#renewing quark's hopes

[comic-sans-chan]

I really enjoy Julian's close friendships because I feel like they all say something really succinct about Julian as a genetically engineered character. Everything about them makes perfect sense.

Jadzia is because she's adventurous - the show points this out - but it's also because she's lived long enough and seen enough shit, there might actually be a chance of her accepting him as an augment, which is why Julian becomes obsessed with the idea of a relationship with her. She’s rarely judgmental. And because she is uniquely intelligent, knowledgeable and wise thanks to the symbiont, speaking to her is uniquely fulfilling for someone as unnaturally brilliant as Julian. It doesn’t hurt that she has such a soft heart, just like him. Compassion is his center, the most human thing about him that he clings to like a lifeline.

Garak is because Julian has that whole thing about spies and lying and identity crises, so he understands Garak on a core level right from the start, but they also end up being highly compatible as two cerebral, annoying, passionate people who just love analyzing and picking things (and each other) apart. They both have daddy and mommy issues. They’re both insane. Julian can be dangerous and grumpy and real with Garak and it just comes across as hot because Garak’s Cardassian. He can handle the full brunt of Julian Bashir, so he doesn’t have to edit himself so much, and when he does have to, he doesn’t have to feel guilty because Garak’s doing it, too. As an agent, Garak was also barred from meaningful attachments, just like Julian, so their attachment to each other is extra exciting and illicit. Forbidden twofold. Oh my.

O'Brien is because he's the quintessential human, an average joe in a happy marriage with a kid, which are experiences Julian can never have as an augment, so hanging out with him makes Julian feel more connected to his humanity (which he is constantly questioning the existence of). They can drink and play games and be stupid and Julian can pretend he’s normal for a while. He can listen to O’Brien talk about Keiko and his kids and his simple uncomplicated views on the world and see what a normal human life is supposed to look like. O'Brien's acceptance of him as someone with enduring human characteristics in Dr. Bashir, I Presume? is especially meaningful because of all this, though Julian has trouble accepting it. There's no one more suited to accepting Julian as human than Miles O'Brien.

I just love how neatly everything fits together.

[fandomn00blr]

Jadzia Dax had a warp core breach near a multiphasic star and ended up on the open decks of Siren's Call.

This ask, tho...I have outlined five chapters of this randomness and of course, this is what has finally broken my writer’s block (through much grinding and gnashing of teeth). Here’s the first chapter (it’s way longer than it has any business being)...you’re welcome (and I’m sorry)!

The salty, fishy stench hits Jadzia first, shocking her olfactory system awake before she even realizes that she’s no longer in the engineering bay of the Defiant. Her eyes open begrudgingly, almost fearful of locating the source of such an offensive odor -- worse than anything she ever had to endure in all of Curzon’s dealings with the Klingons, even worse than congealed room temperature Cardassian tojal with yamok sauce -- but all she sees is darkness.

She taps her combadge.

She hears nothing but the ringing in her own ears.

Her eyes finally start to adjust, playing an infuriatingly slow game of catch-up with the unwelcome acuteness in her sense of smell. She can just barely make out trace amounts of light swimming blurrily above her, but it’s not enough to make any kind of sense of her surroundings.

She tries to sit up, but everything is wobbly, she realizes, and there’s a sharp shooting pain behind her eyes whenever she tries to move or look or do much of anything, really. She manages to reach a hand up to her temple, tracing a trail of dried blood to a cut there. It stings when she touches it, but it’s mostly superficial and mostly done bleeding, nothing a dermal regenerator can’t handle, anyway. She moves her fingers gingerly toward the back of her head. “BaQa'!” she hisses as she touches the large tender lump she finds there...this one might be a bit trickier to deal with. But it’s not the first time she’s been concussed. And it probably won’t be the last.

She takes a deep breath through her nose and tries to focus through the pain, the sharpness of it renewed with every fresh whiff, every sound, every attempt to look or move or think.

In seven lifetimes, she’s endured far worse. In this lifetime, alone. Figure it out, Old Man!

Why she suddenly hears Sisko berating her at a time like this is something she can ponder later. But for now...she takes another deep breath, focusing on her surroundings this time instead of her own internal disorientation.

There are large wooden barrels all around her. They certainly don’t look airtight, and she fears that at least some of the odor is coming from them. Like it could be on purpose. Some kind of ancient fermentation process preserved for the sake of tradition or ritual, maybe. That might explain why everything here seems to be made out of wood. Perhaps this room has a ceremonial purpose? It doesn’t explain how she got here, or even where ‘here’ is, but it’s a theory at least. And she’s a scientist. Right?

She shrugs, gathering her resolve to stand up and investigate, even though her balance is still something to be desired. It doesn’t help that this smelly, dark, wooden room she’s in seems to be...swaying? It’s an odd sensation, probably just another symptom of her head injury.

But she has felt it before, hasn’t she? At least part of her has. Prior to being joined, Torias had taken up sailing as a hobby, much to Nilani’s chagrin. He managed to go sailing exactly once as Dax, and his voyage had been cut short, because Tobin had gotten seasick…Tobin, who’s fretting now. Tobin, who needs to be quiet.

The full memory comes flooding back now suddenly, viscerally...violently. She’s barely just managed to stand before she’s doubled-over, retching, and the contents of her stomach hits the wooden floor below her with a sickening splash. She can feel the liquid sliding and pooling around her boots with the gentle, nauseating rocking motion of the ship, but Curzon had an iron stomach, and Jadzia has no reason to believe she gets motion-sickness, so she banishes Tobin to the back of her consciousness, and she hopes her theory about this room having some ritual significance proves wrong, because she, Jadzia, has never been very good at apologies.

She taps her combadge again, remembering as she does it that it’s not working.

Still nothing. Not even an error signal telling her she’s out of range.

“Virtually indestructible, and they won’t run out of power for at least a century under normal use…” she mutters to herself, reciting what the Engineering folks had promised when they switched from rechargeable units to the current power cells. She knew she was overdue for an upgrade, but it hasn’t been that long since Curzon had gotten this new one, has it? She’ll have to have Miles take a look at it when she gets back.

Back. Back to where? Back from where? She tries to avoid the leaky barrels in the dark as she carefully maneuvers her way around the long, narrow room, balance and coordination slowly returning with every toe stub and banged knee. There’s more light streaming down on the other side, but trying to focus on it only seems to make things worse, so she can only hope it’s a doorway or a stairwell or something she can work with.

“Who’s down there making all that noise?”

She hears a voice above her and footsteps. Two sets, assuming they belong to bipedal humanoids. She freezes, but hears them stomp past overhead, heading in the same direction she is.

“I didn’t hear anything.” A second voice...lower, but with a tremulous quality betraying its owner’s attempt at disinterest.

“Bet one of those refugees is sampling some of the haul…or trying to take some to sell themselves. Not a bad idea, actually...”

“Captain says it isn’t even ready yet. Still needs a few more months in the sun to really ripen…”

Jadzia feels her stomach lurch again, but at least it's completely empty now, and she manages to breathe through Tobin’s overly-sensitive gag reflex this time.

