#deep see research cruise

[teathattast]

Wake up babe new fish dropped

#threads #deep sea creatures #strawberry squid #marine biology #deep see research cruise #noaa #noaa fisheries

[pronoun-fucker]

“I’m looking at a picture of my naked body, leaning against a hotel balcony in Thailand. My denim bikini has been replaced with exposed, pale pink nipples – and a smooth, hairless crotch. I zoom in on the image, attempting to gauge what, if anything, could reveal the truth behind it. There’s the slight pixilation around part of my waist, but that could be easily fixed with amateur Photoshopping. And that’s all.

Although the image isn’t exactly what I see staring back at me in the mirror in real life, it’s not a million miles away either. And hauntingly, it would take just two clicks of a button for someone to attach it to an email, post it on Twitter or mass distribute it to all of my contacts. Or upload it onto a porn site, leaving me spending the rest of my life fearful that every new person I meet has seen me naked. Except they wouldn’t have. Not really. Because this image, despite looking realistic, is a fake. And all it took to create was an easily discovered automated bot, a standard holiday snap and £5.

This image is a deepfake – and part of a rapidly growing market. Basically, AI technology (which is getting more accessible by the day) can take any image and morph it into something else. Remember the alternative ‘Queen’s Christmas message’ broadcast on Channel 4, that saw ‘Her Majesty’ perform a stunning TikTok dance? A deepfake. Those eerily realistic videos of ‘Tom Cruise’ that went viral last February? Deepfakes. That ‘gender swap’ app we all downloaded for a week during lockdown? You’ve guessed it: a low-fi form of deepfaking.

Yet, despite their prevalence, the term ‘deepfake’ (and its murky underworld) is still relatively unknown. Only 39% of Cosmopolitan readers said they knew the word ‘deepfake’ during our research (it’s derived from a combination of ‘deep learning’ – the type of AI programming used – and ‘fake’). Explained crudely, the tech behind deepfakes, Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), is a two-part model: there’s a generator (which creates the content after studying similar images, audio, or videos) and the discriminator (which checks if the new content passes as legit). Think of it as a teenager forging a fake ID and trying to get it by a bouncer; if rejected, the harder the teen works on the forgery. GANs have been praised for making incredible developments in film, healthcare and technology (driverless cars rely on it) – but sadly, in reality it’s more likely to be used for bad than good.

Research conducted in 2018 by fraud detection company Sensity AI found that over 90% of all deepfakes online are non-consensual pornographic clips targeting women – and predicted that the number would double every six months. Fast forward four years and that prophecy has come true and then some. There are over 57 million hits for ‘deepfake porn’ on Google alone [at the time of writing]. Search interest has increased 31% in the past year and shows no signs of slowing. Does this mean we’ve lost control already? And, if so, what can be done to stop it?

WHO’S THE TARGET?

Five years ago, in late 2017, something insidious was brewing in the darker depths of popular chatrooms. Reddit users began violating celebrities on a mass scale, by using deepfake software to blend run-of-the-mill red-carpet images or social media posts into pornography. Users would share their methods for making the sexual material, they’d take requests (justifying abusing public figures as being ‘better than wanking off to their real leaked nudes’) and would signpost one another to new uploads. This novel stream of porn delighted that particular corner of the internet, as it marvelled at just how realistic the videos were (thanks to there being a plethora of media of their chosen celebrity available for the software to study).

That was until internet bosses, from Reddit to Twitter to Pornhub, came together and banned deepfakes in February 2018, vowing to quickly remove any that might sneak through the net and make it onto their sites – largely because (valid) concerns had been raised that politically motivated deepfake videos were also doing the rounds. Clips of politicians apparently urging violence, or ‘saying’ things that could harm their prospects, had been red flagged. Despite deepfake porn outnumbering videos of political figures by the millions, clamping down on that aspect of the tech was merely a happy by-product.

But it wasn’t enough; threads were renamed, creators migrated to different parts of the internet and influencers were increasingly targeted alongside A-listers. Quickly, the number of followers these women needed to be deemed ‘fair game’ dropped, too.

Fast forward to today, and a leading site specifically created to house deepfake celebrity porn sees over 13 million hits every month (that’s more than double the population of Scotland). It has performative rules displayed claiming to not allow requests for ‘normal’ people to be deepfaked, but the chatrooms are still full of guidance on how to DIY the tech yourself and people taking custom requests. Disturbingly, the most commonly deepfaked celebrities are ones who all found fame at a young age which begs another stomach-twisting question here: when talking about deepfakes, are we also talking about the creation of child pornography?

It was through chatrooms like this, that I discovered the £5 bot that created the scarily realistic nude of myself. You can send a photograph of anyone, ideally in a bikini or underwear, and it’ll ‘nudify’ it in minutes. The freebie version of the bot is not all that realistic. Nipples appear on arms, lines wobble. But the paid for version is often uncomfortably accurate. The bot has been so well trained to strip down the female body that when I sent across a photo of my boyfriend (with his consent), it superimposed an unnervingly realistic vulva.

But how easy is it to go a step further? And how blurred are the ethics when it comes to ‘celebrities vs normal people’ (both of which are a violation)? In a bid to find out, I went undercover online, posing as a man looking to “have a girl from work deepfaked into some porn”. In no time at all I meet BuggedBunny*, a custom deepfake porn creator who advertises his services on various chatroom threads – and who explicitly tells me he prefers making videos using ‘real’ women.

When I ask for proof of his skills, he sends me a photo of a woman in her mid-twenties. She has chocolate-brown hair, shy eyes and in the image, is clearly doing bridesmaid duties. BuggedBunny then tells me he edited this picture into two pornographic videos.

He emails me a link to the videos via Dropbox: in one The Bridesmaid is seemingly (albeit with glitches) being gang-banged, in another ‘she’ is performing oral sex. Although you can tell the videos are falsified, it’s startling to see what can be created from just one easily obtained image. When BuggedBunny requests I send images of the girl I want him to deepfake – I respond with clothed photos of myself and he immediately replies: “Damn, I’d facial her haha!” (ick) and asks for a one-off payment of $45. In exchange, he promises to make as many photos and videos as I like. He even asks what porn I’d prefer. When I reply, “Can we get her being done from behind?” he says, “I’ve got tonnes of videos we can use for that, I got you man.”

I think about The Bridesmaid, wondering if she has any idea that somebody wanted to see her edited into pornographic scenes. Is it better to be ignorant? Was it done to humiliate her, for blackmailing purposes, or for plain sexual gratification? And what about the adult performers in the original video, have they got any idea their work is being misappropriated in this way?

It appears these men (some of whom may just be teenagers: when I queried BuggedBunny about the app he wanted me to transfer money via, he said, “It’s legit! My dad uses it all the time”) – those creating and requesting deepfake porn – live in an online world where their actions have no real-world consequences. But they do. How can we get them to see that?

REAL-LIFE FAKE PORN

One quiet winter afternoon, while her son was at nursery, 36-year-old Helen Mort, a poet and writer from South Yorkshire, was surprised when the doorbell rang. It was the middle of a lockdown; she wasn’t expecting visitors or parcels. When Helen opened the door, there stood a male acquaintance – looking worried. “I thought someone had died,” she explains. But what came next was news she could never have anticipated. He asked to come in.

“I was on a porn website earlier and I saw… pictures of you on there,” the man said solemnly, as they sat down. “And it looks as though they’ve been online for years. Your name is listed, too.”

Initially, she was confused; the words ‘revenge porn’ (when naked pictures or videos are shared without consent) sprang to mind. But Helen had never taken a naked photo before, let alone sent one to another person who’d be callous enough to leak it. So, surely, there was no possible way it could be her?

“That was the day I learned what a ‘deepfake’ is,” Helen tells me. One of her misappropriated images had been taken while she was pregnant. In another, somebody had even added her tattoo to the body her face had been grafted onto.

Despite the images being fake, that didn’t lessen the profound impact their existence had on Helen’s life. “Your initial response is of shame and fear. I didn't want to leave the house. I remember walking down the street, not able to meet anyone’s eyes, convinced everyone had seen it. You feel very, very exposed. The anger hadn't kicked in yet.”

Nobody was ever caught. Helen was left to wrestle with the aftereffects alone. “I retreated into myself for months. I’m still on a higher dose of antidepressants than I was before it all happened.” After reporting what had happened to the police, who were initially supportive, Helen’s case was dropped. The anonymous person who created the deepfake porn had never messaged her directly, removing any possible grounds for harassment or intention to cause distress.

Eventually she found power in writing a poem detailing her experience and starting a petition calling for reformed laws around image-based abuse; it’s incredibly difficult to prosecute someone for deepfaking on a sexual assault basis (even though that’s what it is: a digital sexual assault). You’re more likely to see success with a claim for defamation or infringement of privacy, or image rights.

Unlike Helen, in one rare case 32-year-old Dina Mouhandes from Brighton was able to unearth the man who uploaded doctored images of her onto a porn site back in 2015. “Some were obviously fake, showing me with gigantic breasts and a stuck-on head, others could’ve been mistaken as real. Either way, it was humiliating,” she reflects. “And horrible, you wonder why someone would do something like that to you? Even if they’re not real photos, or realistic, it’s about making somebody feel uncomfortable. It’s invasive.”

Dina, like Helen, was alerted to what had happened by a friend who’d been watching porn. Initially, she says she laughed, as some images were so poorly edited. “But then I thought ‘What if somebody sees them and thinks I’ve agreed to having them made?’ My name was included on the site too.” Dina then looked at the profile of the person who’d uploaded them and realised an ex-colleague had been targeted too. “I figured out it was a guy we’d both worked with, I really didn’t want to believe it was him.”

In Dina’s case, the police took things seriously at first and visited the perpetrator in person, but later their communication dropped off – she has no idea if he was ever prosecuted, but is doubtful. The images were, at least, taken down. “Apparently he broke down and asked for help with his mental health,” Dina says. “I felt guilty about it, but knew I had to report what had happened. I still fear he could do it again and now that deepfake technology is so much more accessible, I worry it could happen to anyone.”

