#literally warp 10 speed

[chaoticrystal]

lt. tom paris learns how to love his infinite velocity lizard children [sd. 49374.5]

[katjohnadams]

I fucking love Star Trek and energy because like.

Holy shit. The fucking warp core is insane. Actually fucking crazy. Let's take deuterium and anti-deuterium and fire them down massive super conductive magnet coil tubes at each other into a weird crystal that somehow interacts with subspace, use the insane amount of energy released when the deuterium and anti-deuterium mutually annihilate to break physics and let us go literally exponentially faster than light with zero time dilation.

Like, do you understand how much energy they are riding? I don't because they use measures that are actually absurd. They talk about the heat inside the warp core as being in the millions of kelvins. And like, yeah

Bro. You are standing next to that fucking thing. They literally touch it at times but the surface of the warp core is just... Room temperature. That is fucking bonkers. They are harnessing relativistic power, sometimes just to take a quick hop around the relative neighborhood.

And the "curren" warp scale? Is mad? Like, it goes from warp 1 (the speed of light) on an exponential curve to 9.9999repeating. because warp 10? You occupy all points in the universe at the same time.

AND THEN THEY FUCKING DID THAT? AND IT TURNED THEM INTO SALAMANDERS?

Like. Babes.

I love Trek.

But my people are mad.

[mysticstronomy]

HOW FAST DOES LIGHT TRAVEL??

Blog#395

Wednesday, April 24th, 2024.

Welcome back,

The speed of light traveling through a vacuum is exactly 299,792,458 meters (983,571,056 feet) per second. That's about 186,282 miles per second — a universal constant known in equations as "c," or light speed.

According to physicist Albert Einstein's theory of special relativity, on which much of modern physics is based, nothing in the universe can travel faster than light.

The theory states that as matter approaches the speed of light, the matter's mass becomes infinite. That means the speed of light functions as a speed limit on the whole universe. The speed of light is so immutable that, according to the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology, it is used to define international standard measurements like the meter (and by extension, the mile, the foot and the inch).

Through some crafty equations, it also helps define the kilogram and the temperature unit Kelvin.

But despite the speed of light's reputation as a universal constant, scientists and science fiction writers alike spend time contemplating faster-than-light travel. So far no one's been able to demonstrate a real warp drive, but that hasn't slowed our collective hurtle toward new stories, new inventions and new realms of physics.

A light-year is the distance that light can travel in one year — about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion kilometers). It's one way that astronomers and physicists measure immense distances across our universe.

Light travels from the moon to our eyes in about 1 second, which means the moon is about 1 light-second away. Sunlight takes about 8 minutes to reach our eyes, so the sun is about 8 light minutes away. Light from Alpha Centauri, which is the nearest star system to our own, requires roughly 4.3 years to get here, so Alpha Centauri is 4.3 light-years away.

"To obtain an idea of the size of a light-year, take the circumference of the Earth (24,900 miles), lay it out in a straight line, multiply the length of the line by 7.5 (the corresponding distance is one light-second), then place 31.6 million similar lines end to end," NASA's Glenn Research Center says on its website. "The resulting distance is almost 6 trillion (6,000,000,000,000) miles!"

Stars and other objects beyond our solar system lie anywhere from a few light-years to a few billion light-years away. And everything astronomers "see" in the distant universe is literally history. When astronomers study objects that are far away, they are seeing light that shows the objects as they existed at the time that light left them.

Originally published on https://www.space.com

COMING UP!!

(Saturday, April 27th, 2024)

"HOW WAS OUR SOLAR SYSTEM CREATED??"

[houseofbrat]

What do most people not understand about what it’s like to be a personal assistant to very rich people? A lot of people think, Oh, it’s red carpets and Lamborghinis, but most of your job is sitting behind a desk. Even when you’re on the road with a client, you’re isolated in many ways. One family I was traveling with for three months, they had profound inherited wealth and they just wanted privacy, even from each other. So we were getting these big villas that were very quiet. Each person would go to their own wing, with their own kitchenette and fridge, and we’d keep it stocked with what they wanted and they wouldn’t have to see anybody. Sometimes they would give me their phone and be like, “I don’t want to talk to anybody. If anything important comes in, deal with it.” And that might go on for days.

[...]

Why do you think people get stingy about these salaries when they have so much money? They delude themselves because when they put out a job opening, and it says $80,000, they get hundreds of applications. What they don’t understand is that it’s not about quantity, it’s about quality. When you hire people who are gawkers, who are opportunistic, who don’t have a lot of experience and will work for $80,000 to be in proximity to fame, you’re guaranteed to have problems down the line. Eventually, everything falls apart and people start suing. And when a celebrity or billionaire gets sued, they never win. They lose every single time. The case never goes to court because nobody wants their dirty laundry out there.

Another reason these people get stingy is that there’s some kind of psychological distortion that happens when everyone fawns over you all the time. The VIP’s mentality is, “Hey, this person should be paying me, because they get to be around greatness.” They’re used to having people want a piece of them. So they think that the job is such an amazing opportunity that they shouldn’t have to pay the person what they’re actually worth. They live in a bubble and their reality is warped.

[...]

After more than ten years of working for high-net-worth families and individuals, I decided to start my own operation, recruiting and placing PAs for the same type of clients. A lot of other staffing agencies deal primarily with nannies and housekeepers. But finding a highly skilled person who you can trust with all your secrets is incredibly difficult — people want to hire an Ivy League–educated executive assistant who’s worked for a billionaire before and has recommendation letters. And just because someone worked for one billionaire doesn’t mean they’re going to be good in another environment with someone else. We are aligning the hard skills and the soft skills and the personality traits to make a perfect match that’s going to last for 5, 10, or 20 years. The high-net-worth families don’t want to be blowing through assistants every year. They have a lot to lose, and it’s hard for them to trust people.

[...]

Are there situations where, after you embed yourself with a client, you realize they’re just too much of a nightmare to keep on? Oh, yes. I learned some very hard lessons. There was this one billionaire who had, it could only be described as a dungeon in his basement, for fetishes and stuff like that. With another client, I literally lied and said I was going to the bathroom, and I just escaped. There are times when I get into the mix and I’m like, “I’m out of here.” I’ve been in a couple situations where I was really worried about people’s behavior, especially with all the drugs and alcohol.

[...]

What are some of the “soft” skills that you mentioned that PAs need to have to be successful? You have to have thick skin. You’re like a rhinoceros or an armadillo. And you have to have incredible patience. The way you word things is so important. Your intonation and speed of delivery — I mean, it’s an art. You’re working for people who are not used to hearing no.

