#helium analysis

[jcmarchi]

MIT researchers discover the universe’s oldest stars in our own galactic backyard

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/mit-researchers-discover-the-universes-oldest-stars-in-our-own-galactic-backyard/

MIT researchers discover the universe’s oldest stars in our own galactic backyard

MIT researchers, including several undergraduate students, have discovered three of the oldest stars in the universe, and they happen to live in our own galactic neighborhood.

The team spotted the stars in the Milky Way’s “halo” — the cloud of stars that envelopes the entire main galactic disk. Based on the team’s analysis, the three stars formed between 12 and 13 billion years ago, the time when the very first galaxies were taking shape.

The researchers have coined the stars “SASS,” for Small Accreted Stellar System stars, as they believe each star once belonged to its own small, primitive galaxy that was later absorbed by the larger but still growing Milky Way. Today, the three stars are all that are left of their respective galaxies. They circle the outskirts of the Milky Way, where the team suspects there may be more such ancient stellar survivors.

“These oldest stars should definitely be there, given what we know of galaxy formation,” says MIT professor of physics Anna Frebel. “They are part of our cosmic family tree. And we now have a new way to find them.”

As they uncover similar SASS stars, the researchers hope to use them as analogs of ultrafaint dwarf galaxies, which are thought to be some of the universe’s surviving first galaxies. Such galaxies are still intact today but are too distant and faint for astronomers to study in depth. As SASS stars may have once belonged to similarly primitive dwarf galaxies but are in the Milky Way and as such much closer, they could be an accessible key to understanding the evolution of ultrafaint dwarf galaxies.

“Now we can look for more analogs in the Milky Way, that are much brighter, and study their chemical evolution without having to chase these extremely faint stars,” Frebel says.

She and her colleagues have published their findings today in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS). The study’s co-authors are Mohammad Mardini, at Zarqa University, in Jordan; Hillary Andales ’23; and current MIT undergraduates Ananda Santos and Casey Fienberg.

Stellar frontier

The team’s discoveries grew out of a classroom concept. During the 2022 fall semester, Frebel launched a new course, 8.S30 (Observational Stellar Archaeology), in which students learned techniques for analyzing ancient stars and then applied those tools to stars that had never been studied before, to determine their origins.

“While most of our classes are taught from the ground up, this class immediately put us at the frontier of research in astrophysics,” Andales says.

The students worked from star data collected by Frebel over the years from the 6.5-meter Magellan-Clay telescope at the Las Campanas Observatory. She keeps hard copies of the data in a large binder in her office, which the students combed through to look for stars of interest.

In particular, they were searching ancient stars that formed soon after the Big Bang, which occurred 13.8 billion years ago. At this time, the universe was made mostly of hydrogen and helium and very low abundances of other chemical elements, such as strontium and barium. So, the students looked through Frebel’s binder for stars with spectra, or measurements of starlight, that indicated low abundances of strontium and barium.

Their search narrowed in on three stars that were originally observed by the Magellan telescope between 2013 and 2014. Astronomers never followed up on these particular stars to interpret their spectra and deduce their origins. They were, then, perfect candidates for the students in Frebel’s class.

The students learned how to characterize a star in order to prepare for the analysis of the spectra for each of the three stars. They were able to determine the chemical composition of each one with various stellar models. The intensity of a particular feature in the stellar spectrum, corresponding to a specific wavelength of light, corresponds to a particular abundance of a specific element.

After finalizing their analysis, the students were able to confidently conclude that the three stars did hold very low abundances of strontium, barium, and other elements such as iron, compared to their reference star — our own sun. In fact, one star contained less than 1/10,000 the amount of iron to helium compared to the sun today.

“It took a lot of hours staring at a computer, and a lot of debugging, frantically texting and emailing each other to figure this out,” Santos recalls. “It was a big learning curve, and a special experience.”

“On the run”

The stars’ low chemical abundance did hint that they originally formed 12 to 13 billion years ago. In fact, their low chemical signatures were similar to what astronomers had previously measured for some ancient, ultrafaint dwarf galaxies. Did the team’s stars originate in similar galaxies? And how did they come to be in the Milky Way?

On a hunch, the scientists checked out the stars’ orbital patterns and how they move across the sky. The three stars are in different locations throughout the Milky Way’s halo and are estimated to be about 30,000 light years from Earth. (For reference, the disk of the Milky Way spans 100,000 light years across.)

As they retraced each star’s motion about the galactic center using observations from the Gaia astrometric satellite, the team noticed a curious thing: Relative to most of the stars in the main disk, which move like cars on a racetrack, all three stars seemed to be going the wrong way. In astronomy, this is known as “retrograde motion” and is a tipoff that an object was once “accreted,” or drawn in from elsewhere.

“The only way you can have stars going the wrong way from the rest of the gang is if you threw them in the wrong way,” Frebel says.

The fact that these three stars were orbiting in completely different ways from the rest of the galactic disk and even the halo, combined with the fact that they held low chemical abundances, made a strong case that the stars were indeed ancient and once belonged to older, smaller dwarf galaxies that fell into the Milky Way at random angles and continued their stubborn trajectories billions of years later.

Frebel, curious as to whether retrograde motion was a feature of other ancient stars in the halo that astronomers previously analyzed, looked through the scientific literature and found 65 other stars, also with low strontium and barium abundances, that appeared to also be going against the galactic flow.

“Interestingly they’re all quite fast — hundreds of kilometers per second, going the wrong way,” Frebel says. “They’re on the run! We don’t know why that’s the case, but it was the piece to the puzzle that we needed, and that I didn’t quite anticipate when we started.”

The team is eager to search out other ancient SASS stars, and they now have a relatively simple recipe to do so: First, look for stars with low chemical abundances, and then track their orbital patterns for signs of retrograde motion. Of the more than 400 billion stars in the Milky Way, they anticipate that the method will turn up a small but significant number of the universe’s oldest stars.

Frebel plans to relaunch the class this fall, and looks back at that first course, and the three students who took their results through to publication, with admiration and gratitude.

“It’s been awesome to work with three women undergrads. That’s a first for me,” she says. “It’s really an example of the MIT way. We do. And whoever says, ‘I want to participate,’ they can do that, and good things happen.”

This research was supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation.

[whats-in-a-sentence]

Routine chemical analyses involve determination of the mass percentages of C, H, N and S in a compound, and are often carried out using an automated elemental analyser such as the one shown in the schematic diagram in figure 3.8.

"Chemistry" 2e - Blackman, A., Bottle, S., Schmid, S., Mocerino, M., Wille, U.

[strangemusictriumph]

Cryocooler Market - Forecast (2022 - 2027)

Cryocooler Market Size is forecast to reach $18.4 billion by 2026, at a CAGR of 8.5% during 2021-2026. Cryocoolers are standalone devices utilized for providing cooling temperatures at different cryogenic levels. There are different types of cryocoolers available based upon the operating thermodynamic cycles. These cycles assist cryocoolers to attain different levels of cryogenic temperatures that are applicable to specific set of applications in plethora of industry verticals. Cryocooler is a mechanical refrigerator designed to cool an application down to cryogenics temperatures. Cryocoolers are significantly used for applications in the transportation/storage of gases at extremely low temperatures as well as cooling of products, particularly infrared products in various applications. Cryocooling solutions have been witnessing a wide popularity across the major end-use verticals including medical, mining, power plants and are subjected to repeated as well as continuous usage, the need for regular maintenance or repair, fixing customer queries in times of malfunctioning, replacing spare parts with new ones and so on becomes highly essential. These services help the end-use customers to continue production activities without causing time delays, operation failures and hampering business productivity.

Report Coverage

The report: “Cryocooler Market Report– Forecast (2021-2026)”, by IndustryARC covers an in-depth analysis of the following segments of the Cryocooler market

By Rotor Type: Inner Rotor, Outer Rotor.

By Type: Single Phase, Three Phase.

By Efficiency Class: IE1, IE2, IE3, IE4.

By Output Power: Upto 350W, 350-700W, 700-1000W, 1-2KW, 2-5KW, 5KW and Above.

By Speed: Upto 500RPM, 500-1000RPM, 1000-2000RPM, 2000-5000RPM, 5000-10000RPM, 10000RPM and Above.

By Voltage: Upto 1KV, 1-6.6 KV, Above 6.6KV.

By Vertical: Industrial, Commercial, Residential, Agriculture, Automotive and Others.

By Geography: North America (U.S, Canada, Mexico), South America(Brazil, Argentina and others), Europe(Germany, UK, France, Italy, Spain, Russia and Others), APAC(China, Japan India, SK, Aus and Others), and RoW (Middle East and Africa).

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Key Takeaways

Technical Support services help the users or customers to select best cryocooling components or spare parts according to their industrial requirements, offering details about on-service contracts, or discounted service packages, diagnosis or repairing faults, troubleshooting technical issues along with a proper guidance on servicing intervals. With the help of technical support services, various end-use customers have been able to maximize their productivity with a cost-efficient approach.

Scheduled maintenance had been gaining a wide popularity within the cryocooler market owing to various service providers offering maintenance contracts, emergency support, warranty offers and so on. These services have proved to be a beneficial factor as the cryogenic components including compressors, cold heads and so on helps in early detection of defects or damages, which can ultimately benefit the end-use customers to schedule or pre-book repair or refurbishment services, within lesser costs and efforts.

Applications including cooling in MRI systems, superconducting magnets, low temperature sensors, storage of biological cells or specimens, cyropumps for semiconductor fabrication, cryosurgery and so on are considered as some of the major factors impacting the growth of various cyrogenic hardware over the years.

Cryocooler Market Segment Analysis - By Temperature Range

50K-100K temperature range type hold the highest market share accounting for $649.3 M in 2020 and $906.0 Million by 2026 with a CAGR of 6.3% over 2021-2026. Cryocoolers which can provide cooling within range of 50K-100K are used for applications including liquefaction of nitrogen & mixed gases and cooling the gas temperature ranges from 60-80 K. Cryocoolers that can supply cooling up to the range of 100K are used in Cooling of satellite typically in the milliwatt range at 60-80K. On January 2020, NASA developed a 20 Watt 20 Kelvin cryocooler is a critical step in enabling zero boil-off of liquid hydrogen. Active thermal control of cryogenic propellants is made possible by integrating a cryocooler to intercept and collect heat from the cryogenic tank support structure and/or a broad area cooled shield. 10K-50K temperature range cryocooler type is witnessing fast growth rate with a CAGR of 7.63% during the forecast period 2021 – 2026 owing to the wide range of applications employed in liquefaction of Solid Hydrogen in the temperature range of 10-14K and liquefaction of hydrogen in the temperature range of 18-30 K.

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Cryocooler Market Segment Analysis - By Vertical 

In Power and Energy vertical, applications of cryocooler includes LNG for peak shaving, Infrared sensors for thermal loss measurements, SC magnetic energy storage for peak shaving and power conditioning, SC power applications (motors, transformers etc.). The superconductor industry is closely linked to the cryogenic industry due to operating temperatures required for superconductivity being below 130K. Such cooling comes from cryocoolers. The use of a superconductor and the fact that superconductors currently need a cryogenic temperature to operate means SMES is part of the superconductivity and cryogenics industry. Thus, cryocooler play an important role in creating cryogenic temperatures required for superconductivity. In SMES energy is stored in a magnetic field created by the flow of direct current (DC) in a superconducting coil, which has been cryogenically cooled below its critical temperature. Energy storage is a rapidly growing market with a number of trends. The increase in decentralized renewable energy, the advent of smart grids, smart micro-grids and smart houses, the electrification of transport, the increasing demand on the ageing electricity infrastructure and climate change targets are all helping to drive the energy storage market. Thus, with the increase in energy storage devices such as SMES the market growth for cyrocoolers will increase as it used for direct cooling of superconducting magnets.

Cryocooler Market Segment Analysis - By Geography 

Geographically, Asia-Pacific hold major share 33.2% of Cryocooler Market share in 2020 terms of revenue owing to increasing applications in Defense sector, Healthcare and Space sector. For instance, On May 2019, China unveiled the prototype for its sleek new magnetic levitation (maglev) train. Developed by the state-owned China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation (CRRC), the world's largest supplier of rail transit equipment announced that the new train is capable of travelling at a speed of 600km/h. Moreover, India’s Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) announced that their Anti-Tank Guided Missile (NAG) is set to be exported to global market and India further look to expand its production units. This will propel the application of cryocooler in large scale further enhancing its market growth. South America region is anticipated to witness the significant market growth during the forecast period 2021-2026 with a CAGR of 7.7%. The market growth in this region is mainly due to rising applications of cryocooler such as to offer high speed imaging and sensing infrared detectors across a variety of different sectors, including space, defense and commercial. With Brazil ramping up domestic space satellite, rocket programs the cryocooler market will grow significantly.

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Cryocooler Market Drivers 

Growing Applications in Military and Defense

The extensive deployment of cryocoolers for defense and military applications such as cooling of infrared focal planes and infrared sensors is likely to be the major driving factor for the growth of global cryocoolers market. Cryocooler are often used for tactical military applications such as airborne, ground mounted and shipboard IR sensors that are associated with cryocoolers for cooling needs. Indium antimonide (InSb), Mercury-cadmium-telluride (HgTeCd) and other prominent detector materials used in these applications are required to be cooled to cryogenic temperatures to ensure proper operation of sensor device by reducing the random transition of electrons between energy bands. Moreover, improving power, size and weight constraints of space qualified cryocoolers boosted the utilization of these devices in large military satellite electro optical infrared missions.

Growing Adoption of Night Vision Cameras 

Most of the advanced security cameras are featured with night vision to provide footages of the location even in dark and night conditions. These cameras rely on infrared light and capture footages by lighting the field of view with infrared light source. Night vision cameras installed in military applications such as video surveillance for enemy detection uses cryocoolers. These devices use high efficiency compact pulse tube cryocoolers as cooling element for IR sensing materials to enhance the picture clarity and colour discrimination. The growing demand or night vision cameras in typical commercial applications owing to theft and other anti-social activities is propelling the cryocoolers market.

