#the counterfeitting episode

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

the fact that shakespeare was a playwright is sometimes so funny to me. just the concept of the "greatest writer of the English language" being a random 450-year-old entertainer, a 16th cent pop cultural sensation (thanks in large part to puns & dirty jokes & verbiage & a long-running appeal to commoners). and his work was made to be watched not read, but in the classroom teachers just hand us his scripts and say "that's literature"

just...imagine it's 2450 A.D. and English Lit students are regularly going into 100k debt writing postdoc theses on The Simpsons screenplays. the original animation hasn't even been preserved, it's literally just scripts and the occasional SDH subtitles.txt. they've been republished more times than the Bible

[megane-sama]

YUZUGIRI NATION ARISE.

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

Fellow Psych enjoyer!! Im watchin psych at this very moment lol, i know its a tough question bc i dont even have a definitive answer but like, what's your favorite episode?

hmmm well i did very much enjoy the episode where Lassiter & Henry bond over fishing... i also like the episode where Shawn gets kidnapped & ends up on top of a moving car <3

[mariocki]

Alfred Burke puts on his best policing face as Parisian detective Inspector Maron, in Overseas Press Club - Exclusive!: The Billion Franc Mystery (1.6, ABPC, 1957)

[dude1sh]

seasons 1-2 of h2o was like : “ooorrhhh naurrr we’re mermaids but i wanna go to this pool party???”

and then season 3 was : “there is a water tentacle attacking us but actually it was trying to warn us about a comet that is going to destroy the earth and we will have to stop it with our mermaid powers (also the scientists don’t know about the comet destroying the planet bc they don’t know about the moon pools magic and also that is it magnetic so it’s also drawing the comet to earth) … also emma is gone bc she’s traveling the world or whatever idk”

[troutfur]

The human AU version of this scene is just Jay, Holly, and Lion acting like mobsters and bringing their preteen cousins along for the ride.

[roxannepolice]

[brookbee]

DS9 episode where Quark starts selling marriage licenses after seeing all the couples getting engaged on the station. Odo is suspicious about it.

Garak reminisces about a wife he had for 24 hours before the Obsidian Order killed her and when Bashir offers his condolences Garak says “oh no she was an awful woman, it’s just such a shame I never got to experience a divorce.” But he seems pretty broken up about it so Bashir says “oh well uh if you need anything let me know.”

One of Curzon Dax’s short lived love affairs with an arms dealer’s daughter arrives on the station. She insists they once had a Vegas wedding and they’re still married (by her people’s laws). She demands that Dax divorce her and pay alimony, but Dax is Starfleet and doesn’t have enough of the currency that the alimony would be in. Meaning that Dax would have to pay it off by becoming a gun smuggler or something. Dax says something about being a trill and responsibility for the past. Sisko orders Odo to find a way out of it before the divorce court opens in a week (they’re closed for convenient plot reasons).

Garak ends up with a marriage license for him and Bashir because, well, Bashir said anything and he always wanted to experience a divorce. Bashir is freaked out about it but he does want to make Garak feel better about everything. Except the divorce court isn’t open so he has to be married to Garak for a week. Shenanigans ensue.

Odo finds out that Curzon Dax never had a Vegas wedding and the arms dealer’s daughter bought a counterfeit license from Quark made with an older date. Turns out all of Quark’s marriage licenses are actually counterfeit.

Odo informs Sisko and Dax, and Dax has a gay moment that is also somehow heterosexual with the not-really-her-wife when they say goodbye to each other.

Quark gets threatened by Odo to stop selling the marriage licenses and for some reason there’s crazy sexual tension. But Quark agrees to stop selling them.

Bashir is relieved because he assumes that Garak bought a marriage certificate from Quark, making their marriage invalid. Quark looks confused and is about to correct Bashir, before he just shrugs and walks away.

Fade to black, music plays, they never bring it up again.

[lyralit]

writing prompts from ttpd quotes

took a miracle move-on drug, the effects were temporary

but I've seen this episode and still loved the show

this ain't the chelsea hotel, we're modern idiots

left all these broken parts // told me I'm better off // but I'm not

down bad, waking up in blood // staring at the sky, come back and pick me up

& I'm pissed off you let me give you all that youth for free

I learned these people try and save you // 'cause they hate you

scandal does funny things to pride, but brings lovers closer

at the park where we used to sit on childrens' swings // wearing imaginary rings

barricaded in the bathroom with a bottle of wine // well, me and my ghosts, wе had a hell of a time

love left me like this and I don't want to exist // so take me to Florida

what if the way you hold me is actually what's holy?

