#specifically spock asking about the life is but a dream line

[cchipollo]

hmmm probably gonna turn this spock boat drawing into a bigger thing cus i really like it. also it’s been a while since i’ve worked on a big proper drawing with proper rendering so i reckon i’ll give it a shot :o]

[kirksfattitties]

hi! sorry for sending this on anon, but i wanted to put my two cents in re:spock&mixed race identity and i have a current aversion to linking this directly to my blog for personal reasons.

i am coming to this discussion from the perspective of a brown mizrahi+white ashkenazi jew who is primarily in contact with the mizrahi part, both literally in the sense of they're the family i talk to and more metaphorically in the sense that i live my life moreso as a brown person and am more in touch with mizrahi tradition etc.

this is probably going to get long for it is late at night and u have adhd, so i'm breaking this down into paragraphs for each question you asked that i have presumably relevant input on and trying to avoid walls of text.

the term half-human/half-vulcan

i don't think referring to spock as half-whatever amounts to blood quantum by itself and spock does in canon refer to himself as half-human several times in a way that doesn't bother me. HOWEVER, if you feel you are approaching that territory in some way, i would recommend trusting ypur gut and rephrasing (if you were oversensitive, no harm's been done, eh?). for spock specifically, he seems to mainly view himself as vulcan. i, similarly (?) view myself as brown - in my opinion, spock is most likely to either, if relevant, say immediately that he is vulcan+human (something along the lines of "i am part/half vulcan and part/half human"/"i had a vulcan father and a human mother" etc) or he will call himself vulcan THEN elaborate (a la "i am vulcan. my mother was human"/"i am vulcan and also human" etc). depending on the conversation, the fact he's both may not be relevant at all - it may be enough to say he's vulcan/human and leave it at that; for example, if you're discussing the way starfleet views alien-ness it's probably enough just to say he's vulcan, if you're talking about him doing a kiddush or something (struggling to come up with a differnet example rn, there are probably better ones) it's likely enough to just say he's human.

the term mixed

i don't think it's offensive to call spock mixed, but it does seem to me a little bit odd. might just be personal tendencies, just seems weird to call a white person mixed becuase the word "mixed" implies the "-race" part. in context it can work, out of context it feels awkward to me.

is spock coded as a poc

seems to me like a stretch. vulcan isn't a race, and (for the time being) spock is a white character and is treated as such. coding him as a person of colour would only work if he were actually one, no matter how much star trek loves using his story to talk about race. whiteness is only distanced from spock insofar as he is a jew (jew coded, whatever. he's undeniably jewish it doesn't matter) and that doesn't take away from his whiteness, only ensures a specific experience of it. (however this is not about black/brown spock my friend spock who lives in my head. he has rights he is loved he should be canonical. but [current] canon spock IS white and it doesn't really make sense to refer to him as poc coded or anything of the sort. a comparison may make my point more clear - worf is poc coded [specifically black coded], being an alien played by a black man written in a way which can in many ways be said to fit into some common black experiences and/or black character tropes [there are some cool essays on that you can look into if you want. worf my beloved]; spock isn't, he is a white character whose alien-ness is often used for race allegories.)

balancing humanity and vulcan-ness

a big part of spock's character arc is learning to accept himself whole. part of that has to an extent been admitting to himself he is also human and was raised by a human mother and currently lives in a majority human sphere. spock engaging in more human practices, letting go of some vulcan disciplines he doesn't want or coming to peace with himself are themes that i think fit his stories and that should be featured when talking about him. BUT, i think that's important, it seems to me more like growing up/accepting himself contradictions and all than like learning to Mix His Cultures. i don't think spock's problem is that he doesn't embrace human culture as his own, i think it's that he actively disapproves of parts of himself in the attempt to be the ur vulcan and takes it out as undervaluing humanity in general. basically my point here is that a lot of spock's journey is about accepting parts of himself that are seen as more human but make sure that when you phrase it it doesn't sound like what you're saying is that in order to be happy mixed people need to embrace Traits™ from all their races or whatever. spock's problem isn't that he doesn't act "human", he doesn't have to - it's that he represses the parts of himself he thinks don't fit his typecast essentially.

writing spock

i don't know how to solve the question of how to make sure you're not overstepping the line, but i would simply say proceed with caution. spock is both human and vulcan, it's a significant part of his character, you can write it, just don't set out to write a mixed story and/or if you see you are straying too far into a life you do not feel you know lay off it.

this is most everything i have to say. i hope it was coherent. i hope it was what you wanted. i hope it wasn't exhausting to read. i would like to conclude by saying @paramount cast a jew of colour to play spock it'll be so sexy and so much less white people in alien makeup are trying to talk about race also i think spock deserves it. it's what nimoy would've wanted he told me this in a dream.

(referencing the asks i made in this post)

thank you for taking the time to make such thorough answer! this really helps

[cywscross]

From @lightveils on Twitter (free to use wherever!). I’ve been meaning to do this for a while. I definitely have enough fics to fill it lol~

-0-

A Fic You Love Without Knowing The Source Material:

I was born for this by esama (Assassin’s Creed | Altair x Desmond | M)

Juno did her best to lead him to her preferred fate, but the end is coming and Desmond has doubts.

A Fic With A Premise That Shouldn’t Work But Does:

Proposing To Strangers by moonstalker24 (Teen Wolf | Peter x Stiles | G)

At the end of a strained relationship, crime novelist Stiles chooses to hide from the world inside a bar with far too many motorcycles outside it for comfort. Here he'll meet the man of his dreams, eat food and propose marriage, all within the first five minutes.

Peter doesn't know who this kid is, but he's cute and looks like he could use a break. So he feeds him. He's not expecting a marriage proposal, but with what comes after, he doesn't really mind.

A Fic You’ve Reread Several Times:

Hooverville by twothumbsandnostakeincanon (Teen Wolf | Peter x Stiles | E)

Town to town, train to train, tent to tent.

By 1932, the dust had begun to blow and the jobs were gone.

Anonymity was a byproduct of looking for work, which made it both necessary and convenient.

Stiles had enough secrets of his own to know to look the other way when he saw something that shouldn’t be possible.

The ghost of a tail giving enough balance to disembark a moving train.

Near silent Latin whispered on the edge of a tent encampment.

A flash of burning eyes.

He had more than enough to worry about without adding the oddities of others, and besides- having unusually sharp teeth certainly didn’t make a man worse than the ones running from the wife and kids they couldn’t feed.

So Stiles kept his observations to himself. He kept his everything to himself.

Until he met a man. One with eyes so blue they seemed to glow- and then they did.

Stiles tried to look away, but for the first time he was stopped.

“Don’t be like that sweetheart. Aren’t you curious?”

A Fic You Still Remember Many Years Later:

All True-Hearted Souls by mardia (Temeraire | Laurence x Granby | G)

“For God's sake, if someone doesn't talk Laurence out of these constant heroics, I wouldn't bet a farthing on his chances; no, and not ours either.” Four times that John Granby helped save William Laurence's life. Laurence/Granby. Spoilers up to Empire of Ivory.

A Comfort Fic:

Nothing Improper by Bunnywest (Teen Wolf | Peter x Stiles | G)

“How long since someone touched you, sweet boy?” Peter asks, his voice barely a breath in Stiles’ ear. “Days? Weeks? Months?” Stiles nods imperceptibly at that last one.

“After…after everything, after Allison,” is all Stiles manages to get out.

A Cathartic Fic:

Swing by ShippersList (Teen Wolf | Peter x Stiles | T)

Stiles wants to fly.

A Fic You’d Print And Put On Your Bookshelf:

Nose to the Wind by Batsutousai (HP | Tom x Harry | M)

While Harry had been content with his second chance, that didn't keep him from thinking what he could have done different, how many people could have survived if he hadn't been set on the very specific path he'd walked. Third time is the charm, though, right?

A Fic You Associate With A Song (x2):

Strange Duet by BelleAmante, thiliart (thilia) (Teen Wolf | Peter x Stiles | M)

The past three years have been a series of shocking, or not so shocking, successes for 2018 Tony award winner and two time Grammy nominee, Stiles Stilinski. You don’t typically find classically trained opera singers singing alternative folk rock to crowds at Coachella. Nor do you find indie singer/songwriters winning best actor awards at the Tony’s for their Broadway debuts. Stilinski has made it his lifetime habit to defy and exceed all expectations.

-or-

A Steter fic loosely based on Phantom of the Opera

~

Full Circle by Nike Femme (FMA | Roy x Ed | T)

Edward Elric returns with amnesia. He has lived the past four years as Auric, a Gatekeeper. But there are some battles that only he can fight. Will his friends be able to awaken Ed, and what happens to Auric if they do?

A Fic That Inspires You:

Off the Line by esama (FFVII | Cloud x Vincent | T)

In which Cloud gets a Virtual Reality Dream Console – ShinRa's latest in virtual reality technology. Aaand everything pretty much goes downhill from there.

A Fic That Brought You On Board A New Ship:

Me and Mine by linndechir (Fast and the Furious | Deckard x Owen | E)

The last time they'd spoken, Deckard had told Owen that he was tired of cleaning up his messes. But the first thing he did after breaking out of prison was to take Owen to the other end of the world so they could lick their wounds and start planning their revenge.

A Fic You Wish Could Be A Movie:

Moving In (To Every Single Aspect of Danny’s Life, Including the Boring Bits like Dry-Cleaning) by westgirl (Hawaii Five-0 | Steve x Danny | T)

It felt wrong for Steve to sound unsure of his place in Danny’s life. His place in Danny’s life was at Danny’s side, driving him slowly insane. Steve should feel secure about that.

A Fic That Led To You Making Friends With The Author:

Begin and End by Rikkamaru (Log Horizon x HP | G)

This is how it begins: a boy rejected by his family, a boy reunited with his brother by his sister-in-law's intervention. A boy who found a family in an online game. But how will it end?

FREE SPACE:

Reverti Ad Praeteritum by Batsutousai (Fullmetal Alchemist | Roy x Edward | M)

Unwillingly forced to serve as a human trial for a crazy alchemist experimenting with time travel, Edward Elric finds himself standing across from Truth in the moment it takes his leg from him. Armed with the knowledge of what's to come and burdened with guilt for the choices he'd made as an adult, Ed sets out to fix every mistake he ever made and save every life they ever lost, no matter what it takes.

A Fic You’ve Gushed About IRL:

Designation: Miracle by umisabaku (Kuroko no Basket | M)

It's been three years since seven human experiments, called "Miracles," escaped Teiko Industries, alerting the world to the presence of super-powered children. Now they're finally integrating into society-- going to normal high schools, playing basketball, falling in love-- and trying to find out if it's possible to truly escape their past.

A Fic You Associate With A Place (have to self-rec for this one):

Safe Harbour by cywscross (Teen Wolf | Peter x Stiles x Chris | T)

Peter didn't think he'd find a home here. He certainly didn't think he'd find a home with two other men.

Chris and Stiles prove him wrong.

A Fic That Made You Gasp Out Loud (kind of? it was suspenseful):

Sanctuary by DiscontentedWinter (Teen Wolf | Peter x Stiles | E)

The Hale Wolf Sanctuary isn’t just for wolves.

It turns out it’s for Stilinskis as well.

A Fic You Found At The Right Time:

slow increments by Areiton (Teen Wolf | Peter x Stiles)

Peter is enigmatic, egotistical, sometimes barely sane. He's sharp and cutting and takes more time to care for the pack than anyone.And sometimes, John catches him watching Stiles.

A Fic That You Would Read Fic Of:

if you try to break me, you will bleed by Dialux (Game of Thrones | Jon x Sansa | T)

It had been a slash across her chest from a White Walker’s sword that finally ended her life. Sansa’d landed in a puddle of her own blood, and she’d died quickly, quietly.

And then she’d awoken with a gasp, trembling, in a bed that had burned under Theon’s betrayal.

A Fic That Made You Laugh Out Loud:

The Path towards Unwilling Godhood by Sky_King (Bleach | Kisuke x Ichigo | G)

Ichigo has never had the most normal life, and this latest chapter of it is no different.

"I'm not a god!"

A Fic With A Line (Or Two) That You’ve Memorized By Heart:

Atlas by distractedKat (Star Trek | Spock x Jim | T)

Between what was and what will be stands James Tiberius Kirk, in all his fractured patchwork glory. Because saving the Federation was only the beginning.

A Fic That Gave You Butterflies:

The Rest of Our Lives by mia6363 (Teen Wolf | Peter x Stiles | T)

“I don’t know, as a kid I watched a lot of movies, you know? And at first I figured like… I’d be on some great adventure that would take me away from it all, you know? Like Indiana Jones comes around and is all, ‘Hey Stiles, buddy, come with me we’ve got to go save the world.’ Then… you and… everything happened… then I just… I figured I’d die before I was eighteen.”

A Fic That Embodies Something You Value In Life:

The Boy Sleuth by Shey (Teen Wolf | Peter x Stiles | T)

Stiles is eight when he discovers a box of his mom’s old Nancy Drew Mysteries in the back of the guest bedroom closet.

A Favourite AU:

Love What is Behind You by KouriArashi (Teen Wolf | Peter x Stiles | M)

Basically what it says on the label. Hunger Games type fusion. Stiles doing way better than anyone anticipates. Peter finds him intriguing. Ruthless, devious assholes working together to ruin bad guys, as the Steter ship is meant to be.

A Fic You Stayed Up Too Late To Finish Reading:

Of Dwobbits, Dragons and Dwarves by ISeeFire (The Hobbit | Fem!Bilbo x Fili | T)

Bilba has been a slave her entire life. All she knows of the outside world is what she sees from time to time outside the gates of Moria and the stories her mother used to tell her. Stories of a place called the Shire where her mother once lived and a placed called Erebor where, as far as she knows, her father still lives. Stories of dragons a thousand times larger, and more intelligent, than the beasts the orcs rode and of a strange concept called freedom where one was allowed to live as they wished with no one to tell them what they could, or could not do.

The stories meant little to Bilba. The only future she had was to live, and die, as a slave as countless number had before her.

And then the orcs dragged an injured female firedrake through the gates, her rider screaming obscenities behind her as he fought to reach her side...and everything changed.

A Fic That Made You Feel Seen (another self-rec lol):

i am addicted to death (so remind me what it’s like to live) by cywscross (Teen Wolf | Peter x Stiles | T)

Stiles is sixteen years old. He has already died seventy-eight times.

[branwyn-says]

2020 fanfic review meme!

Thanks to @livenudebigfoot for tagging me and providing me with a legitimate excuse to reflect self-indulgently on my special interest: writing obsessive amounts of fic for Michael Emerson vehicles. What fic did I disgorge from my brain maw this year? This was the year I started writing for Person of Interest, the fandom that changed my life! I found a fannish community on the Subway discord and joined a whole bunch of exchanges, which I’d never done before. 

In February for chocolate_box, I wrote 7 stories:

The Life of the World to Come (Person of Interest, Reese/Finch): Canon compliant fix it in which Reese wakes up in a lakeside cabin about 6 weeks after he died. Unspecified magical bargains were involved.

