#FUCK present day society since you so artificially intelligent

[harrelltut]

☥ FUCK yo’ Arrested Developed [A.D.] mortal feelings you Psychologically Compartmentalized [PC] into your tiny illiterate minds of basic artificial intelligence you Mistakenly believe is your self confidence that safeguards your other hidden insecurities of genetic human imperfection you Physiologically failed to Alkhemically Reverse during your allotted time on earth as you continue to flock like SHEEP to genetic extinction when I Physiospiritually Articulate [PA] UNAPOLOGETIC BLACK TRUTHS ☥

[365days365movies]

May 6, 2021: The Martian (2015) (Recap: Part One)

We’re leaving lo-fi sci-fi, people. Kind of.

I mentioned before that films like Her are what I define as “lo-fi sci-fi”, which is a category that I’ve kind of made up. Basically, it’s the science fiction version of low fantasy, meaning it contains science fiction themes contained within an otherwise contemporary setting. In the case of Her, Joaquin Phoenix’s character, along with many others, live in a world and setting basically like ours, but with technology advanced enough to generate AIs (like Siri) that are intelligent enough to actually ascend our reality. Because we live in a society.

You give me Joaquin Phoenix, I’m gonna make a Joker reference; it’s in the contract of my existence. Anyway, that is admittedly kind of broad, right? I mean, that has the capability of crossing over with a BUNCH of sci-fi genres and themes. And, considering that we’ve already seen magic, speculative technology, time travel, monsters, and artificial intelligence, we’ve already touched on quite a bit.

And with science fiction, the sky’s the limit. Literally. So, I think it behooves us to re-examine lo-fi sci-fi a little bit. Specifically, we should note that it can also be defined as an extension of currently existing technologies and possibilities. Writers would call this “speculative sci-fi”, assuming in this case that it’s set within the present or a near and attainable future. Her definitely fits in this category, as does Westworld. But, let’s crossover to another genre by speculating upon another possibility. And it begins with this man. Probably.

Hey, Elon, what’s up? Now, Mr. Musk here is a...controversial figure, for COMPLETELY understandable reasons. Instead of touch upon the man himself, I feel like touching upon one of his recent focuses: space travel. With SpaceX and the various upcoming space trips and journeys that they’re planning, Musk has made it clear that he plans to shoot to the Moon. Again, literally.

In fact, this full plan is to go even further than that, and to fuel potential commercial space flights in the future, which is admittedly very cool. And of course, if you’re going to shoot for the Moon...

Guys...guys, that’s Mars. THAT’S FUCKING MARS

Is that not amazing? We have sound and pictures from FUCKING MARS! THAT’S A DIFFERENT PLANET, GODDAMN IT! It’s cooler than I have the ability to properly express, but it IS goddamn cool. And this means that, easily within my lifetime, we could (and likely will) land on Mars. Which is amazing. God, I really want to see that happen.

And so, landing on Mars is BARELY science fiction, but since we haven’t yet done so...yeah, it’s fictional at the moment. And so, any film about landing on Mars falls within this category. Well...to an extent.

2000′s Mission to Mars, for example, was a Disney-funded film (to my IMMENSE surprise; and it’s based off of an old Disney World ride, WHAT), and a movie that I saw a LOT when I was a kid. I also barely remember it, to be honest. But that film is straight-up science fiction because of, well...aliens. The idea of Martians is, as far as we know it, fictional. And most fiction involving Mars includes these aliens somehow. Whether it’s DC Comics’ entire civilization of Martians, as seen in Justice League, Supergirl, or Young Justice...

...Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s heavily mythologized civilization, as seen in the Barsoom series of novels (and another Disney film)...

...Or one of the best Looney Tunes characters.

Mmm. Yes. Isn’t that lovely?

But, yeah, Mars and aliens go hand-in-hand in our media. So, to properly look at lo-fi science and speculative science fiction in relation to the Red Planet, we’ll need a movie that goes to the planet, and doesn’t touch upon the concept of aliens AT ALL.

Enter...Ridley Scott?

Yeah, the director of Legend, Alien, Thelma and Louise, Blade Runner, Gladiator. Also the director of Kingdom of Heaven, Prometheus, Exodus: Gods and Kings, and...ugh, 1492: Conquest of Paradise. I’ve talked about his mixed record before, in my Recap of Legend right here.

In 2014, he was brought on to adapt a book by Andy Weir called The Martian, which is a great book! I’ve listened to the audio book, and I whole-heartedly recommend doing that. And because of that, I am VERY MUCH looking forward to watching this film, especially seeing as it’s often called one of the best science fiction films made during that year, and was critically acclaimed then and now. It got seven Oscar nominations (although it won none of them), amongst other awards. So, enough navel-gazing, huh? The Martian!

SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Recap (1/2)

On Acidalia Plantitia, at the landing site of the Ares III mission, a group of scientists are gathering samples. These scientists are commander and geologist Melissa Lewis (Jessica Chastain), pilot Rick Martinez (Michael Pena), systems operator Beth Johanssen (Kate Mara), surgeon Chris Beck (Sebastian Stan), German chemist Alex Vogel (Aksel Hennie), and overly talkative botanist Mark Watney (Matt Damon). 

The group seems to have a good dynamic, but that dynamic is interrupted by a massive dust storm, which is large enough to cause the entire crew to evacuate. However, in the chaos of the dust storm, Mark is hit by debris and lost in the shuffle. Although Lewis goes back to find him, she can’t get to him before they need to leave, and Mark is believed dead. This is reported (pretty callously) by NASA Director Teddy Sanders (Jeff Daniels) to the press soon afterwards.

But of course, that wouldn’t be much of a movie, now would it? Mark’s alive! And Mark’s alone. With his suit damaged, and low on oxygen, he trudges back to headquarters, which is intact and still contains breathable oxygen. He gets inside, and realizes that he’s been stabbed in the abdomen by some debris. He removes it, and stitches up his own wound. Which is...god, it’s fucking BRUTAL just to think about, nevertheless watch.

Once he’s finished, he records a log for the future, if he doesn’t make it. It’s day 19 of the 31-day mission at this point, and Mark’s basically screwed. He needs lasting oxygen, water, and food, and he might need that for 4 years, when the next manned mission can come to the red planet. Additionally, he has absolutely no way to contact NASA, leaving him completely stranded. Another dust storm rolls in that night, and Mark looks over the belongings of his colleagues, packing them up for their eventual return. It’s somber, to say the least. However, Mark affirms that he’s determined not to die on the planet.

After doing the math, Mark should have enough food to last him for about 300 days, especially if he rations it. Until then, he’ll need to figure out how to grow his own food, on a planet where nothing grows. Which is, of course, going to be a difficult feat to accomplish. But Mark Watney’s a botanist with botany powers, and he’s gonna do it.

It’s day 31, and Mark’s brought in dirt from the outside, and uses the bio-waste from the crew’s stay there for a form of compost. After 5 days, mostly full of him watching Happy Days on TV and trying to farm, he realizes that he needs water, both for himself and for the soil. To do that, he goes chemical and decides to use hydrogen-laden rocket fuel, wood from Martinez’s belongings, and good old-fashioned fire to make water! And since hydrogen + oxygen = water, it should work. With a minor side-effect.

So, yeah, he blew himself up. As as he records a video log, the sound mixing makes itself impressively known by subtly and realistically generating a tinnitus sound. It’s VERY well-done, holy shit. Anyway, he makes a stable fire, and the place is soon covered in condensation, moistening the room and the soil successfully.

We get to day 54, and Mark’s planted leftover potatoes from the crew in order to grow them. And while he’s being mourned at a funeral on Earth, and in NASA, he’s seeing the fruits (or shoots) of his efforts.

Back on Earth, Mars Mission Director Vincent Kapoor (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is trying to convince Director Teddy to let him lobby for another Ares mission, despite the risk of bad press for the callousness of the proximity to Watney’s death. Meanwhile, satellite technician Mindy Park (Mackenzie Davis) looks down at the Ares III site, and realizes that the site has changed visually, meaning that Mark may actually be alive.

Shocked by this, she tells Kapoor, Teddy, and media director Annie Montrose (Kristen Wiig) about this, and they realize the absolute clusterfuck that this whole thing is. They can’t tell the other members of the Ares III crew about it, because it’d devastate them for the 10 months they have to get back to Earth, at the VERY least. They can’t tell the WORLD about this, because they just had a funeral for the guy, and they’d reveal that they left him stranded on Mars accidentally, destroying faith in the Mars Missions Program. And they can’t save Mark, who they’re sure will starve eventually. It’s a mess. And Kapoor also wonders what’s happening to Mark psychologically through all of this.

And yet, they reveal this to the world regardless, causing the clusterfuck reaction that they think it’s going to cause. But Mark’s busy on Mars, figuring out how to get to the site of the next Ares IV mission in 4 years, at the Schiaparelli crater about 50 days travel away. This is a struggle, as his Rover has only so much power and fuel, and he can only get more power by cutting out the heater is risking death by freezing. So, problems. However, he figures out a potential solution: radioactive isotopes! In a move that is, let’s face it, COMPLETELY INSANE, he digs up a radioactive generator from the ship in order to heat the ship.

On Earth, they try to figure out Mark’s moves, as well as how to resupply Ares IV sooner for Mark’s benefit. This is with the director of JPL, Bruce Ng (Benedict Wong), and the flight director of the ship Hermes, Mitch Henderson (Sean Bean), who insists that they tell the Ares II crew. They continue to monitor Mark, and note that he’s been travelling for 17 days in his Rover towards something. Kapoor figures it out, and flies to California.

See, Mark needs a way to contact NASA, and he believes that the way to do so is through Pathfinder, the first probe ever sent to Mars in 1997, lasting for 9 months since landing until they lost contact. Mark digs it up, and the people at JPL in California start their own efforts for contact. And despite communication being extremely rudimentary, initially limited to yes/no questions that use a still-frame camera, it fucking WORKS! WHOO!

To boost this communication hurdle, the two camps figure out a hexadecimal system for communication, allowing them to communicate using a circular table of numbers that represent an alphabet. That allows them to teach Mark to hack into the Rover, allowing it to piggyback off of its broadcast signal and send them messages via keyboard. Nice! Now that communication is reasonably possible, Mark’s able to ask how the crew is handling his death. But upon learning that they haven’t told him. He’s understandably a little goddamn enraged. And so, they FINALLY tell the Ares III crew about this.

The news breaks the crew, even though Mark continues to stress that he’s all right, and that it wasn’t their fault. Meanwhile, Mark’s able to survive for 912 days with his potato plants, and things improve with the help of technicians on Earth. They plan to launch a supply rocket to him in the next year, and things are looking fine! Unless, of course...something goes horribly HORRIBLY wrong.

Well...fuck. Good place to pause for Part Two, then?

[spongeekat]

Life as a Super Powered Omega Sucks (Chapter 1)

read on ao3

Masterlist Here

Summary:  Peter just got invited on his first lengthy Avengers mission, one that will prove whether he's fit to continue operating as a hero on the streets of New York. Unfortunately, he's also an omega disguised as a beta, and on the week of starting his heat. Unable to miss out on the mission for the sake of his future, he goes anyways, equipped with a dangerous quantity of heat suppressants and an optimistic outlook. However, he wasn't prepared to end up spending most of his time with Alpha and long term friend Wade. Will he survive the mission and get back in time to spend his heat at home? Or ruin his health and suppress his heat long enough that he can prove his worth to SHIELD and the Avengers?

Peter Parker wasn't exactly ashamed of being an omega. Sure, he hid his status like the plague- masking his scent with an artificial beta spray, using heat suppressants at any given chance, only going off them when it was guaranteed he had a free weekend to spare, and wearing clothes that highlighted his un-omega-like toned arms when he was feeling particularly insecure about it- but it wasn't out of fear of being seen as such. But if you needed a picture painted of why he chose to hide his biological assignment in lieu of presenting himself as neutral, the one word he could begin to create it with was ‘Alphas��.

Alphas secreted dominance with them wherever they went, leaving their cocky, charismatic scent all over public spaces. School was no different. From the days of 7th grade and up, when puberty started hitting Peter's classmates and kids were presenting left and right, the alphas took total control of the hallways. Big man Flash was the first to show clear signs of an alpha, and the rest of his crew of alphas and wannabee-betas fell right in line behind him. With the rise of Alpha-Beta and Beta-Beta relationships being accepted in society, omegas were far and few. Male omegas were even rarer, making up just 25% of the omega population. History taught the extremely fertile gender was previously discriminated against harshly by those that believed them to be nothing more than baby-making machines, and nearly eradicated, as only Alpha-Omega relationships could produce omegas. However,as the omega population went down, closely followed by birth rates, everyone had begun to realize the necessary role omegas played in re-population. As such, omegas were presently celebrated and respected; lusted after and worshiped by alphas and betas alike.

But that was mostly in their later years. Before alphas started to develop their sexual drive, they reveled in the chance to show their power over others, and omega girls tended to be their target. Peter saw kids shoved into lockers, thrown in trash cans, and pushed around on a daily basis. He’d only known 2 omega boys in his life, and the teasing had gotten so severe they eventually moved to homeschooling. Luckily, he hadn't presented, and when he reached 14, he was officially declared as a beta by the school nurse, giving him a pass to fly under the bully's radars at least a tiny bit more effectively.

Unfortunately, being born as the child of a purebred omega and a groomed Alpha such as Mary and Richard left you more susceptible to presenting than other children. So when Peter awoke when he was 17, a few years after he'd taken on the Spider-Man persona and met Mr Stark, sweating and clawing at his clammy skin mid-heat, he knew the universe was doing whatever it could to fuck him over. Besides just school bullies being an issue when it came to his identity, another major reason he had to conceal any evidence of his omega status was the fact that he was Spider-Man. Not only would he most definitely be looked down on by his enemies or perceived as weak, but with the Avengers hardly taking him seriously as it is, and police on high alert searching for an alpha with superhuman strength, he didn't want to risk losing any more respect from the public. He wasn't totally popular at the moment. Besides, being known as an omega, especially a male omega, publicly would narrow down the search quite a bit. What was he, one of 20,000 in all of New York City? Luckily, he'd been pretty successful in hiding it so far, even on days such as today when he was on the week of his heat and could feel the hormone changes already. There was some big-name-but-secretly-evil private investor from some big-name-but-sketchy company that had been quietly investing in illegal technology on the terrorist level, or at least that's what Peter had gathered so far. He always did have some trouble figuring out what Coulson was actually saying, especially when he was distracted by...everything. Particularly a shiny-- "And we can count on you for that, right, Spider-Man?" Oh yeah. That was him. "What? Yeah, yeah, of course." Peter flashed his biggest grin to show he had definitely been listening and not spacing out like the 20 year old kid he was, but Coulson obviously couldn't see it through the spandex of his mask. All intimidating and slightly patronizing pairs of eyes turned back to stare at him, and he felt himself melting into his seat in guilt. Coulson drew a long sigh, rubbed his temple, then turned back to the map projected on the screen. "So, to repeat for Spider-Man, this point of investigation on the building will be a stealth mission. We'll send Natasha and Steve to the ground floor to  take out the heaviest of the security, and once they take notice of you, Spider-Man should have plenty of time to access the elevator shaft and descend to the bottom floor unnoticed. Once you're there, you need to find a way to get Tony in so he can disable the bombs placed on each level. That way, our agents can effectively infiltrate the premise with as little resistance as possible, end the weapons trade in Cabo, and place as many of the workers under arrest as we can.” Now Peter was a little confused, mostly by how he had spaced out all the way from the Russia plans to Mexico, but he was at least a little too proud to raise his hand and ask.

