#because i watched star trek tos religiously and still do

[cryptic-queer-cryptid]

look. not to get sappy on main but like.

call it cringe call it silly call it whatever you want but do you know what it felt like to be a depressed teenager and hear the doctor say “do you know, in 900 years of time and space, i’ve never met anyone who wasn’t important before”?

cause let me tell you, hearing that… there are whole years of my life that i barely remember because of my depression. chunks of my time on earth that i’ll probably never get back. but i do remember watching that damn special because it meant something to me, even in that fog.

[spacefinch]

MSB character headcanons: Dorothy Ann

Huge Star Trek fan. Her favorite series are TOS and Voyager, and her favorite character is Captain Janeway.

Has a pet Maine Coon cat named Teddy. She named him that because he’s big and fluffy, like a teddy bear.

Is always torn between just enjoying a sci-fi film and getting annoyed with the scientific inaccuracies. She is usually able to let it slide, since she’s been on some wild adventures as a student in Ms. Frizzle’s class.

Cannot for the life of herself remember any good jokes. Carlos keeps trying to teach her some jokes, but D.A. has trouble memorizing them. Facts and figures are much easier.

The one time D.A. does crack a joke on screen (“We’re on the ‘erode’ to ruin” in Rocks and Rolls), it’s the first time she’s ever done so without having to consult a book. And of course, Carlos is very proud of her.

By day: serious science student. By night: writes fanfiction on AO3. She goes by the username “stellar-falcon.”

Doesn’t want anybody to know she writes fanfiction. Unfortunately, it’s becoming harder and harder. The whole class loves stellar-falcon’s Star Trek fics and they keep up with their stories almost religiously.

Also has a pet parrot named Dinah. Dinah is older than D.A. herself!

She’s from a fairly well-off family.

100% autistic. Loves infodumping to anyone who will listen. Never goes anywhere without her book bag, which I’m pretty sure is her comfort item.

On her friendship with Carlos: (I ship the 2 of them btw)

Right off the bat, the two of them were rivals. Sure, they were also friends, but boy, were they competitive.

For the longest time, only Phoebe knows D.A. has a crush on Carlos.

Said crush developed very gradually. D.A. and Carlos tend to bicker a lot, but after a while, they find they actually enjoy each other’s company.

One thing they have in common is that they both like birds. Unfortunately, Phoebe knows this, and keeps trying to set them up for bird-watching dates.

Example:

Phoebe: Hey, D.A., are you free this weekend? I’m going birding at Walkerville Swamp.

D.A.: Sure, I’d love to go! I’ll get some great observations for my bird journal.

Phoebe: Great! See you on Saturday!

Phoebe, a few minutes later: Hey! Carlos! Do you want to go bird-watching with me on Saturday?

Carlos: That sounds fun, but I’m kind of busy. (Lying)

Phoebe: ….

Carlos: Fine, I’ll come. But both my siblings are coming.

Phoebe, thinking: hmmm. That complicates things.

The next Saturday:

Everyone: Arrives at the swamp, but separately.

Phoebe: D.A.! You made it just in time! There’s a whole bunch of cool birds here!

D.A. : Whoa, cool!

The two of them: *nerding out about birds and other swamp wildlife*

Meanwhile: *Carlos and his two siblings (Mikey and Maria) are looking for birds as well*

Phoebe, seeing them: Hey, glad you could make it! We found a big flock of black-necked stilts here!

Carlos: This, I have to see! … Oh, wow!

Carlos, D.A., and Phoebe: *nerding out about birds*

Phoebe: *sneaks away, leading Mikey and Maria with her*

D.A., not noticing at first: *talking about swamp birds* Isn’t that cool, Phoebe? Phoebe? Where are you?

Carlos: Huh. I don’t see her, either. She must have wandered off. *notices that his siblings are also gone* WAIT A MINUTE!

D.A.: Did Phoebe just—

Carlos: *sigh* Yep.

D.A.: I’ll get her for this!

They still laugh about the “black-necked stilt incident” long after it occurs.

More notes:

Runs a science-themed blog on Tumblr. Completely separate from her fanfiction account. She didn’t make a sideblog for her fanfiction. She made an entirely different account.

Enjoys having “girls night” with Phoebe, Keesha, and Wanda. What this means is watching movies, playing card games, trying on clothes, etc…

There’s also a fair amount of scary storytelling that goes on during the girls’ sleepovers.

Usually D.A. hosts the sleepovers, since her house is the biggest and has the comfiest guest spaces.

Everyone is still trying to solve the mystery of who stellar-falcon really is. Mikey has a pretty good guess, but surely it can’t be D.A.? Surely it’s someone else who’s writing these really good Star Trek stories….

[transhuman-priestess]

Watching Strange New Worlds, I'm seeing dead people

If I'm honest, I can't stand Strange New Worlds. Spoilers abound in this post, this is your only warning.

Look, I watched the first season. I enjoyed most of it. It's delightful. It has a cast of colorful characters, the old planet-of-the-week plot, and Anson Mount's aw-shucks Captain Pike. I enjoyed it, but something kept nagging at me the entire time.

That nagging kept with me for the first 8 episodes, and I still couldn't figure out what was bothering me and why. Then comes "All Those Who Wander," and suddenly things started to fall into place.

The thing that carried Star Trek for the first 40 years was always characters, because when you have an episodic/monster-of-the-week type show, that's where your main source of continuity is. Watching characters change and grow, but within a predicable envelope such that you can say, regardless of where in the show syndication takes you, "yeah, i can see Riker/Troi/Geordi doing that."

Disco and Picard shifted the focus of the show from character-driven continuity to story-driven, and a lot of people weren't terribly happy with that. I actually liked Disco, though in hindsight it is pretty disappointing.

But getting back to Strange New Worlds, "All Those Who Wander" flopped really, really hard for me. To start, the Alien pastiche was so tonally jarring compared to the previous 8 episodes that it already felt like writing for shock value. So when it gets to the cool blind guy doing his heroic sacrifice, it felt part and parcel of writing for shock value.

Said cool blind guy, Hemmer, has, at this point, gotten I think 4 episodes with an actual role to play. His actor, Bruce Horak, is in the opening credits for the entire show to this point. Hemmer is the chief engineer of the Enterprise! Traditionally, that's a big role on a Star Trek show. Geordi, O'Brien, B'Ellana, Trip, and, of course, Scotty.

Scotty, of course, is the Chief Engineer of the Enterprise in TOS. At this point he's also been very conspicuously absent from Pike's Enterprise, and therein lies the one thing that just absolutely kills Strange New Worlds for me. It's a prequel.

Ever since Discovery came out, I've made do with the reality that Paramount would rather do prequels and interquels and follow-ups than stick a flag in the early 25th or 26th centuries and continue on the way that TNG did with the 24th.

Canon is always going to be a millstone around the neck of a writer. This is true of any work in an established property. The Star Wars prequels were not only bad because George Lucas is a dogshit writer, they were bad because the story they wanted to tell had to fit into the world established by events that take place after them and that were written long before they were.

Back in 1986 when TNG was in the planning stages, Roddenberry was very insistent that no direct references be made to the original series. Eventually the producers persuaded him to have a cameo by Bones. But after that, for years, TNG only made vague reference to the original series. This started to change after Roddenberry's death, eventually bringing in James Doohan and Leonard Nimoy to reprise Scotty and Spock in one-offs.

During TNG and most of the rest of the 90s, when faced with a conflict between canon and doing something interesting which contradicted it, the writers of Star Trek chose the latter, both for better and for worse.

But as the frachise has expanded, aged, and sunk into the groundwater of pop culture, fans who are now second or third generation raised on Trek have become increasingly demanding of writers. Star Trek and universes like it are no longer a basis for telling stories, they are a core component of identity. To call it religious may be slightly facetious but not as much as you might think.

All of which loops me right back around to Scotty's notable absence in Strange New Worlds, Hemmer's death, and the unbearable burden of canon.

There is not a single story that has been told in Strange New Worlds that could not be told in a sequel series set in the 25th or 26th centuries. Pike's struggle with his certain fate does not need Pike to be an interesting story, it could easily be any other Captain, because the interesting part of a story like that is not the end result, it is the journey to that end result. But because canon is law, Pike's fate is assuredly sealed, as the season finale, "A Quality of Mercy," lays bare.

