#nerf vulcan

[spirkbitch]

one more opinion about star trek fashion

it actually shouldn’t look like stuff you would wear (or at least a lot of it shouldn’t)

i’ve seen a lot of praise for modern trek fashion being better than classic trek because ‘people would actually wear that’

look at what people wore as everyday fashion 200-300 years ago, would you wear it? probably not, maybe for the novelty of it, but definitely not every day.

like, yeah this stuff looks crazy

it’s 300 years in the future. some of them are aliens, makes perfect sense to me that they would wear ridiculous extravagant clothes that look strange to my 21st century eye

similar to how if you showed modern fashion (especially alternative fashion/runway fashion) to someone dressed like this,

they would probably think we’re crazy.

yet for some reason modern trek wants us to believe that hundreds of years into the future people still just wear zip up hoodies?

(idk if the spock fit actually is a hoodie or not but come on man, the zipper? nothing more futuristic than a zipper?)

or this dress that looks like i could buy it in a 21st century target?

(not to hate on chapel, she’s just the only one i can find decent pictures of out of uniform)

also why is everything so grey now? when was it decided that people don’t wear colors in the future? i can not find out of uniform pictures where any of these people wear color, all black, white, grey, and maybe a bit of muted green.

tldr

clothing design in star trek should be just as important as clothing design in a period piece. i don’t think a screencap from any star trek should look like it could just as easily take place in the 21st century, i should see some crazy outfits. the clothes can do a lot of the heavy lifting to remind us that this is supposed to be far in the future.

[lexissketches]

The mission is over - and everyone left their heavy blasters with her >:(

[kyanitedragon]

I shared a bunch of my thoughts after watching TOS Season 1 for the first time...

But I've been so impressed with Spock in particular, and now I entirely understand why everyone adores him.

Vulcans are such a complicated alien characterization, and it's really easy to misunderstand them or write them wrong. Since these were the first star trek episodes, I was a little worried that season 1 Spock might be far more "human" than later star trek vulcans, or simply than later TOS seasons when it got its footing.

But no, Gene Roddenberry knew what he was doing from the start.

I've always liked vulcans (I started on Voyager first and Tuvok was one of my early faves) but I never appreciated them more than now.

The way Spock is written is absolutely vulcan writing at it's best.

I've been getting tired of the modern trend since Enterprise of vulcans being emotionless assholes wanting to hold back humanity. I've been getting tired of the series not really challenging the humans' views and misconceptions. I've especially disliked Strange New Worlds' obsession with making Spock more "human".

Vulcans have emotions — their emotions are simply repressed and controlled. Vulcans can lie! Vulcans can joke! Vulcans can be amused! They just... do it all in a very vulcan way.

And Spock... TOS Spock does all of that.

He is so damn sassy and I adore it so much. He finds so much amusement in his human crewmembers, he loves to screw with people, he loves to insult Kirk and Bones and they love to insult him back. And no matter what, he always feels so distinctly vulcan.

My personal favorite is from Tomorrow is Yesterday (1x19), when they have an air force captain from the 1960's on the bridge and they're explaining to him the future. The man walks onto the bridge, saying that he "doesn't believe in little green aliens". And Spock, knowing that he is visibly alien, walks forward to show himself and says "Neither have I". He absolutely knew that he would confuse and freak out and overwhelm the 60's captain. He just wanted to have some fun and screw with this stranger.

But that's not all.

Vulcans are telepathic. They can mind mind. We see a mind meld in episode 9. I was shocked that we got one so early.

Vulcans can do the nerve pinch. Spock can easily knock out anyone with a simple shoulder grab, while Kirk has to punch people and hurt his hand.

Vulcans have super strength, too. Each time Kirk and Spock fight, we can clearly see the amount of difference in strength.

By all means, vulcans are OP. By all means, it should be insanely difficult to have such an OP main character surrounded by entirely normal humans.

And yet... it never feels that way. Nor does it feel like they ever need to nerf him.

Spock uses all these powers. He uses them often. He volunteers them, he suggests them, sometimes Kirk asks him to do something difficult or even painful and Spock always agrees with no hesitation.

And this never feels overpowered.

And when Spock doesn't use his powers? It's always because his powers are entirely irrelevant and couldn't be used - no nerfs needed.

This series does so well with Spock!!

