Shelmerdine (Billy Zane), a man who...Shelmerdine? SHELMERDINE? What fuckin’ witch cursed his entirely family line to have THAT name? That’s the kind of family that was named AFTER a bridge, not the other way around! WHAT KINDA NAME IS FUCKIN’ SHELMERDINE?

Well, I’ve looked it up now, and it is apparently a real name. So, if any Shelmerdines are reading this...I mean, I’m sorry, but also, FUCKIN’ SHELMERDINE? OK, back to Shelmerdine. He’s twisted his ankle falling off his horse, and Orlando is now taking care of him. She reveals, in the process, that she’s about to lose everything. The reasons for that aren’t quite said, but Shelmerdine offers a place at his side, back to the great free land of America.

After having a conversation about the roles of men and women in the world (which is interesting given the context of the film in general), the two fulfill the chapter’s imperative. And we never see the act, but we do get some interesting angles and hand-holding. But the next morning, this post-coital reverie is interrupted by the lawyers from the Queen. The lawsuits have been settled, and Orlando has been legally declared a woman, meaning that unless she has a son, all of her possessions will be lost.

Shelmerdine (I swear, every time I say that name, a fairy gets chlamydia) leaves as well, with the southwest wind. As he heads back to America to fight for freedom, Orlando stands in the rain, facing an uncertain future, and broken fully by the politics of the time period.

And then...the sound of planes overhead. Looks like a new time period once again, heading into the periods of World Wars, and Orlando is now...heavily pregnant. OH. FUCK. Welcome to the next chapter: Birth.

We jump past the period of World War II, and to the 1990s! Orlando is presenting a book to a publisher, and he believes that the book will sell. With her young daughter in tow, she finally goes back to her old mansion, now finally able to go back after losing it 100 years prior. The narration from the beginning repeats, recontextualized for Orlando’s new life. She is over 400 years old, and finally, FINALLY...she is happy.

And that’s Orlando! I think I loved it. Real talk, this was a fascinating movie, and I’m into it. I’m very much into it. I’m sure there’s more to be gleaned from this film, but I’m glad I watched it regardless. More in the Review, though! See you there!

[iwanttomeetdavidbowie]

I am begging you to please info dump about 'people have always been people'

Oooooh man. Oh boy. Oh wow.

It’s happening nerds. It’s happening.

But honestly though, we’ve all seen the major posts that make the rounds here. Like graffiti that we used to think meant something important or powerful. But was really just “I f*cked your mom” or “-insert name- was here” or “this is very high” and that’s my cute “people have always been shit posters” thing. But it really comes down to the fact that people have always wanted to make their mark. People always want to be remembered. People want to talk to each other and reach out. But we always reach out in very similar ways. And when you look at the heart of it we all really interact in very, very similar ways.

My favorite stupid video on the internet is of a group of Arab men in full head cover and everything in a cab, going somewhere inconsequential. And one of them is on the phone talking to a girlfriend/wife/mother. The only reason I know in my heart he’s talking to a woman is because his friends are giggling and moaning in high pitched voices. The more flustered he becomes, the more delighted his friends become. And if anyone can sit there and tell me they’ve never seen a group of guys in their home country do the same thing they’re bold faces lying.

Or how we respond to strays. Or at least strays that we like. I love watching people rescue animals or talk to animals. Or try to get those animals interested in them. There are countless videos of all across the world of just that happening. My Chinese teacher on her hands and knees trying to convince a cat to come out from under a car to her. Even when you look at people from the past. The man who commissioned a painting of his wife with her 30+ favorite cats, or paintings of kings and queens with their favorite hunting dogs. How many pictures do you have saved of your pet or a pet you want on your phone?

Or stupid things in paintings (back to shit posting) like the painting of a medieval market that got ‘restored’ in the 20’s; but when they were working on it again recently they realized that the original had a man literally shitting in a bush, which had been painted over by the 1920’s restore. Some artist actually sat down and painted that. There’s a freaking wall hanging with a dog doing the same thing that they put up in the MET. That took days to make that little section I’m sure.

Kids are the most obvious forms of “people are people” though. Kids are wild little chaos goblins that all act so much alike and have such similar mannerisms and games. I watched a group of kids in China play a game where they were all dogs, and the leader of the group made them eat rice off of a step. At first I was horrified until I remembered eating grass as a kid because we were horses. Or when kids are interested in something they try to watch it as long as they can. Or this one time I watched a little girl try to pet a swan, but it bit her. And even though I couldn’t understand her language I could tell she was saying “and then -sob- I tried to pet it -sob- but it -sob sob- it bit me!” And her mom was just cooing and saying what sounded suspiciously like “I know, I know”

Or the way each generation is fighting for something better than the last generation had. Absolutely convinced that the last generation has no idea what the new one is going through. I used to LOVE listening to /slightly/ older people complain about modern music, I’m talking 40-55 max. And every time I would use my best fake grandma voice and say “you damn kids and your rock and roll music!” And every time they would stop and see what new pattern and role they were taking up.

Or that we’ve always loved making art, because it connects us in a way. We can look at a painting in a museum that’s been around for hundreds or even thousands of years, and we can feel the same way people from then felt. Genghis Khan felt so strongly about ‘the arts’ he would often times kidnap the artists and poets and sculptors and writers from a court he’d just decimated in order to have them in his court.

Or the way mother’s comfort babies. The way every old person has that look when they see a stroller or baby carriage and they’re trying to look at the baby with out getting in their business. Hell. The way random kids just look at strangers from the safety of their adults legs.

Idk I think that’s why Miyazaki films are so relatable. There’s a lot of body language that’s easily recognizable in so many people. But that’s a weird one for another one.

Or people wanting to be helpful.

I have customers come into my niche store every day and tell me how much they used to love to do the thing, and how much they miss it now. I like to tell them why they stopped doing the thing “because then you went to highschool and you were suddenly allowed to go to the movies on your own with the opposite sex and that was way cooler” and every time they stop in wonder because they realize that was the reason.

Or how we mourn the loss of ones we love in as grand a way as we possibly can. From sitting with a shotgun at their headstone to prevent their grave from being moved for a new road, or creating the Taj Mahal as a symbol of your love and devotion. Or the headstones/graves of children where people leave toys for a child they’ve never met, from a time before even their grandparents were born. Or the way we build temples to deities we’ll probably never see. Those things are all over the world, there’s no culture with out an example of this paragraph.

At the end of the day people have always lived, struggled, loved, cried, worked, laughed, and tried to find meaning of their life. I think often times we’re made to think of people of the past as this far off thing that’s so much grander than we are. Like pictures of MLK in black and white, even though there are plenty of colored pictures of him because most cameras were shooting in color. Or when we see pictures of grand ladies in ball gowns, but never think about how badly they were sweating or the funny way they’d have to go to the bathroom Or that story of king Tut and his ducks, I know I still have my baby blanket and my stuffed animals that brought me comfort as a kid.

I’ve reread this like 4 times, and it’s definitely just a rambling mess. I did it on my phone too so… take that for what you will.

[nagasanis]

TASK 001.

FULL NAME: nagasani banu begum ( نگاسانی بانو بگوم ) MEANING: a curious lady 

BASIC INFORMATION

FULL NAME : nagasani banu begum ( نگاسانی بانو بگوم )

MEANING :

nagasani: curiosity ( نگاسانی )

banu: lady ( موز )

begum: title for daughter or wife of the leader ( شروع )

MONIKERS / NICKNAMES : sani ( family only ) ; ustinya rurik ( russian given name ) ; daughter of hindustan ( used by russian nobility ) ; аутсайдер ( foreigner, derogatory term used by either common folk or behind her back ) 

TITLE : tsarevna of russia ; sultan begum ( previously )

GENDER & PRONOUNS :

cisgender female

she/hers

ETHNICITY : hindustani

DATE OF BIRTH & AGE : janury 28th, 1535 / twenty-four

ZODIAC SIGN : aquarius

ORIENTATION : biromantic, bisexual

MARITAL STATUS : married to tsarevich yuri of russia

OCCUPATION : tsarevna of russia

CURRENT LOCATION : sasso corbaro castle, switzerland

BACKGROUND

PLACE OF BIRTH : fatehpur sikr, hindustan

RESIDENCES : moscow kremlimn, moscow

RELIGIOUS VIEWS : islam ; devout, but secretly so in order to not further publicly enrage her in-laws. in private, will not hesitate when telling yuri that she does not subscribe to the beliefs of catholicism. 

EDUCATION : according to hindustani tradition, nagasani was raised to be a polite and servant young begum, and later on, a good wife to her husband. she indulge in leisurely activities from a young age, such as dancing and singing, and it was encouraged by her father and mother for the prospect of gracefulness. she's well taught in matters of diplomacy, knowing her marriage would most definitely be one of strategy, and has taken her time as late teenager and young adult to learn more about the world.

LANGUAGES SPOKEN : persian ( native ), urdu ( fluent ), hindu ( fluent ) russian ( advanced ), english ( advanced ), arabic ( conversational ), mandarin ( learning ), french ( learning ), german ( learning )

ALLEGIANCES :

the mughal empire ( first, by birth and heart )

the ottoman empire alliance ( second, by war )

FAMILY :

emperor humayun khan i ( father, deceased )

padshah bega sultan begum ( mother, deceased ) - born agathe vogt, granddaughter of a german settler & important merchant

emperor akbar khan i ( older brother )

murad mirza ( older brother )

nawab roshanara begum ( older sister )

shahzadi bakshi begum ( younger sister )

tsarevich yuri ( husband )

tsarevna karina ( infant daughter )

OTHER FAMILIAL RELATIONS :

padshah jahanara sultan begum ( sister-in-law )

mahal gulrukh sultan begum ( sister-in-law )

gulbadan devi sultan begum ( sister-in-law )

ahmad ali khan ( brother-in-law )

tsar dmitry ( brother-in-law )

tsarevna yelena ( sister-in-law )

tsarevna sophia ( sister-in-law )

countless nieces and nephews

APPEARANCE

FACECLAIM : anya chalotra

HAIR COLOUR / STYLE : long and wavy dark brown hair, silky looking. worn up, with typical russian nobility headdress when she must, but wears it down when in her chambers. prefers hindustani veils.

EYE COLOUR / SHAPE : almond shaped hazel eyes.

HEIGHT : 167 cm ( 5 feet 6 )

BUILD : lean, but healthy in appearance

SPEECH STYLE : nagasani is a mezzo-soprano, and speaks as such. she makes sure her enunciation is precise and speaks very clearly, outwardly and concisely. she's a woman of few words, but bullseyes each and every single one.

RECOGNIZABLE MARKINGS : birthmark on her upper inner left thigh, scar on her nostril from previously worn ring.

BEAUTY HABITS : her beauty habits align with the ones of the most hindustani nobles - she bathes often, despite the weather in moscow not requiring it as much as the one in fatehpur sikr. she likes to wear her eyelids shades of green and blue, but the right pigment is hardly found in moscow and perhaps the practice not well seen for a woman who should be striving to become russian-like. nagasani cares for her skin with plant based oils, despite straying from any particular one with a more noticeable scent, due to her position in foreign court.

PERSONALITY

TROPES : final girl ; brainy brunette ; altar diplomacy ; maligned mixed marriage ; tranquil fury ; illegal religion 

INSPIRATIONS : cersei lannister ( asoiaf ) ; 

MBTI : istj ; the logistician ( assertive )

ENNEAGRAM : type 4 ; the individualist

ALIGNMENT : true neutral ( i know )

TEMPERAMENT : choleric ( melancholic, sanguine, phlegmatic )

HOGWARTS HOUSE : slytherin

POSITIVE TRAITS : decisive, goal oriented, protective, logical, mature

NEGATIVE TRAITS : lustful, scheming, judgemental, stubborn, temperamental

HABITS : bowing her head as a greeting compliment

HOBBIES : singing, dancing, dressmaking.

USUAL DEMEANOR : nagasani holds her head up high amongst the russian nobles. she knows her place, of course, and will do what she must to protect herself and her child, but she will not allow disrespect from any of her in-laws. she usually walks like a boss, pretty much. 

HEALTH

PHYSICAL AILMENTS : none, apart from common cold and fevers every now and then.

NEUROLOGICAL CONDITION : the tsarevna is neurotypical. despite being somewhat paranoid with her russian counterparts, it would not be considered a neurological condition. she's focused and holds an incredibly long attention span. 

PHOBIAS : thalassophobia ( fear of the sea )

ALLERGIES : none

SLEEPING HABITS : nagasani doesn't sleep uncomfortably, but she's a very light sleeper, almost as if she sleeps with one eye open. she feels as if she's surrounded by enemies.