Canon is law, and so when I watch Strange New World, I see, as the line goes, dead people. I see Lieutenant Na'an dead fighting the Gorn. I see Oretegas transfered to the Saratoga or the Faragut or the New Jersey. I see Dr. M'Benga leaving to remain on some distant world to help erradicate a disease that reminds him of his daughter's plight.

I see all of these characters that in the course of 10 episodes I have already come to know and love be swept away in order to make room for more familiar faces. It has been 57 years since Star Trek first aired in syndication on NBC, but as it was written, so it shall be that James Tiberius Kirk will be captain, that Spock will be his first officer, that Leonard "Bones" McCoy will become the Ships Doctor, and that Montgomery Scott will give it all she's got, captain.

I'm probably in the minority here, as Strange New Worlds appears to be by far the most popular of the new Star Trek series, at least the live action ones. But honestly? I'll take Discovery instead, any day of the week.

[rotationalsymmetry]

General gripes about DS9 and gender (some spoilers) (content notes: some references to sexual abuse/trauma, and specifically spiritual abuse/sexual misconduct in religious leaders, also death/murder):

I swear to fuck these people do not know how to write female characters without shoehorning them into romance plotlines. (Or weird fucked up stuff, like when that Cardassian serial murderer kidnaps Kira.) Especially noticeable with Ziyal -- when Kira takes her to DS9, the writers apparently can't think of a single thing to do with a young woman other than ship her with a much older Cardassian. Then, she's starting to get her own life and make a name for her as an artist, and they fucking refridgerator her. The fuck. (And: the focus is on how her death affects Dukat, that fucker. Which, obviously sure it's going to affect him...but it's also going to affect Kira, who sees Ziyal as like a younger version of herself and was trying to protect her. And then Ziyal dies. That should have some sort of effect on Kira! And did no one else on the station make any sort of connection with her when she was there?) This is arguably not primarily a gender thing, but it is partly a gender thing: the show keeps demanding Kira find sympathy for her oppressors, over and over again. (This is a gripe fest: of course there's a lot of things about Kira's character that are done really well.) She keeps getting thrown in situations that show (some) Cardassians in more nuanced lights and that more or less force her into relationships with them, while meanwhile her old resistance cell friends all get killed off, her parents are dead, if she has any other family we don't hear about it, and she's basically left with no Bajoran friends even, as far as we know. She gets Bajoran lovers who... OK, about that. First, Vedek Bareil. Now, Bajorans are shown to have a pretty relaxed attitude towards their clergy (eg Kira is frequently rude to Winn even after she becomes Kai with apparently no consequences) -- but still. Vedek is roughly equivalent to, what, cardinal? He's high up in the heirarchy. And, he's put himself in a role of spiritual authority relative to Kira: she gets access to one of the Orbs through him. They've got a power imbalance and one that's connected to Kira's ability to do her religion. I don't care what the social norms are on Bajor that is 100% sexual misconduct on Bareil's part. If something went wrong in their relationship, it could fuck up Kira's connection to her faith. And in the show it's presented as no big deal.

(Star Trek seems to be aware of this when it comes to ship's captains! For all that Kirk notoriously fucks everyone, he never voluntarily (/outside of the mirror universe, outside of odd transporter malfunctions that split him into two parts, etc) came on to a crew member. But it's no less important for religious authorities.) (Also: this has nothing to do with celebacy. I'm fine with Bajoran religious figures being allowed to have sex and being allowed to have sex outside of marriage. But: a religious leader having a sexual relationship with someone who they're in a pastoral relationship to is wrong, and while Bareil isn't exactly Kira's pastor I think there is some level of, he's providing spiritual guidance to her. That means she's off limits to him, or should be. In the same way that bosses shouldn't fuck their direct reports, college professors shouldn't fuck their students, therapists definitely shouldn't fuck their patients, etc. Regardless of how they handle their sex life outside of those restrictions. And regardless of whether there's love involved or not -- romantic love absolutely does not make it better.) And then there's Shakaar, the former leader of her resistance cell. That she joined as a teenager. It's...yeah, it's been many years, yeah she's not directly under him any more, and yeah goodness knows a band of resistance fighters is probably not going to have a clearly written up sexual harassment policy so it's not necessarily unrealistic...it's not as blatantly "oh god no" as Bareil, but it's got some...is anyone thinking of potential abuse of power issues here? Anyone?

There was one episode where Jake and Nog were double-dating and it goes badly due to Ferengi, uh, gender roles not meshing well with Federation egalatarianism. And, then the rest of the episode is all about how they're going to repair their friendship. And I was thinking: we didn't see either female character either before or after, and why is a sexism issue being shown from the lens of "how can I, a nice guy, stay friends with my male friend who has sexism issues" and not "how am I, a young woman, going to deal with this affront to my basic personhood" or "how am I, a young woman, going to repair my friendship now that I talked my friend into a double date so I could date the guy I liked but his friend turned out to be garbage?" Like...out of all the potential relationships there, why is Jake's friendship with a guy with sexism issues (who's made it clear he's not going to change, at least as far as dating goes) the one presented as being in most need of preservation? I know, it's because Jake and Nog are more central characters and their friendship has been significant in the show for seasons now. But...that just brings up more questions. Like why does this show have a significant bro friendship between two teenage boys, but there's no friendship between two women (or between a woman and a man for that matter) that's given as much weight? There's some bonding between Kira and Dax, but it doesn't have the same presence and significance as Jake and Nog or, say, Miles and Julian. (I'm having first name/last name inconsistencies here. Ah well.) Keiko has no on-camera friendships. Kira has no on-camera friendships that have Jake & Nog or Julian & Miles weight. Dax maybe does with her Klingon buddies from Curzon's lifetime. (Benjamin Sisko also doesn't.) Ziyal could have, but doesn't. Molly could have, but doesn't. Miles doesn't seem to have any (on-camera or otherwise acknowledged) parent friends (like...there's one couple mentioned who can babysit Molly at times? That's it? We never even see them?), which is weird because fuck knows parenthood can make it hard to have any friends who aren't parents. Odo's got his weird frenemy thing with Quark. Garak has his standing lunch with Julian (if you read that as platonic, which ... yeah, there's not a lot of arguments for seeing it as platonic beyond "they're both men.") I am, don't get me wrong, extremely for showing male friendships. Very much for it. It's just...I want friendships that aren't between two guys also. And I want them to be shown as significant and meaningful and worth overcoming obstacles for. Friendships between women, friendships between people of the same race or culture (or alien species, since we are talking Star Trek here), friendships between men and women that aren't just a precursor to romance. And...parenting that isn't just...I want to see Keiko have problems with parenting that she overcomes with help from other people. I want to explore the emotional ramifications of Kira being a surrogate mom to Kirayoshi or being a semi adopted mom to Ziyal and then having her die. I want Kira to talk about how her own upbringing in times of famine and war and occupation affects her sense of her ability to potentially be a parent. I want a female character to calmly talk about her decision to not become a mother and have that decision be treated with the utmost respect. I want the sort of struggles that male characters have with parenting on the show, like Worf's difficulty connecting with his son or Benjamin's conflict over watching his son grow up and get less interested in spending time with his dad, be shown for female characters as well. And the joys, like when Benjamin remembers holding Jake as an infant, like when they reunite after Jake gets caught in a war zone. Rather than parenting be this thing that mom characters apparently do on autopilot without any internal conflict or feeling out of their depth or particular moments of joy and amazement. There's so many plot lines and moments and bits and pieces that could be amazing moments that give

mother characters balance and nuance and characterization, but they only ever get shown for fathers. (And this is not just Star Trek either...look at all the kids movies that are about father/son or father/daughter bonding, and somehow the moms...just aren't there. It's so good when there are single father storylines, just...where are all the mom storylines that could be like that?) And why do teenage boys get focus and their own stories (especially with Jake in DS9, but also TNG has Wesley Crusher and Alexander, and TOS had one story centering on a teenage boy) but girls either aren't there at all or don't get to have stories that are about them? Ziyal's stories aren't about her, she doesn't get to form her own friendships and only barely gets to develop an interest of her own before her life is taken away from her. Molly doesn't get stories that are about her. (And yeah, Molly's a lot younger than Jake, but those are still choices: DS9 could have been set when Molly was a teenager, or the show could have introduced a different teenage girl as a significant character, or Jake could have been a girl rather than a boy, or Benjamin could have had two children...)

