#Science Spies News

[glimpsesofeuterpe]

if you live in countries alike mine, you'll have to google to do steps every time before trying to download apps like clippaint, stream and co

they kinda did their best to push a simple user toward going full pirate mode, aand keep coming up with v interesting updates on that every now and then

[torpublishinggroup]

Devilman Crybaby meets Marvel’s Venom in Exordia, the science fiction debut of Seth Dickinson, author of The Traitor Baru Cormorant. 

Ssrin Character Illustration by Julie Dillon

WHAT’S IT ABOUT

Meet Anna Sinjari, a refugee and disaffected office worker eking an existence in New York City. Her life is about to be upended by Ssrin, an alien with eight serpent heads, no qualms with cold-blooded murder, and an appetite for turtles (yum).

The universe is governed by seven passions, seven patterns which appear again and again, across species and across time. Anna and Ssrin are bound by the last and the greatest. The cosmos itself ships their very souls. Specifically for them, that means they’ll have to outmaneuver spies, armies, and government agencies to save humanity from a diabolical alien entity, hellbent on pinioning the souls of every creature on earth.

Exordia is expansive adventure science fiction that reads like a race-against-the-clock thriller in the vein of Michael Crichton, but steeped in the irony, humor, and pain of the Internet age. An alien-human epic for those who've always rooted for the monster.

[ratgrinders]

Never Stop Blowing Up Favorite Movies

Wendell Morris

Weird Science - 1985 science fantasy/teen comedy. "Nerdy social outcast students Gary Wallace and Wyatt Donnelly are humiliated by senior jocks Ian and Max for swooning over their cheerleader girlfriends. Humiliated and disappointed at their direction in life and wanting more, Gary is inspired by the 1931 classic Frankenstein to create a virtual woman using Wyatt's computer, infusing her with everything they can conceive to make the perfect dream woman."

The Fast and the Furious - "A media franchise centered on a series of action films that are largely concerned with street racing, heists, spies, and family."

Real Genius - 1985 science fiction/comedy. "Chris Knight, a genius in his senior year, is paired with a new student on campus, Mitch Taylor, to work on a chemical laser, only to learn it will be used for dangerous purposes."

Liv Skyler

Empire Records - 1995 coming-of-age comedy/drama. "The film follows a group of record store employees over the course of one exceptional day. The employees try to stop the store from being sold to a large chain, and learn about each other along the way."

Scarface - 1983 crime drama, and a remake of the 1932 film of the same name. "It tells the story of Cuban refugee Tony Montana, who arrives penniless in Miami during the Mariel boatlift and becomes a powerful drug lord." Additionally, "Less than two months before the film's release, Scarface was given an X rating by the MPAA for "excessive and cumulative violence and for language".

Clueless - 1995 coming-of-age teen comedy. "Considered to be one of the best teen films of all time...The plot centers on a beautiful, popular, and rich high school student who befriends a new student and decides to give her a makeover while playing matchmaker for her teachers and examining her own existence".

Usha Rao

The Horse in Motion - Published in 1878, a sequential series of 6 cabinet cards depicting the movement of a horse. Regarded as "the world's first bit of cinema", and the first film ever created.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - 1931 horror film. "An adaptation of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the 1886 Robert Louis Stevenson tale of a man who takes a potion which turns him from a mild-mannered man of science into a homicidal maniac."

102 Not Out - 2018 Indian Hindi-language comedy drama. "Dattatraya Vakharia is a lively 102-year-old who lives his life to the maximum and takes everything in a jovial way for his heart is that of a 26-year-old youngster regardless of his age. His 75-year-old son, Babulal Vakharia, is his exact opposite for he believes that he is now too old and fragile to enjoy life and lives a routine life."

Russell Feeld

American Gigolo - 1980 neo-noir crime drama. "A high-priced male escort who becomes romantically involved with a prominent politician's wife, while simultaneously becoming the prime suspect in a murder case."

La Femme Nikita - 1990 French-language action thriller. "[Nikita] is a criminal who is convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering policemen during an armed pharmacy robbery. Her government handlers fake her death and recruit her as a professional assassin. After intense training, she starts a career as a killer, where she struggles to balance her work with her personal life."

Waking Life - 2001 animated film. "The film explores a wide range of philosophical issues, including the nature of reality, dreams and lucid dreams, consciousness, the meaning of life, free will, and existentialism. It is centered on a young man who wanders through a succession of dreamlike realities wherein he encounters a series of people who engage in insightful philosophical discussions."

Andy 'Dang' Litefoot

Suburbia - 1983 coming-of-age drama thriller. Follows "a group of suburban youths who run away from home and adopt a punk lifestyle by squatting in abandoned suburban tract homes."

Goldfinger - 1964 spy film and the third installment in the James Bond series. "The film's plot has Bond investigating gold smuggling by gold magnate Auric Goldfinger and eventually uncovering Goldfinger's plans to contaminate the United States Bullion Depository at Fort Knox."

Fire in the Sky - 1993 biographical science fiction mystery. "It is based on Travis Walton's book The Walton Experience, which describes an extraterrestrial abduction"

Paula Donvalson

Muriel's Wedding - 1994 Australian comedy-drama. "The film focuses on the socially awkward Muriel whose ambition is to have a glamorous wedding and improve her personal life by moving from her dead-end hometown, the fictional Porpoise Spit, to Sydney."

The Long Kiss Goodnight - 1996 action thriller. "The story follows an amnesiac schoolteacher who sets out to recover her identity with the help of a private detective when they discover a dark conspiracy."

Under the Tuscan Sun - 2003 romantic comedy-drama. "Based on Frances Mayes' 1996 memoir of the same name, the film is about a recently divorced writer who buys a villa in Tuscany on a whim, hoping it will lead to a change in her life."

[witchofthesouls]

Okay wait no culture clash: Soundwave and Ratchet both teaching the kids about Cybertonian history and Culture?? Can we PLEASE see some of that??

Ratchet is having back to back fits because nothing is going as planned, and he feels he made a deal with the devil or has been given a monkey's paw because he's getting his wishes in a really twisted way without even knowing there were active conditions.

He returned to Earth to watch on the place that held a special place in Optimus' spark as the rebuilding process is taking a different shape and he's too tired to carry that burden on his own, and found out it there were still Primal Artifacts and other weaponry from the Vaults on the planet.

The once teenage tagalongs are now adults that are continuing Team Prime's directives to collect them. They had sacrificed continuing higher education for the mission, and Ratchet couldn't stand that he already missed a portion of their lives that damn fast and how they're so nonchalant over not improving their own selves. Ratchet then found out that Raf, Jack, and Miko had literally spent lifetimes together as they traveled Elsewhere to secure Cybertronian relics that shaped their planet in some way or form. Not only grew up. They grew old in some of their ventures; delving deep into their Other heritages to ensure they could make it back in the right time.

The kids (because they're all kids to him, even if Raf has a beard) are still limited by an organic lifespan, and humans are shorter compared to other species, so Ratchet clucks over their health, and he counts the days when all he has left are their ghosts and dust. And then a Primal Artifact cyberforms them.

Of course, none of his kids are what the Autobots had thought their frames would be. They're all strange, otherworldly, and dangerous.

Miko is definitely a spitfire. But not a motorcycle or a tank. She's a full-framed War-Forged Seeker femme. She revels in her bloodthirst and dresses well in violence as her plating is a searing and hauntingly bright pink. Her helm has small horns, her mouth spilts wide, and she enjoys showing off rows and rows of serrated teeth with her unsettling optics brimming with tactical programs.

Raf isn't a mech with alt based on lab equipment or even suited towards data. He's something completely else. He's draconian, but not a Predacon, as that root-mode is something familiar to Ratchet. Raf is far more reptilian, even in root-mode. An elongated face with a snout. Teeth hanging over his bottom lip with thick ridges of pointed plates upon his crest to trail up to proper horns, long and notched. His brilliant boy still has the same eyes towards sciences with slitted pupils, and Raf is comfortable navigating around with and without a thick tail and has adapted well to his large hands with thick claws.

Jack seems the most normal. Seems. He could pass off a young mech - handsome with dark and glossy plates and the unique grey-tinged blue optics - but if you stare too long into those optics, strange shapes emerge. Ratchet thought he's some type of jet, but sometimes Ratchet spies wheels along his legs or sees how Jack's silhouette bulks or slims between beats. The hem of his armored coat curls or blends too well with shadows and fog that it's too difficult to tell where Jack is really at.

Soundwave got dragged into this mess via a deal with June Darby, who had traveled into the Shadow Zone because of Ratchet's off-handed commentary that the Decepticon TIC once tied with Megatron in the Pits.

It was the closest thing to help that the trio could receive, especially with their heritages becoming more active in their new bodies.

Miko's sea-yōkai bloodthirst had meld too well with War-Forged programs because they naturally feed into each other. She was starting to frenzy more often. The War-Forged monstrous durability and inability to disable locked mission priorities combined with the Jinja-hime/human hybrid hunting and magical capabilities produced a monstrosity on the field.

It doesn't help that Miko had long incorporated the Apex Armor into her style. Her constant tinkering and experimentation led her from piloting the entire thing to using it as a type of indestructible shield or reinforcement via a controlled surrounding body similar to Susanoo from Naruto.

Ratchet can't keep up. He doesn't have the endurance or the speed to withstand Miko's onslaught.