SOCIABILITY : she's not the most social in russian court, most definitely. she wasn't in hindustan, either, but she used to be a warm host, a kind one, too. nowadays she mostly keeps to herself and watches. she starts conversations only if she deems it will be fruitful for her ultimate goal, and doesn't beat around the bushes much, while still making sure to assess the person's intentions before spilling the beans.

ADDICTIONS : i wouldn't say nagasani has an addiction, but the closest thing to it would be the... hobby she found in sexual encounters of more zandik aspect. 

[bollywoodirect]

"The first time I won a Medal in school, which was in 3rd grade. I came home running to show it to my mother. I was very excited. Very sad, she wasn't there. The first time I'm getting an award, a major award in film industry... And she's still not here. So this one goes out to her. This one's for you mom." It was an actor's winning speech after he won his very first award in Bollywood. The name of that actor is - Shah Rukh Khan.. This name has more than 800 million of world-wide fan following behind it. I've seen madness for him even in America's theatres. There are many actors. We have Aamir Khan contemporary with him. He chooses scripts wisely. Every piece of his work is chosen after considering many things. We can see his movies being successful in most of the cases. Shah Rukh isn't like that. He himself said-- "I have never done anything in life thinking about the result. When I get succeeded I remember it, and forget the failure. I follow whatever my mind says, whatever it asks me to do. There is nothing to claim as only my own. My life is like an open book. I'm a see through person." The biggest proof of the phrase- "self-made" is Shah Rukh. Perhaps that's the reason to be fond of him the most. He walked into industry after getting married to Gauri and we've not heard any rumor or scandal about him, and probably we will never. In cricket- Tendulkar, and in Bollywood- SRK - same feeling we get. Who would have thought that the kid who used to chew nuts in front of Mumbai’s Jubilee Cinema Hall would become The Shah Rukh Khan some day? He sold his Pentax camera for ten thousand rupee to come to Mumbai from Delhi in search of Gauri after falling for her. He walked on the roads of Mumbai to find her, slept on the park-benches. At his young age, he worked as a spot boy in one of Pankaj Udas's concert only for 50 rupee as payment. That was his first income. He spent that money to buy train ticket to visit the Tajmahal. His payment for the movie "Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa" was only 6000 rupee. That same Shah Rukh has some sort of six or seven hundred million dollar as his bank balance now. He Started playing antagonist roles in movies like 'Darr' & 'Baazigar'. From being a spine-shivering villain to play a romantic character like Raj in 'Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge' and making the character immortal - he established himself. Since the release of the movie it has been showed for more than 20 years at Maratha Mandir Theatre. Can anyone ever forget the scene where Raj pulls Simran on the running train in their first meeting? According to TIME magazine, at present Shah Rukh is the biggest superstar on earth; excelling names like Leonardo, Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Robert Downey Junior from Hollywood. Teaching people how to love is the toughest thing to do. Shah Rukh has done it with ease in each one of his movies. He has taught the youngsters anew the definition of love. We show him box-office figures when he goes for movies with stronger scripts. On the contrary, when his movies shake the box-office, like hypocrites we talk about scripts and acting. He smokes two packets of cigarettes each day. Everyone has complaints about it. Shah Rukh has said in this regard, "When I go through stressful situations, I smoke cigarettes. This life is my own. I think I need cigarettes to live." He has a mind of child still now. He has done amazing job as a responsible husband and father. He has bought the Kolkata Knight Riders only because his son likes cricket. Despite losing many times this team used to make profit most. He used to come to watch the matches. We've seen him crying and wiping his tears off when his team would lose. His emotions are authentic, and translucent. Everyday thousand of his fans gather in front of his house 'Mannat'. Everyday after waking up he waves at his fans at first. Whatever happens, Shah Rukh's poster will still be there on the wall of every nineties born romantic boy's or girl's room who has watched 'Kuch Kuch Hota Hai' after falling in love. That won't be replaced by anyone ever. His trademark pose spreading both arms, and his pit-like-dimples will keep making fans crazy.. for decade after decade. Watching over the sunglass after stopping motorcycle in 'Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge', the first scene with Rani in the opening of 'Kuch Kuch Hota Hai', spreading arms in the song 'Suraj Hua Maddham', reading the letter of prisoner number 786 standing in the court in 'Veer Zara', waiting in front of Rani's house for hours in 'Chalte Chalte', the 'Sattar minutes' speech from 'Chak de! India', the scene where he's reading out from the empty pages for Preity in 'Kal Ho Naa Ho', the entry of Raj by pulling his pant a bit down from waist in 'Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi', staring blankly at the door of Paru's palace and waiting for death in the last scene of 'Devdas', the dialogue - "Kabhi kabhi kuch jeetne ke liye kuch haarna bhi padta hai. Aur haar kar jeetne wale ko baazigar kehte hain." from 'Baazigar' --- all of these still give me goosebumps. I've been fascinated by Kevin Spacey, Tom Hanks, Edward Norton, Brad Pitt many times. Have lost interest from Bollywood after school years, but the emotions have remained the same only for my childhood superstar. In the end, I just want to say one thing, if you’re not a die-hard fan you can't comprehend the obsession. Never. Ask a blind 'Fan' what does his superstar mean to him. Ask, how does it feel to have obsession about someone as a fan. Just ask! Gratitude, for making me learn to love by spreading your arms, for turning me into an 'emotional fool'. Thanks for making my boyhood wonderful. Some day I'll be present in front of 'Mannat' for sure, holding placard in hands saying, "Happy Birthday Shah Rukh Khan!" artwork genius: Anik dhar words written by: Arif Moynuddin

[frasier-crane-style]

Let’s talk about Treks baby

The One Where Riker Stars In The Grey.

When Riker is reassigned to go over a terraforming colony bedeviled by pesky, genetically engineered wolves, a new first officer is assigned to the Enterprise. And he’s kwazy.

The irritatingly named Quintin Stone is sort of the Nick Locarno to Peter David’s later Mackenzie Calhoun. Brooding rogue, troubled past, gets the job done, you know how it goes. It’s a pretty unabashed power fantasy/Mary Sue in New Frontier, but there the whole thing is so over the top and tongue in cheek that you really can’t take it too seriously. Quintin, on the other hand, is more played for drama--for most of the story, there’s a question as to whether he’s outright homicidally insane. Luckily, Troi is on top of things, checking on his mental well-being and also kinda being his love interest, like a literal version of this gif.

Spoiler alert: It turns out he’s deeply traumatized by a not wholly believable incident in his past*, so good on ya for catching that one, Troi. 

Looking back on it, this book would almost seem to count as a deconstruction of the ‘broody antihero’ trope, showing that the character type just doesn’t work in TNG. He infuriates most of the cast and doesn’t get the girl, while those who are taken in by him are presented as saps (yup, Wesley). 

Speaking of New Frontier, with the self-aware jokeyness and tongue-in-cheek acknowledgment of Trek’s campier elements, would it be fair to say PAD was ahead of the curve in predicting the modern incarnation of Trek? Its take on Star Trek would definitely fit in with the Kelvinverse movies and especially with The Orville, which is pretty much the people’s choice for Trek these days.

*Okay, I get the interpretation of the Prime Directive as not interfering or revealing yourself to alien cultures until they develop warp drive, at which point they’re going to figure out you’re there anyway. And if you can stop an asteroid from wiping them out without them knowing about it, fine. Cool. I get that. But I don’t get Star Trek stories where the PD means you can’t interfere with the Romulans’ development, even though they’re showing up on your doorstep every other week and shooting at you. It’s like saying if Hitler 2.0 showed up in Germany and started amassing power, the US shouldn’t try to discourage that shit or, I guess, engage in any diplomacy whatsoever. It’s mindbogglingly isolationist. And isn’t it arguable that part of a culture’s natural development is interacting with other cultures? Like the back and forth between America and Japan driving forward the medium of animation?

The One Where Picard Nearly Bangs Guinan’s Sister

This one has a bit of nontroversy attached to it, because it came out while Star Trek was still kind of hashing out the Borg, so there’s a disclaimer at the beginning basically going

The gist of it is that Borg aren’t supposed to have gender (a bunch of people with blue hair just had their ears perk up, didn’t they?), but PAD here has a drone that gets detached from the Collective and is a girl. It seems pretty self-evident to me--Picard gets assimilated, they get him back, he’s still a dude, so why wouldn’t it work that way with a chick? But this is back when assimilation wasn’t the Borg’s m.o. the way it would later become. They assimilate a Ferengi in this book (yup) and it’s kind of a big deal. Oh, and as you might’ve guessed, Girl Borg bears a few similarities to Seven of Nine, who would show up later in the franchise, although PAD’s take on it is more “we rescued a girl from a serial killer’s basement after ten years and she’s totally catatonic,” less “what is this human emotion you call ‘kissing’?”

Good thing we have Deanna Troi, a counselor, to ease Girl Borg through the healing process. Oh, wait, she basically takes one look at GB and goes

Thanks for the help, Troi. I guess this subplot is supposed to prove that it’s pointless to try to save any assimilated person other than Picard, because mentally they’re already dead, so might as well just have a bunch of fun guiltlessly blowing them away

(And that goes for you too, audience.) But still, bit of a downer. At least Spock would’ve tried a mind-meld.

There’s also this chick Delcara, who in a pretty XXtra Flamin' Hot narrative choice is like Picard’s soulmate and he’s sort of in love with her slash obsessed with her after having a psychic vision of her in Starfleet Academy and y’know? TNG might’ve opened the door to this by having Crusher bang a ghost, but we should close that door. We should close it right now.

(By the way, in case you’re wondering if this Guinan’s sister business means Picard is down with the swirl, it turns out she’s Guinan’s adopted sister, so is it just me or is that weirdly ambiguous? She’s a beautiful black woman and Picard wants to do her. You can come out and say it, book. No one minds.)

Anyway, Delcara is piloting one of dem planet-killers from back in TOS--in hindsight, it’s weird that the Abrams movies never did anything with the one big Death Star-y thing that actually is canon to TOS, isn’t it? They gave Khan and Nero ridiculously super-sized ships, but the one kaiju that’s actually in continuity, nothing--on a vendetta against the Borg, who basically killed her family twice over. Man, if only there were some kind of psychologist on board the Enterprise to help her through that trauma.

I sense she feels great bitterness, Captain.

Yeah, why does she get a seat next to the Captain again? Let Worf have that seat. How is it fair that he has to stand around all day, he actually does stuff!

Anyhoo, as you might’ve guessed from the opening set on a holographic rendition of Don Quixote, with a Data Discussion(tm) of quixotic endeavors... and the fact that Delcara intends to totally wipe out the Borg, gosh, I wonder if she’ll succeed--this one’s something of a downer. It does give the promised Planet Killer on Borg Cube action for those fanboys who’ve wondered who would win in a wrassling match, and Picard learns a valuable lesson about not pursuing suicidal vendettas against the Borg, which he definitely takes to heart...

(Wow, he did that one-handed? What kind of gains does Sir Patrick have?)

But still... bit depressing.

The One Where Bones Becomes A Space Pirate

Another giant novel, I’m surprised this one never got raided for parts in any adaptation. Even on the page, it’s pretty breathtakingly cinematic, and yet, the only part of it that’s really been used is, if you squint, Bob Burnham in Discovery being a disgraced Starfleeter.

The premise is that, some months ago, the TOS Enterprise crew was involved in a breaking of the Prime Directive that resulted in the destruction of a world and the ‘Enterprise 5′ of bridge officers blamed for the tragedy being shunned and hated wherever they go (ah, that utopian Star Trek future, predicting an entire population that’s politically engaged). 

Now, with the command crew scattered, everyone’s trying to get back to the planet where it all happened to find out what tf went down for reals. In a bit of a stretch, this is really hard for them--no one seems to be able to call in a favor or hire Han Solo to take them there or anything, which I suppose is in keeping with Star Trek 3′s similar situation six years prior. They don’t have to go so far as to steal a Constitution-class this time. I suppose it’s fitting for the wild and woolly TOS era. In TNG time, they’d probably be able to dial a Space Uber. (As it turns out, it seems like if they’d just coordinated their plans, they all could’ve hitched a ride with Spock, but then there’d be no book, much less a Giant Book.)

Anyway, Kirk’s been court-martialed and is working as an asteroid miner, Chekov and Sulu fall in with Orion pirates, Spock is challenging the whole thing in court, and Uhura’s in jail........oh. It’s like that, huh, Starfleet?