Arctic Flower (POI, Grace/Jessica): An AU in which Jessica rushes to assist Grace when a cyclist knocks her down in the park, and their friendship enables her to leave Peter before it’s too late.

A Bird of Foreign Tongue (POI, Reese/Finch): A sequel to Arctic Flower in which Harold finds still-in-the-CIA Reese and offers him an escape route.

Objet d’Art (POI, Finch/Grace): During a coffee date early in their pre-canon relationship, Harold has a guilty conscience about all the secrets he’s hiding from Grace.

Kintsugi (POI, Finch/Grace): The longer sequel to Objet D’art. Grace gets sick. She doesn’t have health insurance. Harold panics and decides to take care of her himself.

Incentives (POI, Reese/Fusco): John’s in the trunk. 

Fixer-Upper (POI, Reese/Zoe Morgan): In every fandom, I write gender AUs. This one is Zoe Morgan taking always-a-girl!Reese under her wing.

Then in the spring, I wrote one story for the Hurt/Comfort Exchange and two for Exchange of Interest:

Line of Duty (POI, Reese/Fusco) 14k about Fusco making really self destructive life choices thanks to low self worth and unresolved trauma, while Reese is forced to stand back and wring his hands. And then, you know, exact a lot of vengeance. Harold has soup.

Number Every One (POI, Reese/Nathan): AU in which Nathan saves Jessica, and Reese comes asking questions.

Eden (POI, Reese/Jessica): A perfect, ordinary moment in John’s relationship with the one person who connects him to the world.

And then I wrote some stories for @livenudebigfoot because I enjoy making her happy.

An Indulgence (POI, Finch/Fusco): Fusco is having an emergency and Finch is there for him. My first foray into ABO and literally all they do is hug; is this my brand?

Bunnymoon (Lost, Ben Linus/John Locke): I acquired this whole new fandom/OTP without meaning to, and then I wrote 8000 words of animal shelter AU for it.

Shipoween was next, and I was very proud of the two stories I wrote because both of them are short and this is hard when you exhale novel-length plot outlines instead of carbon dioxide. Also they are both creepy and kinda experimental, like back in my Buffy days. It was also my first time pinch hitting for an exchange and I got a nice little buzz off pulling that off with one day to deadline.

a lucid dream (Lost, Ben Linus/John Locke): Ben is having a very bad dream, and it’s all his own fault.

One In the Eye (POI, Finch/Fusco): Harold’s a monster. Fusco’s a cryptid.

This was my first year doing a Big Bang exchange and the story I wrote for it is, in my own opinion, the best thing I have ever written.

Kingfishers (POI, Reese/Finch/Grace): An AU in which Harold didn’t introduce himself to Grace that day in the park. Years later, after Harold starts working with John, they receive her number. 

I wrote a popular Star Trek fic in 2019 and then went more than a year and a half without updating, two chapters before the end. I’m sorry, I’m a monster. Now there’s only one chapter left before the end. I’m shooting to get it finished by the end of January. I’m sorry I suck so much.

K’diwa: A Steamy Novel of Interspecies Romance (Star Trek AOS, Kirk/Spock) And then, after a swift crash course in participating in fics and exchanges, I took on managing the POI Advent 2020 Calendar. I needed to write a five-parter in order to plug holes in the posting schedule, and a Muppet crossover was born.

A Muppet Christmas Carol, Starring Harold Finch (Person of Interest, Muppets)

Takeaways from reflecting on your kick-ass writing, or kick-ass lack of writing, during a year more focused on survival than perhaps any other:

I’ll be 39 next month. I’ve been writing seriously since I was 15. I was a very good writer for a 15 year old, for a 19 year old, but I could never have dreamed of writing the way I do now. No amount of hard work, practice, reading, conferring with other writers, editing manuscripts, or thinking about craft could have made me the kind of writer it’s possible for me to be in my late 30s. Youthful geniuses are a myth. I’m really grateful my agent couldn’t sell my novel 10 years ago--when I finish the next one I will get to introduce myself to the world as the writer I am now.

Most surprising fic you wrote this year:

Oh, definitely Bunnymoon. I had no idea I would be writing fic for Lost at all, much less that I would be writing a mundane AU with comedy and my first E rated scene in years. It is entirely the fault of bigfoot, who infected me with the fandom in general and the animal shelter concept in specific.

How you’ve grown as a writer this year:

I’ve learned a lot about what not to say--when to trust the reader--and I have benefited hugely from thinking hard about formal structure. Every idea used to turn into a novel whether I wanted to or not, but revisiting high school English lessons about short story structure vs 3 act structure has changed my whole game.

What’s coming in 2021:

I would really like to write one more story in my Harold & Grace series, another story in the Jessica Lives AU, and I’ll def. sign up for HCEX and Shipoween. But also, this year I am writing a novel.  Tagging @theimprobable1, @liz-squids, @argylepiratewd, @sidewaystime

[trek-tracks]

Trek Book Club: The Romulan Way

So I read The Romulan Way by Diane Duane and Peter Morwood! Overall, it was quite enjoyable, but I have some conflicting feelings about it. (Please come discuss it with me!)

(Spoilers Ahead)

This is an unusual book, as it features an original character as the main character (Lt. Terise Haleakala, posing as a Romulan head servant in order to better understand and report on their civilization), with Bones being asked to check up on her to make sure that she hasn’t fully “gone Romulan” after a two-year hiatus in contact. To get himself into Romulan space, he needs to get himself captured by Romulan officers who have a specific grudge against the officers of the Enterprise. He also needs to check up on Terise and get out before his automatic death sentence is painfully carried out, either in a preapproved “scenic execution pit” or behind the scenes by a Romulan willing to pay the highest price for his head. Of course, we don’t find out about this mission until much later on in the book, leaving us to assume for much of it that he’s just been captured, as usual.

The good:

Bones being Bones. Diane Duane and Peter Morwood’s Bones is great; unsurprisingly, they really understand both him and the Trek universe. His first scene in the ship, communicating with the Sulamid (shades of the “Planet Forbidden” exchange in Wrath of Khan) and then being a total badass with the Romulan leader and being as self-sacrificing as usual, even if it also turns out to be in service of a greater plan, was excellent. (There was a LOT of collateral damage here for a covert one-person mission. You’d think Bones would be even more perturbed about that than he is, but that would have spoiled the reveal of his purpose in the narrative).

Terise is a pretty solid new character; fleshed-out, interesting, conflicted, resourceful, successful, and refreshingly, a female character not there for any romantic purpose. She’d be cool to follow in her further adventures.

Terise’s immediate understanding of Bones’ “gentleness,” and his dislike of antagonism other than a shield:

Bones getting the undercover agent to break purely by purposefully being as annoying as possible.

Some good banter:

McCoy being the one to think of coating the Horta Starfleet officer’s body in Teflon so that the oxygen wouldn’t hurt him, because of course he creates more than one healing technology for this completely out-of-the-box species using duct tape and a dream.

Naraht (the Horta officer) in general, especially bantering with Bones who’s mother-henning him to eat more rocks so that he can grow up big and strong.

H’daen, Terise’s house lord and a complicated Romulan with a conscience - and numerous Romulans who don’t all behave the same way.

Bones using the Romulan filibuster method to stay his execution for as long as possible, saving his own life by ranting about everything under the sun, from criticizing the hypocrisies embedded in Romulan culture to discoursing on mint juleps, which is just so Bones that it’s amazing.

Random Sarek namedrop during one of the chapters on Romulan history, described as a “grimly handsome gentleman.”

This WAY too prophetic line about government:

“You have your own worlds to save.” Bones: “All of them.” <3

The middle:

The Romulan backstory was intriguing and very fleshed-out, but I also flipped forward to see how long the chapter was every time we went back to it, because for a story involving a heck of a lot of death and war, it was fairly dry. I wanted to know it, but I also wanted to keep reading the main story.

The “enhancing Bones’ brain with a chip so that he’s a recording device” was odd, but kind of fun, and did explain a lot of things. I enjoyed his musings about and discomfort with it. Felt like payback for Spock’s Brain and the remote control. I think they could have gotten into the implications of it for the character more, as he has a lot of trauma surrounding people messing with his brain, especially telepaths - which means that a mission like that would probably bring it to the surface. Though this didn’t really decrease my enjoyment of the novel, I kind of prefer when beloved characters succeed on their own attributes, rather than random technology enhancements (this is not a criticism of assistive tech at all - it’s just more narratively interesting when Jim Kirk bluffs his way out of a scenario using intuition than “Jim Kirk ate phlebonium and wins because he can now jump 20 feet in the air”).

The “hmmm…”:

I get that they wanted Bones to record a Romulan trial and get a feel for the Senate while he was there, which necessitated him to stay for the “trial,” even though the reasoning felt a bit tenuous as an excuse for a dramatic escape. I’m not sure I understand the purpose of essentially exploding the trial hall and killing a bunch of Romulans as Bones’ exit plan. Wasn’t this supposed to be a relatively covert operation, for Bones to check up on their spy’s mental health? I guess it took all suspicion off her, but it was a hell of a way to stage it.

I love Bones. He’s 100% my fave. But I really, really missed his interactions with Kirk and Spock when he’s totally on his own, and the fact that, other than accompanying him to the initial meeting to plan the incursion, we have no idea what the other two are doing. My favourite long-form Trek fic, Equilibrium, separates the trio for two-thirds of the story, but they’re all still very much in each other’s thoughts and influenced by what the others would do. I got a feeling of almost total separation from the book, other than Bones wryly thinking that, if something a Starfleet officer said as a compliment led to his current predicament, he’d take Spock’s insults any time (and thinking about Spock every time a Romulan or Romulan in disguised raised an eyebrow). His interactions with Terise and Naraht are good, but nothing beats the chemistry of the Triumvirate.

The pre-epilogue ending fell flat for me. Though it was cool that their rescuer was the aunt of the Romulan Commander from The Enterprise Incident, the space boss battle felt really unnecessary; if the story is about Bones and Terise, the climax is now basically something that essentially takes neither of their skills to resolve, so the main characters are either not on “screen,” or are just kind of hanging out.

Plus, the introduction of Ensign I Love Danger (the ironically-named Luks) only a few pages before he sacrificed himself made it fairly difficult to care deeply about his heroic sacrifice in and of itself. He worked as an analogue to a young Kirk, and maybe we could have explored that more in Bones’ reaction to his presence and death. Maybe that seemed too obvious to the writers, like it would have been hitting us over the head with the 2x4 of symbolism to make that any more clear. Really, it just made me miss the Bones-Jim dynamic, and felt like Ensign Ex Machina, without a greater thematic relation to the plot. Yes, I know sometimes in life things just happen in sequence, but that’s not as satisfying to read.

Leonard “Edward” McCoy gave me the same visceral reaction as James R(iberius) Kirk, even though I realize that both of these things happened before Horatio and Tiberius showed up, and I know Horatio is beta canon at best (from Provenance of Shadows, etc.) I just like it better.

Have you read the book? What did you think? Let me know!

[goldenworldsabound]

Envelope That Mountain (Of Feels)

The title is a bit jokey BUT this is the story of how the Interwoven Stars poly ship got started!!! It’s a bit long so most of it under the cut.

“All ready for the camping trip?” Kirk poked his head into Bones’ room, assuming he’d find the doctor putting the last touches on a backpack for an overnight trip. He was startled to find the doctor with no such thing, instead dressed like he was going out for a casual stroll, with a bag suspiciously lacking in sleeping bag or tent shaped bits.

“Hm? Oh, sorry Jim, it must’ve slipped my mind to tell you, but I’m not wasting my shore leave going on a camping trip when there are drinks and girls to be had.” McCoy replied, grinning wide. “I’m a little rusty on flirting probably, but I’ve been practicing some lines, wanna hear ‘em?”

“Er, no thanks, Bones.” Kirk fidgeted, feeling surprisingly queasy all of a sudden.

“You feeling alright?” McCoy asked, noticing the change.

“It’s just, I suppose that means it’s just Wendy, Spock, and I…” He murmured, realizing what exactly it was that was getting to him and immediately regretting verbalizing.

“Oh, well, sorry to leave you with the lovesick couple.” He chuckled a bit. “Although really, they aren’t that bad, are they, Jim?” McCoy raised a brow at Kirk.

“No, no, they aren’t, you’re right. It should still be fun.” He made an effort to perk back up to stop the questioning, afraid of the answer he would have to give. “I’m sure when we come back and tell you about it you’ll be rotten jealous you didn’t come with us, Bones!” Kirk grinned at his fellow.

Bones snorted. “Uh huh, sure thing. Well, I’m off for the day, so I’ll catch you later!”

Bones pushed past Kirk, who had never left the doorway, locking the door to his quarters behind him.

“Oh, I will!” Kirk shot back, watching Bones head down the corridor. He wished he believed his own statement as much as it sounded like he did. And why was it he didn’t?

Nope, not going there right. He sucked in his breath and hurried back to his own quarters to grab his stuff.

-------------------------------------

The hike was going smoothly enough.

Bones was right, of course, about Spock and Wendy. They weren’t all over each other. In fact, they were both fairly quiet. Wendy would occasionally make an observation or a quip, Spock would respond. Kirk found himself just listening without much response. He had quite a lot on his mind.

He hung back as they steadily padded through the woods. It was quiet back here. He felt himself relaxing, his thoughts beginning to unfurl despite his best attempts.

They knew. They had to know! How he felt about them...when Spock had connected with him, in that urgent moment when his life was slipping away...Spock, and with his connection Wendy as well, had brought him back, kept him on this plane. It had felt so warm with the two of them. It had felt like he belonged. His own feelings had spilled out - he wanted to stay with them, he wanted to be with them, he loved them-

He felt nauseous remembering. Kirk was a man who felt a lot but appeared to feel little. He kept everything close to his chest, nestled deeply in his heart. Having shared such a vulnerable thing, admitting to his two friends, who were deeply in love with each other, that he was in love with the two of them! It seemed selfish at best, and malicious at worst, now that he looked back on it.

They had been kind about it. They had still felt so warm and welcoming. And when the connection ended, they had treated him no different. There had been no time though - disaster after disaster before they finally arrived here, to shore leave.

He had specifically agreed to this trip because Bones was invited as well. He somehow hadn’t figured on going with just Wendy and Spock. He smiled derisively to himself. But what was he expecting? That they’d…

He stopped the thought. They would never purposefully embarrass or hurt him. He was certain of that. The most likely thing, he concluded, was that they’d simply say nothing about the whole situation, and he could just go on pretending it had never happened, while secretly missing that brief moment of warmth he’d enjoyed in their shared connection.

Sounded great.

He was startled out of his thoughts as he bumped into Spock, who had stopped walking ahead of him.

“Jim?” Spock asked, raising a brow questioningly.

“Whoops, sorry about that. Just lost in thought I guess.” Kirk replied, unfortunately aware of how his cheeks were flushed. At least he could blame it on the exertion.

