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solomonish · 3 years

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i want to be where your gaze falls. (Solomon x Reader)

Solomon's eyes captivate you like nobody else's.

(Or: I'm hopelessly in love with Solomon and I think you should be, too.)

ao3 link: here!

His eyes were dark - except for when he was working with magic.

The first time you saw him, you hadn't much time to memorize the exact hue that held you in an inquisitive gaze. You were still finding your footing in a strange, dangerous realm and found yourself before a mysterious man who held your phone out to you when you couldn't even remember dropping it. Such a gesture was fine, casual even, but there was something about him that had you feeling uneasy, as if his whole appearance was made to catch you off guard, as if his smile was artfully crafted to just barely conceal sharp canine teeth that could rip you to shreds. You took the phone, exchanged a few pleasantries, and barely made it ten steps before Lucifer approached you to confirm what you had already figured out.

Stay away from Solomon, MC. He is not to be trusted.

It was as if Solomon had heard the warnings, and they instead summoned him with their silent spell. Or maybe he was a moth drawn to a flame, going to where he should definitely not be simply because he had long since discovered how to become fireproof and the only thing left to do with this power was abuse it. Since that day, you could see him skirting the corners of your vision, waving when he was caught but observing when he was not. If you approached him, the conversation felt easy, but it was never about him and never the conversation you intended to have. Solomon knew how to occupy your mind with nonsense riddles, so he made himself the toughest riddle of all and placed himself directly in your hands. Each time you twisted him and found yourself with a solid color row, he would only grin at you and force himself in three different directions so you were more lost than when you began.

That was when you noticed his eyes.

You would come to learn that he had spent much time knowing the ocean so intimately that he had to throw his love away before it cracked his brittle heart. At least, that’s what you had assumed - Solomon gave an impression that perhaps his heart loved too easily and shattered too spectacularly, but none of those impressions ever lasted too long. It seemed just his brand of tragic that the ocean he now hated was the first thing to come to mind when his eyes met yours. The gold laced at the bottom of those deep, smothering blues reminded you of something regal, something kingly - and the more you thought you learned about his past, the more you realized the windows to his soul were reflections of that which he hated most.

They were dark, not just in color, but in emotion, too. Any light behind his eyes that you would expect to see was gone, perhaps blown out by the winds of time. Even when he was not being unkind, they refused to give any indication of sweetness or authenticity. You did not know what you expected from him, but it was not for him to be so blatantly hollow that even his most overjoyed laugh seemed to ring without credibility.

There was a time, however, when all that seemed to change- and what better a time for the greatest sorcerer than when he was doing magic?

When the glitter rose from his palm, when small shapes hovered and swirled in a purple mist so expertly, so naturally that you wondered if his veins were made to fill with electricity and not mundane, human blood, his eyes would shine. At first, you assumed that it was just the reflection of the light his spells emitted as he watched intently, but no - there was something else there. As if peering out from behind a corner, the light you thought should be in his eyes reappeared, shining with an honest interest that naturally pulled you in. If there were rumors of his deceitful charm floating around him before you saw him like this, now he was downright devilish, able to pull you in however deep he wanted with hardly more than a few words and a smile. It was the magic in how genuine it all seemed - a magic so powerful, it rivaled every spell in his worn leather book.

Perhaps that idea played more into your decision to become his apprentice than you thought.

It didn't seem to matter which spell was cast, or even who cast it; when Solomon was surrounded by magic, by floating books as he sorted through spells and potion recipes, by glittering objects as you tried to enchant them, by anything, he was lighting up like a star. His intelligent eyes examined what looked to you like a jumbled cloud of glitter, and he murmured to himself little imperfections and discrepancies from your spell. Once all of his notes had been taken, he looked to you and congratulated you on your improvement, and oh when he looked at you like that - maybe he was a star, or maybe he was every star, or maybe he was an exceptionally sly black hole pulling you into his orbit with nothing but his facade of light spiraling around him. It didn't matter, after all - he was sucking you in, and you were too awestruck to want to fight him off.

Your days were spent with him and magic, learning new spells and finding magic ingredients. Tucked away in the corner of a dim library, his eyes stayed bright as he gently ran a finger over a book's old spine. You asked if he hadn't read that one yet.

"It was one of the first books I completed where each spell was new to me," he admitted, fondness lacing in his voice so it would send a chill down your spine. "We'll get to it eventually, but you're not quite at that level, I'm afraid."

Of course. Of course he had read it already, and of course one of his first spellbooks was far beyond your comprehension. You couldn't find it within you to feel slighted - not when you were convincing yourself to refrain from stealing the book just so you could see that expression every day.

Your hours away from RAD were spent mostly with Solomon wherever he tended to stray, a fact bemoaned by the brothers every chance they got. You couldn't help but wonder when that light would burn out, because clearly it had done so at least once before. But his eyes didn't seem so dark anymore, and you caught him in the halls giving you a dizzying light-eyed grin more often than you didn't, yet no magic pranks had been played to explain them away.

You had gotten paranoid. You had had enough. So you went up to him one day and asked him what had him so happy, preparing to be the reason the light drained from his eyes slowly - but at least then, you would know.

That didn't happen, though. Instead, he gave you a blank look, a good-natured once over, and he flashed you the prettiest smile you'd ever seen grace anyone's lips. "What, is it suddenly suspicious to be happy around my sweet apprentice?"

There was no smell of static and sulfur, no parlor tricks to impress you, no spell for him to get his way. It was just you, and Solomon, and the hall that seemed empty but definitely was not, and his eyes, oh, his eyes-

His eyes were dark. Usually, they were dark...except for when he was working with magic, and when he was looking at you.

#obey me #obey me solomon #obey me shall we date #swd obey me #obey me swd #solomon #solomon fics #solomon fluff

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ectonurites · 3 years

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Conner Kent in Suicide Squad/the Infinite Frontier era: wtf is going on

Alright lads hello I just need to type out some theories/thoughts about what’s going on with my boy Kon right now. This is more for myself than anything else (just trying to organize my thoughts) but since some of y’all like to hear me talk about comics (and some of this discussion has already been happenin in my inbox) I figured i’d format it and put it on here too! its like 4k words and written over the last few days mostly at 3am. sorry <3

this is basically just me going like

Also fair warning that like, I can be wrong and misinterpret things just as much as anyone else can, like I use panels to support why I think what I do but a lot of this stuff is subjective/complicated to understand so like... in general somethings should be taken with a grain of salt, especially because exactly what changes to the universe were made by Death Metal/Infinite Frontier haven’t been super super clearly defined yet. Also sometimes comic writers make the most random nonsensical shit happen, so I as a fan am also allowed to theorize about random nonsensical shit.

But to start: let’s backtrack!

Many months ago when Infinite Frontier was first announced they dropped some promotional art, and I remember being a little confused because. Well:

(Variant Cover spread for Justice League (2018) #59)

(Variant Cover spread for Superman (2018) #29)

Notice how Conner is back to his Teen Titans 2003 look up top, but in his YJ 2019 look at the bottom? This seemed weird to me! But then they announced that Conner would be part of the Suicide Squad ongoing title, in the T-shirt look, so I wrote this discrepancy off in my brain as ‘oh I guess that cover was just the last hurrah for punk Kon’ and moved on with life.

In Suicide Squad right away we learn he’s very much so there against his will:

(Suicide Squad (2021) #1)

Which corroborates more or less what we were also shown in Future State: Suicide Squad, although admittedly it tells... a slightly different version of the events. When I first saw both of these together I just chalked it up to being a bit inaccurate as it’s shown as a memory in Future State:

(Future State: Suicide Squad #2)

Issue 2 we saw him in action with the Squad, trying to do his best to still be a hero despite the team, but things get a little more interesting in the following issue. It starts off with an account of his history

(Suicide Squad (2021) #3)

This page gave me a few immediate red flags, mostly minor things that had to do with coloring, so more irl problems than things to take seriously in-universe (Kon’s pants are the wrong color in the first Superboy shot, and Bart’s Impulse costume is in Kid Flash colors instead of the correct Impulse ones) but then also it just bugged me the phrasing “he joined Young Justice” when he was a founder of the team, he didn’t join it he made it with Tim and Bart.

But again, chalked that stuff up to just.... writers/artists being inconsistent/unaware of things that they should be aware of, or even Nocturna just not being specific with details. But it did still strike me as a little odd considering the very accurate use of villains in those same shots, Scavenger who was a reoccurring bad guy from Kon’s solo days and showed up basically nowhere else (even holding the Spear of Lono and everything!) and Billy/Harm (Greta’s brother) from Young Justice.

But then a few pages later we got this:

(Suicide Squad (2021) #3)

Which is interesting. My first instinct was to think he’s being drugged w kryptonite or something thats leaving him hazy/out of it, but my thoughts on that have kinda changed, we’ll get there in a bit. But in general the context of ‘something’s wrong’ made the slight discrepancies on some details of his own history make more sense.

I also want to then bring up the next part to this story, the crossover issue in Teen Titans Academy.

(Teen Titans Academy #3)

So a few things. Does it feel weird to anyone else that Conner Kent, a known previous Titan who literally has a framed picture of himself in a case there, would set off alarm sensors like that? Wouldn’t he be... recognized as a Titan not an intruder by their sensors? Interesting! Anyways.

He looks really pained looking at that picture, and sad, and almost frustrated, which ya know makes sense and hurts my heart because he misses them! He misses his friends and being happy.

But, importantly for a criticism I wanna make thats less theory related and more just me bein annoyed at Tim Sheridan, that’s a picture of Conner. Right there. That’s Superboy, on display at Teen Titans Academy, so the people who frequent this building would know who he is and what he looks like and be able to recognize him, he’s even in the same outfit and everything. Alinta recognized him at the end of Suicide Squad #3.

So why does only one person during this big fight then comment on his presence?? Why doesn’t it get a bigger reaction???

(Teen Titans Academy #3)

And after the fight we don’t see any on panel moment of Wallace going up to the staff Titans (who weren’t present for the fight) and saying like “HEY NIGHTWING UHHH SUPERBOY WAS WITH THE SUICIDE SQUAD?” we just see him talking with his friends upset about Crush leaving. We see Alinta talking to them but we don’t see the exact dialogue. So I do just wanna take the writer by the shoulders and shake him a little bit and ask WHY because that just feels like... something you’d wanna address on panel! This is like the first time since joining the squad that Kon’s at all in contact with people from his life before Waller got involved, I feel like not addressing those people’s reactions to it/not discussing it at least a little bit on panel (especially when Conner CAME UP in the previous TTA issue, Dick brought him up and everything!!!) is a really odd choice. Maybe it’ll happen next issue and i’m just impatient, but who knows. Anyways, gripes with Sheridan aside, lets move on.

I wanna bring up how Conner... doesn’t really respond to Wallace’s question? At all? Except to just fight him off, not even an attempt at a ‘Sorry’ or anything? (the ‘Ha! That all you got?!’ seems to be coming from Culebra not Conner, although the placement of the bubble is vague enough it could be that it was supposed to be Conner? but it seems more like what she’d say, especially as she’s grabbing Emiko like that) That just feels weird. It feels off. In general he speaks so little in Suicide Squad #3 and this issue. Tbh it almost feels like he doesn’t really recognize Wallace which I mean I suppose they never exactly met (they would have theoretically during Death Metal, basically all past/present Titans were together for a while during that), but Kon’s been back in existing long enough he’d have a sense of who current heroes are anyways.

But right, so, lots of little things that feel weird... that gets us caught up to the most recently released comics... but in this household we look at solicits as they drop. Which gives us some info on what’s coming up a few months ahead of time, albeit without full context obviously. Issues #4 and #5 don’t mention Conner in their descriptions or show him on the covers at all, because there’s just other plot things going on, so ya know seems things will be quiet for him for a bit.

But then we got the August solicitations and oh BOY it’s a doozey for him! And some things start to kinda connect perhaps!

I want to just take a moment to look at that specific wording. “The teen calling himself Conner Kent” I’m probably reading too much into it but that feels deliberate, like why wouldn’t you just say ‘Conner Kent’? Usually these kinds of descriptions are trying to keep a low word count, not add in extra words that don’t need to be there. It makes it feel like that’s a name he’s using that... doesn’t actually belong to him.

So the theory I want to propose (that has been floating around already) is that based on these covers and the description, and how the Conner we’ve been seeing in Suicide Squad apparently talks about his own personal history like he’s ‘reading a wikipedia entry’ and had little response to people he should be aware of like Wallace and apparently isn’t recognized as a Titan through a bio-scan and also bearing in mind those initial promo arts with two separate looks at the same time for him... I think we're looking at a situation where the Conner in Suicide Squad so far has actually been a clone of original Conner (like... like he’s Match 2.0 or somethin) the whole time, that’s just not aware he’s not the original.

Now that’s the base theory I wanna work with and build off of, but there’s MANY different directions that could go in/ways that could work.

For example, one idea is that the Conner we saw in #1 who was chained up is the original Conner, and he’s been being cloned and held captive, so everything else with Conner in Suicide Squad so far has been this Match 2.0

Another idea could be the original Conner in #1 is also the Conner in #2 who Waller had then commented wasn’t ready during the mission in Arkham and had zapped with a lil Kryptonite, and after that moment she took him off the field because his spirit hadn’t been broken enough to be obedient (as he was a lot quieter in Issue #3 & the TTA crossover compared to #2, and #3 is when the Nocturna thing with the history happened)

Or it could even be original Conner in #1, then in #2 was one clone that wasn’t ‘ready’ that after that point she stopped using him, and switched to a diff clone for #3, because like that first cover did show a LOT of clones. That could be more just ‘artistic interpretation’ or something, covers sometimes do exaggerate/mislead, but it also could indicate we’re looking at a lot of clones.

(Suicide Squad (2021) #2)

With all of those in mind I also wanna bring up this little bit from Future State Suicide Squad:

(Future State: Suicide Squad #2)

Again Future State is a ‘possible future’ so stuff from it isn’t set in stone, but the idea of ‘she still has his YJ 2019 outfit somewhere’ makes me think it could be something along the lines of like, Clone!Conner finds original Conner and frees him and he gets back his YJ outfit, which could lead to like the imagery on that variant cover/the idea from my very first part of this post where I was talking about Kon being shown in both outfits in different places.

Alternatively entirely from all that, another option is that she maybe got ahold of what was needed to clone Kon, but doesn’t even have the original Kon in her possession. (again with the Future State thing, she could be lying since elsewhere in Future State we did also see a copy of YJ 2019 Kon’s costume in one of the Jon-focused Future State comics in a display case 🤷‍♂️) Which could also lead to that confrontation on the variant cover & the promo art thing... and could also explain why we have seen nothing about anyone looking for him, because in that sort of scenario he wouldn’t have even been missing in the first place.

There’s a lot of possibilities! It’s still too early to solidly know anything, but I feel pretty confident we’re entering another cloning related plot with our Clone Boy so it’s... ya know. Clone time. On the one hand it’s annoying because god we have done clone/multiple Kons plots before. We’ve done them so much.

BUT on the other hand, I think it could be interesting to use this situation to tie into some older stuff from pre-reboot that I can see some connections to, because due to Infinite Frontier altering the world and people’s memories it’s all technically fair game storytelling-wise again (and like, the use of Scavenger specifically in that flashback way above, who’s not a super well known villain in general, makes me think maaaaybe the writer did do some of their Kon homework)

Something also just dawned on me that i’m not quite sure what it means but still is worth mentioning: The Conner here in Suicide Squad is back in his Teen Titans Vol. 3 outfit, and his history as he tells it stops during Teen Titans Vol. 3. And doesn’t... mention when he died? It feels like it... stopped before that, because like I feel if he was telling his life history (even the wiki version LMAO) the part where he died and came back would be pretty important to bring up?? And Nocturna specifically says that he didn’t explain how that stuff from TT Vol. 3 then led to him in his current situation. That’s a pretty big gap (like uhhh everything from resurrection until he got lost on Gemworld + all the rest of the Young Justice 2019 stuff?) So like.. there could be something funky going on here that has to do with that.

