#anyway... this is just one example; there's a lot of stuff where it's like...

[rhube]

So, this gets into different types of consciousness and what you mean by a 'channel'. For example, in philosophy of mind, we distinguish between 'Awareness' and 'Attention'. The dominant theory (and this matches my experience, but it might not for you) is that you can only *attend* to one thing at a time, but you can be aware of a BUNCH of shit you're not focusing on.

Like, if someone is drilling in the street outside, a lot of people would be able to sort of tune that out (which I guess is a kind of channel analogy, like the way you tune out a channel of radio), so they're not paying attention to it, but it would still be a sound they are hearing and therefore part of their awareness, and if you said, 'Hey, is someone drilling outside?' They'd be like, 'God, yes, it's been going on for hours! It's so annoying.' Which shows that it was a part of their conscious experience, it just wasn't in the forefront of their minds.

So, on one understanding, you might be aware of a bunch of different concerns about going to the park, only attending to one at a time, but flitting back forth between them.

Now, this comes into collision with the problem that a lot of philosophers of mind spend far too much time thinking about their own experience of their own minds, and not asking other people. Or reinterpreting other people's reported experience to fit their model.

I read a lot about introspection for what my supervisor thought was the best chapter of my thesis, and no one I read mentioned aphasia at all.

Eric Schwitzgebel, who has made introspection his Thing, had a giant footnote about a conference he went to where a bunch of experts got together to discuss what exactly you can introspect, and they couldn't even agree something basic, such as whether there is a quality/qualia/what-it's-likeness of thought beyond what is contained in imagery (visual, audio, picturing words etc).

On learning about aphasia and aphantasia, my first thought was: did no one at this conference have these conditions/why didn't you ask THEM?

Of course, it is the habit of philosophers of mind to both rationalise the reports of others to support their own point of view and to question if we have a common understanding of what qualia are (yes, if you're not into these sorts of questions, we're quite annoying to be around). So it might not resolve the question, but it feels like it should be addressed. If I were well enough, I'd be tempted to look up whether there's been scholarship on this, seeing as people are talking about it more, but anyway...

Point is: I see you say you think in different channels at once, and I try to understand it through my own experience, which is as of a whole muddy collection of stuff going on in my head (some conscious, some self-conscious, some subconscious, some unconscious, some moving between those different related states) but there's only ever one thing I'm ATTENDING to.

And this is how I understand it when Occupational Health Therapists tell me I can only ever think about one thing or task at once (which at face value is just false if you have studied minds at all), and when I think I'm multitasking I am in fact context-switching (be proud of me, I have never said to any of their faces, 'Actually, as a philosopher of mind...'). What take them to really mean is that I can only attend to one thing at a time.

This makes sense to me, as although I can listen to music and write and scratch my nose at the same time, I cannot do more than one linguistic task at a time. I cannot SING ALONG to a song and write at the same time, although I am still aware of the song in the background. I have a really strong memory of reading an Anne McCaffrey book where some of the telepaths could hold simultaneous conversations in their heads and just not being able to picture how it would work. And this was when I was in my teenage I Want To Believe phase, so I really did try. It's not possible for me, and I account for it through the attention thing. Linguistic thinking requires attention to formalise the thought in words, and you can only attend to one thing at once.

Based on this, I interpret your description of having 'channels' as really just hopping your attention about between the various miasma of stuff going on in your head (what Kant would call the manifold of intuition), but only ever attending to one thing at a time. It makes sense of the fact that the brain has different subdivisions which, although flexible, are generally devoted to doing different things.

BUT I COULD BE WRONG ABOUT THAT.

The pesky thing about thought and experience is that we aren't telepaths and it isn't communally available. This means our language can't 'triangulate' effectively on the meanings of our words for what is revealed my introspection. If you point at a rabbit and say 'gavagai', I have somewhere to start when it comes to investigating what you mean. You, me, and the rabbit form a triangle that helps me 'locate' your meaning. But you can't point to stuff inside your mind. Despite what science fiction tells us, we can only get rudimentary information about what you're thinking from fMRI scans and the like (at least, so far). So when we're using mental terms to describe what's going on inside, our reference points for potentially shared experiences will always be vaguer. Things like sharp pains are easier than questions about the what-it's-like-ness of thoughts, as it's usually pretty clearly associated with an external object that caused the pain.

To me, it feels like my mind is a swamp of gestating thought and experience, which I can understand as different modules of my meat-based neural net surfacing stuff that requires high-level thought for my conscious attention so I can sort out the stuff that cannot be sorted out by reflex. That makes sense of my experience. I don't believe that anyone thinks in complete and discrete linguistic internal monologues with good sentence structures - aphasia, aphantasia, or otherwise.

But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you really do have distinct, separate channels. Maybe Anne McCaffrey could think about two different linguistic lines of thought at once, and that's why she thought some of her characters could.

Who knows! We haven't really been able to finalise an agreed-upon definition for 'thought' or 'idea' so I dunno how we can hope to start with stuff like this.

Here endeth the ramble.

Thanks for coming to another session of, 'gee, I wish a philosopher of mind didn't follow me'. I will shut up now.

Okay so some people can’t see objects in their imagination and some people don’t think in words and some people hear their thoughts like a voice and others don’t. I get that

But how many distinct channels do most folks have playing at once? cause my normal range is 2-4 and I though that was just what thinking was LIKE but CBD brings that down to just 1

[sengenism]

The Ishigamis and The Gifts of Science

Dr. Stone is a love letter to humanity and its sciences. The main character, Senku, often acts averse to all forms of affection, and the only love he doesn't deny is his love for science. But Senku is so so full of love. He just expresses it in a way other than physical touch or words of affirmation. He gives.