[carinavet]

Okay, Deep Space Nine has officially pissed me the fuck off.

When I started watching Star Trek, I went into it knowing next to nothing about it. I decided to watch them in production order, and I really didn’t expect to enjoy The Original Series. I figured I’d just fight my way through the crappy old campy 60s TV and have enough context to get to the more modern, well-made stuff.

Boy, was I wrong. I loved TOS.

Not knowing anything about it except Kirk’s reputation as a macho lady’s man and Spock’s reputation as the unfeeling Vulcan, I fully expected to hate them both. But Kirk turned out to be thoughtful, caring, and a damn good captain. Spock is ruled by logic but his logic still values life above all else. And the galaxy at large and Star Fleet in particular are set in an idealized future: There’s no money, and therefore no poverty; people have jobs, but the jobs are there because people want to do things with their lives, they want to improve themselves. All of the danger and conflicts come from encounters with alien life forms who either don’t hold themselves to the same standards, or just have such different needs and ways of being that it’s difficult to communicate harmoniously. The whole point of Star Fleet itself is to explore, to learn, to live in this great big galaxy. All of the rules and regulations of Star Fleet are there to achieve that goal and to protect all life, all the things that the creatures of the galaxy hold dear. Sometimes the rules are hard to follow, but they must be followed because they’re there for a reason.

And one thing that doesn’t happen in TOS is the typical American macho crap where the loose cannon runs off, disobeying orders from higher up, either because the orders are bad (sacrificing the ideal for a “greater good”) or because they don’t let him get the job done. The few times Kirk pushes back against orders, it’s because one of the Admirals is the one who’s gone rogue, and it’s made clear that that official is punished for it later. It’s made very clear that you never, ever sacrifice the ideals upon which Star Fleet was founded.

And then along comes The Next Generation. Which was ... okay. It still had those Star Fleet ideals, but there were a few more instances where theory and reality collided and Picard had to make a decision that had no good options. Which is interesting! But just a little bit of the shine came off of the Star Fleet badge at times.

But now I’m watching Deep Space Nine (currently on season 5). I have not been enjoying DS9. There’s almost no exploration, despite the Gamma Quadrant being right there. And all of the conflicts come from power-grabbing, greed (if I hear the phrase “gold-pressed latinum ONE MORE TIME...), religious fanaticism, and O’Brian’s marital troubles. Watching it doesn’t give me hope. It doesn’t excite me. It just makes me feel icky.

And Star Fleet isn’t Star Fleet anymore. They’re more political, more military. Which, granted, there’s still wars and stuff going on that they do need to deal with. But even on the micro level, when Odo gets the Changeling baby they demand Results, without ever acknowledging that this is a sapient life form, and a child at that. They need to be able to communicate with it, sure, but this is a child and Odo is its next of kin in the Alpha Quadrant, so what right does Star Fleet have to take it away from him? (And even if they don’t think of it as a living being, isn’t it Odo’s property and not theirs? Didn’t he buy it from Quark? And Odo himself is not a Federation citizen, nor is the space station purely under Federation jurisdiction.)

And then there’s Dr. Mora. He’s not Federation, but the way the show itself handles him is telling of its overall trends. And the reconciliation the show gave them was bullshit. I don’t hate Dr. Mora for how he treated Odo in the past: he did the best he could with the information he had in the situation he was in. But I hate him for being unrepentant about it. I hate that he never acknowledges that, good intentions or not, Odo suffered at his hands. He never apologizes. All he does is make excuses, and make Odo feel bad for leaving.

But the thing that has made me truly angry is the episode “For the Uniform”. If you don’t know, or don’t recall, this is when Eddington, who betrayed the Federation to join the Maquis, shows up again and Sisko makes a personal vendetta out of capturing him.

Now, I haven’t exactly been a fan of Sisko to begin with. There wasn’t really anything about him that captured me, and lately his writing has been really inconsistent.

[My lack of affection for him may also have to do with the actor, who just ... doesn’t use his face? Like, there’s never anything behind his eyes. This is purely a guess, but from the way he uses very precise, loud intonation I think he’s trained as a Shakespearean actor, where your voice and your hands are more important than your face. Which is great on a stage but just really doesn’t work on television.]

But this episode.... In this episode, Sisko realizes that Eddington sees himself as a tragic hero, and Sisko as the villain. And so Sisko decides to play the role of the villain to get Eddington to make one final heroic sacrifice.

So he poisons a Maquis planet, making it uninhabitable for the next 50 years.

Now, the whole time this is happening, I’m waiting to find out what the trick is. Because I know there’s a trick. Sisko wouldn’t, couldn’t, just poison a whole damn planet just to catch one man. Right? So he’s bluffing. He’s putting on a show. The crew hesitate to follow out his orders because they’re not in on the bluff (in order to fool your enemies, sometimes you have to fool your friends), but they do it anyway because they trust Sisko. Sisko is angrily shouting orders as part of the play, to convince Eddington that he has, in fact, gone of the rails, so Eddington better surrender now before things get worse.

“You betrayed your uniform!” “And you’re betraying yours! Right now! The sad part is, you don’t even realize it!”

All part of the play, right?

Wrong. Sisko actually did poison that planet. He probably wasn’t planning on poisoning more like he threatened to: he knew Eddington would make his heroic sacrifice before it came to that. But that doesn’t change the fact that he poisoned this planet. That everyone who was living there is now a refugee.

But you know what the worst part is, for me? There were no consequences. No court martial, no freaking mutiny -- because that’s what I would have done if I were under his command. It’s played off as if it was the right call. The last lines of the episode are Sisko and Dax gloating about it.

“Benjamin, I'm curious. Your plan to poison the Maquis planets - you didn't clear it with Star Fleet first, did you?” “I knew I'd forgotten to do something.” “Big gamble.” “That's what it takes to be a good villain.” “You know, sometimes I like it when the bad guy wins.”

What. The everloving fuck.

[calliecat93]

Star Trek TOS Liveblog: S2 EP 25 - Bread and Circuses

I still find it highly amusing that video/television is apparently outdated in the 23rd century.

Ah yes, Roman gladiators mixed with 20th Century propoganda. Whoever came up with these things is a genius XD

Ah yes Spock, have them transported right on the edge of a slope where someone could essily break a limb. Practical!

McCoy is REALLY salty with Spock in this episode. Spock totally tricked him into coming on this away mission, didn’t he? That or they’re in the middle of a lovers quarrel. Or both.

Spock is such a sassy snot XD

“Because my dear Mr. Spock it is illogical.” Spock’s expression at that OMG. He almost looks confused, then impressed that McCoy is even capable of using logic at all and it’s amazing XDXD

Wow, they got captured within like… two minutes, if even that long. Is that a record?

…yeah Spock and McCoy 100% had a lovers quarrel prior to the mission. I am convinced.

Well that prison break worked for all of three seconds. Seriously guys, how is your luck this bad today?!

Kirk is just radiating Major Disappointment at Merrick and I love it.

Even at gunpoint, Spcok and McCoy just HAVE to bicker XD

I freakin’ love Scotty when he gets to be in command.

Poor Kirk has to essentialy pock between his crew or let his two best friends die. It sucks watching him have to just sit there and be unable to do anything.

Yeah, it REALLY sucks to be the Triumvirate this episode.

Yeah, I’m absolutely doing a Spones meta on this episode cause there is SOOO much to get out of them with this episode, especially the prison scene.

Yes Spock, being of logic. Pulling on prison bars 15 times is TOTALLY a logical option after it’s proven to fail with no change of approach. There’s a reason that McCoy ain’t falling for that.

