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Shanties and working songs never fail to make the lowliest of spaces ring like the finest opera hall.

(Perhaps because they were never made to be sung in great halls)

That said Halo theme sung in the boys toilets was also magical so could just be a mens toilet thing.

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And hopefully continued your learning into Hiya education.

I learned how to greet people in Hi School.

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jemallon #WildIsLife #RareLittleBugger #Pangolin

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Once thought a myth, by mine eyes it is THE Cold One. A Decade of cracking 'em open, to finally find it!

I must tell the Boys at once!

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I'm more of a fantasy than sci-fi person, but consider my interest piqued. Why should I watch farscape?

Okay, the thing is, every Farscape fan’s pitch on Why You, Yes You, Should Watch Farscape ends up sounding very similar, and that’s because Farscape is a black hole that sucks you in and does things to your brain, and after you’ve watched it you are never, ever the same, which incidentally is basically the plot of Farscape.

I would summarize the basic plot for you, but that’s work, and luckily, the show’s credits sequence includes a handy summary that I will provide instead of doing that work: “My name is John Crichton, an astronaut. A radiation wave hit, and I got shot through a wormhole. Now I’m lost in some distant part of the universe on a ship, a living ship, full of strange alien life forms. Help me. Listen, please. Is there anybody out there who can hear me? I’m being hunted by an insane military commander. Doing everything I can. I’m just looking for a way home.“

So let me break down that monologue into its component reasons you should watch Farscape.

1) Some of the strange alien life forms are Muppets.

Farscape a co-production with the Jim Henson Company, and while there are many aliens played by humans in make-up, there are also a considerable number (including two of the regular crew) who are Muppets. By which I do not mean Kermit. I mean really gorgeous, elaborate works of art.

Also, even a lot of the humans-in-makeup aliens just look cool, and incredibly weird. Here’s an alien who appears in a single episode of season 1:

Not that there aren’t, you know, occasional Star Trek-style “these guys are just humans with weird hair,” or whatever, but in general, the aliens on Farscape look really alien. And that’s more than an aesthetic choice; it’s Farscape’s driving narrative principle. The aliens look alien, they act alien, they have alien values.

You know how a lot of sci-fi shows will have a stand-in for “fuck,” like Battlestar Galactica has “frak”? Well, Farscape has “frell.” And also “dren.” And yotz, hezmana, mivonks, loomas, tralk, snurch, eema, drannit, dench, biznak, arn, drad, fahrbot, narl. Some of those are swear words, but some of them are just words, never explicitly translated, that the alien characters will pepper into their speech, because, well, why should translator microbes be able to completely translate all the nuances of an alien culture? You’ll pick it up from context. One time, in passing, a character mentions that he’s familiar with the concept of suicide, but there’s no word for it in his language. I cannot emphasize to you enough how fleeting this moment is; the episode is not about suicide, we’re not having a great exchange of cultural ideas—at the time, the characters are running down a corridor in a crisis, as they are about 70 percent of the time—it’s just that the subject got brought up, and this character needed to talk around the fact that he literally didn’t have a word, in that moment. Things like that happen all the time, on Farscape.

Because more than anything else, Farscape is a show about culture shock. John Crichton is this straight, white Southern guy, at the top of his game—he’s an astronaut! he’s incredibly high status!—and then he ends up on the other side of the galaxy, where none of his cultural markers of privilege hold any meaning, where he doesn’t know the rules, where he literally can’t even open the doors. And he has to unlearn the idea that humanity is central, that he is the norm.

2) John Crichton, an astronaut, is pretty great.

A show that’s about a straight white guy with high status having to learn that he’s not the center of the universe could easily be centered around a really insufferable person, but one of the subtle things that makes Farscape so wonderful is that Crichton is, for the most part, pretty excellent. He has a lot of presumptions to unlearn because almost anyone in his cultural position would, but he’s also just a stand-up guy: compassionate, intelligent, open-minded, decent, forgiving, brave, hopeful.

And the galaxy tries to kick a whole lot of that out of him. It doesn’t succeed, mostly, but if Farscape is about anything other than culture shock, it’s about the lasting effects of trauma. How you can go through a wormhole one person, and experience things that turn you into someone you don’t recognize.

That’s kind of grim-sounding, but ultimately, what I’m trying to say is that Farscape is almost fanatically devoted to character work. Crichton is not the only character who sounds like he should be one thing and ends up being another. All of the characters—all of them, all of them, even the annoying ones—are complicated wonders. And you don’t have to wonder whether the events of the episode you’re watching are going to matter. They will. Everything that happens to the characters leaves a mark. Everything leaves them forever changed. Whether it’s mentioned explicitly or not—and often enough, it’s not explicit—the characters remember what has happened to them.