And that’s the crux of it. It could happen to any of us – and we likely wouldn’t even know about it, unless, like Dina and Helen, somebody stumbled across it and spoke out. Or, like 25-year-old Northern Irish politician Cara Hunter, who earlier this year was targeted in a similarly degrading sexual way. A pornographic video, in which an actor with similar hair, but whose face wasn’t shown, was distributed thousands of times – alongside real photos of Cara in a bikini – via WhatsApp. It all played out during the run-up to an election, so although Cara isn’t sure who started spreading the video and telling people it was her in it, it was presumably politically motivated.

“It’s tactics like this, and deepfake porn, that could scare the best and brightest women from coming into the field,” she says, adding that telling her dad what had happened was one of the worst moments of her life. “I was even stopped in the street by men and asked for oral sex and received comments like ‘naughty girl’ on Instagram – then you click the profiles of the people who’ve posted, and they’ve got families, kids. It’s objectification and trying to humiliate you out of your position by using sexuality as a weapon. A reputation can be ruined instantly.”

Cara adds that the worst thing is ‘everyone has a phone’ and yet laws dictate that while a person can’t harm you in public, they can legally ‘try to ruin your life online’. “A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth has even got its shoes on.”

Is it any wonder, then, that 83% of Cosmopolitan readers have said deepfake porn worries them, with 42% adding that they’re now rethinking what they post on social media? But this can’t be the solution - that, once again, women are finding themselves reworking their lives, in the hopes of stopping men from committing crimes.

Yet, we can’t just close our eyes and hope it all goes away either. The deepfake porn genie is well and truly out of the bottle (it’s also a symptom of a wider problem: Europol experts estimate that by 2026, 90% of all media we consume may be synthetically generated). Nearly one in every 20 Cosmopolitan readers said they, or someone they know, has been edited into a false sexual scenario. But what is the answer? It's hard for sites to monitor deepfakes – and even when images are promptly removed, there’s still every chance they’ve been screen grabbed and shared elsewhere.

When asked, Reddit told Cosmopolitan: "We have clear policies that prohibit sharing intimate or explicit media of a person created or posted without their permission. We will continue to remove content that violates our policies and take action against the users and communities that engage in this behaviour."

Speaking to leading deepfake expert, Henry Adjer, about how we can protect ourselves – and what needs to change – is eye-opening. “I’ve rarely seen male celebrities targeted and if they are, it’s usually by the gay community. I’d estimate tens of millions of women are deepfake porn victims at this stage.” He adds that sex, trust and technology are only set to become further intertwined, referencing the fact that virtual reality brothels now exist. “The best we can do is try to drive this type of behaviour into more obscure corners of the internet, to stop people – especially children and teenagers – from stumbling across it.”

Currently, UK law says that making deepfake porn isn’t an offence (although in Scotland distributing it may be seen as illegal, depending on intention), but companies are told to remove such material (if there’s an individual victim) when flagged, otherwise they may face a punishment from Ofcom. But the internet is a big place, and it’s virtually impossible to police. This year, the Online Safety Bill is being worked on by the Law Commission, who want deepfake porn recognised as a crime – but there’s a long way to go with a) getting that law legislated and b) ensuring it’s enforced.

Until then, we need a combination of investment and effort from tech companies to prevent and identify deepfakes, alongside those (hopefully future) tougher laws. But even that won’t wave a magic wand and fix everything. Despite spending hours online every day, as a society we still tend to think of ‘online’ and ‘offline’ as two separate worlds – but they aren’t. ‘Online’ our morals can run fast and loose, as crimes often go by unchecked, and while the ‘real world’ may have laws in place that, to some degree, do protect us, we still need a radical overhaul when it comes to how society views the female body.

Deepfake porn is a bitter nail in the coffin of equality and having control over your own image; even if you’ve never taken a nude in your life (which, by the way, you should be free to do without fear of it being leaked or hacked) you can still be targeted and have sexuality used against you. Isn’t it time we focus on truly Photoshopping out that narrative as a whole?”

Link | Archived Link

#radical feminism #radfem #misogyny #feminism #deepfakes #anti-porn

[justforbooks]

The actor Lou Gossett Jr, who has died aged 87, is best known for his performance in An Officer and A Gentleman (1982) as Gunnery Sergeant Emil Foley, whose tough training transforms recruit Richard Gere into the man of the film’s title. He was the first black winner of an Academy Award for best supporting actor, and only the third black actor (after Hattie McDaniel and Sidney Poitier) to take home any Oscar.

The director, Taylor Hackford, said he cast Gossett in a role written for a white actor, following a familiar Hollywood trope played by John Wayne, Burt Lancaster, Victor McLaglen or R Lee Ermey, because while researching he realised the tension of “black enlisted men having make-or-break control over whether white college graduates would become officers”. Gossett had already won an Emmy award playing a different sort of mentor, the slave Fiddler who teaches Kunta Kinte the ropes in Roots (1977), but he was still a relatively unknown 46-year-old when he got his breakthrough role, despite a long history of success on stage and in music as well as on screen.

Born in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, Louis was the son of Helen (nee Wray), a nurse, and Louis Sr, a porter. As a child he suffered from polio, but became a high school athlete before a basketball injury led to his joining the drama club. His teacher encouraged him to audition professionally, and at 17 he was on Broadway playing a troubled child in Take a Giant Step, which won him a Donaldson award for best newcomer.

He won a drama scholarship to New York University, but continued working, in The Desk Set (1955), and made his television debut in two episodes of the NBC anthology show The Big Story. In 1959 he was cast with Poitier and Ruby Dee in Raisin in the Sun, and made his film debut reprising his role in 1961. On Broadway that year he played in Jean Genet’s The Blacks, in an all-star cast with James Earl Jones, Cicely Tyson, Roscoe Lee Brown, Godfrey Cambridge and a young Maya Angelou; it was the decade’s longest-running show.

Gossett was also active in the Greenwich Village folk music scene. He released his first single Hooka Dooka, Green Green in 1964, followed by See See Rider, and co-wrote the anti-war hit Handsome Johnny with Richie Havens. In 1967 he released another single, a drums and horns version of Pete Seeger’s anti-war hymn Where Have All the Flowers Gone. He was in the gospel musical Tambourines to Glory (1963) and in producer Mike Todd’s America, Be Seated at the 1964 New York World’s Fair.

His plays became more limited: The Zulu and the Zayda and My Sweet Charlie; the very short run of Carry Me Back to Morningside Heights, in which he played a black man owning a white slave; and a revival of Golden Boy (1964), with Sammy Davis Jr. His final Broadway part was as the murdered Congolese leader Patrice Lamumba, in Conor Cruise O’Brien’s Murderous Angels (1971). Gossett had played roles in New York-set TV series such as The Naked City, but he began to make a mark in Hollywood, despite LAPD officers having handcuffed him to a tree, on “suspicion”, in 1966.

On TV he starred in The Young Rebels (1970-71) set in the American revolution. In film, he was good as a desperate tenant in Hal Ashby’s Landlord (1970) and brilliant with James Garner in Skin Game (1971), taking part in a con trick in which Garner sells him repeatedly into slavery then helps him to escape.

In 1977, alongside Roots, he attracted attention as a memorable villain in Peter Yates’s hit The Deep, and got artistic revenge on the LAPD in Robert Aldrich’s The Choirboys. The TV movie of The Lazarus Syndrome (1979) became a series in which Gossett played a realistic hospital chief of staff set against an idealistic younger doctor. He played the black baseball star Satchel Paige in the TV movie Don’t Look Back (1981); years later he had a small part as another Negro League star, Cool Papa Bell, in The Perfect Game (2009).

After his Oscar, he played another assassinated African leader, in the TV mini-series Sadat, reportedly approved for the role by Anwar Sadat’s widow Jihan. Though he remained a busy working actor, good starring roles in major productions eluded him, as producers fell back on his drill sergeant image. He was Colonel “Chappy” Sinclair in Iron Eagle (1986) and its three dismal sequels.

But in 1989 he starred in Dick Wolf’s TV series Gideon Oliver, as an anthropology professor solving crimes in New York. And he won a best supporting actor Golden Globe for his role in the TV movie The Josephine Baker Story (1991). He revisited the stage in the film adaptation of Sam Shepard’s Curse of the Starving Class (1994).

Gossett twice received the NAACP’s Image Award, and another Emmy for producing a children’s special, In His Father’s Shoes (1997). In 2006 he founded the Eracism Foundation, providing programmes to foster “cultural diversity, historical enrichment and anti-violence initiatives”. Despite an illness eventually linked to toxic mould in his Santa Monica home, he kept working with a recurring part in Stargate SG-1 (2005-06). A diagnosis of prostate cancer in 2010 hardly slowed him down.

Most recently, he played Will “Hooded Justice” Reeves in the TV series Watchmen (2019), in the series Kingdom Business, about the gospel music industry, and in the 2023 musical remake of The Color Purple.

His first marriage, to Hattie Glascoe, in 1967, was annulled after five months; his second, to Christina Mangosing, lasted for two years from 1973; and his third, to Cyndi (Cynthia) James, from 1987 to 1992. He is survived by two sons, Satie, from his second marriage, and Sharron, from his third.

🔔 Louis Cameron Gossett Jr, actor, born 27 May 1936; died 28 March 2024

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

#just for books #louis gossett jr. #in memoriam

[the-himawari]

A3! Fushimi Omi - Translation [N] MY WORST WEDDING

*Please read disclaimer on blog

---

Juza: …

Omi: …Hm? What are you doing there, Juza?

Juza: Omi-san. You’re home. Welcome back.

Omi: Yeah. I’m home.

Juza: I’m… thinkin’ about my date plan right now.

Omi: Right, we’re supposed to come up with a date plan for our role study. It’s great that you’re giving it some serious thought. Have you solidified what you’re going to do?

Juza: Actually… Yuki happened to pass by when I was stuck earlier. He couldn’t leave me be and gave me some advice.

Omi: Oh, I see.

Juza: I think it’d be nice to go on a sweets tour, so I have that written down for now. If it’s a popular shop with a line up, then I’d have to think about what to talk about as we wait. That’s why… Yuki suggested I should go to a store that only those in know, know about.

Omi: Is that right? Yuki’s advice is accurate, as expected.