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Cryocooler Market Challenges

Low Efficiency in Closed Cycle Mode and High Internal Losses

The internal losses associated with most of the regenerative and recuperative cryocoolers pose a very significant effect on the overall efficiency of the system and this is the major factor hindering the growth of cryocoolers market. The irreversible gas compression mechanism in cryocoolers results in regenerator inefficiency of the system. Other internal losses such as pressure drop loss and clearance seal loss also impact the performance of the system negatively. The losses experienced by Pulse tube type cryocoolers within pulse tube itself include heat transfer between tube wall and gas, circulation of gas within the pulse tube due to oscillating pressures and mixing of warm and cold gas segments.

Cryocooler Market Landscape

Product launches, acquisitions, Partnerships and R&D activities are key strategies adopted by players in the Cryocooler market. Cryocooler top 10 companies include Sumitomo, Chart Industries, Sunpower, Air Liquide, Janis Research, Ricor, Cryomech and Brooks Automation.

Acquisitions/Product Launches

In September 2020, Air Liquide S.A. acquired Cryoconcept which enabled Air Liquide to strengthen its expertise in the field of extreme, or close to absolute zero, cryogenics.

In July 2019, Atlas Copco acquired Brooks Semiconductor Cryogenics through which it will develop a worldwide sales and service network of cryo pumps operations.

For more Electronics related reports, please click here

[marketdevelopmentpp]

Helium Liquefier Market Analysis

The Helium Liquefier market will change significantly from the previous year. Over the next five years, will register a CAGR in terms of revenue, and the global market size will reach USD in millions by 2028.

The Global Helium Liquefier Market research report provides a comprehensive analysis of this industry. The research includes further data on regional contribution and industry guidelines, as well as the significant trends that will define the Global Helium Liquefier market throughout the projected period. The research also looks at how current industry developments affect potential investors. The report contains trends that are expected to have an influence on the growth of the Global Helium Liquefier Market over the forecast period. The report includes an analysis of these trends as well as product innovations.

This report studies the Helium Liquefier market status and outlook of Asia and major countries, from angles of players, regions, product types and end industries; this report analyzes the top players in Asia and major countries, and splits the Helium Liquefier market by product type and applications/end industries.

[rwac96]

could I see a Ruby, Penny, and Oscar prompt based on this?

(Okay, since this looks kinda funny)

Weiss: "Penny!? Ruby!? HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?!"

Ruby: "Remember that gum we got from Walker Wunku?"

Yang: "The weird candy maker?"

Penny: "Upon further analysis, and what our current predicament: This confectionary contains an edible element similar to helium."

Jaune: *confused* "Meaning...?"

Pyrrha: "They ate experimental helium gum."

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

ASU scientists help resolve 'missing methane' problem of giant exoplanet

In the quest to understand the enigmatic nature of a warm gas-giant exoplanet, Arizona State University researchers have played a pivotal role in uncovering its secrets.

WASP-107b has puzzled astronomers for some time, but recent findings, aided by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope, have shed new light on its unusual characteristics.

A remarkable revelation in the exploration of WASP-107b is the unforeseen scarcity of methane, or CH4, in its atmosphere. This intriguing discovery, hinting at a significantly hotter interior and a more massive core than previously hypothesized, has been a focal point of the research conducted by Luis Welbanks, a NASA Sagan Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of Earth and Space Exploration at ASU and lead author on a paper published today in Nature.

The high temperature is believed to be a consequence of tidal heating induced by the planet's slightly noncircular orbit.

“Based on its radius, mass, age and assumed internal temperature, we thought WASP-107b had a very small, rocky core surrounded by a huge mass of hydrogen and helium,” Welbanks said. “But it was hard to understand how such a small core could sweep up so much gas and then stop short of growing fully into a Jupiter-mass planet.”

Welbanks and the team's analysis, in conjunction with data from the Hubble Space Telescope, has led to a deeper understanding of WASP-107b's composition and dynamics. Contrary to earlier assumptions, the planet's inflated atmosphere does not result from extreme formation scenarios but rather from internal heat and tidal forces.

WASP-107b, a Neptune-like exoplanet discovered in 2017, has been identified as a pivotal subject for the study of low-density exoplanets. Its unique characteristics, offering valuable insights into planetary evolution and atmospheric dynamics, have been unraveled through advanced spectroscopic techniques by the researchers. The wealth of information about the molecules present in WASP-107b's atmosphere, including the simultaneous detection of carbon-, oxygen-, nitrogen- and sulfur-bearing molecules for the first time in a transiting exoplanet, further underscores its scientific value. 

"The Webb data tells us that planets like WASP-107b didn't have to form in some odd way with a super small core and a huge gassy envelope," said Mike Line, associate professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at ASU. "Instead, we can take something more like Neptune, with a lot of rock and not as much gas, just dial up the temperature, and poof it up to look the way it does."

Overall, the groundbreaking research on WASP-107b underscores the importance of collaborative efforts in advancing our understanding of exoplanets. The research team's contribution, in conjunction with the support of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope, has been instrumental in this endeavor.

[alianarepasa]

MISSION 1: Scare the Fat Italain vs Wear a Disguise

Ok, so we have already a options! No training and all, ok lets see... So the first mission is "Mario's guarding the front! How do we get in the casino?" Well then, time to analysis:

Option 1: Scare the Fat Italian

So... where do we start here, Mario is pretty easily coward, so yea, we could scare him. HOWEVER! This is SMG4 we're talking about, meaning that this option could be also have chances to backfired in some sense, I mean right now, it seems like Mario is pretty on guard, not to mention, SMG3 and SMG4 would get easily get caught and be chased by guards!! If they have one that is. But, it doesn't mean it isnt a bad choice, as there is also a chances that Mario could get easily get scared and those two could ran instantly inside the casino and go on to the second mission. Overall, this option has 50/50 chances, depends if Mario is taking his job seriously.

Option 2: Wear a Disguise

Now this also make sense, as they can sneak through the casino and don't get caught. The only problem that it is also probably has some catch, like, what if the disguises backfired and everyone knows that SMG4 and SMG3, or if the disguise did succeed, what if someone ran pass by, and cause their disguises to be undone? But yea overall, this option is also has 50/50 chances, but probably has more chances of fail if it got backfired.

Final verdict

Honestly, any of those two of them are a great choices, but if I were to pick... I would say disguise. Yes, it does have some 50/50 chances but high probability of fails if someone recognize 3 and 4, but if I am being honest, scaring Mario is like trying to punch a helium balloon that is about to pop, but then again, it can still work.

[waitmyturtles]

As this film will be getting much more coverage during awards season, I thought that this analysis and reflection of Leonard Bernstein's queer sexuality, and how it was rendered in the film, was worth reading.

Certain emphases in the article below are mine. As an East-Coast American, in many ways, I feel like Leonard Bernstein is musical family; that a Hollywood-driven film about him would leave out important details of the context of his sexual and emotional life is... to be expected in the Hollywood West.

****

The film celebrates Leonard Bernstein’s musical duality, but fails to seriously engage with his bisexuality.

By Jennie Livingston

There’s a heartbreaking scene in Bradley Cooper’s “Maestro,” about the marriage of the composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein (Cooper) to the actress Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan), in which, as the couple argue in the bedroom of their Upper West Side apartment, Macy’s parade inflatables glide past the windows. A giant Snoopy echoes a Snoopy we saw in a family scene; it also gestures at the awkward gulf between Bernstein’s private and public lives, as if the musician himself were yet another helium-propelled icon from the Thanksgiving pantheon. Montealegre’s accusation, “Your truth is a [expletive] lie!” nails Bernstein’s privilege, condemning the habits and appetites he expects his family to tolerate and support.

The film gets right so much of who Bernstein was, allowing us to take in how he was, all at once, ahead of his time, a victim of his time, a gay man, a bisexual, a father, a nonconformist, a narcissist. “Maestro” is full of heart and craft, with riveting lead performances. It’s a film about a musician that doesn’t exaggerate or glorify the creative process, or suggest artists are either superhuman or subhuman.

The film drops you into the heart of creation so that you feel the excitement of the new, particularly in eras (the 1940s through the ’70s) in which Leonard Bernstein revolutionized how the public experienced classical music. As the decades shift, so does what we see: Early scenes use an aspect ratio (4:3) and color world (black and white) from the ’40s; then the film almost imperceptibly brings in color, before finally stretching the frame out to widescreen — all without banging you over the head with its cinematic cleverness. The cinematographer, Matthew Libatique, deserves special applause for his command of light, space and movement. An opening scene in which the young Bernstein leaps onto a bed, slaps his partner’s butt like a timpani, then runs right into Carnegie Hall in his bathrobe and boxers, is as thrilling as any time-compression or dream sequence I can name.

Although it’s clear that Cooper’s directorial hand is nothing less than breathtaking, the film becomes increasingly disquieting. In the first third of the film, the script sets up an intoxicating premise: a queer Jewish man inhabiting the already-antisemitic world of classical music falls in love with a woman. It can happen. It particularly could happen in a world in which gay artists were always in danger of being exposed and ejected from the institutions they depended on. In the ’40s and ’50s, when Bernstein and Montealegre met and married, psychiatry still considered homosexuality a disorder to be treated or cured. (A note on my language describing Bernstein’s sexuality: In an early letter, Montealegre tells Bernstein “you are a homosexual and may never change.” More recently, his daughter Jamie has referred to him alternately as gay and bisexual.)

Early on, the script follows Bernstein from dating the clarinetist David Oppenheim (the man in bed in that opening scene, played by Matt Bomer) to his courtship with Montealegre, an actress with high cheekbones and an intelligence and warmth that are just as sharply defined. One day Lenny’s walking alone in Central Park and runs into Oppenheim, who’s strolling with his wife, Ellen Adler (Kate Eastman), and baby in tow. By now Bernstein’s also married. Addressing the child, Bernstein jokes that he has slept with both of her parents! And adds with a kind of wild glee, “but I’m reining it in.” The mother and child go one way; Bernstein and Oppenheim head downtown. Soon Oppenheim is clasping Bernstein’s face, and they are both feeling, regretting, reliving what couldn’t have been.

If only the film itself weren’t an exercise in “reining in” Bernstein’s sexuality. Granted, the movie primarily concerns the relationship between Montealegre and Bernstein. It’s about two people creating a family, a family that has issues, partly because the wife spends years tolerating, resisting, commenting on, accepting and suffering from her husband’s dualities. But about a third of the way in, the queer characters all but fade out. They’re there as a light visual presence, but not as people with stories and interior lives.

After Oppenheim and Bernstein’s intimate stroll, Lenny and his lovers are reduced (in Montealegre’s eyes) to a series of obstacles to respectability, and (in the audience’s eyes) to a series of outfits, mannerisms and even clichés, like a coke-fueled party during which Bernstein talks on the phone to his daughter Jamie. Did some gay men in the ’70s skate on the surface of drugs and anonymous sex? Yes, and if the film tells me Bernstein was there to witness and experience it, I believe it. What I don’t believe is that he never experienced relationships with men built on conversation, intellectual intimacies and sustained physical contact. It wouldn’t have taken much — one or two scenes — to suggest that the gay relationships that Bernstein cultivated were in fact love affairs. That may have been worth noting, including in the service of telling the story of the marriage.

“Heterosexuals have never known what to do with queer people, if they think of their existence at all,” Carmen Maria Machado writes, in a memoir tracing the invisibility of certain narratives. I don’t want to believe that the director and his co-writer are incapable of writing well-rounded gay characters, but paradoxically, the failure to render Bernstein’s male lovers as three-dimensional people distracts from the central couple’s romance. I longed for more insight into the nuances of Bernstein and Montealegre’s conundrum, and details of his queer life could have provided it. Flattening Bernstein’s gay relationships to a series of knowing glances and brief encounters seemed to underline the main couple’s essential heterosexuality, rather than emphasizing their relationship’s complexity.

Because, in life, Bernstein kept seeing men — and not only at the events the film allows us to briefly glimpse. Ultimately, he left Montealegre for a younger man, Tom Cothran (Gideon Glick), who worked in classical radio. If included, this risky decision could have been a great turning point in the film. Scenes of Bernstein attending the dying Montealegre are moving; they could have been more meaningful if we had understood the drama and sacrifice behind his loving presence at her bedside. He didn’t just drop out of one or two coke-fueled soirees; he left a relationship.

The film ends with Montealegre’s death and suggests Bernstein never recovered from the loss. In life, after his wife’s death, Bernstein reconnected with Cothran, as a friend. Soon after, Cothran himself died, of AIDS, the plague that claimed the lives of so many men of his and Bernstein’s generations. It must have been a cavalcade of griefs for Bernstein; it must have been so complex for this artist to have struggled — with his desire to honor his desires, with his realization that the world was becoming increasingly open to “out” queer artists as viable public figures — and with the divisions between his queer worlds and his family. I wonder if Bernstein longed for Montealegre more acutely in the 1980s. Perhaps, together, they could have absorbed the horror of the AIDS pandemic.

The decision to leave out AIDS feels as if the filmmakers simply don’t know, or mark as significant, what happened in the world during the years between Montealegre’s death in 1978 and Bernstein’s own death in 1990. What viewers get instead is a near-final sequence of Bernstein grinding with his young conducting student to Tears for Fears’s “Shout,” then wildly dancing on his own. That these flashes of ecstasy occur in a room full of other young men, many of whom will die soon, is an odd understatement from a film obsessed with the passage of time.

Jennie Livingston directed and produced the award-winning documentary “Paris Is Burning,” and the shorts “Who’s the Top?” “Through the Ice” and “Hotheads.” Other work includes directing for the TV series “Pose” and creating an original projection for Elton John’s show. Livingston is currently at work on a nonfiction feature film, “Earth Camp One.”

[acaplaya-musings]

Voiceplay Visuals: This Is Halloween

So obviously I'm not the only one who loves talking about Voiceplay and analysing their content, but I wanted to do something a bit different from the kinds of analyses/reactions that other people do, both on here and on Youtube (and music theory isn't really my forte anyway). So I'm planning on making some posts just focusing on the videos (and Geoff's as well, eventually), rather than the music arrangement or vocals or anything like that. My credentials are being a Drama Kid during my high school years, and experience with this sort of analysis from my time in other fandoms. I'm not planning on doing every single video, and though I'm gonna go chronologically from mid-2017 onwards (why not earlier? Because Reasons). However, since I yesterday finished a fanfic based on Voiceplay's cover of This Is Halloween, (which I studied a fair bit to get details right), I might as well start there!

