#the klingons get more racist every time they show up

[horsechestnut]

That, um, that sure is some brownface...

#the klingons get more racist every time they show up #day of the dove #star trek #star trek the original series #st: tos #star trek watch through #klingon #tw: racism

[insipid-drivel]

Personality Ratings Of The Birds That Visit My Bird Feeders

I have the beginnings of a little bird/pollinator garden outside of my bedroom window. It's nothing to show off yet, but I have a pretty big variety of regulars. And, like any bartender, I've come to silently judge them all from afar. Here are my ratings of my local Seed Bastards:

Dark-Eyed Junco:

Bastard Rating: 4/10 They take no shit and don't mind continuing to eat within about 10' of me when I'm actively working outside. Mostly bogart the feeders through numbers rather than actual bastardy. They go berserk for sunflower seeds and shelled peanuts. Don't scare easy but also aren't terribly interested in getting into it with the other birds.

House Finch:

Bastard Rating: 7/10 Refuses to share feeders. Chases other birds except their wives from the feeders, and will fully "nest" on tray feeders so their fat asses block the other birds from getting any from the feeder. I vaguely suspect they're racist toward the other birds because they'll only allow other house finches to eat from the feeders they're squatting in. At the same time, I've seen males feeding other males. Possible problematic queer icons. More review needed.

Chestnut-Backed Chickadee:

Bastard Rating: 5/10 Too tiny to really pose much of a territorial issue, but kinda remind me of flying chihuahuas. They mind their own business when they can, but will not hesitate to throw hands with other birds over either the sunflower feeder or suet cake. Generally don't hold grudges and stay in their lanes, until it comes to suet cakes.

Golden-Crowned Sparrow:

Bastard Rating: 2/10 Hang out in pretty big numbers, but otherwise mind their own business and eat when the other birds aren't taking up the feeders. They prefer the ground feeders. They're generally pretty chill. Their only true crimes are their systematic massacres of my supplies of black oil sunflower seeds.

Varied Thrush:

Bastard Rating: 0/10 Competes with Spotted Towhees in terms of raw cunt-serving power, both my cat and I get all kinds of tingly when this thot shows up. Yeah, he knows you're staring. He knows how good he looks. He's the flashiest bitch on the block. Robins? Dowdy Catholic school kids. Goldfinches? All color, no drama. This magnificent slut is here to slay.

Spotted Towhee:

Bastard Rating: 4/10 The hot goth vampire kid in high school you're 99% has their own OF account. Professionally Round. Uses his phat ass to own the runway (and my feeders) next to his frumpy competition. Is secretly a complete nerd. Basically if Laszlo Cravensworth was a bird.

Pine Siskin:

Bastard Rating: 9/10 This barely-there wannabe-goldfinch would apply lube to the bottom of your heels on Drag Night. The Heelies of the bird world; never truly cool but grasping at any legitimacy he can get. Nobody appreciates plagiarism. And ugh, he couldn't even be bothered to finish blending. What a rank slag. Get off my stage and learn how to work, bitch.

Black-Capped Chickadee:

Bastard Rating: 11/10 DO NOT BE DECEIVED BY THEIR ROUND CUTENESS. These little fuckers are the gangbangers of the forest. Subsist on raw suet cake and spite. They're consistently possessed with the rage of a lust-addled Klingon woman. What the fuck are you doing at their suet cake? God help you, if you're at their suet cake, they will c u t y o u.

Song Sparrow:

Bastard Rating: -1/10 Babygirl. Precious. Just wants to sit on the edge of the gutters or the top of the feeders and make it as independent folk singers. Probably resort to posting hole from time to time to make end's meet. Always eat last because it's all love, my brothers in Christ.

Anna's Hummingbird:

Bastard Rating: 9/10 While they may have cool optical illusions when it comes to their holographic feathers, they verbally abuse me every time I refill the feeder and it hurts my feelings :(

Rufous Hummingbird:

Bastard Rating: 1/10 Shy bois. They stay out of the way until they're sure I've gone back inside before they'll visit the feeders. Generally loners.

Ruby-Throated Hummingbird:

Bastard Rating: 3/10 Generally the It Girls of the bird world. You know your garden is officially making it when these start showing up. They know they're the most popular but generally try to stay grounded about it. Will sometimes hang out and chat while the hummingbird feeder is being refilled. Used to scare me as a kid because my sister convinced me they'd try to stab their beaks into acne spots. While untrue, they don't have much of a sense of personal space.

Mourning Dove:

Bastard Rating: 1/10 Generally only bother the other birds because they're fat and eat in groups big enough to make it hard for the other birds to get at the seed on the ground. Sing beautifully. Makes Hatoful Boyfriend kind of make sense. Ngl kinda wanna befriend one. Confuse me a little bit whenever I see them because I live in a swamp and didn't expect to find any doves out here.

Stellar's goddamned Jay:

Bastard Rating: WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO?!/FUCK I KNOW THE SUNFLOWER DISPENSER JIGGLES WHEN YOU TRY TO FLY YOUR FAT ASS INTO IT. NO, I CANNOT MAKE THE FEEDER POLE STOP WIGGLING WHEN YOU PARK YOUR WIDE LOAD ON TOP OF IT. GDI I BOUGHT PEANUTS FOR YOU. STOP IMITATING A SHRIEKING HAWK TO SCARE AWAY THE OTHER BIRDS AND LEARN TO SHARE YOU ABSOLUTE TWAT.

#birds #silly

[thegeminisage]

readers i am so thrilled to report that tng this evening absolutely ATE. i thought tng was bad but as it turns out tng is good sometimes??? we did "a matter of honor" and "the measure of a man" which are proof of fucking concept: tng CAN BE GOOD!!!

a matter of honor: this is the first time i've been really, really fond of riker. his go-with-the-flow attitude is fantastic. yeah i'll wear the slut costume on the woman planet. sure i'll eat these worms to please the klingons. absolutely i will fuck two of their women at once. good for him. i get it now. I GET IT NOW. he is not only down to fuck is is down to do any and everything. when it rome. so true, buddy. he would've eaten those worms in the conspiracy episode fr

i was just noting how pleased i was that wesley only basically had secondary lines this season ("aye sir" and the like) when they called him to the transport room, but luckily it was just to be racist to that one guy...like, it was stupid, but obviously they were just explaining why they were re-using the prosthetic which turned it around into being funny

picard turning his nose up at the klingon food. WHAT A LIMP NOODLE OF A MAN. IF RIKER CAN EAT IT YOU CAN EAT IT. kirk would've eaten it. don't worry i'm only ragging on picard for this episode he's gonna get his time

whatever worf and riker had going on in this episode was gay. ok gayboys!

riker on the klingon ship...chefs kiss...he was so good. effortlessly parrying the challenge to his authority. conniving to become captain. the word phrase "who's your daddy now" may have been uttered by one or both parties during these scenes, among incredulous laughter. i can't believe he had it in him.

oh and HOW can we forget the klingon women. i actually forgive them for not only the threesome joke but also the breastfeeding joke because they were: fucking hilarious, actually, and felt more like they were punching down at riker instead of women. also i now 100% believe he is prepared to fuck his way through any given spaceship at any time and GOOD for him.

the measure of a man: FINALLY SOME GOOD FUCKING FOOD

still flying high on the endorphins of riker doing All Of That we got to view the poker game, which is apparently the first of many. it was wonderful. i loved data's little visor

episode started to drag when picard's lawyer ex turned up (toscore) bc i dont (didnt?) care about him or his love life, but when maddox showed up i was on high fucking alert bc i knew the name but couldnt remember why

LISTENNN every time he called data an it i gasped. i did call him a bitch several times in a row sorry to catherine. i knew obviously that data was going to be fine but i went on this ENTIRE journey

where do i even start. data resigning rather than submitting to the procedure, his goodbye party, his goodbye to geordi specifically AND THEY SHOULD HAVE HUGGED, augh augh augh

i think it was dumb to make will be the prosecuter if he wasn't going to more actively convey his regret to the audience. all of his goodwill from the klingon ship episode was used up sooo quickly especially when he used data's off button. data doesn't like that!!!!!

i did LOVE however the conversation picard had with guinan...which is bonkers bc apparently it was a last minute addition. but her like oh yeah they're gonna make more datas. entire generations of disposable people and his lightbulb going on OH YOU MEAN SLAVERY and she's like no thats a little harsh and hes like ACTUALLY NO IT ISN'T. it was so good. for the first time tng excelled at something that tos doesn't - like it wasn't too on the nose or pointed the way grand speeches in tos were. it was JUST subtle enough and coming from a black woman who is on tng because of the black woman in tos legitimized it in a way that it couldn't have been as much if, say, picard had come to it on his own. david cage WISHES

PICARD'S EXAMINATION OF MADDOX AND SPEECH IN THE COURTROOM. DID YOU GUYS KNOW HE COULD ACT? hey. did anyone know patrick stewart can act??? he was so fucking pissed off this whole episode and it was kind of nice but like did you guys KNOW he could ACT. when he got in maddox's fucking face about it. GO the fuck OFF i have been waiting and WAITING for him to do this

i loved data's packing things coming back, esp his hologram of tasha yar...she literally took his virginity lol i miss you queen

"does data have a soul? i don't know. i don't know that i have" I LOVE WHEN STAR TREK IS ATHEIST

data forgiving maddox in a sense at the end and maddox switching to calling him he...EYE certainly don't forgive maddox but his shock was so good. realizing something you thought was an inanimate object was like, alive.

also i really like that he forgave riker...i was so relieved they had a scene at the end together and so moved that data could find compassion for him after everything he did that EYE forgave riker...data is genuinely the most loving soul wtf i'd fucking die for him. anyway that made me well up a little bit. what a great episode 10/10 this is gonna be my first "must see" i think

ok! next i do "the dauphin" on my own and then tomorrow we do "the contagion" together

#personal #star trek blogging #tng lb #literally an alternate dimension where tng is good..........

[novakspector]

I don’t like art or fanfic that make the Cardassians more reptile, i.e. turning them into anthros (furries/scalies), giving them dinosaur “snouts,” changing their facial features to be more extreme (like these new shows allegedly did), giving them tails, or saying they have a cloaca or reptile junk down there. Because I think as they are, they are such a well designed species. I don’t think there’s anything about the Cardassians that can be improved from a design standpoint. The makeup design is excellent. I think it’s easily the best alien design ever created, not just in Star Trek but in all of science fiction.

You can see enough of the actors’ face for them to emote and to look recognizable as individuals, but they’re still strange enough to look alien and intimidating. They’re also quite handsome, and that’s because they look recognizably humanoid. Their features aren’t radically changed as in some alien species (huge eyes of “greys”).

Of course, artists and writers can do whatever they want. I’m not saying they shouldn’t draw or write this way, or that it’s wrong. I’m just saying I personally don’t like it or see the appeal of it. Side note, I wish more people would understand this concept: a person disliking something is not a personal attack on those who enjoy it, nor is it a statement that such material shouldn’t be created. I personally just do not like it. That’s it. 🤷🏻‍♀️

I think the Cardassians have the perfect lizard-to-human ratio in terms of their looks, features, and temperament. I like to imagine their reptile-like traits are more external things and some mental things, and that their general over-all biology is standard humanoid. Like their organs are where you’d expect them to be, but slightly different physically than humans. We know they have red blood. We know they can freely mate with other humanoids. We know humans and Bajorans are compatible, and Cardassians and Bajorans are compatible, so the sex organs and reproductive systems of all these species have to be generally the same for that to be the case. It just wouldn’t work otherwise. 

We know Cardassian women have breasts, they give live birth and breast feed, because Seska in Voyager had a baby with a Kazon. We know they don’t lay eggs, so why would they have cloaca? They are sexually compatible with Bajorans, so why would they have snake/lizard penises that need to “evert?” I realize it’s a popular headcanon in fanon stuff but it’s so fucking DUMB that it makes me roll my eyes every time I see “speculative Cardassian anatomy” as a tag on AO3. I’ve seen Gul Dukat’s dick bulge too many times in the show to believe they have coochies down there that their lizard dicks “evert” from. 😅

IMO, Cardassians main differences with other species is they have thicker skin and some scales. They have a parietal eye on their forehead (the “spoon”) to help with thermoregulation. They like warmer temperature because they have a lower body temperature than humans or Bajorans. They like dark places because their eyes are more sensitive to light. They don’t hear very well, but their eyes and other senses are strong. Their sense of smell is much stronger than a human, it’s more like a snake. They are very sensitive to gross odors, like Klingon B.O. They find other species to be more “stinky” and this is part of why they are racist. 

Mentally is where they get quite interesting. I think they have more of the “reptilian” brain or primal brain than humans, which accounts for a lot of their behavior culturally and socially. This is the part of the brain responsible for fight-or-flight, threat assessment, survival instincts, mating, protecting one’s property and family. This part of the brain being more prominent makes the Cardassians view the universe very differently than humans. They are more territorial and are always sizing others up. To humans it comes across as paranoia. They like verbally sparring and debating with one another as their way of romantic flirtation, but it’s also used as a socially acceptable way of fighting. They don’t bash each other around like the Klingons or the Andorians do. They are territorial and aggressive warriors, but they are also socially refined and pride themselves on being very cultured. They view themselves as superior to races like the Klingons, who lack the Cardassians’ social grace. They created a society with intricate and rigidly enforced social rules, not to just oppress and control everyone because they’re baddies, but to keep the peace. They have channeled the people’s natural tendencies to be suspicious, aggressive, and territorial and directed those tendencies toward outsiders like Bajorans and the Federation. They built up a military that conquers other worlds, and focus on their own survival because that’s how their brains work. If they did not have a rigidly controlled society and outward projected aggression, they would have a state of constant civil war with so many paranoid, aggressive people running around suspicious of their neighbors.

I think too much of the discussion about Cardassians’ behavior during the occupation and stuff that Dukat, Garak, Tain, et al do throughout the series forgets that they aren’t human, they aren’t Earthlings, they don’t have the same brains as us, they don’t have the same history as us. So why would they act like us, and why should we hold them to the same standards as us? They are not evil, they are a different species. The fact that they think and behave differently from humans is to be expected. The fact that their morality isn’t our morality is to be expected. The fact that they don’t have something like a Geneva Convention is to be expected.

The different species of Star Trek being genuinely different from humans in terms of mentality and morality is one of the things that makes Star Trek interesting to watch. If all the aliens started adopting human way of viewing the universe, human philosophies, it would be boring. That’s why the idea that after Dominion War the Cardassians become a representative democracy and a free society because they suffered and learned that “WAR IS BAD!!!” is just stupid, OOC, and doesn’t make any sense, not to mention being such a boring turn of events for them as a species. So they just become the human idea of “good guys?” I don’t think it makes sense.

[thebad---catholic]

My problems with AOS

Well here I am, 10 years late with an opinion no one asked for, but I have to write this down and throw into the void so that I can be at peace. I’ve been salty about this film franchise for a very long time now. This will mostly focus on Star Trek (2009) with the other two movies sprinkled in.

1. Starfleet

Honestly where do I even begin? In TOS, Starfleet was modeled after the navy (idk how accurately, but Roddenberry was in the air force so I’m assuming he’d know how all that works). You can get a feel for the chain of command, and everything feels natural with character ages and things like that. There’s a procedure for everything.

AOS Starfleet feels more like a high school club than an interplanetary exploration organization. Jim is supposed to be twenty-five when he gets the rank of captain- after he was almost expelled for cheating. He has no idea how to operate or run a starship. TOS Kirk moved through the ranks of Starfleet and was promoted on merit and leadership skills- he worked for his position.

Why was Jim the only person who knew what was happening when Nero showed up? Was there any requirements to joining to Starfleet other than get on the shuttle? Why did the linguist not know the difference between Vulcan and Romulan when they’re the linguist? How did Pike bypass the chain of command to appoint Jim Kirk as First Officer which was an obvious show of favoritism to someone was about to be thrown out of the academy? Why the fuck was he allowed to keep the title of captain? What the fuck?