Juza: Have you already come up with your plan, Omi-san?

Omi: No. I’ve been busy with work, so I was planning on thinking about it now.

Juza: I see. I’m lookin’ forward to hearing about your plan too.

-pause-

Omi: (That’s what I said… but it’s pretty hard to decide when I actually started planning it.) (An amusement park, an aquarium… they’re cliché, but that’s all I’ve got.)

Kazunari: Hm? What’s up, Omimi~?

Citron: Are you troubled over something?

Omi: Oh. Kazunari, Citron, and Tasuku-san.

Tasuku: It looked like you were deep in thought…

Kazunari: We’re here for you if you wanna talk about it!

Citron: We’ll solve it in a flash!

Omi: Haha, thanks. The thing is…

-pause-

Tasuku: A date plan for your role study, huh?

Kazunari: Ooh, so that’s it~?

Citron: In that case, leave it to us! We’ll brainstorm some ideas!

Kazunari: So like, what comes to mind when you hear the word date?

Omi: Let me think. I guess it’d be something like an amusement park or aquarium.

Kazunari: For sure. Those kinds of cliché dates are a classic! But it’s also important to add your own flair to it!

Citron: Yes! A date that screams Omi would be good.

Omi: (They have a point. Juza’s sweets tour sounded a plan that Juza would come up with.)

Kazunari: When you think of Omimi, wouldn’t it be going on a motorcycle ride? I’m sure it’d feel awesome cruising by the oceanside!

Tasuku: Maybe you can make some stops along the way.

Omi: I see… that sounds good. Alright. I’ll try to think in that direction.

Kazunari: And you should research lunch places. We’re always making food tour maps, so we gotta show off our research skills here!

Omi: Haha, that’s true. I think it would be fun to go to a store that we’re interested in together.

Kazunari: Exactly. It’ll be lit!

Citron: A motorcycle ride…

Kazunari: Do you have your own nice idea, Ronron?

Citron: If you’re going on a motorcycle ride, then what about a chicken race on a cliff!?

Tasuku: What?

Omi: Pardon?

Kazunari: Oh my God! That sounds just like a movie! Your heart would be racing for a different reason! But hey! Maybe you can get even closer by feeling that excitement together!?

Citron: That’s right! Your relationship will deepen by overcoming it together!

Omi: Um… that’s a nice idea and all, but I think that might be too thrilling. Let’s come up with something a little more regular.

Citron: Oh, that’s too bad… In that case, let’s test it out next time! I’d like you to bring me along with you!

Omi: Ahaha… I’ll consider it.

Tasuku: …That’s obviously unreasonable, isn’t it?

---

#a3! #a3! translation #fushimi omi #act! addict! actors!

[angelosearch]

a few random things while I lay here with my chest hurting -

My dog loves it when I am sick. He is so happy to just lay in bed with me all day. Now if he would only let me spread my legs out...

I watched Titanic for the first time in ages and I kind of get it now? I never understood the hype but I now see that James Cameron just wanted to do a bunch of research for his fanfiction. Man wanted to keep it as close to canon as possible. I can respect that.

In all seriousness - the whole Jack/Rose love story is just framing for the actual horror/drama unfolding. The real plot of Titanic is centered on classism, advancing technology/feats of engineering, the hubris of man, and the meaning of duty. And my god, the practical effects - for 1997?! This film was so ambitious. The cinematography was so intimate. You feel connected to these passengers who are on screen for seconds. I spent the last hour and a half of the movie super anxious and crying watching all the deaths and goodbyes. I am never setting foot on a cruise now. Still unsure if a whirlwind romance was the best way to illustrate the gruesome history of the tradegy, but I definitely get why Titanic is still talked about.

BUT I CANNOT SUSPEND DISBELIEF - you are telling me a charcoal drawing on sketch paper with no fixative survived on the bottom of the ocean for 84 years? Yeah right.

Also not feeling the whole romance of suicide stuff. Smh.

I also watched the original animated Beauty and the Beast (because I guess I am just on a romantic movies from the 90s kick) and wow it feels so old now, animation and voice acting wise.

BUT OH MY GOD. DEEP CUT. LeFou at one point hides as/inside a snowman in front of Belle's house. In the live action Beauty and the Beast, LeFou is played by Josh Gad. Josh Gad's biggest role?

ONLY THE MOST FAMOUS SNOWMAN OF ALL TIME (after Frosty) - Olaf from Frozen! (Not Samantha)

Anyhow... anybody got movie reccomendations?

[satans-helper]

Reaching for Stardust - Part I

Read Looking for Space here.

Listen to the LFS playlist / RFS playlist (all fic playlists get updated even to this day!!)

Word Count: ~3300

Warnings: none

A/N: Y'all...I'm so happy to be here, immersed in this new series. I began writing this back in April after I, seemingly out of thin air, came up with a foundation that seemed solid enough to even attempt writing a sequel to my beloved LFS. Ever since I finished that fic, I thought that one day, I might return for more. I have a very hard time letting any series go and LFS was truly a momentous project in my life--the fact that so many people have read it and continue to read it brings me so much joy, I can't even tell you.

Having been a fan of GVF for about five years now, I do feel a lot of sentimentality and nostalgia surrounding the band, the music and definitely my own fics, too, particularly all my series. I can still remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I was mapping out certain pieces of them in my mind. I felt a huge rush of nostalgia recently when I revisited my city's planetarium for a star show, which was a huge source of inspiration for LFS, and I realized that it was literally this same month, August, in 2019 that I was just finishing up the first 8 chapters of LFS, not even planning on making it a 30-something part series (LOL!). You'll see, if you read, that some of these feelings find their way into RFS. This isn't because it's a self-insert fic, rather that's inspired by how much this fandom has seen, experienced and grown over the years. I imagine my friends and readers who were back there in the pre-pandemic GVF era can relate to some level of nostalgia. A big theme in RFS is change. I think we all can absolutely relate to that, too. One thing remains the same though--this is a love story, through and through.

This probably seems like major overkill to introduce fan fiction but this is how I feel. Many of my old GVF friends have moved on in some way or another and I've often felt alone the past few years with still being so tethered to this group of beautiful, silly, fascinating boys that spark so much joy and fantasy for all of us. So, as always, thank you so, so much for reading my fics. I really hope you enjoy

P.S. I am cross-posting to wattpad (comments bring me life!)

---

I was getting lost in the pictures of Alaska–deep, shiny blue water, towering, white-capped mountains, a vivid stream of neon green in the Aurora Borealis, lush green forests. Even enormous, graceful whales surfacing, their tails nearly popping out of my screen as I unconsciously leaned in closer, hovering over my desk. I blinked hard as I turned my attention to the next picture that had been emailed over to me–a huge white ship, lined with windows that seemed endless–and huffed, shifting in my squeaky second-hand office chair. I didn’t even have a true desire to go on a cruise or even go to Alaska, but the neverending research into foreign lands nagged at me, reminded me that it felt like a very a long time since I’d been anywhere new. At least not anywhere exciting, really. 

I grabbed my phone and opened the gallery to scroll through the last trip Josh and I had been on. It’d been a long weekend about nine months prior, which reminded me that it wasn’t all that long ago at all but it still felt like ages since returning to the normalcy of day to day life. It had been a gorgeous summer excursion where we’d had a comfortable, clean hotel room, a warm pool and three nights out all to ourselves, and I found myself yearning for that freedom and escapism again. Plus the sunshine and heat. Michigan winters persisted, long and brutal, and we hadn’t broken through into any real spring weather until just the past week, which had at least given Sam a nice birthday. Josh and Jakes’ birthday was coming up fast. I thought it’d be nice to do something for them, with all of us–go somewhere for real again, all four of us, run amok in a hotel or airbnb. Or just have a nice dinner together followed by bar-hopping. Whatever the twins wanted, really. 

The picture I’d secretly snapped of Josh in our hotel room wandering out of the bathroom completely naked save for a towel twirled around his head came up after a dual selfie of us at the pool and I laughed loudly to myself, throwing my hand to my mouth. I’d nearly forgotten about so many of the little moments. It was so easy to forget when time kept slipping by like the wind, each good moment gone in the blink of an eye and each bad moment suspended in the air until something else came along, and the minutes turned to days and the days turned to weeks and months and before I even knew it, years had gone by and it felt like nothing and everything had changed all at once. 

Next I scrolled to a picture of the best breakfast I’d ever had, this amazing brie-stuffed French toast with a warm berry compote and housemade whipped cream, then the picture of Josh’s breakfast, which had been a skillet full of chorizo, bell peppers, eggs and queso that he’d deemed to be “orgasmic.” My stomach clenched in response and I looked at my phone clock, suddenly eager for dinner once again. My hours were almost up with 5 p.m. creeping on me and my mind turned its attention to Josh and I’s relatively new Friday night ritual–binging on Chinese and watching the most obscure, nonsensical horror movie we could find. With that, I swiveled around to stretch my legs in the sun through the window and pulled up the menu on my phone, trading pictures of Alaskan mountains for pictures of fried dumplings and greasy lo mein; a few seconds later, a very appropriate text popped up:

Hey mama, I’m gonna be a little late tonight. Want me to pick up dinner on the way home?

Yes please. What’s your ETA?

8ish? What’s on the menu tonight?

I’m gonna do the orange chicken and an egg roll. Wanna share some crab rangoon?

yes I do. What about dumplings?

obviously! 

;) see you soon 

I’d need something to hold myself over until Josh got home, though I was glad to have this part of our routine to look forward to. Stability was important and even Josh had come to understand that more and more. I turned my attention back to Alaska, mulling over the images and cycling through words in my head that I could bring to the page and entice people with, as if cruises needed more promotional materials and marketing to bring in profit. They were relatively cheap, all-inclusive and easy for people to handle and reminding myself of this made me bitter all over again–why couldn’t my company make one of their perks a free trip for employees once a year? I didn’t know their exact state of finances but I bet it could be done. They just didn’t want to. And the irony was that they didn’t pay most of their employees enough to take extravagant trips of their own.

Whatever. There were other, more important things I told myself, getting up to stretch and find something from the fridge or snack cupboard. In 32 more minutes I could clock out and put these wild places out of my head for a bit–the weather called for a long walk somewhere.