Oogie Boogie pumpkin just outside the front door! (And a Jack Skellington one on the other side I believe?) These pumpkin also shows up in the spooky Halloween realm the group are transported to after eating the candy.

Credit to one of the comments which said that Earl is wearing a cow onesie and Eli is wearing a rooster onesie, which more likely than not is a callback to their (extremely hilarious) Chicken Song performance. (J is wearing a CatDog onesie, I think Geoff is wearing a giraffe onesie? And I'm not sure what Layne's onesie is meant to be)

Again credit to a commenter (different one), pointing out that Eli deadpan elbows Layne in the back, pushing him down after he eats the candy (likely a not-so-subtle acting cue or something like that, but still very funny once you notice it)

The return of the Jack and Oogie Boogie pumpkins, along with some other creatively-designed Jack-O-Lanterns! Peep the one on the far right, a little more towards the back; its 'eyes' say VP, and its mouth is the Voiceplay logo!

Also a little bit of foreshadowing, whether intentional or not: when Layne wakes up, one of the first things in his line of sight is the axe resting on the hay bales...

First of all, how many pumpkins were carved just for this video? Because a lot of effort went into making all those different designs for sure (and no, I'm not part of Voiceplay's Patreon, as the tier that lets you see behind-the-scenes stuff is like $8.50 AUD per month, rip). And second of all, this is a decent shot of how the group starts out upon waking up. J None is wearing a yellow plaid flannel quite similar to The Wolfman in Nightmare Before Christmas, and Earl is wearing denim overalls, like the behemoth character. Eli's outfit is of course representative of the Mayor of Halloweentown, but no spider bowtie or "Mayor" rosette (would've loved to see it, but eh no biggie). Layne I will get to in a moment, and Geoff a little bit after that.

I can't be bothered getting a better picture of it but Eli's half-concerned half-weirded-out face after J's helium-like vocal line is very amusing to me

On the "eyes glowing red" line, Earl's eyes (which are white at this point) flash red for a very brief moment, basically blink-and-you-miss-it.

The colour-change on Eli's left eye is so subtle that at first I didn't notice it at all, and then I only noticed it later on in the video, and only now, doing this analysis and taking a dozen screencaps, do I realize that it happens way earlier than I first thought (which explains why he takes his glasses off at this point I guess) (so uh, that's a minor inconsistency in my fanfic but it's fine)

Shoutout to the makeup/SFX people who helped with this video honestly, they did a super good job, genuinely!

(In which the frame-by-frame scrubbing technique comes in real handy)

An interesting choice to have Layne go through a sort of "half-transformation" stage, where he has a horn and red eye on one side of the face, while the other side of the face is normal. I like it though!

People have said that Layne is meant to be the devil (who is in fact another Halloweentown resident, but honestly I think he's meant to be Lock, or at least a combination of the two, because this what the two characters look like:

See how Layne resembles Lock more? In the outfit choice if nothing else (Also he's kinda sorta got the right face shape for Lock imo). Also, Lock wears a red trick-or-treating mask with horns on top!

Earl is really distressed about his hair falling out (not that I can blame him, really)

This shot/moment is probably one of the ones that stands out to me the most (other than Certain Other Ones for Other Reasons that I will get to in a moment), because J comes across as pretty mournful here, like he knows what's happening but he's feeling really sad/regretful about it? (Also I only just noticed Eli's face in the background and I'm not sure what to make of it 😅)

"pog" is not a word in my vocabulary 95% of the time, but this is basically just Pog faces right? (Geoff and Layne probably have the most fun of the group in this video ngl)

(Also I haven't yet touched on Geoff's transformations but I love the contouring work on his face!)

My god this video is comedy gold when it comes to pausing/taking screenshots

I daresay Eli ends up one of the least recognizable of the group by the end of it (other than J), and I wanna know how long that took to do

Geoff is the only one in the video who gets an outfit upgrade (Good For Him)

They didn't bother being movie-accurate with Geoff's vampire appearance, and honestly I'm definitely not complaining. (they made him hotter)

Layne did the music arrangement, but Geoff was in charge of the video production. How much say did he have over his own costume/appearance I wonder?

Visually speaking at least, nobody is even paying attention to him, they're just like "yeah that's just Geoff, normal behaviour, nothing new" 😆

I can't get a decent picture of it but shoutout to Layne doing a silly little run around the pumpkin stack, love that for him

Another small moment that a screencap wouldn't do justice: even as a vampire, Geoff still does his little self-conducting hand motions, which you might notice as he walks around the pumpkin stack, in the shot right after his "filling your dreams to the brim with fright" line

Also love Geoff's little almost-Elvis-like moves in the background for a brief scene. I know multiple commenters have mentioned it, but I'm yet to see a reactor notice it

Suddenly Layne is Concerned(tm) about Geoff's vampireness it seems?

Also for someone who very much adores this guy, it took me an embarassingly long time to realise that Geoff's face at this point had become paler and his hairline had changed (and actually now that I type it up here, I think that might even be a wig? Oh dear)

I don't really have anything to say about J's full transformation, but it would be unfair of me to not include him as well, and it's definitely a *very* impressive costume. Almost like one of those rubbery fully-covering-the-head costume mask things, but like it's his actual face?

Is that tattoo real or fake, because I literally have never noticed it in any other Voiceplay video, but it's very realistic! (For that matter, what aobut Earl's upper-arm tattoo that kind of looks like a ring of barbed wire?)

I basically watch the This Is Halloween opening scene from The Nightmare Before Christmas every October, and same with the What's This scene in December, but I had never actually watched the movie in full until December last year. So basically when they had the axe-in-the-head moment in the movie I was like ohhhhhhh so that wasn't just a random moment that Voiceplay dreamed up for the video! (I had a similar moment with the Mr Hyde character and his Mini Mr Hydes in his hat in the movie, but in relation to Voiceplay's Kidnap The Sandy Claws video)

When Elizabeth Zharoff/The Charismatic Voice reacted to this video, she said that the kid at the end (Layne's nephew, apparently), was "adorable". Meanwhile Mortius' reaction to the end scene was "oh I didn't like that! It makes me feel like I'm next!" 😂

Also suddenly just realized that the "real world" scenes are in a different aspect ratio to the "spooky dream realm" scenes? Possibly intentional, but also possibly just due to them using two different types of cameras for the shots.

And that's a wrap! I was hoping to get this done and posted last night but it took longer than expected. Hope you enjoyed it, as I'm thinking of writing up at least one or two more now, and scheduling them for daily releases. See ya!

[artist-issues]

Ok, I've been thinking about your wish posts for quite some time, and I’m very confused, can't seem to follow them. Magnifico's main philosophy is to forget without regret (he, like Faciler, is taking the easy route of life).

Even if a goal doesn't come true or you give up, you should still reconcile with those scars, grow, and let them heal naturally. You say the star thing is sacrificial, but it's not saying Asha is a literal star; she's connected to stardust; it more evokes how God says we are made in the image of him (we are obviously not god, but we are all connected to him and his children).  

Putting aside that, I don't think this movie is religious at all, and I find the implication insane. I think Star is more god, and Magnifico is a false idol and a corrupt leader. Asha sings the lyrics, so I look up at the stars to guide them, much like how the shepherds followed the stars to Bethelheman.

Taking the lyrics of at all costs into account, I'll promise, as one does, I'll protect you at all costs. He's locking them up and stealing their souls, and he wants to seal his people's desire to live so he can achieve ultimate power.

When Asha says I'm a star, she's saying anyone should spread peace and reflect on their scars, and the wishes that are dangerous can be stopped, so if society (Magnifco) decides you are useless or not needed in society, do you listen?

Well, God would never say people's autonomy is useless, like Magnifico, nor do you have to grant everyone's wish, but you can't determine people's way of living or their souls. With no offense, I find your analysis posts to be rather anti-human and I’m curious if you have any answers to these points

First:

Every story is presenting a worldview. If you present a worldview, that worldview WILL come into conflict with other worldviews that say the opposite thing.

Wish may not be saying a word about any one religion—but by presenting the philosophy that human beings have the power of the stars in them, from the star matter inside of them—it is in conflict with several religious worldviews.

"Powerful Stardust Inside Humans" an actual "religion/"worldview out here in the real world. It's founded in the "big bang theory," which as far as I know, guesses that the ancient stars of the universe were made up of helium, lithium, and hydrogen. Then the other elements (the ones that make up us) allegedly gradually formed inside of those, then allegedly blasted all throughout the galaxy during the Big Bang. Therefore, allegedly, life on planet earth is made from star debris, or "stardust."

Then New Age believers take that a step further and decide that this means that a spiritual connection is between us and the stars, which are powerful, because of their religious astrological beliefs.

Which is exactly what Wish is also presenting, as a worldview, in "I'm a Star!" and in every moment where Asha claims she can understand what Star is trying to tell her, and in every moment where the effects artists specifically caused characters' chests to glow with a Star sparkle. Real people in real life believe that real stardust in humans gives them real power.

And that belief is either based on truth, or it's not. People who believe it are either wrong, or they're right.

Because other worldviews believe the opposite of both the New Age idea that stardust has supernatural power, and the opposite of the Big Bang.

Christians, as you know, believe that the world was created (and Earth, which mankind was formed out of, was created before the stars) by the word of Yahweh. They believe the Big Bang Theory is false. They believe that worshipping creations like stars through astrology, or attributing any supernatural power to humans, is false and also wrong.

Other worldviews besides Christianity also don't believe in the Big Bang, or astrology, or New Age spiritualism. But Wish framed Star and the whole "I'm a Star!" song as if these things are the truth...meaning, everything else is not true.

So you can say it had nothing to say about religion, but just by presenting a worldview that is contrary to many religions...it is saying something about religion. It is saying religion is incorrect. Passive-aggressively. But still saying it.

Second:

Star does not represent the God of the Bible in any way.

As I've said before, Star is presented as a higher power, because he is blatantly connected to the wishing stars of other Disney movies—which have been higher powers—but then he's able to be defeated. He's trapped easily by Magnifico. He is unable to rescue himself and has to be rescued by everyone else.

Nothing about that is like the God of the Bible.

Additionally, he's just one star. I feel like everybody is acting like there aren't other stars in the sky—the movie never presents Star the character as the only powerful godlike being in the heavens—in fact, the movie has a line from Asha's father about how "the stars (plural) are there to guide us." There's only one God, the God of the Bible specifically claims to be the only higher power.

Plus, even if Wish were saying that Star is the only wishing star, as a parallel to God's exclusive existence...he does nothing to "guide" Asha.

He doesn't suggest a path for her to take. She just decides she wants to go get Sabino's Wish back, and Star does cute little antics like any super-powered sidekick might to help out, and then she gets Sabino's wish back. Then later, he gives her magical tools that wind up being no help at all—she gets captured by Magnifico anyway. In the climax, he just sort of...pushes on the wishes, then gets sucked into a staff. He very simply does nothing super-helpful. He's just the regular amount of ordinary-helpful to Asha.

Besides, when we say a higher power "guides a character," we usually mean that they offer the hero a choice, and that choice challenges the character to choose what they need instead of just what they want. Like the Blue Fairy (the original wishing star) or Mama Odie. They aren't with the heroes every step of the way, jumping in to do part of the work of the adventure. Jumping in and doing part of the work is what Ray the firefly or Jiminy Cricket do. Star jumps in and does part of the work, like a sidekick; he does not give guidance or direction or a challenge that deepens the hero like the Blue Fairy, or Mama Odie, or The Enchantress. And like I said, he's nothing like God—

—except that he's presented like a higher power who gives guidance, only to actually do the opposite of that, which is a commentary on how the creators of Wish see "higher powers." I can't explain it any more clearly than that.

Also, just for point of reference, the phrase "made in God's image" does not line up at all with Asha's "connection" to Star. Because like I just said, Star's set up like he's supposed to be a higher power but then fails, so he's not that high of a power. Asha's "connection" to Star is a direct link to real New Age Evolutionary spirituality—they say, word-for-word, what New Age Evolutionary Spiritualists say in real life in the song "I'm a Star!"

Which is it: is the movie not religious at all, or is Star God while Magnifico's a false idol?

See, you can't even talk about Wish without acknowledging that it says something about higher powers, I.e. God.

I've already explained why Star isn't an accurate representation of the God of the Bible: he's more an accurate representation of what humanists believe about higher powers: they believe we're all "higher powers." (Which is to say, everyone is powerful and nobody, not stars or gods or nature, is higher than humans.)

But listen—they borrowed the idea of "look up at the stars to guide me" from several different places. One, yes, the Bible. Two, all of navigational history, which uses stars like maps. Three, astrology, which believes that stars give literal spiritual guidance and have an effect on everything that happens on earth. So no. It wasn't a direct one-to-one comparison to the wise men who followed the star to Bethlehem.

Your Claims About What the Movie is Saying:

"He wants to steal people's desires to live" - No, he doesn't, that's not in the movie. All the adults in Rosa's no longer have their wishes; none of them act depressed or suicidal. Not even Asha's mother, after her wish is literally crushed in front of her.

"When Asha says I'm a star, she's saying anyone should spread peace and reflect on their scars" - That's just a theory of yours; it's not supported by the movie. Nobody in the movie wrestled with "their scars." Not even Magnifico. The movie just hints that he lost something in his past—it never fully fleshes out that he's still upset by that, or afraid of losing anything he cares about except power. Asha's father is dead, but other than one line about how nobody should have to live with that pain (which is the opposite of "reflecting" on scars) the loss of her father is never treated like a deep emotional wound she needs to acknowledge or overcome. It's never mentioned again in the movie.

The thing is, none of your points are supportable from what's in the movie. You're reading more meaning into it than the movie actually has—and some of that meaning, the movie itself contradicts.

About how my posts are anti-human:

They're not anti-human. They're anti-humanist, maybe. I don't believe humans are the center of everything. I don't believe they are just as powerful as "higher powers." The point of "higher" powers is that they're HIGHER than what? Higher than humans.

God absolutely does determine what's right and wrong; He invented "right." And He does judge people's lifestyle, and their souls. Sure, Magnifico had no right to do that—but you know what, it's not because "nobody should decide how an individual lives except the individual themselves!" —it's because Magnifico is human. So he doesn't get to judge. God however? God gets to judge. God gets to decide. And He always makes the right decision.

