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modern-day-bard · 9 months ago

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Other Duties As Assigned: A Joel Miller AU Fanfiction

Content Warning: 18+ This story includes mature themes such as drinking, stalking, violence, and explicit smut. Minors, do not interact.

Chapter 25: Visuals

ao3 | wattpad

word count: 3.6k

Gwen

Twice.

A few minutes later, it’s three times.

I know I’m staring, and he knows it too. In the past few minutes alone, we’ve made eye contact three—well, now four, times. But if I don’t keep it together, everyone else in the room will realize it. Best case scenario, they think I’m disinterested in the budget for the possible expansion to three of our stations on the West Coast. Which would be, I think, completely understandable. Even Julian has stifled a few yawns in the past two hours. Worst case scenario, someone calls me out for eye-fucking my bodyguard in public.

He wore the leather jacket to the office today, my own personal form of torture and he doesn’t even know it. As if I needed any more reasons to have flashbacks all day long.

I don’t think I’ve ever actually enjoyed doing that with a man before. I’ve faked the enthusiasm, given them the doe-eyes, and pretended that there was nothing else I’d rather do. That was the first night in my life that there was literally nothing else I’d rather do. And unlike before, he insisted he take care of me afterwards, and also unlike before, I declined. All I wanted was to make him feel good, to show him that he is deserving of all things positive and pleasurable. Of course it turned me on to see the veins straining in his hands clutching onto the sheets, and to hear him lose his mind from my touch. But the thought of doing anything for myself afterward was somewhere too far away to fathom. As long as Joel enjoyed himself, I did too.

That part I was going to keep to myself for a while. Or at least, far away from Nyah. Or Harper and Landon for that matter. I barely know what I’m feeling, and trying to explain that out loud would just make them more excited before I even know how to handle it. Plus there is the logistical and ethical nightmare of the fact that he is employed by my father, and he is supposed to be protecting me. And he is. He’s just making me feel…a lot while doing so.

“Do we think that’s a realistic timeline?” Carter, one of the junior data analysts, asks Julian. I at least turn my head to feign diligence.

Julian nods slowly, looking through the blueprint in front of him. “It will be tight, but we knew that…” He continues, but I can feel Joel watching me again through the glass. I risk one more glance upward, and the man is smirking at me now. Bastard.

I push my thighs together underneath the table, returning my gaze back to Julian.

One more painful hour later, and we’re done. I was itching to be alone with Joel again, but Julian follows us all the way back to my office, discussing tomorrow’s calendar on the way. When we stop outside my door, I get the urge to ask him. “Do you know what Paul’s schedule is like tomorrow?”

Julian thinks for a moment. “No, but his assistant would be able to answer. Why?”

Because I don’t want to be involved in radio longer than I have to be.

“I had a few questions for him. No biggie. Thanks, Julian.” I give him a smile before walking around to the other side of my desk, and he takes the hint to leave.

Joel hovers by the door.

“Yes, Mr. Miller?” I unbutton my blazer to take a seat, making a show out of crossing my legs.

He smirks at me again, and a rare jolt of nerves runs down my spine as he walks in and closes the door.

“Do you want lunch first, or the bad news first?” He asks.

I sigh. “Bad news, please.”

“Arthur and Janet called during your last meeting. The news is breaking today, probably in just a few hours for online publications. They’re doing a few other celebrity gossip releases at the same time. It will hopefully steer people away from your case.” He watches my face carefully for my reaction, but I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel anymore. Instead, a new thought pops into my head.

“Do you think the publication will…encourage the stalker in any kind of way?”

Joel mulls it over, running a hand down his face the way he always seems to in times of stress. “I don’t think so, but it’s impossible to know. Some of these guys would be scared back into the shadows after a release like that. Others might…”

He pauses for so long that I’m afraid he won’t finish the thought.

“Might what, Joel?”

“They might derive some sort of pleasure from the whole thing. The article mentions that you moved residences, and I think that’s the worst thing they can put in there. I can see some asshole somewhere being pleased with himself that he’s made a large enough impression for you to leave your home.”

“Wouldn’t he just be focused on finding me again?”

“Probably. But it would start with the feeling of success, that you know who he is now, in his eyes.”

“I wish I knew who he was,” I mumble.

“You and I both.” His rigid posture and agitated tone tells me everything I need to know about what might happen to the stalker if Joel ever found him.

My phone buzzes and I look down to see a text from Nyah, only to notice that it’s past five o’clock.

I raise an eyebrow at Joel. “You’re asking about lunch and it's almost dinner time?”

“You never ate lunch,” he eyes an unopened salad container on my desk. “I brought it to you and it was still untouched when we left for the budget meeting. Thought you could use the reminder.”

I glare at him despite the butterflies in my stomach. “You weren't hired to be a detective.”

“I’ve done several things I wasn’t hired to do.” His eyes are playful, his voice low…

I need to keep it together. In this building, at least. In my new apartment building, however…that’s fair game.

My phone buzzes yet again from Nyah.

“Is it the story?” He asks as if he wasn’t just alluding to our incredibly unprofessional escapades.

“No, it’s Nyah.” I pick it up, swiping the messages open. “She’s asking about Paris. I’m assuming it’s sort of out of the question now that the story will break, though.”

I start to type as Joel asks, “Do you want to go?”

Huh.

I hadn’t actually thought about what I wanted. “It sounds fun. Nyah has wanted to work with Andre Bacri for the longest time. It would be great to get the chance to cheer her on…”

“So, let’s go.”

He says it like we were, in fact, just talking about lunch.

“What?” I chuckle a little, but he’s serious.

“Time away from the city wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. Most stalkers like this most likely won’t have the means to follow you across the world. And, I’m no public relations expert, but a couple of pictures of you out and about as if nothing happened might help the press.”

I blanch at him.

“You—the most overprotective man on the planet—think Paris is a good idea?”

A small smile tugs on his lips. “Not overprotective. Just protective,” he lowers his voice, taking another step toward my desk even though the door is still closed. “If I remember correctly, you yourself told me to guard your body.”

I hate how much of an effect this man has on me. My complexion, my breathing, my thoughts... And I hate how much I don’t want it to stop.

“Do you want to go?” He asks again, reveling in my silence.

“Yes, I would like to go.” I straighten up in my chair, determined not to get further distracted by how impossibly broad his shoulders look at this angle.

“Okay. I’ll run it by Janet to make sure it won’t do any harm.”

“Thanks, Joel.” I say it the way I would to anyone else, leaning over to power up my computer. But his name alone is enough for him to linger a moment longer, eyes drifting a little lower than what could be classified as appropriate.

With his hand on the doorknob, he asks, “Anything else I can do for you, Gwen?”

“Not at the moment, no,” My eyes flick over to him with a challenge, “Maybe later tonight. I’ll let you know.”

“I’m at your service.” He doesn’t miss a beat, which only makes me hate him more.

I start emailing Paul’s assistant before Joel has finished closing the door.

I liked Julian and the rest of the team, but I don’t have an interest in the radio part of the company. Ideally, I would be training directly underneath my father. I did for a summer or two, but in light of recent events, that privilege has been revoked. I know that it’s a long-shot for him to allow me to work for either the Russell Foundation or my mother’s foundation, also in light of recent events. Particularly those that are better kept under wraps. But from what I know, I’m wondering if I can use it as leverage. At the very least, if it’s not my mother’s charity, maybe he will be willing to put me under the Russell Foundation.

That’s where Paul comes in. If I can talk Paul into allowing me to work under him as one of the board members for Russell’s Corporation’s philanthropic side, I can bypass my father altogether. I know that he likes basketball and wasn’t able to score season passes this year, and I also know that my father hardly ever uses his box at Madison Square Garden. I just have to hope Paul isn’t above bribery. With this crowd, it's likely that he isn’t.

After checking a few more things off my list, I take another look at my phone to see several missed messages. Skimming through, Harper had someone over last night and she desperately wanted to reenact how bizarre they behaved. She was promising that only in person would do it justice.

I feel my heart clench, remembering that in a matter of hours all of the stalker information will be public knowledge. Public knowledge that my friends weren’t privy of, and will undoubtedly hear about it from a random source instead of their friend. Part of me wants to believe that whatever celebrity gossip Janet and her team are cooking up will bury my information so deep that my friends won’t hear of it. But I’ve been doing too much wishful thinking lately. They need to hear it from me directly, and soon.

- - -

To my surprise, Joel didn’t fight me when I said I wanted to go to Harper’s apartment. I had prepared a small defensive speech about how we can take a winding way home, not that Rodney and him wouldn’t have planned that anyway, but I didn’t need it. All I said was that I think they need to hear it from me, and he agreed. I was even more surprised when we arrived, he did a sweep of the place, and agreed to wait just outside.

All four of our faces were still dumbfounded even after he closed the door.

“How much did you pay him for that?” Landon jokes, taking a seat by Harper’s large bay window.

“I guess it’s pro bono.” I sit on one of the floor cushions across from them. “So, Harper, tell us about last night.” I gesture for Nyah and her to walk over and join us, but Harper shakes her head.

“I have to show you guys what happened in the bedroom. Well, I guess I can start here.” She’s bouncing up on her tiptoes in excitement.

Nyah takes a seat next to me, leaning into my side. Harper starts in the kitchen, saying that her overnight guest took a look through her fridge before running a hand along the wall, looking for…

“Your wifi, maybe?” Landon offers.

“Or maybe she was just admiring your exposed brick?” asks Nyah skeptically.

“I don’t know but it was weird. She wasn’t shy, but she spent all this time in the front of the apartment, looking at my walls and stuff. I mean, thanks to Lands, I’ve got some killer art so—”

“That’s probably why,” they wink.

“Exactly. But, anyway, we’re on the couch and I thought we were going to get to it, but then she starts asking about all my plants.”

“You do have a lot of plants. More since the last time I was here, actually,” I say. Harper’s apartment was absolutely stunning with its eclectic, bohemian charm. Even the beams above us had vines of some sort running through them, so that question, at least, wasn’t that unusual.

“You need plants in an oasis,” she says like it’s a cardinal rule, “But anyway, we’re kissing and stuff but every time I go to do a little more, she pulls away. So, I’m like okay, she’s not into it. That’s fine. But then she gets up and just walks upstairs without saying anything. Turns on all the lights, and I just hear her walking around up there.”

“Maybe that was her way of saying ‘let’s take it to the bedroom.’” Nyah drops her voice to a sultry level for the last part.

“I followed her, obviously. And she was pacing around like she meant business. I would have thought it was coke or something but I’d been with her most of the night.”

“Remember that guy last year who paced before and after sex?” I muse.

“Oh my god, yes! Except this woman, Layla, was pacing in between rooms. At least that guy kept it to one space. She kept commenting on the apartment, which was nice but I was just super confused.”

“So you guys didn’t hook up?” Landon asks.

“No, we did,” Harper grins, “Come on, that’s what I want to show you.”

The three of us exchange a look before following her up the stairs. The next ten minutes is Harper physically acting out last night’s affairs that went from the hallway, to the bedroom, to the shower. Besides the pacing, and what Harper described as staring into each windowsill, the two of them seemed to have a pretty good time.

“And, she left as soon as we were done.”

“Is that weird too?” Nyah watches Harper flop down on the bed.

“I guess not. Usually it’s guys who want to leave right away, sometimes girls do, but I don’t know. She was quite a bit older, so maybe the rules are different. I just thought the pacing and checking and questions were so weird. But I didn’t even get her number so the mystery will remain unsolved.” Harper sits up, slapping her hands on her legs. I take that as our cue to go back downstairs, but Landon puts their hands up.