“We already have your escort ready for your portion of the mission, Spider-Man, so don’t worry about that piece. We’ve already made contact and he shall be there tomorrow when you depart.”

“I need an escort?” Peter earned an intense frown for his comment, and he shut himself up right away. “I mean, yeah. A-Okay with Me.”

“Intelligence gathering will begin tomorrow. Meet here at 4 for your flight. Yes, Clint, 4 in the morning. Don’t be late, and don’t forget to bring any supplies you may need for a mission that may take up to two weeks. The majority of your time in Russia will be spent on hold as back-up, in case something goes awry, until we make our move on their transportation facility once we’ve acquired enough data. Keep that in mind when packing. ” With that, Coulson officially ended the meeting and began to gather up what he had brought over. Peter was happy to escape, until he realized what exactly Coulson had said. Two weeks? No, there was no way he could be gone that long. His heat was due sometime around Friday, maybe Monday at latest. Tomorrow, Tuesday, at earliest. He couldn’t go on a trip with the Avengers when it was so close. That would be a story he would never live down.

“Yo, hey, Mr. Stark.”

“Kid.”

Peter side-stepped Captain America as he shuffled past, ending up in front of the man who had brought him into this line of business in the first place. He wasn't aware of Peter's omega status. Mr Stark hardly trusted him enough to allow him to be an Avenger in the first place, so Peter had hacked into Karen's programming with Ned's help to keep her from relaying omega-related health information to anyone else but himself. "Hey, uh, he said this mission was going on for 2 weeks?”

“Yep.” Mr Stark answered as he shoved his expensive tablet into its case, depositing it in his bag. “Homework standing in your way?”

“No, no, that’d be totally uncool.” Peter mentally crossed that off his list of excuses he had prepared. “I just don’t know if I can like...keep my cover that long. I have a lot of people that expect to see me every day. I don’t think the flu will work again.”

“Then use the Stark Internship papers I signed.” Mr Stark sighed thickly, turning to face Peter with an impatient expression. Peter internally cringed, able to see the extra stress he’d been under reflected on his face. He was five seconds from being scolded. He could feel it like a truck about to run him over. “Tell them you’re going on a school trip. Use my card and book hotels for proof. Figure it out. You’ve known since yesterday it was this long.”

“I...you’re right.” Peter relented. Guess there was no helping it, then. He’d just have to make sure to make the mission went by fast. And bring as many heat suppressants as possible, no matter how ineffective they were on him. “Sorry. I’ll get it sorted.”

“Good. This is your chance to prove we can trust you as a part of this team.” Mr Stark continued, walking past Peter and towards the door. Peter kept up with him easily, shadowing him through the hallways of the tower. “You’re young, and that’s kept SHIELD off your back for years. Don’t let this mission be the reason you have to give up everything you’ve worked towards.”

“It’s that important?”

“It’s that important.” Mr Stark repeated back.

Peter hadn’t even begun to consider this may be some sort of test to allow him to continue to operate in New York without proper jurisdiction. However, that made sense. Why else would an entire important section of the mission be dedicated to him? Or at least he assumed it was important. He wasn’t paying attention during the rest to find out what anyone else was doing. In fact, what was the goal of their mission again-- ?

Mr Stark’s shoulder came up close to Peter’s face too fast,and he realized too late he had stopped walking. He barely managed to catch himself before he rammed into the taller man from behind, taking an uncomfortable step back. Mr Stark turned to face him with a suspicious expression, slight worry maybe-possibly mixed in there somewhere. “You’ve been acting weird since yesterday.”

Peter swallowed. Pre-heat brain. But he couldn’t say that. “I guess so? It’s probably just because I’m around all of you guys and-”

“Cut the crap. What’s up? Why are you so determined not to go?” Mr Stark eyed him, as if he could see through his facade if he stared long enough. “Are you hurt?”

“What? No, I’m fine. Totally good.” Peter insisted, only realizing his missed opportunity once it was too late. “I think I’m just tired. I’ll make sure not to stay out too late tonight for patrol.”

“Maybe stay home and sleep the entire night. I’m sure New York will survive for a night.” Mr Stark still didn’t look like he believed him, and Peter almost preferred being ignored.

“I’ll think about it.” Peter agreed, though there was no way that was going to happen when he was already going to be gone for an extensive period of time. “Anyways, thanks for the talk. I should really get working on my excuses and alibis and stuff.”

“Right. Try to take it easy.”

“Will do.”

Peter peeled out of the conversation before Mr Stark could press it any further. He sprinted through the hallways of Stark Towers, pushing on each window until he found the one that was actually able to be opened at this height, indicated by a small rush of wind detectable only to his sensitive ears. His gloved hands pressed lightly on the surface, letting the glass pane swing out after some resistance. Peter crawled up onto the sill, his path home highlighted between the numerous skyscrapers littered along the streets. The cars honking below gave a rise to his adrenaline, and then he was falling, leaping from the building to give himself enough distance not to hit the wall, but free-falling like a bullet through the wind. 10 stories or so down he finally caught his fall, webs shooting out from both wrists with a distinct thwip . His arms jolted at the end of his dissent, before he was soaring again through the air, waiting until the last second possible before he would let another strand sail out and grip onto a pole or a ledge. All the while, calculations of heat suppressants and calendar days ate through his brain. He was sure this mission was just going to last a couple days, and the 2 weeks warning was just precautionary. They’d be in and out within a few days, and he’d be home and in bed by Saturday at the latest. They were the Avengers! It didn’t take that long for these kinds of things.

Probably.

"Hey Karen?"

"Yes, Peter?"

"Falsify a good health report if Mr Stark tries to check on me. Also, can you tell me how much is in my bank account? Suppressants are pretty expensive."

"Of Course, Peter." Karen responded, making Peter smile as he felt slightly less alone. "I believe you have about 3 doses remaining at home, and can afford a pack of 12 from the budget pharmacy in Northwest Queens."

Shit. "Thanks, Karen." Peter would just have to make do somehow.

--

Peter was not awake, by any means, the next morning.

He had followed Mr Stark’s advice and passed out before midnight. However, that still meant he only got a few hours in before he had to be up and packed by 3. He shoved a few days of civvies into a bag, rolled up tightly to conserve space, basic toiletries and underwear, and of course packed the rest of the space with necessary tools in case he got unlucky enough to end up in heat; a week’s worth of heat suppressants (enough for a normal metabolism to last a month, but he was unlucky enough to burn through a day’s worth in a few hours), 2 bottles of faux scent to mask his, and anti-anxiety medication to take the edge off if he was in a difficult spot. With that, he snuck a quiet breakfast and left Aunt May a note, before taking off with toast in his mouth towards the hangar he was told to meet in.

Peter was surprised to find himself to be the only one in full uniform. Mr Stark had his suitcase in hand but had made no attempt to wear it even partway, Steve had on sweatpants and a long sleeve shirt, in similar style to Sam, though his wing containment unit was in his arms, Clint hadn’t even changed out of his pajamas, but he did wear his bow over his back, and Natasha was in her bodysuit without any of her normal accessories layered on. They were still waiting for Peter’s supposed stealth mission escort, as well as Scott Lang, but otherwise Peter felt quite out of place.

“Don’t tell me you’re a morning person, too.” Clint walked in front of Peter, eyeing his suit with a yawn that made him look half-asleep still. “Sam and Steve exhaust me even thinking about waking up this early. I can’t be the only one thinking this is ungodly torture.”

“I’m running on pure adrenaline right now. I only got a nap in last night.” Peter admitted in a low voice, stretching to work the soreness out of his muscles. Usually he could sleep in short spurts and still have some energy for the day. Today, however, his body decided to try to shut down every 5 minutes and force him into a coma. “Honestly, I hope this plane ride is long enough to get a couple extra hours in-”

“I KNEW OUR LOVE WOULD PREVAIL.”

“Oh no.” Peter blanched, and didn’t even dare turn around. “Please tell me it’s not who I think it is.”

“No one told you?” Clint tsked, giving Peter a pitying look. “Yeah, sorry. He’s the only one we felt complimented your skills enough to be your escort.”

“Spidey, we’re finally official teammates! Or I guess I’m more like your babysitter. That just takes all the sex-appeal  out of it. Ooh, wait. I’ll be the professor, and you can be my favorite student I give after school lessons to.”

“Please tell me this is a joke.” Peter swallowed hard, able to smell the alpha behind him from where he stood. Apparently he was the only one that noticed how intense of a scent the man carried with him, as no one else seemed as repulsed by the air.

“Sorry, dude. Can’t always get what you want.” Clint threw Peter a grin that was so smug he wanted to wipe it off his face. However, he made a mental note not to try to attack any of his teammates no matter the situation, and turned to face his battle head-on. Clint passed by the red-clad newcomer with a short, but crisp, high five, and gave the spider one last wiggle of his fingers. What a jerk.

“Heeeey, Deadpool.”

“I thought they were kidding when they said you were on this mission.” The mercenary - or ‘in the process of retiring from murder’ mercenary- crossed the distance on the roof, standing inches above Peter. He wasn’t intimidating, however. More like… a giant, annoying man-child.

Who Peter also happened to be sort of really good friends with. Like, to the point they played video games maskless at Wade’s Manhattan safe house and split pizzas when on patrol. And Deadpool knew his name and face. But he wasn't Peter's first pick to accompany him on a mission Peter was trying to prove that he was mature enough to be on.

“Ouch.”

“Not that there’s anything wrong with you, Pumpkin. But you gotta admit, if I get asked to join in on missions before you, something seriously needs to change about your job performance.”

“Pretty sure they only brought you along as a bullet shield. So you could distract the bad guys with your giant mouth.” Peter shot back, though all in good humor.

Wade made a dramatic gasp, one gloved hand shooting up to cover his lips in true theatrical fashion. “I guess it’s good my kink is getting used.”

“That’s...A weird kink to have.”

“Does it turn you on?”

“Not at all.”

“Don’t knock it ‘til you try it.”

“Hey, Tweedledee and Tweedledum.” Mr Stark’s voice sounded behind Peter, jarring them both from their banter. “Get ready to board.”

“Aye aye, Captain.” Wade saluted in response, then glanced back down at Peter. “You’re sitting by me, right?”

“Definitely not.”

“Awww, Spidey!”

“Let’s go.”  Natasha ordered, her head peeking out from the corner of the craft.

Wade threw out his hand with a gentlemanly “after you.” Peter, unable to resist a moment of humor and making Wade laugh, half-courtesy’d in return and made his way towards the short ladder leading into the plane.

The inside of an Avenger’s aircraft wasn’t anything like Peter had pictured. Being sponsored by a billionaire apparently didn’t reap the benefits of travelling in style; rather than being filled with alien tech, or super advanced spy technology, or even genuine leather seats, the inside of the plane was rather bland. It featured a cockpit illuminated with buttons and levers that Peter hadn’t the slightest clue their true intention, only slight privacy given to the designated pilots at the front. Behind that rested a computer Peter had to resist the urge not to immediately ask to study, as well as spaces in the sides for weapons and storage. The seats were spaced so that there were 8 passenger seats, stretching along the length of the plane. Peter situated himself in the back, close to the hatch they used for for entering. Somehow, having an escape route made him feel more secure than the claustrophobia he would feel trapped between two well-respected heroes. Or maybe he was just self conscious. Either way, he sat himself down as far from the others as he could get, and shoved his backpack in his lap.

Wade decided to take the spot right next to him, despite 3 other seats remaining open, and Natasha -looking as judgemental as ever- took the space across.

“The Itsy Bitsy Spider ran up the water spout. Down came the rain and washed the spider out!” Wade apparently became quite the comedian under pressure, pulling out his katana Bea - or maybe it was Arthur- to start sharpening the length. Both the spider-themed heroes gave him an irritated look, Peter a bit more disbelieving he would bother one of the scariest members of the team, before Natasha cleared her throat.

“I’m sure I could find a way to make sure you don’t come back from death, if you keep this up the entire ride there.” The ginger commented dryly, crossing her legs in a way that Peter felt he was a second away from witnessing Wade’s true demise

“That would be my lucky day, cupcake.” Wade grinned back, sliding his katana back into its holster. Despite his cool exterior, Peter knew he thought Natasha was hot shit that could beat him to a pulp. “I’m quaking in my suit. I don’t know if I’m scared, or excited, but probably both.”

Scott swiveled in the chair placed just in front of the computer he had claimed, the metal loudly squeaking to catch their attention. “I am not dealing with you two arguing for 12 hours.”

“15 hours.” Bruce mumbled, though he remained primarily focused on a notebook filled to the brim with incoherent scribbles.

“I am not listening to you arguing for 15 hours!” Scott corrected, folding his arms in a fatherly fashion.

“I don’t even remember you being invited, LadybugBoy.” Natasha’s subtle but annoyed comment instantly sent Wade into a fit of laughter, jolting her from her anger. The change of Wade’s attitude was just enough for her to relinquish her dangerous atmosphere for a moment, and she settled calmly back in her seat.

“It’s Ant-Man.” Scott mumbled indignantly, which only served to make Wade laugh harder. The ex-convict turned back to his computer to rest his head, and for once in his life Peter saw Natasha crack an expression similar to a grin.

The conversation seemed to settle their nerves, as well as at the 4 AM call time, because the Avengers grew completely silent within the hour. Clint dozed off first, followed by Bruce (after he injected himself with some tranquilizer he often kept with him), and Natasha dropped into some weird relaxation that was close to sleep, with her body still tensed and at the ready to fight at any time. Scott was still sulking by the time Peter felt himself start to fall asleep, a yawn being the first sign of his body begging for a nap. Wade seemed to notice immediately despite the mask, because a gloved leather hand wormed its way to the top of Peter’s head to try to pull him in to his shoulder. Peter didn’t budge, giving Wade a deadpanned look. “Dude.”

“What?” Wade asked innocently, his arm retreating back to his side.

“I’m not sleeping on you.”

“I am the best goddamn pillow you will ever use.”

“We’re on a plane with the Avengers.” Peter said in an awkward whisper as if it wasn’t obvious, crossing his arms stubbornly.

“You don’t have to be shy about our secret relationship, Spidey. I’ve already told everyone you’re my lo--”

“Friend.” Peter cut in, groaning and sitting back in his chair with a huff. He had to admit, the seats weren’t very comfortable, and his stomach was tight with anxiety. Talking with Deadpool was easing at least a little bit of the pressure.

“Friend with benefits. Just as exciting without the emotional attachment. I like your style.” Peter didn’t really have the energy to argue against Wade’s ramblings, so he just let his eyes slip shut and tried to focus on staying awake, figuring he could just rest his eyes for a few minutes. Eventually his body grew numb enough he was a little more comfortable, and the rest was doing wonders for his scattered brain and anxiety.

His eyes shot open again when they hit turbulence, and he realized he had been passed out for an extensive period of time. Long enough that nearly everyone was asleep, including Wade, who was passed out on Peter’s arm. Peter stared at him for a few minutes, trying to decide whether to push him away and save himself the embarrassment of anyone seeing, or let him continue to slumber to make up for the nights he’d let Peter stay over on his couch and eat his fridge dry.

He ended up choosing the latter after an extensive internal debate, though most of it was because his arm was completely asleep under the weight of his large head and leather mask, and he didn’t have the strength in it to push him away. It worked out fine in the end, once Peter had grown tired enough to fall back into sleep, when Wade’s head created a hard pillow for him to drop his cheek on. And that was how they spent their flight, until Wade roused and immediately started teasing Peter for falling asleep on him, to the point he got up and changed seats out of annoyance.