“Spock and I were just thinking this was a good place to camp.” Wendy said, smiling at him. Kirk smiled back, feeling a bit uneasy with the knowing look she seemed to wear.

“It will be dark in 126.5 Terran minutes.” Spock reported dutifully, gesturing with his gaze at the setting suns. “It would be wise to set up camp quickly, so that we can eat while it is still bright out.”

“Is that an estimate?” Kirk asked on reflex, tone teasing. Spock raised his brows. “Well, it just wasn’t very precise, for you.” He grinned a little, falling into the easy comfort of speaking to his friend, despite his prior misgivings.

“For the past year, when I have given estimates more precise than one decimal point, you have reacted with some form of teasing 83.563% of the time.” Spock remarked.

Kirk gawked at him. Wendy laughed. “Alright, enough banter, boys, let’s make camp.”

-----------------------------------

With the tent and assorted bits finally set up, Kirk found that he was starting to feel better already. The three of them had their usual banter - nothing had changed. They’d cooked dinner, and reminisced over the last few incidents, Wendy and Kirk often ending up in stitches while Spock looked on with the slightest smile on his face.

The trip was going to be fine after all.

As the sun set, they remained around the campfire. Wendy had begun to lean on Spock a little, looking content, and the Vulcan had put his arm around her. Kirk felt an ache in his heart as the conversation began to die down.

“Jim?” Wendy asked, sitting up a bit as she addressed him.

“Hm?” He responded, snapping out of his daze. Gods, how badly he wanted to join them…he could see that they were holdings hands now.

“Do you remember, on Hestus VIII, when you were hurt?” Wendy asked softly, gazing at him.

He felt a blush creeping up on his face. Shit, this was exactly what he’d been worried about. Just play it cool.

“Uh, yeah...that was...thank you…” He murmured, rubbing the back of his head, trying to buy himself some time to think his way out of this conversation.

“It is illogical to thank us. You have done the same for us, and I am certain you would do it again.” Spock replied. “But that isn’t what we wanted to discuss.”

Kirk tensed, prepared for Spock to simply blurt out whatever it was he was going to say. He wasn’t sure which was worse - bluntness, or the gentle way Wendy was seeming to tiptoe around it.

“Look, Jim, I think you know this, but the, the mental link we all shared...we felt what you felt. And you felt what we felt. And we thought we should talk about it.” Wendy squeezed Spock’s hand as she spoke.

“Uh, yeah, well, about that…” He took a deep breath. “Look, I was...I was scared, I thought I was gonna...I thought I might die, so I...I let some things slip that I shouldn’t have. It won’t happen again. And I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable.” His hands were fists on his lap, clenched tightly. He slipped into diplomatic form as he spoke, his words coming across strongly and confidently, even as they cut at his own heart.

Wendy and Spock stared at him in silence for a moment.

“But...but Jim, didn’t you-” Wendy gaped at him.

“Wendy, humans often have trouble distinguishing who a feeling belongs to in a connection like that.” Spock commented, before turning his gaze to Kirk. “Jim, how did it feel in the connection?”

“Warm…” He murmured before he could stop himself. He blushed. “What are you trying to tell me?” His tone was cautious, but curious.

“That was because we love you too.” Wendy said quietly, blushing.

“That’s-” Kirk froze, completely unprepared for that. He stared. Even Spock was a tinge green on his cheeks. Kirk couldn’t believe this. They had just come out and said it. He was reeling. He hadn’t anticipated this in even his wildest dreams. “You really do?” He asked softly, in whisper tones.

“Yes, Jim. I love you. And Wendy loves you.” Spock replied, his lips curling up into a wider smile at the confession. Kirk had never seen such a thing on his friend.

“And we wanted to...well, to date you, if you’ll have us.” Wendy said, with a little laugh.

“Wow I...I never expected…” He groaned into his hands, putting them over his face to cover the huge blush deepening over his face.

“Jim?” Spock asked, with a hint of concern. Wendy pat his arm gently, knowingly.

Kirk began to laugh a little, until finally his laughs were loud and happy. He wiped a tear from his eye. “I’m so happy.” He said simply, grinning.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” Wendy replied, with her own grin. Spock was smiling again too. She stood up, and Spock followed suit. They each sat down on either side of Jim, who looked startled. Wendy and Spock held hands behind his back, and then each took one of Jim’s hands, pressing against him gently.

And suddenly Jim felt the warmth again - and this time he recognized it for what it was. Their love for each other, and for him. The three of them sat contentedly by the fire, snuggled up like this. He couldn’t believe it. But it was real.

After a moment, his mind began to linger on concerns that he couldn’t shake.

“But I...I have to say this, at least once. The Enterprise will always be my first love. She is the most important to me.” He said softly, reluctantly.

“Of course, Jim. It would be wrong of us to expect you to change your nature to be with us…” Spock replied without hesitation.

“We understand. And we love you knowing this.” Wendy squeezed his hand, nestling her face into the crook of his neck.

Kirk felt his eyes tearing up. He was overflowing with happiness. He had accepted long ago that as part of being a starship Captain, this sort of love was off-limits to him. And yet, he had found it. In two of his best friends, now his lovers. Nothing could be better.

When they finally retired to sleep, they fell asleep cuddling with smiles on their faces, Kirk firmly sandwiched between Wendy and Spock.

[per-ineptia-ad-astra]

Star Trek Gold Key #26: The Perfect Dream

Our issue begins with a bang. A planet-sized bang, to be precise.

[ID: A comic splash page showing a ringed planet exploding in space. The title in the upper left corner reads Star Trek—THE PERFECT DREAM Part 1. Narration box one: “Federation board of inquiry: Stardate 30:20:4! Investigation into possible Federation involvement in annihiliation of neutral planet body! Recorders log: Testimony of Captain James T Kirk...” Second narration box: “Members of the board, the issues at point are of delicate diplomatic balance! Therefore, so that you may understand the Enterprise’s position, I must carefully reconstruct the events that took place upon Rifas-L...”]

Evidently Kirk is in some trouble about this, since he’s explaining it to a Federation committee. Y’know, they’re supposed to seek out new life and new civilizations, not blow them to smithereens. Bit of a faux-pas, that.

In flashback, Kirk describes how they found this weird planet, or at least something that looked like a planet, but was a bit lacking in some typical planet characteristics. Such as being in a solar system. Or being in orbit. Instead it’s just moving across space in a straight line, Great A’Tuin style, with all its light and heat apparently being provided by its rings.

Well, what’s a crew to do when confronted by a mystery planet but beam down to it and check out what’s going on. Kirk beams down with Spock, Sulu, Chapel, a redshirt, and...Uhuru?

[ID: A landing party consisting of [left to right] Kirk, Spock, Uhura, Sulu, a balding redshirt man, and Nurse Chapel, partway through beaming into a grassy space with some trees and rocks at the edges. Kirk’s narration: “The landing party I took down with me for observation purposes included Spock, Helmsman Sulu, Medical Officer Chapel, Communications Lieutenant Uhuru [sic] and Security Officer Manning!”]

As they start to look around the landscape, Kirk reminds everyone to be careful since they don’t   know much about their surroundings, and Spock is like “lol humans can’t just appreciate something beautiful can they.” Immediately after he says this, the group is attacked by a wild mountain lion. Let that be a lesson to you, Spock.

[ID: Four square panels arranged in two rows of two. First panel, Uhura is saying, “Captain—it’s beautiful! I’ve never seen anything like it!” while Kirk, in the foreground, says, “Yes, stunning! Still, all the beauty could be hiding something—be alert!” Second panel, Spock, Kirk and Uhura are on the ground while the viewpoint shows a beige mountain lion-like creature poised in a tree branch above them. Spock: “Captain, I fail to grasp why humans cannot face beauty without doubting or destroying it...or both!” Third panel, the creature pounces onto the redshirt man with a “RRRROOOWWRR!” Sulu, in the foreground, is saying, “Manning! Captain! A carnivore attacking Manning!” while from offscreen Kirk says, “Set phaser on stun, Sulu, fire on my command!” Fourth panel, Sulu and Kirk fire their phasers onto the creature with a shout of “Now!” from Kirk, knocking the creature off of Manning.]

As if alien mountain lions weren’t bad enough, a giant flock of SPIES OF SARUMAN black birds also shows up. Uhura is somehow able to identify them as ‘like Earth ravens, but carnivorous’ from a distance.

Luckily, before our hapless crew can get Hitchcock’d, they’re rescued by a crowd of...Japanese people…? They yell at the Enterprise crew to drop to the ground while they take care of the birds.

[ID: Three people in samurai-like armor and one in a short tunic fighting off birds and lion-creatures with katanas. In the foreground Sulu is saying, “Captain, I’m not quite sure of what I’m seeing! If I’m not mistaken, they’re using a variation of samurai technique used in ancient Japan!” and Kirk is replying, “Whatever it is, it’s working!”]

Ah yes, the ancient Samurai technique of ‘hitting birds with swords.’

Once all the birds have been driven off, the newcomers politely invite the crew back to their city, where they can treat their injuries with healing balm. Chapel gets unnecessarily hostile about this and snaps that, “I’m quite sure I have the proper supplies to care for my own patients, thank you!” Calm down there, Chris, they don’t know you’re a doctor.

So the crew take a hike back to this city with the mysterious Anachronism People. On the way, Spock and Kirk note that there are farmlands nearby, but they’re only cultivating wild growth instead of developed land, which they find odd since a planet this plentiful isn’t where they would expect to find nomadic farming. After all they’ve been there like, a whole five minutes, which is definitely enough time to do an in-depth analysis on local agriculture possibilities.

But the farming ruminations will have to wait, because they soon arrive at the city.

[ID: A large panel showing the Enterprise crew along with their armored guides approaching a Japanese-styled city by a river. In the background are indistinct shapes of buildings beyond an arched bridge over the river, with mountains in the distance; in the foreground is a while building with red roofs, where a woman in a short pink tunic is standing on the steps saying, “Welcome, travelers! I am Oshino of the Third Dan! This the imperial city of Shondo Ho! Come! We have quarters waiting—Yamoto saw your arrival!” Uhura is saying to Kirk, “Captain, it—it’s perfect! It’s like those enchanted cities I vid-sorbed as a child!”]

Like the what that you what now

Oshino introduces them to a guy called Ekoe of the First Dan, who’s supposed to ‘see to their needs,’ which he does precisely none of in this story but never mind that. Once installed in some guest rooms, Kirk and Spock talk over the situation. Spock thinks this is all weird because the people seem to be living in total perfect harmony with their surroundings, which he’s quite sure humans aren’t capable of. Really? That’s what you find weird about all this?

Kirk has a slightly more salient point: he’s noticed that of all the people they’ve seen so far, he’s only seen six distinct faces. It’s rude to call out the artist like that, Kirk. Anyway Kirk says he’d think maybe that meant everyone around here is an android, but they all show up on the scanners as human. Hm.

Oshino shows the group around the city some. Uhura notes that they all seem very relaxed and not rushed, and asks what their lifespan is. At this Oshino acts confused and says she doesn’t understand what this ‘lifespan’ thing is because they are ‘of Yamoto and the moment.’ Ekoe jumps in and says that maybe they should be thinking more about what happened before and what will happen after, for which he gets chastised for asking questions he’s not supposed to be asking. How, exactly, these people have managed to build up a society with agriculture and a developed city when they have no concept of past or future is...well, that’s, uh, that’s quite something.

But apparently asking “what happened before right now” is a hanging offense around here, because Oshino rats Ekoe out for incorrect thinking to some guy she calls ‘clan father’ who says that Ekoe’s going to have to be ‘dealt with’ for that. But not right away. We can have some dramatic passage of time first.

[ID: Sulu talking to Oshino, an Asian woman wearing a short pink tunic with flowers in her hair, inside a building with yellow walls. The narration box reads, “Oshino tended to spend more time with Sulu. Because of the similarities of their cultures there seemed to be intellectual identification between them!” Sulu is saying, “Can you tell me anything of your history—your planet’s development?” Oshino says, “History? I don’t understand! I—I...lakes?”]

LAKES?

Oh yeah, sure, Sulu’s from 23rd century Earth and she’s from an alien planet vaguely emulating ancient Japan, but their cultures are just alike!

Turns out this whole ‘lakes’ thing is Oshino getting a vision of something happening previously—aka ‘remembering’--specifically a bunch of people rising out of lakes. Huh. Weird. She shrugs this off and asks Sulu to tell her more about where he came from, so he tells her about concepts like ‘night’ and ‘stars’ and ‘other planets’. I’d fear for the Prime Directive, but I think that got busted quite a while back.

Meanwhile, Spock sees Ekoe constructing a cute little model house, but when asked about it Ekoe says that obviously he couldn’t be constructing anything because he’s a First Dan and his functions don’t allow for that. Then he destroys it in a rage. A...weird rage.

[ID: Ekoe, an Asian man in a belted green tunic with a green wrap tied around his hair, sitting at a table and angrily knocking apart a model house, saying, “What is this? This is merely a semi-quadrainial, psi-sided convertional nothing!” Behind him, Spock is standing with one hand thoughtfully on his chin, thinking, “Curious! Ekoe is unlike anyone we’ve met here...”]

A semi-what what-sided convertional what now?

Spock notes that Ekoe stands out around here, not just because he speaks in weird gibberish, but because he alone seems to be unsatisfied with his role in life and is questioning the whole society. When questioned Ekoe reveals that he also has the magical skill of ‘seeing the past’ but his memories don’t make any more sense than the lake thing.

Kirk takes Uhura and Sulu out to scout around for a bit. And he’s giving a captain’s log...during a flashback? Sure, okay.

[ID: Kirk, in the foreground, and Sulu and Uhura in the background, exploring a grassy wooded landscape. The narration box reads, “Stardate 30:19:15...continuing with our data collecting on Rifas-L...We have set out to explore surrounding wild areas!” Kirk is saying, “Sulu, I want samples of that glowing ore over there sent up to the Enterprise for analysis!” and Sulu replies, “Aye aye, Captain!”]

Sulu, I wouldn’t get too close to that glowing ore if I were you.

While poking around, Uhura notes that nearly all of the flora around here has food value, which allows for the prosperity the local people enjoy. Kirk also mentions that he hasn’t seen a single child anywhere around, causing Uhura to posit the existence of some kind of child storage institution.

Spock, meanwhile, is off somewhere else, wiping out the local wildlife.

[ID: Spock standing in grass, shooting his phaser at a lion-creature leaping towards him while another one snarls in the foreground. Spock is thinking, “The ferocity of those creatures would seem to contradict the environment of this world! However, I have a theory...I believe they’re guarding something!”]

Leaving a trail of dead carnivores in his wake, Spock eventually happens onto an isolated building which is giving off weird ‘life force emanations,’ so naturally he goes inside to take a look. Evidently someone went to the trouble of getting a bunch of lions to guard the place, but didn’t think to put a lock on the door.

