#it was build for an earlier form of space exploration

[bugblast]

current alien mech design

[acapelladitty]

something lost, something gained

Summary: After being snatched by human traffickers while exploring an abandoned schoolhouse, Lucy fights to survive as she waits for Cooper to find her. (3.9k words)

(warnings for: attempted sexual assault, biting, blood, face slapping, groping, violence, murder, aftercare, hurt/comfort, cooper trying his best in a bad situation)

Fic Masterlist

Link to AO3

Awaking with a languid groan, Lucy's eyes flittered open for only a moment before slamming shut again as a dull pain to her temple made her wince and gasp. Raising her right hand to press at the skin, she was surprised to find her left hand moving in tandem and her eyes snapped open as she realised that her hands were bound together.

Gazing down at the coarse rope which encircled her wrists, panic arose in Lucy's chest as she glanced around the small, cell-shaped room and immediately understood that she was not anywhere recognisable. It didn't even look like the same building she last remembered walking into.

"Cooper?" Calling out with a dry, uncomfortable voice, a sense of irritation laced the anxiety which rolled through her. "What the fudge? Why am I in here?"

The door to the cell creaked open and Lucy glanced up from her slumped position to see a man she did not recognise fill the doorway. He was very tall, head almost brushing the top of the door frame, with a mop of raggedy blonde hair hanging limply across his shoulders and something in the way he looked at her made her skin crawl with unspoken danger. An instinctive disgust which made her mouth tighten.

"Finally awake." The man spoke, his voice sharp, light and slightly pitched. "We were worried we'd done some real damage to your head there."

At his words, Lucy finished her earlier assessment as her fingers once again grazed the hard lump which had formed on her temple - the skin feeling raw and wounded under her fingertips. Dragging her fingertips away, she found them flecked with her own blood.

"Who are you?" She asked, wide eyes darting across the limited space. "Did Cooper put you up to this? Or my father?"

"Don't know who any of those people are but we saw you going into that old schoolhouse with a ghoul so we snuck in, waited for you to split, and gently smuggled you out."

Gently smuggled.

The wound on her head suggested otherwise.

"Why?" A reflex question, one Lucy didn't think she wanted the answer to as the blonde man took a small step in her direction to stare down at her with a lecherous smirk.

"Cause you're in our territory and you're ours now. Me and my buddies have a little side business going on and you're our latest catch." His gaze roving across her white tank top and blue pants, one of his hands settled on the visible bulge of his groin as he winked at her. "We take them, break them, and pass them on to be sold. 50/50 share. And, baby, let me tell you, you're gonna fetch us a pretty price."

The panic in her chest now clawing at her heart as she scrambled her back against the cool stone of the wall, Lucy felt sweat break out across her body as she took in his candid admission with open-mouthed horror.

"No. You can't-"

"Yeah. I can smell the vault on you so I know you probably aren't rolling with the same diseases as all the other cunts we pick up."

Flinching at the term, Lucy fell back into what she knew best as old defense mechanisms kicked in to protect her as best they could.

"Let me go and I'll get you whatever you need. Caps, meds, weapons. I know people who could hel-"

"You?" Laughing openly at her offer, the man steadied himself against the doorframe. "Maybe that bulky ghoul we saw you with could have worked some muscle for us but you haven't got shit we need. Well, aside from-"

His hand still groping sleazily against his bulge, the man stepped fully within the cell and kicked the door shut before him. An action which made Lucy jump as her body shuddered and tensed to the point of discomfort, sensing the danger and violence to come.

"You see, cunt. I'm much nicer than my two friends out there and I'm willing to cut you some slack. Wrap your lips around my cock and suck it like your life depended on it, and I'll tell the boys that you're willing to be a good girl for us. They'll even leave their nasty 'breaking in' toys at the door if they think you're gonna be a good girl."

As he spoke, his body inched closer towards Lucy and her fingers shook terribly as she struggled against the rope holding her wrists, vision quick to blur as genuine fear rocked through her body.

He's going to rape me. Repeated in her head like a cruel, merciless mantra. The elders had told them what rape was, explained that they needed consent to ensure that everyone in the vault was happy and able to share their bodies without problem. They knew, in the vault, they all knew what was okay and what wasn't.

"Cooper!" She hollered out, voice breaking on the second syllable as she attempted to back up against the wall enough to scramble to her feet. "Please, fudge, someone help!"

A memory rose, unbidden in her mind as Lucy rolled her back against the wall. Not long after her body had started to change, one of the elders, a slender old guy named Ernest, had caught her in the gardens. He had asked her questions about her changing body, questions that made her heart feel heavy in her chest as a sense of how wrong he made her feel forced her to back away from him.

He had moved to grab her, his hand wrenching her arm away from her chest when her father had appeared from nowhere. He had been causal in his greeting but even as a child, she had noticed how tight her dad's smile was and how quickly he ushered her back to her room so he could have a quick chat with him.

Ernest died soon after. One of the first to be lost to the latest famine as the crops failed due to an unknown blight. She hadn't questioned it then, too many good people had been lost, but now, in this moment where that same childish fear weighed heavily at her limbs, she wondered if her father had killed him for what he had tried to do.

Kicking out with her feet as the man dropped to his knees before her, his fingers were quick to lock around her ankles - pulling her free of the wall and stealing the breath from her lungs as her head collided with the floor.

"Please, no. Don't do this! No!"

"First times always the worst."

Flashing rotted teeth at her as he straddled her waist, his hands pinned her own roped palms to her stomach as he burrowed down into her space. His breath was awful, smelling foul and rancid, and it sparked a retch in Lucy's throat as she twisted her head to the side. His tongue trailed across her cheek, tasting the grime on her skin as he growled in her ear.

"Just gotta remember to be a good girl and-ARGH!" Breaking off into a pained scream, the man reared back as blood poured from his mouth to drip down on her tank top.

Spitting out the large portion of tongue she had ripped free with her teeth, Lucy used her attackers moment of stunned pain to knock him free of her body. Crawling on her knees, she almost made it to the door when a rough hand wrapped around her hair.

"Stupid cunt!" The words lisping due to his injury, the man's hand was like fire in her hair as he snatched at her scalp viciously. "Gonna break your fucking nose for that."

Yelling as her hands locked around a small shard of metal that lay by the closed door, the man's foot having accidentally knocked it within the cell as he entered, Lucy gripped it tight as she spun on her knees, digging the shard deep into the closest foot she could reach before pulling it free with a vicious twist.

A fresh cry of pain broke free of her attacker as he crashed to the ground, his hands tight around his foot while he snarled obscenities at her.

Fuelled by adrenaline, fear and rage, Lucy pounced on him like a cat, knocking his back flat to the floor as she stabbed the metal as roughly into his throat as she could. Memories of her fraudulent husband flashed before her eyes and she hollered a vicious snarl as she dragged the metal through his skin until the blood flowed and the gurgling of his throat ceased.

Breathing heavily, she stayed in that position until his glassy-eyed stare repulsed her, the scent of fresh blood making her heave anew. Body shaking and mind rattling, it was only when a new voice broke the silence that she jumped as though an electric bolt had fired across her spine.

"Fuck, Petey. She's killed Owen."

Rolling off the corpse, Lucy was quick to take her earlier position - her stained fingers clutching the metal shard as her back pressed against the wall once more.

"Owen was always a dipshit. We'll be better off without him." The taller of the two newcomers added.

Looking just as filthy as the first guy, Lucy's eyes were wild as she pointed the metal at each of them in turn.

"L-let me go. I'll do the same to you." She stuttered, a sinking feeling of despair making her skin feel cold and clammy. "I've killed people before and you'll be next."

Glancing between themselves, both men burst out into a cruel laughter and their movements were quick as they descended on her. Fingers already trembling, it was easy for them to wrestle the metal from her hands and pin her to the floor; their much larger bodies easily holding her knees apart as they pressed them to the floor with their own legs.

Rough hands fished inside her tank top and Lucy found herself unable to do much but bare her teeth and fight off a sob as her chest was pulled free of her bra; breasts spilling over the fabric as matching grunts of approval escaped her attackers.

"They'll do nicely. Fuck, might not even sell this one, what do you think?" The one named Petey asked, his free hand gripping at her chin painfully as he tilted her head to the side in a crude inspection.

Cupping her left breast as though weighing it in his hand, the other man flashed a yellow smile at her.

"Could play with her for a few weeks without going to the others. Would you like that? A few weeks with us and then a ten minute walk up north to meet the rest of the boys?"

Refusing to answer as a fat tear rolled free of her eye, Lucy chose to remain quiet and not give them anything as she struggled in vain.

"You owe us for you did to Owen." The second man continued, his face an open leer as he released her jaw. "So I'm gonna fuck you and then Petey is gonna fuck you and then we're both gonna fuck you. Then you're gonna open those pretty lips wide for-"

"No."

A sharp hand collided with the side of Lucy's face, the blow catching her across the mouth and bursting her lip open in an instant as the taste of copper flooded her mouth.

"Not asking, cunt."

Their hands were all over her, one set fondling her breasts while the other pulled at the hem of her tank top to expose her stomach. They were everywhere and the feeling of them, hot and heavy atop her body, made her feel sick - her throat constricting and panicking as her breaths came short and fast.

The vague sound of the door slamming open touched at her senses but it felt so far off that she didn't think much of it until all hell broke loose.

A fresh splatter of blood sprayed across her face, the sensation matching by a booming gunshot which made her ears ring in the small space as the taller of the two, Petey, collapsed dead atop her - a hole leaking blood and brains from the front of his forehead to her exposed chest.

In shock, both Lucy and the remaining man stared at the corpse for a second before Lucy felt half the weight on her body disappear as the final attacker was pulled free. Her eyes unfocused and blurred with tears, she saw the flash of familiar, tattered leather which hurled her would-be attacker against the wall.

Sounds of exertion were quickly followed by a fresh death gurgle as Cooper's knife flashed in his hand for only a second before being drawn across her attackers throat; the arterial spray swiftly coating Cooper's clothed chest as he let go of his prey and allowed the fresh body to drop to the floor.

Not trusting her eyes, Lucy tilted her head back and cast her gaze to the dingy ceiling as her thoughs spiralled into a messy haze.

After a moment, Cooper's face swam in her vision and the close sight of him sparked a myriad of emotions within her; shock giving way to genuine relief before settling on fear as she took in the genuine fury which blazed in his stark white eyes as they darted across her battered face and disjointed clothing.

He wasn't angry with her, she knew that, but the sheer rage which rolled from his coiled frame made her want to curl into a ball and hide away from it. He smelled of leather and blood, the scent of fresh violence making her nose twitch as the corpses of her attackers lay motionless, crowding the floor of her cell.

"S'alright, I got you, sweetie." Cooper's hands were firm but gentle as he wrapped them around her shoulders, hoisting her enough that she were able to lean against the wall in a sitting position.

Despite everything, his voice was like a balm and she relaxed into his touch as her trembling fingers were gripped within his own - his knife glinting once more as he quickly severed her bindings and let the rope fall to the floor. In an instant, her knees snapped to her chest as her arms looped around them, her body curling in on itself as a wave of nausea made her throat feel tight.

Still on his haunches before her, Cooper studied her for a solid moment before matching her position as he leaned against the opposite wall, his legs outstretched and his back straight against the cool stone.

"Fix yourself, darlin'. I'd offer but I don't think you want another monsters hands on you before the day's out."

Keeping her knees tight, Lucy brought trembling fingers to her chest - her relief at being saved having made her forget about her state of undress - and she tucked her breasts away back into the off-white bra with a lifeless motion, the skin feeling sensitive and sore due to their abuse. Made decent, her arms were quick to loop around her knees once more, her chin sitting atop her knees as a gloomy, far-off expression graced her features.

"Did they-" A half question which Cooper quickly thought better of as he abandoned ship and adjusted it on the fly. "You okay?" It was a quiet ask, the words so low that Lucy knew she could ignore them if she wanted to.

"No," she stuttered, feeling weary despite the adrenaline which still pulsed in her veins, "but I have to be because what else is there. So I have to be."

Making a small noise of agreement in his chest, Cooper's gaze rose to the ceiling as he plucked his hat from his head and dropped it to the floor by his open lap.

"That you do, darlin'. Nothing else for it."

They sat in silence for a bit, the only slightly pained sounds coming from Lucy's throat as she adjusted to the various aches which afflicted her body. Her face was the worst as her temple throbbed like a bitch and her burst lip felt huge and ugly against her mouth. The bodies forever doomed to lay in messy piles, Lucy's eyes ghosted over them and settled on the growing patches of blood which each steadily leaked to the cell floor.

"You killed them all?" She said, already knowing the answer and unsure why she even asked.

"Not all of them. One of them was already dead when I got here and I'd recognise the teeth marks in that hunk of ripped tongue anywhere." Despite the guarded nature of his tone, there was a spark of warmth as he flashed his, well, her, finger at her, and Lucy swore she heard the slightest hint of pride leaking through. "You did good, sweetheart. You fought like a hellcat and you didn't let them win."

"Didn't win." Lucy mumbled miserly. "You did."

"Oh, I have no doubt you would have gotten them both in the end. They might have taken a few strips from you, but that fire in your belly would have scorched them dry."

Mouth upturning at the praise as she fought off the urge to cry, Lucy swiped at her eyes with the back of her hands as her breathing quickly grew erratic.

"All these bullshit lessons you've put me through and it still wasnt enough." She blurted out with a desperate gasp. "They're evil. I hate it here. I hate their cruelty. I hate their hurting. I hate-"

Finally unable to hold back the swell of emotion which threatened her, Lucy broke off on the final word as a heaving sob replaced any chance she had of cohesive speech. It was something raw and unfiltered, mourning the loss of some part of herself that would never be returned as she was forced to mold herself into a creature of violence and hate just to survive in their world.

Cooper, to his credit, let her cry without any false sympathies or interference. His face lacked any judgement, the hole in his face flexing slightly as he inhaled and exhaled steadily, eyes never shifting from Lucy's sobbing frame. Something difficult to pin down flashed through his gaze as though a multitude of possible outcomes were pushing at his thoughts.

After some internal debate, a grunt slipped free of Cooper's lips as he leaned across the short space and pulled at Lucy's shoulder.

So lost in her own misery, Lucy didn't fight the pressure of his strong hand as he pulled her to the side, dropping her to the floor in such a way that her head pressed against the upper part of his legs as she faced away from him. It did nothing to stop her tears, but it did give her something to lean on as he immediately retracted his hand to fold his arms fully across his chest.

Cooper's thighs were like unyielding steel beneath her head, giving Lucy something solid to pin her senses on as she fought to quell the quiver of her lip and the shudders which continued to wrack her body. Their journey had been hard and the hunt for her father was a disaster of interference and dead trails of information.