Similarly when he flashes back in Future State: Suicide Squad to his past it also goes right from Teen Titans Vol. 3 to the current Suicide Squad run? Like I get it’s one page so they can’t show that much, but the fact that there’s now two places that flash back to that same specific time period and nothing past it until the Suicide Squad feels just... noticeable! Not concretely indicative of something, but noteworthy.

(Future State: Suicide Squad #2)

Like...this almost has me thinking maybe it could be something where like, they tampered with his dead body and cloned from that? BECAUSE, for those of you who may not be familiar with how Kon’s resurrection (during Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds) worked, when he came back there was time travel involved! He was brought back to life in the future (like. Legion of Superheroes era) because it was a process that took that thousand or so years to work/heal him (essentially because of his hybrid dna the process that healed Clark when he had died back in Death of Superman/Reign of the Supermen in the 90s just took a lot longer, but its the same Kryptonian healing chamber thing) meaning when he came back to the present alive again, his dead body was still also in the present just in it’s process of healing. Meaning especially if we’re bringing back stuff from before the reboot, Kon likely has his dead body just vibing out there while he’s goin around living life 🤷‍♂️

SO them doing something related to that could explain the choice to put him back in the T-shirt (since thats what he wore in the era his brain would be caught up to if we’re relating this to when he died) and why he’d recognize himself in a group photo with Bart, Cassie and Tim but maybe not someone like Wallace who didn’t exist back then. I don’t know, this branch of thought is still half baked. Will maybe come back and elaborate on this later. But I’m now really thinking there might be a connection to the early Teen Titans Vol. 3 era specifically because of it being referenced twice in stuff with this Suicide Squad.

ANYWAYS moving on, this is probably a shot in the dark and I only thought of it because I just was reading 90′s Superboy, but right away when thinking about ‘Amanda Waller’ and ‘Cloning Kon’ I was reminded of some stuff about the circumstances around the first clone that was made of Conner: Match.

(Superboy (1994) #35)

Match was created by an organization called ‘The Agenda’, that was after a while primarily under the control of The Contessa, Lex Luthor’s ex-wife, aided by Amanda Spence who had a personal grudge against Kon bc her dad was Paul Westfield the guy Kon was originally cloned from (before the Lex/Clark retcon). They were the big bad guys of an arc called The Evil Factory in Superboy (where Cadmus personnel got replaced with clones) which also then tied into the Sins of Youth event over in Young Justice (Remember how Match was posing as Superboy for a while there? yeah). After those plot lines finished the Agenda was pretty defeated (Amanda Spence was still out there and came back later but still) and... who got their hands on the remaining Agenda tech?

(Superboy (1994) #87)

Why none other than Amanda Waller herself!

If they re-canonized pieces of this (which also tied into Young Justice which ya know, YJ 2019 was all about re-establishing stuff from YJ even before Death Metal happened soooo) it would totally make sense for Waller to have complete access to the exact technology used to clone Conner before.

Now, a thing to consider here though is what happened to Kon after he’d been cloned that first time, where his DNA got all destabilized by the process (and he needed to go through a procedure with Roxy as a genetic template to keep him together, which was how he got stuck at age 16 for a while). This was something where he was fine for a period of time before the side effects began to kick in. Now, I think it’s worth mentioning that was also back in the days where he was not yet Lex & Clark’s clone, but still Paul Westfield’s. So there could easily be a ‘now that certain Kryptonian genes have kicked in as he got his newer powers it doesn’t destabilize him the same way’ reasoning or something along those lines to avoid this problem. Alternatively, it could be an interesting thing to embrace rather than retcon away, especially if we’ve been seeing Clone Conner in action and Original Conner hasn’t been in our focus, things could be wrong with him that we just don’t know about.

Another branch of thinking that I think is even MORE a shot in the dark but could be interesting (or again even related to what I just said, could be a combo of things) is if this somehow ended up related to those clones that were reverse engineered from the remains of Match from the very end of Teen Titans Vol. 3

(Teen Titans (2003) #99)

All of them were then taken down with Kryptonite and killed in battle (by Rose & Damian)

(Teen Titans (2003) #100)

But like... idk man if Waller got her hands on those corpses or even just the data from Dr. Caligan that he extracted from Match to make them... that could also be a potential way to make some new Conner clones, and that could be why the bio-scan thing at Titans Tower wouldn’t work properly because of the thing he says above about it not being a “complete match’

One thing I don’t think is the case, but has been brought up to me, is stuff with New 52 Kon. I’ve talked extensively about New 52 Kon in recent weeks because I read through all his stuff, but the thing that makes me shy away from him being part of this situation is the fact that... he’s not interchangeable with Kon the way I think some people think he is. He wouldn’t visually be recognized as Original Kon because he is literally on a genetic level a separate person. They’d prob look related, sure, like they’d pass for brothers because they both have Clark’s DNA, but New 52 Kon has Lois’ DNA and Original Kon has Lex’s. New 52 Kon would likely look more like Jon, rather than Kon. Lois specifically commented in an Action Comics issue that Kon had some resemblance to Lex, even. So like, things like Wallace recognizing him or him looking at his own matching reflection alongside the group picture at the Tower... those wouldn’t happen the same way if this was New 52 Kon.

Now I think it coooould theoretically be possible for Waller to have gotten her hands on that future N.O.W.H.E.R.E. cloning tech that had been used to make New 52 Kon, like I wouldn’t rule that out. Because she knows where the remains of their bases are as shown in Red Hood and the Outlaws (2016) #16-17, and like, Harvest is dead so she could easily just send teams out there to gather shit if she wanted.

Onto some other things I don’t think are actually related but that I was reminded of/wanted to address:

I feel i’d be a bad timkon fan if during all of this discussion of past stories with cloning Kon I didn’t even bring up Tim’s cloning attempt stuff, but I think it would ultimately be unrelated. His tech was stolen from Luthor, and his attempts didn’t succeed because he was trying to build from scratch without Cadmus’ the data about how they altered the DNA from the original process.

(Teen Titans Vol. 3 #34)

Then that initial cover for the annual really reminded me of part of the Hollow Men story from Superboy Vol. 5 just with like... Kon in a room full of copies of himself. I don’t think this story would be related either because it was more magic Tannarak stuff rather than regular cloning, but ya know. It’s the imagery.

(Superboy Vol. 5 #9)

It also really reminded me of the stuff from Hyper-Tension which was hypertime stuff not cloning but again just... visually.

(Superboy Vol. 4 #62)

In general I don’t think we’re EVER gonna see Black Zero or any of these multiverse Superboys again LMAO.

To try to sum up all of this in a way that might make sense here’s kinda a... flowchart of some of my main ideas for what the cloning situation could be/how the logic could work. Again this is borrowing stuff from across continuities because Infinite Frontier means theoretically anything’s fair game. (Also I don’t think I mentioned this earlier but I do mention it in the chart, but I think it’s also reasonable that Waller could get her hands on Cadmus tech if Cadmus is like properly made canon again. She just has funky government connections!)

Also I just now thought of this now several hours after I already made the chart and I don’t wanna remake it so sorry not incorporating it there but I remembered there was also that bit during House of Kent where Clark took Kon to the Hall of Justice and they were running some tests on him, so I’m thinking it’s also possible Waller got ahold of that data/that might be how she found out about Kon in the first place for this timeline. And they indicated that there was something wrong with him there, where he might eventually lose his powers or something, so maybe she tried to do cloning stuff to be able to have a copy of Superboy in his prime or something??? before that started kicking in. I don’t know, just more things to consider:

(Action Comics (2016) #1028)

ANYWAYS in conclusion: there is clone fuckery of some sort happening, I’m curious where it’s gonna go, and I just want Kon to be okay.

If you actually read this uhm. props to you bc this probably makes no sense to anyone but me its just word vomit <3

#this is very long! and disorganized! i am sorry #this doesn't have one theory abt things it has like. many #its basically just brainstorming/spitballing ideas #i could also be entirely off base! with much of this! i just feel i need that disclaimer #grandpa max is god? i go to church now #i need a kon talk tag bc i swear i write more analysis stuff like this for him than anyone else

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mobius-prime · 4 years

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143. Sonic Super Special #12 - Sonic & Knuckles

Turnabout Heroes

Writers: Ken Penders and Karl Bollers Pencils: James Fry and Andrew Pepoy Colors: Josh and Aimee Ray

So this issue is a bit strange. As you can see, Zonic is up there being all sideways and whatnot, and while he doesn't actually appear in the first story, nonetheless we're invited by him to turn the book sideways to read it, as it's all rotated clockwise. We open to Sonic waking up confused in the hospital, with Dr. Quack and his friends standing over him. They ask him if he remembers anything, and he proceeds to give them a quick rundown of his life story, which seems like a strange thing to do until they hold a mirror in front of him - and, shockingly, he sees Knuckles' face! Meanwhile in Echidnaopolis a similar situation is happening with Knuckles, waking up to Julie-Su and his father and describing himself only to see Sonic's face in the mirror. Now what could have caused such a bizarre thing to occur?

Now I know what you're thinking. What the hell is original Robotnik doing up there? Well, essentially, this story exists in a really bizarre gray area in the timeline. Depending on where you look for the answer, it takes place anywhere in between StH#71 to KtE#29, which as you might have noticed, is a huge timeframe. No matter where you try to fit it in that gap, it doesn't make sense for a variety of reasons, ranging from Julie-Su's location during the plot, to Knuckles even having reunited with his father in the first place, to Sonic's growing knowledge of the new Robotnik's plans. Once Ian Flynn took over later in the comic, his opinion was that this issue couldn't have even taken place at all due to the discrepancies, but regardless, we'll be covering it and just pretending that somehow it makes sense.

The two body-swapped heroes decide they need to go to each other's homes and try to work out what has happened, so Sonic, in Knuckles' body, hops aboard a shuttle to the Floating Island with the other Freedom Fighters, while Knuckles, in Sonic's body, hops aboard a shuttle of his own with Julie-Su to Mobotropolis. However, before either of them get far, they're both shot down, Sonic's shuttle by a legion of swatbots (which look significantly upgraded from regular swatbots, but not quite like shadow-bots, though no one acknowledges their new intimidating design), and Knuckles' by the Dark Legion. Knuckles, climbing out of his downed shuttle and seeing Sonic's going down, realizes he can't glide as normal due to the body-swap, and instead picks up Julie-Su and uses Sonic's speed to race to Sonic's rescue. Everyone groups up just in time to face the combined threat of two evil fighting forces.

WhaaAAaaAAaat? You mean to say ROBOTNIK is BACK? Come on, Sonic, you've seen several different false comebacks by now, you shouldn't even be fazed at this point. Robotnik and Dimitri give the group an ultimatum - Sonic and Knuckles must surrender immediately, or else they will never swap their minds back into the proper bodies, and they'll also kill all their friends. Well that's a choice all right! Sonic and Knuckles allow themselves to be teleported to… uh… whatever facility their enemies happen to be in. Honestly, my assumption would have been that it was the orbital platform from Robotnik's comeback or something, but Sonic didn't give any indication that he'd ever seen it before when he and the others went up there to investigate the Robians' disappearance, so who knows where they actually are right now.

Sonic and Knuckles are forced to agree to go along for the moment, and are quickly teleported into the island's Chaos Chamber, with the Master Emerald (still containing a frozen Mammoth Mogul) inside. Knuckles is loathe to hand over the emerald since removing it will cause the island to fall, whilst Sonic is mostly just irritated at the idea of Knuckles getting to be in his totally awesome body forever. Robotnik and Dimitri watch a video feed of the two from their base, but just as Sonic and Knuckles touch the emerald the screen goes to static. Robotnik and Dimitri, suspecting treachery, immediately hit the button to bring the two back, and are surprised to see them holding the emerald after all. They gleefully instruct them to insert it into their Chaos-Cannon, and activate it for a test run on the Great Forest…

Who knows how the hell they faked such a large gemstone on such short notice - hell, maybe the Brotherhood made a fake copy for just such an occasion and hid it within the chamber somewhere - but the two heroes get to work beating their enemies up. Knuckles goes for Dimitri, who vanishes in a puff of smoke, and Sonic punches Robotnik only for Robotnik to explode violently, revealing himself to be a robotic duplicate. Gee, I'm sure that means that he was just a fake, and not a literal robot version of Robotnik himself, right? Sonic and Knuckles cheerfully walk out upon their victory, amiably arguing over whether it's cooler to be a hedgehog or echidna.

Zone Wars: Giant Robotno

Writers: Dan Slott and Karl Bollers Pencils: James Fry and Nelson Ribeiro Colors: Josh and Aimee Ray

We're back to the present now, with a story that actually fits into the timeline. Sonic is taking a day off to relax and get away from freedom fighting, fishing in a pond in the forest, when suddenly a shuttle emerges from an energy portal in front of him. A strangely-dressed being within informs him that she is Sally from another zone and needs his help, but Zonic then arrives and warns Sonic that this version of Sally, called Sallactor, is evil and trying to deceive him. He calls in the rest of her zone's Freedom Fighters, the Sonicaman: Chaos Ninja Team, who are basically dressed like Super Sentai heroes (fittingly, they're from the Sentai-Zone). Zonic is surprised to see Sonic sigh and walk away from the action, as the others defeat Sallactor and drag her back to their own zone, and Sonic says he's getting sick of all this inter-zone action, that he has a hard enough time keeping track of his own zone's shenanigans. He challenges Zonic, asking how he keeps track of it all and accusing him of using others to get what he wants.

Manipulative little bastard. Sonic goes along reluctantly, and finds himself in a city full of panicking Overlanders all running away from a gigantic, mutated Bunnie, fittingly called Rabbot-zilla. Of course, as soon as Sonic tries to turn around for answers, Zonic pops out of existence.

Sonic uses his super-speed to melt the asphalt under Rabbot-zilla's feet, gluing her to the ground, and this zone's version of Robotnik, who is of course just named Julian Kintobor and wears a white coat instead of red, runs up to thank him. He explains that he tried to stop her from rampaging with a robo-virus, presumably explaining her half-roboticized state, and points to a frozen, robotic Uncle Chuck looming over a different part of the city to show its prior effectiveness. He guiltily continues to recount how he had a hand in this entire disaster…

So to be clear, Knothole Island was clearly inhabited by sapient Mobians. Those aren't ordinary animals being mutated - they're wearing gloves and shoes the same as any other Mobian from Mobius Prime. This guy knowingly detonated an atomic bomb on an inhabited island, and he's trying to pretend like it was all an accident? Sorry, Kintobor, but I don't believe you one bit. He then built giant juggernauts which basically attempted to reenact Pacific Rim against the mutated creatures, but there just wasn't enough energy to power them, as the two halves of the split Chaos Emerald used in the experiment were left on the island inhabited by the mutants. Sonic decides to go along with his plan, using his own speed on a treadmill installed in one of the doctor's Jaegers, the Giant Robotno, a name which pretty much describes how I feel about this whole thing. Clearly Sonic isn't too thrilled about working with him, however.

He blasts off, using the robot's rocket feet to fly to Knothole Island, where he encounters all his friends as mutated monsters. He has no choice but to fight them in order to search for the emeralds, and happens to spot this zone's version of himself, mutated as well, with one of the emerald halves affixed to his chest. However, at that moment he's attacked by his mutated father, also with an emerald half in his chest, and tries to shove him away and block himself from being hit at the same time, clenching his fist as he does so.

Horrified, Sonic flies away from his dead father, as the mutant Sonic approaches and cries in grief. That's right! Sonic was accidentally forced to kill an alternate zone version of his own father to save everyone. That is brutal. Later that night, Sonic stands quietly and sadly next to Kintobor as he celebrates the acquisition of the emerald, saying he can finally protect his city properly, when Zonic shows back up to check on Sonic.

Zonic congratulates Sonic on a job well done as he drops him off back in his home zone, but Sonic angrily confronts him about having known all along that he would have had to kill his own father (albeit from a different zone) to save everyone, accusing him of not understanding how it feels to him right now. In response, Zonic simply takes off his helmet.

Is anyone surprised? Anyone? Did anyone not see it coming that the hedgehog-sized being named Zonic who constantly involves himself with, well, himself, was an alternate version of Sonic? He vanishes, leaving Sonic with even more questions, but alas, we'll have to delay those for now, as it's time to jump into the comic's adaptation of Sonic Adventure!