Back in the city, Kirk is talking about wrapping up this whole venture soon, when Ekoe comes in with another model house and asks if the Federation might have a place for him (and his little houses) somewhere, because he doesn’t fit in around here. Before Kirk can respond to this, a bunch of armed guys (whom Ekoe refers to as ‘collectors from the Garden of Eternity’) burst in to arrest him. Turns out Ekoe doesn’t fit in so much that he’s going to be executed for being a ‘mental deviant.’ The crew tries to save Ekoe, but sadly they’ve misplaced all their phasers—apparently--because they’re forced to resort to whacking the armored guards with their bare hands, which doesn’t work out so well.

[ID: Sulu ridiculously chopping a man in samurai-like armor with the back of his hand while exclaiming, “She’s right, Captain! We’ve got to stop them long enough to make them listen!” In the background, Uhura is pushing over another man in armor.]

Eventually Oshino bursts in and gets huffy at them for interfering in something they know nothing about, and tells them that if they don’t stop fighting they’ll get executed too. So the Enterprise crew just has absolutely no choice but to watch Ekoe, along with some other ‘deviants’ and the elderly, get hauled onto an execution platform and, well, executed.

[ID: Three figures, one of them Ekoe, holding their hands up and crying, “Noooooooo!” while being incinerated with “swurrrrrrrr! Ziiiiiiiiittt! Ziiiiitt!” sounds.]

swurr ziit ziit indeed

Poor Ekoe! We hardly knew ye, and yer little houses. Also that execution platform seems mighty high-tech for this society. Does anyone make a note of that? Of course not.

Well, so much for this whole ‘perfect society’ thing. Uhura tries to explain to a confused Oshino why they disapprove of killing the unusual and elderly, prompting Oshino to have another attack of memory. This is observed by the clan father (I think—it’s pretty hard to tell who anyone is in this art style), who notes that Oshino is starting to get all deviant-y too.

Meanwhile, Spock, exploring the mysterious building, makes a shocking discovery—a cloning lab! That’s right, the identical people with no children are all clones! Man, who could’ve guessed.

While he’s looking around, he’s interrupted by Yamoto himself, who introduces himself as the creator and overlord of this world, which actually isn’t a planet but a giant spaceship (there are a surprising amount of those knocking around the galaxy). Evidently this is all just some big socio-scientific project of his, the reasons for which we are left in the dark about. He just wanted to make a planet, I guess. Anyway, he shows Spock around, talking about how he’s genetically programmed all these clones into three perfect ‘classes.’ Then he zaps Spock with a paralysis ray and says he’s gonna take samples from him to make a whole new, even better class of clones. I dunno how well an entire society of Spocks would function, but I guess Yamoto hasn’t known him very long.

Back in the city, the guards have burst into the room once again, this time to take away Oshino and those dang Federation newcomers who have been causing unrest. Fortunately this time Kirk and his crew have their phasers on hand and are able to take them all out in about two seconds. Kirk tries to call up Spock but can’t get an answer, so he proclaims that they’re going to find Spock—going to, one might even say, search for Spock—and then get the hell off this weird not-planet. Oh, and Oshino can come too if she wants.

Oshino thinks Spock might have gone to the ‘Palace of Life’ so she leads the crew there, taking out yet more lions on the way. Geez, those things must be respawning somewhere. In the lab, Yamoto has successfully taken all the cell samples he needs, so now it’s time to get rid of Spock. Luckily for Spock, Yamoto is distracted in the nick of time.

[ID: Spock laying on a table looking up at Yamoto, a man wearing a green tunic with very large yellow sleeves and a black flat cap, holding a phaser. Narration: “Suddenly...” Yamoto: “Intruders!” Spock, thinking: “He’s distractred—my Vulcan healing abilities have overcome the paralysis! I must act now!” A screen in the background is flashing and going, “woo-ah woo-ah woo-ah.”]

WOO-AH WOO-AH WOO-AH

The crew have found the Palace of Life and make their way inside, where they discover the Terrible Secret. Oshino reacts...not super well.

[ID: Oshino attacking and destroying machinery with one hand. Sulu, behind her, is saying, “Captain! She’s berserk! She’s tearing the place apart!” Kirk, looking offscreen, is saying, “We’ve got bigger worries right now! Look!”]

Yamoto sends some security robots after the intruders, but they’re easily dispatched. Spock shows up and suggests they perform an expeditious retreat—but before they can, Oshino grabs Sulu’s phaser and runs off deeper into the compound on a quest for vengeance. Kirk is reluctant to let her go, but she blocks the doorway behind her (with a bunch of giant boulders that conveniently fall from the ceiling), so they have no choice but to leave her behind. They run outside, where the collectors have caught up to them, but a quick beam-up solves that problem.

The Enterprise runs away, and Kirk narrates to the board what he thinks happened next: Oshino found Yamoto, kills him, and then presses a button that makes the whole not-planet blow up. Yeah, just one button. Evidently this place was designed by Dr. Doofensmirtz.

Kirk tells the board that clearly, Federation intervention can’t be responsible for what happened to the not-planet, even though Federation intervention was directly responsible for what happened, because it would have happened eventually anyway. The board is like “cool” so everyone leaves, but on the way out they’re interrupted by a space janitor.

[ID: Two panels. In the first, a man in a blue shirt and green cap is approaching Kirk, Spock, Uhura and Sulu as they exit a room, holding out a small model building to them and saying, “Captain Kirk, will you look at this! The space scooper picked it up as it was cleaning up Rifas-L...survived the holocaust like a straw in a tornado! You wouldn’t know what it is, would you?” Spock replies, “I think I can answer you, sir!” In the second panel, Spock, in the foreground, says, “It’s quite probably a semi-quadrainial, psi-sided, convertional nothing!” while the man looks shocked in the background. THE END is written in the lower right corner.]

Space...scooper?

I’m not sure if Spock’s end comment there is supposed to in some way be meaningful or pithy but it...it...yeah. One would expect something like “oh, a fragment of a civilization now lost, the last remnant of a man who had great hopes and dreams but is now gone and remembered by almost no one, let’s keep it as a reminder of this great tragedy” but no, Spock just smirks and spouts out a comment that seems snarky but doesn’t actually mean anything and walks off. At the risk of actually seriously analyzing these comics—most certainly a hopeless venture—this is a strong example of how shallow the writing in them is. There’s a sense to me here of someone trying to mimic good writing without any idea of how it actually works, so instead of actual emotional beats you just get this sort of weird nonsense. “Oh, it’s really clever to end a story with a smart call-back, right? This is clever, right? Right?”

I do love the space janitor’s mustache and look of comical surprise there though. And the idea that a straw surviving a hurricane is anything like a tiny model house surviving AN EXPLODING PLANET.

So that’s the end of that story. It’s probably racist? But to be honest I’m so confused at this point I wouldn’t even know where to start on that one. The moral of the story is, uh...don’t...make clones? Sure. Let’s go with that.

[mswyrr]

I don’t think it’s an accident that the fight is between Control and love - specifically love cast in terms of how you have to let people go. To allow them growth and change. To accept their brokenness, their complexity and imperfections. To choose them again and again and ask them to choose you as you grow. To accept the pain of loss while embracing the joy of their love.

Control er... is all about control, yes? And the only way to have THAT is to have a dead galaxy. Silent and bare. 

It’s still about faith, but it’s about the faith of letting other people become. Trusting that they will surprise you; accepting that there will be pain too but it’s worth it. The only way to escape that is to destroy all life.

(It’s important that Philippa gives up control for a higher purpose in loving Michael enough to share her with Gabrielle, her literal mother, and to share Michael with Ash, the other “femme fatale” in Michael’s life (lol) - to see that love in common rather than as a competition over control of Michael, which is the temptation Philippa is offered)

We have the gorgeous angsty broken beautiful polyphony of the Discovery and all the different ways they love each other vs. the cold monotone of Control. A universe of utter emptiness and utter certainty. No need for faith anymore, because there’s no one you have to believe and put your trust in. No one to dream or see the world through different lenses, neurologically (Spock), or in terms of belief (Pike), or across ideological lines (Ash, Philippa) or to envision something new and powerful scientifically and then invest it with love (Gabrielle) in such a way that only that power can challenge Control.

[captainsbabysitter-blog]

Memory Lane

AKA: Tia still can’t title for shit.

So I chose to focus on TOS Spock for Spock Week because my love for him is never ending and I had the idea to finally type up some stuff I’ve headcannoned since rewatching Generations with @t-hy-lla.

It’s pretty angsty, but not horrible. At least it’s not as bad as I could have made it.

Once again, I’m terrible and didn’t edit this at all before posting, so please excuse any typos.

Tag list: @mccoymostly @thevalesofanduin @emmkolenn (feel free to let me know if you want a perma-add or just specific characters/pairings)

Staring at the blank screen of his computer terminal, Spock’s jaw tightened ever so slightly. He wanted to do this; needed to, really. He wasn’t sure he was strong enough yet, but if he didn’t do it now there may not be time later. Spock let out a light sigh before he poised his fingers above the keys again.

Describing my time on the USS Enterprise in my own timeline would take longer than I believe a memoir of this type should be. Instead of focusing on my earlier days- days that I have detailed in various personal logs and copies of my daily recordings that exist among my possessions even now- I will strive to provide further insight into my later years in Starfleet up until the moment I crossed the lines between my own universe and this one.

He closed his eyes for just a moment. Flashes of the events surrounding the Voyager probe came to mind first. It was where he wanted to begin, but he struggled with how much to include. This was to be a personal memoir left behind for his alternate self; an individual different from himself in just as many ways as he was similar. How much did he really want to disclose about his personal relationships with his own Leonard and Jim?

In the end, he decided that to leave out his personal relationships with any of the crew would detract from much of the events. Besides… There were plenty of factual logs of all events, and he found himself hit with the desire to leave more of himself behind. When he was younger, the very idea that his feelings would be so entwined with the facts of a situation would have seemed illogical. Despite the protests of his tired eyes, Spock returned to the document.

These recollections are in no way intended to influence the events of this universe. As you have experienced already, while parallel, our universes differ wildly and so yours will respond differently than my own. You requested my personal history, and so this is how I will present it.

I attempted to undergo the Kolinahr after receiving a marriage proposal from both Leonard and Jim. It was cowardice. My arranged marriage to T’Pring ended poorly and my first pon farr ended in a near death experience for Jim. Only Leonard’s quick thinking ensured the three of us returned to the ship safely and with minimal injury. For this reason and a few others I will not detail here, I chose to run instead of face the opportunity they were presenting me.

He knew he was painting himself in a less than flattering light, but the truth was rarely flattering. The image of Leonard’s face crumbling when he announced his imminent departure, the pleading from Jim, and finally the cold acceptance from them both still clenched his heart on occasion. No, this first piece wouldn’t be flattering.

All attempts to purge myself of emotion ended in failure, however. I learned after a time that I neither could nor desired to erase my emotional attachments to them or the rest of the crew; my friends. I set out to join with the Enterprise and her crew on their way to investigate an anomaly.

When I returned to the ship, Jim welcomed me back with open arms. Leonard was less forgiving. His marriage history wasn’t wholly dissimilar to your McCoy’s, in truth, and my leaving had hurt him deeply. It took continued effort on Jim’s part and no small effort on my own to convince him that I was there to stay.

Throughout the entire event of the Voyager VI probe, alternately referred to as V’Ger, I endeavored to fully regain my place on the Enterprise. My progress with everyone aside from Jim was slow; admittedly due to my own determination to continue adhering to the tenants of Kolinahr despite my failure to complete the training. Jim had to reprimand me several times, but refused to voice his disapproval as an order. He knew I would obey an order.

Every other story after that first came quickly. His own self-sacrifice during their battle with Khan, his unintentional resurrection on Genesis, and the fallout of his loss of memory. He needed to refer to his journals frequently for this section. A lot of pieces were hazy at best, and no matter how long he meditated on them the memories stubbornly remained hidden away.

If he was being honest with himself, he preferred it that way. Leonard had taken another emotional hit when Spock couldn’t remember him.

He continued writing for a few days, pausing to eat and attend any meetings required of him. The Enterprise was set to dock on New Vulcan within the week, and he hoped to finish before they left. The last section would be the hardest for him both mentally and emotionally. He found himself postponing his efforts one day in favor of going for a walk.

Really, he could only procrastinate for so long. He felt his own time running shorter by the day and where was the logic in putting off this writing? The only answer that came to mind was the unpleasant nature of what he was about to admit.

When it was announced that Jim was lost, Leonard and I faced a trying time. If it weren’t for the marriage bond allowing us to share in our grief, I firmly believe this would have resulted in a dissolution of our relationship. It was only through great care, determination, and the knowledge that Jim would disapprove should we crumble at the loss of him that we made it through stronger than before.

Our lives together from that moment were comparatively uneventful. We were retired from Starfleet and enjoyed our own projects for some years. Eighty years we had together and in that time, we healed from the loss of Jim. It was slow, not all at once, and there were multiple steps backward.

And then I felt his spark in my mind one night. It woke me from sleep and I lay there for a few moments attempting to discern what was happening. There was no mistaking the distinct feeling of Jim in my mind, and for that brief moment I was elated. I didn’t know how it was possible, but as I’m sure you are aware by now, to underestimate James Kirk- in any universe- is a mistake. Even still, it took time for me to truly believe it wasn’t a dream of some sort.

As I debated waking Leonard, the bond was severed just as quickly as it had returned. I wish I could say that the despair I felt was controlled instantly, but I must have made enough noise to wake Leonard. He asked what was wrong. For the first time in my life, I lied. I didn’t misdirect, I didn’t obfuscate or underplay; I lied to my bondmate. I told him it was merely a muscle spasm and kept my knowledge of Jim’s return from the dead to myself.

He passed not long after. I had a few more years and then Nero became an issue. From there, you know the rest of the story as you have been present for much of it.

I know I spoke of a lifelong friendship to the Jim of your universe if you would allow it, but also remember the friendships available to you through the entire crew. Yours is just as much your family as mine was to me. Cherish them and together, you will make history-altering changes to your universe.

When the announcement was sent out that the ambassador passed, Spock found himself finally creating the time to read the memoir his alternate self left with him during their last visit. If his attitude toward the crew changed after completing it, no one said a word about it.

[le-koko-butter-blog]

John's Erotic Self. TFP meta reading.

Introduction

I recently re-watched The Final Problem and jotted down some notes regarding things I have yet to read in other meta here on tumblr. Perhaps, they are addressed on someone's blog but I have yet to come across it. Now, I can be completely and utterly wrong. As I was writing it, it felt super duper meta but it made a lot of sense to me. Feel free to add or correct what I have written. I'm putting this out here for a discussion about the text.

In order to even read this, you have to subscribe to or entertain the idea that TFP is from John's mind bungalow perspective. If you aren't of this opinion, you'll likely think everything I am saying is nothing but embellished bullshit. I assure you, I'm being entirely sincere.

The notes follow the events as they are laid out in the episode since I wrote down bullet points as I was watching. I was going to include pictures but alas, I am lazy.