Speaking of Jim.

2. Jim Kirk’s Character

I...don’t like Jim’s character in this film. It’s not terrible for a younger version of Kirk, but like I said though, there’s no reason Kirk should be this young. And in this one he’s just kinda a douche.

We know from TOS that Kirk gets around, but he genuinely cares for his exes, and in general respects women. He uses sex appeal as a strategy, but more than anything this comes off as a subversion of the femme fatal trope bc Kirk is a man. In the movie, he’s just a standard action movie protag who has lots of sex just because.

The scene when the Orion woman says she loves him and he replied “that’s so weird” is just...so weird? Like I can’t imagine Kirk doing anything in that situation than backing off and explaining that he doesn’t feel the same way. The scene continues with him hiding under the bed when Uhura walks in. Watching how the camera angle makes Jim out to be a voyeur made me uncomfortable then and it still does. It could be explained that Jim is trying to figure out Uhura’s identity or that he’s listening in and people look at who they’re listening to but like...she was in her underwear. You shouldn’t look at people while they’re getting undressed, especially when they don’t even know you’re there? Is that a hot take? Apparently.

In TOS there’s this really nice scene in This Side of Paradise(S1E24) where the whole crew is high (again) and has abandoned ship, leaving Kirk to tend to things. We see Jim move around the ship with a little clip pad and make the proper checks. This is a captain who knows his stuff. That is the Kirk we should have seen if we’re going to see Jim become captain.

AOS kirk goes through a standard “stop being an asshole” arc commonplace for male protagonists, but this happens well past the point he should stop being an asshole. Either the AOS series should’ve been a prequel with Jim becoming captain at the end of the trilogy, or he should’ve been older with a completely different arc- maybe coming to terms with his rank? Imposter syndrome? Learning to trust his crew and building trust with them? Building a friendship with Spock and McCoy? There’s a lot to work with here.

3. Spock and Uhura’s relationship

Why. Like why. For what. Por Que.

I like giving Uhura a bigger role, I don’t like making her a love interest to do that.

It doesn’t make sense for either of their characters. Lieutenant Nyota Uhura, linguist expert who handles all transmissions to and from the enterprise- an icon of black women’s representation is now demoted to Spock’s nagging girlfriend. This bothers me more than a little bit.

It manages to make even less sense for Spock. A hallmark of Spock’s character is his duality. He struggles to combat his emotions and the human half of him. His repeating character arc in TOS is coming to terms with humanity while upholding the Vulcan way of life. Having him in an established romantic relationship before this arc is supposed to happen just makes for a boring romantic subplot about a relationship that shouldn’t happen and that I don’t care about.

TOS Vulcan culture is kinda shitty. Explicitly patriarchal and stuff, and also kinda racist against humans. The source of Spock’s inner conflict is not himself but a society that views him as lesser for being half human. However, one thing that I can certainly understand from a “logical” (logic in quotations bc racism and sexism is fucking stupid) people is ritualized arranged marriages. It just...makes sense to me that Vulcans would simply have their mates chosen for them and then marry that person and be done with it. Neat. Logical. Conformity.

This makes Spock and Uhura’s relationship even stranger. Why would Spock go so against conformity that he dates someone before he truly comes to terms with himself? Even if they throw out ponfarr and arranged marriage, it still doesn’t work but now it especially doesn’t work.

My personal theory is that Spock and Uhura’s relationship was established purely to make shippers shut up. It’s no secret Spirk is the most popular ship from TOS. I have no doubt they knew this while writing the movie. So to quietly wrap a no homo on Spock and Kirk’s friendship, they use Uhura as a prop to do so.

The teacher/student dynamic should only be relegated to fan fiction and the throwaway line about oral sensitivity makes me cringe. Every. Time.

4. McCoy

Karl Urbans performance is easily my favorite part of this movie. He captures DeForrest Kelley so well it hurts. He made Leonard Nimoy cry. His chemistry with Pine made McKirk go from the most underrated triumvirate ship in TOS to rival Spirks popularity in AOS. His scenes with Zachary Quinto are just *chefs kiss*.

So why doesn’t he have more of a role? The triumvirate is missing a third.

In particular, there’s a scene where Uhura, Kirk, and Spock make their way down to a planet to talk to a Klingon. I can’t remember which movie it was or why, but Spock and Uhura were bickering and Kirk remarks “can we do this later?”

The line was funny. It would’ve been golden if it was McCoy and not Uhura.

A fantastic performance by an underutilized character in a movie where that character should’ve been at the forefront.

5. Representation

I am skeptical of any movie that advertises diversity. Nonetheless, it made me happy to know Sulu was going to be gay. This is Star Trek after all, known for its diversity and large LGBT fan base, and an homage to George Takai who’s a gay man irl. So whatever.

The fact that I wasn’t expecting much says a lot about the current state of LGBT rep in media but this blink-and-you-miss-it shit is really starting to get to me.

I mean he jus- he doesn’t even give his husband a KISS. Like why.

6. Destroying Vulcan

WHY. Oh god why.

This isn’t Star Wars, JJ. We don’t do that here.

Imploding Vulcan was the most god awful shock value bullshit plot device I’ve ever seen in a movie and it was done entirely to make Spock sad. Besides the gaping plot hole of “why did Nero go back in time to destroy Vulcan when he could’ve just saved Romulus” I’m just grasping to find a purpose for this particular event. New fans don’t care at all about Vulcan while I was enraged that they would do Amanda that dirty.

It’s not just that they did that, it’s more that they did it like that. Vulcan’s destruction should’ve caused a federation wide meltdown as the biggest catastrophe in the entire franchise. If they were gonna make the stakes so pointlessly high, they should’ve treated the destruction of Vulcan exactly how they would treat the destruction of earth. There a million ways to treat that event with more gravity and million better plot lines that don’t involve G E N O C I D E

7. Miscellaneous petty bullshit because I’m a baby

-lower the fucking stakes Jesus Christ

-Don’t like the set. It’s bright and white and boring and gives me a headache. You don’t need a remake of the old set but like have fun ya know? Shit looks like an Apple store.

-Christine and I are the same in that we are both soft and are thirsty for Spock. Imagine my surprise to learn she wasn’t fucking there. Same with Janice but I’m more pressed about Christine. I don’t even remember the name of that blonde doctor lady who is Not Christine but i didn’t want her.

-The costumes in AOS look boring but still don’t feel like a uniform either. I deadass think Chris Pines outfit in the SNL skit looked better than the actual movie (minor adjustments needed)

-I didn’t notice this at first but someone pointed out that women’s uniforms don’t signify rank and now I can’t not see it. I don’t...think this movie treats women good? Or McCoy? Or just people who deserve better?

-Lens Flare

-I get why they did it but I don’t like that they misquoted the opening theme to say “no one” instead of “no man”. I probably wouldn’t have even notice except they gave the line to Uhura. Comes off as just a touch too “yay feminism” which is really rich coming from that treated Uhura like an object to be looked at when she wasn’t too busy being Spock’s emotional support gf, and completely cut two women from the main cast.

8. Conclusions

If I could describe these movies in one word it’d be generic. Which sucks because Star Trek far from generic.

They’re fun to watch but not think about. It was nice that I got to see a Star Trek movie in theaters. I just wish it as the same Trek I saw on TV.

#star trek the original series #star trek tos #star trek aos #star trek alternate original series #jj abrams #jim kirk #captain kirk #dr mccoy #bones mccoy #spock #mr spock #lt uhura #nyota uhura #hikaru sulu #star trek #star trek headcanon #trekkie #trekker #star trekkin

[walks-the-ages]

Really gotta love Star Trek establishing over and over and over and over again that the Cardassians (Space Facists and diRECT paralelles to Nazis multiple times), even after making a peace treaty with the Federation, are continuing to attack, enslave, torture, and commit genocide against entire worlds around their territory, including against the Bajorans, who are Direct ""positive"" Parallels to Jewish people, who have been held under a reign of terror and genocide by the Cardassians for generations.

But, you know, Star Trek ALSO says that the Maquis, consisting of Federation citizens who banded together to continue to fight the Cardassians as the Cardassians continued to attack innocent worlds?

According to Star Trek, if you're fighting against facism? If you're fighting against genocide? If you're defending yourself and others from brutal, violent attacks while your government stands by because of a "peace" Treaty? You're the bad guy. You're a terrorist. You're worse than the people who commit genocide, because you're going against Federation Law, which we all know is the ~Pinacle of Moral Authority~

Star Trek will tell you that the Maquis, the Space Anti-Facists, are a violent, vicious group that beats their members into a heirchary of submission. Star Trek will tell you that the people fighting against genocide are vicious and cruel and willing to sacrifice innocent lives along the way as long as they achieve their goals.

Star Trek will tell you that anyone that fights against facism is WORSE than the genocidal Facists they fight.

Star Trek's core message is that Manifest Destiny cannot and should not be denied, and that anyone that tries to get in our way of expanding and colonizing are evil, and that if you are non-white and not a main character, that if you fight against horrific injustices by breaking the law while the law stands by and supports the injustices, then you are worse by far than the aggressor.

You are not immune to propaganda.

Star Trek, while masquerading as Social Justice in many cases purporting to stand against racism, sexism, homophobia, antisemitism, and facism, shows in every episode, in every scene, that these very concepts are baked into it's core.

The Klingons were literally just Black savages in TOS; in TNG, they are STILL savage, agressive and cruel, but now we have Worf, our main character, who is as often reduced to an agressive warrior who abandons his son more than he is a character whose rich history is there to explore. The Klingons are still overwhelmingly Black, but now there's a few white people sublty thrown into the mix.

All of the actresses on the set of TNG have many many interviews about what it was like, acting out a 'utopia where sexism doesn't exist' while being treated in the most horrific sexist ways by the writers and crew, so I will not get into that.

How about all of the mystical pregnancy episodes designed to torture the female characters? How about how Beverly and Deanna only talk about men when they are together? How about how the female characters constantly are sexualized and reduced to stereotypes?

How about the time we see Will Riker flirting with a woman FROM HER PERSPECTIVE and we see how she's afraid of his advances and tries to turn him down multiple times up until he tries to force himself on her, but because Will Riker himself didn't view his actions like that, he did nothing wrong?

How about how in the first episode, Tasha, our white woman, is being persued by an agressive Black man who kidnaps her to force her to marry him, and is pressured by every other character AND the narrative to admit that she finds him and his agressive actions attractive, as though that is some pointed Moral Lesson that the audience needs to understand.

How about making the Ultimate Klingon Enemies be two sisters that rise up to take over the Empire, because the Klingons are ALSO incredibly sexist on top of being racist caricatures, despite what their courtship rituals would insist you believe (men read poetry while women throw heavy objects at the male... Which is literally just more sexism in that it is supposed to be funny that the big strong Black man reads poetry while the big scary Black woman tries to kill him).

Geordi La Forge, 9 times out of 10, is an obsessive incel who stalks women through the holodeck and becomes petty and cold when he is rejected.

There is exactly one episode dealing with homophobia and specifically conversion therapy, which gets it's message across pretty well...

Except that the entire rest of the series refuses to even touch on the subject, going out of its way to insist that all life forms seek to have sex and reproduce with the opposite sex, that all life forms must have males and females, that men and women will always have strict roles in a society, etc etc.

They COULD have had Data and Geordi slowly realize they view each other as more than just friends; they could have had Beverly and the Trill (?) Continue a relationship long distance off screen while Beverly continued to work on the Enterprise. They could have offhandedly mentioned that Picard officiated the marriage of two crew members and casually introduce them later to reveal they are both of the same gender. They could have a child in the care center say they miss their moms/dads, etc etc etc.

As for antisemitism... The Ferengi. The Ferengi the Ferengi the Ferengi. Need I say more?

Wait, of course I do!

The Bajorans are ALSO antisemitic stereotypes!!! Despite the narrative insisting that they're "positive" representation, did you notice their noses? Did you notice how they're not allowed to wear their sacred cultural earrings while in uniform, despite Worf getting to keep his sash? Did you notice that the main Bajoran character, Ensign Ro, is unruly and hostile and got kicked out of Starfleet and put in prison multiple times? Notice how all of the main characters treat her like crap for things they wouldn't even blink at from another character? Notice how, like Worf, she exists in multiple episodes purely so she can offer an agressive option to solve a problem and have her input shot down by the other characters and be scolded for being so aggressive??? Despite their input being the exact solution in many other episodes???

Facism? In MY Federation? It's more likely than you think!

The Federation is constantly upheld as the Highest Moral Authority in the galaxy, and while Picard and the other main White cast occasionally say "obeying orders purely because they're orders is bad", most of the time, the laws of the Federation are upheld as absolute, and anyone that disobeys is harshly punished.

Yes, those humans in Starfleet proclaim all the time that currency is no longer a thing............ But anyone that DOESN'T specifically join Starfleet still has to fight against overwhelming poverty and violence. While every Starfleet military vessel is equipt with Replicators for unlimited food and water, Federation colonies struggle to survive, with scores of orphaned children wandering the streets and women being murdered for a single loaf of bread by starving neighbors.

I do not recall which episode or show it is, but it is outright stated that people regularly join Starfleet Academy to have access to the "utopian" side of society, aka, access to nutritious food and clean water and no longer having to live in squalor. Hmm, it's almost as if that's exactly what the US Military offers to impoverished minorities in the US???

Oh, and can't forget! Starfleet is military. Starfleet is military propaganda. Starfleet claims to be about exploring and scientific discoveries but every single ship is equipted with phasers and every single ship is called to engage in military assignments. Every single Starfleet vessel operates on a strict chain of command and no one can disobey a direct order and must wear strict Federation uniforms and every single ship is equipted with a SELF DESTRUCT option that the captain and first officer can initiate at any time! While families and children are on board!

#Star Trek #Star Trek crit #we're watching Voyager can you tell #Chakotey joined the Maquis because his home colony was being attacked by the Cardassians #while ghe Federation stood by and shrugged #bold text #large text #long post

[transxfiles]

I originally followed you for Lumberjanes and because you felt like a friend, but after seeing so much about Star Trek...I’m curious. What’s the premise and where can I watch it? (Explain it to me like you’d explain it to a child, I don’t watch live action TV)

I want to start out by saying that this ask is so sweet and it made my day, so thank you so much :D 

Star Trek is a bit hard to explain in a sense simply because there’s so much of it. I’m gonna stick to what I know (and what I post about) which is The Original Series (other people will abbreviate it to TOS, I abbreviate it to STOS bc I think of it as ‘Star Trek Original Series’) which came out in the 1960s, and I'll briefly explain Star Trek: The Next Generation (ST: TNG or just TNG), Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (DS9), and Star Trek: Discovery (often simply referred to as Discovery, ST Disco, Disco, etc.) bc I post a bit abt them too, though not as much.

The Original Series is what I mainly watch. It’s about a crew of people from all over Earth (and some other planets, but mostly from Earth) who are traveling in a spaceship called the Enterprise. They’re supposed to be finding new worlds and species, but really they just fuck around and find out. Most of the time they don’t even follow basic lab safety, which gets them into many shenanigans that will have you yelling at the television abt how stupid they are. 

This is Captain Kirk. He’s a Human from Riverside, Iowa and his job on the ship is basically to be dumb and pretty. In a good way. He comes up with some good plans and some bad plans, but no matter what he’ll pretty much always divert an entire mission to save his First Officer, Spock. He’s a romantic who likes flowers and antique books, and doesn’t know what black holes are. 

