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anewstartrekfan · 10 months

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Spock and Chapel fizzled out so quickly because Spock was trying too hard to correct what he did to piss off T’pring. Meanwhile Chapel was too focused on herself.

Spock was distant and dishonest with T’pring, and despite his efforts to impress and not worry her, it all backfired hard. Hence he wants to come out the gate when he sorta starts dating Chapel, and even give a go at being more human. Despite T’pring putting their relationship on pause, Spock was on a high of mostly positive reinforcement of human values, both after sticking up for his mother and when the relationship with chapel first kicked off. Chapel doesn’t kiss Spock the Vulcan way, she starts crazy making out with him. Point is he wanted it clear cut, direct, and above all else, open. And Chapel wasn’t gonna give him that.

I’ve seen people call Chapel’s self centered ness something forced into the episode, but it’s not. It’s been a theme since the dinner episode. Yes she was doing everything in her power to get Spock back to normal, but her big takeaway after meeting those aliens and getting Spock back to normal was “wow. I’m awesome. I did something super cool that’s way more fufilling than your validation. Fuck you Vulcans, goodbye.” And to be clear she earned that. She is awesome. But it influenced how she approached her relationship to Spock.

To Chapel, how she feels takes priority. She tells Spock not to think about it when they start making out because she’s too into the moment. She doesn’t want to get interrupted by Vulcan logic. And this continues into the next episode when they’re playing chess and she tries to change it into a sorta relationship. She doesn’t want it concrete cuz that will fuck up her plans for the other 3 month think she signed up with to do with Dr. Korby if she’s accepted. Plus when Bolmier tells her she’s not in Spock’s future she’s destroyed. She puts up walls around her self to the point that in the next episode when she’s clearly going through some rough shit with that Klingon defector on the ship, and Spock offers a shoulder for her to lean on, she refuses, and indeed I don’t think ever tells him what actually happened to the Klingon.

And so we get to sub space rhapsody. Wherein she’s burying the fact that she values her career more than her relationship with Spock but also values that relationship enough to not want to tell him that.

But Spock wants to know.

So she gets forced to sing about it instead.

I realize more of this was dedicated to Chapel than Spock but I felt like her’s needed more justification/explanation.

I liked how this episode (or well this season) re-contextualizes when Chapel confesses her love to Spock in the Naked Time.

Just like in sub space rhapsody Chapel could only confess her true feelings while under the influence. And just like last time, Spock is so heartbroken he leaves and goes off to have his own emotional episode.

“I’m in love with you Mr. Spock.”

Look at that face. That is a face of a man who just heard his ex girlfriend (who broke up with him mind you) confess she loved him. He’s holding his hand out to her for a kiss,

I CAN PROVE IT

(No I can’t)

Chapel spending the whole conversation begging him to call her Chiristine, like he use to,

“I’m sorry, I am sorry.” From Spock hits so different now. He isn’t telling he he’s sorry because he never felt that way, he’s apologizing because even if he does have feelings for her still, he does not want to peruse them. Chapel had her chance and she blew it.

Look never been a Spapel fan but I do love angst and this is plenty of that so I will take it.

#snw spoilers #strange new worlds spoilers #spapel #hope this made sense #star trek meta #sub space rhapsody #the naked time #snw subspace rhapsody #subspace rhapsody

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tailsrevane · 2 years

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[tv review] snw 1x01 “strange new worlds” (2022)

this was so good i literally cried. this is easily, and i mean easily the best first episode of a star trek series. and as much as i like nutrek better than a lot of others who have been fans of the franchise since the golden age, this just blows everything else out of the water in terms of making me like holy shit star trek is back.

this series is like they took all the best parts of tos and discovery, and a lot (not all, but a lot) of the best parts of tng and tossed them in a blender and said “here you go!” it’s like the much better series the first episode of discovery teased us with but we actually get to keep it this time. and that is more or less what i was hoping for, but never in my wildest dreams did i imagine that it would just immediately be that, right out of the gates. this was breathtaking.

i’m struggling to remember the last time i allowed myself to be this unguardedly hyped for something, and having that thing just so resoundingly live up to that hype… i can’t stop gushing about it??? i am literally incapable.