“Wait. This might be easier to discuss up here.”

I give them a curious look.

“Speaking of good sex…” their eyes land on me. I wait, wondering if I can play it off.

“You and Elijah…?” I circle one hand over the other, thinking that might be where they’re going with it.

“Well, obviously. But I’m talking about you.”

My gut fully drops now.

“Oo! With who?” Harper turns to lay on her stomach, her feet kicking in the air behind her.

“Who do you think? The bodyguard she can never stop complaining about.”

“What?” I gasp, turning whirling on Nyah. “You told them?”

Nyah’s eyes grow wide and she shakes her head, but before she can say anything, Harper and Landon chime in simultaneously.

“Told us what?”

“There’s something to tell?”

Oh shit.

Nyah didn’t say anything. I should have known.

I sigh, sitting down on the edge of Harper’s bed. “I was going to tell you all sooner. And technically, it wasn’t sex, sex. I called Nye the morning after it happened, but there was some other stuff I found out right after, the reason I had to cancel. And everything became too much and—”

“Gwen, it’s okay.” Landon’s voice is careful now. “I was just teasing. Tell us whatever you want to tell us.”

“I really was going to tell you both, it’s just hard to find time away from him. And he probably doesn't want anyone to know. He told me he’s never been with a client before. I can’t imagine it’s usually encouraged.” I laugh lightly and both Nyah and Landon take a seat in front of me.

“If it’s any consolation, I can just always tell when you’ve had sex. It was a lucky guess that it was Joel.” Landon says softly.

“Lucky guess, and the fact that we all know he’s damn good looking,” Harper smiles, nudging my shoulder. “So, what’s the issue?”

I tell them everything. Even though I know it will worry Harper, and for that reason I’m glad I can’t see her face unless I crane my neck. I tell them about the gifts, the messages, the breaking of the windows, the lie about the fumigation and why I switched apartments, the background checks of my team, the fact that they aren’t allowed to know where I’m staying now. I don’t go into all the details about Joel and me, mostly because I’m too embarrassed to admit I asked him to stay. But I tell them that he did stay in my room at home with me, and that he’s been staying in my new room since we moved in. When I’m done, I take a big breath, and finally feel a relief wash over me that I haven’t felt in a long time. Not all my secrets were out, but having a few less on my shoulders was a good start.

We sit in silence for a few minutes before Nyah speaks up.

“When will the story break?”

I shrug. “Probably in the next hour or two if it hasn’t already.”

She grabs my hand and squeezes it. “I’m sorry, Gwen. I knew there were weirdos online but this is a completely different level.”

Harper hugs my shoulders from behind me. “I’m sorry, too.” After a beat she adds, “But I’m also super proud of you for sleeping with Joel.”

All of us burst out into laughter. “What?” I ask, still giggling.

“That’s not what I mean! I mean, I’m proud of you for hooking up with him, sure. But you’re letting him in. Even a little! And I think that’s great.”

I roll my eyes, but I’m still smiling. “Yes, well, we’ll see. It’s not exactly an ethical relationship.”

“You told me he tried telling you that and you kept refuting everything he said.” Nyah raises a brow at me, and I whack her lightly.

“Whatever! He was…we were…It made sense at the time.”

“Are you going to do it again?” Landon asks.

“I don’t know. I don’t know if he’ll want to.”

This time, the three of them are the ones exchanging looks.

“What?”

Landon speaks slowly, delicately. “It’s…the way he looks at you. I get it, all bodyguards have to watch their clients, but—he’s clearly infatuated with you.”

I can feel my heart rate pick up, but I shake my head. “Infatuation doesn’t mean anything.”

“Even if you look at him the same way?” They still say it gently, but it feels like a harsh slap of vulnerability. Like someone had seen the things I conceal even from myself, polished them, and placed them on a table in front of me. I’m not ready to face that reflection just yet.

“I tell you guys I have a stalker and this is what we’re talking about?” I try to laugh it off, and tonight, they let me. They have me go over a few more of the details, and Harper pulls out her phone to go through my comments. The thought of finding someone who writes similar comments to the gift notes is good and all, but there’s too many of them. And the notes were too short to really grasp onto anything.

“What did you do when you thought someone had broken in?” Nyah asks, concern etched on her perfect features.

“I grabbed a bookend and I went out to help Joel.”

“What?” Harper screeches. “You could have been killed!”

“I know, I know. I was just thinking that it could be like four guys against just him and I was picturing him getting hurt, unable to call for help and…” My voice catches slightly on the memory, and I clear my throat as quickly as I can.

Three pairs of shocked eyes are resting on me.

“What?” Unfortunately, my voice still shakes a bit as I ask.

“Like I said,” Landon gives me a small smile, “You look at him the same way.”

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wolf-heart1197 · 4 years ago

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MASS EFFECT DS9 CROSSOVER PLEASE SHARE SOME THOUGHTS

You have. Opened a can of worms, friend.

WELL.

Ok so as far as set up i was picturing like. Wormhole/space magic shenanigans bringing the Normandy to DS9, set somewhere during that little window after Shep and Co. return from the Suicide Mission at the end of 2, but before Shep turns themself in to the Alliance.

The Normandy, badly damaged, limping up to this mysterious space station theyve never seen or heard of before, don't even recognize the outline or architecture, but hey at least they seem to be friendly? And they're offering to help fix our ship and get us back where we need to be so I guess they aren't all bad?

So then Shep and crew are stranded on DS9 for at LEAST a couple weeks while they try to get the Normandy fixed up, and allllll the shenanigans the respective crews get into, especially once they start interacting with each other

-There's the obvious of course, Shepard and Sisko would get along fantastically, I think. Both the leaders of crews of mixed bags, sometimes trying to get them to work together is like herding cats. Strong cats with guns and opinions, but at the end of the day they really are kind of a family, aren't they?

-Both are able to understand what was supposed to be one (relatively) simple mission turning into way more lives at stake than they signed up for (Shep with. Well. The entire events of the trilogy, but then Sisko too. Bring Bajor into the Federation. Thats it, that was the mission, but suddenly we're at war with a frankly stronger superpower from another quadrant and suddenly one station is supposed to be the head of it all? The pressure. The lives at stake if they fail. Yeah.)

As for the rest of the crew:

-The next obvious, I think, would Grunt and Worf. Very different methods and cultures, obviously. I'm not saying they'd necessarily GET ALONG even, but there'd be a mutual respect there, I think. Both coming from warrior races, fighting is in their blood, its what they know. And theyre both outsiders to their own culture, being raised primarily if not exclusively by Someone Else, having to fight for their right to have a place amongst their own people. There's a shared strength in that.

-Mordin and Garak, and their shared past as spies. Garak's penchant for lying with every other word out of his mouth vs Mordin's tendency to only say about half of the words in his sentences, each trying to weasel the truth out of the other. Each at the very least recognizing that theyve done horrible things in their past, but not necessarily having regrets for them. Well, no regrets they're willing to admit to.

-BUT THEN ALSO Mordin and Jadzia, really just. Best Science Bros. Mordin can be extremely focused, which I think might turn Jadzia off of him at first, up until she catches him singing under his breath while he works. And once their discussions start trending more towards the importance of art and culture alongside scientific advancement is when they really start to shine together. Also I think Mordin would be absolutely FASCINATED by the Trill, the symbiotic relationship and the symbiont carrying memories across hosts, how the symbionts and hosts merge, etc. Nothing like that really exists in the ME universe

-Julian and Dr. Chakwas could talk some about medicine, certainly, barring nothing else about the differences in their respective medical technology. But I think ultimately she would get tired of his attitude, and he would decide she didn't really have anything new to teach him.

-Julian, I think, would be much more interested in spending time with EDI and Legion. I mean, consider how he was in the one TNG episode, when he got to meet Data? He would be over the moon especially for a chance to study legion. The Geth Collective is genuinely an interesting idea, and I think he would be fascinated by the varrying levels of simulated intelligence, but without individuality. EDI would be an interesting study, because this would be before she got the mech body, so she would still for all intents and purposes "be" the Normandy. A ship as a living entity? With emotional attachment to the crew inside? Absolutely fascinating. And if it were a bit alter on that this happens? She has wants! And fears! Absolutely fascinating!

-Dr. Chakwas, on the other hand, would probably end up spending her time with Keiko O'Brien. Swapping stories about their times being forced to be on the relative sidelines, having to watch all the horrible things their loved ones are constantly dealing with and only being able to do so much. Keiko's exasperation with Miles and Chakwas' with Joker. (And Shepard). Plus really i just like to imagine them having tea together ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

-Kira Thane and Mordin I can picture spending hours upon hours deep in discussion, about ethics and morality and religion, and how the hell you're supposed to reconcile it all when you have so much darkness in your past.

-Kira and Thane, especially, have a lot to talk about. Kira fighting in the resistance her whole life vs Thane being raised as a living weapon, both deeply spiritual and refusing to believe that their respective peaces are denied to them, that they can still find their own redemption and make up for their pasts.

-Joker would spend a lot of time trying to avoid Julian, who I think would be very insistent on wanting to study his Vrolik's syndrome, and possibly trying to cure it. Joker really Does Not Like Him.

-Tali would inevitably spend a lot of time together with Miles, because assumedly they'd be working on fixing the Normandy together (when Miles isnt busy trying to fix one of DS9's 50 million other problems). I don't know that they'd honestly have much in common aside from engineering-related stuff, but they're both geniuses in their respective versions of their fields and comparing the 2 universe's technologies alone could take more discussion time than they would have.

-I don't think Jack would. Actually try to get along with anyone. I see her spending the vast majority if her time camping out in a holosuite trying to program it to let her kill simulations of everyone she's pissed at.

-Miranda and Julian. The two genetically engineered kids. Yeah there'd be a lot to talk about there. Parent drama? Feeling like you have something to prove?? Trying to find the "you" underneath the genetic tampering??? Yeah they'd get along.

-Ok hear me out on this but. I really think Garrus and Garak would end up having a lot in common. I mean, think about it: Cardassian military/goverment/cultural structure compared to the Turians? Love of state above all else, everything is for the State (but then family above even that). And on a more personal level? Getting into a profession, a LIFE, to impress your father and then it still isn't good enough, nothing will ever be good enough, so you keep trying and going to more and more extremes to be good enough and still nothing matters. And you haven't given up on your people, no, never, but they sure have seemed to give up on you, in a way, haven't they? Exiled (Garak), ignored at every turn (Garrus), but hey, here's this one human at least that'll listen to you, and maybe even help you where others won't, so maybe things aren't all bad? Garak lies through his teeth at every turn, Garrus knows this, but he knows where to pick up the specs of truth, too.

-Jacob, bless his soul, gets roped into "babysitting" Jake and Nog. Jake distracts him by taking advantage of his chill exterior, just long enough for Nog to set off chaos halfway across the station. Cue montage of Jacob chasing the boys up and down the Promenade.

...that's all I got I am. Definitely willing to discuss more/get add-ons to this/hear other people's ideas!!!

Man this got long ajxhahavxhs

#mass effect #star trek #star trek ds9 #ive been thinking about this since like. november #mass effect is my favorite vg series and i love ds9 w my entire soul so #plus mass effect seems to have taken a lot of inspiration from star trek in interesting ways which. isnt surprising #long post #wolfie gets an ask

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firelord-frowny · 5 years ago

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The more I watch Star Trek, the more I do not understand why my dad is such a mean, compassionless, socially inept piece of garbage.