Analysis

The Final Problem displays every genre but romance and yet, in its entirety it is a romance. There was a post going around that compared the cinematic shots to other films. The dialogue and the music are also genre-specific. I was tipped off initially because of the outrageous clown sequence at the beginning. I thought that they would go through all the movie genres and end up in romance but they did the opposite. This baffled me and made me lose confidence that I knew what the hell was going on (that was just the tip of the iceberg). There was no romance, partly because all the genre switches serve a function to highlight the fact that indeed BBC Sherlock is a romance as we have always known ever since S1E1. Of course, there is a lot of meta out there already talking about how the show is perceived versus how it really is. (I suspect that that Bond article Gattiss replied to was planted just to put the idea of Bond and shitty movies into our head).

If we also extend this to John's mind, the fact that he deliberately avoids romance is pretty telling. He's afraid to even consider it in fear of its implication. I think this is the theme to the whole episode. Romance is just another word for erotic love. We tend to think of it as something naughty or bad and certainly John has this assumption but Eros as a type of love is named explicitly to separate it from the other types. We are tipped off that Eurus is a Greek name. Well so is Eros. Eros is the erotic love (hence the root word), philia is friendship, agape is like a broader kind of love, a love for humanity, that Jesus kind of love. You can easily google this if you're interested.

Eurus=John erotic self. This is not a stretch. In T6T they made the phonetic leap from ammo to amo. This seems a bit of a reach honestly since these are two common words. To me it's like bowl and bowel. Perhaps I have this impression since I live in a city that has a high population of Spanish speakers. I would also think it is somewhat common knowledge for English speakers. This is just an assumption of course. The phonetic link between Eurus and Eros is less of a stretch since the pronunciation of Eurus sounds almost the same as Eros to many of us. The actors routinely pronounced it differently since that round gutteral Euuurr sound is a bit difficult. I can't say it without mimicking her voice. 

Going forward with the idea that Eurus is John's erotic self, it's interesting to note that Eurus looks a lot like Sherlock compared to her other disguises. She has a wonderful mass of black curly hair that starkly contrasts her vibrant blue eyes. This is interesting since John has only seen her with reddish hair as the girl on the bus, light brown hair as the therapist, and coming from Sherlock's report, blonde hair when she was pretending to be Faith. 

In the initial scene at 221B, I noticed the painting of a man that is directly behind John in the living room is dark. Now, I'm sorta new to tjlc so I'm not sure if you guys decoded this already. I always thought it looked like John or a young William Shatner (The Kirk/Spock thing again?). We don't get a good look at it but it's a white man with blondish short hair. From my recollection, it's always lit. Curiously, it's dark in TFP. Perhaps, this represents John in some way. It's dark suggesting that's he's unconscious. I could be reading into it though. You all tend to be better with the sets. 

Under the assumption that Sherrinford=sherlock, one may assume that Sherrinford is a code word for Sherlock that Mycroft uses and not an actual place. And is it just me or the goddamn place looks like a penis? Anyhow, Eurus is kept secure deep in Sherrinford. Deep, deep down there is that erotic love (Eurus) at the center of John's image of Sherlock. At least, that's how I read it. Perhaps I am off.

 The next scene is in the plane. There is an empty baby seat in the aisle. The little girl looks at it briefly. I of course, think this is baby Rosie in some way. It's interesting that it's empty. I'm not sure what this symbolizes yet. Perhaps it's saying the babe ain't real or perhaps it represents the betrayal of Mary or the emptiness of John's life as a father married to Mary.

 Another interesting thing that I noticed is that throughout the episode all the deductions are freaking absurd. They sound more like the jokes that people throw at Sherlock, like did you know what college I went to by the coffee stain on my shirt? That kind of stupidity. I think that's another clue that we are in John's mind because John's isn't really able to follow Sherlock's deductions. They seem to make sense but not really. They are terribly far fetched.

 Now, you can totally disagree with me on this next point. But I believe the violin playing=sex. As soon as Sherlock plays his own song, Eurus interprets it instantly as sex even though the song sounds absolutely nothing like sex. It's rather somber. But we should recognize it as Irene's theme. John in TLD mocked Sherlock asking him if they had random sexual rendezvous. He's suspicious and massively jealous that Sherlock has had sex with Irene.

Eurus says something so interesting in this scene. She says something along the line that "The man who sees through everything, doesn't see it." In the dream world it's the glass. This of course, is laughable to us as the audience but just for second, think what it means symbolically. She keeps directing him to it, but he can't see it. Sherlock's super observant but for some reason he can't tell that John wants him, can't tell that the glass isn't really there. Oddly enough, the company is elephant glass. John is aware that he desires Sherlock and can't believe that Sherlock who can read other people so easily can't see this.

This little exchange between them is fascinating to me because there is an element of philosophy here that isn't totally ridiculous like the stuff we've heard from her before. My personal favorite is the whole shitey lot is "happiness is a pop song, sadness is poem." Like ok, what next level emo shit is that? The dialogue that I find interesting is when Sherlock mentions that her playing is beautiful. She says she doesn't know if it's beautiful, only that it's right. Sherlock then replies that they are often the same thing. Eurus immediately answers then what's the point of beauty? So to Sherlock, all things beautiful are right. However, Eurus doesn't believe that they are the same thing. Some things are beautiful and wrong. Now, John recognizes the beauty in Sherlock (this sounds corny but it is after all, a necessity to romance) but at this point John thinks his desire for Sherlock is wrong. It isn't right. He's beautiful but it isn't morally right.

Much has been said about the awful rape lines and I agree with what has been posited by other bloggers that John is further demonizing his sexuality since John is likely bisexual. 

Simultaneously, John, Mycroft, and the governor are sitting in the dude's office talking about Eurus' mind control. I think besides the obvious genre level stupidity that we see in many Hollywood films, I think for the meta, it is saying that giving Eurus your attention will compromise you, meaning giving attention to your dark sexual thoughts compromises oneself, and subsequently makes one dangerous and out of control. It's not uncommon for people to link sexual desire with the inability to control oneself. I think this further demonizes John's desire. The only practical solution is to ignore it altogether. They really don't have the option though since Eurus won't be ignored any longer.

Going back to the convo between Sherlock and his sister, John further demonizes his sexuality, turning something beautiful into something horrible. Eurus mentions Sherlock's laugh. She says it's her favorite thing. John must love the sound of Sherlock's laughter. She talks about making him laugh all night and it makes you wonder if Sherlock and John stayed up all night laughing and John all the while was extremely sexually aroused by him. This seems almost like it would be a tender moment between Eurus and Sherlock but Eurus (/John) immediately switches this to screaming. John thinks his desire would harm Sherlock in some way.

But it doesn't really matter because again, Eurus is taking over the prison and John is losing his ability to control his desire although he fights it. When Eurus finally attacks Sherlock she screams for everyone to come in and stop her from killing Sherlock. John is evidently fighting with himself.

Finally Moriarty (the manifestation of all evil gayness) shows up. What's interesting is the Queen song. People have already talked about the song's themes and what it says about coming out and embracing your sexuality. But Moriarty, the evil gay takes out the earbuds right before the word 'love.' John is still unable to see that these desires can be connected to love. His homosexual desire can in no way be connected to love. This is why all the villains in the episode are queer coded because John villain codes all queerness. One thing that strikes me is how Sherlock is interestingly less flamboyant in this episode. Like this is the same guy who used the phase "alarming shade of pink" and z-snapped as he screamed to some rando at the bar that he knew ash.  

But anyway! Back to TFP. In the flashback, the glass is clearly there when Moriarty meets Eurus. Her reflection can easily be seen. I wonder what the glass is supposed to symbolize. I wonder if it's some form of truth. The glass is not there when Eurus, John's erotic self is visited by Sherlock because there really is nothing separating them but it's present when Moriarty shows up. Moriarty and Eurus although supposedly want each other, they actually, in truth don't touch. This is perhaps a stretch. I'm just theorizing here. This just may have to do with the fact that Eurus doesn't think to take over the prison until Moriarty shows up. Not that that makes sense or anything. The surface plot of TFP makes little sense.

A random aside: Eurus mentions a so called brother of Moriarty and says he's as stationmaster. I wonder if in John's mind he is thinking of Culverton Smith.

The killing of the Governor's wife instance is really interesting because I honestly believe that it's about Mary. She is the wife after all. John curiously, is unable to kill the guy. I thought he would be able to honestly, since he is soldier and has killed people and really only a fool would think not executing the guy would not end up in the wife's death as well. But what's significant for John is he can't go against his moral code (this is brought up a couple times in the ep). He can't go against it even if it results in causalities such as the wife's death. You can certainly guess what option he'd make in those stupid hypothetical train games. 

Mary is brought up and the Gov asks what he would do to bring her back. John doesn't answer. What are we supposed to deduce about what really happened to Mary? I don't know if I'm looking at this too deeply but Mary's death and John's involvement is freaking fishy (that wasn't an aquarium pun btw). Also later on the 3 Garidebbs room, John shouts that his "priorities got a woman killed." Hmmm....

 Now to the Garrideb scene: There is red paint on the walls. I hope its paint and not blood. Mycroft mentions that it is still fresh. This reminds me of the text in T6T, "fresh paint to hide a smell."  There's a huge window with an ocean in the background. I think it's already been established that water is feeling. This isn't unique to the show. That's actually a rather old belief. That's why the water zodiac signs, Pisces, Cancer, and Scorpio are thought to be ruled by their emotions. The deductions Sherlock and Mycroft here again make no sense. At least to me they don't. They deduce that the guy had laser eye surgery because of his nice clothing. This is absurd. Again, John doesn't quite understand the route of Sherlock's thinking.  

 The Garrideb story is literally and figuratively dangling in front of the viewer under the clear assumption they would know the significance of this story to Doyle's canon and yet, they gloss over it. I think they were trying to rip the heart out of everything and make it just a cold, boring case with forced stakes.

Afterwards, John is furious and Sherlock turns to him and says "Don't let Eurus distract you. Soldiers today." The soldiers thing comes off super bro, no homo and I think in a way it's meant to. John was an actual soldier. Largely being a soldier is about "duty," selflessness, and suppression for the greater good-well, supposedly. If John thinks of his desire for Sherlock as selfish and bad, he would naturally repress it under the guise of being a soldier. If you remember at Sherlock's grave in TRF, one of the most heartbreaking and powerful things John does is straighten up and stand like a soldier. You could see him crumbling underneath this futile attempt at control.

They then enter the next room and discuss the little girl on the plane. They agree that they have to get the girl to crash or land in the sea. Again, the sea and water are symbols for emotion. Later we find out that the little girl is Eurus. Eurus is John. So, it is really John that has to land in the water. He has no other choice. The only thing is whether or not Sherlock will save him or doom him.  

Next to the infamous "I love you" scene. I sincerely believe the coffin is clearly John's. The headroom shouldn't be unnecessary so why does Sherlock cut off a couple of inches? Maybe I don't understand coffins. He deduces that it's Molly because she's unmarried, practical about death, and alone...Why can't this be Irene Adler? There is no real logic in the deduction to be Molly. Most of what he says from the coffin before Mycroft looks at the lid is downright dumb speculation honestly. He assumes that it's cheap and therefore the person is unloved. One can easily say their family was poor. But anyways, it's a dream and John believes that Sherlock pulls shit out of thin air. All that really matters is that Molly is a mirror for John. She's loved Sherlock forever or at least John thinks so. The first time he meets Sherlock, Molly comes in with coffee and Sherlock remarks cruelly that her lips are too small. John could tell that Molly liked Sherlock. Molly to me comes off super ooc. She's usually rather mousey but she's somewhat forward and aggressive in TFP. She has more traits of John than she normally has. I think what's important is that she's always loved him and John has always loved Sherlock. All the ASIP reminders as well as Sherlock running up the stairs at Lauristan Gardens in HLV's mind palace to get back to John the first time he left him suggests that the two were in love at first sight. (I would love to discuss this further but I feel that someone already wrote meta on this).

 However, like John, Molly needs Sherlock to say it first. People have already discussed this, John in addition, is super emotional in this scene. Of course, he cares for Molly but he just looks downright dejected especially after the confession.

 "Saved Molly Hooper?" This line rings awful and trite. But they are utilizing the themes of genre and all it's cliches. I think what this line is actually saying about John is that he is afraid of love, he thinks it will destroy him no matter how it happens, through his own death or through the heartbreak that Sherlock doesn't really love him, that even if Sherlock says it to him, it'd be forced and empty. He thinks he's meaningless to Sherlock the way Molly thought she was meaningless to Sherlock in TRF. Again, the discussion of John's lack of self-worth has been largely discussed.

 A random aside. Molly's message machine: Dead Center of Town? Is that a morgue joke? The timer is also really incorrect and suggestive of a dream. I may be wrong about this but that last 30 seconds felt super long.

 The next scene is where Sherlock has to shoot one of them. Mycroft's words are of course how John sees himself especially in relation to Sherlock who he practically worships. He thinks he's a "stupid little man, little scrap of ordinariness," and that Sherlock can easily "find another". Again people talked about this before in other posts.

 What's interesting and also infuriating about this scene is that John doesn't actually do anything. Throughout the episode he merely gets dragged along.  His inaction is glaring when Sherlock puts a gun to himself and John doesn't intervene. This is his dream and he can't control his subconscious. Again, he thinks Eurus (his desire) is an unstoppable threat to Sherlock.

 Also, I kinda like this scene despite John's silence because it shows how underneath all his annoyance with Mycroft, John thinks he is a good guy.

The music as well, sounds straight up like a Bond movie during this scene. I'm not familiar with Bond but it sounds like the stuff they have playing during the trailers.

After they all hilariously get darted, Sherlock wakes up in that room with the cut up pictures on the wall of Sherlock and Mycroft's child selves. Escaping from his confines, Sherlock literally breaks down the four walls. Others have stated that not only is this a call back to the queen music video but this is metaphorical to what the episode and the creators are doing, breaking  down the so called 4th wall and interacting with the audience.

Meanwhile, John is in a deep well, chained to the bottom submerged in water. Again water is feeling, water is love. John is chained to the bottom drowning in his love but Sherlock can't reach him. It's hidden in some place no one knows where, no one but Eurus. So the key to saving John from the well is Eurus, the key to saving John from drowning in his love for Sherlock is reconciling with John's erotic self. In less fancy terms, if John doesn't have sex with Sherlock he will figuratively drown in his overwhelming love for him. This show is so over the top dramatic in its romance that I am inclined to believe it is actually a 15 year old gay boy's modern angst filled Sherlock AU. But I'm all for it, it's so damned romantic I can hardly think about it before my mind explodes. This is also why the rope which is actually a chain btw saves him even though he was chained to the bottom of the well. Because the thing that John thought was oppressing him, the thing he thought was evil, his erotic desire is actually the thing that saves him. How fucking sexy is that?

Meanwhile, Sherlock confronts his crazy Charlie Manson sister. She threatens him to solve the final problem (Find redbeard through the song). Meanwhile the plane is shaking around the same time that the well is filing in with water. The scenes are shot back to back, connecting them, solidifying that the little girl is John. They are both crying for help.