This is Spock! He’s in charge of Science with a capital S (we don’t really know specifics, but he’s really smart...) and he’s Captain Kirk’s first officer. He’s the only main character who’s an alien - he’s half-Human, half-Vulcan, and was raised on Vulcan by his Vulcan father and Human mother. Vulcans are a species who, unlike Humans, follow a strict philosophy of logic, which means that Spock often appears emotionless and unfeeling to his Human coworkers. Every seven years after hitting puberty, he goes into a mating frenzy when this logic leaves him and he has to have sex or he’ll die. He really likes playing chess, hanging out with Captain Kirk, and the word ‘fascinating’. He does not like McCoy, which is reasonable, because McCoy is basically space racist.

This is McCoy, sometimes referred to by the nickname Bones. He’s the Chief Medical Officer of the ship, an old country doctor from Georgia, and it’s implied that he’s working in space because of his divorce back on Earth. He spends a lot of time with the main crew which will make you question who’s actually on ship taking care of the Medbay. He likes hyposprays (super fast space shots that work like a charm) and drinking hard liquor on the job. He’s an old friend of the Captain. He’s incredibly xenophobic; he does not get along with Spock, and often refers to Spock using words that in-universe are essentially slurs against Vulcans. 

These two guys are Sulu (on the left) and Chekov (on the right). They navigate the spaceship. Sulu likes fencing, botany, and messing with Chekov. He’s friends with everyone on the ship. At one point Space Madness causes Sulu to run through the ship with a fencing foil shirtless and cackling. Chekov’s Russian and won’t shut up about it. He claims that everything was invented in Russia, including but not limited to the book Alice In Wonderland and the invention of the Warp Drive. One of his best lines is “Oh yes, I’ll live, but I won’t enjoy it.” 

In this photo, we see Uhura (on the left) and Scotty (on the right). Uhura’s in charge the ship’s Communications Officer and is a xenolinguist, which means she’s a master of pretty much all known alien languages. She likes big earrings and has a beautiful singing voice. Scotty (on the right) is the ship’s Chief Engineer, who fixes all the problems when Kirk or aliens break the ship. He’s Scottish and you won’t ever forget it. He and Bones are probably drinking buddies.

This is Nurse Chapel. She runs the Medbay when Bones is dancing around on the Bridge or various alien planets. She’s pretty chill and has a little crush on Spock that sometimes causes problems. She and Uhura hang out sometimes.

And finally, this is Yeoman Rand. She and Sulu hang out sometimes. She also vibes with Uhura. I’m not really sure what her exact job is - she delivers food to people sometimes, but she also eats it when no one’s looking. She has the wackiest hairdo on the show. I love her so much.

As far as plot goes, in The Original Series, there isn’t any. They run around on alien planets and sometimes little paper mâché rocks are thrown at them from offscreen. Sometimes they fight Klingons, which are their main enemy (though that doesn’t happen a lot). Sometimes they end up on a planet that’s entirely composed of gangsters from the 1930s and 1940s, sometimes they end up on a planet that’s actually run by the Greek god Apollo, sometimes they end up on a planet but all the people on it are being eaten by space ravioli, sometimes they end up on a planet and a space ghost is killing people to eat their fear, etc. 

You can watch The Original Series on Netflix, and you can generally find copies of it in various Google Drive folders or on video sharing sites like YouTube and Vimeo. There are also six movies: The Motion Picture, The Wrath Of Khan, The Search For Spock, The Voyage Home, The Final Frontier, and The Undiscovered Country. But really you can stop watching after The Voyage Home if you want.

Star Trek: The Next Generation is basically the first series but with more plot, and we have some more aliens plus an android in the mix. Also the characters aren’t nearly as stupid as they are in The Original Series, which makes for less yelling at the screen. (You can watch this on Netflix)

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine focuses on a group of people who work on a space station instead of a spaceship. There are some humans in the mix, but this crew also has a bunch of aliens. There is a bunch of plot, and religion, and the aftermath of war and colonialism. (You can watch this on Netflix)

Star Trek: Discovery has the most plot, and follows Spock’s adopted sister, Michael Burnham, after she accidentally starts the war between the Klingon Empire and the Federation. She ends up serving on a spaceship called the Discovery, where she starts working to discover the secrets of the ship and those who work on it. (You can watch this on CBS’s streaming service but it’s not worth it to get a streaming service just so you can watch one show so I recommend just buying the DVDs on sale at like, Target, if you really wanna see it).

Sorry this ended up being kinda long, I hope this is helpful! The main takeaway is that The Original Series is mostly just a bunch of science fiction short stories in TV episode format. 

#naththemaster #ask #star trek #I hope this helps and I'm sorry if it ended up being too long! Please tell me if you want to know anything else #long post

[richincolor]

Last week someone asked if I knew of any good lists of memoirs and coming-of-age novels. We do have a list of memoirs, but that was created four years ago and several more have been published since then that we’d recommend. I couldn’t recall or find a list like she was describing for coming-of-age books either, so the librarian in me felt the need to make one. Here’s an updated collection of memoirs along with a few coming-of-age novels. If you know of others written by BIPOC authors that you would recommend, please share the titles.

Memoirs

All Boys Aren’t Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto by George M. Johnson Farrar, Straus and Giroux (Byr)

In a series of personal essays, prominent journalist and LGBTQIA+ activist George M. Johnson explores his childhood, adolescence, and college years in New Jersey and Virginia. From the memories of getting his teeth kicked out by bullies at age five, to flea marketing with his loving grandmother, to his first sexual relationships, this young-adult memoir weaves together the trials and triumphs faced by Black queer boys.

Both a primer for teens eager to be allies as well as a reassuring testimony for young queer men of color, All Boys Aren’t Blue covers topics such as gender identity, toxic masculinity, brotherhood, family, structural marginalization, consent, and Black joy. Johnson’s emotionally frank style of writing will appeal directly to young adults.

Almost American Girl: An Illustrated Memoir by Robin Ha Balzer & Bray/Harperteen

For as long as she can remember, it’s been Robin and her mom against the world. Growing up as the only child of a single mother in Seoul, Korea, wasn’t always easy, but it has bonded them fiercely together.

So when a vacation to visit friends in Huntsville, Alabama, unexpectedly becomes a permanent relocation–following her mother’s announcement that she’s getting married–Robin is devastated.

Overnight, her life changes. She is dropped into a new school where she doesn’t understand the language and struggles to keep up. She is completely cut off from her friends in Seoul and has no access to her beloved comics. At home, she doesn’t fit in with her new stepfamily, and worst of all, she is furious with the one person she is closest to–her mother.

Then one day Robin’s mother enrolls her in a local comic drawing class, which opens the window to a future Robin could never have imagined.

Banned Book Club by Kim Hyun Sook, Ryan Estrada, Hyung-Ju Ko (Illustrator) Iron Circus Comics [Crystal’s Review] [Q&A with Authors – in a Comic]

When Kim Hyun Sook started college in 1983 she was ready for her world to open up. After acing her exams and sort-of convincing her traditional mother that it was a good idea for a woman to go to college, she looked forward to soaking up the ideas of Western Literature far from the drudgery she was promised at her family’s restaurant. But literature class would prove to be just the start of a massive turning point, still focused on reading but with life-or-death stakes she never could have imagined.

This was during South Korea’s Fifth Republic, a military regime that entrenched its power through censorship, torture, and the murder of protestors. In this charged political climate, with Molotov cocktails flying and fellow students disappearing for hours and returning with bruises, Hyun Sook sought refuge in the comfort of books. When the handsome young editor of the school newspaper invited her to his reading group, she expected to pop into the cafeteria to talk about Moby Dick, Hamlet, and The Scarlet Letter. Instead she found herself hiding in a basement as the youngest member of an underground banned book club. And as Hyun Sook soon discovered, in a totalitarian regime, the delights of discovering great works of illicit literature are quickly overshadowed by fear and violence as the walls close in.

It’s Trevor Noah: Born a Crime Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah Delacorte Press

Trevor Noah, the funny guy who hosts The Daily Show on Comedy Central, shares his remarkable story of growing up in South Africa with a black South African mother and a white European father at a time when it was against the law for a mixed-race child to exist. But he did exist–and from the beginning, the often-misbehaved Trevor used his keen smarts and humor to navigate a harsh life under a racist government. This fascinating memoir blends drama, comedy, and tragedy to depict the day-to-day trials that turned a boy into a young man. In a country where racism barred blacks from social, educational, and economic opportunity, Trevor surmounted staggering obstacles and created a promising future for himself, thanks to his mom’s unwavering love and indomitable will.

Infinite Hope: A Black Artist’s Journey from WWII to Peace by Ashley Bryan Atheneum Books

In May of 1942, at the age of eighteen, Ashley Bryan was drafted to fight in World War II. For the next three years, he would face the horrors of war as a black soldier in a segregated army.

He endured the terrible lies white officers told about the black soldiers to isolate them from anyone who showed kindness–including each other. He received worse treatment than even Nazi POWs. He was assigned the grimmest, most horrific tasks, like burying fallen soldiers…but was told to remove the black soldiers first because the media didn’t want them in their newsreels. And he waited and wanted so desperately to go home, watching every white soldier get safe passage back to the United States before black soldiers were even a thought.

For the next forty years, Ashley would keep his time in the war a secret. But now, he tells his story. The story of the kind people who supported him. The story of the bright moments that guided him through the dark. And the story of his passion for art that would save him time and time again.

Ordinary Hazards: A Memoir by Nikki Grimes Wordsong

In her own voice, acclaimed author and poet Nikki Grimes explores the truth of a harrowing childhood in a compelling and moving memoir in verse. Growing up with a mother suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and a mostly absent father, Nikki Grimes found herself terrorized by babysitters, shunted from foster family to foster family, and preyed upon by those she trusted. At the age of six, she poured her pain onto a piece of paper late one night – and discovered the magic and impact of writing. For many years, Nikki’s notebooks were her most enduing companions. In this accessible and inspiring memoir that will resonate with young readers and adults alike, Nikki shows how the power of those words helped her conquer the hazards – ordinary and extraordinary – of her life.

They Called Us Enemy by George Takei, Justin Eisinger, Steven Scott, Harmony Becker (Illustrator)Top Shelf Productions

They Called Us Enemy is Takei’s firsthand account of those years behind barbed wire, the joys and terrors of growing up under legalized racism, his mother’s hard choices, his father’s faith in democracy, and the way those experiences planted the seeds for his astonishing future. What does it mean to be American? Who gets to decide? When the world is against you, what can one person do? To answer these questions, George Takei joins co-writers Justin Eisinger & Steven Scott and artist Harmony Becker for the journey of a lifetime.

Coming-of-Age

Clap When You Land by Ellizabeth Acevedo Quill Tree Books [Crystal’s Review]

Camino Rios lives for the summers when her father visits her in the Dominican Republic. But this time, on the day when his plane is supposed to land, Camino arrives at the airport to see crowds of crying people…

In New York City, Yahaira Rios is called to the principal’s office, where her mother is waiting to tell her that her father, her hero, has died in a plane crash.

Separated by distance–and Papi’s secrets–the two girls are forced to face a new reality in which their father is dead and their lives are forever altered.

And then, when it seems like they’ve lost everything of their father, they learn of each other.

Darius the Great is Not Okay by Adib Khorram Penguin Books [Interview with Adib Khorram]

Darius Kellner speaks better Klingon than Farsi, and he knows more about Hobbit social cues than Persian ones. He’s a Fractional Persian–half, his mom’s side–and his first-ever trip to Iran is about to change his life.

Darius has never really fit in at home, and he’s sure things are going to be the same in Iran. His clinical depression doesn’t exactly help matters, and trying to explain his medication to his grandparents only makes things harder. Then Darius meets Sohrab, the boy next door, and everything changes. Soon, they’re spending their days together, playing soccer, eating faludeh, and talking for hours on a secret rooftop overlooking the city’s skyline. Sohrab calls him Darioush–the original Persian version of his name–and Darius has never felt more like himself than he does now that he’s Darioush to Sohrab.

Forward Me Back to You by Mitali Perkins Farrar, Straus and Giroux (Byr)

Katina King is the reigning teen jujitsu champion of Northern California, but she’s having trouble fighting off the secrets in her past.

Robin Thornton was adopted from an orphanage in India and is reluctant to take on his future. If he can’t find his roots, how can he possibly plan ahead?

Robin and Kat meet in the most unlikely of places–a summer service trip to Kolkata to work with survivors of human trafficking. As bonds build between the travelmates, Robin and Kat discover that justice and healing are tangled, like the pain of their pasts and the hope for their futures. You can’t rewind life; sometimes you just have to push play.

In turns heart wrenching, beautiful, and buoyant, Mitali Perkins’s Forward Me Back to You focuses its lens on the ripple effects of violence–across borders and generations–and how small acts of heroism can break the cycle.

Hearts Unbroken by Cynthia Leitich Smith Candlewick Press

When Louise Wolfe’s first real boyfriend mocks and disrespects Native people in front of her, she breaks things off and dumps him over e-mail. It’s her senior year, anyway, and she’d rather spend her time with her family and friends and working on the school newspaper. The editors pair her up with Joey Kairouz, the ambitious new photojournalist, and in no time the paper’s staff find themselves with a major story to cover: the school musical director’s inclusive approach to casting The Wizard of Oz has been provoking backlash in their mostly white, middle-class Kansas town. From the newly formed Parents Against Revisionist Theater to anonymous threats, long-held prejudices are being laid bare and hostilities are spreading against teachers, parents, and students — especially the cast members at the center of the controversy, including Lou’s little brother, who’s playing the Tin Man. As tensions mount at school, so does a romance between Lou and Joey — but as she’s learned, “dating while Native” can be difficult. In trying to protect her own heart, will Lou break Joey’s?

Loveboat, Taipei by Abigail Hing Wen Harperteen [Jessica’s Review]

And just like that, Ever Wong’s summer takes an unexpected turn. Gone is Chien Tan, the strict educational program in Taiwan that Ever was expecting. In its place, she finds Loveboat: a summer-long free-for-all where hookups abound, adults turn a blind eye, snake-blood sake flows abundantly, and the nightlife runs nonstop.

But not every student is quite what they seem:

Ever is working toward becoming a doctor but nurses a secret passion for dance.

Rick Woo is the Yale-bound child prodigy bane of Ever’s existence whose perfection hides a secret.

Boy-crazy, fashion-obsessed Sophie Ha turns out to have more to her than meets the eye.

And under sexy Xavier Yeh’s shell is buried a shameful truth he’ll never admit.

When these students’ lives collide, it’s guaranteed to be a summer Ever will never forget.

Parachutes by Kelly Yang Katherine Tegen Books

They’re called parachutes: teenagers dropped off to live in private homes and study in the United States while their wealthy parents remain in Asia. Claire Wang never thought she’d be one of them, until her parents pluck her from her privileged life in Shanghai and enroll her at a high school in California.

Suddenly she finds herself living in a stranger’s house, with no one to tell her what to do for the first time in her life. She soon embraces her newfound freedom, especially when the hottest and most eligible parachute, Jay, asks her out.

Dani De La Cruz, Claire’s new host sister, couldn’t be less thrilled that her mom rented out a room to Claire. An academic and debate team star, Dani is determined to earn her way into Yale, even if it means competing with privileged kids who are buying their way to the top. But Dani’s game plan veers unexpectedly off course when her debate coach starts working with her privately.

As they steer their own distinct paths, Dani and Claire keep crashing into one another, setting a course that will change their lives forever.

Yes No Maybe So by Aisha Saeed & Becky Albertalli Balzer & Bray/Harperteen [Group Discussion]

YES

Jamie Goldberg is cool with volunteering for his local state senate candidate–as long as he’s behind the scenes. When it comes to speaking to strangers (or, let’s face it, speaking at all to almost anyone) Jamie’s a choke artist. There’s no way he’d ever knock on doors to ask people for their votes…until he meets Maya.

NO

Maya Rehman’s having the worst Ramadan ever. Her best friend is too busy to hang out, her summer trip is canceled, and now her parents are separating. Why her mother thinks the solution to her problems is political canvassing–with some awkward dude she hardly knows–is beyond her.