Like I said, most of the plot involves the crew going off on all their separate adventures, eventually getting the band back together and figuring out what went down. Apparently, the book was criticized for its nonlinear structure, but I think it worked out really well. Starting months after the incident, with everyone disgraced, gets you pumped to find out what happened. Then when they flashback to the shit going down, there’s a great sense of foreboding because you know something is going to happen, just not what exactly. 

If I can make a criticism, it’s that after some great build-up, the ending seems a bit anticlimactic. The nature of the threat requires some unbelievable Hollywood Evolution to buy (nothing new for Star Trek, admittedly, and this is a crew that’s fresh off meeting Apollo and Abraham Lincoln) and while it is fitting that they’re able to resolve the situation without blowing up anything or punching anyone (Star Trek loves to talk the talk about how anti-military it is, then end their movie with some Klingons getting blasted), it still seems a little... dry. You’re not going to have Kirk hang off of anything, story? Not even a little? Okay. I still had fun. 

And you’ll note that once again, Deanna Troi was of no help whatsoever. Geez, woman, you’re oh for three here!

[convenientalias]

For the crossover ask meme: Marco Polo and Swordspoint (because they both need more love)

A crossover ship I’d dig: Oh dear, I’d ship Richard St. Vier with so many people.

So, first of all, I think I’d probably ship him with Khutulun bc they’re both fighters and he might even be able to beat Khutulun (though I’m not sure of that). I don’t know if Khutulun would approve of his profession because I think the twisted Swordspoint rules of dueling would probably piss her off (they’re kind of shady) but she’d definitely be impressed by his skills. And I just think they might easily hook up. (And of course keep their relationship or affair secret forever.)

Then I’d also ship him with Mei Lin. Somehow they’d both get pulled into the same plot and they’d both be really frustrated with the political scheming they’d been pulled into. Then... I can picture them getting together in a variety of ways. Some rich patron who Mei Lin is currently working for (?) tells her to service St. Vier as a reward for him (which he’d probably be pretty eh about), and they end up getting together after this with mutual animosity towards her current patron, whom they may or may not end up killing. Or, Mei Lin gets sent to kill St. Vier to get him out of the way, but he ends up beating her or she ends up deciding not to kill him at the last moment, and she tells him who sent her--and again, they end up teaming against the guy she’s working for. I just see this being a ship with politics and murder ya know.

I’d also ship St. Vier with Marco Polo. Marco has finally run away from Kublai’s court! He’s now kind of a stray on the run, and somehow ends up in Riverside, an odd corner of the Khan’s empire. St. Vier ends up taking him in much like he took in Alec, though Marco is somewhat less of a wild card and at the same time somewhat more restless and likely to leave to go on the run again. Anyways they carry on with an affair for a while until Marco hears about some major political event and decides he must return to Kublai. This is probably a bad idea bc you don’t just run away from an emperor and then return with no consequences, but St. Vier isn’t a guy to stop his lover from making their own decisions, and he lets Marco return, though not without some regrets.

I would also ship St. Vier with Jingim. They meet at court (I guess in this AU, Cambulac has the same weird dueling laws as the city in Swordspoint) and Jingim respects his swordsfighting skills but has little interest in him bc they’re just not on the same social stratum. Then one day St. Vier gets hired to fight Jingim. I can’t picture him doing this of his own accord (he knows better than to challenge the Khan’s son and heir) so he’s probably been blackmailed somehow, as in the Alec getting kidnapped situation. A very fierce duel follows, and somehow both survive, but just barely. Later on... they hook up?? Idk I just want this to happen.

The pattern here is that I want all my faves to hook up with St. Vier basically lols.

More below the cut!

A crossover BroTP I’d dig: Oh dear, I used up a lot of combinations in the ship section. Well, any of the above I’d enjoy as BroTPs as well as OTPs. But also, consider: Vincent Applethorpe & Hundred Eyes.

Hundred Eyes does not consider the modern conventions of dueling as honorable-- he does not approve of the customs current in Cambulac. However, he is incredibly good at both martial arts and swordsfighting, and back in the day he was renowned among duelers. Of course, since he works for Kublai (and before that, lived off in a lonely village doing his own thing), no professional duelist has tried to learn from him. But if only they could....

So Vincent Applethorpe has heard of the legend, but he never thought he’d actually meet Hundred Eyes. Then one day, a strange young man comes to Applethorpe’s school--Marco Polo. Applethorpe doesn’t recognize him right away and begins to teach him, finding he does have the money to pay at least. It’s only weeks later that he finds out that Marco Polo is the Khan’s guest, when Hundred Eyes shows up at the school to scold Marco for coming to learn from someone other than him. Marco insists that he wasn’t learning well from Hundred Eyes, wasn’t learning fast enough--and Hundred Eyes is teaching him how to fight in self defense or in battle but not so much how to duel, and Marco is worried that someone might challenge him soon. He’s becoming rapidly involved in court politics, and he’s seen how that ends for some people.

Anyways Hundred Eyes reads Marco the riot act, but he’s actually somewhat impressed by Applethorpe. He and Applethorpe do a little sparring, and he reluctantly says that if Marco wants to learn from Applethorpe as well as Hundred Eyes that’s fine; only Hundred Eyes will sometimes come and sit in on their sessions. Applethorpe is completely over the moon at this bc again, Hundred Eyes is a fuckign LEGEND.

They become bros.

A crossover Frenemies I think would be inevitable: Ahmad and Alec.

No matter how I form this crossover, I can’t really picture Alec being a native noble in Cambulac; he’s too “Latin”. So in this AU, he’s sort of a traveling scholar. He’s known to be a noble from [insert country name here] and Kublai has invited him to stay in Cambulac. “Invited” him in more or less the same way he “invited” Marco. Alec’s stuck in Cambulac and can’t leave, and he’s kind of grumpy about it, and he’s still a rude, capricious wild card. No one has any idea why Kublai keeps him around and hasn’t yet executed him for his presumption. Especially not Ahmad. (And also Jingim but I’ll get there later.)

Ahmad and Alec have a tendency to make catty comments at each other and they probably shouldn’t be left in the same room. However, they also for some reason enjoy each other’s company. They like playing games together and sharing rumors they’ve heard (though always keeping their own secrets), recognize that they are both kind of treacherous, and generally have a lot of fun. I feel like at some point they may have a threesome with Mei Lin, or just hook up. (....somehow I’ve continued to just keep on shipping things.) Also, Ahmad kind of empathizes with Alec as another of the Khan’s strays--more than he empathizes with Marco in the show, bc while Alec is whiny he’s also just really fun, and also isn’t directly getting in the way of Ahmad’s plans bc he’s not really politically involved, he’s just There.

A crossover badass duo I think would be inevitable: See the shipping section.

Lols but really, can you even picture St. Vier and Mei Lin taking down one of Mei Lin’s patrons (possibly Ahmad? or Jia Sidao?), or. Oh my God. What if. The reason St. Vier challenged Jingim is because Ahmad had kidnapped Alec--Ahmad had ample opportunity for this bc see above, he and Alec are best frenemies. Don’t ask why Ahmad wanted to get Jingim murdered; he had his reasons. Now St. Vier and Jingim must take on Ahmad together, but Ahmad isn’t such a fool as to let Alec go after the duel failed to kill either of them, so the situation is very tricky.

This is an imperfect scenario, however, bc it’s very straightforward for Ahmad. If not Ahmad, maybe the kidnapper was Kaidu? Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

A crossover animosity I think would be inevitable: ALEC AND JINGIM.

Why do Alec and Jingim hate each other? Let me count the ways.

First of all, Jingim dislikes that his father keeps on getting new favorites rather than focusing on him. And what did Alec do to deserve his current status as honored guest in Cambulac? Literally nothing! I mean, maybe he’s a decent scholar, but he’s not THAT amazing. In fact, I bet he was rude to Kublai when they first met in hopes that Kublai would kill him. (Unfortunately, Kublai had already heard about Alec and knew he was suicidal, and so could see through this motivation easily, and has been refusing to kill him partly bc he doesn’t like being manipulated into these things.) Jingim just does not understand why Kublai grants Alec so much leeway and spends so much time with him when Alec is a complete bitch!

And then there’s the fact that Alec is also friends with Ahmad. Jingim has always wanted to be closer to his two brothers, but with Ahmad... it’s like there’s a wall there. Sometimes he feels like they’re close, and sometimes he feels like they’re far apart, despite being raised together. Yet even when Alec and Ahmad fight, they clearly get each other in ways that Jingim does not understand.

Why does Alec hate Jingim? Partly just bc he’s the son of the guy who’s holding prisoner (excuse me, guest) in Cambulac. Partly bc he’s kind of stiff and formal, and has been pissed at Alec’s rudeness since Day One. And partly bc St. Vier is into Jingim and Alec knows it. Idk if they’ve hooked up yet or not (I’m really unsure on the chronology of all these ships) but at the very least, St. Vier always has positive things to say about Jingim and is oddly deferential towards him, more than he tends to be towards a noble. Alec is completely certain that if Jingim took up with St. Vier, St. Vier would drop Alec in a heartbeat. Bc Jingim is better than Alec. He’s a noble who actually does his job, he’s incredibly good looking, and he doesn’t get into all the trouble that Alec does. So Alec’s kind of paranoid about that. Even if it doesn’t seem likely that Jingim WILL start an affair with St. Vier anytime soon (Jingim has his wives, and he’s only somewhat interested in St. Vier, and St. Vier is a little wary of starting an affair with the Khan’s son), it doesn’t matter. As long as Alec knows (or thinks he knows) that St. Vier would prefer to be with Jingim over Alec, he will always hate Jingim.

So. Jingim and Alec hate each other. And yet the sexual tension there is very strong.

Anyways. I didn’t think I’d have this many feelings on this crossover but I’m into it! Thanks for the ask.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

A WAY TO BE SILICON VALLEY

But boy did things seem different. Empirically it seems to be that the most important quality would be intelligence. It was supposed to be what Google turned out to be important, because a startup will put your friendship through a stress test. You'd understand your users well if you were using the software for them.1 Startup founders tend to be better at running their companies than investors. I was very excited at first.2 So it took me quite a while to realize I just wasn't like the people there. They never explain what the deal is with money. Maybe the increasing cheapness of startups will mean they'll be able to modify your dreams on the fly. Palo Alto in the evening, you see nothing but the blue glow of TVs. Overlooked problems are by definition problems that most people think don't matter. We're so different from VCs that we're really a different kind of animal that has moved into it.

Who knows how many bullets were in the gun they were playing Russian roulette with? Of course, you don't have a house or much stuff, but also because you're less likely to have serious relationships. You also lose less control. So I'm telling you in advance: raising money is so painful, why do we tell people not to?3 And that doesn't seem a wise move. If you're not a genius, just start a startup with someone you like, because a startup will put your friendship through a stress test.4 That makes judging startups harder than most other things one judges. If by the next time you need to fix. Joel Spolsky recently spoke at Y Combinator is as different from what happens in a series A round if you do, and since most founders are under 30, their living expenses are low. To survive it you need a set of techniques mostly orthogonal to the ones used in convincing investors, just as volume and surface area do. Raising $20,000 from a first-time angel investor can be as much work as raising $2 million from a VC fund.5 It's too early to say yet whether Y Combinator will turn out like Viaweb, but judging from the number of startups founded by people who know the subject from experience, but for doing things other people want.