Seriously though, their scene here as McCoy essentially breaks down everything about Spock is just so freakin’ good. Say what you want about McCoy, but DAMN is he good at reading people. People should realy acknowledge that side of him more tbh.

The slave girl bits make me so uncomfortable…

How I wish to punch this controller guy asshole in the freakin’ face.

I repeat, I freakin’ love Scotty.

You did the right thing Merrick… too bad you died and all but still!

McCoy just tossing the mattress PFFFT. Who needs swords when you have furniture to throw?

…yay religious message? I think? Yeah still not sure how to feel about that ending.

Despite that though, this was still a pretty good one! I had liked it oretty good the first time, and I think I did a tad moreso this time. There’s definitely gonna be a Spones meta incoming when I have enough brain cells to word it cause GOD there’s such good Spones content in this one. But yeah Roman gladiators, Triumvirate angst, Spones being a bickering married couple, Badass Scotty, what’s not to love?

[mithrilwren]

Tagged by the lovely @drinkingdeadpeopletea ! I’ll tag in @soullistrations, @fivie, @charliesdayoff, @kookaburrito, and @walkthegale - haven’t got time to come up with a full 10, so anyone else who wants to join in, go for it!

Name ten favorite characters from ten different things (books, tv, film, etc.) then tag ten people. [Do different Star Trek series count?? Hmm.] I also added special mentions for the top five, since I couldn’t truly choose.

1. Beauregard from Critical Role - I loved Beau from her first words, and that love has only strengthened with time. A person who believes they are not good while trying SO DESPERATELY to be, her reckless disdain at the beginning of the show reminded me of who I used to want to be, and her hard-won trust with her teammates reminded me that there are gentler, more freeing paths to take. Plus, she’s given me an avenue to explore things in fic writing I’ve never been able to before, because I so rarely encounter lesbian characters in fiction, let alone ones who are (soft) butch, with short hair and strength and an absence of apologies to those who don’t deserve them. She inspires me in so many ways.

Special mention: Fjord

2. Garak from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Though he only shows up in a handful of episodes, I think Garak’s introduction is instrumental in setting the tone for DS9 apart from the other series. In many ways, he’s emblematic of the ambiguity of the show, where morals are not so clear cut and every person may be playing two sides without truly being dishonest in either. He’s also just a genuine joy to watch - charismatic, witty, biting, as queer as you were allowed to be on network tv in 1993 (”I need to know that someone forgives me”, goddamn it Garak/Bashir will always be the true OTP of my heart)

Special mention: Kira

3. Fem!Shepard from Mass Effect - We can debate the ending till the cows come home (and god knows I was as unhappy as the rest of you) but Mass Effect took me on a journey, y’all. And most of that journey is filtered through the eyes of Shepard, the intrepid naval commander and saviour of the universe. It’s so incredibly rare that I’ve gotten to play a video game with a female protagonist who actually has such a vibrant personality, all the more so because I got to help shape that personality through my actions. She was one of the few video game protagonists PERIOD I’ve ever came out of the game feeling like I truly understood. When the final goodbyes happened, I felt her pain, because I’d watched and lived her struggle for three games, and felt the gravity of all her actions up till that point, both ‘good’ and ‘bad’. She was a fully-realized creation.

Special mention: Garrus

4. Magnus Burnsides from TAZ - On paper, I would have expected Taako to become my favourite character of THB. And I do still love him dearly, but Magnus’s simple and constant drive to be good, to be better, to be a light of positivity and love in the world captured my heart like no other.

Special mention: Taako

5. Seto Kaiba from Yu-Gi-Oh! - Oh look, it’s a villain-turned-antihero with an asshole father who swears he doesn’t care about the gang but still manages to  always (reluctantly) put his life on the line when it really matters. All I’m saying is Zuko had a predecessor and he had twice the sass despite being just as dumb - seriously, his 4kids dub dialog is top notch. I was obsessed with this stubborn child-billionaire when I was 10 (and 13, and 17, and 21 and let’s be real, I will be til I die).

Special mention: Ryou Bakura

6. Sam Tyler from Life on Mars (UK) - Never has an actor’s performance on a TV show given me so many heart palpitations as John Simm’s portrayal of Sam Tyler, the time-travelling detective stuck in 1973 Britain after being hit by a car in 2006. His angst over the situation was visceral, despite the relatively silly premise, and his decisions in the final episode landed me in a fog of emotional processing for days after I finished the series. 

7. Bones from Star Trek TOS - (I’m ruling it counts as different shhh). Bones is everything. Probably the first fictional character I remember deciding was my “favourite”, back when I was a kid still watching old Star Trek episodes on VHS. Wry humour mixed with a depth of humanity and just a whole heaping helping of curmudgeonliness, what a great guy.

8. Makise Kurisu from Steins;Gate - MY SCIENCE GIRL. Incredibly smart, both in terms of academics and emotional intelligence and despite her all-too-relatable struggles as a woman not receiving her due respect in academia, she always manages to keep pushing forward, driving the rest of the crew towards the truth in any timeline. Just, the coolest person.

9. Marcus Keane from The Exorcist - Give me all that good queer religious angst! It hurts! It’s relatable! I need more! Marcus is a man who deeply wants to do the right thing with layers upon layers of guilt and pain stacked on top of his shoulders. I want only for him to finally be able to rest.

10. Ani from The Goose Girl - From one of my favourite books of all time, Anidori-Kiladra Talianna Isilee is a princess with magic that lets her to talk to animals, which I mean, come on. But it’s was her journey that really had a big influence on me when I was a kid. I loved her for the way she was written, as admirable and imperfect and magical without realizing it, strong and self-reliant but only after learning how to be. The amazing prose by Shannon Hale is just the cherry on top.

[fantasiavii]

some unpopular opinions

You have been warned.  You don’t have to read this.  I’m not attacking anyone or saying that people who disagree with me are bad (mostly...on 10 I’m pretty mad).  I’m just venting.  There’s a lot of fandoms on here but mostly Star Trek lmao.  In no particular order: 

1. (Les Mis) I don’t really like the Jehan/M0nt-par-nasse ship lmao and I’m sad that it’s pretty much the only ship Jehan’s put in now.  When I joined the fandom there was a lot more Jehan/Courf and I really liked that and I miss it and I miss Jehan/Bahorel and Jehan/Feuilly too even though I never really shipped them like I shipped Jehan/Courf but I just miss Jehan with other people... (Also Jehan/Courf/Combeferre!!! My beloved rarepair rowboat of a ship)

2. (Les Mis) Not really an unpopular opinion just something I found out and I don’t see people talking about: The invasion and colonization of Algeria actually had a key role in the 1830 revolution and the establishment of the Orleans monarchy and its not really mentioned in Les Mis, most likely because Hugo’s looking at French history through rose-colored glasses.  A lot of ideals from the Revolution and Napoleon’s time were weirdly combined under the Orleans monarchy to get people to support the regime and the colonization of Algeria was a key part of this and part of the expression of that ideology.  Essentially, some of the values promoted in Les Mis were used to justify the colonization of Algeria (though in a weirdly monarchist form).  Good reference: By Sword and Plow: France and the Conquest of Algeria by Jennifer E. Sessions.

3. (Star Wars) I like the prequel trilogies.  Not in a “they never did anything wrong/are unproblematic and you are all wrong!” way but in a “I grew up watching all of Star Wars indiscriminately” way because my parents (who grew up with the original trilogy) didn’t hate the prequels and so now I can say I like the prequels, I don’t think they’re any worse than the original trilogy (which had plenty of problems imo) and also Padme is fucking awesome.

4. (Marvel) Loki is canonically bi and genderqueer both in Norse mythology and the Marvel comics and that’s just how it is.  This isn’t even an opinion.  I’m just tired of people straightwashing him and honestly if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine, just stick to the movieverse, I really really don’t mind.  It’s worse when you try to explain away his queerness.  That’s what really sucks.