Sherlock then realizes that Redbeard is actually Victor. We can tell by looking at the little kid that that kid is John. So, Redbeard=Victor=John. But Sherlock can't get to him until he reconciles with Eurus. Interestingly, Eurus compares herself to no one. She felt like she was no one. She was neglected, ignored. But in order to save John, Sherlock needs to connect to Eurus. It's the like most anti-no homo thing ever. There's no platonic blah blah. Connecting John's desire and John's love are essential for his survival. In fact, all of them are the same thing. They are all John. It is worth noting that everything is John but everything is about Sherlock.

Again, when we have the flashbacks of Victor, Eurus is talking about the deep water, how Sherlock always finds himself here. The deep water though, in my opinion is almost always John expressing his love for Sherlock.  We get a flashback of the pool and the Reichenbach falls. At the pool in the Great Game, John with a chest full of explosives attempts to sacrifice himself for Sherlock. Sherlock is startled by this and it's probably the first time that Sherlock knew that John cared for him. During The Abominable Bride, John shows up at the Reichenbach falls and saves Sherlock. Interestingly, the dark blue water from the aquarium bounces off Sherlock's face in the close up with the black back drop sequence suggesting perhaps that John protected Sherlock again at the aquarium. Maybe this has something to do with Mary again?

The song was addressed in an earlier post where someone impressively decoded it, realizing that the "I'm lost without your love" was added by Sherlock because just before you thought it couldn't get insanely more romantic, it had to go another mile. I still don't understand what the "seek my room." part is supposed to mean. Maybe it refers to something literal in the real world or perhaps it's sexually suggestive.  What's super important though is that Sherlock knows at this moment that the little girl in the plane is Eurus. This is essential to solving the final problem and saving John Watson. The little girl is the link between the different sides of John, the "friend" part of him, the Redbeard/Victor John and the "erotic" Eurus John. The girl is the both of them. The plane metaphor is where the literal falling in love thing comes in to play. John is falling in love and has been but he's so afraid of landing. He's so afraid of what it would do to him. He thinks it ends in death. He needs Sherlock to coax him through the landing. Cause yes, again it just gets even more fucking romantic.

 When Sherlock delivers the line "Open your eyes," it brought shivers down my spine. I bet money that is super prominent in the 4th episode.

He keeps saying, "this time get it right." It's referring to her killing Victor but it harkens again back to what is probably a bitch load of regrets John has, especially in marrying Mary and never acting on his feelings for Sherlock.

Then there is the Greg scene and the corny great guy, good guy thing that references ASIP. It just shows again what John thinks of Sherlock. This echoes again the "who you think I am is who I want to be" speech in TLD. Sherlock had always wanted to be the hero John thinks he is. In this scene, we see that John sincerely thinks that he already is this guy.

The whole "Emotional Context" thing is also important. Eurus kept bringing this up throughout the episode. John says to Sherlock in this scene that Sherlock gave her what she needed, emotional context and then says, "It is what it is." (The fkn johnlock line).  What John needed to realize what that the emotional context is central in accepting his erotic self. He needed to realize that his love for Sherlock is not impure just because he desires him. That in fact, a central part of that love is the desire. Consider as well that Sherrinford is surrounded by a huge ocean, a symbol of John's deep love for Sherlock.

The ending is weird as hell. There's a long violin duet between Sherlock and Eurus. I wonder what song they are playing. It sounds gothic as all hell. He plays a part, she repeats it, and then they play in concert together. Often people link love making to music. It sounds weird and gross since it's his sister but it's not really his sister.

Then there is the dreaded Mary speech. She is completely wrong about Sherlock and John. Someone said that Mary is heteronormativity and I agree. John thinks that he should be this straight guy who gets married and has babies, who occasionally gets to go on adventures with his bro. I'm not sure why they decided to end it this way. Maybe it's because the show is showing everything that it isn't, starting with the obvious genre switch, the ooc-ness, and the massive amount of plotholes. It appears like a shitty horror/action flick when in fact, it's actually a romance. All the characters are ooc but they really are presenting certain aspects of the characters (mostly different elements of john), and the plotholes are actually carefully laid out either to aid the genre switch or to add a physical image in the episode of feelings and thoughts (the chain for example).  Once you think it's symbolic and from John's Mind Bungalow, everything actually has it's place.

 Oh and the fucking dummy...what the hell, I feel like that's a symbol for me. After watching the episode over I can't believe I took it's seriously. It's actually so ridiculous that I'm shocked I took it at face value. I actually laughed a lot the second time around. That whole "Which one is pain" statement was so downright dumb and reminiscent of shitty teen horror flicks that I feel I should immediately have been alerted. But I was too invested in Johnlock that I just wanted them to kiss. I didn't want to think. I didn't care about the plot honestly.

On a final note, the Mary monologue also represents what history has done to Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, kept them imprisoned in this little box, forcing them from realizing who they ACTUALLY are which of course, is gay lovers. ^_-

 If you come across this, please share with other interested meta writers who might have something to add or correct me on. Most of what I've written are musings. I still think I need to watch all 3 episodes in order again to flesh out my ideas but I thought some of y'all might be interested. 

[per-ineptia-ad-astra]

Star Trek Episode 1.12: The Menagerie, Part 2

AKA: Talosian Boogaloo 

Our episode begins with a recap of what happened last episode: Spock gone rogue, the Enterprise heading to Talos 4, mysterious transmissions, etc, etc. After the titles, we’re back in the hearing room, where they’ve re-convened Spock’s trial, although they’ve now pared down the participants to just Kirk, Mendez, Pike and Spock. Everyone else who was there for the first part is just going to be left on a cliffhanger. Mendez reiterates that viewing transmissions from Talos 4 is strictly against Starfleet policy, but Spock tells him that the screen is now being remotely controlled and the transmissions are just going to keep coming anyway, so they have no choice but to view them. Although they could try leaving the room so they don’t have to look at the screen. Just a thought.

After Spock gives them a Previously On My Court Martial, the screen comes on again, and we see Pike waking up on a bed in some kind of strange cell. The walls are made of stone bricks but it appears to have been built into a cave, and beyond the transparent front wall of the cell a long rocky corridor stretches forth. Pike wastes very little time in attempting to bash the wall in shoulder-first, but it absorbs the impact with only a slight wobble.

Before he can make any further effort, a door slides open nearby and a quartet of Brainheads—the Talosians, presumably--appear and approach Pike’s cell. Pike starts talking to them, introducing himself as Christopher Pike, commander of the space vehicle Enterprise. Yes, that’s what he said, space vehicle. Well it’s not technically wrong, I guess.

Pike tells them his crew has come in peace, and demands to know if they can understand him. Instead of replying to him, one Talosian starts talking--telepathically--to another as if Pike can’t even hear them, which is the most annoying thing, I hate it when people do that. Specifically, he (...she? they? zie? I have no idea) remarks that “the specimen’s intelligence appears to be shockingly limited.” Wow. Rude. The Talosian leader, referred to as Magistrate, responds that this isn’t surprising since it was so easy to bait the ship here in the first place, and that they can read in Pike’s thoughts that he’s only just now starting to figure out that the encampment was an illusion. They continue to stand around making smug comments about how primitive Pike is while he tries to talk to them. But despite how primitive they find him, he seems to be more adaptable than their other specimens, so they’re ready to start “the experiment.”

Back on the Enterprise, a small group of officers, including Spock, Boyce, Number One, and a red-haired chap who was with the landing party, have convened to discuss just what they’re going to do about the captainnapping. Currently Spock is giving a presentation, in which he hypothesizes that the inhabitants of the planet live underground and manufacture all their living needs down there, because the surface of the planet doesn’t have enough vegetation or animal life to support any kind of civilization. So, as they too have now worked out, the survivors were an illusion all along. A perfect illusion, Boyce bemoans, down to every detail. Well, I don’t know about that, Boyce. I mean one of them was wearing makeup. That really should have been a tip-off.

But the danger is clear to them now. The Talosians can create illusions out of people’s own thoughts, ones that seem completely real to them in every way. That’s going to make it pretty difficult to go up against them. Spock warns that if they attract the Talosians’ attention they might find that their psychic powers are strong enough to easily kill them all. But, as Redhair points out, they can’t just leave Pike down there for the Talosians to have their way with him. Since their hand phasers didn’t bring down the door, he suggests they use the ship’s own power against it, which he says is powerful enough to “blast half a continent.” One would hope he’s exaggerating because if the ship can do that they might bring down the door, alright, but they’d probably be killing Pike and everyone else down there along with it. There’s a reason the usual response to a hostage situation is not to nuke the entire building.

Number One agrees to this plan, though, so the group disperses to go set to work. Back down in the caves, one of the Talosians is reporting to the Magistrate that they’re all hard at work probing Pike’s mind—just his mind, thankfully—and they’ve found excellent memory capacity. The Magistrate notes that Pike has a recent memory of having to fight to save his own life, which they’re going to use now, but give him “something more interesting to protect.” In his cell, Pike is examining the walls for weakness when his surroundings suddenly shift, and he finds himself on a planet surface, looking up at a pink and purple sky with a giant moon hanging on the horizon. Dominating this vista is a large castle beside a waterfront. As Pike stands there going wtf, a woman runs up to him, saying that they must hurry and hide themselves. Pike protests that he was in a cell just a minute ago and now he’s back on Rigel 7 and what’s that about? He reckons that means this is all another illusion pulled out of his memories. This is all happening as it happened back on the real Rigel 7, down to the unseen growling thing that seems to be approaching—except for the woman. She’s new.

As Pike and the mystery woman run towards the castle for cover, we pull back to the present, where Spock comments that this was “a brilliant deduction by Captain Pike.” Well, I don’t know if I would go that far. Once you’ve learned that the telepathic aliens who’ve captured you can create perfect illusions, and you find yourself suddenly in an impossible reconstruction of your own memory, it’s not a big leap to figure out that the telepathic aliens probably did it. Spock goes on to explain, just in case anyone hasn’t realized it yet, that the Talosians could indeed create any illusory world they wanted for Pike, and that even knowing they were illusions would not make him experience them any less vividly.

On the screen, Pike has figured out that the mystery woman is in fact Vina, just with longer hair and a new dress. He finds this quite odd, but doesn’t get the chance to interrogate her at length because the growling thing has found them. It turns out to actually just be a dude in standard barbarian getup, with a shield and a spiky handaxe. Who is growling.

Vina urges Pike to attack the miniboss over there while he can still swing a surprise round. Pike protests that this isn’t real, but Vina says he has to kill the guy just like he did before. This might all be an illusion but Pike is still gonna feel it just the same if he gets an axe through his chest.

After stomping around a bit, Mr. Snarly finally catches sight of Pike, so any possibility of Pike getting a sneak attack is now gone. Instead he shoves Vina out of the line of fire—the line of axe, if you will—and picks up a nearby mace and shield that’s just laying around. The two have at it, swinging weapons around like two people not used to swinging weapons around.

[Image description: A set of stone stairs between an archway leading up to a balcony. A man in heavy furs and a helmet, carrying a shield, is advancing on Pike, who is crouched on the stairs holding him off with a spear. Behind Pike a woman in a white dress with long blonde hair is cowering.]

A Pike holding a pike.

Eventually Mr. Snarly chases Pike and Vina up onto a nearby balcony. Pike gets pushed off, leaving Vina in the clutches of Mr. Snarly. In desperation, Pike picks up a nearby dagger and throws it at Mr. Snarly, somehow scoring a perfect hit and impaling the guy in the lower back despite all the thick fur in the way. That’s quite implausible impressive, though it doesn’t kill Mr. Snarly. It does attract his attention, though, as a dagger in your back is prone to do, and he proceeds to jump off the balcony to get at Pike—and lands right on top of a big vicious barbed thing that Pike holds up just in time. And that’s the end of Mr. Snarly. 500 XP for Pike!

The scene then dissolves and suddenly they’re back in the cell—both Pike and Vina, though now she has short hair and a shimmery silver dress. She promptly throws herself onto Pike, but then draws back as she realizes they’re being watched by the Talosians, who turn and exit back into the elevator without a word. Creeps.

Back in the present, the hearing room screen suddenly goes blank all by itself, to the surprise of Kirk and Mendez. Spock says this is because the Talosians know that Pike is getting worn out, and sure enough, the guy is asleep with his head slumped forward, thus far the only movement the actor has gotten to perform. The Talosians, Spock says, have a vested interest in Pike getting back alive. He suggests they take a break so everyone can catch a nap. Mendez and Spock have yet another brief bout of verbal arm-wrestling, which predictably goes nowhere. So they take a recess and come back after the break.

As everyone heads back into the room, Kirk’s voiceover informs us that they’re now only an hour out from Talos 4. Luckily for them Captain Pike’s gripping adventures fit remarkably well into a television episode format, so they should have plenty of time to finish watching before they get there.

On the screen, Pike is questioning Vina, asking what her whole deal is. She says she’s there to please him (gross), and when asked if she’s real she says she’s “real as you wish.” Pike calls that one out as the vague non-answer that it is, but Vina’s not any more forthcoming. He guesses that she’s there to get a reaction out of him for the sake of whatever this whole experiment is. While Pike muses out-loud on this, Vina tells him that he can live out any dream or fantasy he wants, and that she can be any woman he’s ever wanted. Vina. Vina, you’re creeping me out here. Please stop.

Mercifully for all of us, Pike is currently less interested in living out sex fantasies and more interested in not being caged up and experimented on by a bunch of psychic jerks, so he tells Vina that the best way for her to please him is to give him some information about how he can fight back against the Talosians. She won’t, though, only saying that he’s a fool, so Pike goes “well you’re not real anyway, nyah” and stalks off. But only about two feet away, there’s not much room to stalk in there.

Up on the planet surface, the Enterprise crew have brought up a seriously big laser and aimed it at the door. They start the countdown and then all run off and hide behind some rocks to watch the show. It’s an impressive show, including a lot of eye-watering flashing lights, but no matter how high they crank up the power, the door won’t budge. Eventually they have to shut it off, leaving them with no sign that anything happened at all, despite all reasonable expectations. But as Boyce points out, they can’t actually be sure of that—the Talosians’ psychic powers are so OP, they could have actually blasted that whole hill to kingdom come and they just can’t tell. Well, that was a productive use of time.

Back in the cell, Vina, evidently tired of being ignored, finally says that maybe she could answer some questions for Pike. But only if he’ll pick a fantasy for them to live out together. Pike is only willing to go as far as “perhaps” but that’s good enough for her. So he asks just how much the Talosians can control people. Vina says they can’t actually force him to do anything, only trick him using the illusions, and punish him if he doesn’t cooperate. They’re not completely all-powerful, then—good to know. As any good gamer knows, if it’s got a weakness, you can find a way to kill it.

When asked, Vina gives some backstory on the Talosians. Evidently they used to live up on the surface many millennia ago, but there was a great war that wrecked the planet so badly it’s only just starting to become able to support life again. The Talosians that managed to escape underground found that living in caves forever is really boring, so they worked on developing their psychic powers to compensate. As Vina explains, though, this was their downfall (well, their second downfall). Once their powers got so great that they could start living out any fantasy they wanted, they stopped doing anything else. Stopped building, expanding, creating, or maintaining their own society. Just sat around all day, dreaming up fake lives. Kind of like having the internet, but even worse.