3) The living ship houses a lot of excellent women, among them the ship itself.

Ah, the women of Farscape, thou art the loves of my fucking life.

There’s Aeryn Sun, former Peacekeeper (that’s the military that the “insane military commander” hails from) now fugitive, currently learning the meaning of the word “compassion” (literally). She will break your fingers and also your heart. John/Aeryn is the main canon romantic ship.

There’s Pa’u Zhoto Zhaan, a priestess of the ninth level, current pacifist, former anarchist. Sorry, leading anarchist. She orgasms in bright light! (Oh my god, Farscape.)

There’s Chiana, my fucking bestie, a teenage(ish? ages in Farscape are weird) fugitive on the run from a repressive authoritarian state. Chiana is like a seductress con artist grifter thief who mostly just wants to survive so that she can have fun, damn it. Characters on Farscape do not really discuss sexualities (sex, yes, sexualities, no) and it would be fair to say that several of them do not fall along human sexuality lines generally, but I’m gonna go ahead and say that Chiana is canonically not straight.

Then there’s Moya, the ship herself, and it’s hard to get a straight read on Moya’s personality, since she mostly can’t speak. But she definitely has opinions, and things and people she cares about. And she moves the plot, though that gets into spoiler territory.

Past first season, further excellent women show up: Jool (controversial, but I like her), Sikozu (I once saw a Tumblr meme where someone had marked down that Sikozu would lose her shit when someone pronounced “gif” wrong, and that’s absolutely correct, and it’s why I love her), and Noranti (who is incredibly weird, and incredibly hard to summarize, but man, you gotta love her willingness to just show up and do her thing). Plus, there’s a recurring female villain, Grayza, who I could write probably multiple essays about. (I don’t know how you will feel about Grayza, as not everyone loves her, but I think she’s fucking fascinating, especially because she’s not actually the only recurring female villain. We also get Ahkna!)

(Side note: I should mention, here, that the cast of Farscape is really, really white. There is one cast member of color, Lani Tupu, but he pretty much represents the entirety of even, like, incidental diversity in casting for the series.)

Anyway, Farscape is full of awesome women, and also awesome and unexpected men, and it really enjoys playing with audience expectations of gender roles, generally. Literal entire books have been written about the way that Farscape fucks around with sex, sexuality, and gender. It’s a little weird because it was the late 90s/early 2000s, and sometimes that does come through, but Farscape’s guiding principle was always to try not to present American culture of the time as the norm, so like. It is not.

(An aside on Farscape and sex: Literally every character on Farscape has sexual tension with every other character. If you are a shipper, this is a Good Show, because no matter who you ship, there will not only be subtext, you will get a Moment of some kind. Multiple characters kiss the Muppet. Farscape is dedicated to getting into the nitty-gritty of the galaxy—I like to think of it as showing the guts of the universe—so a lot of the show is kind of squishy. They live on a biomechanoid ship, instead of androids there are “bioloids,” there’s a lot of focus on strange alien biologies, and lots of weird glowing fluids and things. I think the sex thing is kind of part and parcel of the larger biology focus: Farscape is really fascinated with how we all eat and evolve and live and die and, well, fuck. Which is in turn, kind of part of its focus on making everything really alien.)

4) Other stuff you should know.

Farscape as a whole is excellent, but it was kind of the product of creative anarchy—an Australian/American coproduction (oh yeah, everyone except Crichton speaks with an Australian accent) that was also partnered with the Henson company, whose showrunners were based in America but whose actual production all took place in Australia, and who was just constantly trying new things. So individual episodes can vary wildly in quality. It really takes off in the back half of season one, but no season is without a few off episodes.

It is extraordinarily funny, and I really think I haven’t stressed that enough. It’s one of the shows I want to quote the most in my daily life, but almost all of its humor is really context-dependent, and if you just wander around going, “Hey Stark? What’s black and white, and black and white, and black and white?” people look at you really funny.

It’s very conversant with pop culture generally (although obviously sci-fi  specifically, and Star Trek most specifically of all) and really enjoys deconstructing tropes, often to the effect of, “Well, Crichton really does not know what to do here, does he?” but sometimes just to be interesting.

There are also a lot of themes about science, and its uses and misuses.

The whole thing is fucking epic, and if you get invested at all, will take you on an emotional ride.

This show is weird. I know that that’s probably come across by now, but I think it’s worth reiterating as its own point: Farscape is so weird. Like, proudly, unabashedly, trying its hardest, weird. An amazing kind of weird.

If you’re into fantasy, you should know that there’s a recurring villain who’s just a wizard. Like, they don’t bother to explain it any more than that, he’s just a fucking wizard.