#nala reads archie sonic preboot #archie sonic #archie sonic preboot #sonic the hedgehog #sonic super special 12 #writer: ken penders #writer: karl bollers #writer: dan slott #pencils: james fry #pencils: andrew pepoy #pencils: nelson ribeiro #colors: joshua d ray #colors: aimee r ray

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nomadicism · 5 years

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Voltron: Legendary Planning Fail

Thanks to @ptw30‘s post, “A Few Thoughts on DW/VLD Marketing” for reminding me that I’ve had a draft about VLD toys, merch, and marketing copy inconsistencies to complete. Read her post first.

I’ve been researching the toys and merch for several months now to follow-up on weird things that I noticed much earlier. I’m a toy collector who is also a designer and have worked in advertising/marketing, and in broadcasting at Cartoon Network. I left that world to design and develop applications in genetics/life-sciences, best decision I ever made (co-founded a startup in between all of that too. Good times). My experiences had me zeroing in on this show bible business that came up during that Let’s Voltron interview (March 28th, 2019). I’ve been suspicious about it for awhile, as the gradual unraveling of VLD’s narrative, lore retconning, and OOC dialogue and behavior of the characters (most egregiously in S8) is indicative of a lot of problems, and an incomplete or poorly-done show bible is at the top of that list. Now combine that with the weirdly slow-to-market of VLD merchandise and toys.

Both manufacturers and merchandise license program partners can’t get product to market in time to meet (or even anticipate demand) if they don’t have official assets from the show, and that includes anything that would have been in the show bible. When the show-runners let it out that their show-bible was the “loosest you’ll ever see”, and then complained about the elemental icons used on the toys by the manufacturer (Playmates) not matching their aesthetic, and after they redesigned them, Playmates didn’t want to use them, I was like: “Really? Y’all got hung up on that?”

It takes months, sometimes over a year, to design and test molds for toy prototypes and then to go into mass production and distribution. Traditionally, there is also a step where the IP holder has to approve the design concepts created by the manufacturer (toys and other merch).

The IP approval step could potentially have been made more complicated by the different players involved in the communication: WEP, DreamWorks Animation, Playmates, Studio Mir, and the most complicated layer of all, DreamWorks Classics, aka Classic Media. All of them could have been involved, I’m not saying that they all were, but it��s something to consider.

DreamWorks acquired Classic Media in 2011-2012 and formed them into a separate unit within DreamWorks Animation. Classic Media were the managers of the Voltron IP among many other brands in their huge IP library. That’s the short version b/c it’s complicated. IP ownership and licensing is not always as straight-forward as one might think, especially with these toy-cartoon properties from the 80s.

So where did the elemental icons come in during the creation of the show bible and toy design approval process?

Above: packaging inserts showing the elemental icons.

I kept the package inserts because—as a toy collector—I strongly felt that the packaging was done very well. The graphics are slick and look good. The ink has a nice saturation with a lot of color depth, range, and fidelity. The die-cuts are excellent and intricate. The packaging on the larger lion sets makes great use of aqueous coating and spot varnishes. Whomever designed the packaging knew what they were doing, and also understood the print production process (Hi! I used to do that too).

I kept these even though I always ditch packaging because I wanted to scan them for collage art. There is absolutely nothing wrong with these elemental icons, and they look reasonably well integrated with the graphic assets from DreamWorks and Studio Mir. These inserts were from the toys released in 2017.

The toy packaging gets more interesting when you see what marketing copy was sent to Playmates to use (or work from if it was from the show bible).

Above: Shiro’s package insert with descriptive text that says, “Long ago a mighty robot warrior, Voltron, was created to protect the galaxy from evil. Now, five young heroes must master the power of the Voltron Lions to defeat the Galra empire and restore peace!”

“Five young heroes” eh? They must have gotten that text early on because that’s kind of a weird way to say it when the Shiro packaging also says “…wise beyond his 25 years…”. I mean, 25 is still young, but that’s not what comes to mind when I read “five young heroes” on a toy box!

Shiro is the only one with a listed age in any of the packaging. I noticed this when I got these toys in 2017 and it reminded me that I had originally read that it would be five teenagers and I had to go looking for articles that I kept (yeah I do that b/c toys).

From this article on ActionFigureInsider.com about Playmates launching the VLD toyline in 2016:

“Let’s Voltron! Playmates Toys and DreamWorks Animation today announced plans for a new toy line based on the new DreamWorks Animation series Voltron: Legendary Defender, a re-imagining of the classic property featuring five teenage pilots and mystical robot lions, set to debut as a Netflix Original Series in 2016. Playmates Toys will serve as the master toy licensee and will create an expansive line of toys set to launch in spring 2017.”

and

“Voltron: Legendary Defender follows five unsuspecting teenagers as they are transported from Earth into the middle of a sprawling intergalactic war and become pilots for five mystical robotic lions in a battle to protect the universe from evil. Only through the true power of teamwork can they unite their lions to form the mighty warrior known as Voltron. Voltron: Legendary Defender premieres on Netflix in 2016.”

LULZ. That ain’t no fluke y’all. That loosey-goosey show bible and the initial story planning drafts/concepts must have had Shiro as a teenager. Oops.

Playmates got part of the message in time to slip-in Shiro’s age on his packaging, but why the discrepancy between the article in early 2016 and the 2017 toy release in the first place?

Obviously, things changed between the first story planning phases, the release of marketing copy to media, the release of production art assets to Playmates, and when S1 was made. There still would have been time to update that copy for Playmates and media in early 2016, given that S1 would have already been in production, with S2 to quickly follow by that time. The show-runners already knew before that article ran that Shiro was not going to be a teenager anymore (and likely many other toy-relevant details). Did they intentionally not update anyone who had a right to know, or did it just slip their minds? Did someone else in the chain of communication mess up? Did that disagreement over the design of the elemental icons take up a lot of time, or possibly include larger disagreements?

Since the first wave of toys were released in 2017, when Keith was in the Black Lion, they would have been designed for production and manufactured much earlier than that. Playmates can’t turn around on a dime to manufacture toys (not to mention design the packaging) to match the seasons. They need to have the information of what will happen in a season way ahead of time. This is one of many banal-yet-important reasons why your show bible needs to be tight, and your character arcs well-planned out.

We can see the first wave of the toys in photos from Toyfair 2017. There’s even a Zarkon figure, and various toys that are clearly for young boys (prop swords, masks, and the like). I remember seeing these photos right after Toyfair and thinking that Zarkon figure was looking pretty cool looking for what it was.

Above: Zarkon prototype figure with black bayard sword. Photo by Jim Kiernan for NerdyRottenScoundrel.com.

Since Playmates was able to create a prototype of Zarkon ahead of Toyfair 2017, that means that they began the design phase in early 2016 before the show first aired (possibly before that even). This also means that they knew that Zarkon had the black bayard, so that much was planned out.

Then in Toyfair 2018, Playmates had new toys, including prototypes for the Hunk, Pidge, and Allura figures, the HyperPhase lions, and the “Stealth Mode” translucent lions. It’s worth noting that photos of the Pidge and Hunk paladin figures show up on the inserts in the 2017 toys as they were originally intended to be part of that wave.

Above: Prototypes for the Allura, Pidge, and Hunk paladin figures. Photo by Joe Moore for Toyark.com.

So salty that Playmates cancelled these.

Below, an excellent video from Toyfair 2018 where Pixel Dan asks the hard questions of the rep (if video doesn’t show here is the URL to it on YouTube):

youtube

Pixel Dan asks about the possibility of a Lotor figure, and what happened to the other villain figures from 2017 (e.g. the Zarkon figure, and there was a prototype for another robeast other than Myzax). The rep says those were pushed back, and there “will be more Lotors” (LOL) in the next phases in development. I’m pretty sure he got Lotor confused for Zarkon.

It’s important to note that Pixel Dan and the rep talk a lot about the slow distribution of the first wave of figures based upon what retailers were doing with their ordering and stock. That people weren’t seeing them in stores. The rep explains that the toys are made in response to demand and that’s also up to the retailers to order them, but there’s also some comments that I interpreted as though they didn’t have enough details about what to make in the first place.

For those who haven’t already seen me share ToyGalaxy’s excellent video about the action figure industry being broken, give it a watch:

youtube

The video above explains a lot about why Playmates had problems with distribution, as ALL manufacturers were-and-still-are having distribution problems. It’s really hard to find toys at stores, my partner and I go hunting all the time, the lengths we go to are absurd.

I’m certain that retail distribution problems contributed to demand for the toys and that’s partly why they were cancelled. But this problem with the show bible also contributes because if Playmates had future season information when they should have, then they might have been able to design toys that more closely matched the show, thus boosting demand once it hit critical mass. I also wonder how much time they lost in the beginning due to the back-and-forth over the elemental icons.

Other merch, like t-shirts should also have been in production before 2017. They would have required details from the show bible as well. We could have had lion slippers y’all. Just sayin’.

So about those Allura with the Red Lion t-shirts that @ptw30 mentioned in her post:

Above: officially licensed t-shirts for Allura and Keith with the Red Lion, bearing the fire element icon.

Someone (ptw30? headspacedad?) called these shirts to my attention privately a few months ago—after S8 but ahead of Hot Topic’s recent new t-shirt release—and alarm bells went off in my head. Typically, this is the kind of error that you’d see in a knock-off, but these are officially licensed and they were linked to directly from the Voltron store page (at the time they had a re-direct promo image for merch on Amazon, in addition to what they sell on their own store page).

Descriptive text in the shopping page for all of the t-shirts of this style reads:

“Join the Paladins Shiro, Keith, Lance, Pidge, Hunk and Coran as they combine their lion mechas together to form Voltron! Help them take on the Evil Galra Empire with these officially licensed Voltron: Legendary Defender graphic tees, pullover hoodies and popsockets!”

Coran eh? Interesting choice for text about combining lions. Why no mention of Allura on her own t-shirt? And what the hell is a popsocket?

On another Allura t-shirt—which also has different product specification text indicating that it’s probably not manufactured by the company that made the t-shirts above—has descriptive text that reads:

“Voltron is the classic cartoon series that began in the early ‘80s. It is an animated show that brings back the nostalgia of classic cartoon fever. Not to mention a popular show pretty much stole the idea. (starts with pow- ends with -angers….) Voltron will always be number #1! This women’s junior’s shirt features a high quality character design of Princess Allura and Blue Lion.”

Why are they dragging Power Rangers in the text for an Allura t-shirt?

And actually, it’s incorrect. Power Rangers aka Tokusatsu Sentai shows came first. Voltron/GoLion descends from the combining mecha genre that began with Go Nagai’s Getter Robo series in the 70s, which was influenced by the Tokusatsu Sentai shows. So no, Power Rangers didn’t steal that idea.

Did anyone involved with VLD do their homework other than Tim Hedrick and May Chan?

We can see here that the t-shirts that are available on the Voltron store, and what’s available on Amazon are not always the same, even though the shirts say they are officially licensed. What’s going on here?

Some—but not all—of the t-shirts in the Voltron store list “From Trevco” in their description. Trevco.inc does licensing for branded merchandise, and selling t-shirts via Amazon appear to be one of their licensing product programs. Both DreamWorks Animation and Voltron: Legendary Defender are among the brands listed. Oh look, another layer in IP licensing cake!

Meanwhile, in the Hot Topic store, there’s a completely different style—in terms of aesthetic and design—of both VLD and Voltron DotU t-shirts being sold. I suspect that HT licensed VLD and Voltron DotU for in-house design, plus artist collaboration design, as these are exclusive for Hot Topic and I’ve not seen them anywhere else. That could mean they have a different kind of license than what Trevco and others selling on Amazon have. The t-shirts from HT don’t list any other manufacturer on the label, other than being made in Haiti. I kind of want to buy that weird Allura with Red Lion t-shirt to just compare them. (Surprising no one, I bought the Lot//ura and Black Paladin Shiro t-shirts from HT).

The difference in style between what’s on WEP’s Voltron store and Amazon, versus what’s in Hot Topic is very interesting, and I assume it has a lot to do with demographics for their respective markets (perceived or real). In a traditional merchandize licensing agreement, WEP and/or DW would still have to approve any designs created by—or if artist collaboration with—Hot Topic.

How long did that approval process take?

The recent release of t-shirts (Feb/March 2019) include a t-shirt with a scene from S5 (the chosen marks scene for Allura and Lotor). There are no MFEs, Atlas, white-haired Shiro, or anything else from S7-S8. There is a Keith t-shirt with his cosmic wolf, and a shirt with the Monsters and Mana designs, so they got something from S6.

Above: Funko Pops. I’ve got a poorly-painted Allura (her right earring and tiara y’all), both Shiros, and the Pidge, Hunk, and Amazon Exclusive metallic paint VLD Voltron (Pidge, Hunk, and Voltron not pictured).

The VLD Funko Pops came out in the end of 2018 but ahead of S8. I’ve seen them at Hot Topic, and online (Amazon, and BigBadToyStore.com), but I have not seen them at other retailers that carry Funko Pops like GameStop and Target. We go toy hunting to those all the time, in many different places. I guess that demographic of boys aged 9-12 just aren’t interested in VLD to demand it at GameStop and Target. At least Hot Topic knows what’s up.

The Funko Pops use Allura’s uniform from S1-S2, and have two designs for Shiro (Black Paladin, and his black outfit). How long did these take to license and approve? Funko Pops are the lowest hanging merch fruit, so they should have been an obvious licensing choice by the end of 2016 once it was clear that VLD was a hit. But we didn’t see these until just before S8?

Finally, apparently WEP and the Voltron Store don’t mind those elemental icons that the show-runners hated, since they have a lanyard with them on it in their store (image below):

It’s almost as if no one is on the same page!

If I didn’t know any better—oh wait, I do because this is kind of my thing—it looks like these elemental logos were designed to be like Boy Scout merit badges. That’s fitting as the toys were meant to be bought by boys aged 9-12, and are safe for children aged 4 and up. With over 15 years of professional design experience across multiple fields and domains of design, if I were designing these, that’s exactly what I would have done from Playmates’ end, especially if DW and WEP had told me that their target demo was boys aged 9-12.

Shouldn’t the show-runners and Studio Mir’s very different design aesthetic have been made clear in the show bible and in any discussions and communications with Playmates (and whomever else was involved)? Who was responsible for communicating that?

To be clear, I like Studio Mir’s aesthetic much better, but what I like is irrelevant when we’re talking about toys and target demographics for marketing them, vs what’s appropriate for merchandise that could be for all kinds of demographics.

I’ve been in situations where I’ve had to design in parallel with an outside agency, and in the dark with little communication between us. It’s an awful position to be in, and I’m surprised that DreamWorks didn’t know better than to make sure that didn’t happen between those designing for the show and Playmates and anyone at DreamWorks Classics and WEP that might have been involved in communications.

I spat out my coffee when I read that bit about the show bible, because damn, if you’ve ever had to design an ad campaign (which can last for years!) with a half-assed or incomplete branding guide and little-to-no marketing and romance copy (let alone a style guide to help your copy editors write it), then you’re looking at a huge mess once that thing finally gets finished.

How did DreamWorks not catch that?

#vld #voltron licensing #dreamworks #voltron: legendary defender #action figures #montsantos #marketing #toycourse #yes i buy the toys #salt

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rutilation · 6 years

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there isn’t a new chapter but i feel like I should still...write things

Fool that I am, I thought that since there wouldn’t be a chapter this month, I could just quickly type up a post about some hnk things that have been on my mind, but haven’t been immediately relevant to the new chapters. Easy Peasy.

Now it’s 5,000 words later, I’ve started ranting about geology instead of my usual literary bullshit, a couple cookie recipes have snuck their way onto this word document, and the Euclase section has ballooned far beyond its original scope.