But let's go back to the one who taught him so– Byakuya Ishigami, his father. The love of Senku's life.

Byakuya is introduced in the tenth chapter of the manga as a dotting father who sells his car to present Senku with scientific instruments he will need for a more efficient research. This car is Byakuya's means of transportation, and given that he is crying and shaking in this scene, it could not have been easy for him to lose it. But his love for Senku is so big, that he wants to support his son's passion even if it means sacrificing a great convenience for him.

And Senku? Senku truly fell in love with science at this moment.

If there is anything that Senku is, he is Byakuya Ishigami's son through and through. They may seem like two very different people, as Byakuya is an openly affectionate guy while Senku is more closed off with showing his true emotions. But Senku takes more from Byakuya than not, and one of them is by showing his love and/or care for others through giving the gifts of science.

And it starts with Byakuya.

[Bodysuit Acquired!]

Byakuya had failed his first attempt at being an astronaut ten years back, but he doesn't give up and tries again. Senku then creates a bodysuit that manipulates muscle movement to help Byakuya pass his swimming test. And while the bodysuit doesn't quite help Byakuya to swim, the thought Senku had put into it had motivated Byakuya more than ever to pass the test. This is one of the fundamentals of gifting– sometimes, it really is the thought behind it that matters.

This motivation is what Byakuya credits during his interview with JAXA for passing the tests. He understands that Senku might not have given him any words of encouragement, but this bodysuit was all the words that were needed between them. Senku wants Byakuya to achieve his dreams just as badly. It's the way Senku shows his love for his father.

And it's the way Senku shows his love for others too.

[Glasses Acquired!]

One of the primitive aspects of the Ishigami village is that it considers bad eyesight as a type of "disease". Fuzzy disease, to be exact.

Suika wears a melon mask at all times to help clear her eyesight, which Senku later reveals is due to the pinhole effect. She, however, has never told Senku or the others about having the fuzzy disease. Senku himself notes how odd it is for her to wear a melon around, and confronts her about it once he decides to create glass. This is one of the most beautiful scenes in Dr. Stone, as Suika finds out that her disease was never a disease, and is finally able to see as clearly as the others. Senku basically gives her perfect eyesight, something she didn't even know was possible before.

[Antibiotics Acquired!]

One of the most beloved people in this village is the priestess, Ruri. Two of Senku's new friends, Kohaku and Chrome are deeply affected by her unknown fatal disease. Senku is such a person who would help a stranger even if there is no benefit to do so (though he would never admit to it), what more a person who his new friends truly love and care about. He cures Ruri of pneumonia, giving her a chance to live a life without the worry of it being her last day every day.

[Cola Acquired!]

Senku forms an alliance with Gen, who plays the role of Tsukasa's spy, for the promise of a bottle of cola. Both Senku and Gen are aware that the cola is only a front for Gen's loyalty to Senku and the Kingdom of Science, for Gen needs his superficial reputation as a comfort and cannot simply join them if there is no personal benefit for him to do so.

This cola is also the first gift post-petrification that Senku brands himself on, probably because it represents the first gift that is not out of necessity and leans toward a comfort/luxury that they both used to enjoy in the modern world.

For a modern man such as Gen, drinking his favourite soda in the stone world might have been one of the happiest days in his life.

[Cotton Candy Acquired!]

Senku cares about people so much, even if the people in question have tried to kill him. Senku sees Homura as a soldier who is merely following the orders given by her leader, but he also sees the Homura as a lonesome girl sitting by herself on trees day and night.

As usual, Senku hides his kindness and care by showing an evil ulterior motive, such as turning Homura to their side using the cotton candy, but Ruri points out that this is a facade. Similarly to Gen, a person with such an ego is unable to seem as if he is doing something good out of the kindness of his heart.

[Stove Acquired!]

As winter approaches, the elders in the village are worried about losing people to the cold. Senku hears about this and creates a stove which has a multi-purpose of cooking and also radiating heat for the people to stave off the coldness of winter. And speaking of winter...

[Christmas Acquired!]

Senku hangs up lights in the tree for the "light bulb test" on a random night. Except the date isn't random at all and he drops enough hints for Gen to catch on that it is the night of Christmas. The significance of the day is only appreciated by Gen and himself, as they are the only modern timers in the village. It is for the sake of nostalgia, but Senku would rather be caught dead than admit that he is a sentimental guy with such irrational feelings.

And well, it all comes back to that scene with Byakuya, doesn't it? If you recall, Byakuya calls himself "Santa" while giving the scientific presents to the young Senku. This indicates Senku received them during Christmas. Which means... Christmas is a sentimental day to Senku and his father. An anniversary of Senku receiving his Christmas presents from Byakuya, which led to his deeper dive into his science obsession. The beginning of it all, one would say.

And even though he's dead and buried, Byakuya never stops giving. He gives Senku the Ishigami village to provide Senku with allies. He gives Senku Lillian's music, because he believes in the light of music and understands the importance of media to society. He collects platinum till his last breath, because he believes that Senku will need it someday. Byakuya keeps on giving to Senku, because his love for his son is so huge and unconditional. And because he promised.