so, in the first episode of your new star trek series you’re going to go with a botched first contact scenario with prime directive implications aplenty. that’s a bold choice, and this episode not only makes it work, it actually makes it work in its favor.

firstly, the voiceover from number one at the beginning of the episode is just the star trekkiest star trekky speech that ever star trekked. it’s full of hope and bravery and honesty. we then slide over to captain pike on shore leave. the “pike knows he’s going to die” subplot isn’t my favorite tack to take with this character. it was one of the rare things i didn’t like about season 2 of discovery. but in spite of disagreeing with it on a kind of fundamental level, i actually love the way it was deployed here? it’s a believable way to get him to a place where he’s a character in crisis without compromising his fundamental values or the things that made everyone collectively fall in love with him in the first place.

and that sets you up to do the whole reluctant captain dragged back to duty thing, which… i don’t love refusing the call as a trope usually, but for some reason star trek has always found a way to do it that doesn’t bother me? and this is probably one of the best examples i’ve seen. both of establishing the character’s reluctance, and of showing his willingness to rise to the occasion in spite of said reluctance. i also loved the admiral’s reasonable attempts to reach him not working (his communicator beeping over and over and him ignoring it), ultimately requiring his unreasonable attempt to reach him (flying a fucking shuttlecraft overhead while he’s taking his horse out for a ride). also also on a much geekeir and less consequential note, it hecking ruled that we finally had a canon appearance from robert april.

i know a lot of people are probably upset about the portrayal of spock’s relationship with t’pring but i actually loved it? it’s nice to get some actual romance and levity in that story, and i really liked the scene where she proposed to him a lot! i also think it ties back into tos just fine considering we literally already established that t’pring is irritated with him for unflinchingly choosing duty over her and he is pretty blatantly oblivious, so it’s not really difficult to see how that relationship is going to end up cooling off.

everyone returns to the enterprise which is being rushed back to active duty, and this feels like the right time to say oh my gods i love the look and feel of this series? the enterprise itself is gorgeous, like even better than the version from season 2 of discovery. the bridge and other sets all look like believable, more fully-realized versions of the equivalent tos sets but with a lot more of the original design elements and overall look/feel retained than in previous attempts like the kelvinverse.

oh, and the opening theme and title sequence? resoundingly awesome.

anyway, once everybody’s back aboard, we get into the main action of the story and pike does his best to toe the prime directive line but once they’re committed past the point of no return anyway he just barges right in and does a the day the earth stood still, in a way that both explicitly references contemporary politics and emphatically makes a case for the best aspects of the federation’s (and, by extension, star trek’s) values. i really needed to hear this right now.

oh, yeah, earlier in the episode he’s watching the day the earth stood still, which is great foreshadowing but is also a great way to let the audience know that the people making this show are huge nerds who love science fiction. so that was pretty awesome.

s-rank

#star trek #star trek strange new worlds #strange new worlds #star trek snw #snw #tv #tv review #reviews

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ichayalovesyou · 3 years

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~Act One: In Denial of Pon Farr~

Blood Moon~by Saint Sister, Madrid (Album)

“To return home, and take a wife… or die.”

Spock is feeling anxious and unusually lonely, more resentful of his complex heritage than usual. Feeling rejected, but not by Jim, he finds his thoughts wandering to T’Pring. Who he feels deep resentment toward, she hasn’t contacted once him in the two decades he’s been gone from Vulcan. He has yet to realize it is the beginnings of Pon Farr.

“I am sure, you craved me once before. When I think of all the fruit I’ve found, and how easily you left it on the ground.”

Evening On The Ground (Lilith’s Song)~by Iron & Wine, Woman King (album)

“I hoped that I would be spared this.”

Spock’s yearning and loneliness transforms into anger and frustration. He knows Pon Farr has begun, and he hates it. He has no desire to return to Vulcan, worse still, he loathes that he yearns for someone who he does not know. Worse still, she’s not the only one he’s longing for…

“We were born to fuck each other one way or another but I’ll, only lie, down by the water side at night”

I Want You (She’s So Heavy)~(Originally) by the Beatles, performed by the Cast of Across the Universe, Across the Universe (Album)

“How do Vulcans choose their mates… Haven’t you wondered?”