There was a reason Peter had said no to sitting by Wade. He was an asshole. Comfortable, but still an asshole.

[pcy-babygirl]

Pairings: Lee Taeyong x Female!Reader, NCT x Female!Reader (platonic) Genre: Dark!AU, Criminal/Gang!AU, Superhuman!AU // angst, slow burn, smut Series Warnings: dark themes (experimentation/human enhancement, kidnapping, thievery, murder), blood, sex, alcohol consumption, (more will be added if needed)

Chapter Warnings: alcohol consumption, angst if you squint (i think that’s it)

Word Count: 3.2k

Notes: Hey, so this is my first fanfic so I hope it isn’t terrible. I spent a long time writing this first chapter, trying to perfect it. I don’t make it super clear in this chapter, but this story takes place sometime in the near future or maybe in an alternative universe that has advanced technology than what we have today. I had cyberpunk aesthetic in mind when writing (i.e blade runner, cyberpunk 2077, etc.). This story won’t have humaniods or cyber enhanced people, but their will be biological and chemical experimentation involved. If you are uncomfortable with this then I suggest not reading. Anyway, happy reading! ♡

Heathens Masterlist

- Synopsis -

Heathens; this was what they called each other. People who didn’t fit into society nor were like other humans. A group of outsiders who had a plan, one that involved a naive and confused girl.

They were given numbers as names, but she knew them as NCT.

“We are the used and forgotten; you babygirl, are the innocent and brainwashed. In the end we’re both heathens to this unacknowledged dystopia.”

     Neon lights, holographic billboards, and heavy traffic was all that you could see from the high level your room was on. Days were dull and desolate, while nights like tonight glowed fluorescent by technology and culture. Seoul had become the center for all advancing technology. The world calls it the future; where cures for fatal diseases would be discovered and life moved twenty times faster, it seemed. They call it: Neo City. 

The alarm on the glass screen brings you back from your absent mindedness, alerting that it was time to leave for the fundraiser dinner. Walking away from the window and to the object mounted to the wall, you tap the glass and dismiss the reminder. You slip your uncomfortable heels on and check your appearance in the mirror. The sleeveless, cut-out dress was minimal yet elegant. The black material complimenting your skin tone nicely. 

“You look stunning Y/N-ssi.”

“Thank you, Athena.” You reply back to the artificial intelligence system. Something the movies predicted, eventually the high class started living like Tony Stark with their own personal Jarvis. It was something that you found unnecessary.

Satisfied after smoothing your hair another time, you take the elevator down to the ground floor. A car was waiting for you when you stepped outside the apartment building. Rolling your eyes as you get in; you thought, “how typical of him”. 

The fundraiser dinner was a get together for investors who were interested in your father's corporation, a research organization for cancer. Dinners like tonight were important, so you were told. It was to bring in new investors while also encouraging current investors to donate more based off of the newest research found. They were nothing compared to the annual gala your father holds for the corporation, which was his form of gratitude for his employees. As the founder's daughter, you were expected to attend all formal events.

The self-driving car pulls up to your destination and the backseat door opens automatically. You step out of the sleek vehicle and onto smooth, city concrete. Staring up at the tall building you get the feeling of déjà vu. 

Always on the ground floor but never exploring what was above. Curiosity eats at you every time you go to one of these events. The opportunity to go next door and take a look upstairs in the labs was so close to you, yet so far away. You would get caught by security immediately.

You enter the reception hall that your father added next to the research center a few years ago. It was modern and expensive looking like everything else in the Gangnam District. The room was filled with round dining tables, all decorated with silverware, wine glasses, and floral centerpieces. Men and women were all dressed in formal cocktail attire, some being the company's staff but most were investors. You spotted your friend Yuri, a biochemistry research assistant, who worked at the lab. She smiles cheerfully when you step in front of her.

“Hey, are you excited for your trip to Japan?”

Remembering my planned trip abroad, my smile widens. “Very excited, it's going to be the first time I leave the country, the city even.”

It was true, you never left Seoul. Ever since you can remember, you were always sheltered from most of the world. Your father never allowed you to go past city boundaries; but you were an adult now, he couldn't stop you. So when the opportunity to go on a two week, college trip to Japan was available you took it. Your father was furious with you but settled. 

“I'm surprised Minjun Choi-ssi is even letting you go. You're barely allowed to go to school, let alone out of the country.” Yuri huffed in annoyance. You two have known each since your first day of college. It was just a coincidence that she was getting her research experience time at your father's lab.

“He's just very protective,” you explain. Yuri's focus on your conversation was diminished and was now centered on someone else. He couldn't have been much older than you, maybe a year or two younger. He stands tall in his grey suit, brunette locks styled up and away from his pale face. He's stunning, you think.

Yuri must of thought the same thing because she turns her eyes back to you. This time they are filled with curiosity. “Do you know who that is?”

I shake my head; “No-” I turn my head back in his direction to see him walking our way, “-but he's coming over here.”

Before Yuri can do anything more than take in an anxious breath, the mysterious man is in front of us with a charming smile.

He bows to us in greetings. “Hello ladies, who do I owe the pleasure of meeting this evening?”

You grin, knowing your friend is probably too busy malfunctioning to answer him. “I'm Y/N, and this is my friend Yuri.”

He gently takes her hand and bends down to place a kiss on her knuckles. “It's lovely meeting you two. Yuri, a beautiful name for an even more beautiful girl. It means ‘lily’, yes?”

Yuri stands in a daze of fascination and a bloom of dark blush on her cheeks. Amongst it all though, she nods her head and smiles. 

This makes the man's smirk widened. “Their beauty couldn't even compare. I'm Yoonoh.”

You quickly made an attempt to leave knowing you've became the third wheel. “I think I'm gonna get a drink at the bar.”

Yoonoh looks over at you, with his hypnotic smile still present. “I'll keep Yuri company in the meantime. I suggest getting the red wine, it's a special one tonight.” 

He gives you a final wink before taking Yuri off to his table. Walking to the bar, your eyebrows furrowed in confusion. Why did he say it like that? Shaking your head from your thoughts, you make it to the bar and order the wine suggested. You take small sips while looking at the large crowd of people; spotting your father talking to a young man with silver hair. He was shorter than most and currently laughing at, what you presume, was a joke your father just made. There's more young men here than usual, you thought. Were these men new staff or are they possibly chaebols? Your thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a deep voice next to you.

“Isn't it ironic that these people pour money into this organization even though they don't know half of what's actually being researched in the labs?”

You turn your head to the right to see the owner of the voice. Your eyes meet glimmering yet sharp, brown ones. The man in front of you is dressed in a black suit, the first few buttons of the white shirt underneath unbuttoned to reveal a silver chain underneath. His jaw could cut glass and his lips resembled the color of cherry blossoms in spring. His hair was stained bright red like blood, something that made you want to know who the hell this man was.

Not fully knowing how to comment; you stutter out, “I-I guess it's their blind faith. They believe this organization is going to cure cancer. If they see progress then, why stop?”

He scoffs before finishing his glass of soju. “It's easy to believe in a lie, little one. These days people want something to believe in. The promise of cures, tech innovation, the end of poverty and war are all just weapons used against us to keep the cycle of corruption going. Neo City is supposed to be the world's savior, but what if the people in it are the cause of our destruction?”

His words took you back by surprise but also made you curious. You've never known someone who speaks the way he does. He didn't view the world through rose colored glasses like everyone else. Who the fuck was this guy? Why was he here if he, seemingly, hates your father’s company? 

“I have to go.” 

You grab hold of the mysterious man’s jacket sleeve before he could leave, to his and your own surprise. “Wait…”

The red haired man gives me a warning glare, making me loosen my grip on him. “Sorry but, you never told me your name.”

His gaze drops from mine to the ground and he lets out a dry laugh. It was barely noticeable, because within seconds his eyes are back on you and he smirks.

“Taeyong.” 

He was gone immediately after, vanishing through the crowd of who he called the naive and hypocritical. You couldn’t even spot his wine colored hair anymore. You turn back around to the bar and look down at the glass filled with red, smooth liquid. A reflection of yourself could be seen, one that was glazed over in tones of crimson. All the drink did was remind you of his words. Of the veil of lies he talked about. He couldn’t of been right. Your father runs a good company, your father is good. He adopted you as a child and raised you up, without a wife. Your father’s company makes cures, nothing else.

Not being able to stomach seeing red anymore, you step away from your wine glass and go to sit down at your reserved table. You wished your father had enough time for you to ask about Taeyong. Maybe he doesn’t even know who Taeyong is. Questions spun in your mind like a whirlpool, going over the same questions just to come up with another possibility. Your thoughts are put on halt by the tapping of a microphone. On the stage, behind the podium, in the center was the director of research for the Neo City's branch and company headquarters: Dr. Oh Daewon. He has been you father’s right hand man for as long as you can remember. There was something about the man that was always off putting to you. You could never figure out what it was, but you tried keeping as much distance from him as you could.

The doctor cleared his throat before giving the guests a forced smile. “Hello and thank you everyone for attending the investors’ dinner this evening. It is nights like tonight that aid our progress for the future. I would like to thank all the newcomers who are now joining us on this groundbreaking quest for a better human society. With the help of our international branches, the Seoul Mutations Division is just a few steps closer to a cure for cancer and alzheimer's. By creating mutations of different stem cells, we have discovered a revolutionary change in our trials. This could be the start of a healthier, stronger, human race. We are happy to announce that at this year’s gala, in two weeks, we will be presenting the final product that has been in the works for the past seventeen years.”

The audience applauded his influential speech, everyone except the young man with silver hair you noticed. Instead of a praising smile, he gave a stone cold glare at the doctor. He was unmoved compared to the people around him. He painted on the same expression on his face as Taeyong. Turning back to the front, you see your father replacing Dr. Oh at the podium. You only can take it bits and pieces of what he's saying, your mind was too distracted thinking about the list of questions you'd have for your father if he knew who Taeyong is. 

Finally, your father's speech was over and everyone was welcomed to their entrees. You waited until your father was settled in his seat next to you to ask about the handsome red haired man.

"So, I met someone tonight I had never seen at one of these dinners before."

Your father hummed while chewing his kobe steak before swallowing. "He must be a new investor then."

You continue, "His name is Taeyong. He didn't give me his surname though, just 'Taeyong'."

"Ah", Father beamed. "That is probably Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul-ssi's associate. He mentioned that his associate would join the dinner at some point."

"Who is Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul?" You ask, the name being completely foreign on your tongue. 

“He’s an investor, a very young one at that. He runs a business specializing in medical technology in Thailand. He’s interested in contributing to our Thai branch.”

You nod your head and continue to pick around your food, not having much of an appetite tonight. After a pregnant pause, your father sighs. "I think it would be best if maybe one of my men go with you on your trip tomorrow. For your safety."

You roll your eyes at this repetitive argument being brought up, of all places as well. "Father, I'm twenty-one years old. I don't need a babysitter."

"It's for your protection Y/N, you still need to know more about the world. I intend to give you a protected lifestyle for as long as I can. You are valuable to bad people."

Shaking your head, you throw your dining napkin on the table. "You've given me a secluded and sheltered life. I'm just now getting to experience things people my age do. I'm a grown adult now, I need to start making decisions for myself. I'm going without your security."

You could see your father physically holding back his anger, his ears started to turn red and his hand was balled up into a fist. You almost recanted, fearful of this side of him. When his eyes would grow darker and his mouth would turn into an ugly sneer. His expression took an unexpected turn though when he spotted Dr. Oh and his assistant approaching. It was like you could actually see the lightbulb flicker on in his head. 

“How about you take Dr. Oh’s assistant with you?”

It seemed like you were never going to get out of this without him winning in some way. Your father gives the scientist the smile he gives when he wants something from his staff, already knowing he will get it because he’s their superior.  

You move sideways to see the young assistant behind Dr. Oh. He was about the same height as the latter, his jet black hair styled up making him look more mature than what his actual age probably was. To you, he barely looked out of high school.

“Father, I’m sure Dr. Oh’s intern is my younger. How can he look after me if it will feel like I have to look after him?” You argue. 

"Think of it as bringing along a friend, you two don't even have to talk to each other on the trip. It will be educational for him as well. If I remember right, Jeno is a first year at your school. I will ask a favor of the dean to add him to the list of students traveling." Father exclaimed with a triumph smile.

“What if Jeno doesn’t want to go? You can’t just send him to Japan without his consent first!”

“I’ll go…” All three heads, including yours, snap to the young man behind the scientist. He seemed unbothered by the situation, like this request was to go get coffee for everyone.

“Wonderful!” You silently glare at the younger you barely knew as your father spoke.  “You will both leave at eight tomorrow.”

This was unbelievable, you thought. You were officially going to be babysat by someone who’s barely an adult. You didn’t blame Jeno, your father was to blame, but he didn’t help the situation by agreeing. You could of won the argument and would be flying with just your classmates tomorrow. Shaking your head, you lurch up from your dining chair and grab your clutch.

“I think it's time for me to return home.” You announce, bidding everyone a short bow before walking out of the banquet hall. The sharp, night, Seoul air brushes up your bare arms, sending uncomfortable chills down your spine. You shiver as you wait for valet to bring your car to the front. The wind is cut off suddenly by what you realized was a blazer suit jacket. Shocked, you look around for the owner of the jacket only to find silver hair and a dazzling smile.

“You should bring a jacket if you’re going to wear that beautiful dress, baby. It doesn’t accommodate the cold.” 

His voice was sweet sounding, reminding you of lollipops. Something sweet and syrupy; if lollipops were melted down, they would be his voice. Although, behind the sugar there was a hint of mischief and seduction. Too much of him is an addiction, you think, he has the ability to rot your insides if you let him.

Shaking out of your thoughts, you stutter and hold back from a blush rushing to your already rosy cheeks. “Uh, thank you-” then you notice the invitation in the inside pocket of the jacket, “Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul-ssi?”

He gives you an impish smirk, “You can call me Ten.”

Confused, you question why he wanted to be called a number but never ask. The name oddly suited him well, better than his real name even. Ten was smaller than most men, his figure almost feminine in a way. Everything, from his nose to the fingertips of his hands were slender. He was somehow pretty and handsome at the same time. Elegant yet a sense of edge. Something though that Ten, Taeyong, had in common was that they were mysterious and obscure.

“Thank you, Ten.” 

“You seem distressed,” he comments.

You instantly lie, not wanting your problems to be someone else’s. Especially a complete stranger’s. “I’m not.”

He hums soothly, “You’re lying, sweetheart.”

Looking up at him with anxiety, you knew you were caught red handed. You laugh lightly, just wanting to move on from the subject already. "Am I that bad of a liar?"

He moves closer to you, enough to reach out and tuck the blowing strand of hair from your face. "No, I'm just really good at detecting lies from the truth. Although, I myself would be lying if I said you didn't have stress written all over your face."

You return his smile slightly, not fully mirroring though. Looking behind you at the building next door again, it only clouds your mind up more.

"Do you ever feel like your life isn't in your control? That it's in someone else's hands? Just playing you like a puppet? And you're wishing to be released from their grasp, from their watchful eyes?" You look back at the unique man whose brown eyes have never left your own.

"All the time, Y/N."

There's a silent but not uncomfortable pause between you two. Nothing more than starting at each other and the black sky that's lit with neon. 

Finally the valet brings around your car, apologizing for the wait and opens your back door. You hand the jacket back to Ten.