Surely, there is no greater love in the manga than Byakuya's love for his son and Senku's love for his father. Byakuya could easily win ten billion best father awards... well, not like there's much competition for that in shounen mangas.

[likesdoodling]

Got into Witch Hat Atelier last year sometime and yesterday finally got around to drawing Qifrey. And we've got some pictures of Coco too :D

(I'd forgotten my pencil so this was just inked straight without sketching first which is not what I typically do, but I don't think it went tooooooo badly...)

My favourite is definitely the top right one of Qifrey. I was using the manga for reference (hanging out at the public library with a friend so there were books right there), and I really like how it turned out tbh.

[betty-fran]

Thank you @sad-trekkie-life for your reply, and I always appreciate your opinion, especially one different from mine! I expected someone to disagree with me sooner, to be honest. I understand perfectly well how this reading of TOS/films configuration is formed, and why people like it, and I certainly believe that this view is as correct and valid as any other in general (except for some really toxic stuff). We are all objectively different people with different experiences, and none of us look at the same thing the same way.

But, well, I do see it differently... I'm not saying it's right, that's just how I see it. I don't really have anything against the films (well, objectively I find TMP and TWOK quite simplified, not so much in the plot itself, but in how it's presented to us, but that's more of my very imao criticism, like I read a really good review on TMP that turned this movie into a logical piece of candy [big thanks @anghraine for this analysis, it objectively added more meaning to the film than I actually saw on screen, I wish it was that intellectually subtle, but I still tend to think that the retelling of The Doomsday Machine was really a retelling of The Doomsday Machine, in an attempt to show Kirk's problems and weaknesses on the path to maturity, but at the same time, TMP has one of Shatner's best scenes, when he sees Spock for the first time after so many years, so]) but I sincerely think the films III-V are absolutely great, each in their own way (The Search for Spock, for example, is incredibly emotionally powerful and close to me on some personal level, honestly, the more time passes since watching it, the stronger it feels). But even so, each of the films actually correlates poorly even with each other, representing a kind of potpourri of genres and themes (this actually surprised me, because TOS, which is generally considered to be completely non-linear and disconnected in the "watch any series in any order" way, is actually perceived as a much more holistic and coherent thing, which is sustained in how and what questions it asks) and work with radically different parts of the series, more or less fall into characterization (TWOK objectively does the worst job of this, trying too hard to be a blockbuster, but anyway). They are absolutely wonderful on their own, but if I really try to tie it all to TOS, well, it doesn't really work for me. And probably it's not even right to take it as mischaracterization, but just as, well, an alternative reading, because the films really exist in their own personal space.

It's true, I'm neither a military analyst nor a person with military experience, and my rambling is not particularly intellectual (compared to a lot of the fandom talk I read here, I'm incredibly stupid), but IMO, TOS is generally less militaristic than the films. Starfleet in TOS, although it's a kind of military organization, is not exclusively a military organization, combining also research/scientific and even some diplomatic elements (they are obviously jacks of all trades in any strangest situation, being something in between navy, aviation and astronautics and some idk the peace corps of the first contact, taxi and local rescue service), and is rather a reflection on the topic of "how it could be in the future," built on fresh post-war experience and dreams about changes. It should rather be some new, mixed form of quasi-military organization, the analogue of which we don't have now. And even if Starfleet is an exclusively military organization, it exists in a distant and rather utopian future, where the Federation chooses the paths of diplomacy and conversation with each other, and it represents the unification of planets, not just Earth, so expecting its military system to be completely identified with the military system of the modern army is not entirely correct, I think. In any case, I would like to believe that in 200+ years it will be somehow different... But films are already much more attached to the idea of ​​showing an emphasized military organization in a more familiar and understandable way for us, and there are actually many external reasons for this. And where TOS subtly but powerfully talks about war/genocide/mass tragedies/violence in general, without showing it but reflecting on the impact and consequences, the films are already much simpler and less sophisticated in such conversations.

I, subjectively, think that soldier is not the description Kirk would have chosen for himself. As far as I remember, he calls himself a soldier only once in Errand of Mercy, when he believes they have entered a war with the Klingons (and at this point, he was a soldier). He's clearly part of the chain of command, takes it seriously, and has a lot of personal constraints to that (which he obviously doesn't always agree with), but he's much more of a "hit the ground running and use your brain" type of guy than a blind follower of orders. Kirk is clearly not a hero and has his weaknesses, he has quite openly spat/or been willing to spit on any regulations when it comes to Spock, he clearly has his own very pronounced system of values ​​and ideas about what is right (and it's some kind of fully formed internal thing that doesn't depend on external rules), and while I don't consider Obsession/The Conscience of the King to be episodes about PTSD either, they show us that the coping mechanisms Kirk uses aren't particularly healthy, and it's only when he's forced to re-face the traumas of his past that he even begins to emotionally process it, but given how much TOS actually tends to emphasize Kirk's similar experiences over and over again, I feel like this has a certain intentionality. So I can't agree that he's dealing with the traumatic experience exemplarily well, and that it hasn't left a deep mark on him. He's obviously better at controlling it/it doesn't stop him from doing his job, and he's adept at ignoring it most of the time, but idk even if you're the most resilient terminator, it's still there in the back of your mind. I perceive this whole line of loneliness as Kirk's greatest paralyzing fear as something personal and internal, rather than exclusively the loneliness of a soldier. And considering everything we're told about Kirk in TOS, I do think that You Never Have Faced a Death doesn't really correlate with the original series, and is actually a purely pop-culture TWOK thing, because the next TSFS already works with it much more logically /KIRK: My god, Bones. What have I done? McCOY: What you had to do. What you always do. Turn death into a fighting chance to live./