This was just the latest set-back in a long list of utter shit.

Offering her no other physical support, unsure if it would cause her to act out or break down further, Cooper waited until her breathing was a little more even before speaking again.

"Be sad." He paused, allowing the rare piece of advice to sit heavily in the air between them. "Be angry. Feel that fire in your gut burn so hot that you get the fear it's gonna burst free and raze everything around you to the ground. Hell, curse the day your momma brought you into the world if that's how you feel. But don't break."

Stopping once again, Cooper felt a rare moment of genuine pity for the woman as he glanced down at her. Lucy Maclean, who foolishly tried to choose peace in a peaceless world, still had a lot of learning to do when it came to the way that same world worked.

He could only show her so much, some lessons had to be learned the hard way, and if she could take them, then he would do his part to keep her whole.

"Whatever they do to you, survive it. Skulk off, lick your wounds, come back stronger. Get that revenge your blood sings for." Speaking as much to himself as her, Cooper allowed her a peek into his own thoughts, an insight he knew she wouldn't fully understand quite yet. "Never let them break you. Better off dead than broken in this world."

Gathering herself enough to shakily speak, Lucy gripped Cooper's knee with clawing fingers as she clung to him like a lifeline.

"There's more of them. Ten minutes up north. That's who they were- who they were going to sell me to."

"More side-tracking bullshit." Cooper sighed but his voice grew more contemplative as his gravelled tones mused on her words. "That said, been a while since I hunted down some proper vermin. No bounty. No rules. Might be fun to let loose for once."

He let the idea hang in the air, curious if she was hinting at what he suspected she was.

"You coming with me?"

"Yeah."

Unseen by the shaking Lucy, a pleased smile split Cooper's lips as he glanced down at her steady answer.

It wasn't often he took on a companion, far less one that he'd actually indulge, but the odd woman intrigued him with the hypocrisy of her very existence. A vaultie with a edge, naive blood screaming out for wrongs to be righted just like his own as she fought alongside him like a harpy.

It did help that they both wanted her dear old daddy strung up like the traitor he were.

But revenge would see her right.

She was owed a debt by those who had tried to take her, a debt of honor, and he would see that she avenged it in a glorious explosion of violence that would help keep her nightmares at bay as they would leave no doubt that the beasts responsible were well put down and unable to haunt her.

By gun or by knife, she would get at least that.

He had seen the broken ones. The ones used and abused by so many across the wastelands that they gave up everything and became husks even more devoid of humanity than the ghouls who lost the battle and went feral. It was a fate worse than the many deaths he'd experienced in his time.

No one deserved that.

Especially not Lucy Maclean.

His hand ghosting over her head, fingers only an inch away from her fine head of mousy hair, Cooper tilted his head to the side as he took her exhausted frame in.

"Sleep for now, vaultie. Time for this little killer to save her strength. So take it for what it is and when you wake, we'll see about righting some of the wrongs that happened here."

Feeling more safe with the violent ghoul who had shown her the new reality of her world than any other of the awful creatures she had met since leaving her vault, Lucy's eyes fluttered close as his voice washed over her and exhaustion claimed her before she could do anything to muse on that odd feeling of safety.

Links to the rest of the series:

Part 1

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

[myfandomrealitea]

I really wanted to ask you about this:

Do you have any advice of how to develop critical thinking and media literacy?

There are many, many ways you can practice critical thinking, evaluation and media literacy. At its most basic, you can access student resources for lower levels of education like earlier high school years and look at the examples and guidance given there. Rehashing this will often give you a good foundation to build off of and apply.

One of the main aspects of critical thinking involves discerning what is fact and what is opinion. A good portion of media analytics is opinion. What is 'bad' by one person's standards is 'sub-par' or even 'great' by another's. Similarly, the majority of fandom space is opinion-based. The main pitfall of fandom spaces is that everyone wants their opinion to be taken as fact, which is where critical thinking and even basic communication begin to fall away.

"I'm right and you're wrong" and "this is the way it should be, if you do it or think differently, you're wrong" are common roadblocks people run into when engaging with things like media analysis and even basic fandom activities like fanfiction.

'Mischaracterisation' is fanfiction is one popular topic, especially here on Tumblr. What people often fail to recognize is the true creative depth of fanfiction and using someone else's pre-existing characters. Characters as they are in the source material may not make the choices or behave in the ways necessary to activate or validate certain plot material or author intentions in fanfiction. Which is, inherently, one of the main points of fanfiction. Exploring the alternate.

While you might immediately recoil and say "he'd never do that!" you then have to sit back and recognise that that's exactly the point. That this iteration of that character is not meant to directly reflect the source material. Its a re-imagining, a re-interpretation. That doesn't mean its bad. Its simply different.

'Mischaracterisation' is only actually applicable in fandom spaces when someone is trying to insist as a blanket fact that a character would do something or behave in a way that blatantly contradicts their canon behavior, opinions, morals and perspective or deliberately interpreting an action in biased bad faith. It is not actually applicable to fanfiction where creative liberty dictates you can do whatever the fuck you want with a character because you're not trying to claim it as part of the source content.

Questions To Ask Yourself

Am I reacting to [media] emotionally instead of rationally? Is my emotional response to [media] blinding me to the rational or critical approach(es)?

Am I allowing my expectations to get in the way of me understanding [media] fully? Am I forming a biased negative opinion of [media] because it isn't meeting my expectations?

Even if I disagree with [media], do I actually understand it? Can I recognise the reasoning behind choices made or actions even if I don't agree with them?

Am I searching too hard to hidden meaning or purpose in absolutely everything? Can I recognise what is simply passive information/detail and what is active information/detail? (E.g; English tutors saying a character's curtains are blue because they're depressed when throughout the literature its passively reinforced that blue is the character's favorite color.)

Even though I disagree with the statement or opinion shown, is it necessary to argue against it? Is there any benefit to making my counter-opinion known or is it simply a no-end argument? Am I just using arguing as a means of release/fulfilment? Am I treating this person poorly because of their opinion/statement?

Resources

Critical Thinking Exercises & Explanations #1 The Critical Thinking Activity Workbook Early Stage Critical Thinking Games Five Media Literacy Activities Six Media Literacy Ideas

[fatehbaz]

imperialism and science reading list

edited: by popular demand, now with much longer list of books

Of course Katherine McKittrick and Kathryn Yusoff.

People like Achille Mbembe, Pratik Chakrabarti, Rohan Deb Roy, Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert, and Elizabeth Povinelli have written some “classics” and they track the history/historiography of US/European scientific institutions and their origins in extraction, plantations, race/slavery, etc.

Two articles I’d recommend as a summary/primer:

Zaheer Baber. “The Plants of Empire: Botanic Gardens, Colonial Power and Botanical Knowledge.” Journal of Contemporary Asia. May 2016.

Kathryn Yusoff. “The Inhumanities.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers. 2020.

Then probably:

Irene Peano, Marta Macedo, and Colette Le Petitcorps. “Introduction: Viewing Plantations at the Intersection of Political Ecologies and Multiple Space-Times.” Global Plantations in the Modern World: Sovereignties, Ecologies, Afterlives. 2023.

Sharae Deckard. “Paradise Discourse, Imperialism, and Globalization: Exploiting Eden.” 2010. (Chornological overview of development of knowledge/institutions in relationship with race, slavery, profit as European empires encountered new lands and peoples.)

Gregg Mitman. “Forgotten Paths of Empire: Ecology, Disease, and Commerce in the Making of Liberia’s Plantation Economy.” Environmental History. 2017, (Interesting case study. US corporations were building fruit plantations in Latin America and rubber plantations in West Africa during the 1920s. Medical doctors, researchers, and academics made a strong alliance these corporations to advance their careers and solidify their institutions. By 1914, the director of Harvard’s Department of Tropical Medicine was also simultaneously the director of the Laboratories of the Hospitals of the United Fruit Company, which infamously and brutally occupied Central America. This same Harvard doctor was also a shareholder in rubber plantations, and had a close personal relationship with the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, which occupied West Africa.)

Elizabeth DeLoughrey. “Globalizing the Routes of Breadfruit and Other Bounties.”  2008. (Case study of how British wealth and industrial development built on botany. Examines Joseph Banks; Kew Gardens; breadfruit; British fear of labor revolts; and the simultaneous colonizing of the Caribbean and the South Pacific.)

Elizabeth DeLoughrey. “Satellite Planetarity and the Ends of the Earth.” 2014. (Indigenous knowledge systems; “nuclear colonialism”; US empire in the Pacific; space/satellites; the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.)

Fahim Amir. “Cloudy Swords.” e-flux Journal #115, February 2021. (”Pest control”; termites; mosquitoes; fear of malaria and other diseases during German colonization of Africa and US occupations of Panama and the wider Caribbean; origins of some US institutions and the evolution of these institutions into colonial, nationalist, and then NGO forms over twentieth century.)

Some of the earlier generalist classic books that explicitly looked at science as a weapon of empires:

Schiebinger’s Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World; Delbourgo’s and Dew’s Science and Empire in the Atlantic World; the anthology Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce, and Politics in the Early Modern World; Canzares-Esquerra’s Nature, Empire, and Nation: Explorations of the History of Science in the Iberian World.

One of the quintessential case studies of science in the service of empire is the British pursuit of quinine and the inoculation of their soldiers and colonial administrators to safeguard against malaria in Africa, India, and Southeast Asia at the height of their power. But there are so many other exemplary cases: Britain trying to domesticate and transplant breadfruit from the South Pacific to the Caribbean to feed laborers to prevent slave uprisings during the age of the Haitian Revolution. British colonial administrators smuggling knowledge of tea cultivation out of China in order to set up tea plantations in Assam. Eugenics, race science, biological essentialism, etc. in the early twentieth century. With my interests, my little corner of exposure/experience has to do mostly with conceptions of space/place; interspecies/multispecies relationships; borderlands and frontiers; Caribbean; Latin America; islands. So, a lot of these recs are focused there. But someone else would have better recs, especially depending on your interests. For example, Chakrabarti writes about history of medicine/healthcare. Paravisini-Gebert about extinction and Caribbean relationship to animals/landscape. Deb Roy focuses on insects and colonial administration in South Asia. Some scholars focus on the historiography and chronological trajectory of “modernity” or “botany” or “universities/academia,”, while some focus on Early Modern Spain or Victorian Britain or twentieth-century United States by region. With so much to cover, that’s why I’d recommend the articles above, since they’re kinda like overviews.Generally I read more from articles, essays, and anthologies, rather than full-length books.

Some other nice articles:

(On my blog, I’ve got excerpts from all of these articles/essays, if you want to search for or read them.)

Katherine McKittrick. “Dear April: The Aesthetics of Black Miscellanea.” Antipode. First published September 2021.

Katherine McKittrick. “Plantation Futures.” Small Axe. 2013.

Antonio Lafuente and Nuria Valverde. “Linnaean Botany and Spanish Imperial Biopolitics.” A chapter in: Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce, and Politics in the Early Modern World. 2004.

Kathleen Susan Murphy. “A Slaving Surgeon’s Collection: The Pursuit of Natural History through the British Slave Trade to Spanish America.” 2019. And also: “The Slave Trade and Natural Science.” In: Oxford Bibliographies in Atlantic History. 2016.

Timothy J. Yamamura. “Fictions of Science, American Orientalism, and the Alien/Asian of Percival Lowell.” 2017.

Elizabeth Bentley. “Between Extinction and Dispossession: A Rhetorical Historiography of the Last Palestinian Crocodile (1870-1935).” 2021.

Pratik Chakrabarti. “Gondwana and the Politics of Deep Past.” Past & Present 242:1. 2019.

Jonathan Saha. “Colonizing elephants: animal agency, undead capital and imperial science in British Burma.” BJHS Themes. British Society for the History of Science. 2017.

Zoe Chadwick. “Perilous plants, botanical monsters, and (reverse) imperialism in fin-de-siecle literature.” The Victorianist: BAVS Postgraduates. 2017.

Dante Furioso: “Sanitary Imperialism.” Jeremy Lee Wolin: “The Finest Immigration Station in the World.” Serubiri Moses. “A Useful Landscape.” Andrew Herscher and Ana Maria Leon. “At the Border of Decolonization.” All from e-flux.

William Voinot-Baron. “Inescapable Temporalities: Chinook Salmon and the Non-Sovereignty of Co-Management in Southwest Alaska.” 2019.

Rohan Deb Roy. “White ants, empire, and entomo-politics in South Asia.” The Historical Journal. 2 October 2019.  

Rohan Deb Roy. “Introduction: Nonhuman Empires.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 35 (1). May 2015.

Lawrence H. Kessler. “Entomology and Empire: Settler Colonial Science  and the Campaign for Hawaiian Annexation.” Arcadia (Spring 2017).

Sasha Litvintseva and Beny Wagner. “Monster as Medium: Experiments in Perception in Early Modern Science and Film.” e-flux. March 2021.

Lesley Green. “The Changing of the Gods of Reason: Cecil John Rhodes, Karoo Fracking, and the Decolonizing of the Anthropocene.” e-flux Journal Issue #65. May 2015.

Martin Mahony. “The Enemy is Nature: Military Machines and Technological Bricolage in Britain’s ‘Great Agricultural Experiment.’“ Environment and Society Portal, Arcadia. Spring 2021. 

Anna Boswell. “Anamorphic Ecology, or the Return of the Possum.” 2018. And; “Climates of Change: A Tuatara’s-Eye View.”2020. And: “Settler Sanctuaries and the Stoat-Free State." 2017.

Katherine Arnold. “Hydnora Africana: The ‘Hieroglyphic Key’ to Plant Parasitism.” Journal of the History of Ideas - JHI Blog - Dispatches from the Archives. 21 July 2021.

Helen F. Wilson. “Contact zones: Multispecies scholarship through Imperial Eyes.” Environment and Planning. July 2019.

Tom Brooking and Eric Pawson. “Silences of Grass: Retrieving the Role of Pasture Plants in the Development of New Zealand and the British Empire.” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. August 2007.

Kirsten Greer. “Zoogeography and imperial defence: Tracing the contours of the Neactic region in  the temperate North Atlantic, 1838-1880s.” Geoforum Volume 65. October 2015. And: “Geopolitics and the Avian Imperial Archive: The Zoogeography of Region-Making in the Nineteenth-Century British Mediterranean.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers. 2013,

Marco Chivalan Carrillo and Silvia Posocco. “Against Extraction in Guatemala: Multispecies Strategies in Vampiric Times.” International Journal of Postcolonial Studies. April 2020.