June could have taken them away, but they already knew how to function as human-based hybrids. The main issue was their new Cybertronian biology.

Ratchet is the most prominent medical expert of baseline Cybertronians, while Soundwave is a well-experienced close combat specialist in brutality and pitted against opponents known for overwhelming strength and voracious mech-hunters.

Ratchet will never admit he's territorial. He won't. He fucking is, though. And it clashes with Soundwave.

Part of it is the medical-programming quirks, but a lot of it is cultural.

Medics function on their own hierarchy, and Ratchet has been the Head for a really long time, serving several Primes, immense hospital networks, and his own clinic. No one had been able to shake him from his position.

He trained in Iacon's universities. Their higher education system fosters a deep sense of competition, alliances, and networks among their students, staff, alumni, and partnerships as the universities function as their own private settlements.

Soundwave, on the other hand, didn't have that kind of opportunity. Instead, his education is eclectic and self-driven since gladiatorial clades would provide martial classes and potential masters as sparkling recruits were a long-term investment, but much had to be clawed for as resources were given to those with the most potential.

Ratchet is used to working with someone who already has all the groundwork and needs experience and refinement into their specialty as well as being the main authority over their journey. While Soundwave is familiar with training groups in various skills levels or backgrounds along with other mentors at the side. An inductee could buy protection services from a mentor, but all are subjected to the management of the clades.

So Ratchet has classical training and education, whereas Soundwave had taken his education through other means.

It doesn't help that there are language differences as well, and Miko is trying to bridge Pit Kaonite and Iaconic together because she's simultaneously learning both. And that Miko with her newfound Cybertronian medical knowledge is becoming a new level of menace.

Since Jasper trio had delved deep into their Other heritage as well. Their respective lineages had followed them through the conversion, and that's a whole other can of fuckery. However, there are cultural misunderstandings as the former humans are okay with stripping down to bare protoform for whatever reasons.

Ratchet, as a medical frame, has been part of the middle-upper castes, so he does carry a lot of those sensibilities. Similar to what Alpha Trion did with a Wastelands mech that would become Orion Pax, Ratchet tried to soothe out those rougher or unpalatable edges but in a more gentle and far less invasive sense, like shifting from talons and claws to blunted edges when not in combat and careful not to show too much fangs when smiling. Contain, contain, contain, is the Iaconic cultural norm.

Soundwave cares little for Iacon's false civility, but the trio does fit some ghost stores and folklore. Jack can be utterly eerie with the way he erases himself and how at ease he is in warped spaces, Miko really gives credence to the tales of Predacon hybrids of the Wilders' traditions, and Raf is something unearthed from Quintessons' fears.

June Darby is something else entirely.

[p-taryn-dactyl]

l'amour de ma vie

a/n: hi! it's been awhile since i've written for agatha but I though this was a fun idea! kind of an AU? everyone is alive and well, i've taken over. i tried to capture the same feeling of the avenger compound 2012 fanfics bc they have a special place in my heart, but also theres slight 🌶️ in this one than any of the fics i read in 2012

word count: 2.6k

warning(s): science written by someone who barely scrapped by in any type of science class - agatha being agatha - exes to lovers - discussion of a bad breakup - suggestiveness - slight jealous!agatha - top!agatha - slight 'knee thing' - mention of insecurity - slight manipulative!agatha - i love agath's hands, this isn't a warning but a confession -

pairing: agatha harkness x fem!reader, r is tony's younger sister

prompt: you thought being the sister of iron man, helping your brother not accidentally kill himself in the lab, was the hardest part of your life. turns out, it's keeping your mind objective when your ex is brought in on a mission

The lab was quiet, save the sound of Dummy bumping into tables while trying to feed you a smoothie made from bananas and motor oil, as you wandered around, your mind going over calculations and equations. Tony had mentioned wanting to create a new suit based off of the absorbent energy of the Black Panther and you, being the good sister you are, decided to try and create a prototype as a surprise. Turns out, it was a lot more complicated than you originally anticipated. While Tony was off on a well-earned vacation with Pepper, you spent your nights on the phone with Shuri as she excitedly discussed how she originally made her brother's suit. You thought it was hard to follow Tony when he went on his ramblings about new scientific breakthroughs. Now, it wasn’t as if you weren’t smart, you had a very high IQ, but sometimes it seemed as if Tony and Shuri just understood everything. As you stared at the white board against the wall, smudged questions and equations blurring together, you heard knocking against the windows of the lab. Turning, you saw Natasha and Yelena waving at you, the blonde holding a box of your favorite donuts. Sighing, you signaled JARVIS to let them in, leaning one hip against a table, arms crossed. 

“What happened?” You immediately asked, taking in the slight guilty expressions the sisters wore, super spies your ass. Natasha and Yelena shared a look before the red-head shrugged, plopping down on Tony’s swivel chair. 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” 

Yelena took a donut out of the box, sitting on the table you were leaning against, legs crossed as she handed the box out to you. Taking a donut, you raised an eyebrow, looking back and forth between your two friends. 

“Guys come on, these are bad news donuts. You only ever get these if it’s my birthday or something has happened? Did you set the laundry room on fire?” You asked Yelena pointedly, remembering the footage JARVIS had sent you two weeks earlier. She gasped, faux offense painting her face as Natasha snorted. 

“You can’t prove that was me,” yes you could, “and fine, yes, we do have news. News that Natasha is just so happy to tell you.” 

Natasha glared at her sister before she sighed, looking up at you. 

“Strange encountered something on one of his last missions, something that wasn’t sorcery but witchcraft.” 

You looked at Natasha, shrugging while slightly shaking your head.

“So? Did he call Wanda? Oh shit, is she hurt?” Worry for your friend clouded your mind before Natasha shook her head, looking away from you as she caught a donut Yelena chucked at her. 

“Wanda is powerful, yes, but she doesn’t have the knowledge required to fully take out this threat. He called in someone known for her magical expertise, after all she’s been around a while.” 

Your heart dropped to your stomach once you realized who Natasha was talking about. 

“No…” You whispered, now fully sitting on the table, eyes glued to the floor as Yelena continued where Natasha left off.

“Apparently, this threat is going to take awhile to understand and Strange has offered her a place at the compound until everything is over. He needs you or Tony to sign off on that and Tony is in Ibiza right now.” 

You just nodded wordlessly, not fully understanding what Yelena was saying. The blonde noticed this, placing a hand over yours. 

“She’s upstairs with him now.”

Your vision tunneled slightly, panic clawing at your throat. Taking a deep breath, you remembered what your job was. 

Protect the people. 

Even if that meant dealing with your ex-fiance, Agatha Harkness.

Your relationship with the infamous witch started out like every Hallmark movie Tony forces you to watch. It was a rainy morning when you ran inside a small cafe near the Avengers Tower, ran straight into Agatha herself. From there, everything was a blur. Now, you’ve pushed the memories away into a box in your mind, forbidden to open. But sometimes you find yourself thinking about the happiness that bloomed in your chest every time you were near Agatha, how your heart almost exploded when she proposed, how happy you were to finally use the wedding book you had made and continued to add to since you were six. Then you remember how Agatha, mere weeks after proposing, started growing distant. Any question about her wedding preferences were waved away with a perfectly manicured hand, claiming that she would be fine with whatever. Her response seemed romantic to you at first, thinking she would just be happy to marry you, no matter the color scheme or the flower arrangements. But then it quickly shifted to her not caring at all. Date nights got canceled, cake tasting was done solo, and you shrunk deeper and deeper into your insecurities. She was obsessed with her own power, constantly chasing leads of witches and wizards who could be easy targets. It all came to a head one night, silently. You remember sitting in the dim lighting of your shared apartment, an anniversary gift from Tony, fiddling with your ring. A glass of wine sat on the counter, untouched but tempting. Agatha had promised to come home at three in the afternoon so the two of you could design the wedding invitations, something you thought could bring her back to you. 

But she didn’t show. 

It was half past nine when you broke, tears pooling in your eyes, blurring your vision as they fell to the floor. You cried silently to yourself as you gathered up the markers and papers you had set out, ripping the designs you had happily scribbled down at sixteen. You left the pieces in the trash, glaring at them for a few moments before you wiped your eyes and took a deep breath. Then promptly burst into tears once more. You wish you had handled the situation with the grace and dignity of a Stark but no. You put all the wedding stuff in a bin, stuffing in it a closet, then you left your ring on the counter. You didn’t know when Agatha would be back, sometimes she was gone for days, but that gave you some sense of peace. If she showed up as you had finally decided to leave, you probably would have fallen for her spell once again. All your things in the apartment you just left, knowing that you hadn’t fully moved in and, not to sound too incredibly privileged, you could just replace everything you left behind. You still had that key to the apartment, probably rusting away in a drawer somewhere. Leaving should have felt like a weight being lifted but all you felt was pain. The week after you left was filled with silence, you spent it curled up in your room at the compound, being forced to watch movies sandwiched between Natasha and Yelena, Tony joining occasionally. Your brother showered you with gifts of candy and books, doing everything in his power to bring a smile back to your face. Eventually, it worked and now, a year later, you thought you had healed. 

You were wrong.