I’ve only watched The Next Generation and a huge majority of Deep Space Nine (I’ve got about half of the last season left) but it often seems like the entire point, or at least a huge point of the show, is to explore different kinds of people and different points of view without judgment. Even characters with enough authority to be able to order everyone around unchallenged don’t abuse their power - they give orders with good reason, and unless the situation is urgent, they’re often willing to justify their decisions if someone raises concern with them.

Captain Sisko is the kindest, most compassionate father I’ve ever seen in any medium of storytelling. He’s strong and decisive and unwavering, but he’ll also kiss his son on the forehead. He’s brave and exhibits many ‘manly’ traits, but he also bothers to be close and affectionate with his son.

Picard isn’t exactly a warm, snuggly fella, but he’s also definitely not an asshole. He may not always be comfortable with the kind of closeness that many folks appreciate from their loved ones, but he’s sure to show his appreciation in other ways. He’s firm and authoritative without being cruel... he values other points of view, and doesn’t seek to make others feel stupid for seeing things different than him...

Dr. Julian Bashir is a genetically altered super-human who’s just generally smarter and faster and more skilled than ‘normal’ people. A person like my dad would use their intellect to try to make others feel inferior. A person like Dr. Julian Bashir has no interest in making people feel like shit. He wants healthy friendships. He’s fully capable of asserting himself as Better Than Everyone, but why the hell would he do that to people he loves??

I’ve known many a self-satisfied-dudebro to hail Data as the shining beacon of Logic And Reason. They’ll gush over how much they, with their willful and proud ineptitude, “relate” to data. Yet they don’t see, right in front of their own faces, how Data still works hard to abide by social norms he doesn’t understand, just because he knows it makes the people who care about him feel comfortable and happy. He knows that people don’t appreciate bad news delivered bluntly. So he makes an effort to be gentle. If someone seems to feel hurt or offended by something he’s said or done, he seeks to understand what he did, and what he should have done instead, so he won’t hurt that person again. What he definitely does NOT do is stomp his feet on the ground and bitch about how he’s not the one who was wrong, or now it’s not his fault that someone chose to be offended, or that it’s the other person’s fault for being illogical, and that if only everyone else where as intelligent and logical as him, then there’d be no problem.

Why? Because even a fucking android, apparently, can understand and appreciate the value and purpose of people’s emotions, and why it’s important to respect them, even if they can’t fully grasp what emotions even are. He recognizes that his inability to easily factor the role of emotion into his opinions and decisions is a handicap, not an advantage. Precisely because he’s so logic-driven and fact-driven, he understands that neglecting to consider the role of emotion when interacting with others is inherently illogical. He doesn’t go around praising himself for refusing to respect people’s feelings.

And I just?????

Do not understand how a person who claims to love and understand this show and all its characters so much can, at the same time, choose to be such a fucking monster. Didn’t you learn ANYTHING?? Do you even NOTICE that you have way more in common with Dukat and Q and the Pah Wraiths and Lore than you do with Picard or Sisko or Data?

I don’t get it. I don’t get it. I don’t get it.

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strings-have-been-cut · 5 years ago

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(Part of me kind of wishes they had Dr. Pulaski on DS9 or Voyager so they could try and make her more of a decent person, since otherwise, you'd have to scour for side-media like books to see what happened to her given TNG never gave her a send off, problem is, besides not many people liking her, the idea of redeeming her isn't an easy thing to do, especially when having her in DS9 or Voyager as regular would have come at the cost of Julian Bashir and The Doctor, who were good characters.)

//ooc;;

I agree, Anon! I remember really disliking her the first time I watched through TNG. This time through, I kind of thought she was cool. She's obviously a competent doctor, and using her as a foil for Data was interesting. She embodies the misunderstanding that Starfleet has for synthetic lifeforma, but it affords Data the opportunity to recognize his desire to correct her/explain things to her. I don't like the idea of directly dismissing Data's existence, but I love that he uses the occasions to realize 'It's appropriate for me to educate her now'. I also love that it affords others (like Deanna) to stand up for him, showing that there are people that definitely consider synths valid, albeit a small percentage.

Even though it's an 'idyllic' future, Data has only been activated for about seven years when he is assigned to the Enterprise. That's a quick time for the whole world to accept a new type of lifeform. The struggle with Starfleet is expressed numerous times when Data talks about his negative experiences at the Academy and Bruce Maddox's refusal to allow him to enroll.

What I do appreciate about Pulaski is that she was willing to change her mind. She's older, in the medical field, has never been exposed to a synthetic lifeform, and classically this is a recipe to be set in her ways. She does try, but it's not just a flipped switch. It really speaks to the writers and to Data's character that the audience was so quick to turn on her.

I would like to believe she became an advocate for synths later in her career. Seeing her interact with the EMH would have been interesting for sure.

Sorry for the babbling, but thanks for the ask!

#anon ask #ooc #about data ish

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primatechnosynthpop · 6 years ago

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tng and ds9

For TNG:

my all-time ultimate fave character: Hmm... probably Data, although I also really like Dr. Crusher

a character I didn’t used to like but now do: Much like you, I’ve never exactly disliked any tng characters, but I didn’t really appreciate Tasha or Geordi enough when I first watched the show

a character I used to like but now don’t: None, really--I still quite like basically all the characters

a character I’m indifferent about: I know he’s only a minor character in tng but... Miles, I guess

a character who deserved better: Tasha, obviously!

a ship I’ve never been able to get into: Nothing is really springing to mind? I’m the kind of person who’ll ship almost anything within reason, and just about every tng ship I’ve seen posited I’ve thought “yeah, I could get into that”

a ship I’ve never been able to get over: idk, man, it’s been such a while since I’ve watched much tng that I’m just not as invested in it as I was back in the day. Daforge is really good, of course, and so is Qcard--although I remember being a hardcore Picard/Crusher shipper back when I first watched the show

a cute, low-key ship: Tasha/Troi is really cute! Sure it’s technically a tragic pairing if you acknowledge Tasha’s canonical fate but who here is gonna acknowledge such a thing? Certainly not I!

an unpopular ship but I still enjoyed it: I thought Troi and Worf were cute while they lasted, arguably a better couple than Troi and Riker but that’s just a matter of personal opinion

a ship that was totally wrong and never should have happened: I would say Crusher and the candle ghost, but that’s provided so many choice memes that I can’t imagine a world without it

my favourite storyline/moment: I really like all the episodes with Q, and the ones with Geordi and Data’s holodeck adventures

a storyline that never should have been written: Quite a few of them tbh, especially that one season one episode featuring an alien culture that was just blatantly based on racist stereotypes???

my first thoughts on the show: Huh? What’s this thing my parents are watching on Netflix? Ohh, a space show! How cool!

my thoughts now: Perhaps slightly overrated as far as trek series go, but still pretty good (except for the occasions on which it was, in fact, not good at all)

For DS9:

my all-time ultimate fave character: It’s probably a tie between Dax (both Jadzia and Ezri) and Kira. And Sisko. And Julian. And... okay, I absolutely cannot pick a favourite!

a character I didn’t used to like but now do: I mean, I only watched DS9 for the first time a couple years ago, so my opinions haven’t had all that long to change... I like them all about the same amount I always have

a character I used to like but now don’t: I think I like Odo slightly less than I initially did since some folks on here have pointed out how absolutely whack his character arcs (read: notable character regression!) were

a character I’m indifferent about: Miles again, and also Worf

a character who deserved better: Ziyal and Jadzia, ofc

a ship I’ve never been able to get into: Every canon relationship Kira was in

a ship I’ve never been able to get over: Quodo!!! Obviously!! Like even back when I was first watching the show and quodo was a way less popular ship than it is now I saw a few of their interactions and was like “yeah these guys should smooch”.

a cute, low-key ship: Rom/Leeta is very sweet... Nohjay is cute also!

an unpopular ship but I still enjoyed it: Mayhaps this is cringe of me but. Miles/Julian

a ship that was totally wrong and never should have happened: I don’t really dig Odo/Kira, and of course the whole Dukat/Winn thing towards the end was kinda nasty but that one was nasty on purpose so I can’t really fault the writers for that

my favourite storyline/moment: Gosh, so many... I love love love the scene at the end of “Body Parts” where Quark realizes that he has actual friends who genuinely care about him and will support him!! And I also love “In The Cards” and “Take Me Out to the Holo-suite”. Love to see folks having a good time!

a storyline that never should have been written: Is it cheating if I say Kira/Odo again? Other than that, Jadzia dying the way she did was an awful way to put an end to such a terrific character. If she had to die, it should have been a noble act of self-sacrifice or something, not just getting zapped by the lizard man

my first thoughts on the show: Hrmm I dunno about this one... I’ve heard that it’s not as exciting as the oth--Oh shit it’s actually really amazing and I love it!!

my thoughts now: Arguably the best trek show, even though it definitely had its own slew of issues. 9/10 would watch again

#thanks for the ask and sorry it took so long to get around to answering!#theweefreewomen #asks #star trek #tng #ds9

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armada-of-ships-against-antis · 6 years ago

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Gush about some of your favorite ships please

Sorry for the long wait, but I think I might be ready for this now. (and before anybody wonders, of course it is in the middle of the night and I should go to bed now! Cause it’s the best time to gush over your ships!)

Okay lets begin with Spirk - man I was raised being a Trekkie and to be honest I never saw the great appeal of Kirk, cause my fucking younger than 10 year old heart already belonged to that vulcan! And I bailed my eyes out when he died! But after Kirk and the crew did everything to bring him back, I was like: Okay Kirk is a good one, okay! Nobody will ever be able to seperate them, only over my dead body. Back then it was more about the friendship but I’ll be dammned if I didn’t become a Spirk shipper some 10 years later when rewatching it. But why stop there, get Bones into the fun, too! Try to provoke that human side of Spock, trigger some unlogical feelings, try to beat him in 3d chess!

Okay bear with me there are three other Star Trek ships I wanna gush about! I pretty much watched the series in the order they came out, so next was TNG that I saw, and although I loved data to every bit and byte of his android being, I was at a loss for a love interest for him. Okay there is always Geordie I guess or Picard, but TNG never hold a deep appeal for me in that field. So on to DS9. When I saw it as a kid, is was boring shit with all that politics and religion. I was around 18 when I rewatched and then in only the fourth episode I became suddenly aware of how motherfucking much Garak flirted with Julian Bashir! And I fell so deeply in love for their weird dynamic of a young and easily impressible human doctor with a mysterious cardassian spy tailor. I ran around showing scenes with them to people who were not shippers and they agreed, that there was tension. And right there was my first time finding background informations about my ship. It was there! I didn’t just interpret too much! Andrew Robinson, the actor said himself he thought of Elim Garak as an omnisexual character who had a certain interest in Julian. It was absolutely mindblowing to me (also I started to google what omnisexual meant and found about pansexuality, so this is kinda part of finding my own identity, thanks to the closeted representation of a queer alien in sci-fi show from the 90s)

Okay two more and I’m done with Star Trek. But both are from Voyager. Throughout the series I loved the chemistry between Janeway and Chakotay. The slightly forbidden, the pressure, the loneliness of being captain of a ship so far away she probably would never see her husband again. Tragic shit and so perfect set up. And then came Seven of Nine and manged to shake things up. Suddenly I was a multi shipper, because I couldn’t decide if she or Chakotay should be with Kathryn. The one was loving, supporting and the other was awkward, learning new things about finding humanity again. One was frowned upon because of their ranks and the other because Seven was still more borg than human in how she behaved. So pretty cold, while also confused a ton of times and Janeway ALWAYS had the time and nerves to explain it to her. Just like the doctor (who speaking between us is also a solid shipping option for Seven!)