Laura Rademaker. “60,000 years is not forever: ‘time revolutions’ and Indigenous pasts.” Postcolonial Studies. September 2021.

Paulo Tavares. “The Geological Imperative: On the Political Ecology of the Amazon’s Deep History.” Architecture in the Anthropocene. Edited by Etienne Turpin. 2013.

Kathryn Yusoff. “Geologic Realism: On the Beach of Geologic Time.” Social Text. 2019. And: “The Anthropocene and Geographies of Geopower.” Handbook on the Geographies of Power. 2018. And: “Climates of sight: Mistaken visbilities, mirages and ‘seeing beyond’ in Antarctica.” In: High Places: Cultural Geographies of Mountains, Ice and Science. 2008. And:“Geosocial Formations and the Anthropocene.” 2017. And: “An Interview with Elizabeth Grosz: Geopower, Inhumanism and the Biopolitical.” 2017.

Mara Dicenta. “The Beavercene: Eradication and Settler-Colonialism in Tierra del Fuego.” Arcadia. Spring 2020.

And then here are some books:

Frontiers of Science: Imperialism and Natural Knowledge in the Gulf South Borderlands, 1500-1850 (Cameron B. Strang); Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World (Londa Schiebinger, 2004);

Africa as a Living Laboratory: Empire, Development, and the Problem of Scientific Knowledge, 1870-1950 (Helen Tilley, 2011); Colonizing Animals: Interspecies Empire in Myanmar (Jonathan Saha); Fluid Geographies: Water, Science and Settler Colonialism in New Mexico (K. Maria D. Lane, 2024);  Geopolitics, Culture, and the Scientific Imaginary in Latin America (Edited by del Pilar Blanco and Page, 2020)

Red Coats and Wild Birds: How Military Ornithologists and Migrant Birds Shaped Empire (Kirsten A. Greer); The Black Geographic: Praxis, Resistance, Futurity (Hawthorne and Lewis, 2022); Fugitive Science: Empiricism and Freedom in Early African American Culture (Britt Rusert, 2017)

The Empirical Empire: Spanish Colonial Rule and the Politics of Knowledge (Arndt Brendecke, 2016); In the Museum of Man: Race, Anthropology, and Empire in France, 1850-1960 (Alice Conklin, 2013); Unfreezing the Arctic: Science, Colonialism, and the Transformation of Inuit Lands (Andrew Stuhl)

Anglo-European Science and the Rhetoric of Empire: Malaria, Opium, and British Rule in India, 1756-1895 (Paul Winther); Peoples on Parade: Exhibitions, Empire, and Anthropology in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Sadiah Qureshi, 2011); Practical Matter: Newton’s Science in the Service of Industry and Empire, 1687-1851 (Margaret Jacob and Larry Stewart)

Pasteur’s Empire: Bacteriology and Politics in France, Its Colonies, and the World (Aro Velmet, 2022); Medicine and Empire, 1600-1960 (Pratik Chakrabarti, 2014); Colonial Geography: Race and Space in German East Africa, 1884-1905 (Matthew Unangst, 2022);

The Nature of German Imperialism: Conservation and the Politics of Wildlife in Colonial East Africa (Bernhard Gissibl, 2019); Curious Encounters: Voyaging, Collecting, and Making Knowledge in the Long Eighteenth Century (Edited by Adriana Craciun and Mary Terrall, 2019)

The Ends of Paradise: Race, Extraction, and the Struggle for Black Life in Honduras (Chirstopher A. Loperena, 2022); Mining Language: Racial Thinking, Indigenous Knowledge, and Colonial Metallurgy in the Early Modern Iberian World (Allison Bigelow, 2020); The Herds Shot Round the World: Native Breeds and the British Empire, 1800-1900 (Rebecca J.H. Woods); American Tropics: The Caribbean Roots of Biodiversity Science (Megan Raby, 2017); Producing Mayaland: Colonial Legacies, Urbanization, and the Unfolding of Global Capitalism (Claudia Fonseca Alfaro, 2023); Unnsettling Utopia: The Making and Unmaking of French India (Jessica Namakkal, 2021)

Domingos Alvares, African Healing, and the Intellectual History of the Atlantic World (James Sweet, 2011); A Temperate Empire: Making Climate Change in Early America (Anya Zilberstein, 2016); Educating the Empire: American Teachers and Contested Colonization in the Philippines (Sarah Steinbock-Pratt, 2019); Soundings and Crossings: Doing Science at Sea, 1800-1970 (Edited by Anderson, Rozwadowski, et al, 2016)

Possessing Polynesians: The Science of Settler Colonial Whiteness in Hawai’i and Oceania (Maile Arvin); Overcoming Niagara: Canals, Commerce, and Tourism in the Niagara-Great Lakes Borderland Region, 1792-1837 (Janet Dorothy Larkin, 2018); A Great and Rising Nation: Naval Exploration and Global Empire in the Early US Republic (Michael A. Verney, 2022)

Visible Empire: Botanical Expeditions and Visual Culture in the Hispanic Enlightenment (Daniela Cleichmar, 2012); Tea Environments and Plantation Culture: Imperial Disarray in Eastern India (Arnab Dey, 2022); Drugs on the Page: Pharmacopoeias and Healing Knowledge in the Early Modern Atlantic World (Edited by Crawford and Gabriel, 2019)

Cooling the Tropics: Ice, Indigeneity, and Hawaiian Refreshment (Hi’ilei Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart, 2022); In Asian Waters: Oceanic Worlds from Yemen to Yokkohama (Eric Tagliacozzo); Yellow Fever, Race, and Ecology in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans (Urmi Engineer Willoughby, 2017); Turning Land into Capital: Development and Dispossession in the Mekong Region (Edited by Hirsch, et al, 2022); Mining the Borderlands: Industry, Capital, and the Emergence of Engineers in the Southwest Territories, 1855-1910 (Sarah E.M. Grossman, 2018)

Knowing Manchuria: Environments, the Senses, and Natural Knowledge on an Asian Borderland (Ruth Rogaski); Colonial Fantasies, Imperial Realities: Race Science and the Making of Polishness on the Fringes of the German Empire, 1840-1920 (Lenny A. Urena Valerio); Against the Map: The Politics of Geography in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Adam Sills, 2021)

Under Osman’s Tree: The Ottoman Empire, Egypt, and Environmental History (Alan Mikhail, 2017); Imperial Nature: Joseph Hooker and the Practices of Victorian Science (Jim Endersby); Proving Grounds: Militarized Landscapes, Weapons Testing, and the Environmental Impact of U.S. Bases (Edited by Edwin Martini, 2015)

Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce, and Politics in the Early Modern World (Multiple authors, 2007); Space in the Tropics: From Convicts to Rockets in French Guiana (Peter Redfield); Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800-1850 (Andrew Togert, 2015); Dust Bowls of Empire: Imperialism, Environmental Politics, and the Injustice of ‘Green’ Capitalism (Hannah Holleman, 2016); Postnormal Conservation: Botanic Gardens and the Reordering of Biodiversity Governance (Katja Grotzner Neves, 2019)

Botanical Entanglements: Women, Natural Science, and the Arts in Eighteenth-Century England (Anna K. Sagal, 2022); The Platypus and the Mermaid and Other Figments of the Classifying Imagination (Harriet Ritvo); Rubber and the Making of Vietnam: An Ecological History, 1897-1975 (Michitake Aso); A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None (Kathryn Yusoff, 2018); Staple Security: Bread and Wheat in Egypt (Jessica Barnes, 2023); No Wood, No Kingdom: Political Ecology in the English Atlantic (Keith Pluymers); Planting Empire, Cultivating Subjects: British Malaya, 1768-1941 (Lynn Hollen Lees, 2017); Fish, Law, and Colonialism: The Legal Capture of Salmon in British Columbia (Douglas C. Harris, 2001); Everywhen: Australia and the Language of Deep Time (Edited by Ann McGrath, Laura Rademaker, and Jakelin Troy)

Subject Matter: Technology, the Body, and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500-1676 (Joyce Chaplin, 2001); Mapping the Amazon: The Making and Unmaking of French India (Jessica Namakkal, 2021)

American Lucifers: The Dark History of Artificial Light, 1750-1865 (Jeremy Zallen); Ruling Minds: Psychology in the British Empire (Erik Linstrum, 2016); Lakes and Empires in Macedonian History: Contesting the Water (James Pettifer and Mirancda Vickers, 2021); Inscriptions of Nature: Geology and the Naturalization of Antiquity (Pratik Chakrabarti); Seeds of Control: Japan’s Empire of Forestry in Colonial Korea (David Fedman)

Do Glaciers Listen?: Local Knowledge, Colonial Encounters, and Social Imagination (Julie Cruikshank); The Fishmeal Revolution: The Industrialization of the Humboldt Current Ecosystem (Kristin A. Wintersteen, 2021); The Earth on Show: Fossils and the Poetics of Popular Science, 1802-1856 (Ralph O’Connor); An Imperial Disaster: The Bengal Cyclone of 1876 (Benjamin Kingsbury, 2018); Geographies of City Science: Urban Life and Origin Debates in Late Victorian Dublin (Tanya O’Sullivan, 2019)

American Hegemony and the Postwar Reconstruction of Science in Europe (John Krige, 2006); Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule (Ann Laura Stoler, 2002); Rivers of the Sultan: The Tigris and Euphrates in the Ottoman Empire (Faisal H. Husain, 2021)

The Sanitation of Brazil: Nation, State, and Public Health, 1889-1930 (Gilberto Hochman, 2016); The Imperial Security State: British Colonial Knowledge and Empire-Building in Asia (James Hevia); Japan’s Empire of Birds: Aristocrats, Anglo-Americans, and Transwar Ornithology (Annika A. Culver, 2022)

Moral Ecology of a Forest: The Nature Industry and Maya Post-Conservation (Jose E. Martinez, 2021); Sound Relations: Native Ways of Doing Music History in Alaska (Jessica Bissette Perea, 2021); Citizens and Rulers of the World: The American Child and the Cartographic Pedagogies of Empire (Mashid Mayar); Anthropology and Antihumanism in Imperial Germany (Andrew Zimmerman, 2001)

The Botany of Empire in the Long Eighteenth Century (Multiple authors, 2016); The Nature of Slavery: Environment and Plantation Labor in the Anglo-Atlantic World (Katherine Johnston, 2022); Seeking the American Tropics: South Florida’s Early Naturalists (James A. Kushlan, 2020)

The Colonial Life of Pharmaceuticals: Medicines and Modernity in Vietnam (Laurence Monnais); Quinoa: Food Politics and Agrarian Life in the Andean Highlands (Linda J. Seligmann, 2023) ; Critical Animal Geographies: Politics, intersections and hierarchies in a multispecies world (Edited by Kathryn Gillespie and Rosemary-Claire Collard, 2017); Spawning Modern Fish: Transnational Comparison in the Making of Japanese Salmon (Heather Ann Swanson, 2022); Imperial Visions: Nationalist Imagination and Geographical Expansion in the Russian Far East, 1840-1865 (Mark Bassin, 2000); The Usufructuary Ethos: Power, Politics, and Environment in the Long Eighteenth Century (Erin Drew, 2022)

Intimate Eating: Racialized Spaces and Radical Futures (Anita Mannur, 2022); On the Frontiers of the Indian Ocean World: A History of Lake Tanganyika, 1830-1890 (Philip Gooding, 2022); All Things Harmless, Useful, and Ornamental: Environmental Transformation Through Species Acclimitization, from Colonial Australia to the World (Pete Minard, 2019)

Visions of Nature: How Landscape Photography Shaped Setller Colonialism (Jarrod Hore, 2022); Timber and Forestry in Qing China: Sustaining the Market (Meng Zhang, 2021); The World and All the Things upon It: Native Hawaiian Geographies of Exploration (David A. Chang);

Deep Cut: Science, Power, and the Unbuilt Interoceanic Canal (Christine Keiner); Writing the New World: The Politics of Natural History in the Early Spanish Empire (Mauro Jose Caraccioli); Two Years below the Horn: Operation Tabarin, Field Science, and Antarctic Sovereignty, 1944-1946 (Andrew Taylor, 2017); Mapping Water in Dominica: Enslavement and Environment under Colonialism (Mark W. Hauser, 2021)

To Master the Boundless Sea: The US Navy, the Marine Environment, and the Cartography of Empire (Jason Smith, 2018); Fir and Empire: The Transformation of Forests in Early Modern China (Ian Matthew Miller, 2020); Breeds of Empire: The ‘Invention’ of the Horse in Southeast Asia and Southern Africa 1500-1950 (Sandra Swart and Greg Bankoff, 2007)

Science on the Roof of the World: Empire and the Remaking of the Himalaya (Lachlan Fleetwood, 2022); Cattle Colonialism: An Environmental History of the Conquest of California and Hawai’i (John Ryan Fisher, 2017); Imperial Creatures: Humans and Other Animals in Colonial Singapore, 1819-1942 (Timothy P. Barnard, 2019)

An Ecology of Knowledges: Fear, Love, and Technoscience in Guatemalan Forest Conservation (Micha Rahder, 2020); Empire and Ecology in the Bengal Delta: The Making of Calcutta (Debjani Bhattacharyya, 2018);  Imperial Bodies in London: Empire, Mobility, and the Making of British Medicine, 1880-1914 (Kristen Hussey, 2021)

Biotic Borders: Transpacific Plant and Insect Migration and the Rise of Anti-Asian Racism in America, 1890-1950 (Jeannie N. Shinozuka); Coral Empire: Underwater Oceans, Colonial Tropics, Visual Modernity (Ann Elias, 2019); Hunting Africa: British Sport, African Knowledge and the Nature of Empire (Angela Thompsell, 2015)

[escapism-from-the-real-world]

*climbs over fence*

*scales the side of building*

*picks window lock*

*slides it open so I can sit on the windowsill and dangle my legs in the air*

Me: Why do you think that they give all the female power rangers skirts? I mean, they are short enough to fight in, but I feel like it’s a weird way to indicate that someone is female. Especially since in earlier versions of power rangers, ranger yellow was often portrayed as a guy in the original version but the US typically wanted at least two female leads so the yellow ranger would be played by a girl in her civilian form and a man in her ranger form and no one really mentions it?

Like, I’ve been exploring a lot of the power rangers fandom while rewatching the shows and I don’t see it mentioned?

Which means that fans of these versions don’t care about whether or not the girl power ranger had a skirt and can easily recognize a power ranger as a girl even if she doesn’t have boobs or a skirt in her ranger form.

Furthermore, that means that the whole concept for having the leading ladies have a skirt on their uniform kind of weird? Especially because, while obviously not getting in the way, is still inconvenient and just an extra bit of fabric for the enemy to grab onto.