[pebiejeebies]

PART 9 OF MY CABLOON ANALYSIS! GO TO MY #CABLOON-ANALYSIS TAG TO FIND THE FIRST POST! (Or go all the way down for the link :D)

(Btw theory, instead of someone.. well, manually helping him regain his helium, has anyone thought that Balloon could just.. heal over time? Like an injury! Plus, if it WAS someone’s co2, he wouldn’t sound so high pitched!!)

Balloon really outdid himself with the flower honestly, how cute!! 😭

Finally DOESNT get mocked for getting the wrong ingredient 

You can definitely say that again Mephone!! Look at how happy THEY ARREEE ANNANANNNSBBBSBWBBDHENSN AAWWEEEEEE <33333333333

*Wow balloon looks pretty cool*

SAME FACE SAME FACE!! (The top one had many similar faces so it doesn’t count.. ig..?) 

That’s (Still don’t know cause my math sucks)!! I GUESS ITS STILL NOT ENOUGH!

Collection :D

I FUCKING LOVED THIS SCENE SO MUCH ANAHHABABBAHAHAAAA!!

Cabby exposing Balloon in front of his everyone is WILD 😭 POOR BALLOON

NEXT TIME OOOOOOOOONNNN—

Huh, why is balloon holding his breath while the others breathe normally? Hmhmhm… silliest man alive

Balloon was the first to stand beside cabby’s words!! I feel like Balloon would’ve said it himself at some point, but he didn’t know how to word it right, so he waited until Cabby or someone else says it first so he could agree

Like, his face wasn’t shocked or anything, it was more in admiration

or I’m being delusional again 😁‼️‼️

The autistics ever omfg—

MORE OSC CHARACTERS NEED TO BE AUTISTIC!! I DEMAND MORE!1/silly

btw loving how their eyebrows look on the first image woah

Loving these two’s poses in this image too omga

MY BABBIWSSSSS

okay but I’m being so fr rn

why is balloon like.. always beside her???/genq /vpos

I don’t get it omfg,,, like, this episode, he and Nickel are on good terms again, but he STILL wants to stay with cabby more!!

There’s literally no other explanation, they’re actual soulmates

T H I S .

THIS IS WHAT STARTED THIS WHOLE MESS!! THIS WHOLE SCENE. EVERYTHING IN IT

As much as them both feeling a lot better is refreshing, I don’t really feel comfortable shipping them, but if you do, then go with the flow!!

I literally screamed when I saw that balloon VOTED OFF NICKEL. for CABBYYYYYYYYY!!!

He loved cabby’s social talk and aimed his chances to cabby, to blindside Nickel and… TO KEEP HER IN THE GAME AGAIN!!

Noticed that he kinda pushes away Nickel in these voting situations, but fighting to keep cabby in the game

Kinda want these two to interact more, I feel like there’s so much potential with them omfg

D.. do these .. traumatizingly cute toys count..?

I guess they do now

Alrighty guys! I will make the last post now, sry for being late again <33

@ch0cocrave (here you go, since u REALLY loved this :D)

Btw I can’t really edit the last post soooo yep

(First post) — (Next post)

[jcmarchi]

Astronomers spot a giant planet that is as light as cotton candy

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/astronomers-spot-a-giant-planet-that-is-as-light-as-cotton-candy/

Astronomers spot a giant planet that is as light as cotton candy

Astronomers at MIT, the University of Liège in Belgium, and elsewhere have discovered a huge, fluffy oddball of a planet orbiting a distant star in our Milky Way galaxy. The discovery, reported today in the journal Nature Astronomy, is a promising key to the mystery of how such giant, super-light planets form.

The new planet, named WASP-193b, appears to dwarf Jupiter in size, yet it is a fraction of its density. The scientists found that the gas giant is 50 percent bigger than Jupiter, and about a tenth as dense — an extremely low density, comparable to that of cotton candy.

WASP-193b is the second lightest planet discovered to date, after the smaller, Neptune-like world, Kepler 51d. The new planet’s much larger size, combined with its super-light density, make WASP-193b something of an oddity among the more than 5,400 planets discovered to date.

“To find these giant objects with such a small density is really, really rare,” says lead study author and MIT postdoc Khalid Barkaoui. “There’s a class of planets called puffy Jupiters, and it’s been a mystery for 15 years now as to what they are. And this is an extreme case of that class.”

“We don’t know where to put this planet in all the formation theories we have right now, because it’s an outlier of all of them,” adds co-lead author Francisco Pozuelos, a senior researcher at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalucia, in Spain. “We cannot explain how this planet was formed, based on classical evolution models. Looking more closely at its atmosphere will allow us to obtain an evolutionary path of this planet.”

The study’s MIT co-authors include Julien de Wit, an assistant professor in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, and MIT postdoc Artem Burdanov, along with collaborators from multiple institutions across Europe.

“An interesting twist”

The new planet was initially spotted by the Wide Angle Search for Planets, or WASP — an international collaboration of academic institutions that together operate two robotic observatories, one in the northern hemisphere and the other in the south. Each observatory uses an array of wide-angle cameras to measure the brightness of thousands of individual stars across the entire sky.

In surveys taken between 2006 and 2008, and again from 2011 to 2012, the WASP-South observatory detected periodic transits, or dips in light, from WASP-193 — a bright, nearby, sun-like star located 1,232 light years from Earth. Astronomers determined that the star’s periodic dips in brightness were consistent with a planet circling the star and blocking its light every 6.25 days. The scientists measured the total amount of light the planet blocked with each transit, which gave them an estimate of the planet’s giant, super-Jupiter size.

The astronomers then looked to pin down the planet’s mass — a measure that would then reveal its density and potentially also clues to its composition. To get a mass estimate, astronomers typically employ radial velocity, a technique in which scientists analyze a star’s spectrum, or various wavelengths of light, as a planet circles the star. A star’s spectrum can be shifted in specific ways depending on whatever is pulling on the star, such as an orbiting planet. The more massive a planet is, and the closer it is to its star, the more its spectrum can shift — a distortion that can give scientists an idea of a planet’s mass.

For WASP-193 b, astronomers obtained additional high-resolution spectra of the star taken by various ground-based telescopes, and attempted to employ radial velocity to calculate the planet’s mass. But they kept coming up empty — precisely because, as it turned out, the planet was far too light to have any detectable pull on its star.

“Typically, big planets are pretty easy to detect because they are usually massive, and lead to a big pull on their star,” de Wit explains. “But what was tricky about this planet was, even though it’s big — huge — its mass and density are so low that it was actually very difficult to detect with just the radial velocity technique. It was an interesting twist.”

“[WASP-193b] is so very light that it took four years to gather data and show that there is a mass signal, but it’s really, really tiny,” Barkaoui says.

“We were initially getting extremely low densities, which were very difficult to believe in the beginning,” Pozuelos adds. “We repeated the process of all the data analysis several times to make sure this was the real density of the planet because this was super rare.”

An inflated world

In the end, the team confirmed that the planet was indeed extremely light. Its mass, they calculated, was about 0.14 that of Jupiter. And its density, derived from its mass, came out to about 0.059 grams per cubic centimeter. Jupiter, in contrast, is about 1.33 grams per cubic centimeter; and Earth is a more substantial 5.51 grams per cubic centimeter. Perhaps the material closest in density to the new, puffy planet is cotton candy, which has a density of about 0.05 grams per cubic centimeter.

“The planet is so light that it’s difficult to think of an analogous, solid-state material,” Barkaoui says. “The reason why it’s close to cotton candy is because both are mostly made of light gases rather than solids. The planet is basically super fluffy.”

The researchers suspect that the new planet is made mostly from hydrogen and helium, like most other gas giants in the galaxy. For WASP-193b, these gases likely form a hugely inflated atmosphere that extends tens of thousands of kilometers farther than Jupiter’s own atmosphere. Exactly how a planet can inflate so far while maintaining a super-light density is a question that no existing theory of planetary formation can yet answer.

To get a better picture of the new fluffy world, the team plans to use a technique de Wit previously developed, to first derive certain properties of the planet’s atmosphere, such as its temperature, composition, and pressure at various depths. These characteristics can then be used to precisely work out the planet’s mass. For now, the team sees WASP-193b as an ideal candidate for follow-up study by observatories such as the James Webb Space Telescope.

“The bigger a planet’s atmosphere, the more light can go through,” de Wit says. “So it’s clear that this planet is one of the best targets we have for studying atmospheric effects. It will be a Rosetta Stone to try and resolve the mystery of puffy Jupiters.”

This research was funded, in part, by consortium universities and the UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council for WASP; the European Research Council; the Wallonia-Brussels Federation; and the Heising-Simons Foundation, Colin and Leslie Masson, and Peter A. Gilman, supporting Artemis and the other SPECULOOS Telescopes.

[toongrrl-blog]

My Style Analysis: Devi in Ben's Dream Part 2

Alright folks we are gonna take another ring around the rosy everything Ben got thinking of this dream.

One thing I kick myself for despite the fact that both Stranger Things and NHIE are Netflix productions is why I didn't see it sooner.

Devi is likely dressed in an updated version of Princess Daphne from the classic arcade game Dragon's Lair, a Don Bluth production.

Yes the archetypal Damsel In Distress whose character design was based on Playboy pinups, who looks like she'd fall out of her lingerie (lots of fashion tape must be used) and part of the Dumb Blonde stereotype that was used do demean conventionally attractive women AND women who didn't fit the mold regardless of physical appeal. And her Knight In Shining Armor? Dirk.

Despite fitting the archetypal notion of the Knight, Dirk is not drawn as desirably as Daphne, part of the reasons many feminists found the games to be sexist (with Space Ace being a marginal improvement given that Kimberly, a redheaded Daphne, is sassy and spunky and is able to take initiative in saving the day) and Daphne is a passive figure in all this.

Now what about ST2 and NHIE? Well....

In the opener to the 2nd Season of the highly popular sci-fi period piece, the boys (Will Byers, Mike Wheeler, Dustin Henderson, and Lucas Sinclair) head over to a 1984 perfect arcade where Dustin tries to best Lucas's high score at the game only to have Dirk killed by the dragon and Lucas gloat about being able to save the blonde beauty. Why is this important?

Because New Girl in Town Max Mayfield ("Mad Max") beat Dustin's high score on Dig Dug and soon Lucas and Dustin are both in competition for the acerbic tomboy's feelings, thus marking a foreshadowing of who gets the girl.

It's Lucas, of course. But despite time zones, episode by episode conflicts, and decades separating the couples, Lumax and Benvi do have a lot in common. Buckle up because we will be talking about how Western Society treats difference in ethnicity, heritage, race, and appearance and gender.

One thing to make clear that the image of the Knight in Shining Armor and the helpless Princess is often obnoxiously Eurocentric, especially of the Gallic or Anglo persuasion. Princess Daphne is tall, leggy, slim and curvaceous with long, blonde hair and blue eyes with a voice high on helium and a babylike demeanor, a kind of innocence attributed to respectable European women that Karens have exploited for generations often to damaging effects; Dirk is meant to stand in as traditionally masculine but hapless enough to be relatable to the (assumed) male players of the game, all he has to do is save the girl to have any shot with her leading to the unfortunate implication that young men are entitled to the opposite gender, especially the ones considered the most desirable but he isn't classically handsome, historically men have been able to get away with not living up to beauty standards by being able to be identified with their talent, intelligence, heroics, finances, economic savvy, work ethic, virility, strong character, sense of humor, or being a decent person. And of course it's been said (and proved) that white men can get away with being mediocre and still scale the ladder of society, whereas his conditionally white and racialized counterparts have to work harder to even take their steps on an often more perilous ladder.

Historically in our society, both members of the Black and Jewish Diaspora have had a....hard time of it: often as targets of derision, fear, violence, and disdain for the jobs they were sentenced to do (often in less "respectable" areas) and this also affected how (and this is not to take away from how insidious anti-Black and anti-Semite misogyny is, go ask Meghan Thee Stallion and Elana Steinberg) men of these groups were depicted: either desexualized and non-threatening to the point of being humiliated or over-sexualized and "out to take our wimmin" and scapegoated because won't someone please think of the children?

Sometimes if they were "lucky", they got to be "the best friend" to the less ethnic white guy who presents as WASPy. They could be attractive (if not more) or charming (if not more) or compelling to watch (if not more) as the hero but don't get the leading man treatment or are the replaceable awesome love interest who are moved aside for the more flawed and relatable white character (look at Courtney B. Vance in Sex and the City); there is also ugggh beauty standards that favor Eurocentric gentile features over non-European features. Dirk is drawn in that classic homely cartoon guy style while both Lucas and Ben are more conventionally desirable to their girlfriends (and many fans of their respective shows) but while Dirk is entitled to Daphne's affections (and by implication, her body), both Lucas and Ben (who are both younger than Dirk) have to not only save the girl but they also have to gentle their way (a term I learned as a kid) by being more emotionally available and being there for their girlfriend's vulnerabilities and be willing to risk heartbreak. Both @urspopinionsareshit (on masculinity and anti-Semitic tropes) and u/absentminded88 on Reddit (on Lucas Sinclair and tropes focusing on African American masculinity) have wrote extensively on these topics but my point still stands that often men of both diasporas were often overlooked as paragons of ideal masculinity.

Now it's one for the ladies!

I picked these because Max and Devi have something that poor Daphne lacks: illuminating friendships with other women and looks like I will have to toss a wet mildew blanket into the party.

Let's talk feminine stereotypes and difference! *dodges tomatoes*

It's quite a stretch to suggest that both Max and Devi don't fit a conventional eurocentric blonde beauty as both Sadie Sink (who's also a model) and Maitreyi Ramikrishnan are both pretty girls with expressive eyes with slim figures but yet many women of color and redheaded women were often not considered paragons of beauty (if they weren't being over-sexualized as homewreckers and temptresses) and often not considered feminine due to depictions of their "fiery" tempers at best or being seen as castrating harpies. Max and Devi both struggle with their society's view of how girls should behave, have dealt with trauma, not taking shit from boys or authority figures or even other girls, chafing against certain expectations put on them while trying to navigate femininity away from their mothers (who they have strained relationships with) and with the help of mass media (eep). But ultimately both girls find empowerment in their relationships with other women, finding out how capable they really are even with threatening a man with a weapon or destroying his skateboard, and in their own self-expression and put-upon uniqueness. Whereas Daphne existed to look pretty and adore Dirk (and by extension the assumed cis male player), Max and Devi have agency and ideas with formidable personalities that intimidate their peers and do-nothing adult authority figures. If they need saving, they at least try to resist and are capable of it.