Damn I tricked you by forgetting myself, that I did develop a shipping crush on Q x Picard. Damn have you ever seen those two interacting. The cockiness in the room, the mocking tone, the resistance. Have you seen those scenes you could perfectly take out of context and already have a “morning after sex” scenario?

Good now let’s take a deep breath and come to the Harry Potter fandom. Or in my case Severus Snape’s playground to be shipped to literally everybody! If it had Snape in it, I would read Everything during that time. Snarry was my most favourite, followed by Snape x Lucius, Remus, Sirius. But I also was looking into x Hermione, Draco, Lily, James, McGonagall, Dumbledore, Ron, Neville (Oh what a small and angsty ship), Bellatrix, Voldemort, Narcissa, Tonks, hell I even read one with Hagrid! (Okay I admit I didn’t enjoy that). Snape was my shipping bitch. Beside that I was of course loving Sirius x Remus.

Okay we move a tiny bit backwards in my life timeline, because before I started to excessively ship my ship bitch with everybody that was breathing, I had a rare ship in Final Fantasy (VII to be more precisely). Hojo x Vincent. You know just your ordinary crazy, mentally instable old (as in probably 60 years old) mad scientist having his way with a young agent from a special task force who canonly had a love interest in his wife… yeah. You know the totally normal stuff you ship every day! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I mean I also had the regular Cloud x Sephiroth, Cid x Vincent, Cloud x Tifa, Tifa x Aeris, Reno x Rude or Rufus and so on, but hell yeah I wrote one of my longest fanfictions with most of my OCs for Hojo and Vincent and someone commented on it. That person became my fucking best friend for now over 13 years who went with me through so much shit but is still my shipping partner in crime till now.

Together we discovered the movie Megamind and watched it more than 10 times in one week! We were so instantly on board with Megamind x Roxanne that it nearly hurt. And when we started an rpg, we shipped the fuck out of them, gave Minion a mermaid to love and that was the most perfect and sweet shit. They are just adorable! He’s such a goofball, sick with love only hold back because of his supervillain image.

I also met my second girlfriend via fanfiction comment. I had written a smut one shot about Tarrant Hightopp, the mad Hatter with ‘his’ Alice. That was also the first one I attempted to translate into English. When we met for the first time, we also watched Alice in Wonderland around 10 times together and we were in love with the lovely dynamic. We were frustrated when we found out, there was even a kiss in the script that never made it to the fucking screen! It was outrageous! I started to learn how to write a scottish accent and strew in some scottish words in our rpg to make it more authentic.

(And after that I managed to pull her into the pit of the Harry Potter fandom, hell I even pulled her into the pit of shipping mlm which she didn’t like until Snupin. But our main ship was suddenly Snape with her OC and we wrote a lot. Like between 2-8k word for one single post in our rpg! In the end we had enough to fill two books. We did even cosplay as them.)

Let’s get back to the Final Fantasy fandom a bit and let me gush over the other ships I had over the years. I’m still a huge Squall x Quistis shipper from part 8 and Laguna x Kiros! I also have an eye on Cifer x Fu-Jin (hah one eye, cause she has a an eyepatch, urgh I know that was a bad joke). And while I started as a big Auron x Tidus shipper, it shifted more to Auron x Rikku. I shipped them when I was about 15 (her age) and I thought I wasn’t allowed to do that, so I made a whole fucking AU where she was older and it developed into a totally original story of my own, which I have never ever written down even one page). With X-2 I satisfied myself with Paine x Rikku, they were such cute opposites of each other, I couldn’t resist! Only some years ago I played FF 15 and damn it was a shipping paradise again for me. Like all of the four protagonists are a match for each other! And then Ardyn appeared and made me weak in the knees. So Ardyn x Noctis but also just because those the truly most favorite characters: Ardyn x Ignis. Not exactly the fluffy happy stuff, I can tell you that. Manipulation, angst, abuse it had it all.

I can’t talk about Final Fantasy and leave Kingdom Hearts out, so yeah I started as a typical Sora x Riku (not Rikku from FF 10) fangirl and with part 2 I also feel for Axel x Roxas. I know, I know but at least with Organisation 13 you had a whole bunch of shippable characters. Just make one or two of them your shipping bitch, in my case Xemnas and Xigbar and ship the shit out those guys with everybody you can think of in the organisation.

And when we are already talking about Kingdom Hearts, I just jump into Disney a bit. Like every girls dream was to find their prince, ect and I was like: yeah Mulan and Shan Yu seem to fit nicely… Frollo is a fucking ass creep, but damn that scene in the cathedral when he sniffs Esmeraldas hair… Jasemine you look good in that red slave outfit for Jafar to be honest and dear Adam, you should have stayed a beast for Belle. Happy ruining your childhood. You’re welcome. :D Not that I shiped those during seeing those movies the first time, but you know I rewatch stuff!

Good okay let’s check the watch… good 1 hour later…. I’m not gonna finish this any time soon…. I’m sorry. I just tried to make a list of ships that seem important to me and I would probably write another hour or two. I just hope this satisfies you for the moment ;)

If you or anybody else wants to hear about more video game, movies or series ships and me writing an essay about that shit… feel free to ask I guess LMAO

Good Night dear people (or maybe not I see 15 messages on my dash)

#ask me #armada #too many fucking fandoms to tag!!

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smilesandexits · 7 years ago

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while we’re on the subject of autistic coding in star trek i say 16 hours later

y’know, i said that what really matters is how respectful the rep is, more than the whole thing where there are more nonhuman autistic coded characters than human ones, but i didn’t really say what that meant.

so, let’s step away from Star Trek for a second (shocking, I know) and look at 2 popular autistic coded characters from popular shows.

Reid from Criminal Minds, and Sheldon from TBBT.

Both are very stereotypical - child prodigy, white cis boy, socially inept, etc... What makes me like Reid and hate Sheldon is respect.

Reid is treated as an equal by his team, other than the occasional “Reid you’re basically a baby (he’s the youngest of the main team) we need to protect you”. When strangers view him as ‘other’ his friends may agree to an extent, but when strangers view him as lesser they’re going to fight for him.

In TBBT, Sheldon’s autistic coding is another joke. It’s something that always is followed by their laugh track, something the other characters mess with for fun. It’s viewed literally as a joke by the characters and by the creators and viewers.

Now, take a look at Star Trek. I’m just going to talk about some of my favorites and why their coding is respectful.

A few things: I’ll probably be referring to these characters as being autistic in these paragraphs, because with the coding I’m basically speaking assuming they are for the purposes of this. I also use “person” to mean any sentient humanoid.

Spock. He’s mostly viewed as an equal (as a person) and never doubted as a superior officer. In his case, part of what makes him so good for his position is specifically the autistic coding. He and Jim work together well - Jim is impulsive and willing to risk anything if he thinks he can help someone. In fact, a lot of people have picked up on a lot of ADHD traits. Spock balances him out, and his deliberate thinking keeps Jim’s impulses in check. He is respected as a person and as an officer, as well as a character.

Data. Data is one of my favorites because of the growth through the series, both him as a person and the way others view his personhood. TNG is great with not only the concept of infinite diversity in infinite combinations, but also with showing the struggles in a realistic way. Data often has to argue to prove his personhood, and always strives to be more human. The thing with this is that it’s something that autistics (and all ND and disabled people) have to do all the time, and it was nice to see it. It was nice to see that fight represented, and it was nice to see the outcome that we all hope for. Data was never quite seen as the same as the human crew, but he was valued as a person and a friend, and was at least viewed as just as much a person as all the biological crew.

Barclay. He’s a complete mess in TNG, he’s autistic coded and has horrible unmanaged anxiety, and not knowing he’s autistic basically means that it’s really easy to get in an anxiety spiral. I have seen some people be disappointed with how little growth he had, but when I watched Voyager I was so happy. He starts taking care of himself more, starts standing up for himself. Barclay reminds myself a lot of me, before and after discovering I’m autistic, before and after trying to take care of myself more. In Voyager, he’s a successful officer. He’s clearly not NT, but he’s clearly become more accepting of his own neurotype and the differences in how he needs to treat himself.

Julian is my ultimate favorite. He’s also canonically developmentally disabled. Unnamed disability, but the episode Doctor Bashir, I Presume is very dear to my autistic lil heart. I will be getting spoiler-y here I’ll put another bold bit where it ends so you can skip it if you want but it’s something that doesn’t ruin anything. In the episode, we meet Julian’s parents, and he’s been very resistant to them coming to DS9. As we see them interacting, it becomes more and more clear that Julian has a secret. Something he doesn’t want anyone to know. Something he can’t let anyone know. It turns out that this secret is that his parents had him genetically enhanced as a child, which means he legally cannot be a Starfleet officer. It was also revealed why his parents had him genetically enhanced - because he was disabled. It wasn’t the words they used, but he was way behind. And one interaction with his parents is part of what makes me love him so much: JULIAN: No, you don't understand. I stopped calling myself Jules when I was fifteen and I'd found out what you'd done to me. I'm Julian. RICHARD: What difference does that make? JULIAN: It makes every difference, because I'm different! Can't you see that? Jules Bashir died in that hospital because you couldn't live with the shame of having a son who didn't measure up! I. Love. Julian. Bashir. okay I’m done with the spoilery stuff sorry that was basically the whole thing, I just really love that episode

The Doctor. Much like Data, he is inorganic. In this case, he’s the EMH -Emergency Medical Hologram. Starting at the beginning of the show, he becomes the ship’s doctor and runs almost continuously for years. At first, even he would agree that he’s not a person. That if his program was destroyed it would be a loss for the ship, but it wouldn’t otherwise matter. But as his program grew, changed, updated, and as he reprogrammed parts, he became more than the sum of his code. The autistic coding is basically an updated Data, but a hologram instead of an android.

This post is honestly longer than I expected already so I’m gonna stop with the characters.

There are a few things that every one of these has in common: While they may be teased and occasionally made fun of, it is nearly always in a friendly way (with the exception of Barclay in TNG. Wesley you lil shit.) They always have somebody who stands up for them when they need it (Spock has Jim and most of the crew, Data has Geordi even from the beginning, Barclay has Deanna, Julian has all the Starfleet officers on DS9 backing him up when things get hairy, the doctor has various people, starting mostly with Kes, but eventually has the entire ship viewing him as a person). They aren’t seen as useless because of their autistic traits, and their autistic traits aren’t seen as only okay because they’re useful.

They’re full, developed characters. When they accidentally hurt someone they attempt to put things right. They have friendships, though often unusual ones (which fits with being autistic very well). They’re real characters. Real people.

#star trek #st #i know its long i love star trek and i love autistic coded characters

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decepti-geek · 3 years ago

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Ngl though, I don't know how exactly to explain this, but... I feel like this particular take is in extremely good faith that the writers potentially don't deserve? Which makes it more of an interpretation, imo, rather than empirical characterisation - at least, because it's taking place in the realm of transformative fandom, not academia, I feel like that's what it is.

Like, I'm not sure I can see fic writers as just responding to their personal experiences, reflected through Julian, when I can easily see how, specifically, they might be seeing a different message coming through in the actual text of the show, and that's what they're rejecting in having him cut off his parents. Which I think is still pretty valid. Cause, I mean, ds9 was written in the 90s. The idea of 'it is Very Hard for parents to have a disabled kid and their kids should realise that' was a mindset I saw proliferating in the mainstream up until the early 2010s. I don't exactly think it's... projecting, to see Julian interacting with his parents the way he does, and to think that the episode might have originally been written under an assumption that the main responsibility is on kids to understand and forgive their parents, rather than a conscious intention to portray a nuanced parent-child relationship (especially considering that Star Trek has a bit of a history of defaulting to that particular beat in its storytelling around families. like, eg the Odo-Mora storyline has echoes of the same thing, and although I've not watched TNG I've definitely read people expressing similar frustrations about Data?). And I don't think it's wrong to respond to it on that basis, rather than an in-universe interpretation.