Anyway, click the read more if you want to see the following topics:

Hot takes about Euclase

I attempt to psychoanalyze Cairngorm’s fashion choices

Visual symbolism from the cover of the artbook

What type of microcrystalline diamond aggregate is Bort anyway? ft. the etymology of Bort’s name

Crazy snail theory

Since Euclase is a bit of a hot topic at the moment, I figured that I might as well expand a bit on my thoughts towards them. Somehow, I ended up writing a big ‘ol essay. Then I erased most of that essay. But there were some good bits in there, so here’s what I thought was worth salvaging. First though, I should lay my cards on the table, and explain why I’m not on team Euclase Did Nothing Wrong.

In the days following the release of chapter 71, I’ve heard a couple people say that this line:

was not translated with the appropriate nuance, and that Euclase wasn’t blatantly saying “lol, I’ve found their weakness.” However, the fact that Padparadscha regards Euclase’s words as emotional manipulation in the very next scene indicates to me that that’s still a probable reading of Euclase’s actions, even if they’re not being as unsubtle about it as the translation implies. I don’t know much Japanese though, so I can’t really comment on any translation issues that may or may not have occurred.

I think my sticking point with Euclase is that I have trouble buying that they’re acting in good faith or that they’re really committed to the ideals they’re espousing. Granted, most of what they’ve been saying and doing seems reasonable, especially compared Phos’s short-sighted flailing. They haven’t displayed any malice, and they’ve at least paid lip service to wanting positive change and demonstrating pro-social behavior.

But here’s the thing: if they truly value change, and they simply want to go about effecting positive change in a way that’s more sensible than Phos’s bull-in-a-china-shop strategy, then why are they so consistently reactionary? (I mean this in the most neutral sense of the term, btw.) They didn’t value an equitable relationship with Kongou until Phos made it impossible for the Kongou-centric monarchy to continue. They felt no urgency towards Cinnabar’s plight until they became useful in warding off the moon gems. They showed no concern for Phos’s crippling lack of self-esteem until they could use it to try and persuade Phos to defect to their side. Even though they have reputation among the other gems for being kindhearted, from what I’ve seen, they’re only ever as kind as is absolutely necessary to maintain group cohesion. The only time they’ve been considerate of someone else’s feelings in a proactive manner is with Dia, specifically regarding their issues with Bort. And since those two are the gems’ strongest non-comatose defenders, it’s prudent for Euclase to concern themselves with their issues.

Like, compare Euclase and their partner’s respective reactions to Phos in chapters 21 and 22. The story goes out of its way to show that Jade doesn’t mob Phos like the other gems, and they express concern over Phos’s insomnia. Euclase meanwhile, has no compunctions about ganging up on Phos with the others, and only apologizes when they need to ask a favor of them. I kind of expect a bit of tactlessness from the other gems, because most of them, on top of being single-minded, are implied to be pretty childlike on account of the highly static society they live in. And even those who aren’t very childlike kind of don’t have their shit together. But since Euclase has positioned themselves as wise and compassionate authority figure, that sort of thing stands out. And when they’ve cultivated a reputation among the other gems for being kind, it’s really off-putting when the narrative drops hints that that kindness isn’t sincere.

Couple all that with Padparadscha’s wariness towards them and that creepy face they made in chapter 60 and my predominant emotion towards them is

Which isn’t to say that I hate them or anything. To the contrary, I think that it’s valuable that their perspective--that of someone who is stalwartly on the ‘society’ side of the whole ‘individual vs society’ theme that the manga has going on—is a valuable one to acknowledge in the story. Furthermore, I find them to be quite the interesting character at this point. They’ve come a long way from their initial role as “that one minor character who follows Jade around.” I also find characters who are in some way secretive or two-faced to be a lot of fun because I get a kick out of trying to wade through the miasma of subtext and half-truths to try and get to the core of a character (looking at you, Craig-Greg.) Anyway, in Euclase’s case, I don’t even think they have bad intentions; but at the moment, the impression I’m getting is that they only value other people insofar as they can contribute to the maintenance of society, whatever form that society takes, rather than seeing society as something that should exist for the sake of enriching the lives of inherently valuable people. Despite the fact that Euclase is a staunch team player, I’m gonna go on record and say that I don’t think they care all that much about other people, they’ve just come to the conclusion that being cooperative and not rocking the boat as a general principle is the most rational way for them to go about their life.

If at some point in the future Euclase demonstrates that this isn’t their mindset, then I’m prepared to eat humble pie and admit that I was interpreting all their actions in the most cynical light possible and jumping to conclusions from there. But for now, I am Mr. Krabs.

Getting away from “It’s about ethics in gem society” for a moment, I suspect that, unlike a lot of the other gems, Euclase isn’t really coming from a place of willful ignorance. They’re not incurious and their words and actions have been quite deliberate. I think that they know—or have at least inferred—some truths about their world that a lot of the other gems look away from. Their oft remarked fondness for statistics might have given them insight into some discrepancies in the narratives they’ve been fed by Kongou. For example:

They’re probably well aware of the fact that no one on the moon has ever come back, and that if they themselves are captured, they’re gone for good. (According to Aechmea this wasn’t always the case; but it’s quite possible that the gems who were returned to earth and promptly recaptured lived before the gems started keeping written records as well as before any of the current characters were born.)

If we compare the number of old gems to the number of young gems to the number of middle-aged gems, it’s clear that the old group is the smallest in number, and that most of the gems who make it to old age don’t patrol often for one reason or another. Even though the gems go about their lives under the assumption that if they’re careful, they’ll never be caught by the Lunarians, that assumption is clearly not based in reality. And Euclase, who apparently knows how old each gem is down to the day, is probably well aware of how illusory their immortality really is.

What I’m getting at is this: they’re likely one of the few gems who have wrapped their head around the concept of death, and like all the other gems who’ve come to understand that they’re not as immortal as they’ve been lead to believe, this knowledge has informed their outlook on life and their actions. But while someone like Phos has taken a carpe diem approach to dealing with the fleeting nature of life, it seems to me that Euclase responded by maneuvering themselves into a position where they never have to take risks and, thus, never need to die. As one of the little character intros mentioned, Euclase is skilled enough for any job, but the job they’ve chosen is one that apparently allows them to avoid patrolling and stay out of danger.

Something I find interesting which I expect to be brought up in the story later is Euclase’s insecurity about their brittleness, which was briefly mentioned in chapter 8. To expand on this, Euclase has three planes of cleavage, one perfect and two distinct. This aspect is actually something they share in common with Phos. Euclase, like phosphophyllite, is considered among gemology nerds mineral collectors to be a beautiful mineral that would make for great jewelry...if it wasn’t so rare and brittle. Both of them also have names that reference their brittleness--euclase means “easily broken” and the -phyll part of phosphophyllite references its perfect cleavage.

Since many of the gems have one or more aspects of their characterizations based on the physical properties and/or cultural associations of their minerals, and since breakage is a major motif of the work, I think there’s probably significance to the fact that Ichikawa decided to make a gem so thoroughly associated with brittleness into a major character. That’s how it is with Phos anyway. To paraphrase a bit, Ichikawa said in this interview that phosphophyllite’s much lauded beauty and rarity juxtaposed against its unsuitability as jewelry was the inspiration behind Phos as a character being bold yet perpetually ineffectual (and of course very, very breakable, both literally and figuratively.)

So, this character, who is shaping up to be an antagonistic(?) force has a similar—and thematically relevant—existential condition to our protagonist, and they deal with it in a strikingly different way. It’s a bit early to say where this element of the story is going to lead, but it’s worth keeping an eye on.

As I’m typing this, I’m starting to wonder if the reason why Euclase misinterpreted Phos’s words in chapter 70 as insecurity about their hardness is because Euclase themselves is insecure about their brittleness. In fact, that might also be the reason why they didn’t show themselves in chapter 70 until everyone was down and out, and why their overall plan involved shooting first and asking questions later. The chance of breaking and showing weakness—either literally or figuratively—isn’t one they want to take, even at the cost of a lot of casualties/toxic mercury spills. Additionally, when the Lunarians reported that they observed no changes in the earth gems’ behavior, Padparadscha comments that it seems like something Euclase would do, and doesn’t elaborate any further. I think this aspect of their character is what Padparadscha was getting at, that Euclase is loath to show weakness, and goes to great pains to never be the first one to blink.

Going back to chapter 8, they also talk about how the gems’ immortality predisposes them to be ignorant of danger, and how they somewhat envy the bugs and plants that can react promptly to changing stimuli. At that point in the story, it just seemed like one wistful observation on immortality among many, but looking back on it, it may have been just as much a window into Euclase’s anxieties as that line about their brittleness right after. For someone who wants to organize the world around them and dislikes uncertainty, it must be frustrating for them to imagine that some inherent aspect of their nature predisposes them towards ignorance.

To pull back a bit, I imagine that the point of making statistics Euclase’s beloved hobby is to help set them up as a foil to Phos. It’s a way to allow them insight into the flawed and tenuous nature of their society and their own existence without having them actually go out into the wide world to experience those answers for themselves like Phos does, since they’re not the type who’s willing to take risks. So unlike say, Melon or Hemi, they’re not wallowing in their comfortable yet stagnant existence because they’re willfully ignorant and simply don’t want to inconvenience themselves. Instead, they’ve spent their life running cost-benefit analyses and have come to the conclusion that they should maintain the status-quo to the best of their ability and avoid putting themselves out there. It may seem like a distinction without a difference, but I think that’s what Ichikawa is going for. Not to mention, it’d be kind of lame if everyone who decided to go against Phos and stay on earth was doing so out of incurious stubbornness or simple concern about the logistics of Phos’s plan. For one of the gems to oppose Phos due to irreconcilable differences in worldview seems a bit more meaningful to me.

So, the core of the conflict between Phos and Euclase is that Phos finds value in risking failure as a means to finding something better, while Euclase believes that if they can simply play the system forever, they’ll never have to reap the negative consequences said system doles out. This kind of goes without saying, but I don’t think the narrative is going to side with them in the end; looking at the story as a whole, I doubt that “If you keep your head down and play your cards right, you’ll be able to avoid suffering,” is a conclusion it wants to reach.

But much like the rest of the cast, Phos has forced Euclase to change. See, as much as they like to control the environment around them, they don’t like to let on that they’re doing so. To me, their blurb on this page indicates that the reason they stick to Jade and subtly direct their actions is because it allows them to micromanage everything to their heart’s content while letting someone else take on the nominal position of authority and all the attention and responsibility that comes with it.

But now that Kongou has ceded power, Euclase doesn’t have the luxury of pretending to be middle management anymore. Since no one else was willing to step up to the plate, they had no choice but to do so. And now that the gems are split in two, Euclase has been forced to publicly stand for something. Even if they’re trying to mitigate possible risks, they’re still operating well outside their comfort zone, and given that this manga is a veritable meat-grinder, it’s only going to get harder for Euclase to keep their world in order.

To sum it all up: yes, Euclase is a snake. But they’re, like, a complicated snake. A snake whose character flaws spring forth from very real insecurities. A snake who just wants to spend their days lounging on a comfy heating pad without having to worry about Actual Chaos Elemental Phosphophyllite mucking everything up.

(Ichikawa please validate my interpretation or else I’ll become Boo-boo the Fool.)

Anyway, Euclase isn’t the only character insecure about their brittleness…

Naturally, I continue to have thoughts regarding The Artist Formerly Known as Craigory. There are times where I wish I had gotten attached to a more respectable character, but honestly where’s the fun in that? I stan disasters!

I mentioned in my last write-up that the glove Cairngorm is now wearing over their left arm pretty blatantly displays their desire to cover up the part of themselves that’s prone to breaking, both metaphorically and literally. But after some thought, I’ve realized that their entire wardrobe is full of AnxietyTM. Here’s a few of my observations.

They started off their foray with avant-garde moon lingerie with a small transparent shawl which has, a month later, become a full-body veil. It seems to me, on a purely visually symbolic level, reminiscent of their situation with Ghost. Like, if I were Ichikawa, and I were looking for a way to symbolize their existential plight in clothing form, that’s how I’d do it. If I were to try to decode the meaning behind the evocative imagery, it’d be this: they’ve become trapped again, and are still being blocked from the freedom and the engagement with the world that they desire—symbolically in the sense that they’re interacting with the world through a veil, and literally in the sense that Aechmea seems to be, uh…strongly discouraging them from leaving their room, or doing things in general.

Cairn, please love yourself and get as far away from this creep as possible; I’ve got a sinking feeling that he’s going to cash in all those red flags he’s been setting off sooner rather than later.

Then there’s the matter of Cairngorm’s ongoing quest to find the Worst pair of shoes. See, Cairn started their love affair with terrible shoes long before chapter 68.

They’re not as ostentatious as say, the banana-peel crocs but…I mean look at them. These may as well be pointe shoes. Anyway, comparing these with their more recent…shoe decisions, I can’t help but think they might be a bit insecure about their height? (And in case any of you guys didn’t see it, this omake explicitly spells out that they’re shorter than the other gems.)

Even though they’re at most a couple centimeters shorter than the others, they seriously overcompensate for it. I think that for them, the slight difference in height is a painful reminder that they’re not fully formed like the others are, which has lead them down the path of…dreamfoam platform high-tops.

Getting back to the glove, chapter 44 contained a lot of subtext that indicated that they’re insecure about their finicky arm, and possibly about their finicky inclusions in general. The whole buildup to Phos’s head being stolen is full of dumbass decisions from both of these clowns, but on Cairn’s side, they contributed to the whole fiasco by hiding the fact that their arm had been strained past its limit, and insisting on taking down the vessel alone in spite of that fact. I’ve talked a bit before about how embracing or rejecting one’s weakness and impermanence is a major motif of this series, so the fact that Cairngorm consistently tries to hide the part of themselves that keeps breaking is…noteworthy, as is the fact that their most obvious attempt to do so in chapter 44 ended very badly.

Which got me thinking, what if that’s also why they started wearing long sleeves? It might be possible that the long sleeves on their winter uniform served the same purpose the glove does now--to cover up their left arm. We saw their bare arms in chapters 68 and 69 and it looked fine then, but what if, say, fractures appear on their left arm on a regular basis, and they wore long sleeves in order to cover it up?

To sum it all up, the aspects of themselves that set them apart from the other gems are all things that they subtly act like they’re ashamed of, and their choice of clothing reflects this.

I’ve already made a couple of posts about the cover of Pseudomorph of Love, but I felt like staring at it again and reporting my additional findings.

Something I noticed is that while the other characters’ broken pieces are placed right next to themselves, Phos’s pieces are scattered over the entire cover, usually lying on top of one or more of the other gems. I have circled them here, with my peerless image editing skills.

If I were to take a guess at what this visual symbolism is trying to say, I’d say it’s that by changing and breaking, Phos leaves an impact on others. At their very best, I think Phos breaks other people out of their bad habits and learned helplessness. As Phos rushes forward, they also drag others out of their personal hells, sometimes intentionally, sometimes inadvertently. Needless to say, they don’t always live up to these ideals, but that’s the general direction they’re headed in.

(Hey guys, do you think the fact that Phos’s hand is caressing their own face is foreshadowing that one day they will let go of their self loathing and learn to love themselves? Because I want that to be the case.)

Oh, and Cairn is indeed missing The Left Arm of Conspicuous Foreshadowing here too. The break is even at the same angle. If it turns out that nothing else happens to that arm for the rest of the story then I’m going to be so embarrassed because I have gone full pepe silvia over it.

Pictured here is Ichikawa making me cry by sneaking the foot Antarc left behind into the illustration.

The only other gem whose parts have managed to travel across the cover is Dia, whose hand is next to Bort. And I’m sure that it’s Dia’s because it’s a right hand and Euclase’s right half is blue in this illustration, and it can’t be Antarc’s either because all of Anatarc’s pieces are overlayed with a shimmery, watery reflection. Make of it what you will.

At this point, I’m going to take off my literary hat and put on my middle school geology phase hat. Bort, how can I possibly bless your marriage to Cinnabar if I’m not sure what arbitrary classification of diamond you fall into?

So, bort is a rather ambiguous term, and can refer to basically any diamond that isn’t fit to be used as jewelry. But Bort the character is not so non-specific. They’re supposed to be an aggregate of microcrystalline diamonds, and the thing is, microcrystalline diamond aggregates are considered notable enough that they get their own names. So while the term ‘bort’ does encompass these specimens, it’s a bit imprecise.