Having specimens like Pike around is really great for the Talosians, Vina explains, because when they create illusions for him to live out they get to live vicariously through him, feeling his emotions and seeing new experiences. That’s why they’ve got a whole zoo down here, brought back from all over the galaxy. She doesn’t explain how they were brought back. The Talosians seem either unable or unwilling to leave the planet, so did they just have to lure all of their specimens to them? That would indicate that all of those specimens are actually from species advanced enough to have space travel, yet the presence of any other sapient species in the zoo is never mentioned. This would seem to lead to one of two conclusions: either there are other sapient species in the zoo and Pike and Vina just don’t care enough to give them any thought, or the Talosians got really lucky and managed to lure Space Noah’s Ark over to them.

If the Talosians have been keeping all these specimens around for years, Pike works out, they must have been doing what zoos usually do with their animals—breeding them. That indicates they intend to breed them some humans, too. They’ve now got a male specimen, so where are they going to find the female one? Vina protests that Pike made a deal with her about this question-asking business, but Pike says he doesn’t have to hold up a deal with a person who doesn’t exist anyway. Vina tells him that actually she is real, as real and human as him. They’re like Adam and Eve, she says. Oh boy.

Before she can elaborate on that, though, Vina starts writhing around and screaming in pain, begging not to be punished. Then she vanishes, leaving nothing but an empty dress behind. Pike turns to see the Magistrate, who’s been watching them for a while now, and who promptly skedaddles back into the elevator. But like, in a smug way.

Back in the hearing room, Mendez asks Pike if this means he was captured as breeding stock, just in case anyone in the audience doesn’t know who Adam and Eve are. Kirk questions why, was it just to maintain their zoo? Spock says there was much more going on. Then we go back to the footage. Thanks guys, really needed that little break there, very vital for the ongoing plot.

Pike has gone back to leaning on the walls in the hopes of finding a weak spot, when he sees that a glass of blue liquid has come through a panel. He tries to break through the panel, but he’s far too late and it’s now shut securely again. Nothing left to do but check out that glass. The Magistrate, who’s come back again, tells Pike that the liquid is a nourishing protein complex, good for when you’re working out a lot. And they actually say this with their mouth, the first time any of the Talosians have deigned to communicate verbally.

The Magistrate says that if Pike doesn’t find the protein complex appetizing, it can appear to be any kind of food he wants. What if, Pike asks, what he wants is to go on a hunger strike instead? The Magistrate replies that if Pike doesn’t cooperate he can be punished. Seconds later, Pike is writhing about in a landscape of flame and boiling mud, screaming dramatically. Then, just as quickly, he’s back in the cell. The Magistrate says they drew this experience from a fable Pike heard in childhood. I presume they’re talking about Hell, but really it could be a lot of things. Muspelheim, for example.

So if Pike doesn’t do what he’s told he’ll be put in time-out in Hell, which is pretty bad. But he wonders, why not just make him feel irresistibly hungry? The Magistrate doesn’t answer, but Pike works it out himself: that’s not within their power. They can construct imaginary environments that provide certain kinds of stimulus, but it seems that directly forcing people to feel specific sensations is a no-go. But the Magistrate warns that if Pike doesn’t drink his supper they can draw even worse punishments from his mind, so reluctantly he downs the contents of the glass. Then he gets up and abruptly makes a charge for the front of the cell, causing the Magistrate to briefly step back in alarm.

What follows is two completely separate conversations happening at once. Pike is focused on the Magistrate’s reaction. In that moment, he says, he was only thinking about how much he wanted to hurt the Magistrate, which makes him wonder if the Talosians can’t read through ‘primitive thoughts.’ Meanwhile the Magistrate, stubbornly ignoring everything Pike is saying, tells him that a human ship really did crash on the planet, but in reality there was only one survivor, badly injured. They fixed her up, found her ‘interesting,’ and decided they would need to attract a mate.

Pike finally caves to the subject and notes that the Talosians seem to be trying to make Pike feel protective and caring towards Vina. The Magistrate says this is necessary for propagation of the species. So apparently, despite how advanced the Talosians would like us to think they are, the only way they can get a baby out of a couple of humans is to get them to physically have sex with each other. I mean, we don’t even have to do that anymore. On that note, the Talosians got really lucky that both of their ‘specimens’ turned out to be cis and straight, and evidently still in full possession of all baby-making capabilities. Imagine how gloriously Pike could derail this whole stupid thing just by saying, “Sorry guys, got something to tell you...” My enjoyment of this episode would skyrocket.

The Magistrate says they only want Pike to fall in love with Vina because they want their specimens to be happy. Pike immediately dismisses that as a lie, which seems fair, since so far the Talosians’ attempts to make Pike ‘happy’ have involved sticking him in a ten by ten room with a single hard bench, constantly threatening to punish him horribly if he steps out of line, occasionally providing him with a single mouthful of liquid for sustenance, and standing right outside loudly insulting him for kicks. You guys would never get AZA accredited at this rate.

So Pike naturally enough assumes they have ulterior motives. He thinks that maybe they’re trying to get him to genuinely bond with Vina so they can establish a family group, maybe leading up to a whole community. Hopefully they’re planning to get some more specimens in the mix there or that human community is gonna face some serious problems. On his way out, the Magistrate says that Vina has been properly ‘conditioned,’ which enrages Pike, who says that if they’re going to punish anyone they should punish him because he’s the one not cooperating. The Magistrate smugly notes that Pike is feeling protectiveness and, now, sympathy, which is just what they want. Then they swan off again.

I don’t know if I would consider getting a human to feel sympathy and protectiveness to be much of an accomplishment though, to be honest. I mean, humans can feel sympathy and protectiveness towards animals, plants, inanimate objects, fictional characters, Animal Crossing villagers...it doesn’t take a masterwork of manipulation, is what I’m saying.

Pike stands there glaring after the Magistrate, but a moment later the cell fades out and he suddenly finds himself in a soundstage with some trees on it—sorry, I meant, some beautiful and verdant parkland, of course. Nearby is Vina with a blanket and picnic basket, and also, a couple horses. Pike recognizes the horses as his, the ones he was telling Boyce about back in Part I, and takes a minute to happily pet one and feed him some sugar cubes. Pike’s held out in the face of being offered any kind of wild fantasy he wishes, refusing to buy into any illusion he’s been given, but getting to see his beloved pets, now, that’ll make him immediately give in a little. Which I consider to be easily the most realistic moment in this entire story. If you wanted me to buy into an illusory world, putting my cat in it would probably be your best bet.

This all seems to be a scene from home for Pike, home in the most ideal possible sense, and Vina tells him he can stay there. Pike protests that neither of them are really there, that they’re being held in a cage, a menagerie—two for one title drop there, woo! But Vina reacts very badly to any mention that this is all an illusion. Pike keeps trying to get information out of her while she sits there begging for him to just go along with it.

Eventually Vina says that it’s true the Talosians can’t read through primitive emotions like hate. I’m not sure why hate is a more primitive emotion than anything else. I could understand how any strong enough emotion could overwhelm sensitive telepathy, but no, it’s just hate, I guess. Personally I think hate is kind of an advanced emotion. I mean, do you think animals feel hate? I don’t think so. I think it’s something we invented.

Problem is, Vina says, it’s impossible to keep that hate going for long enough to really do anything. “I’ve tried,” she says. “They keep at you and at you, year after year, tricking and punishing. And they’ve won. They own me.”

Keep in mind that if Vina was really a survivor of that crash, that means she’s been here for eighteen years. Eighteen years alone with no contact except for figments of her imagination and some aliens that view her as nothing more than a primitive animal. Eighteen years of being held captive by beings that can make someone live through the most nightmarish scenarios they could possibly imagine as punishment for any transgression. Eighteen years of constant psychological manipulation and torture. Pike’s frustration with her unwillingness to help is understandable but it’s hardly any wonder that Vina just wants him to cooperate so that the hell she lives in, that she’s given up any chance of ever getting out of, could now at least become a little more bearable. We only get a glimpse of what that hell must have been like for her, but that glimpse is absolutely horrific.

Pike comforts her, because you’d have to be pretty damn hard-hearted to not react to that little speech, but Vina says he doesn’t fully realize what’s going on. She says that the Talosians picked Pike specifically because they read her mind to know what her idea of the perfect man would be. In other words, he was hand-picked to be someone she couldn’t help but fall in love with. Really, they searched her mind for the ideal man and came up with this dude? Vina. Vina, honey, I don’t mean to judge, but you could do so much better.

While the Talosians watch from their cave monitor, because they’re skeevy bastards, Pike says that he’s been attracted to Vina as well from the moment he first saw her in the camp. When you thought she was eighteen, ya creep. He says she was like “a wild little animal.” Pike...Pike, I don’t know where you learned to compliment women but you clearly need to go back and take the course again.

Vina says that she thinks she knows now why Pike hasn’t been brought in by any of the illusions; they’re all things that he’s experienced and is familiar with. A person’s wildest dreams, she says, are about things that they can’t have. Pike being a starship captain means he always has to be formal and honorable, so he must be yearning to cut loose. Wow, thanks for giving the Talosians free tips on how to psychologically manipulate humans, Vina.

Sure enough, the Talosians promptly change the idyllic scene, and Pike finds himself dressed in ornate clothing and sitting by a poolside while Vina—now appearing as an Orion woman with green skin and dark hair—dances with the accompaniment of a few guys playing music that I can only describe as ‘stereotypically exotic’. And that really is the same actress, Susan Oliver, who had a long career as an actor, director, and aviator, but mostly now gets remembered for a few minutes of dancing around with green paint on.

(A fun fact about this scene is that they had to experiment a lot to get the green makeup right, but when the film first came back from editing, the green was barely visible. So they tried another makeup, but that didn’t show up any better. This went on for a while before they found out that the guy in the film lab had been assuming that the green color was a mistake that they would want corrected, and had been hard at work undoing the makeup artist’s hard work. That’s the only fun thing I can come up with about this scene, though.)

Apparently Pike’s wildest fantasies also include a bowl of fruit and a couple of incredibly sleazy guys sitting next to him just to round things out. Luckily for him, all this is being observed not just by a bunch of smug jerk aliens, but also by the court martial attendees watching it on the screen in the present, while he sits there unable to leave or say anything or even turn around. And yes, the scene cuts back to the present, just in case anyone might have forgotten about that. Kirk even asks Pike to confirm that that is Vina as the Orion slave girl, for no reason I can think of except to just embarrass him. Mendez muses that “[Orion women] are like animals—vicious, seductive. They say no human male can resist them.”

Excuse me, I need to just step away from my computer for a moment.

[distant sounds of a head banging against a wall]

Okay, I’m back. Where were we? Oh, right. This.

The sexy dancing goes on for longer than is frankly necessary—although really, any amount of time at all would be longer than is necessary—while Pike sits there vibrating in place before he can’t stand it anymore and flees through a nearby door. Beyond is a series of, guess what, more caves. As Pike looks around for an exit he finds that the way back is now gone, nothing more than a solid stone wall. And then Vina, still in green, appears behind him, holding a torch.

What happens next is left to the imagination—probably for the best there—as we then finally return to the Enterprise, where a landing party is assembling. Number One and Spock give the rest a grim briefing: they’re hoping to beam down to the inside of the Talosians’ base, but there’s always the possibility that the Talosians could manipulate what the transporter officer sees and cause people to be beamed inside solid rock. Gee, the transporter sure is fun. Number One says that, given that lovely possibility, anyone is free to back out now without judgment, but no one does. No one ever does when someone gives that ultimatum, come to think of it.

So they all get on the transporter and prepare to head off, but when the switch is hit, only two of the six people actually go anywhere: Number One and a red-haired female crewman who’s been around but hasn’t been named yet. Or, as Spock hilariously declares rather loudly, “THE WOMEN!”

The transporter operators fumble desperately with the controls, but to no avail: the women are, indeed, gone. Specifically, they’ve gone to Pike’s cell. The inside of his cell, unfortunately. Pike is evidently still inside the illusion doing I-don’t-want-to-know-what with Vina because he’s just standing there staring into space while Vina has her hands on his shoulders. Upon seeing the new arrivals she screams, “No! Let me finish!” and storms away.

While Vina sulks and the other two women realize that no one else got transported with them, Pike re-enters reality, and promptly tears open the redhead’s landing jacket. No worries, though: what he’s after is the phaser she’s carrying. He takes Number One’s, too, but to his frustration neither phaser seems to be working. Neither is Number One’s communicator.

So Pike adopts a new strategy. He stands over by the panel where the food-drink came out, drops the phasers in front of it, and begins loudly talking about how he’s imagining beating up the Talosians, filling his mind with that most primitive of emotions, hate. Meanwhile, Vina moves on to picking on the other women, sneering about how the redhead is “a fine choice for intelligent offspring” and that “they’d have more luck crossing him with a computer” than Number One, who somehow has already figured out that the Talosians are trying to breed humans from Pike. Number One fires back that Vina was an adult crewman on the crashed ship eighteen years ago, meaning she should not be looking quite so young and sprightly anymore. Yeah, you really get a sense that Number One is logical, emotionless and detached, by how her response to one half-baked insult is to immediately go, “Oh yeah, well you’re OLD.”

The whole argument is derailed when the Magistrate comes back to tell Pike that since he’s been resisting Vina, they’ve brought him two more women to choose from. Great. Lovely. Look, I, uh...I don’t really want to examine the practicality of breeding humans too much, y’know, but...I don’t understand why the Talosians are so focused on Pike and only Pike here. When they only had one human on hand, and wanted a lot more humans, trying to get more humans out of that first human makes...sense, I guess. But now there’s a whole ship up there of some four hundred humans (and one half-human), and they’re completely ignoring all of them except Pike and two women that they only brought down to entice Pike some more. Sure, they’ve decided Pike is the ‘prime specimen’ or whatever, but he’s only one guy. If you want to build a whole community, you’re going to need a lot more genetic diversity—not to mention the additional skillsets offered by the rest of the Enterprise crew, that the Talosians themselves clearly don’t have, and the fact that having so many more extra specimens means your whole plan isn’t ruined if one of them dies or is infertile or refuses to get with the program. This plot is obviously incredibly ethically wrong, but it’s also just incredibly stupid on a practical level.

The Magistrate proceeds to inform Pike that both women have qualities in their favor: Number One is really smart, and the redhead is young and strong. Also apparently she’s been crushing on Pike for some time but considered him unreachable and is now realizing that that’s changed. Sure, because any woman’s first thought upon suddenly being imprisoned to use as breeding stock would be “oh cool, I get to screw the captain now.” That’s ever so realistic.

Pike is still yelling at the Magistrate about all his hateful thoughts, but the Magistrate puts a stop to it by giving him some kind of mental punishment, presumably another trip to hell. They smugly tell the assembled captives that wrong thinking will be punished and right thinking will be rewarded. Then they flounce away.