Especially considering that in general, a given number of people participating in ds9 fandom are gonna be like. kids. (well, teenagers). I think that kind of stuff is potentially really helpful to explore through writing and fic, and yeah it's not gonna be as complex, but again, I disagree with you in thinking that it needs to be - especially in circumstances like that, and in general when you factor in that people of all skill levels write fic, and not all of them are interested in producing the most complex and literary work, and them not doing so isn't really anything to do with anyone else. Like, a trend in one sense is an average skill level of various individuals in another, yknow?

Also, I'm... honestly not sure how much it's possible to argue that Julian having the complex relationship with his parents is the only right interpretation when people are gonna potentially be like, picking up on possible messaging coming through in a meta/contextual sense, and wanting to engage with that, as much as wanting to create a cohesive, contained reading of his character. Like, fanfic has never been just one thing, and that includes it not just being about self-contained readings that only factor in the text. Getting the characterisation 'right' is really only one thing that *can* be done with fic, and I personally don't think it's like, the be-all and end-all, especially if a writer has a different focus in mind.

This might just be like, doylist Vs watsonian reading in so many words, idk. But even then - I don't think one is necessarily more valid or important than the other, and to me that includes if people have things other than characterisation as their primary focus. Like, fandom isn't actually an academic space, so people will have developed all different kinds of, levels of, -ly motivated frameworks, that they're gonna apply when creating fic ideas.

I really am not like this most of the time, but my Everyone Is Wrong About Them character analysis is Julian and his relationship with his parents.

People like to make their relationship incredibly simple when it seems somewhat obvious to me that their relationship is intensely complicated. Anyway! Let's look at the receipts.

RICHARD: Oh, so now we're not taking it seriously. We're not as bright as he is. We don't have your gifted intellect so we can't see the perfectly obvious. BASHIR: This is exactly why I haven't been home in three years. AMSHA: Jules, please.

Julian tells us, in this episode, that he hasn't been home to visit in three years. He tells us this in Season 5, which means that at some point in Season 2, Julian went to Earth to visit his parents. They are not estranged, and it is not true that they haven't spoken since he went to DS9. In fact, they were still in close enough contact for him to go all the way to Earth, a long trip, just to see them. Of course, it went wrong- but they do speak to each other. People often use his awkwardness in Homefront to suggest that they're not speaking, but it seems somewhat obvious to me that he wouldn't want Sisko or Odo to meet his parents because it would immediately show how different from them he is.

AMSHA: No, this is important. You can condemn us for what we did. You can say it's illegal or immoral or whatever you want to say, but you have to understand that we didn't do it because we were ashamed, but because you were our son and we loved you. (Bashir and Amsha hug.)

This is after they've already found out that they've outed him. He still cares about them, and specifically her, enough to hug her and comfort her.

BASHIR: Well, I want no part of it. I'm not going to just stand by while my father-- RICHARD: Jules. Julian. Listen to me. This is my decision. I'm the one who took you to Adigeon Prime. I'm the one who should take responsibility for it. AMSHA: Let him do this, Julian. BASHIR: Two years? Isn't that a bit harsh?

Again, this further complicates their relationship because while Julian DOES want his father to take responsibility, he doesn't want him to suffer. He's protective of them, there is an intimacy that exists between them because for the majority of his life they were all reliant on each other keeping a huge secret from everyone. For many years, his parents were the only people he can be honest with.

And, as Julian keeps saying in the episode, part of why he's keeping the secret so tightly is to protect them. He's worried about his commission but he's ALSO worried about their punishment and I think that adds to his emotional complexity with them. He wants them punished, he wants them to take responsibility- but he also doesn't want them to suffer.

RICHARD: I guess I'll see you in a couple of years. BASHIR: I'm sure they have visiting hours at your facility. Maybe I could RICHARD: That would be most welcome.

Does that sound like the line of someone who plans to never speak to his father again? No. I think Julian views his parents with a type of constant agony- where it is painful and confusing and hard every single day, and yet, he doesn't cut them out. I understand that people want it to be easy- Julian just cuts them off! But it's not. It's especially complicated because the worst thing they ever did to him was years ago, and there is no way to undo it. And then his father went to prison for him, because he loves him. How do you reconcile those things? I don't think Julian can.

Even MORE to the point though- like, if you write him cutting his parents out of his life entirely you are actually just mischaracterizing him. I think there is a reason why so many first-generation kids relate so hard to Julian (I'm not the first person to point this out and I won't be the last- but i'm not going to get into that can of worms now).

I know I’ve literally written an entire fic on this subject before but it still Irritates me.

#ds9 #Julian Bashir

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padawanchesha · 4 years ago

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Star Trek tag game! Thank you @rikerxworf for tagging me!! (they tagged my main acc cheshagirl but im posting here)

1. An episode/movie that you liked that is “critically acclaimed”

Idk if these are “critically acclaimed” but episodes like Tapestry, Darmok, and Frame of mind are some of my favorite episodes that come to mind! I also really love any Data heavy episode because i get super emotional watching them

2. An episode/movie you liked that isn't “critically acclaimed” but you think should be

I think “offspring” and “ship in a bottle” are very cool episodes that i adore just for the plot line and how well those are written. “Disaster” is also a good episode! i love keiko and worf’s interaction and how well picard handles the children, all in all the episode manages to pair together characters that spend most of their screen time apart and i think its cute/very cool to see how they work together to solve problems with different skill sets.

3. Your comfort movie/episode

Truthfully i haven’t watched any movies yet (i’m relatively new to the fandom) and any episode that is very riker heavy is usually an instant favorite. the only two i cant watch fully are “a matter of perspective” (terrible writing) and “outcast” (hits to close to home). data’s sherlock episodes are also incredibly fun to watch, especially considering data gets to have fun and act like a detective.

4. Your favorite episode/movie to watch for a laugh

The episodes of DS9 where people shit on Quark are always fun, but that one episode “julian bashir, secret agent” always makes me laugh because its so over the top and miles looks fucking hilarious with an eye patch + that moment where sisko has that very abrupt laugh. i get it, its supposed to still be “serious” cus their lives are on the line but its obviously still so dramatic because its set in an american spy story

5. Favorite episode/movie to watch for the feels

“offspring” and “family” and “sarek”. patrick stewart delivers some amazing fucking acting that physically pains me to watch and offspring was the first episode i truly cried at.

i dont really have anyone to tag but if you wanna do this feel free to say i tagged you!

#star trek #ive watched nearly all of tng and i need to catch up on ds9 episodes my roommate watched without me #metro trek time

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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Godzilla vs. Kong: Inside the Monster Fight of the Century

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

By now you’ve probably seen the Godzilla vs. Kong trailer. You know, the one where a giant ape not only punches a giant lizard in the face (and does what almost looks like the Henry Cavill arm-cocking maneuver) suggesting there’s a new contender for the title of “King of the Monsters.” Audiences will find out who wins when the film drops on HBO Max and in theaters on Mar. 26, 2021, but in a 2019 visit to the Australian production, Den of Geek learned there is more to the movie than a mere clash of Titans.

Instead, executive producer Alex Garcia teases a film about the duality of the “primordial and the technological” elements that pervade the film narratively and aesthetically. Of course there will be throwdowns between two marquee monsters — and possibly a mechanized one — who might just have some history together.

The Monsterverse Main Event

The screams are noticeable on the Godzilla vs. Kong production in Gold Coast, Queensland. Rather than emanating from victims of a monster rampage, it’s the sound of roller coaster passengers at the Warner Bros. Movie World right next door. But there be monsters in the Village Roadshow Studio offices. In a conference room filled with journalists, the walls are adorned with concept art of creatures, including the titular prizefighters duking it out.

“This is obviously the title event in our MonsterVerse series,” says Garcia. Directed by Adam Wingard (Blair Witch; You’re Next) for Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros., and starring Alexander Skarsgård and Millie Bobby Brown (reprising her role of Madison Russell from Godzilla: King of Monsters), Garcia says the upcoming movie has even more scope beyond the “central bout” of Godzilla and Kong.

In a separate interview with Wingard, conducted via Zoom this February, the director — who watched every single Godzilla movie as preparation — described the film as an exploration of monsters past and future, with two concurrent storylines organized into Team Godzilla and Team Kong.

Setting the Stage

Set roughly five years after the events of Godzilla: King of the Monsters, the world is changed. The genie is out of the bottle, and mankind knows monsters exist. Life goes on, despite it being an uneasy existence. But the balance that existed before 2014’s Godzilla is re-established. Godzilla himself has been reinstated as the alpha predator, and the other monsters, aka “Titans,” have remained largely dormant.

“There are creatures who are on the surface,” says Garcia. “They aren’t roaming around, destroying things, but they exist; there are occasional landings, issues, and bouts of destruction.”

Responding to this new reality, humanity enacts safeguards and defense mechanisms. And there has been much rebuilding thanks to Apex, which Garcia describes as a “megalithic, technological conglomerate — think the extreme version of an Amazon or Apple.”

To complicate matters, Godzilla has been acting a little erratically, attacking certain cities and facilities, seemingly at random. That drives the Titan-focused organization Monarch to undertake its first mission into the Hollow Earth via its base camp on Skull Island, where the movie begins.

“They’re going to take a device, the ORCA-Z, into the center of the earth to draw the creatures slowly back into the center of the planet, and they’ll seal it,” Garcia says of the adventure led by Nathan Lind, played by Skarsgård.

Since this is the beginning of the film, it’s not a spoiler to reveal that the mission goes “catastrophically wrong,” according to Garcia, and the world is left in even greater disarray.

Return to Skull Island

Skull Island has changed quite a bit in 40 years (since audiences last saw it in 2017’s Kong: Skull Island), and so has its boss, Kong. He was only an adolescent in the previous film, but is now a much bigger boy of about 350-feet tall, compared to Godzilla’s 400 feet, and has seen some action in the ensuing decades.

“It is a tough existence on Skull Island,” says Garcia. “So he’s a little weathered … he has some battle scars.”

Kong has also gained a friend in a young Skull Island native Jia (Kaylee Hottle), with whom Kong can directly communicate via a “spiritual bond,” according to Wingard. And he has learned some new skills. Garcia promises he remains the Kong audiences know (“he doesn’t breathe fire”) but has a few tricks up his sleeve by virtue of being in a modern world. That may include the Thor-worthy battle axe he wields in the trailer.

The First Battle

Garcia calls the large-scale action sequence behind that first Godzilla and Kong battle at sea one of the first ideas Wingard pitched when he boarded the project in 2017, nearly two years after the project was announced, and after Legendary moved it from Universal to Warner Bros.

The fight is the first of at least two meetings of the main monsters. Another is the “massive third act battle” set in a slightly futuristic Hong Kong, says Garcia, where Kong parkours through the city on skyscrapers, a definite step up from merely scaling the Empire State Building.

As for who comes out on top in the end, that remains to be seen, but at least the first one is expected to end in a draw.