Additionally, IMO, there is a certain pole shift in Kirk's weaknesses/strengths in the films, which to me feels like (in somewhat taboo Hogwarts metaphors again) a change from Slytherin to Gryffindor (the idea with Slytherin! Kirk is not even mine, but the author of this great article, and although it's probably not the best comparison today, it's actually very apt). Kirk's rather calculating, cold cunning (which reads much more as flexible, conflicted, intellectual, feminine bitchiness) from TOS is transformed into a much more straightforward, masculine-coded, reckless bravery/impulsiveness as an attempt to connect him to a more relatable male character for the audience at the time. And I see this less as a natural development of his character in maturity, and more as a departure from something fundamental about him.

But I don't think that the development of characters/events in films as a direct continuation of TOS is completely impossible, unrealistic, or can't be thoroughly explained psychologically. It's completely possible, realistic, and can be thoroughly explained psychologically. Maybe that's even more true. This exists and works well together, I just don't feel that way personally, and looking back at TOS, they're two separate worlds for me, each enjoyable and deep in its own way, but in this, I quite justifiably prefer TOS.

Being in the process of watching post-TOS films right now, and having rather mixed feelings about it, there is something that probably surprises me the most about all of this. We talk a lot about AOS Kirk and even SNW Kirk (which Paramount tries to show us as the canon young Kirk) as being non-TOS-canon, very different readings of Kirk as a character, but we never really talk about the fact that Film!Kirk is an equally non-TOS-canon reading of the character.

ETA: this is going to be a very long post that I wanted to finish earlier, but my latest meltdown obviously didn't let me finish anything I had planned this week.

[there will be a bit of film criticism now, you can skip that right away and move on to criticizing Kirk's characterization… this really sounds bad, but don't get me wrong, I like post-TOS films, but they're so damn different and I want to talk about it]

The post-TOS films certainly lose all the noir and theatricality of TOS, all its épater la bourgeoisie, this legacy of old cinema (TOS, strangely enough, is completely a child of the golden age of Hollywod, and is much closer to "Casablanca" than to "Star Wars") by completely projecting itself into science fiction (which, to be honest, was the last thing TOS did at all, like they flew in space, of course, but it was such an obviously special transcendent type of space, where you would rather meet Socrates than Xenomorph) and outright militarism.

Perhaps the most shocking moment in "The Motion Picture", and my personal point of no return in the sequels, was one of the opening scenes in the Enterprise's transporter room. The ship wasn't ready to leave yet, and the transporter wasn't working properly, but two crew members were sent out of the Starfleet transporter room, and they… just died in the process (why?). This wasn't negligence on the part of the ship or the crew; it was clearly blatant negligence on the part of Starfleet, and it was presented so quickly and dryly as if it were a fairly routine situation for everyone. They were a little upset, shook their heads, and went off to more pressing matters. It was an absolutely unnecessary scene for the plot (the only thing it affects is the appearance of a vacant science officer position on the ship, which, like, could’ve been vacant anyway? these scene is generally never mentioned again, you could just not add it at all), meaningless and cruel in its absurdity, which perfectly highlights the changes in the approach to the display of violence between the 60s and 80s.

[Enterprise transporter room] RAND: Do you read me Starfleet? Override us. Pull them back! STARFLEET [OC]: Unable to receive their pattern, Enterprise. KIRK: Give it to me. Starfleet, boost your matter gain, we need more signal! ...More signal! SCOTT: We're losing their pattern. RAND: Oh, no! They're forming! WOMAN: (a scream) SONAK: (a moan) KIRK: Starfleet, do you have them? STARFLEET [OC]: Enterprise, ...what we got back didn't live long, ...fortunately. KIRK: Starfleet, ...Kirk. Please ...express my condolences to their families. Commander Sonak's can be reached through the Vulcan Embassy. There was nothing you could have done, Rand. It wasn't your fault.

All of these things were the result, in political and cultural changes, the growth of noticeable gloom in science fiction, and mostly changes that the film industry experienced after the 1960s (the rapid development of technology, the expansion of the audience, and the attempt to move away from the theatrical relic of the past to spectacular films) and in the sequels this is felt not only in the script, which emphasizes dynamic scenes and is much more simplified in literary terms, but also in the acting, which is already much more static and tied to the camera (the acting is one of the reasons why TMP is so difficult to watch, apart from the frankly weak direction and editing, and despite the pretty good [still very Roddenberry-esque with all this love is a touch but not a touch] plot, which is quite funny, because the fact that this is happening against the background of the character of Ilia, who really plays a non-human /a body/ that uses a computer, doesn’tt improve the situation in any way, because none of the actors look noticeably more alive than her, and the only glimpse of emotion in the entire film is the scenes between K/S, which is of course very sweet, but…).