MAYBE SO

Going door to door isn’t exactly glamorous, but maybe it’s not the worst thing in the world. After all, the polls are getting closer–and so are Maya and Jamie. Mastering local activism is one thing. Navigating the cross-cultural crush of the century is another thing entirely.

#memoir #Coming of age #YALit

[starfleetdoesntfirefirst]

Popping back into disco fandom after a busy week and decided to give my incomprehensible meta from earlier this week a reblog; however, discovered that this webbed site hid it and realized that, despite my scrupulously including no links, it very likely was hidden because of my tongue-in-cheek use of a certain phrase, so decided to just repost instead sans webbed site phrase. Anyway, 

Thinking about the degree to which Cpt. Georgiou’s story is about kindness and integrity, and the degree to which that means that (long before the events of later in the season make this incredibly explicit) it is therefore about the enemy within.

Like any self-respecting Star Trek captain fangirl, I have firm opinions on Georgiou’s Coolest Moments, Most Underrated Qualities, etc. The moment that beats out of a hell of a lot of Cool Underrated Moments/Qualities to reach second-place, extremely-close-to-first place for me is the moment when she tells Burnham that retreat is not an option not only because they’re in Federation space but also because they are the only line of defense for the space station and the Andorian colony behind them.

It’s not really a quotable-quote, but to me, it’s one of her most awesome moments, because it’s what makes much of the rest of the pilot episodes an awesome story about a captain and her crew looking out for innocent people, rather than about a captain risking and ultimately losing her ship and multiple members of her crew for the sake of space!diplomatic posturing.

But my first-place Underrated Georgiou Moment is the one that it’s tempting to call that moment’s inverse: We don’t start shooting on a hunch, and we don’t take innocent lives, period.

Georgiou looks out for the people on the base behind her, and she looks out for people in the starship confronting hers, which is only the inverse of looking out for innocent people if you’re willing to stake their lives on the assumption that they are not innocent.

<food/diet talk> I once read an advice column where someone had written in to say that they wanted to eat more ‘healthy food,’ but that fast and processed food was faster, cheaper, and better-tasting. The advice columnist began their response with Well, you’re right–fast food is faster, cheaper, and better-tasting! At the time, having grown up with years of war-on-obesity type messages about how home-cooked fresh-vegetable-based meals were in fact Faster and Cheaper and More Delicious than fast food, I clutched my pearls at this.

What the advice columnist said was, of course, in many contexts, correct. We tell our children that fresh food is always cheap and easy to prepare and will save them, </food/diet talk> and that kindness feels good and pleasant and makes their lives better, and sometimes it does, but sometimes it’s brutal and painful and entirely capable of making things worse. I think one reason I find Georgiou’s Trek Captain StoryTM comforting is because of the way her story as a whole makes me feel less alone in not necessarily associating acting with kindness with feelings of softness or pleasure or fulfillment.

Acting with kindness is so often swallowing a grenade; wrapping your arms around it. Matter can’t be created or destroyed and even in the movies whose directors haven’t seen the Mythbusters episode about how jumping on a grenade probably wouldn’t work anyway, you can’t put the pin back into it. The pain has to go somewhere.

Kindness and integrity are about shouldering the pain–even though you don’t deserve it; even though the very act of taking the pain onto yourself not only hurts you but also might in turn hurt someone else. Or, sometimes, kindness and integrity and supporting someone else are about finding a way to offload some of the weight onto another, different someone-else who doesn’t deserve the pain either but maybe, in this moment, is more capable of shouldering it than the person you’re looking out for would be. Kindness is entirely capable of wounding its practitioners, or, to paraphrase Seven of Nine: It’s hopeless and pointless and exhausting, and the only thing worse would be giving up.

Despite all those poems about women being wolves (the idea of wolves), and letting our teeth drip with blood and thorns grow from our hair, much of the time the person in the path of our aching teeth is not the person who deserves to cut by them. Have you ever wished someone, a good person!, ‘Good morning,’ and gotten a perhaps-justified glare from their exhaustion-smudged eyes? Because they’re in such a bad mood, because they’re in so much pain, because of course they would have glared at anyone who spoke to them? Except that, of course, it turns out they were quite capable of warmly greeting their boss or their lover or the more valued–and less visibly disabled–person who walks into the room after you. Even justified rage and pain and desire, when released indiscriminately, often do discriminate.

Near the end of Discovery Season 1, I remember reading a review that encapsulated Mirror Georgiou as being mirror-universe-evil but also a better strategist than Prime Georgiou, because she was quicker on the uptake than Prime Georgiou had been when Burnham spoke with each of them, respectively, about the current relevant threats. But deciding who is better at threat assessment necessitates defining what is a threat.

There’s a piece of fan art I’ve always wanted to paint if a) I had significantly greater art skill, b) I had the literal weeks it would take to paint a multi-panel art piece, and c) art on the theme of ‘person protecting someone else with their body’ didn’t inevitably come across looking like the “this is so sad” poorly-scaled soldier protecting cartoon toddler meme: Captain Georgiou and a small Shenzhou, a la all those sick Janeway-chilling-with-small-floating-Voyager-in-space artworks, standing in space with the space station behind her and the Klingon fleet in front of her. She is protecting the space station behind her from war; in subsequent panels, the viewpoint revolves around her and the little Shenzhou, and the images behind her shift to show the people we know and love on the Discovery–Culber and Stamets kissing; Burnham and Stamets releasing the tardigrade back into space; everything we recognize from ST:DSC’s Federation as innocent and loveable and worth protecting.

But as we circle back around to the same viewpoint again, the images shift. Instead of the Klingon fleet in front of Georgiou and the Shenzhou, we see the innocent people living their lives on Qo’noS; behind her, we see Mirror Georgiou bombing the rebel base; Mirror Georgiou preparing to execute Burnham; Cornwell and Sarek working with Mirror Georgiou to destroy Qo’noS; Qo’noS exploding into fiery nothingness. Is Prime Georgiou defending what is behind her from what is in front of her, or holding back what is behind her to protect the rest of the universe?

What is a Star Trek captain’s coolest #Underrated Moment?

Would Captain Georgiou have been able to effect more net positive good in the universe if she’d been just a bit more ruthless, a bit less Captain Kirk and a bit more Chrisjen Avasarala from The Expanse, and had elbowed her way up in the ranks to become an admiral by the time of the war? Maybe! To quote another advice column: “Should” Éowyn have stayed behind in Edoras to be Queen? Probably.

(Because that one’s a complimentary quote and Tumblr will hide the post if I link: “Commander Logic tells you how to get unstuck,” captain awkward dot com, which I do not endorse entirely as an advice site but which definitely has its moments.)

But then, of course, there’s no woman-Hobbit tag team to kill the Witch-King of Angmar (who is most definitely not Innocent People), and then maybe Admiral Georgiou helps create a better Federation that flawlessly averts the war in the first place and buys all of its citizens a new puppy, or maybe a Georgiou who would make the choice to ruthlessly cut her way to the top is, in fact, the Georgiou we meet at the end of Season 1 who made the choice to ruthlessly cut her way to the top and now stands there, using a mirrored Starfleet to control a mirrored universe.

Here is the story we got instead: Georgiou was a captain and not an admiral, and she didn’t avert a war, and she lectured Burnham like a child and was space-racist about Saru and didn’t even always wrap her own indiscriminate cruelty and pain and desire safely in her arms.

(And yes, I’ll always be disappointed that we didn’t get seven seasons of Captain Georgiou, or one season of Captain Georgiou and six season of Captain Burnham and background Admiral Georgiou, or… Prime Georgiou isn’t just comforting and hopeful and inspiring; she has flaws and impulsiveness and ruthlessness herself. What would it be like to see the story where she grows?)

But she did not start shooting on a hunch, and she did not take innocent lives. She put her own ruthlessness into the service of holding back what was behind her as much as facing down what was in front of her. She changed the people who she served with and captained, like every other cliched metaphor of ripples in a pond, and when Starfleet became the enemy within, and partnered with her own mirrored enemy within to try to kill millions of innocent adults and babies and children, it was the woman who had been the Shenzhou’s first officer who was the first to stand and say No, and the woman who had been the Shenzhou’s pilot who was the second.

I enjoyed seeing Mirror Georgiou stab Mirror Lorca as much as I enjoyed seeing Éowyn stab the Witch-King of Angmar. I don’t have a problem with the power part of power fantasy. But sometimes the Underrated Moment looks uncool. Sometimes the only way to act with integrity is to give something up rather than to Stand Up For Yourself The Way You Deserve, and the only way to look out for someone else hurts you in a way that is painful and awful and unfair. Even the most satisfying power fantasy is still a fantasy.

I would have preferred to see Lorca live and stand trial for crimes against humanity not for his sake but because a Terran Empire that condoned death as a consequence for failure is only a mirror to a Federation that condoned life in prison as a consequence for mutiny.

What do you see as Starfleet’s greatest threat?

#the phraseTM can be seen in the orig. which is still on my blog to preserve little-brisk’s kind comments on it #philippa georgiou #star trek discovery #normally I would not maintag my rambling meta but the disco tag is deserted rn btwn seasons so #here is some absolutely incomprehensible content! #(as always PLEASE feel welcome to add shit #I yearn for more meta in this fandom and if my incomprehensible and vaguely pretentious content helps generate some then !!!!) #meta #georgiou #mirror georgiou #food #ableism #racism #seven of nine #star trek picard #burnham #cornwell #sarek #prison #incarceration #trauma #the expanse #avasarala #lotr #éowyn #lorca #detmer

[tsaomengde]

Tiny Viewing Guide to Star Trek: The Next Generation

Just found out one of my oldest friends, a huge sci fi guy, has never actually seen TNG, or indeed any Trek. He asked if I wouldn't mind writing a viewing guide. Not all that tiny, but the blurb for each episode is tiny. YMMV.

S1

Encounter at Farpoint - Goofy but iconic, series premiere

The Naked Now - Bad but hilarious and a little important

Code of Honor - terrible racist horseshit

The Last Outpost - first time we meet the Ferengi, they're not impressive

Where No One Has Gone Before - interesting enough

Lonely Among Us - I have no memory of this place

Justice - terrible outfits, Wesley episode

The Battle - Picard episode, not terrible

Hide and Q - Riker-centric Q episode, not the best Q episode, not the worst

Haven - first time we meet Lwaxana, don't remember anything else

The Big Goodbye - first of many holodeck episodes, pretty good

Datalore - important!!!

Angel One - totally forgettable

11001001 - meh

Too Short a Season - weird, generally meh

When the Bough Breaks - Wesley episode, don't remember it much

Home Soil - no clue

Coming of Age - more Wesley (can you tell Gene Roddenberry liked the character?), but not bad

Heart of Glory - first time the Klingons get real character, important

The Arsenal of Freedom - automated weaponry is bad, mmkay

Symbiosis - nope, no idea

Skin of Evil - dark, nasty, generally unpleasant episode, important for character reasons

We'll Always Have Paris - genuinely do not remember this one but wiki says there's time travel and that's always fun

Conspiracy - real mixed feelings about this one, it's tense and interesting TV but not really good Trek and it has huge implications that are never revisited

The Neutral Zone - Romulans are reintroduced, pretty cool

S2

The Child - pretty decent Troi episode

Where Silence Has Lease - interesting space puzzle episode sprinkled with Picard philosophizing

Elementary, Dear Data - first Sherlock!Data holodeck episode, excellent stuff

The Outrageous Okona - weeeaaaak, but kind of funny

Loud As A Whisper - cool deaf character, cringey late-80s implementation

The Schizoid Man - Data episode, good acting, cringey dialogue

Unnatural Selection - Pulaski-centric, and I dislike Pulaski so this is a pass for me

A Matter Of Honor - Riker serves on a Klingon warship, some good stuff

The Measure of A Man - Easily a top 10 Trek episode of all time

The Dauphin - Wesley has a crush, receives terrible romantic advice from entire crew

Contagion - interesting lethal archaeology

The Royale - love this episode, it's terrible and bad science but I love it

Time Squared - weird time-travel stuff, not one of the best

The Icarus Factor - lot of good character stuff, terrible future martial arts

Pen Pals - excellent Data episode, thoughts about the Prime Directive

Q Who - WATCH THIS ONE

Samaritan Snare - bad episode, funny moments

Up The Long Ladder - holy shit the Irish racism

Manhunt - Lwaxana Troi at her best, love it

The Emissary - Amazing Klingon stuff

Peak Performance - good episode, lots of fun character bits

Shades of Gray - TERRIBLE CLIP SHOW AVOID AVOID AVOID

S3

Evolution - Wesley episode, not bad but not great

The Ensigns of Command - Mediocre Data episode

The Survivors - space puzzle episode, OK

Who Watches the Watchers - more prime directive stuff, mildly interesting

The Bonding - interesting stuff about grief

Booby Trap - another space puzzle, high stakes, cool payoff

The Enemy - Pretty good, Romulans

The Price - fun episode

The Vengeance Factor - ehhhhhhhh

The Defector - More Romulan stuff, is good

The Hunted - will 100% make you scream at how terrible security is in the future, not a bad ep though

The High Ground - ugh, just not great

Deja Q - good Q episode

A Matter of Perspective - let's use the holodeck to prove Riker couldn't have committed this crime!

The Offspring - WATCH THIS BUT BRING TISSUES

Sins of the Father - first of many Klingon Politics episodes, I love these with a fiery passion and my wife is bored to tears by them so YMMV

Allegiance - space puzzle, not a great one but not bad

Captain's Holiday - WATCH THIS, IS AMAZING

Tin Man - literally put me to sleep once

Hollow Pursuits - First of many Barclay episodes, my beautiful autistic space boi

The Most Toys - alright, worth one watch

Sarek - SO IMPORTANT WAAAAAAAAAATCH

Menage a Troi - bad episode, worth it for the payoff

Transfigurations - Jason Ironheart called, he knows he came after this episode chronologically but he was better

The Best of Both Worlds, Part 1 - YAAAS

S4

The Best of Both Worlds, Part 2- YAAAAAAAAAAAAAS

Family - So important

Brothers - Very Important

Suddenly Human - meh

Remember Me - very interesting space puzzle, one of the Crusher episodes where she gets to be awesome

Legacy - not the most jaw-dropping ep but important

Reunion - KLINGON POLITICS YEEES

Future Imperfect - interesting enough

Final Mission - Wesley episode, not bad

The Loss - v. good Troi episode

Data's Day - fun, wholesome Data times

The Wounded - SO GOOD AND SO IMPORTANT

Devil's Due - I love this episode even if it's not that important or good

Clues - Awesome space puzzle

First Contact - eh? okay? sure?

Galaxy's Child - fine, whatever

Night Terrors - uuuuugh, no

Identity Crisis - this one scared the fuck out of me as a kid and may be responsible for my deep-seated body-transformation-horror triggers, now it's just kind of weird

The nth Degree - BARCLAY, LOVE HIM AND THIS EP

Qpid - YES SO GOOD

The Drumhead - This is Michael Dorn's favorite episode and it is worthy of the title

Half a Life - Lwaxana is great, the episode not as much

The Host - introduction of the Trill, kind of cringey almost 30 years later

The Mind's Eye - brainwashing stuff, meh

In Theory - Data tries to date, hilarities ensue

Redemption Part 1 - GIVE ME THE KLINGON POLITICS

S5

Redemption Part 2 - MOOOOOOOOOORE

Darmok - One of my top 5 episodes in the series

Ensign Ro - so important, introduces the Bajorans and Ensign Ro

Silicon Avatar - important for Data, not a terribly interesting episode otherwise

Disaster - Troi gets to shine! cool episode

The Game - by far the worst Wesley episode. everyone is seduced into acting like a brainwashed idiot by a terrible space future video game. fuck this episode and everyone who wrote it but especially Brannon Braga.