In summary: You should watch Farscape because it is a weird, wild, emotional, epic romance/drama/action/allegory full of Muppets and leather and one-liners and emotional gut punches and love, and if you let it, it will worm its way into you and never let go, which, now that I think of it, is another Farscape plot.

Send me meta prompts to distract me from my migraine!

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Executive Heelies! The one thing I have not stopped going on about since I entered the workforce

Guy's living in the year 3,000

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Oh yes?

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You are flying through space, on a routine run; you are a part of a rescue service for stranded ships, be they damaged or out of fuel or dealing with a rogue AI, this is what you, and your small crew, are contracted to do by whatever government it is that exists now.

You are currently attempting to answer a distress signal from a distant corner of space, one that is just close enough, but also just far away enough from traditional travel paths that it's not uncommon to get work in that sector, but it's also not frequent.

As you approach the distress beacon, you finally glimpse the ship, and your scanners are able to pick up details about it. The readings are confusing, however. The ship is reading as both larger and smaller than it's manifest log states it should be, and your scanners indicate that it is simultaneously further away and closer than where the distress beacon is pinging from.

Your eyes tell you that it's exactly the right size and distance, despite your scanner's odd readings. However, it does not look like what the log tells you it should. What should be a typical freighter ship is a Frankenstein of rusted, decaying ship parts from all sorts of mismatched ships.

Upon docking, you gather your crew, and board the ship to search for whoever it was that sent out the distress call. But as soon as you cross the threshold into the derelict ship, you realize that you have stepped into a perfect recreation... of your own childhood home.

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still mad about smart TVs. that shit should be in a separate box like you can literally buy one of them androidtv boxes for £30. it doesn't need its own ip address it doesn't need its own app store it doesn't need to replicate the functionality every device plugged into it already has

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I'm not going to bother reading the article to find out if this actually works or if anyone is actually trying it. I'm just happy we as a society are showing proper reverence for Orbs.

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Good Grief, is this really going to be my first actual Post.

Outwith the usual silly claptrap I reblog, it should come as no surprise that I support Israel & Israeli rights to continued existence.

"So you're saying..." no fuck right off. Your failure to grasp the concept of nuance and empathy is your own bloody problem and I'm not wasting my breath adding the platitudes that are obvious to anyone with more than one firing neuron.

My reason for coming out the wood workfollows this morning's news that the Madleen has been diverted to Ashdod under IDF escort. The "crew" released pre-made videos for this eventuality claiming in particular that they have been kidnapped.

Now. A great many things that the Free-Palestine crowd have done are beyond the pale, and have drawn my ire in private. And the party boat cruise to Palestine had been little more than a raised eyebrow.

But this.

This just feels perverse. Given the way the conflict started. Given the reasons for it's continuation. Are you actually insane? It's stolen valour in the most asinine and vindictive way. Calling on Sweden's government to do everything possible to free them. Yes I'm sure the Knesset wouldn't want you on the first Scandi-Airlines out of Ben Gurion.

But then. Not for one moment do I believe it wasn't an intentional use of the word. A perverse ideation to be the real victims and aligned with the real victims. A flagrant attempt to belittle and minimise the remaining 54 hostages "well Israel is holding us captive so that cancels them out".

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strong contender for best book cover

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What could possibly go wrong?

I'm really wondering WTF about now with the new adverts.

They started out creepy but not awful and then have gotten progressively worse.

Putting a cut in and issuing a warning that it's a bit much when you click the readmore.

Nice of the AI girlfriend industry is including furries at least

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Sokka: *whispering into Toph's ear*

Toph: ... MY GUY!

Once when the gaang visits the Fire Nation, they’re all just on the side of too tipsy when Zuko leans in with the most grave expression imaginable.

“Aang,” Zuko says, “This has been… haunting me…. Why did your friends need to suck on those frogs?”

And Aang just gasps, and does not explain the frogs, because he has suddenly remembered that Miyuki is still wanted by the Fire Nation and that just won’t do. So Aang demands that Zuko pardon Miyuki for her crimes, which then gets the rest of the gaang to dogpile on and also demand justice for Miyuki. 

Zuko is willing to hear him out. 

…Zuko is significantly less willing to hear him out when Aang mentions that Miyuki is a cat.

(Zuko finds it difficult to believe that a cat is legitimately wanted by the Fire Nation)

But because they are all the worst, he relents and they all drunkenly stumble down to go find the records of Miyuki’s crimes and write her up a pardon, much to the chagrin of the night-shift archivist.

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Someone asked for the smaller Hitchhiker’s Towel in my notebook paper style, which I was more than happy to try, lol.  The others in the set will have some of the doodles I usually add on the sides, but had to rest it out plain first, and quite like how it turned out.