One example: I was working for a prince, and in the Middle East, he’s a pretty big deal. But outside of that world, nobody knows who he is; he’s just another wealthy guy. So he got this crazy idea that he wanted to meet this big-deal Hollywood celebrity. I got on the phone with the right person who worked in that celebrity’s inner circle. And they said, “We might be able to do it, but here’s the set of circumstances under which it could happen.” So when I explained to the VIP that, if he wanted to meet this celebrity, he would need to make a donation to the celebrity’s favorite charity and do these other things, he exploded in anger. It went on for two days. He was running around screaming, “No, people pay to meet me.” He lost his mind.

So I learned an important lesson: It would’ve just been better for me to say that I couldn’t do it. You have to get to know the rhythms of the person you’re working for, and there’s certain ways that you have to say things. And you have to know when it’s better to not say anything or tell little fibs. The use of collective pronouns is very important — saying “we” instead of you or I. Sometimes when you’re working with people who have inherited wealth — they just walk into money and never had a job and don’t understand how the real world works — they’ll ask you to do something profoundly ridiculous, and you can’t tell them how dumb the idea is.

How do you deal with boundaries, personally, when clients cross them? It’s hard. You get sucked in, and the water becomes very muddy. A lot of these people are lonely. They’re in their megamansion all alone with you, and then they’ve had a couple lines, and then they’re telling you all their problems, and you become like a psychiatrist. It’s tricky.

Personally, I know other people in the business, and I would sometimes call them and say, “What do you do in this situation?” And we’d give each other advice. The big stars, they have a whole army of people that work for them, the agents and the managers and the doctors and the lawyers. But those people are only interacting with them intermittently at best. The PA is the one that’s there in the trench, day in and day out, year in and year out. You have to know your place, though, too. A lot of VIPs are obsessive about the people around them. They’re constantly in a state of mental torture because they think other people want something from them — usually their money. So you want to make sure you keep both feet on the ground, because it can all be taken away.

How do you keep from being starstruck or intimidated by the people you work with? You get used to it. It’s a business. And when you meet these people, most of the time, you’re going to be disappointed. Either because they’re mean, or they’re just not like what you thought they were going to be like. The Hollywood publicity machine creates a certain image, and it’s very rare to meet a celebrity who is genuinely an amazing, brilliant, kind, humane person to everyone all the time. Once you’ve been around it enough, those butterflies start to go away.

[real-fire-emblem-takes]

No offense but I really hope you have a lot of fun with Siege tomes in bop, because I find them absolutely miserable to deal with in excess. Oh boy, I sure do love having to check the range of the mage every 5 seconds because they double every unit and rarely ever miss.

you won't actually have to worry about being doubled and killed! I was just referring to Downpour having infinite durability lol.

Enemy deep mages will have single digit speed, skill and luck for most of the game and Downpour has 0 might and a low hit of 70. Later siege tomes will be even less accurate. Also i reduced the range from 3-10 to 3-7 and made all of them stationary if they have siege tomes.

On top of all of that, you have several ways to get to them before they can attack you. Lenore and Jed can easily fly over and one round them, other mounted units and also Manon (your archer) for some reason can also get in range to attack without getting attacked back but will need very good positioning, you can warp or rescue someone using Maggy or Alastor, put a galeforce tome on Siobhan and have her kill an enemy on the way, or just take 2 turns with literally anyone (they'll probably survive 2 or 3 hits from max hp and can dodge sometimes).

So they're actually pretty manageable and you'll also get to play around with a few of your own :) Oh also Anima and Light don't have any tomes with more than 2 range.

[dwellordream]

thoughts on HOTD episode 2, season 2 (spoilers below)

phia saban and tom glynn carney knocked it out of the park this episode, and so did olivia cook. alicent's panic attack as she blames herself for invoking some sort of karmic retribution by having sex outside of marriage, helaena and aegon's animalistic grief over the loss of their son- it was all fantastic. i'm glad the episode did not quickly breeze over the response to jaehaerys' death in an effort to speed through the plot. helaena's meltdown when the funeral procession is stuck in a pothole exemplifies her awareness of the horrible story she's in. she knows there is no way for anyone to win this war, and that the suffering will only triple with every turn. she's beloved by the common folk as a martyr, and it horrifies and disgusts her.

some fans are pissed rhaenyra doesn't take any responsibility for the murder/is shown as being horrified and disgusted by daemon's actions. i understand the argument that her being unaware further reduces her autonomy, but i also feel this instance shows the fundamental disconnect between her and daemon. they aren't actually equals in this relationship, based on how it began. not just because he is her uncle and because he groomed her as a child, but because they've never fully trusted one another, and they can't. on some level they will always be rivals for the throne, because daemon will never be 100% comfortably fully ceding his authority to his wife and abandoning any hope of himself on the iron throne.

a single scene between baela and jace is somehow more than they did with the entirety of season one, but the bar is literally in hell here. i hope the writers make more time for the twins in season two, because it's a waste of their characters to constantly relegate them (and often the velaryons in general) to the shadows.

of course aemond is drinking milk while lying in the lap of a brothel madam, lmao. as much as this scene has been mocked, i think people miss the point. aemond is not supposed to be a swaggering badass. he is a deeply disturbed, pathetic person. that doesn't mean he can't have cool moments, but he is a delusional, amoral, neurotic person. he craves any kind of maternal affection and approval, and he warps events to match his own internal expectations.

i'm not sure if i buy mysaria's change of heart and decision to help rhaenyra, not because it wasn't well-acted (and i'm glad they gave mysaria and rhaenyra a scene together), but because it just seems like she's putting it all on the line yet again for a family that has repeatedly shown they will use and abuse her without thought. that said, the erryk/arryk scene was really well done, and i'm relieved they didn't have rhaenyra suddenly show some secret training in arms, lol

i think the 'daeron does exist!' reveal was very awkward, and they absolutely could have mentioned him before this, but i suppose they wanted to dangle daeron as this surprise dark horse for the greens? idk i'm curious to see what they do with him. overall, i enjoyed this episode more than the first, and i'd definitely give it an 8/10. pretty good, and i hope the season continues with this stronger writing.

[mermaidmoose]

Inspired by @montyuh & @callsign-relic first contact AU oneshots - here’s the first fanfic I’ve written in literal years so uh, it’s a bit rough.

Soaring through the depths of space, far beyond the reach of man traveled a ginormous starship- the Lost Light. Measuring 15 miles long and 10 miles wide it was certainly spacious enough to comfortably accommodate a large crew … and one tiny new resident.

Back on Earth, you had signed up to be part of an expedition to an inhabitable planet far from home. In exchange for food, shelter, and the adventure of a lifetime you eagerly packed your bags and said your goodbyes to loved ones. The trip was supposed to take a few years total give or take. Nothing too strenuous.

To quote Murphy’s Law: “What can go wrong will go wrong”. The company responsible for creating the expedition’s starship had cut corners- lots of them. When the starship jumped into warp drive it shook so violently that your whole body was rattled and smashed into the ceiling of your capsule bed. You were lucky to get away with only severe bruising and a bloody tongue. Exiting the jump left the ship stranded, drifting aimlessly as everyone scrambled in the dark to collect themselves. With several of your more experienced crew-mates dead or injured, you and the few survivors chose to route the ship’s remaining power to fuel the escape pods to try to navigate back to Earth.