“Rats, then?”

“Feel free to go investigate yourself. Bilge rats give me the creeps!”

“You’re a fucking Raider now! Grow a pair, will ya?”

“Have you seen the size of their bollocks?”

The owner of the first voice is laughing now. “What is wrong with you?”

“Nothing! Heard a Warden once say they spread the Blight!”

“No real Warden ever said that…”

“Yeah! I heard it from one of ‘em at Ostagar!”

“Now who’s talking bollocks?”

Jadzia has to work hard to stifle her own chuckle at this. She isn’t sure what the Blight is, or Wardens, or Ostagar, but she recognizes and appreciates the spirit of the exchange. It almost reminds her of Odo and Quark bickering back on Deep Space Nine.

“Are you going to check down below or what? You’re the one hearing things. I’ll cover your ass, but you gotta go first. And if it’s rats...”

“Yeah, fine. I’ll be sure to neuter ‘em all just for you, baby brother.”

Ok, so maybe not quite like Odo and Quark. She hears them both descending the stairs, and she has half a mind to try and hide behind one of the barrels, but she’s not sure she can keep Tobin’s sea-sickness under control in such close proximity to the contents of the barrels. So she decides to take her chances making contact, walking a few more steps toward the light of the stairwell so as not to take anyone by surprise.

A human, a female, she presumes, in primitive leather armor, comes into view first at the bottom of the stairs, about ten feet away from her, peering into the darkness.

“...and who are you supposed to be?”

She crosses her arms in front of her and cocks one hip to the side, just enough so that Jadzia can see she has two daggers slung behind her back, but she doesn’t look particularly eager to use them.

“Is it rats?”

“No, you dumb idiot…” she hisses back over her shoulder without taking her eyes off of Jadzia. “It’s one of those weird tattooed elves, I think?”

“Are you sure it’s not a rat?”

The owner of the second set of footsteps, a male human, she thinks, finally peeks out from behind her, his large frame dwarfing the person in front of him.

“Or maybe you’re Qunari? I don’t see any horns, but that big guy in Lothering didn’t have any, either, and you’re awfully tall for an elf, aren’t you?”

Jadzia isn’t sure what to make of the two people leering at her, either, but they don’t seem to pose an immediate threat. The one with the daggers looks more intrigued than alarmed, and the other one isn’t even carrying a weapon. “I am a Federation Science Officer, currently serving aboard the USS Defiant.”

“An Officer, eh?” The first one smirks.

“What’s an Officer doing all the way down here?” the second one asks. “You should be at least three decks up.”

“Funny-sounding name for a ship, too…not part of the Armada, I take it?”

Jadzia purses her lips impatiently. Her head is still throbbing. “There appears to have been some kind of...accident.” This is putting it mildly, she thinks. “Can you tell me which star system we’re in?”

“Star system? I don’t believe in that 'Vint mumbo jumbo. Mum said I was born under a rising Draconis but I sure as shit can’t turn into a dragon…”

The first one eyes him with annoyance before turning back to Jadzia. “You mean to ask the date?”

"Sure…and the year, too, if you don't mind."

"By Chantry reckoning, it's 9:30...and it's the fifth of Solace."

“I don’t suppose you could convert that for me? Into something more...universal?”

“Oh shit! You are a ‘Vint!”

“No!” She puts her hands up defensively, assuming ‘Vint is probably not a good thing to be, based on his tone. “No...I just...my people...the, er, what did you call us? With the, uh, horns?”

“Qunari? Are you a spy?!” He turns back to the other one. “I told you they have spies everywhere!”

She looks unimpressed by this, but Jadzia notices as she shifts her weight to the other hip.

“No, not Qunari! The other thing…”

“Elf?”

“Yes! That! That is what you call my people, but we have a different word. And we use a different calendar. I am part of an isolated group, known for our unique height and markings.”

He eyes her suspiciously, and the other one -- the smarter one, Jadzia has decided -- just grins, her teeth flashing in what little light there is down here. It’s not particularly reassuring, but she has yet to reach for her blades.

“Sure,” she says, and the worrying grin vanishes. "Fine, yeah, whatever."

Jadzia realizes she’s been holding her breath. It’s been awhile since she’s had the proper training for this kind of thing. Surviving Cardassian torture and manipulation is an entirely different skill set, one that involves clinging relentlessly to your own identity, not making up an entirely new one.

“‘Vint, Qunari, Elf, or otherwise, the Captain’s the one you’ve gotta convince you weren’t trying to steal from her. Come on. You can work on your story on the way. Try it out on my idiot of a brother who believes the Blight is carried in the testicles of rodents.”

“Hey!”

Jadzia ducks her head and allows herself a quiet snort of amusement, and the woman with the daggers nods appreciatively.

[anotheruserwithnoname]

(Belated) thoughts on Picard S1

Due to a mixture of (pre-lockdown) travel and other things, I didn’t get a chance to finish watching the second half of Star Trek Picard Season 1 till this weekend. I have some thoughts, but I’ll put a break here first as I’ll be doing spoilers.

In brief, though: for the most part I liked it and I don’t get a lot of the hate being thrown its way.

Looking at online reviews of Star Trek Picard, both by professionals and amateur YouTubers, you’d think it was the biggest abomination since Enterprise. I mean, I’ve seen hate thrown its way that even exceeds that directed toward Star Trek: Discovery.

I’m not going to turn this into a commentary on Discovery. I’ll just say that I agree with 99% of the criticisms about it and I have no plans on watching Season 3, nor do I intend to watch any of the Short Treks moving forward after being turned off permanently by the awful The Trouble with Edward.

Picard, however, renewed my faith that it’s still possible for good Trek to be made for TV.

Picard is being criticized for a number of things, like violating canon. Yet I didn’t see it. First, the show is the first Trek series set in “the future” of the Trek franchise since Nemesis back in 2002. So anything it establishes about Starfleet, Picard himself, and the fates of characters like Riker and Troi - there is no canon to violate because we’re moving forward. There is nothing in Picard that is of the same magnitude of, say, what recently happened with Doctor Who. We didn’t have them rewrite established history by suddenly finding out Jean-Luc was a Romulan spy, or that he wasn’t really the captain of the Enterprise, or anything to cause decades of storytelling to collapse into irrelevance or be contradicted. Nearly everything I saw was consistent with what I knew and remembered from TNG. They didn’t even try to retcon the appearance of the 1701-D like Discovery did to the original Enterprise.

That’s not to say everything that was done to the characters post-Nemesis was great. I didn’t care or how Seven of Nine was treated, and they did a few things with her that I think were in the “because we can, not because we should” category. So criticism is warranted there. I also felt a few characters were underserved - including Narissa, who is (or was, RIP) arguably the show’s best character next to Picard. She was a classic Trek villain - yet towards the end we started to wonder if she actually WAS a villain, or basically the Romulan equivalent of Jack Bauer from 24. She commits acts of outright savagery to pursue her ends, definitely - but the same can be said of other “ends justify the means” heroes and anti-heroes. I would have liked to have seen her developed more. (Mind you, the way she is killed off by Seven does leave an opening for a return - that was a long way down, with plenty of time to pull some macguffin out of her hat.)