Unification 1 - WATCH

Unification 2- THESE

A Matter of Time - So good, waaatch

New Ground - I am not a fan of Alexander but he is so important to Worf's growth, so... yeah

Hero Worship - more stuff about grief, eh

Violations - I don't remember this one that much but I do not think I enjoyed it

The Masterpiece Society - read the above description

Conundrum - amazing space puzzle episode. easily one of my favorites in the series

Power Play - meh

Ethics - very important, good Trek

The Outcast - THIS EPISODE COULD HAVE BEEN SO MUCH BETTER IF THE LOVE INTEREST WAS MALE. JONATHAN FRAKES PUSHED FOR A MALE ACTOR. watch it anyway

Cause and Effect - fun space puzzle, a little repetitive but totally solid

The First Duty - one of the best Picard Speeches ever, watch

Cost of Living - fun Lwaxana episode

The Perfect Mate - pretty meh but Famke Janssen is fun as Kamala

Imaginary Friend - so bored

I, Borg - INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT

The Next Phase - interesting episode about the afterlife

The Inner Light - THIS IS MY FAVORITE EPISODE OF THE ENTIRE SERIES AND I CRY EVERY TIME

Time's Arrow 1 - Such good time travel

S6

Time's Arrow 2 - Such great Mark Twain

Realm of Fear - Yay more Barclay!

Man of the People - bad Troi episode

Relics - WAAAAAAAAAATCH

Schisms - space puzzle, kind of lame payoff due to effects limitations but the journey is worth it

True Q - By far the worst fucking Q episode ever written

Rascals - uuuuuuuugh. half the crew is regressed into children. Ferengi are involved. you are missing nothing.

A Fistful of Datas - amazing dumb holodeck episode, watch

The Quality of Life - boring episode, good message

Chain of Command 1 - So dark, so difficult, so totally riveting and important

Chain of Command 2 - See above

Ship in a Bottle - Sequel to Sherlock!Data, amazing

Aquiel - could have been written much better

Face of the Enemy - by far the best Troi episode, Marina Sirtis was incredibly happy when I told her it was one of my favorites

Tapestry - fantastic Q/Picard episode

Birthright 1 - Basically exists to set up DS9 but is pretty good and has important bits

Birthright 2 - See above

Starship Mine - DIE HARD ON THE ENTERPRISE

Lessons - Very important Picard episode

The Chase - amazing space puzzle episode, has one of my favorite one-off Klingon characters

Frame of Mind - is Riker's entire life a delusion he has created to mentally escape his imprisonment in a mental asylum? spoilers: no

Suspicions - Good mystery episode, Crusher gets to do stuff

Rightful Heir - Very important Worf episode, good Klingon stuff

Second Chances - uh, kind of bad, but it gets referenced later in DS9

Timescape - super interesting space puzzle, amazing character bits

Descent 1 - WAAATCH

S7

Descent 2 - as above

Liaisons - okay. not great. not bad.

Interface - OK Geordi episode

Gambit 1 - Amazing stuff

Gambit 2 - More amazing stuff

Phantasms - Psychological horror? in my Data? it's more likely than you think. watch

Dark Page - one of the few Lwaxana episodes I don't love

Attached - great Picard/Crusher episode

Force of Nature - environmentalism! is! good!

Inheritance - important Data episode

Parallels - SUCH A GOOD WORF EPISODE

The Pegasus - very important Riker episode

Homeward - Interesting Worf and Prime Directive episode

Sub Rosa - so cringey and terrible, oh my God

Lower Decks - a fun change of pace from the main cast

Thine Own Self - I don't love it, but it is good character stuff

Masks - weird space puzzle episode, I love it but I wouldn't call it Great

Eye of the Beholder - space mystery, it's not fantastic

Genesis - look. this episode is not good. but it has amazing costumework by Michael Westmore. and has some great Picard/Data stuff. watch it.

Journey's End - super important stuff. sets up a lot of stuff for DS9 and VOY

Firstborn - Good Worf/Alexander episode

Bloodlines - More Ferengi stuff, kind of lame

Emergence - space puzzle, weird but interesting

Preemptive Strike - So so so so important

All Good Things... - it's the series finale. and some of the best Trek ever. obviously you're going to watch.

#star trek #the next generation #star trek the next generation #st:tng #tng #viewing guide #blurbs #ymmv

[idairsauthor]

This Fcking Emergency: Stupid Racist Magic

PLAIDDER: Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of This Fucking Emergency, an intermittent imaginary cable talk show where I sit down with some of the many imaginary characters I have created or befriended over the years and discuss vital issues of the day. Please welcome back to the program everyone’s favorite imaginary diplomat, legislator, and former sheep dealer, Conn mac Emer...

CONN: Why are there so many chairs on set today?

PLAIDDER: Because there were two mass shootings within 24 hours last weekend. 

CONN: I don’t see the...

PLAIDDER: OK. I wrote Redemption for a lot of reasons. One of them was that I was trying to understand and maybe imagine a solution for school shootings. This was in 2005, I would just like to remind our viewers. Aught fucking five. Fourteen years ago I finished this novel and I was already, at that point, permanently appalled by this country’s tolerance for mass shootings in schools. 

CONN: So what happened to Daphie at Decalon High--

PLAIDDER: Yes. That happens in my country. OFTENER and OFTENER. Now you didn’t have a lot to do with that storyline because you were caught up in the other horror of life in the aughts, viz., the War On Terror. But anyway, my point is: because I wrote that novel, when something like this happens...I mean I don’t even call them. Your fellow-characters just...show up.

DAPHIE: Hello?

PLAIDDER: Hi, Daphie. If you want to know what you’re doing here--

DAPHIE: Because of the baby and the mother and the father.

PLAIDDER: Exactly. Only in this case, only the baby survived. Because in my world, evidently, we only have one kind of magic.

CONN: I thought your world didn’t have shri.

PLAIDDER: We definitely don’t. 

CONN: Then what kind of magic do you--

PLAIDDER: Chandra knows.

CHANDRA: Hi.

CONN: Where the hell did you come from all of a--

PLAIDDER: Chandra, can you just say it? That line of yours that’s been in my head since El Paso.

CHANDRA: Found a church on stupid racist doctrine, you get stupid racist magic.

PLAIDDER: Yes. And you know how you get even MORE stupid racist magic? You choose, as the person to lead your nation, a stupid racist mage.

CONN: Nothing about your president seems magical to me.

PLAIDDER: Yes, well, that’s the Ideiren point of view. But what Chandra’s talking about is National. It is in fact the only kind of magic in your universe that originated in the Nation.

CHANDRA: I always thought it was all bullshit. I mean...my family definitely tried to annihilate me with it, and here I still am--

PLAIDDER: All right, let me explain what I mean by ‘magic’ in this context. 

AINE: This should be interesting.

CONN: Shriia! I didn’t know you’d be here.

AINE: Neither did I.

PLAIDDER: Like I said. I don’t even call them; they just come. Anyway. I had an old friend over for dinner the other day who was talking about what we call “the magic of the theater.” Now, when I say that I’m usually being ironic, but he seems to really believe in it and to be honest I’m not totally sure that I don’t. A lot of contemporary performance theory is based at some distance on the idea of theater as a ritual which at some point in the distant past was efficacious.

SONNIA: Effiwhatnow?

PLAIDDER: And welcome to you too, Sonnia. 

AINE: “Efficacious” means that it actually makes something happen. So, take haons linn.

SONNIA: You mean that weird thing you do at five in the morning.

AINE: To you it’s a weird thing I do at five in the morning. To me and to the rest of my people it’s how we help create the world. To you it’s a ritual the same way, I don’t know, brushing your teeth is a ritual. To us, it’s efficacious. It keeps the world together. I can skip it under extraordinary circumstances once in a while and things will be all right, but that’s only because other shriias will be doing haons linn somewhere else. If we all stopped doing haons linn...the sun wouldn’t rise. The whole world would just stay dark, forever.

SONNIA: Really?

AINE: Yes, really.

SONNIA: So what explains the fact the sun rises in the Nation?

AINE: It rises in the Nation because we’re all on the same island.

SONNIA: What about Dubhinis? There’s no shriias in Dubhinis.

TYRNA: Don’t you wish.

PLAIDDER: Hello, Tyrna, thanks for joining us.

AINE: Don’t be hard on her, Tyrna, she was raised to believe--

TYRNA: I know what she was raised to believe in.

SONNIA: So you do haons linn.

TYRNA: I don’t. That’s an Ideiren thing. But we do other things to keep our world together. Despite what you hear from Chandra’s people--

CHANDRA: They’re not my people any more--

TYRNA: --the Nation is not the center of the universe. The Nation only continues to exist because the rest of us are building the world around it. 

SONNIA: That’s nuts. The world is real, whether--

TYRNA: Nobody’s saying it’s not.

PLAIDDER: Well, I kind of am. I mean, your world isn’t actually real. It’s created. It’s created by me, you know, with the support of the people who read it. And that means Tyrna’s absolutely right. I wouldn’t have created this world just to write about the Nation. On the other hand, I couldn’t, or at least I didn’t, create Ideire or Dubhinis or Plenana or any of the other islands without also creating the Nation.

TYRNA: Why the hell not? 

AINE: Tyrna!

PLAIDDER: No, she’s right to ask. Of all the places in your universe, the Nation is the one most like the place where I come from.

CHANDRA: That’s...really depressing.

PLAIDDER: You’re telling me. 

CONN: Weren’t we talking about the magic of the theater?

PLAIDDER: Yes. Yes we were. Anyway, so my friend’s idea of the magic of the theater is this: You have a vision of something you want to make happen. The thing does not come into existence at that moment. You have to work to make it happen. You find other people and you share the vision with them, and you find a place, and you find a lot of other stuff, and eventually the thing that you imagined becomes real--so real that other people can see it. This is an ordinary process that goes on all over the place all the time. But when you think about it, this is actually kind of what magic is. You imagine something, and that makes it real.

SONNIA: I’m not getting any of this.

AINE: I think we’d better move on. I spent months trying to move Sonnia past this stage and it never happened.

PLAIDDER: And then what I said was--and this was before all of THIS happened--there’s a passage in one of the Little House books where Pa explains the railroad the same way. The engineers imagine a railroad, and then everybody goes out west and works 24/7 and digs dirt and pounds steel and eats pancackes and gets paid because of something that’s just an idea, that doesn’t exist at all. It’s a really interesting passage--it’s in By the Shores of Silver Lake, I think. 

CHANDRA: Of course the real magic there is--

PLAIDDER: Imperialism and capitalism, yes. But that’s my point. This having a vision and making it real thing is a lot of fun and I think, mostly, good for people in the theater, as long as the Vision-Haver is, you know, a clueful and compassionate person who cares about the human consequences of their magic. But there’s nothing inherently good about this process of making a vision real. It can be bad. It can be really bad. It can be REALLY. FUCKING. BAD.

DAPHIE: Like...

PLAIDDER: Yes. Exactly.

SONNIA: I don’t know what she’s--

PLAIDDER: Daphie’s whole novel is about me trying to understand one particular kind of very bad magic. I was trying to understand how a thing like the shooting at Decalon High is imagined and then how it is made real. Over and over, oftener and oftener. It seemed to me as if every evil vision, every malicious imagination in my world had collaborated to create this thing. I wrote...I don’t even know how many hundred thousand words went into that novel. Let’s just say the problem and the solution in Redemption are about three times as complicated as they are in any of the earlier novels. And when I look back on it, I can only see one thing about that explanation that I think is really true, that I think is still true now.

CONN: Which is what?

CHANDRA: Stupid racist magic.

PLAIDDER: Bingo.

CHANDRA: “Bingo”?!

PLAIDDER: It’s...oh, never mind. Look, about fifty years ago Jerome Bixby was trying to understand the magic of war and he wrote a script for a show called Star Trek called “Day of the Dove.” And in that episode, there are these energy beings that feed off aggression. So they try to bait all the people on this one ship into fighting each other, so they can feed. The individual Starfleet or Klingon people think they want war but there’s actually some force out there making them want it, making them do things, imagining a war and then making it happen. And it’s remarkable how durable this idea is. I mean you could link it back to Tolstoy and War And Peace, where he tries to understand a thing like the war of 1812 and takes all those thousands of pages to prove that none of the historical explanations for it matter worth a damn. The war happened because Providence wanted to move people from west to east and this was the way Providence found of making that real. Or in season 2 of Stranger Things, they start calling the monster the Mind-Flayer and everything gets tentacly and it is weird, it is REALLY weird for me, how much that damn thing looks like an arani--like the biggest fucking arani ever--

AINE: I hate arani.

PLAIDDER: Yes! I hate them too! They are the nastiest fucking things in the ether apart from the kraikk, and as with the Mind-Flayer and those pumpkin patch death vines and all of these things are metaphors for whatever it is out there that keeps making humans hurt and kill each other when clearly, clearly, that is not what most individual human beings want or what most of them would do if they were free.

TYRNA: Says you.

PLAIDDER: All right. Says me. 

TYRNA: You want to know what I think?

PLAIDDER: Sure.

TYRNA: Put whatever metaphors you want on it. Under the costume it’s always greed. Just people grabbing what they can get and then trying to kill anyone who looks like they might take it from them. Throwing the whole world out of balance. I keep trying to right the balance and it’s like water in a sieve. A hundred women like me couldn’t do it. A thousand couldn’t do it.

CHANDRA: All right, greed, definitely, but like...I mean...the cruelty. The cruelty isn’t just about greed. Sometimes the cruelty actually interferes with the greed. People have a choice between them and they choose cruelty. 

TYRNA: I never said your magic was efficient. It’s been pretty efficacious, all the same.

CHANDRA: But why the cruelty? I mean that’s the question that’s kept a dozen of my therapists up at night. Cruelty beyond monetary gain, cruelty beyond utility. Cruelty as...as, like, a god unto itself.

TYRNA: Cruelty and greed are both lusts and they’re limbs of the same tree grown from the same rotten root.

PLAIDDER: So anyway...what I said was, if theater is magic, then, fascism is magic too. Someone has a vision. He calls out to other people. Other people share that vision. Then they make it real. And it’s hideous. That’s what--I mean, Rhinoceros.

CONN: I beg your pardon?

PLAIDDER: This old French play where everyone turns into rhinoceroses. No reason, they just do it. Because something’s making it happen. It’s not called magic, it’s called absurdism. But it’s the same thing: why the fuck is this hideous transformation taking place? Why can’t anyone stop it? I mean I think the arani and all those metaphors Tyrna is quite rightly impatient with--it’s our way of representing the just--fucking--irrationality of it all. It starts to seem at some point as if nobody really WANTS this, it’s just happening because the thing that’s making it happen is too powerful to stop. Like, an arani doesn’t have an agenda. It just grows. That’s all it does. It has no brain and no intelligence, it’s just an empty bag of guts with filaments hooked into a hundred different heads. It can be manipulated by an intelligent and powerful human...to a point. And after that it just...feeds. This image that we have of this monstrous indefinable thing that makes us do horrible things to each other--I mean--we made it real. We MADE IT REAL. We keep making it. First it’s newspapers then it’s phones then it’s radio then it’s television now it’s the internet. And THAT MAN goes out there and fills up this arani with his--he goes out there and does his--

CHANDRA: Stupid racist magic.

PLAIDDER: People in my country mostly don’t believe that curses are efficacious. But they are. If you’re powerful enough, you can curse people. If you’re the president of the united states, you can call down evil on someone, and the evil will materialize. He says the words--and they’re stupid, stupid words--but they still have power. They suggest images to people who hear them. And then people go and make them real. And then he can say it had nothing to do with him. Because there is no material, no evidentiary, no objective chain of causation. But everyone knows he’s doing it. Everyone knows. Regardless of what they admit. They know that his stupid racist magic is killing people. In El Paso. In Dayton. In Gilroy. He’s imagined a world in which white men are omnipotent and he’s making it real.