This initiative is reflected in the dream: Devi declares her academic accomplishments and capability are superior to Ben's and that is a turn on for him, she manages to Jedi mind-trick his shirt off, and declares she will take charge of their lovemaking. Perfect combo of sensuality, brains, beauty, and gumption.

Both Lumax and Benvi prove that there is an appeal towards seeing couples not fall into strict gender roles where one is more capable than the other and one has work hard to meet a trophy wife standard and about thirty years after Daphne and Kimberly of Space Ace, we have seen the sassy, vocal, independent love interest role evolve from love interest to being the protagonist/main character of her story.

[elendiliel]

The Last Prime

Hold on to your hubcaps; this is a long one, as it covers the whole of "Predacons Rising". (I'm willing to repost it as shorter chunks, if that's more to everyone's liking. It's also on AO3 here.)

As usual, inspiration credits to @justawannabearchaeologist's "TFP Wheeljack in TFA" series. For the ending, I am also indebted to @novafire-is-thinking's ongoing analysis series "Who is TFP Optimus?" Both are highly recommended.

Here goes...

---

“We have endured many hardships and countless battles,” Optimus Prime declaimed, “but at last our home planet has been restored. We would not be standing on Cybertronian soil were it not for the valiant efforts of both those assembled here – including one from far away,” his optics rested on Glitch, who blushed and dropped her gaze to the ground; she hadn’t really done all that much, and certainly no more than her duty demanded, “and our absent comrades. Ratchet, who remains on Earth to safeguard our human friends,” Arcee laid a sisterly servo on Glitch’s shoulder, aware that the young medibot missed her friend and colleague, and was more than a little daunted by the prospect of filling his role, “and Cliffjumper, who made the ultimate sacrifice.” It was Glitch’s turn to put a discreet arm around ‘Cee, Cliffjumper’s partner. She knew his death had inflicted a wound on her comrade that would never fully heal.

“But on this day,” Prime continued, “at the dawn of a new era, we gather to bestow a special honour, one earned by Bumblebee through his bravery and devotion to the cause of peace, long before he rid the universe of the scourge of the Decepticon warmonger.” We hope, Glitch caught herself thinking. Megatrons, in her experience, were pretty hard to kill. “In the company of your fellow Autobots, in the presence of our creator Primus, the living core of our planet, and by the authority vested in me by the Matrix of Leadership,” Prime raised the Star Sabre, a relic of the ancient Primes Glitch had nicknamed Andúril, “Bumblebee,” Andúril touched Bumblebee’s left shoulder, then his right, as he knelt before his leader, “arise, a Warrior.”

As Bumblebee stood up, the rest of the team clustered around to congratulate him, even Glitch, though she was still a bit hazy on why the ceremony was such a big deal – or necessary at all. But then, her Cybertron had been officially at peace since before she came online – helium, before her CO came online – and its class system wasn’t as rigidly defined as that one had been before the Autobot-Decepticon war. While Elite Guard positions were very much sought-after by a lot of young ‘bots, they were, theoretically, open to anybot. And she’d never wanted one. She was more than happy to be a field-tech, a healer and protector, not a destroyer.

Unlike, say, Wheeljack. “Let’s get this party started!” The Wrecker lived up to his unit’s name, triggering explosives he must have planted beforehand in a statue of Megatron. Glitch had to admit to a certain satisfaction as the stone warlord was deconstructed joint by joint, but did Wheeljack have to make such a mess of everything?

Prime allowed them a few cycles of jubilation before speaking again. “I am sorry to interrupt your celebration.”

“Here it comes,” ‘Cee remarked.

“Primes never party,” Bulkhead added.

“You might be surprised,” Glitch murmured, thinking of another red and blue mech, who had a hidden talent for the guitar.

“But I must take my leave of you,” Prime carried on. So soon? Prime had fought at least as long and hard as anybot there, and more so than most. He deserved to enjoy some peace, at least for a while.

“Sir, may I ask why?” Ultra Magnus enquired.

“Though Cybertron is once again able to support life,” Prime began, “our planet is currently incapable of generating new lives.”

“Let me guess,” Glitch interrupted him. “We need the Allspark. I wondered when that box of tricks would enter the picture. And it’s probably safely out in deep space, where almost nobody can find it.”

“That is correct.” Prime wasn’t as surprised that she’d second-guessed him as might be expected. He knew how similar their realities were, in some ways. “I assume yours was hidden for the same reason.”

She hummed in assent. “Cooled the war down a treat, especially when Megatron buzzed off to look for it. And before anyone asks, we post-war ‘bots received our sparks from Vector Sigma.” She was aware that the ancient computer had a counterpart in that reality, but clearly it didn’t have that particular functionality. More’s the pity.

Bumblebee was all for retrieving the Allspark as a whole team, but Prime pointed out that they couldn’t leave Cybertron vulnerable to Decepticon remnants. He assigned Ultra Magnus to organise patrols and hunt down Starscream and Shockwave, and Bulkhead to start the rebuilding of the wrecked planet, prioritising a landing field for other Cybertronians who might come home. Only Wheeljack would go with Prime; he was one of their best pilots, and had wandered the galaxy for aeons before finding his way to Earth and the team. Glitch pulled him aside for a quick word as the party broke up, knowing better than to argue with Prime over non-medical matters. (Wheeljack was also much closer to her in height; sometimes she practically had to shout to get Prime’s attention.)

“Promise me you’ll look out for each other,” she said. “The Allspark may be the source of your life, but if my version’s anything to go by, for individual ‘bots it’s trouble with a capital T, R, O, U, B, L and E.”

“It can’t be that bad – can it?” At least Wheeljack was taking her semi-seriously.

“Let me put it this way. My Allspark nearly flattened the ‘bots it chose as its protectors, then almost got them killed again when Megatron found them. They were missing, presumed dead, for half a century.” A very long half-century for Glitch, who had had two close friends on that crew. Including her now-partner and boyfriend. “Megatron was in stasis and pieces all that time. Starscream tried to use it to level Detroit; it offlined Optimus trying to get rid of Screamer, then revived him. Its power also revived Megatron’s head and allowed him to create the Dinobots and Soundwave before putting him back together again. When he got his servos on it, Optimus had to disperse it to avoid disastrophe, and the fragments are still causing all kinds of chaos. Everything from haywire assembly lines to an immortal Starscream. And its reassembly killed Prowl. Shall I go on?” She could, for quite some time.

“No, that’s enough. I’ll have Optimus’ back out there, I promise, and we both know he’ll have mine.” Prime would always put his soldiers’ and friends’ lives first. Then something Glitch had said struck Wheeljack afresh. “Your Starscream’s immortal? I thought ours was a nuisance, but…”

“He certainly used to be. Most inconvenient in some ways, though I for one don’t actually want him dead. Jazz thinks he saw the fragment keeping him alive being pulled out when he and Prowl were reassembling the Allspark, but his shell was never found. And when it comes to that ‘bot – don’t count him as offline until you see the body, and even then you can still be wrong. Come to think of it, that applies to Megatron, too.”

“Not ours, I hope. Anyway, I’d better get going. Look after Magnus and Bulkhead for me.”

“Wilco.” The Wrecker and the field-tech went their separate ways, the latter hurrying to the ex-Decepticon warship the team was using as a base, suddenly dying to get to work.

***

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! How’re you gonna attach the cladding when the framing structure’s incomplete, huh?” Bulkhead’s voice, followed by a series of metallic clangs and clatters that sounded like something out of a slapstick comedy, must have carried for hics as Arcee and Glitch drove to the building site that was meant to be an air traffic control tower.

“Labour issues?” ‘Cee asked as she transformed beside her old friend. With the Autobots rotating between patrols and their individual duties, Bulkhead was having to work with a crew of Vehicon volunteers whose enthusiasm clearly outstripped their skills.

The answer was self-evident, so Bulkhead changed the subject. “Any news of our fugitives?”

“Just signs of recent scavenging in former Decepticon installations.”

“And the warship can’t detect their life signals?” Bulkhead looked to Glitch, now the team’s only tech “expert” on-planet, who had been making friends with the Nemesis ever since Megatron’s defeat.

“Shielded,” she answered briefly. “Working on it. Needed to spin my wheels, though, and get a vent of fresh – whoa!” Amply demonstrating why some of her teammates affectionately called her “the little monkey” when they thought she wasn’t listening, she scrambled up the side of the half-built tower to where part of the frame was likely to give way. A few nanokliks’ work with her built-in blowtorch, and the problem was solved. She all but jumped back down, eager to be on solid ground again, and rejoined her friends.

“Nice one,” Bulkhead said, appraising her patch job with a professional optic. “How’d you spot that?”

“I’ve done my share of construction work, back in Detroit.” She no longer said “back home”; she had three homes in two universes. (The others’ Cybertron wasn’t one of them, though – yet.) “Urban combat tends to get messy, and it’s only right that we should help fix the damage afterwards. Good PR, too. One learns to see problems before they become serious.” Especially if, like her, one had a talent for pattern-recognition – even at the expense of other abilities, such as face-recognition. “By the way – maybe cut the Vehicons a bit more slack. Not everybot has your expertise.” Bulkhead had been a labourer before the war, so-called “low caste”, protoformed for construction. She hoped she’d found a positive spin to put on that.

Either she had, or he’d hidden his reaction well. “I’m trying, but it’s not easy. If a mistake can be made, they’ve probably made it, even with the basic stuff. I know they can learn, but – honestly, I’d rather have a crew of Constructicons than these guys.”

“Scrapper would definitely help,” Glitch agreed, thinking of the Constructicons back in her universe. “’Specially if Snarl lent a servo as well. Maybe Mixmaster, if we could get hold of enough decent motor oil. Not Dirtboss, though. We’d have an Energon racket on our servos before we knew where we were.” She was partway through describing the diminutive Decepticon’s attempt to control Detroit’s oil supply when Bumblebee called her comm. “Glitch, we need you back here now. Magnus is hurt, badly. I’m sending a groundbridge.” Stars, that sounded serious. Oh well. That was what she’d signed up for.

It was serious, as even a preliminary scan made abundantly clear once she’d reached the Nemesis med-bay, where Magnus was already on her repair table. “Blimey, there’s a lot of internal damage here. Most of it pretty bad. Predacon? New one, I’d say.”

“Yeah, two of ‘em. How’d you know?” Smokescreen had been on patrol with Ultra Magnus, and was still hovering by his commander’s side, not quite blocking her light. Had Magnus been hurt trying to protect him?

“I do have optics. Scorching, impact trauma and denta and claw marks add up to Predacon, but the claw spacing and synth shape and size don’t match Predaking. I don’t suppose you got a good look at their alt-modes?” she asked out of vague curiosity, most of her processor focused on her patient.

“Another dragon and one kinda like a big winged cyber-cat. A griffin, I think it’s called on Earth.”

“We’ll have to find them, and quickly,” Bumblebee put in, having just returned from updating Arcee and Bulkhead on the situation. “How’s Magnus?”

“Not good. I can stabilise him, for now, but we need another medic if he’s ever going to recover fully. Call Ratchet in, or let Knock Out out. In or out, I don’t care, just find someone better than me.” She had already begun to fix Magnus’ most severe injuries, but only her centuries of training kept her servos steady. She’d been qualified for less than two stellar-cycles, and had spent rather less time than that in that universe. And Magnus’ wounds were worse than she felt she could handle alone. “In the meantime, clear out and let me deal with this mess.”

Bumblebee and Smokescreen obeyed without a word, and must have chosen Option A. A short while later, Ratchet barged in, medical kit in servo. The two medibots worked side by side, speaking only when necessary, until Magnus was out of danger and heading towards recovery.

“He’ll be all right,” Glitch confirmed, more for her own benefit than for Ratchet’s. “Thanks for coming at such short notice, and – sorry, for calling you in. I suppose I panicked.” Her first case as the team’s primary medic, and she’d dragged Ratchet out of his semi-retirement to help her. Not a good start.

Ratchet’s servo entirely covered hers. “You did the right thing.” She’d seldom heard such gentleness from either Ratchet, that one or her mentor back in Detroit. “You have talent, but a case like this calls for experience you simply haven’t had time to acquire yet. Trying to handle it yourself would have been the height of foolishness.” He smiled down at his junior colleague. “By the way, you did a good job on Smokescreen during the battle. And Optimus, while I was – elsewhere.” Specifically, aboard that very ship and in Decepticon servos. “Thank you for that.”

Glitch blushed in acknowledgement and gratitude. “Just doing my duty. Practically had to blackmail Prime onto the repair table, though. Is he always like that, or was he just worried about you?”

“Oh, he’s been that way as long as I’ve known him, and still has the temerity to lecture me about my Energon intake.” Rightly so. On at least one occasion, Glitch had had to resort to sleight of servo to make sure Ratchet was properly fuelled. He changed the subject with almost unbecoming haste.  “Out of interest, how are you getting on with the ship’s systems?”

“Making progress, but Soundwave locked all the data storage up tight. And I’m still tripping a lot of alarm codes. Managed to detach them from the actual alarms, though.”

“Not a moment too soon.” Bumblebee had put his head around the door again. “If either of you can spare some time, we’re having a strategy meeting on the bridge.”

“Go,” Ratchet said. “I’ll stay with Magnus.”

“How’s the commander?” Smokescreen demanded the moment he saw her. He was clearly still beating himself up for letting Magnus be injured.

“With time, and rest, he’ll make a full recovery.” Everybot else visibly relaxed at that. They’d probably have preferred to hold the meeting in med-bay, keeping an optic on the patient and making sure both medics were included, but had respected her preference for peace, quiet and privacy.

As it turned out, the meeting was almost over. Their obvious priority was tracking down the new Predacons, no doubt cloned by the still-elusive Shockwave. Glitch would love to know how he’d managed that in the absence of the Allspark; in her universe, Starscream’s various clones and the Lugnuts Supreme had had to be brought online with tiny Allspark fragments. But the other Starscream had cloned himself as well, without any of that. Interesting…

A question for later, though. Bumblebee had a couple of ideas for places to start looking, and Glitch had something important to say.