Probably the main thing that I liked about this show is I cared about the characters. I can even remember their names - something Discovery failed to impress upon me. Rios and his crew of holograms were great and in Season 2 I hope they do another meeting sequence where they all interact with each other. Yes, I know Orphan Black did it first and probably did it better - but it ain’t Star Trek.

One of the biggest criticisms others levy on Picard is that Picard was a supporting character in his own show. First, that’s nonsense. Second, Picard is supposed to be a dying man throughout and in his 90s to boot. This is why I think the idea of bringing Shatner back as Kirk isn’t going to work because he won’t be running around with phasers blasting either! Stewart is not the same man he was when he made Nemesis - and they don’t make the mistake of trying to pretend otherwise. Even at the end where they basically make him a nuBSG-style Cylon to keep him alive, they didn’t turn around and make him 50 years old again. If Trek wasn’t a TV show, sure they probably would have, but the reality is the actor turns 80 this summer, and who knows when Season 2 will be filmed.

The big condemnation is about how Starfleet went dark post-Nemesis. People seem to think that Starfleet is always about goodness and light. They forget about the high command plotting the assassination of the Federation president in Star Trek VI. They forget about the black ops division Section 31 established in DS9 - or some of the things Sisko does during the Dominion War. Apparently, one of Picard’s showrunners says the original plan was to make it clear the “darkening” was part of the aftermath of the Dominion War, but this was cut. Yet they don’t need any excuse - the show clearly establishes that Romulans infiltrated the highest levels of Starfleet Command (if you think that can’t happen, go watch the final few episodes of TNG Season 1 when it happens) and were responsible for the Mars attack that set everything in motion.

And the show clearly establishes that there are till bastions of “goodness and light” in Starfleet - starting with Picard himself. And the season ends with the synthetic lifeform ban removed, signifying that Starfleet is returning to its old standards. It works. There were also people concerned that Picard was going to somehow tie-in with Discovery (due apparently to some of the cast members of both shows posing for photos together). Other than a few small references to things established on Discovery, Picard doesn’t go there.

Is Picard perfect? Hell no. Although I appreciated the “slow burn” style of storytelling, which has been adopted by a lot of other shows, it is a tough fit for Star Trek. But I didn’t mind because it was interesting. But I can see others’ points when they say the first few episodes drag a bit.

The show also suffers from the usual “continuity lockout” facing any newcomer to Trek. In this case, you need to know a fair amount about Seven of Nine’s story arc from Voyager, the Hugh story arc from the later seasons of TNG, the movie Star Trek: Nemesis, and have a working knowledge of the Picard-Data relationship from TNG. It also doesn’t hurt to know that Bruce Maddox appeared in one of the key “Data is a person” episodes of TNG as well. Unfortunately, knowing TNG may also result in one of the few major continuity issues of Picard, and that’s the fact Data already had a daughter, Lal, in “The Offspring”. The fact she’s never referenced is puzzling.

Other issue I had: I am not a fan of the use of F-bombs in Star Trek. While I concede they were better handled than the juvenile “because we can” attitude of Discovery, it added nothing other than to justify the TV-MA rating (without the F-bombs the show - eye-gouging included - would have fit under TV-14), which some has interpreted as an intentional attempt at alienating younger viewers (Torchwood ran into the same criticism). I already touched on the mishandling of Seven of Nine (which added in some unnecessary storytelling cliches, especially at the end), and I thought Narek could have been better handled - he vanishes without explanation in the finale and no one seems to care.

They also missed a few bets. I would have loved for the mysterious tech-alien species to have had some connection to Vger from Star Trek the Motion Picture (it makes more sense than Vger being found by the Borg, which is a longstanding theory). And while it was just a destination in the show, and never seen, rather than invoking the name of Deep Space 12, would it have killed them to say Deep Space 9? There was already a visual reference to Quark in one of the episodes, but mentioning DS9 by name, along with Seven’s presence, would have allowed Picard to have connected the three “future” Trek spinoffs.

But I enjoyed Picard, and if they still make DVDs after all the madness currently in the world, I look forward to buying the complete series when it comes out, and I hope they make a second season (it’s been renewed, but these days there is no guarantee when or if renewed shows will resume production and too long a delay risks 80+-year-old Patrick Stewart not being up to it). All in all, quite pleased, yet still puzzled at why so many people hate it. But then I know there are people who cannot understand why I cannot abide by certain shows, so I guess it evens up.

[ships-inside-your-head]

memory/future

Toshinori could not help but be catapulted back to the time when he had no chance. The time before he met Nana and his whole life had changed for the better. He did not like to think about it, but it was inevitable.

Every time he thought of having a meeting with Inko Midoriya, Izuku's mother, he had heart-fluttering and butterflies in his stomach on one side, and on the other side, an icy hand reached for his heart and squeezed it slowly so that he had the feeling of stifling.

No, it was not Ms. Midoriya herself, she was a wonderful, strong, sensitive, gentle and friendly woman. It was definitely because he had been harshly reprimanded several times in his teenage years, which would not have been bad - the bad thing about the whole situation was the disgust and insults that came after him, both from the person who had turned him down (which was okay, he would never force anyone), as well as others. How dare he, as a quirkless person, try to find someone. How dare he? Such things.

He did not feel like saying anything like that, especially not because Izuku himself has been quirkless and yet she had raised him with much effort and more love, but there was always that little bit of self-doubt, a remnant of his time before he became All Might.

He realized that these fears were completely unfounded, especially as Izuku himself had assured him that his mother would look forward to a renewed conversation with him - without tears and great promises. All this was clear to him, and yet ... all those concerns came back since he could no longer rely on his heroic persona.

Since he was forced to be only Toshinori Yagi.

Of course, he knew what many would say, that he would always remain All Might for all of them, despite all the circumstances and changes, but he no longer felt like All Might and he missed it how you miss your twin. It was as if he had lost a part of himself. What was so great about him? He could not think of anything.

So he forced a smile on his face. How had he always said to Izuku? Smile, in the face of fear and that's what it was: He was afraid.

But what choice did he have? He had to face her, he was responsible for his successor and his mother, after all, it's his fault that Izuku was scarred by the age of 16 and had to experience so many pains and obstacles ... she did not know it, but it nagged nonetheless at his conscience. Because you could twist and turn it as you wanted, but in the end, it all came down to him being responsible. It was he who gave Izuku his quirk.

So much guilt weighed on his shoulders, so many mistakes that so many people simply overlooked, how could they not see it?

A door opened in his face and he was surprised that he was so lost in his thoughts and memories that he had not realized that he had knocked on the door of the Midoriyas.