AINE: Trying to make it real.

PLAIDDER: Aine, it *is* real, don’t you understand, it’s real in a way that much as I love you you can never be.

CONN: If that gleachinai is doing magic then he’s not the only one. There are other visions in your country. There are better visions. People share them and work at them and some of them come true some of the time. You know that. I don’t understand why you say that this is the only kind of magic your world has. It isn’t.

PLAIDDER: But stupid racist magic just keeps killing people and I don’t understand why it just keeps getting stronger and more powerful and--

TYRNA: BECAUSE IT HAS GUNS.

PLAIDDER: OK, I get that, but--

TYRNA: Do you though? I don’t think you do. There’s nothing magical about any of this. Yeah, words have power, even when idiots use them. Because the idiots HAVE THE GUNS. All of this nonsense keeps happening in your country because nobody has taken the guns away from the idiots.

PLAIDDER: It’s very hard to take a gun away from an idiot.

TYRNA: Honey, what about me or my backstory would ever make you think that I do NOT know that?

PLAIDDER: Nothing.

TYRNA: Damn right. Yeah, it’s hard. It’s hard watching idiots ruin the world. It’s a crime and a shame. It’s unfair. But none of that is a new thing for me, all right? I’ve been fighting stupid racist magic all my life and I will tell you this. You want the balance restored, you have to take some guns away from some idiots. Now when is that going to happen, in your world?

PLAIDDER: Well, Tyrna, it could be said that your whole universe is the result of the fact that it is easier for me to imagine demons and monsters and devils and people shooting fire out of their hands than it is to imagine the government of my actual  country actually taking guns away from idiots.

TYRNA: Wow.

PLAIDDER: Yeah.

DAPHIE: It isn’t always idiots.

PLAIDDER: Daphie...

DAPHIE: Jarad wasn’t an idiot.

PLAIDDER: I know. But some idiot made it easy for Jarad to get a RAF. I mean I never even explained how that happened, because in my own world that’s not an extrarordinary event. Like, of course he could find a RAF when he wanted one, that’s how things just are. I was...when I wrote your book, I was...not interested in that part of it. I was chasing all these other explanations, because that was what we all did, back in the aughts.

CHANDRA: So...I mean...what. You...regret the whole...our whole story?

PLAIDDER: No, no no. I just feel like...well, it took me a long time to accept the fact that actual problems are sometimes less interesting than fictional ones. Like, the fact that a problem is hard to solve doesn’t mean that its solution is fiendishly complicated. Sometimes the solution is really fucking simple. Too simple to entertain people. Too simple for narrative.

CONN: Is this, like, a two-hour special or something? It’s already gone on way longer than normal.

PLAIDDER: I know. I can never resolve these things, I just have to...end them. So I am. Thanks for coming, everyone. I hope it’s a long time before I see you again.

#the current catastrophe #this fcking emergency #wof #redemption

[ijaws]

My Captain Marvel Review

Before I do this, I want to clarify a few things. There are going to be both personal opinions on the character and simple objective observations from a different perspective that what most people are doing in defense of this character.  I am not sexist. I am not racist. I am not misogynistic. I do not identify with the Alt-Right and consider myself a centrist. I believe that modern Feminism (Contrary to Classical Egalitarian-Feminism) is a toxin in society and now it has translated into the MCU through her movie. 

I just wanted to put this out there first because any time I make any sort of evaluation of her movie or her as a character I get bombarded with hate, personal attacks, and people telling me why I hated the movie or something when they don't personally know me and aren't me. (You just hate strong female characters! Bitch, go look at my profile. I fucking LOVED Rescue, SCARLET FUCKING WITCH, and Nebula is literally one of my most favorite characters in the MCU... They were ALL badass in End Game)

So if you like her as a character and if you like her movie, please do not think that my observations of her or her movie are a personal attack against you. I've had so many people take my viewpoint personally for some reason and it no longer is a debate as they close their minds off to anything I say and start becoming immediately dismissive. I mean no disrespect in any of my viewpoints. I just feel like I needed to put this out there because... again... more often then not I'm dealing with some radical feminist that will foam at the mouth and protect her beloved character from any opposing viewpoint irrationally.

Lastly...

PLEASE. DO. NOT. REBLOG. WITH. A. REBUTTAL. AND. BLOCK. ME. LIKE. A. COWARD. 

FUCKING. @. ME. 

I’M JUST LOOKING FOR SOMEONE WITH A BRAIN TO GIVE ME A GOOD COUNTER ARGUMENT TO THIS.

Okay, so, I personally believe that Captain Marvel and her movie were a toxic addition to the franchise. This is going to be a little long, obviously, but I would appreciate it of you read through. Clearly you don't have to because it is a huge ass wall of text but taking in viewpoints that aren’t constantly validating your own is HEALTHY... So please read?

Firstly, they retconned the Skrull, that are one of the most recognizable villainous races in all of fiction like Klingons and Orcs, to be refugees of a war that they'd lost. In the comics they have 100% control of the Andromeda Galaxy as one massive Empire and the Kree were definitely not in the position to eradicate the Skrulls. They could put up a good fight, but I feel that the Skrulls were too well fortified in Andromeda to really be defeated by the Kree. That's the first, shortest, issue I disliked about the movie. They nerfed the hell out of the Skrulls to being simple refugees... and innocent. I'm sorry, but no... This is like going into the Star Trek Universe and retconning the Klingons to be some peace loving hippies. They were also some of the most human characters in the entire movie besides Nick and the Black Best friend. (I can't remember her name... she didn't stand out to me.) They were DEFINITELY more human than Carol Danvers herself. The moment when Talos goes to his family on Mar-Vells ship and hugs them was definitely the most human part of the entire film and it cemented my thoughts on the character. My favorite character in the entire movie was Talos. A lot more likable, interesting, and funny than Carol Danvers was... I wish the movie had entirely about him at this point because it would have been a better film by FAR.

Secondly, the themes. There was a clear message that this movie was trying to sell long before it even hit theaters, and that was Modern Feminism. The Air Force advertisements featuring female pilots, the girl-power advertisements, and so on. The movie was clearly trying have a target audience of young women or young girls and there's nothing wrong with that. However, I started to feel a bit off put by the movie when it showed literally ever male human character that wasn't Nick, Coulson, or the Skrull Leader, Talos, was a sexist prick. LITERALLY every single one of them were sexist. Even her Father. I understand in the comics her and her father never got along or something of that nature, but I personally feel that if they wanted to push the whole sexism narrative that they should have lead it with her father and kept it with her father. Instead they extended the narrative to every male in the entire movie and in her flashbacks.

I feel there needs to be a specific section on the flashbacks alone. Okay, so, in her flashbacks quite literally every single bad thing that happened to her was because of a man.

Carol was riding in that Go Kart and the boy told her she was going too fast. Of course in a feminist movie we can't have a girl listen to what a boy has to say, even if he may know more about what she was doing than she did, and so she goes and crashes horrifically. I thought it was a brutal crash.

A second later and her Dad appears looking down at his busted up and bleeding daughter, that I'd be taking to a hospital in a heartbeat, saying that she didn't belong there.

Okay, that alone is unrealistic to me to begin with. There are a VERY few fathers out there that would have the first words coming out of their mouth being that she didn't belong to be out there. It would be about her health, asking if she was okay, and they would be looking her over as best as possible. However, I will agree with the Father's initial comment that she didn't belong out there on the track. Why? Well I wouldn't want my daughter, who was too stubborn to listen to a boy that was giving good advice when she was doing something dangerous, to do anything dangerous again. Damn right she doesn't belong in dangerous, male, situations and jobs if she's going to act that way. The girl is going to get herself killed.

Then there's the whole, 'You know what it's called a cockpit, right?' scene and that alone, while not improbable, was unneeded at this point. We already had two male characters expressing their inherent, evil, sexism. Oh, but they went even further than that and got the motorcycle guy in there as well telling her to smile and everything. (Woulda been the first smile in that movie so far at that point for Brie.) While that does happen they’re continuing to beat a dead horse… Then later on it shows her being bullied on a beach when she’s REALLY little by BOYS he knock her down.

Then in Basic Training they’re all yelling out to her that she’s gonna die or and things of that nature are more or less unrealistic as well. My father was in the military and was going through basic around the same time that she was and he went into the same branch. The Air Force. When you go into the military they tell you that you are to be colorblind. That you are to be ONE force. ONE unit. You are a team and NOTHING should stand in the way of that. The means that racism, sexism, or any sort of predisposed idealism that puts on person down while raising another up is to be crushed and blown away like dust in the wind. It has no place in the Military as it reduces its effectiveness. So in that training scene where they’re yelling at Carol that she’s going to die and that she’s going to fail is NOT a proper representation of what happens in basic training. Maybe the Drill Instructors to stress you out or drill it into you that what your doing is dangerous and the military itself is dangerous, but not by your fellow team members. If anything your fellow team members are supportive because there are group punishments for your weakest link in your unit… If they fail, you all fail. If one person is stupid, you ALL get punished for their stupidity. So for her fellow trainees to be putting her down like that makes next to no sense and it is CLEARLY intimating the issue of women in the workplace not being able to do what a man can do or women simply being put down in the workplace for simply being women.

So, I don't necessarily agree with the route in which they went about the topic of sexism. The execution and presentation were not done well in my opinion. While you may have felt it resonated with you, what about the boys and the men?

Marvel Movies have always been oriented towards everyone. They've been family movies. Not one Marvel Movie has been solely and strictly for men. Why? Because movies with male leads don't focus on the fact that they are MALE leads... There's nothing special about a male lead or male actor in a film. They don't feel the need to point it out or make the male actor into a champion for men and masculinity.

So, again, what does this film tell you about men? It tells you what I've described. That men are sexist oppressors that want nothing more than to see women fail, smile, and do what they say. That men think women can't do the same job that a man can and that women aren't as strong as men. That's a message that is being conveyed here... and that's the ONLY message you get on the subject. That's the bottom line. There's no, 'but not all men-' in this film. There's no redemption act, representation (I know a lot of you love that word so here you go... You won’t like it cause I’m using it in a way you disagree with it.), or presentation of the fact that men will stand for women in face of true sexism. There isn't any sort of male role model to learn from in the film. Nick is there for comedic relief, Coulson is barely in the film, and the Skrull isn't even human. There's no outreach to TEACH boys and young men that sexism is bad. It simply states that men are sexist. That's literally it. This movie was for girls and girls alone, which is a failure in and of itself on the side of Marvel, and it is simply teaching them that men will do this. That boys will do this. There's nothing there to teach boys to not do that or any sort of redeeming quality for men in the film at all. Is this wrong?

So, yes, if you think it presented the female experience realistically, which I felt it did not in certain scenes, than I am not one to try and change your mind. I've never been in a woman's shoes and I've never experienced sexism from men like that. I'll let my opinions stand for themselves.

While I agree that sexism is truly a problem in society and still lingers, I simply feel that it wasn't presented well enough. That's my main issue with sexism in this film.

On a personal level I felt that if you’re a guy going to see this movie that you should prepare to feel like an asshole. The entire film is intimating that men are oppressing women, that men see women as objects that need to smile more, that women aren’t as strong as a guy or can’t do what a guy can do. It puts men in a bad light and sort of validates the Modern Feminist talking points and agendas that all men are evil, shallow, vile creatures that want to oppress women because they think that they are objects and aren’t as tough, strong, or brave as men.

(If Marvel had made a Movie about a Man that acted arrogant, cold, emotionless, and super super super strong and made all the female characters in his past trying to put him down, were annoying, were emotionally manipulative and controlling, were emotionally abusive, were using men for their wealth or income, and were lying cheaters with no sort of redemption character for women to prove things differently I think that this movie would have tanked.)

Thirdly, a shallow Carol Danvers. With all that being said up above, I feel like that all that made her character VERY shallow. The ONLY reason she’s a pilot, the ONLY reason she’s ‘strong independent woman’, the ONLY reason why she’s a hero is because she’s a woman that’s been put down by men her entire life. To prove that she can be a strong independent woman, and that men can’t keep her down anymore. It’s a consistent attitude of hers to challenge men regardless of who they are or to act arrogant towards them as when first seen by Nick Fury. Immediately upon seeing him she acts a bit sassy, or arrogant, because Nick isn’t knowledgeable about the alien conflicts that exists or doesn’t believe her about the shapeshifting Skrulls. This entire issue sort of cheapens the character as well because if you created the character with the sole purpose to be a conduit or avatar for feminism and feminist talking points… where do you go from there? All of her personality traits, all of her history, and everything that made Carol Danvers who she is about the oppressive nature of men. Once that is solved, which it is in her movie after she gains the full scale of her powers, where do you go from there?

For example in the Amazing Spider Man movies with Andrew Garfield his story was that his parents had died a long time ago and he knew nothing about them. After discovering some papers belonging to his father it becomes a story about self-discovery. To learn about his parents and what happened to them. To understand and connect with them in the only way he could which was through Dr. Conners. Later, since he is on this journey of discovery about his father and mother’s demise, he forgets to walk Aunt May home and Uncle Ben is mad at him for not remembering to do this and that he needs to start being responsible. Peter gets frustrated because this relates to his own past and current journey of understanding. To his father. Why did his father die? Why was he sent to his Aunt and Uncle's house when he had a responsibility to Peter and to be a father? Peter leaves out of this anger and selfishness and Ben attempts to follow. Peter had made his way to a convenience store and was trying to buy some milk but is a few cents short and lets a thief rob the place due to the cashier being somewhat of an asshole about it. While on his search for Peter, Uncle Ben encounters the thief and tries to stop him and that gets him shot. Uncle Ben dies and Peter realizes that it's his fault. That he had the power and strength to do the right thing but simply stood there and did nothing. That is what begins his quest as a Superhero. If a good person has the power to do something to save someone’s life, but doesn’t, are they really a good person? Are they just as bad as the man that pulled the trigger by letting someone die? So that becomes who Peter is. Peter isn’t a hero because he’s a strong white kid who got bit by a weird spider. Peter isn’t a strong hero because he’s a man or because women or men were keeping him down. Peter is a strong hero because he learned the HARD way that if you have the power to stop someone from doing something that could cost an innocent person their life, and do nothing, you’re just as bad as the guy that pulled that trigger…

Hell, Shazam’s is, ‘If you can’t save your family, what kind of Hero are you?’ I’m not sure if I got the wording perfect, but even the REAL Captain Marvel here stands for something that has deeper meaning and truth. Shazam is ALL about family and fighting for them...

That is a much deeper, much BETTER, character traits than the simple feminist argument that Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel stands for. That she’s a strong because she’s a woman. That she’s strong because she won’t let men keep her down anymore. That she can do whatever a man can do and do it even better. I simply feel like that cheapens the character and is a very boring, shallow, and limited origin story because throughout a Hero’s career they will be challenged on their morals and the reasoning behind what they do.  (And GIRL POWER is already something that has been established in Cinema for well over 50 years...) Batman’s is vengeance versus justice. That is a HUGE topic for the hero and he has been struggling with that issue for decades. An argument could be made towards Shazam that his reason for being a hero and doing good, to protect his family, isn’t FOR his family or BECAUSE his family… it’s because he’s scared to be alone again. That could be a good inner struggle for Shazam. So what sort of personal beliefs are going to be challenged when it comes to Captain Marvel? What sort of personal dilemma or inner struggle can she possibly go through? Why is she a hero? Cause even if you extend her origin story away from her childhood and to the Kree Empire where she was being trained to be used as a weapon against the Skrull that goes back to the issue of oppression and ties in with the rest of her history. Carol has been oppressed by men, told what to do by men, and has been controlled and used by men (Yon-Rogg is the face of this issue, and once again he’s a man.) for their personal gain and desires.