It was the nicest day we’d had so far, which I fully realized once I was driving and headed out to a familiar, easy forest trail Josh and I often did together on the weekends. But we had a busy weekend coming up, actually. We desperately needed to stock up on groceries–my most recent find of an old packet of peanuts as my last snack was testament to that–and then the boys had a show at Waterstreet. Sunday wouldn’t be as fun–my sister was repainting the entire interior of her new house and had somehow roped Josh and I into helping, in part because we were just that nice, according to Josh anyway, and also because she let each of us pick one color for one room each. Josh had chosen a shade of dusky desert red for the den and I’d chosen something called “spring morning,” a pale lilac, for the powder room, which seemed pretty fitting for the time of year she was making these renovations. 

The trail was bustling, which I wasn’t surprised by, and much of my walk was spent nodding and smiling to other people passing by. The break in weather was infectious for all of us in the area–everyone seemed to be in better moods finally, myself included even despite the gripes I had with work and money and everything else. Sometimes it felt like just yesterday that Josh and I were lying on our backs in the deep black night, gazing up at infinite stars and trying to come up with material for that poetry class that had been the catalyst to bring us together. The warm sun above me while I continued down the dirt path also reminded me of days past, of the first hike Josh and I ever had together when we both stripped down to our feelings, laughed, kissed through sweat, and had decided that was it. We’d made a lot of decisions over the years, so many that I felt like I hadn’t even noticed some of them, but I’d never decided to let fog cloud my memories. I hated that it happened regardless. And sometimes I absolutely hated what changes all the decisions had led to. I wanted to go back in time every once in a while to relive those moments and those days and it made my heart ache to know I couldn’t. Josh would assure me that the future would be just as good–and sometimes even better–than what those memories had to offer. 

And he was often right. Life was good, and I reminded myself of that as I narrowly avoided tripping over an obtuse rock sticking out of the dirt, it was just more challenging now. There was no school to fall back on–I hadn’t realized how much of a safety net that had really been at the time–and less free time. There were more financial worries. More pressures in life. But if nothing else, I had the best people in my life possible; if nothing else, Josh and I were rock solid. He didn’t let a week go by without reminding me that we were soulmates and I agreed wholeheartedly–no matter what might happen, we’d have each other. 

After my walk, I thought about running our necessary errands on my own but ultimately decided that’d be a deviation in routine I didn’t want to make. Josh was the best person to go grocery shopping with, being surprisingly focused and deliberate in his choices. He also was the best at picking out produce, somehow always able to discern which fruit was just the right amount of ripe, and he was good at finding the best deals. He was the coupon cutter, which always made me laugh, and I was the one who followed instinct more than the list we mutually made the day before. I would get caught up in being frivolous, more often than not tossing special treats into the cart that I couldn’t excuse beyond something like, “Come on, you like them too” to which Josh would agree with his cheeky little grin. 

And that same grin was on his face later that night when he came home with the bag bursting with Chinese takeout. His voice and the smell of soy sauce and that syrupy orange stuff made me hop up from the couch, excited for all the things, but mostly him.

Josh gave a little groan as he headed into the kitchen, his backpack still over his shoulders while he carried the white plastic bag in his right hand and his keys in his left. “Sorry I’m late,” he said, shuffling and rustling all the way out of my sight. “Stephanie needed extra time–she’s having trouble with the new cameras. And to be fair, they do have a steep learning curve. You remember how much trouble I had with them last week?” 

I followed him in, taking the bag out of his hand so he could zip back out and discard his keys and backpack. “Which one is Stephanie again? The one who’s obsessed with ‘film noir?’” 

Josh chuckled from beyond the walls before appearing again, pink-cheeked and smiling. “Yeah, that’s her. And that’s another thing–I’m gonna have to review how these cameras even film in black and white because for the life of me I can’t remember right now.” 

“Does she have any movie recs?” I asked as I opened a cupboard to get plates. “We gotta figure out what we’re watching tonight.”

“What about Night of the Reaper? You haven’t seen that one yet.”

“Yeah, but you've seen it,” I replied, wagging a pair of chopsticks at him. “That’s like, cheating. We gotta watch something we both haven’t seen.”

“We’ll find something.” Josh moved in close and pressed a quick kiss to my cheek and my heart fluttered–it always did. “What about you? What’d you get up today in my absence?”

“I went to the Hemlock Trail. It was busy,” I told him while we both plated our respective dishes, my stomach growling. “It was nice though. Looks like we’re gonna have good weather for your birthday.”

“That would be ideal but I’m going to be cautiously optimistic. Last year we had snow, remember?”

“Yeah, like a dusting,” I said with a little laugh, purposefully knocking my hip into his. “I’m gonna be blatantly optimistic and say it’ll be good. And we still gotta figure out what you wanna do.”

“We'll figure it out, my love.” Josh led the way to the living room and sank into the couch which we could have probably done with replacing; he set his can of sparkling water on the end table then grabbed the remote. “I’m so excited for these dumplings. I don’t care if it’s cat food.”

“They do kind of taste like cat food, don’t they?” I concurred, settling down on the other side of the couch. I put my plate on the coffee table in front of us and pulled it closer. 

“They smell like cat food, too,” Josh said, picking a dumpling up between his pair of chopsticks. “I don’t mind. They’re fucking delicious.” 

“I really don’t get how you’ve always known how to use chopsticks,” I remarked, opting for a fork instead to pierce my own dumpling while Josh fished through the cushions for the remote as he chewed. “It’s not fair.”

“I’ve tried to teach you, doll.”

“And I haven’t learned, so either you’re a shit teacher or I’m a shit student.”

Josh laughed and swatted my arm with the remote. “Hush! I’ll have you know that my students love me.”

I nodded, chewing. “So I’m a shitty student after all.”

“You are not. There’s a learning curve to chopsticks too, ya know.” Josh took another bite of his dumpling then leaned forward, peering at the TV. “Okay, so–what’re we watching?”

I followed his scrolling through our shared list of choices while I tackled the orange chicken. “What about that one?” I asked when he paused on the title Devil’s Ground. “It looks pretty obscure. 1983, a director I’ve never heard of, looks grainy and weird.”

“It’s been on our list forever,” Josh said, clicking the play button. “Let’s give it a shot.”

The movie really did turn out to be obscure–the protagonist was a teenage girl who finds an old well in the middle of the woods and climbs down into it, for some reason believing that her missing brother would be down there. Josh and I chided about the already well-known fairytale parallels, except in this movie the girl encountered creatures in the world beyond the well even weirder than those in Alice in Wonderland or Labyrinth, and ended up having to get betrothed to some menacing demon, played by a giant puppet, to save her brother. Then she and her brother kill the demon and find their way out of the strange world and back in their world.

Josh laughed loudly as the movie came to an end. “That was ridiculous. One of the best ones we’ve seen so far.”

“Those puppets were something else,” I commented, watching the credits roll and hoping everyone on that production went on to do better things. “The little blue one with teeth was my favorite.”

“Why didn’t they just get a real actor for the demon?” Josh asked, shaking his head. “Good god. It was a travesty but also kind of brilliant. I could show this to my students to demonstrate the use of close-up shots.”

“The close-up on the puppet demon when he was being slaughtered seemed unnecessary.”

Josh got up and stretched, gathering all of our plates and silverware and his chopsticks. “It really was. You want me to do the dishes?”

I turned the TV off and followed him, carrying in our empty drinks. “I thought another part of our Friday night tradition was saving the dishes for the next day and we can argue about it then.” 

“No argument. You get to do them since I got the food,” Josh said as he set the plates into the sink with a clatter, then pinched my side. “Deal?”

I giggled, shrinking away from his ticklish touch. “Deal.”

“Anyway, my darling,” Josh began to say, twirling away from me and to another kitchen cabinet. I watched, amused at how he always struggled to reach far enough up to get the wine glasses. “There’s a full moon tonight. Let’s go see it.”

“What? There is?” I asked, trying to peek at wherever it may have been through the kitchen window, our third-story apartment giving us a halfway decent view of the sky most of the time. That was one of the few perks of this place–we’d moved in last year, sizing up so I could have my “office” and enough space in general for both of us to not be completely on top of one another–though Josh never complained about that–but the building was old and lacking a number of things, namely outdoor space. Our little balcony was all we had anymore. 

Josh trailed out, wine glasses tinkling in one hand while he held the mostly full bottle of red wine in the other, and I followed again, feeling a sense of eagerness for the night sky which I hadn’t felt in, well, about a month. Our life together was full of tradition, I had come to realize in time, and a viewing party of the full moon whenever possible was certainly one of them. I’d just been too wrapped up in Alaskan cruises to remember this one on the calendar. 

The night air was chilly–a tingle ran down my spine and Josh noticed this as I sat down next to him on the cushioned bench we’d garbage-picked right after moving in. He skillfully and quickly poured each of us wine, set the bottle down and wrapped his free arm around my shoulders, pulling me in close. 

“It’s gorgeous,” he declared, his voice as rich as ever but a softness brushed through those words. I always loved whenever he got so starstruck over something that he couldn’t help but be concise. 

“It really is,” I agreed, pulling my gaze away from Josh’s equally–if not more so–gorgeous face to take in the huge globe of bright cool white above us. “I can’t believe I forgot about it. Sometimes I feel like I don’t even know what planet I’m on.”

Josh laughed, light and affectionate. “You’re on planet earth. It’s disappointing sometimes, I know, but if we weren’t here, I’m not sure we’d be able to see the moon and the stars like this.”

I took a drink, already lulled by Josh’s voice and his warm, strong arm around me. He’d always been strong, considerable muscle secure beneath silky tan skin, but he’d gotten stronger still; the muscles had become even more obvious and I sometimes poked fun, and a little bit of envy, at him for being a “hard-body” because, well, he was. I’d learned to memorize the curves and lines of his body throughout the changes, tracing every plain and valley with my fingers whenever I had the chance.“Probably not, no. We’re really lucky after all, aren’t we?” I said, reaching up to stroke his hand over my shoulder. 

“I think we are. Especially if we can see the stars wherever we go.”

“Speaking of–earlier I was thinking about how it’s been a while since we took a trip anywhere.”