I was tame, I was gentle, til the circus life made me mean // don't you worry folks, we took out all her teeth

you wouldn't last an hour in the asylum where they raised me

he had a halo of the highest grade // he just hadn't met me yet

dancing phantoms on the terrace // are they second-hand embarrassed // that I can't get out of bed? // 'cause something counterfeit's dead

our field of dreams, engulfed in fire // your arson's match, your somber eyes

you're the loss of my life

breaking down, I hit the floor // all the pieces of me shattering as the crowd was chanting "more!"

'cause once your queen had come // you treat her like an also-ran // you didn't measure up // in any measure of a man

he jokes that it's heroin, but this time with an "e"

it's hell...on...earth...to...be...heeeaaveeenlyyyy

you've got edge, she never did // the future's bright....dazzling

[glennk56]

Tom Bosley before Happy Days (1 of 2) (1959-1972)

Tom Bosley's big break came when he landed the lead role in the Broadway Musical Fiorello! in 1959 about the Mayor of NYC from 1934-1946 and winning the Tony Award for his portrayal.

Tom Bosley as Fiorello La Guardia on Broadway in 1959.

Tom Bosley as Teddy in a TV Movie version of Arsenic and Old Lace in 1962 which starred Tony Randall and even included Boris Karloff.

Tom Bosley in an episode of Car 54, Where Are You? as a counterfeiter posing as a Preacher boarding with the Toodys not realizing Toody is a policeman.

Tom Bosley appeared in an episode of Naked City in 1963 as a judge hearing case of spousal physical abuse.

Tom Bosley as an executive in an episode of Route 66 in 1963.

Tom Bosley in his first theatrical movie Love with the Proper Stranger in 1963 with superstars Natalie Wood and Steve McQueen as an awkward, nervous date of Natalie Wood. Tom was 35 years old at filming.

Four months later in 1964, Tom Bosley appeared in The World of Harry Orient as the father of one of the girls tormenting Harry Orient played by Peter Sellers. Bosley's wife was played by Angela Lansbury.

Tom Bosley was in the first episode of Jericho in 1966, a WWII show about a team of Allied members working behind the lines as sabateurs and intellegence agents. Bosley, a civilian radar expert is called into duty, but his lack of confidence and bravery threaten the mission. This show lasted only 16 episodes. But the picture quality is very good. Other shows Tom Bosley guested on during this time were Ben Casey, Dr. Kildare, Ther Defenders and The Girl from UNCLE.

Tom Bosley's next movie role was in 1967, Divorce American Style starring Dick Van Dyke and Debbie Reynolds. Tom played newly divorced Debbie Reynolds first date where she learns how vast the extended families of multiple divorcees can be.

Bosley's next film was a spaghetti western, Bang Bang Kid in 1967. In the late 60's many American actors did at least one.

Tom Bosley's next movie was The Secret War of Harry Frigg starring Steve McQueen in 1968, playing one of the Generals taken as Prisoners of War. This was his first, maybe only shirtless scene as far as I know.

In early 1968, Tom Bosley was in an episode of The F.B.I. as a criminal suspect.

[cantsayidont]

Despite its protestations of progressive values, STAR TREK media has always explicitly presented (and, with only fleeting exceptions, consistently celebrated) the Federation as an expansionist imperial power, engaged in a large-scale project of colonialism.

The usual apologia/rationalization for this, both from the franchise itself and from its fans, is that the Federation is also a post-scarcity socialist utopia. However, that is expressly not the case in TOS, despite the attempts of the later series to insist otherwise.

Indeed, the plots of some of the most famous and acclaimed episodes of TOS are specifically about resource extraction and ensuring the Federation's access to crucial resources, including lithium (in "Mudd's Women"), pergium (in "The Devil in the Dark"), and dilithium (in "Mirror, Mirror," et al). We are told repeatedly that the Enterprise has a mandate to use force to secure these resources if gentler methods fail. Moreover, while the Federation has a strategic interest in these resources, it's clear at various points in TOS that their extraction and exploitation are, to a significant extent if not exclusively, overseen by private interests for profit. For instance, in "Mudd's Women," Harry Mudd remarks:

Well, girls, lithium miners. Don't you understand? Lonely, isolated, overworked, rich lithium miners! Girls, do you still want husbands, hmm? Evie, you won't be satisfied with a mere ship's captain. I'll get you a man who can buy you a whole planet. Maggie, you're going to be a countess. Ruth, I'll make you a duchess. And I, I'll be running this starship. Captain James Kirk, the next orders you're taking will be given by Harcourt Fenton Mudd!

