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thresholdbb · 1 month

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what's the threshold theory

There was a post about how Tom is the only crew member who isn't really affected by the Borg, and there's a theory that he has so much luck because he saw the past and the future when he crossed the transwarp threshold. He saw the past and the future, all of time and space. There's some subconscious part of him that remembers that experience. In fact, Tom refused to play a part in Chakotay indulging Annorax's temporal incursions, probably because a part of him knew nothing good could come of it.

If we extend that same theory to Janeway, some of her wild luck with time travel and other crack plans starts to make sense. She doesn't verbally hate time travel until after the events of Threshold, since it happens in Time and Again without complaint. Janeway has an uncanny knack for time travel, as evidenced every time she deals with it. She hates time travel, but it might be because part of her knows exactly how to manipulate the timeline. She manages to avoid the "inevitable" temporal explosion in Future's End, saving both Voyager and Braxton. She resets the entire timeline in Year of Hell, and no one else followed her reasoning. She pulled it off flawlessly. In Relativity, she senses the incidents are all related, despite it being just one reading that connects them. By the time she's involved, she has a temporal incursion factor of .0036 and a time travel protocol named after her, even if that may just be Braxton's personal grudge. Then there's Endgame, where she intentionally changes the timeline. Up until this point, she has been dragged into time travel, but for the first time, she jumps in on purpose. How does Admiral Janeway know how to get them home sooner in a way that completely avoids the Temporal Integrity Commission? It's because she has seen all of time, and part of her knows exactly what needs to happen so she can get Voyager home and do it in a way that becomes baked into the prime timeline. Maybe she doesn't consciously remember what happened during her transformation, but the experience lives in her mind somewhere, guiding her decisions.

#every day is threshold day #tldr threshold cemented the time travel shenanigans #we're not counting her disparagement of time travel in relativity i know it's technically before threshold #but they've messed with the timeline so much that her past timeline is also changed.#Time travel is funny because the past is the future the future is the past #so while relativity comes before threshold in the prime timeline her timeline has also been changed in a way that it wasn't before threshol #we could chalk it up to a writing oversight but this is more interesting #not to mention her uncanny luck with the Borg which I think ties in as well #it's part of why her instinct is so strong #also the bio neural gel packs but that's a different theory #listen she's amazing with or without having seen all of time and space but she has seen all of time and that must have affected her somehow #those little salamander babies also have all of the cosmos in their mind #tried to explain as concisely as possible but it is part of my overarching theory #she doesn't second guess herself nearly as much following their jaunt into transwarp #I have more but I'm trying to be brief cause it's written up partially in my drafts somewhere and i have some things i need to do today lol #meta #Star Trek voyager #Kathryn janeway #threshold day #did you expect me thresholdbb to not have a serious threshold theory?#listen I can make anything nonsense and turn anything into a serious theory I was known for this kinda bs in grad school #I wrote a 25 page paper on NOTHING once #I wrote a paper about how corn fields were super gay and it made my professor cry I can spin the bullshit it is one of my skills

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unforth · 7 months

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I had a day off yesterday.

And I can already practically hear the assumptions that such a statement is prompting the reader to make. Those assumptions are wrong. I don't mean I didn't work. I did, for about 8 hours. That's not at all what I mean.

I mean my wife took the kids out at 9:30, spent the night with her mom, isn't back yet the next morning.

There are things I NEED people on this website to understand about parenting. And I've talked about it before, and I'll talk about it again, because honestly the way that Tumblr as a cohort talks about parents makes me sick. Multiple polls have shown that only about 2% of people on here are parents. We're a huge minority, and we're constantly talked over, ignored, or accused of being bad parents (like, personally, I have had people reply to my comments or come on to my posts and tell me I shouldn't have my kids). In my case, being a parent means I'm almost 41, I'm married to @ramblingandpie, and our children are inching up on being 8 and 6 years old.