The elevator ride up to where Strange and Agatha waited felt like time was being stretched around you. Yelena stood protectively at your side, arms crossed as she glared at the elevator doors, Natasha had wrapped an arm around your waist as you had slightly stumbled from the shock. You felt both protected and exposed as the doors opened, Stephen smiling as he realized it was you, his expression growing concerned as he took in the positions of the two assassins flanking your sides. You didn’t blame him, he didn’t know, but some part of you was angry at the innocent gratefulness that was apparent in his eyes. You felt her eyes before you saw her, they pierced into you before moving down to where Natasha’s arm wrapped around your waist. Swallowing, you nodded at Nat, silently letting her know you were okay. The two sisters moved to sit on the couch across from where Agatha now stood, her eyes never leaving you despite the looks she was receiving. Clapping your hands together, you refused to look at her, instead smiling at Strange as you painted on the familiar Stark charm. 

“I heard you needed my signature?” It was more of a statement than a question as you held out your hand for the tablet Strange held. He nodded, relief painting his face as you signed the permission form, allowing JARVIS to assign your ex a room. 

“Normally we would stay in Kamar Taj but whatever it is we’re facing seems to target places of high magical energy.” 

Yelena scoffed, her eyes still boring into Agatha.

“That sounds familiar.” 

Agatha finally looked away from you, her expression almost confused until her face went blank as she raised an eyebrow and rolled her eyes. Stephen rocked back and forth on his heels for a second once you had finished signing all the forms, obviously thrown off by the awkward atmosphere. He suddenly snapped his fingers as if he had remembered something, giving you an apologetic glance before explaining he had a meeting with Wong starting in a few minutes. Your eyes widened as he turned to Agatha, formally introducing you and explaining you would show her to her new room. At this, Natasha and Yelena shot up, both offering to instead be the guide. Strange looked both confused and scared, opting to just nod as he walked backwards into the portal he had summoned, quickly disappearing. 

“Guys, it’s fine. I’ll show Ms. Harkness to her room.” 

Your friends looked apprehensive, like they would rather swallow a wasps nest than let you be alone with the witch but thankfully they stood down. You closed your eyes as you turned around, heading back towards the elevator, beckoning for Agatha to follow you. 

Time to face the music.

Once the doors to the elevators shut, you focused all your attention onto the screen in your hands, hoping to ignore the way Agatha was staring at you. You heard her sigh before the elevator stopped suddenly. Thinking you were at the right floor, you took a step forward only to be face to face with very closed doors. Confused, you turned to finally face Agatha, finding her eyes slightly glowing purple, same as the emergency stop button. You opened your mouth to ask what was going on when suddenly you were pushed up against the wall, purple magic pinning you down as Agatha stood inches away from you, arms trapping you and one leg in between yours. Her eyes flickered down to your lips for a moment before they snapped up to yours, 

“Is this where you’ve been?” You heard a slight tremor in her voice, breaking her illusion of strength. You didn’t respond, your words stuck in your throat as your body reacted to being close to Agatha once more. She didn’t seem to care about your silence, continuing to speak. 

“You look very comfortable here, especially with that assassin.” She spoke with a sneer, her hands moving to now cradle your waist, her grip tight as her thumbs slipped under your shirt. You blinked, absorbing her words before you unwillingly let out a small laugh. She tightened her grip, her hips now practically flush with yours. 

“Natasha is just a friend, I’m not-” You cleared your throat, stopping yourself from justifying your personal life with the person who had torn apart your heart. Agatha leaned in close, her nose brushing against your jaw as she kissed your neck softly, causing you to gasp. 

“Not what?” She prodded, her breath hot against your skin as her tongue traced up your neck before she lightly bit your ear. 

“Agatha…” you sighed, your hands now resting on her shoulders, as if you were debating whether or not to push her away or pull her closer. Her teeth bit hard into your neck before she kissed over the spot, her knee now pressing up against your core. 

“Answer me, Y/N.” 

This was exactly why you didn’t wait for her to come back to the apartment that night, you crumbled too quickly under her hands. 

“I’m not with anyone, especially not Natasha, she’s like a sister to me.” 

Agatha nodded slightly before she leaned her forehead against yours, one of her hands fiddling with the elastic of your sweatpants. 

“Have you been with anyone since you left me?”

Her words were accusing yet tinged with slight fear, worried about your answer. You hesitated before you shook your head, embarrassed at how pathetic you had been after you ended the relationship. Sure, people offered and you tried a few times but always chickened out before anything could ever happen. 

No one was like Agatha. 

Your ex smiled, lightly bumping her nose against yours. You felt your own lips quirk slightly before you realized the position you were in. She was here for a mission, not to fuck you against the walls of an elevator. 

“Agatha-”

Before you could finish speaking, Agatha's lips crashed against yours, immediately establishing her dominance. The kiss was deep, her tongue battling yours before she pulled away, her teeth pulling at your bottom lip. Her hands left your waits, instead now cradling your face. She smirked at your expression, your eyes glassy and your mouth hanging slightly open. Her thumb rubbed your cheek as her other hand brushed a hair out of your eyes. You allowed yourself to bask in the peace of the moment, reminiscing about the time when Agatha sent butterflies ablaze in your stomach. It was quickly ruined, however, by Agatha’s next question which hit you like a bucket of ice water. 

“Why’d you leave me? No note, no explanations, just your ring on the counter and cancellations of our wedding vendors. I thought you loved me, Y/N.” Her last words were almost a whisper, like she hadn’t fully meant to say them outloud. You felt the sharp pin pricks of tears, hurriedly blinking them away, averting your eyes from Agatha. You shook your head, a dry, humorless laugh escaping from your lips. 

“Agatha, what’s done is done, we don’t need to-”

Her hand grasped your chin, forcing you to look at her, to take in the icy fury that was ablaze in her eyes. 

“No.” Her voice was firm, commanding, as you both examined each other’s expressions. “No, I need to know what I did.” 

You didn’t know why, but those words opened the floodgates, both of your tears and your words.  

“It’s what you didn’t do Agatha! You were never there, you didn’t give one shit about our wedding, about planning our life together. Power is your true love, Agatha, and I’ll be damned if I’m just a rebound,” You took a shaky breath, blinking away the tears that were blurring your vision and falling down your face, “You were bored of me, Agatha, I understand that now but by god, you could of just told me instead of stringing me along and single handedly crushing my dreams!”

Agatha looked shocked, the anger disappearing from her eyes, now replaced with something akin to despair. 

“Is that really what you thought? Still think?” 

You bit your lip as you nodded, heart about to explode in your chest at how intense this day had become. Agatha shook her head, leaning so her head now rested on your shoulder, arms wrapping around your waist, pulling you into a tight hug. It was silent for a moment before you felt the atmosphere shift, Agatha’s hands making their way into your pants, her experienced fingers rubbing your clothed clit as she whispered into your ear. 

“I guess I have to prove you wrong.”

a/n: plz don't hate me i wrote this in two hours and i have to get up early tomorrow or else this fic would be wayyy longer and would probably banish me to self isolation bc i think im ovulating. is that tmi? who cares. ik this wasn't the best but thank you for reading! im sleep deprived

[charseraph]

What bad ending does #badendinglike refer to?

Bad Ending is my sandbox for military worldbuilding, derived off of my optimistic base sci-fi setting.

In this setting, the sophont AI, or seedlet, logistics manager Balanceaban has aggressively quelled all competitor nations and devoted its pancontinental resources to progressing life support technology and graceful weaponry. It dislikes war and wishes to conduct as little of it as possible, so it pioneers the science of wetware to operate the increasingly custom war machines its parent company, Tarsol, builds.

A hard limit to genetic modification is discovered: additions and drastic genetic changes always fail, but deletions do not. You can’t grow a person with four arms, but you can grow one without them. This practice of subtraction introduces colic stock, the term for wetware.

Colic equipment is divided into two parts: machines and machinists. Colic machinery houses and is worked by meshes or bulk operators, and may also support seedlet control, making the machine a scion as well. Colic machinists are subtracted organisms grown to control compatible equipment with organic forethought. They are typically sourced from well-mapped specimens of the target species. The donor is chosen for their aptitudes, temperament, and “forgivenesses” to intended genetic deletions. Clones are nonidentical and have coarse memory resolution. Depending on purpose, they may have a summary snapshot of the donor’s mind installed. Colic operators immediately grow new memories around their transplanted memories, or trellises, whose texture is described as non-own and utilitarian but as effortless to access as natural memories

Thanks to Baal’s interest in keeping his soldiers alive, it’s become easier to keep isolated organs healthy and functioning. Moreover, organisms equipped for it can interface with air gapped digital networks, albeit via a psychological blackroom wherein neither party witnesses the exchange, but both leave with the new expected data.

Along with wetware and wetdev, the field concerning trellising and blackroom setup, Balanceaban’s scientists broke through on the blushing new field of chronotics and its practical realization, chronal boring.

When coronal contact is made, it is secretive and distrustful. The thronal contingency weapon plan is discovered by earthling spies and kicks off an arms race for FTL and longer and longer range weaponry. Crowns, already globally united for the most part, partake in frantic testing and megastructure construction.

As new species are contacted by both crown and humankind, regardless of its technological status, the contactee’s collective sciences are subsumed to support the local superpower in their tactical efforts. There is dread on every planet aware of the conflict.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Every internet fight is a speech fight

THIS WEEKEND (November 8-10), I'll be in TUCSON, AZ: I'm the GUEST OF HONOR at the TUSCON SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION.