“Yeah? Well, where would you want to go?” Josh asked, bringing his wine to his lips. “Not Alaska, I assume.”

“No, not Alaska. But I don’t know, Josh, I feel like we should go somewhere soon.”

Josh took another drink, looking ahead through the darkness that was interrupted by various porch lights from the other apartments rather than up at the jeweled sky. I’d expected enthusiasm–he’d have more free time soon with the semester coming to an end and I still had a lot of vacation days left, making the whole thing easy in theory–but he was uncharacteristically quiet. 

“What?” I prodded, tugging at his wrist. 

“No, nothing,” he assured me, coming alive again with his body squirming beside me, his hand grabbing mine in reciprocity. “I was just thinking about it. We should both think about it some more.”

I returned my attention back to the moon and the stars and a memory overcame me so viscerally it actually hurt–the abandoned barn, the vast field, the endless sky hanging overhead the two of us. “Alright, let’s think about it,” I concluded, wishing that the place we could travel to was back in time. 

Josh sighed and curled around me. “I feel like a dumpling,” he said, lifting a hand to pat his stomach, and I laughed right into the night along with him.

---

Tagging no one because my list is so outdated that none of those people are even in the fandom or use tumblr anymore LOL please let me know if you'd like to be tagged in this series!

#josh kiszka #josh gvf #greta van fleet #gvf #gvf fic #josh fic #josh kiszka x reader #jake kiszka #danny wagner #sam kszka #sam gvf #danny gvf #jake gvf #lfs #rfs #I'M BACK!!!!

[starset21]

Standard Disclaimer: I only own my original characters, I've done some research but there will likely be Navy/military inaccuracies, and I do not consent to the posting, translating, or publishing of my work to any 3rd party site, the only place it may be found is on tumblr and Wattpad under @.itswildflower

A/N: This story is heavily inspired by the hallmark movie of the same title and is very self-indulgent. I'm also trying a different format than I'm used to using so it may change in the future chapters.

Looking for the next chapter? U.S.S. Christmas Masterlist 

Summary:  She’s on her way to a Christmas ball to meet her brother Jackson, a fighter pilot in the Navy. There, she spots a certain blonde, tall drink of water with gold wings clad in full dress uniform waiting at the bar.

Chapter 1: The Christmas Ball

“Oh, my. I feel like I should be standing at attention,” Kayleigh whispered to her brother.

“Relax, Kate. Even the most disciplined sailors know how to have fun. You just wait until this dance floor fills up. I'll go get our table number.”

Kate took a deep breath. “Okay. I'll get drinks,” she told him before walking over to the open bar.

“Hi. A red wine and a whiskey neat, please,” she ordered. The bartender got to work quickly and was handing them to her within a minute. “Thank you so much,” she handed him a 5-dollar tip before taking them and turning around only to run smack into a woman wearing white, effectively spilling her red wine over the white fabric.

“I'm so sorry!” she gasped, turning and setting the drinks down and picking up a towel to hand to the woman.

“We have literally been here for three minutes,” the woman complained.

“I- i-i-i-i'm… I'm gonna get your dress dry-cleaned. Actually, you know what? I'm gonna go get you a new dress. I'm gonna actually go to the mall right now,” Kate rambled on.

“I finally found a flattering white dress… Of course, this happens,” the woman mutters. 

“I'm so sorry. I feel terrible,” she apologizes. “It's... fine. Accidents happen. If you'll excuse me, I am headed to the restroom.”

The woman leaves, leaving Kate with the handsome stranger.

“I'm so sorry,” she apologizes again.

“Red wine, the enemy of flattering white dresses everywhere,” the handsome blonde quipped.

“Yeah. It's a fashion emergency if I've ever seen one,” Kate muttered embarrassed.

“She'll survive. Although you might want to have your date grab your drinks for you next time,” he suggested.

“Oh, no, I'm not…” she trailed off when another man patted the handsome blonde on the shoulder.

“Hangman! Long time no see, buddy.” The two men speak for a moment.

“I better get back to my date,” Kate tells the man. “It was nice meeting you,” he tells her before she walks off. 

“Kate! Over here,” her brother calls out, standing with a familiar face.

“Merry Christmas! It's so good to see you again,” the older man greeted and opened his arms for a hug.

“It's good to see you too, Captain Kerner,” Kate hugged him.

“No, no, no, you're a civilian. No formalities. It’s Ron or Slider... I cannot believe how grown up you are, I haven't seen you since your Dad's funeral.”

Kate nodded. “Yeah. You gave such a beautiful speech, sir.”

“Thank you. Sam was one of the finest RIOs and a great wingman out at sea,” he complimented.

“Yeah, he was the best,” Jackson chimed in.

“He would have been proud of you two. Your stories in the paper, Kate, and, of course, you following in his footsteps on the Polaris, Jackson,” Ron told them.

“It's my honor to serve, sir,” Jackson smiled.

“It's a shame, however, that you didn't sign up for the Christmas tiger cruise along with your mom this year. You could have seen your brother in action,” Ron told Kate.

“I just have so much work right now. Big stories percolating,” she countered.

“A chance to watch Jackson launch a $65 million jet off the deck of a carrier, why, that's a big story,” Ron laughed. “Not to mention we're gonna make a stop in New York City this year,” he added after a pause.

“Isn't it too late, sir? The cruise leaves Norfolk day after tomorrow,” Jackson asked.

“We carry 6,000 people on the ship. I think we can find an extra bunk for Kate,” Ron patted him on the back.

“Kate?” he asks.

“Well, thank you, really, for the offer, but it's just so last-minute with Christmas being ten days away,” She tells the older man.

“Well, the offer is there if you change your mind,” Ron told her with a smile.

“Sir!” A younger service member approached them. “Ah, yes. If you'll excuse me? It was great catching up.” 

“You know Captain Kerner is my boss, right?” Jackson muttered to Kate as the older man walked away. “Like, my big boss?” he stressed.

“Yeah, I know. I'm not interested in going on a tiger cruise, okay? I didn't want to go when we were little, I don't really want to go now,” she told him.

“I get it. Now, the more important question is, where are those drinks?” he asked her.

“Oh, um…” Kate trailed off.

“Isn't that your shawl?” Jackson asks, his eyes following the woman she had spilled wine on. Kate nodded. “Who is that, anyway?” He looked at his sister.

“I don't know. I had a little bit of an accident at the bar. Some guy actually told me to have my date get the drinks next time,” she tells him, hanging her head in embarrassment.

“From the looks of that woman's dress, maybe you should have got the Merlot?” Jackson teased.

“Affirmative,” Kate sighed.

“Come on,” Jackson offered her an arm and led her to the table where they caught up on each other's lives. 

“Oh, it's Jenny. I'm gonna grab this,” Jackson told her, grabbing his phone and standing.

Kate nodded and yawned. “I know the military can be stiff… But are we really that boring?” Hangman, the handsome stranger from earlier approached.

“Sorry, it's just… It's been a long day,” Kate tells him.

“There's your shawl. Solo again?” he asks as she takes the shawl from him.

“Thank you. What about you? Is your date okay?” Kate asks.

“She's a little traumatized.”

Kate’s cheeks flushed. “Seriously?” she lamented.

“She likes things to be… Just right,” he told her.

“Oh. A good match for you, then.”

Hangman raised a brow. “Based on...?” he questioned.

“I just know most military officers are meticulous,” Kate told him.

“I can be pretty easygoing. Spontaneous, even,” he countered.

“There you are. Your tie's a little crooked, Jake,” the woman in white came up to him and fiddled with his tie. The lieutenant mouths sorry to Kate before being led away by his date.

“Is Jenny okay?” Kate asked when Jackson returned to the table.

“She's good. She'll be back tomorrow. Look, I'm real glad you came with me tonight,” he told her.

“Me too,” Kate smiled.

“Ladies and gentlemen, excuse me. May I have your attention, please? The captain would like to say a few words.”

Ron steps forward. “Thank you, Commander. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Captain Ron Kerner, skipper of the USS Polaris, and I want to wish you all happy holidays and thank you for coming to the Navy Christmas ball. Now, as you know, while the Navy is not about self, but country, I look around this room tonight and I see so many fine men and women who make incredible sacrifices for this nation every day. And I'm not just talking about the sailors, but those who love them, as well. My apologies… I know we're not an easy bunch. And I can't wait to host your families on the Christmas tiger cruise. It's always exciting to me when they get to see what an incredible job you do on the ship. So during this holiday season, be thankful for family and for this fine country. Raise your glasses in a toast. To the Navy!” he cheered.

“To the Navy!” Everyone repeated.

“Merry Christmas,” he finished before the music began once more.

#starset writes #jake seresin x oc #fic:// u.s.s christmas #jake seresin fanfiction #jake hangman seresin #hangman top gun #top gun au

[bonnie-is-bumbling]

Oh. Look. It's once again been a hot minute since I've written anything!... Okay, that's a lie.

I write, then I let it sit... Usually decide it's too bleedin' cringey, and I delete the Tumblr post. But not today!

Today, I'm just going off about my special interests. Today, the brain is on ships, and the sheer sizes of them. As some ass-coverage: All images are snagged from Google. They are not accuracy checked. They belong to their respective owners, not me. Do not take my words as fact, my research has been shallow, casual, and for fun.

My housemate and I got a bit curious, as we're both big Titanic enthusiasts and plane enthusiasts- How big IS the Boeing 777x compared to the Titanic?

It was just one of those questions that popped up out of nowhere. Being an impoverished person my whole life, I've pretty much only traveled a few states outside of my landlocked rocky mountain home. The closest I've been to the ocean is Galveston, Texas. Save for a maybe 2 hour beach visit when I visited a former partner in Florida. That said, I've never seen a full size ship.

Boats? Ferries? Sure! My grandfather used to go fishing on Lake Conroe in Texas on the prettiest bass boat I know. (I may be a bit biased, hah.) But while I've never seen a full size ship in person, I've flown about... four times? So I've seen a plane up close. I think the first one I flew on was an A320, but for the love o' gigantic buffets, don't quote me on that. (Oh. Did I mention I'm waiting on dinner while writing this? A buffet sounds delightful. It has ZERO to do with this post. But maybe it'll remind someone who hasn't eaten to eat?... GO EAT.)