[inkedinserendipity]

okay. well! that was the first two episodes of the murderbot show! going to walk through what i liked and didn't like below. going pretty heavy on the stuff i didn't like, so if you haven't seen it yet/overall enjoyed it, please do not read! i don't want to spoil anyone's experience. and it seems like the fandom overall is really enjoying the show, which is awesome! (please support martha wells!)

things i loved:

the rise and fall of sanctuary moon! god that was so freaking funny. and the way murderbot pulled lines directly from the show to interact with humans, that was absolutely perfect.

ratthi painting the outside of the habitat! it was such a charming little detail.

the helmet is so freaking cool y'all it looks so good

things i liked:

the comedy was well-done! see aforementioned painting-of-the-habitat.

murderbot's running narration was appropriately exasperated. that's my secunit!

minor detail, but arada referring to murderbot as he and gurathin countering with it. mind, arada thinks she's being kind and gurathin is depersonalizing murderbot, but arada's viewpoint is still an interesting stand-in for the presaux's crew's perspective on murderbot at this point: human-ish, not a robot. a lovely bit of characterization that will be satisfying to see again when the crew changes their minds around exit strategy!

the rise and fall of sanctuary moon is so campy and so bad and i'm so happy with how they did it. the shooting is awful. the acting is awful. it was everything i wanted. (also: sulu!)

(captain did you have sex with that vulcan robot)

things i did not like. oh boy. i'm splitting this into two categories: 1. things i didn't like because they don't track well with the books, and 2. things i didn't like evaluating the show on its own merit.

(2 is basically just gurathin.)

1. things i didn't like because they don't track well with the books:

murderbot got nerfed. like, hard. it didn't bother me until my friend moby pointed out that a scene in episode 2 implies that gurathin controls secunit's access to hubsystem, and that's just...mind-bogglingly wrong. murderbot is hacking everything, all the time. it has to, in order to keep itself safe and not get found out about its governor module!

arada and bharadwaj ignore murderbot's advice. the crew sends mensah and bharadwaj off in the hopper without their secunit. even at the beginning, murderbot's sold (literally) as a discounted unit, and is first introduced to the crew in a strange, undignified pose that immediately nerfs its credibility.

which is frustrating, because one of the major draws of murderbot as a character is that it is competent and it's not even paying attention. it's blasé, it's funny, and it gets shit done. without that, you have...what? a clown?

speaking of which, this murderbot did not feel like book!murderbot at all. there was some comic narration! but not nearly to the level of the book. the pessimistic, tongue-in-cheek narration style that made the books so funny is almost wholly lost in the show's voicetrack and tone, and for me, that's a huge blow.

all systems red the book was about murderbot. episodes one and two of murderbot the show are about gurathin.

mensah's defining characteristic trait is fear. when she's shown on her own, she's having a panic attack. she continues to have panic attacks. she makes stupid decisions and goes off on her own. she does not overrule gurathin's "veto" on bringing murderbot with her. where is the intrepid galaxy explorer that murderbot admired? where is the version of mensah that earned the tag like blorbo from my shows!???

yes, it admired her! even before the start of book one, she was the crew member it admired! and in this show, it doesn't seem to think about her at all, and disappointingly, i get it. this isn't like our mensah at all.

speaking of which, this also nerfs character development following exit strategy. this is behavior we would expect from exit strategy mensah. so when we get to that point, mensah's terror will have no impact on the show's audience, because that's what she's been introduced as: a terrified, pretty voiceless leader who's overshadowed by her skeptics on the crew.

2 things i didn't like based on the show's own merit:

this one's just gurathin, basically. the rest of point 1 ^^ is my disappointment in what the show "could have been" manifesting in words. this one is a real genuine problem with the character choice made with gurathin.

reading about gurathin's rudeness in the book pissed me off; reading about his nigh-sadism in the show made me physically uncomfortable. for someone who just "wants to protect his friends" - for someone who has lived on preservation for six fucking years, and has presumably come to see bots as people - he seems pretty fucking happy to order secunit to do things it doesn't want to do.

he sees murderbot's discomfort and orders it, a command that it cannot refuse, to lean into it. on an emotional level, what gurathin did is the same as the client who burned murderbot's hand in the opening scene. the difference is, murderbot cannot turn down its pain receptors on this one.

this is not the gurathin who provoked murderbot's anger onto himself in order to determine that it wouldn't harm the crew. this was a power play, an act of intimidation, and a revolting willingness to exercise power over another person.

and worse, it worked. murderbot, at the end of eye contact, did not read to me as unimpressed: it read to me as scared.

i despise those sorts of power imbalances in media. i see them in real life; i have lived them; i have no interest in consuming them in media. the show is attempting to paint gurathin as sympathetic. with that one scene, they have lost me entirely. his actions were abhorrent, and were it not for my preexisting love for the source material, my disgust with his character would've been enough for me to drop the show then and there.