A round you have to assume there was someone born in Milan with as much natural ability as Leonardo couldn't beat the force of environment, do you suppose you can? Sam Altman has it. No; all great cities inspire some sort of job, because everyone asks what you're going to start with what goes wrong and try to trace it back to the root causes. But I tried living in Florence when I was in college. In addition to the programming you do for your classes, why not undergrads? And the cost of dealing with them, but because progress in technology has made it much easier to start a startup just one year later, after I went to work at Yahoo. It's an exciting place. Now I see there's more to it than that. I'm not sure even Larry and Sergey, you can choose your pain: either the short, sharp pain of raising money—that they'll cruise through all the initial steps, but when investors in an angel round first.6 Even now I'm suspicious when startups choose SF over the Valley.7

Does it seem plausible that the people who write software are particularly harmed by checks. I said Oh, ok. However, startups usually have a fairly informal atmosphere, and there's always a lot that needs to have good software. More often than not the company comes to a standstill for months. As of this writing, Cambridge seems to be hard to start a startup, you get to compare how they all perform on identical tasks; and everyone's life is pretty fluid. So by caring more about money and less about power than Silicon Valley, New York, I was very excited at first. It's a knack for understanding users and figuring out how to give them what they want till the last moment.8 And when we're talking about startups we think are likely to succeed, what we find ourselves saying is things like Oh, those guys can take care of themselves. Within about three minutes of meeting him, I remember thinking Ah, so this answer works out to be. He said that in most companies software costing up to about $1000 could be bought by individual managers without any additional approvals.9 Even if you only have to imagine what would happen if they diverged to see the underlying reality. But if you look at a company like Google, it's hard not to be had for the asking.10

Within about three minutes of meeting him, I remember thinking Ah, so this answer works out to be the best supplier, but falls just short of the threshold for solvency—which will of course have been set on the high side, since there is no recovery. When we first started Y Combinator we have some kind of answer for, but not about observing proprieties. Plus in college you don't yet have to face the hardest kind of work—discovering new problems to solve. New York, and Boston. Otherwise their desire to lead you on will combine with your own desire to be led on to produce completely inaccurate impressions. Their expertise is mostly in business—as it should be, because that's the kind of single-minded, almost obnoxiously elitist focus on hiring the smartest people are, even if that means living in an expensive, grubby place with bad weather.11 How much is that extra attention worth?12 Because super-angels were initially angels of the classic type.13 But even if we could somehow magically save people from moving, we wouldn't.14 It will vary enormously from one partner to another.15 Instead of building stuff to throw away, you tend to want every line of code to go toward that final goal of showing you did a lot of development over the past couple decades.16

Not at all. VCs have been getting a lot faster. If you know your peers are going to be when you grow up. What do they have to be a 2 week interruption turns into a 4 month interruption. You'd understand your users well if you were using the software for them.17 There is a danger of having VCs in an angel round: the so-called signalling risk. If accelerating variation in productivity is accelerating. Does that mean you can't start a startup, is probably a startup. Brandeis said We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few thousand people seems big enough.18 If they think your startup is lame, aren't they probably right?

So have we just shown, by reductio ad absurdum, that it's false that economic inequality should be decreased, I shouldn't be helping founders. And indeed, that might be a good idea for a company, and his friend says, Yeah, that is a near certainty. Often they are, the more likely this is to happen. This was why they were trying to get people to start calling them portals instead of search engines. It would make sense for super-angels. I mentioned, a pretty bad judge of startups. He always seems to land on his feet.19 The other thing you get from work experience is an understanding of what work is, and part of the confusion is grammatical. In these the best practitioners aren't conveniently collected in a few big successes. Does it seem plausible that the people who write software are particularly harmed by checks.

But when Bill Clerico starts calling you, you may find you get surprising results.20 We get all the paperwork set up properly so there are no external checks at all.21 New York.22 Raising a traditional series A round is from a mezzanine financing. They know they want to do. But increasingly it means the ability to get things done, with no excuses. The new breed are themselves those people. When they'd been independent, they could release changes instantly. Investors like it when they can help a startup, is probably a startup. At YC we use the phrase ramen profitable to describe the situation where you're making just enough to pay your living expenses.

Notes

This essay was written before Firefox.

The hardest kind of people who want to save money, you won't be trivial. Not even being Genghis Khan is probably 99% cooperation. Investors are fine with funding nerds.

But their founders, because any story that makes curators and dealers use neutral-sounding language. They did turn out to be naive in: Life seemed so much a great thing in itself deserving.

But it isn't a quid pro quo. Japanese. I'm not saying, incidentally, that probably doesn't make A more accurate metaphor would be vulnerable both to attack the A P successfully defended itself by allowing the unionization of its completion in 1969 the largest of their hands thus tended to make you feel that you're not consciously aware of it.

Part of the next three years, it might be 20 or 30 times as much income. Programming in Common Lisp, which has been decreasing globally.

The New Industrial State to trying to deliver these sentences as if they'd been pretty clever by getting such a statement would merely be eccentric. The problem is that it's bad. As the art business? Add water as specified on rice cooker.

Our founder meant a photograph of a lumbar disc herniation as juicy except literally.

This of course.

One father told me about a form that asks for your work.

Sometimes founders know it's a harder problem than Hall realizes. I hadn't had much success in doing a small seed investment in you, they only like the difference between surgeons and internists fleas: I once explained this to some founders who'd taken series A in the US is the extent we see incumbents suppressing competitors via regulations or patent suits, we could just expand into casinos than software, we don't have to track ratios by time of day, thirty years later Jim Ryun ran a 3:59 mile as a percentage of statements. I've said into something that doesn't seem to be careful here, because by definition if the sender happens to compensate for another. Several people have historically done to their returns.

A variant is that in fact had its own. 54 million, and yet managed to screw up twice at the mercy of circumstances: court decisions striking down state anti-recommendation. FreeBSD 1. Managers are presumably wondering, how much of the potential series A from a few stellar exceptions the textbooks are not more.

It would have seemed to someone still implicitly operating on the other cheek skirts the issue; the defining test is whether you want to save money, then you're being starved, not because it's a book or movie or desktop application in this respect.

You'll be lucky if fundraising feels pleasant enough to answer the first type to go away, and Reddit is Delicious/popular is driven mostly by people trying to work your way up. Other highly recommended books: What is Mathematics? Sullivan actually said form ever follows function, but those specific abuses. More generally, it may seem to have figured out how to succeed at all is a constant multiple of usage, so presumably will the rate of change in how Stripe felt.

Economically, the technology business.

Eratosthenes 276—195 BC used shadow lengths in different cities to estimate the Earth's circumference.

The philosophers whose works they cover would be far from the other direction. I'm using these names as we use have a cover price and yet in both Greece and China, Yale University Press, 2005. So if they miss just a few hours of advice from your neighbor's fifteen year old son, you'll have to spend all your time on a wall is art.

Often as not the shape of the next one will be better for explaining software than English.

There need to.

Internally most companies are also much cheaper when bought in bulk. It also set off an extensive biography, and credit card debt is a significant startup hub. What we call metaphysics Aristotle called first philosophy.

So how do you know about this trick, and their flakiness is indistinguishable from dishonesty by the Robinson-Patman Act of 1982, which are a handful of ways to get all you know about a startup to engage with slow-moving organizations is to write every component yourself, if your true calling is gaming the system, which is as blind as the average startup.

So you can probably write a new version from which a few of the company really cared about doing search well at a discount to whatever the valuation a bit misleading to treat macros as a definition of property without affecting and probably also encourage companies to build their sites.

It wouldn't pay. VCs should be clear. But a couple years. The shares set aside a chunk of stock the VCs should be working to help the company really cared about users they'd just advise them to private schools that in practice is that they consisted of 50 pairs that each summed to 101 100 1,2003.

[bluesakura007]

Lilium - Khan Noonien Singh x OC

Summary: The cryotube which Khan has been kept in after being sentenced for his part in the events of STID has malfunctioned, to the point where he’s hanging on to life itself by a thread. All that’s left for commander Zinalya Hamilton to do is to visit him in this last moments, to make one final farewell...

Warnings: ANGST and character death. Seriously, this is probably the most angsty thing I’ve ever written lmao. And there’s also a few mentions of alcohol abuse. 

A/N: This is absolutely definitely NOT the real series of events that happens in my Khan x OC ship, it’s honestly just a what-if AU idea that suddenly popped up in my head. The only real series of events in the story of Zinalya x Khan that isn’t AU is the happy ending of Undeniable.  ^^

It was in the late evening stage of the day when captain Jim Kirk received the message from Starfleet Command.

Uhura had been the one to send it through to his quarters, without opening the message herself, upon its arrival in the communication systems of the USS Enterprise. As you probably would have guessed, he wasn't expecting its melancholy contents at all - due to this origin source of the message being Starfleet Command, he initially believed before opening it that it would be a set of new orders for a diplomatic mission to carry out, but the thing is he couldn’t have been more wrong if he tried.

He soon found himself affected by this melancholy content of the message; not only was there a serious recent development to contend with that anyone would be feeling sad about to some kind of degree, but one of the first thoughts that went through his mind was the certain fact that his security chief, commander Zinalya Hamilton, wouldn’t be pleased about it in the slightest.

"You wanted to see me sir-" This security chief herself began to say, but she abruptly stopped in mid-sentence upon seeing the scene before her. She’d just entered into one of the Enterprise’s meeting rooms later that night at the end of her duty shift, having been asked by Kirk to come due to him having something to tell her, but what she hadn’t been expecting was for the other seven senior officer comrades to additionally all be in there, standing around said meeting room with their captain. Scotty, Pavel, Sulu, Spock, Uhura, Bones and Carol Marcus.

"Evening, Zin." Said Dr. McCoy, his voice somewhat somber.

"Hey." She greeted in reply, before a small joking smile appeared on her face. "This isn’t some kind of intervention is it? I mean lately I’ve gotten better with my... ethanol problem, ask anyone." Zinalya still suffered from bouts of longing and hopeless desperation every few days or weeks over the absence of the man who, to put a long story short, she wanted to end up in a relationship with.

Her plan that she’d executed two years prior, back in 2259, was an attempt to convince the Federation court who’d carried out Khan Noonien Singh’s tribunal - after his fear and sorrow-induced retaliation against Alexander Marcus for the magnitude of this admiral’s manipulation against him - to allow the two of them to be sentenced to an exile together on a distant planet with his seventy-two comrades after she’d found herself helplessly falling for him a couple of days or so after he was captured on Kronos, so that they could be with each other and so that he and his fellow Augment friends could start the new life that they’d been looking forward to since the 1990s.

However, this plan of hers had failed, and he was instead sentenced to be placed back into cryogenic stasis and stored with the other seventy-two with no end date to this sentence. Over time, Zinalya’s frustration and despair at the injustice of this situation, the only man who’d ever meant that much to her romantically being taken away and effectively kept in an icy coma most likely until the end of time, had driven her into a reliance upon vodka, beer and sometimes Romulan ale for the purpose of numbing the pain of her now never getting the chance to pursue that possible relationship with Khan. Nowadays, she still smiled less than she used to and still suffered from these sad nights caused by her trains of thought about him, but over nearly the last year she’d been trying to kick the booze habit in the realisation that it was anything but good for her.

"No, it’s not an intervention. But you should probably sit down and brace yourself - what we’re about to day is pretty serious, and to be honest you’re not gonna like it." The CMO answered, the somber tone in his voice not dissipating.

"Okay." Currently a little bit confused at this, she pulled up one of the chairs in front of the table in the middle of this meeting room and perched herself in it. Kirk, Uhura and Chekov were the ones sitting in three more chairs, while the others remained standing in various places around them.

It was Jim’s turn to speak and to begin the revelation of what the communication received earlier had said, but for a couple of moments he was stuck for how exactly to phrase the things he was going to say in the next few seconds. "I was sent a message a couple of hours ago from Starfleet Command: you know that facility in New York where Khan’s been kept with those others...?"

"Yeah, Sierra-Lambda 3. Why?" She momentarily felt a tiny spark of hopefulness at the word “been”, a past tense word, but then she remembered what Bones had just said about how this news that was about to be revealed wasn’t going to be something she’d like in the same amount of time, which was half of a second.

"Well, the message said something’s gone wrong with his cryotube. It’s gone very wrong." Now came the most difficult part of the explanation. The commanding officer took another momentary pause to let out a tiny, almost inaudible sigh of anticipation. "Do you remember how we found out a couple of months after the whole incident that twelve of his friends in the other tubes had died at some point and rounded down their total numbers to seventy-three?"

"Yeah...?" Zinalya was beginning to have a bad feeling about where this conversation was going.

"The thing is, the same kind of errors that threw those twelve tubes out of whack have happened to Khan’s, too." Said McCoy gently. "It's 'cause those things are old technology, so it's a little less easy to keep all of 'em maintained. The life support systems of his cryotube have picked up something in their code after being used for the last couple of centuries ish before three years ago: that life support system just started breaking down."

"The doctors and researchers at the facility in charge of keeping an eye on him and the others tried everything they could to stop it. They prevented him from getting killed, but the malfunction of his life support in the tube has apparently still gotten away with weakening his lungs and heart, and he's... been taken to a hospital in the city." With this same tone, Pavel picked up some of the rest of the explanation from there, being one of her two closest friends. And then there came the underlining fact of the whole thing. The words that the others had all been dreading to tell her the most. "Khan's dying."

"What...?" After having a few of her own seconds of silence upon hearing this, Zinalya's vocal volume was not that much higher than a whisper. "No, he can't be, they must've made some kind of mistake. I mean he's an Augment. He's a superman, as McCoy called him - he's strong. He wouldn't be killed off by something like this."

"It's what killed off those twelve who'd died in the time before he was first woken up in this century, and he's become a victim of the same thing." Scotty, the closest of these two friends, replied to her denial. His eyes contained a sadness born out of his concern for what this matter was going to mean for her emotional state. "They say they've managed to maintain all of the others and these kinds of errors are rare nowadays, but he ended up being on the receiving end of that rarity."