Spock cannot bear the tearing between Human & Vulcan halves that has come ferociously to light under the stress of Pon Farr. His duty is to that man on the bridge, but the call of Koonut Kalifee is only getting louder. He has no desire to burden Jim with horrible display of emotion. Yet desire is quickly becoming all that he can think about.

“I want you, I want you so bad, it’s driving me mad, it’s driving me mad.”

~Act Two: Blood Fever, The Nightmares of Plok’tow~

Howl~by Florence + The Machine, Lungs (Album)

“To have their logic ripped from them, as this time does to us.”

The first, foreboding rumblings of Plok’tow have begun. He dreams of a hunt, he’s chasing someone, he does not know who. Each time the blood of this faceless, slaughtered, ravaged victim is a different color, every time he turns around, green, red, green, red, green, red, green, red…

“Like some child possessed, the beast howls in my veins, I want to find you, tear out all your tenderness.”

The Horror of Our Love~by Ludo, You’re Awful, I Love You (Album)

“It strips away our veneer of civilization.”

The dreams are getting worse, more violent, detailed, intense. He knows his quarry-

Jim.

He tears his captain apart in a thousand visceral, grotesque ways, physically, mentally, no love, no hate, no want, just blinding hunger. And the most frightening part, he enjoys it. He begins withdrawing from Kirk, for fear of what may happen should dreams threaten to become reality.

“Carnivorous and lusting, I’ll track you down among the pines.”

Become the Beast~by Karliene, Become the Beast (Album)

“It is the Pon Farr, the time of mating.”

The last of his Blood Fever dreams occurs after Kirk confronts him about his behavior. This one is, much to Spock’s relief, not violent. The lyrics are spoken through the faces of fellow Vulcans- T’pring… childhood tormentors… Sybok… his cold and disapproving father… T’pau… Surak… himself.

The rage and hunger has cooled into ice rather than fire, for now.

“Do I terrify you? Do you feel alive? Do you feel the hunger? The desert howl inside?”

The Woods~by San Flemin, Jackrabbit (Album)

“You humans have no conception.”

When James Kirk grabbed the shiv from Spock’s hand in their confrontation, a shard of Spock’s Blood Fever came with it. Spock was spared a nightmare this final night, but not Jim. The dream even dared to be pleasant initially, alone together in the woods. Before the arena of Koonut Kalifee erupted violently around them, as did Spock. Yet, before Spock could deal the final killing blow, Kirk found himself sinking into the sparkling sands below. He startles from his slumber, feeling suffocated.

But he does not remember how, or why.

“The nights are lovely dark and deep, but I’ll appear when you’re asleep. You’ll wake up with a sudden hurt, your mouth and nose all full of dirt”

~Act Three: Kalifee, the Death of A Friend~

Take Me Down~by Brother, Pax Romana MMV (Album)

“I’ll get you to Vulcan somehow…”

All Jim knows is that Spock is getting worse, and that he needs him. Not knowing, and not daring ask whether the shiv was meant for himself or Spock haunts Kirk, as does the ghost of his forgotten dream. He does not know what will come of this wedding. Only that he will do whatever it takes to make certain Spock lives. No matter what, it’s a race against time.

“The powers that be, the powers that run you through, I’m taking a stand I know what it comes down to, God knows I do.”

Hunting Grounds (feat Joe Cotela of Ded)~by In This Moment, Mother (Album)

“He is deep in the Blood Fever, he will not speak with thee again.”

Kalifee has begun, Spock has completely lost himself to the Blood Fever, and Kirk must fight for his life. He finds himself outmatched by the environment, and by Spock’s rage. He knows two things, he has no desire to die, but he cannot, under any circumstances, kill Spock. (I imagine this duet could be as seen as Maria Brink=Kirk, Joe Cotela=Spock)

“Like a predator sink my teeth into your neck.”