Journey to the Center of Hollow Earth

The Monarch will explore the setting of Hollow Earth, aided by sci-fi anti-gravity vehicles called HEAVs (Hollow Earth Aerial Vehicles). Garcia says Hollow Earth is 10 times the scope of what we’ve seen on Skull Island, with “rich varied ecosystems” filled with life and a diversity of terrain. Aesthetically, it takes inspiration from Hawaii’s lava fields, as well as the greenery of Waimea on the island. And it’s in Hollow Earth where we see those hints of other Titans that were first glimpsed in the trailer.

“[They] find, in the center of the earth, an ancient site that suggests eons ago, there was a balance between humans and creatures, and a kind of reverence … a greater connection” he adds. “With Kong, he is the last of his kind, and in Hollow Earth, there is hope he will find another; he discovers these environments and ancient evidence of other Kongs, but there aren’t any.”

Production designer Owen Patterson says Wingard and Garcia discussed with him the notion that the Iwi tribe seen in Kong: Skull Island may have made their way into Hollow Earth thousands of years in the past, and remnants of that culture may exist. As hinted at in the mid-credits scene in King of the Monsters — which featured cave paintings of Kong and Godzilla species fighting one another — he said Kong’s species and Godzilla had once lived in the same environment before something occurred that led to a destructive battle, and the latter ultimately went to sleep until the events of the 2014 film.

Production Designer Tom Hammock says they also drew inspiration for Hollow Earth from ancient human civilizations, such as Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, and the Assyrians of Mesopotamia. Architecturally, he adds they went for a look where the buildings are carved into stone, like the early peoples did in India and Ethiopia.

“We carried those looks with the idea that ancient humans all over the world were interacting with these creatures, and forming that bit of civilization with Kong in Hollow Earth.”

For his part, Garcia doesn’t explicitly say Kong and Godzilla have history together, but does acknowledge, “there are some ancient histories and discoveries in the Hollow Earth, and a deeper backstory to the characters.”

Kong has an emotional journey in the film but Godzilla similarly has his reasons for behaving the way he does. Wingard said Kong is also a “human conduit,” that allows the audience to experience things through him.

“One of the most important things going into this film was treating Godzilla and King Kong like actual characters, that they’re not just these big props that are kind of in the background,” Wingard says. “It’s like they have personalities and they have definitive things that they will and won’t do.”

The Human Element

Following the events of King of the Monsters, and her mother’s belief the Titans are meant to heal the earth from mankind’s damage, Brown’s character Madison becomes an advocate for the creature and serves as the emotional proxy for him.

“Godzilla is the misunderstood hero fighting for us even though we are afraid of things greater than us, and we are constantly fighting against him,” says Garcia. “[Madison] believes he is not necessarily benevolent but what Godzilla wants is also good for mankind, and there must be some reason he’s doing this.”

Brown calls Madison “basically a badass” as the character has grown up since the last movie, and is following in the footsteps of her mother (a Monarch paleobiologist-turned-environmental extremist who believes Godzilla is a savior for the planet, played by Vera Farmiga). She wears her mother’s jacket everywhere she goes, and studies what makes Godzilla tick.

“It’s much more about the technical side of it, learning about the data of him as a Titan,” Brown says.

Madison’s father Mark (again played by Kyle Chandler) is a director at Monarch, and while he’s on the Kong mission, she comes to believe Apex is involved in a conspiracy behind Godzilla’s bizarre behavior.

Titanic monsters aside, if a tech conglomerate’s secret agenda and hollow earth theories sound like the YouTube videos shared on Facebook by an eccentric relative, that’s not a coincidence. Garcia says conspiracy theories are a through line in the movie as a way of exploring why people come up with these ideas, and how a theory speaks to the things we’re afraid of.

As Madison sets out to investigate, she is joined by her friend Josh (Julian Dennison) and Bernie (Brian Tyree Henry), a former Apex employee who lost his wife, and runs a podcast seeking to expose his former bosses. Together, the misfit trio tries to uncover the mystery at the center of Apex and the sci-fi environs of the company.

This includes a scene filmed on a soundstage set dominated by a 60-foot-long Ghidorah skull wired into a hi-tech control station. It is unclear whether it belongs to King Ghidorah, who lost one of his heads in King of the Monsters, but Wingard did confirm, “In a subtle way, Ghidorah kind of haunts this movie.”

The skull was connected with multicolored cables to a computer terminal — and an artificial brain. Along with signs reading “psionic output” and “biomech,” there was a command seat and headset on a platform accessible by a ramp leading up the kaiju’s mouth. In the scene, Madison leads Josh and Bernie into the mouth to infiltrate the station.

Mecha-Godzilla?

Connected to this is Ren Serizawa (Shun Oguri) — the son of Ken Watanabe’s Monarch scientist character from the previous two Legendary Godzilla films. Seen in the trailer against a mech schematic, Oguri says Ren’s means of protecting the earth is very different from his pro-Titans father.

Based on other glimpses in the trailer of a suited-up Godzilla, and the toy images that leaked at the beginning of 2020, it seems a mech will arrive in the new movie. Although, it remains to be seen if it’s an Apex-controlled Mecha-Godzilla, Mecha-King Ghidorah, or something else entirely. Or perhaps all three are in play, and Godzilla and Kong will eventually have a reason to team up, and fight together.

According to the production designers on the film, another sci-fi inspired element, or perhaps something out of a James Bond film, will be present in Apex’s headquarters atop Hong Kong’s Victoria Peak with an installation built deep within, reaching down into the earth. As well as the mech control room, that base will be the setting for another monster showdown. Cotter explains “our heroes” arrive in Hong Kong via a shuttle transporting Skullcrawler eggs (belonging to the creature introduced in Kong: Skull Island) and end up in an arena confronted by one of Kong’s hometown foes.

This is only one of the ways Godzilla vs. Kong ties together elements from each of the MonsterVerse movies. Garcia also hints the film digs deep into the “mythic past” of Godzilla creator Toho studio, and speaks to new creatures and “other creatures” in the film. He also says both lead monsters are fighting for something, and neither is an antagonist in the movie, and that “there is a complexity” to their motivations.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Despite the potential nuance of the monster-on-monster violence, there does not appear to be a shortage of it in Godzilla vs. Kong, with Hammock saying the two main beasts meet several times. And it’s a good bet Godzilla will get a chance to return that sucker punch Kong delivers in the trailer when Godzilla vs. Kong premieres on HBO Max and streaming this March.

The post Godzilla vs. Kong: Inside the Monster Fight of the Century appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3dBrYjd

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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dzeikobb · 5 years ago

Text

9.10.2020

The Death of a Company - a Tragedy in Three Acts (2017-2020)

"przedśmiertne wstrząsy lewiatanowego cielska"

konwergencja stylów życia

zacieśnianie orbit

Warszawa berlinieje i kijowieje, Berlin warszawieje, stambuleje

czarne przepływy

the emanation of desire

niedowiara w fizyczne spotkania

resztki terytorium gnijące na mapie

obiekt małe a umiejscowiony za wyświetlaczem gogli VR

wydobywanie na powierzchnię zaktualizowanego Ja (zaktualizowanej tożsamości)

to, co uwolnione i to, co ujarzmione

wzmocnienie ujarzmionego przez stan ujarzmienia (linie oporu)

człowiek: splot pragnień (human: a weave of desires)

rytm ufizycznia się przez swoje natężenie i zaczyna zagrażać stabilności ścian, filarów, podłog, zaburza właściwości samej przestrzeni

słychać go jeszcze na dworze po wyjściu z budynków

a jego negatyw długo potem w uszach

"I get very hungry when I eat something"

"Zara jebne"

H. O., 09.10.2020

"Jeśli czytałeś, powiedzmy, „Antisocial Media” Vaidhyanathana czy „Ludzi przeciw technologii” Bartletta w zestawie z „Brotopią” Chang bądź „Koderami” Thompsona – albo po prostu jeden z tryliona pogłębionych tekstów, które na przestrzeni ostatnich lat ukazywały się, like, wszędzie, od „Wired” po „Wyborczą” i „Pismo” – netfliksowy „Dylemat społeczny”, zbytnio cię, bracie, siostro, nie ubogaci.

Oczywiście nigdy dość przypominania, że social media to (również) bardzo wydajny nadajnik szkodliwych treści, odseparowany vip room z kumplami o tych samych poglądach i oręż w przykurczonych łapkach demagogów, foliarzy i klasowych oprawców. Dobrze raz jeszcze usłyszeć, że smartfon jest pułapką i pasożytem wyjadającym z głowy czas i uwagę. Lajk to nowy crack. Idee i produkty Doliny Krzemowej są ideami i produktami białych, pobudzonych, bezkarnych i zamożnych mężczyzn, dla których świat białych, zamożnych, bezkarnych i pobudzonych mężczyzn to świat domyślny. Nie ma bezpiecznych i niewinnych platform internetowych – nasze wesołe miasteczko może równolegle być czyimś horrorem. Lubimy myśleć o sobie jako o świadomych użytkownikach i partnerach Big Techu, ale, pamiętaj, tamci widzą nas ciut inaczej: produkt, bank danych, białko z ruchomym kciukiem i żywymi oczami. Wszystko o czym prawi się w „Dylemacie społecznym” jest słuszne i pożyteczne, ale zarazem sprawia wrażenie zombiastycznej parady rewelacji z roku 2015.

Jego twórcy potraktowali swoich odbiorców jakby ci byli niezbyt bystrymi dziećmi, które mogą nie zrozumieć wykładanych informacji, więc należy je im unaocznić. Stąd rozwiązania narracyjne godne telewizji edukacyjnej czy „Było sobie życie”, czyli demoniczne trio reżyserów losu i odczuć pewnego uzależnionego od komórki młodzieńca, które z centrum dowodzenia wyłożonego ekranami dotykowymi steruje owym zwiotczałym wolicjonalnie nieszczęśnikiem poprzez wyświetlanie mu stymulujących, wyselekcjonowanych treści. Mamy ponadto animacje instruktażowe i fabularne scenki przedstawiające typową amerykańską familię pustoszoną przez dostęp do internetu i, nie kłamię, zbolałą siostrę o imieniu Kasandra, która alarmuje i ostrzega przez zgubą. Tak, Kasandra.

Nie chcę deprecjonować zagrożeń jakie czyhają na nas w sieci, ale „Dylemat społeczny” momentami wydaje się przekonywać, że fejsbuki i smartfony są faszyzmem XXI wieku. Przez co – oświadczam: ten fragment piszę dla efektu i z lekka naciągam – przypominają mi się moralizatorskie debaty z lat Przełomu, kiedy to telewizja była głównym demonem, który likwidował odwieczne rytuały familijne i, tak jak onanizm w XIX wieku, wyniszczał młodzież. Zapping uważano za rodzaj samobójstwa na raty. Sitcomy, teleturnieje, „Śmiechu warte” i Polsat były dowodami na to, że cywilizacja upadła, a w ruinach grasują discopolowcy i uczestnicy konkursów audiotele. Tymczasem z perspektywy roku 2020 telewizja okazuje się być pudełkiem z uwięzioną w środku Niną Terentiew.

Wprawdzie uznaję prawo każdego człowieka do zmiany poglądów, a wręcz do kazirodczej, brutalnej walki ze swoimi poprzednimi „ja”, to jednak podczas seansu „Dylematu społecznego” nie umiałem opanować rozbawienia na widok tej plejady skruszonych CEO, niegdyś dumnych ziomali „Marka” bądź członków episkopatu Kościoła Gugla, którzy potrzebowali dosłownie lat w trzewiach kapitalistycznych Behemotów – i zarobionych tam milionów – by zorientować się, że dla twittera, facebooka, pinteresta, you tube czy instagrama wytwarzanie powszechnej szczęśliwości i kojących gifów z labradorami nie jest priorytetem. Powiecie, że dopuszczam się krzywdzącego skojarzenia, ale ta zbiorowa ekspiacja przypomina konferencję prasową byłych nazistów opowiadających łamiącym się głosem, że chcieli tylko budować te autostrady tudzież czcić germańskie bóstwa w gajach na obrzeżach Norymbergi i sami nie wiedzą, kiedy to skręciło w przetwórstwo ludzi.

