maureenlycaon

[maureenlycaon]

Art source

[maureenlycaon]

[maureenlycaon]

[maureenlycaon]

#politics #nazi germany #weimar germany

[maureenlycaon]

Steampunk without commentary on the exploitative machinations of imperialism is not steampunk.

Cyberpunk without commentary on capitalism’s efforts to buy the world out from under us is not cyberpunk.

Solarpunk without commentary on how to grow a brighter future for everyone instead of submitting to gloom is not solarpunk.

These three make a trifecta of how capitalism took over, what can happen if it continues, and how to prevent it from doing so. What was, is, and still could be.

#solarpunk #cyberpunk #steampunk

[maureenlycaon]

An open Tumblr letter to younger fans, from a 77-year-old TOS fangirl

* who has shipped Spirk since that night in 1967 that Amok Time first aired * and helped storm NBC to keep TOS on the air for a 3rd season * and wrote fanfic way back in the day * and was privileged to be around for the earliest days of fandom, when Leonard used to come to your house if that’s where the fan club was meeting and sit on the sofa with you in that Spock hair cut and eat cake

All of you who are writing TOS/AOS fan fiction and creating fan art now: remember, YOU are the ones shaping the traditions of fandom. You have inherited the kingdom. Bless you for keeping it vibrant, growing, alive. In fifty years, you will be the ones who are remembered for molding it and handing it down to the future. It probably doesn’t feel like now, but you are making history.

Your current addiction to TOS and the feels you get when you contemplate the love between Jim and Spock will be with you for life. It won’t always be in the forefront; you will sometimes go years, sometimes go a decade, without Star Trek being more than a passing thought. But then something will remind you and every consuming feeling you feel right now will come rushing back, every bit as powerful and deep and strong as it is today. All there, right where you left it.

The friendships you make in fandom will be with you for life. Like all friendships, they will wax and wane as the focus of your life shifts over time, but you will always be able to pick up the thread. You will — to give you a hypothetical example — be 77 years old and discover Tumblr and get a rush of Spirk feels after a decade of not giving TOS a thought, and contact your 83-year-old fangirl friend in the nursing home, to whom you haven’t spoken in several years. You will open the conversation with, “So, Jim and Spock love each other and that just makes me so happy.” And your friend in the nursing home will sigh and say, “Yes. They do love each other. It’s such a comfort.”

That look that Jim and Spock give each other, of absolute adoration and acceptance and love? That’s real. It’s rare, but it’s real. One of my greatest joys in life is to see my son and his husband give each other looks like that. Of course I don’t know you; I don’t know your strengths and struggles or your place on the spectrum of gender or anything about your sexuality or what you look like or what your life has taught you to believe about yourself, but I do know this: YOU DESERVE TO BE LOVED AND LOOKED AT THE WAY JIM AND SPOCK LOOK AT EACH OTHER. Please don’t accept less than that in your life.

The future of our planet does not seem very hopeful at the moment. But please remember that when Gene created Star Trek, the world was in turmoil and the future seemed very bleak. Star Trek is, was, always shall be about hope. Reach for it. When TOS first aired, we hoped to see some form of a Starfleet on the horizon in our lifetimes. That vision must be passed on to you. Do it. Make the world worthy of launching the human race out into space. CREATE STARFLEET.

You are all creative and funny and amazing. Far more amazing than you know. Be kind to yourselves. Live long and prosper, kids.

Tags are in reference to my first bullet point. Meant as a kudos to your work, but feel free to untag yourself if you don’t want to be linked to my ramblings; I won’t be offended! (Also, this extends to a thousand other artists and writers out there who deserve kudos. tag at will.)

#fandom #fandom history #inspiring #uplifting

[maureenlycaon]

This was the alternative that our elders gave us to selling out. Think about that.

Kent State University

#boomers #sixties #kent state #kent state shootings #kent state murders

[maureenlycaon]

Vending machine but it vends moss covered rocks, small opals, faux ivory brooches, mushrooms to plant, tiny sacks of dirt, seaglass, and gnome statues

[maureenlycaon]

It is not often you get the chance to meet a man who holds a place in history like Ben Ferencz.  He’s 97 years old, barely 5 feet tall, and he served as prosecutor of what’s been called the biggest murder trial ever. The courtroom was Nuremberg; the crime, genocide; the defendants, a group of German SS officers accused of committing the largest number of Nazi killings outside the concentration camps – more than a million men, women, and children shot down in their own towns and villages in cold blood.