[fireforce1stwatch]

S3E4 I really feel like Vulcan nerfed Maki like she was soooooo cool and strong in S1 and ever since he made these funky weapon things she's been away less metal

[regina-bithyniae]

Tourney Pattern

One of the quirks of Adeptus Titanicus is the dominant Warhound titan build, with a Vulcan Mega-Bolter (for rapid-fire shield clearing) and a Plasma Blastgun (amazing at everything). Called the "tourney pattern" build for its ubiquity, almost any other loadout is at best a sidegrade.

It's so common that, as above, very often people will post pictures from their games and every single Warhound you can see is using the build.

There's an interesting balance dynamic, where the PBG is so head-and-shoulders the best Warhound gun that it obviously deserves a nerf to make the game more interesting. But a common balancing pitfall is to weaken a faction's best things by 5% and strengthen the weaker things by 5% assuming this balances out, when this is almost always a net nerf in practice, and the PBG is needed in its current form to keep the Warhound competitive with the bigger Reaver/Warlord titans.

And the PBG debates rage on, until we get a major shakeup sometime in maybe a decade.

[joju-but-trek]

Star Trek: Prodigy Season 2, Episode 18: Touch of Grey

It's just like in my fanfics! - The Doctor

In the penultimate episode of this season, we have a piece that closes out a lot of subplots. It makes sense that this episode would try to clear the field for a more focused finale, but it does feel a little weird with respect to what it does and doesn't try to wrap up. It also feels like it was trying to do slightly too much towards that end while also doing something new, and it could have handled it better. 8/10

In terms of subplot focus, this episode tries to wrap up a lot of the internal politics on Solum. That part works. It sets up Iltharan to lead a resistance, undermines Ascensia, and works to reposition Ascensia as just herself with a lot more funding instead of the face of a vast empire. I like this emphasis, even if I think it didn't get enough onscreen development leading up to it. Still, I am invested and sold on her as the main villain.

This episode is also the first to really center the returning characters. It had to happen at some point, and I'm glad that it's a) not the finale and b) still focused on them supporting the Prodigy characters. Nerfing Wesley also makes sense for the finale, and they do some character work towards that, but there is something inherently funny about Wesley and Janeway sharing a moment where they realize they're getting old when Chakotay is right there and even more aged up by this season's events.

The legacy character that's worked the least for me and has only gotten worse is the Doctor, which is disappointing because I love the character. He's been played as a joke for most of the season, and this episode is the worst offender of it as he becomes the primary comic relief of the team. It's not anything character-breaking, it's just that as a fan of the character I wish they hadn't made the creative decision to use him like this. I feel like if you gave all his specific medical duties to Noum he wouldn't even need to be here for this season. Honestly, Tuvok might have worked better in that capacity, since he provides another Vulcan tactician for Ma'jel to bounce off of. It's unfortunate, but the show isn't about him, and he isn't needed for this story to work.

Also, Ascensia captured a Loom creature somehow. They handwave it, which isn't completely out of line with how much Ascensia was able to steal from Wesley, but it is a bit of a jump from them almost eating Voyager last time we saw them. I do like that the characters end up using it to get out instead of fighting it - it's a good reminder of how these creatures work in Star Trek, where talking your way out of problems is a much stronger tactic.

Anyway, the finale's next! I hope Dal flies something small and full of lasers while the Doctor writes more self-insert fanfic.

[someone-pretentious]

Nice! Gonna retain function at all? Tha Vulcan was alway my whit whale when I was into nerf

Got this for $2. It's broken but I'm thinking of making it into a heavy bolter

[jdlaverty]

Another nerf repaint for summer camp theming. Stormtroopers need their blasters

[peopleholdingnerfguns]

[gaykarstaagforever]

Spock was always intended as a spooky mysterious "other" on TOS, so they could do racism metaphors on a ship where you're not going to be racist to the Japanese-American guy or the Black lady. It was the 60s, right, so that was really progressive and complicated in a world where half the country was still getting violently angry about Black people being treated as fully human. And the nuance may have worked on them - Nimoy was a presenting-white guy, whose only noticeable differences were funny ears and hair and eye makeup. He doesn't automatically offend white racist viewers. So people being racist to him might make actual white racists go, "Ha! Why are they doing that? He's just a person with minor physical differences...OH WAIT!"