After a week of travel (according to your pod’s calendar) you were carefully navigating through an asteroid field when a large shadow fell over you. While you are grateful the giant-ass starship that appeared out of nowhere hadn’t obliterated you and your escape pod, you weren’t expecting to be kidnapped either. By giant alien robots no less! With a language barrier! And no sense of personal space or boundaries! Shit! You didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the situation.

Well, you had tried quietly crying about it while wandering down one of the vast halls of the Lost Light, until a blue mechanical horror emerged from an adjacent hallway. To you, Whirl looked like something that had stepped out of a horror movie, with his gangly inhuman build, long neck, and large yellow optic that felt like it drilled right through you.

Whirl barely gives the fleshy creature a cursory glance, noting that it had stopped moving and making those weird noises. He hardly knew what all the fuss was about over such a small, fragile, stinky creature. One misstep and he’d be cleaning gunk out of his foot for several cycles. As he looked away and began ruminating on who he could heckle at Swerve’s a sound made his antennae twitch. It was the pitter-patter of tiny feet running away from him at a frantic yet pathetically slow speed.

Ok, so maybe he could gain some entertainment out of the thing at least. “Hey? Where you goin?” He drawls as he slowly follows after you. It was almost comical how slow he had to walk to not catch up right away. Did you really think those tiny legs could outrun him? “If you don’t pick up the pace I’ll pinch ya!” He leans forward and clacks his pincers menacingly at the empty air behind you.

You were scared shitless. Once Whirl started plodding after you, you contemplated if this was the end. Murdered or eaten by a metal alien monster and all because you wanted to explore beyond earth. ‘I wish I could go back in time and throttle myself’ you seethe as another pinch draws closer. ‘I wish I had never left home. I wish-‘ pre-death regret-thinking is cut to a halt by the appearance of a gap in the wall paneling. In an instant, all thoughts disappear as your body bursts forward with a surge of adrenaline. With a quickness neither of you were expecting, you squeeze yourself into the gap.

You heave a sigh of relief at your successful escape. Your victory is short lived however when Whirl’s optic comes into view and blasts you with what feels like the light of several hundred light bulbs. “Ow! Bastard!” you snarl. Without even thinking you blindly lash out and slap the offending optic. Whirl jerks back in slight surprise, not expecting to feel … whatever that was. Was that an attempt to fight back? Damn, this thing was pathetic. “Oh? Think you’re a tough guy? You’ll need to hit harder than that!” He jams one of his pincers into the gap above your head, trying to wiggle the wall panel open.

As Whirl is focused on the wall panel, you desperately squint around, looking for some means of escape. Thankfully, his loosening of the panel opened another gap on the opposite end. You make a break for it and rush out of the gap, not daring to look back. As you feel a rush of wind and the thrumming of danger (or is that the vibrations of something running?) a shout breaks through the chaos.

“Whirl! What do you think you’re doing!?” Before you can even register what’s happening a smaller, orange mech runs up and scoops you into his hands, holding you in a protective grasp. Though muffled you can still hear what you’re pretty sure is angry robot speak.

Rung rolls his optics at Whirl’s theatrics and sighs. “We’ll discuss this further at your next session. And don’t think this will go unreported- Ah, poor thing, you’re shaking” his attention is drawn back to you. The mech softly coos, gently running a finger along your back in soothing strokes. Truthfully at this point you’re shaking from a mix of adrenaline and relief, not fear. But you lean into Rung’s finger and note how much gentler he is compared to the other bots you’ve met so far. Orange eyebrows bot is now #1 in your book … whatever that means (god your brain is fried. you want a damn nap).

“Are you trying to kill the poor thing? Organics are much more fragile than us Whirl, even enough stress can kill them. Such as being chased by a giant mech! And don’t think I didn’t see you try to grab them!” Rung hardly raises his voice at others, but if Whirl is going to be a threat to the organic, he needs to intervene now.

“Tch! Relax eyebrows, we were just playing around. Y’know, bonding and all that slag. That’s what the captain said we were supposed to do right? Well,” He clicks his pincers. “This is how I bond. Bet we’re already besties! See?” Whirl stretches his neck out to get a closer look at you, but all you do is cower further into the orange mech.

Whirl lets out a dramatic gasp and places one servo over where his spark would be. “Did you see that doc? Rejected! Betrayed! I’m never gonna emotionally recover from this!”

“…It wasn’t that bad” the blue mech grumbles, somewhat affronted by Rung’s scolding and the weird itching at the back of his processor. “Whatever, I’ve got better things to do than hang with you two losers. Like getting drunk!” With that, the blue mech takes off with a cackle, leaving you and Rung in the dust to process everything.

‘I need to find my escape-pod as soon as possible, or else I’m gonna die here’ you morosely conclude.

[ygoartreviews]

Alligator's Sword

"ey, dis mighty lissard man can swing his sword so fast, dat it's more dan da speed a sound!"

God this lizard's face is so smug. And for what? He isn't even holding his sword in a proper, battle ready position. He's not even a reptile type either! What has this world come to...? His sword is sick as hell though; like, using what are presumably alligator bones for the hilt, even if they do look horrendously warped is pretty metal when you're supposedly an alligator yourself (or wyvern. You know, whichever). I do also think it's crazy that they straight up made him look like Piccolo. You can argue that the yellow pattern on his neck and torso is just meant to be scales, sure, but you can't convince me that the way his arms were designed wasn't meant to intentionally invoke Piccolo. I literally don't have anything else to add now that I finally realized why his arms have been bothering me so much for actual years.

Rating: 6/10, Every franchise is improved by adding Piccolo

[maxdurden]

tagged by @deadchannelradio! thanks!! i'll always take the opportunity to talk ad nauseam about music i'm listening to lol

shuffle your on repeat playlist (on spotify) and list the first 10 songs and then tag 10 people

1. Pigs is Pigs by Mannequin Pussy — what an incredible first pull. uhm. sorry for the screamo ass punk music but also consider that i literally JUST saw them in concert and this song goes so hard. it's not sung by their front woman (who totally deserves her flowers), but i LOVE colins' vocals. not a lyric in the song, but what he said at the concert was 'we don't need police, we need community' and fuck yes. this is such a good band if you have an opportunity to see them in concert do it holy fuck they're so good haha 😬👍

2. American Teenager by Ethel Cain — i know exactly two (2) ethel cain songs but this one goes hard what can i say. peak speeding down the highway singing at the top of your lungs music (don't speed, dive safe kids)