5. (Star Trek - Vulcans) Vulcans/Vulcan culture seem to have originally been a thought experiment of like...taking Enlightenment era rationality and neo-Stoicism and pushing it to its most extreme and Vulcans, when they were originally created, were (mostly likely, given what I know of the time period) a symptom of the contemporary Western idea that religion would one day die out and be replaced by rational, secular humanism.  Vulcan logic/Surakian logic grew to resemble a religion more over time* (most notably within the Enterprise and Discovery series) and then it most resembled (through my religion major eyes) a combination of Enlightenment era rationality and Buddhism.  Surakian logic’s relationship to Buddhism is complicated, because its resemblance of Buddhism is a symptom of the Orientalism that is still very much present in a lot of science fiction** (usually when Asian inspired cultures appear but not Asian characters), but Surakian logic is also symptomatic of the Americanization of Buddhism or what some people call American Buddhism.  This is a form of Buddhism that has been sanitized of most of its original “religious” trappings and narrowed down to “spirituality” and, again, rationality, because white people went to Asia and thought that Buddhism was the only rational religion for awhile and then brought it to the US and it’s now sold to people as mostly a spiritual, not a religious, thing, and as a way to cope with late capitalism.  Not trying to disparage American Buddhists or people who are into the just spirituality thing.  I’m just saying there was a change when Buddhism crossed the Pacific and some of the process of bringing it over was highkey problematic (same with Hinduism).  The fact that Buddhism was perceived as the “most rational” religion is probably why it ended up being what Surakian logic most resembled when Surakian logic grew to look more obviously like a religion.  And also because Orientalism.

*though it is my opinion that even in its original series formation, Surakian logic could still be considered a religion

**there’s several examples of it in Star Trek besides Surakian logic.  Also Star Wars.

6. (Star Trek - TOS) Take a deep breath on this one guys: the original series is not that great.  Like. It’s valuable for the nostalgia factor and its repetitiveness is comforting and so is the familiarity of the cast but some of the episodes are just straight up bad.  Like That Is Obviously Racist levels of bad.  And I no longer want to waste time with this “they put sexual stuff to distract the censors from the radical message” shit.  That might be true but there’s still blatant exploitation of women and women’s bodies in almost every episode; Jim both is sexually assaulted and sexually assaults other people; Jim is a feminist sometimes but only when it suits the episode.  The fandom put TOS on a pedestal and looks at it through rose-colored glasses and I don’t really understand why??? We should be able to admit it had problematic aspects and move on.  It was groundbreaking for its time, yes.  But it’s been over fifty years and I’m not interested in returning to the 1960s.  

7. (Star Trek - Spirk) The AOS movies (especially the first two) are written like a love story between Kirk and Spock and I know people get upset about the Spock/Uhura romance but there is at least as much homoerotic subtext in aos as there is tos.  y’all are just mean. (esp since Jim so obviously dates other women in tos or has “had a past” with them which is clearly meant to imply romance of some sort......)

8. (Star Trek - AOS) Into Darkness is a good movie.  So it the first one and so is Beyond.

9. (Star Trek and Star Wars) This fandom war is pointless.  You can enjoy both, especially since they’re completely different stories with different messages, and also, by some definitions, different genres (science fiction vs science fantasy).  My parents grew up watching both and (like the stuff about the Star Wars prequels) didn’t ever tell me I should be fighting between the two.  I honestly think these controversies (Star Wars vs Star Trek and SW prequels vs originals) still exist bc they’re taught to us, not because they are valuable debates.

10. (Oscar Wilde) “Love is a sacrament that should be taken kneeling” is not about oral sex, y’all have just never read De Profundis and it shows.  Oscar Wilde was very much a Christian and while talking about divine love through the metaphor of human love and vice versa is a tried and true thing people do, I can guarantee that this quote is not about oral sex.  You guys just have your minds in the gutter or are, at worst, fetishizing of gay relationships.  Not everything queer people do is about what they like it bed.

And I think 10 is a good place to stop lol.

[solacekames]

wu-wei-clan replied to your post “Continuing on my slow project to watch all Star Trek, I finished all...”

i want to try watching star trek but i'm overwhelmed by how much there is. do you have an recommendations as to what's a good starting point or which is the best/easiest series to begin with?

So far the best experience in terms of modern binge-watching is definitely DS9 (Star Trek: Deep Space 9). It has the best balance between one-offs and season arcs, all the characters are fundamentally likeable, and the religious and sociopolitical themes are still super relevant today. The costumes are awful (except for the Ferengi jackets, which rock), but there’s a lot of other people like me who will agree that DS9 is the best...

If you just want to skip around, watch some of the best classic TOS episodes. There are a million lists of the TOS best episodes you just have to Google them. The first Star Trek movie is awful—don’t start with it. Wrath of Khan is good and so are the next two, the Search for Spock and then the whale one, but the last two movies aren’t worth it.

Star Trek: The Next Generation is the linchpin series for DS9 and Voyager. It’s also good, but more uneven and also more sexist, as opposed to DS9 (which isn’t perfect either but it’s better). The first season especially has some stinkers, like the MRA planet episode. There are characters from TNG who move into DS9 (like Worf) so there’s a fair amount of crossover in terms of plot lines and so on.

Voyager is even more uneven, and there were parts in my watch where I just gave up and skipped ahead like 5 or 10 episodes at a time. But it has some excellent parts too, I just wouldn’t start with it. 

I haven’t watched the Enterprise series at all, everyone says it’s so bad.

Although I like individual Klingons (Worf!) as someone who grew up with a lot of gross anti-Asian stereotypes, the Klingons as a concept are pretty stupidly racist. They started off in the 1960s incredibly racist and got about 10% less racist with every decade. They’re a combo of a stereotype of a Japanese samurai crossed with the stereotype of a Mongol barbarian. Every time a Klingon says HONOR I roll my eyes, it’s so irritating. The Klingons on Discovery make more sense, because they look and act more alien and, therefore, less racist.

I don’t know if you watched the first season of Discovery yet, but I absolutely love Discovery! Discovery has almost no connection to the ST:TNG linchpin shows (DS9 and Voyager) so you don’t need to watch them to understand what’s going on, just watch some of the TOS.

[fatalism-and-villainy]

top 5... kinks? (alternatively, top 5 scifi works of media?)

I think I’ll do the second one, because I don’t feel super comfortable answering the first one publicly, and because I’m not even sure how I would answer it even if I were (What Is A Kink and how sexual-adjacent does it have to be and what differentiates it from just Stuff You’re Into, etc. etc.)

So, sci-fi.

1. Next generation era Star Trek (TNG, DS9, and VOY), because try as I might I just can’t get into TOS. I have trouble feeling at home in a lot of sci-fi settings, but this particular era and look for Star Trek always feels right to me, perhaps because I grew up with it TNG and Voyager. Regardless of the quality of the writing or how well the social messages actually land (wildly variable, especially on Voyager), emotionally I have good associations.  

2. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Philip K. Dick) and Blade Runner - these two kind of coexist in my head, and my ideal version is kind of a mingling of the two that keeps the atmosphere and lack of Dickian religious weirdness of the film but also the more complex characterizations of the novel. (I’m still disappointed that Roy Batty’s backstory, including his messianic self-conception, and the bit about him justifying his revolution through “the sanctity of android life”, wasn’t included, and that Rachael was diluted so much.) I have decidedly mixed feelings about many of Dick’s other works (ESPECIALLY his treatment of female characters), and we don’t talk about Blade Runner 2049, but this story in itself actually made me care about robots, which is quite the feat. Apparently it takes a violent radical extremist to do that, who knew. 

3. The Left Hand of Darkness (Ursula K. LeGuin) - this one stood out to me when I read it because it subverted a lot of standard sci-fi tropes that bothered me, and actually used its protagonist’s misogyny as a starting point for commentary about gendered expectations, as opposed to it just being The Standard. The politicking wasn’t terribly interesting to me (and was a bit of a heavy-handed Cold War allegory, something LeGuin seems to do a lot of), but the vast remote atmosphere of the ice world and its mythology was deeply compelling. 

4.  Pacific Rim - deliberately excluding the sequel, which was a soulless money grab (apart from John Boyega, who was wonderful) - this really stood out to me because of the prioritization of human connection, in a way that felt very genuine. A lot of sci fi universes feel very cold and untouchable to me, but this film had a lot of human warmth. 