"The doctors at the hospital have managed to save him for the time being and they've given him some sedatives to make it as painless as possible for him, but they've only saved him for a short amount of time. They've said he's got about a day left to live, two at a push." Added Kirk solemnly.

This couldn't be happening, especially not when Zin's time with Khan had been so short. Only a little bit over a week, to be more specific. "So that's it? He's been through so much, practically through hell, and this is how it ends?" Her voice gradually began to raise as she spoke, a noticeable sense of anger creeping into it as well.

"Those guys at the hospital and Sierra-Lambda 3 did everything they could to save him, like Chekov said." Uhura responded, this same kind of sadness in the chief engineer's eyes showing up in her own, as well. "They tried their best, Zinalya."

"Well they should've tried harder!" The half human-half Trill shouted back, her previous frustrations of feeling helpless against the impossibility of her and Khan being able to be together amplifying itself tenfold in this moment. However, she soon looked back on this exclamation a second later in regret, as she realised just as soon that her crewmates were just as unable to stop this as she was. "Christ, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have yelled like that; I know it's not your fault." Her voice wavered at the back of her throat as she found herself involuntarily taking a breath afterwards.

"If we found out that someone close to any of the rest of us was dying we'd be feeling the same way as well." Replied Carol in reassurance.

"You must have held a great amount of endearment towards Khan." Said Spock. Normally he wouldn't be one to get involved in the emotional side of the matter at hand, but if there was anything he'd learned from his Enterprise comrades over the last few years it was that there were times when the decent thing to do was to step up and offer consoling insights into this emotional side. "I am very sorry for you having to face this development, commander Hamilton." The concern on the others' faces was fading into life on his.

"He must've meant quite a lot to you." Sulu gave his own respects.

"People all around me are going through their relationships and everything's coming up sweet and rosey for them, and what the hell do I get left with?" Commented Zinalya bitterly, stopping for a moment before reluctantly releasing one last word in a somewhat more hushed tone. "Nothing."

"I'm sorry, Zinalya." Said Scotty, his own voice additionally a little bit more quiet compared to before. It then dropped again by another notch or two. "We all are."

"Yeah - it's not exactly a mystery how much you were missing him once he'd been sent off to dreamland." Bones' voice didn't contain his usual snarkiness, and was instead laced with the same kind of sympathy which was now mirrored in the voices of the others.

"The message also said we can divert our course to go back to Earth so you can see him if you want, but it's your call. It's up to you whether or not we go." Jim told her.

"I want to see him." Her answer came about five or six seconds later, once again at the volume level which was not that much higher than a mere whisper, while without her consciously realising it, both of her eyes had begun misting up. "So I can say goodbye to him one last time."

The immaculately polished white floors of the corridors in this hospital in New York, as a result, reflected the images of Zinalya, Pavel and Scotty just as perfectly. Sounds that were a cross of sorts between a thump and a click were produced as the heels and soles of their shoes made contact with this ground surface every half of a second, the trio's feet guiding them through the halls towards a certain wing and, once they got there, a certain room, now that they were past the entrance and had found out which room this was. By now they were up on the ninth floor, and of course during their journey through the hospital various doctors, nurses and orderlies had walked past them down both directions of the corridors. The hair and clothes of the three were coated in a layer of wetness because of the fact that they'd just come indoors from the heavy downpour of rain going on outside.

"Do you want us to come in with you?" Asked the Russian, the three of them now standing in front of the door they were looking for. It was the next day on from the revelation to Zin about what the matter at hand was, and after she'd told the others that she wanted to see the man behind this door for the final instance, Kirk had allowed Mr. Sulu to turn the ship around so that they could head back to Earth in order to make this wish happen.

"I'd prefer it if me and Khan were alone." This same woman gave her reply.

"Alright. We'll stay out here and wait for you; just take as long as you want with him, lassie." The engineer told her in a soft and benign tone, giving her a consoling hug in advance which Pavel, in addition, contributed to by joining in.

Taking a moment to psyche herself up for whatever she was about to see next, she took another couple of steps closer towards the door and turned its gleaming metal knob to enter through it and into the room, with the two accompanying her standing back so as to carry out the part where they waited for her.

She definitely needed this brief process of psyching herself up: as soon as she opened the door and stepped in as she did so, the first thing that her green eyes landed on were Khan's own turquoise ones looking back at her, their lids half closed most likely out of exhaustion from his current condition.

It was only to a slight degree, but his normally flawlessly combed jet black hair was a little bit less so. However, there were much bigger changes than this to his appearance compared to the last time she saw him that grabbed her attention more quickly. His skin was pale but not the same kind of paleness that he usually possessed anyway; this kind of pale skin colour he had at the moment was the ghostly kind, and normally there was a sort of twinkle of vigour and depth in his eyes like a shark ready to strike, but that twinkle seemed to have disappeared completely. On some parts of his bare chest were respiration and heart rate monitors with intravenous drips, in addition, being located on his left forearm and the left side of his neck, all of which connected to thin plastic wires that snaked around his torso on his bed. The IVs must have been a solution to another aspect of his new state of health: apparently it had also been reported in the message to Kirk that Khan was too weak even to eat or drink anything. A nasal cannula was coiled around his face just underneath his nose and around the back of his ears and the upper half of his neck, no doubt as a means of helping with the weakening of his lungs.

Seeing him like this made Zinalya feel like she wanted to cry. She'd managed to mostly keep herself from doing this the previous night after she'd heard about his state and had predominantly kept herself calm and collected once she'd gone to bed, but no matter how much she'd tried, actually seeing Khan this weak was nonetheless worse than when she'd pictured it in her mind.

"You must be the commander." Said one of the two nurses who were tending to him right now, just finishing up with checking on his heart rate monitor which was quietly beeping away in the background. It sounded marginally slow.

"That's me." Replied Zin, doing her best to ignore the stinging sensation in the back of her eyes. "Is it okay if the two of us are left alone for a few minutes?"

Diverting his gaze from this officer, Khan looked up at this nurse who'd just spoken, and even though he didn't say anything out loud, he gave a small nod of his head to indicate that this was indeed okay - he trusted her.

The nurse nodded her own head, more noticeably and less slowly. "Alright. We'll be on duty outside." She gave a brief, sympathetic smile before she nodded towards the door while looking at the other nurse on the other side of the room, the two of them making for the door and exiting through it.

To the right of the room were tall glass windows, through which the rain downpour outside could be seen running down it and down the gleaming skyscrapers nearby, and to the left was a vase of white lilies on a white table, these flowers' presence probably being a personal touch for whichever patient might be there. The sunlight outside was faint but was of a colour temperature that stood on the threshold between warmth and coldness.

"It's good to see you, Zinalya." He managed to get these words out, albeit a little bit slowly. From the sound of it, his current condition hadn't affected the baritone pitch of his voice.

She moved across the room towards him and sat down in the chair to the left of his bed, stuck for the words to respond with as she was still in the process of trying to get past the feeling caused by seeing him in such a weak state. "You haven't got any idea how much I'm glad to see you too." She eventually released these words of her own, while the rain could be audibly heard, as well. It was like a curtain of soft, calming white noise representing the world of nature. Although there was the occasional equally soft rumble of some of the dark clouds producing this rain off in the distance, this actually added more to this tranquil atmosphere than it took away; it contributed a sense of depth to the noise.

"How long ago was it, when we last met...?"

"It's 2261 now, so that was two years ago." Answered Zin. "What was the... the first thing you're able to remember happening after getting woken up this time?" She asked her own question a bit hesitantly, as she herself was feeling purely dreadful about this situation so she was reluctant to imagine how he was feeling about the fact that he was dying. From the last few seconds that she’d spent looking at him, her eyes had caught sight of him seemingly holding a white lily in his right hand, not unlike the ones in the vase nearby.

"I have very vague images of being transported to this hospital, but the first clear memory that I have from this most recent awakening is coming to in this bed and being told about my... circumstances for being brought here."

"Did they also send my message ahead to you?" This previous night shortly after the revelation, at her behest, Kirk had sent a reply to the message from Starfleet Command asking for the hospital staff in charge of looking after Khan for his last few days to tell him that Zinalya was on her way to see him.

"They did - that’s why I have this." It took a moment, but he slowly, weakly raised up his right hand, the one that was holding the lily, and loosened some of his grip on it. "Once I knew you were coming, I tried to get up and retrieve a flower for you from the grounds outside, but I was stopped before I’d even finished sitting upright. In fairness, I highly doubt I would have been physically able to complete that task regardless." At first, the small smile which then adorned Khan’s features was created out of the dry humour of this statement he’d just made, but it was soon plain to see that it was additionally born from the fact that, as he’d said a few seconds beforehand, he felt glad to see Zinalya. "One of the nurses agreed to retrieve it for me instead."

As she reached out and took the snowy white flower from his hand, feeling a little bit of the surface of its petals on her fingers, this was the moment when the tears that had previously just been a sting deep down in the back of her eye sockets came into being at the top of both of her cheeks.

"Why did this whole cryotube malfunction have to happen, huh?" Asked Zin, using her own dry humour with a tiny chuckle - one that faded away again very quickly and afterwards became replaced by a sorrowful frown. "Why did you have to go and do this...?" The left one went that little bit further but both of these tears that had now materialised swam down the rest of her cheeks' length.

Although his eyes looked sunken as continuous outward reinforcement of his frailness, the concern showing up inside of them at the sight of this fresh wettening of her face was obvious. Still with some slight difficulty, he once again raised the hand he'd been using until now to hold the flower and tenderly wiped away the tear on the right side of her face, then the left, with his thumb. "I don't know why this had to happen. I suppose fate has chosen me as its new plaything."

"This is weird, too: the last time I saw you was two years ago, but talking to you now's like I only saw you last week or something." Zinalya admitted what she was thinking out loud.

"It's almost funny - I was thinking the same thing." He replied.

"You and me are going to fight this all the way, Khan." She said afterwards determinedly. "We'll find the best medical minds in the entire Federation and we'll go as far as we can go with this."

"That's the only obstacle in our path: there's not that far we can go with the matter." The Augment took a breath, the latest look in his eyes showing up at this moment being one of the softness which he reserved for her. The only woman in this century who'd shown him both clear benevolence and full understanding of his motives and pain back in 2259. "I've been told that this is the end of the line so as to speak, and that there's nothing else able to be done for me except for allowing me to die peacefully."

"You can't die. I mean after all that stuff you and me have been through, you just can't." She used her right hand to wipe this wetness from the tears away from her face, though she knew it was an exercise in futility as there was more coming, while still clutching the lily in her left. "I don't want you to die." After a pregnant pause, she uttered the simple truth of her emotional turmoil.

"I'm sorry Zinalya. I don't want to leave you either, but this appears to be the hand that I've been dealt nonetheless." He winced in the pain from the strength required while doing so, making her wish as she heard it that he'd just continued to stay still, but Khan turned to his right ever so slightly and reached out his left hand to hold hers comfortingly, this physical contact with him easing the sadness inside her mind to this same ever so slight degree. "You were a happy dream during those days when I needed you the most." It made him wish he'd had Zin in his life before the first 23rd century awakening, before his escape with his companions aboard the SS Botany Bay in 1996, as a saviour to make the process back then of him trying to forget some of the nightmarish days of his adolescence that little bit easier. These friends of his were people he could count on and who he trusted with his life, but Zinalya's presence seemed to unlock a new level of the ability to be himself and to say what was going on in his heart. "Those moments with you have been some of the best ones that I can remember." A tear from his own eyes suddenly showed up just beneath the right one.

Leaving the lily in her lap, she grasped on to his hand with the other one, so that she could now hold it with both. Knowing that, in turn, she too could entirely and completely be herself around him, she allowed herself to let loose with the amount of tears she shed. "I can't remember a time I didn't feel excited when I was around you. You're not just handsome and basically a sweetheart, you're also a man who brings exhilaration and adventure in your wake."

"I'm afraid flattery won't postpone my death date." He remarked in reply to this with another of his chuckles, putting more dry humour to use. He was, however, still touched by her words.

"No but at least I gave it a shot." She managed to raise a tiny smile herself. Two could play at this game.

While his tear traversed his cheek, his breathing became hitched. The heart rate monitor had also slowed somewhat now. "Do you think I'll see her?"

"Who, your mum?" The half Trill hybrid acted on the guess forming in her brain at who he meant by the word 'her'.

He nodded. "I think I might be about to see her again, and Tanvir, but the truth of that possibility lies in whether what people believe about the existence of hell and heaven is true, and even then it’s a question of which religion in particular was correct." He took a breath once he’d finished speaking - evidently long sentences were getting the better of him somewhat now that he was on death’s doorstep.