Microcrystalline diamond aggregates can be roughly grouped into four different varieties: framesite/stewartite, ballas, carbonado, and yakutite.

Ballas, also known as shot bort, are microcrystalline diamonds with a radiating, fibrous habit that form spheres of various sizes. Despite being opaque, it sometimes displays a pearly luster depending on how heavily included a given specimen is. It ranges in color from white to gray to black.

Framesite is the name applied to most granular-to-microcrystalline diamond aggregates. It's usually black but I couldn’t find an exhaustive list of colors. Stewartite is the term for framesite that’s been magnetized as a result of magnetite intergrowths and inclusions.

Carbonado is the toughest and most mysterious form of diamond. No one knows how the hell it forms, and theories about its formation range from the transformation of irradiated hydrocarbons to supernova-genesis. These rocks are a hodgepodge of diamonds, graphite, and amorphous carbon. Carbonado is very porous and its component crystals are of a much smaller grain than either ballas or framesite. It is also further distinguished from its fellow diamond aggregates by a melt-like glassy patina that coats its surface. While most are just black, they come in a wider range of colors than other microcrystalline diamonds, including grey, red, brown or even some weirder colors like green, purple, and pink. There’s also some evidence that suggests it’s slightly harder than normal diamonds—at the very least, many a diamond-tipped sawblade has been ruined trying to cut into carbonado.

Yakutite is named for the location in Russia where it is found. It is characterized by its numerous lonsdaleite inclusions, and since it’s found in rocks that have undergone shock metamorphism, it is thought that yakutite forms via meteor impacts. So, this is pretty much the only variety of microcrystalline diamond we can rule out since I’m not seeing any meteor craters on the island.

At first I was thinking that since the inside of their hair is brownish red, and carbonado is the only one that comes in that color, they must be carbonado; problem solved!

But then I realized that the inside of Bort’s hair has never been colored that way in the manga, only the anime. In colored illustrations, the inside of their hair is iridescent like Dia’s, but with much more muted colors, so that it looks more like an oil slick or something and less like a rainbow. That could be an artistic representation of the glassy patina of carbonado, but it might also be the pearly layers of ballas. Framesite on the other hand is more likely to have a completely dull luster than either ballas or carbonado, so…one point against framesite I guess

One thing that indicates they might be ballas is how their mineral is represented in both the episode 10 eyecatch and in one of Ichikawa’s illustrations. The bort represented in these images has the spherical shape of ballas.

The most compelling argument for Bort being made of framesite is the fact that out of all the options here, framesite is the most likely to be referred to as simply ‘bort.’ Several sources I’ve looked at listed framesite and stewartite as being obsolete names for what is normally just called bort these days. This comes with a big caveat though.

While the scientific names of minerals are widely agreed upon and are consistent cross-linguistically, unofficial trade names are...not. For example, our Padparadscha probably wouldn’t meet the GIA’s standard for padparadscha sapphire on account of the fact that they’re pinkish-red with a bit of orange and a somewhat dark shade, rather than the GIA’s narrowly defined pastel salmon coloration. But despite the GIA’s current standard on what counts as padparadscha, they’d still meet the criteria for padparadscha found in historical literature on account of being a hunk of corundum that’s vaguely orange-looking. There are other gems in this series who exist in this gray area, but this post is getting pretty damn long so I’ll spare you poor readers the details.

What I’m getting at here is that if you look at the Japanese Wikipedia page for carbonado, bort is listed as a synonym. So even though they’re not typically used interchangeably in English, it looks like that’s not the case in Japanese. In fact, last spring this geology museum did an hnk themed event, and the rock they used to represent Bort was a hunk of carbonado, and this tweet they put out treats bort and carbonado as synonyms.

In carbonado’s corner, there’s Bort’s fight with Ventricosus. During said fight, chunks of their hair melted off from Ventri’s acid. But here’s the thing though: diamonds can’t be dissolved by acid, no matter how strong that acid is. If we generously assume that Bort losing some of their hair isn’t just a plot hole, then it may point to them being carbonado, since the graphite and amorphous carbon packed into carbonado is readily soluble in acid.

In conclusion, there is no answer and I’m slowly going insane. My mind is all out of Bort license plates. I’m leaning towards carbonado because of Bort’s galling lack of acid resistance and also because I think carbonado is a pretty cool rock.

Putting on my literary hat once again, I can’t help but wonder if the reason why Ichikawa went with the ambiguous bort over the other possible names was because of its etymology, which comes from the Anglo-Saxon gebrot, meaning fragment which is in turn derived from breótan, ‘to break.’ (A related cognate from Middle English is brotel, which became brittle in modern English.) Its cognates in other Germanic languages all seem to have meanings along the lines of ‘a break,’ ‘a rupture,’ or ‘a fracture.’ Another possible source of bort is the Old Norse brotna, meaning break. -Brot also shows up in a few other Old Norse words like Skipsbrot—shipwreck, Haugebrot—the destruction of a grave, and ísabrot, meaning oh-god-someone-please-take-my-dictionary-away-from-my-sinful-hands.

Ahem,

Out of all the possible names Bort could have had, they got one that references brokenness. I realize that this probably isn’t intentional symbolism, and I’m just shoving my interest in linguistics where it doesn’t belong, but I do think it’s a nice bit of serendipity nonetheless.

Okay, I promised you guys a galaxy-brained snail crack theory, so here goes: I’ve mentioned before that Variegatus seems to share a lot of parallels with baby!Phos, and that her name, which means multi-colored, could be said to describe Phos’s current state of being. It seems pretty clear that, on a metaphorical level, she’s connected to Phos. Well, what if that metaphor was literal, and ~somehow~ the inclusions from Phos’s arms and legs which were lost at sea ended up reborn as Variegatus, and that’s why she’s so Phos-like. The idea seems pretty absurd, but it wouldn’t be the first time Ichikawa has used someone’s body parts becoming their own sentient person as a plot device.

#houseki no kuni #land of the lustrous #*slams my face into an anglo saxon dictionary* will this help me understand hnk?

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spacetimewithstuartgary · 5 years

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What scientists found after sifting through dust in the solar system Just as dust gathers in corners and along bookshelves in our homes, dust piles up in space too. But when the dust settles in the solar system, it's often in rings. Several dust rings circle the Sun. The rings trace the orbits of planets, whose gravity tugs dust into place around the Sun, as it drifts by on its way to the center of the solar system. The dust consists of crushed-up remains from the formation of the solar system, some 4.6 billion years ago -- rubble from asteroid collisions or crumbs from blazing comets. Dust is dispersed throughout the entire solar system, but it collects at grainy rings overlying the orbits of Earth and Venus, rings that can be seen with telescopes on Earth. By studying this dust -- what it's made of, where it comes from, and how it moves through space -- scientists seek clues to understanding the birth of planets and the composition of all that we see in the solar system. Two recent studies report new discoveries of dust rings in the inner solar system. One study uses NASA data to outline evidence for a dust ring around the Sun at Mercury's orbit. A second study from NASA identifies the likely source of the dust ring at Venus' orbit: a group of never-before-detected asteroids co-orbiting with the planet. "It's not every day you get to discover something new in the inner solar system," said Marc Kuchner, an author on the Venus study and astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "This is right in our neighborhood." Another Ring Around the Sun Guillermo Stenborg and Russell Howard, both solar scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., did not set out to find a dust ring. "We found it by chance," Stenborg said, laughing. The scientists summarized their findings in a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal on Nov. 21, 2018. They describe evidence of a fine haze of cosmic dust over Mercury's orbit, forming a ring some 9.3 million miles wide. Mercury -- 3,030 miles wide, just big enough for the continental United States to stretch across -- wades through this vast dust trail as it circles the Sun. Ironically, the two scientists stumbled upon the dust ring while searching for evidence of a dust-free region close to the Sun. At some distance from the Sun, according to a decades-old prediction, the star's mighty heat should vaporize dust, sweeping clean an entire stretch of space. Knowing where this boundary is can tell scientists about the composition of the dust itself, and hint at how planets formed in the young solar system. So far, no evidence has been found of dust-free space, but that's partly because it would be difficult to detect from Earth. No matter how scientists look from Earth, all the dust in between us and the Sun gets in the way, tricking them into thinking perhaps space near the Sun is dustier than it really is. Stenborg and Howard figured they could work around this problem by building a model based on pictures of interplanetary space from NASA's STEREO satellite -- short for Solar and Terrestrial Relations Observatory. Ultimately, the two wanted to test their new model in preparation for NASA's Parker Solar Probe, which is currently flying a highly elliptic orbit around the Sun, swinging closer and closer to the star over the next seven years. They wanted to apply their technique to the images Parker will send back to Earth and see how dust near the Sun behaves. Scientists have never worked with data collected in this unexplored territory, so close to the Sun. Models like Stenborg and Howard's provide crucial context for understanding Parker Solar Probe's observations, as well as hinting at what kind of space environment the spacecraft will find itself in -- sooty or sparkling clean. Two kinds of light show up in STEREO images: light from the Sun's blazing outer atmosphere -- called the corona -- and light reflected off all the dust floating through space. The sunlight reflected off this dust, which slowly orbits the Sun, is about 100 times brighter than coronal light. "We're not really dust people," said Howard, who is also the lead scientist for the cameras on STEREO and Parker Solar Probe that take pictures of the corona. "The dust close to the Sun just shows up in our observations, and generally, we have thrown it away." Solar scientists like Howard -- who study solar activity for purposes such as forecasting imminent space weather, including giant explosions of solar material that the Sun can sometimes send our way -- have spent years developing techniques to remove the effect of this dust. Only after removing light contamination from dust can they clearly see what the corona is doing. The two scientists built their model as a tool for others to get rid of the pesky dust in STEREO -- and eventually Parker Solar Probe -- images, but the prediction of dust-free space lingered in the back of their minds. If they could devise a way of separating the two kinds of light and isolate the dust-shine, they could figure out how much dust was really there. Finding that all the light in an image came from the corona alone, for example, could indicate they'd found dust-free space at last. Mercury's dust ring was a lucky find, a side discovery Stenborg and Howard made while they were working on their model. When they used their new technique on the STEREO images, they noticed a pattern of enhanced brightness along Mercury's orbit -- more dust, that is -- in the light they'd otherwise planned to discard. "It wasn't an isolated thing," Howard said. "All around the Sun, regardless of the spacecraft's position, we could see the same five percent increase in dust brightness, or density. That said something was there, and it's something that extends all around the Sun." Scientists never considered that a ring might exist along Mercury's orbit, which is maybe why it's gone undetected until now, Stenborg said. "People thought that Mercury, unlike Earth or Venus, is too small and too close to the Sun to capture a dust ring," he said. "They expected that the solar wind and magnetic forces from the Sun would blow any excess dust at Mercury's orbit away." With an unexpected discovery and sensitive new tool under their belt, the researchers are still interested in the dust-free zone. As Parker Solar Probe continues its exploration of the corona, their model can help others reveal any other dust bunnies lurking near the Sun. Asteroids Hiding in Venus' Orbit This isn't the first time scientists have found a dust ring in the inner solar system. Twenty-five years ago, scientists discovered that Earth orbits the Sun within a giant ring of dust. Others uncovered a similar ring near Venus' orbit, first using archival data from the German-American Helios space probes in 2007, and then confirming it in 2013, with STEREO data. Since then, scientists determined the dust ring in Earth's orbit comes largely from the asteroid belt, the vast, doughnut-shaped region between Mars and Jupiter where most of the solar system's asteroids live. These rocky asteroids constantly crash against each other, sloughing dust that drifts deeper into the Sun's gravity, unless Earth's gravity pulls the dust aside, into our planet's orbit. At first, it seemed likely that Venus' dust ring formed like Earth's, from dust produced elsewhere in the solar system. But when Goddard astrophysicist Petr Pokorny modeled dust spiraling toward the Sun from the asteroid belt, his simulations produced a ring that matched observations of Earth's ring -- but not Venus'. This discrepancy made him wonder if not the asteroid belt, where else does the dust in Venus' orbit come from? After a series of simulations, Pokorny and his research partner Marc Kuchner hypothesized it comes from a group of never-before-detected asteroids that orbit the Sun alongside Venus. They published their work in The Astrophysical Journal Letters on March 12, 2019. "I think the most exciting thing about this result is it suggests a new population of asteroids that probably holds clues to how the solar system formed," Kuchner said. If Pokorny and Kuchner can observe them, this family of asteroids could shed light on Earth and Venus' early histories. Viewed with the right tools, the asteroids could also unlock clues to the chemical diversity of the solar system. Because it's dispersed over a larger orbit, Venus' dust ring is much larger than the newly detected ring at Mercury's. About 16 million miles from top to bottom and 6 million miles wide, the ring is littered with dust whose largest grains are roughly the size of those in coarse sandpaper. It's about 10 percent denser with dust than surrounding space. Still, it's diffuse -- pack all the dust in the ring together, and all you'd get is an asteroid two miles across. Using a dozen different modeling tools to simulate how dust moves around the solar system, Pokorny modeled all the dust sources he could think of, looking for a simulated Venus ring that matched the observations. The list of all the sources he tried sounds like a roll call of all the rocky objects in the solar system: Main Belt asteroids, Oort Cloud comets, Halley-type comets, Jupiter-family comets, recent collisions in the asteroid belt. "But none of them worked," Kuchner said. "So, we started making up our own sources of dust." Perhaps, the two scientists thought, the dust came from asteroids much closer to Venus than the asteroid belt. There could be a group of asteroids co-orbiting the Sun with Venus -- meaning they share Venus' orbit, but stay far away from the planet, often on the other side of the Sun. Pokorny and Kuchner reasoned a group of asteroids in Venus' orbit could have gone undetected until now because it's difficult to point earthbound telescopes in that direction, so close to the Sun, without light interference from the Sun. Co-orbiting asteroids are an example of what's called a resonance, an orbital pattern that locks different orbits together, depending on how their gravitational influences meet. Pokorny and Kuchner modeled many potential resonances: asteroids that circle the Sun twice for every three of Venus' orbits, for example, or nine times for Venus' ten, and one for one. Of all the possibilities, one group alone produced a realistic simulation of the Venus dust ring: a pack of asteroids that occupies Venus's orbit, matching Venus' trips around the Sun one for one. But the scientists couldn't just call it a day after finding a hypothetical solution that worked. "We thought we'd discovered this population of asteroids, but then had to prove it and show it works," Pokorny said. "We got excited, but then you realize, 'Oh, there's so much work to do.'" They needed to show that the very existence of the asteroids makes sense in the solar system. It would be unlikely, they realized, that asteroids in these special, circular orbits near Venus arrived there from somewhere else like the asteroid belt. Their hypothesis would make more sense if the asteroids had been there since the very beginning of the solar system. The scientists built another model, this time starting with a throng of 10,000 asteroids neighboring Venus. They let the simulation fast forward through 4.5 billion years of solar system history, incorporating all the gravitational effects from each of the planets. When the model reached present-day, about 800 of their test asteroids survived the test of time. Pokorny considers this an optimistic survival rate. It indicates that asteroids could have formed near Venus' orbit in the chaos of the early solar system, and some could remain there today, feeding the dust ring nearby. The next step is actually pinning down and observing the elusive asteroids. "If there's something there, we should be able to find it," Pokorny said. Their existence could be verified with space-based telescopes like Hubble, or perhaps interplanetary space-imagers similar to STEREO's. Then, the scientists will have more questions to answer: How many of them are there, and how big are they? Are they continuously shedding dust, or was there just one break-up event? Dust Rings Around Other Stars The dust rings that Mercury and Venus shepherd are just a planet or two away, but scientists have spotted many other dust rings in distant star systems. Vast dust rings can be easier to spot than exoplanets, and could be used to infer the existence of otherwise hidden planets, and even their orbital properties. But interpreting extrasolar dust rings isn't straightforward. "In order to model and accurately read the dust rings around other stars, we first have to understand the physics of the dust in our own backyard," Kuchner said. By studying neighboring dust rings at Mercury, Venus and Earth, where dust traces out the enduring effects of gravity in the solar system, scientists can develop techniques for reading between the dust rings both near and far. IMAGE....In this illustration, several dust rings circle the sun. These rings form when planets' gravities tug dust grains into orbit around the sun. Recently, scientists have detected a dust ring at Mercury's orbit. Others hypothesize the source of Venus' dust ring is a group of never-before-detected co-orbital asteroids. CREDIT NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Mary Pat Hrybyk-Keith

#space #science #Astronomy #physics

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killianmesmalls · 6 years

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Raising Alice: Historical(ish) Headcanons and Meta

Now, everything here is based on speculation and, though I’d love to spend weeks researching this because I love history, especially the time periods this lends itself to, I’m going open this up to discourse because there’s a lot of conjecture at a certain point with fictional people, fictional realms, and timeline discrepancies.