Die Today~by The Txlips Band & Guitar Gabby, Queens of The New Age (Album)

“Kill Spock? That’s not what we came to Vulcan for is it?”

The Kalifee has been an intense drain, Kirk knows, deep down, that not even the “Triox Compound” could save him in this fight. He feels his life flash before his eyes, he bears no ill will toward Spock, he’s not in control of himself. He reflects on their relationship, and how much it has meant to him, and accepts, that for Spock to live, he has to die.

It was worth having known him, saving a friend isn’t the worst way to go out…

“If you die today, if we die today, at least I’d be in your arms.”

Pearl Diver~by Mitski, Lush (Album)

“You may find, that having, is not so pleasing a thing as wanting.”

Spock is absolutely distraught, he’s disgusted with himself, he loathes every single Vulcan he’s ever known, but most of all he is angry with Kirk. That he had to be the moth to his flame. How dare he want to get close to him! How dare James Kirk ever have the stupidity, the courage to love him?! The wanting had driven Jim to his death, and himself to murder. It was illogical, and he will never, forgive either of them for it. Curse having, curse wanting, and curse himself too.

“But hunter you were human don’t forget it and go safely. And I? I’ll live without you, though the struggle will be daily.”

Sweet Dreams~by JOSEPH, I’m Alone, No You’re Not (Album)

“I shall do neither, for I have killed my Captain, and my friend.”

Spock languishes in the agonizing hours between the Kalifee and confronting Bones about what must be done. He prays for a short and cruel life… and dares ponder the question, do Humans have Katras?

“I’ll return to my sleepless night, dreaming with my eyes open, watch the shadows play on the ceiling.”

[The final act is a little on the smutty side, here’s a read more just to be safe.]

~Act Four: The Need is Met~

To Be Alone~by Hozier, From Eden EP (Album)

“I shall offer no defense, their is no excuse for the crime of which I’m guilty.”

Though overjoyed and relieved that Kirk is alive, Spock continues to anguish over the reality that had Bones not intervened, he would have killed him. Jim knows better this time, he will not let Spock continue down this path. A tender and honest conversation puts salve to Spock’s fears. In any event, while the Kalifee burned away the Blood Fever, it becomes clear the needs of Pon Farr still remain. Kirk suggests, delicately, to put a new Bond in place of the old.

Spock accepts.

“You don’t know the hell you put me through, to have someone kiss the skin that crawls from you, to feel your weight in arms I’d never use.”

Mermaid’s Calling #2~by the Cast of The Lure, The Lure (Album)

“The ancient drives are too strong, eventually they catch up with us.”

The thrum of Bonding needs no words, it is not just a joining of minds, but of bodies as well. They complete one another, no thoughts, no voices are required. They soon find that the physiological differences between them can be more than a little… fascinating.

“…”

The Deep~by PHILDEL, Wave Your Flags (Album)

“One touches the other, in order to feel each other’s thoughts.”

The tangible, physical world of course has it’s pains and pleasures, to be joined physically is one thing, to be joined in soul and mind alongside those sensations is a different ordeal entirely. If this, completeness, is what it means to be Bonded, Kirk now understands why Vulcans go mad over it.

“Give me a sign ‘cause it runs through my mind like your heat, caught in the web you’re so easily lead to the deep.”

The Mermaid~by Kate Rusby, Life in A Paper Boat (Album)

“In this way, our minds are locked together...”

Unbeknownst to anyone else in the universe, James Kirk & S’chn T’gai Spock are now Bonded, and neither has ever felt less alone. For once, it does not matter to Spock that he is of two worlds, here, he is home. For once, Kirk does not feel as though he is forced to live the Enterprise’s life, this time, she helped him live his. A shining, blissful moment in the vast, expansive sea of stars that they have devoted their lives to exploring.

For them, the journey itself, is home.

“In peace now, the sea it comes, and peace now, in her arms where I’ll be love, sleeping in the sea.”

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kinetic-elaboration · 3 years

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February 13: Star Trek Beyond

Some attempted thoughts on Star Trek Beyond.

So first it was bad lol. It is the worst. I thought maybe it would be less the worst than I had previously thought but it really, really is just irredeemably bad.