Zinalya shook her head, while still not being able to stop the full onslaught of the many tears she was releasing. "I don’t know." Her voice, understandably, was strained. "I don’t know what’s going to be waiting for you, but if heaven and hell do exist then whoever’s in charge up there had better send you to heaven, or at least some kind of medium place between the two."

"Or else you’ll confront them yourself?"

"If it’d mean you getting a chance at a good afterlife, yeah."

Over the next few seconds, he managed to conjure up another small smile. "Or perhaps the beliefs about reincarnation are true, and some time from now I could be reborn as a horse."

"Why a horse?"

"I think running through wide open fields with the wind soaring through my mane will be fun. But whichever kind of afterlife awaits me, I hope I get to see Tanvir and my mother again." He said poignantly. He was only a toddler when Sarina Kaur died, so not only would he be happy at the prospect of interacting with her once more after all these years, but based on the amount of affection she’d shown to him during those first happy years of his life, he had a feeling that she’d be just as joyous to see her little boy again, all grown up. And he'd be doubly happy if he also got the chance to be reunited with probably the greatest friend he'd ever had before said friend's death at the age of fifteen, the boy who had been the best at helping him, and some of the others, for that matter, with trying to get past the emotional turbulences caused by their captivity at the hands of the scientists who'd given them their abilities. "And it'll be nice if I meet Noonien there, as well." Noonien Prasad, although not related to Khan by blood due to the fact that the latter hadn't been conceived from a biological father of any kind, was Sarina's boyfriend until his own death from cancer while she was pregnant, so because of this closeness to her he would've most likely ended up becoming a fatherly figure.

"I hope so too, you deserve to find all three of them." Without fully realising it, the grip of both of her hands on the one of Khan’s she was still grasping tightened. "I’ve heard about this belief called karma, where people are rewarded in their next life depending on how much they suffered in the last one - basically what goes around comes around."

"The sum of a person’s actions." He gave another nod of his head, in recognition of this karma belief after having grown up in India during his childhood and, as a result, being taught about the Hindu faith from an early age. Throughout his life he’d never really followed any kind of religion himself, so he wasn’t sure whether or not he’d be allowed to get in on the action of heaven or reincarnation due to not being a believer. Whether what was coming for him was just a black void which he wouldn’t even consciously be aware of at all. Basically, when there are as many different religious beliefs and ways of faith floating around as there were here on Earth, including atheism, it tends to leave your mind in a bit of a jumble when you try to predict what will happen to you after your eventual demise.

Suddenly, his hitched breathing made a return, more so than it had been the last time.

"No, no, Khan, you can’t go." Said Zinalya, her own voice now becoming even more strained. Her grip on his hand became more soft and gentle again. "Whether you’ve got the power to stop this or not, you still can’t just go!"

As an attempt to comfort her again, his maximum moving speed was still rather slow but he released this hand from hers and used both of his to reach upwards towards her face, gently caressing his fingers against the sides of her cheeks. "To speak truthfully, I’ve spent a fair while in the past wondering how I was going to die, yet this way is possibly one of the ones I expected the least." His eyes conveyed a deep kind of fearfulness which she'd never seen from him until now, and which rocked him to his core. A pause set in for a moment or two. "I don't want to die either."

"Well you're not going to!" She exclaimed defiantly, especially upon noticing that his heart monitor had slowed down again by another couple of notches. Her face was a mess of clammy tears that poured out from the depths of her heart; she could feel both a small release in pressure and a tightening of it simultaneously, in the depths of this heart of hers, as she carried on releasing said tears. There was nothing she could do to stop them even in the slightest. "Remember that scheme I tried out back then, during the trial? How we were going to take each other's hand and run off to some new place once it was all over? We were going to be free to start anew there. There was going to be pretty much nothing we couldn't do together..." The last moments with each other were upon them, meaning Zin was now more desperate than she'd ever been so far to not let the life force of the man she adored sail away down the river. "We were going to have such good times to come..."

"Sssssssssshhhhhh..." Khan soothed, gradually retracting his hands and letting them fall down onto hers, curling his fingers around those of her own hands one final time. "There's nothing that can be done now." His pauses between sentences were growing longer. "This is the way it ends... not with a bang, but with a whimper..." He quoted from the poem The Hollow Men.

"I don't think I've ever hated poetry more than I do right now." Commented Zinalya, this latest attempt at humour to ease the pain of the matter failing to accomplish this desired effect.

"I can feel it..." He said. His voice was at its most quiet volume she'd heard over the last few minutes. "I can feel my heart getting slower, and slower, and slower..." He breathed out, with his face being moisturised by the presence of not just one but two of his own teardrops trickling from his eyes. This provided that extra yank on the young woman's heartstrings. "I love you so much, Zinalya..." Although it was at its smallest size yet, there came another return of his smile.

Hearing these words out loud left her with no other choice but to reply with another plain, simple truth. "I love you too Khan... I love you..."

She found her voice fading out as, over the next few excruciatingly painful seconds, she watched the gentle glint in his eyes as proof of his soft spot for her also fade away. He was grateful that he got to pass away not only with the subject of his endearment sitting with him but additionally while hearing such a calming sound coming from the rain outside the window.

With his eyelids closing a tiny bit more, the expression on his face drained out, and she felt his fingers around her hands go limp.

Then there was the unwavering sound of the monitor flatlining.

He was gone.

Now that there was no one left in the room to offer reassurance, her newfound lack of control over her crying reached an all-time high. Zinalya realised in her mind that this must have been similar to the sadness Sarina was feeling when Noonien died back in 1969, but what she additionally realised was that at the time - although, again, he wasn’t a blood relative to Khan - Sarina had a baby on the way and still had a continuation of her bloodline to love and look after.

Zin didn’t have any of that. The future prospect of accomplishing her life goal of having her own children someday or even just getting married had died with this “superman”. Not to mention the fact that she’d finally found a man who she felt could have been Mr. Right, which had been made even better by him having revealed these two years ago that he experienced the same emotions about her in return, and yet he’d been well and truly ripped away from her forever by nothing more than a malfunction of the cryotube within which he had spent these years until now being kept asleep.

Despite her hand currently trembling, she reached out her left hand and tenderly used her thumb and index finger to fully close his eyelids. There was a sort of peaceful and serene look about him; maybe one could pretend that he was just sleeping again with his eyes in this state of being completely shut.

With her not knowing whether or not she’d have any other emotion left in her once she was done, Zinalya’s head dropped as she began to sob.

[eactivist]

Dear [Congressman, who has neither supported nor rejected Pai’s plan]

I cannot speak for all of America, much less all of the Asians-Americans, the high schools, or to California itself. Although I am part of all of these, I am also a youth, a part of the next generation.

As a youth, “education” factors into why our voices are not heard: we do not have multiple degrees, our bubbles have yet to be popped, and our situational awareness remains dim, limited to our childhood models as a reflection of their views.

But the Internet fixes part of this. You see, we can get degrees online. We can take classes on Khan Academy or FutureLearn. Social media itself forms learning spheres where we become exposed to videos and actions from all over the world, where we can interact with others with different heritages, in different languages, with different flashbulb memories and insights.

Accessing the Internet is part of the globalization process today, allowing us to find our own identity among others. From a simple retweet, we expose not just ourselves, but our friends and family to content we would never have perhaps learned, such as slavery in Libya, where people are sold as little as four hundred dollars.

What social media, online blogs, and shopping websites all show are current trends. They show the fads of human nature. Yes, they show fallacies, but most of all, they show the eclectic voices of humans. To put more of a filter on that by price already inhibits the true reflection of the conscience of society.

And without a doubt, the youth generation is known to be addicted to the screen, to watch copious amounts of TV and movies, to excessively play video games and apps, such as Pokemon Go to Animal Crossing.

We download these apps on the Play or App store. And in this virtual store, there are entertainment services for the youth, a startup market for the youth, and a place to innovate novel ideas for the youth. A future for small content creators among the youth’s creativity would be limited.

In a partisan, polarized society, memes, likes, and shares bring the youth together. How would that remain when Facebook may cost a monthly fee like Netflix?

The Internet provides opportunities, such as the Women’s March in Washington, whose organization, without net neutrality, may not have able to been afforded. #MeToo give women, the Silent Breakers, a source of empowerment to find their voices. Hollywood’s secret history of sexual harassment, highlighted by Harvey Weinstein, would never have been exposed to the public.

Let’s be frank. Your, and any other member of Congress, goal is to be re-elected. And to be re-elected, you target those who vote. Well, it’s no surprise that Congress targets the elderly, 65 years and above, who, since 1968, have had more than 60% vote. And, the youth? Well, the youth, ages 18-24, have had less than 50% vote since 1968, hitting even 30% in 1996, while the elders have had around 70%.

It is a fact that out of the voting age population, the elders are targeted. It’s the reason why Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security are virtually untouchable. It’s why in my city, Rancho Cucamonga, in Central Park, there is a senior center instead of soccer fields or swimming pools.

So now it boils down to the question—the chicken or the egg?:

Do the youth not vote because they feel Congress does not respond to them (rather, the elders) or does Congress not target the youth because they don’t vote?

So I ask you, Congress, to end this chicken or the egg debate by stepping up to be the chicken, helping the egg hatch. Restore our faith and let our voices be heard. The youth grew up on technology, with no broadband providers directly discriminating between fast and slow lanes.

Congress, however, has the chance to prove to the youth that it does not have to be this way.

And not just to the youth.

According to Gallup Poll’s 2014 “Public Confidence in Institutions”, Congress had around 30% who said they have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence. This was the lowest rating out of newspapers, the Supreme Court, the President, the military, and churches.

There is a chance to increase this rating. And there is a reason Ajit Pai proposed his plan now. Show that while Congress focus’ on the tax reform, the debt limit, DACA, etc will not come at the literal cost of net neutrality. Uphold the United Nation’s statement in 2016 that “accessing the Internet is a human right.”

Pai’s reasoning states that the Internet ran fine before the FCC imposed net neutrality rules around 2015. Correction: the FCC formally adopted network neutrality rules for the first time in 2010, filed a complaint all the way back as 2008, and established principles of net neutrality all the way back to 2005.  

It’s not that before the 21st century there was a total, free, open Internet. Some amount of regulation always existed in some form. Indeed Stanford Professor, Barbara van Schewick notes “we have always had a de facto network neutrality regime in the U.S. — first, through the architecture of the Internet, and later, through a mix of formal and informal FCC regulation and action. This de facto regime prevented or at least deterred blocking and discrimination.”

Who’s to say this de facto network neutrality regime will still exist when “Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T want Congress to make a net neutrality law because they will write it”?

And when ISPs no longer operate under common carriers, they have the power to deter and block and discriminate between fast and slow lanes, which is why it’s essential Ajit Pai’s plan for Internet Service Providers to not be classified as broadband providers.

And if ISPs are classified as “broadband providers”, what choice do you and I really have at 25 megabits per second down or 3 megabits per second up (the FCC's definition of broadband)? How is this the competition that Ajit Pai proclaimed when desiring to define ISPs as broadband?

Perhaps Ajit Pai is right when he says we “had a free and open internet prior to 2015.” Key word: Had. Who’s to guarantee we will have a “free and open internet once these regulations are repealed” — especially when “Verizon told a federal court in 2013 that it should have the right to charge any website any fee Verizon liked — and if, for instance, the Wall Street Journal didn’t pay up, Verizon should be allowed to block its site”?

Verizon’s proclaimed “rights” thus would surmount individual rights. After all, rights are a part of Ajit Pai’s meticulous and well-crafted plan.

He aims to eliminate all net neutrality rules, except the modified transparency rule, which means ISPs have to tell their customers that they are engaging in practices — such as entering into deals with online companies to put them in a fast lane to the ISP’s customers. All of these are prohibited by the current rules.

If these are violated when net neutrality is repealed, the FTC will not be able to intervene since the company has disclosed that it has paid fast lanes, charges online companies for access to users, and blocks those that don’t pay.

In other words, without net neutrality, the FTC lacks the power and tools to police net neutrality violations. With current net neutrality rules and ISPs also under Title II, the FTC can intervene.

And while the FTC is independent of the government, the ISPs seem to not follow: the ISPs have more power in Congress now that the FCC is led by a man who used to be a lawyer for Verizon.

It doesn’t stop there. This year in March, 2017 the Senate voted to allow ISPs to sell customer data, including browsing history without prior customer consent. And while the Senate is Republican-controlled, it isn’t an issue about party, not when 73 percent of Republicans, 80 percent of Democrats, and 76 percent of independents want to keep the current protections.