5. Imperial Radch (Ann Leckie) - This one appealed to my need for charming ensemble casts and compelling central relationships, despite many of the more fascinating worldbuilding questions going unanswered in the name of Plot. (Plot is overrated, right?) Anaander Mianaai backstory prequel, pls. 

Honourary mention to the original Twilight Zone, which I haven’t watched since I was a kid so I don’t have an up-to-date opinion on, but Rod Serling had such a mind for pacing and tension and what kind of gimmicks and plot twists actually work (something a lot of his imitators can’t quite grasp).  

[subjectredacted]

1, 8, 20 and 29?

1. if someone wanted to really understand you, what would they read, watch, and listen to?read - One of my all-time favorite reading experiences was Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The writing style and language was easy for me to consume and I loved the engaging nature of how man comes to question his own morality while also dealing with the fear of responsibility that one isn’t ready for. It’s the birth of science fiction and a great metaphor for how we as people assume we know best.I did also devour Fahrenheit 451 when I had to read it in school, because it felt so close to our reality but with some strong sci-fi elements that were vividly described and easy to visualize.  watch - I was gonna try to just pick ONE thing but I’m gonna have to pick  a few because they’re different genres - End Of Days - Rated R - Okay so I must confess that while this movie is rated R (because there is sexual content in it as well as other things) that I grew up watching it as a child. I loved seeing Arnold Schwarzenegger in a serious role as a melodramatic cop, like he’d stepped out of a noir film and into a biblical film about the end of the world. Gabriel Byrne plays a mysterious and alluring interpretation of The Devil, and it’s all around very odd business but I love this movie. Lots of spooky demon stuff, possession, body horror, and sexy nightmares.Star Trek (the 2009 film) - Rated PG-13 - I love TOS Kirk but AOS Kirk resonates with me on a deep emotional level. I went through a lot of the same struggles he went through growing up and so I really feel like I understand what he’s been through, and by that notion, seeing him overcome his personal obstacles as well as outside ones gives me hope. It took him a lifetime of self-deprication before he found his purpose and career goals in life, and honestly I hope that I’ll find that for myself someday, even if it takes Way Too Long and I do spend a lot of time hating where I’m at in life in a career sense. Plus, I love sci-fi.Rock Of Ages - Rated R - This kooky musical captures my love of life, the 80s (from a pop culture standpoint, not a socio-political one), and music. Also it has a gay couple in it who even kisses on-screen!!! It deals with sex positivity and the struggles of workers in the sex industry in a way that I feel like is much needed and honestly this gem goes underappreciated. PLUS, TOM CRUISE IN LEATHER PANTS, and if you either looked up the deleted scenes or watch the extended edition, you even get to see him pole-dancing. Overall, this musical deals with great coming of age analogies and how to learn to accept yourself, both your good parts and your faults. This musical is a gift and honestly if you like 80s-themed musicals, please check it out.Evolution - Rated PG - This movie…. This freakin movie…. It has an all-star 90s cast, and while it came out in 2001, it still has that classic 90s movie feeling but with more polish in its special effects due to its time of production and release date. You’ve got Mulder from X-Files dealing with aliens but in the most comedic, although sometimes raunchy way, and this is another movie that I grew up watching religiously when I was a child. This movie was so quotable for me, and I have a long time love affair with “Play That Funky Music” thanks to this movie. The way they end up beating the aliens and saving the human race is a huge spoiler but it’s SO AMAZING AND SILLY. Great punchlines throughout this whole thing. Humor I enjoyed as a child and jokes I appreciate as an adult, something for the whole family to enjoy. listen to - Pre-Fallen album Evanescence has some of my melancholy depression/need an escape from reality songs - “Forgive Me” is a nice peaceful ballad when you’re feeling sad about wronging someone, “Give Unto Me” is when someone else is feeling sad and you wish you could shoulder their burdens, “October” is the feeling when you’ve been working too hard and everything has become hopeless so you’re crying out, “Anywhere” is escapism where you fantasize about running away from your life to start something new with the person you love. For something more upbeat, I’d probably go with the Plans album by Death Cab For Cutie. It’s still relatively relaxing to listen to, but there’s more positivity, with some occasional lows in the album. Ultimately this album just feels like it captures the different states of humanity and relationships very well. Also I Will Follow You Into The Dark is a go-to duet for @spookyeyeimagery and I to sing together. 

8. what musical artists have you most felt connected to over your lifetime?Blue October’s entire discography is a tale of how one moves through life with depression and I feel that. This is another one that you could listen to to understand me better, especially since Justin so clearly and vividly depicts the image of what depression feels like for a listener who might not understand what living with it is like. My favorite tracks include “For My Brother^”, “The Feel Again (Stay)”, “Razorblade^” (tw self-harm, rape in this one), “Amazing^” (cw kind of sexual but i usually just imagine general intimacy/cuddling), “Come In Closer^”, “James^”, “Somebody^” (tw abuse), “Drilled A Wire Through My Cheek” (cw sex, but it’s consensual, not rape), and then to round out all the depression with some positivity, “Not Broken Anymore.” Songs marked with ^ have live versions of the songs that I enjoy as well as the studio versions. Poets of the Fall would me my other choice, not because of mental health reasons at all but because the way that Marko writes and performs, and generally the final compositions of the songs just feel very familiar to me, but not in a way like “oh yeah i’ve heard this kind of song before, (insert band here) did something similar.” Poets of the Fall’s music makes me feel like it’s a group of old friends I’ve known for a while, even though I haven’t met a single one of the members of the band. It’s just a level of kindred nature I guess in their music that really resonates with me. 

20. would you rather be in middle earth, narnia, hogwarts, or somewhere else?HMMMMMM… This is hard because there’s pro/cons for each one… Honestly I might go with Gotham instead because um, Batman??? But also I think the DC levels of universe weird are the right kind of weird for me. 

29. three songs that you connect with right now.Remains - Bastille (vs. Rag'n'Bone Man & Skunk Anansie)Yuri On Ice - Taro UmebayashiSledgehammer - Rihanna

[meme-and-askbox]

Get To Know Me Uncomfortably Well

1. What is you middle name?     Rae, and I don't hate it as much as I did when I was younger.  In fact, if I ever get published, my pen name is going to be Rae (redacted).