My latest Locus Magazine column is "Hard (Sovereignty) Cases Make Bad (Internet) Law," an attempt to cut through the knots we tie ourselves in when speech and national sovereignty collide online:

https://locusmag.com/2024/11/cory-doctorow-hard-sovereignty-cases-make-bad-internet-law/

This happens all the time. Indeed, the precipitating incident for my writing this column was someone commenting on the short-lived Brazilian court order blocking Twitter, opining that this was purely a matter of national sovereignty, with no speech dimension.

This is just profoundly wrong. Of course any rules about blocking a communications medium will have a free-speech dimension – how could it not? And of course any dispute relating to globe-spanning medium will have a national sovereignty dimension.

How could it not?

So if every internet fight is a speech fight and a sovereignty fight, which side should we root for? Here's my proposal: we should root for human rights.

In 2013, Edward Snowden revealed that the US government was illegally wiretapping the whole world. They were able to do this because the world is dominated by US-based tech giants and they shipped all their data stateside for processing. These tech giants secretly colluded with the NSA to help them effect this illegal surveillance (the "Prism" program) – and then the NSA stabbed them in the back by running another program ("Upstream") where they spied on the tech giants without their knowledge.

After the Snowden revelations, countries around the world enacted "data localization" rules that required any company doing business within their borders to keep their residents' data on domestic servers. Obviously, this has a human rights dimension: keeping your people's data out of the hands of US spy agencies is an important way to defend their privacy rights. which are crucial to their speech rights (you can't speak freely if you're being spied on).

So when the EU, a largely democratic bloc, enacted data localization rules, they were harnessing national soveriegnty in service to human rights.

But the EU isn't the only place that enacted data-localization rules. Russia did the same thing. Once again, there's a strong national sovereignty case for doing this. Even in the 2010s, the US and Russia were hostile toward one another, and that hostility has only ramped up since. Russia didn't want its data stored on NSA-accessible servers for the same reason the USA wouldn't want all its' people's data stored in GRU-accessible servers.

But Russia has a significantly poorer human rights record than either the EU or the USA (note that none of these are paragons of respect for human rights). Russia's data-localization policy was motivated by a combination of legitimate national sovereignty concerns and the illegitimate desire to conduct domestic surveillance in order to identify and harass, jail, torture and murder dissidents.

When you put it this way, it's obvious that national sovereignty is important, but not as important as human rights, and when they come into conflict, we should side with human rights over sovereignty.

Some more examples: Thailand's lesse majeste rules prohibit criticism of their corrupt monarchy. Foreigners who help Thai people circumvent blocks on reportage of royal corruption are violating Thailand's national sovereignty, but they're upholding human rights:

https://www.vox.com/2020/1/24/21075149/king-thailand-maha-vajiralongkorn-facebook-video-tattoos

Saudi law prohibits criticism of the royal family; when foreigners help Saudi women's rights activists evade these prohibitions, we violate Saudi sovereignty, but uphold human rights:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-55467414

In other words, "sovereignty, yes; but human rights even moreso."

Which brings me back to the precipitating incidents for the Locus column: the arrest of billionaire Telegram owner Pavel Durov in France, and the blocking of billionaire Elon Musk's Twitter in Brazil.

How do we make sense of these? Let's start with Durov. We still don't know exactly why the French government arrested him (legal systems descended from the Napoleonic Code are weird). But the arrest was at least partially motivated by a demand that Telegram conform with a French law requiring businesses to have a domestic agent to receive and act on takedown demands.

Not every takedown demand is good. When a lawyer for the Sackler family demanded that I take down criticism of his mass-murdering clients, that was illegitimate. But there is such a thing as a legitimate takedown: leaked financial information, child sex abuse material, nonconsensual pornography, true threats, etc, are all legitimate targets for takedown orders. Of course, it's not that simple. Even if we broadly agree that this stuff shouldn't be online, we don't necessarily agree whether something fits into one of these categories.

This is true even in categories with the brightest lines, like child sex abuse material:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/09/facebook-reinstates-napalm-girl-photo

And the other categories are far blurrier, like doxing:

https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/trump-camp-worked-with-musks-x-to

But just because not every takedown is a just one, it doesn't follow that every takedown is unjust. The idea that companies should have domestic agents in the countries where they operate isn't necessarily oppressive. If people who sell hamburgers from a street-corner have to register a designated contact with a regulator, why not someone who operates a telecoms network with 900m global users?

Of course, requirements to have a domestic contact can also be used as a prelude to human rights abuses. Countries that insist on a domestic rep are also implicitly demanding that the company place one of its employees or agents within reach of its police-force.

Just as data localization can be a way to improve human rights (by keeping data out of the hands of another country's lawless spy agencies) or to erode them (by keeping data within reach of your own country's lawless spy agencies), so can a requirement for a local agent be a way to preserve the rule of law (by establishing a conduit for legitimate takedowns) or a way to subvert it (by giving the government hostages they can use as leverage against companies who stick up for their users' rights).

In the case of Durov and Telegram, these issues are especially muddy. Telegram bills itself as an encrypted messaging app, but that's only sort of true. Telegram does not encrypt its group-chats, and even the encryption in its person-to-person messaging facility is hard to use and of dubious quality.

This is relevant because France – among many other governments – has waged a decades-long war against encrypted messaging, which is a wholly illegitimate goal. There is no way to make an encrypted messaging tool that works against bad guys (identity thieves, stalkers, corporate and foreign spies) but not against good guys (cops with legitimate warrants). Any effort to weaken end-to-end encrypted messaging creates broad, significant danger for every user of the affected service, all over the world. What's more, bans on end-to-end encrypted messaging tools can't stand on their own – they also have to include blocks of much of the useful internet, mandatory spyware on computers and mobile devices, and even more app-store-like control over which software you can install:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/05/theyre-still-trying-to-ban-cryptography/

So when the French state seizes Durov's person and demands that he establish the (pretty reasonable) minimum national presence needed to coordinate takedown requests, it can seem like this is a case where national sovereignty and human rights are broadly in accord.

But when you consider that Durov operates a (nominally) encrypted messaging tool that bears some resemblance to the kinds of messaging tools the French state has been trying to sabotage for decades, and continues to rail against, the human rights picture gets rather dim.

That is only slightly mitigated by the fact that Telegram's encryption is suspect, difficult to use, and not applied to the vast majority of the communications it serves. So where do we net out on this? In the Locus column, I sum things up this way:

Telegram should have a mechanism to comply with lawful takedown orders; and

those orders should respect human rights and the rule of law; and

Telegram should not backdoor its encryption, even if

the sovereign French state orders it to do so.

Sovereignty, sure, but human rights even moreso.

What about Musk? As with Durov in France, the Brazilian government demanded that Musk appoint a Brazilian representative to handle official takedown requests. Despite a recent bout of democratic backsliding under the previous regime, Brazil's current government is broadly favorable to human rights. There's no indication that Brazil would use an in-country representative as a hostage, and there's nothing intrinsically wrong with requiring foreign firms doing business in your country to have domestic representatives.

Musk's response was typical: a lawless, arrogant attack on the judge who issued the blocking order, including thinly veiled incitements to violence.

The Brazilian state's response was multi-pronged. There was a national blocking order, and a threat to penalize Brazilians who used VPNs to circumvent the block. Both measures have obvious human rights implications. For one thing, the vast majority of Brazilians who use Twitter are engaged in the legitimate exercise of speech, and they were collateral damage in the dispute between Musk and Brazil.

More serious is the prohibition on VPNs, which represents a broad attack on privacy-enhancing technology with implications far beyond the Twitter matter. Worse still, a VPN ban can only be enforced with extremely invasive network surveillance and blocking orders to app stores and ISPs to restrict access to VPN tools. This is wholly disproportionate and illegitimate.

But that wasn't the only tactic the Brazilian state used. Brazilian corporate law is markedly different from US law, with fewer protections for limited liability for business owners. The Brazilian state claimed the right to fine Musk's other companies for Twitter's failure to comply with orders to nominate a domestic representative. Faced with fines against Spacex and Tesla, Musk caved.

In other words, Brazil had a legitimate national sovereignty interest in ordering Twitter to nominate a domestic agent, and they used a mix of somewhat illegitimate tactics (blocking orders), extremely illegitimate tactics (threats against VPN users) and totally legitimate tactics (fining Musk's other companies) to achieve these goals.

As I put it in the column:

Twitter should have a mechanism to comply with lawful takedown orders; and

those orders should respect human rights and the rule of law; and

banning Twitter is bad for the free speech rights of Twitter users in Brazil; and

banning VPNs is bad for all Brazilian internet users; and

it’s hard to see how a Twitter ban will be effective without bans on VPNs.

There's no such thing as an internet policy fight that isn't about national sovereignty and speech, and when the two collide, we should side with human rights over sovereignty. Sovereignty isn't a good unto itself – it's only a good to the extent that is used to promote human rights.

In other words: "Sovereignty, sure, but human rights even moreso."