“I’m coming with you. Ratchet can hold the fort here; stars know he’s had practice. And given what happened earlier, you may well need a medic soon.”

“Actually, I was hoping you’d come along,” Bumblebee said. “I’ve a feeling the first person I want to ask could already do with your expertise.” Such as it was.

His “feeling” was borne out by the fresh Energon trail the scout soon found and followed to its source – Predaking. The wounded dragon-Predacon did not look happy to see them, and the sentiment was mutual; Arcee, Bulkhead and Smokescreen primed their weapons and Glitch readied her shields as Predaking prepared to flame them all, but Bumblebee chose a very different way to deal with the situation. Negotiation. He handled Predaking magnificently, first bluffing him into standing down with a fake Immobiliser, then politely enquiring about the new Predacons. Unfortunately, Predaking claimed to have no knowledge of them, and Glitch for one believed him. As the others started to leave the mighty warrior to brood over the remains of his forebears in peace, though, she looked up from her medical scanner, indicated the site of his still-leaking wound and asked, “May I?”

Predaking just looked bemused, so she explained herself a little further. “I’m a medic, and you’re hurt. With your permission, I’d like to change that latter state of affairs.”

Predaking studied her for a long moment. “You wear the mark of the accursed Autobots, but you do not smell like them, or like any other Cybertronian. You are different.”

“Too right I am. I’m from another universe, but I have some experience treating Cybertronians of this one. You all bleed the same – Predacon, Autobot, Decepticon or neutral.” She forced herself to meet Predaking’s burning yellow optics. “And believe me, if there’d been a way to save the other clones both from the Wreckers and from slavery to Megatron, I’d have done so. What happened was a tragedy, and I give you my word of honour, it will not be repeated on my watch.”

“You speak truth,” Predaking conceded. “As did the other medic, Ratchet, who may have been the first person to show me and my kind true respect. Very well.” He transformed back into his dragon-form, twisting around to display a long cut along one side, awkward to reach, but relatively simple to repair. She fixed it in a matter of nanokliks – it was sparkling’s play after treating Ultra Magnus – and, once she’d found a fuel line, injected a vial of Energon to replace that which he’d lost, before stepping back into his field of vision and bowing. “Until we meet again, Your Highness.”

“Should that prove necessary, little medic.” She chose not to be offended by that as she turned, transformed and raced away after the others.

She soon caught up with them on the way to Darkmount, Megatron’s former citadel, where Knock Out had apparently claimed they could find a list of Shockwave’s old labs. A modicum of hacking – Glitch was getting used to breaking ‘Con cyphers – proved the Decepticon CMO right.

“Well, whaddaya know,” Bumblebee said as Smokescreen messed around on Megatron’s throne and Bulkhead rebuked him. “Knock Out actually shot straight for once.”

“What’d you have to do, scuff his finish?” Arcee asked. Knock Out was notoriously, ridiculously vain, in contrast to Glitch, who was proud of her scratched servos.

“Close. Now, let’s download the data and get outta here.” Glitch was way ahead of him; she’d set the console up to copy the decrypted files straight to a transfer drive the moment she broke the cypher. Which was just as well; a flier, too small and fast to be Predaking, the wrong shape to be Prime, was headed straight for Darkmount. Nanokliks later, one of the last ‘bots any of the party had expected to see landed right in front of them. He was taller and bulkier than he had been just days before, and his optics and biolights shone purple rather than red, but he was recognisably Megatron.

Until he spoke. Whoever was using King ‘Con’s voicebox, it probably wasn’t its original owner. Megatron liked overdone rhetoric, but “minions of the Prime” was a bit much even for him. And “his” voice had extra harmonics that sent a shiver down Glitch’s backstrut as she readied her combat-capable tools. Why was she so tired all of a sudden?

Soon enough, the situation was made clearer. Megatron wasn’t in control of his body – Unicron was. The Chaos Bringer. Widely regarded as a myth in Glitch’s universe; very real in that one. Wait ‘til I tell Bee about this, she thought drowsily and almost nonsensically.

Somehow, she managed to keep pace with the rest of the team as they ducked and dodged Unicron’s fire, but they were clearly outmatched, and evac via groundbridge would require them to get away from their opponent. You’ve been around me too long, she thought hazily as Bumblebee led them, in vehicle mode, between Megatron’s peds, off a ledge and through a tunnel excavated by his blaster. That was the kind of stunt she usually pulled.

They raced through the abandoned corridors of Darkmount until ‘Cee called a halt, not a moment too soon. Ahead of them, the floor gave way to what looked like a deep pool of molten slag.

“What in blazes is that?” Glitch asked.

“A smelting pit,” Bulkhead told her, clearly not wanting to go into detail.

“For once, I don’t want to know.” Mostly because she could guess. All too easily.

Bumblebee barely had time to call for a groundbridge before a lilac explosion behind them announced Unicron-Megatron’s proximity – and threw them all into the air. Bumblebee and Glitch landed on solid ground, but the others ended up hanging over the smelting pit, a chain of terrified ‘bots.

As Bulkhead fought to keep Arcee and Smokescreen from fiery oblivion, Unicron landed Megatron behind him, shaping a pair of hook-like weapons for himself out of lavender light. While Bumblebee held his attention, Glitch climbed up his back, grateful for once for her small stature, and transformed her right servo into a laser scalpel, intending to sever the electrical connection between his right arm and his CPU. But either her fatigue-addled processor had miscalculated, or Unicron’s upgrades had changed Megatron’s internal structure. Where she expected a shower of sparks, deep purple liquid welled from the incision. Dark Energon, she just had time to realise before everything went black.

***

“What’re we supposed to call him, huh? Megacron? Unitron?”

“Really? That’s your biggest issue right now?” The familiar sound of Smokescreen and Arcee bickering greeted Glitch as she came back online. Somehow, they’d survived and returned to their mobile base.

“Megacron sounds better,” she put in, “but Unitron emphasises the fact that it’s Unicron driving the bus, so to speak. Either would work.”

“You’re awake.” Ratchet sounded more than a little relieved – to someone who knew him well. “How do you feel?”

“A little more stasis wouldn’t hurt, but all systems are nominal.” She’d run a self-diagnostic the nanoklik she returned to consciousness. “What happened?”

“It appears you are hypersensitive to Dark Energon. Simply being in Unicron’s presence may have been enough to weaken you, and exposure to that which flows through Megatron’s system caused almost immediate stasis. You’re lucky to be in such good shape after a fall like that, by the way.”

“I’m tougher than I look. And I did feel tired pretty much as soon as Unitron showed up – as though I’d just pulled three shifts in a row.” Her record was four. Not an experience she planned to repeat. “How did we get back here?”

“Ratchet opened a groundbridge above the smelting pit,” Smokescreen answered. “Just as the floor gave way under Bulkhead. Bee scooped you up and jumped right into it.”

“Bet that annoyed Megacron.” As the others moved on to debate their next move, and tried to contact Prime and Wheeljack, Glitch called up the results of a scan she’d made during the battle with Unitron – and a couple of other files. Fascinating… “Ratchet, would you mind providing a second opinion on something?”

“Not at all.” As Glitch sat up on a makeshift repair table that had been set up on the warship’s bridge, the Autobots’ current HQ, Ratchet seated himself beside her, leaning down to examine her datapad. “What am I looking at?”

“Megatron’s sparkbeat, recorded during his last physical exam. Before you ask, I needed access to the medical files in case any of the Vehicons were injured, and if Knock Out wanted to anonymise these data properly, he probably shouldn’t have called the folder “Big M”.” Ratchet conceded the point with a shred of a laugh. She switched to another file. “This is Unicron’s sparkbeat, pulled from your records of his last awakening. And this is a scan of the being currently walking around in Megatron’s upgraded shell. What do you make of it?”

“It looks as though – Unicron’s sparkbeat has been superimposed onto Megatron’s, somehow.”

“That’s what I thought. I think Megatron’s still alive in there. Maybe he couldn’t join with the Allspark because of Dark Energon shenanigans. Unicron’s in control for now, but Megatron’s pulled a Master at least once before. If we can reach him – maybe he’ll do it again.”

“Pulled a Master?” Glitch really had to stop making references the others wouldn’t get.

“Doctor Who. The Master’s another renegade Time Lord, Megatron to the Doctor’s Optimus, if you like. He wants to conquer the universe, not see or protect it, but occasionally he refuels more than his system can handle and has to team up with the Doctor to save his own circuits.”

“I see what you’re driving at. It might be worth a shot, but don’t pin all your hopes on that. Megatron has a strong will, but Unicron is a god.”

“And human mythology’s full of gods defeating each other, or being beaten or tricked by mortals. But I’ll keep all my options open.” Seeing that the others had stopped trying to contact the away team, she and Ratchet headed over to join them. “Any luck?”

“No response. Maybe they heard us and can’t transmit for some reason; maybe we’re on our own. Either way, we need to figure out why Unicron’s here.”

“And what he wants.” Bumblebee finished Arcee’s sentence.

“To destroy the spark of his arch-enemy, Primus.” Ratchet stated what should have been obvious.

“But that’s the core of our planet!” Yes, Smokescreen, we know.

As ‘Cee complained that the situation was unfair, and Ratchet responded in typically dramatic fashion, Glitch headed over to another console and resumed one of her projects. She had an inkling it, and the ship itself, would be needed very soon.

“In other words, life’s not fair,” she said from beneath the console when Ratchet had finished. “All the more reason to make our own fairness.” Hm. That gave her another, trivial idea.

***

“Crikey O’Reilly!” (Maybe Glitch had spent a little too long researching Earth culture.) “That looks like some seriously bad mojo.” (And a shade too long around Jazz, if that were possible.) Armed with the knowledge that Megatron was in some way still alive, the Autobots had just started tracking down his exact location – only to see an energy spike at the same position. Under the circumstances, probably a type of energy Glitch had encountered for the first time earlier that day, but knew about from the others’ stories. Dark Energon. At the Predacon burial ground. That and Unicron’s presence couldn’t add up to anything good.

Specifically, the most likely summation was an army of reanimated Predacon shells (why not more modern Cybertronians? Because they were more accessible, or more powerful?), heading for the Well of All Sparks to undo all the Autobots’ hard work.

“So what do we do?” Bulkhead asked.

“We put ourselves between Unicron’s army and the Well.” Bumblebee’s strategy was simple and sound. They couldn’t afford to wait for Prime, Wheeljack and the Allspark; they had to act, and the warship was their greatest asset.

“Glitch, you’ve been working on this ship since we took it over,” the newly minted warrior said to the field-tech. She had, especially in the previous few hours. It was better than worrying about the away team, or getting in Ratchet’s way as he monitored Ultra Magnus. “Think you can pilot it?”

“He’s a bit bigger than Moth, and I might have to stand on something to reach the controls, but a ship’s a ship. I’m not touching the weapons, though.” In her reality, no self-respecting Autobot used such things if they could help it.

“I wouldn’t ask you to. Bulkhead, can you be her co-pilot and main gunner?” And ready to take over in the event of further Dark Energon exposure, he carefully didn’t say.

“’Con engineering. User-friendly, right?” Particularly when an Autobot had spent days refining the controls – and adding in a few of her own.

Once Ratchet and Ultra Magnus had been transported to safety on the surface, the remaining ‘bots were soon on their way to intercept Unicron’s horde. Glitch had forgotten how much she enjoyed piloting. She was usually scared of heights, but flying a ship she trusted was fine. It didn’t make much sense, but that was often the way with her anxiety. She might have been a microgram rusty, though.

“Whoa, easy!” Bulkhead reached for the controls as she banked to port a little too sharply, sending crewmembers and loose objects sliding across the deck. “You’re flying a warship, not a cruiser.”

“Sorry.” She levelled out, never taking her optics from the instruments in front of her.

“Primary fusion cannons, null-rays, ion blasters – everything we need to stand a fighting chance against Unicron’s army.” Bumblebee listed off the ship’s complement of death-bringers. Glitch wondered idly what had become of the stasis ray she had seen mentioned in the team’s files. That was much more to her liking. Non-lethal, non-destructive and reversible.

“Should be able to buy a fair amount of time for the others to get here,” she remarked to Bulkhead as Arcee complimented Bumblebee on his leadership skills. “Before our circuits get fried.”

“Ah, c’mon! Where’s that famous optimism?”

“It opted out when I saw the scale of our problem. If Prime and Wheeljack don’t show up in time, the odds of our survival are slim indeed. I can’t calculate the probability that they will, and even if they do we’ll still be outnumbered – but I do like those odds.”

“I guess we can only try,” Bulkhead just had time to say before the most annoying person on the planet arrived on the bridge.

“Autobots!” Starscream, and a squad of Vehicons, levelled missiles and blasters at the crew. “Surrender this warship!” Everyone but Glitch turned to face down the intruders – then stopped short, for reasons she only understood when Screamer boasted that he had the Immobiliser, a device that caused instant, lasting stasis-lock.

“And in case you’re wondering, Smokescreen is in no position to come to your rescue.” Glitch could see Knock Out reflected in the viewport in front of her, wearing Smokescreen’s phase shifter. The young ‘bot had been fetching the Immobiliser and another relic, the Polarity Gauntlet, from the ship’s vaults; he must have been intercepted on the way back.

“Climb down and step away from the console,” Starscream commanded her, “or I’ll freeze you and simply drag you away.” Or, more likely, get one of the Vehicons to move her.

“Either use that thing or put it down,” she countered, digits still flying over the controls. “Waving that glowstick of destiny around just makes you look even more like an idiot.” Starscream wasn’t an idiot, she knew, but that was far from obvious. “But if you do use it and miss, you’re likely to hit this console and drop us all out of the sky. And if your aim is good enough,” she activated one of her custom settings, “good luck flying this ship with the isomorphic lock active.”

“Isomorphic lock?” the bewildered Decepticon asked.

“User recognition system I just finished installing. The controls will only respond to designated pilots. And I couldn’t add you or anyone else to the list and fly at the same time, even if you forced me.”

“Ah, Screamy won’t use the glowstick on any of us,” Bulkhead said from where the Vehicons had herded the other Autobots into the centre of a circle of ‘Cons. “He needs us if he’s gonna stand any chance of surviving Unicron.”

“You misunderstand,” Starscream told him, Glitch forgotten for the moment. “I do not intend to use this warship for battle, but for quickly getting as far away as possible from this doomed planet.” Someone was jumping to conclusions.