"Thank you for letting me borrow this. It was nice meeting you, Ten."

He folds the blazer jacket over his arm and gives you a warm smile. "We'll see each other soon sweetheart."

Give one last wave, you step into the vehicle, and tell the automated system you home coordinates. Soon enough you're rolling away from the silver haired man and towards your apartment. It wasn't until you were blocks away did you start to question.

How did Ten know my name?

[pass-the-bechdel]

Continuum season one full review

How many episodes pass the Bechdel test?

80% (eight of ten)

What is the average percentage per episode of female characters with names and lines?

30.6%  

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 40% female?

One, episode 1.05, “A Test of Time” (41.18%)

How many episodes have a cast that is less than 20% female?

Zero.

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Twenty-two. Seven who appear in more than one episode, five who appear in at least half the episodes, and one who appears in every episode.

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Forty-four. Fifteen who appear in more than one episode, eleven who appear in at least half the episodes, and three who appear in every episode.

Positive Content Status:

Perfectly average, with nothing terrible, but nothing of note, either.  (average rating of 3.0)

General Season Quality:

Solid. It attempts to merge police procedural element with a more serialized narrative, and generally succeeds at both.  It is also clearly a series that realizes the potential of its premise and is interested in exploring it in depth.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) under the cut:

Let’s talk about heroes.

Heroism, in stories set in versions of Earth that are meant to resemble ours—see: the MCU, Supergirl, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, earthbound Doctor Who stories not set in the future—tends to be associated with maintaining the status quo. As disruptive as heroes often are by nature and necessity, they generally don’t work to change things for the better in a general way, but rather, to ensure things don’t get worse. Society, by implication, becomes “good enough”—something worth keeping around as is. This tendency is occasionally questioned—not surprising, given all the ways the status quo isn’t actually good for many people—but the story’s internal rules mean that the conclusion is often a half-hearted “eh, what other option is there?” with the occasional “but that way lies tyranny!” While this stance isn’t entirely without reason, it’s also often frustrating. Inaction and tyranny aren’t the only choices, so why pretend that they are?  

This right here is one of the main reasons why I really appreciate Continuum, and why I would probably do so even if the show weren’t as consistently solid as it is.  It is a show entirely built around the idea that the status quo is untenable, and that trying to keep things as they are can only bring about the destruction of the human race at the hands of the 1%.  While it’s far from the only series with a social conscience, it is one of the very few to declare that what is needed is massive, widespread and disruptive social change. That it does so while also being a police procedural, a genre that tends to be almost inextricably tied to conservative politics and an affinity for the status quo, is all the more impressive.  

I’m fascinated by stories about people vs. the future—it’s the absolute impossibility of the struggle that gets me. I mean, how do you fight change? Sarah Connors’ battle wasn’t just about deadly people-killing robots; it was a fight against progress, a refusal to acknowledge that humans will continue to advance technologically no matter what you do, and  “winning,” in those terms, meant undoing the previous fifty years of existence. Team Machine’s battle against Samaritan hit the same points: in the end, if didn’t matter whether one particular artificial super-intelligence was atomized, because another would take its place—maybe not soon but eventually.  

While Liber8’s struggle has some similarities to these fights, it is, in the end, fundamentally different. The Corporate Congress and the mass demotion of actual people to second-class citizens isn’t inevitable the way the advent of artificial super-intelligences is. There’s no reason why humanity can’t continue progressing technologically AND choose not to bring back indentured servitude. If the terrible future happens, it’s not because the arc of humanity inevitably bends towards corporate dystopia, but because the people in positions to change things…didn’t. Also, while artificial super-intelligences are still years away, Continuum’s apocalyptic future isn’t really the future at all.  Corporations aren’t going to wait fifty years before they choose to actively reduce people’s freedoms in order to obtain ever greater profits; it’s what they’re doing at this very moment.  Liber8’s battle is much more urgent and immediate, and that ups the difficulty level of the storytelling immeasurably—it would have been very easy for the series to fuck it all up.  

Fortunately, Continuum, for the most part, hasn’t.  It’s not perfect—its theory of oppression largely ignores the role of marginalized identities, and how these shape the way oppression is performed and perceived (and no, making most of Liber8’s members people of color isn’t enough to address this)—but the series’ heart and storytelling instincts appear to be where they need to be. They actually care about the issues at play, and that’s mostly evidenced in the fact that it treats Liber8’s fight as legitimate.  It could have been the easiest thing in the world for Continuum to be the story of cop vs. terrorists FROM THE FUTURE!, and for Liber8’s motives to be nothing more than the motivation to get the story going, or a cover for more traditional nefariousness. Instead, it is the whole point. Continuum is a series about getting from point A to point B, and about just how complicated things can get.

Speaking of complicated: Kiera Cameron.

While Kiera is very much a genre show protagonist—Continuum is very much a genre show—she actually reminds me more of a character from an entirely different sort of story—The Good Wife’s Alicia Florrick.   This is a good thing, since Alicia is one of the best protagonists on television and I love her for many of the reasons I love Kiera. I love that she’s an introvert who doesn’t make friends easily. I like that she likes systems, and feels most comfortable inside them. I like that she is fundamentally selfish. I like that neither she nor the series is exactly concerned about her being approachable or cool. Perhaps most importantly, I like that while the series is never short of sympathy for her, it is also very clear that her goal is completely incompatible with the good future.  

Unfortunately, none of the show’s other female characters manage to equal Kiera, or even come close. While there’s no glaring missteps I can identify in the show’s female representation—aside from the usual ones—there’s no real revelations, either: Sonya, Garza, and Betty, are, for the moment, just alright. Somewhat ironically, the one-shot female characters do better than the more promising ones, in part because they’re more numerous and varied, and in part because the series can’t afford to punt their development to a future date. While this feels like the result of circumstance rather than intention—with so much to cover and so little time to do so, something had to give—that’s really just an excuse. There’s no reason why the characters who got prioritized this season had to mostly be men.  

If there is something noteworthy in the way Continuum approaches gender, it is in Kiera’s relationship with Carlos, which is my favorite dynamic in the show. While I tend to look askance at calls for more purely platonic relationships between sexually compatible characters—I’m not often confident they’re made in good faith—I do like the idea in theory, and this relationship is an excellent proof of concept. Kiera and Carlos could get together. There’s tons of evidence that they’re compatible, and he’s a better person than Kellogg or—ugh!—Alec.  Heck, there’s absolutely no evidence here that they aren’t going to get together in the future. But it’s not happening now, and neither the characters or the show think there’s anything wrong with that or that it makes their relationship somehow lesser.  It isn’t that romance isn’t important or it’s incompatible with depth or great storytelling and character development; the elements of the relationship that I like— push and pull, between people who disagree on a lot but respect each other and are more than willing to meet each other halfway—could easily still be there if they were together. It’s just that sometimes, it doesn’t need to be there.

(I’m team Kiera / no one, myself.)

Kiera’s relationship with Alec, meanwhile, is not nearly as compelling, in large part because Alec is the element of the show that least works.  I understand his place in the narrative, and I can totally see how a character like him would end up eventually helping create the corporate dystopia, but this doesn’t make the present-day version of the character and his immaturity any easier to take (his future self is fine). He’s not intolerable, and I like the family drama that surrounds him—the best episode of the season is all about the Saddlers and Randols—but he’s also not great, and given just how many characters and concepts are fighting for attention, that’s something the series can’t afford.  

To mix metaphors, Continuum is a high-wire act, juggling so many balls that it is in constant danger of collapse. There’s a let’s-prevent-the-terrible-future time travel narrative, with all the usual complications of time travel stories. There’s a good half-dozen fish-out-of-water narratives.  There’s a traditional police procedural, except that it also involves future technology. There’s an exploration of class warfare and capitalism, and the evolving roles of activism and terrorism within it. There’s family drama. Taken together, it’s arguably more than can be properly explored in ten episodes, and that the series did as well as it did is genuinely surprising. While I’m not sure it can keep up the balancing act indefinitely as it continues, I’m interested in seeing how long it lasts.  

[spirify]

Artificial Flower― CH. 9

w. Rielin to never fade; only to live.

“Behind the flashiness of an eternal flower petal, there’s a liar who has never bloomed nor withered.” -Eddy Kim.

bgm Maze - Kim Na Young While You Were Sleeping OST

Hey, Eid. I never said it before, but I always admired you. I always looked up to you. You were my role model. I wanted to be exactly like you. Perhaps there can only be one Eid in the world. Maybe that's why I killed you, so I can overtake the king and wear that crown.

Ever since we were young, we were treated entirely differently. Although we looked exactly the same, our height, our voice, our face- everything, literally, but our personality wasn't. I mean, you were like "the better version" of me, at least that's what our mother said. You were more intelligent, much kinder, much more wiser, and you knew how to do everything; you were simply the definition of perfection. Meanwhile, I wasn't smart enough to be praised by mom. I mean, I did try and did get A's on my exams, but I guess it wasn't enough to be hugged by her. She ignored my presence, instead.

It's alright though, it's okay if you got the spotlight, I didn't mind. I was proud of you as well. Except until… I met her. Sorry brother, but I fell in love in first sight when I saw her. She was your girlfriend though, I shouldn't have, why did you even introduce me to her anyway? But you were in the spotlight, so all I could do was just watch you and her… loving each other from the backstage, where the light doesn't shine.

Then our parents died of sickness. Of course, you got our dad's company, I didn't mind though. You look much more fitting as a CEO than me. You knew how to control the world around you. I didn't.

But you know what I couldn't stand? You being with her. You talking to her, you hugging her, you kissing her, even you being right next to her. Why couldn't I do that? I mean, I loved her as well, even more than you, I knew that for sure. Why couldn't I have at least one thing, brother? Why did you take everything?

Jealousy turned into insanity.

It was a raining day. Didn't you hate the rain? Well, for sure, you would definitely hate the rain after this day- oh wait. You're dead. You can't even hate anything now, can you?

As always, I was standing on the backstage, where the light doesn't shine, so you two couldn't see me. You drop her off at her house, you kiss her goodbye, she goes inside her house, and you get in your car and use the shortcut to come to our house- it was always the same. How did I know? I stalked her, of course. Just to plan this.

The shortcut's real nice, isn't it? It's about 10 minutes shorter than using the main road. But not many people use the shortcut since there aren't any streetlights. I got inside my car as well. I was waiting inside of our house and I knew the exact time when you would be on that shortcut road. I was right. I saw your car on the opposite side of the lane. You despise the rain so much that were quickly trying to wipe away the droplets on your window with your wiper. In fact, you were too focused on that, that you didn't even see my car.

I smiled. My heart was beating so fast, I was sweating, I couldn't wait! I couldn't wait to hold her in my arms instead of yours! Just how petite is she? Just how pretty is she? Just how adorable is she? You wouldn't know, you're dead.

WIth my adrenaline pumping through my veins, I swerved the steering wheel, and there. I crashed my car into yours. Haha, you should've seen the look on your face just when you saw my car lights shining on your face. I bet you saw my face as well, I was laughing hysterically. Good thing you died though, no one would figure out that I'm the one who killed you. It was a risky choice since I could've of died as well, but I was actually concentrated on my driving rather than focusing on wiping away the droplets of rain. Father always told us, Eid, always focus on the road.

I actually broke my ankle from that accident. My car wasn't destroyed too much either, unlike yours. I quickly got out of my car and opened the door that was blocking my reach toward you. I checked your pulse, your heartbeat, your breathing. Yep, you're dead. I did a pretty good job, didn't I? Do you think mother will praise me for doing something right at last? I took your wallet, your phone, all of your belongings and quickly drove off. Of course, I threw my car away. I can't have anyone suspect that I killed you. Oh it's okay though, Chung knows. You know, your secretary? I didn't mean to tell him but he found out by himself. If he spoke about that accident to others, I swore I will kill him. Haha, he was like a little puppy, all scared and trembling, he's pretty entertaining, too.

Everyone figured out that you died of car crash. But my main goal was to actually be you and return to her. So I just told Chung to tell everyone else that Eid didn't actually die, he's in a coma. So I had to stay hidden away from her view for a year. A whole fucking year. I wanted to see her so badly, so you know what I did? I made Chung wear this special type of glasses, it had a tiny camera on it. I made sure he visited her, to make sure she's alright, and so I could see how she was doing. She was in a depression though. It made me worried, but a year passed by. I was stroked to meet her.

I didn't tell her of course, I wanted it to be a surprise. I knocked on her door, and haha, her facial expression was so cute. Her eyes widened, she was trembling in disbelief, tears were starting to form within her eyes, then bam. She hugged me. My dream came true, how small she was in my arms. And you had her all by yourself, brother. You sure are selfish.

After holding her, I realized that only I want to hold her. No one else can hug her. No one else can kiss her. No one else can talk to her, look at her. Because I was her boyfriend. I was Eid.

We moved into a condo, one close to the company. I mean, being a CEO wasn't easy but you left all kinds of steps and tips behind, I guess it was all for you, but thanks, that helped me to actually become you even to the society's eyes.

I guess she loved going outside, she said she loved shopping, watching movies, going to places. But if I allow her to do that while I was at work… others would look at her. They could even talk to her. How could I let them do that to her? Only I can do that. She's mine.

I made sure she never left the house. I didn't know why, but she seemed so depressed. But I can't let her leave. What happen if she leaves ME? What happen if she figures out everything and runs away from me? Even thinking about it brings me nightmares, even to this day.

I locked her in. Surely, she was sad. At first, she tried to fight with me, but it didn't work out. Then she started to give up, she started to become so fragile and weak. I gave her all kinds of presents she would like but she threw them all to the side. She didn't love me anymore. It stinged my heart. But it was okay. As long as she was next to me. As long as I can see her, talk to her, hug her, kiss her… but she didn't wanted to do that with me anymore.

I decided, that I will let her be free and enjoy being outside. As long as I was next to her. As long as I made sure no one looked at her, no one talked to her. Slowly, her eyes started to become vivid, those golden eyes shined like the day she met me.

Then something I couldn't believe happened. She started opening up to me. Took her awhile, but she started to actually look into my eyes. She started to hold a conversation with me. She hugged me. She let me kiss her. She even let me spend the night with her. I couldn't believe that not only her mind loved me, but her body loved me as well. She loved me! Everything was going perfect. I even bought an expensive diamond ring for her, I was going to propose to her. I had everything planned. After work, I was going to take her to a restaurant which I reserved the entire place just for us. It was decorated with her favorite color, her favorite flower, her favorite food, it was everything she would want.

But that day, Chung decided to bring up the accident. I was irritated. Why did he wanted to talk about this today? Should I just kill him? No, it's like he liked Eve or anything. Maybe I should just hire a doctor to tear his tongue out, to rip all of his teeth out just so he could never speak.

But why were you there…? Why were you behind that door, listening to everything?

"Who the fuck are you,"

Why are you angry at me? I'm the person you love, I'm Eid. You were never angry at Eid. I did everything to please you, I am living just to make your life better. I saved you from that depression, didn't I? I made you smile again, I made you happy again. You said you loved me. Wait… you never did. You never said that you loved me. Ha, all of my efforts to become Eid was useless…?

Why?

Everyone loved you, Eid. Why couldn't I just have one… just one person's love? That's all I wanted in my life. Why couldn't she love me? Why, even in the end… she chose you? Did she even know, that whenever she called me 'Eid', it stinged my heart?