3. Control by Mannequin Pussy — it's gonna be a lot of mannequin pussy on here,,,,,,, lmao. this song is great tho!

4. Too Sweet by Hozier — there's probably gonna be a lot of hozier on here too lol. he released new music which always makes me ill, but also unreal unearth unheard has been sooo good for the oc's i've recently been throwing around like ragdolls in my head lol

5. I Got Heaven by Mannequin Pussy — 'and what if jesus himself ate my fucking snatch?' need i say more? this is maybe one of their best songs lol

6. Smog by Indigo De Souza — everyone go listen to all of indigo de souza's music RIGHT. NOW. thanks :)

7. Clean Slate by The Mountain Goats — this is another band that released a new album recently(ish) and i've just been a bit ill about some of the songs. the trumpets are especially fun in this one lol

8. Ptolemaea by Ethel Cain — okay so stick with me on this one. it's a great song first of all (insane that it's on the same album as american teenager lmao but go off ethel) but i've mostly been listening to it for oc purposes. this oc is kinda a vessel for working through feelings about gods and faith, and the way that both gods and the faithful need each other and shape each other. essentially,,, in a universe where gods are sustained by the faith of their followers, what happens when all but one of their followers is wiped out. in what ways do those two entities change and warp and love and destroy each other. ya know. just coping with senior year of college things tbh. anyway it's a great song :3

9. Apollo by Momma — this song has fun instrumentation, makes brain go brr. also!!! very on theme for the previously mentioned oc and thinking about gods and the weird relationships you can have with them.

10. Same as Cash by The Mountain Goats —IN YOUR CAR WITH YOUR HEAD IN YOUR HANDS AT THE FAR END OF THE WALMART PARKING LOT, TRYING NOT TO BUCKLE UNDER THE STRAIN, STRIKING A BARGAIN WITH THE IMP IN YOUR BRAIN, PREPAIRED TO TAKE ANOTHER KNOCK FOR THE SHORT GANG, BUT YOU CAN ASK ANY VETERAN RUNNING BACK, EVENTUALLY YOUR JOINTS COMPLAIN. this song is so special to me no one will ever understand it like i do (only bitches who have worked long hours at an understaffed walmart during the pandemic while couch surfing bc you just left your shitty home situation will ever understand what john is trying to say here like i do tbh. entirely possible john doesn't even understand it like i do [this is a joke. art is personal and always ripe for meaningful and individual interpretation. pls don't shoot me]). but everyone should listen to it anyway, the violins and piano are so so fun and good

hahaaaa i told you i could talk soo much about the music i like, unfortunately for y'all

@darkravenstag @thrustin-timberlake @mitebitmurderous @johaerys-writes @sabrirene @sarcasticbeanie @seethestarsalittlecloser @sleeperagentclone @notacluedo @alive-ontheinside

(no pressure ofc!!! and if you don't have spotify i say just go hog wild and talk about songs you've been enjoying no one can stop you)

[omegaremix]

25 Vinyl Records That Influenced My Vinyl Collecting Habits.

‘Top ten’ lists - they were so commonplace on social media before the pandemic that half of the people you knew participated in them. Your friends involuntarily posted lists of their top ten favorite albums, songs, movies, sports moments, video games, books, or whatever came to mind. Then they’d nominate you to do the same if you even cared. All of a sudden they stopped and for a few months everyone did tournament brackets. These days no one does either. Now, tag a band and see if they acknowledge you exist, solve a simple math problem where everyone with a Facebook diploma in mathematics are out to prove you wrong, or answer some useless questions to find out what your new gang initiation name is by removing your first and last letter and any surviving vowels.

But I don’t care about childish entry-level entertainment that everyone will forget about five minutes later. I’d watch Fox News for that. Longtime Ω+ followers know our ‘top tens’ are much more than that: they are playlists, mixtapes, end-of-year finds, and best-of decade results. That’s what I’m into. I’m into what’s important and that’s identifying with people. It’s not a contest or a be-all-end-all game of right-or-wrong. It’s all fully subjective. Without personal results, how special or unique would these lists be?

The last survey I was nominated to do was from WUSB’s Mister Edison, the station’s only cylinder aficionado in its’ 45-year history: top ten vinyl records that influenced your collecting habits. I did volunteer to do it and I was halfway there, then somehow along the way I deleted it. Now, here it is. But, instead of a top ten, we’ll do a top twenty-five because I’m compulsive and 10 is not a square number. All records shown here regardless of size, speed, color, or print run are those that have changed not only my record-collecting habits but also have shaped my musical tastes to an extent.

The record that started it all? KMFDM’s “Power” 12”. It was the very first vinyl record I bought with my own money, just mere months after purchasing most of its discography in one shot at my local record store. I ordered it from the TVT / Wax Trax mail order - my very first mail-order to be exact - numbered to 3,000 copies as a single-sided etched vinyl record in a clear plastic silk-screened jacket. That also came with Underworld’s “Rowla”. Shizuo’s High On Emotion e.p. was my third. Found at what was Port Jefferson’s Music Den, that’s a record I had to have at first sight because I knew it was extremely rare. Glad I made the right call because I never saw it again. Even though I didn’t have a turntable, I bought them anyway thinking I could hold on to them until I finally got my hands on one. Turned out my ma’ and dad had one: a wooden box smaller than the records it played. It literally had no sound and was deemed almost unplayable, so a close “friend” of mine gave me his father’s 1972 Panasonic and a copy of Autechre’s We Are R Y 12”. I was now in business.

From there, another one-time pressing of theirs, the “Keynell” e.p., introduced me to the panic of now-or-never buying. Booth & Brown collectors know how insanely rare their limited edition e.p.’s are and also how they and Warp divided up their Cichlisuite and Envane e.p.’s in two parts. And that was nothing to when Aphex Twin released not one, not two, but eleven e.p.’s as the Analord series through his Rephlex label. Ten regular platters and two versions of Analord 10: either you got the Aphex logo picture disc or, if you were really lucky (we mean that in a literal sense), one that came with the Analord binder which is fetching impossible prices right now. Some of them even came with the mythical Analogue Bubblebath 5. We’re just happy to have purchased all eleven editions for regular price when they first came out. Amazingly in that same year, I did my first-ever label run and purchased $300.00 worth of vinyl and disc releases from DHR.

The first hardcore record I got my hands on - Kill Your Idols’ This Is Just The Beginning - was also the very first music purchase I made at any show. Three years after one of my close friends introduced me to Sick Of It All and hardcore / punk in general, This Is Just The Beginning flung the doors wide open for crushing similar-styled tough-guy finds. Most Long Island record stores sold them when they came in, and places like Hicksville and Centereach’s Utopia (when they did sell them) offered many easy one / two / three-dollar bargain bin purchases of many 7” records, 45’s, and 12” LPS. The Howards & Checkerboard Charlie split is one example of that and one of many local acts I possess. Jemini The Gifted One’s “Funk Soul Sensation” is the only hip-hop record on the list. Ten years ago I re-discovered golden-era hip-hop and realized there was a treasure trove of white-label and 12” singles I never heard of from that time. Those hip-hop / rap singles can be found on the cheap in the same manner as those discount hardcore records. I’ll be on a life-time hunt for them as at this point I don’t have enough of them.