In "The Devil in the Dark," Kirk ultimately takes a regulatory position — he will not permit the pergium miners to kill the Horta or continue to destroy her eggs — but at no point does he suggest that stopping the pergium production that threatens the Horta is a viable or even acceptable alternative. The accord he proposes is contingent on the Horta's agreement that she and her children will support the mining efforts on her planet, since Kirk emphasizes that "a dozen planets" are depending on the miners to supply needed pergium. (What would have happened to her if she hadn't agreed is not stated, but the episode strongly suggests that she would have been severely punished for noncompliance with Kirk's mediated solution: forcibly relocated to some kind of Horta reservation away from the main mining operations, perhaps.) When the Horta does agree to this proposal, Kirk assures Vanderberg, "you people are going to be embarrassingly rich," which once again suggests that while the miners may have contractual agreements to delivery pergium to Federation worlds, they are still a private, for-profit business, not a Federation department or nationalized entity.

Profit is also Ron Tracey's motivation for breaking the Prime Directive in "The Omega Glory": He believes that he's discovered a "fountain of youth" that he can own, monopolize, and exploit, and that the value of that resource will be enough to buy his way out of legal trouble for his regulatory violations.

We mostly don't see the Enterprise crew handle money except on away missions in other cultures or times, but there are a number of indications that the Federation in this era has not abandoned money: For instance, Harry Mudd's list of past offenses includes purchasing a space vessel "with counterfeit currency," while in "The Apple," Kirk rhetorically asks if Spock knows how much Starfleet has invested in him, which Spock begins to answer, "One hundred twenty-two thousand two hundred …" before Kirk cuts him off. More tellingly, in "I, Mudd," we have the following exchange:

KIRK: All right, Harry, explain. How did you get here? We left you in custody after that affair on the Rigel mining planet. MUDD: Yes, well, I organized a technical information service bringing modern industrial techniques to backward planets, making available certain valuable patents to struggling young civilizations throughout the galaxy. KIRK: Did you pay royalties to the owners of those patents? MUDD: Well, actually, Kirk, as a defender of the free enterprise system, I found myself in a rather ambiguous conflict as a matter of principle. SPOCK: He did not pay royalties. MUDD: Knowledge, sir, should be free to all. KIRK: Who caught you? MUDD: That, sir, is an outrageous assumption. KIRK: Yes. Who caught you? MUDD: I sold the Denebians all the rights to a Vulcan fuel synthesizer. KIRK: And the Denebians contacted the Vulcans.

Whether Deneb is a member of the Federation at this time is unclear, but Vulcan certainly is, and so we may assume that Vulcan and presumably the Federation itself are also part of "the free enterprise system."

The first indication that the Federation does not use money is in STAR TREK IV, and it's not obvious there if Kirk's remark that "They're still using money" is talking about money more broadly or just physical currency, which the Federation may have phased out even if it still uses credit or electronic transfers of monetary value. (Certainly, McCoy's attempt in STAR TREK III to charter a starship indicates that he had some means of paying for passage, since the captain of the ship specifically demands more money upon learning of the intended destination.)

If we accept at face value the assertion of TNG and DS9 that the Federation has genuinely abandoned the use of money, rather than simply going cashless, the most reasonable Watsonian explanation is that this has been a relatively recent development during the 70–80 years between the TOS cast movies and TNG, most likely related to the development of replication technology (which the Federation did not yet have in Kirk's time).

Of course, from a Doylist standpoint, we could chalk up some of this incidental dialogue to the franchise's evolving construction of its own setting, in the same manner as anomalous references to Vulcans as "Vulcanians." Roddenberry and his apologists might also insist that he always meant to depict a socialist utopia, but was prevented by the nattering nabobs of negativity (i.e., the network's BS&P); I'm very skeptical of such claims, but the writers were acutely aware that depicting what Earth is like in Kirk's time would be opening a can of worms, which is why we didn't actually see 23rd century Earth (even briefly) until the movies.

However, the focus on resource extraction and its ramifications is such a load-bearing story element in TOS that the revisionist assertion that the Federation was already a post-scarcity socialist utopia in Kirk's time (as both DISCOVERY and STRANGE NEW WORLDS have attempted to claim) would require really substantial retcons of the original show, perhaps to the extent of insisting that some of those events never took place at all, or happened radically differently than what's in the TOS episodes most STAR TREK fans have seen. For me, anyway, that crosses a line from willing suspension of disbelief to "don't trust your lying eyes," and suggests a frustrating and somewhat disturbing determination to insist that TOS is something much purer and nobler than it is rather than grapple with its actual conceptual flaws and ideological shortcomings.