.... So, planes are pretty big. That much, I can tell you. But I was plenty surprised to see they're not even half of the Olympic class. Insert my first snagged photo from a shallow Google search!

On my housemate and I's curiosity search, we settled on this one. There's dome size differences between a 777x and an A380, but it was one of those instances of "Close enough."

Now, to preface this question, yes, I understand buoyancy, aero/hydrodynamic shapes. I'm no engineer, and I'm REALLY not about to go into the deep science and numbers here. Not today. I have looked up how ships float, how planes fly... All while being super heavy, bulky. And loaded with people/cargo. But despite knowing this stuff, it still feckin' BAFFLES me how a big tub of steel floats. Or something weighing multiple fucktons can fly like it weighs nothing.

Even with a general understanding of the design and engineering, the science, even... It still just makes me stop and think about that. Humans are impressive.

Oh. And if you think the Olympic class looks huge compared to an A380, the Olympic trio are only about 1/3 the size of the Costa Concordia (Brief rundown: Cruise ship that hit rocks and sunk partially in 2012. I know there's some drama surrounding this creator right now, but if you're of the easily distracted mind and need some humor to keep things interesting like myself, Internet Historian on YouTube has a decent documentary on her that was quite entertaining. )

No, seriously, I just snagged this off Google, it's not mine. Don't come at me. I just find it fascinating. We build these huge, heavy things and yet they float or fly like it's nothing. Just... What are the chances? That's so cool!

Have a lil 747 happily wagging it's tail as my thanks for bearing with my bumbling ♡

#my thougts #ramblings #boeing 777x #titanic #olympic class #ships #icon of the seas #costa concordia #tw cursing #autism #bumbling #special interest #credit to the person who made this

[spyxfamilyanalysis]

Spy × Family analysis

Phân tích tất cả các tập có phụ đề tiếng Anh của anime~

Analysing the anime's all episodes with English subtitles~

I decided to do an observation & analysis of the currently famous anime Spring 2022 SPY × FAMILY. After my previous-of-previous-of-whatever-previous post, I continued watching the episodes started thinking about how to analyse the episodes and see any spoilers or whateverso. I also rewatched episodes that helps me analyse them, as well as characters and ships: Damian x Anya, Yor x Loid.

Edit: Spy × Family season 2 was officially here, starting at episode 26, on October 7 2023!

Here are my title's analysis of the episodes and facts (they might be kinda long, pls reconsider reading this, sry if my analysis could be wrong :P) Thank you!!!

Season 1: 25 episodes: 1-25

Season 2: 12 episodes: 26-37

Episodes/Missions:

Operation Strix [part 1] [part 2.1] [part 2.2] [part 2.3]

Secure a Wife [part 1] [part 2.1] [part 2.2]

Prepare for the Entrance Exam

Interview for the Prestigious School

Pass or Fail

Operation Buddy-Buddy

Target: The Second son

The Counter-Secret Police Cover Operation

Show Off How in Love You Are

The Great Dodgeball Plan

Stella

Penguin Park

Project Apple

Disarm the Time Bomb

A New Family Member

Yor's Kitchen/ The Informant's Great Romance Plan

Carry Out the Griffin Plan/ Fullmetal Lady/ Omelet Rice <3

Uncle the Private Tutor/ Daybreak

A Revenge Plot Against Desmond/ Mother Becomes the Wind

Investigate the General Hospital/ Decipher the Perplexing Code

Nightfall/ First Fit of Jealousy

Underground Tennis Tournament: The Campbelldon

The Unwavering Path

The Role of a Mother and Wife/ Shopping with Friends

First Contact

Follow Mama and Papa

Bond's Strategy to Stay Alive/ Damian's Field Research Trip

Mission and Family

The Pastry of Knowledge/ The Informant's Great Romance Plan II

Plan to Cross the Border

The Fearsome Luxury Cruise Ship

Who Is This Mission For?

The Symphony Upon the Ship

The Hand That Connects to the Future

Enjoy the Resort to the Fullest/ Bragging About Vacation

Berlint in Love/ Nightfall's Daily Life

Part of the Family

Facts & Opinion: first announcement, second announcement, (1), (2), (3), (4), spoilers for (5), (5) Twilight/ Loid Forger (Part 1), (6), (7) Twilight/Loid Forger (Part 2), Chapter 96 opinion

Google forms: Spy x Family analysis: A small survey (11 responses)/Closed/, SPY x FAMILY: Questions of choices~ (3 responses)/Closed/

Arts: Christmas 2022 Thank you 37 followers, Christmas 2023 (main blog)

Votes: Anya Forger or the Garden, OC art spy edition

Help request: Drafts posts & Art collaborations!!!

Instructions if you can't click the links above

I have added the link of the posts above so you can look for them much easier. Moreover, please check other reblog posts from other Spy × Family fans as they also go deep in the anime and manga and contribute to the Anime World of Art with amazing artworks of Spy × Family.

Thank you for 67 followers everyone!~

#Spy x Family analysis #spy x family analysis #spy x family #spy family #spyfamily #the forgers #forgers #poor loid #loid x yor #anya x damian #yor and anya #loid and anya #spy x family damian #damian desmond #anya talks #twilight #thorn princess #loid forger #anya forger #yor forger #yor briar #spy family manga #spy x family manga #spy x family anime #spy x family icons #spy x family anya #anya spy x family #spy x family fanart #spy x family loid #spy x family spoilers

[motownfiction]

i love you, okay?

It’s just like Emma to fall in love with unattainable, unavailable men. When she was ten, eleven, twelve, she fell in love with faraway actors. In the fifth grade, she asked her parents for expensive commemorative magazines just so she could rip out pictures of the boys who played Peter and Edmund Pevensie and tape them to her walls. She called it hommage des garçons à Narnia. When she remembers showing off the pictures to her friend Renee in the summer of ‘06, so proud of her collection and of her French accent, she cringes deep in her bones.

In junior high and high school, Emma fell in love with popular athletes who almost liked her back but never could, never would. Her seventh-grade crush is the one that haunts her the most. His name was Kyle. They sat next to each other in science class, and they always got along. She thought maybe they should “go out” (like seventh graders do – make eyes at each other in school, talk on the phone twice a week, and never see each other past four in the afternoon), so she asked her friend Monica to see if he was interested. He said no. According to Monica, Kyle sort of liked Emma, but his friends on the football team would never see it that way. Emma was just too … geeky.

And so she wore that label with imbricated pride and shame, sometimes thrilled she was too geeky for normal boys; sometimes humiliated to be herself. It led her to college, where geekiness was celebrated, and she fell in love with a couple of sweet, handsome boys who later introduced her to their boyfriends. They all turned out to be pretty decent friends (except for Josh, who mocked how fast she could eat a plate of chicken fried rice), but it was never more. Never more. For two years, Emma was pretty sure she’d never fall for an appropriate guy.

It got even worse when she realized how she felt about Joel.

Joel, her favorite instructor, whose Intro to Cinema Studies class she wound up in by chance, whom she’s been able to follow from class to class ever since. He’s an assistant professor – the kind who asks you to call him by his first name. He’s a sweetheart, and he’s funny. He’s totally professional. He’s totally married to a documentarian who swears a blue streak and also has one in her hair. And Emma is totally in love with him.

There’s no way Joel doesn’t know. He’s brilliant, and Emma isn’t subtle. She sits as close to the front as she can in every class, she talks more than any other student, and her voice gets weirdly high whenever Joel throws a compliment in her direction. He’s only a few years younger than her parents, but that doesn’t stop Emma from thinking about him. And thinking about him. And driving herself crazy with thoughts of what could be, in an alternate universe where everyone is just a brain in a jar. Maybe they’d be together then.

She knows he’d still choose the documentarian, but it’s fun to pretend.

Toward the middle of the semester, Joel cancels a week of classes to have individual conferences with students about their research projects. It’s a class on multisensory film, and Emma wants to write about sex and taste in Like Water for Chocolate. She wears her nicest dress – in part to be professional, in part because at the very least, she wants to look pretty in front of Joel. When she tells him about her idea, his eyes light up in that Joel way. It’s unmistakable. It’s the thing that makes so many people fall in love with him. The Tom Cruise of Cinema Studies. He tells her it’s a great idea, gives her some recommendations on what to read before she writes the paper, and asks her when she’s applying for graduate school. He’d love to write her a letter of recommendation. Emma grins and thanks him, but she can feel her face fall. Joel gives her a funny look.

“Emma?” he asks. “Something wrong?”

Emma’s chest gets very warm. It’s not desire, either. She tries to breathe, tries to say anything, but she can’t. She can’t say what her head is screaming.

I love you, okay? I love you.

Because she doesn’t love Joel.

It would just be nice if she did. If she could.

She shakes her head at him instead.

“No,” she says. “Just thinking about Merleau-Ponty.”

Joel laughs.

“Yeah,” he says. “Good thing to think about.”

He plays it cool, and Emma wishes she could really love him more than ever.

#drabble #writeblr #ch: emma o'connor #year: 2016 #asks #kalonkakons #thank you!

[stewardofningishzida]

Chapter 7: The Research Begins

Here we go! A day early and I might do some bonus content posts in a bit if I feel like it. =)

T for language, FYI.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*Doctor Stephen Strange wanders aimlessly through the suburban neighborhood of a foreign yet somehow still familiar universe while fuming in silence.  He knows we aren’t malicious, but by the Vishanti, this whole situation is frustrating.  From what he figures, none of his spells are going to work to get himself home.  So, what then?  Will those in his home universe just replace him?  Will something like Dormammu or Thanos show up again and try to wipe out countless lives?  He’s trying to stop spiraling and contain his growing fear and frustration.*

*Laer's in her rented car, cruising towards Steward's house from the hotel she checked in late last night. She slows down as she sees a rather uncanny and familiar figure making his way down the sidewalk. She rolls down the window as she cruises to a stop adjacent to him.* Hey—what're you doing out here? 

*Stephen pauses and lets out an annoyed huff.  He glares at the woman in irritation.*  

Stephen (exasperated):  …Not more of you…What do you want from me now?