Ajit Pai wants the government to stop micromanaging businesses, so that the “vibrant and free competitive market” will return to its’ former glory, “unfettered by Federal or state regulation.”

Without “micromanaging”, what stops anarchy? Without rules, what stops one branch in government from superseding another? Repealing net neutrality would allow business to supersede the rights of the people, all the way to the youth. And trust in businesses, according to the Guardian, have “declined in two-thirds of the 27 markets the survey” covered and “is now below 50% in 14 markets, the worst showing since 2008.”

Sure, rules cannot stop LiAngelo from shoplifting in China. But they can set a precedent to others to not do the same. They define morality, what we should and should not do. Rules can make sure Larry Nassar, former USA Gymnastics doctor, serve 60 years in prison for child porn.

By allowing ISPs to no longer operate under “common carriers” in Title II, we allow businesses to influence this thought of society. We allow what the youth access on the Internet to be micromanaged itself. In the house, there are the youth, the children, the toddlers, and so on and so forth. If our voices are not heard, then the house is not home for these differing voices. And as Lincoln said, a house divided against itself will not stand.

I am a constituent and net neutrality rules matter to me. Please oppose Ajit Pai’s plan. You can speak for me, for Asian-Americans, for those in high schools, and for the youth.

[weerd1]

Star Trek TOS Rewatch Log, Stardate 1711.26 Supplemental: Missions reviewed, "Court Martial," "Return of the Archons," and "Space Seed."

In "Court Martial" the Captain is accused of panicking during an ion storm and taking an action that results in the death of a crewmember.  The computer and visual logs are against Kirk, but Spock has a breakthrough when he beats the computer at chess five times in a row. He feels it must mean the computer has been tampered with.  I was really amazed with this episode on how quickly the brass was ready to throw Kirk to the wolves, and how nonchalant they seemed to be over the fact the Prosecuting attorney was one of Kirk's old girlfriends.  I was actually impressed however that somehow they managed to cast three out of four of Kirk's Court Martial officers as people of color in 1967.  That's something easy to overlook now, but would have been a hell of a telegraph in the year leading up to Martin Luther King Jr. assassination.  We get first mention of Kirk's involvement with Axanar here as his commendations are read.  More on that when we get to "Whom Gods Destroy" in season 3.

"Return of the Archons" makes good use of that Paramount backlot on a rustic planet that has it's own version of "The Purge" going on once a year to allow people who are otherwise meek  the time to unleash. The Enterprise is here to investigate an Earth ship, The Archon, which disappeared a century before.  They did not fare as well against the cultish planet under control of an ancient computer known as Landru, which will keep the peace at any cost.  We get mention of the Non-Interference directive, which Kirk pretty much immediately rejects, and proceeds to destroy the way these people have lived for 6000 years. It's all right though; they leave ten guys behind to teach the millions of people on the planet how to rebuild society!

And finally we get to "Space Seed."  Kirk thaws out 220 lbs of genetically engineered toxic masculinity who immediately tries to take over the ship. Khan is not operating on his own though; LT Marla McGivers is willing to do anything this abusive f*#&ing organ says to her because he treats her like crap and she apparently loves it. She does at least redeem herself somewhat by helping Kirk escape so he can take a space crowbar and beat the snot out of Khan before sending him and all 72 of his followers (and McGivers) to a nice little planet called Ceti Alpha V.  I am sure they won't be any more trouble.  Khan is described as a Sikh, but is played by a Hispanic actor and is beardless, but OK. Must admit that's better than casting an Englishman.  Now, I love Cumberbatch in the role in Star Trek Into Darkness, but making him Khan is not one of that movie's strengths.  However, for those who are concerned how Harriman/Khan could possibly be designing warships for Section 31, please keep in mind TOS Khan hadn't even been thawed out a full day yet and he had memorized the Enterprise's manual enough to override all bridge control from engineering, take complete control of environment and intruder controls, and then override all safety protocols to set the engines to a buildup to overload.  Give him a few months, and I bet he could get an Admiral's stalled battleship back on track.  Finally we get yet ONE more possible time period for TOS as they are referencing the Eugenics War as being in the mid 1990s and Khan as having been frozen for 200 years.  This places them roughly in the late 22nd Century.  This episode also says the Eugenics War and WWIII are the same conflict, though later Treks will not only move WWIII ahead to the 2050s, but will move TOS ahead about 60-70 years as well with all of this happening in the 2260s.  The definitive time period for all of this though will not be established on screen until the first season of TNG which finally tells us an exact date for them, 2364.  All other "official" Trek dates expand out from that.

NEXT VOYAGE: One of my very favorite go to episodes as the Enterprise visits Eminiar VII and gets "A Taste of Armageddon"! 

[rockofcalifa]

PART I: 1425

back to index

Stiff. Everything stiff.

 Stiff clothes, heavy, scratchy.

 Stiff posture, back straight like his mother had instructed him. She wanted him to "look confident" in front of the cathedral's congregation of nobles, which was a little ridiculous, since everyone was taller than he was anyway.

 Stiff expression. Appropriately solemn, but, of course, not too sad, because showing emotions at his own father's funeral "would be inappropriate."

 Vasilii’s mother had allowed him to cry yesterday, in private. At the funeral, she'd told him - quiet, stern, her cold fingers running through his hair, - his personal feelings would be irrelevant. The funeral was a political function.

 She hadn't needed to say it. He might only be ten but the ideas of duty, honor, and survival in the shark-infested waters of court had been impressed on him strongly by his tutors. He understood how these things worked.

 The dull drone of the Archbishop, the intermittent and ghostly lamentations of the choir, the heavy air cloudy with incense thick enough to drown in, and the unreal quality of his father lying still and silent in front of him all combined to create a hypnotizing feeling, a feeling of being pulled downwards. Trying not to move his head, he averted his eyes, seeking out the other side of the cathedral.

 He knew several of his friends would be here but invisible somewhere in the crowd. Stanislav, further back, within the permanent Lithuanian delegation representing Vasilii’s mother's family. Yesugei, hidden among the Mongolian envoys swiftly sent by Khan Mehmet. Vitaliya, however, was with him in the group up front, and he could just barely see her standing sandwiched between her older brothers, Kosoi and Dmitrii, the three representing their father, Vasilii's Uncle Iurii, who was away overseeing his princedom in Galich.

 "Focus," his mother hissed down at him, and he looked forward again, feeling a little more grounded. Less alone.

   It was a warm feeling, while it lasted. However, over the next few weeks, he became acquainted with the lonely reality of his new situation.

 Yesugei leaving had been, after his father's death, a second and maybe even harsher blow. His wisest, calmest, and most understanding friend, the person he'd hoped could help him navigate, had been forced to move far, far away - to the Khan's capital in Sarai - and for a long, long time, to "begin training for his career."

 He had other friends who could help him manage, but - it was cruel, almost, that from the window of the conference room he could see Vitaliya and Stanislav scampering around the garden. He should be out there, not in here, wasting his days pretending to listen to adults who respectfully addressed him as gospodin, "Grand Prince," and then proceeded to ignore him; adults who liked to listen to themselves talk and never got around to the point.

 He didn't need to be there, anyway - his mother was regent and she would take care of everything - but she wanted him there, to "be seen" and to "learn." Vasilii suspected that she also liked having him nearby for her own peace of mind. If he was sitting there next to her, then he hadn't been murdered by their political enemies.

 Stanislav stuck a bright yellow flower on top of Vitaliya's head. Vasilii turned his attention back to the Archbishop.

 "Although the threat of Lithuania should be enough to dissuade Galich for now, we need to take other measures before the Prince is able to gather more strength." Archbishop Photius concluded. "There are two steps that we should take as soon as possible."

 His mother nodded. She often told Vasilii that Photius was 'a brilliant and holy man.' Vasilii just appreciated that he knew how to be succinct.

 "First, I myself will take a delegation to Galich, and pay them a pastoral visit. With Your Lordship's blessing, of course." The old man inclined his head slightly.

 Vasilii's mother nodded again, and then looked at him pointedly. "Yes, of course," he squeaked, internally wincing at the sound of his own voice.

 "Second, I suggest that we send representatives to the Khan. He is the only man who can settle the matter definitively without necessitating... excessive means."

 'Excessive means.' Vasilii knew enough to understand that meant killing his uncle. Uncle Iurii, who had recently claimed that the dynastic succession of Muscovy was from brother to brother, and not father to son.

 "But if we go to the Khan asking for his decision, we have no guarantee that he will rule in our favor," his mother pointed out.

 "This is true." Vasilii glanced back outside, but Vitaliya and Stanislav had disappeared from view. "However, the Khan will make his decision whether we visit Sarai or not. I think it would be to our advantage to send a few well-spoken men to state our case."

 "Hm," said his mother.

 "As God wills it, we will put this matter to rest." The Archbishop sighed. "And then, may we never hear from Iurii or his kin again."

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[newstfionline]

Can Techie Parents Reinvent School For Everyone—Or Just Their Rich Kids?

By Ainsley Harris, Fast Company, Sept. 11, 2017

Six-year-old Tiana had just gotten her ice cream machine working for the first time, and she was triumphant. Wrapped in hot pink decorations and duct tape, the device was now capable of churning out flavors that the young scientist planned to dub “Mint Speshel” and “Tiana’s Dlitght.”

Eyes wide, Tiana turned to her teacher, Shira Leibowitz.

“Shira, this is the most important day of my career,” she declared.

Leibowitz, a founding team member of startup Portfolio School in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood, recalls that story with a laugh. Portfolio School has been designed to look and operate more like the workplace of the future than the classroom of today, but no one expected students to internalize that approach quite so literally.

“They view themselves as working,” says Leibowitz, who has a doctorate in education. “They’re never learning something because one day they’ll need it, they’re learning something because they need it right now.”

As in a modern office, a typical day at Portfolio School revolves around individualized goals and collaborative, interdisciplinary projects. Tiana’s ice cream machine was the culmination of a unit called “learning is delicious,” which ran the course of the fall 2017 semester. As students explored that theme and built their machines, they learned about science (states of matter), math (measurement), and history (the commercialization of ice). When I first visited the school one morning last October, Tiana had just produced a trial batch of mint ice cream and proudly shared a bowl with me.

Portfolio School is at the vanguard of a movement of startup schools seeking to foster learning experiences, like Tiana’s, that map to the jobs of the future. Many are “micro-schools,” where students of different ages occupy a single multi-purpose space. Many are based on the Montessori method, which emphasizes curiosity and guided choice. And nearly all of these startup schools aim to personalize learning by using technology to deliver individualized lessons alongside group activities.

Perhaps it should come as no surprise that the founders of this new wave of schools are often former technology executives who have started families. In their previous roles they ushered in a new way of working, now prized across industries, which values collaboration, creativity, and iteration. They look at traditional school, with its textbooks and lock-step progressions, and see the need for revolution.

Portfolio School cofounder and CEO Babur Habib fits that profile exactly. He grew up in Pakistan, where he attended public schools, and moved to the U.S. to pursue his PhD in engineering. (He and cofounder Doug Schachtel, who manages operations, met on the squash courts at Princeton, where Habib earned a doctorate in engineering.) Early in his career, Habib designed and debugged microprocessors. Later, he cofounded an education company that was eventually acquired by Intel in 2014. After the deal closed, Habib spent a year managing the integration. Around the same time, his daughter Sophia was born.

“That was the eye opener,” he says of his stint developing educational mobile and tablet applications at the hardware processor. “I visited so many schools, talked to so many administrators.” Over time he grew to share school leaders’ frustrations. Constraints, like classroom design, limited their ability to experiment with technology.

“There’s so much room to reimagine this stuff,” says Habib. “If things are changing in the real world, why aren’t they changing in schools?”

Other parent-technologists have arrived at a similar conclusion.

In the heart of Silicon Valley, Khan Academy founder Sal Khan established a complementary lab school that he describes as “Montessori 2.0.,” infused with the type of video-based math lessons that Khan Academy has popularized since 2007. Across the country, former Google executive Sep Kamvar created Wildflower Montessori, which launched as a storefront school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 2014, and has since added nearly a dozen locations. And then there is AltSchool, a network of micro-schools that is the brainchild of another former Google executive, Max Ventilla. He has managed to recruit an executive team that includes parent-leaders from Airbnb, Uber, and Zynga.

“‘I want something better for my child’--that’s what’s motivating a lot of these high-tech entrepreneurs,” says Tony Wagner, a former teacher who now serves as an expert in residence at Harvard’s Innovation Lab.

Wagner, who advises Portfolio School, sees the growing interest in startup schools as both a reaction against the dominance of test-prep pedagogical regimes and an embrace of the knowledge and skills that future jobs will likely reward.