Trying to keep up with what was actually happening and talk in the group chat was too difficult and I now feel very exhausted lol. And I’m not even sure what I watched.

I liked Jaylah a lot, including her back story, characterization, “house,” traps, and cool mirror tricks.

I also like Kirk in that emergency uniform with the jacket unzipped.

That’s it! That’s all I liked.

In the past I’ve also said I liked the Spock and Bones parts but I honestly wasn’t a fan of them either this time around!

None of the characters felt IC and none of the relationships felt true or were compelling. Which is particularly egregious given that the alleged theme was strength in unity.

The movie was especially lacking in K/S content or even K & S interaction, which obviously didn’t please me. And it’s definitely the worst Kirk characterization I’ve ever seen. There’s no excuse for that either because it’s halfway through the 5YM, which means he should be pretty close to TOS Kirk--yes, he has a different set of experiences, so there’s going to be some variation, but there’s comparatively less excuse for a radically different characterization than in STXI and STID. They should have had Shatner read the script and make notes lol because whatever else you might say about him he KNOWS Captain Kirk.

Like, he (Kirk) lacked humor and charm and, often, confidence. He had moments when he was very smart and moments when he had a commanding presence. But he had just as many moments when he was whiny or bored and his Captain’s log??? I deserve financial compensation for every time I’ve listened to that. Bored of space?? No, this man is bored when he’s stuck on Earth. He stagnates in desk jobs. He is an adventurer and explorer before he’s ANYTHING else; if you don’t get that, you don’t need to be writing Star Trek.

Also, as I have frequently complained, I’m tired of him having no internal conflict or emotional complexity past his father issues. First reboot movie: dealing with his dead father’s memory and his step-father’s abuse. Fine, that makes sense for how they set up the AU. Second reboot movie: entirely motivated by the need for Manly Vengeance upon the person who killed his father figure. And for this redundant story line (in many sense) we had to lose Pike? Third reboot movie: you’d think he’d finally be ready to move on to other conflicts but actually no this time he’s sad about his birthday and having a longer life span than his...you guessed it!! father!! Yet again.

What else has ever motivated him? Legitimate question.

The destruction of the Enterprise was truly horrific. Long, boring, unwarranted, and without any emotional punch. As if it were just any ship! No, she’s a character in her own right and she’s not to be sacrificed like that but please tell me again how Simon Pegg is a true fan who brought the franchise back to its roots?

B said he did like that they split up the crew into unusual units but I have mixed feelings about it. I don’t entirely disagree, but I don’t think they did a lot that was interesting with any of those separated units. Uhura and Sulu are a cool pair (but this would have been a good opportunity to include Sulu’s semi-canonical crush on Uhura but whatever... a different rant) and they almost did some interesting stuff with them. There were glimmers of a caper in that story line and times when I could tell they were straining especially hard to make Uhura, their Sole Female Main--now that they cut out Rand, Chapel, and even Carol Marcus--into something Feminist and Interesting. But it didn’t quite gel for me. Like, Uhura would be having almost interesting dialogue with the villain and holding her own...and then she loses track of her colleague and has to watch that person die, thus undercutting everything she just said about unity and seeming to prove the villain’s point. Is she competent or not?

Bones and Spock are a pair I care about and like but again I think their canonical relationship in TOS is more interesting than STB showed. I personally read them as like...reluctant best friends who originally just had one person in common, and then realized they also like each other too, but they’ll never really say it. They understand each other but pretend not to. They have fun with the barbs they throw at each other. They both deeply love Jim but in different ways. They enjoy their intellectual debates. (That’s one thing that was definitely missing from them here! The intellectual debates!) So again, there was something there but not enough.

And Kirk and Chekov just happened to land near each other; nothing was done with that relationship per se. They really aren’t people who have much of a relationship in TOS so there’s not a lot to work off of but then on the other hand there IS an opportunity to create something new. Maybe I’m being too harsh and too vague but it just didn’t gel for me. The only specific K and C moment I remember was that supremely un-funny joke about Kirk’s aim as he sets off the “wery large bomb.”