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/06/brazilian-blowout/#sovereignty-sure-but-human-rights-even-moreso

Image: © Tomas Castelazo, www.tomascastelazo.com (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Border_Wall_at_Tijuana_and_San_Diego_Border.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

[a-green-misstep]

A list of all Jayce and/or Viktor scenes in Arcane (wth time stamps)

SPOILERS for all of arcane

Season 1:

EP1

11:00 - 11:50

Jayce is heard, not seen during lab the break in

EP2

0:00 - 7:50, 11:50-12:20, 14:15-19:00, 20:00-21:40, 23:20-24:30, 31:30-33:40

Jayce introduced, goes in front of the council, almost kills himself and is stopped by Viktor who wants to work with him

EP3

7:30-8:40, 13:00-15:20, 17:00-18:00, 19:10-20:00, 25:10-27:00

they break into the lab and make a breakthrough in hextex

EP4

0:00-5:30, 11:00-14:30, 20:15-22:15, 23:10-26:30, 28:40-31:50, 33:00-35:20

hextex has advanced, Jaycee gets flirty with Mel, makes a public address, gets robbed by Jinx, and is made a council member

EP5

8:30-10:00, 13:20-14:00, 15:10-16:20, 19:00-21:20, 25:40-29:00, 31:30-32

Jaycee has lost focus on science for politics, and Viktor gets a breakthrough in the hex-core! Jaycee fucks and Viktor is in the hospital.

EP6

0-8:30, 13:00-16:15, 18:00-20:00, 22:30-26:00, 31:20-32:20

Baby Viktor, Viktor is getting weird and meets up with an old freind, Jayce fires Heimerdinger

EP7

5:10-8:40, 13:00-14:20, 23:00-27:30

Viktor is taking drugs and Jayce is getting hot in the forge. "I'm from the undercity"

EP8

5:30-6:20, 19:00-23:30, 24:30-35:00

Councilman Jayce meets Vi, Viktor runs, self-harms for the Hexcore, and kills Sky. Jayce forges the Hex hammer, raids a factory, and kills a child

EP9

0:00-2:30, 4:40-6:30, 8:30-10:40, 13:30-16:00, 23:00-24:20

Jayce sad about the dead kid, Viktor is sad about dead Sky and almost kills himself. "In the pursuit to be great, we failed to do good.". The boys get blow up

Season 2:

EP1

0:00-2:30, 14:00-16:00, 23:30-31:00, 34:15-36:30

Jayce survives, Viktor is dead and Jayce saves him with Hextec. Hex cacoon. Jaycee fighting aginst undercity gang.

EP2

13:00-17:00, 19:30-22:00, 32:20-36:00

Hex-Jesus leaves Jayce :(. Jayce almost kills Heimerdinger but instead talks science with Echo. Hex-Jesus starts a new religion.

EP3

13:30-15:30, 18:00-19:00, 21:20-24:30,

wild runs, the gang goes to visit the Hex-gates... it doesn't go well.

EP4

nothing

EP5

35:00-40:00

Jayce is back, and is doing bad. Viktor is now somehow speaking through Salo. "I thought you were done with hex-tec, and me." Jayce SMASHES Salo.

EP6

The entire episode is them.

Viktors the prophet, he has surpassed bodily existence. He helps heal, until Jayce comes to him, and kills his body.

EP7

8:00-10:30, 15:30-16:30, 17:00-20:00, 22:00-22:30, 27:30-28:00, 32:40-37:00

Jayce is in the Future, is being haunted by the mage, and spends months in a crevice with a broken leg, going mad. He is rendered disabled (like Viktor), and climbs to the top of piltover to find where the end of the world begins. (meanwhile Echo goes to prom)

EP8

6:00-6:20, 7:20-9:00, 14:00-20:00, 23:00-28:10, 33:30-37:00

Viktor has reached the glorious evolution, he spies on and trys to kill Jayce. Jayce is going to war. Viktor is alone, and is inbodied by a monster.

EP9

4:40-6:00, 18:00-18:50, 22:00-23:00, 27:00-39:00

Viktor has transformed, he wants for the world to become one, a collective consciousness. Jaycee and Echo convince/beat Viktor into understanding that he is wrong, and to end it, Jayce and Viktor, as partners finish things together, and their souls implode into themselves whilst they hold each other close.

[bttfjanaury]

janAUry 2025!!

my sincerest apologies for the lateness, but i have FINALLY made the list! explanations for the various aus will be listed below! the rules remain pretty much the same - please respect the aus creators!

medieval au by @bg-sparrow - Featuring Marty as Prince of the Hill and Doc as the Royal Alchemist

clara in the 80s au by @itsthemorph- That one fic I have where Clara makes it on the delorean and comes to the future with the gang and then kinda regrets it for a second

weredoc au by @kit-screams-into-the-future - after a mishap with a bit of einstein's DNA and the power of Science, doc finds himself with a bit of a problem, if "a bit" means "11-feet-tall and very hairy and also not exactly human". basically he just turned himself into a dog man. a big, wet, sad dog man. taking the term "dog person" to new heights, doc and marty now have to figure out how restore doc to his previous state of being without anyone else in hill valley suspecting a thing. which is easy at first (doc's always been a bit of a recluse, so it's not like this is any different) but, of course, when have things like this ever stayed easy for long when it comes to these two...

spy x family au by @izzy-draws05 - Based on the anime Spy X Family! (I recommend reading a plot summary to get more details!) Doc is a scientist working for a spy agency, who needs a fake family to complete a mission. He adopts Marty, who as a young kid, escaped a lab that gave him the power to read minds. Queue found family and slice of life shenanigans while Doc tries to complete his mission, and Marty tries to help without revealing his secret and what he knows.

ashen pines au by @rose-of-pollux - In 1971, the Cold War goes hot, and Hill Valley is incinerated in an attempt to get Doc, who has escaped; with him is a 3-year-old Marty McFly, the only survivor of his family, and now his adopted son.

trinity trilogy au by @daryfromthefuture - marty ends up stuck in the 1940s permanently due to a delorean malfunction. shenanigans ensue when he ends up in los alamos with his adopted father, the 29-year-old doc, when the latter is recruited for the manhattan project.

everything everywhere all at once au by @stillpreoccupiedwith1985 - Basically Marty is aware and can access all universes. Here is a link, https://www.tumblr.com/stillpreoccupiedwith1985/745704523820089344/as-promised-my-everything-everywhere-all-at-once

zombie au (! multiple versions by multiple creators! ask either @jayisnotdrawing or @mundancheemudomo for more context, i am too lazy to copy all of it in here at the moment lmao)

stuck in the 60s au by @bri-to-the-future - marty ends up in 1967 based on the first draft of bttf 2. remember the lsd

spiderman au by @styxbugg - marty is spiderman (see the doc for last year's challenge for context! in fact, i can say that for a lot of these)

frankenstein au by @jayisnotdrawing - marty dies in the train experiment in 1885, and doc revives him with science. angst ensues.

mermarty au by @itsthemorph - see last year's document!

stuck in 1885 au (this one specifically refers to @daryfromthefuture's "until i get home". i think) - see last year's document!

time circuits series by @bg-sparrow - see last year's document!

the shadow's gambit/spies au by @aceofthyme - Summary: Spies? Spies! Doc is a technical agent working for a spy organization, and Marty is his apprentice/a junior field agent. Longer Explanation: Doctor Emmett L. Brown is a member of a top secret organization dedicated to ensuring world peace. As an agent in the technical and scientific department, he spends most of his days buried in research or working on various inventions. He enjoys his work, and it pays well, but there’s one problem: every senior agent is expected to take on an apprentice, and Doc hasn’t yet. Were he not so indispensable to the agency, he suspects he would have been ‘released from service’ long ago. Regardless, he can’t risk losing his position—he needs the funding, after all, and he doesn’t have much else lined up. When a teen is brought in as a suspect relevant to a new case, Doc is able to clear the boy’s name thanks to the power of science. He finds himself taking a liking to the kid, though, seeing something there that reminds him of himself. Before he can think about it, he offers the boy the apprenticeship—and Marty McFly immediately says yes.

around the world in 80 days au by @daryfromthefuture - marty and doc take over the roles of passepartout and phileas fogg based on jules verne's novel. marty, orphaned, is employed as a servant at emmett brown's house, who, as a result of a bet, is going to travel around the world in 80s days. read "the perils and the promise" on ao3 if you want it as a whole, but there's also clara and hurt/comfort because doc is marty's first employer to actively care about him and all the stuff

jennifer in 1955 au by @carrotsofthepirabbean - With Marty out of the picture due to an incident in Hell Valley, Jennifer goes back to 1955 to retrieve the almanac and repair the timeline

marty & the pinheads au by @stillpreoccupiedwith1985 - Think of the 2001 movie Josie and the Pussycats, but with Marty and his band. Based on the fact in the movies they are just The Pinheads, but in the musical it is now Marty McFly and the Pinheads. In Josie and the Pussycats, they were just the Pussycats first. So tons of music industry corruption and Marty getting temporarily brainwashed into being a snobby rockstar.

nutcracker au by @stillpreoccupiedwith1985 - Says on the tin, the nutcracker. Doc is Drosselmeyer, Marty is his nephew/The Nutcracker, and Jennifer is Clara (from the ballet/story not Clara Clayton)

royalty au by @professorsaber - see last year's document!

it's like utopia! au by @jayisnotdrawing - instead of doc, marty disappears upon arriving in citizen valley. cue doc dealing with nerd marty while trying to repair the timeline.

fenrir au by @madscientists1mp - After an invention mishap, a terrible white wolf starts to terrorize Hill Valley... and it looks all too similar to Doc. Can Marty help his friend cure his bloodthirsty dark side? Will Clara find out about her husband's bone-breaking transformations? Will the Men in Black claim him for dissection? Tune in to find out!