Plus, it usually breaks up the design of the power ranger suit and it doesn’t always look good and it would be better and probably more convenient to have them be similar designs all around. I mean, keep space for their different body types, but you don’t need a skirt to tell your audience who is male or female. You already have heavy color association with your characters and have them where the same color as their suits on the daily. Give your audience some credit.

Idk, even as a kid I thought it was weird.

What do you think?

Stranger who’s house I broke into so I could info dump:

Stranger: Yeah, that is weird.

Me: Thank you!

[sixeyescurseuser]

《1》

It all started thirteen years ago, when Geto found a surprise visitor hiding in his fishing  boat. He barely had time to react to the sheer size of the shimmery tail, or the electric blue eyes that screamed predator when the fishermen nearby approached his boat. 

They question if Geto has seen anything out of the ordinary, going as far to describe a creature that is half-man-half-fish.

“If you didn’t believe the sea tales before, then you’d certainly believe them after catching a glimpse of the monster,” the leader says. “With a tail like that, you’d become rich after selling one day at the market!”

While Geto spaces out and stutters over his words, decidedly covering for the massive merman nestled in his tiny boat, the merman holds his hand hostage, nibbling on his fingers threateningly. 

“No, I haven't seen anything like that. And- I-I’m not feeling well actually… 'M just gonna head back early,” Geto finally gets out. 

When he waves to the other fishermen, maneuvering the boat away, the merman licks his palm, letting him know it was the right choice.

About fifteen minutes pass, and Geto is nearly back home. He intends to drop the merman off in secrecy, but finds the creature is already dozing off.

Which is quite appalling because Geto would’ve expected the merman to jump his throat the moment they fled the other fishermen. Or at the very least, not let its guard down and fall asleep in such a vulnerable place.

Well, it’s not like Geto wants to risk his life by waking it up.

Turning to face the direction of his cottage on the shore, Geto sighs, knowing he’ll have to spend extra hours fishing tomorrow to make up for going home early today.  

***

Gojo doesn’t even remember passing out. He must’ve been more tired than he realized.

He’d had enough trouble dealing with hostile sea creatures that think they can easily subdue the King of Rogues. Encountering the fishermen had thrown Gojo off his scheduled path, not wanting to lead them back to his home waters.

When Gojo wakes up to a dark sky, he’s still in the boat, and no human in sight. 

He’s free to go!

Gojo sits up, vaguely registering the awkward separation of his tail, and throws himself over the side to submerge his lower half in the water. His tail gradually forms again. It flips earnestly again at the feeling of being submerged back where it belongs.

Gojo thinks back to the human from earlier. He was quite pretty, with long braided hair, and a muscular build. He was dressed in a simple tunic and trousers, like the other fishermen, yet didn’t think twice before keeping Gojo’s presence hidden.

Gojo chances a look at the land, and sees a quaint cottage. An orange-ish light glows in the window.

Never the one to follow the rules, Gojo prides himself in taking risks to quench his endless list of curiosities. These risks have allowed him to explore what most merpeople dare not to go near - from the deepest caverns of the ocean up to the surface where humans roam - granting him the knowledge and satisfaction of observing creatures of all natures.

Plus, he was strong and clever enough to save himself from real trouble if needed. If he thought about it, dealing with one human was a piece of shrimp should things go south…

This is why upon hearing a series of knocks, Geto opens his door to the sight of the same merman with glowing blue eyes. Except now, the merman stands on two long legs, posturing while very naked on Geto’s front door step.

“Holy shit,” Geto greets, eyes bulging out of his head. When the merman tilts its head, Geto now realizes it is slightly taller than him.

“Holy shit,” Gojo repeats with a solemn expression. Sure, he doesn’t understand human language, but last time he checked, this was not a customary way of greeting?

Geto keeps stumbling over his words, unable to believe that the merman he’d saved today was on LAND, appearing even more gorgeous up close. The merman now makes a series of chirps and clicks, waving his arms around, explaining things in sounds Geto never imagined communicating in.

Geto nods his head as he listens. It was the polite thing to do, right?

After a minute or so, Geto is about to ask- er, gesture if the merman wants to come in. Then, the merman makes a particular large swoop of his arms, reenacting something that looks akin to swimming-

The merman suddenly loses balance. 

Gojo crumples forward with a squawk. Damn legs, he knew he couldn’t rely on them for anything!

Geto’s jaw drops open. He only has time to open his arms in an attempt to catch the tall merman. 

“OOF!” Geto grunts, feeling his ass hit the floor, then his back. Gojo lets out an apologetic croak, lightly flicking the human’s forehead.

“Letting you know that if I still had my tail, and if my tail could walk on land…this wouldn’t have happened,” Gojo babbles in mer language, kicking his feet behind him.

Geto can’t hide the incredulous expression on his face. The day was just getting weirder and weirder. Because he cannot understand a word of what the merman says, Geto just hums, using a noise he knows how to make and hoping it conveys his sincerity. 

“Sorry, I didn’t expect you to just collapse forward like that,” Geto says, hands awkwardly patting the merman’s sides. Oh right, the merman was still very naked, now on top of him. Lovely. “Um, if you’re going to stay like that, you need clothes.”

The merman pauses his rambling. For a second, Geto thinks he understood, and perhaps wanted a set of clothes as well. However, the sight of the merman’s nostrils flaring as he sniffs the air disproves this notion.

Geto had been cooking dinner when the merman knocked on his door. A dinner that very much smelled like it was burning!

The merman clicks again, then runs its tongue along its sharp teeth.

Geto gulps. Looks like he has a guest for dinner.

***

(Present)

Yuji wakes up the next morning wrapped up around his podmates, Megumi curled against his side and Nobara tucked under his arm - nothing unusual. They’re still nestled on the large bed in the human’s guest room, the human Gojo is apparently very close with.

Yuji shifts because someone is laying on top of his tail and making it go numb. Except for some reason, Yuji’s tail moves in separate ways, and feels like it’s been split apart. Scrunching his nose in confusion, Yuji lifts the covers to inspect the weird phenomenon.

He sees a pair of legs that he did not have the last time he checked, yet they are definitely attached to his torso… Yuji tries curling the end of his non-tail up; the small appendages on the ends of the legs wiggle.

Yuji screams.

Thirty minutes later, both Geto and Gojo - sporting legs himself - are in the bedroom and have calmed Yuji down, reassuring him it is completely normal and safe for legs to appear when a merperson stays on land. Gojo lets it slip he has had years of experience, after all, but zips his mouth closed when Megumi and Nobara shoot him an accusing look. 

(Years of experience and secrets, they want to add.)

Come midday, Nobara transforms and gets her pair of legs, to which Geto yeets a pair of boxers and sweatpants at her and flees the other direction.

Megumi turns the latest that evening, seeing as he possesses a heightened connection to the sea. Not only does his body feel completely out of its depth being out of water, but he was also taught from a young age that it’s a disgrace for a merperson to lose their tail. Even a punishment for misbehaving by going up above the surface!

Every two hours, Megumi goes to put his feet under the water - it kills him otherwise. 

Despite everything, the younglings are still very skeptical of this human, who is apparently their leader’s mate?? Gojo effortlessly switches into human language when addressing Geto. Judging by their tones, the two don’t seem to be getting along completely. Gojo acts cautiously, speaking firmly to Geto and deflecting the apologetic expressions Geto sends his way. 

Whatever happened in the past - and whatever is going on now - the younglings want to know!

Another day, when Gojo has yet to rise from slumber, staying in Geto’s bedroom much to the youngling’s pained knowledge, the trio gather around the kitchen table. Since Gojo recognizes Geto as his mate, the younglings’ instincts to submit kick in.

Cue Geto walking in with the breakfast dishes, and Yuji subconsciously sliding off his chair to lay on his stomach on the floor.

“What are you doing?” Megumi asks incredulously. Yuji blinks, eyes shifting from his podmates to the tall human with kind eyes. The dining room seems to cave in, feeling all too foreign and small.

“Um… if we’re going by rank…“ he stares pointedly at Geto, the one who technically has authority in Gojo’s absence.

“Stop it, right now,” Nobara gags. Geto, who understands, puts his hands up in defense.

“You don’t have to address me like that, Yuji-kun,” Geto says, speaking in perfect mer language. “I’m just here to look after you.” 

He smiles warmly and places the hot food on the table.

Struggling to stand up, Yuji murmurs under his breath, “That did not make this any easier.”

The more Geto converses with the trio, effortlessly making all their clicking, chirping, and purring sounds, the more the younglings feel the bubbly sensation swirling in their tummies. 

When Gojo finally joins them for breakfast, sitting in the chair next to Geto, that’s when the urge to bond to Geto washes over the younglings.

It doesn’t help when Geto begins to officially teach them how to be human. It started when Nobara took interest in the shiny things attached to Geto’s ears, which sparkled in the sunlight.

“Are all humans born with holes in their ears?” She had asked. Geto chuckles while shaking his head. “Nope. I got my ears pierced. These-” He points to the stones in his earlobes. “-are called earrings.”

“I want some,” Nobara replies. Geto offers to show her at the market, then to take her shopping since she needs her own clothes that’ll actually fit instead of wearing Geto’s old ones. Yuji pipes up that he wants to join, and Megumi nods his head once in agreement.

“Perfect. We can go tomorrow-” Geto starts.

“Not so far, They must acclimate first," Gojo interrupts, crossing his arms. He glares at Geto, daring him to disagree. "You can’t just send people away to far away places however you please.”

The younglings hold their breath, the usual tension between Gojo and Geto returning. They have a sense that Geto is still apologizing for the way things ended all those years ago.

Megumi was the one to recall the way Gojo would close himself off when the topic of mating came up. He never had anything to add to the conversation besides “Love is both a blessing and a curse. It just depends on how it forces one’s hand.”

“You’re right. I’ll teach them everything they need to know!” Geto assents easily. He tentatively loops an arm around Gojo’s waist while adding, “I have a 100% success rate. Right, Satoru?” 

Gojo’s cheek flush pink, Geto obviously referring to him as the one who Geto has successfully taught. He lets Geto’s arm remain around his waist too.  

The younglings give their leader one more week of giving the cold shoulder until he’s back to his cheerful self, hopefully with his human mate by his side.

***

w/ @no-one-says-hi

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

Can Life Exist on an Icy Moon? NASA’s Europa Clipper Aims to Find Out

With a spacecraft launching soon, the mission will try to answer the question of whether there are ingredients suitable for life in the ocean below Europa’s icy crust.

Deep down, in an ocean beneath its ice shell, Jupiter’s moon Europa might be temperate and nutrient-rich, an ideal environment for some form of life — what scientists would call “habitable.” NASA’s Europa Clipper mission aims to find out.

NASA now is targeting launch no earlier than Monday, Oct. 14, on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Europa Clipper’s elongated, looping orbit around Jupiter will minimize the spacecraft’s exposure to intense radiation while allowing it to dive in for close passes by Europa. Using a formidable array of instruments for each of the mission’s 49 flybys, scientists will be able to “see” how thick the moon’s icy shell is and gain a deeper understanding of the vast ocean beneath. They’ll inventory material on the surface that might have come up from below, search for the fingerprints of organic compounds that form life’s building blocks, and sample any gases ejected from the moon for evidence of habitability.

Mission scientists will analyze the results, probing beneath the moon’s frozen shell for signs of a water world capable of supporting life.

“It’s important to us to paint a picture of what that alien ocean is like — the kind of chemistry or even biochemistry that could be happening there,” said Morgan Cable, an astrobiologist and member of the Europa Clipper science team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which manages the mission.

Ice Investigation

Central to that work is hunting for the types of salts, ices, and organic material that make up the key ingredients of a habitable world. That’s where an imager called MISE (Mapping Imaging Spectrometer for Europa) comes in. Operating in the infrared, the spacecraft’s MISE divides reflected light into various wavelengths to identify the corresponding atoms and molecules.

The mission will also try to locate potential hot spots near Europa’s surface, where plumes could bring deep ocean material closer to the surface, using an instrument called E-THEMIS (Europa Thermal Emission Imaging System), which also operates in the infrared.

Capturing sharply detailed pictures of Europa’s surface with both a narrow and a wide-image camera is the task of the EIS (Europa Imaging System). “The EIS imagers will give us incredibly high-resolution images to understand how Europa’s surface evolved and is continuing to change,” Cable said.

Gases and Grains

NASA’s Cassini mission spotted a giant plume of water vapor erupting from multiple jets near the south pole of Saturn’s ice-covered moon Enceladus. Europa may also emit misty plumes of water, pulled from its ocean or reservoirs in its shell. Europa Clipper’s instrument called Europa-UVS (Europa Ultraviolet Spectrograph) will search for plumes and can study any material that might be venting into space.

Whether or not Europa has plumes, the spacecraft carries two instruments to analyze the small amount of gas and dust particles ejected from the moon’s surface by impacts with micrometeorites and high-energy particles: MASPEX (MAss SPectrometer for Planetary EXploration/Europa) and SUDA (SUrface Dust Analyzer) will capture the tiny pieces of material ejected from the surface, turning them into charged particles to reveal their composition.

“The spacecraft will study gas and grains coming off Europa by sticking out its tongue and tasting those grains, breathing in those gases,” said Cable.

Inside and Out

The mission will look at Europa’s external and internal structure in various ways, too, because both have far-reaching implications for the moon’s habitability.

To gain insights into the ice shell’s thickness and the ocean’s existence, along with its depth and salinity, the mission will measure the moon’s induced magnetic field with the ECM (Europa Clipper Magnetometer) and combine that data with measurements of electrical currents from charged particles flowing around Europa — data provided by PIMS (Plasma Instrument for Magnetic Sounding).

In addition, scientists will look for details on everything from the presence of the ocean to the structure and topography of the ice using REASON (Radar for Europa Assessment and Sounding to Near-surface), which will peer up to 18 miles (29 kilometers) into the shell — itself a potentially habitable environment. Measuring the changes that Europa’s gravity causes in radio signals should help nail down ice thickness and ocean depth.

“Non-icy materials on the surface could get moved into deep interior pockets of briny water within the icy shell,” said Steve Vance, an astrobiologist and geophysicist who also is a member of the Europa Clipper science team at JPL. “Some might be large enough to be considered lakes, or at least ponds.”

Using the data gathered to inform extensive computer modeling of Europa’s interior structure also could reveal the ocean’s composition and allow estimates of its temperature profile, Vance said.

Whatever conditions are discovered, the findings will open a new chapter in the search for life beyond Earth. “It’s almost certain Europa Clipper will raise as many questions or more than it answers — a whole different class than the ones we’ve been thinking of for the last 25 years,” Vance said.