What no one who worked on that show expected was that fans would fall madly in love with Spock and self-identify with him. So now the spooky weird alien man is the one we relate to and want to kiss. And that immediately changed the dynamic going forward. Because if the fans want to be Vulcans and Klingons and Data, then, I guess we can use them as analogs for the audience...? But then what are the future humans now, besides just boring Space people? How does any of this work going forward?

So the shows have continuously invented new alien races we DON'T love yet, and used THEM to fill in the gaps. So we get both O'Brien being racist against Cardassians, which is bad, but also the Cardassians being Space Nazis, which is ALSO bad! ...But then the Klingons go after them, so now the Cardassians are oppressed...? And the Klingons are evil now, after 30 years of this franchise nerfing them and making them funny and quirky because we love them...?

And this was all this big mess in the mid 90s, which is another 30 years ago from now. So I sympathize with the producers of these shows, how do they do this, and what do they do?

So they went "Vulcans are The Good Doctor and racist." Which is...not a solution many of us like. But I see how it happened.

I still think the core of the issue here is the overly-broad metaphors and simplistic "morals" of these stories. The thing being sorted out is not always rising organically out of well-rounded characters, of whatever race, who are dealing with personal issues that just happen to relate to something we get (which is how you do it to make it emotionally impactful). Now we just see and feel the broad strokes of these pretentious message stories, and see the seams of them, which are characters being inconsistent and races being idiosyncratic in service of giving us a Very Special Episode.

Also not a new problem. Voyager and Enterprise were both very guilty of this, for the same reasons. Discovery has been better about it (so far, in my watching of it). But obviously it's a very easy thing to stumble into, because avoiding it is a tricky matter of nuance and trusting the audience, things studios HATE, because that takes time and artistic freedom on the part of producers and directors.

TNG had episodes where there was a Black "spear-chucker" planet, and a planet of drunken deranged 1940s Irish stereotypes. Like, balls can be dropped, even by "good" shows. Maybe not quite that hard, that way, anymore, thank goodness. But now they're accidentally being racist to fantasy people, and lazy and inappropriate about autism representation.

The struggle continues. Lol

A thing I need neurotypical Star Trek fans to understand is that Spock—and the whole Vulcan species—are heavily autism-coded. Originally unintentionally, but now it seems that they're doing it on purpose.

Autistic fans feel this deeply and relate to Spock a lot. When he acts really weird and his friends accept him anyway, it's so comforting. We can be weird and off-putting and people will still love us! This was something the TOS writers very much intended, because the point was befriending people who are different.

But when Vulcans are constantly racist, when Spock is seen as only happy and lovable when he changes, when human characters announce that what REALLY matters is emotion and community, which Vulcans can never understand....well.

One wonders if that's how you see us. Especially when we see neurotypical fans accept this viewpoint uncritically and lean even harder into it than the show does.

I wrote about this at length on my author blog, but all I'm really asking right now is for you to think for a second about what you say about Vulcans and ask: if I subbed out the word "Vulcan" for the word "autistic," do I sound like a raging asshole? And if the answer is yes, don't say that thing!

[the-diwi]

Meet "Betsy", my newest addition for my Fallout Cosplay. I seriously hope I get through the security for the german Comic Con in Munich this weekend lmao

[scarletheartzverse]

Damn, I've been frantically trying to catch up with Fire Force anime but then today I realized it ended :(

Oh well, I only have 3 more episodes to go and I have to say it's been hella lit. This anime really improved, and I have to admit I did drop it around episode 12 or so mainly because Tamaki being naked every two seconds annoyed me and made me lose interest in watching. But recently I decided to binge it and to my surprise I've been missing out on a lot of good shit. I can totally look pass the fanservice now because this anime has been legit fire. I might actually read the manga after this.

[gibus-the-cat]

I forgot I have a Tumblr, but I bought a old beaut recently.~

[ninjakittenarmy]

Looks like a Nerf Vulcan EBF-25 fucked an old movie camera.