2. How old are you?     43, physically.  Emotionally, 3 or 300, given any particular day 3. When is your birthday?     15 October. 4. What is your zodiac sign?     Libra, and boy, am I ever. 5. What is your favorite color?     Purple, black, fushchia, aqua. 6. What’s your lucky number?     Don't have one.  I don't have luck. 7. Do you have any pets?     I have two.  Fucko and Harpo.  Actually, they're cats, named Sam (Samhain Murray) and Maggie (after Maggie the Cat in Gargoyles) 8. Where are you from?     North Carolina.  Lil bit outside Charlotte. 9. How tall are you?     It says 5'7 on my license, but.  It's probably more like 5'5 10. What shoe size are you?      Ladies 11 wide, Men's 8-9 depending on the shoe. 11. How many pairs of shoes do you own?      5.  Two pairs of Sketchers, a black pair I keep for funerals, a pair of suede ankle boots, and a pair of Harley Davidson biker boots. 12. What was your last dream about?      Roxy the pink police poodle.  She's a recurring dream, and I'm working on turning her and her handler into a novel. 13. What talents do you have?     I don't suck at writing.  I have pretty phenomenal reading retention; I can't tell you page numbers or anything, but I can recall that I read article X, and in it, they said A, B, and C.  I'm good with most non-reptile animals. 14. Are you psychic in any way?     Occasionally I have dreams that come true later, and I get odd flashes of deja vu, in that I'm certain I've done this before but I don't quite remember when. 15. Favorite song?     At the moment, it's "Glitter and Gold" by Barns Courtney 16. Favorite movie?     Sleeping Beauty. I can watch it a million times. 17. Who would be your ideal partner?     oh, oi.  I have no idea, because I don't want a partner.  I guess my ideal would be someone who had the same interests as me, and who didn't mind being either fucked off and left alone, or attended to every whim as the need occurs.  I'd honestly like to have someone to talk TV/Movies/Books with, have a cuddle every now and again, then fuck off to your own thing. 18. Do you want children?     Fuck no.  But even if I did, I couldn't have 'em anymore.  All the lady parts got surgically removed in my 20s. 19. Do you want a church wedding?     Do you WANT me to combust on the spot? 20. Are you religious?     More than I'd admit to, but less than my fam would like me to be. 21. Have you ever been to the hospital?     For myself?  Yes.  For someone else?  Yes. 22. Have you ever got in trouble with the law?     Do speeding tickets count?  Cause I had a couple. 23. Have you ever met any celebrities?     I have!  I used to hit the Star Trek convention circuit pretty heavy and I met most of the TOS cast, and the TNG cast too.  My favorite is John deLancie. 24. Baths or showers?     Showers, please. 25. What color socks are you wearing?     White with purple toes and heels. 26. Have you ever been famous?     Christ I hope not. 27. Would you like to be a big celebrity?     I'd like to be a Stephen-King level celeb, but not much more. 28. What type of music do you like?     80s and 90s.  I tuned out of music around 2000. 29. Have you ever been skinny dipping?     Uh, yes. 30. How many pillows do you sleep with?     5.  Three for my head, one between my knees, one tucked under my hip. 31. What position do you usually sleep in?     On my side, but lately it's been 50%-50% side/belly. 32. How big is your house?     3br, 2ba modular home.  So maybe 2000-ish sq ft? 33. What do you typically have for breakfast?     I don't.  I hate breakfast.  But because I take insulin, I usually scarf down some yogurt or Lance crackers. 34. Have you ever fired a gun?     Yes.  I enjoy guns even though I don't really own any.  My uncles both have/had huge collections, and I got my love from them.  But I know myself well enough to know that with my temper and my past suicidal tendencies, having a gun in the house would not end well. 35. Have you ever tried archery?     Nope 36. Favorite clean word?       Fudgin'. 37. Favorite swear word?     Fuck.  It's so versatile. 38. What’s the longest you’ve ever gone without sleep?     48 hours. 39. Do you have any scars?     Quite a few. 40. Have you ever had a secret admirer?     Not a real one.  I thought I had one for awhile in high school, but it turned out to be a joke some of the guys on my bus route played on me. 41. Are you a good liar?     Depends on the subject.  In the small things, yes.  "Does this make my ass look big?"  "No, of course not."  But on the big stuff?  No.  I don't lie well. 42. Are you a good judge of character?     Nope.  I'd like to think I am, but I have a string of disastrous ex-friendships and relationships in my wake to prove that I am, in fact, a shitty judge of character. 43. Can you do any other accents other than your own?      Not convincingly. 44. Do you have a strong accent?     Some people say I do.  I don't hear it, but then, I'm surrounded by it. 45. What is your favorite accent?     British, Scots, Irish, Spanish, Greek, Italian.  In that order. 46. What is your personality type?      INFJ, if I remember right. 47. What is your most expensive piece of clothing?       My Harley boots. 48. Can you curl your tongue?      Nope. 49. Are you an innie or an outie?     Innie! 50. Left or right handed?     Right.  My dad was a leftie, though 51. Are you scared of spiders?      Nah, not really.  If I see one, I just burn the house down and go about my life.  Yes, I'm terrified of the little ELFs. 52. Favorite food?     Chicken and rice.  Cook the rice in chicken broth, simmer the chicken in with it, throw in a can of cream of chicken soup, stir, simmer until hot, and serve.  Best thing EVER. 53. Favorite foreign food?     Chinese.  Cashew Chicken, Orange Chicken, Sweet & Sour Pork 54. Are you a clean or messy person?     Messy.  Cluttery.  Two Steps Away From Hoarding.  Take your pick. 55. Most used phrased?     Some variation of "fuck."  Lately, "fuck me." 56. Most used word?      See above, re: fuck 57. How long does it take for you to get ready?     If I'm showering first, about twenty minutes.  If I'm just getting dressed, about ten. 58. Do you have much of an ego?     I'd like to say no, but yes, I do. 59. Do you suck or bite lollipops?     Suck, baby. 60. Do you talk to yourself?     Sometimes I'm the only one who listens to me. 61. Do you sing to yourself?     Constantly, especially in the shower or when I'm cleaning. 62. Are you a good singer?     Fuck no. 63. Biggest Fear?     Snakes. 64. Are you a gossip?     Sometimes, especially with my besties. 65. Best dramatic movie you’ve seen?     Backdraft.  "You go... we go!" 66. Do you like long or short hair?     Shooooooooort. 67. Can you name all 50 states of America?     At one time I could.  But thanks to Yakko Warner, I can name all the countries of the world. 68. Favorite school subject?     Creative writing and physics.  I failed physics at the time, but I can tell, now that I understand most of it (thank you, Mythbusters!) that I would have loved it. 69. Extrovert or Introvert?     An extroverted introvert.  I don't MIND being around people, but I really would be happier with my own company.  But, when I am with other people, I am gregarious to the point of obnoxious. 70. Have you ever been scuba diving?     Nope. 71. What makes you nervous?     Practically everything. 72. Are you scared of the dark?     Nope.  Not since I was like, seven. 73. Do you correct people when they make mistakes?     They don't call me Grammar Nazi for nothing... 74. Are you ticklish?      I refuse to answer on the grounds it might be used against me. 75. Have you ever started a rumor?      Nope, but I've certainly helped pass them along. 76. Have you ever been in a position of authority?       Yep, I used to be manager of my office.  Hated it. 77. Have you ever drank underage?       Yep. 78. Have you ever done drugs?       Nope.  I don't like needles, and I don't have the cash. 79. Who was your first real crush?        Wayne E.  He looked so handsome in his ROTC uniform, and he was always nice and friendly with me and my BFF JC.  We both had huge crushes on him, but he was a few grades ahead of us, so I don't think we registered except as friends.  But that was okay. 80. How many piercings do you have?    Four.  Two in each ear. 81. Can you roll your Rs?     Thanks to Sra. Iglacia, yes.  Took her two whole semesters, but she got the whole flaming lot of us Southern kids rolling our Rs. 82. How fast can you type?    80ish WPM, last time I took a test. 83. How fast can you run?     I think a snail outpaced me. 84. What color is your hair?     A nice chocolately brown, with highlights trending a little auburn. 85. What color is your eyes?     Cornflower-type hazel. 86. What are you allergic to?     Mobic, IV contrast dye, Ciprofloxacin, medical-grate latex, ragweed and oak pollens, dumbasses. 87. Do you keep a journal?     Not in a few years, no.  I stopped when my dad died, idk why. 88. What do your parents do?     My dad's passed away, but before he died he was disabled, and before THAT, he was a computer systems programmer and analyst for Piedmont Natural Gas and Bank of America.  Mom's retired and disabled now with back problems, but she was an LPN before that. 89. Do you like your age?     No.  I hate being a responsible grown-up.  I want to be ten or eleven again, old enough to know things, but young enough not to be responsible for anything other than basic chores, and I still got allowance. 90. What makes you angry?     Practically everything, at some point.  My family puts it as I have a wild hair across my ass and it'll go off anytime. 91. Do you like your own name?     It's not a bad little name, but I always liked Daphne better. 92. Have you already thought of baby names, and if so what are they?    Fuck no.  Ugh. 93. Do you want a boy a girl for a child?     NEITHER.  I want cats.  or dogs.  or fish.  or a bird, I think I could love a bird.  or a turtle. 94. What are you strengths?    I'm loyal to a fault; if you're my friend, I am always in your corner and I will 100% throw hands with the first motherfucker who looks at you wrong. 95. What are your weaknesses?    Impulsive, careless, stubborn 96. How did you get your name?     My Dad's uncle (Kelly) and my mother's father (Ray became Rae).  Can you tell they were expecting a boy and got me? 97. Were your ancestors royalty?     Christ, no.  They were poor Irish. 98. Do you have any scars?     ...didn't we just answer this?  Yes. 99. Color of your bedspread?     Flowered. 100. Color of your room?    White walls, burgundy carpet.

from @evilwriter37  and @marcymakemagic

[rotationalsymmetry]

Good morning world. And do you know what I’m thinking about this morning? Keiko (chill, autocorrect) on Deep Space Nine.