TOP IMAGE: This artist’s concept (not to scale) depicts what Europa’s internal structure could look like: an outer shell of ice, perhaps with plumes of material venting from beneath the surface; a deep, global layer of liquid water; and a rocky interior, potentially with hydrothermal vents on the seafloor. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

LOWER IMAGE: The puzzling surface of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa looms large in this reprocessed color view made from images taken by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft in the late 1990s. The images were assembled into a realistic color view of the surface that approximates how Europa would appear to the human eye. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute

[comicarc]

𝐈 𝐃𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐇𝐞𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐧 (𝐈𝐕)

previous • next

"A lonely moon craving for the radiant sun." In which a certain girl catches the attention of a prideful billionaire playboy as they both attempt to find their way in the world. (I haven't seen many fics explore Bruce in his formative years, so I thought I'd share my take on them, of course with romance.)

wc: 2469

“We need to talk,” Bruce began as he pulled her away from Harvey.

“Aren’t we doing that already?” y/n quipped, upset by his sudden appearance. Harvey was about to say something important by the way his face hardened, but she’d have to wait to find out what. 

Bruce audibly groaned as his voice adopted a serious tone, “We need so place private to talk. Now.”

Her eyebrows remained knit, annoyed by Bruce’s insistence, yet regardless she turned toward Harvey to tell him she’d be leaving. It was careless of her to be alone with Bruce, especially after Harvey had disclosed his concerning nature, but regardless it couldn’t be worse than the alternative fate she was running from. 

When her head spun back to her best friend, she noticed Harvey lost in deep thought. His emerald eyes were fixated on something in the distance, staring right through the short blonde wavy bangs that fell over his forehead. She wanted to move a hand to caress his face and preserve the serene moment in which they were both momentarily at peace. She was melting in his presence and she wished to relish it for as long as she could, until Bruce cleared his throat and broke the trance she was lost in. 

“Harvey,” she called out softly, hoping to not startle him. After blinking a few times, he turned to meet his eyes with y/n’s. Acknowledging her with a hum, she continued, “I need to go. I don’t think I’ll be back soon, so don’t wait up for me. Ok?”

He sighed knowing that there was no convincing the woman after she had made up her mind about something. He thought of saying no. He didn’t want her to go, especially not with him. But, she wasn’t going to let go of Bruce anytime soon, despite his warning, and her decision to leave signaled something he wasn’t ready to admit just yet. She was drifting from him and though he was selfish enough to want her all to himself, he loved her too much to deny her anything. 

“Ok.” He answered, before turning back to the work he had set aside earlier. 

Before moving to leave she squeezed his shoulder attempting to elicit a response, but to her dismay, Harvey’s head remained unmoving from the papers in front of him. 

Bruce lead the way out of the library with y/n shadowing right behind with her head down in defeat. They strolled down the halls and past the buildings till they reached the school entrance where a limo was parked. She followed Bruce’s lead as they entered the vehicle and situated themselves.

“Where are we going?” She had no advantage over him, no leverage against Bruce to sway things in her favor. Bruce’s want for help was unexpected, but undeniably an advantageous opportunity for her to finally be free. Amidst the conversation with Harvey she had decided, she would take up on his offer, as long as she knew she was safe. 

“You got in a stranger’s car blindly?” Bruce quipped, obviously trying to tease her.

“Oh, so now we’re strangers? And for your information, I didn’t get in blindly. If we’re going to be partners we have to have a certain level of trust between us, no?” Bruce smirked, happy that she had taken up on his earlier proposition. 

“So, tell me. Why were you there that night?” 

y/n didn’t want to give him all her cards, after all, he had notoriously been deflecting all her questions. Instead, she changed the topic, hoping to run him in circles until he spilled what he knew first. “Are you sure this limo is a safe space to be talking about this? For all we know there could be recording devices hidden everywhere.”

“Trust me, there aren’t. Now, what aren’t you telling me?”

She couldn’t keep it in. If they wanted to get anywhere with this conversation, she had to tell him the truth, or at least part of it. “I ran errands for someone powerful. They usually–” She hesitated, scared that Bruce would turn on her. Instead, his face scrunched into a serious expression as he waited for her to continue, unwavering in his resolve. “I got bribes for them. I would go to a drop-off location, pick up cash, and bring it back to them. I thought this time it would be the same, but the address was something new.”

The boy seated across from y/n was engrossed in the details as he focused on the view outside the window. y/n rolled her eyes, growing irritated by his persistent ignorance of her. Ever since they met, he had barely spoken a word to her and purposely tried to hurt any way he saw fit. What was she even doing here, had she gone insane? Regret began to fester in the pit of her stomach as the past began to creep back into her mind. Four years of what felt like torture endured at the hands of a boy who wanted her help. Nothing made sense anymore. 

The ride continued in silence until they arrived at the manor and headed into an elaborately decorated study. Hundreds of books covered the rich mahogany shelves that stretched from the floor to the ceiling. Some books were binded with real leather while others had delicate covers as if they were the original copies. There were no empty spaces or gaps between the levels as each shelf above perfectly matched the height of the books below. The intricacy of the carvings within the wood was so detailed that each crevice formed a masterpiece. Among racks of wood, was an antique bronze staircase still shiny and firm to the touch. It too had intricate designs enchanting it. It was a sight to behold, especially as the evening light filtered through the skylight.

At the center of the room stood a desk with a similar antiquity to it with carved wooden legs and a polished top. In front of it, a whiteboard was placed in which a series of photos, receipts, documents, and magnets were organized, all connected by red string. At the sight, y/n turned to Bruce with an eyebrow raised, barely able to hold the urge to tease him about playing detective. 

“I’ve been investigating Carmine Falcone for a while now. That night we both got an address. You might’ve thought that the address you received was of his home, but you’re wrong.” Bruce began his eagerness to share his revelations apparent in his voice. 

“What do you mean? What else could it be?” y/n turned her body towards him, paying full attention.

“I’m not sure. But I know for a fact that the address I got was of his real home. So that must mean you’re being taken elsewhere.” 

“How would you even know that? If everyone knows Falcone lives in one place, don’t you think it’d be too dangerous for him to do anything illegal there? It would be out in the open.”

“Precisely, he’s hiding in plain sight.” 

y/n thought for a moment. It made sense for him to keep his secret operation somewhere no one would expect. Even more chilling was the admitting that Falcone or Wilcox was trying to tie her up with something really bad. Of course, she would get the ominous address, there would be no one to question her disappearance and no support for her to fall back on if they did in fact trap her. She was the perfect scapegoat. 

Bruce continued, brushing off the worry that plagued y/n’s features. “A couple of months ago, I noticed an increased amount of movement of GCPD vehicles, but there was rarely any radio chatter on the police lines. Obviously, the disparity was suspicious so I–”

y/n stalked closer to Bruce as she interrupted, “How do you even that? Why do you know that? Bruce, it's not normal to be stalking the police even if you are immune to them. I need to know your intentions before I do something I know I’ll regret.” She glared at the boy as he mirrored her movements, attempting to intimidate her. He looked down at her, caging her between his arms as he moved unwaveringly. She didn’t realize her position until her back hit the desk and she was stuck. He put his hands at her sides, resting them on the desktop as he leaned his face closer to her. He was close enough for y/n to feel his warm breath on her skin, reminding her of when he had caught her in that tunnel. But his narrowed eyes scared her for within them, she could see a glimpse of the monster Harvey had described. 

“That’s for me to know.” His voice sounded more husky and articulate than before.

He moved a bit further away, still trapping y/n between him and the desk, as he resumed, “As I was saying, the extra vehicles always appeared after a drug bust. I investigated a little more and found out that half the drugs found at the crime scenes were never reported anywhere. It got me thinking: GCPD is known for being dirty. Almost every cop is on someone’s payroll and Falcone is probably using them to run an operation of his own.”

y/n still wasn’t buying it. Though she knew she shouldn’t poke the beast, she couldn’t help but give in to her instinct. “I still don’t understand why that’s suspicious. If the cops have been dirty for years, what’s so special about them helping Falcone now?”

“Like I said, that’s for me to know.” Bruce remained resolute in his response, but it was the very thing that gave him away. y/n could tell he didn’t want to divulge his stake in the scheme, but it was something personal enough for him to investigate it to this degree. 

Regardless, she decided she should stop pushing her luck. Bruce was right, she didn’t need to know his motivation to get out of this alive. Concentrating on the case once more, she pondered on the evidence he had presented. Gotham was infamous for its drug distribution, and heading those operations was usually Falcone. “So Falcone’s taking the drugs from his competitors in these busts, asking the cops to take half the supply to give to him, and outselling?”

The two continued their discussion of the case, analyzing all the items pinned on the whiteboard. Eventually, they both moved to seat themselves on the floor, allowing the tension to dissipate with every laugh Bruce was able to get out of y/n. Though he didn’t reveal much about himself, and neither did she to him, they both enjoyed tracing the trail formed by the idiocy and carelessness of the crooked cops. 

Before she knew it, the skylight had darkened, preset lights had turned on, and an empty pizza box lay open beside her. She could feel Bruce’s gaze on her, softer than before. A genuine smile painted her face as she looked at him ignoring the butterflies that tumbled in her stomach. There was no denying how handsome Bruce Wayne was. The sharp jaw, slicked-back black hair with a single strand falling in front of his face and sculpted features made him look like the heartthrob of the century. Something about his conviction reminded her of Harvey, how they were both so purposeful. 

He moved his fingers closer to hers, laying them atop hers as used his other hand to pull out a box from his pocket. Presenting the item, he revealed, “I’m sorry about your other phone, but you have to admit, that thing was ancient.”

Smiling, she playfully tapped his arm, feigning offense as she noticed the photo of a phone on the box. He placed it between them and gestured for her to open it. Awed by just how advanced and pricey the phone seemed just from its encasing she protested, “Bruce, I know I said that you owe me a phone but I can’t take this.”

“You’ll have to, how else will anyone be able to hear your angelic voice when you’re not there.” Bruce furiously blushed as the words left his lips, but the ambient light was just warm-toned enough to hide it. y/n, on the other hand, was confused and flustered by the unexpected compliment. She stumbled over her words before sealing her lips shut and surrendering to him.

Opening the box, she was met with the newest, best model of the iPhone on the market. Her jaw was practically on the floor as she gawked at her newest prized possession. She had never had the finances to afford something this beautiful or functional. The sleek surface of the unscratched screen and the undented backing of the phone was truly awing. 

Left speechless, she was barely able to let out her gratuity with an appreciative “Thank you.” 

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Usually, Monday classes were the dullest point of the week. But this time, y/n’s mind was rarely in class. As the teachers began to say their farewells and congratulations to the students for having finally completed high school, y/n lost herself within a mind captured by Bruce Wayne. It wasn’t out of character for her to be alone, so as she daydreamed free from the suspicions of others, y/n began entertaining the possibilities for why Bruce was being nice to her. 

It wasn’t until the end of the day when Harvey had come to accompany her for the practice graduation ceremony that she forced herself out of the trance. It was dangerous to fall for someone so fickle with his partners, much less someone who held her life in his hands. If she upset him, annoyed him, or even irritated him too much, there was not telling what he would do. 

As she filtered into the football field, holding onto Harvey’s shirt so as to not get separated in the crowd, she saw Bruce. Situated by the podium, he had a girl wrapped in his arms. She was laughing at something he said, leaning into him close enough for their noses to touch. For a moment her line of sight was blocked but as the crowd began to die, she saw him kissing her passionately. 

It was no surprise he would have arm candy with him, he always did. But why did it hurt? Her heart fell to the pit of her stomach and her eyes became teary leaving her stupefied. Why did it confuse her so much? 

Despite the discrepancy between her mind and her heart, one thing was clear. Harvey was right: Bruce had a knack for causing pain and how foolish was she to think that she was the only flower in his garden.

˖ ࣪🦇𓆰♡𓆪🦇ִ ࣪⋆

taglist: @earth-to-name

[outfitqueer]

20 Things We as Trans Wish We Knew Before Transitioning

@outfitqueer 🏳️‍⚧️

Did you know that the journey of transitioning often reveals lessons that only become clear in hindsight?

When I reached out to fellow trans individuals and asked them what they wished they had known before their transition, here’s what they told me:

@outfitqueer 🏳️‍⚧️

“I wish I had known that self-acceptance takes time. It’s a process that unfolds gradually. It wasn’t something that happened instantly for me.”

@outfitqueer 🏳️‍⚧️

“I wish I had understood that support comes in many forms. You might not find it where you expect, but new sources of support will appear in unexpected places.”

@outfitqueer 🏳️‍⚧️

“I never anticipated that my identity would continue to evolve. I thought transitioning would be the end of my self-discovery, but it turned out to be just the beginning.”

@outfitqueer 🏳️‍⚧️

“If only I had realized that the process isn’t linear. There were so many twists and turns along the way. It’s normal to feel like you’re moving backwards sometimes.”

@outfitqueer 🏳️‍⚧️

“I wish I had paid more attention to self-care. I didn’t fully grasp how important it was to nurture my mental and emotional health throughout the transition.”

@outfitqueer 🏳️‍⚧️

“Finding a supportive community earlier would have made a huge difference. I didn’t know how invaluable it would be to connect with others who truly understood me.”

@outfitqueer 🏳️‍⚧️

“I was caught off guard by how many people wouldn’t understand. If I could do it over, I’d prepare myself for the ignorance and work on being patient and educating others.”

@outfitqueer 🏳️‍⚧️

“Patience would have been a great ally. Transitioning and gaining acceptance took much longer than I expected. I wish I’d been more patient with myself and others.”

@outfitqueer 🏳️‍⚧️

“I didn’t expect the emotional highs and lows to be so intense. Recognizing and accepting these fluctuations would have helped me cope better.”

@outfitqueer 🏳️‍⚧️

“Finding my voice and learning to advocate for myself was crucial. I wish I had realized sooner how empowering it would be to speak up for my needs and experiences.”

@outfitqueer 🏳️‍⚧️

“I didn’t fully grasp how much transitioning would impact my relationships. If I could go back, I’d be more prepared for these changes and how to navigate them.”

@outfitqueer 🏳️‍⚧️

“Self-compassion was something I struggled with. I wish I had been kinder to myself during the tough times. It’s important to remember that setbacks are part of the journey.”

@outfitqueer 🏳️‍⚧️

“Celebrating small victories was something I overlooked. I wish I had focused more on acknowledging and enjoying my achievements along the way.”

@outfitqueer 🏳️‍⚧️

“Navigating public spaces was more challenging than I had anticipated. I wish I had been better prepared for the complexities and how to handle them.”

@outfitqueer 🏳️‍⚧️

“Building resilience was essential. I learned that developing inner strength helps in facing challenges and setbacks. I wish I had understood its importance earlier.”