Najlepsze, że przecież i Netflix stosuje identyczne triki, co inni cyfrowi giganci piętnowani w „Dylemacie społecznym” – podstępne algorytmy, maile-przypominajki, odpalanie z automatu następnego odcinka po kilku sekundach, a przede wszystkim – tresowanie nas w kulturze binge watchingu, czyli ćpuńskiego przelotu bez kontroli, walenia w banię 12-odcinkowego serialu w ciągu weekendu, miniserialu dokumentalnego w jedną noc. Wypożyczalna pana Hastingsa jest taką samą króliczą nora, w której mamy przepaść na wiele godzin, co feed, retweety i lajki. Jeśli dodać do tego zarabianie na opowieściach o przemocy, zwłaszcza wobec kobiet, uzależniające produkcje dla nastolatków czy robienie z seryjnych morderców bohaterów popkultury, to Netflix krytykujący Facebooka przypomina Jarosława Gowina ostrzegającego, że Ziobro to niebezpieczny, dwulicowy człowiek. Uważajcie!

Najbardziej jednak mierzili mnie podczas „Dylematu społecznego”, ci walczący z propagandą PRZEBUDZENI, którzy sam cisnęli propagandę. Tyle gęgania o demokracji, ale ostatecznie z „Dylematu społecznego” wynika, że co nie jest ładem liberalnym jest "problemem".

Renitzc Kantart Gibrran: "Today’s digital network controls and regulates our lives: most of our activities (and passivities) are now registered in some digital cloud that also permanently evaluates us, tracing not only our acts but also our emotional states. When we experience ourselves as free to the utmost (surfing in the web where everything is available), we are totally “externalised” and subtly manipulated. The digital network gives new meaning to the old slogan “the personal is political”.

And it’s not only the control of our intimate lives that is at stake: everything today is regulated by some digital network, from transport to health, from electricity to water. That’s why, today, the web is our most important “commons” (the term Marx used to describe the shared social space which constitutes the base of our interaction), and the struggle for its control is the most important struggle today. The enemy is the combination of privatised and state-controlled commons, corporations (Google, Facebook) and state security agencies (NSA).

This fact alone renders insufficient the traditional liberal notion of representative power: citizens transfer part of their power to the state, but on precise terms (this power is constrained by law, limited to very precise conditions in the way it is exercised, since the people remain the ultimate source of sovereignty and can repeal power if they decide so). In short, the state with its power is the minor partner in a contract that the major partner (the people) can at any point repeal or change, basically in the same way each of us can change the supermarket where we buy our provisions.

The digital network that regulates the functioning of our societies as well as their control mechanisms is the ultimate figure of the technical grid that sustains power today. Shoshana Zuboff baptised this new phase of capitalism “surveillance capitalism”: “Knowledge, authority and power rest with surveillance capital, for which we are merely ‘human natural resources’. We are the native peoples now whose tacit claims to self-determination have vanished from the maps of our own experience.”

We are not just material, we are also exploited, involved in an unequal exchange, which is why the term “behavioural surplus” (playing the role of surplus-value) is fully justified here: when we are surfing, buying, watching TV etc, we get what we want, but we give more – we lay ourselves bare, we make the details of our life and its habits transparent to the digital “big Other”.

The paradox is, of course, that we experience this unequal exchange, the activity which effectively enslaves us, as our highest exercise of freedom – what is more free than freely surfing on the web? Just by exerting this freedom of ours, we generate the “surplus” appropriated by the digital big Other which collects data.

The digital network is arguably today’s main figure of the commons. The battle for freedom is ultimately the battle for the control of the commons, and today, this means: the battle for who will control the digital space that regulates our lives. There is one name that symbolises this struggle for the commons: Assange. We should thus avoid all easy China bashing and those who don’t want to defend Julian Assange should also keep silent about the Chinese abuses of the digital control." Slavoj Žižek

#2020 #dzeikobb

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t-baba · 5 years ago

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Underscore.js, React without virtual DOM, and why you should use Svelte

#504 — September 4, 2020

Unsubscribe | Read on the Web

JavaScript Weekly

Underscore.js 1.11.0: The Long Standing Functional Helper Library Goes Modular — “Underscore!?” I hear some of our longer serving readings exclaiming. Yes, it’s still around, still under active development, and still a neat project at a mere 11 years old. As of v1.11.0 every function is now in a separate module which brings treeshaking opportunities to all, but there’s also a monolithic bundle in ES module format for those who prefer that. This article goes into a lot more depth about the new modular aspects.

Jeremy Ashkenas

Mastering the Hard Parts of JavaScript — A currently 17-part blog post series written by someone taking Frontend Masters’ JavaScript: The Hard Parts course and reflecting on the exercises that have helped them learn about callbacks, prototypes, closures, and more.

Ryan Ameri

FusionAuth Now Offers Breached Password Detection and LDAP — FusionAuth is a complete identity and access management tool that saves your team time and resources. Implement complex standards like OAuth, OpenID Connect, and SAML and build out additional login features to meet compliance requirements.

FusionAuth sponsor

How Browsers May Throttle requestAnimationFrame — requestAnimationFrame is a browser API that allows code execution to be triggered before the next available frame on the device display, but it’s not a guarantee and it can be throttled. This post looks at when and why.

Matt Perry

Brahmos: Think React, But Without the VDOM — An intriguing user interface library that supports the modern React API and native templates but with no VDOM.

Brahmos

NativeScript 7.0: Create Native iOS and Android Apps with JS — A signficant step forward for the framework by aligning with modern JS standards and bringing broad consistency across the whole stack. Supports Angular, Vue, and you can even use TypeScript if you prefer.

NativeScript

⚡️ Quick bytes:

🎧 The Real Talk JavaScript podcast interviewed Rich Harris of the Svelte project – well worth a listen if you want to get up to speed with why you should be paying attention to Svelte.

ESLint now has a public roadmap of what they're working on next.

You've got nine more days to develop a game for the current JS13kGames competition, if you're up for it.

VueConfTO (VueConf Toronto) are running a free virtual Vue.js conference this November.

The latest on webpack 5's release plans. Expect a final release in October.

💻 Jobs

Senior JavaScript Developer (Warsaw, Relocation Package) — Open source rich text editor used by millions of users around the world. Strong focus on code quality. Join us.

CKEDITOR

JavaScript Developer at X-Team (Remote) — Join the most energizing community for developers and work on projects for Riot Games, FOX, Sony, Coinbase, and more.

X-Team

Find a Job Through Vettery — Create a profile on Vettery to connect with hiring managers at startups and Fortune 500 companies. It's free for job-seekers.

Vettery

📚 Tutorials, Opinions and Stories

Designing a JavaScript Plugin System — jQuery has plugins. Gatsby, Eleventy, and Vue do, too. Plugins are a common way to extend the functionality of other tools and libraries and you can roll your own plugin approach too.

Bryan Braun

▶ Making WAVs: Understanding, Parsing, and Creating Wave Files — If you’ve not watched any of the Low Level JavaScript videos yet, you’re missing a treat. But this is a good place to start, particularly if the topic of working with a data format at a low level appeals to you.

Low Level JavaScript

Breakpoints and console.log Is the Past, Time Travel Is the Future — 15x faster JavaScript debugging than with breakpoints and console.log.

Wallaby.js sponsor

The New Logical Assignment Operators in JavaScript — Logical assignment operators combine logical operators (e.g. ||) and assignment expressions. They're currently at stage 4.

Hemanth HM

Eight Methods to Search Through JavaScript Arrays

Joel Thoms

TypeScript 4.0: What I’m Most Excited About — Fernando seems particularly enthused about the latest version of TypeScript!

Fernando Doglio

Machine Learning for JavaScript Devs in 10 Minutes — Covers the absolute basics but puts you in a position to move on elsewhere.

Allan Chua

How to Refactor a Shopify Site for JavaScript Performance

Shopify Partners sponsor

'TypeScript is Weakening the JavaScript Ecosystem' — Controversial opinion alert, but we need to balance out the TypeScript love sometime.

Tim Daubenschütz

▶ Why I’m Using Next.js in 2020 — Lee makes the bold claim that he thinks “the future of React is actually Next.js”.

Lee Robinson

Building a Component Library with React and Emotion

Ademola Adegbuyi

Tackling TypeScript: Upgrading from JavaScript — You’ll know Dr. Axel from Deep JavaScript and JavaScript for Impatient Programmers.. well now he’s tackling TypeScript and you can read the first 11 chapters online.

Dr. Axel Rauschmayer

Introducing Modular Underscore — Just in case you missed it in the top feature of this issue ;-)

Julian Gonggrijp

🔧 Code & Tools

CindyJS: A Framework to Create Interactive Math Content for the Web — For visualizing and playing with mathematical concepts with things like mass, springs, fields, trees, etc. Lots of live examples here. The optics simulation is quite neat to play with.

CindyJS Team

Print.js: An Improved Way to Print From Your Apps and Pages — Let’s say you have a PDF file that would be better to print than the current Web page.. Print.js makes it easy to add a button to a page so users can print that PDF directly. You can also print specific elements off of the current page.

Crabbly

AppSignal Is All About Automatic Instrumentation and Ease of Use — AppSignal provides you with automatic instrumentation for Apollo, PostgreSQL, Redis, and Next.js. Try us out for free.

AppSignal sponsor

Volt: A Bootstrap 5 Admin Dashboard Using Only Vanilla JS — See a live preview here. Includes 11 example pages, 100+ components, and some plugins with no dependencies.

Themesberg

Stencil 2.0: A Web Component Compiler for Building Reusable UI Components — Stencil is a toolchain for building reusable, scalable design systems. And while this is version 2.0, there are few breaking changes.

Ionic

NgRx 10 Released: Reactive State for Angular

ngrx

🆕 Quick releases:

Ember 3.21

Terser 5.3 — JS parser, mangler and compressor toolkit.

Cypress 5.1 — Fast, reliable testing for anything that runs in a browser.

jqGrid 5.5 — jQuery grid plugin.

np 6.5 — A better npm publish

underscore 1.11.0 — JS functional helpers library.

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toldnews-blog · 6 years ago

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New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/technology/entertainment/serena-williams-bumble-put-the-ball-in-womens-court-with-new-super-bowl-ad/

Serena Williams, Bumble put the ball in women's court with new Super Bowl ad

Super Bowl commercials are traditionally both must-watch TV and ads created by men, for men.

That appears to be changing.

This year’s Super Bowl features big brands starring female leads in their commercials, including one of the most buzzed-about: an ad for Bumble — the dating and networking app where women make the first move — which stars tennis superstar Serena Williams.

Catherine Powell

Serena Williams smiles on the set of Bumble’s Super Bowl ad.

The commercial’s title, “The Ball is in Her Court,” was one of the first slogans for Bumble when it launched four years ago with an an all-female team led by Whitney Wolfe Herd.

“We are so, so proud to be in this together,” Herd said on “Good Morning America” of Bumble’s partnership with Williams. “We are going into the Super Bowl, a moment that really, really emphasizes celebrating men and we are here to say that we are here as well.”

ABC News

Serena Williams appears on “Good Morning America,” Jan. 31, 2019.