But like there are possibilities.. they’re both pretty horny and Chekov is a whiz kid and Kirk is also very smart and has always been smart... Like in other words people Chekov’s age don’t end up on the bridge crew, in either ‘verse, without the Captain’s say, so even though he’s TOS!Spock’s and AOS!Scotty’s protege, Kirk is important to his life. Something with that maybe??

I’m upset that Spock’s individual story line was about whether or not he should go off and make baby Vulcans because, again as I have complained many times before, that was a conflict he faced and resolved in ten minutes two movies ago, and it doesn’t make sense to me for him to bring it up again now just because the Ambassador is dead. Like... the Ambassador told him to stay in Starfleet!! “Ah, yes, I will honor him by doing precisely the opposite of what he wanted me to do.”

Also--if they had made his motivation different or gone into it more, I would have been more into it. Make it about New Vulcan! Say there’s news from New Vulcan that it’s not doing well. Or what if T’Pring got in contact with him? Or what if we used this as an excuse to bring in Sarek?

This is part of a larger point for me which is that STXI set up a really cool AU and STID tried to do something with it--a little hit or miss, but it tried--and instead of pushing even more at the AU and developing it more and doing more with it... STB just ignored it! Was that part of what Paramount was warning about with making it “not too Star Trek-y?” Was it SUPPOSED to be a movie you could watch without having seen the last two? If so they did succeed but like.. .why? They made the supremely ballsy move of blowing up a founding Federation planet two movies ago and now they’ve just forgotten about that and all the reverberations that would necessarily have?

But of course we got a call back to Kirk being a Beastie Boys fan so.... Guess it was Deep all along.

We all three agreed that the core story of this film was potentially interesting but could have been done as a 50-some minute episode of a TV series rather than a whole-ass 2 hour movie. First off, cutting or cutting down the action sequences would have shaved off half an hour easily.

I’m frustrated in large part because there are certain things that are interesting here. I do like the concept of the crew being pulled on to an alien planet by a ship of former Federation crew, from the early days of the Federation/deep space flight, who were presumed missing but are somehow still alive because they have turned into aliens/used alien tech to prolong life, and who have also captured other aliens, like Jaylah, for the main crew to interact with. All of that was cool.

I would even be okay with these old Federation crew being villains but I don’t think that’s necessary or even the most interesting take.

But...first of all, as my mom pointed out, Krall was basically Nero in his illogical motivations: feeling aggrieved because someone who couldn’t help him didn’t help him and then just maniacally wanting revenge. It made more sense to me with Nero in a way. Maybe that was because he was better characterized, maybe it was because his anger was more personal (the loss of his wife), maybe--probably--it was because he was angry at Spock and Spock had actually promised to help, so there was some kernel of logic in his sense of betrayal, even if it was out of proportion etc. Also, Nero’s mania was portrayed as mania--we were all supposed to recognize that the strength of his emotion was warranted but his logic was deeply flawed. I think we were supposed to think Krall had some kinda... real criticism of the Federation, but in fact he doesn’t! He’s wrong! So like if he’d been angry with the Federation for abandoning him but the narrative and the other characters explicitly recognize that he’s wrong--the Federation tried but he was just doing something very dangerous and he recognized that danger on signing on--that might have been more palatable to me.

I’m not sure I’m making sense here entirely or explaining myself as well as I could.

I just don’t entirely get Krall’s beef with the Federation. I don’t get that whole “being a soldier and having conflict makes you strong and having people you can rely on and connections and community makes you weak.” That seems pretty obviously false. It also doesn’t really seem, not that I’m an expert, but particularly in line with military ethos either.

BUT the idea that he had a life that was comfortable to him as a soldier and then the Federation comes in and forms Starfleet and says, actually, we’re going to pull back on the soldiering and up the diplomacy and the exploration and the science--yeah, I could see that. I DO think Starfleet is military but even if you must insist it’s not, it’s clearly based on and formed from the military, and it has certain military functions. So obviously the first people to join or be folded into Starfleet probably were more explicitly military.