@outfitqueer 🏳️‍⚧️

“Embracing my unique path was something I had to learn. Comparing my journey to others was unhelpful. I wish I had focused more on my own experience.”

@outfitqueer 🏳️‍⚧️

“The journey didn’t end with transitioning. Personal growth and self-discovery continued beyond that. I wish I’d known that there’s always more to learn and explore.”

@outfitqueer 🏳️‍⚧️

“Financial planning is something I wish I’d focused on more. Transitioning came with significant costs, and better budgeting would have eased some of the stress.”

@outfitqueer 🏳️‍⚧️

“I should have sought out comprehensive legal and medical advice earlier. Having a better understanding from the start would have made many decisions easier.”

@outfitqueer 🏳️‍⚧️

“I found that documenting my journey helped me a lot. Keeping a journal or recording my experiences provided a way to process the emotional ups and downs.”

@outfitqueer 🏳️‍⚧️

[thelarriefics]

SECRET RELATIONSHIP FIC REC, Part II: Below you will find more fics where Harry and Louis hide their relationship. (Part I)

📖 i found love in you (and i learned to love me too) by @larrydoinglaundry (167k)

After months of battling with his own demons, Louis goes back to get what he once left behind, but Harry's not sure if he showed up in time. A journey of remorse, healing and love that's strong enough to break them down and build them back up again. Sequel to 'love is a word, you gave it a name'.

📖 blue moon by @aquietlarrie (152k)

or the self indulgent 50’s au where i wanted a safe space to explore the culture, history, and sexuality of being gay in a time when it was extremely difficult to do so. includes, lots of questionable dancing, healing your inner child, and one heck of an emotional ride.

📖 Behind closed doors (I got myself in a mess) by @teamlouis2023 (58k)

Louis, a renowned wedding planner, has everything he needs to be happy : loyal friends, a boss that is a little more than just a boss, a job that he loves with all his heart. Tasked with the planning of Gemma and Michal's wedding, he doesn't except to come across the man who had left him five years earlier

📖 Us Against the World by @chelsea-frew (58k)

It's time for the 58th Hunger Games. 18-year-old Louis, the victor of the 56th Hunger Games, is to be mentor to the latest tributes from District 4. It is the worst job in the world. Making it even worse is that one of those tributes is 16-year-old Harry, Louis' secret boyfriend. The stakes are life and death. Can Harry do what needs to be done to emerge as the victor? Can Louis help him from the outside? Against all odds, can these two be brought back together—or will Louis be saying goodbye to Harry forever?

📖 Train Tracks and Porcelain by @jaerie (41k)

The next moments happened in the strange slow motion of dawn. Shadows were forming into people and things and, there in the middle of it, Louis watched the humongous head of an elephant emerge from a box car right in front of his eyes. Or a Water For Elephants inspired AU

📖 Lover Boy by @brightgolden (27k)

Where Louis wants to tell everyone about his relationship with Harry, but his boyfriend clearly thinks otherwise.

📖 Unraveled by @allwaswell16 (18k)

Whilst Harry was prepared to protect the PM with his life, he wasn’t prepared for Louis’ secrets. As Harry helped investigate the attempts on Louis’ life, he found a tangled web of political rivals, possible terrorist attacks, and family secrets as well as an undeniable attraction to the man he has vowed to protect.

📖 Everything's going to be alright - Sixth Form AU by @boufantgirl (17k)

Louis is in sixth form with Harry Styles. A classic story about sixth form, love and coming out. There is some drugs and alcohol use. There are some adult themes. The people in this story are 18. A story about the end of school before going to university.

📖 On Thin Ice by @neondiamond (16k)

As the goaltender for one of the best hockey teams in the world, Harry never expected participating in his second winter Olympics would be so eventful. His hidden long-term relationship with the captain of their biggest rival team may have something to do with it.

📖 getting yourself wet for me by @dreamersdivin-headfirst (10k)

frat boys take on watersports

📖 Curves of your lips rewrite history by @lunarheslwt (8k)

everyone bows to Prince Harry, but in the privacy of his four walls, the one he is bowing and kneeling for is his knight, Sir Louis.

📖 The President and His Captain by @tommokat (5k)

Childhood best friends turn boyfriends Harry and Louis have kept their relationship quiet for almost a year now, so when Harry's basketball coach enforces a no dating rule for the season, they should have no problem sticking to that rule. Right?

📖 Battle Of The Balls by @greenblueish (5k)

the one where YouTubers Harry and Louis play Golf With Friends, go to the pub with Niall and return home six hours after posting the video.

📖 tongue-tied by @liberty-barnes (3k)

the one where OT9 participate in a game of Family Feud, and they really should have listened to Liam when he said this was a bad idea

📖 there are rumors we have to face by @louisandtheaquarian (2k)

In this scene, Harry and Louis are sneaking around in earnest while at the wedding of friends, Zarry's stunt is getting old, and rumors fly.

📖 every night with us (is like a dream) by @darkinfinity (2k)

A look into the life of a professional football player dating a physical therapist.

[rising-volteccers]

So, have this self indulgent take of Friede's POV in HZ044 ft some dialogue and scenes I wished he had. Why is it when I'm sick that I have the motivation to finish WIPs. At the very least it gave me a reason to rewatch some episodes haha

Anyway, hope this is an enjoyable read still! Spoilers for HZ044.

Series: Pokemon Horizons

Characters: Friede, Spinel, Cap

--

Aside from the wild Pokemon that quickly dispersed upon spotting their little group, Friede couldn't shake off the uneasy sensation that settled over him at how quiet the island was. Granted, confronting the Explorers on their turf wasn't ideal but they had little choice if they wanted to stop them from catching Rayquaza. Even a formidable Legendary could fall prey to whatever the Explorers had in store for it.

Eventually, Friede and the others reached the odd building. Once again, the lack of any lookout sowed further uneasiness within him. 

Surely the Explorers were alerted of their presence, or at least knew that they knew about their plans to capture Rayquaza. If Friede was in their shoes, he'd at least place multiple guards to protect the area.

Seemed like they did so with Magneton and Beheeyem hovering around the place earlier. 

A pair of Pokemon that he was very familiar with. 

Friede had a score to settle. Not only for that ambush back in Levincia but for putting Liko through an awful experience. Memory tempering was a downright deplorable act in the first place but to inflict it on a child?

Certainly a dangerous opponent that he can't underestimate. 

After a quick dash towards the singular door, Friede raised his hand for the others to stop. The other went to test the handle.

“It’s open? That can't be right,” he muttered. From what they knew of the Explorers that went in here, this felt suspiciously sloppy. With no lookout and conveniently unlocked door…

“You wait out here. If anyone shows up–” he began but Roy quickly interrupted him.

“We battle them!” Liko too nodded in agreement to Roy's response.

Friede gazed at the kids. He wanted to say that they should run and hide but he found it hard to say otherwise, not when they looked so determined. Didn't he allow them to join because he believed in their strength?

(A smile subconsciously formed on his lips. Murdock was right. Kids really do grow up quickly). 

“Gramps, you look after these two.”

“Mmm-hmm, these two are in my care,” Ludlow replied.

Assured of their safety, Friede turned towards the door. “Alright, time to get in there!”

Slowly, Friede opened the door. Light spilled into the dark room, and from what little that he saw showed a completely emptied space. Cap jumped off his shoulder after a few steps in, scanning the area just as he did. 

They barely had time to react when the door swung shut. Within seconds, Friede heard Roy pounding on the door, calling for his name. He hated distressing the kids but his suspicions were proven true. 

“Heh, seems like the others missed out on your little trap,” Friede spoke into the darkness. 

“No matter,” a smooth voice responded. Friede's eyes swiftly trained onto the light emitted from an Umbreon’s rings. “Mere children are no threat to us once we've set our minds on something.”

While Friede couldn't get a proper look at the guy standing next to Umbreon, he recognised that voice all too well.

“That voice… so you finally show your face, Mr Awfully Shy.”

“Welcome Professor Friede. I've been waiting for you.” As pleasantly polite as his smile and tone was, Friede knew there was zero respect to the title he called him with. 

“I anticipated the possibility of Coral leaking our plans. This place was built to imprison you.”

“So you also anticipated I'd come here. Wow, I feel special to get such preferential treatment,” Friede replied with a small huff, lips set into a smirk. At the very least, he was the only one trapped here, sparing the kids and Ludlow from the same fate.

“Liko! Roy!” He began, eyes never once straying from his opponent. “This is the wrong place! Keep looking around!”

Initially he heard Roy's protest but that quickly died down. Good, he trusted Ludlow to keep the kids calm and guide them elsewhere. The longer they lingered, the higher the chances of the Explorers’ plans coming to fruition. 

Once he could no longer hear them outside the door, that was when Friede released a tiny exhale. With the kids hopefully far away from here, he could now fully focus on finding a way out of his predicament.

“So, just the two of us–well, I guess four if you count Cap and that Umbreon of yours. What, not bringing Beheeyem and Magneton into the mix too?” Friede drawled, one hand settled on his hip. His first course of action was to scope out this guy, see if he'd divulge in the exact nature of the Explorers' plans.

“They’ve performed their part well. I simply need to keep you here, Professor. I've determined that my Umbreon here is enough.” 

“I'm surprised. I thought you were the sort to play dirty, press whatever advantage you have.” Friede's previously light tone took on a hardened edge, feelings that he had over his first encounter with this man bubbling to the surface. “What, memory wipes are off the table now?”

“There is no such need to use that method when the present situation is sufficient.”

Friede didn't think he had a temper, rare as it was for him to get angry in the first place but he can't deny the hot surge as he snarled out, “But you'd do it to a child?”

“Oh? My, I see what it is now,” came the infuriatingly calm response. “I did not harm the girl, no? I could have approached her like I did with you but I chose to go about it in a peaceful way. If anything, you should be grateful for it.”

To his still adjusting eyes, Friede spotted the faint smirk. Briefly, he entertained an uncharacteristically violent fantasy. The sheer audacity of his lacking remorse in what he subjected a child through…

“Pika.” Cap’s brief call snapped Friede out of his thoughts. His eyes flickered to his partner, who shot him a quick glance in return. 

Right, Friede needed to remember his position. Losing his cool would simply put him at a disadvantage. If anything, this was probably a part of that man’s plan to get a rise out of him so that he'd make mistakes.

Friede took in a subtle breath, then exhaled quietly. He shoved down the bubbling anger until he slipped on his usual confidence once more. His own smirk returned, mind racing to choose his next words. 

“I'll show you how grateful I really am,” Friede steadily replied to the provocation. “Still, there's one thing that I'm trying to wrap my head around. Don't think you can answer it, do you?”

“Seems like you saw through it,” he uttered, not sounding put off in the slightest. “But I suppose I can. What's on your mind, Professor?”

“See, Rayquaza’s appearance is unpredictable in the first place. Even if you can narrow down where it'll appear, not many mons can get close to it unless they're able to fly. Even then, it's powerful enough to repel most attacks.”

Friede briefly recalled the battle Amethio’s Ceruledge had with it a while back. Even with Phantom Force in its arsenal, it still couldn't land a strong enough hit to take Rayquaza out of the sky.

“What makes the Explorers so confident that you're able to capture Rayquaza?”

“Hmph. Well, it's because we'll lure Rayquaza out using a resonance generator.”

“A resonance generator?” Friede had a vague idea on what such a device could do from its name.

“Yes. I analyzed the accumulated data and recreated the energy Terapagos emits when calling to Rayquaza.”

“Even if you can call it, do you really think you can beat it?”

“Three skilled Explorers are on the job. They will bring it down,” came the confident response.

“That's a surprise. Didn't peg you as the type to ask for help,” Friede replied. He filed away everything he learnt for future consideration. To think that the Explorers were able to replicate the energy Terapagos let out. They truly were a formidable enemy.

“Don't be ridiculous.” The scoff wasn't unexpected considering what Friede gleaned from this guy's personality. “I am simply using them. I shall acquire the black Rayquaza without even fighting it.”

Once he called out for Umbreon, Friede knew casual conversations were over. It was time to battle.

“Not if I can help it!” Friede instinctively pulled out Charizard's Pokeball before he realized a crucial fact.

“In this confined space, you cannot make use of Charizard's flight. Not let it go on a Terastallized rampage.”

“So you anticipated all of this, huh?” Friede had to concede that in this particular room, he was at a disadvantage with Charizard. His partner's strength lay in its maneuverability within the field,  allowing it chances to gain the upper hand against a grounded opponent. Not to mention, its Fire-type moves could be a bit too dangerous within an enclosed room. 

“Pika.” 

Friede's eyes went to Cap, who threw off his hat as his readiness for battle. Right, he had another strong Pokemon that could face off against the Umbreon. 

“A Pikachu? You're toying with me.”

“Heh. I've heard the same thing from someone else before.” What was it with his opponents underestimating a Pikachu? “You're gonna regret it.”

“Umbreon! Use Snarl!”

With a growl, Umbreon released red rings of energy from its mouth that hit Cap straight on.

“Don't let it faze you, Cap! Use Double Team!”

Cap swiftly jumped out of the Snarl’s path, creating multiple clones of itself to confuse Umbreon. 

“Thunder Punch!”

Cap alongside his clones surged forward towards Umbreon, his true self charging up a Thunder Punch. It almost hit the Umbreon if not for the sudden Reflect it threw up, halting the Thunder Punch in its tracks.

“Keep it up! Double Team!”

Cap once again made multiple clones of himself but the Umbreon retaliated by an exceptionally speedy Quick Attack that took out all the clones.

“Cap, meet it with a Thunder Punch!”

Still in mid air, Cap turned with a lightning encased fist towards Umbreon. It looked like the punch connected but it seemed that Umbreon used its tail to block the move. Before Cap could recover, Umbreon got behind him.

“Foul Play!”

Umbreon flipped around and used its back legs to kick Cap away with tremendous force. Friede watched his partner fly halfway across the room to hit the wall behind him, causing dust to kick up from the impact.

“Cap!” Friede called out. Thankfully, that wasn't enough to take his partner out. With a nod, he muttered, “Now, what to do next?”

“Pi Pika.” Cap drew his attention again. It was a subtle shift but Friede spotted the crack on the wall’s joint. He quickly understood what Cap meant. 

“Wanna try for it?”

“Pikachu!”

Right, with a vague plan in mind, it was time to carry it out. Friede will put his trust in Cap's endurance for them to overcome this situation.

“Cap, Double Team and get up close!”

Cap once again created multiple clones of himself to surround Umbreon. While it tried to find the real version, all of the Pikachu rushed forward with their fists raised. Friede hoped that without calling for the move, it would catch Umbreon off guard with its timing to block.