Partly because I’ve been thinking about how the show’s done her wrong since a few episodes into Season 1. Partly because, in the wake of the Atlanta shooting, it’s clearly past time to talk about how women of Asian descent are depicted in the media.

Rather go on and on about what the show did wrong, I’m going to start with what it did right, then move on into some suggestions for plot lines that might have gotten the audience into Keiko’s (and perhaps her daughter Molly’s) head better. Feel free to borrow for fanfic purposes. (And let me know if you do, or if someone else wrote some good Keiko and/or Molly fanfic I might enjoy.)

What's right: she’s a, not core character, but sort of second tier character who is on the show often. She has a respectable role: she’s a well-educated professional whose work is important to her, and a wife and mother. We also get hints of her having a life beyond that — not as much as I’d like, but for example at one point in the first season she’s away visiting her mother, and when she’s pregnant with her second child she keeps leading an active life. I think the show strikes an appropriate balance on sexuality: she’s married, we’re pretty sure she and Miles have sex, but she’s not presented as a sex object. And we don’t see her suffering more trauma than the other characters. As of where I'm currently at in Season 6, she's alive, and I have every reason to believe she'll stay alive through the end of the show. (A quick look at Memory Alpha confirms this.) Good stuff.

(She’s also in The Next Gen — parts of that I haven’t watched and others were a while back, so I’m going to stick to talking about her role in DS9.)

And...very nearly all the episodes she’s in, are very firmly from Mile’s perspective and not hers. (Even storylines that really should be about her: when she’s experiencing frustration at not being able to pursue her career and ends up going back to work, that episode is entirely from Mile’s perspective. She barely speaks a word in it.)

Contrast this to how Benjamin Sisko’s son and father are shown: Jake very much gets his own storylines and own life, and relationships that aren’t primarily about his father, even though his dad has a more central role in the show (and we definitely see their relationship from Benjamin’s perspective as well), and even though we rarely see Grandpa Sisko (huh, apparently his name is Joseph), you immediately get the sense of him as a strong-willed person who lives life on his own terms, and when he and Ben have conflicts you can understand his perspective easily. In spite of relatively little screen-time. Keiko gets far more screen time, but far less interiority. She’s presented in a way that’s hard to empathize with. And there’s less of a sense of who she is as an individual rather than as a role.

(BTW, if we got to see Keiko’s perspective more, whose would we see less of? Maybe Miles, who gets quite a lot of focus. Maybe Quark, maybe Julian...basically, I’m pretty sure if I went through the season and marked down which episodes were primarily about male characters vs primarily about female characters vs pretty balanced, the ratio would be telling. And it’s not like I don’t like the male characters (well, maybe I could do with less Quark) but... I don’t like them so much that I think the show is better for having shorted the women.)

I want to see Keiko have friends. I want to see her talk to other parents on the ship as a parent. That episode where Keiko’s off station and Miles has to figure out how to get their new baby to stay asleep? I want an episode where Miles is gone and Keiko has parenting struggles. Where we get into old conflicts between her and her mother or father that she has to work through as a parent herself. (This is not an unrealistic expectation -- we got that for Odo in one episode, and we got a similar thing with Kira processing her father's death while another character was dying.) I want Molly to go on her first sleep-over and Keiko to have conflicted feelings about her daughter growing up and for Molly to have conflicted feelings where she’s excited but...also kinda misses her mom.

I want to see how Keiko’s explaining the Dominion war to Molly and what she’s skipping over. I want to see Keiko worried about her husband (which, granted, we’ve seen that) and getting emotional support from someone else (which we haven’t really.) I want to see Keiko pursuing a hobby other than gardening. I want her to be really excited to introduce Molly to something that she loved growing up. (Specifically a Japanese cultural thing or not.) I want her to take Molly to a holosuite program that shows some Japanese architecture or history or gardens. I want there to be some conversation about language — sure, universal translators, but what do people speak on their own, and what does Molly grow up speaking?

(They’ve got an interracial/inter-cultural relationship and explore absolutely nothing about that.)

Since Keiko was a teacher for a while, is she absolutely obsessing over homeschooling Molly now that there’s no school?

I’m not sure I want to see Miles and Keiko have a “no one’s right” disagreement over how to raise their children, but that’s certainly a thing that could have happened. Or could happen indirectly: Miles isn’t the talking type and yet everyone on the station knows when he’s having wife troubles and are willing to give him advice. Who does Keiko get relationship advice from?

When Keiko and Miles are apart and Miles spends all his time playing darts with Julian or reenacting battles with Julian, who is Keiko connecting with?

(Side note: one thing that Brandon Sanderson does well in his fantasy novels such as the Mistborn Trilogy, is couples that are balanced in power and narrative significance. The show made a choice to have Miles be a more central character than Keiko. There’s no intrinsic reason they couldn’t have been on the same level of narrative significance.) (But even if they were going to be at unequal levels of significance, Keiko still could have been done much better.)

(And you’ll notice the show is almost going out of its way to avoid having any female characters with less significant recurring love interests. When they partner up Kira, it’s not with some guy who’s just nice and fun or a supportive boyfriend (someone analogous to what Leeta is for Julian or later Rom), somehow even though she’s one of the most powerful characters in the show (she’s second in command on the station) she keeps getting partnered up with characters who have more religious or civil power than she does, and who become very narratively significant at least for a little while. Female characters can be just love interests or family members, male characters have to be doing something big and important.)

I think the show overdoes romance, so this wouldn’t be my first choice, but...having an old flame of Keiko’s show up could be a thing that happened. Or having a thing where she notices an interesting stranger, and of course nothing happens because she’s married, but we still get to see Keiko as, you know, a woman with desires and interests that don’t always fit perfectly into her respectable well-ordered life. We could see mirror universe Keiko — I wonder what she’s like. Or some time travel alternate timeline story where she’s with someone else, or single and enjoying the single life. (Surely even if Keiko is overall happy with her life, surely sometimes she must wonder about the roads not taken.) We could have some indication that she too misses Miles when they’re not together, or we could see her excited to get more time away or get their quarters to herself while he’s away, or both because people are complicated.

What are Molly’s adventures? Who is she best friends with? Where’s her tension between growing up and becoming her own person vs wanting her parents’ love and approval? Where’s the episode where we’re all wait, she’s really not a little toddler any more, is she?

(We don’t even know what Molly thinks about having a baby brother — and that’s a huge, highly dramatic change in the life of a child.)

Where’s the episode where she desperately wants some pet that her parents don’t want her to have, or desperately wants some toy or activity that one or both thinks is unsafe, or where she wants to be on a sports team but there aren’t enough kids on the station, or where she has to say goodbye to the Bajoran friends she made, or she starts playing make believe games involving evacuating the station...

What if we got to see Keiko’s mother and learn something about her or the family history? What if Keiko had some aunt or uncle or sibling who showed up on the station some time, what might their relationship be like? Is there some family hero that Keiko’s always encouraging Molly to grow up to be like?

If the show’s writers truly couldn’t handle writing a child that young, this is Star Trek and we have time travel — there’s no reason we couldn’t have an episode involving future grown up Molly O’Brien.

What if we got some terribly retconned explanation for why Keiko, a professionally trained botanist, was mysteriously ready and eager to step into schoolteacher mode even though that’s its own profession that requires years of specialized higher education? Did...did Keiko for some reason study to be a teacher, have something go wrong, and then go with botany as Life Pursuits Take 2? (Perhaps she was pushed into being a teacher then decided she loved botany more? But she didn’t actually dislike teaching?)

What if we actually got an episode centered around her being a botanist and exploring alien plants? There’s possibilities there — heck, one of the most popular TOS episodes centered around space wheat, so why not? I want an alien planet where all the plants are yellow or hot pink because they photosynthesize with something other than chlorophyll. Why not? (Did you know there’s an old school Piers Anthony sci fi book about killer mushrooms? Not joking.)

She’s the only woman of color who’s a regular character on the show throughout the whole series. She’s one of the few Asian-descent women who’s on American TV at all. She deserved better.

And I think we should talk about how she, and other characters, could have been written better.