Her green eyes flashed joyfully, even if only a slight smile appeared on her lips. He could not say exactly why, but somehow a small load fell off his shoulders and he relaxed a bit. "Mr. All Might! Please, come in! "

The older one flinched as if she had hit him. She had hit an open wound without aiming and it hurt. "Please, just call me Toshinori, or if that's too private, then Mr. Yagi, but I'm not All Might anymore," he told her as he stepped in and got rid of the shoes in the entryway. That was why he did not catch her frown. "Of course, Toshinori, if you prefer it so much. I'm Inko," she said and held out her hand and he realized that her personality had made a 180 ° turn since the last time he fell to her knees before her. His joints later cursed him for that, but that was worth it, as Izuku now continues at U.A. and was allowed to live in the dorms. Fortunately, the other teachers did not know about this extreme measure, otherwise they would make fun of him.

"Please, sit on the couch. I will make tea, a certain preference? "

"A simple herbal tea is enough, thanks," he mumbled hurriedly and sat down on the sofa. It was not long before the green-haired woman appeared next to him, handed him a steaming cup, a container of sugar and ... a bowl of cottage cheese with fruit. Bananas, it looked like. Confused, he just blinked before looking up at her, sure she could see the question marks over his head.

"Why-?"

"Because Izuku told me about your gastrectomy after I asked him what you liked to eat. So I researched what you can eat and thought that was the best option. Do not worry, the quark is lactose free, because I was not sure if you still tolerate it or not, but I wanted to be on the safe side, so I had to look for it extra and then the next question was whether bananas are okay So I wanted to ask Izuku first, but- "

"Inko," he interrupted her little monologue and with amusement he now knew where his successor had this habit. He found it as lovable to her as it was to his boy. "It's alright, thank you," he said, picking up the bowl and starting to eat. Her relief and joy as he took the first bite made him warm around the heart.

"No problem! I always like to help and take care of others, "she said with a smile and he replied. "That's why he has it." Now she blushed. "Maybe ... but he always wanted to be like you, so he took your words to heart rather than mine."

"But I did not raise him and make him those wonderful boys. It was you alone. "He stared at her defiantly, as if to say that she should make a counter-argument, which he would then pick apart. She sighed. "Okay, yes. Well."

For a few moments, silence enveloped the two as he slowly ate his quark and sipped her tea. Till ... "Why did you ask me here?" He asked when he finished his little meal. "I have no problems with appearing here, but why me and not another of Izuku’s teachers? After all, Aizawa is his class leader. "

She looked up from her cup and there was again that determined look on her face, causing him to have tachycardia and butterflies in his stomach.

"Because you're the only one I've entrusted to Izuku. I've never met his other teachers, and I know how much Izuku is attached to you, and last time you proved how much you care about him, and that's the only reason he moved in the dowms and was still allowed to go to U.A. «

Toshinori's expression softened. "Okay, then we figured out why me. But why? "He inquired cautiously, not wanting to upset her, especially if she had that look on her face. She looked embarrassed now. "Because I want to know what's going on with Izuku. He calls, but he never tells me what really happened, he skips so many things and I'm just worried. "She looked away. "Would you be willing to come regularly to tell me about his progress? Or at least send me such things by phone or by message? "

She looked so worried that he did not have the heart to refuse. It was not like he did not have the time. Since he could no longer take the practical lessons, his teaching time had been cut in half, and with more time on hand he had begun to constantly think of his past, which was not healthy and ... he wanted to change it. He had Izuku, his successor, in whom he had set all his hopes, and all the other students of the 1-A and 1-B who gave him confidence in the future.

"It would be a pleasure," he agreed with her suggestion, smiling at her, which she beamed back. His heart fluttered again a little.

Why should he revel in the past if he helped the pillars of the future?

[gurguliare]

what if I liveblogged the silm oh wait. BUT I was rereading “Of Fëanor and the Unchaining of Melkor,” bear with me, this is a kind of prose poem

getting into this fandom, I sort of passively absorbed the idea that Melkor’s pardon was presented to the Eldar as a unanimous or settled decision, even though we know that the Valar internally were almost half-and-half about it. I feel like this isn’t borne out by the way the Valar otherwise interact with elves, though, since we see Aulë and Tulkas and Yavanna sniping at each other literally over Fëanor’s head. There’s the line about “for those who will defend authority against rebellion must not themselves rebel,” but “talking loudly about Melkor’s bad personality to any humanoid who holds still” would fall well below threshold, I think. Not that the elves would need outside encouragement to question Manwë’s reasoning; they know who Melkor is! All of this is just to say that I’m interested in the period where Melkor’s release must have been THE hot new trolley problem. I hope it led to a bunch of urgent renewed investigation into the Psychology of God-Kings and What Do Aliens Want? Ossë swamped with student interviewers from Tirion U who want to data-collect about the qualia of a redemption arc. Please someone write me interview fic about baby Findis gathering Ainur-impressions of Morgoth from before time began. “He was... spicy? Well, his quarks.”

It’s nice that Sauron provably wasn’t in Aman for this period, because of course his Annatar routine is like, a straight re-enactment of Melkor among the Noldor (and in fact refines upon Melkor’s attempts to buddy up with Fëanor, I guess? My impression is always that Melkor’s problem is he’s TOO afraid of elves. Sauron’s innovation is to still be terrified of them but to underestimate them occasionally).

I’ve always assumed (based off that one quote about Morgoth fearing Turgon even when they crossed paths in Aman and literally no other evidence) that Fingolfin and his family had more active facetime with Melkor than Fëanor, as a show of piety---accepting Manwë’s word and inviting the prisoner round to dinner. Finwë: uhhhhh hahaha sounds good oh weird I’m busy that night, have fun though

tbh since I headcanon Indis as having been a kid on the Great Journey I imagine she is not THRILLED either but tries really really hard to compartmentalize .................. :(

Also since Finrod and Turgon are inseparable besties (at this point), whenever Turgon and Melkor were in a room together you have to imagine Finrod running hardbitten socialite interference for 1) his best friend and 2) the dark enemy of the world, both having panic attacks behind separate pillars.

Finally, I’d like to say that I’m using this chapter transition: “For Fëanor was driven by the fire of his own heart only, working ever swiftly and alone; and he asked the aid and sought the counsel of none that dwelt in Aman, great or small, save only and for a little while of Nerdanel the wise, his wife. ---> Chapter 7: In that time were made those things that afterwards were most renowned of all the works of the Elves. For Fëanor, being come to his full might, was filled with a new thought, or it may be that some shadow of foreknowledge came to him of the doom that drew near; and he pondered how the light of the Trees, the glory of the Blessed Realm, might be preserved imperishable. Then he began a long and secret labour, and he summoned all his lore, and his power, and his subtle skill; and at the end of all he made the Silmarils.” to pretend that nerdanel had a hand in originally convincing him to make the silmarils lol

[heroesandvillainsofmbti]

INFP: Benjamin Sisko, “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”

INFP – the Healer, the Dreamer, the Clarifier

The revelation that Sisko is an INFP hit me one day like a ton of latinum bricks. I was trying to explain his moody attitude in the first episode compared to his later boldness. Cycling through a half-dozen or more different types and cognitive functions, I suddenly recognized the Fi-Si loop. I’ve been in one many a time, and now that I know we share the same type, I wish I had more of the positive aspects of Sisko’s personality in common with him. But Star Trek is about nothing so much as aspiration, so I hope all the shy INFPs out there can look to this commanding example of the INFP as a figure of power and passion.

