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I laughed much harder than I probably should have.

[ilianamalek]

Star Trek + Languages

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Cardassia

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Sketches

[ilianamalek]

"Who am I, Elim?" I didn’t hestitate. “Someone I must never let out of my awareness.”

[ilianamalek]

ugghhhh one of the things I really want from Star Trek that they don’t talk about much is alien science

How do Cardassians conceptualize/describe scientific principles differently than us? What course did the scientific progress of Bajor take? How did the social...

[ilianamalek]

Adorable Cardassians are adorable. XD

Doodles. uwu

[ilianamalek]

"It seemed more about a group of troubled individuals forced to work together and evolve light years away from home." Really? Because I didn't get that feeling from the show at all. We have what should be two very disparate crews forced to work together on the other side of the galaxy, but from Episode 2 onward there is no conflict between the characters. The only instance of outright dissent I can even remember is Seska and another member from the Maquis crew coming to Chakotay and saying "if you want to munity, we'll back you", and him instantly saying "say anything like that again and I'll arrest you". Then nothing. The Maquis were instantly absorbed into the Starfleet crew like nothing had happened, and the Maquis crew seem to immediately forget that they were never Starfleet. The few other times they try for a "they're Maquis and that's causing problems" episode, it's more like, well, these guys aren't doing what we want them to, so we'll have them run some laps around the ship and problem solved.

I don't think that Voyager was anything innovative. It felt like a poor continuation of TNG, if anything, and the writers were actually striving to make VOY more like TNG because that format was so successful. They even continued the numbering system from TNG, so that the pilot episodes of Voyager are not 101 and 102, but 801 and 802, which says a lot about the aims of the show's producers.

All that being said...I still enjoy Voyager. Sure, I get mad at the show a lot while I'm watching it, but there's a lot of nostalgia involved for me since it was the only Trek show on TV (in syndication...I believe Enterprise was in its initial run at the time, as well, but...yeah...Enterprise...) for a long time, so I watched a lot of it. XP I could write an entire dissertation on the problems with Voyager (lack of character development, the constant use of the reset button, the fact that there were so many great things that were set up and then never delivered on...etc), but at the end of the day I'll still watch it if it's on. But, if I want to watch a good episode of Star Trek, I'm more likely to go for DS9 or TNG.

Considering I generally like Cardassians, I feel frustrated that Seska is such a puke-inducing character and she doesn’t even look Cardassian… and I don’t know if they ever explained why, if its like from being altered to look Bajoran so long that when she magically reverted back (??) she didn’t…

[ilianamalek]

Nametags on uniforms so you know who the hell you're talking to.

Cardassia - +1 Starfleet - 0

[ilianamalek]

my favorite thing about worf is how sometimes he peeks out from behind things

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[ilianamalek]

Sword of Goujian

Dated: Spring and Autumn Period (771 to 403 BCE)

Discovered: 1965 in Jiangling County

Medium: bronze

Present location: Hubei Provincial Museum, Hubei Province, China

The Sword of Goujian is an archaeological artifact of the Spring and Autumn Period (771 to 403 BCE) found in 1965 in Hubei, China. Renowned for its sharpness and resistance to tarnish, this historical artifact of ancient China is currently in the possession of the Hubei Provincial Museum.

In 1965, while an archaeological survey was being performed along the second main aqueduct of the Zhang River Reservoir in Jingzhou, Hubei, more than fifty ancient tombs of the Chu State were found in Jiangling County. The dig started in the middle of October 1965 and ended in January 1966.

More than 2,000 artifacts were recovered from the sites, including a bronze sword. In December 1965, 7 kilometres (4.3 mi) from the ruins of Jinan, an ancient capital of Chu, a casket was discovered at Wangshan site #1. Inside, an ornate bronze sword was found with a human skeleton.

The sword was found sheathed in a wooden scabbard finished in black lacquer. The scabbard had an almost air-tight fit with the sword body. Unsheathing the sword revealed an untarnished blade, despite the tomb being soaked in underground water for over 2,000 years.

On one side of the blade, two columns of text are visible. Eight characters are written in an ancient script. The script was found to be Bird-worm seal script (literally “birds and worms characters” owing to the intricate decorations of the defining strokes), a variant of seal script. Initial analysis of the text deciphered six of the characters, “King of Yue” and “made this sword for [his] personal use”.

The remaining two characters were likely the name of this King of Yue. From its origin in 510 BCE to its demise at the hands of Chu in 334 BCE, nine kings ruled Yue, including Goujian, Lu Cheng, Bu Shou, Zhu Gou, and others. The identity of this king sparked debate among archeologists and Chinese language scholars.

The discussion was carried out mostly in letters, and it involved famous scholars such as Guo Moruo. After more than two months, the experts started to form a consensus that the original owner of the sword was Goujian, the King of Yue made famous by his perseverance in time of hardship. So the entirety of the text reads “[Belonging to] King Goujian of Yue, made for [his] personal use”.

The sword of Goujian is 55.6 centimetres (21.9 in) in length, including a 8.4 centimetres (3.3 in) hilt; the blade is 4.6 centimetres (1.8 in) wide at its base. The sword weighs 875 grams (30.9 oz). In addition to the repeating dark rhombi pattern on both sides of the blade, there are decorations of blue crystals and turquoise. The grip of the sword is bound by silk, while the pommel is composed of eleven concentric circles.

The Sword of Goujian still has a sharp blade and shows no signs of tarnish. To understand why, scientists at Fudan University and CAS used modern equipment to determine the chemical composition of the sword, as shown in the table below.

The body of the blade is mainly made of copper, making it more pliant and less likely to shatter; the edges have more tin content, making them harder and capable of retaining a sharper edge; the sulfur decreases the chance of tarnish in the patterns. It is likely that the chemical composition, along with the almost air-tight scabbard, led to the exceptional state of preservation.

Sources: Baide Baidu | Wikipedia | Freedom for Vietnam

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[ilianamalek]

Designs for the Ferengi knives used in Bloodlines.

Artist: Rick Sternbach  Source: Star Trek The Next Generation: The Continuing Mission [Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens] 1997

[ilianamalek]

Bwahaha!  I can totally see NuSpock acting like that. 

[ilianamalek]

i’m not 1701% certain, but it COULD even

be the same pair

of ladies

[ilianamalek]

The Acolyte by Abayomi (yes, this is me)

Ancient Hebitian (Cardassian) with a recitation mask. I actually sort of hate the injection of religion into modern Cardassian society in the books, but I'm more okay with it in ancient culture. Really, all I wanted to do was mimic Pre-Raphaelite style art with a Cardassian as the main subject, so nyah. Architecture is also vaguely Egyptian because Egypt.

And drawing hands sucks, so ignore them.

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Bellerby & Co. Globemakers - the last of the hand made globes