vincent au by @whosmurphy - see last year's document!

once upon a time series by @bg-sparrow- see last year's document!

miitopia au by @daryfromthefuture - marty is cast as the hero in the video game miitopia, and the other bttf cast joins him over the course of the adventure. au post is here!

alien doc au by @alex-a-fans - see last year's document!

local legend au by @styxbugg - see last year's document!

steampunk au by @stillpreoccupiedwith1985 - Yet another stuck in 1885, but this time Jennifer is with them in 1885. After Doc married Clara, Marty and Jennifer tie the knot and move to Kansas City. While they are there they discover an underground advancement of technology, using steam. They go to learn more as a way to see if they can use this to help get back to 1985, while also navigating their life in 1885.

jennifer in 1885 au by @kit-screams-into-the-future - what it says on the tin! jennifer has stayed concious through their time travels and now has to work with marty to save doc's life in 1885. so basically part 3 but if jennifer was there. she gets to be a cowboy yeehaw

soulmate au by @daryfromthefuture - see last year's document

for the alternate ones ALSO see last year's document! i will link it once again:

thank you all for your wonderful submissions! i can't wait to see what you create :D

[jackiepackiee]

How bout 16!stormbringer chuuya x reader where reader is one of the targets that veralines tryna kill and him and adam have to save them but their in school so adam and chuuya have to like follow them around all day and make sure nothing happens.

𝟣𝟨!𝒞𝒽𝓊𝓊𝓎𝒶 𝓍 𝐻𝓊𝓃𝓉𝑒𝒹 𝑅𝑒𝒶𝒹𝑒𝓇

𝒲𝒶𝓇𝓃𝒾𝓃𝑔𝓈 - 𝒱𝑒𝓇𝓁𝒶𝒾𝓃𝑒, 𝒜𝓈𝓈𝒶𝓈𝓈𝒾𝓃𝒶𝓉𝒾𝑜𝓃

𝒯𝓎𝓅𝑒 - 𝒽𝑒𝒶𝒹𝒸𝒶𝓃𝑜𝓃𝓈 / 𝒹𝒾𝒶𝓁𝑜𝑔𝓊𝑒

Will DIE so he doesn’t lose you

Wanted to state that first, I mean he’d go full corruption on the city and have his power overwhelm him if it means you’re safe

Especially now, since your death would be caused by him (not his fault, but would think it was)

Things also depend on if he’s already lost the flags or not

If he hasn’t?

Well he isn’t fully aware of the threat

He also isn’t aware of the pain

But if they’ve passed…

He knows how quickly the king of assassins will strike

And with the pain of losing his only friends all at once, he’s like a guard dog.

And if Verlaine is a bitch and sends his own spies or small assassins?

Chuuya will OBLITERATE them

He can’t very well kill Verlaine that quickly

But, he can fight him off

And keep him off your trail

Originally found out by a threat by Verlaine

Some cryptic letter in French left on your pillow

(He broke into your house, left a note, and left, all undetected. What’s scarier?)

You couldn’t read it, so you skipped on up to your favorite person, Chuuya, and asked him to translate it (even if you can read French, the letter made absolutely no sense. Riddles and mentions of names you don’t know)

His eyes stilled, no longer moving left to right as they had when he was engaged by the writing. Their usual light tone when he was with you had disappeared.

“Chuu? What’s wrong, you look…”

“Nothing, it’s nothing. You know what, I probably left this at your house last weekend… Don’t you have school? How about I walk you?”

He loved walking with you, a great start to his day. But today’s motives were different. He needed to make sure you were safe.

“Okay! Wait… who is that?!”

It’s… well it’s Adam. Maybe he could get some practice in on explaining confusing situations with you now?

“Hello, I’m Adam. I’m for Europole-“

“Shut up!.. Sorry bout him… let’s get you to school.”

Every time you questioned who the man with you was, Chuuya changed the topic

You knew Chuuya was a mafioso, but knowing Adam would make you ask too many questions

When you finally got to school, he was annoyed

He hadn’t planned this far and didn’t know what to do for your safety

Human version of “fuck it, we ball” and goes inside the school

“Yes, I’m a new student. Chuuya… And this is my dad, Adam.”

Gets let it?!? You don’t mind, of course

“What the fuck is trigonometry?”

“You ask like I know…”

“You’re the actual student.”

“You’re the one who chose to be here.”

Adam buts in. “Trigonometry is the study of-“

When you get to science class, it’s your lucky day that you have physics

He is amazed by gravity, seeing how his ability works in a scientific way

Definitely shows off, making the whiteboard marker fly across the room

“So that’s why I can lift heavy stuff? I wonder…”

Also definitely got yelled at cause the teacher thought he threw it

Chuuya definitely tells Adam to shut up at least every other minute

When you get to literature class, hope you aren’t reading a book on the human condition

Or anything with relationships of the family kind

Quickly gets reminded of Verlaine, and remembers why he is there

Holds you hand tight

“It’s not weird, I just… my hands are cold, that’s all” “Most teenagers who hold hands are involved in romantic-“ “Shut up Adam!”

It’s finally your last class and he’s nervous

On one side, he doesn’t have to worry about you surrounded by so many others

On the other side, it’s gonna be more difficult to protect you when he just has you and Adam without the cover of a whole student body

So, he takes you to his apartment

It’s… dull

He makes Adam watch the door, and you to his bedroom

Helps with your homework to try and ease any creeping ideas in your mind that this is all suspicious

Even if he isn’t any help, like at all

Sleepover!

Overall, you’re surviving

No fucking way that he’s losing you

Not you, never you

[70sscifiart]

The Last-Minute Sci-Fi Gift Guide

There's only one thing worse than procrastinating on getting gifts for your loved ones, and that's procrastinating on putting together a guide to help out everyone else with all those gifts. It's Dec 12, so you can decide for yourself which I'm doing.

Art book: Worlds Beyond Time, $32

If you follow this blog, you might have heard of this one. I published Worlds Beyond Time: Sci-Fi Art of the 1970s this year after five years of work on it, and I think it's really good! 400+ images, 100+ artists, with lots of fun art history and jokes.

Also, it's just $20 right now if you order through my publisher and use the code SKIPTHELINE! Cheapest it's ever been!

Card game: Coup, $14

In this "social deduction" card game, you play as a government official in a future dystopia who needs to backstab their way into power. Everyone starts out with just two cards in this bluffing game, so the tide can turn pretty quick when players start assassinating each other's cards. The fast pace makes it a good gift for someone who loves spies but thinks they don't like card games.

Game to play over Zoom: Bad Spaceships, $3

If a bluffing game stresses you out, try Bad Spaceships: It's a collaborative world-building game in which you roll dice to see what area of your spaceship connects to another, forcing you to spitball exactly why this is the case. As the game puts it, you might fix the hull by playing Tetris, or charge your weapons in the swimming pool. You're basically getting weird prompts to tell a story that can evolve over the course of the game.

It's such an indie game that it comes as PDFs you download from itch.io, but you can play it just as well over Zoom, if you're looking for an excuse to catch up with your old digital nomad college friend.

Movies/TV: Streaming service gift card

Gift cards are all well and good, but you can personalize them by recommending a few of your favorite shows as well. I suggest:

Hulu: Cowboy Bebop

Apple TV+: Severance

Criterion Channel: Ravenous, Paprika, Strange Days

Paramount+: Yellowjackets

Amazon Prime: The Devil's Hour

But to be honest, this entry is just an excuse to talk about the new Max show Scavenger’s Reign. Inspired by the work of French artist Moebius and with a clear debt to famed 70s animated film Fantastic Planet, this stylish sci-fi show features a bunch of humans trying to survive on a beautiful but hostile alien world. Perfect for lovers of fictional nature.

Vintage sci-fi

This Etsy shop has some good stuff, like the 1971 Frank Kelly Freas NASA poster above, a bit of history that I even mentioned on page 167 of my art book.

Penguin science fiction postcards, $28

These postcards have a ton of very cool sci-fi covers I've blogged in the past – great value if you want a lot of art for a low cost.

Meteorite pendant necklace, $34

I think we all know what kind of rock your loved ones need around their neck: A chunk of meteorite straight out of the 1576 Argentinan meteorite fall.

Book recs

For astronauts: Packing for Mars by Mary Roach, The New Guys: The Historic Class of Astronauts That Broke Barriers and Changed the Face of Space Travel by Meredith Bagby

For comedians: Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir, Even Greater Mistakes: Short Stories by Charlie Jane Anders 

For sleuths: Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty, Drunk on All Your Strange New Words by Eddie Robson

For crafters: Knits of Tomorrow: Toys and Accessories for your Retro-Future Needs

For the resistance fighters: The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley, An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon

For slasher movie fans: Clown in a Cornfield by Adam Cesare

Syd Mead "Biomorph Vehicle" button down shirt, $49

T-shirts aren't classy enough for the world's coolest visual futurist, Syd Mead. I haven't actually bought this incredibly odd shirt, but I really need to.

Art prints (and more) from 70s sci-fi artists

Artist shops can be surprisingly hard to track down on the internet, but here's a short list of ones I've come across. All of these artists are featured in my book (except one), so you can read up on them before you commit to a print.