Dominant Function: (Fi) Introverted Feeling, “The Deep Well”

Once Sisko believes in something, his intensity can be scary, even to the family and crew who know him well. Witness his fury for fighting the Dominion, hunting down Eddington, or saving Bajor.

When he first takes the DS9 assignment, this intensity is in danger of trickling away. Sisko is stuck deep in an Fi-Si loop in the wake of his wife Jennifer’s death at the hands of the Borg, and he’s become withdrawn, directionless, and moody. Meeting the wormhole aliens grants him the emotional catharsis he needs to properly grieve Jennifer’s loss, and he returns to his mission with renewed energy.

Over the years, the assignment takes on greater personal meaning for Ben—he is “of Bajor,” and he calls DS9 the place where he belongs.

For all his passion, Ben usually keeps a reserved, somewhat brooding composure. His bond with his son Jake appears through warmth, physical affection, and shared meals. He and his eventual new wife Kasidy strike sparks together instantly, but he has trouble voicing his feelings at certain awkward points in their relationship. For a long time, he won’t join the DS9 crew at Vic’s, until Kasidy drags out of him that he morally objects to joining a re-creation of a time and place where brown people like themselves weren’t allowed.

Even when healthy, Sisko’s Fi smolders—he rarely reacts in the moment unless called for. Given time, he erupts, embarking on a bold course of action, or delivering a stirring moral rant. All Star Trek captains excel at speechifying, but Sisko’s brand of righteous fury is particularly invigorating to behold. He dresses down recalcitrant officers, calls out stubborn Starfleet leadership, and takes devious villains to task.

Ben trusts his own judgment, in spite of entreaties or orders to the contrary. He leads a mission to rescue Odo and Garak from the massacre at the Omarion Nebula, despite Starfleet’s orders and the risks involved. He never believes that smooth-talking villains like Dukat, Winn, or Weyoun are up to anything other than no good. He shows faith in Kira and Odo from the beginning despite their prickliness and initial conflict. He takes it really hard, and really personally, when Eddington betrays him, because he didn’t see it coming while the man served right beside him.

Sisko’s Fi works through his decisions carefully, and in the morally gray environment of DS9, it has to work overtime. He constantly has to settle disputes and arguments in a politically tricky environment. He preaches about how it’s easy for Starfleet Command to overlook the plight of the Maquis because Earth is a Paradise. He believes bringing the Romulans into the war is the right thing to do, but in the aftermath, he needs to privately process the shady things he did to make it happen. He comes to a place where he’s okay with what he’s done, makes his peace with himself, and then deletes the log entry.

Auxiliary Function: (Ne) Extraverted Intuition, “The Hiking Trails”

Sisko explains to the Prophets in their first encounter that life is like baseball. With each new pitch, each new swing, a thousand potential outcomes arise which cannot be predicted. This, he preaches, is the joy of linear existence—while the Wormhole Aliens see all of time all at once, humans have to experience time moment by moment, never quite knowing what will happen next.

By explaining it out loud to the Prophets, Sisko realizes he has not been living this way. He’s been stuck in an Fi-Si loop since the death of his wife, unable to move forward. Sisko engages his auxiliary function and looks to the future—in his vision, he leaves his wife’s body and turns to his young son.

Ben is bright and accomplished, with expertise in engineering and military strategy—and baseball. He excelled and achieved at the Academy, and had a diverse career before taking the DS9 assignment. He’s possessed of an obsessive curiosity, and once he gets started on a project or pursuit, he can’t stop. Building the Bajoran lightship, exploring the ruins of B’Hala, beating the Vulcans at baseball, even tricking the Romulans into the war, are all paths he took from which he couldn’t retreat.

He even performs the part of the villain when chasing down Eddington, playing into the man’s martyrdom complex and going to shocking lengths to make him surrender.

Sisko is extremely patient with his angry, diverse, misfit crew as they learn to work together. He’s able to understand and appreciate the ideas and perspectives of other cultures, whether it’s the religion of the Bajorans or the greed of the Ferengi (though Quark has to school him a couple times). Although he’s uncomfortable with the implications at first, Sisko can hold on to the apparently contradictory concepts that the creators of the wormhole are both Wormhole Aliens (a scientific description) and the Prophets to the Bajoran people (a faith-based proposition). He eventually accepts that he is both a Starfleet officer with a job, and the Emissary of the Prophets with a calling.

This does not make either Starfleet Command or the Bajoran religious establishment entirely happy, but Sisko thrives in the paradox between these two ideas.

As Benny, his persona in his vision of the 1950s, Sisko is even more obviously an INFP. Benny writes short stories at a science fiction magazine, imagining a better future where anything is possible—like a black man commanding a space station. Later, when Benjamin returns to his life on DS9, he wonders if his whole existence here, and the life of everyone on board, might not be entirely in Benny’s head. And again, just like the dichotomy of the Aliens and the Prophets, Sisko is okay with this ambiguity.

Tertiary Function: (Si) Introverted Sensing, “The Study”

Sisko describes to the Prophets how each moment that a human experiences prepares them for the next—but no past experience prepared him for the day Jennifer died. He sees her “every time I close my eyes.” In the time-warp limbo of the Wormhole Aliens’ space, Sisko literally lives in that moment, continuously.

Sisko loops again, though not as severely, after the death of Jadzia, heading back home to Earth to peel potatoes at his father’s restaurant while he clears his head.

In fact, home is a familiar retreat for Ben. In his first few weeks at the Academy, he spent all his transporter credits beaming home for dinner every night. Years later, Sisko and Jake have lived on DS9 for over two years before he finally unpacks their stuff from Earth. Ben confesses to Jake that he’s finally begun “to think of this Cardassian monstrosity as home.”

Ben enjoys having the crew over to his quarters for dinner, which he cooks himself with real ingredients, carrying on the culinary legacy of the Sisko family. He also treasures the near-extinct Earth sport of baseball, keeping the tradition alive with his son Jake, and teaching the crew to play. At the end of the series, Ben decides that Bajor will be his home when he retires, and nabs a parcel of land to start building a house.

Jadzia tells him he’s a builder, the kind of man who needs to stay in a place and get the job done, rather than administrate from a distance (which is proven true the couple of times he’s given desk jobs). This healthy Si keeps Sisko grounded and focused while tackling the daily surprises that the job on DS9 brings.

Inferior Function: (Te) Extraverted Thinking, “The Workshop”

Sisko’s comfortable enough with his Te that he makes an effective and even intimidating commander. He rarely has trouble telling his crew what he wants or confronting them on their mistakes, though it’s typically low-key or one-on-one. When faced with orders or situations he dislikes or disapproves of, he’ll speak out or even yell out one of his epic moral rants, but often this is only after he’s kept his temper bottled up for a while.