However, I do headcanon Killian raised Alice within both the societal ideals of Victorian to Edwardian views of child rearing and what was accessible to him, but was also highly progressive. Part of this is based on when he grew up (clearly late 18th to early 19th century-ish regardless of realm in terms of style and etiquette) and how he adapted over the years, with a key factor being the fashions and beliefs of when he took in Bae for what one can speculate to be a few months as well as how his years of piracy which allowed a high level of democracy, tolerance of different lifestyles, and distaste for stringent authority. Part of this is also based on when their books were published, so 1865-1911.

I am going to separate my personal headcanons into different categories: toys, lessons, nutrition, and other, the last of which is a catch-all for anything I either forgot to assess or doesn’t fit within the context of the previous categories nor does it merit its own (clothing, schedules, discipline, etc). All under the cut because I feel I may ramble.

Here is what I cannot help but headcanon about Alice: It is no coincidence her aesthetic is from the time period that first started to truly understand late childhood and adolescence were stepping stones to a human’s development. Killian Jones never got that. We can only infer what his life was like, but I highly doubt a ~10-year-old indentured servant on a late 18th century ship would have lived the sort of life today’s child is gifted with. We can only speculate the abuses he went through, but we can (I hope) all acknowledge it wasn’t a privileged life.

Then we have Alice. Now, we know she has a lot working against her: trapped in a very tight space, no doors, no indoor plumbing, only one other voice to listen to outside of her own (until she’s almost 11, which we won’t go there...), etc. Though there were some obvious struggles, there is no doubt to me she was raised with an abundance of love. The below, to me, will detail either what we’ve been already told, what I headcanon based on history, or what I headcanon based on what I believe about Killian.

Toys

I’m not going to lie, I’m in love with some of the toys that started to develop around the late 19th century to the beginning of the 20th. It was such an enthusiastic time of development with all sorts of new technologies, cultures intermingling thanks to trains, automobiles, steam ships, the telegraph, music, moving pictures, etc. This also gave rise to what humans are wont to do, which is protect their traditions or “their own” in the face of progression, but this was such a beautiful time of progress in some aspects. Yes, the advancements can arguably be attributed to a causing factor of WWI and, as such, WWII, but let’s stick to the positive in this case? I can discuss WWI for days, but I’d like to focus on the happy and I’ve already detracted enough from Alice and Killian, my true purpose for this.

Let’s take a couple looks at what she has.

I’ve discussed this before, but I feel the desire to bring it up again. I cannot begin to count her dolls, she has a parasol, a wooden ship, a baby carriage, obviously the chess set, and so on. These toys do not come cheap, nor do her dresses or nightgown. She is, as far as we can infer, financially spoiled. We can only imagine why this may be, but it’s hard (for me) to not believe Killian kept her well-stocked in toys thanks to her inability to leave her home/prison. These toys all, also, keep with the style of late Victorian pieces. All of her dolls are dressed in late 19th century fashion, circa 1880-1910 if one were to take a guess, and well-crafted. In addition, Noah’s ark toys were highly popular in late Victorian years, as were parasols, and the shape of the baby carriage she is shown pushing is also in the style of this time period.

If, based on her clothing and other toys (more on the former later....) we’re assuming other objects of a similar time period are around, here are some of toys the I don’t doubt he’d either like to gift her with or already has and they’re stashed away somewhere: skipping ropes, marbles, spinning tops, toy soldiers (because, let’s face it, he didn’t raise her strictly according to gender roles of the time), and my current headcanon favorite, a kaleidoscope.

Why a kaleidoscope I hear you asking silently? Because now I’m just imagining her beside him, pretending it’s a spyglass of her own, playing pirate and seeing all sorts of treasure in the distance.

Lessons

We know she understands sword fighting enough to defeat a jabberwocky with being the sole survivor in addition to us seeing her having a lesson with her father. She knows stars well enough to know the date based on their location. She’s spent years on her own, traveling realms completely by herself, and surviving based on everything we can believe she’s been taught. Basically, that girl spent almost 11 years with her father’s studious voice speaking to her, and his voice in her head urging her to read and learn different subjects since then.

Even in her cursed persona, Alice craves the knowledge of a bookstore. She focuses thanks to chess. Everything that makes Alice happy revolves around either her most loving relationships or in academic pursuits. When Henry brings up the idea that he thinks they may actually be cursed characters from his book, she immediately starts perusing through it.

It’s canon she studied art, there were knitting materials in her cottage when she’s older, we can infer she’s able to bake based on her having the cupcake on her birthday (unless others have the headcanon that the tower magicked it there for her, but I don’t think the tower is that nice). While many young girls stopped learning more “masculine” subjects, such as mathematics and science, as they were expected to marry and align themselves to a more homemaker role, I have many doubts that Alice was raised with this mentality, at the very least due to what was mentioned above.

While she does see the world in a “special” way, no one can claim that Alice is in any way stupid, and I don’t doubt her curiosity would prevent her from ever being considered truly ignorant. Like her father, if there is something worth knowing, she absolutely will learn it. Again, this is mostly based on some evidence but mostly headcanon, but I have a hard time believing otherwise.

Based on time period and on what I believe about Killian, I think she’s aware of the etiquette in different realms, knows at least one other language and maybe more, knows some military history, and knows the basics of sailing even if she’s never been. I think he also taught her about the customs and beliefs of different people, though how much this included religion considering all the mixing of religions in the show is a mystery.

Nutrition

Food at this time period, with a primary focus in this case for Irish and English foods, was heavy in beef, potatoes, pork, eggs, bread, cheese, and, as we know of Alice, various jams. Obviously, we know a bit about Killian’s diet and his aversion to sugar/“junk food” and we know how much Alice craves orange marmalade. In addition, we know they were close enough to a port for her to consider a 48-hour trip using Enchanted Forest methods of transportation to be cause for worry, and he was able to get her various vials of sand for her birthday. So I assume they were able to get seafood easily enough without worry of it spoiling before he could either cook it or get it on ice.

Food-borne illnesses, gout, and afflictions easily handled these days with a dose of stomach medication was still a concern during this time, so I feel like Killian would have avoided any foods that were at risk of easily going bad unless they had a way of storing it. Though they were not poor, as evidenced by how well-stocked Alice was kept in pristine clothing and toys, there were still a lot of concerns, and I feel like he would have been extremely cautious considering she was unable to go see a doctor.

Killian likely raised her on a healthy balanced diet with marmalade as a comfort food that was both a treat but also something healthy (guarding against scurvy) and could store well (up to six months). I also love the idea that “I had no idea you could put candy on fruit” is also a carryover from Alice’s time with fruit being the primary dessert and anything high in sugar being a very rare treat, perhaps mostly in the form of sea salt toffee or, on special occasions, cupcakes.

The trick here is we don’t know how the tower kept stocked with food, let alone how generous it may have been or how well it kept any of it, so we can only speculate how much/how often they had anything that spoiled easily. It’s still worth knowing what may have been a typical spread in the Jones home for those of us that are insane nerds about them and this time period.

Other

Speaking of Alice’s pristine clothing, we saw at least three different outfits compared to Killian’s one. Her puffy sleeves, embroidery, the fabrics used, and colors used indicate she was dressed relatively upperclass. Her clothing, like her toys, again shows how absolutely well-cared for she was.

However, as spoiled as she was financially, there is no way in my mind she was spoiled in terms of a schedule. At the very least, for her to know the date by the stars, I feel like she could also look at the sun to know the time, and keeps to it. That, mixed with the fact that she needs help to focus, plus the fact that Killian was shown at times to be stringent on routine, she likely veered very little from the schedule they both adapted for years. Rise at this time, breakfast by this time, lessons by this time, lunch by this time, etc. You get the point. It’s also what, by the time she’s left alone, helps her keep some level of sanity. I also, as I’m writing this, somewhat headcanon part of her mind to be the White Rabbit, fretting about being late and later selling “time pieces”, strictly telling Rogers a time to meet her and only showing late when she had news she didn’t want to give him.

Even with all this strictness when it came to making sure a schedule was in order, Victorian and Edwardian times could still be pretty tough on some children. They were still expected to be seen and not heard, often not listened to or respected as individuals, had others’ ideals impressed upon them, and were pretty severely dealt with from time to time. With everything Killian dealt with as a child, and how much Alice grew to be an inquisitive person with little shame in how she felt or how she appeared to others, I think he was most progressive in this regard. I am not going to go into too controversial of topics, but I do believe if he were ever firm it was very few and far between. We have to remember, beyond his past abuses, that Killian is aware that he is the only person she is exposed to. While he will make mistakes as he’s only human, and he is still a product of his time period, his hands are the only hands she’s going to hold or be near for a while. I don’t believe that he’d ever risk her fearing them. She was mostly respected in terms of her autonomy and her beliefs, and we know he is shown multiple times in supporting her, building up her self-esteem, and treating her like a smart, capable individual. There may have been slips and slides, but I truly believe with the way they came out of this and how she grew into the person she is, she felt mostly pure love and respect from her father.

In Conclusion

FFS, did you guys stay through all of this? Wow. Props, guys.

#knightrook meta #ouat meta #alice jones #killian jones #knightrook

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the-cryptographer · 7 years

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on fathers and sons - an index of YGO abuse narratives

When discussing Noa’s arc, it seems like people place a lot of emphasis on this moment and declaration from Seto:

It’s a very stark and strong moment - Seto’s rejection of Gouzaburou, and I think it’s right to take this into account. But I think maybe we should be putting just as much, if not more weight, in the sequences in Noa’s arc following this. Particularly in the structure of Seto and Noa’s duel:

Make no mistake. This is a duel set up to run on Gouzaburou’s terms. Seto and Noa are fighting in the understanding that there’s only one living body between them, and the winner will have proven themselves superior and the rightful heir to Kaiba Corp. They are fighting for the right to Gouzaburou’s legacy, and the loser will be left behind in VR. To Lose is to Die.

Continued under the cut:

Noa believes he has the upper hand, both because he was born and bred for this job. And because he outstripped the boundaries of humanity when his mental capacities were enhanced living in VR.

Seto is not impressed with this line of reasoning.

Not only did Seto put in the hard work and struggle to inherit Kaiba Corp. Noa’s already dead. He’s already lost once by Gouzaburou’s terms. Seto accepts the challenge to duel in the understanding that Noa was the loser once, and a loser once is a loser always.

...Both ultimately betray Gouzaburou’s teachings during this duel - Noa by cheating, and Seto by both admitting there are things more important than his own life on the line here in deciding to save Mokuba, and in Atem helping him finish the duel after he’s petrified. (Notably the BC final duel also subverts Seto’s expectations for loss, in Atem’s ability to find a method to save Malik’s life in their shadow game.)

But before that moment of truth, you’ve certainly got a lot of trash talk, some of which seems to betray certain line of reasoning from Seto.

[Insert long speech about the value of humans having to struggle against the chaos of the real world versus this VR of Noa’s creation.]

“Of course Gouzaburou loved me more! Gouzaburou must have been confused if he even considered that you might bet the better or superior compared to me! How pathetic of either of you to even doubt! He acknowledged me as superior - and the result of duel is going to prove him right!”

Okay, I’m being hyperbolic but, contrary to what you’d believe from the first set of caps, I think what Seto says here, combined with the circumstances surrounding this duel, betray a certain amount of Seto deeply desiring recognition and acknowledgement from Gouzaburou. Or at least recognition and acknowledgement for having the qualities that Gouzaburou would have valued.

I’ve seen people pan the direction of this arc, and Noa as a villain, specifically on this basis. Seto should, in theory, not care about what Gouzaburou thought, and thus not care about stomping out Noa’s desire to prove himself the worthy son. Gouzaburou was his abuser, no real parent to Seto, and therefore Seto should not care. And, make no mistake, I think Seto’s hatred for his stepfather is clearly documented.

But I’m going to defend how Noa’s arc frames this conflict and Noa as a villain, and the idea that Seto may have feelings regarding Gouzaburou that are rooted in a desire for acknowledgement and affection. There is very little of Gouzaburou in manga canon, nothing that would generally suggest Seto having any conflicting fond feelings for him - although I think the fact that Seto continues to make decisions to build and destroy duel towers in the memory of Gouzaburou might be indicative of the fact that he cares a little too much.

But the reason I think this is a particularly good extrapolation from manga canon, is that it matches the themes we see in REPEATEDLY in the narratives of abuse that ygo offers to us.

I’m sure you’re aware that the surplus of absentee and abusive dads in DM, it’s… a bit of a joke. Even for characters for which you can assume a somewhat normal family life, such as Anzu and Honda, there’s a kind of sense in the story of a lack of presence from their parents. Which I would expect in a manga filled to the brim with ~adventure~ How are the characters gonna pile onto ships and blimps and go traipsing off to Egypt if their parents are always bugging them about school?

Well, I guess Yuugi has somehow managed to make it onto ships and blimps even with his mom bugging him about school…

There are multiple layers to this – The fact that absentee dads have become a norm in Japan given the increasing demands of corporate life. The fact that in a measure of personal experience a dead parent is much the same as an absent one – but dead parents make for better narrative drama. The fact that we never see Atem and his father together and are instead relayed an inherently biased posthumous recollection of their relationship. And the fact that there’s a kind of woefully imbalanced attribution of certain roles onto certain demographics of character. On that last point – I think it’s telling that, as a whole, it’s elder male children that are victimised in Takahashi’s narratives of family. It’s telling that mothers have an even smaller presence in Yu-Gi-Oh than fathers (and that when Yuugi’s mom hits him with a ladle up there, it’s framed as a joke). And it’s telling that father-daughter relationships are also very poorly defined. I’m going to give Shizuka a pass given the discrepancy in hers and Katsuya’s living situations, but I think it’s a pretty huge oversight that Isis’s relationship with her father is as unexplored as it is. (If I’m being brutally honest, I don’t think Takahashi empathises enough with his female characters to understand how they might, also, be deeply unhinged or affected by trauma.)

But, although I can critique the way Takahashi repeatedly approaches this same narrative – the narrative of a young man at odds with a cruel, violent, and single-minded father – I can’t help but love it, as I am perpetually surprised and enamoured with the amount of understanding, empathy, and realism Takahashi allows to his victims. This cuts in a lot of different ways, but there is one aspect that I particularly appreciate:

He not only understands that it’s normal for abused children to be angry and vengeful, but that it’s also normal for them to care about their parents regardless and to desire reconciliation with them, no matter how unlikely or misguided. And they are not shamed for it.

Jounouchi ended up being the prototype for this character in ygo canon, although these threads were dropped by the time the card game started. We see the gang caught of guard by an attack meant for Jounouchi.

And Honda confirms this behaviour is typical of Jounouchi’s dad.

But when we see Jounouchi’s attitude towards his dad, it’s warm and full of forgiveness. He enters a game show with the intention of winning money to pay off his father’s debts-

-specifically on the hopes that, by winning, he’ll be able to repair their relationship, and live together happily.

Gouzaburou was introduced next into the narrative, but Otogi and his father followed not far after.

Otogi’s father, Mr Clown, hits and berates him.

But, even so, Otogi continues to seek revenge on his father’s behalf.

And, beyond that, he’s very mild and apologetic.

Even when he’s pushing back against his dad, he’s apologising. This is framed as a harsh moment of rebellion - one that shocks Mr Clown - but all Otogi does is disobey his father’s request, and snatch the puzzle’s chain from his hand. And he’s still apologising while doing so. I think it goes to show how uncharacteristic it is for Otogi to express any harshness towards his father.