“Earth would be nice,” Knock Out commented, “now that Unicron no longer seems to be calling it home.” That particular Decepticon did seem to have a soft spot for that world, or at least its cars.

“Shut up!” Starscream lived up to the second half of his name. “Now, deactivate that lock and move away from those controls, Twitch,” the name’s Glitch, “or get stiff.”

“There’s just one thing you’ve overlooked.” What was Bumblebee playing at? Oh well; at least he might have spared Glitch another round of trying to outsmart Megatron’s most cunning lieutenant. “That device you’re holding? Not the Immobiliser.”

In the viewport, Glitch saw Starscream take a moment too long to figure out whether or not the warrior was bluffing. In that moment, the Autobots counterattacked, taking down the Vehicons within nanokliks. Starscream lunged for Bumblebee, and somehow got the upper servo almost as quickly. “I will silence you forever!”

No! She turned, magnets and EMP generator sliding into place – just in time to see a flawless claw-tipped servo phase through the Seeker’s chest, take the Immobiliser and belt him into stasis with it.

“Now will you believe I’m joining the winning team?” Knock Out asked, still holding the remains of the broken relic.

“Knock Out! We needed that!” Ratchet’s common complaint was as good as a “yes” from Bumblebee.

“Wait – it – really was the Immobiliser?”

“Good riddance, if you ask me.” Glitch turned back to her console, but not before giving Knock Out a friendly smile. She rather liked the other medic, despite herself (and hated the idea of putting anybot in permanent stasis-lock). “And welcome to the team.”

***

“Are we there yet?” Smokescreen asked as he, Arcee and Knock Out returned from locking Starscream up. (And, owing to the deployment of Glitch’s best scraplet eyes, checking him over.)

“We’re right on schedule,” Bulkhead replied.

“And so is Unicron,” Bumblebee added.

“Let’s get his attention, then,” Glitch said, before sending the ship into a steep dive, and Knock Out skidding across the deck, the moment the gunners were in position.

Just one strafing run was enough to draw Unicron’s Terror-Predacons away from the Well – and towards the ship. Glitch should have been terrified, but as a power surge pulsed through her circuits, analogous to a human’s adrenaline rush, all fear was burned away. She didn’t even feel the buzz at the back of her head that distinguished reasonable fear from the product of her cross-wired processor. Twisting, turning, diving, soaring, almost dancing between the undead Predacons like a young, less skilled Hera Syndulla or Powerglide, anchored to her console by the safety straps on her legs usually used by human riders, she even found herself struggling not to laugh.

Not everybot was amused, though. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Knock Out asked, clinging for dear spark to an unused console.

“Oh, relax. I learned from Omega Supreme’s mentor.” Her Ratchet, to be exact, who was also her mentor. Might that make her Omega’s sister in some way? Now that would be weird.

“I’d never have guessed. You fly like a Wrecker,” Bulkhead remarked.

“Thank you.” Coming from one of the last of the black-ops unit, she knew that was a compliment.

At that moment, the conversation was interrupted by a ship-shaking impact, which must have done some serious damage. “One engine is down,” Bulkhead reported. “It can be jump-started, but not without compromising our shields. We don’t have any other spare power.”

“I do.” Glitch had prepared for that possibility. She tore a couple of wires from beneath their console, flipped open a panel on her own forearm and crosslinked the two systems before even she could think twice. “Good grief.”

“You OK?”

“Fine. It’s just – more intense than I expected.” The connection she had forged wasn’t a full gestalt powerlink, like a combiner’s, but it still flooded her processor and frame with sensation. With an ordinary ship, she’d probably have gone into shutdown or meltdown almost immediately. As it was, though, it was a simple matter to direct power from her own systems into the inactive ones, giving them the spark they needed to start up again.

While she was distracted by that, a reanimated Predacon she and Bulkhead hadn’t managed to avoid slammed into a viewport right by Knock Out, who jumped back, yelling, “Zombie-‘Con! Zombie-‘Con!”

Bumblebee and Smokescreen moved in front of him, weapons at the ready, but they needn’t have bothered. A burst of yellow flame incinerated the mobile corpse, and a few others.

“Predacon,” Glitch said to herself with more than a little satisfaction.

But even their new allies couldn’t be everywhere at once. Despite Glitch’s modifications to their shields, despite her tweaking the engine burn to turn even their drive plume into a weapon, the ship started to take critical damage faster than she could compensate for it. They couldn’t stay in the air much longer, but Glitch had one last SD card under her plating. Almost by sheer willpower as much as by using the failing thrusters, she placed the ship directly above a flock of fliers. “Brace for impact!”

The warship dropped like the proverbial stone, its fall cushioned by several squashed Terror-‘Cons, skidded on their spilled fuel, and finally came to rest bare mechanometres from the Well of All Sparks. “Everybot all right?”

“Nothing a little carnauba wax won’t fix up.” Really? That was Knock Out’s priority?

Glitch bit back the sassy remark she wanted to make, focusing on the bigger picture. “I wish I could say the same for the Justice. It’s going to take weeks to get him back in the air.”

“You renamed the Nemesis?”

“Of course. The old name was too negative. Revenge is never good, but justice can be – especially if it’s restorative, not retributive.”

Mercifully, Knock Out chose not to get into that argument, though he did his best to start another one. “I say we leave it here to rust, if we even survive what’s coming.”

“Over my cold, offline shell! This is a Cybertronian we’re talking about here!” Knock Out looked surprised and confused. “You didn’t know?”

“Know what?” Bulkhead asked, still recovering from the crash.

“This isn’t just a ship. He’s a Metrotitan. Trypticon, to be exact. Stasis-locked, but alive. I recognised the general layout and file architecture from my Omega Supreme,” all the Omega Sentinels, really; they had been her sparklinghood obsession, “and did some digging.” That was how she had coped with the powerlink. Even in deep stasis, Trypticon’s mind had shielded hers. She vowed to repay him by bringing him back online.

If she lived, that was. The fight wasn’t anywhere near over, and the greatest danger was yet to come. She disconnected herself from Trypticon, then had to brace herself against her console as her systems registered that she was running on fumes. She’d prepared for that, too, and withdrew a canister of green liquid from a hidden drawer below the controls, consuming the contents in one go and making a face. It tasted worse than boot-camp rations.

“Is that Synth-En?” Knock Out was right to be wary. He’d once been soundly beaten by Ratchet under the influence of an early version of synthetic Energon.

“The stable one, yes. Shockwave didn’t have time to destroy his manufacturing facility, though he locked the controls up tight. I had to ask very nicely just for one dose. But if this doesn’t counter the effects of Dark Energon exposure, nothing will.”

Luckily for her, it did. Even outside the protection of the Justice, with a trail of Dark Energon staining the ground, she was still ready for battle as the Autobots (including one recent defector) lined up in front of the Well, the Predacons – Predaking, another dragon and an ursagryph, easily mistaken for a griffin; Smokescreen had been nearly right – landing behind them, all braced for the fight of their lives.

“Stick close to me,” she said to Knock Out, indicating her shield with one magnet. “Finish protector.”

“I’m never going to live that down, am I?” Knock Out seemed resigned to the fact. “Speaking of finishes, yours could do with quite a bit of work.”

True, but… “Don’t have time. And I’m still surprised you do.”

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way. And if we both get out of this alive, at least let me do something about your hands. They’re painful to look at.”

Glitch spared a brief glance for the offending components. Yes, they were scuffed, but she liked them that way. They showed that she worked for a living; that she wasn’t some spoiled upper-class sparkling or privileged academic. If fixing them up would make Knock Out happy, though… “All right. When we survive this.”

Her optimism wasn’t universal; after all, as Bumblebee pointed out, they were the last line of defence for the Well and the planet. Not the safest role in the universe.

“I would recommend leaving that,” Predaking “suggested”, “to those more suited for the task. Skylynx! Darksteel! Allow nothing to enter the Well!”

Without another word from anybot, the three living Predacons transformed back into their alt-modes, leaped over the Autobots’ heads and charged their undead ancestors. Their flames held back the horde of Terror-‘Cons for a little while, but there were just too many of them; Predaking and his new subjects were swept into the Well, still fighting denta and claw to slow the advance of Unicron’s army.

“Really? This is how it ends?” Bulkhead asked in disbelief.

“We’re not losing our planet,” Bumblebee declared. “Not without taking Unicron with it.” One recently reawakened deity sharing a body with a very angry and independent ex-gladiator against seven extremely determined warriors, six of them fighting for a home they had only just regained, the seventh fighting for her friends. One almost had to feel sorry for the Chaos Bringer. Almost.

The power surge that had carried Glitch through the dogfight was fading at last, followed by the Synth-En’s most obvious effects, allowing fear to take up residence in her processor once more. She ignored it with the ease of long practice. She didn’t stop climbing because she was scared of heights, or making friends because she was scared of losing them. And she certainly wouldn’t back down from a battle because she was scared of dying and leaving her loved ones. All the same – that would be a really good time for the away team to show up.

As if on cue, Magnus’ ship (borrowed by Wheeljack), the Iron Will, swept overhead. The relief in Bulkhead’s voice was shared by the whole of the party as he said simply, “Optimus.”

“I never thought I’d be so happy to see that big rig,” Knock Out added.

“Expeditionary fighting vehicle,” Glitch corrected with her volume turned down low. Knock Out clearly didn’t know Prime had scanned a new alt. (Two new alts, technically, but his dinoform was supposed to be a secret.)

Prime himself disembarked from the Iron Will in midair, flying straight for Unicron, but the dark god fired on the bigger target first. A spear of purple light hit the retreating spacecraft right next to one of the engines, knocking it out of the sky.

“’Jackie!” Before anyone could stop him, Bulkhead transformed and drove off to check on his downed joint-best friend. Arcee tried to follow, but Glitch held her back as she and Knock Out exchanged glances. One medic had to go with Bulkhead and one had to stay behind, but which should be which?

“You go,” Knock Out said. “Wheeljack’s not exactly up to speed with recent developments.” He was right; even injured, the reckless Wrecker would probably attack the ex-‘Con on sight.

“Copy that.” Glitch transformed and raced away towards the crash site, sparing as many prayers as she could for all her friends.

By the time she reached the wrecked ship, Bulkhead had already found Wheeljack and was about to try to move him. She hadn’t arrived a moment too soon. As she knelt beside her patient, she kept thinking of Ultra Magnus lying dented and leaking on her repair table, and her inability to save him by herself. This isn’t like that. Ratchet said you have talent, and Wheeljack’s tough. You can do this.

“You’re lucky,” she told the white sports car once her preliminary scan had finished. “Not many ‘bots survive a crash like that with mostly superficial injuries. There’s still some internal damage, though, and you seem to have hit your head pretty hard, so stay off your peds for a while.” To Bulkhead, she added, “We’d better take him and the Allspark outside before this mess gets any worse. But next time, wait for a medic before trying to move a casualty if possible.”

“I’ve been worse,” Wheeljack informed them a little vaguely as they ‘bothandled him out of the ship, the Allspark in its glowing, floating container trailing behind.

“I’d hate to see that,” Glitch shot back before realising that she had – after Wheeljack’s and Magnus’ fight with Predaking that had cost the commander a servo and his signature weapon. Wheeljack hadn’t quite had time to repair the Forge of Solus Prime before setting off to retrieve the Allspark. He’ll have time soon.

Especially with Prime back in the game. The Autobot leader chose that moment to arrive, unharmed and not visibly grieving; the others were probably fine, then, and holding Unicron’s attention.

Wheeljack cut straight to the chase, as befitted a sports car. “So, how’re we gonna get that thing to safety?” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the Allspark.

“By the only means available to us,” Prime replied, “under these most dire of circumstances. The very survival of our species on this or any other world depends upon it.” He outlined his plan; Glitch calculated that it would almost certainly work, and the bait-and-switch element appealed to her, but her spark dimmed to a flicker as she realised what the consequences would probably be, and when he met her optics and gave her a barely perceptible nod, it was practically a single photon.

Nobot else had any better ideas, though, and Prime’s plan didn’t need her, so as he and the Allspark flew back to the Well, she concentrated on things she could do. Fixing Wheeljack and returning to the others.

They got there just in time to see Unicron pry the Allspark’s container from Prime’s servos, having shot him out of the air. “I shall devour your Allspark whole!”

Quite the reverse, as he realised when he opened the container. “What? A trick!” They were the last words he spoke in Megatron’s body; the vessel forged for the source of Cybertronian life, emptied of its former contents, pulled his “anti-spark” out of his stolen shell and sealed it away, hopefully for good. Nanokliks later, a fusillade of explosions echoed up from deep in the Well, indicating that Unicron’s Terror-‘Cons couldn’t “survive” without him. The planet was safe at last.

Megatron’s frame had crashed to the ground as Unicron left it, but as Prime began to explain what had happened to the other Autobots, and Starscream (must have escaped in our crash) turned up like the proverbial bad shanix, he started to get up again, his optics a familiar red once more (though his biolights remained purple). Starscream heaped praise on his master, sounding rather like his alternate’s sycophantic clone, but Megatron’s reaction was somewhat unexpected. When his SIC referred to ruling Cybertron, Megatron refused. Quite forcefully.

“Because I now know the true meaning of oppression,” he said when asked why, after exchanging a long glance with his former friend Prime, “and have thus lost my taste for inflicting it.”

Starscream tried to bluster his way back to familiar ground (or air), but Megatron was having none of that. “The Decepticons are no more, and that – is – final.”

“A sensible Megatron,” Glitch remarked. “Wonders really will never cease.”

Megatron’s optics eventually sought her out, standing in the shade of the Wreckers. “Ah, the visitor from another universe. Tell me, what became of my counterpart in your reality?”

“Last I heard, he was still in prison, having been defeated and captured – by a maintenance crew.” And a few friends of theirs, but she chose to keep things simple.

“A maintenance-?” Megatron stared at her in disbelief for an uncomfortable moment. Then he threw back his head, and a sound rang out that had not been heard from the warlord in many, many stellar-cycles. Great peals of pure, genuine, joyful, sparkfelt laughter.