Normally patient in his leadership style, Ben can become controlling and heavy-handed under extreme stress. He pushes the Federation President to declare martial law on Earth when he suspects Changeling infiltrators are afoot. Starfleet security officers march the streets, and ordinary citizens are ordered to give blood tests. It takes a lecture from his father to cool him off and set him back on the right track.

Ben gets aggressive as the coach of the DS9 baseball team, determined not to let the team of smug Vulcans beat them. He takes the competition too personally—the Vulcan team captain has been taunting Ben about human inferiority since their Academy days—and bullies the crew to be better. He embarrasses Rom and kicks him off the team, and then gets kicked out of the game himself for laying hands on the umpire (ISTJ Odo, sticking to the rules).

The team loses, but not before Sisko reinstates Rom, who scores a run. The Niners celebrate afterward, because scoring against Vulcans at all after only a few days of practice is a victory of its own. It is not logical, as the Vulcan points out, but Sisko has stopped caring what his rational adversary thinks of him. He revels in the happiness of the moment, because more than being a Starfleet Captain, more than being an Emissary, Ben Sisko is a human.

[arxt1]

Return of the X-rays: A New Hope for Fermionic Dark Matter at the keV Scale. (arXiv:1710.02146v2 [hep-ph] UPDATED)

A long time ago (in 2014), in galaxies and galaxy clusters far, far away, several groups have reported hints for a yet unidentified line in astrophysical X-ray signals at an energy of 3.5\,keV. While it is not unlikely that this line is simply a reflection of imperfectly modeled atomic transitions, it has renewed the community's interest in models of keV-scale dark matter, whose decay would lead to such a line. The alternative possibility of dark matter annihilation into monochromatic photons is far less explored, a lapse that we strive to amend in this paper. More precisely, we introduce a novel model of fermionic dark matter $\chi$ with $\mathcal{O}(\text{keV})$ mass, annihilating to a scalar state $\phi$ which in turn decays to photons, for instance via loops of heavy vector-like quarks. The resulting photon spectrum is box-shaped, but if $\chi$ and $\phi$ are nearly degenerate in mass, it can also resemble a narrow line. We discuss dark matter production via two different mechanisms -- misalignment and freeze-in -- which both turn out to be viable in vast regions of parameter space. We constrain the model using astrophysical X-ray data, and we demonstrate that, thanks to the velocity-dependence of the annihilation cross section, it has the potential to reconcile the various observations of the 3.5\,keV line. We finally address the $\phi$-mediated force between dark matter particles and its possible impact on structure formation.

from astro-ph.HE updates on arXiv.org http://ift.tt/2gn4xLQ

[swissforextrading]