It’s no surprise to see that more than half of this list is made up of Seventies’ jazz / fusion records. If not for Lonnie Liston Smith & The Cosmic Echoes Astral Traveling, I would not have the size of vinyl library I have now. One of our former hip-hop dee-jays at the station played “Expansions”, “Aspirations”, and “Colors Of The Rainbow” and those three cuts literally changed my life. It opened up an avenue for me to re-discover who I was and revisit a certain era of time I missed out on. From that point on, it was all about that era’s sounds, sampling, and personal favorites. John Tropea’s A Short Trip To Space, Les McCann’s Music Lets Me Be, and Roy Ayers’ A Tear To A Smile - those three records define my final years at Stony Brook. Phil Upchurch’s 1979 solo outing, Stuff’s self-titled debut, Emily Remler’s Firefly, Steve Khan’s The Blue Man, Ramsey Lewis’ Tequila Mockingbird, Eric Gale’s Multiplication, and Ronnie Laws’ Pressure Sensitive tie me in and keep me connected to those years.

Karla Bonoff’s Restless Nights and Urbie Green’s The Fox influenced my collection in an amusing way. I had no idea who both artists were until I pulled them out of the bins. What had me purchase them? I bought Restless Nights and The Fox solely based on the year of release (1979 and 1976 respectively). One listen of each and I knew I made two right calls.

Remember when we posted our entry about our close friend Syke who rescued a pile of old records from being thrown out to the curb? Of the 500+ he found, he gave us 50 and we still have most of them. We selected Pete Shelley’s “Telephone Operator” as a reminder of that free giveaway.

I could list both volumes of the original Dirty Dancing motion picture soundtrack which my ma’ had, her only surviving childhood vinyl record of Disney’s Cinderella, or The Pac-Man Album 12″ picture disc written by Patrick McBride and Dana Walden. But those three mentions aren’t influential; just early Atari-youth memories. My first-ever childhood memories I still remember (not photographed) are also vinyl-related: J. Geils Band’s “Centerfold” and The Cars’ “Shake It Up”; the latter which I have in my possession and are the markers of all classic rock records I own around that era. (Think Dire Straits and Donald Fagan’s The Nightfly to name a few.)

Another Atari-youth moment I remember is The Chambers Brothers’ A New Time, A New Day. My dad cut out the album sleeve and used it as a paper holder in our garage. That very record made me think of whatever few platters I remember him having before he sold his entire vinyl library and our library of Atari 2600 games…for a paltry $50.00. “He needed the money” he told me; which is always a pathetic man’s answer to everything. Had he’d seen how enthusiastic I was into music collecting, he would’ve handed his entire collection to me. Roberta Flack’s Quiet Fire, Kiss’ Rock & Roll Over, and The Rolling Stones Sticky Fingers and Their Satanic Majesties Request were the four in his collection he parted with and I have three of them, not including The Chambers Brothers release. He tried to make it up to me, however, by bringing home two separate piles of records he rescued from the curb. One heap was full of polka records which I donated to WUSB’s resident polka lady before she died the same year. The other heap? Since you didn’t ask: loads of classic hippie rock records, showtunes, and celebrity albums. Jim Nabors on wax? Stop before I deactivate this account.

Finally, Boulders’ Rock & Roll Will Never Die. Look it up and you’ll see it’s a near total obscurity only confined to hipster circles who know what’s up. A five-track Wharf Records release picked up for less than $3.00 is the one 12" that may as well get me into the Discogs purchasing game for all rare releases (not found in stores) I’ve been looking for in the past seven years. I’ve played many of them on Omega WUSBand soon after bought a substantial chunk of their discographies in one shot (three Happy Meals / Free Love LP’s and three Black Marble discs, for example). As a nice side effect, it’ll be the the same for cassettes as well such as Believer/Law’s Matters Of Life And Death and JS Aurelius’ Machines Water The Plants Now - if the seller’s price is right, that is.

Notice how we went from KMFDM to Boulders? You can’t get any more disparate in styles and worlds between the two. The first purchases, public library finds, donations, record fairs, mail orders, samples, jazz-fusion and soul, hardcore and hip-hop buy-outs, record-store victory tours, and many other moments I might have missed…that’s 25 years of buying vinyl records spanning many different collecting eras and genres for me. That’s only one format, and also not counting acquiring music by other means such as radio and downloads which also shaped my collection. The bingo board jumble you see is only a tiny pinch of my musical tastes and not the whole story of my listening habits that’s usually broadcast on Omega WUSB or always posted here on Ω+.

After making this list, I’m reminded that I’m the most diverse person I know. I’m proud that my low-lying threshold for accepting and liking sound and concept allowed me to make that diversity into a science and have that mind-blowing knowledge I have of it. I’m as consistent, thorough, and far-reaching as I possibly can while hitting as many targets as possible. Would there be more bingo boards like this? Only if I make sure of it.

Phil Upchurch: self-titled

Lonnie Liston Smith: Astral Traveling

Karla Bonoff: Restless Nights

Steve Khan: The Blue Man

Chambers Brothers: A New Time, A New Day

Emily Remler: Firefly

Boulders: Rock And Roll Will Never Die

KMFDM: “Power”

John Tropea: A Short Trip To Space

Les McCann: Music Let’s Me Be

Shizuo: High On Emotion

J. Geils Band: “Centerfold”

Aphex Twin: Analord 10 picture disc

Jemini The Gifted One: “Funk Soul Sensation”

Roy Ayers: A Tear To A Smile

Ramsey Lewis: Tequila Mockingbird

Pete Shelley: “Telephone Operator”

Autechre: “Keynell”

Kill Your Idols: This Is Just The Beginning

The Cars: Shake It Up

Ronnie Laws: Pressure Sensitive

Stuff: Stuff

Eric Gale: Multiplication

Urbie Green: The Fox

Checkerboard Charlie b/w The Howards split

[savedpeople]

MULTIMUSE QUESTIONAIRE

RULES: Answer the questions with the Muses that would best fit the answers. Bonus if you give details why. If tagged, copy and paste into a new post – DO NOT REBLOG!

(Since this is a single-muse blog, I'm going to include muses I've played on other blogs. I'm not going to include every muse I've ever written though because 1. it already feels funny talking about muses that 99% of my followers have never seen me write, and 2. some of them were very short-lived. So I'm only including the ones that I've written most or were most significant, plus my newest one that I haven't written yet, since they've been on my mind a lot lately.)