She was an artificial flower. You were blooming, yet you never showed me a sign of life. I watered you, placed you on direct sunlight, yet nothing happened. Another petal didn't bloom, another petal didn't die. You're alive to other's eyes, but you're honestly dead. They never fade, only to live. You're an artificial flower, my dear Eve.

note:

This entire chapter is Add talking to Eid and explaining every event! Also shows his very crazy side lmao

But I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter! The reason of the title is now explained! Next chapter will be the last chapter and it's fairly short. It's kind of like an epilogue, I'd say. Hope y'all are looking forward to it!

Rielin’s Fanfiction Site

[sleepymarmot]

DS9 season 4 liveblog

[Season index: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 PS]

The Way of the Warrior

they changed the music! I liked the original arrangement better. I guess they decided that if they have to change the opening titles, better redo them from scratch?

I love how the Klingon general dramatically cuts his hand. It's like looking at the origins of an ancient ritual which real and very important meaning has long been forgotten. Tbh I thought the crew would do the same in the previous episode, but they went for the less dramatic blood tests :D

How was the Obsidian Order destroyed? The Dominion destroyed the fleet that the Order wasn't even supposed to have. What about all of their normal agents, infrastructure, gathered intelligence? 

"Not like you? Impossible" (note: as I prepare to publish this post, having just finished season 5, it seems this line was the last time they ever shared a flirty moment... rip garashir 1993-1995)

finally!

please stop reminding me about that awful movie thanks

Poor Worf is so awkward as usual

"And I find you offensive. Now hold up your arm, or I'll have the security do it for you"

"Captain Sisko bet me that you would thank him for the rescue before you started complaining." "I lost."

The Visitor

I have a hard time becoming invested in stories like this, when I know that the entire timeline would be undone by the end. The final scene did manage to make me tear up a bit, but overall I'm not impressed. At least it's not outright terrible like The Inner Light...

Hippocratic Oath

Wait, did Bashir get promoted between seasons?

I don't think that joke about Keiko was very good :\ But this is the second time Miles comes really close to confessing his love for Julian... what's up with that

seriously, why does the new theme have such a messy rhythm? it's as if the beat is out of sync with the melody

Odo is such an unusual security officer, of course there's conflict between him and Worf. I'm glad they're addressing this!

of course O'Brien does a transporter trick

oh come oooon O'Brien do you really need to be such a jerk this week

Sisko is nicer to Worf than I expected

the last scene between Bashir and O'Brien is very poignant

Indiscretion

The runabout scene with Kira and Dukat is unsettling because this rhetoric is too real...

The Worst Field Trip(tm)

Julian & Jadzia's Judging Corner: priceless

honestly the absolute last thing i expected was for Dukat's butt to get so much attention...

Ziyal looks much younger than someone who was 13yo six years ago

halfway through the episode I thought Ziyal would be that Cardassian girl from season 2, I mean there was a reason for that scene, right? right?

great episode

Rejoined

Oh, Dax got promoted too

Trill society sounds dumber and dumber with each episode

Kahn is so beautiful, charming and well-dressed. damn

how did my mom manage to walk into the room just as they kissed? is that a special parent talent

;_;

"your work produced the first artificially created wormhole in history" not counting, you know, THE wormhole

welp. a romance episode finally made me cry :(

Starship Down

Wait, is the alien played by Odo's actor? 

this is like a really boring version of "Disaster"...

Dax knows Bashir now better than a year ago? He hasn't changed much over the past year, the difference is rather between seasons 1-2 and later ones, plus they seemed pretty good friends in season 1 already, not like "she was avoiding him" -- in fact, I thought she was his only friend at the time. Their body language is cute as hell though.

Damn, I could hardly keep track of the plot in this one... or why the characters were saying what they were saying... how dull

you know what was the selling point of The Disaster? characters in unusual combinations and roles! I see none of this here...

Little Green Men

ew using someone else's tooth sharpener

omg Odo! :D

what, Klingons and Vulcans didn't have warp drive by 20th century?

The Sword of Kahless

what, this was the little boy we saw in TNG? Klingon children sure grow fast...

is this sword telepathically infected or something?

So, when Worf was acting OOC he wasn't under outside influence? okay... I enjoyed this episode, but under the assumption that Worf's dishonorable actions would be explained

Our Man Bashir

Bashir's taste is about as lame as Picard's...

"I think I joined the wrong intelligence service"

"This is more than I ever wanted to know about your fantasy life" same tbh... it's enough to remember these gross tropes exist somewhere out there, I don't need them in Star Trek reenacted by my faves

This just made me remember how much I dislike James Bond... We just had a cheesy 20th century pastiche two episodes ago, but at least I don't have anything against that genre. Not to judge what people do behind the holosuite's closed doors, but it's pretty offputting to see a 24 century man so enamored with this sexist fiction. And I have pretty much the same reaction to kisses with not-Kira and not-Dax as in the Mirror Universe episode, though to a lesser degree; that was pretty gross and exploitative. It's as if someone decided that the show wasn't straight enough after Rejoined and decided to compensate...

Also I think this was the first time ever that Bashir wasn't happy to see Garak. It feels strange and sad...

I expected Garak to spend all episode making fun of silly tropes, but the little he said was pretty weak. Though I liked the confrontation in the end and the way Bashir repeated Garak's speech.

And I don't think they even took advantage of the J. B. initials. Come on! :D

Homefront

"I prefer Klingon beliefs. Our gods are dead. Ancient Klingon warriors slew them a millennia ago. They were more trouble than they were worth." I think I prefer Klingon beliefs too...

Why did Sisko put on TNG-type uniform?

Is that Leah Brahms?

Very relevant story about security vs civil rights, and it's very fitting for Odo to be here -- not just because of the plot. I really like the thematic unity between the changeling storyline and Odo's personal issues as a character.

Come on, it's so easy to deprive the entire planet of power?

Paradise Lost

This title is very ominous...

Cadet Shepard haha

I think I've heard this boast... "We have five million Cybermen. How many are you?" "Four." "You would destroy the Cybermen with four Daleks?" "We would destroy the Cybermen with one Dalek!"

So, Earth and DS9 can communicate in real time? But in the previous episode, DS9 "received a recording of a high level diplomatic conference that took place on Earth a few days ago". I assumed the delay was due to the distance, but apparently not -- was the recording just classified before someone decided to send it to Sisko?

Wait, what President's speech? Did I miss something?

I liked the first part better. So, the changeling terrorist attack on the same week was just a coincidence? Everyone seemed to forget about that...

Crossfire

Odo/Kira scene is cute instead of irritating for once

"You could hear that?" "*points to lobes* Hello?"

"I have reason to believe someone is planning to assassinate First Minister Shakaar" and by someone you mean Winn?

Odo and Worf discussing security and order! 

are they replacing Odo/Kira/Bareil with Odo/Kira/Shakaar? How many nice but bland Bajoran dudes can be in love with her?

"Frankly, I don't care whether you and Major Kira end up living happily ever after or not. I just want to see the situation resolved" same

ok, I get it, falling in love makes you very upset, bad at your job, and is sad and frustrating to watch on tv screen. nothing new here

Return to Grace

"Is that what you kept track of during the occupation? No wonder you lost"

"It bothers him, you know. Very much. He talks about it sometimes" crocodile tears... literally

some men just won't take a hint...

wait, since it was previously mentioned that Cardassian flirting is bickering, does Dukat genuinely misinterpret Kira and think he's got a chance here??

so much for keeping Klingon secrets from the Cardassians...

There's something about this dynamic I really appreciate, but I can't yet articulate it. The way Kira confidently and unflinchingly deflects all the bullshit he sends her way? How she is allowed to be right in her unforgiving stance? That being civil and working together with someone and seeing their better side does not mean all their past (and present) misdeeds are forgotten and they're suddenly your friend? Maybe this is the infamous "grey morality" done right -- not the indiscriminate tolerance and moral relativism, but allowing the other side to plead their case without losing sight of what made them "the other side" in the first place.

Sons of Mogh

Jadzia has a great "I'm gonna fuck that" face

"Charged with murder?" Have these people never heard of assisted suicide?

"I don't give a damn about Klingon beliefs, rituals or custom" ohhh so when we talk about Bajoran religion we all have to be tolerant and culturally sensitive and understanding, but Klingons are not allowed to perform their own rituals among themselves?

Wait, did Kurn consent to this or?...

A second good Klingon episode in the season that is tainted by the heroes' inexplicable immoral decisions. Last time Mr. Honor attemped murder in the most dishonorable day possible; this time ritual assisted suicide was deemed outrageous but likely nonconsensual mindwipe is an acceptable solution. The former can be headcanoned away with the assumption that the sword had some curse on it. My headcanon for the latter: people other than Sisko wouldn't have objected to the ritual (Dax canonically, O'Brien was implied to), so they accepted Worf's other solution on the same grounds.

Bar Association

Haha, Odo brings up Rascals, one of TNG's most ridiculous security failures :D

"Have you have any idea how bored I used to get sitting in the Transporter room waiting for something to break down? Here, I've a half dozen new problems every day. This station needs me" Damn, I hoped he got to do something interesting that we just weren't shown...

Wait, O'Brien got into a physical fight with Worf of all people?!

"If this was Ferenginar, I'd have you all taken to the Spire of the Tower of Commerce, displayed to the crowds in the Great Marketplace below, then shoved off, one by one. Small children would bet on where you would land, and your spattered remains would be sold as feed mulch for gree-worms" lol remember Quark's little speech about Ferengi not being barbaric?

I really care about this messed up family...

Yaaaaay I'm so happy for Rom! :D

Ferenginar sounds no less oppressive than Cardassia. I want a revolution! You know what, now that the Dominion has kindly disposed of the Tal Shiar and the Obsidian Order, can it take the FCA next? I, for one, would welcome our new gelatinous overlords in this case...

(I'm not a fan of that Leeta/Bashir background noise, thank you very much.)

Accession

"Quark, did you hear? Chief O'Brien is having a baby!" "I thought your females carried your young."

people from the past should stay in the past... apparently only 50 years ago Bajor was a pretty oppressive place too... 

"Maybe you never realised this, Captain, but we would've tried to do whatever you asked of us when you were Emissary, no matter how difficult it seemed" well that's creepy

oh come on Kira, don't follow your religion so blindly...

O'Brien and Bashir is the real love story of this show istg

oh god they have an untouchable caste too

and of course the aliens can't tell which is the true Emissary because the word "first" isn't in their vocabulary lol

The aliens say "First. Later. They have no meaning to us." -- and in the same conversation use grammatical tense to indicate the order of events: "This IS the one that WAS injured." "He WAS injured" "We KEPT him with us" "The Sisko TAUGHT us" -- so they must have some perception of time

"We are of Bajor" oh? since when do you even know that word? did the poet teach you?

these two are so awkward that poor Keiko has to play matchmaker for her own husband :D bless her

I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the direction of this story... Sisko was completely right to feel uncomfortable as a saint for a religion he doesn't believe in of planet he's not from, but it turned out he's so awesome that the Prophets chose him over the man from this culture who fits the descriptions in the sacred texts. Because only an enlightened human can lead the silly natives -- by following one of their own they'd go back to the dark ages! Yuck.

I've seen more than half of the show now... time flies fast.

Rules of Engagement

Courtroom episode!

I like the clever cinematography & editing

Hard Time

Poor O'Brien...

Well. This was really upsetting. I've been crying for several minutes now.

TNG repeatedly failed to show the recovery after a character's traumatic experience -- specifically, Picard's loss of time in The Inner Light and imprisonment and torture in Chain of Command. DS9 finally delivers an episode just about that -- even if the next week the status quo will be restored and I'll have the same complaint. 

What Miles goes through is completely horrific -- so much that I can't imagine how one can survive that. Even as a viewer I want to wipe this from my memory and pretend it didn't happen... For my own peace of mind I'm gonna pretend O'Brien's friend was a part of the simulation, and later he managed to erase it all from his mind somehow.

Now I kinda want a story where the characters become self-aware and O'Brien decides to get away from his sadistic writers (and Bashir helps him, sacrificing their friendship for O'Brien's well-being).

Shattered Mirror

Always nice to see Worf's hair loose

Well, at least Dax is angry at Sisko for the rape by deception...

Why is Kira still wearing that shit...

at this rate you won't have any characters left for the next episode

The Muse

will this adult woman leave Jake alone

poor Sisko

Odo: "Actually, I have some free time and I was wondering if you wanted to take a walk." Worf: "I would." Odo: "I meant Lwaxana."

"Well, just don't go do what I did. Look for someone to fix your broken heart then end up pregnant and on the run." "I don't think there's too much danger of that happening."

aah Odo makes her a blanket! (well, I guess he owed her a night of sleep on his lap...) this entire scene was so sweet

eww not the pedo woman again

why must I watch this

Odo and Lwaxana playing hide-and-seek!!! this is the best thing ever

oh my god this is such a fanfic trope

ew can I just fast-forward through this?

"If you don't mind, this is a very special moment for me"

"You know, for a minute there, I really believed you wanted to marry me" ahh poor Odo's face :( even when he literally declares he wants someone in his life, that person thinks he didn't mean it...

aaaaaah! the goodbye scene!!! Lwaxana is so good! this is so significant and beautiful, this is Lwaxana recognizing and preventing her biggest negative trait/habit (pursiung and harassing disinterested men) with one of her more rarely shown positive traits (compassion and emotional intelligence)

i don’t know what to say about an episode where the main story is 0/10 but the side story is 10/10

For the Cause

Finally, some info on replicator sharing policy! "The Federation only gave Bajor two CFI [industrial] replicators” 

"If she's really a Maquis, then she's no longer a Federation citizen" wait what?! I thought this was the entire reason Starfleet had to keep them in check -- because they were Federation outlaws! have they proclaimed their own state while I wasn't looking?

have they recast Ziyal? she looks different

I don't appreciate all this UST

"I would not become a terrorist. It would be dishonourable" "I wouldn't say that around Major Kira if I were you"

she... invites him... to a SAUNA??! ohhh my god whyyyyyy who wrote this

You go Kira!

okaaay I definitely missed something major about the Maquis formally leaving the Federation

well at least Cardassians enjoy their saunas fully dressed, that's a relief. the idea of lizard people lying around on heated rocks for relaxation is actually really cute, though

To be honest, I was dreading Garak's scenes in this episode. It seems that the writers ran out of Mysterious Past and Unclear Motivations to hint at, and stripped of that he's just... not particularly interesting. Plus, this episode confirmed my unpleasant impression that starting with this season, the producers/writers decided to forcibly drag Garak and Bashir away from each other and throw girls at them no matter how random and/or inappropriate it looks. At least they recast Ziyal so now she actually looks 19 instead of 13! (The problem is, in the previous episode she acted like a child, too, and you can't forget that she's a generation younger, so it's still pretty gross.)

Eddington's point about assimilation would have worked better without the rest of that inane speech. "Why is the Federation so obsessed with the Maquis? We've never harmed you" -- They're obsessed because you're a threat to their foreign relations, what's so hard to understand about that? "We've left the Federation" -- When? When?! Left Starfleet, sure, but the Federation?! Isn’t that the entire reason Starfleet is pursuing them -- because the Federation is responsible for handling its citizens and stopping them from committing crimes against its neighbor!?

To the Death

Iconians -- that's from "Contagion", right?

I like this guy...

"What is the point of doing battle if you cannot enjoy the fruits of victory?" "You mean sleep?" :D

I love how Whatshisname casually gives out the white, rolling his eyes and barely moving attention from his plate -- so different from the Jem'Hadar perspective we saw in Hippocratic Oath!

"I didn't know that was public knowledge." "You told Commander Dax." "Well, that explains it."