First of all, this concerns Shatner, who is actually a very good theatrical actor (and criticism of his performance in TOS is completely incomprehensible to me). Where he is absolutely alive, natural, and sincere in the noir, theatrical TOS, he is exhausted, stiff, and (I'll be honest) repulsively arrogant in the films’ blockbusterness and their efforts to be dramatic. I partly attribute this to the fact that, like me, he is completely unsuited to dark hair and it turns our lives into a Nietzschean abyss, but more likely the combination of his ego and inability to realize himself played a bad joke on him, and he lost something real, really important in the pursuit of attention. But that's why the K/S interaction scenes in the films (and all the Kirk scenes that involve Spock in any way) are so surprising to me, because they're the only scenes where Shatner suddenly sheds all of his ego, arrogance, and discontent, becoming again... sweet, alive, and natural in his acting, and sincere in his absolute admiration and warm love for the one important person in Kirk's life, and it's such a contrast to his acting at other times that I'm just, I don't know, Bill, what are you doing? He just sees Spock, and bang, he becomes a completely different person. In any case, Shatner's changes and internal conflicts have their impact on the character's formation and perception in the films, but they are only part of the bigger picture.

[end of films criticism, let's move on]

"The Motion Picture", our ground zero in Kirk drift, generally sets this emphasized masculine tone in Kirk's portrayal from the very beginning, clearly departing from both his gender-ambivalence and his noir femme fatale, and becoming quite constrained even in his nature of utopian humanism. In my conversation with my sister, I joked that it was quite funny that they were trying to convince us that TOS Kirk, who had survived genocide (famine, mass murder, psychological/physical abuse, and clearly read SA) at 13, and then went through a mass massacre on a ship he served in his 20s, for which he blamed himself, had become this in a few years of paperwork. The midlife crisis had apparently erased even his traumatic experiences. I generally understand the idea they were trying to show - a real captain who is tired on solid ground and more than anything in the world wants to return to space, and even more - to his ship, the only place where he was truly happy + (this is of course not so obvious, but it's damn visible in Shatner's acting and in subsequent K/S scenes) this existing gap between him and Spock is a tangible trauma and Spock's absence in his life breaks him to pieces. But, even with this idea of growing up/(literally) returning from heaven to earth, Kirk's behavior in TMP frankly doesn't align well with his characterization in TOS.

We see several consecutive scenes of his conflict with Decker, the acting captain of the Enterprise, whom he removes from his post by order of Starfleet, and although Decker himself is a rather static character, in whose development not much effort was put, in all these scenes, he is clearly... right.

KIRK: I'm taking over the center seat, Will. DECKER: You're what? KIRK: I'm replacing you as Captain of the Enterprise. You'll stay on as Executive Officer. Temporary grade reduction to Commander. DECKER: You personally, are assuming command? KIRK: Yeah. DECKER: May I ask? Why? KIRK: My experience, five years out there dealing with unknowns like this, my familiarity with the Enterprise, this crew. DECKER: Admiral, this is an almost totally new Enterprise. You don't know her a tenth as well as I do. KIRK: That's why you're staying aboard. I'm sorry, DECKER: No, Admiral. I don't think you are, not one damn bit. I remember when you recommended me for this command. You told me how envious you were, and how much you hoped you'd find a way to get a starship command again. Well, it looks like you found a way.

KIRK: All right, explanation? Why was my phaser order countermanded? DECKER: Sir, the Enterprise redesign increases phaser power by channelling it through the main engines. When they went into anti-matter imbalance, the phasers were automatically cut off. KIRK: Then you acted properly, of course. DECKER: Thank you, sir. ...I'm sorry if I embarrassed you. KIRK: You saved the ship. DECKER: I'm aware of that, sir. KIRK: Stop ...competing with me, Decker! DECKER: Permission to speak freely, sir? KIRK: Granted. DECKER: Sir, you haven't logged a single star hour in two and a half years. That, plus your unfamiliarity with the ship's redesign, in my opinion, sir, seriously jeopardises this mission.

We are also given an emphasis on how Kirk puts pressure on his crew:

KIRK: Programming ready? DECKER: Programme set for standard warp entry, Captain, ...but I still recommend further simulation study. KIRK: Mister Decker, every minute brings that object closer to Earth! Engineering! Stand by for warp drive. SCOTT (on intercom): We need further warp simulation on the flow sensors. KIRK: Engineer, we need warp speed now! McCOY: Jim, you're pushing. Your people know their jobs.

It's not that he's never done it before, but there's a literally physically palpable difference in how and when it happened in TOS and how it happens in TMP, and how truly unjustified (apart from wanting to seem significant and controlling again) Kirk's behavior in TMP is.

He also, not particularly justified, takes a risk by allowing that weird electric thing onto the bridge, which leads to further tragic events.

KIRK: Mister Decker? DECKER: I advise caution, Captain, we can't withstand another attack. KIRK: That thing is twenty hours away from Earth. We know nothing about it yet. DECKER: That's precisely the point. We don't know it will do. Moving into that Cloud, at this time, is an unwarranted gamble. KIRK: How do you define 'unwarranted'? DECKER: You asked my opinion, sir. ... DECKER: Ilia! ...Ilia! (the probe with Ilia disappears) DECKER: This is how I define unwarranted!

In fact, this whole Kirk vs Decker situation is an obvious paraphrase of "The Doomsday Machine", where the same Kirk vs Decker conflict is played out (god, it's not even funny), but with the roles reversed. Kirk now finds himself in the role of an older, more experienced man, but it’s his self-confidence, obsession with an idea, fear of being rejected, and his apparent conflict as an authority figure against the younger and more brilliant captain (ok, it's not about TMP Decker, but you get the idea) that prevents him from being truly flexible and leads to abuse of power. Of course, TMP Kirk handles this situation better than TOS Decker (but he was also not in a state of traumatic shock after the death of his team at the time of the events).