And, even when Mr Clown renounces Otogi as his son-

We see Otogi afterwards (on Jounouchi’s urging) hurry to cradle his father in his arms and and lead him to safety, and away from the fire that’s started in the Black Clown game shop.

But maybe the most persuasive show of Otogi’s desire to reconcile with his dad, is that he succeeds. They seem to be on good terms in Darkside of Dimensions, have opened a new business at the shopping plaza together.

I think Malik embodies this pattern most completely though. His abuse is portrayed with imagery more gruesome than the other characters on this list. His father’s whip, and the scars that were carved onto his back.

I’ve seen people operate under the impression his beef with the Pharaoh has to do with being confined to life underground, or having his back mutilated as part of the tombkeeper ritual, or for twisting his father’s personality into something terrible. I’m not going to say that those could not also be factors in Malik’s motivations. But the primary motivation for his behaviour in BC, is textually that he believes the Pharaoh’s spirit is responsible for killing the father that he loved. And being unable to accept the fact that the father he loved was also the father he hated enough to kill himself.

(Also, wow, panels that make much more sense after DSoD. If Bakura was surprised because Shada reappeared despite having been killed 3000 years ago, why was he not surprised to see modern incarnations of Isis and Set. Except in addition to killing Shada, he also killed Shadi ~5 years ago. Now his surprise makes sense.)

But, yeah, this vein is carried through to the end of Malik’s story arc. He’s not able to forgive himself for killing his father, no matter how abusive or terrible, he’s only able to decide, with encouragement from Rishid, that it’s preferable to keep on living.

Anyhow, insofar as Seto goes, as I’ve said, there’s scant evidence to draw from regarding his feelings about Gouzaburou. But I think it’s prudent to consider, as with the rest of these characters, his feelings are probably not limited to disdain. According to Takahashi’s commentary, Seto does consider Gouzaburou a father and is has been deeply haunted by his involvement in Gouzaburou’s downfall and death. Taking it a step further, it’s entirely likely that, he feels some form of fondness for his lost parent. No matter how misguided and futile such feelings would be.

#Kaiba Seto #Kaiba Noa #Jounouchi Katsuya #Otogi Ryuuji #Malik Ishtar #Kaiba Gouzaburou #Hank Ishtar #why is my tag for malik's dad 'hank ishtar' it's undermining how overly gd serious this post is #meta #DeLurk words the meta #save me from this card game hell #cw: abuse #i pulled these caps from here and there and everywhere #the Otogi ones I took pictures of myself which is why they're so bad #but thanks again @nenya for getting me the ones for the YBakura & YMalik duel and of Seto in front of the duel tower #i'm so sick of this post. i refuse to look at it any longer.#*sends out for other ppl to look at instead*

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mitchbattros · 5 years

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What Scientists Found After Sifting Through Dust In The Solar System

Just as dust gathers in corners and along bookshelves in our homes, dust piles up in space too. But when the dust settles in the solar system, it's often in rings. Several dust rings circle the Sun. The rings trace the orbits of planets, whose gravity tugs dust into place around the Sun, as it drifts by on its way to the center of the solar system.

The dust consists of crushed-up remains from the formation of the solar system, some 4.6 billion years ago -- rubble from asteroid collisions or crumbs from blazing comets. Dust is dispersed throughout the entire solar system, but it collects at grainy rings overlying the orbits of Earth and Venus, rings that can be seen with telescopes on Earth. By studying this dust -- what it's made of, where it comes from, and how it moves through space -- scientists seek clues to understanding the birth of planets and the composition of all that we see in the solar system. Two recent studies report new discoveries of dust rings in the inner solar system. One study uses NASA data to outline evidence for a dust ring around the Sun at Mercury's orbit. A second study from NASA identifies the likely source of the dust ring at Venus' orbit: a group of never-before-detected asteroids co-orbiting with the planet. "It's not every day you get to discover something new in the inner solar system," said Marc Kuchner, an author on the Venus study and astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "This is right in our neighborhood." Another Ring Around the Sun Guillermo Stenborg and Russell Howard, both solar scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., did not set out to find a dust ring. "We found it by chance," Stenborg said, laughing. The scientists summarized their findings in a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal on Nov. 21, 2018. They describe evidence of a fine haze of cosmic dust over Mercury's orbit, forming a ring some 9.3 million miles wide. Mercury -- 3,030 miles wide, just big enough for the continental United States to stretch across -- wades through this vast dust trail as it circles the Sun. Ironically, the two scientists stumbled upon the dust ring while searching for evidence of a dust-free region close to the Sun. At some distance from the Sun, according to a decades-old prediction, the star's mighty heat should vaporize dust, sweeping clean an entire stretch of space. Knowing where this boundary is can tell scientists about the composition of the dust itself, and hint at how planets formed in the young solar system. So far, no evidence has been found of dust-free space, but that's partly because it would be difficult to detect from Earth. No matter how scientists look from Earth, all the dust in between us and the Sun gets in the way, tricking them into thinking perhaps space near the Sun is dustier than it really is. Stenborg and Howard figured they could work around this problem by building a model based on pictures of interplanetary space from NASA's STEREO satellite -- short for Solar and Terrestrial Relations Observatory. Ultimately, the two wanted to test their new model in preparation for NASA's Parker Solar Probe, which is currently flying a highly elliptic orbit around the Sun, swinging closer and closer to the star over the next seven years. They wanted to apply their technique to the images Parker will send back to Earth and see how dust near the Sun behaves. Scientists have never worked with data collected in this unexplored territory, so close to the Sun. Models like Stenborg and Howard's provide crucial context for understanding Parker Solar Probe's observations, as well as hinting at what kind of space environment the spacecraft will find itself in -- sooty or sparkling clean. Two kinds of light show up in STEREO images: light from the Sun's blazing outer atmosphere -- called the corona -- and light reflected off all the dust floating through space. The sunlight reflected off this dust, which slowly orbits the Sun, is about 100 times brighter than coronal light. "We're not really dust people," said Howard, who is also the lead scientist for the cameras on STEREO and Parker Solar Probe that take pictures of the corona. "The dust close to the Sun just shows up in our observations, and generally, we have thrown it away." Solar scientists like Howard -- who study solar activity for purposes such as forecasting imminent space weather, including giant explosions of solar material that the Sun can sometimes send our way -- have spent years developing techniques to remove the effect of this dust. Only after removing light contamination from dust can they clearly see what the corona is doing. The two scientists built their model as a tool for others to get rid of the pesky dust in STEREO -- and eventually Parker Solar Probe -- images, but the prediction of dust-free space lingered in the back of their minds. If they could devise a way of separating the two kinds of light and isolate the dust-shine, they could figure out how much dust was really there. Finding that all the light in an image came from the corona alone, for example, could indicate they'd found dust-free space at last. Mercury's dust ring was a lucky find, a side discovery Stenborg and Howard made while they were working on their model. When they used their new technique on the STEREO images, they noticed a pattern of enhanced brightness along Mercury's orbit -- more dust, that is -- in the light they'd otherwise planned to discard. "It wasn't an isolated thing," Howard said. "All around the Sun, regardless of the spacecraft's position, we could see the same five percent increase in dust brightness, or density. That said something was there, and it's something that extends all around the Sun." Scientists never considered that a ring might exist along Mercury's orbit, which is maybe why it's gone undetected until now, Stenborg said. "People thought that Mercury, unlike Earth or Venus, is too small and too close to the Sun to capture a dust ring," he said. "They expected that the solar wind and magnetic forces from the Sun would blow any excess dust at Mercury's orbit away." With an unexpected discovery and sensitive new tool under their belt, the researchers are still interested in the dust-free zone. As Parker Solar Probe continues its exploration of the corona, their model can help others reveal any other dust bunnies lurking near the Sun. Asteroids Hiding in Venus' Orbit This isn't the first time scientists have found a dust ring in the inner solar system. Twenty-five years ago, scientists discovered that Earth orbits the Sun within a giant ring of dust. Others uncovered a similar ring near Venus' orbit, first using archival data from the German-American Helios space probes in 2007, and then confirming it in 2013, with STEREO data. Since then, scientists determined the dust ring in Earth's orbit comes largely from the asteroid belt, the vast, doughnut-shaped region between Mars and Jupiter where most of the solar system's asteroids live. These rocky asteroids constantly crash against each other, sloughing dust that drifts deeper into the Sun's gravity, unless Earth's gravity pulls the dust aside, into our planet's orbit. At first, it seemed likely that Venus' dust ring formed like Earth's, from dust produced elsewhere in the solar system. But when Goddard astrophysicist Petr Pokorny modeled dust spiraling toward the Sun from the asteroid belt, his simulations produced a ring that matched observations of Earth's ring -- but not Venus'. This discrepancy made him wonder if not the asteroid belt, where else does the dust in Venus' orbit come from? After a series of simulations, Pokorny and his research partner Marc Kuchner hypothesized it comes from a group of never-before-detected asteroids that orbit the Sun alongside Venus. They published their work in The Astrophysical Journal Letters on March 12, 2019. "I think the most exciting thing about this result is it suggests a new population of asteroids that probably holds clues to how the solar system formed," Kuchner said. If Pokorny and Kuchner can observe them, this family of asteroids could shed light on Earth and Venus' early histories. Viewed with the right tools, the asteroids could also unlock clues to the chemical diversity of the solar system. Because it's dispersed over a larger orbit, Venus' dust ring is much larger than the newly detected ring at Mercury's. About 16 million miles from top to bottom and 6 million miles wide, the ring is littered with dust whose largest grains are roughly the size of those in coarse sandpaper. It's about 10 percent denser with dust than surrounding space. Still, it's diffuse -- pack all the dust in the ring together, and all you'd get is an asteroid two miles across. Using a dozen different modeling tools to simulate how dust moves around the solar system, Pokorny modeled all the dust sources he could think of, looking for a simulated Venus ring that matched the observations. The list of all the sources he tried sounds like a roll call of all the rocky objects in the solar system: Main Belt asteroids, Oort Cloud comets, Halley-type comets, Jupiter-family comets, recent collisions in the asteroid belt. "But none of them worked," Kuchner said. "So, we started making up our own sources of dust." Perhaps, the two scientists thought, the dust came from asteroids much closer to Venus than the asteroid belt. There could be a group of asteroids co-orbiting the Sun with Venus -- meaning they share Venus' orbit, but stay far away from the planet, often on the other side of the Sun. Pokorny and Kuchner reasoned a group of asteroids in Venus' orbit could have gone undetected until now because it's difficult to point earthbound telescopes in that direction, so close to the Sun, without light interference from the Sun. Co-orbiting asteroids are an example of what's called a resonance, an orbital pattern that locks different orbits together, depending on how their gravitational influences meet. Pokorny and Kuchner modeled many potential resonances: asteroids that circle the Sun twice for every three of Venus' orbits, for example, or nine times for Venus' ten, and one for one. Of all the possibilities, one group alone produced a realistic simulation of the Venus dust ring: a pack of asteroids that occupies Venus's orbit, matching Venus' trips around the Sun one for one. But the scientists couldn't just call it a day after finding a hypothetical solution that worked. "We thought we'd discovered this population of asteroids, but then had to prove it and show it works," Pokorny said. "We got excited, but then you realize, 'Oh, there's so much work to do.'" They needed to show that the very existence of the asteroids makes sense in the solar system. It would be unlikely, they realized, that asteroids in these special, circular orbits near Venus arrived there from somewhere else like the asteroid belt. Their hypothesis would make more sense if the asteroids had been there since the very beginning of the solar system. The scientists built another model, this time starting with a throng of 10,000 asteroids neighboring Venus. They let the simulation fast forward through 4.5 billion years of solar system history, incorporating all the gravitational effects from each of the planets. When the model reached present-day, about 800 of their test asteroids survived the test of time. Pokorny considers this an optimistic survival rate. It indicates that asteroids could have formed near Venus' orbit in the chaos of the early solar system, and some could remain there today, feeding the dust ring nearby. The next step is actually pinning down and observing the elusive asteroids. "If there's something there, we should be able to find it," Pokorny said. Their existence could be verified with space-based telescopes like Hubble, or perhaps interplanetary space-imagers similar to STEREO's. Then, the scientists will have more questions to answer: How many of them are there, and how big are they? Are they continuously shedding dust, or was there just one break-up event? Dust Rings Around Other Stars The dust rings that Mercury and Venus shepherd are just a planet or two away, but scientists have spotted many other dust rings in distant star systems. Vast dust rings can be easier to spot than exoplanets, and could be used to infer the existence of otherwise hidden planets, and even their orbital properties. But interpreting extrasolar dust rings isn't straightforward. "In order to model and accurately read the dust rings around other stars, we first have to understand the physics of the dust in our own backyard," Kuchner said. By studying neighboring dust rings at Mercury, Venus and Earth, where dust traces out the enduring effects of gravity in the solar system, scientists can develop techniques for reading between the dust rings both near and far. Read the full article

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melindarowens · 7 years

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Why is the Dollar at New Lows? – Weekly Market Report

Good morning,

What’s in this week’s Report:

Why Is The Dollar At New Lows?

Tax Cuts – Where Do We Stand?

Oil Update

Momentum Indicators – More Signs of Weakness

Weekly Market Preview (A Lot of Important Numbers Are Coming)

Weekly Economic Cheat Sheet

Futures are fractionally lower following a generally quiet weekend for markets, outside of Hurricane Harvey.

Hurricane Harvey caused RBOB gasoline prices to spike to 2 1/2 year highs and pushed oil prices down 1%. At this point, the economic impact of Harvey remains a local one for commodities markets and the region. Refined product markets will recover in time, as will the resilient people of Houston.

The biggest non-Harvey story in markets this morning is the dollar, which sunk to a 16 month low while the euro surged to a 2 ½ year high. The catalysts were two-fold: Draghi didn’t talk down the euro in his speech Friday, while some traders are selling the dollar thinking Harvey will cause slower US economic growth (it shouldn’t – that’s a stretch). In our view, neither event was really dollar negative – and these new lows are more a function of low liquidity and volumes more than any dollar negative catalyst over the past two days.

Economically, EU M3 (money supply) missed expectations at 4.8% vs. (E) 5.0%, but that number isn’t moving markets.

Today focus will remain appropriately on the situation in Houston, although there is one notable economic report today: International Trade in Goods (E: -$64.1 Bln). From a market standpoint, the weak dollar has been mildly positive for US stocks, so if the declines continue, stocks can rally.

Sincerely,

CapitalistHQ.com

Market

Level

Change

% Change

S&P 500 Futures

2,446.25

3.50

0.14%

U.S. Dollar (DXY)

92.42

-0.2570

-0.28%

Gold

1,304.00

6.10

0.47%

WTI

47.41

-0.46

-0.96%

10 Year

2.18%

0.01

0.46%

Stocks

This Week

Economic data will be the focus of markets this week, as there are no notable earnings reports. The Jobs Report Friday, August manufacturing PMI and Core PCE Price Index (Thursday), are the key numbers to watch here in the US.

Internationally, the Chinese PMIs (Wed night, Thursday night) and the flash EU HICP (Thursday) has the potential to move markets as well, if they disappoint vs. expectations.

Last Week (Needed Context as We Start a New Week)

Stocks bounced back a bit last week as the S&P 500 rallied on hopes of tax cuts amidst quiet summer trading conditions. The S&P 500 rose 0.72% last week and is up 9.12% year to date.

With no material economic data or earnings on the calendar last week, political rhetoric and headlines once again filled the news void and created modest volatility.

Tuesday was really the key day last week (markets were flat and boring Monday), as a Politico article implied that Republicans were much more on the same page regarding tax cuts. Remember, the market sell-off from two weeks ago was largely due to the perception that Republican infighting would prevent tax cuts, so this partially reversed that perception and move in the markets. Stocks rallied 1% on Tuesday in response to the article.

Wednesday and Thursday saw some of those gains given back, in part because of President Trump’s threat of a government shutdown at a campaign rally (although to be clear, that remains very, very unlikely).