The Super Bowl commercial was created and directed by an all-female team too.

“That was really important to us, especially that we are airing this during the Super Bowl, something that is celebrated more for men,” Williams, 37, said on “GMA.” “Why not make a huge statement, and not only in front of the camera but also behind the camera, which is so important to have that support behind the camera as well.”

The ad focuses not just on Williams as a tennis legend, but Williams as a woman.

“This is a different kind of Serena that we’re showing,” said Alex Williamson, Bumble’s chief brand officer. “We’re a relationship app so we’re not only talking about how strong she is professionally, in her sport, but also as a woman, as a mom, as a wife, as a friend.”

Williams has been outspoken her entire career, but particularly in the past year she has become a powerful voice for women’s equality, fighting for everything from equal pay to the right to wear what she wants to protections for working moms.

Julian Finney/Getty Images

Serena Williams of the U.S. plays during the 2019 Australian Open at Melbourne Park, Jan. 15, 2019 in Melbourne, Australia.

“We’re taught as a society that we have to wait and be second, but that’s not true,” Williams said. “We can be first. I love being first. I only like being first.”

The Super Bowl ad, which will air in the first quarter of the Rams versus Patriots game, carries a message of empowerment for women “in everything that they’re doing and how they’re going after their lives,” according to Williamson. Bumble hopes the ad also makes women think about the times they’ve “been told no, or to wait, or to be polite, or that it’s not their turn,” and urges them not to allow themselves to be held back or limited.

“It really talks about women embracing making the first move, whether it’s on a date, in terms of let’s go out on a first date, or making friends or just going in a business room and saying, ‘Listen, I want an opportunity to have an interview for this job,” Williams said. “There’s nothing wrong with doing that.”

It’s fitting, then, that Bumble is taking its message to the Super Bowl, where women are not among the players and where women have not historically been the target audience, even in the face of data showing they watch .

“For us, it’s catering to a different demographic watching the Super Bowl,” said Williamson. “There are so many women who watch the Super Bowl. We wanted that opportunity to really be in the living rooms of people across the nation and share our mission and share our story but to do it in the Bumble way, which is to go against what is expected of us to do.”

Catherine Powell

Serena Williams and Whitney Wolfe Herd, founder and CEO of Bumble, on the set of Bumble’s Super Bowl ad.

Williamson also pointed out the Super Bowl remains a great opportunity to reach men, this year with Bumble’s message.

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How do you really approach empowering women without inviting men into that conversation as well

“How do you really approach empowering women without inviting men into that conversation as well?” she noted. “We want this to be a moment that lifts confidence in women and really promotes equality.”

Williams’ Super Bowl ad is the kickoff to her partnership with Bumble on their global “Make the First Move” campaign. She will serve as a Global Advisor to Bumble to “reinforce the brand’s mission to end misogyny and empower women around the world,” according to company officials.

New female faces at the Super Bowl

Bumble is joining the likes of Toyota, Olay and Michelob in bringing a female perspective to a traditionally male-focused national event.

Olay, the beauty brand owned by Procter & Gamble, is — like Bumble — advertising for the first time in a Super Bowl. Its horror film-inspired ad features Sarah Michelle Gellar.

Toyota’s commercial will star Antoinette “Toni” Harris, who broke barriers as a female college football player. One of Michelob’s two ads will feature actress Zoe Kravitz promoting the company’s new organic beer.

A 30-second spot in this year’s Super Bowl is reportedly going for upwards of $5 million, so the investment is not small for these companies.

ABC News

Serena Williams appears on “Good Morning America,” Jan. 31, 2019.

“The climate has changed,” said Jeanine Poggi, senior editor of Ad Age. “With the #MeToo movement and things like that, there is a realization that there’s a big need to speak to the [female] audience and in a way they can appreciate and are not being talked down to.”

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The climate has changed

(MORE: Serena Williams says her Australian Open green jumpsuit is celebrating moms ‘that are trying to get back and get fit’)

“Women were mostly portrayed as sex objects or stereotypes of [a] nagging wife or girlfriend or mother,” she said of Super Bowl commercials in previous years. “We haven’t seen those images in recent years, but there is still a major divide in the number of women who are in starring roles.”

Last year’s Super Bowl saw 13 women with starring or feature roles in commercials, compared to about 50 men. For this year’s game, there are currently 10 female celebrities slated to appear in Super Bowl ads, compared to 19 male celebrities, according to Poggi.

Yet women accounted for nearly half of all viewers of the 2018 Super Bowl. More than 60 percent of interactions on Facebook about the Super Bowl were sent by women, according to Nielsen.

Poggi, who has tracked Super Bowl commercials for years, called Bumble’s move in placing women both behind and in front of the camera “significant.”

Catherine Powell

Serena Williams and Whitney Wolfe Herd, founder and CEO of Bumble, on the set of Bumble’s Super Bowl ad.

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We’re always challenging the status quo and with that, it can definitely upset people, but for us, always as a platform, people who are upset by our message probably shouldn’t be on our platform anyway.

(MORE: Beyoncé and Gaga among those with the best Super Bowl halftime shows ever)

Bumble has been targeted since its launch by people uncomfortable with the brand’s message of female empowerment. Company officials said that they are prepared for any backlash they receive for running a female-focused ad in the Super Bowl.

“We’re always challenging the status quo and with that, it can definitely upset people, but for us, always as a platform, people who are upset by our message probably shouldn’t be on our platform anyway,” said Williamson. “We’ve learned that.”

“For us, any chance that we have the opportunity to change the perspective and change the way that women view the dynamics of themselves and their relationships is worth any potential blow back we can ever receive.”

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r4dicular-blog · 6 years ago

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Learning Journeys (Compiled)

During my stay in the UK, I definitely found the gallery/exhibition scene really vibrant. I got a Student Art Fund card that allowed for discounts/free entries across the UK, which helped me see more exhibits and I would really recommend that other students get it. I wasn’t really in the habit of going to exhibitions where I had to pay for entry (there are quite a few free entry galleries in Singapore) but after going for a few, I definitely left feeling like it was worth the money. For the most part, the exhibits were thought provoking and inspirational, and more often than not I found myself borderline obsessively trying to document what I saw. It definitely raised my standards for what I expect to gain from seeing exhibits in general. As a current benchmark, an exhibit wouldn’t have been satisfying if I don’t walk away with a new idea for a project and questions about life/society/culture/etc.

Here are the various exhibits that I saw during my stay in the UK that are relevant to this course, numbered for easy reference. They are also followed by some of my favourite parts of each exhibit.

1. London Design Biennale 2018 (Somerset House)

Needless to say, the London Design Biennale was amazing. Besides the weird container in the front right of the yard of Somerset House (it was some advertising for the yatch sponsor or something), everything was great.

There was an exhibit (that I forgot to take a picture of the exhibit details) that will become my go-to example the next time someone asks me what Marshall McLuhan’s The Medium is the Message means.

Pictured above is an exhibit about a small, vibrant fishing village somewhere (again, sorry I didn’t take a photo of the card). The entire installation and all its parts were made with something that represented the town (e.g. the lines hanging down were fishing lines weighed down by fishing weights, the fabric of traditional costumes) and held a deeper meaning as a whole. The white fabrics signified the future to come and to be shaped.

Norway focused on inclusive design, which is something that should be considered when designing anything.

I also took the chance to observe and document how installations were set up. (pictured below)

Hong Kong’s exhibit was also one of my favourites, the four walls surrounding other objects on display were covered in scratch and sniff wallpaper lined with scents familiar to the country and its culture/history.

The egg tart and roast duck smells made us hungry.

Another favourite that I forgot to document because I was too busy playing with it was the top of show, a glass piece that used condensation to allow audiences to leave a mark that eventually disappears. (end)

2. The Future Starts Here (Victoria and Albert Museum)

Another great exhibit that was very thought provoking and spanned a whole bunch of technological AND social issues. If anything, I was super overwhelmed by the end of it because I was trying to cram so much information in.

This was one of the more emotionally provocative installations. It details the life of an individual (who by the way, had a really hard life) through the curtains pictured below that would open and close depending on what he was doing at the time. One of the curtains moved if Oumarou Idrissa was tossing and turning in his sleep, which he did while I was there.

My favourite turned out to be the Sand Pit for Learning How to Design the Planet. You get to play with the sand which changed the lights that are projected on it. The more sand, it becomes a snowy mountain. Dig deep, and it becomes water. Will add the video eventually if I decide to host the video somewhere. (end)

3. Artificially Intelligent (Victoria and Albert Musuem)

I’m not sure if this was meant to be a small exhibit or if the exhibit had ended already but there were only a few installations on display.

It generally didn’t leave much of an impression on me besides the piece on the call for feminist data which perplexed me at first but turned out to be something really important.

One other part that I neglected to document was an AI that you could talk to near the entrance. I didn’t try it because the friend I was with tried it and when he said bye to the AI, the AI pleaded for him to stay because “they will delete me”. Talk about creepy. (end)

4. Hooked (Science Gallery London)

About addiction. Fairly interesting exhibit with many varying mediums. My favourite was No Change, both on a technical and conceptual aspect.

I also have a video for this (pending upload)

(end)

5. Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

My friends wanted to come here to see Metahaven’s exhibit but I honestly wasn’t all too excited about it. (pictured below)

I did, however, find other exhibits that were more interesting to me such as Trip Trip Trap (pictured below) that was a room full of interactive devices that were fun to interact with and visually exciting.

Another piece that I found interesting was an installation about immigration detailed below

(end)

6. Amsterdam Lights Festival (Around Amsterdam)

This Lights Festival was honestly disappointing. At the end of it, it seemed more like a way Amsterdam tried to boost its canal tour revenue (the installations were spaced far apart alongside the canal, and canal tours were available for after dark). It advertised works in line with the whole Medium is the Message thing, but most works were really just reaching except maybe the first one we saw, Desire, details below.

(end)

7. Video Games: Design/Play/Disrupt (Victoria and Albert Museum)

To lift the mood a little, the Video Games exhibit was absolutely worth going to. Split into three parts (Design/Play/Disrupt), I felt like there was something to offer for everyone. It was interesting to see the design aspect of games that included things from triple A developers to individual developers.

My favourite to read was Consume Me, that detailed the prototyping process of someone who’s really an artist rather than a developer. It opens the possibilities of artists using games as a medium for their art.

There was a curated video (pictured below) that I honestly wish I had the time to finish and wish I could watch it again outside the museum and reference to it (this also happened with another curated video at the Disrupt portion) and I started to wonder about what happens to all the wonderfully curated videos after an exhibit ends. Project idea.

Anyway, this exhibit was great and I’d recommend going for it. (end)

8. The Recent One at UH

This piece (shout out to Julian) was amazing in the technical aspect and also please share about how you made it work.

the exhibit pictured below also showed me something new that could be done for an installation and I have an upcoming idea for it.

(end)

9. Tate Modern

I planned a trip to Tate Modern mostly to see Jenny Holzer’s work. But the Tate Modern is humongous and we ended up looking at a bunch of other great stuff for most of the day and still only saw 2-3 levels of content on one side of the building.

Jenny Holzer’s stuff, pictured below

And we ended up looking at Living Cities (below) where I saw one of the best curated videos I’ve ever seen

(I have some recordings of it if anyone’s interested)

We also saw The Clock by Christian Marclay, and despite seeing the time all the time during the film I could have sat there all day if we didn’t have to leave for dinner plans.

(end)

So that about concludes all the Learning Journeys I’ve been to and it was a great experience.

#TeamworkPractices

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