CERN’s American sibling Fermilab turns 50

This is an RF Cavity in the Recycler Ring in Fermilab’s Main Injector Tunnel, its most powerful particle accelerator (Image: Reidar Hahn/Fermilab) Fifty years ago, physicists in the US established a new laboratory and with it a new approach to carrying out frontier research in high-energy physics. It began in the 1960's, when Cornell physicist Robert Rathbun Wilson saw early plans for a new accelerator in the US to rival Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, and CERN in Switzerland, he considered them too conservative, unimaginative and too expensive. Wilson, being a modest yet proud man, thought he could design a better accelerator for less money and let his thoughts be known. By September 1965, he had proposed an alternative, innovative, less costly (approximately $90 million cheaper than the original) design. It was approved. This period coincided with the Vietnam war, so the US Congress hoped to contain costs. Yet the discovery of the omega baryon particle at Brookhaven in 1964 meant high-energy physicists felt that a new high-energy accelerator was crucial to exploring new physics. Simultaneously, physicists were expressing frustration with the geographic situation of US high-energy physics facilities.  Groundbreaking in October 1969 for the new 200 GeV Synchrotron (Image: Fermilab) Against this backdrop arose a major movement to accommodate physicists in the centre of the country and offer more equal access. Columbia University experimental physicist Leon Lederman championed “the truly national laboratory” that would allow any qualifying proposal to be conducted at a national, rather than a regional, facility. In 1965, a consortium of major US research universities, Universities Research Association (URA), Inc., was established to manage and operate the accelerator laboratory for the AEC (and its successor agencies the Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA) and the Department of Energy (DOE)) and address the need for a more national laboratory.  Today, Wilson Hall, the central laboratory building, is the heart of the 6,800-acre Fermilab site. Following an architectural design competition among the DUSAF firms, it was built between 1971 and 1974. The design was acknowledged in 1975 with an award from the Society of American Registered Architects, and the building was named for Robert Rathbun Wilson on September 18, 1980. (Image: Reidar Hahn/ Fermilab) Following a nationwide competition organised by the National Academy of Sciences, in December 1966 a 6800 acre site in Weston, Illinois, around 50 km west of Chicago, was selected. Another suburban Chicago site, north of Weston in affluent South Barrington, had withdrawn when local residents “feared that the influx of physicists would ‘disturb the moral fibre of their community’”. President Lyndon Johnson signed the bill authorising funding for the National Accelerator Laboratory on 21 November 1967. Science dedicated to human rights “The formation of the Laboratory shall be a positive force…toward open housing…[and] make a real contribution toward providing employment opportunities for minority groups” Robert Wilson, Director of Fermilab Fermilab’s Betz Prairie was once the largest prairie reconstruction project on the planet. The site now hosts about 1,000 acres of restored prairie and is also home to a herd of bison, a symbol of Fermilab’s place on the frontier of physics. (Image: Fermilab) It wasn’t easy to recruit scientific staff to the new laboratory in open cornfields and farmland with few cultural amenities. That picture lies in stark contrast to today, with the lab encircled by suburban sprawl encouraged by highway construction and development of a high-tech corridor with neighbours including Bell Labs/AT&T and Amoco. Wilson encouraged people to join him in his challenge, promising higher energy and more experimental capability than originally planned. He and his wife, Jane, imbued the new laboratory with enthusiasm and hospitality, just as they had experienced in the isolated setting of wartime-era Los Alamos while Wilson carried out his work on the Manhattan Project. Wilson and colleagues worked on the social conscience of the laboratory and in March 1968, a time of racial unrest in the US, they released a policy statement on human rights. They intended to: “seek the achievement of its scientific goals within a framework of equal employment opportunity and of a deep dedication to the fundamental tenets of human rights and dignity…The formation of the Laboratory shall be a positive force…toward open housing…[and] make a real contribution toward providing employment opportunities for minority groups…Special opportunity must be provided to the educationally deprived…to exploit their inherent potential to contribute to and to benefit from the development of our Laboratory. Prejudice has no place in the pursuit of knowledge…It is essential that the Laboratory provide an environment in which both its staff and its visitors can live and work with pride and dignity. In any conflict between technical expediency and human rights we shall stand firmly on the side of human rights. This stand is taken because of, rather than in spite of, a dedication to science.”  The campus brought inner-city youth out to the suburbs for employment, training them for many technical jobs. Congress supported this effort and was pleased to recognise it during the civil-rights movement of the late 1960s. Its affirmative spirit endures today. Aerial view of Weston, the site for the National Accelerator laboratory in 1966 (Image: Fermilab) Fermilab in 1977, showing the Main Ring accelerator (top) and Wilson Hall next to it. (Image: Fermilab) International attraction By the 1970's experimentalists from Europe and Asia flocked to propose research at the new frontier facility in the US, forging larger collaborations with American colleagues. Its forefront position and philosophy attracted the top physicists of the world, with Russian physicists making news working on the first approved experiment at Fermilab in the height of the Cold War. Congress was pleased and the scientists were overjoyed with more experimental areas than originally planned and with higher energy, as the magnets were improved to attain higher and higher energies within two years. The higher energy in a fixed-target accelerator complex allowed more innovative experiments, in particular enabling the discovery of the bottom quark in 1977. Fermilab has had many successes over the past fifty years, including the discovery of the bottom quark in 1977. (Image: Fermilab) Superconducting-magnet technology was the future for high-energy physics, and was championed by Wilson, and a new director to take this forward was sought. Lederman, champion of the "national laboratory", spokesperson of the Fermilab study that discovered the bottom quark, and later a Nobel Prize winner for the discovery of the muon, accepted the position in late 1978 and immediately set out to win support for Wilson’s energy doubler - a colliding-beams accelerator, which would employ superconductivity. Experts from Brookhaven and CERN, as well as the former USSR, shared ideas with Fermilab physicists to bring superconducting-magnet technology to fruition at Fermilab. This led to a trailblazing era during which Fermilab’s accelerator complex, now called the Tevatron, would lead the world in high-energy physics experiments. By 1985 the Tevatron had achieved 800 GeV in fixed-target experiments and 1.6 TeV in colliding-beam experiments, and by the time of its closure in 2011 it had reached 1.96 TeV in the centre of mass – just shy of its original goal of 2 TeV. A Remote Operations Center in Wilson Hall and a special US Observer agreement allowed Fermilab physicists to co-operate with CERN on LHC research and participate in the CMS experiment. (Image: Maximilien Brice/CERN) Lederman also expanded the laboratory’s mission to include science education, offering programmes to local high-school students and teachers, and in 1980 opened the first children’s centre for employees of any DOE facility. Lederman also reached out to many regions including Latin America and partnered with businesses to support the lab’s research and encourage technology transfer. The latter included Wilson’s early Fermilab initiative of neutron therapy for certain cancers, which later would see Fermilab build the 70–250 MeV proton synchrotron for the Loma Linda Medical Center in California. A time-lapse of the Fermilab muon g-2 ring being installed and prepped, from June 27, 2014 to June 5, 2015. Replay Animation (Image: Fermilab) In 1999, experimentalist and former Fermilab user Michael Witherell of the University of California at Santa Barbara became Fermilab’s fourth director. Mirroring the spirt of US–European competition of the 1960s, this period saw CERN begin construction of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) to search for the Higgs boson. Accordingly, the luminosity of the Tevatron became a priority, as did discussions about a possible future international linear collider. After launching the Neutrinos at the Main Injector (NuMI) research programme, including sending the underground particle beam off-site to the MINOS detector in Minnesota, Witherell returned to Santa Barbara in 2005. Physicist Piermaria Oddone from Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory became Fermilab’s fifth director in 2005. He pursued the renewal of the Tevatron in order to exploit the intensity frontier and explore new physics with a plan called “Project X”, part of the “Proton Improvement Plan”. A Remote Operations Center in Wilson Hall and a special US Observer agreement allowed Fermilab physicists to co-operate with CERN on LHC research and participate in the CMS experiment. The Higgs boson was duly discovered at CERN in 2012 and Oddone retired the following year. Currently, prototypes for the future DUNE experiment are being built at CERN (Image: Maximilien Brice/CERN) Under its sixth director, Nigel Lockyer, Fermilab now looks to shine once more through continued exploration of the intensity frontier and understanding the properties of neutrinos. In the next few years, Fermilab’s Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF) will send neutrinos to the underground DUNE experiment 1300 km away in South Dakota, prototype detectors for which are currently being built at CERN. Meanwhile, Fermilab’s Short-Baseline Neutrino programme has just taken delivery of the 760 tonne cryostat for its ICARUS experiment after its recent refurbishment at CERN, while a major experiment called Muon g-2 is about to take its first results. This suite of experiments, with co-operation with CERN and other international labs, puts Fermilab at the leading edge of the intensity frontier and continues Wilson’s dreams of exploration and discovery.   This article is a condensed excerpt from a feature article by Adrienne Kolb, published in The CERN Courier June 2017 issue, which you can read in full here. http://home.cern/about/updates/2017/06/cerns-american-sibling-fermilab-turns-50 (Source of the original content)

[anotheruserwithnoname]

New thoughts on The Orville and Star Trek Discovery

This post contains spoilers on both series up to “Cupid’s Dagger” for The Orville and “Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum” for Discovery. As I’ll probably get wordy, I’ll throw in a page break.

Before the break, though, the tl;dr is The Orville continues to be great (though this week’s episode is a bit controversial to some); meanwhile, approximately three episodes ago, Discovery finally became, for me anyway, proper Star Trek. And the renewal of both series is a cause for celebration.

I’ll start with Star Trek Discovery. Up to and including “Choose Your Pain”, the episode that reintroduced Harry Mudd, I was starting to lose hope in Discovery. It was too dark, too unlikeable, the characters were not gelling either as a team or as TV heroes, the Klingon subplot was - save for some unexpected in-show shipping of two Klingons - dull as an economics textbook. It was fading. And I speak as someone who gave both Voyager and Enterprise more than a year each to find their voice. The “icing on the cake” was having two characters unnecessarily utter the F-word for no other apparent reason than to justify the episode TV-MA rating. I was already saying to people that I gave it two more weeks and then I was probably done.

And then came “Lethe” and something great happened. It felt almost like having Stamets and Tilly drop F-bombs caused the show and its writers to snap to attention and snap out of whatever TV-MA/streaming cliches rut they’d fallen into. Maybe hearing two people in Starfleet uniforms make like Malcolm Tucker made them realize they’d taken things too far. Because all of a sudden we began a run of episodes that truly felt like Star Trek, the characters snapped into place as a team and as TV heroes, the plots were interesting, Michael dropped the woe is me routine (for the most part) and even the Klingon stuff became less boring. OK, the tech is still too advanced, the Klingons look awful, and there are a few other problems, some of which (like the fact it’s a prequel) cannot be fixed ... but the show felt like Trek, finally.

“Lethe” gave us some valuable insight into Sarek and Michael’s backstory. And while I still wonder how they’ll reconcile not having any past reference to Spock having an adopted sister (maybe Sybok will show up and whisk her away somewhere), and the new abilities related to the mind meld are coming close to deus ex machina territory, it still seemed to work. Having Canadian actress Mia Kirschner as Amanda - who resembles both a young Jane Wyatt as well as Abramsverse Amanda Winona Ryder - was a bonus and I hope we see her again.