1) Rank your softest Muse and your toughest Muse. (Personality-wise) - Strictly personality-wise, softest to toughest: Ted Logan (Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure), Max Caulfield (Life is Strange), Izaya Orihara (Durarara!!), Amaimon (Blue Exorcist), Satoru Gojo (Jujutsu Kaisen), Negan, Levi Ackerman (Attack on Titan.) This is kind of funny though because aside from Ted and Max, none of these characters can really be considered "soft."

2) Which Muse would blow through $1000 quickly? - Gojo. But he's also rich rich, so $1000 is nothing to him. He canonically owns shirts that cost more than that. Aside from him, I think if you gave Ted $1000 he could easily blow it all on music gear and albums pretty quickly lol.

3) Do any of them have nicknames? Is there a meaning behind them? - Negan has been called "Neegs" by a few, but not many can get away with that. "Ted" is short for Theodore, and "Max" is short for Maxine (never call Max by her full name, she hates it.)

4) Are any of them up-to-speed on the latest trends? Anyone more old school? - Ted, Gojo, and Max are most likely to be up-to-speed on trends, but Max appreciates the old school stuff (she prefers analog cameras over digital for her photography, for instance.) Levi and Negan are more old school, though Negan might attempt to learn trends to seem cool to his students/the kids (it rarely works.)

5) Who has the best relationship with their siblings? - Three of them have siblings: Ted, Izaya, and Amaimon. Ted and his little brother probably have the best relationship, at least as kids, though he deals with insecurity and envy as their dad clearly favors his brother. Izaya has two sisters who are twins and about ten years his junior. Their parents were abroad for work so much that he basically raised them, but his bad influence played part in them turning out eccentric. Their relationship is complicated and a bit love/hate. Amaimon has six brothers and a sister. They are all demons (literally, they are children of Satan lol.) He's only seen interacting with one which I interpret him to have a neutral to positive relationship with. I don't see him having a close relationship with any of the others. But I also haven't read or watched the series in years, so I have no idea if more has been revealed.

6) Karaoke night! Who is likely to grab the mic first and bust out a tune? - Ted. Max will join him with some encouragement. Negan if he's had a few drinks.

7) Who is least likely to enter a beauty pageant/model? - Levi (he could actually probably do well as a model, but suggest this and he'll vehemently deny it.) Also Amaimon because he doesn't spend much time on Earth and probably doesn't even know what a beauty pageant is.

8) If your Muses visited a haunted house where actors scare you, who would panic and who would be unfazed? - Ted and Max would be panicking (but they're having a blast.) Levi and Amaimon are unfazed.

9) Are any of your Muses particular about taking certain modes of transportation? - Not really. Max does get nervous about airplanes and Izaya prefers to walk or take a taxi/public transport. Gojo doesn't drive and either takes the train/subway, has his assistant drive him, or teleports/warps short distances since he can do that lol.

10) Share a little-known fact about any Muse. - So I can't really think of anything, but I have twd verses for most of my muses that I never got to use/talk about so I'mma ramble on about little things about them here. Ted - and Bill - were following a band on tour that summer, and were at a music venue in the Atlanta area when the outbreak hit. Bill's dad died saving them the first day, and they and Missy go on to survive traveling around in their RV for a while. Max found an old vintage photography store shortly after the outbreak and took as many packs of polaroid film as she could realistically carry. She continues taking photos, not just to document the new world but to also capture small moments of beauty and happiness within her group. Gojo acts nonchalant about the apocalypse until he loses his best friend to a walker bite, after which he essentially shuts down and locks himself in a room with the (restrained) walker for days, refusing to let anyone in. He even attempts to remove its jaw/hands to keep it with him (kind of like Michonne did), and it wasn't until after that he finally killed it. He puts on a big smile and acts fine, but the unresolved anger and grief come out in spades whenever he goes up against walkers. Izaya and his sisters are in an airport preparing to fly back to Japan when the outbreak hits, and get stranded in the Virginia/DC area. A group takes them in out of pity, despite Izaya giving them the creeps. But when his sisters are eaten in a large walker attack, the group abandons him, and he's presumed dead. Months later, cue The Saviors showing up with Izaya at Negan's side as one of his lieutenants. Surprise! Levi meets up with his uncle, the only family he has, when the outbreak happens. It doesn't take long for them to start butting heads morally - his uncle is much quicker to warm up to the idea of stealing and killing. But they stick together until they're separated while fighting a horde, and Levi's been on his own ever since, unsure if he's alive. He's eventually taken in by Alexandria, but has a hard time adjusting. I don't have anything set for Amaimon, but he's naturally violent and off-putting and very likely ends up with the Whisperers or becomes a cannibal or something lol.

tagged by: @wexarethewalkingxdead tagging: @esoterium @survivoirs @chitteringbeast and anyone else that'd like to do this (y'all are the only active mutuals I know that have multiple muses and weren't already tagged I don't think??)

[fellasleepinbaltimore]

this isn't going to be very controversial nor brave I feel but I find that the existence of things like fast food, amazon or all around general hyper convenience and the expectation of speed and perfection like that entitlement to that service to that experience has literally warped the public consciousness and is metaphorically a crack through which the devil molests the world like vghukyiib BROO WTF???? like it is not normal to flip out bc the thing ordered yesterday isn't here today... it is quite literally indicative of a horrifically undiagnosed cognitive dissonance to see 10 other people in a drive thru and an operating dinning room and expect your food and order to be left no it literally is truly and utterly delusional for you to be in that line and be ANGRY when your friend are soggy, not fresh, have salt you didn't ask for salt it is ARROGANT AND LIKE YOU LITERALLY HAVE TO BE UNAWARE OF HOW THE PHYSICAL PLANE OF REALITY OPERATES to be mad, like people will order such horrific amounts of food which is fine! but... against constant drive thru, drive thru now we're making and packaging 5 family bundles like... and you're going to get mad when the service you except to take less than 15 minutes isn't 10/10... you are stupid and you have been made stupid and you continue to choose to be stupid

like hgjtjuu it's truly altered the way people perceive the world in the absolute WORST way and i do think they should be illegal dhjukuk7j idk like I think everything needs to slow the fuck down and shift in quality like... you should get a mid burger and fries that take 35 minutes to make period.

[devondeal]

Just rewatched The Motion Picture. I haven't seen it since I was a kid so it's been a while. At the time I hated it so I just didn't watch for years until now.

The story is genuinely much better than I remembered. The way the plot connected to Spock's arc was beautiful.

But yeah I completely get why it flopped. Way too much starship porn shots (what I like to call it when there's a ten minute sequence just making the audience look at the Enterprise, shuttles, or any ship movement), they were clearly fucking around and showing off what must have been new special effects for the time with again 10 minute sequences of literally just warp speed or the V'ger interior.

But condense all that to more sensible time slots and I think it's a pretty for a Star Trek movie. Only thing is it doesn't have much of a satisfying ending. Like Earth was almost destroyed and right away we're just back to normal operations?