Ferencz is the last Nuremberg prosecutor alive today. But he isn’t content just to be part of 20th century history – he believes he has something important to offer the world right now.

#better the second time around #fuck nazis #nuremberg trials #ben ferencz

[maureenlycaon]

No comment. ;)

#trucks #fuck nazis #satire

[maureenlycaon]

— CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE, A Monstrous Manifesto.

#poetry #cool quotes #catherynne m. valente #a monstrous manifesto

[maureenlycaon]

Just occurred to me, with force, as I thought about all the young leftists that make me fantasize that the Sixties did, after all, reincarnate.

#songs #music #personal #politics #sixties #marianne faithfull #nostalgia

[maureenlycaon]

How the media depicts the Apollo 11 mission:

Actual quotes from the Apollo 11 mission:

#funny #apollo moon shots #moon

[maureenlycaon]

Y’all I read a lot of scripts. And the one note I give over and over and over and over to the point that I can pretty much copy and paste it from one review to another…. let your characters lie. Let them omit, stumble, and circumvent. Allow them to be completely unable to express what they’re feeling. Make them unable to admit a truth. Let them sit in silence because they can’t think of anything clever to say! Let them say the exact wrong thing!

Dee Rees talks about it in her BAFTA lecture (which you should ABSOLUTELY WATCH): that what your character actually says should be three degrees of separation away from what they mean to say.

I read script after script after script where characters articulate their needs, desires, and objectives with perfect accuracy off the cuff 24/7 and there is not one single human person on this planet who is actually able to do that. This is the #1 thing that’s going to make your script sound stilted and the #1 thing that’s going to make shit difficult on your actors. Let them shut up, and let them lie.

#writing advice

[maureenlycaon]

Current reading: Providence, by Alan Moore

I’m up to the third issue, but I just have to blabber on about the protagonist’s second dream, the one in which he’s on a train. All the hints and hooks and seemingly minor incidents in the story up to now feature in the dream, but at the same time, some of these allusions are obviously “premonitions”. I put “premonitions” in quotes because in Providence, time is kind of a permanent, motionless thing where every thing that happens sets up echoes in the past and the future. (It makes more sense in the actual graphic novel than in my words.)

The premonitions are unmistakably of the Holocaust, still twenty or so years into the protagonist’s future. Stating it flat out like that doesn’t begin to convey the growing atmosphere of dread, of foreboding. It’s still just disturbing little hints, but it chills me to the bone! It’s almost as if the premonitions reflect something approaching him that’s even worse, if possible, than the Nazi genocides.

I originally started reading the novel due to Gordon White’s praise of it. He described it as having a genuine magician’s understanding of time, and that each event thus sends echoes down through the past and the future. I’m beginning to see what he meant.

#providence #alan moore #gordon white #occult #magic #graphic novels #comics #lovecraft #innsmouth

[maureenlycaon]

It seems you’re right. I knew snakes and lizards are closely related, but I didn’t realize that snakes actually nest *in* the lizard clade! Thank you. :)

That rabbit/hare post is messing me up. I’d thought they were synonyms. Their development and social behavior are all different. They can’t even interbreed. They don’t have the same number of chromosomes. Dogs, wolves, jackals, and coyotes can mate with each other and have fertile offspring but rabbits and hares cant even make infertile ones bc they just die in the womb. Wack.

[maureenlycaon]

Some phylogeny for your evening reading, folks. :)

Is it true that some lizards are more closely related to snakes than to other lizards? Holy crap, I did not know that!

That rabbit/hare post is messing me up. I’d thought they were synonyms. Their development and social behavior are all different. They can’t even interbreed. They don’t have the same number of chromosomes. Dogs, wolves, jackals, and coyotes can mate with each other and have fertile offspring but rabbits and hares cant even make infertile ones bc they just die in the womb. Wack.

#paleontology #taxonomy #phylogenetics #cladistics