Then came my favourite episode so far, “Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad”. Hopefully this episode will silence those Discovery fans who keep harping about The Orville borrowing/stealing/revisiting storylines and concepts from Trek considering this episode was basically a remake of the classic TNG tale “Cause and Effect” with a touch of Battlestar Galactica 2004′s “33″ tossed in for good measure - and even hints of Doctor Who’s “Heaven Sent”. And it works. Stamets finally became a character I enjoyed watching, and Tyler also became more interesting. Some are complaining about him and Michael becoming an item but, again, this is Star Trek and while TOS never went there, all the other shows had on-board romances. The time loop was intelligently played and out and Rainn Wilson was terrific as Mudd though I hope his cold-blooded killings early in the episode were done with his assumption that time would reset and everyone would be fine - I’m OK with Wilson playing Mudd as a darker character (so far he’s been the best part about Discovery), but making Mudd a cold-blooded murderer crosses the line. It’s also a shame they couldn’t put Mudd in the title of this or the Choose Your Pain episode, as that’s always been a bit of a tradition in the franchise, but they obviously didn’t want to give the surprise of his appearance away.

“Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum” was not as much fun as the last two, but it gave us some valuable character development for Saru, making him less of an Odo clone. And the subplot where the female Klingon operative teams up with and then appears to betray Admiral Cornwell was interesting. I think there’s more there than we think. By the way, I’ve been a fan of Jayne Brook since she was in WIOU back in 1990 so I’m glad to see her on this show. I hope they don’t kill her character off.

So, yeah, Discovery suddenly got good three weeks ago (and to be fair, “Choose Your Pain” was a good episode too; they just didn’t need to have the juvenile swearing; I was reminded how in one of Torchwood’s first episodes they had Jack announce he was taking a pee mainly because that was something they couldn’t do in Doctor Who. It just served to cement some folk’s negative first impressions). If it keeps on going this way, it’s going to become appointment viewing for me.

The Orville, meanwhile, continues to go from strength to strength. After the surprisingly grim “Krill”, we had “Majority Rule”, which tweaked today’s knee-jerk “like-dislike” culture. (Don’t let that stop you from clicking that little heart at the bottom of this article, though! 😂) I’ve heard people compare it to Black Mirror. Having never seen Black Mirror, my comparison is actually more towards The Outer Limits. It raised some interesting questions and right after watching the episode a friend sent me a video of Katy Perry doing an “apology tour” type TV appearance for some indiscretion of hers, much like LaMarr has to do in the episode. I enjoyed seeing the crew in (sort of) modern day outfits, too.

Then we had “Into the Fold”, a great spotlight episode for Penny Johnson Jerald (formerly Kassidy Yates on DS9) with the surprising reveal that she’s a single mom raising her two boys on board the Orville. The fact we’ve already been introduced to the concept of families on board a starship both with Bortus and his husband - and in TNG before that - makes it less of an ass-pull than such a sudden introduction might usually appear. And it works really well as a character builder for Isaac as he becomes the boys’ surrogate father when Dr. Finn goes missing. I have some issues with Dr. Finn’s rather violent escape (I don’t think shooting the guy was justified) but the episode holds together well otherwise.

Last night’s episode, “Cupid’s Dagger,” was the first overtly comic episode of the series, and it rubbed a few people the wrong way. The same way comedic episodes of TNG and DS9 often did. (Two decades of brain bleach have yet to wipe away the memory of Quark’s head superimposed atop a woman’s lingerie-clad body. 😱) There are also those who questioned the wisdom of an episode about a Deltan-like race that causes anyone who comes in contact with them to become sexually infatuated airing during a time when so many people are accusing or being accused of sexual misconduct and assault. I won’t go into those arguments. I’ll just say the episode was a very strong character building episode once again which gave some closure to the scene in the pilot where Kelly cheats on Ed, while raising more questions. We also saw some resolution to the Finn and Yaphit relationship (uh ... yeah ... I’ll just leave that with a “no comment”), some great Alara moments, and an interesting resolution to the episode’s B-plot involving preventing a war. We also get to enjoy the first appearance by one of Seth MacFarlane’s Family Guy co-stars, as Mike Henry appears in a very funny running gag about an alien who wants to start piping elevator muzak into the Orville’s turbolifts.

Next week’s Orville is looking to be another dramatic one, and if the promo images that have been released are anything to go by, it might be an Alara-centric story, and more Halston Sage is never a bad thing.

---

So basically where I sit now is that The Orville is still amazing, a lot of fun, and still gives off classic Trek vibes with a little modern edginess, though “Cupid’s Dagger” probably pushes the show as far as I’d like it to go in terms of the comedy. Discovery, meanwhile, appears to have undergone some sort of slight internal reboot/reset after its initial set of episodes. Which is good because I want to be able to enjoy both shows, both for the remainder of their first seasons, and into next fall, too.

As a side note, it’s been announced that a book on the making of The Orville is going to be published in January 2018: The World of the Orville by Jeff Bond.

A North American DVD release for Season 1 of The Orville has also been indicated on Amazon, though no date has been announced yet. I’m assuming sometime early 2018, though with Season 1 ending in early December there’s always a chance they might try to sneak in a release for Christmas.

As for Discovery, a novel based on the show is already out in Canada and the US and IDW is gearing up to start publishing a spin-off comic or two. No word on a DVD/Blu-ray release. Being a streaming series doesn’t disqualify it from physical release (Netflix issues most of its shows on DVD eventually, with House of Cards and Orange is the New Black usually coming out within months of their release - though I wouldn’t be marking any calendar dates re: House of Cards at the moment) but I wouldn’t expect to see anything until at least fall 2018 assuming they release the complete Season 1 at once.

[arxt1]

Return of the X-rays: A New Hope for Fermionic Dark Matter at the keV Scale. (arXiv:1710.02146v1 [hep-ph])

A long time ago (in 2014), in galaxies and galaxy clusters far, far away, several groups have reported hints for a yet unidentified line in astrophysical X-ray signals at an energy of 3.5\,keV. While it is not unlikely that this line is simply a reflection of imperfectly modeled atomic transitions, it has renewed the community's interest in models of keV-scale dark matter, whose decay would lead to such a line. The alternative possibility of dark matter annihilation into monochromatic photons is far less explored, a lapse that we strive to amend in this paper. More precisely, we introduce a novel model of fermionic dark matter $\chi$ with $\mathcal{O}(\text{keV})$ mass, annihilating to a scalar state $\phi$ which in turn decays to photons, for instance via loops of heavy vector-like quarks. The resulting photon spectrum is box-shaped, but if $\chi$ and $\phi$ are nearly degenerate in mass, it can also resemble a narrow line. We discuss dark matter production via two different mechanisms -- misalignment and freeze-in -- which both turn out to be viable in vast regions of parameter space. We constrain the model using astrophysical X-ray data, and we demonstrate that, thanks to the velocity-dependence of the annihilation cross section, it has the potential to reconcile the various observations of the 3.5\,keV line. We finally address the $\phi$-mediated force between dark matter particles and its possible impact on structure formation.

from astro-ph.HE updates on arXiv.org http://ift.tt/2gn4xLQ