Sometime later, everyone’s sitting around looking glum—or taking a nap, in Vina’s case—when Pike sees the panel in the wall start to slide open. The Magistrate is making a grab for the phasers Pike dropped there earlier. But this time Pike is ready. He pounces on the guy, hauling them out into the cell, pinning them to the floor, and grabbing them by the throat. The Magistrate responds by making themself appear to be some kind of big hairy thing with tusks, but Pike is undeterred and hangs on, threatening the Magistrate into dropping the illusion. So then the Magistrate says that if Pike doesn’t release them they’ll destroy the Enterprise. Vina says they can do it, by tricking the crew into working the wrong controls, but Pike thinks they won’t.

He tries the phasers again, but they still don’t seem to be working. So he turns the phaser on the Magistrate. He’s guessing that the phaser did work and the Magistrate just illusion’d over it, but they’re probably not going to be able to do the same thing if Pike shoots them in the head. The Magistrate gives in and, sure enough, a big hole suddenly appears in the front wall of the cell. Well, fancy that.

Everyone makes their way out of the hole, Pike hauling along the Magistrate with a phaser still pointed at their head. Back in the present, the screen goes off on its own. Spock, for the first time during all this, seems unsure and worried, especially when Mendez comments that “it seems the Talosians have deserted you.” He asks them to just wait a moment, but the screen still remains white. I feel for him. It sucks when you’re trying to give a presentation but the projector’s just not cooperating.

Mendez asks Pike for his verdict, but Spock begs his former captain to signal for a wait instead, telling him it’s a chance for his life on the line. Kirk questions what Spock means, exactly, by all this ‘chance for life’ business, since all that we’ve seen indicates that ‘life’ with the Talosians means being kept caged and treated like a zoo animal performing for amusement. You know, Kirk, that’s a mighty good point. We’ll get back to that later.

Spock insists there’s more to it and tells him to watch, but there’s nothing to watch. It sure is a pity Spock has completely lost his ability to explain anything himself and can only rely on the screen to do it for him. Tragic.

With no more footage forthcoming, Mendez pushes again for a verdict, and Pike votes with a single long beep: guilty. Mendez himself votes guilty as well. Attention turns to Kirk, although with two guilty votes it doesn’t much matter what he says now. Still, there’s quite the dramatic chord when he votes guilty as well. Although it’d be pretty hard to not vote that Spock was guilty right now. I mean, he put in a guilty plea. They know he did indeed take the ship to Talos 4 because they’re on the ship and it’s going there right now. Spock may (or may not, it’s debatable) have good reasons for doing what he’s doing, but it’d be kind of ludicrous to call him innocent of the charges.

After the break, the bridge calls in to say that they’re entering orbit around Talos 4. Spock says that the Talosians are controlling the ship like they did thirteen years ago. Uh. The Talosians didn’t control the ship thirteen years ago, though, did they? They tricked the people who did control the ship into going there, but there was never an indication that they could actually control the ship directly. You might say they were just controlling it via illusions again, except they can’t do that because no one is actually flying the ship right now. It’s still computer controlled. So what’s going on here, Spock?

Spock’s not forthcoming about this but he says they’ll see the answer as to why right now. And sure enough, the screen comes back on. Man, all that drama about whether the record would keep playing, and voting Spock guilty or not, that sure led up to something, didn’t it. Here they are, all still in the room. Watching the screen. Why did it go off in the first place? Nobody knows.

On the screen, Pike and co take the elevator back up to the surface, where it turns out that the giant laser cannon actually did blow the door clean off, and took out a bunch of the surrounding rock, too—the Talosians just put an illusion over it.

Pike orders Number One to contact the ship, but it seems she can’t. The Magistrate gloats that their escape attempt was futile and actually they wanted the prisoners to get up to the surface. Oh, fuck off. If they wanted the humans on the surface, they could have taken them to the surface at any time. There was no need for an elaborate charade of pretending to be taken prisoner. This punk just got their ass handed to them and is too terminally smug to admit it. “Yeah, this was our plan! We wanted you to do this all along!” Bullshit.

Anyway, the Magistrate says it’s time for the reclaiming of the planet surface to begin, once Pike chooses a lady. Pike says that he’ll stay with Vina if the Talosians at least send Number One and the redhead back. Number One then drops this stunning line.

[Image Description: Number One, a white woman with long dark hair wearing a blue landing party jacket over a gold uniform shirt, saying, “It’s wrong to create a race of humans to live as slaves.”]

REALLY, IS IT? I NEVER WOULD HAVE GUESSED. Man, Star Trek really coming in with the hard-hitting moral lessons here. So cerebral! I’m in awe.

To prove her point, Number One has set her phaser to start overloading, which will kill all of them. The Magistrate is, for once, quite thrown by this sudden determination to die rather than live in captivity. Pike tells Vina and the Magistrate that they still have time to get back underground before the phaser goes off, but Vina says that if they all really find it this important, she’s staying with them. After all if the Talosians have any human beings left they’ll probably just keep trying this whole thing all over again. And poor Vina may well be thinking now that going out in a phaser overload is preferable to more time as a captive under such awful circumstances.

Before anyone can get vaporized, though, a couple more Talosians come up in the elevator. Apparently they’ve got some information from the Enterprise records that they’re here to deliver to the Magistrate telepathically, though not before getting in yet another dig about how crude the humans are. The Magistrate is stunned at this new information: that humans have such a hatred for captivity that they’ll choose death instead, no matter how pleasant the captivity is. Yeah, we really hate captivity. Not so much, of course, that we won’t subject lots of other humans to it if it’s convenient for us, but, y’know.

At any rate, from this information (wherever they got it from—was there just a subheading in the Enterprise archives about How Much We Hate Captivity, Boy We Really Do?), the Talosians figure that using humans for their slave race is never going to work because they’re just too violent and rebellious. Since the humans are no use, the Talosians are going to let them go. Oh. Well okay then.

Pike is annoyed that they’re not even getting a “sorry we kidnapped and tried to enslave you” or anything, but one of the Talosians points out that without a slave race, the Talosians are condemned to die, so Pike should be happy with that. Oh sure, blame it on the humans. You were the ones who got yourselves into the situation where you needed a slave race to survive. You have only yourselves to blame.

But apparently humans were the Talosians’ best shot, as they were unable to find any other species adaptable enough for the purpose. Pike wonders if there might be, y’know, some middle ground between survival by slave race and extinction—trading, perhaps—but the Magistrate says that humans would eventually pick up the Talosians’ illusion powers and destroy themselves too. That’s a remarkably confident prediction. How do they know humans are even capable of developing that power, or that they would react in the same way to having it?

Oh, never mind. Pike’s done with these idiots and ready to get back to the ship. All eyes then turn to Vina—who says she can’t go.

Up in the transporter room, they’ve suddenly got power again, and the helm is responding once more. Oh, I guess the Talosians did have control over the ship? Since...when? It seems to be enough for them to transport Number One and the redhead back up, at any rate. But not Pike just yet. He’s still down there talking to Vina.

As dramatic music plays, the illusion fades away from Vina, revealing her TRUE FORM: an old woman with a couple scars and a hunch. Hideous.

[Image Description: Vina, an old white woman with stiff pale hair, a scar running across her face and another under the corner of her mouth. She is wearing a shimmery white-gray garment and her right shoulder is hunched up close to her ear.]

Vina says the Talosians found her in the wreckage of the crash, horribly injured, and were able to save her, but because they had never seen a human before they had “no guide to putting [her] back together.” So they were able to figure out human anatomy well enough to restore a dying crash victim to full health, while somehow also not being able to figure it out well enough to make the human look right—even though the Talosians are pretty human-looking themselves and, one would think, would have a decent idea of where all the arms and legs and things go at least. Of course, given that all we can see is Vina’s face and some of the shape of her upper body, it’s rather hard to tell what the Talosians even did that was supposedly so bad. Maybe we’re supposed to imagine the rest of her looks like a Necromorph, but as it is, you’ll forgive me for not dropping my jaw in horror at an old woman with a hump.

Pike, however, seems to be considerably more squeamish, and stands there gaping like an idiot. The Magistrate tells him that they had to show him that Vina did in fact honestly want to stay behind, but they’ll give her back her “illusion of beauty” and “more.” I mean they psychologically tortured her for eighteen years, but we can probably trust them with her welfare.  

So Pike returns to the ship, and when asked if Vina isn’t coming with, he says, “No, and I agreed with her reasons.” Oh, you agreed, did you? Once you saw her “true form” wasn’t attractive to you, you realized it was better for her to stay with the aliens that tortured and enslaved her. God forbid she should walk among humans again. She might drive people mad!

The Enterprise heads out, and in the present, the screen goes white again—presumably that’s really the end this time. Kirk gets up, shares a long look with Spock, then turns to say something to Mendez—but Mendez promptly disappears. An image of the Magistrate then appears on the screen, speaking telepathically.

The Magistrate says that Mendez never left the base—he’s been an illusion ever since the shuttlecraft. Having heard from Spock what strength of will Kirk had, they were afraid that Kirk would regain control of the ship, so they made this illusory court martial to distract him. Well if that was the case, why the frell did Mendez keep trying to end the court martial? You’d think they would want him to be extending it as much as possible instead of constantly saying he wanted it stopped.

Anyway, the Magistrate says Pike is welcome to come stay with them for the rest of his life, where he can live in a virtual world instead of being stuck paralyzed forever. Kirk wants to know why the hell Spock didn’t just explain all this to him, because after all Kirk is always down for breaking Starfleet regulations if the Right Thing To Do is on the line. But Spock says that he wouldn’t have Kirk facing the death penalty too. Uh, he kind of is, though? Because it’s his ship so he’s responsible for everything that happens on it? Did we not go over this? I think we went over this.

At that moment, though, a message comes in from the real Mendez, saying that they received the transmissions from Talos 4 also, and in light of how important Pike has been to the service, they’re going to drop the death penalty thing this one time. And Spock is off the hook. Oh, well, that’s super nice of them. I guess the only thing left to do is ask Pike himself if he wants to go.

Pike says yes, so Spock takes him off to the transporter room. Kirk, left alone in the room, is shown an image of Pike—young, healthy Pike—returning down the elevator hand in hand with Vina. “Captain Pike has an illusion, and you have reality,” the Magistrate says. “May you find your way as pleasant.” And there we end.

There is so much going on here I don’t even know where to start. The ending that Vina gets is, quite honestly, an outrage. It’s presented as an utterly obvious fact that her appearance means that staying behind on Talos 4 is best for her. Did anyone consider that maybe if they brought her back she could be treated by human doctors, who, y’know, generally have seen a human or two in their time and might be able to help her a wee bit more than the clueless aliens? Even if not, even if they could do nothing for her, why the hell shouldn’t she come back? It can’t be that she’s somehow unable to leave, such as from some kind of medical issue that only the Talosians can treat, because she outright says “everything works.” It’s an ending that pretty bluntly says that for a woman, being disfigured is such a horrible fate that it’s better for her to remain a captive of the aliens that imprisoned, tortured, and attempted to breed her to make a race of slaves, than for her to live with other humans. Some enlightened future this is!

It’s a bad enough for a character of any gender, but it’s hard not to see it as being directly related to her being a woman, because we have a male example to directly compare it to: Pike. Pike’s appearance after his accident helps demonstrate his condition but it’s otherwise pretty much incidental. No one ever comments on it. All the focus is on his quality of life--which it should be in that situation, but no one ever talks about Vina’s quality of life. So for Pike to consider going to live in a virtual world with the jerkass aliens he has to be completely paralyzed and barely able to communicate with anyone, but for Vina, well, she doesn’t look nice anymore, so that’s basically just as bad, right?

Not that the whole question of going to live with the jerkass aliens is itself not weird as hell. The idea of choosing the virtual world isn’t so much the problem. I mean, I spend way too much time playing video games to call anyone else out on their decisions in that regard. If this was some neutral situation--a planet or machine that naturally generates these illusions, or that the Enterprise had stumbled upon aliens with this power accidentally, maybe, for Pike or even Vina to choose to live there because they felt their quality of life in the real world was no longer good enough, that would be an understandable decision. But we’re not talking about that. We’re talking about the aliens that kidnapped five people, put them in cages and treated them like zoo animals, tortured them for not obeying, and intended to breed a race of slaves from them. Did everyone just forget that?! Vina outright described being tortured for eighteen years by the Talosians. Why would anyone remotely be okay with the idea of continuing to live with them? Why would you trust that they genuinely had good intentions for Pike and Vina now or that they’ve become definitely reformed in the past thirteen years? Why are we expected to treat this as an unambiguously happy ending?

I acknowledge that there were limitations when it came to writing The Menagerie--they had to work with an existing story which wasn’t written with the later framework in mind. But they didn’t have to frame that story in the way that they did, which, I’ll be honest with you, I did not find that great. It starts out interesting enough, with this whole question of what could possibly be going on with Spock, and what’s so terrible about Talos 4, but once they get to the actual court martial it just peters out. They keep trying to maintain tension in both storylines, but all the drama in the present one falls flat because it’s meaningless. Periodically the screen will stop or Mendez will go “I’ve had enough of this!”--and then nothing happens and everything carries on as it was. Then at the end it turns out Mendez wasn’t real and, despite Talos 4 apparently being SO DANGEROUS that it warranted the only death penalty in the Federation, Starfleet is like “oh okay yeah no it’s fine” and that’s the end of that.

Why not just...I don’t know...present the story as a flashback? Why go to all the trouble of setting up circumstances of letting them view the footage on a screen in a way that’s so weird the characters straight up have to say “hang on this doesn’t make sense” just to get the audience to accept it? Set up a situation where the present day Enterprise crew is dealing with something a little like the Talosians and have Spock go “oh we encountered something like this once” and Kirk go “oh tell me about it” and then at the end Kirk somehow gets an idea of how to deal with the current situation because of that story. Or maybe someone makes contact with Talos 4, maybe they’ve changed their minds and want to ask for help after all, maybe Vina’s changed her mind and wants to go home, but Spock has to relate the story because no one else knows what’s going on. Hell, maybe Spock and Kirk just meet Pike in a bar and he’s like “hey Spock remember those dumb aliens we met that one time!” There’s lots of potential frameworks that would be less overly complicated, and less prone to setting themselves up to an unsatisfactory conclusion, than the one we got.

The Cage was infamously rejected because the executives thought it was “too cerebral.” What, exactly, they thought was cerebral about it is a mystery to me. Was it Pike fighting a snarly guy in a fur hat for five minutes? Was it the bit where a woman in green body paint dances sensually while a lot of men ogle at her? Was it the giant laser? There’s so many amazingly cerebral things in this story, it could have been any of them. But whatever their reasons, I, for one, can only say I am glad that they did reject The Cage and that we got the show that we did instead.

TREK TROPE TALLY: None once again this episode--unsurprisingly since we only saw two main cast members and they just sat in a room the whole time. Next time we’ll be enjoying  intrigue and Shakespeare references galore with The Conscience of the King.