*Laer's brow rises and she raises her hands from the wheel.* Nothing, nothing. Just a question. Though I'm gonna warn you, you're gonna get stares dressed like that in a neighborhood like this. There's no convention nearby.

*He looks around to make sure there are no other witnesses before magically changing to a casual outfit.*

Stephen:  Do any of you know anything about multiversal travel here at all?  For all I know, something else has already destroyed my universe by now.  *He’s in a state of frustration, desperation, and silent helplessness.*

*Laer huffs a breath* I wish I could say we do. There's a multiverse theory—several theories—in this universe but to my knowledge, they're just theories. *She eyes the street up and down with a soft frown.* Look, if you need to just walk off the stress, I'll leave you to it and meet you at the house when you're done. But if you'd like what info we have now, I can take you to my hotel and show you what I've dug up so far. But I don't want to have this convo in the middle of the street.

*He listens, clearly stressed out.  Though he briefly pinches the bridge of his nose for a moment to quell a slight headache starting to develop.*

Stephen:  …Fine.  Just…Let me have a moment to myself.  I’ll be back at the house in a bit…*He’s reluctant, but resignedly agrees.  Any chance or scrap of info is welcome.  He’s not going to admit to the fact that he pissed me off yet.*

Laer: Yeah, sure thing. Nice to meet ya. 

*She lifts a hand and rolls up the window, then drives off to head off to the house. Only when he's out of view does she grin and squeal.* Oh my god oh my god it really _is_ him ahhhhhh. Right, get it out of your system. You're an adult. It's all good. 

*Meanwhile, I’m gardening with far more aggression than I usually do, tearing out weeds and tossing them ferociously in the bin.  Occasionally, I grab my trowel and stab it firmly into the dirt to hack away at any particularly tough roots.  All the while, muttering quietly to myself.*

*Laer pulls up in her car. She raises her eyebrows at Steward and her jerky movements within the garden.* Bad morning? *She calls out from her car, pulling out her purse and a folder filled with printed information.*

*I stab the trowel deep into the ground just to place it somewhere so nobody trips on it.*  

Me (deadpan):  Yep…The stress caught up to him and he took it out on me.  I know he’s worried, but that was uncalled for.  Taking it in stride because I get it, but he kinda pissed me off.  I’ll be fine. Just getting the energy out…*I huff to release a bit more.*

Laer: I mean, you should know how he is, if he's anything like his MCU self. A lot of his comic interpretations are calmer—though a couple of them are asses too, actually. Depends on the writer. Anyway, what version is he? 

Me:  I know…Though this Stephen seems to be some sort of hybrid.  He’s aware of or has experienced a lot of stuff in the comics AND the MCU.  He’s rivals/enemies with Mordo, has fought Nightmare, has fought Dormammu, etc.  Pretty sure this one hasn’t been through the latest movie.  That’s what I know so far.

Laer: Well thank God, no one should have to suffer through Waldron's writing. *She half smirks to herself before sobering.* Try and give the guy some space. In hindsight, calling like 5 of us to gawk at him probably wasn't the best move, but I have a peace offering in the form of my start on multiversal research. *She gestures to the folder.*  He can have it. You probably want to go to the local library and rent out any books that may be useful, too. Or help him get a library card. Maybe a subscription to one of those science research websites? I mean, there's so many places to look. I dunno. This is just wild.

Me:  Understandable.  The gawking kinda happened by accident.  I was trying to hide him originally, but Trix got suspicious and I owned up.  The rest, you kinda saw unfold live via text.  The info will probably placate him, yeah.  As for the books, I can help with that using my card.  Also, since I work as a researcher in the local university, I’m already subscribed to those websites.  He can use my login info.  We’ll hopefully find something.  Heh.  Wild.  You’re telling me?  He literally fell into my bedroom while I was browsing on the internet.  

Laer: Yikes. *Shakes her head.* How many people do you have staying over?

Me:  It’s just me and him.  I’m on the second floor and he’s in the guest room on the bottom floor.  I minded his space and such.  I’m not the touchy-feely or clingy sort.  You know that.  *I curl my lip, slightly amused.*  I think I was just the damn fool who walked in at the wrong place and time.

*Stephen has calmed down and is walking over.  He hears my self-degrading curse.*

Stephen:  …Look…I-

*I hold up a hand to shut him up.*

Me:  It’s fine.  Let it go.  There’s a lot to unpack here and we should focus on getting you back.  Laer here has a folder of research and I figured you can have me use my library card and research access from the university to figure something out.

*He sighs and looks slightly ashamed of himself.*

Stephen:  …Thanks.

Laer: Right. Uh. Like she said, I'm Laer. I took a few days off to see if I can find something in research, but we don't have contact with other dimensions and the like in our world… at least, not to public knowledge. Nothing's been leaked showing anything like that. We do have actual UFOs that the Pentagon admitted to though like 3 years ago, so that's pretty neat. No found alien life though. Um, yeah. That's about it. You can have this though *Hands over folder.* Give you an idea of where we are for like, multiverse stuff.

*He accepts the folder and nods at her.*  

Stephen:  I appreciate it.  *He gives me a slight, apologetic look.  I nod in acknowledgement.*

Me:  So…Want some leftover soup or anything or are you good for now?  

Laer: Soup for breakfast sounds legitimately gross. *Makes a face.* Don't you have, like, a breakfast place around here or something? Or a Starbucks?

Me:  Well..About 2 miles that way, there’s a Starbucks…*I point in its direction.*

Laer: Well if that's the best you got, it's still better than soup. *Looks at Stephen.* Do you have Starbucks in your universe?

Stephen:  Yeah.  The Sanctum disguises itself as one.

Laer: Haha, no shit. How the hell does that even work with the personnel and the regional managers in New York wondering where the hell this extra Starbucks came from? What happens to people's money? Wait, does that mean that the Sanctum can create food items out of thin air? I mean I guess that does happen, but still, it makes -no- sense—oh, I'm sorry. You don't need to answer all that, I just find it fascinating. Did you want me to pick something up for you? *Looks at Steward.* Did you want something too?

*Stephen looks at Laer and just lets her speak for a while.  This still takes some getting used to.  He didn’t get this level of attention in his universe.*

Stephen:  Erm…It’s difficult to fully explain.  No, it’s fine.  I still have some pastries left from the bakery.

Me:  I’m okay.  Thank you, though.  I’ll probably just finish up whatever’s left from yesterday.

Laer: Right. Well, I'll get out of your hair. I'm going back to the hotel after breakfast. I'll send you any additional info I find while I'm here.

Me:  Thanks, Laer.  We’ll need it.

Stephen:  I’ll look through the folder.  Thank you, Laer.

Me:  See ya!  It was nice meeting up, at least.  *I wave.*

Stephen:  Bye.

*Laer offers a normal smile at Steward and a beaming smile at Stephen, then heads back to her car and takes off.*

Me:  …So…Might as well look through the folder and try stuff out.  I’ll give you my login info to the university database.  If we can’t find anything that works today, you have two options:  Come with me to work and you can check stuff out in the library while I’m in the lab or stay here and keep looking online.

Stephen:  First, let’s see the resources at our disposal.  If nothing decent comes up, I’ll consider my options.

Me:  Deal.

**To be continued**

#doctor strange meta fic #multi author #dr stephen strange #doctor strange #doctor stephen strange #stephen strange

[dreamsandroots]

Auto Gynè Phile

A disembodied voice imparts intermittent, bite-sized chunks of information via overhead relay. It could be any time of day: perhaps we’re at the station waiting for the train to take us. For it’s often said that the roads are less safe than have been advertised or may be imagined. Once alighted, something grinds and we look below. “Please remember to re-engage your feeling brain.” A random thought: can inanimate objects perform a sexual act, beyond intention? The way vibration might arise beneath the scope of what is conscious, the way flesh can be swayed by so little? Perhaps it was an engine, we might think to ourselves, or perhaps it was the walls that whispered. We register a soft smile that, in spite of its softness betrays ignorance of some unprocessed vulnerability, some dumb pain. Perhaps we are the inanimate object.

It may be not entirely random: it’s uncertain but these recitations may have been put it in place to remind us that sometimes we carry things that happen between moments, like the time we’d thought about going on a luxury cruise: we’d researched and made a budget and as the time approached we could almost envision the look of the main deck and the indoor pool and the cabin with its large bed and the main bar strewn with exotic liquors and an indoor jungle and a dance floor with various, multiform faces vibrating and sweating softly and we could almost envision the placid views over sea—and how they’d take our breath away—and the way that we’d get lost in those waves, moving towards the light, flickering at the ocean’s tiny end on the horizon, the visual mirage of the sea evaporating into the atmosphere at its edges. Perhaps, having overheard that the friendly ghost of a famed opera singer haunted these endless halls we would wonder as to the sordid details of her ultimate fate.

“Do not submerge into a state of absence. Collect ‘go’ from partition in lieu of extra credit. Reminder to dally out your day,” the voice says, or maybe “please advise the author of a clear impulse. Excrete grime for hasty escape. There is no simple way to trick gravity. An unfixèd object may bound through space indefinitely.”

Perhaps every train of thought runs to an unknown timetable. The bus vibrates while the tram flows without resistance. On the ocean you acclimatise, or so we’ve heard it said, to the rolling of the waves. We have eyes to see that which is begot by nothing: we can feel it grating, this lumpen blood-hungry golem of flesh. The sharp click clacking of her red heels over the pavement, grinding us. The covers of the magazines and TV screens in proximity present feasts for the eyes and more hungry mouths to feed. Because we'd forgotten there was a hole in the side and the water kept trickling down into puddles of deep colour, being a ship at high sea, and to our memory it all seemed so sudden when we were asked to evacuate, the usually calm voice betraying an air of irritation. And on second thought it was not so much a great liner in the ocean, as much as it was a dinghy on the river and the hole was filling with water rapidly and we did not know these parts well, nor how deep the river ran.

“Do not leave any mess behind in case you are long, or permanently, departed.” We burn the maps, declare this undiscovered country.