Staying with politics, on Friday an FT interview with Gary Cohn revealed he considered resigning in the wake of Charlottesville, but while the media made a big deal of it Friday, it’s unlikely to move markets (he clearly said he’s staying, and Trump won’t fire him).

Beyond politics, stocks bounced slightly on Friday thanks to a falling dollar, and in quiet trade, to close with modest gains on the week.

Your Need to Know

Market internals were once again non-controversial last week, as the gains were pretty evenly distributed amongst indices and sectors. To that point, the S&P 500, Dow and Nasdaq all finished up about the same while the Russell 2000 slightly outperformed given.

From a sector standpoint, the gains were oddly uniform: Banks, financials, semiconductors, healthcare and utilities all closed up about 1%. The outlier was consumer staples (XLP), which dropped 1% on weakness in the grocery stocks following AMZN’s announcement it’s cutting Whole Foods’ prices.

The bigger issue from a sector standpoint remains whether we are seeing a rotation out of defensive sectors (which have outperformed YTD) and into cyclicals (which have lagged YTD). Last week provided no real insight into that rotation (which still isn’t happening).

But, we continue to watch for it, as we think getting that “switch” right, if and when it happens, will be the key to outperforming.

Bottom Line

With nothing else to focus on last week (no data, no earnings) markets remained at the whim of political headlines and commentary, but despite the continued uptick in volatility, the general outlook for this market remains the same.

Earnings and economic data have powered this market higher in 2018, and both remain healthy on an absolute level. But, markets always focus on marginal changes, and there are some doubts about the future growth rates of both—and those doubts are being reflected in our momentum indicators (NYSE A/D Line, SOXX, FDN) showing signs of fatigue. Put differently, this is a market that is searching for a new positive catalyst to push stocks higher. And, right now, that search isn’t coming up with anything compelling.

Over the past three weeks, that lack of a discernable positive catalyst combined with an uptick in geopolitical drama (North Korea, Charlottesville) to cause this mild dip in stocks (the S&P 500 is down about 2% from the highs).

Looking forward, the biggest takeaway from the last three weeks for me is that taxes will be a critical issue this fall. If earnings growth and economic acceleration have peaked, then tax cuts are the only identifiable positive catalyst over the next few months. And, given current low expectations, tax cuts (done in 2017) would be a legitimate, positive surprise to stocks because they’d conservatively boost 2018 S&P 500 EPS by $5-$10 (depending on whose research you’re reading).

So, from a research standpoint, we are very focused on getting the tax cut outcome “right” ahead of the street, so we can be positioned accordingly (for either a positive or negative outcome). But, the tax cut process will take time, so for now the bottom line remains that despite some concerning signs from momentum indicators and bond yields, the trend in markets remains higher, and this market’s resilience must be respected.

We continue to advocate more defensive equity allocations—lower beta, higher yield and non-cyclical sectors: Super-cap internet (FDN), healthcare (XLV/IBB/IHF), consumer staples (XLP), utilities (XLU). We also remain bullish on Europe (HEDJ/EZU) despite recent underperformance. Europe is experiencing a potentially rising economic tide (albeit from a lower level), and we think over the medium/longer term that market continues to outperform the US.

Finally, from a tactical standpoint, I’ll again point out that buying September or October puts on the market is, in my opinion, a reasonable move given 1) Strong YTD gains and 2) Low liquidity, low volatility, and the potential for a political, macro or economic surprise over the coming months. This market hasn’t seen a real pullback in nearly two years. If tax cut hopes get smashed, or there is some geopolitical or political shake up, a trap door on the averages could open, similar to August 2015/January 2016… and I just want people to be aware that risk is real.

Economic Data (What You Need to Know in Plain English)

Need to Know Econ from Last Week

There were only two notable economic reports last week, and neither were particularly controversial… and neither did anything to change the current market expectation of 1) High 2% to low 3% GDP growth in Q3, or 2) Fed reduction of the balance sheet in September. Neither data point gave us any incremental color on whether the Fed will hike rates in December, although we’ll get a lot more color on that issue this week.

Looking at the data, the most important number last week was the August flash composite PMIs. The headline number beat at 56 vs. (E) 54.3, but that strong aggregate number hid some pretty significant discrepancies in the details.

The reason the PMIs beat was because of a surge in service companies. Flash service sector PMI rose to 56.9 vs. 54.8. But, the more important manufacturing PMI dropped to 52.5 vs. 53.2 (the manufacturing PMI is just a better reading of activity, so it’s more heavily weighted in the minds of economists).

So, despite the headline beat, this number was actually a disappointment, although I want to be clear that it was not an outright negative (PMIs need to drop below 50 before they imply economic activity is slowing). Bottom line, this is not the type of August reading that would make us think we’re seeing an economic acceleration.

Turning to Durable Goods, they were in line. Yes, the headline reading missed expectations as orders for Durable Goods fell -6.8% vs. (E) -5.8%. But, longer-time readers of this publication know you should ignore the headline as it’s massively skewed by airplane orders. The more important number is New Orders for Non-Defense Capital Goods ex Aircraft (NDCGXA) and it rose 0.4% vs. (E) 0.5%, although June data was revised 0.1% higher, so it was an in-line reading.

Again, we watch NDCGXA because it’s the best proxy for business spending and investment. And, similar to the flash PMI, while the number isn’t an outright negative, it’s not the kind of number that makes us think a broad economic acceleration is coming. Bottom line, both numbers last week implied continued steady, but unspectacular, economic growth, and that’s simply not enough to cause a rising tide and push stocks higher.

Important Economic Data This Week

This will be one of the busiest weeks of the year from an economic data standpoint, and it will come during one of the lowest liquidity weeks of the year… so the potential for data-based volatility this week is high.

The key reports this week (in order of importance) are: Jobs Report (Friday), Personal Income and Outlays (Thursday) and Global Manufacturing PMIs (Thursday night/Friday morning).

The reason those reports are ranked like that is because of inflation. Remember, barring a shockingly week Jobs Report on Friday, nothing is going to stop the Fed from reducing the balance sheet in September.

But, whether they hike rates in December remains uncertain, and the key variable that will decide that is inflation. So, that means that the wage number in Friday’s Jobs Report, and the Core PCE Price Index (the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation, which is contained in the Personal Income and Outlays report) will be the two key numbers this week.

If they run hotter than expected, you will see markets begin to price in the chance of a December rate hike, which would likely be a near-term headwind on stocks as a rate hike is not priced in to bond yields, the dollar or equities.

Turning to measures of economic growth, the August manufacturing PMIs are always important, but again there really shouldn’t be any major surprises here. A firm number in the US that refuted the soft flash PMI from last week would be welcomed as we need better growth to push stocks higher, but really the focus will be on inflation this week.

Looking at the dovish possibilities, we could easily see the data this week push the 10-year Treasury yield to new lows if the inflation data is underwhelming, and we would view that as a negative for stocks broadly.

Bottom line, I know this is a heavy vacation week, but it’s important one for Fed and ECB expectations, and that has the potential to move markets, especially given the precarious technical situation the S&P 500 is sitting in.

Commodities, Currencies & Bonds

In Commodities, the segment was in aggregate flat last week as the widely held commodity ETF DBC was down fractionally. Oil and energy was volatile last week thanks to inventory data and Hurricane Harvey.

Initially, oil rallied midweek on a larger-than-expected drop in gasoline inventories, and despite continued growth in US production. But, a lot of those gains were undone by the approach of Hurricane Harvey, which resulted in the shut in of refining capacity in the Gulf, a move that will reduce short-term demand for oil.

So, that resulted in a surge in RBOB Gasoline (up about 3% on the week) while oil closed lower (down about 1.2%, but off the lows).

Hurricane Harvey will likely cause more short-term volatility in the energy market and, likely be a short-term net positive. But, any effect of the storm will likely be temporary, and the bigger issue remains rising US production. That is by far the biggest trend in the oil and energy markets over the medium and longer term, and as long as US oil production keeps rising, it will be hard to generate any meaningful upside in oil over the longer term.

Turning to gold, it traded up about 0.5% last week, and gold continues to trade relatively well. Gold surged to just under resistance at $1300 initially on North Korea angst, but while that has subsided, gold has remained firm. Point being, based on geopolitics alone, gold should have gone down over the past two weeks, and it hasn’t. We find that notable.

Going forward, if we see dovish inflation data this week from the PCE Price Index or wage number in the jobs report, gold could break above $1300, and a potentially substantial short squeeze could ensue. For those that are watching it, GLD, GDX and GDXJ remain the easiest way to play a potential rally in gold.

Looking at Currencies and Bonds, the Dollar Index hit a fractional new low for 2017 thanks to heavy selling Friday despite the fact that nothing actually dollar negative happened last week. The Dollar Index declined about 0.5%, with all the losses coming Friday.

The catalyst for the dollar weakness Friday was a lack of liquidity more than anything else. Neither Yellen nor Draghi said anything new, but, it was especially Draghi’s comments that sent the euro surging and the dollar dropping… on a Friday in late August at 3:00 p.m. Not exactly the busiest time in the currency markets.

The reason there was a positive euro/negative dollar reaction on Friday was because Draghi didn’t try and “talk down” the euro. We thought this could be a hawkish move, and we were partially right. It wasn’t so much that Draghi was dismissive of the higher euro in his comments. Instead, he just didn’t reference it as a problem, and between that and the lack of liquidity, it sent the euro to new, two-and-a-half-year highs, and the Dollar Index to fresh lows.

But, to be clear, nothing “happened” on Friday that meant a resumption of the euro strength/dollar weakness. That longer-term issue will be decided much more by the data this week and how explicit and aggressive the ECB is in its tapering at its meeting during the first week of September.

Turning to Treasuries, they largely ignored the drama on Friday. The 10-year yield dipped 2 basis points last week and spent the entire week largely churning sideways except for a brief pop above 2.20% following Tuesday’s rally in stocks.

Looking at bonds, whether we see new 2017 lows in the 10-year yield will be dependent on the Fed (whether they hike in December or not) and on tax cuts (if they do pass before year end, the 10-year yield is going to surge). So, until we get more clarity on those issues (which could come this week) expect more sideways churn in yields just above the 2017 lows.

Special Reports and Editorial

Political Update: Where Do We Stand on Taxes?

What a difference a few days can make. By Thursday’s close (Aug. 17), the S&P 500 was at a one-month low, and the prospects for any tax cuts or foreign profit repatriation tax holiday were dim.

Now, thanks to one Politico article, happy days are here again, as the S&P 500 surged on the idea that the leaders in Washington are actually making progress on tax cuts! Hopefully, you can sense my sarcasm.

The lack of liquidity and attendance in the market is making these tax-related market mood swings worse than they otherwise should be, so I wanted to step back and provide a clear, unemotional update on the tax cut situation.

Starting with Tuesday’s Politico article, there were two reasons it was positive: The “Big Six,” and 22% to 25%.

Starting with the latter, you know from this publication that right now, the market is expecting a corporate tax cut in Q1 2018 down to 28%. If that happens, it likely isn’t a materially positive or negative catalyst.

However, the Politico article implied consensus was coalescing around a corporate rate between 22% and 25%, obviously less than 28%. If that happens, it will represent a positive catalyst and a boost to corporate earnings, which will send stocks higher.

Now, on to the former. The “Big Six” is apparently the nickname that a key group of Republican leaders have given themselves in regards to tax negotiations. For clarity, the “Big Six” are: Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, National Economic Council Director Cohn, Senate Majority Leader McConnell, Speaker of the House Ryan, House Ways and Means Committee Chair Brady, and Senate Finance Committee Chair Hatch.

The Politico article implied the “Big Six” have been working much closer than previously thought, and that they have made a lot more progress on the structure of tax cuts (although plenty of details remain).

Bottom Line

The noise on this topic is officially deafening, but I want to cut through it and give you some hard takeaways on the outlook for tax cuts and the impact on the market.

1. Expect more tax-related volatility. If January through August is any guide, we can expect the ever-growing Washington soap opera to fully engulf the tax cut issue this fall. Like healthcare, there are multiple moving pieces, a lot of important, TV happy players (I’m not even including Trump), and a lot of pressure—as this is basically the Republicans’ last chance to get any legislative priorities accomplished before focus on the midterms starts in 2018.

2. The outlook for tax cuts wasn’t as bad as it seemed last Thursday, and it’s not as good as it seems right now. The Politico article was positive, but it didn’t contain anything ground breaking. To boot, it appears that substantially controversial issues are being discussed in the tax cut package, including: Capping mortgage interest deductions, eliminating the deduction of state and local taxes against federal, corporate interest deductibility and other issues. These are foundational pieces of the current tax code, and removing them won’t be easy.

3. The sector winners from potential tax cuts remain the same as they’ve been all year: Super-cap tech (on foreign profit repatriation), healthcare (on foreign profit repatriation), retailers (they pay high corporate taxes) and oil and gas (high tax rates). FDN/QQQ, XLV/IBB/IHF, RTH and XLE/XOP are all ETFs that should outperform if taxes surprise to the upside.

4. A prediction: Tax cuts happen in Q1 2018. I’m in the business of generating conclusions and opinions, so I’ll give one about this tax issue. I’d give it about a 65% chance that tax cuts/foreign repatriation holiday gets done by Q1 2018, and about a 50/50 chance those tax cuts positively surprise (i.e. the corporate rate drops below 28%). I do not expect any changes to personal taxes. The reason for this opinion, as I’ve said several times before, is self-preservation. Congressional Republicans are on the ballot in 2018, President Trump is not. If they fail to accomplish anything (no healthcare repeal, no tax cuts) and this Washington soap opera continues, then it’ll be Congressional Republicans who are out of a job. So, they have to get something done if they want to save their jobs. There’s no better predicator of action in Washington than the rule of self-preservation.

FDN and SOXX: Closer to Support

FDN and SOXX both closed lower yesterday (the former falling fractionally while the latter dropped 0.74%).

Now both ETFs, which again have led markets higher for all of 2017, are getting very close to breaking recent lows… and that would be a negative technical signal.

For FDN, a break below support at $96.00 would be a clear, negative signal, while for SOXX, a close below $144.60 would be a fresh two-month low.

Bottom line, the NYSE Advance/Decline line is clearly flashing a warning sign, as it has been over a week (and it’s hitting fresh lows). If SOXX and FDN break to fresh one-month lows, that will reflect a real deterioration in market momentum—and that will make us considerably more nervous in the short term.

For those wanting some near-term protection, September out-of-the-money Nasdaq, S&P 500 or Russell 2000 puts are not the worst idea here, especially if we see SOXX and FDN breakdown further.

EIA Report and Oil Update

Last week’s EIA data was relatively in line with expectations, and the market reacted accordingly with a very choppy and insignificant response. Gasoline stocks did fall more than expected, and as a result RBOB futures outperformed WTI futures, which closed up 1.72% and 1.09%, respectively.

On the headlines, crude oil stocks fell -3.3M bbls vs. (E) -3.1, which also roughly matched the -3.6M bbl draw reported by the API late Tuesday. The change in gasoline supply was the only real surprise in the data print as stockpiles fell -1.2M vs. (E) -500K. And compared to the API, which reported gasoline inventories rose +1.4M bbls, that data point favored the bulls.

The rising trend of lower 48 production remains the most important influence on the energy markets right now, and there was a potential sign of fatigue in that figure as it rose just 12K b/d vs. the 2017 average of 25K b/d. In theory that is a slightly bullish influence, but it is only one report and US output did hit another multi-year high in this most recent release, which is still longer-term bearish. Additionally, Alaskan production continued to stabilize and show signs of turning higher into the fall, as production rose 14K b/d to the highest level since mid-July.

Bottom line, US production continues to trend higher despite a slight pullback in pace last week. And as long as US production is grinding to new multi-year highs, it will be a headwind on the entire complex, and the $50/barrel mark will continue to be a stubborn psychological and technical resistance level for WTI.

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source https://capitalisthq.com/why-is-the-dollar-at-new-lows-weekly-market-report/ from CapitalistHQ http://capitalisthq.blogspot.com/2017/08/why-is-dollar-at-new-lows-weekly-market.html

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