I’m sorry, but it’s just weak and shallow. There are no further storylines that you can have that sort of validate her reasoning of being a hero without making it some gigantic feminist issue. If the issue isn’t about feminism then she’s simply trying to do the right thing to do the right thing… and ANYONE can do that. It doesn’t make her special. In fact, there’s nothing really special or ultimately heroic about her. All she is a woman that achieved powers and saved a couple of refugees and declared war on a corrupt Empire. It’s… weak. Steve Rogers fights for Freedom and fights against Tyranny and was forced to reevaluate America and Shield during Winter Soldier and Civil War. These CHALLENGED his very meaning of being a Hero and what he stood for... The Hulk and Bruce Banner fight because they’re constantly being hunted to be exploited for their power, and not just by people who want to use him for evil, but also by people that want to his power for good… the bottom line is Bruce and Hulk fight to escape being used as a chess piece. They just want to be left alone. In this sense they aren’t even a hero, and that makes it even better for them as a character because it makes their choices and issues interesting to say the least… Black Widow fights because she’s trying to make up for the evils of her past. Tony fights because he wants to protect who he loves most and that he feels he has an obligation to Earth and to protect innocent people from being killed like the ones that were being killed by the weapons he designed to protect them in Iron Man 1.

I’ll leave that there though. I think the last thing I want to talk about is the Mary Sue aspect of captain Marvel. Just so people don’t immediately hate me for calling her a Mary Sue I’m going to copy and paste the definition.

Mar·y Sue

noun

noun: Mary Sue; plural noun: Mary Sues

(originally in fan fiction) a type of female character who is depicted as unrealistically lacking in flaws or weaknesses.

"she was not a ‘strong woman’ so much as an insufferable Mary Sue"

So Captain Marvel is a Superhero and Superheros, in order to make them appealing and relatable, are ALWAYS shown to have flaws, weaknesses, and things about them that make them more human to the target audience. That’s what makes them lovable and likable. That you can relate to them and understand where they are coming from and sympathize with them. That you can watch them grow as a character and enjoy their Hero’s Journey. In this movie Captain Marvel has no character growth. Carol Danvers is literally the same as she was in the beginning as she was in the end except she has all her powers and now she hates the Kree. Carol Danvers has no personality flaws whatsoever except, maybe, arrogance and trust issues, and those aren’t exactly traits you want to share with her. They aren’t healthy character flaws. Besides that she barely has a personality to begin with for there to be any sort of flaws. ‘She’s spent six years learning to control her emotions,’ I’m sorry, but no. That argument is weak. Just because you learn how to CONTROL your emotions doesn’t mean that you sacrifice your personality in the process.

So with that being said she has no sort of personality flaw about herself and it is shown in the movie that she has no physical or emotional weaknesses either. In the entire movie the only time she was beaten was because of a surprise attack by Talon. From then on out she has consistently kicked ass, NEVER lost a fight, and NEVER physically struggled against any enemy. Carol was super strong and could NOT be stopped. It sucked any sort of drama or any sort of tension out of the movie. You knew she was going to win and be the hero because at that point nothing could stop her. Carol is a badass woman that could not be stopped. Yay Girl Power!

The best opportunity for her to have been given a weakness and a struggle was when she unlocked her full potential and had access to ALL of her power. To make her struggle to control it for the entirety of the battle except towards the end when she takes out those nukes sent down from Ronan. Even Peter Quill had issues controlling his powers and was CONSTANTLY being beaten by Ego until Yandu finally told him that he doesn’t control his inner strength and power with his head… he uses his heart… and that Power Up that he gets after that, after struggling and losing the ENTIRE movie, is extraordinarily satisfying. You LOVE it when he gets that power up. It’s like how in Wonder Woman she gets that power up after losing Steve and she goes ape shit… There’s a huge emotional lead up and tipping point in those scenes, but Captain Marvel doesn’t even do that. Instead she simply closes her eyes, and opens them and has complete control of her powers. It was ridiculous too because she hadn’t trained with even a decent percentage of her powers at her disposal before! For six years she just trained with a small itty bitty bit of her powers and then suddenly she has full control over ALL of her power as soon as unlocking it? That’s like a Fireman being trained to put out fires with a garden hose for six years only then to be dragged out to use a full on fire-hose at full power that usually requires more than one person to control and expected to do just fine…. Like, I’m sorry, but that’s not how that should have worked. After that point she’s basically Superman and cannot be stopped. There’s no fun to it anymore… it’s just a boring overpowered character being overpowered simply because she’s a woman… and this is only going to lead her up to being the hero that fans want to see lose. A LOT of people don’t like Superman because he’s a sort of Gary Stu in a sense and they ALWAYS love seeing him get his ass beat. By Batman, Shazam, Wonder Woman. Everyone enjoys seeing the most powerful man of all get taken down… Especially if they’re on their high horse like Captain Marvel is with her arrogant ass.

Oh yeah, the last thing I wanna add… They had to sex change Mar-Vell, the ORIGINAL Captain Marvel, because, of course, we can’t have a feminist movie with a feminist character that we’re trying to make into a feminist icon look up to a man after all. They had to have her looking up to a female Amelia Earhart sort of character instead of a Red Baron or Wright Brother sort of figure… That kinda peeved me as well.

So with ALL that being said, I simply think that she’s toxic because her entire character is based off of feminism. Modern Feminism at that. (I draw a line between Classical Egalitarian Feminism that I actually agree with, and Modern Feminism.) The issue is that not everyone agrees with the agenda of Modern Feminism and since she’s now the face of it, they’re just going to see an agenda they hate rather than a character they dislike. They’re going to see the Feminist Icon that they despise and won’t pay attention to her as a character. It’s going to cause a rift in the fan base, as it already has, and if she’s going to be made the face of Marvel like they want her to I can bet you that people are going to be finished with Marvel. Real, TRUE, fans of the MCU, not blue haired normie feminists as I’ve heard them described, are going to feel ostracised for not agreeing with Captain Marvels Politics and the fact that she’s so powerful simply because of girl power. I feel that with the introduction of her as a Feminist Icon that any movie she’s in is going to allude to that and buy into her Girl Power - Ex Machina stuff… Into the Mary Sue in her and it is going to cheapen every movie forward that she’s in. I mean, people are already talking about not seeing End Game because she’s in it and that they’re afraid she’s going to be the sole reason why the Avengers win… and frankly I’m afraid that she may be the reason why the Avengers win too and that would bother me a LOT. Not because she’s a woman, not because I hate women, but because she’s a terribly written character with no personality and is beyond arrogant. Especially in the, ‘Lets get Thanos.’ End Game clip that Marvel Released… It bothers me a lot…

EDIT: https://youtu.be/6byj_uqzGh8 Here's more proof that she's a Mary Sue in the MCU films... They buffed the fuck out of her over the MCU Thor who has been nerfed to hell.... "Captain Marvel is MUCH WEAKER than Thor."

#captain marvel #marvel comics #mcu #brie larson #marvel #end game #feminists @ me #debate this #read this #mary sue #can someone with a brain debate me #captain mary sue #brie #feminism #feminists #sjw #mary sue characters

[thegeminisage]

THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY breakdown

as always i am transcribing the little notes i took on my phone during the experience

the three things i knew about this film before i started were 1. valeris secret villain? some kind of mind-meld forced on spock? 2. worf's grandpa 3. kirk and bones sentenced to hard labor on planet hoth. other than that i went in blind

im glad they opened with CAPTAIN!!! sulu. i feel like he couldnt be there during filming but im so relieved he got parts anyway <3

also quite shocked to see janice rand?! god bless. she was like, i've undergone so much unbelievable bullshit. lemme get that star trek money. and then she did <3

the ship shaking in this movie was VERY realistic. the m,ost realistic yet. idk why they would have glass tecups in this situation though...maybe they just like to watch them break dramatically

uhura is still so beautiful in this movie. i don't know how she gets more beautiful in every star trek thing she appears in but she did it 6 times in a row. queen

first cry of the evening was when spock showed up but it was a SHORT cry because i had just cried about him in tng two days ago.

loved his little domestic spat with kirk at the beginning. the giant space between them. doing it in public. the absolute death glares. who's in the woodshed NOW (sorry for saying woodshed)

kirk being racist was an unexpected detail but i get it. you gotta have somebody being racist to nail home this story's message or whatever. i just figured it'd be bones. then again the klingons didn't kill his kid

that one bald klingon who kept eyefucking everybody he looked at. king. i know the phrase eyefucking is out of date because we overused it but there is simply no other way to describe it. he was there to leer at men suggestively and recite a batshit amount of shakespeare. and he did a great job

i had so much fun playing spot the tng set. they kept those rooms SO dark so we wouldn't recognize them but i did anyway.

the anti-gravity scene was SO so so so cool and good. like, the 90s cgi purple pepto bismol blood took me out of it a little but we have been saying every time something fucked up their little ship "how is the gravity still on rn." and the answer, always, is "it's on bc no-grav scenes cost money." FINALLY we got a no gravity scene. such a profound sense of both awe and closure

the violence was shockingly gorey too. like we had severed arms and real blood flying everywhere. idk that any of the trek i've watched so far has been quite that explicit

the scene where bones tries to save the klingon high chancellor. 10/10. bones the healer begging to be allowed to save lives. him jumping straight up onto that table and straddlign that man. him digging his hands into all that klingon blood. what a fine moment. it was a little homoerotic of that guy to grab kirk in the spiderman kiss pose as he was dying too

sarek cameo <3 it felt weird to see him alive right after he died

i did wonder why they didn't just have saavik in this film instead of valeris...i guess that saavik fans would have been mad if the send-off for the character was to make her a backstabber. but it would have felt more believable that spock be blind to her passions because she was also his protege. it also would've made the mind meld (WHICH. WOW. GETTING TO THAT) all the more tragic. valeris does a great spock eyebrow but she's not as compelling as saavik and she doesn't have the backstory so even if i hadn't had the spoilers i would have suspected her

things i didnt like: that one colonel guy saying terrorism and mr scott saying bitch. watch your mouth, gentleman.

the trial was fine (i still have trial fatigue) but i find it hard to believe klingons dont have tear ducts. what if they get something in their eyes? i loved seeing worf. i loved bones's little arthritis joke. frail little old waif of a man <3

kirk getting his ass handed to him over his personal logs is why you don't make personal logs. even funnier: their thing where they were like yeah but he has a record of [lists 1000000 crimes kirk has committed]. that was funny because it was true.

i love when they put dogs in costumes

bones collapsing in that blizzard was my ONE AND ONLY HOPE for this movie. i needed him to do it so bad so i could round out my collection and he did not let me down. true consistency. authenticity. king behavior. me when i go north fr

unexpected: both the cigar and the hot alien lady. i don't know what either of them were even doing there. she literally macked on kirk right in front of bones's salad. idk if we can count this as a close encounter though considering how short it was

i loved kirk's little fight where he nutshotted the alien. and their little prison outfits. and them snuggling up on bed together to stay warm <3 also bones being like and one day PFFFT kobayashi maru, that's it! quintessential bones behavior.

AMANDA GRAYSON RELATED TO SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE??? cmon.

mixed feelings about the shapeshifter. double kirks was great (once again: william shatner plays a woman) and hilarious especially when they smooshed poor bones. double especially when she was like yeah well i bet you always wanted to kiss yourself anyway. that little girl giving kirk a saucy wink was maybe less fun. it would have been a close encounter if they'd fucked i guess

spirk talking in the hall and their faces were soooo close together

spock's forced mind meld: i thought this was something done TO him, not something HE DID. imagine my shock. there's a little mirror spock in him after all. it was absolutely fucking ruthless. i have a little pet theory that everyone in the mirrorverse is really the same - it's only their circumstances that turned them into monsters. it's not always viable and it's not always as fun as them just being evil and edgy, but this does lend it evidence <3

spock "i've been dead before" absolute king.

the conference at khitomer!!!! the foreshadowing.........

spirk's conversation in spock's quarters in the dark...mwah. "the night is young" "i find that remark insulting" "i need you" i wish they had talked about valeris but this was still really good. bones should have been there.

TORPEDO SURGERY! IT'S AN AOS REFERENCE! aos bones is a damsel because he couldn't operate on the torpedo.

loved kirk's GET DOWN MRS OBAMA moment and he got to have one twice in a row and then pull the mask off that guy like he was a scooby doo villain. incredible.

you've restored my father's faith / you've restored my son's...wah. i didn't really care about david but i'm glad he got closure about it or whatever.

then the klingon slow clapping. incredible.

spock cussing and saying go to hell <3

"soon the enterprise will have a new crew" yeah a worse one. i did like the switch from no man to no one though during that final monologue. just subtle enough <3

I DID CRY AGAIN AT THE END.....................it was a very sweet ending. second star to the right and straight on til morning. i'm glad sulu got to say goodbye even on webcam he was such a g this film. i'm gonna miss them SO MUCH.

i now know spock's ENTIRE LIFE STORY except whatever happens in snw that i dont care about <3 if i wasnt busy it would have huge fanfic potential. give me time i guess.

#personal #star trek blogging #tuc lb #a tag i'll use again someday when i get to the novelization

[tessatechaitea]

Superman: Up in the Sky #4

Best DC cover ever or greateast DC cover ever? Those are the only two choices.

Die Tasche. Die Tasche? DieTasche! Die Tasche. Shtop.

The story begins with somebody talking about a race for charity between Superman and The Flash. They say it was televised and that people bought tickets to sit along the route and watch it. Seems like a huge scam to me. How long could it actually take Flash to run around the Earth ten times? Like fifteen seconds? I could probably do the math on it but I don't want to show off. But this story assumes that Flash and Superman didn't run so fast that people couldn't at least see them blur by. So this kid telling the story says that Lex Luthor offered to double the money to charity if Superman loses. And Superman heard it with his super-hearing which meant Superman was going to just have to win no matter what! He'd just have to believe he was faster than The Flash and then be faster than The Flash. Because that's how comic books work. What makes a hero is the secret reserve of strength and will and confidence that only appears when the hero is about to be defeated. People who are defeated aren't heroes because they don't have that reserve. They are losers. Big stupid losers. Did you die from your cancer? Not a hero, jerk. Did you fail to get that promotion at work because you didn't complete the project a hero would have completed at the last minute? Total loser. Did one of your kids drown in the pool because you gave up on the CPR like a big jerko loser dumb-dumb? Yeah. Not a hero. Maybe even a villain! But Superman, being a hero, now had to win the race for charity! And The Flash apparently isn't a hero because where were his secret reserves to beat Superman? What an idiotic failure. Although I haven't finished the story yet! Maybe Superman is still going to lose just like the cover implies! I bet the point of this story is that Superman loses sometimes but nobody ever gives up hope in him! And he always tries his hardest! And maybe even before the race, he made a bet in Vegas that Lex Luthor would bet a billion dollars against him which would pay off like a billion to one!

Lame. Superman wins.