#writing #Original Work #stream of conscious writing

[finishingflight]

I think I wrote and rewrote my caption for my Instagram post with this video several times. When it comes to paragliding I often feel out of place with my own opinions and thoughts. So I feel more uncomfortable putting them out there. Instead I’m going to write it here.

In this moment I felt like I couldn’t get my heart rate to slow down. I was working on taking deep and slow breaths. I checked all my gear over and over. I almost backed out of launching. I’m glad I didn’t but I sure learned a lot about myself. I didn’t really relax and have my heart rate slow until I was standing with my feet on the ground in the valley below.

The Owens Valley has a valid reputation in the free flight community. It has big violent thermals, dust devils ripping across the valley where you land and plenty of turbulent conditions that requires a high level of expertise to navigate. When I was here two months ago, to watch a Hike and Fly race, one of the competitors broke his pelvis after some weird air caught his wing and it collapsed about 30-40’ off the ground. The way people talk about flying in the Owens borderlines between concern for people underestimating it and gate keeping.

In all reality though with research safe flying can be done for beginners and low hour pilots. Conditions are typically mellower in the morning or in the late afternoon when it’s cooler. Midday is when things get rowdy.

I had being the retrieve driver for three more experienced pilots on Saturday. All three talked about strong 8m/s climbs and sink, and their whole flight requiring active flying to keep their wings open and flying. Two reported having such strong surges that their wing ended up in front of them instead of over their heads. In comparison the strongest lift I have experienced is closer to 3-4m/s with an average being around 2m/s.

So when I got the opportunity to fly on Sunday I was apprehensive. Eric reassured me that I had the skills to fly the conditions and that if do fine. When I woke up I could feel the heat beating through the tent at 6:30a. Then everyone seemed slow moving so we didn’t get to launch until 10. Which was later than we had planned on. When we got there we found a bunch of Hang gliders setting up, covering the whole launch area except for a tiny area right at the edge. They were nice and tried to move out of our way but their wings are massive and need the space.

I could tell I had barely enough room to lay out my glider. I felt nervous about it. With a launch like that sometimes it’s hard to get the wing up because at the angle there isn’t much wind on the ground where the glider is, but stronger wind once it gets up. I was going to have to step back, off the edge and onto the steep slope to inflate and then try and not get plucked before turning and going. If anything went wrong I most likely was going to get my paraglider tangled up in someone’s hang glider. Which I didn’t want.

Yet the launch was beautiful. It felt solid and I was told it was a great looking launch. Normally I settle fast and relax once I’m in the air. This flight was not one of those. I immediately started climbing up in lift and didn’t have to search for it. Which normally I’d be thrilled in. But I found myself afraid to turn and thermal up. When I got out in front with a clear view of landing areas, I did force myself to start thermalling up telling myself I was being ridiculous.

Slowly I started being able to see a favorite hiking trail pop up, and lakes I was familiar with. Langley and Whitney were in clear view and I could see more and more the higher I got. Somewhere right below 13,000 I started feeling the effects of not drinking enough water over the past few days and ended up deciding to push out and follow the range down. I could have easily cruised around Whitney and other peaks but found myself still worried and afraid that some strong 8m/s thermal was lurking on a spine or peak. Since it was approaching 11am I decided it would be better to just land.

I had a nice decent and a great landing. I almost laughed at myself after touching the ground. I had been so stressed and nothing I had felt had been outside of my skill level. I had done my research and flew within my capabilities. I just really think that the words and fears of other pilots creeped into my head and took hold.

Next time I won’t be so worried about the looming fear and gatekeeping by the community. This isn’t saying I don’t have a crazy amount of respect and caution for flying this valley, because that will always be there. But next time I won’t be so worried about my morning flights before it gets too rowdy.

#paragliding #flying #adventure #outdoors #mountains #Sierra Nevada

[ichayalovesyou]

Personnel File Rugal Proka-Pa'Dar

Position: Helmsman, *Researcher (See Special Notes) Rank: Ensign Species: Cardassian Gender: Male Date of Birth: 2358 Age: 22 Place of Birth: Bajor Height: 1.81 meters Weight: 62 kilograms Eye Color: Brown Hair Color: Black Family: Kotan Pa'Dar (Father), Proka Migdal (Foster Father), Proka Nali (Foster Mother) Education: Starfleet Academy (Class of 2379)

Service Record: U.S.S. Tubman (Present)

Background Story: Raised for the first twelve years of his childhood on Bajor by Bajorans. Relocated to biological family on Cardassia by legal procedure via Captain Benjamin Sisko, known by religious Bajorans as "The Emissary", now a part of the collective of Wormhole Aliens near Deep Space Nine. Officer relocated from Cardassia immediately after reaching legal Cardassian adulthood, accepted to Starfleet Academy discreetly due to volatile political nature of Officer's heritage. Assigned to U.S.S. Tubman for his Cadet Cruise and chose to stay, continuing aspects of Starfleet education long-distance.

Personality Profile: A highly proficient, if socially withdrawn young officer. Partially ascribed to the unfortunately solitary nature of his Academy training. Considers his Starfleet career as part of a "pilgrimage" in order to reconcile his diametrically opposed heritages between biological and foster families. Still practices the Bajoran faith of his foster parents, has a peculiar relationship with the memory of Captain Sisko. Believes walking the path of "The Emissary" will enlighten him to the nature of Sisko's actions regarding his parental custody, and his personal belief system as well.

Physical Profile: Unusually narrow build for a Cardassian, wears his hair tail length and wears his Proka family earring on his right ear, a keepsake of his foster family.

Special Notes: One of the only Cardassians in all of Starfleet, and the son of a former Cardassian political figure, handle with caution. Ensign Migdal-Pa'dar is completing his Starfleet Academy degree in Xenoanthropology, specializing in Religious Studies by researching and writing his final thesis on the religious practices and attitudes of displaced refugees. Requested commission aboard an Amnesty Class ship, Starfleet granted his request.

#yes THAT little boy from the DS9 episode 'Cardassians' #no I have not read The Never-Ending Sacrifice by Una McCormack (YET!) #the fanon/OC version of him in my head may change when I do but for now I couldn't resist! #rugal pa'dar #ds9 rugal #cardassians #deep space nine #ds9 #star trek #star trek ds9 #star trek fanon #star trek ocs #fanon #ocs #oc universe #xenoanthropology #rugal proka-pa'dar #ensign proka-pa'dar #the uss tubman #uss tubman #ichayalovesocs

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

NASA’s InSight Records Monster Quake on Mars Estimated to be magnitude 5, the quake is the biggest ever detected on another planet. NASA’s InSight Mars lander has detected the largest quake ever observed on another planet: an estimated magnitude 5 temblor that occurred on May 4, 2022, the 1,222nd Martian day, or sol, of the mission. This adds to the catalog of more than 1,313 quakes InSight has detected since landing on Mars in November 2018. The largest previously recorded quake was an estimated magnitude 4.2 detected Aug. 25, 2021. InSight was sent to Mars with a highly sensitive seismometer, provided by France’s Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES), to study the deep interior of the planet. As seismic waves pass through or reflect off material in Mars’ crust, mantle, and core, they change in ways that seismologists can study to determine the depth and composition of these layers. What scientists learn about the structure of Mars can help them better understand the formation of all rocky worlds, including Earth and its Moon. A magnitude 5 quake is a medium-size quake compared to those felt on Earth, but it’s close to the upper limit of what scientists hoped to see on Mars during InSight’s mission. The science team will need to study this new quake further before being able to provide details such as its location, the nature of its source, and what it might tell us about the interior of Mars. “Since we set our seismometer down in December 2018, we’ve been waiting for ‘the big one,’” said Bruce Banerdt, InSight’s principal investigator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which leads the mission. “This quake is sure to provide a view into the planet like no other. Scientists will be analyzing this data to learn new things about Mars for years to come.” The large quake comes as InSight is facing new challenges with its solar panels, which power the mission. As InSight’s location on Mars enters winter, there’s more dust in the air, reducing available sunlight. On May 7, 2022, the lander’s available energy fell just below the limit that triggers safe mode, where the spacecraft suspends all but the most essential functions. This reaction is designed to protect the lander and may occur again as available power slowly decreases. After the lander completed its prime mission at the end of 2020, meeting its original science goals, NASA extended the mission through December 2022. More About the Mission JPL manages InSight for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. InSight is part of NASA’s Discovery Program, managed by the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the InSight spacecraft, including its cruise stage and lander, and supports spacecraft operations for the mission. A number of European partners, including CNES and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), are supporting the InSight mission. CNES provided the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument to NASA, with the principal investigator at IPGP (Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris). Significant contributions for SEIS came from IPGP; the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany; the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) in Switzerland; Imperial College London and Oxford University in the United Kingdom; and JPL. DLR provided the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) instrument, with significant contributions from the Space Research Center (CBK) of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Astronika in Poland. Spain’s Centro de Astrobiología (CAB) supplied the temperature and wind sensors.

#space #science #Astronomy #news #physics #NASA #Insight #Mars

[strawberryspooktacular]

Deep Rising (1998) 13/10/23

Rating before seeing the movie: Nic: 8 Vic: 8

Rating after seeing the movie: Nic: 8.5 Vic: 9

What you did like about the movie:

The creature was very good, a good mix of practical and animation.

The crew of Finnegan’s ship.

The way the creature fed was really unique.

What you didn’t like about the movie:

Too many plots. There were like four or five and it got really hard to keep track.

The fact that the cruise ship’s owner just... Knew what the creature was without any research or anything? That’s a major plot hole.

Particularly memorable scene: Vic: The scene where Pantucci gives that guy the gun and the scene that follows it. Nic: Jet-ski hallway

Would you watch it again? Vic: Yes. Nic: Yes

Reflections: Vic: “This movie was well worth the $3.79 that I paid to rent it. The SFX scenes were really well done for the 90s and while there were some really confusing plots, overall, I thought it was a pretty decent movie.” Nic: “It’s a decent monster movie. It’s from the 90s, the cgi isn’t amazing but it’s good. Just ignore some of those extra plots.”

Final quotes: Vic: “FUCK YOU DUDE. PANTUCCI DID NOTHING WRONG.” Nic: “Thats not how those buttons work”

#gays watch films #2spooky4me #strawberryspooktober #horror movies #deep rising