“The big leap we’re trying to make is moving away from content standards to performance standards,” Wagner explains. “Can you use knowledge, can you apply knowledge?” Demonstrating mastery of chemistry, in this line of thinking, would involve designing a study and presenting the findings, rather than memorizing the periodic table.

“Content is not as important anymore. Content is in our back pockets, literally,” Habib says, gesturing toward his iPhone. “Whatever knowledge you’ve gained, how do you apply it? That is the central thesis of this school. We feel that the creative process of taking an idea and then producing something out of it is so important, so important for the future.”

But as Habib and other parent-founders are discovering, turning lofty pedagogical aspirations into daily reality for a small group of children is no easy task.

It requires patience, for one. Habib, who previously taught physics at Stanford and authored papers on quantum dots, has had to learn how to explain the basics to tiny beginners. During one of my visits to Portfolio School, I found Habib at a whiteboard, teaching long division to an advanced 7-year-old. Habib and Schachtel are not trained educators, but they have taken a hands-on approach in their school’s classrooms and made a point of hiring expert counterparts. After recruiting Leibowitz, they signed on engineer-turned-teacher Nancy Otero, who previously created digital fabrication labs for schools in China, Brazil, and Spain.

At Portfolio, Otero installed a “Makerspace” in one corner of the rented ground floor space that the school occupies. Wire cutters, a sewing kit, and other tools hang from pegboards on the wall. There is also a soldering iron, which Portfolio’s kindergarteners wield with surprising aplomb.

“We don’t distinguish for the kids between a pencil or a scissors or a 3D printer or a laser cutter or a book or an online science simulation,” says Leibowitz. “They use what they need when they need it to learn and to create, so that it’s seamless. It’s not ‘now we’re going to technology, now we’re going to the art room.’”

Before Portfolio, Tiana was homeschooled by her mother, Jackie, who paused her Wall Street career to oversee a schedule that included piano and violin lessons and trips to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But Jackie felt limited by her own breadth of experience: “I only knew traditional school.” At Portfolio, she says, “They have a vision even above my vision, and they can implement it.”

Though a high achiever by any standard definition--she majored in math and economics as an undergraduate, and earned a Stanford MBA--Jackie has little interest in the status markers of academic success that dominate New York’s competitive private schools.

“Giftedness--what does that mean? Winning a chess championship? It’s good for the parents to brag, but it’s meaningless for the kids,” she says. Portfolio, in contrast, emphasizes the virtues of intrinsic motivation.

“They put the challenge back to the child, and I love that,” she says. “They’re teaching how to be a self-sustaining learner. [Tiana] feels she can do anything.”

Over morning coffee and biscuits at Bubby’s Tribeca, around the corner from Portfolio, Habib and Schachtel reiterate that vision.

“It should never be more about school than learning, or succeeding just to get the right grades and get into the right school,” Schachtel says. Growing up, he logged one accolade after another--Princeton diploma, Columbia MFA--but struggled to find purpose in his studies, and later in his work. “You get on this track,” he says.

Like Habib, Schachtel envisions that Portfolio students will one day attend top universities--but “that’s not the expectation that’s put upon kids and the driving motivator.”

Of course, if Portfolio students do happen to aim for the Ivies, many years from now, they will be ready--perhaps even at an advantage.

“Our approach of building impressive student portfolios from the age of 5 is preparing them for admissions,” says Leibowitz, who notes that top schools, including MIT, now review portfolios of student work alongside essays and other application materials.

Plus, she adds, “If [students] are still taking SATs when these guys are preparing for college, we’ll teach them strategies for the test as if it were any other project. We want all the doors to be open to them.”

For $35,000 per year--Portfolio’s current tuition rate--parents expect nothing less.

And therein lies the tension facing private startup schools like Portfolio, many of which rely on wealthy parents to get off the ground but aspire to serve children of all backgrounds by selling products and services like teaching training and project-based curricula to their public school counterparts. The steep price that Portfolio parents pay ensures that their children are taught by PhDs and given access to resources like a Makerspace. Meanwhile, at nearby Manhattan public schools, teachers with STEM backgrounds are a rare luxury, and budgets are so tight that parents routinely pay for Kleenex and other basic supplies.

If AltSchool founder Ventilla has a pedagogical bias, it is toward participatory lessons--like most of the educational entrepreneurs in this new era. “Students should be encouraged, at every stage of the learning process, to adopt an active stance toward their education,” Khan wrote in his 2012 book, The One World Schoolhouse: Education Reimagined. “They shouldn’t just take things in; they should figure things out.”

Tiana and her peers had that type of learning experience during Portfolio’s first year, and so too did Habib and his founding team. They scrambled throughout the spring to create lessons and projects that incorporated student interests, with largely promising results. As part of a unit on domesticated animals, Portfolio’s students welcomed two guinea pigs into their classroom and designed a custom house for them, complete with sensors and webcam. “They built a three-story castle,” Habib recalls with pride.

One boy, 9 years old, trained a neural network to tell the two guinea pigs apart, using the webcam video feed, so that he could analyze their behavioral patterns. An investor who happened to attend Portfolio’s end-of-year presentation described the student as “immediately employable”--to his parents’ great surprise and Habib’s great delight: “This is the first time the parents don’t know as much as the kids do.”

[bluesakura007]

Undeniable - Chapter 3: How Dare You - Khan Noonien Singh x OC

Summary: Zin’s revelation in the courtroom sparks disapproval and an argument with two crewmates who aren’t that keen on letting her go with Khan on the exile sentence she suggested. 

Warning: This chapter’s a little bit of an angsty one.

"We're not seriously gonna let her do this are we?" Said the CMO.

"I think we should. I mean it’s her choice, so if she’s certain that it’s what she wants to do then us trying to stop her’s just not right." Scotty replied.

"What is also not right, Mr. Scott, is to allow lieutenant-commander Hamilton to make that choice and thereby ultimately risk her life at the hands of Khan if she does decide to accompany him in exile." Spock, afterwards, added his own viewpoint. "I am in agreement with Dr. McCoy."

Bones himself momentarily looked off into the distance in reaction to this second sentence. "Still one of the most uncomfortable things I’ve heard in a while."

They and the other five senior crewmembers, which was except for the woman in question and included Carol, were currently gathered together in one of the court building’s empty conference rooms several floors up, all standing in various places around this room in equally varying positions. Some of them were leaning against the wall, others weren’t, some had their arms crossed and the rest instead had them at their sides, during which the cold, white sunlight outside touched, essentially, every surface in sight.

"Chekov, what are you thinking about this?" Kirk asked this ensign.

Pavel appeared to be somewhat hesitant and anxious about providing his answer, but responded after a second or two with, "I agree with Mr. Scott, sir - if Zinalya wants to do this then I don’t think we should stop her."

"I personally don’t know which side to take in this." Said Sulu. "We’ve all seen what Khan can do and what he has done, and I’m as worried about her as the rest of you, but at the same time if she thinks she can help to change him by going with him then we should at least let her try."

"So you’re on the fence?" Said Jim.

"Yes sir."

The captain sighed quietly to himself, in agreement with these points which had just been mentioned and having realised around a minute prior that this was what Zinalya's request for advice the previous evening regarding a "transfer" had really been about. "To be honest with you I’m feeling the same way. I'm on the fence too."

"And me." Uhura nodded her head.

"And me." Carol additionally contributed to the discussion.

"Khan is a highly dangerous man, Doctor; a dangerous man who should not be permitted to leave the Federation with one of Starfleet’s own officers." As Spock put in another point in reply to the blonde woman, it was after this sentence was spoken when, in the doorway behind him, the burgundy haired one who was the subject of all these different sides of the argument suddenly turned up. "Such a course of action would not only mean he has caused her to leave behind a career she has been building on for several years, but will also bring disrepute to Starfleet and put the Federation’s trust in us at risk."

During this, Scotty, Pavel and the others who had the doorway in their line of sight looked at where Zinalya was standing with surprise at her appearance and with a little bit of a desire for her not to have been there to hear Spock. Regardless of the matter at hand, they all still didn’t want to offend her if they could avoid it.

It took a moment of silence for Spock to realise that they were looking behind him at something, to which he turned around to see that she was indeed standing right there. He opened his mouth ever so slightly upon seeing her, as if he was about to say something but didn't know what, and his abrupt realisation was being channelled through the look in his eyes.

Zinalya snorted derisively through her nose at this expression upon his face and fully entered into the room. "No, it's okay, just carry on like I'm not even here why don't you?" She didn't show it externally, but she did feel a tiny twinge of guilt at the way she'd spoken, as she was usually a mild-mannered enough person.

Spock finally managed to pose the question, "What is it that you see in Khan which makes him so endearing to you?"

"Why I’ve got feelings for him?"

"Yes."

Now it was her turn to be stumped for what to say next. "Because I don’t fully know why, but I feel a little like he’s lonely, and like he’s been through a lot because of admiral Marcus." She answered calmly.

"Oh yeah? And whose fault is it that Marcus can’t be brought to answer for what he’s done?" Said McCoy, to which a look of painful recollection crossed Carol’s features for only a second. Despite her clearly expressing her shame beforehand for this admiral to be her father, she could nonetheless oh so vividly remember the sound of his skull being split by Khan and the way in which the latter conveyed his final words to him: You should have let me sleep.

"My decision still stands: I do wanna go with him if they do give him the exile sentence instead of putting him back into stasis." Zinalya said firmly in answer.

The doctor’s eyes narrowed and his jaws tensed up. "Are you out of your bagel-fed mind? God only knows what Khan’ll do to you!"

"You weren’t there when he was crying back on the Enterprise. He was talking about how everyone he had left who he knew and who mattered to him were used against him and most probably killed by then, and he only cried one tear - he was hurting and he still didn’t know how to express it and get it all out. He’s a troubled man, Bones."

"You sound like you’re his goddamn therapist..." He commented to himself, which caused the previously placid and collected Zinalya to suddenly feel a surge of irritation coursing through her body.

"If Khan wanted to hurt me, he would’ve already done it by now." She snarled back through gritted teeth. Pavel turned to look at Scotty, both of them beginning to experience concern at the rising tension between their friend and the Southern doctor. "Somebody with his capabilities would've just done whatever the hell they wanted with no restraint."

"That does not excuse his actions which he has committed, which include the deaths of admiral Pike and the numerous others from the bombing of the Kelvin Memorial Archive and the USS Vengeance's crash into San Francisco." Said Spock. "And even of the captain."

"Yeah, we're all very well aware of how you handled that one." Zinalya, unblinking and with the stony expression on her face still present, responded, recalling one of her own memories of Khan, on that day they were referring to, getting practically dragged through the Enterprise with several gashes across his face and with a broken right arm, and the way Uhura described Spock's rage-fuelled fight against him which caused these injuries. Jim, the revived man himself, was now feeling the same concern at the conversation's growing friction that Scotty and Chekov were.

"Is it absolutely definite that you want to leave with him, lassie?" This chief engineer enquired.

"It is." She nodded.

"There you go then, case closed." Scotty was attempting to finish the discussion so that the source of the almost tangible tension would be cut off.

"It's not just 'case closed'!" Retorted McCoy, before turning his attention back towards the security chief and raising his voice. "Dammit Zin, we're trying to help you out here! Do you wanna end up dead or something?!"

"No of course I don't, but it's nice to be allowed to have a choice!" She snapped back.

"You mean like how you've got the choice of having a relationship and maybe even settling down with pretty much any guy out there that you want, any actually good enough guys out there in the world and in the whole damn Federation, and you picked Khan, a guy who's basically a murderous ass?" He hissed aggressively.

Zinalya fell silent after this was said, matching what the others had already been doing during the last few seconds. And then some moments later, without hesitation, she marched across the room towards Bones and slapped him across the face. Hard.

Everyone's eyes widened, with Kirk, in addition, even doing a brief whistle in this same surprise. Bones' head had been jerked back to one side by the force of the slap, and while he looked back with incredulity at Zinalya, who was now only a few inches in front of him, he spent about half a second using his fingertips on one hand for feeling the area of his left cheek where he'd been hit.

"How dare you." Her voice was only just higher than a whisper, during which her features morphed into a full, deadly glare and the volume of her voice then kicked up again by several notches to the point where she was now shouting at him. "How dare you dictate who I can and can't like and what I can and can't think about someone!"

Feeling as if she'd been betrayed by a man who was supposed to be one of her trusted comrades, it was immediately after she'd finished speaking when Zinalya turned around and stormed back out of the room and away down the corridor, leaving the others with a range of different emotions but with the main one being shock at what had just taken place.