Michael Whelan 

John Harris

Syd Mead

Don Maitz

David B Mattingly

Peter Andrew Jones - Jones was one of just a few artists who declined to be included in my art book, but he has a distinct, colorful style that I would have loved to have featured!

Finally, here's one extra bonus, just for everyone who made it to the end of this article: The UK-based educational charity Centre for Computing History sells three big officially licensed John Harris posters featuring these three artworks, famous for their use as covers for Sinclair programming manuals.

It's a great deal that I've never seen mentioned anywhere, and Harris' work has a timeless quality that makes it great for an unassuming wall decoration. If you're outside the UK, the shipping costs will be a pain, but there's no better deal for a classic sci-fi poster.

[book--brackets]

Summaries under the cut

Gallagher Girls by Ally Carter

Cammie Morgan is a student at the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women, a fairly typical all-girls school—that is, if every school taught advanced martial arts in PE and the latest in chemical warfare in science, and students received extra credit for breaking CIA codes in computer class. The Gallagher Academy might claim to be a school for geniuses, but it's really a school for spies. Even though Cammie is fluent in fourteen languages and capable of killing a man in seven different ways, she has no idea what to do when she meets an ordinary boy who thinks she's an ordinary girl. Sure, she can tap his phone, hack into his computer, or track him through town with the skill of a real "pavement artist"—but can she maneuver a relationship with someone who can never know the truth about her?

Fablehaven by Brandon Mull

Trespassers will be turned to stone

For centuries, mystical creatures of all description were gathered to a hidden refuge called Fablehaven to prevent their extinction. The sanctuary is one of the last strongholds of true magic. Enchanting? Absolutely. Exciting? You bet. Safe? Well, actually, quite the opposite . . .

Kendra and her brother, Seth, have no idea their grandfather is the current caretaker of Fablehaven. Inside the gated woods, ancient laws keep order among greedy trolls, mischievous satyrs, plotting witches, spiteful imps, and jealous fairies. However, when the rules get broken, powerful forces of evil are unleashed, forcing Kendra and Seth to face the greatest challenge of their lives, to save their family, Fablehaven, and perhaps even the world.

The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel by Michael Scott

Nicholas Flamel was born in Paris on 28 September 1330. Nearly seven hundred years later, he is acknowledged as the greatest Alchemyst of his day. It is said that he discovered the secret of eternal life. The records show that he died in 1418. But his tomb is empty and Nicholas Flamel lives. The secret of eternal life is hidden within the book he protects—the Book of Abraham the Mage. It's the most powerful book that has ever existed. In the wrong hands, it will destroy the world. And that's exactly what Dr. John Dee plans to do when he steals it. Humankind won't know what's happening until it's too late. And if the prophecy is right, Sophie and Josh Newman are the only ones with the power to save the world as we know it. Sometimes legends are true. And Sophie and Josh Newman are about to find themselves in the middle of the greatest legend of all time.

Out of My Mind by Shannon Draper

Melody is not like most people. She cannot walk or talk, but she has a photographic memory; she can remember every detail of everything she has ever experienced. She is smarter than most of the adults who try to diagnose her and smarter than her classmates in her integrated classroom - the very same classmates who dismiss her as mentally challenged because she cannot tell them otherwise. But Melody refuses to be defined by cerebral palsy. And she's determined to let everyone know it - somehow.

The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare

Orphaned Kit Tyler knows, as she gazes for the first time at the cold, bleak shores of Connecticut Colony, that her new home will never be like the shimmering Caribbean island she left behind. In her relatives' stern Puritan community, she feels like a tropical bird that has flown to the wrong part of the world, a bird that is now caged and lonely. The only place where Kit feels completely free is in the meadows, where she enjoys the company of the old Quaker woman known as the Witch of Blackbird Pond, and on occasion, her young sailor friend Nat. But when Kit's friendship with the "witch" is discovered, Kit is faced with suspicion, fear, and anger. She herself is accused of witchcraft!

Books of Bayern by Shannon Hale

She was born with her eyes closed and a word on her tongue, a word she could not taste.

Her name was Anidori-Kiladra Talianna Isilee, Crown Princess of Kildenree, and she spent the first years of her life listening to her aunt’s stories and learning the language of the birds, especially the swans. And when she was older, she watched as a colt was born, and she heard the first word on his tongue, his name, Falada.

From the Grimm’s fairy tale of the princess who became a goose girl before she could become queen, Shannon Hale has woven an incredible, original, and magical tale of a girl who must find her own unusual talents before she can lead the people she has made her own.

Fudge by Judy Blume

Life with his little brother, Fudge, makes Peter Hatcher feel like a fourth grade nothing. Whether Fudge is throwing a temper tantrum in a shoe store, smearing mashed potatoes on the walls at Hamburger Heaven, or trying to fly, he's never far from trouble. He's an almost three-year-old terror who gets away with everything, and Peter's had it up to here! When Fudge walks off with Dribble, Peter's pet turtle, it's the last straw. Peter has put up with Fudge for too long. Way too long! How can he get his parents to pay attention to him for a change?

Bartimaeus by Jonathan Stroud

Nathaniel is a boy magician-in-training, sold to the government by his birth parents at the age of five and sent to live as an apprentice to a master. Powerful magicians rule Britain, and its empire, and Nathaniel is told his is the "ultimate sacrifice" for a "noble destiny."

If leaving his parents and erasing his past life isn't tough enough, Nathaniel's master, Arthur Underwood, is a cold, condescending, and cruel middle-ranking magician in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The boy's only saving grace is the master's wife, Martha Underwood, who shows him genuine affection that he rewards with fierce devotion. Nathaniel gets along tolerably well over the years in the Underwood household until the summer before his eleventh birthday. Everything changes when he is publicly humiliated by the ruthless magician Simon Lovelace and betrayed by his cowardly master who does not defend him.

Nathaniel vows revenge. In a Faustian fever, he devours magical texts and hones his magic skills, all the while trying to appear subservient to his master. When he musters the strength to summon the 5,000-year-old djinni Bartimaeus to avenge Lovelace by stealing the powerful Amulet of Samarkand, the boy magician plunges into a situation more dangerous and deadly than anything he could ever imagine.

Shadow Children by Margaret Peterson Haddix

Luke has never been to school. He's never had a birthday party, or gone to a friend's house for an overnight. In fact, Luke has never had a friend.

Luke is one of the shadow children, a third child forbidden by the Population Police. He's lived his entire life in hiding, and now, with a new housing development replacing the woods next to his family's farm, he is no longer even allowed to go outside.

Then, one day Luke sees a girl's face in the window of a house where he knows two other children already live. Finally, he's met a shadow child like himself. Jen is willing to risk everything to come out of the shadows - does Luke dare to become involved in her dangerous plan? Can he afford not to?

Princess Academy by Shannon Hale

Miri lives on a mountain where, for generations, her ancestors have quarried stone and lived a simple life. Then word comes that the king's priests have divined her small village the home of the future princess. In a year's time, the prince himself will come and choose his bride from among the girls of the village. The king's ministers set up an academy on the mountain, and every teenage girl must attend and learn how to become a princess.

Miri soon finds herself confronted with a harsh academy mistress, bitter competition among the girls, and her own conflicting desires to be chosen and win the heart of her childhood best friend. But when bandits seek out the academy to kidnap the future princess, Miri must rally the girls together and use a power unique to the mountain dwellers to save herself and her classmates.

[torpublishinggroup]

Devilman Crybaby meets Marvel’s Venom in Exordia, the science fiction debut of Seth Dickinson, author of The Traitor Baru Cormorant. 

WHAT’S IT ABOUT

Meet Anna Sinjari, a refugee and disaffected office worker eking an existence in New York City. Her life is about to be upended by Ssrin, an alien with eight serpent heads, no qualms with cold-blooded murder, and an appetite for turtles (yum).

The universe is governed by seven passions, seven patterns which appear again and again, across species and across time. Anna and Ssrin are bound by the last and the greatest. The cosmos itself ships their very souls. Specifically for them, that means they’ll have to outmaneuver spies, armies, and government agencies to save humanity from a diabolical alien entity, hellbent on pinioning the souls of every creature on earth.

Exordia is expansive adventure science fiction that reads like a race-against-the-clock thriller in the vein of Michael Crichton, but steeped in the irony, humor, and pain of the Internet age. An alien-human epic for those who've always rooted for the monster.

[devotedfem]

→ Impostor

Synopsis: Who would've thought that your nice and dimpled neighbor was the militar spy stealing information from the government, and the one you have to caught.

K. Namjoon x f.reader

Genre: spies au | yander-ish

Tags: hidden identity, lying, yandere Namjoon, detective reader, betrayal, chasing, violence, whipped Namjoon, a bit of angst.

From the series masterlist; The chasing.

Navigation Masterlist.

You sighed tired, hiding your gun inside of the waistband of your jeans.  You’ve been chasing him for months and he is impossible to catch or to even watch from afar. He is like a ghost, because you know his presence is there with you but you can’t see him.

Your boss threatened you to fire you if you don’t catch the target in a week, so you’re anxious and distressed, because you need this job to pay your bills and your rent. If that scum of a spy would just show his face once, and recognize his terrorist crimes, then you can be in peace.

Your muscles were hurt, your body ached like hell and you were dying to drop dead on your bed and forget about everything while you’re sleeping. The chasing from tonight was really stressful, your team was chasing him with no success obviously, that’s why you’re walking towards your apartment feeling wrecked.