The whole thing with Ilia didn't hit for me even though the actress did an amazing job. To be honest I'm not sure what I find wrong with it other than the standard fridging a woman trope to make Decker upset. I do recognize the intention in story but still.

Also whatever arc they were attempting with Kirk just wasn't developed enough to hit home for me. He was so desperate for command, he overruns Decker who later uses this to get Kirk to let him join with V'ger. That he wants to join as much as Kirk wants the Enterprise. And then Kirk gets what he wants.

Maybe they were trying to compare Kirk's love of the Enterprise as adjacent to joining with machine, but none of this seems to help him evolve in the way Decker, V'ger, and Spock have.

Maybe if we cut all the starship porn shots and special effects tour, there would be more time for Kirk to have an arc of his own and bring it home at the end.

[willtasker]

It is September 2007, and the Big Bang Theory has begun. I take the Sig Sauer out of my mouth, but the taste of gun oil lingers. I realize that suicide is not the answer because this show would only follow me into Hell. Something like this does not descend from the afterlife but rises up out of open graves. It is populated by the unwilling, amusing only to the already deceased.

Now: The nerdy roommate who’s not a doctor is made fun of because he’s not a doctor while the other nerds make bad jokes about science that are also not accurate. It is not enough to hate a thing, but those things often do not die by death. They exist because Death is too afraid of its touch; that the soft grace would somehow kill Death its self by inventing a new dying. Death squared. The sort of fate people should wish on Ronald Reagan or anyone who explains details of last night’s dream.

It is September 2010. I am having rough sex with my girlfriend. I look up in the middle of the act, her voice cresting, when I hear the television we left on in the next room. The show is in repeats, and becoming unavoidable. A character I cannot identify but will never forget makes a reference to the physics of Warp Speed. I lose my erection immediately. She asks me what is wrong. I produce a pack of Indian Spirits from the dresser and begin to smoke, the first one I’ve had in 10 years. My hands are shaking. I look at them and think about strangling the writer’s room of The Big Bang Theory, one in each hand, a fury so passionate that the rest realize it is better to wait their turn than to try and flee.

“NO MORE!” is what I scream at the television. “DEAR GOD NO MORE!” But the episodes keep coming, marching like soldiers to the sea. An endless, undulating wave of dullness. Sunlight crushed behind rolling grey clouds. References to 80s movies and science and POP CULTURE ACTORS who are probably paid $10,000 to show up and say HONK IF YOU LOVE WILLIAM SHATNER and then have a weird punchline about particle physics. It is endless. The show’s broadcast signal goes off into the horizon and out into space, following Hitler’s hosting of the Olympics in 1936. An endless fucking current of the slime from a billion emptied septic tanks. It is not shit but what is left over from literal shit. The culmination caked to the inside of the tank walls.

“PLEASE JESUS GOD HOLY FATHER KILL ME AND TAKE ME AWAY” is what I cry into the night sky, and in reply, God looks down and in His mighty mercy says

BAZINGA.

It is September 2012. I stare blankly at a drop ceiling in a downtown hotel. I have not spoken to another person in days. The television is off but I hear it through the walls from the next room. BAZINGA. Again, that meaningless word. Trichottillomania rears it’s self, and I slowly begin pulling hair out of my head in handfuls. I feel nothing. There is no pain anymore. Nothing compared to that fucking word. And the laugh track that follows.

I remember I had a gun in my mouth when the TV series started and that I was afraid of the Hell that produced this show, would perpetuate this show. This THING. And now I am afraid that there is no Hell, and that if there was Satan couldn’t keep it away from his own doors. The characters enter the archway of the eternal Abyss, studio audience laughing.

BAZINGA says the awkward man who makes an attempt at a joke about Brownian Motion that’s actually fucking incorrect but haha he’s a nerd and there’s a STAR WARS reference in there and remember that time when the hot neighbor didn’t have money so he was like I HAVE MONEY IN MY SUPERMAN MODEL and holy fucking shit I’ve seen footage of inmates in blackout solitary for weeks on end that come out covered in cockroach bites that is more humane than the humor in that show.

Instead of an eternal lake of fire, or chained to a boiling floor, or forced to watch The Smurfs Presented by The Icecapades - there is BAZINGA. That word that both saturates my brain with an incommunicable suffering and emits a kidney stone’s discomfort from my very soul. The fact I have to share a time and place with The Big Bang Theory makes me want to consider bear hugging JJ Abrams, so I can do the one great good of a doomed life by dragging him into into the 8th Circle Of Hell with me.

I realize I am damned. The freedom of this is that I can now do what needs to be done.

It is now August 11, 1971. I’ve made a time machine and traveled ten years prior from my date of birth to murder my father so I won’t ever exist and hear that FUCKING WORD Bazinga. I’ve decided to use a woodman’s axe to blunt my rage across time because my soul will not be satisfied unless I cease to exist in the most sure way possible. The blows land, a dull thud made wetter with each hit. I must make sure. This isn’t personal. This is just what must be done so I can undo that which cannot be undone.

I can feel myself fading from existence. This post will be my last. Everything is fading. All will be well. I smile in relief at a sky so blue it’s all you can do but wonder at it. Peace lovingly brushes past my cheek with a mother’s pity.

On the horizon, glowing in a blue outline, I see a pale man with a bad hairline wearing a fucking DC comics tshirt, smilingly thinly at me because - you see - he’s pleasantly awkward and doesn’t understand humor and his girlfriend is named Penny. ITS BEEN 45 SECONDS - HERE COMES ANOTHER TOLKIEN REFERENCE FOR THE PEOPLE AT HOME.

I scream. I cover my eyes but cannot unsee the truth shimmering between my locked fingers. My soul launches through the fire of time. Nothing can stop him. He follows me, smiling that trademark smile: only with his teeth but without moving his mouth. His skin stretches taught, his eyes afire. The studio audience, now and forever a chorus of faceless harpies, wings beating, their laughter wounds me like swallowing a box of straight razors fresh with grease.

I do not exist now. I do not remember my name. My parents never met and my soul is scattered on the winds beyond winds, to an everlasting personal horizon that no one will ever know. I do not remember who I was, what I was, or what I did to end up here. I am a ghost without a grave, a soul without an afterlife to turn to. But I do remember him. And I do remember…

BAZINGA.

[aceiestartist]

So the one that is wrong is.... door No. 3! The character of Erek King was named after a fan who won a competition Scholastic held while the series was coming out, and was first introduced in book 10, The Android. However, as was pointed out in the notes very quickly, Erek King is one of the most important side characters in the entire series, and shows up in way more than two books. Nineteen, specifically, and being mentioned in another seven.

He's also a several thousand year old pacifist alien robot dog, but that's beside the point.

Gonna go over all the others under a readmore so I don't destroy your dashboards.