My entire day, and therefore my entire life, revolves around them. I'm up most mornings at 5 AM, because that's the earliest they're "allowed" to wake up, and so my brain just defaults to being awake around then - better to wake up before them, at least then I get a few minutes in the morning. Between 5 and 7, I sit with them, do my social media, work on side blogs, study Chinese. Then it's helping them get ready for school, then my wife or I or both get them on the bus, and then I work until the last possible minute, which is either when I need to go pick them up for an after school activity or when I need to go down and meet them off the bus. My afternoons are after school activities, chores such as washing the dishes and cleaning up toys, talking with them, working with them, playing with them. Their bedtime starts at 7:40, and my son gets scared if I leave before he falls asleep so I sit with him until about 8:15. As soon as he's asleep, I go fall on my face, sleep as best I can, then wake up and do it again. Overnight, it's hard to sleep deeply, because about once a week someone will wake up in the middle of the night and need help. That could be as minimal as a hug or as complex as having to completely change the bedding on a bunk bed at 2 AM while also comforting a child who is afraid they'll be in trouble, or afraid they're sick, or afraid of their nightmare, or, or, or. Further, if a child is awake, there is always noise. I usually study Chinese with two or more competing sources of noise. I read the same way. My life is loud, and active, and consists of constant interruptions.

I adore my family, and I love my children, but this is terrible for me.

I do all of this as an neurodivergent introvert. My clinical depression is at least medicated, mostly because post-partum depression after I gave birth the first time nearly drove me to suicidal in under a week (we were expecting this and were prepared, fortunately, getting help was as simple as a phone call). The constant noise and interruptions and forced socialibility are about the worst combination of home-life I could be subjected to. I spend far too many early mornings just breathing deeply and gearing myself up to be subjected to the wall of Loud, Boisterous, Needing-My-Attention that is every minute when anyone else in the house is awake.

So what did my day off look like?

I helped get the kids ready to go and did some morning chores. I'd been up at 4:30 AM so I also had already social media'd and studied. Then, while my wife finished the preparations, I started work, and I worked from about 8 am to about 4 pm, straight. I didn't get hungry so didn't bother stopping for lunch. No one interrupted me, no one asked me to look at anything they'd built, no one broke my concentration, no sounds could be heard except those I'd chosen myself.

I'd been out the day before at a local shopping street and listened closely to the things the kids said they wanted, so at 4 I grabbed a couple orders I needed to ship for work and drove to our local downtown, dropped the orders in a post box, then went back to the shops and did some Christmas shopping in the 45 minutes or so before everything closed. I think I'm basically done with what we'll get them - other bigger things will be left to grand parents - so that's a load off, I literally had a stress dream earlier this week about it being 12/24 and having forgotten to do the shopping and having to go to (oh horrors) the mall on the day before Christmas. (Reminder: I'm a Jewish atheist. It's just virtually impossible not to Holiday in the Culturally Christian Hellscape that is the US. Also, my wife is Christian. So.) Found something cute for my wife, too, even tho I already know the main thing I'm getting her. Then, I realized - one of my favorite restaurants is on that block. So. I went there. I sat by myself at a table, only the indistinct restaurant hubbub around me. I read four or five chapters of my book, and ate a savory crepe, and drank lovely fruit tea, and got a scone to-go that I'll eat for lunch today. It was more than I probably should have spent on myself - about $25, including tip - but fuck it. I only get maybe a handful of days off all year, and I'm allowed to indulge a little.

Then I came home. There were no lights on. There was no noise. I had considered doing some more merch work while watching TV on the actual television (my kids are too young for subtitled shows, so usually if I want to watch My Shows I either have to do it on my computer when they're not around, or put them on and read all the subtitles aloud while trying to keep up and process the actual meaning of what I'm reading). But when I got back, the quiet and dark was so goddamn NICE that instead I curled up on the couch and read more of my book. I did that until bedtime - still about 8:15, because I'm exhausted. Then...I went to bed. And I slept long and deep, knowing that there was no chance I'd be interrupted and woken up, I didn't have to be, even in sleep, alert to every noise and possibility that I'd be needed.