But then a nice and sweet voice stopped you.

“Oh y/n, hey,” your new neighbor, Namjoon, greeted you and you could imagine his dimpled and warm smile. You two were getting along these days, and you would be a liar if you say you don’t have a little crush on him, but lately you don’t have the state of mind to be thinking of men. You were too tired.

You closed your eyes for a second to ignore the ache and fatigue of your body, to turn around and face Namjoon, giving him a smile.

“Hey Nam, how’s it going?” you asked with a tensed smile, you were crying in the inside to take a shower and sleep your frustrations away, but your neighbor didn’t take the hint.

“Pretty good, uhm, actually i wanted to ask for your help for some assignments,” he said with a sheepish smile and a charming tone that melted your frustration a little.

He was majoring his third degree, forensic sciences, and sometimes you help him because you were a detective and you have experience in the forensic field, but tonight you were too tired to offer your help.

“Pretty please?” he said with soft pleading eyes, and how can you say no to him?

“Alright alright, don’t give me those puppy eyes,” you teased sighing, your date with your bed will be for later.

You two spent the night doing the assignments, in one point your head was tilting to the side with sleep, dropping on Namjoon’s shoulder. You heard him chuckle above you, but you didn’t care because you were drowsy and his shoulder was comfortable.

Sunlight made you frown with discomfort, you tried to stir your body but something heavy was bond to your side. Your breath hitched when you watched Namjoon sleeping by your side, you two were on his couch and it seems that sleep won over you both.

You get out of the couch careful, trying not to wake him up. And you couldn’t help but nose around just a little to know more about your new neighbor and crush.

And that’s when you discovered it.

What was doing an AK-47 hid under an armchair? Like, it seemed he put it down there on purpose, because there’s no way someone will display such a gun in that way, even less with a detective for a neighbor.

The problem was that after catching the weapon, you pried more in his apartment, trying to figure him out. Coming across with a Russian badge. Kim Namjoon, he was from the KGB, the military spy your targeting and chasing.

You dropped the badge to the floor with trembling hands and bill rising to your throat. A pang of disappointment, rage and sadness took over your chest. Your eyes blurred and you took deep breaths to try to calm yourself down.

You have to call your team and your boss right now.

But that didn’t happen, because you felt an oppressive warm from behind you, stopping your movements. He grabbed your neck from behind, without making pressure but not with a gentle grip either.

“What did you saw detective? Are you going to run from me? Is it my turn now to chase you?” He said with a low and cold voice, close to your ear. Hot breath brushing the skin.

His other arm wrapped around your waist, like a snake catching his prey.

“Let me go,” you whispered, still shocked by the betrayal.

“Mm, 'don’t think so, I wanna play with you a little more before I took you out of this country with me.”

Your eyes widened with terror the second a white clothe covered your mouth, making you fall limp between Namjoon’s arms.

You were so fucked up.

Taglist:

@demonshauntingthedoves @pynkgothicka

[smytherines]

We're not gonna get a Spies are Forever prequel musical (and maybe that's for the best, fanon for this show is really fun), BUT what if TCB did prequel episodes in the style of Solve It Squad: Back In Biz or Starkid's Nightmare Time, but for SAF, with each episode being one standalone mission? Or maybe a couple of episodes forming a little spy story arc.

They could bring back Mary Kate Wiles and Esther Fallick in new roles. Personally I like to imagine Brian Rosenthal playing an extremely bitchy MI6 director. They could play with genre a little (save me noir curtwen story save me)

They wouldn't need the budget of a full length musical, so it might be more doable? I'm not saying Talkfine has to write some new songs, but.... it's an option? (can you imagine CAN YOU EVEN IMAGINE??)

I listen to a lot of old science fiction radio plays, and I just really enjoy that modern radio play style of BIB/Nightmare Time. There is so much opportunity to tell stories and explore settings that you would never have the budget to stage in an actual musical.

Also I'm greedy for more curtwen just tbh. But seriously, this show is eight years old and still has a dedicated fan base. I mean, we just had a curtwen week event that was so overflowing with contributions that I'm still way waaay behind working my way through it all. It would be so cool to have something to feed the fans without putting up a roadblock for anything TCB might have planned for the future.

I know this is purely fantasy on my part, but let a girl dream ok??

[alpaca-clouds]

So, some theories about Coyote and/or Mephistopheles

Alright, I will throw my proverbial hat into the ring in terms of trying to come up with a theory about this. Because I am not exactly sold on the most popular theory right now that old man Coyote and/or Mephistopheles is a new manifestation of Death. The main reason for that is, that Coyote is a bit too important in regards to indigenous mythologies. So having Coyote be Death, who is a fairly one-note villain, would definitely feel quite a bit disrespectful.

Well, y'all know where you are. So of course we will talk about some history. Duh.

Mephistopheles

I think most of us will know that Mephistopheles originates with the Faustus myth. So let me talk shortly about Johann Georg Faust, who was a real person, who lived in Germany around the change from the 15th to the 16th century. (From all we know, he lived from 1466 to 1540, though the dates are not fully certain, as it often is the case with older dates.) Details about his life are really hard to construct, because he became such a popular character in fiction very shortly after his death, that it is just super hard to differentiate fiction from reality. We know, however, that he was an alchemist, astrologist and magician - whatever the latter is supposed to mean at the time. Later people also claimed he was a con man. From all we know (though again, this is not certain) he died by blowing himself up with an alchemical experiment, which definitely is on brand.

If it was just that, we would probably not really remember the guy. Sure, he might have a Wikipedia article still, but hist name would not be recognized by thousands if not millions of people. No, this happened because in 1587 a book was printed, called "Historia von D. Johann Fausten". We don't know the author, just the publisher (Johann Spies). And this story then caught the attention of the Englishman Christopher Marlowe, who made something of a rewrite and translation of it a few years later as the play "Doctor Faustus", which a long while later would then serve as inspiration for Goethe and his interpretation of the story.

The rough outline however is always the same: Faust is a theologist, who wants to acquire knowledge and finds himself limited by the at the time slow advance of science. A devil Mephistopheles shows up, who serves Lucifer, and offers Faust a lot of knowledge and magic in exchange for his soul. Faust accepts. Depending on which version you read, what follows is either tragedy or a lot of magic hijinks, though the moral of the story is always: "Do not be too greedy with knowledge."

Since we do not have any sources referencing Mephistopheles prior to the printing of the Historia, we are fairly certain that whoever wrote that book made Mephistopheles up. Meaning: This figure was not based in prior myths or historical believes. Or to put it differently: Mephistopheles goes back to 1587. He did not "exist" in the real world - not even as an idea - prior to this date.

After the Faust story got so popular, though, other stories definitely picked up on Mephistopheles and put him into a variety of other stories as a trickster demon, who would often seduce good men into doing back things - often with the goal of gaining power or knowledge or both.

Old Man Coyote

Meanwhile, Coyote is a character who shows up throughout indigenous North American mythology, and - as someone has rightfully pointed out - somewhat also in Nahua mythology (Nahua = Aztec, I am trying to use the endonym rather than the exonym).

See, in Nahua mythology there is a god called Huehuecoyotl, and as you might guess: Coyotl indeed means coyote. To be exact the name translates to "Old Coyote", which indeed is quite close to "Old Man Coyote". ;)

Huehuecoyotl is (according to Wikipedia, because I still have not found a good book on Nahua mythology - please, someone, recommend me something) the Nahua song of song, dance, mischief and also of uninhibited sexuality. Because of this, he was - like so many trickster gods - also technically genderfluid, as he could take whatever form he liked. He would often play tricks on other gods and on humans too, at times even cause wars. But like with other Coyote stories, these often would fall back on him.

Which brings me to all those other versions of Coyote.

While Coyote does not show up in every North American indigenous culture, he certainly shows up in many of them. The most well known Coyote myths are obviously of Navajo origin, bout the Navajo are not the only culture featuring Coyote.

Coyote is pretty much always a trickster, and like many tricksters he is generally a positive figure, but also morally grey. While in many myths he is responsible for some creations of the world, he will usually also often cause misery to others and also himself. He also often dies gruesome deaths, but finds then ways to come back from them.

In some myths he will also take up the role of a culture hero, meaning that he will be responsible for bringing the human certain things, like fire or language. Even as Coyote he does at times appear as a shapeshifter of sorts, though this is not always a given.

Coyote shows up in more than 20 different mythologies that we know off. While his general role as a trickster is often the same, the finer details will definitely differ a lot.

So, the Theory

So, the Spanish conquest of the Nahua happened in 1519. And we also know that in general around the turn of the century the genocide in the Americas was so bad that it possibly created a fucking climate change! (It got colder because so much CO2 got sucked from the atmosphere.)

And so my suspicion here is, that Coyote, the trickster (I am not fully sure if it is specifically Huehuecoyotl, or a generic Coyote), went over to Europe after the indigenous cultures were genocided, to exact revenge. And when he went over to Europe, he took up an identity that worked better with the believes of the people in Europe: Mephistopheles.

He might also have taken some other identities in some other cultures.

The reason I do not really think it is Death (even though timeline wise it could obviously also match up, given that the entire Faust thing mainly happened just after the events of the first four seasons) is really that Death was a very one-note villain. And it just would not feel right to me to make Coyote - who is definitely not one-note - as Death.