O'Brien's answer to the Jem'Hadar! "I am Chief Miles Edward O'Brien. I'm very much alive and I intend to stay that way"

The Quickening

bwahaha

whoa, a city? if it the first one we've seen in the Gamma Quadrant? lovely matte painting

of course they make everything worse. Because being Culturally Advanced and Civilized won't always instantly solve any problem, and hospices and euthanasia aren't evil.

"I was so arrogant I thought I could find one in a week." "Maybe it was arrogant to think that. But it's even more arrogant to think there isn't a cure just because you couldn't find it." Good one, Dax! We're really going back to the pivotal traits of his character in this episode. (Someone on the writing staff: "Hmm, we haven't mentioned Julian's arrogance and hero/savior complex for a couple of months...")

He swallows his pride and decides to stay! I'm proud

I did have a suspicion that the pregnancy would solve everything...

I'm really glad the local doctor wasn't villainized! When Bashir was setting up his clinic I was afraid that he'd raise the townspeople to destroy it or something.

Bashir has more luck with medical episodes than Crusher and Pulaski...

Body Parts

Jadzia's female solidarity!

Alright, how is this one episode going to fit in Keiko's pregnancy (and presumably childbirth?), Quark's condition, Brunt, and Garak? 

Federation technology is amazing...

Second time someone calls DS9 a "Cardassian monstrosity". That would make a good tumblr url... Wait, it's not even taken -- I'm very tempted...

of course Brunt bought him, why else would he be in the opening credits? :D this is so beautifully malicious

finally an episode that makes Quark look like a good person

Garak's face says "Killing you sounds like a great idea" :D :D

This is the most delightfully bizarre way to handle an actress' pregnancy :D

QUARK SHOPPING FOR MURDER-SUICIDE OPTIONS WITH GARAK =  AMAZING

(not to mention very relatable...)

This is Garak's best outing in the entire season, tbh :D

Don't forget to undo your contract with Garak...

aww

This was a blast! This is a huge step in Quark's character development: following Nog and Rom, now he decides to break his society's rules. I'm very happy. ...But what about Garak, though?

Broken Link

Poor Odo...

aw encouraging Quark

"I'm thinking of asking Julian to come live with us. Even things up a little" Is that the only reason? ;)

"Captain, I want to be judged. I'm the only changeling who's ever harmed another. I've spent most of my life bringing people to justice. Now that it's my turn, how can I run away?"

"Don't tell me you'd object to a little genocide in the name of self-defence?" This is such a Cardassian line...

Why human and not Bajoran?

Oh Odo, just as he got comfortable with his identity as a shape-shifter... :/

General impressions:

Bashir in season 4, a summary: "Friendship ended with Garak, now Miles O'Brien is my best friend" Seriously, though... O'Brien and Bashir's relationship has become one of my favourite parts of the show. They got lots of good content this season: countless casual/humorous scenes, conflict in Hippocratic Oath, need for each other's company in Accession, talking down from suicide in Hard Time... And Garak was the most underwhelming part of the season for me, both himself and his relationship with Bashir -- or lack of it. I'm not even asking for shippy stuff, I know it's not going to be canon, but can't they just share screentime and enjoy each other's company, like they did before and Bashir does with O'Brien now?

And while the writers seem unsure what to do with Garak now, Dukat continues to be incredibly entertaining. Need a personification of Cardassian oppression? An unwanted ally the protagonist(s) would barely tolerate? A pompous prick to make fun of? A dangerously charismatic speaker -- or a windbag who thinks himself much cooler than he is? A relatively sympathetic opponent to provide "grey morality"? Well, here's all of that in one character! And my favourite thing is that despite being so immoral, he's not actually an enemy plot-wise (at least so far), so instead of fighting, defeating, and getting him out of the picture, the heroes just keep telling him how much he sucks. An interesting antagonist with a decent amount of screentime -- the dream. But all of that was about the character in general, and my favourite thing about his two episodes in this season is that he's self-aware of his status as a Complex Antagonist and completely overestimates the "complex and sympathetic" part, and (mis)casts himself as some kind of sexy byronic antihero whose deep and rich inner world will eventually win over the feisty heroine. Meanwhile, Kira is really not into villain/protagonist pairings and just wants the creepy guy responsible for genocide against her people to leave her alone. This was filmed twenty years ago but looks like a parody/deconstruction of currently popular ships like reylo or solavellan -- I find it really hilarious. (Maybe I’d feel more grossed out than amused if his behavior disturbed Kira more -- but she seems so gloriously unimpressed!)

I generally like Klingons and was glad to see Worf again, all of his episodes had something that stopped me from fully enjoying them.

It was my impression that Kira’s screetime got reduced because of Nana Visitor’s pregnancy -- and it was actually a good thing for the show! I feel bad saying this about one of the only two main female characters, but Kira is obviously the writers’ favorite, and got the most attention over the past seasons, so stepping back a bit let other characters shine more.

[axiomabstractions]

One Step Forward

For many years, one of my most deeply held beliefs has been that the most powerful thing any individual can do is inspire others. I’m almost positive I’ve been saying this since high school. A TED talk I watched earlier today (June 11, 2021) reminded me of this. Now, here I am, closing up what may be the single most important piece of literature I’ve yet written in my life. It's definitely the one I'm most proud of.

I won’t provide you with a complete synopsis of the TED talk, as I believe it’s good enough to deserve you listening to it in its entirety and in full context. However, one of the central ideas was that of looking inward in order to first develop a stronger sense of self, and then to strategically, methodically align your intention, efforts, and actions with those things that inspire you in a positive way. It was an excellent presentation, and the themes resonated with me strongly enough to inspire me to write this essay. I feel like many people in America, particularly many young adults, have been very impassioned and inspired for the past several years. It’s good to be inspired. Inspiration is where action and change come from. It shows that many of us care to make a difference, which is important and necessary, but I’m not so sure the picture of the world we are being inspired by is accurate.

The way I see it, the truths each of us is able to see are not only becoming further and further divorced from the way things actually are, much of those truths are being manufactured by a technological and informational infrastructure designed to exploit each of us for our attention as effectively as possible. In order to maximally draw our gaze, the artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms track our activity across the internet, and develop an increasingly accurate picture of the type of content each of us tends to engage with most consistently. The fact that I even believe this may very well be a direct consequence of what I just described, except I listen to a lot of podcasts and actually pick up a book every now and then, so I’d venture to say enough of my sources exist sufficiently outside of this framework to provide at least a moderately effective filter. In any case, the general trend I see is that, within this infrastructure, it is becoming increasingly difficult for us to distill the same truths as one another concerning the state of the world and the direction we are heading as a society. We’ve seemingly been reduced to engaging most strongly with, among other reference points equally unfit to facilitate the expansion and forwarding of the conversation in any meaningful way, memes, sound bites, “gotcha” moments, group think, moral outrage, and open resentment and hatred for “the other.” The identity politics serve only to devolve the conversation into a finger-pointing fest devoid of any potential to produce real, practical forms of change which could serve all our interests.

Okay this seems like a monster of an issue, so what the hell do we do about it. Well, one approach would be to demand more stringent regulatory oversight of the tech superpowers responsible for maintaining the infrastructure within these systems. That would be great, and I think that idea does deserve some careful attention. However, I prefer to work from the ground up. By that I mean I try to focus more on what each of us can do as individuals, as opposed to relying on some institution to implement changes that probably won’t ever happen. Even if the necessary changes were implemented on this scale, I believe the time it would take to get there would allow for much more damage to the ethos of our society than any of us should dare to flirt with. We need to change the way we’re interacting with these systems and with each other, so we can collectively break the spell being held over so many of us.

I mentioned something above, which I think serves as a good starting point for finding a solution: the idea of a filter. Functionally, what this filter should do is provide each of us with enough variation in perceived perspectives, incentives, and outcomes so as to enable us to break the gridlock of these confirmation-bias bolstering meme machines. We need to re-enable ourselves, re-equip ourselves with the psychological, contemplative framework from which we can make more reasonable determinations about what information qualifies and what information has no utility as a piece of the story we tell ourselves about the state of the world, about ourselves, and about each other. Again, this could be done by regulating the systems which deliver this information to us (i.e. try to make is so that no bad information is broadcasted), but I think it’s more important for each of us to take personal responsibility for the way we interact with these systems, not to mention the implications enforcing such regulations would have for our free speech. There are powerful forces at play, and if we aren’t mindful and strategic about our approach to overcoming this, I fear we will simply be inviting the technocalypse. The filter needs to come from inside each of us. It needs to happen in your mind, not in silicone valley.

If we rely on tech or the news media companies alone to address this issue, we will be perpetuating the cycle of disempowerment and victimhood, a cycle whose trajectory only leads downwards into the abyss. The same can be said for any institutional problem that we care to identify and take a stand against. Regardless of which position you start at (victimhood or powerlessness), the same positive feedback loop is activated (“positive” in this case meaning that these two modes of thought are complimentary and enforce one another, not that this feedback loop is good in any way). When you frame the world through the lens of victimhood you rob yourself of your own sense of autonomy by the assertion that the outcomes of events in your life are outside of your control, and thus the processes which determine those outcomes should be governed by another. Allowing our outcomes to be increasingly governed by others gradually robs us of our ability to make decisions over outcomes in our own lives, and thus constructs a society wherein we are all increasingly likely to be made into victims by those whom we have allowed to steal our autonomy from us. See how this feeds into itself? My basic proposition would be that personal responsibility and accountability serve as the antidote to this cycle, by re-empowering us to control the outcomes of events in our own lives. If each of us chooses to be accountable for our contribution to the outcomes we experience in our own lives, we empower ourselves to change the way we choose to contribute, thus can gracefully pursue the outcomes we most desire.

I believe firmly that the macro social phenomena we see are necessarily the direct sum of our attitudes and actions as the constituents of our society. Consequently, it is imperative that we manage how we interact with the framework of our society, the relationship between ourselves and our institutions, and the personal policies we carry through our day to day lives as individuals. I was recently introduced to the simple notion of us all taking one collective step forward by Douglas Murray, a guest on Eric Weinstein’s Podcast “The Portal.” To clarify, I am in no way associated with Douglas or Eric, but It’s a fucking awesome podcast. You should check it out sometime. Anyhow, the point I’m trying to make is that I see much more potential in the idea of working to inspire a healthy perspective shift across 350,000,000 people, than I do in the notion of regulating our institutions so as to attempt to please 350,000,000 people. The latter seems like a fool’s endeavor to me, which is why I care more to work from the ground up. And yes, that starts with working on myself. I wouldn’t be telling you all this, if I was not adamant about incorporating these ideas into my own life.

If we bring our focus back now to the filter, I do have a suggestion for how specifically to make this happen. You ready? Spend less time getting your information from within the framework designed to extract as much of your attention as possible. Get more of your information from books, scientific literature, observing nature, conversations, etc. Go to a library if you need to. Find more places from which to extract your model of the world we live in, places which are not manufacturing an artificial truth for you. Intentionally seek diversity of perspective to help you build a model that is well examined from as many angles as possible. Insofar as you do choose to consume content on facebook, twitter, Instagram, wherever you get your tailored version of reality, be more critical of the ideas you choose to adopt and/or share. Indeed, I think a more critical general audience would be a natural consequence of us forming better habits around where we get our information.

I’m no evolutionary biologist, but I don’t believe humans were evolved for our brains to compete with supercomputers in constructing our perspectives, incentives, and policies of living. I believe we evolved to extract our understanding and meaning through the process of interacting with and carefully examining our natural environment, and testing those observations, in good faith, against what others have observed. Another big difference is the sheer volume of information the average American in consuming on a daily basis. It’s outrageous. There’s no way to possibly keep up with and make sense of it all. We need to stop bombarding ourselves so haphazardly with mind numbing click-bait that’ll be irrelevant in 12 hours or less.

And look, right now, as I’m writing this, I am as much telling this to myself as I am telling this to you. I’m not perfect, and I’m not immune from this either. It is every bit as important for me to grow and improve in these ways, and to remain cognizant through my effort to do so. In fact, that’s what this whole thing is “axiomabstractions.” This is my standing invitation to everyone to not only bear witness to the process of my growth in real time, but to become more involved in the process of their own growth, so that we can grow and build a better truth together as we move ever-forward into the future. If we fail to do this, we will likely continue to suffer from the existential angst produced by the unbalanced distribution of perspectives, incentives, and outcomes manufactured by our technological machinery. We will likely continue to fall deeper into the grips of insecurity, fear, powerlessness, and victimhood together, which if that’s the ride we’re on, then it’s the ride we’re on. I’d much rather be on a different ride though, one that ends in a better place than mutually assured destruction.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a pessimist. I can just see catastrophe looming. However, the fact that I make the effort to share this with all of you is my way of saying I have faith in us to get through this shit. It would be a total waste of my time if I didn’t have a fundamental, unwavering faith in humanity. We’re not going to accomplish it alone though. The conversation on how we’re approaching progress needs to shift in a manner which promotes more collaboration, cooperation, and honest communication. We need to start participating in growth with each other in good faith again.

In closing, I’d like to send a short message to all active members of the IDW:

We, your viewers, desperately need continued and even more exposure to your perspectives, just as your perspectives deserve increased viewership and broader consideration within the context of our society as a whole. Please keep the conversation going as you have been. This movement, by far, does not stop with you, as I’m sure you are already all starkly aware.

[shirlleycoyle]

Apocalypse Porn Shows Why People Are Horny for the End of the World

In the middle of a months-long global pandemic, economic collapse, climate calamity, and civil unrest unlike anything we've seen in a lifetime, the world—or at least the world as we knew it—feels a little like it's coming to an end.

And people say they're horny for it.

Like giggling at a funeral, getting boned up during the apocalypse feels taboo but ultimately, uncontrollable. Much has been written about how the COVID-19 lockdown has fucked with our sex lives: under forced cohabitation or isolation, we've all gotten a little screwy.

But there's a long tradition of being turned on by the end of the world in porn. As scholars and sex therapists I talked to assured me; and even when we're faced with the apocalypse, feeling these things is as human as it gets.

A Brief History of Apocalypse Porn

Defining "apocalypse porn" is tricky. There's disaster porn, a colloquial term for gawking at ruin, which is something altogether different from what we're discussing here.

There are true apocalypse adult films, like the 2007 film Crescendo 2012, where the premise is that people fuck like there's no tomorrow, because there won't be. Outside of porn, these scenarios are everywhere in pop culture. Britney Spears' video for "Till the World Ends," for example, while not pornographic, falls into this category of world-ending orgy fantasy. So does Prince's "1999." Melancholia, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, Armageddon, Last Night—the list of world-ending movies with a sex or romance plot goes on.

Searching "apocalypse" and "end of the world" on porn tube sites like Pornhub or Xvideos returns mixed results. It's mostly riff on the retro Mad Max-style post-apocalyptic style, like Apocalypse X or a parody of Bird Box. Compared to results for, say, cock and ball torture or selfsuck, which have hundreds of video results, apocalypse porn doesn't seem to be as popular or prolific. But what is out there is usually more plot-driven and carefully produced.

Apocalypse sex can happen at the end of the world, or just the end of this world. Coronavirus porn could probably fall under the category of apocalypse porn, since so much of it leans into a dystopian horror flick theme. Then there's post-apocalyptic porn like the 1987 film The Load Warrior, a parody of the second Mad Max film, The Road Warrior. In Load Warrior, men are cows to be milked for the world's most scarce and precious commodity: semen.