All morphing has a small risk of death by warp-speed spacecraft: How the books explain morphing into something with a different mass than yourself is that excess mass is stored in a side dimension called Zero-Space/Z-Space. Spaceships also use Z-Space in order to facilitate faster-than-light travel. This has the result of there being a very real (if extremely small) chance of a passing spaceship literally running into your stored morph-flesh like a truck running over a squirrel on the highway. Technically, this only applies to morphing smaller than yourself, so that's a minor oops on my part.

One of the major alien races is constantly on the verge of starvation: This would be the Taxxons, which look like giant centipedes with gaping mouths and gelatinous red eyes. Their instincts basically urge them to eat anything and everything they physically can, all the time. In one particular instance, this results in a Taxxon who's been cut in half starting to eat its own severed body as it dies.

Parasitic alien slugs can get addicted to instant oatmeal: Specifically instant maple and ginger flavored oatmeal. It also causes the Yeerks to go insane and literally fuse with their hosts. Exploiting this is the main plot of book 17, The Underground, wherein the main kids plot to use the stuff to essentially infect the alien food supply.

The main characters permanently trap a kid on an island, as a rat, on purpose: The kid in question is named David, and gets pulled into the orbit of the main kids when he finds the device that gives someone morph capability and tries to sell it on the internet. He gets added to the team as a result, but quickly reveals himself to be untrustworthy, eventually trying to kill all 6 of the main cast. Since it's not possible to just take his morphing away, trapping him in rat form on a tiny island is their eventual solution.

A major recurring character is partially named after Gandalf: The main antagonist of the series is a Yeerk named Esplin 9466, better known by their military rank - Visser Three. Visser Three's host is an Andalite named Alloran-Semitur-Corrass. Alloran's name is derived from Olórin, which is an alternate name for Gandalf (specifically the name he had in Valinor, for any LotR fans out there). K. A. Applegate is actually a massive Lord of the Rings nerd, and there's a number of other references throughout the series. There's a company called Gondor Industries, for crying out loud.

There is a virus that can wipe a species from existence at the atomic level: It's called the Quantum Virus, and it functions by targeting a species and breaking down the forces that hold their subatomic particles together. It's used exactly once, in the spinoff book The Hork-Bajir Chronicles. Alloran (pre-Yeerk infestation) tries to use it to wipe out the Hork-Bajir species so that the Yeerks can't infest them to use as shock troops.

Atlantis is real: In book 36, The Mutation, an underwater civilization called the Nartec is discovered. According to their queen, they used to be humans living on a island on the surface, but eventually it was swallowed by the sea, resulting in the inhabitants mutating to become amphibious. They kill, dissect, and taxidermy humans taken from shipwrecks, and want to reverse-engineer human technology to invade and conquer the 'surface-dwellers.'

A reality-warping alien has the appearance of a dinosaur with a human face: Several people pointed out that this doesn't match the descriptions of the main reality-bending entities of the series, the Ellimist and Crayak, which is true. This is a description of Drode, Crayak's right-hand man, introduced in book 27, The Exposed. I left out that he's also described as being extremely wrinkly, like a prune.

A sapient hawk is the child of a human and an alien via time travel: One of the main kids, Tobias, gets trapped in hawk morph in the very first book, and remains that way for the entire rest of the series. While he does still identify as human, and later gets the ability to morph back into his human form temporarily, he's functionally a sapient hawk for 95% of the series. There is much angst about it. He's also the son of a human (Loren) and an Andalite (Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul), who met when Loren was kidnapped by a different alien species, which had also come into possession of a device called the Time Matrix. Elfangor and Loren used the Time Matrix to get back to Earth, then Elfangor buried it and trapped himself in human morph, eventually marrying Loren and conceiving Tobias. Soon after, the Ellimist, in an effort to fix the pair's timeline-bending shenanigans, modified Loren's memories, shunted her three years into the future, and reverted Elfangor back to an Andalite. Incidentally, Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill, the only alien of the main 6 characters, is Elfangor's younger brother, making him Tobias' uncle.

[nika-the-hunter]

Spaceshiptember 2024 Day 14: Faster Than Light Film travel, the strange reality bending method of traveling the universe at ridiculous speed. This vessel is in the process of surfacing into the film, it is only part way through the process More info below the cut. Forgot to upload the rest of these :C Oops

Film Travel, also called Diving, is the only known form of Faster-Than-Light travel in the universe. It involves a vessel breaking out of known reality and cruising at speed along the outside of existence until they approach their destination, where they will breach back into the universe. Some more radical scientists liken the Film to a reservoir of literal magic, but that is not acknowledged by the wider scientific community despite the Film violating several laws of the universe.

The realm outside the universe is separated into two sections. There is the Film, and the Ether, or Void as some call it. The Film is an astronomically thin layer on the outside of the universe, which has been measured to vary between 42 to 80 AU thick. While the Ether's depth is unknown and presumed to be near infinite. Some observations can occasionally detect distant stars through the clouds of the Ether, but it is not known whether it is a reflection of our universe or another.

Inside the Film, there is a gravitational pull towards the Ether, placing it 'down' in retrospect. Its pull extends 15 AU into the Film, although it never exceeds more than 1g of force. The Film-Ether boundary is a shimmering one-way barrier, anything that passes fully into the Ether is unable to return, unless a tether or appendage is extended through the barrier to retrieve it.

There is also a ceiling appearing as a matte two-dimensional view of the milky way galaxy as seen from what would be presumed to be intergalactic space. It also has a gravitational pull but it only extends 15 meters from the surface, reaching a maximum strength of only .12g. The Ceiling is also a hard barrier, nothing is able to pass through or break through its surface unless using a Film Drive. Explosions of sufficient size will briefly warp and reverberate through the surface but will have no discernible lasting effect.

The speed of travel is dependent on the size and type of Drive used, with the smallest ship using the most up-to-date drive achieving speeds of .5 lightyears per hour of distance in real space.

Hazards:

OSHA mandates that direct exposure to drive energies be limited to 1 hour intervals, with no more than 10 cumulative hours per Dive to mitigate effects.

Drive technicians who spend extended periods of time within the containment space during drive operation are known to experience changes to their physiology, with the amount proportional to their exposure. Most minor changes vanish when transitioning back to normal space, however more extensive transformations are known to persist. Initial warning signs of over-exposure are known to be splotches of unusual skin texture, hair growth/loss, or other bodily proportion shifts. The latter are common in technicians who may be experiencing some form of body dysphoria or who are otherwise predisposed to modifications. If allowed to persist, full body changes can occur, which include but are not limited to gender inversion or anthropomorphic hybridization of species both known and unknown.

The side effects of Film exposure stated above are extremely uncommon outside of Drive containment areas, but not unheard of. Vessels are recommended to avoid the visible clouds of energy whenever passing through the Film in order to mitigate the possibility of a non-containment failure incident.

Studies have shown that lasting psychological changes have yet to be recorded as a direct effect of the energy exposure.