***

Once again, the Autobots (including Knock Out) gathered under Cybertron’s sun, this time at the edge of the Well of All Sparks. Once again, Prime was making a speech. And once again, it was a bittersweet occasion, though only two people knew why. Unicron was imprisoned, his army had disintegrated, Megatron, Starscream and the Predacons were literally in the wind and Shockwave wouldn’t try anything until the odds were in his favour. Only Prime and Glitch were aware of or suspected the full cost of that victory, though the former was about to change that.

“In order to both protect the Allspark,” he began, “and secure Unicron’s defeat, it was necessary for me to empty the vessel’s contents.”

“Into where?” Bumblebee asked.

“The Matrix of Leadership.” The repository of the wisdom of all past Primes, housed in the current Prime’s spark chamber. Not wholly unlike another Matrix in Glitch’s favourite television programme, she thought, trying desperately to distract herself from what she knew was coming. “As such, my own spark can no longer be separated from the multitude of others within me.” There it was.

“Are you telling us,” Ratchet now also knew what Prime had to do, “that you are now – one with the Allspark?”

“Heh, that’s what you say when someone kicks… the…” Smokescreen’s voice trailed away as he came to the same conclusion.

“Exactly,” Glitch said, her voice already heavy with sorrow.

Smokescreen rounded on her, suddenly furious. “You knew? And you didn’t say anything?”

“It’s not something one drops into casual conversation. And – I hoped, for once, I was wrong. But after what happened to Prowl – I’m just surprised it’s taken this long.” Her predecessor back in Detroit had donated his own spark to complete a partially reassembled Allspark, which had killed him instantly.

“To not return the Allspark to the Well,” Prime managed to get them back on track, “would be to prevent future generations of new life from existing on Cybertron.” Which, after everything they’d gone through, was unthinkable. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. “My quest must be completed.”

“Optimus,” Ratchet objected, “I didn’t return to Cybertron to save a life only to lose the one I care most about.” Glitch hadn’t even considered the effect on her colleague of losing his Amica. She resolved to be there for him, as much as he and her processor allowed, for as long as he needed her.

“Ratchet’s restored planets!” Bulkhead pointed out. “He’ll find a way to save you!”

“We can turn to Vector Sigma, just like we did before,” Arcee chimed in.

Prime was immovable. “Because the Matrix must now be relinquished with the Allspark, it cannot be restored, or passed down to another. But while this may very well mark the end of the Age of Primes, leadership can be earned with or without the Matrix.” Too right. There was no such thing in Glitch’s universe, to her knowledge, but Cybertron still functioned – mostly. Her own Optimus Prime had no ancient relic on which to call, but was growing into a great leader nonetheless. “And in my view, you have each acted as a Prime.” Steady on!

As his gaze fell on Knock Out, the medibot managed a self-deprecating, “Well, I never really had the best role models.”

“You have them now,” Glitch told him, her optics sweeping across the assembly. Three fierce warriors, three loyal and brave Wreckers, one dedicated doctor – and, of course, the leader who had stood by his people through thick and thin, fighting side by side with them, caring for each and every one.

“As even Megatron has demonstrated on this day,” Prime continued, “every sentient being possesses the capacity for change.” He turned away, towards the Well, activating the stabilisers on his jetpack – then turned back to say one last thing. “I ask only this of you, fellow Autobots.” Yes, that includes you, a brief glance at Knock Out seemed to say. “Keep fighting the noblest of fights.”

“You can count on us to keep the peace.” Bumblebee spoke for all of them, as he so often had since regaining his voice.

Reassured, Prime turned away again and flew high into the air, before letting himself fall directly into the Well. Every optic remained fixed on the shortcut to Primus even after he had vanished and every ‘bot there heard his voice once more – over comms, or in their heads? It was impossible to tell. “Above all, do not lament my absence, for in my spark I know that this is not the end, but merely a new beginning. Simply put, another transformation.”

Just go forward in all your beliefs, and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine, Glitch thought as she and her friends watched a multicoloured multitude of sparks rise from the Well. But the words of an even older, even wiser character than the Doctor felt more appropriate. I will not say: do not weep, for not all tears are an evil. She couldn’t cry, but at such times she often wished she could.

For the others’ sake, though, she kept it together until she was in the privacy of her tiny room on the Justice, had put some music on (a human piece, Elgar’s magnificent setting of Newman’s poem The Dream of Gerontius, describing a soul’s journey to the Christian afterlife) and had fired up her terminal (a faithful-as-possible copy of the ones she had left behind in Nevada and Detroit and on her Cybertron) to pour her feelings out into her own music. Before she could make a start, however, a file caught her optic. It hadn’t been there before, and was entitled, “For Glitch.”

She ran a virus scan (one can never be too careful), then opened it. It was a text file, written in an old Cybertronian dialect, laid out like poetry or song lyrics. From the little she understood, she knew they would fit her nearly-finished “Song for Cybertron” perfectly. They captured not just the joy of finally seeing the planet restored and Cybertron’s intrinsic beauty, but also the long aeons of conflict and darkness that preceded that restoration, and the countless Cybertronians who would never see it, those whose shells still lay beneath their world’s new surface and those who had fallen far away. All of them, regardless of faction. Skyquake, Dreadwing and Breakdown would be remembered, just like Tailgate, Cliffjumper and Seaspray. All Cybertronians bled the same – within one universe, at least.

The lyrics were simply signed “OP”. Optimus Prime or Orion Pax? she wondered. The firebrand archivist or the gentle general? And did it matter? They were aspects of the same person, the same spark under different armour. She had fought alongside Optimus Prime, and talked late into the night with Orion Pax. She knew she would miss all of him, whatever he – or she – might want.

When had he written them? According to the file’s embedded metadata, it had been created after Bumblebee’s warrior ceremony, most likely after Prime and Wheeljack left Cybertron, and added to her terminal while she was helping transport Ultra Magnus to the Well. With so much else to worry about, he had taken the time to set words to her music – having first got hold of her draft, somehow. Ratchet had access to all her files, and would do a great deal for his Amica; he’d probably copied it at some point after she casually mentioned that she was writing a song that was crying out for words she couldn’t give it. Prime had obliged – as a farewell gift, it had turned out. “Stars, Orion…”

As the great baritone Bryn Terfel thundered out, “Proficiscere, anima Christiana” – an ancient prayer over the dying – she finally opened her composition software and began a new piece. One that would tell the story of a young ‘bot who dared to look beyond the limits set for him, to dream of a better world, and to work with – not merely for – the oppressed in his unjust society, using his higher status to help them where he could. Who humbly accepted rank and responsibility for the sake of his people. Who, when war came despite his best efforts, knew the names and stories of all his Autobots, and regretted every death, even those of enemy soldiers. Who stayed kind and hopeful even in exile, ceaselessly protecting the organics on his new homeworld – and exacting retribution when one of those in his special care was hurt. Who would tear off a Decepticon’s door to save a human he didn’t know, and give up most of his memory for a planet not his own. Who had remained an Autobot at spark, even when tricked into believing he was a Decepticon. Who had, at last, sacrificed that spark for his renewed world, and whose legacy lived on in the people whose sparks and hearts he had touched.

Though he had told them not to mourn, her spark didn’t even listen to her processor at times, let alone to anyone else. She did grieve for him and the hole he’d left in so many lives, and the piece reflected that. A lament for the last Prime.

[miirshroom]

I feel like I should make a schedule or something for clearing out my Elden Ring drafts. As an overview of the essays I have in progress:

Key References to Tolkein's Legendarium

Astrological Zodiac and calibration of the FromSoft meta-narrative

The influence of Kuon (2004) on Miquella's storyline

Radagon Anagrams and Word String Theory

Atomic Shells and the discovery of Helium

Literary Parallels to a certain other story that is constructed around Alchemy and Witchcraft

Atomic Decay of Nihonium: a comparison of the spontaneous fission of Dubnium to the 7-step decay chain ending in Californium

Visual references to the Vatican, Rome, and Pompeii

Australia

I also have a tangential analysis of the thematic subtext in .Hack//Sign that's sitting at near complete, but I need to acquire screencaps.

[foodfightnovelization]

Chapter 1: Analysis and Discussion

So we're starting where almost every good story starts: at the beginning. But even before the beginning, we have to talk about the inside cover page. It's not mentioned on the front, but here we can see this was written by children's author Irene Trimble. I'm only taking the time to point this out so A. People know who wrote this, and B. because Irene Trimble ALSO wrote the junior novelization for Disney's Wreck-It Ralph, a movie which is very conceptually similar to Foodfight. (Even down to being mostly about original characters and only featuring famous ones in cameo roles). Lawrence Kasanoff, Joshua Wexler, Sean Derek, Rebecca Swanson and Brent Friedman are also given writing credit, although this is clearly just for the script to the movie itself.

Anyway with that out of the way, the first page of Chapter 1 is mostly identical to what's seen in the finished film- the last customer of the night says goodbye to Leonard, the manager, as he closes up the supermarket for the day. The dialogue is even exactly the same! So nothing much to talk about so far. Incidentally though, in an early trailer for the movie from 2002, the sign above Leonard's supermarket says "Carlson's Market". In the finished movie from 2012 however, the sign says "Marketropolis Market" (which is a far worse name, in my opinion). Here neither name is used, so I guess we'll never know what the store is called in this version of the story!

The following page of Chapter 1 continues as the lights of the grocery store shut off and the place closes for the night. For a brief second everything is still, and then it miraculously comes to life, transforming into a bustling metropolis. The shelves turn into buildings, and the mascots of various products turn into "Ikes" (short for "brand icons"). This term isn't used right away in the novelization, however it's used so frequently in the movie itself and also later in the book that I think we should establish the preferred nomenclature right away.

Anyway, with the supermarket now full of life we focus in on a "large bird in glasses" who sees a helium balloon drifting across the store and says "We're in a pickle now!". It's not explicitly spelled out, but this is clearly supposed to be the Vlasic Stork (the mascot for a real-life brand of pickles.) Presumably they couldn't get the rights to any real-world brands for the novelization, so it's just being alluded to here as much as possible without saying his name. This is a trend that's also seen in author Irene Trimble's later work on the Wreck-It Ralph novelization, where none of the videogame characters are actually named but instead just implied (e.g. simply referring to Zangeif from Street Fighter as a large Russian wrestler.) The Vlasic Stork also doesn't have any dialogue in the actual movie, so it's up to interpretation whether this line was added to the novelization to clarify who he was, or if it was in the movie at one point but cut out.

Riding the helium balloon is Fat Cat Burglar, the mascot for the Fat Cat Litter brand. In the movie, this character is introduced without explaining who he is or what he's the Ike for, so it's nice to get some clarification here. We also get introduced to our main character, Dex Dogtective, the mascot for Cinnamon Sleuth cereal. In the novelization, he jumps from atop his shelf onto the giant balloon, but in the movie he's introduced already standing atop it. In general, this whole sequence so far has played out slightly differently to how it does in the movie, but not enough to be hugely noteworthy so far.

Okay, here we are on the next page and just like I did a few paragraphs ago, the book has established that brand icons are named "Ikes" in this world. It's good to be ahead of the curve though, right? Dex tells Fat Cat Burglar to hand over a basket of stolen kittens or else- this dialogue is mostly identical to how it is in the movie. However, of note is that Fat Cat Burglar is described as an "overstuffed cat" here, with mention of him twirling his whiskers. Now, I don't know if you've seen the actual movie (Please say you have I can't imagine why you'd be reading this blog if you haven't) but in the movie, Fat Cat Burglar is clearly a giant rat.

I mean, look at him, that's a rat. There's no two ways about it, there's no mistaking him for an entirely different species. So either Irene Trimble read the script and just assumed from the name that Fat Cat Burglar was a cat himself, OR at some point during production the character WAS actually a cat and this was changed later on. We may never know! But here, in the novelization, we can say for sure that he's a cat. Moving on, the rest of the page continues very similar to the movie- Fat Cat sends a group of hamster henchmen after Dex with the intention of pulverizing him.

Dex proceeds to beat up the hamsters with some slick martial arts moves before throwing them off the balloon with a roundhouse kick. This doesn't happen in the movie at all- already the differences are starting to add up. In the movie, he simply throws a piece of cheese off the balloon and the hamsters mindlessly run after it before falling Looney Tunes-style into the streets below. It's just Dex and Fat Cat now, and Dex demands he hand over the basket of kittens. Fat Cat refuses, and explains he needs to use the cats to make "black market Kitty Litter cookies" and Dex takes the time tell him this idea is in fact terrible and weird. Again, the explanation for why he's stealing kittens in the first place isn't in the movie either! 4 pages in (there are 128 total) and there are already so many differences! It makes you wonder just how different the rest of the novelization is gonna be, right?

Dex punctures the balloon with a cocktail sword and catches the kittens in midair, before using his price tag gun like a whip/lasso (think Indiana Jones) to hook onto a nearby building and land himself safely in nearby Produce Park. In the movie, Fat Cat gets a line of dialogue as the balloon flies away crying "I just wanna be loved...IS THAT SO WRONG?" that isn't present here at all, but that's about the only difference.

Dex hands over the basket of kittens to Hairy Hold, a fox Ike and the mascot for a brand of hair-care products. This character isn't a part of the scene in the movie, and in fact isn't introduced until later on, but here the novelization briefly tells us who he is and what Dex thinks about him. Dex also changes out of his leather jacket and hat (again, think Indiana Jones) into a fancy white tuxedo, however in the movie he's still in his adventuring getup for the rest of the scene.

As Chapter 1 draws to a close, we're introduced to Hedda Shopper, a newspaper reporter who remarks this is the five-hundredth case he's solved as head of the USDA (the United Supermarket Defense Association, not the United States Department of Agriculture) and asks what his secret is. Dex delivers his catchphrase "The secret's inside", and the chapter draws to a close. There's not a whole lot to say here as this exchange is identical to how it is in the movie.

So, that's Chapter 1 of this strange, strange book. 6 pages in and there are already major diversions from the movie, which is common for novelizations (they're usually based on earlier drafts of a movie's script, e.g. the infamous Back To The Future novelization) but it's especially interesting with Foodfight as it had such a troubled production, and like I mentioned at the start of this blog this appears to be the only copy of the novelization in existence so nobody else has EVER seen this. It's cool to get some insight on how this movie changed over the course of production, right? And that's not even getting into the changes to the story made in later chapters... if you thought THIS was different from the final film, you ain't seen nothing yet.

Stay tuned for the analysis/discussion of Chapter 2, coming soon!