In the 1981 Satisfiers of Alpha Blue, people in the far-off future travel to a planet of erotic pleasure to get their needs fulfilled by computers that fuck them perfectly. Of course, one of the characters wrestles with questions of connection, love, and romance versus the cold perfection of artificially-intelligent fuckbots—themes reflected in mainstream pop culture today, with more recent films like Her and Ex Machina still asking the same questions of humanness and sexual connection.

It's not the end of humanity, but the teetering, collapse, and rebuilding of society, that still resonates today.

Within the category of post-apocalyptic porno flicks, the 1982 avant-garde Café Flesh is a favorite of Laura Helen Marks, porn scholar and professor of English at Tulane University. It's set in a post-nuclear apocalyptic future where almost everyone gets violently ill if they have sex, and those who don't are put on stage to perform live porn theatre for the rest.

Marks told me that she sees two divergent approaches to apocalypse porn: lawlessness or breakdown in social structure, and the case of a completely authoritarian world that spawns outcasts and rebels.

"In the former case, there is a good deal of desperation, barter, and primitive economies, which can provide a certain level of danger and excitement—a sense of 'who gives a fuck,'" Marks said. "In the latter case, the films offer a contrasting sense of being controlled or restricted, which similarly augments sexual fantasy though in the opposite direction—toward strict regimes and containment."

Both approaches play around with erotic fantasies of gender, race, and class divides, where identities and power dynamics are either dialed to caricature levels or rendered meaningless.

"We get to indulge in fantasies of subversion of traditional hierarchy, or hyperbolic renderings of those hierarchies," Marks said.

As the whole world struggles to define its "new normal," and we're attending orgies over Zoom and inviting the virtual world into our sex lives more than ever—combined with the uniquely 2020 phenomenon of widespread "skin hunger"—it's no wonder some among us are little horny all the time.

Why We're Drawn to World-Ending Porn

Here in real life, sex at the edge of global collapse is a little more complicated than Prince or Britney made it seem. And the overarching impression that everyone is so horny right now—whether we're getting that from Twitter jokes or all the personal essays floating around on the topic—might not be the whole story of what people are actually experiencing.

"People are definitely being impacted by the state of the world at the moment—all of the uncertainty and unrest can be really hard to cope with," Kristen Mark, director of the sexual health promotion lab at the University of Kentucky, told me. "We’ve noticed in our data that sex lives are, for the most part, being negatively impacted in terms of frequency. But for those who are remaining sexually active, they tend to be more open to trying more adventurous sexual acts. This might be offering distraction from the world around them, something that makes them feel good, the novelty can be helpful."

"Some people cope by seeking out pleasure, intimacy, and connection as a distraction from their anxiety, whereas others experience a loss of libido when overwhelmed with anxiety"

Part of that might be biological. NYC-based psychotherapist and sex therapist Dulcinea Pitagora told me that when people are under higher amounts of stress—say, from a bombardment of tragedy in the news every day, unemployment, or lack of intimacy from lockdown—their brains and bodies look for all possible sources of oxytocin and dopamine.

"People tend to be more susceptible to the phenomenon of falling in love when under intensified stress due to a change in brain and body chemistry, such as heightened cortisol (stress hormone) and adrenaline," they said. "So there’s something happening at the chemical level during natural disasters, but there are also psychosocial factors that go along with the realization that so many people are dying in addition to having to avoid spending as much time with people as we would like. The associated fear within a context of constraint leads many to experience a spike in desire as a coping mechanism."

Pitagora said in their practice, they've seen a couple trends lately. "A benefit of the current heightened unrest is that some people are gaining a heightened awareness of their privilege," they said. "As a result, one thing that’s happening with people in relationships is they are discovering differences in privilege between partners, or in their awareness of or values around their privilege, leading to conflicts and sometimes break ups."

Another thing Pitagora has seen seen is increased and decreased frequency of sex and desire, depending on how the person copes with anxiety. "Some people cope by seeking out pleasure, intimacy, and connection as a distraction from their anxiety, whereas others experience a loss of libido when overwhelmed with anxiety," they said.

Whatever you feel here at the apparent end of the current state of things is probably fine and healthy, sex-wise. "Sexual desire is driven by so many factors. It could be stress, anxiety, exhaustion, uncertainty, relationship context, societal pressure, so just take it as it comes," Mark said. "Sex drive is normal and sex drive fluctuations are a natural part of the experience of desire."

In the process of working out why we feel what we feel right now, perhaps apocalyptic stories and pornography can bring some clarity—or at least some distraction, since we're all inside anyway. Porn can be a mirror for society, even if they're 80's disaster skin flicks. Asking how sex fits into the future can illuminate our desires and values in the present.

"Porn has proven to be an interesting site for such ideas because on the one hand, of course porn is going to grapple with a scenario that relates to sex, but on the other hand most visions of sex in the future are sterile, lacking in intimacy, or couched in some kind of outlaw economy," Marks said. "These kinds of conflicted porn movies are the ones I find particularly interesting, though, and they can sometimes generate an unexpected and surprising level of eroticism, even when simultaneously bleak."

Apocalypse Porn Shows Why People Are Horny for the End of the World syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[harrelltut]

☥ JEHOVAH Occult Witness Me [ME = U.S. Michael Harrell = TUT = JAH] in Church [JC = JESUS CHRIST] since I BEE A HIGHLY Sophisticated Underworld Nubian [SUN] SOUL [GOD] who NEVER DIES like the soulless ones of earth… ‘cause I BEE II HIGHLY CONSCIOUS ALL [CA] UP IN:side GHETTO HEAVEN [Astronomical EDEN] II BEE Distracted by the unenlightened [DEAD] ones [U] who didn’t JEHOVAH OCCULT WITNESS My HIGHLY Official… U.S. ATLANTEAN [USA] HARRELLTV® Empire of Lost America [L.A. = NEW Atlantis] ☥

[entergamingxp]

Towards more speculative sex • Eurogamer.net

Hello! All this week we’ll be celebrating Pride and the power of positive representations in games. Every day we’ll be bringing you stories and insights from different parts of the LGBT+ community. You can also help support Pride with Eurogamer’s newly redesigned t-shirt – all profits from which will be going to charity.

In 2015, the Wachowski sisters asked a very important question via their sic-fi TV show Sense8: If eight people were psychically connected to share each other’s senses, how would they have sex?

The answer – enthusiastically and at a distance – notwithstanding, the question itself proves important. By asking it, the Wachowskis applied a fundamental lens of speculative fiction-a view towards questioning what is, can be, or will be possible-to sex.

“Resistance and change often begin in art,” said speculative-fiction giant Ursula Le Guin in her 2014 National Book Award speech, with a pointed nod towards science fiction and fantasy. Especially now, with the rise of “geekdom” as a mainstream, socially acceptable hobby, the idea that speculative fiction helps reimagine and perhaps pave the way for new socio-technological realities is neither contentious nor particularly novel. Since people began telling stories, we’ve been imagining the impossible and subsequently using these stories to expand the boundaries of the possible. After all, long before Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov’s 1965 spacewalk in a nylon and metal spacesuit, Icarus soared to the sun on wax wings.

Which brings us back to sex. While sci-fi/fantasy authors spend a great deal of time conceptualizing various aspects of our humanity, reimagining how we have sex is often passed up for more “socially acceptable” topics. For queer folks, this is significant: who we have sex with, how often we have sex, and how frequently we choose to have sex is often the basis for discrimination against queer people around the world. There absolutely exists in culture an idealized, normative sexual praxis. And to seek out representation of anything else is to delve into the world of independent artists, of queer subcultures, and niche hobbies.

Consider, for instance, representations of the bodies we have sex with, especially the sentient but non-human kind. If we can conceive of intelligent aliens with whom we form emotional attachments, we can conceive of the desire to have sex with them. And while we can dream up scores of weird, unusual or monstrous bodies against which to wage war, our depictions of aliens to have sex with is sadly lacking in diversity. Mainstream film and television, at least, are mired in the heteromasculine gaze, where fuckable aliens tend to be lithe human women with brightly coloured skin. Hell, even Jabba the Hutt, a giant desert-slug, favours oddly Western-human ideals of beauty.

Star Trek (2009)’s take on alien sexuality.

In fact, we’d rather show no body than one that deviates from our beauty standards. While 2013’s Her is a deep, fascinating look at how humans might bond with and come to love artificial intelligences, that love is a rather chaste one. Joaquin Phoenix’s Theodore is utterly content with the occasional bout of late-night dirty talk (with a hint of fade-to-black masturbation) with his disembodied, AI-girlfriend, the same activity he used to engage in with human sex-chatroom lurkers. He clearly has never heard of sex toys, nor the (rather ridiculously named, true) field of teledildonics. The movie does enter interesting territory when he tries to sleep with a human mimicking the AI-girlfriends moves according to instructions whispered into her earpiece, but this look into the sexual politics of human-OS threesomes fizzles out quickly and never resurfaces.

Contrast this with Naomi Clark’s Consentacle, a 2-player card game that embraces a monstrous, speculative beauty. You play a human astronaut and an alien attempting to maximize each other’s pleasure while in joyous flagrante delicto. The alien, Dup, is basically an enormous blue-purple head with extra eyes and multiple tentacles, complete with octopus-like suckers. The astronaut Kit is a human woman. And yet, despite the anatomical gulf, the game models their sex acts (represented via cards), as joyful an uninhibited. The two characters tease each other, bite, kiss, and caress each other, exchange soulful gazes, and insert arms into each other’s “hungry orifices”. There’s even a comic.

Naomi Clark’s Consentacle.

And why not? When we conceive of queer sex and queer bodies, we reject what is considered “normal” and embrace the unusual, the taboo, and yes, the inconceivable. Consentacle, for the most part, is a game about how partners can communicate healthily, but it’s also a game that encourages you to think about who your sex partner is and what their body could be. As a piece of speculative art, it emphasizes possibility; as a game, it invites players to make decisions and choices within these possibilities, picturing themselves, perhaps in a wholly new sexual light.

Consentacle is probably a more extreme depiction, but even when media try to depict “unusual” sexual proclivities here on earth, we’re served the same old 50 Shades of Grey: bland, sanitized representations of sexual practices that were once fiercely queer. Small wonder that “kink” has become synonymous with BDSM for many (straight cis) folks.

Games are not so shy. Alex Robert’s game POP!, which I had the pleasure of editing for an anthology of erotic games, focusses on the lives and loves of balloon fetishists. Far from mocking the practice, the game portrays its subject matter in a sensitive light. As a larp, where players create much of the story, it encourages players to be just as attentive: “keep love in your heart. Looners, as they often identify, are real people.” It tasks the players with sensitively exploring the community and society of those who have sex with balloons.

These social impacts of a more speculative sexual practice are often simplified by mainstream media. HBO’s Westworld might be attempting to question the nature of consciousness and intelligence, but when it comes to sex, the show’s message never really advances beyond, “have robot, will fuck.” Similarly, if we examine depictions of VR sex (I’m recalling Arnold Schwarzenegger’s little romp in Total Recall) the social consequence of being able to have constant idealized sex aren’t really discussed.

By contrast, Troels Ken Pederson’s larp My Girl’s Sparrow‘s zooms in on the physical aspects of sex in a futuristic world where VR is the only (acceptable) mode of sex. In Pederson’s game, the near-future world considers meatspace sex to be gauche and gross. The freeform game’s main focus is on a group of friends who rent a cabin for the sole purpose of taboo physical intimacy, and much of play consists of describing, in minute detail, the blow-by-blow of your sex acts. The game never feels pornographic, however. Rather, the detailed erotic descriptions serve to highlight the fact that these characters never get to do this in real life. “Sex isn’t an indeterminate mass – its details matter,” Pederson writes. “What we do together and how we react to each other says a lot about who we are.” How does it feel?, the game asks of you, and then constrains you further by forbidding you to ever discuss your feelings. How does sex feel when the norm is taken away from you? Or under another interpretive light, how does it feel to have queer sex?

Troels Ken Pederson’s My Girl’s Sparrow.

The concept of feeling and sensation is studied through a different lens by Kat Jones and Will Morningstar in You Inside Us-another title in the Honey & Hot Wax anthology of erotic art games I mentioned earlier. In this two-layer larp, one player takes on the role of a human colonist of a distant planet, while other plays an alien symbiont that comes to live inside the body of the former. The game asks us to examine the physical sensations we might often take for granted, and ask ourselves what physical pleasure and eroticism really mean. The two players, who maintain some form of physical contact throughout the game, describe mundane actions the human performs with their body in their day to day, and explore how it feels now that an alien is in residence. Has the nose become an erogenous zone? Does the act of eating soup now trigger tingles down one’s spine? “Be indulgent, intense, and weird,” the designers urge you, because the game is about, “making familiar sensations alien, [and] making alien sensations real and intimate.”

Jones and Morningstar position sex as something present within the banal, quotidian world. In the tiny, indie video game Stick Shift, Robert Yang does the same-only he focusses on the hyper specific act of, well, masturbating a car. Or perhaps you’re masturbating yourself via the car? Or is the car just your kink? Either way, Yang asks:

“What if sex in games was something we did, instead of something we obtained? One way to do sex is to see sex everywhere. Sex here, sex there, sex behind yonder tree!… and sex through the tender caresses that seduce gay cars everywhere.”

Robert Yang’s Stick Shift.

Yang, Jones, and Morningstar want us to normalize sexuality, want us to explore erotic possibility where society says there is none, want us to break out of the confines of “here and a this time are when you receive sex, as a result of this action.” By replacing “ordinary” with “sexual”, these games allow us to reject heteronormative dicta of what constitutes sex, give us permission to question what we ourselves desire, what we lust for, and what, for each of us, makes sex sex.

Finally, on the topic of queerness and sex, gender must inevitably come into play. Gender and the possible deviations from our binary norm are still relatively taboo topics in mainstream media. More than fifty years after Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, where the inhabitants of the planet Gethen have no gender as a default and shift gender once a month, most science fiction does little to speculate on our notions of gender. Now consider Avery Alder’s indie tabletop roleplaying game Dream Askew. You play members of an enclave of queers, attempting to “live, sleep, and hopefully heal” and maybe carve out a utopia in a post-apocalyptic world. At character creation you choose a gender. The game, however, eschews, “male” or “female”, and instead presents a variety of new options: “gargoyle”, “dagger daddy”, “ice femme”, “raven”. Alder writes:

“Creating a character in Dream Askew involves contending with gender, but it’s a gender exploded, extracted from the society intact and made mutant. What do some of these words even mean? […] When you encounter a gender word, imagine. Ask your fellow players. Flirt with a search engine. If nothing comes up, invent. No matter how you come to your initial understanding, it’s yours to continue to define through play.”

Avery Alder’s tabletop roleplaying game Dream Askew.

Not content with simply offering new ideas about gender, Alder encourages players to come up with their own, and in an unusually intersectional move, links these gendered markers to other dimensions of identity like ethnicity or social class.

If speculative fiction is to offer us a vision of a better, queerer future, we need to stop ignoring a facet of the human experience as significant as sex. Like Sense8 with its multi-gender psychic orgy, Black Mirror and its virtual-crossplay-coitus, or the legion of indie, underground games that explore the hornier side of life, sci-fi and fantasy media should strive to explore the future of fucking. We should be unafraid to poke at our conceptions of gender, prod our communities and reactions to intimacy, and probe at our kinks and desires. We need to play more with sex.

The Effing Foundation for Sex-Positivity’s mission is to reduce sexual shame and normalise conversations around human sexuality by fostering sex-positive art and education. Two generous grant from them was what made “Honey & Hot Wax” possible. You can donate to The Effing Foundation here.