Though, the Explorers simply called for another Reflect that just about blocked Cap’s Thunder Punch. Cap was speedy enough to get away before it could retaliate with Foul Play. It certainly was foul in the way it used Cap's strength against him.

If Cap can't connect with close ranged attacks, perhaps it was time to switch it up.

“Cap, keep your distance and use Thunderbolt!”

Cheeks sparking, Cap quickly fired off a Thunderbolt towards Umbreon–only for it to dodge using a Quick Attack. Umbreon solidly connected against Cap to send him flying back, and due to Cap's position, he went straight towards Friede.

Instinctively, Friede braced himself to catch his partner. The force knocked the wind out of his chest, though he remained on his feet. Cap quickly jumped out of his arms to look up at him, concern swimming in his usually confident eyes. 

“Heh, don't worry about me Cap. You know I've taken much worse from you before,” Friede assured his partner. While he did feel twinges of pain from his torso, it wasn't anything he couldn't handle. He had taken harder, electric fueled hits from Cap back during their first meeting after all.

Cap nodded once and turned his focus back to the battle at hand.

“My, you're quite hardy, Professor.”

“Comes with the territory of studying Pokemon,” Friede quipped. Before he could say any further, loud explosions were heard from outside, strong enough that he felt the vibrations within the room.

“Seems the black Rayquaza has shown itself.”

If that was truly the case, Friede had to escape as quickly as possible. He trusted Ludlow to look after the kids, and while they've grown to be capable battlers in their own rights, the likes of Rayquaza were still too much for them.

“Cap!”

Cap quickly charged up another Thunder Punch but Umbreon swiftly countered it with Foul Play. After a quick block with its tail, Umbreon kicked Cap away, sending him flying towards the wall again.

Friede gritted his teeth from the impact. It was hard to watch but he trusted Cap. His partner dashed past him with a Thunder Punch charged up, one that Umbreon once again responded with Foul Play.

“We’re not done yet!” 

This cycle repeated itself, ending with another hard crash against the wall. Cap took a moment to stand up this time, the damage clearly taking its toll.

“Are you just stalling for time? This battle's going nowhere.”

“Correct. You are powerless here,” was the confident reply, arms spread in grandiose. “You cannot even hope to escape.”

Friede certainly hated that infuriating smile of his. As much as he wanted to wipe that off, they can't stray from the plan.

“Don't give up, Cap! Keep at it!”

Thunder Punch met Foul Play once more, resulting in another crash from behind him. Friede clenched his fists, casting a quick glance over his shoulder. Just a little bit more.

“Your struggling will amount to nothing.”

Friede noticed that something in his tone changed. Perhaps in response to the smirk he gave, now confident that this plan will succeed. He won't give the guy time to ponder.

“That should be enough, Cap! Use Volt Tackle!” Friede ordered.

With Cap’s body encased in electricity, he rushed towards Umbreon with all the power he could muster.

Instead of using Foul Play, Umbreon used Reflect just as Friede hoped it would. Volt Tackle was just far too strong to effectively counter with Foul Play.

Friede watched as Cap turned mid rush, feet connecting solidly with the barrier. He used it as a springboard to fly towards the wall with all the momentum of Volt Tackle behind it. 

The small crack formed from all the previous crashes blew wide open from the tackle. Friede felt himself smirk as he said, “Sorry for wrecking the place.”

Without waiting for a response, Friede swiveled on his heel to make a dash towards the opening. As he took out Charizard's Pokeball, he heard from behind him: “My Foul Plays, meant to turn Pikachu's strength against it…”

“Yeah, I turned em right back at you!” Friede shot back.

He tossed out Charizard's Pokeball. His partner wasted no time in lowering itself for easy mounting, and after Cap hopped on, the trio flew to the skies.

Once they put some distance from the building, Friede took out Cap’s hat and put it on his head. 

“You showed some real grit, Cap.” Truly they wouldn't have succeeded if not for Cap's endurance. 

Now that they were past that obstacle, it was time to turn their attention to the black Rayquaza. 

“Is that the place? Hightail it, Charizard!”

With a mighty flap of its wings, they were off towards Rayquaza. Hopefully the kids were able to avoid too much trouble.

[jbfly46]

Your All-in-One AI Web Agent: Save $200+ a Month, Unleash Limitless Possibilities!

Imagine having an AI agent that costs you nothing monthly, runs directly on your computer, and is unrestricted in its capabilities. OpenAI Operator charges up to $200/month for limited API calls and restricts access to many tasks like visiting thousands of websites. With DeepSeek-R1 and Browser-Use, you:

• Save money while keeping everything local and private.

• Automate visiting 100,000+ websites, gathering data, filling forms, and navigating like a human.

• Gain total freedom to explore, scrape, and interact with the web like never before.

You may have heard about Operator from Open AI that runs on their computer in some cloud with you passing on private information to their AI to so anything useful. AND you pay for the gift . It is not paranoid to not want you passwords and logins and personal details to be shared. OpenAI of course charges a substantial amount of money for something that will limit exactly what sites you can visit, like YouTube for example. With this method you will start telling an AI exactly what you want it to do, in plain language, and watching it navigate the web, gather information, and make decisions—all without writing a single line of code.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to build an AI agent that performs tasks like scraping news, analyzing social media mentions, and making predictions using DeepSeek-R1 and Browser-Use, but instead of writing a Python script, you’ll interact with the AI directly using prompts.

These instructions are in constant revisions as DeepSeek R1 is days old. Browser Use has been a standard for quite a while. This method can be for people who are new to AI and programming. It may seem technical at first, but by the end of this guide, you’ll feel confident using your AI agent to perform a variety of tasks, all by talking to it. how, if you look at these instructions and it seems to overwhelming, wait, we will have a single download app soon. It is in testing now.

This is version 3.0 of these instructions January 26th, 2025.

This guide will walk you through setting up DeepSeek-R1 8B (4-bit) and Browser-Use Web UI, ensuring even the most novice users succeed.

What You’ll Achieve

By following this guide, you’ll:

1. Set up DeepSeek-R1, a reasoning AI that works privately on your computer.

2. Configure Browser-Use Web UI, a tool to automate web scraping, form-filling, and real-time interaction.

3. Create an AI agent capable of finding stock news, gathering Reddit mentions, and predicting stock trends—all while operating without cloud restrictions.

A Deep Dive At ReadMultiplex.com Soon

We will have a deep dive into how you can use this platform for very advanced AI use cases that few have thought of let alone seen before. Join us at ReadMultiplex.com and become a member that not only sees the future earlier but also with particle and pragmatic ways to profit from the future.

System Requirements

Hardware

• RAM: 8 GB minimum (16 GB recommended).

• Processor: Quad-core (Intel i5/AMD Ryzen 5 or higher).

• Storage: 5 GB free space.

• Graphics: GPU optional for faster processing.

Software

• Operating System: macOS, Windows 10+, or Linux.

• Python: Version 3.8 or higher.

• Git: Installed.

Step 1: Get Your Tools Ready

We’ll need Python, Git, and a terminal/command prompt to proceed. Follow these instructions carefully.

Install Python

1. Check Python Installation:

• Open your terminal/command prompt and type:

python3 --version

• If Python is installed, you’ll see a version like:

Python 3.9.7

2. If Python Is Not Installed:

• Download Python from python.org.

• During installation, ensure you check “Add Python to PATH” on Windows.

3. Verify Installation:

python3 --version

Install Git

1. Check Git Installation:

• Run:

git --version

• If installed, you’ll see:

git version 2.34.1

2. If Git Is Not Installed:

• Windows: Download Git from git-scm.com and follow the instructions.

• Mac/Linux: Install via terminal:

sudo apt install git -y # For Ubuntu/Debian

brew install git # For macOS

Step 2: Download and Build llama.cpp

We’ll use llama.cpp to run the DeepSeek-R1 model locally.

1. Open your terminal/command prompt.

2. Navigate to a clear location for your project files:

mkdir ~/AI_Project

cd ~/AI_Project

3. Clone the llama.cpp repository:

git clone https://github.com/ggerganov/llama.cpp.git

cd llama.cpp

4. Build the project:

• Mac/Linux:

make

• Windows:

• Install a C++ compiler (e.g., MSVC or MinGW).

• Run:

mkdir build

cd build

cmake ..

cmake --build . --config Release

Step 3: Download DeepSeek-R1 8B 4-bit Model

1. Visit the DeepSeek-R1 8B Model Page on Hugging Face.

2. Download the 4-bit quantized model file:

• Example: DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-8B-Q4_K_M.gguf.

3. Move the model to your llama.cpp folder:

mv ~/Downloads/DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-8B-Q4_K_M.gguf ~/AI_Project/llama.cpp

Step 4: Start DeepSeek-R1

1. Navigate to your llama.cpp folder:

cd ~/AI_Project/llama.cpp

2. Run the model with a sample prompt:

./main -m DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-8B-Q4_K_M.gguf -p "What is the capital of France?"

3. Expected Output:

The capital of France is Paris.

Step 5: Set Up Browser-Use Web UI

1. Go back to your project folder:

cd ~/AI_Project

2. Clone the Browser-Use repository:

git clone https://github.com/browser-use/browser-use.git

cd browser-use

3. Create a virtual environment:

python3 -m venv env

4. Activate the virtual environment:

• Mac/Linux:

source env/bin/activate

• Windows:

env\Scripts\activate

5. Install dependencies:

pip install -r requirements.txt

6. Start the Web UI:

python examples/gradio_demo.py

7. Open the local URL in your browser:

http://127.0.0.1:7860

Step 6: Configure the Web UI for DeepSeek-R1

1. Go to the Settings panel in the Web UI.

2. Specify the DeepSeek model path:

~/AI_Project/llama.cpp/DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-8B-Q4_K_M.gguf

3. Adjust Timeout Settings:

• Increase the timeout to 120 seconds for larger models.

4. Enable Memory-Saving Mode if your system has less than 16 GB of RAM.

Step 7: Run an Example Task

Let’s create an agent that:

1. Searches for Tesla stock news.

2. Gathers Reddit mentions.

3. Predicts the stock trend.

Example Prompt:

Search for "Tesla stock news" on Google News and summarize the top 3 headlines. Then, check Reddit for the latest mentions of "Tesla stock" and predict whether the stock will rise based on the news and discussions.

--

Congratulations! You’ve built a powerful, private AI agent capable of automating the web and reasoning in real time. Unlike costly, restricted tools like OpenAI Operator, you’ve spent nothing beyond your time. Unleash your AI agent on tasks that were once impossible and imagine the possibilities for personal projects, research, and business. You’re not limited anymore. You own the web—your AI agent just unlocked it! 🚀

Stay tuned fora FREE simple to use single app that will do this all and more.

[bullet-prooflove]

Hi~~ Could I have prompt 17 "Rebel girl you are the queen of my world" for New Year's Eve with this man, please?

P.S: thanks for feeding me with all these reblogs with Scola these past few days. It made my days :)

Honestly I am living for these two right now after writing this. Thank you for prompting for this one, it was such a fun one to explore.

You have a reputation, for being a little wild, a little reckless. You think Stuart doesn’t know about it, but he does. You’re a complete pain in the ass to anyone who has the pleasure of supervising you but you’re an expert with explosives and you have nerves of steel. You’ve never faltered in the face of adversity; Stuart's seen it himself. When the chips are down, he’d bet on you every single time.

Which is why he’s standing alongside of you right now while you’re wrist deep in a bomb ignoring the screaming of your boss over your earpiece.

“You should leave Stuart.” You say, your voice terse. “This might get messy.”

“You stay, I stay.” He reminds you and it takes you back to the first time you met.

Him sitting cross legged in the reception area of 26 Fed with a pipe bomb strapped to his chest, the scent of your perfume flooding his senses as you leaned in close. Amber and jasmine, he remembers thinking at the time, something expensive and high end from the subtleness of the notes.

“You should go.” He’d told you as the timer ticked down, your fingers trailing over the wires.

“No.” You’d drawled out the word, your eyes flickering up to meet his. “You stay, I stay. That’s the deal, right?”

There’s a calm in you that surprises him. You’re the shelter in the middle of the storm. The safe space in the midst of all the chaos. He draws strength from that because if you can be solid in that moment so can he.

“We got this.” You'd told him with that beautiful smile of yours. “I promise.”

You reach into your ear and remove the earpiece; Stuart follows suit because the language that’s coming out of your supervisor’s mouth is beyond colourful.

There’s three hundred people in the building above you. They’re trying to evacuate them but there isn’t enough time. That’s the reason you’re still here, if it was just property damage you wouldn’t give a fuck but it’s the people you care about, the lives that’ll be burned up if you don’t do this.

“I need the multi-tool in my top right pocket, but I can’t take my hands out of the casing.” You tell him, your brow furrowing in concentration.

He seeks out the tool, removing it from the vest before taking a deep breath and plunging his hand into the depths of the device. He presses it into your palm, and you take it carefully, grasping it tightly in your fingers before you clamp the wire and snip.

The two of you go still. Stuart’s eyes meet yours and he sees your lips twitch up into a smile. He can’t help but smile back because his girl, she’s a little crazy and that make him a little crazy. You withdraw your hand from the casing and put your earpiece back into your ear.

“The device is disarmed.” You say as you tuck the multitool back into your pocket, tapping your fingertips on it twice for good luck.

There’s silence on the opposite end before your supervisor utters.

“Christ Sasha, you cut it close.”

“Do I get to keep my badge?” You ask him, referring to his earlier threat and Stuart shakes his head because his girl does not pull her punches. “Or do I have to find an alternative means of employment? Stuart always says I’d make a pretty good barista.”

“Just get your ass out here, bomb disposal will be on scene in ten.”

“Copy that.” You say before pulling out your earpiece again.

“You’re such a rebel.” Stuart says fondly as his hands cup your face. His thumbs ghost over your cheeks as he leans in close, his athletic form presses against yours and he can see the excitement in your eyes as his nose trails along the length of yours.

It’s the adrenaline that’s driving him. All he wants to do right now is get you in the back of the SUV and fuck you until your saying his name. You want it too; he can tell by the noise you make when his lips brush over yours.

“Later.” He promises as he tips your chin up to meet his gaze. “Go outside and play nice first, I’ll ruin you when we get home.”

Love Scola? Don’t miss any of his stories by joining the taglist here.

Interested in supporting me? Join my Patreon for Bonus Content!

Like My Work? - Why Not Buy Me A Coffee

@kmc1989 @trublu2u @greenies-green @burningpeachpuppy @upsteadlogic @malindacath @yezzyyae

[elysiaishere]

Genshin Thoughts/Theories No One Asked For, (Spoilers) —Relationship Edition Part 1

At this point, this should be a series because I'm lost in the Genshin sauce, and it doesn't seem like I'm coming out of it anytime soon.