[bg-brainrot]

Hello, I am writing Astarion fanfic with no signs of stopping 👋

Note: All Astarion x Tav, all written with gender-neutral pronouns and from second-person POV. Will continue to update this! This blog is all BG3 + Astarion

Love at First Knife

Rogue!Tav and Spawn!Astarion

This series is based on my double-rogue playthrough. Tav is an assassin rogue, chaotic neutral, chooses mostly good options but a ton of options just for the laughs or the money. Astarion remains unascended. Everyone shows up sooner or later, though main group includes Karlach and Shadowheart.

The Trap is Set: Two 8 strength rogues get stuck and need to wait for rescue; one of those rogues doesn't like being trapped underground

Failed a Dex Save and Fell for You: the gang plays Truth or Dare and Tav starts to realize their feelings

Healing Threads: Astarion is an expert at embroidery -- Tav finds this out through an injury. They later find out *why* he’s such an expert

The Night They Slept Together: Tav pines, and their relationship with Astarion shifts ever so slightly. (They literally do just sleep) [Tumblr]

One Small Bedroll, Two Confused Hearts: oh no, one bed! But both Astarion and Tav are scared to admit they're catching real feelings

Failed Every Insight Check and Fell all the Harder: Astarion POV, he begins feeling some new feelings. It's only after Moonrise Towers that he can put a name to them. [Tumblr]

Stolen Hearts: Tav "picks" Astarion over Karlach (Tav and Karlach were never really together but oh well, semantics)

NEW! To be Known: Astarion reads a book and wonders what it means to be known. [Tumblr]

A Stolen Moment: Tav and Astarion are on a thief date

The Rogues that Slay Together Stay Together: Tav goes down protecting Astarion, Astarion has never been this worried

A Pair of Penguin Pebblers: Both Astarion and Tav love stealing, they steal through a shopping episode and go on a date afterward

The Smut Peddlers of Sharess' Caress: the group finds smut written about Astarion and Tav [Tumblr]

A Bad Counterfeit: Tav is replaced by a doppelganger and Astarion immediately notices something's wrong, some angst as he comes to term with being a "hero"

Hugs for a Vampire: Rogue!Tav and Astarion's romance as told through hugs [Tumblr Masterlist]

More than Vampiric Charms: After some banter between Jaheira and Astarion goes too far, Rogue!Tav reassures Astarion [Tumblr]

Would You Still Love Me?: Rogue!Tav asks the question everyone wants to know the answer to "would you still love me if I was a worm?" [Tumblr]

Of Bets, Bluffs, and Briefs: The gang plays strip poker, though it seems like not everyone (Astarion) is playing by the rules [Tumblr]

Brawls Fair in Love and War: What starts out as a scuffle turns into a full out tavern brawl for the gang [Tumblr]

Alone in a Crowded Camp: Astarion reflects and realizes that company isn't so bad. [Tumblr]

Their First Winter Together: Astarion and Rogue!Tav enjoy a lot of winter firsts in this fluff-filled extravaganza [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12]

Unraveling Plan Meet Immeasurable Insecurity: Tav tries their damnedest to propose, only to be rebuffed by Astarion at every single turn. [Tumblr]

(smut) The Thousandth Time: Astarion and Rogue!Tav make love for the thousandth time. In a bathtub. [Tumblr]

Random post-game rogue!Tav headcanons

A Star in the Dark

Evil!Dark Urge and Ascended!Astarion

Evil!Dark Urge and Astarion have a tumultuous relationship, make dubious choices, and become a power couple. *This playthrough scares me so I'll update this sporadically hah

(smut) In My Head: Dark Urge has an all new kind of daydream after Astarion approaches them

(smut) A Bloody Sacrament: Astarion licks Dark Urge clean after they bathe in a pool of blood [Tumblr]

Other

Tav x Astarion fics that don't belong to a series

IN PROGRESS When He's all but Forgotten How to Love Again: Elf-Tav reincarnation story, they dream of him in their reverie, and go out to find him once they reach maturity [Tumblr Masterlist]

IN PROGRESS The Consequences of Convenience: Tav enters a marriage of convenience with their unromanced, best friend Astarion-- feelings ensue.

Spicy Astarion Headcanons (both A!A and Spawn!A)

Horny Astarion Headcanons (both A!A and Spawn!A)

If you're looking for some more fics, check out my fic recs here!

If you're wondering which Hozier songs fit which pairings, check them here!

[hermitcrimes]

Xisuma's crimes of episode 13

Theft

Counterfeiting currency

Shoplifting

[mariocki]

Alexandra Bastedo goes toe to toe with Simon Templar (and bonus Philip Madoc as her employer, Alzon), as French nightclub hostess Mireille in The Saint: The Counterfeit Countess (5.20, ITC, 1967).

Bonus bonus: Philip Madoc and his lovely cat Chouchou