#i can't speak to what was going on in tumblrland

[sylvies-kablooie]

i hope we are better people now than in 2021

not to revive dead discourse but i just want to put it out there that they way the internet treated sophia dimartino during s1 of loki was cruel and if i see any of that going on again this time around i will block no questions asked. you are not "cool" for posting horrific harassment to the people behind a show you didn't like.

[holodexmachina]

Listen. I wrote a thing.

Part of me still can't believe I've done this, but, okay, here we go: I wrote some Star Trek fanfic! And while posting fanfic is a pretty banal activity in tumblrland, it was kind of A Whole Thing for me. I’ve never written fanfic before! I haven’t even written fiction of any sort since, good lord, my sophomore creative writing class, which was *checks watch* twenty years ago. And it’s been way too long since I wrote anything just for fun. So it’s been kind of a wild practice, and now it’s out there, and I want to tell you about it.

The fic is called “A Woman of Your Century,” and it is a rewrite of the Star Trek: The Original Series episode “Space Seed,” but imagines Khan as a woman. [You don’t need to have seen the episode to get the story, but here’s a quick synopsis: the Enterprise encounters a ship full of sleeping humans and wakes one—Khan Noonien-Singh, played by Ricardo Montalban. The crew soon realizes that Khan is an “augment”—one of a group of genetically engineered superhuman despots who took over Earth in the 1990s, causing the disastrous Eugenics Wars. Khan tries to take over the Enterprise so that he can conquer the galaxy. Khan nearly kills Kirk; fist fights ensue; Khan loses, and Kirk ditches the augments on an abandoned planet (thus setting the scene for Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan twenty years later).] 

“Space Seed” is my favorite Trek episode, hands down. Khan is a pretty interesting villain—ruthless, narcissistic, ambitious—and the augment storyline has always been incredibly compelling to me, especially as it gets picked up and developed further in several other series. That said, the episode isn’t without its flaws; like many TOS episodes, the premise didn’t need to be thought through any more than was required of its 50 minutes, and later attempts to explain the augments’ history tended to introduce more questions and canonical conflicts. And then there’s the squick-inducing relationship between Khan and the ship’s historian, Marla McGivers—a relationship that provides plot devices, but has a deeply fucked dynamic. I mean, he negs her over her hair, and she decides, yeah, I’d engineer a mutiny for this man. You can tell the writers really respected women. 

Then a friend said: could you imagine how this story would have gone if Khan had been a woman?

Oh. Oh—

Yes. Yes, I can imagine that. 

I started thinking about what would change if Khan were a woman. How would the crew of the Enterprise react to such a powerful female villain? How would it unfuck Marla’s interactions (or not)? What kind of rivalry would develop between Kirk and Khan? TOS doesn’t skip female villainy, but does tend to keep it squarely in the realm of “seductress acting on behalf of a male.” The limitations of midcentury masculinity make it hard to imagine Kirk seeing a woman as a true threat—as a mind on par with his own (let alone far beyond it). 

Thinking through the gender-bent implications also led me to considering the story from Khan’s point of view. It’s a tricky balance—Khan is a genocidal sociopath with the blood of millions on his hands. Let’s not defend that, maybe! At the same time, there’s a reason the best villains are humanized: we need to be able to see ourselves in the monstrous, and the monstrous in ourselves. Cartoon evil is boring and unrealistic. But finding ways to create sympathy for a villain—without condoning them!—is very interesting. 

Rewriting “Space Seed” let me not only explore material I adored, not only fill in minor plot holes, not only build out augment backstory—it also let me highlight the current of sexism and misogyny that has always been part of Trek, and blow it up real good. Marla’s treatment in the original—and the crew’s reverence for Khan’s aggression—both speak volumes about gender attitudes in the 1960s (and, uh, beyond). But swapping genders—Khan for Khana and Marla for Marlow—forces (I hope) a reexamination of character, of narrative, of values. Which is what science fiction is for, after all.

Also: it was just fucking fun to do. Which makes me wonder if I should…write more fic? (I’m open to ideas! What should I try next?) Either way: thanks, friends, and happy reading!

[ablackgoddess]

things I can't tell my friends #???

Well Tumblrland, I fucked up again and started liking a boy.... at my job 🙃 To give basic information about him [I'ma call him Jay] he's [supposedly] 19, lives with roommates, from Chicago, and is from a primarly Spanish speaking family. His accent is literally STRONG as fuck, like my friend said she can barely understand him sometimes but 💀 I can understand him. He's like... medium complexion w/ dimples [fucking dimples bitch] and he's real cool. I didn't think I would start liking him until I called him best friend and started feeling weird whenever he would call himself ignoring me or just not responding to me whenever I spoke to him. My friend (Iv) would always tell me that I was flirting with him and that I liked him and I would deny it bc I honestly didn't think I did 💀 I guess I was treating him like people that I liked, but overall nah. So one day, I was supposed to be handing the food out to the customers in drive thru, but nobody was taking his order so I literally left my position to take his order. Then, I served it off and nobody remembered it except for me so I had to give it to him. And my other work friend said something and called him my "booboo". I'm like 🙄🙄🙄🙄 bitch wtf are you talking about. So he bought him some Mcflurry's and I told him to buy me one and HE ACTUALLY DID. Boi that's where I think it all started bc 💀 food is the key to my heart. So I would joke around with him and call him best friend and things like that. Honestly, it's a lot more than what I feel like typing so I'm gonna move onto the next part. SO, I told two of my friends that I liked him [one who messaged me and randomly told me that I should be his girlfriend like what, pero okay 🤔] like... late last week. I thought this one girl at my job liked him bc she was always calling his name and was always up on him [like bye ho], but YESTERDAY I FOUND OUT HE ASKED MY MANAGER ON A DATE [the sister of the last girl I just mentioned] AND I WAS SHOOK BC I WASNT EXPECTING THAT AT ALL. AND my manager is the crush of my friend and he was pissed at her bc he makes it OBV ASF that he likes her and she's v flirtatious w/ him. When he [my friend who likes the manager] was telling us [me and my friend, Iv] about it, I was telling him I'm in the same boat BUT I COULDNT TELL HIM WHO I LIKED OFC BC I DONT NEED IT TO GET ALL OVER MY JOB. SO WHEN I SAW JAY, I LOOKED AT HIM AND ROLLED MY EYES AND ALL HE SAID WAS "OK." AND I WAS LIKE "WHAT?" AND HE WAS LIKE "WHY YOU LOOKIN AT ME LIKE THAT?" AND HE HAD THE AUDACITY TO SAY HE GOING TO SIX FLAGS WITH ME AND MY FRIENDS AFTER PROM JUST TO PLAY MY FUCKING LIFE. AND MY DUMB ASS LIKE "If you wanna go, you can idc." AND HE WAS LIKE "See, you don't care." I'M LIKE WTF. LIKE IF YOU WANT TO THEN HMU, ACTIN LIKE HE CANT LOOK AT MY SCHEDULE AND SEE THE NEXT TIME I WORK OR FIND MY NUMBER LIKE OKAY HOE. LIKE I DON'T EVEN HAVE THE RIGHT TO BE UPSET BUT I AM BC I LET MYSELF LIKE SOMEBODY JUST TO GET SLAPPED BACK TO REALITY LIKE BITCH U R TRASH.