Superman wins but the dumb kid telling the story doesn't explain how. The kid just goes on and on about contradictions but totally uses the word incorrectly. Like saying "Superman is faster than a speeding bullet" is a contradiction. Is it? How? If Superman is faster than a speeding bullet than he's faster than a speeding bullet and that's not a contradiction! Stupid idiot kid. The kid is so dumb I bet the kid got the story wrong and just made it up to make herself feel better. Because the kid telling the story is the girl that Superman is looking for and she has to believe that Superman can do the impossible (like win a race against The Flash) or else she's just going to rot on whatever planet she's lost on. So the story is about hope or something. Superman hopes and so Superman does. It's kind of like Oprah's Secret, I guess? It doesn't make any sense but since it's Superman, you always know he's going to win. Even that time he died, he won by killing Doomsday as well. So see? Blade was wrong. You should always bet on red! And blue! The second story is also about hope. Hey! Are all these stories about the hope Superman gives people?! I've been duped! I thought this was going to be a bunch of stories about how hard Superman can punch bad guys! Stupid DC Comics hiring some intellectual namby-pamby like Tom King! Writing stories that are all, "Superman shows how faith and hope can inspire us to be better than we are!" Whatever! I hope the next issue is about Superman punching a gigantic space monster! Superman: Up in the Sky #4 Rating: Oh yeah! The second story was about Superman interacting with Clark Kent because they were struck by magic space lightning and separated into two unique people. As if that's a thing! Somehow Superman's Kryptonian DNA makes him all logical and shit while his human upbringing makes him all emotional and valiant and sacrificial and awesome! Isn't that the way it always is? Humans are the greatest beings in the universe because they know how to cry while reading Shakespeare! Everybody else in the universe is a boring old rational Vulcan! If another alien species is allowed to be emotional, they only get one emotion. Like how Klingons are angry and Ferrengi are sneaky and Romulans have huge cocks and Guardians of the Universe are assholes. Only humans have mastered the spectrum of emotion and that makes them the best! Go Clark Kent! You teach that Superman a thing or two about hope! Now merge with him again for next issue and get to punching shit!

#Superman #Up in the Sky #DC Comics #DC #Tom King #Andy Kubert #Sandra Hope

[i-just-like-commenting]

Because I’ve been thinking about little else all day let’s talk about more stuff I liked from last night’s (please just be season) finale of “Timeless”:

Rufus calling Wyatt out for his total self-absorption this season. Someone had to, I’m glad it was him.

Every. Single. Moment. Between. Rufus. And Jiya. Why is this not the only ship that anyone cares about?*

I mean seriously SHE SENT HIM A MESSAGE IN KLINGON. Remember his Star Wars message from first season? Can they be any more perfect for each other?

Jiya learning to control her visions, which is basically mental time travel, and risking insanity doing so to try to save Rufus’ life, I’m trying not to think about this too hard because I will start crying again.

“Harriet Tubman is hardcore.” She is. And also psychic. I love this show.

Wyatt and Jessica? Weirdly? Like I feel as though I got a glimpse of what their married life was like and why Wyatt wanted it back so desperately. But then she’s been turned into a completely different person by RH, and Wyatt trying to save their unborn child from being turned into a true believer drone like her is the kind of angst I will actually sign up for, no more of this “Lucy-Jessica soap opera” please.

Mason becoming the Official Team Dad to Agent Christopher’s Team Mom. We just need to find him a hobby now.

No last-minute redemption for Lucy’s mom. How deeply ingrained her RH upbringing was means, I’m afraid, little hope for fixing Jessica. That gets them both a touch of pity from me...none for Emma though, it is nice to have a villain I can just hate.

Okay, so Flynn is really obviously in love with Lucy at this point. Still not a shipper, though - I’m not sold on Flynn getting a happy ending, because I just don’t think you can have one after you do the things he’s done

Wyatt copping to basically ruining everything with Lucy that season. And the writers not letting him off the hook by having her give him an easy “I love you” back. That takes time to rebuild.

The writers spending enough time after Rufus’ death showing the other characters mourning him to give his death weight, to make you believe even momentarily that maybe they really are killing him off before, as I felt fairly sure would happen, setting up the main point of the entire next season to be “bring Rufus back!”

*I know the reasons, obviously, it’s that (1) the show is clearly consciously setting up a Lyatt/Garcy ship war, and (2) they’re not white, and we’ve been conditioned by media not to prioritize those ships because they usually don’t get much emphasis; I’m not calling anyone outright racists here, I’m just saying this is Pavlovian, and even I’m guilty of it sometimes.

#timeless #spoilers #SO MANY SPOILERS #season finale #mini review

[porgthespacepenguin]

first thoughts about episode 11

So a few hours behind most people, I have finally watched episode 11 and … what a ride!

First let’s start off by comparing what I had predicted earlier on with what actually happened:

The eye injury Michael inflicted on Voq in episode 2 ended up super important (Correct)

Voq revealed (Correct)

Voq fighting against mirror!Voq (Correct)

Lorca being revealed in the same episode (Wrong)

Ash/Michael going down in flames (Correct)

Ash vs. Voq being the only prime vs. mirror showdown (Wrong)

4/6 isn’t too bad a score, and the episode honestly exceeded my wildest hopes (which I keep low on purpose). I am happy to get stuff wrong as long as it’s better than I anticipated! And it was.

And I admit I’m pretty proud of figuring out the eye injury was important, as it was what almost immediately clued me in to Ash being Voq and I have not seen it discussed anywhere else (if someone else did figure it out as well, feel free to comment and I’ll amend my post).

Now onto the analysis. Beware, this is not a meta, just some ideas after watching the episode a few times.

Ash/Michael – welcome to tragedy, population: us

Forewarned is forearmed: the show definitely did warn us, though not in so many words, that this could only end in tears. Regardless, witnessing Ash and Michael’s relationship crash and burn was beyond painful.

I wrote in my earlier meta that I didn’t believe that Ash/Michael could come back from all this. I stand by my opinion more than ever after episode 12.

First and foremost, there is the fact that as soon as Voq got his memory back (and therefore his full agency) he made his choice, in full conscience.

And that choice was to murder Michael.

Let that sink in for a while.

He chose to murder her in cold blood.

Worse, if mirror!Saru hadn’t intervened, he would have gone through with it and succeeded. It was only because of Michael showing kindness to Saru earlier on that she didn’t die.

Later on in the episode, Voq shows no remorse. No regrets. Not even a hint of internal pain.

To me, more than anything, this highlights that their relationship is dead in a romantic sense.

You can come back from a lot of things – lies, double-crossing, even betrayal – but attempted murder without a hint of remorse or regret is more than a line crossed.

Especially as they are an established relationship, not two adversaries on a battlefield (I would not hold their first fight in episode 2 to the same standard, for example – that was a clearly different situation).

If the show did walk that back, and put them back together, I don’t think I could continue watching. I liked Ash/Michael but after watching episode 11, I’m out.

Some people have speculated that Michael could potentially find mirror!Tyler and pick up the relationship with him instead. I see many issues with this:

Assuming there is even a Tyler…

And his mirror!version is not a racist jerk…

Michael did not have feelings for Tyler, she had feelings for Tyler/Voq…

And just picking up a spare right after losing the original guy feels a bit… cheap?

I know, I can hear some of you saying: wait, aren’t you the one who wrote that long boring meta about how Lorca had a past relationship with mirror!Michael?

Yes, I am. And I stand by it, by the way. I truly think it would be really lovely storytelling to have Lorca finding his lost love in another universe after tragedy struck (and if Michael hadn’t been sentenced to life in prison, to a literal “future full of misery”, I’m not sure he would have interfered at all – just a gut feeling).

When it comes to Michael and Ash, trying to replace the original guy (who attempted to murder you) with a lookalike equipped with a better personality is problematic to say the least.

It would cheapen their actual relationship (past or not, it did exist!) and totally erase Voq from the equation, leaving us to wonder what purpose this whole arc served. Unsatisfying on so many levels, so that’s a  pretty firm no from me.

In the future, what will happen with Voq?

Until we go back to the prime!universe, probably not a whole lot. Michael might have to face him again to come to terms with some things, though.

Once we are back, from a story perspective Voq will have to resume his own narrative arc, which means potentially breaking out with L’rell and going back to the Klingons.

Perhaps a resolution to the war can then be found before the end of season 1 but it would necessitate a time jump: no way can we go believably from murderous fanatic Voq to “humans are not so bad” Voq in 2 episodes.

We might get there eventually, if his experiences as Ash can bring him the same wisdom mirror!Voq displayed. But again, this type of character development takes time.

Before we move on… in hindsight all of Tyler’s declaration of love and protection sound pretty hollow right about now. And yes, I’m bitter about it on Michael’s behalf.

Michael deserves better, dammit.

Michael/Lorca

The agony booth scene

So much to unpack here, it almost deserved its own post.

Before anything else… poor Gabriel. I mean look at him. He needs a hug and a stiff drink, is what he needs.

So, the agony booth scene. They are both standing. Lorca looks like hell, he is shaking and barely holding together. Importantly, this has stripped away a lot of his defenses. He is not in control the way he usually is, not anymore.

Michael is conflicted about what to do with the rebel base. Lorca’s response is immediate, do what you have to do and bomb them if you have to.

Now I have seen some people react to this as confirmation of Lorca being evil or being out to grab the throne for himself.

But let’s keep a few things in mind:

Lorca is familiar with the Empress, and he correctly foresees the fact that she will be mightily displeased at her orders not being followed. Michael is taking a huge tactical risk by being merciful, and it ends up having huge consequences.

Even if he is not affiliated with the rebels, it doesn’t follow that he would not be leading a rebel Terran faction of his own. As far as we have seen, the rebel group led by Voq doesn’t seem to have any Terran members. It would be fairly logical that there would be dissent within the Terran ranks beyond the non-human resistance.

The conversation that follows is pretty amazing. This is one of the first time we see Michael inspire Lorca, pulling him toward her idealism and Starfleet morals and away from the mirror universe’s darker, more ruthless standards.

After all, wasn’t that explicitely one of the reasons he chose her?

You chose to do the right thing, even at great personal cost.

That moment, all the way back in episode 3, made me certain that Lorca isn’t evil.

Dark? Maybe. Morally grey? Sure.

Evil? No.

I mean let’s be logical about this. If I were a villain intent on committing a villainous plot, I wouldn’t go ahead and specifically pick a person with a strong moral compass to help me with it. They would of course try to thwart me at every turn. It would make zero sense.

Ah, penguin, I can hear some people say, but what if Lorca needs her, specifically, to access the Empress? Wouldn’t he recruit her and then manipulate her into doing his bidding then?

Sure. So let’s take a detour to “How to manipulate someone 101”:

Destroy your victim’s self esteem

Use gifts and favors to create a feeling of obligation

Isolate them from their support system: family, friends, romantic attachments

Denigrate their achievements

Undermine their self confidence

Punish the victim for perceived transgressions

Right. And in contrast, so far Lorca has:

Helped her rebuild her confidence on her own (contrast the start and beginning of episode 3, it’s such an amazing change)

Given her a job and a place aboard a starship again, while avoiding her gratitude as much as possible

Helped her maintain or rebuild her support system: mounted a rescue for Sarek (family), gave her Tilly as a roommate (who was the only one good hearted enough to look past Michael’s transgressions and befriend her), and kept his opinion to himself concerning her relationship with Tyler (though he was undoubtedly jealous)

Praised her for her strategic mind and her strong sense of morale

Encouraged her to take pride in herself (“You did well, Burnham. You should be proud.”)

Trusted her with the most important missions

Ignored at least one transgression that could have landed her in the brig (that fight they had on the bridge in episode 9)

I’m sure I’m forgetting things but you get the idea.

Honestly, if he needed her only as a tool, it would have been much smarter to keep her under his thumb with her confidence broken. Look how pliable she was at the start of episode 3.

(Again, I do think that the fact that Georgiou is the Empress is significant, and that having Michael on his side against her is a tactical advantage – but that’s not the whole of it, by a long shot.)

Anyway, moving on.

Michael sweetens the deal by adding the part about finding out how the Fire Wolf leads his coalition, but essentially it all boils down to:

She appeals to his moral sense

She asks him not to force her to commit such a terrible act

And it works. Partly because after so much torture, Lorca’s defenses are way down. But I think it’s mostly because of Michael’s ultimate secret weapon: she says please.

Seriously.

She says please, and… that’s that.

Just like with the Sarek rescue mission, Lorca just gives in and makes an illogical tactical decision (which, I might add, results in the Empress coming straight for them at the end of the episode).

Visually, I don’t have much to say beyond the extensive use of choker shots. Those are very often used to create emotional intimacy and tension, as I’ve mentioned many times before. This is not a shot you’d use for people who are not developing a strong relationship of some sort (be it friendship or romance).

And finally… Lorca’s “Hurry back. Please.” just kills me.

That’s not an order. That’s a plea.

The meeting room scene

Their second scene together is quite different. Lorca is looking a little better, while Michael seems shattered by her recent betrayal.

By the way. I love how Michael (who is a tough cookie) is psychically exhausted after 3 days in the mirror!universe and how much reflection (pardon the pun) she is doing on it.

Hopefully it will help mitigate her anger at Lorca when she finds out he is from the mirror!universe too (and has spent his entire life there without turning into a human-shaped demon spawn like the rest of the Terrans). At this point, overthrowing the Empress is starting to look like a moral imperative.

Lorca informs her they have to stay longer, for reasons that are both tactically sound and highly convenient, because I’m pretty sure he plans to face the Empress at some point (though probably not right there and then).

There also a lovely little morsel I wasn’t expecting: Lorca sounds jealous. He can’t bring himself to say “liked” or “loved” (that little pause is very telling) and when he says “Tyler”, you can tell he truly wanted to say “what’s his face”.

As an aside, I think he only noticed Michael’s partiality for Tyler in the previous episode, when Ash had a panic attack in the worker bee. I don’t think I mentioned it in my main meta, but I adore the way Lorca manages to sound at once gruffly protective (“You can relax too. He’s safe.”) and jealous despite himself.

Moving on.

Michael just can’t take it anymore, she’s scared, and she just admits it to him, leading to this amazing exchange:

“I don’t think I can survive this place alone.”

“You are not alone, Michael. We will survive this place… together.”

And then Lorca takes her hand. This is the first touch we have seen him initiate with her. It’s also the second time he calls her Michael, and that’s not a coincidence.

Not Michael Burnham, not Burnham, not Specialist Burnham.

Just plain Michael.

Right there and then, Lorca is not being her captain. He’s just being a man, comforting a woman.

Even more importantly, @trashywestallen made a brilliant point in one of our discussions, which I hadn’t noticed until she pointed it out.

This scene is meant to be the mirror of the scene in episode 10 when Ash reaches for Michael’s hand during their discussion in the mess hall.

Both Ash and Lorca are on seated the left, while Michael is sitting on the right. (Very quick aside, the man on the left/woman on the right is imagery commonly found in classical paintings, with the Arnolfini portrait commonly cited as an example.) Both contacts are initiated by the man.

That’s where the similarities end, because everything else is inverted.

In the scene with Ash and Michael, the camera zooms in on their joined hands but very noticeably, the shot is obstructed by a teacup.

Contrasting this with Michael and Lorca: their hands are in plain view. There is even a shot with the light streaming in from behind through the window and onto their joined hands.

Another major difference: Tyler grabs Michael’s hand possessively to reassure himself. Lorca lays a calming hand over Michael’s to reassure her.

Ash takes Michael’s right hand with his right; Lorca covers Michael’s right hand with his left. Symbolically, this is hugely significant. The left hand is the hand (or arm) a gentleman or a knight would use to escort his lady: keeping the right hand, his sword hand, free to defend her.

Lastly: Ash asks her to let him handle things on his own; Lorca says they will figure it out together.

Point taken, I guess?

Everything else

Stamets! I am pretty glad to have been wrong about there being only one twin encounter. Go save your love, Paul. (Though mirror!Stamets freaks me out a little).

Empress Georgiou is utterly terrifying. I love it.

Michael lying to spare Saru (while Saru lies to spare her) is just lovely. Also interesting to note she is willing to lie for a good cause (not unlike other people I could name…)

Michael’s kindness to mirror!Saru coming back to save her is almost karmic.

Mirror!Voq was awesome. Wise, strong, everything a leader could be. Unfortunately, that means prime!Voq is the evil twin. Bummer.

Mirror!Sarek, who’s met Michael all of 5 minutes, is more validating and full of praise than our own Sarek. Seriously, dude, you’re going to have to step up the dad game, presto.

#star trek #star trek discovery #star trek discovery spoilers #star trek disco spoilers #lorca x burnham #michael burnham #gabriel lorca #michael burnham x gabriel lorca #st:fallenangels #USS ArchAngel #st:archangel #uss archangels