I understand what they meant by this (ok, again), but it's such a blatant misreading of TOS Kirk as a character that I'm starting to think that even AOS Kirk at some points was read much closer to TOS Kirk (maybe not really, but even in the face of the obvious opposition between the two, AOS Kirk got his clearly existing psychological trauma/unhealthy coping patterns and (coincidentally, this was definitely not planned in the heteronormativity of the reboot) his sexual ambivalence) than Film!Kirk. Now I understand much better where this concept of the Golden Boy of Starfleet, the lucky guy who easily gets out of any situation, a kind of exemplary good young man who has had no real difficulties in life, or terrible PTSD or anything shameful, disgusting, dirty, that you want to forget, in his past, came from. The 2009 film (thank's aos) gave new life to this, clearly emphasizing the key difference between AOS/TOS Kirk - the presence of parental support (although it's not like Kirk's parents were ever actually mentioned in TOS, which makes this concept pretty meaningless in light of TOS):

KIRK: Wait. Where you came from, did I know my father? SPOCK PRIME: Yes. You often spoke of him as being your inspiration for joining Starfleet. He proudly lived to see you become Captain of the Enterprise.

And of course, there's that important line between Kirk and David in TWOK, which is obviously easy to read as "the loss of Spock has become such an all-encompassing and overwhelming grief for Kirk that nothing can compare to it" (the films unexpectedly turned out to be even more romantic than the series, which is partly exacerbated by the fact that they lose TOS in the plot and K/S becomes just the only palpably real thing on which it’s based at all), but it actually works very strangely with the TOS Kirk’s death experience, by crossing out the very existence of this:

DAVID: Lieutenant Saavik was right. You never have faced a death. KIRK: No, not like this. I haven't faced death. I've cheated death. I tricked my way out of death ...and patted myself on the back for my ingenuity. ...I know nothing.

I patted myself on the back for my ingenuity. I honestly think about these words in the context of Kirk's words in Obsession /No man achieves Starfleet command without relying on intuition, but have I made a rational decision? Am I letting the horrors of the past distort my judgment of the present?/ and it somehow doesn't fit together at all. How can a man who has lived for over 10 years with a constant paranoid sense of guilt for the deaths of about 200 people through his own mistake consider a survival experience as cheating death and commendable ingenuity? And of course, another obvious thing that doesn't fit together is his Tarsus IV experience. Even if we imagine that somehow Kirk managed to escape a truly horrific experience and that he could’ve saved his own life through trickery and ingenuity, this absolutely contradicts his characterization in TOS. He was a child (at that borderline age when traumatic experience is particularly merciless in its memories), he saw four thousand people die, he experienced a terrible famine (which is hinted at repeatedly in TOS), violence, and experiences of violation of personal physical/psychological space (which is hinted at even more in TOS). "The Conscience of the King" is a beautiful episode in its complexity, which actually gives us enough to understand how fundamentally traumatic these events are, and how much they have influenced Kirk's increasingly (humanistic) worldview:

KIRK: What were you twenty years ago? KARIDIAN: Younger, Captain. Much younger. KIRK: So was I. But I remember. Let's see if you do. Read this into that communicator on the wall. It will be recorded and compared to a piece of Kodos' voice film we have in our files... ... KARIDIAN: (reading) The revolution is successful, but survival depends on drastic measures. Your continued existence represents a threat to the well-being of society. (stops looking at the paper) Your lives means slow death to the more valued members of the colony. Therefore I have no alternative but to sentence you to death. Your execution is so ordered. Signed, Kodos, governor of Tarsus Four. KIRK: I remember the words. I wrote them down. You said them like you knew them. You hardly glanced at the paper. KARIDIAN: I learn my parts very quickly. KIRK: Are you sure? Are you sure you didn't act this role out in front of a captive audience whom you blasted out of existence without mercy? … KARIDIAN: Or is. Kodos made a decision of life and death. Some had to die that others might live. You're a man of decision, Captain. You ought to understand that. KIRK: All I understand is that four thousand people were needlessly butchered.

It honestly surprises me how a character who was written as someone who had more than one experience of mass slaughter, which he witnessed at a young age, suddenly begins to be interpreted as someone who never really encountered death, but only trickery and ingenuity avoided it. TOS Kirk is obviously a player, an actor, a pirate, and a seductress, a person who is really capable of using all available methods to survive/to save others, but all of these actions of TOS Kirk are, and this is actually well written and consistently shown to us, the result of the fact that he has really faced death, and is very well aware of what it is. This is not empty /I don’t believe in no-win scenarios/ this is a clear awareness of what price you have to pay to survive things like genocide. A person who pays that price, who goes through something like that, will never say that they have ingeniously escaped death or that they are lucky.

This reminded me of a very stupid conversation I had with my coworker about Dostoevsky, he's obviously one of my least favorite writers, and talking about him on a special level means just ruin the day, but in this conversation we touched on the topic that Dostoevsky was supposed to be executed, but at the last moment, literally before the shooting, he was pardoned, such an inhumanly cruel experience that forever broke his psyche and affected all his subsequent work, to which my coworker just said, "Exactly, he's such a lucky guy.” I thought for a long time about what to answer him, and I realized that it wasn't like I really had the words for it. Some experiences are the exact opposite of winning a lottery ticket, and living with the memories of them can be more unbearable than death itself, sometimes the price of survival is too high, but even if you get through it, it stays with you forever, and TOS actually talks a lot about these things, but it was hardly something that was really thought about in the 80s.