I'm still exhausted and burned out, but even one night to myself felt really, really nice.

Saying "Tumblr does X" as a universal statement is doomed to failure, but generally speaking, the parenting posts I see on Tumblr, the ones with tens or hundreds of thousands of notes, speak what's apparently widely seen as a truism on here: that unless someone wants to spend 24/7 with their kids, to be 100% emotionally available at all times, is always kind and patient and perfect, they are a bad parent, maybe even abusive. I remember when covid started, there were multiple posts actively mocking the "oh god, my kids are now home all the time, how am I supposed to do this?" attitude that a lot of parents posted in despair. WhY dId YoU hAvE kIdS iF yOu DoN't WaNt To SpEnD tImE wItH tHeM?

Look at what my usual day looks like.

Look at what my day off looked like.

Do you really think I don't want to spend time with my kids? Do you really think I don't love my kids?

But I'm not a fucking MACHINE. I'm a PERSON. That's what people on Tumblr seem to forget. PARENTS ARE PEOPLE. The same tumblrinas who post ~uwu be kind to yourself rest if you need to, you should forgive yourself for that mistake you made~ will turn around, with zero sense of irony, and post "you're a bad parent if you ever raise your voice around a child."

Expecting parents to be perfect means expecting parents to be inhuman. It also means that a parent can't be poor (can't spend all your time being the perfect parent if you have to work multiple jobs or weird hours!), can't be introverted (can't be a perfect parent if you're not completely emotional available, god forbid socializing is exhausting for you), can't be on the ADHD or autism spectrum (what do you mean you forgot to get your kid to a doctor's appointment once? what do you mean over-stimulation can make you angry? how dare you get angry at a kid!), can't be depressed (gotta get out of bed every single day, gotta always be upbeat, patient, happy, or else that's Evil), can't be (like my wife) physically disabled (what do you mean your hands hurt too much to hold a child's hand? are you denying them touch?? CRUEL). And when the only answer you can offer to that is, "if you can't be that perfect you shouldn't be a parent," then you're saying people who aren't middle class to wealthy, people who aren't neurotypical, people who aren't physically able, shouldn't have children.

And honestly...what the fuck is your problem?

I'm not perfect. I tell my kids to just leave me alone sometimes. I raise my voice, especially when one of my kids starts punching the other, but also sometimes just cause I'm exhausted and Can't Anymore. I've forgotten an appointment by accident and felt like a total fucking idiot, and I've skipped an after school activity because I just wasn't up for taking them. I've served them more unbalanced, unhealthy meals than I can count. I've made many, many mistakes, but I've also done my best, and I love my kids, and I hope that when they grow up, they'll still love me even as they recognize that I wasn't perfect, just as I've come to accept my own parents' short-comings while still loving them very much. They're people, too, and the older I get, the more I understand where they were coming from.

When I fuck up, I apologize.

When they tell me they're unhappy with something I've done, I apologize, and I try to do better. Sometimes I even succeed.

This shit is hard, yo. And it's getting harder every year.

I'm BEGGING Tumblr: you need to start seeing parents as people. The way y'all talk about parenting on here is toxic, and genuinely harmful, and frankly exhausting. You have no idea what the reality of raising kids is like, and you need to shut the entire fuck up.

I had a day off yesterday.

I might get one more before the end of 2023.

I already can't wait. I am so, so, so tired. sigh

(if you actually read this whole rant and even a single word of it resonated for you, please reblog it. I'm tired of never seeing positive posts about parenting while I see negative ones with a bajillion notes.)

#unforth rambles #parenting #momblr #nothing prompted this #i just think about writing posts like this all the time #because the low-level background buzz of how much tumblr hates parents is a constant stressor tbh #and every once and a while i tip over the line end up Writing the Thing #and so here we are again #god i have so much to do today and instead i procrastinate with this #oops

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