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/06/towards-more-speculative-sex-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=towards-more-speculative-sex-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net

[mayacatmaster]

What do you mean I'm Back on earth?

*** *** ***

And A kind of Blind-Obey-virus-program has spread around the planet. Child Blind-Obey-virus-program-Robots Being Mass Produced, Built to Kiss-any kind of Dark Tyranny Ruler’s-Ass. And generation after generation, and passed through generation to generation. *** *** *** Factories in this planet are producing lifelike Child Blind-Obey-virus-program-Robots loaded with the Blind-Obey-virus-program-artificial intelligence necessary to fulfill their customers’ - any kind of Dark Tyranny Ruler’ - most extreme mental illness perversions. *** *** *** So….Just like the Thousands and thousands Of Syrian, Iraq or different name country, different area Refugees Escape from home, no matter of it’s what kind of social, country, rulers, no matter of it’s eastern or western, no matter of it’s ancient or modern…! *** *** ***

Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom; and with all thy getting get understanding. ~Proverbs 4:7

*** *** ***

Indeed they found their fathers astray.

So they hastened [to follow] in their footsteps.

And there had already strayed before them most of the former peoples,

Their deeds are like ashes which the wind blows forcefully on a stormy day; they are unable [to keep] from what they earned a [single] thing.

That is what is extreme error.

*** *** ***

And…:

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. ~Qscar Wilde *** *** ***

And…:

Everyone tells you what to do and what’s good for you.  They don’t want you to find your own answers.  They want you to believe theirs. ~Socrates *** *** ***

So…: The simple believeth every word: but the prudent man looketh well to his going. 愚蒙人是話都信，智慧通達者步步審慎。 ～Proverbs 14:15 King James Bible *** *** ***

By their fruits you will get knowledge of them. Do men get grapes from thorns or figs from thistles?

Even so, every good tree gives good fruit; but the bad tree gives evil fruit.

It is not possible for a good tree to give bad fruit, and a bad tree will not give good fruit.

*** *** ***

Not equal are the blind and the seeing,

Nor are the darknesses and the light,

Nor are the shade and the heat,

And not equal are the living and the dead. Indeed, 

*** *** *** Because…: Nation of sheep.  Ruled By Wolves & Tiger.  Owned By pigs. And I follow orders like a dog. It's what made me a "man"(woman; children). *** *** *** 【Ruler】: Between th frown of the tiger and smile of the wolf the flock is perished; the ruler claims himself as kind of the law, and the priest as the representative of “God”(religion-morality-belief-system), and between these two, the bodies are destroyed and souls wither into nothing. ~Gibran *** *** *** 【God】: Man has worshiped his own “self”(egoism-standard) since the beginning, calling that self by appropriate titles, until now, whey he employs the word “God”(religion-morality-belief-system) to mean that same “self”(egoism-standard). ~Gibran *** *** *** 【Segregation】: A God who is good knows of no segregation amongst words or names, and were a God to deny His blessing to those who pursue a different path to eternity, then there is no human who should offer worship. ~Gibran *** *** ***

So…: I always very curiosity about such like when we question mankind history,  See any kind of preach and teach people kiss Dark-Tyrant-Ruler’s ass, …: *** *** *** 以致古往今來，不論東方或西方或任何地區...： So in this earth-time-space, from the past to present, no matter it’s in the east or west or in any area ...: 絕大多數的人們, 不斷重複歷史的舊有既定命運，結局與下場，一代又一代！ The overwhelming majority of people constantly repeat the old established fate of history and ending , generation after generation! *** *** *** They all said this…: My entire life can be described in one sentence:  Just Blind-Obey and Blind-follow and kiss any kind of Dark-Tyranny-Ruler’s-Ass. ***  No matter it’s in a world, a country, a home, a mind-body. *** *** *** Because…: I never dreamed I'd grow up to be kiss-ass-fools-asshole! And all my every lifetime only Three stages of life: 1. Birth. 2. What the fuck is about this, … my whole life just Programmed into Blind-Obey and Blind-follow and kiss any kind of Dark-Tyranny-Ruler’s-Ass. ***  No matter it’s in a world, a country, a home, a mind-body. ***  3. Death. *** *** *** My entire life can be described in one sentence:  Just Blind-Obey and Blind-follow and kiss any kind of Dark-Tyranny-Ruler’s-Ass. ***  No matter it’s in a world, a country, a home, a mind-body. *** *** *** And same to you…: You are a victim of the rules you live by. *** *** *** By the standards that you’ve learned on your planet - by the laws and rules that you’ve learned; even by the morality that you learned from your parents or your peers or your religion, …. - you have picked up opinions and beliefs. *** *** *** Because…: If this is all a dream, a Maya, a mirage, it's long as fuck....: Because lesson repeats until it is learned….: It has 5000 years in China. It has 7,000 years in India. *** *** *** And no matter it’s what kind of country?; what kind of society?; what kind of area?;, what kind of religion?; what kind of morality?; what kind of family?; what kind of education-belief-system?;….: You can put it in this list, as you wish! *** *** *** So…: What suggestions and ideas are you giving yourself?  Realize that these will be materialized in your personal experience. ~Seth *** *** *** Because…: The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is a consequence of Submission to authority. *** *** *** The matrix is real. It's exists inside the minds of the masses. As a form of social, economic, cultural, political and educational indoctrination. Collective psychosis. *** *** *** Humankind is the only virus cursed to live with the horrifying knowledge of its host's fragile mortality. *** *** *** And ~~~! The host kills the virus, or the virus kill the host. *** *** *** You get what you expect, have you noticed that?  And so, how have you been programmed to expect?  *** *** *** We all place ourselves in danger to one degree or another when we stand up, but we place our children and grandchildren in ever greater danger when we don't. *** *** *** So...If you kill those only just preach, teach, or built children going to Kiss  any kind of Dark Tyranny Ruler’s-Ass-virus-belief-programs  or help people to get rid of it, …: *** *** *** No matter it’s in a world, a country, a home, a mind-body. *** *** *** No matter it’s use the name of “God”, Use the name of man-made-moral, Use the name of country,  Use the name of family,  Use the name of egoism,  *** *** *** Between your “God” and my “God”, kills each others,  Between your man-made-moral and my man-made-moral, kills each others,  Between your country and my country, kills each others,  Between your family and my family, kills each others,  Between your body and my body , kills each others,  *** *** *** No matter it’s use the name of Chiang Kai-shek, Mao Zedong, the emperor of Japan, North Korea's leadership, Hitler, Stalin, …: *** No matter of it’s use the name of religion, moral, country, home, education-system, parents, teachers, husbands, boss…! *** No matter of it’s use the name of any kind of tyranny in history. *** *** *** Then your whole world will peace, joy, happy, relax as Cat. *** *** *** And if you can’t do this, don’t tell me you are a guru, or an-sincerity-honest-enlightenment-heart, because it’s a cosmic joke. *** *** *** Otherwise…: May I ask one question, ...”so call” enlightened-heart-man his Life is going to the Finish Line, Final Line, so his Life is all disappear, so he never have any Life anymore? I am so curiosity about this, have any enlightened-heart-man can tell me about this??? *** *** *** If not...then ”so call” enlightened-heart-man…:  What suggestions and ideas are you giving yourself? Realize that these will be materialized in your personal experience. ~Seth *** *** *** Because…: If this is all a dream, a Maya, a mirage, it's long as fuck....: Because lesson repeats until it is learned….: It has 5000 years in China. It has 7,000 years in India. *** *** *** If not...then ”so call” enlightened-heart-man…:  What is your religion-belief-system, morality-belief-system or any kind of belief-system Based Upon? The "Laws of the Universe"(Source; Tao; True Self; Brahma) or the laws-of-man-made? *** *** *** And no matter it’s what kind of country?; what kind of society?; what kind of area?;, what kind of religion?; what kind of morality?; what kind of family?; what kind of education-belief-system?;….: You can put it in this list, as you wish! *** *** *** And you still consider April Fool's Day only one day??? *** *** *** And since…: A lot of parents will do anything for their kids except let them be themselves. ~Banksy *** *** ***  Maybe they said they love their children, …: Well, I am just very curiosity if one parents true love or really love their children, why? ***  Why they don’t help children and other children to be natural, help children and other children to be free, Help children and other children to be themselves, and never try to force anybody, pull and push and manipulate. Those are the ways of the "egoism-standard"(No matter it is parents, government, husband, teachers, religion, morality or mind). And that is what all politics-morality-religion-belief-system is.  *** *** ***  Since every children is a human not a robot.  So, why as parents they want indoctrinate their children and their inner-children??? *** *** *** Because…: Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. ~Qscar Wilde *** *** ***

[road-to-love-blog1]

the road to love - part I

I’m 37 years old and healthy. I live in one of the coolest cities in the world. I have an awesome job, doing what i always loved to do in one of the coolest companies in the world. I live in an amazing house, have a wonderful dog and 2 crazy but sweet as honey kitty kats. I always have food to put on the table, enough money to have fun, surround myself with friends whom i call family or spend the time alone to recover my batteries. I should be the happiest man in the world.

I work for one of the top 5 e-commerce companies in the world as a developer (programmer). When I say it’s one of the coolest companies, i’m not exaggerating: think of the working conditions at google you read on those buzzfeed articles and add a much better work/life balance: I don’t see anyone working more than 8 hours a day, you rarely get any notifications from work outside office hours and the commute time is usually short (depending on where you live you can even cycle to work everyday).

In a typical day it goes like this:

I get up in the morning, at 8.30, i walk my dog and i cycle 15 minutes to get to work

on my best days, i arrive just in time for my team’s daily standup at 10am

not before i get my free expresso coffee on my way from the elevator to my desk

i usually go to the smoking balcony 2 times before lunch, sometimes 3 if i’m really bored

I go to have lunch in the canteen, where i have access to a very good, almost restaurant quality, wide variety of choices between warm dishes, soups, cold cuts, sandwiches and wraps, great choices of vegetarian and vegan.

After lunch, I go back to the canteen, grab a paper bag and pack some great food so i can bring home and have dinner at night.

I go back to work and leave at 17.30, making the pauses that i want to check on facebook, go get a coffee, smoke more cigarettes, have a conversation with anyone or play some ping pong or some pool

I listen to the music i want, on my headphones, the whole day. I can even stop to watch a youtube video at any time.

i go back home at 17.30, after my work is done

I don’t think about work anymore until i’m back to the office the next day

Sounds good, no? It has been 4 months today, since i started there, and I can’t bring myself to enjoy it. Why? I have absolutely no interest in what i’m doing, the goal of the company goes against my core principles that have been becoming more and more important for me. The “company environment” isn’t for me anymore and i feel more and more entrapped by society into a proverbial slavery, where i get to have a comfortable life but all the doors for an alternative are closed. And I feel that i am an outsider to what has become, or always was, a fucking CULT.

<quote> “what happens in mind control is your real self is broken down and a new identity is created, they teach you dependence and obedience; but your real self, even if you’re born in the cult or raised in the cult, we have an authentic self that wants love, wants truth, wants goodness, we don’t wanna be exploited or abused.”

- Steven Hassan </quote>

I work in a building with 1000 people, each one brilliant in their own way, and super passionate about what their doing, its purpose and are encouraged to come up with ideas on how we can “make our product better for our customer” when all in all, day by day, all of our brains, all of our energy is being drained with the sole purpose of getting more and more money for the company every single day.

All the best minds in the world are constantly being poached by these companies: Startups / Financial / Oil Companies / Artificial Intelligence for better and better Advertising, instead of given the freedom to be brilliant and build the future we desperately need.

So the daily lives of these best minds, at my company, consists in analysing petabytes of data so we can come with small ideas like changing a button’s color from green to a paler shade of that green, to see if more users end up buying our product on the website. It’s not even technically challenging most of the times, at least for me, what I as a programmer need to do most of the time is go through a labyrinth of code that has been accumulating year after year, contains conditions everywhere so we can present different content to each one of 1 million different users that come along each day. 

I got tired of being one of them but, for the time being, I need to play the game, while i’m preparing to make the jump and go figure out what i want to do with my life, how can i do what i love in a way i am actually contributing in a positive way to the world and being able to sustain myself and not worry about my financial future and my parents’ well being, as they are reaching old age and this society failed in repaying all the effort they made throughout their lives, like it’s going to fail in repaying my effort, and money is never enough. 

I used to enjoy it, even though what always excited me was becoming better and better in my technical skills. I never cared about the product i was building, i had a saying “As long as it’s not child pornography or arms dealing, i’m ok with it” so i ended up working in Advertising where i really started to feel uncomfortable about what i was manifesting to the world and, from that moment on started the descending spiral in the path of my career, that has made me happy for my entire adulthood (starting at 27 years old - i will write about that in a future post) until i reached 36 years old and my life was complete and everything turned upside down.

Yesterday, I saw something that further advanced my deprogramming in a giant leap. When you’re deep enough in the cult your sense of morality and ethics decreases exponentially and it becomes easy to accept or even have attitudes that you would never have as a person. And it doesn’t take long to be deep enough in the cult: they just have to keep reassuring you in what a great job you have been doing, how much value you bring to the company - “here, have a free lunch everyday”, “here’s a christmas present we bought for you and for every other one of the 12.000 whose life force we suck to make this company make more and more billions every year”, keep it on and you’ll be promoted, etc). 

What i saw yesterday clicked so fucking hard: Someone was asking in a company forum about mentioning the company’s name in an online course about how to detect and report possible cases of human trafficking from Stanford University Online. The purpose of mentioning the name of our company was that there would be a public display of the companies whose enough employees took the course and praise the effort, also showing the company as a supporter of the cause. The reply from the Public Relationships represented was obviously negative but, instead of giving any of the multiple possible and acceptable justifications for that no, his reply was “we, as a company, don’t want to have a public stance on that issue because some of our clients may be involved (with human traffic, i remind you) and it would be bad for us”. I really feel I’m working and devoting my time and energy to make the world a worse place. But for the next couple of months i have to keep working there, i really don’t feel like looking for another job where i’m either gonna have to work much more than i am now or have much stricter rules, and for now, i really need peace and quiet so i can prepare my exit-strategy from this matrix.

[harrelltut]

卍 JEHOVAH Occult Witness Me [ME = U.S. Michael Harrell = TUT = JAH] as ALIEN [JA = YAHWEH] iTUT® in fallen america since I BEE yo’ HIGHLY Official… U.S. ATLANTEAN [USA] President [PHARAOH] of Inner Earth’s [HADES] Biblically Black [Ancient] FUTURISTIC Nubian Underworld States of Atlantis [USA = LEMURIA] as I Politically + Militarily [P.M.] Remain Under Secret [U.S.] Service [U.S.] PROTECTION in California [PC] as I’M Hallelujah & AMEN [HA = HARRELL] HOTEP!!! on Egyptian [HE = JAH] HARRELLTV® 卍

[harrelltut]

卍 Hallelujah & AMEN [HA = HARRELL] Me [ME = U.S. Michael Harrell = TUT = JAH] in Lost America [L.A. = NEW Atlantis] as I INTENTIONALLY SABOTAGE the powerless TELEVISED govment politicians of fallen america since I BEE A Universal SOVEREIGN [U.S. = UNTOUCHABLE] who Don’t give A FUCK about present day govment authorities who have No Control over Me [ME = U.S. Michael Harrell = TUT = JAH] as I Magically INVOKE [MI = MICHAEL] My GOLDEN [DIVINE] Black Dawn Society [ILLUMINATI] POWERS OVER mankind 卍