Spock's death would undoubtedly be the most terrifying and personally difficult experience in TOS Kirk's life, but it wouldn't be the first. It wouldn't be that first terrifying shattering, first shock of a great loss, but it would be the last straw, that point in the chain of all these endless losses and loneliness and pain, after which there would hardly be anything else. It would read much closer to the quiet absolute doom of Yanagihara's "A Little Life" ending than to what we see in TWOK. And while this scene is particularly touching for understanding the K/S relationship, it would have had much more meaning if this confession /No, not like this/ had occurred against the backdrop of Kirk's already existing horrific death experience, the reminder of which is a constant line in TOS, rather than against the backdrop of completely erasing this experience from the plot, reducing it to a simple /I cheated death because I don't believe in no-win scenarios/ simplifying both Kirk as a character and Spock's true significance in his life.

[mermaidsirennikita]

Kev throughout this novel: I have nothing to offer you, Win!!!!!

Win, looking downwards: Idk I think you have SOMETHING............................

[floorpancakes]

big fan of headcanoning that kid doumeki killed the class chicken because nobody else wanted to and he was already being picked on for being Inexplicably Weird and Smelling Like Death so his classmates probably thought it would work as a bullying tactic. he handled it like a champ and it makes sense that he would but it's still kind of sad

[chibishortdeath]

Ok stupid rant, but I’m sick of looking up a game and only being able to find guides and wikis made by people who obviously hate the game they’re writing information about.

I was looking for guides for the hedge maze portion of Castlevania 64 because I was stuck in it and couldn’t visualize what the layout of maze looks like (turns out, it’s not technically a traditional maze, aka one route to the exit, which helps a lot) and the only guide I can find is one on gamefaqs or something where the person cannot contain themselves from constantly interjecting to say how much they don’t like Malus cause “ugh overdramatic cutscene, his parents are dead who cares, he looks like a girl” or how they hate the game cause it’s too hard and annoying and “oh boy as if this game couldn’t get worse”.

And like dude! Sincerely! Shut up! I don’t care! I just want to know what I’m supposed to do! You are allowed to dislike the game and express your opinions, just please keep those to a little ending opinion section or a review!!! Stop breaking up actual instructions I can’t keep track of what you’re telling me to do!!!!!!!!!!!

And I saw something similar happen on a different smaller wiki-ish sort of website (it might have been the Castlevania Dungeon, I’m not sure. Definitely not Fandom tho.) on the Castlevania: The Adventure page when I was looking for some facts. Again, the person writing was constantly being all “not that this game is important anyway” and like! I literally don’t care if you don’t like the game that’s not what I’m here for!!! Heck the website even had some misinformation on the page too saying that Christopher was Simon’s grandson in that “or whatever, it doesn’t matter” kind of tone! Like!!!!! Shut up!!!!!!!!!!!! I am here for factual information! Not a review!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It’s just absolutely annoying and now I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do in CV64 cause I can barely process what this guy is saying ugh.

[sonknuxadow]

it's so wild to me that people talk like sonic and knuckles just now started acting gay in frontiers or that the sonknux ship only exists because of frontiers theyve been gay this whole TIME you just refused to admit it until now

[beneaththebloodylake]

「You're thinking 'people from Kansai are stingy' aren't you. ... Actually it's just me who's personally stingy.」

literally me but with uk/europe/whatever distinction americans decide to assign me

[zevrans-archive]

i finally finished bg3 2 nights ago ya'll 😭🥺

[sucrose-soymilk]

hadn’t really regressed in a While and i didn’t realize how much i missed/dareisay needed it until i had the free time and ability to do so over the last few days and i have to say. i’m feeling a bit better

[13eyond13]

.

[dropespeon]

something that fascinates me is the different sorts of aus different fandoms are drawn to. like i see a lot of canon divergent aus for isat, but then with other things like orv it's mostly different settings (classic fantasy aus and such). and then there's whatever the bnha fandom has going on where they just make the protagonist a completely new character

[thatdisasterauthor]

👀 i would be interested in hearing the deviantart points rant

Alrighty, the deviantART points rant. For context, I had a dA account from the time I was 12 and used it steadily until I was about 20. I was also a volunteer moderator with them for about a year, and they even offered me a job at one point. (But there was no way in heaven or hell they could've paid me enough to move to southern California, and god forbid they offer remote work.)

dA was one of the original social media behemoths. Never quite to the level of Twitter or Facebook, but if you were an artist you were on deviantART. It was a fantastic site back in its heyday. Artists got their start on there, recruiters were on there, art directors were on there, the community building features were fantastic. Yeah, it had its share of weird shit, but point me to a website that doesn't.

Multiple famous artists got their start on deviantART. Back then, it was a place you got real, legitimate work from. A place you could use to build a real, legitimate audience. The titans of early 2000s digital art that pretty much everyone knows (in the West, anyway), the ones who still have a massive effect on art styles today, basically all got their start on deviantART. It influenced the entire western culture of what art looks like on the internet, and that bled out into what art looks like everywhere else because these people made beloved shows and comics and movies and books and everything else.

But one of the best things about deviantART was that it was created at a time before everyone decided social media had to be slimmed down to its barest bones. It was a complex site, and there was a lot to it. That made it really easy for all levels of artists (and just plain art enjoyers) to use, and easy for them to make it function in a way that worked for them. This fostered a great environment where people of all skill levels could interact, share knowledge, and just absorb skills from one another.