So, here are some mostly inane thoughts I've had about various relationships in the canon:

1. Nahida and Wanderer

Nahida and Wanderer have a beautiful friendship.

On the surface, a friendship between them seems unlikely. He's arrogant, rude and at times, downright cruel. Nahida, on the other hand, is a warm and forgiving spirit. But, if we consider their past experiences, we are able to build a clearer picture of how Nahida and Wanderer are able to not only get along but complement each other as well. Both endured long periods of isolation and loneliness, and from what the canon has shown us, these periods have largely shaped who they are today.

For all that she's the God of Wisdom, Nahida is young and inexperienced. Her imprisonment prevented her from forming authentic, meaningful bonds with her people, and, as such, it suffocated her own self-confidence and ability to connect with others. Even now, she doubts herself.

In contrast, Wanderer is an experienced combatant and seasoned leader. His time as a Fatui Harbinger, no doubt, taught him how to coordinate people and communicate his expectations—even if his expectations were otherwise cruel and unfair.

These differences, however, are key to why their dynamic works so well. Nahida is able to build him a safe space to explore his own humanity without judgment. On the other hand, Wanderer is able to both protect Nahida from physical threats and model self-confidence in a way she can easily emulate.

It's unorthodox, sure, but their friendship showcases a phenomenal example of how, sometimes, we find the most fulfilling and meaningful relationships in the strangest of places. Truly, I hope to see more of them in the future. I'm always delighted by their rapport. She obviously enjoys teasing him, and despite his enormous pride, he allows it.

2. Furina and Neuvillette

In an earlier post, I briefly touched on the speculations I have about who Furina/Focalors is to Neuvillette and vice-versa. In this post, I intend to dissect what information—or lack thereof—is available to us. After all, as the Hydro Archon and Hydro Dragon, respectively, their destinies have no doubt always been intertwined.

In Neuvillette's character teaser, "Watcher in the Deep," Neuvillette admits that he longs to find the answers to the many questions he has regarding his identity. He has no leads, no starting lines, and even states: "It's as if I've forgotten something since the very beginning."

Then, some seconds later and out of frame, we hear Furina:

"So, why don't you find the answers for yourself?"

Her voice is soft, encouraging, and a stark contrast from the shrill, theatrical young woman we've come to know throughout the 4.0 and 4.1 Archon Quests. This suggests that, at one point in time, Furina and Neuvillette were once close.

In comparison, their interactions we've seen thus far are a pale shade of that. He often seems exasperated by her antics while she expects him to yield to her whims, no matter how unreasonable those whims might be.

I liken it to a relationship between a spoilt little sister and an exhausted older brother. Entertaining, fun, and downright hilarious.

Jokes aside, I don't think he's indifferent to Furina. In fact, we're shown on a handful of occasions the exact opposite. Just before the iconic Primordial Seas cutscene, he tells the Traveler he's reluctant to leave Furina alone with Arlecchino and, as such, asks the Traveler to watch over her throughout the meeting. Then, in the aftermath, while the Traveler and Neuvillette are talking outside the Opera Epiclese, the scene focuses on Neuvillette watching Furina sneak away. The Traveler is none the wiser, but based on how he tunes out Paimon and watches her leave, we can deduce that he's worried about how out of character Furina seems.

I'd also like to highlight that this is the first time we've seen Neuvillette call her simply "Furina" instead of "Lady Furina." I think this is quite indicative of a more nuanced relationship than what has been observed so far.

As for Furina, I find her to be a living, breathing dichotomy. Initially, she appears spoilt and immature. A young woman who feels insecure, so she overcompensates with glamour and entertainment. But, if we gleaned nothing else from her meeting with Arlecchino, it's clear that she does, in fact, take her status as the Hydro Archon very seriously. She cares about Fontaine and its people.

Moreover, Furina, I think, carries a lot of care for Neuvillette as well. She seems comfortable in his presence, so much so that she doesn't feel the need to perform for him. Or, at the very least, Furina doesn't feel the need to perform him much. She seems to feel much safer and settled during her initial meeting with Arlecchino than she is in the second. Implying, to some degree, that Furina trusts him to look out for her if a situation turns south.

With that said, I think something strange has occurred that's led to the formation of their current dynamic. Perhaps the "curse" Arlecchino mentioned. And whatever has occurred, curse or not, it has totally reshaped their relationship. However, I simply can't deduce what.

[justforbooks]

Joseph Rykwert

Architectural writer who believed that buildings not be considered in isolation but as part of the fabric of a city

Joseph Rykwert, who has died aged 98, was a historian and critic of architecture of exceptional intellect, cultural breadth and distinctive outlook. His books and his teaching changed the understanding of his discipline and helped to move the design and planning of cities and buildings away from the functionalist mindset that dominated postwar building. In 2014 he was awarded Britain’s leading honour for architecture, the Royal Gold Medal, one of a very few times that it has been given to a writer rather than a practitioner.

Rykwert’s first book, The Idea of a Town (1963), by exploring the rituals that underlay the founding of ancient cities, sought to restore the importance of such things as memory, feeling, intuition and instinct in the making of the places where human beings live. It was an important part of a wider reaction to technocratic approaches that were causing widespread destruction in cities across the world. It is now commonplace for developers and planners to talk about “placemaking”, by which they mean the ways in which architecture and landscape work together to make social urban spaces, a concept that owes much to Rykwert’s belief that buildings should not be considered in isolation but as part of the fabric of a city.

His other books included On Adam’s House in Paradise (1972), on architects’ enduring fascination with the idea of a primitive hut at one with nature, and The First Moderns (1980) – his favourite – which revealed the roots of 20th-century ideas of modernity in thinkers and architects 200 years earlier.

In all his work Rykwert moved readily between architecture, philosophy, art and other disciplines, aided by his wide erudition and an impressive library that he started building as a student. He was motivated by his certainty that the design of buildings is always part of a wider culture, and by his passion for the places that make a city flourish, whether a remembered street in pre-war Poland or a forum in ancient Etruria. He was, as the writer Susan Sontag put it, an “ingeniously speculative historian and critic of architecture – of that is, the forms (in the most concrete sense) of civilisation.”

The many architects whom he inspired and influenced include the Stirling prize winners Sir David Chipperfield and Witherford Watson Mann, Eric Parry, Patrick Lynch, and Sir James Stirling (the giant of British architecture after whom the prize was named).

Rykwert’s demeanour was gentle and civilised – “the sort of great-uncle I would have liked to have”, as one former student, the artist Richard Wentworth, now puts it, who “always imparted a general sense of mischief”. This character was all the more remarkable for the traumas of his childhood, in which he and his family had to flee for their lives from the advancing German armies. Many of his relatives died in the Holocaust.

Joseph was born in Warsaw, the son of Elizabeth (nee Melup), and Szymon Rykwert. His father, a railways engineer, was ruined after the great crash of 1929, but worked his way back to prosperity. In September 1939, when the Wehrmacht invaded Poland, the Rykwerts escaped via Lithuania, Latvia and Sweden to Britain. Joseph went to Charterhouse, a “plunge” in his words “into the wholly alien world” of an English boarding school. His father died of a stroke early in Joseph’s time there, leaving his mother “skimping” to pay his fees. He went to the Bartlett School of Architecture, which was evacuated to Cambridge in wartime, then the Architectural Association in London.

He started to write, studiously, taking two years to complete his first book review for the Burlington Magazine. He wanted to work for “the London architect I most admired”, Ernö Goldfinger, but was put off by the measly pay on offer – 30 shillings a week – and went instead to the pioneer British modernists Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew, who paid five times as much. Rykwert later decided to refuse a job offer in the Paris studio of the most famous architect of the 20th century, Le Corbusier, who paid nothing. Eventually, although his built works included a fur-lined nightclub and a house in Chelsea, Rykwert’s writing and teaching would take over from designing buildings.

In both London and Paris, which he visited as a young man, the postwar years were for him a time of “exhilaration and easy familiarity” in which “people of great intellectual and professional distinction ... seemed prepared to accept an obscure and impoverished youth as a partner in dialogue.” From the age of 18 he exchanged ideas with the future Nobel prizewinner Elias Canetti. Later he became friends with Italo Calvino, whose 1972 novel Invisible Cities owed something to Rykwert’s urban thinking, and the painters Prunella Clough and Michael Ayrton. Iris Murdoch, Umberto Eco and Saul Steinberg were also acquaintances. In 1968 he would befriend the great modernist designer Eileen Gray, then living in obscurity at the age of 90, and rediscover her work in an article for the Italian magazine Domus.

He started to teach, including at Ulm School of Design, in Germany, then considered to be the heir of the Bauhaus as (in Rykwert’s words) “the forge of all that was new in design”, although he found its “systematic rationality” uncongenial. He was librarian and tutor at the Royal College of Art in London from 1961 to 1967 and from 1967 to 1980 professor of art at the new University of Essex.

His postgraduate seminars for the university, held in various locations including the Royal Academy in London with the historian and theorist Dalibor Veselý, were groundbreaking for the way they combined architecture with philosophy and anthropology.

After Essex, Rykwert held posts and professorships at the University of Cambridge and, from 1988 to 1998, at the University of Pennsylvania, and visiting appointments in numerous universities in several countries. In his retirement he continued to welcome lively and creative minds to his book-lined London flat. He was appointed CBE in 2014.

His first marriage, to Jane Morton, ended in divorce. In 1972 he married Anne Engel, his editor on The First Moderns, with whom he enjoyed a successful partnership until her death in 2015. He is survived by Sebastian, his son with Jane, and by Anne’s daughter from a previous marriage, Marina, and by two step-granddaughters.

🔔 Joseph Rykwert, architectural historian and critic, born 5 April 1926; died 18 October 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

6 Things to Know About SPHEREx, NASA’s Newest Space Telescope

Shaped like a megaphone, the upcoming mission will map the entire sky in infrared light to answer big questions about the universe.

Expected to launch no earlier than Thursday, Feb. 27, from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, NASA’s SPHEREx space observatory will provide astronomers with a big-picture view of the cosmos like none before. Short for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer, SPHEREx will map the entire celestial sky in 102 infrared colors, illuminating the origins of our universe, galaxies within it, and life’s key ingredients in our own galaxy. Here are six things to know about the mission.

1. The SPHEREx space telescope will shed light on a cosmic phenomenon called inflation.

In the first billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after the big bang, the universe increased in size by a trillion-trillionfold. Called inflation, this nearly instantaneous event took place almost 14 billion years ago, and its effects can be found today in the large-scale distribution of matter in the universe. By mapping the distribution of more than 450 million galaxies, SPHEREx will help scientists improve our understanding of the physics behind this extreme cosmic event.

2. The observatory will measure the collective glow from galaxies near and far.

Scientists have tried to estimate the total light output from all galaxies throughout cosmic history by observing individual galaxies and extrapolating to the trillions of galaxies in the universe. The SPHEREx space telescope will take a different approach and measure the total glow from all galaxies, including galaxies too small, too diffuse, or too distant for other telescopes to easily detect. Combining the measurement of this overall glow with other telescopes’ studies of individual galaxies will give scientists a more complete picture of all the major sources of light in the universe.

3. The mission will search the Milky Way galaxy for essential building blocks of life.

Life as we know it wouldn’t exist without basic ingredients such as water and carbon dioxide. The SPHEREx observatory is designed to find these molecules frozen in interstellar clouds of gas and dust, where stars and planets form. The mission will pinpoint the location and abundance of these icy compounds in our galaxy, giving researchers a better sense of their availability in the raw materials for newly forming planets.

4. It adds unique strengths to NASA’s fleet of space telescopes.

Space telescopes like NASA’s Hubble and Webb have zoomed in on many corners of the universe to show us planets, stars, and galaxies in high resolution. But some questions — like how much light do all the galaxies in the universe collectively emit? — can be answered only by looking at the big picture. To that end, the SPHEREx observatory will provide maps that encompass the entire sky. Objects of scientific interest identified by SPHEREx can then be studied in more detail by targeted telescopes like Hubble and Webb.

5. The SPHEREx observatory will make the most colorful all-sky map ever.

The SPHEREx observatory “sees” infrared light. Undetectable to the human eye, this range of wavelengths is ideal for studying stars and galaxies. Using a technique called spectroscopy, the telescope can split the light into its component colors (individual wavelengths), like a prism creates a rainbow from sunlight, in order to measure the distance to cosmic objects and learn about their composition. With SPHEREx’s spectroscopic map in hand, scientists will be able to detect evidence of chemical compounds, like water ice, in our galaxy. They’ll not only measure the total amount of light emitted by galaxies in our universe, but also discern how bright that total glow was at different points in cosmic history. And they’ll chart the 3D locations of hundreds of millions of galaxies to study how inflation influenced the large-scale structure of the universe today.

6. The spacecraft’s cone-shaped design helps it stay cold and see faint objects.

The mission’s infrared telescope and detectors need to operate at around minus 350 degrees Fahrenheit (about minus 210 degrees Celsius). This is partly to prevent them from generating their own infrared glow, which might overwhelm the faint light from cosmic sources. To keep things cold while also simplifying the spacecraft’s design and operational needs, SPHEREx relies on an entirely passive cooling system — no electricity or coolants are used during normal operations. Key to making this feat possible are three cone-shaped photon shields that protect the telescope from the heat of Earth and the Sun, as well as a mirrored structure beneath the shields to direct heat from the instrument out into space. Those photon shields give the spacecraft its distinctive outline.

More About SPHEREx

SPHEREx is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the agency’s Astrophysics Division within the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. BAE Systems (formerly Ball Aerospace) built the telescope and the spacecraft bus. The science analysis of the SPHEREx data will be conducted by a team of scientists located at 10 institutions in the U.S., two in South Korea, and one in Taiwan. Data will be processed and archived at IPAC at Caltech, which manages JPL for NASA. The mission principal investigator is based at Caltech with a joint JPL appointment. The SPHEREx dataset will be publicly available at the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive.

TOP IMAGE: NASA’s SPHEREx observatory undergoes testing at BAE Systems in Boulder, Colorado, in August 2024. Launching no earlier than Feb. 27, 2025, the mission will make the first all-sky spectroscopic survey in the near-infrared, helping to answer some of the biggest questions in astrophysics. Credit: BAE Systems/NASA/JPL-Caltech

LOWER IMAGE: Molecular clouds like this one, called Rho Ophiuchi, are collections of cold gas and dust in space where stars and planets can form. SPHEREx will survey such regions throughout the Milky Way galaxy to measure the abundance of water ice and other frozen molecules. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech