crazedhatter77

[crazedhatter77]

I don't think I realized Threshold was that early in the Voyager run.

What on earth is going on in the Star Trek fandom today, it's like my dash exploded

lol 28 years ago today, the Star Trek Voyager episode "Threshold" aired. The premise of the episode was that humans cannot travel at or faster than warp 10, because if they do, they would be traveling at "infinite velocity" and would exist in all points of space time simultaneously. Tom Paris found a way to travel at this speed, and doing so accidentally hyper-evolved him and his captain (Janeway) into giant salamanders, whereupon they immediately reproduced and created 3 baby salamanders. They were then turned back into normal humans, and forced to leave their salamander babies on the planet they had escaped to.

The episode was long held as the worst star trek episode. Not just the worst Star Trek Voyager episode, but the worst episode, period, because it was extremely weird and people turning into salamanders greatly annoyed a lot of people who don't know what fun is. Tumblr, having discovered this episode like excavating an exciting fossil, has taken a shine to this episode and many people now produce art and memes and eat pepperoni pizza in celebration of its air date, mostly to annoy the episode's creator, as in a very Arthur Conan Doyle way, he hates this episode and wants it de-canonized.

Anyway, happy Threshold Day!

[crazedhatter77]

One thing Movie Era got right, more variation in the color of undertunics! We need a color for every specialty, not umbrella colors. In fact, I'd go so far as to have a two color system - keep the BIG 3, but then have a secondary color for which branch they're under, it has to be boldly visible though, which means the colors would have to be chosen to compliment the big 3 so they aren't hideous.

I think this could be fun to design.

i do think medical & sciences should have different shirt colors. after you've been attacked by sentient plants or the hull has been breached by klingons or a malevolent space cloud has incapacitated the bridge crew, i think you'd want to be able to tell immediately if you're running towards a doctor or a geologist. design flaw

[crazedhatter77]

I dunno, validating the Salamander truthers might be a step too far... I know we like inclusion but c'mon. ;-)

I’ll be honest, I’m kind of a fake Trekkie. I haven’t seen ANY of them in full, I just vaguely know the plot lines of all the generations. But whenever I catch my family watching your ready room, I ALWAYS sit down to watch with them. Your enthusiasm for every part of the universe is contagious, and it’s always so nice to share in someone’s passion, even if it’s through a TV screen. Seeing you be so unabashedly excited lifts my own spirits, I guess? Lmao. Anyway, just wanted to say I love watching you in it.

I feel like someone once told you that unless you like Star Trek in this one specific way, you aren't a "real" fan.

I would like to retroactively tell that person to shut up and let you enjoy things.

There are ENORMOUS parts of the Star Trek universe I know nothing about. I still haven't watched a full episode of Enterprise, and haven't seen more than a handful of Voyager.

But you'd be hard pressed to find someone who loves Star Trek more than I do, because the love we feel for things comes from inside us, from a place that an insecure gatekeeper can't touch, unless you let them.

You don't need permission to casually enjoy and love Star Trek, but I'll give you this "Wil Wheaton Says Shut The Fuck Up And He Outranks You" card to play when someone tells you that you aren't a "real" fan, because you can't rattle off the combination to Kirk's safe.

Thank you for watching Ready Room! Live long and prosper.

[crazedhatter77]

Richly deserved and long overdue, regardless of whether you win or not, the recognition is what really matters.

Last night, TNG was given the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 51st Saturn Awards. (The Saturn is the sort of the Oscar for genre movies and television, if you aren't familiar.)

I have never cared about awards (I think I've mentioned that being nominated is more than enough), and I still don't. I'm not minimizing this, to be clear. It's fucking awesome. But I didn't need an award to know that I am part of something special.

The thing about last night, though, is that for the first time in almost 30 years, when the TNG cast was recognized and celebrated, I was finally included. (Put another way, I was not deliberately excluded). I got to stand on stage with my TNG family, arm around my Spacemom, while a room of our peers, including people I idolize, cheered for us.

And I got to be part of it. After all these years, that meant *everything* to me.

[crazedhatter77]

Scarier than Five Nights at Freddy's

[crazedhatter77]

What's fun about executive dysfunction is when you finally break out of it and Complete the Task, your reward is an immediate shame spiral.

"This took 15 minutes. Why did I put it off for six months. I created so many new problems by not doing it six months ago, and it wasn't even hard. I am literally a waste of carbon molecules."

And I know my brain works differently. I understand that executive dysfunction isn't a choice or a thing I can even remotely control. But once the task is done, there's no relief. Only shame. Because wow. Look how easy it was, and I turned it into a burden for six months.

[crazedhatter77]

It's literally a physical difference in our brains that directly impedes Executive Function! Several areas of the brain are 5 to 8 percent smaller! It's definitely not a disorder, it's a goddamned disability! This isn't something that just... goes away, it isn't a result of modern technology (Take a look at Leonardo DaVinci's career, tell me he wasn't ADHD as hell!.)

It is an Executive Function Disability that we who have it need help with. Medicinal help and other forms of support as well.

“adhd isn’t a disorder, it’s a different way of thinking” i’m going to maim you

[crazedhatter77]

Rant #3: On the 'live-actioning' of Animation.

Yeah so... I'm sure you've noticed there has been this big obsession for a while of taking Games, Animated Shows or Movies and making Live Action adaptations. Occasionally, this works... more often? It doesn't.

What I don't get is why the urge to do this in the first place? Animation is a perfectly good medium for telling stories, so why do you need to change to a 'realistic' look to tell the same damned story? It doesn't add anything, and in SO VERY MANY situations it detracts, rather horribly, from the experience. When you combine this obsession with 'Reboots' and 'Sequels' it genuinely starts to feel like all creativity has fled into the dark crevasses of the world.

It's just kinda sad to watch the greed and hunger for money literally consume everything. I have started to think that the reason they're focusing AI so much on Art is because they want to crush all creativity, because they know if they used AI and Robotics to replace actual workers, Capitalism couldn't survive.

[crazedhatter77]

Life with ADHD described perfectly.

Friend: You talked about meds making your brain go quiet for the first time, what do you mean by quiet?

Me: Imagine you're trying to do some work, but you're doing it at a kid's table. The kid to your left is singing a song, but they don't know all the words so they're just singing the same line over and over again. The kid to your right is singing a completely different song on loop. The kids opposite are chattering away and it's mostly just noise, you can't keep track of what they're saying and they change topic every few minutes anyway.

And you're trying to get this work done, you're on a deadline, but none of the clocks in the room work, you don't know how fast time is moving but you know you don't have enough of it.

Now imagine waking up like that. And going to sleep. And everything in between. I wake up with a new song in my head every day, often multiple overlapping songs, and conversations that are moving too fast and so much time-blindness. Imagine the sheer relief when the kids stop talking and you can hear yourself think. Slowly, purposefully, calmly think.

Adhd meds. Honestly life-changing

[crazedhatter77]

Damned straight!

ADHD is not caused by modern distractions, it isn't us just being 'lazy' or 'scatterbrained' or what have you. It is a physical difference in our brains that diminishes our Executive functions to varying degrees.

Please take it seriously.

Scrolling because of the dopamine slot machines that are social media might be making the average person more distracted, but that level of distraction is not the equivalent to chronic struggles with executive functions like working memory to the point you need to be diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder.

____It is not the same thing___!

Sincerely, ADHDers who are tired of people saying *we are all a little ADHD sometimes*

[crazedhatter77]

Rant #2 - On living with ADHD

ADHD is a hell of a thing. A physical difference in the human brain that causes 5 specific and relatively small areas of the brain to develop roughly 5 to 8 percent smaller than would be normal. And those 5 areas all just happen to deal with Executive Function! The end result of this is virtually no impulse control, no internal motivation, no capacity to focus on anything that isn't interesting... oh and perhaps the worst one, no ability to be accountable to yourself. This gets particularly tricky when you're an adult with money - rewards systems that may have worked when you're a kid just fail, because you can just give yourself the award! It's a hard thing to live with. I'm not even sure a neurotypical can fully grasp how WEIRD it is to have no internal motivation. The only reason I do ANYTHING is because of outside forces, and I mean ANYTHING. If there is no outside force desiring a thing... that thing just won't happen.

It's exhausting, day after day having to overcome this mental inertia to do absolutely nothing. Like, if it weren't for needing to have a roof over my head, food for myself and my cat and medical care to ensure my physical conditions don't kill me, there is absolutely no way I would ever get to work. The stakes basically have to be life and death for me to be doing anything constructive at all. The effort it takes, by the way, to be able to focus and to be able to engage with work and not give in to these rampant mental impulses results in a level of mental exhaustion that some days... I just get home from work, sit down, and stare at a blank screen for an hour before it registers that I haven't even gotten out of my work clothes.

So why am I writing about it? Because sometimes you just need to get your frustrations off your chest, and you don't want to burden anyone with the weight of it. Living in my brain is just the strangest thing - I am conscious human being, but it feels like I'm renting time in my own skull. I'm not the one in control and that is just... well it's weird, but I don't FEEL weird for the simple reason that I've never lived in a neurotypical brain. I've often thought about how different it must be to think 'I need to do X' and just... doing it? The internal argument, monologue, whatever you want to call it to push through and get something done in my brain is like herding cats. My thought process looks like an 8 way intersection with no traffic controls, oh and a runway and some rail tracks run through it too.

The physiological basis of the disease is the really hard part about it. Knowing that it is effectively a deformity in your brain, knowing that you'll just never be able to function as a normal human being without medical intervention is hard. It's not something that will be cured, it's a physical fact of your brain and unless we figure out how to stimulate growth of those 5 regions, or figure out how to edit it out of the genes so that it can't happen in the first place, it's here to stay.

Don't get me wrong, there are occasional benefits to it, if you can get it well managed the task switching becomes invaluable when you have to juggle a number of things, as long as you can maintain interest in them. The propensity for wandering thought patterns and daydreaming undoubtedly can lead to interesting places - I wouldn't be at all surprised to find ADHD disproportionately represented in Science and Art - hyperfixation combined with those daydreams and thought patterns undoubtedly would lead to some incredible creations and scientific discoveries. But man, that doesn't really cancel out the constant struggle just to exist as a conscious being. I can't tell you how many times I've just... forgotten to eat! Sometimes I wind up so hungry that I feel physically ill to the point that I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to keep the food down!

The real reason I'm writing about it, is that even though it was first described in the 1790's, even though it's been discovered to be a PHYSICAL disability, it's still one of those things that is dismissed as nonsense or laziness and that is the worst thing of all about it. The thought that so many people out there think we've made up this disability because we 'just don't want to try hard' is absurd. It crushes the human spirit within us, humanity in it's very nature is a species that strives for progress - that part is still in me, there are so many things I wish I could push myself to do but... I literally just can't. I lack the actual capacity and to think I'd be that way on purpose is insulting.

I just wish more in the world could come to terms with it, ADHD is a real, debilitating, physical defect that causes a learning disability in people that have it, and it results in an utter lack or severely curtailed executive function. It isn't a choice, it isn't curable, and it isn't going away. But it IS in need of support and accommodation, just like any other disability - the difficult part is figuring out what that support looks like.

That is the real challenge.

Anyhow, this wasn't really a rant I guess, more like a stream of consciousness info dump of a lot of crap that rattles around in my head, and the fact that I wrote all of this and got to this point shows how badly I wanted to vent this. I haven't gone 'Look a Squirrel!' this entire time!

[crazedhatter77]

Rant #1 - On how a question is asked.

Alright, so here's the thing world. HOW you ask a question matters as much as what you're asking and what you seek to know. What do I mean by this?

Don't lead your question with "Am I the only one that-". The answer is immediately no, there are 8 billion people on the planet, or nearly so, do you REALLY think you'd be the only one?

The same applies to "Does anyone else think-" and other variations. Even if you're 1 in a million there are 8000 others like you, the chances of it being a unique thought or question are slim.

Better choices: "Who else thinks that-" "How many of you-" or other such more open ended openings to a question.

And yes, I know I'm an old man shouting at clouds. That's kind of the point of this space for me.

[crazedhatter77]

People who complain how they can't romance Judy in Cyberpunk 2077 and use mods to make her romance a man need to stfu and don't deserve to play this game

Either romance her as a women or fuck off

Just bc a bunch of pixels is a lesbian isn't the end of the world. Cishet men litterally have EVERYTHING and need to shut up

[crazedhatter77]

Anytime I communicate that I’m struggling with focus and someone responds with “you just have to force yourself to do it”

Like WOW, you’re so right! You know, it’s almost like the reason I can’t do it is literally because I have a disability stopping me from doing it!! It’s almost like ADHD effects my executive functioning skills to a detrimental degree!!! Making it impossible for me to do just that exact thing!! But you’re SO right I’ll just crawl under my desk and die now! Thanks!

[crazedhatter77]

Yyyyyyup.

“People think being alone makes you lonely, but I don’t think that’s true. Being surrounded by the wrong people is the loneliest thing in the world.”

— Unknown

[crazedhatter77]