Now, one area deviantART didn't initially cater to people was built-in payment options. They had a print shop you could upload your work to, but it was like Redbubble or Printful; merch selling, not custom work selling. So if artists wanted to offer commissions, they'd have to take payments elsewhere. (Usually Paypal.) Which was fine! That worked great!

But, well. Corporations gonna corporate. I forget the exact year, but one day they launched a new feature called Points. Points were a site specific currency, and they were one of the first (if not the first) to have such a thing. There were also some other things launched with it, including the ability to accept commissions with points as payment. You could also use points to buy site subscriptions, badges, stuff from the print shop, etc., or you could gift them to other people. You could also cash them out for real currency, for a fee (I wanna say the fee was 10%, and less if you were a subscribed user, but I can't remember exactly).

The conversion rate for Points was 1 Point=1US cent. Which seems fine on the surface! But the problem was psychological, because what they didn't do was actually make it look like that. Points instead looked like dollars, because there was no equivalent to actual CENTS in the Points ecosystem. So, for example, lets say you want to charge one dollar for something. That would look like this:

$1

P100.

Or ten dollars for something:

$10

P1000

Or a hundred dollars for something:

$100

P10000

See the problem? They're the same VALUE, but points just look massively bigger. This was especially a problem for people who didn't know what the conversion rate was because they just didn't know, or they were from other countries and REALLY didn't know because it wasn't related to their own currencies at all. (I think there was also a max amount of points you could charge for a commission, like a couple hundred dollars worth maybe? It was low when you converted it to real currency, if I'm remembering correctly.)

It devalued the art market like a knife to the gut. People were suddenly taking commissions for literal pennies just because the numbers LOOKED bigger. And because deviantART was such a hub for the art community, it bled out elsewhere. Prices started to dip other places too, because people who DID understand the conversion rate knew they could go on deviantART and get shit for super cheap from the people who didn't know or care. Which made other people lower their prices to compete, and it just resulted in a spiral to the bottom.

Would the art market have still tanked in the same way without the introduction of Points on dA? Maybe. But Points were the first domino to fall, and they were a massive one. The art market has never recovered even though deviantART has been 90% dead for going on a decade.

So yes. There's my internet history rant on Points and art values. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

[starpros-sunshine]

It's is especially at one in the morning that you realise how ridiculous "I shouldn't go take dancing classes even though I desperately need a hobby that would let me fix the issue of me being so ridiculously short of breath that they genuinely worried about my health because, well, i can't dance." actually sounds. My brother in Christ you're supposed to learn how to do that there.

[hydrangea-shelters]

LOTS OF PUNK STAMPS! (part 1)

Here we are with another part of music genre stamps. Just like the goth stamps i made, its a "my favorite genre is in this stamp" + aesthetic stamp combo.

Punk genres listed for this batch, because theres so many punk genres

Anarcho-Punk (i.e. Crass, Rudimentary Peni, The Mob, Lost Cherrees)

Celtic Punk - punk + celtic music (i.e. Dropkick Murphys, Flogging Molly)

Chain Punk - from the meme involving "chain vs egg punk". Has more hardcore punk roots, aggressive

Egg punk - from the meme involving "chain vs egg punk". Quite similar to synth punk due to usage of synths.

Crust punk (i.e. Nausea, Axegrinder, Doom, Deviated Instinct. Aus Rotten)

D-Beat - artwork inspired by those "d beat album covers that has band members censored eyes". Bands like Discharge (where the genre name is from), Anti Cimex, Driller Killer

Emo/Emotional Hardcore (more focused on bands like Rites of Spring, American Football, Jimmy Eat World, and all of those stuff. I'll try to make a different emo stamp for the likes of MCR, Fall Out Boy, and Paramore)

Folk Punk (i.e. Pat the Bunny, Days n Daze, Mischief Brew)

Grindcore - even it's more related to metal. I decided to include here since it was rooted from hardcore punk. Example bands: Napalm Death, Extreme Noise Terror

Digital Hardcore - electronic music + hardcore punk. Some mostly use guitars (i.e. Rabbit Junk) and some will have mostly electronic sounds than guitar (i.e. Machine Girl). Decided to have more cyberpunk aesthetic for this, 'cause it sounds like stuff you play in middle of a fight in a cyberpunk world

Hardcore Punk - apparently "hardcore" can mean different music genres (Beatdown hardcore is one of it but theres also hardcore techno), but lets focus on the punk. Bands like Bad Brains, Black Flag, Dead Kennedys, and Minor Threat.

Horror Punk - spooky punk music. (i.e. Blitzkid, Misfits, Calabrese)

Oi! (i.e. Oi Polloi, Angelic Upstarts, Camera Silens)

Punk Rock - supposedly for the classic punk rock sound but stamp can be used for punk rock in general. Example bands: The Clash, Ramones, Sex Pistols

Ska punk (i.e. Operation Ivy, Less than Jake, Against all Authority)

Skate Punk - something you have heard on Tony Hawk pro skater games. Anyway... bands like NOFX, Suicidal Tendencies (also metal), Pennywise

Street Punk (i.e. GBH, Varukers, UK Subs)

Synth Punk (i.e the Screamers, Suicide, Devo)

feel free to use it to your personal page, carrd, neocities, strawpage, toyhouse, sheezy, deviantart, etc. No need to credit when using the stamps (like putting html embeds and stuff) but linking any of my pages is appreciated when reposted, reblog, or reupload on different places.