So he’s one of those people. Now he’s supposed to be a scientist and a diplomat and an explorer and he doesn’t like that. He’s given this very prestigious and interesting mission and jumps at it. Starfleet warns him, you might go beyond where we can reach, we might not be able to help you. That’s fine. But then when his ship is stranded and he is lost, he gets angry--maybe somewhat irrationally, but understandably--why?? Why did the Federation do this to him? What was even the point? When he put himself in danger before, at least he knew why. But just flying around space for the hell of it, and this is the cost? So that’s what creates his anger.

I thin this could be tied into Kirk’s diplomacy at the beginning--if the scene were written to not be a comedy bit where Kirk looks like an incompetent buffoon and is completely disrespectful the whole time. He’s good at this job and we should say it. But we could emphasize that this IS a diplomatic mission often, just as often as it’s a military or scientific mission. Maybe we could include other bits of their missions, too, to play up the variety of things they do and roles they play.

Another thing I think could be interesting, going back to my point about Spock, Vulcan, and using the first two movies and expanding on the world building... what if Spock wanted to leave Starfleet for better, more well-defined reasons, and we used that? Paralleled the two? Connected the two?

Because I think Vulcan in the AOS verse is very interesting and the movies didn’t do nearly enough with it. First, we have the Romulans showing up way earlier, at least visibly: in TOS, no one knew what they looked like or their connection to Vulcans until Spock is in his late 30s. In AOS, it happens not long after he’s born. So he’s growing up probably with more anti-Vulcan racism floating around the Federation. THEN Vulcan is destroyed. Now it has nothing and it needs to rely on the rest of the Federation, which must be both humbling and frustrating to many Vulcans, on top of the extreme tragedy of losing everything. Most of their population, a lot of their history, their manufacturing, their scientific facilities, their resources, their animals, literally whatever else you can think of that a planet has--all gone. Now all of the survivors have lived some period on an alien planet, by definition, and they’re probably very dependent on the Federation not just to set up the new colony, but to replace all of the resources--natural and Vulcan-made--that they lost. And they’re a founding Federation member, Earth’s first contact. They’re especially important. And now they’re weak, and reliant on others.

So maybe Spock, early on, hears from New Vulcan and they’re not doing well. Maybe we hear from Sarek or T’Pring (...I’d just like to see reboot T’Pring). Maybe it’s not about, or just about, having children, but about being from an important and ancient family, and being seen as a hero for his part in the Narada mission, that makes him want to go and help rebuild their government (taking his mother’s place perhaps? she was on the High Council) or their scientific facilities, or the VSA, or their space travel capabilities--you know Vulcan had space ships of their own, outside of Federation ships. This would be the perfect place to showcase that tension between wanting to be independent--out of pride, out of fear, even--and needing help, because Vulcan could not survive without the Federation, probably less than 10 years out from the original planet’s destruction.

And then you feed it back into Krall.

So I could see like... well the tension, and then Krall comes in, and he's angry that the Federation "abandoned" him, but we actually explicitly address this. Maybe Spock gets to interact with him and say "I get it. You had a life and a mission and a purpose that was comfortable for you. Then the Federation came in and changed everything. A lot of my people are also feeling upset for similar reasons. But here's why actually you're wrong."

So anyway as you can see I’m smarter and more interesting than Simon Pegg.

I also hated, speaking of writers of this movie, the gay Sulu thing and HEAR ME OUT on this. It’s homophobic. His husband doesn’t have a name? Might not be his husband at all? Looks like he could be his nanny or his brother? As B said “at least grab his butt or something.” That was the most sanitized, no-homo depiction of a gay person I’ve ever seen. He’s gay (see, progressives and queers! gay! you like that right!) but DON’T WORRY STRAIGHTS--he’s in a monogamous relationship and has a child, he’ll show nothing but the most platonic physical affection with his male significant other, and the plot point will be so minuscule you’ll need a microscope to detect it. Also, we’ll throw in a no homo joke about two male characters not wanting to hug and we’ll make sure Kirk and Spock interact as little as possible, because we know they give off Big Queer Vibes every time they’re together.

Yes the last point is a little unfair but can you blame me for being angry about all the “look how hip to the times we are” back-patting that went on in 2016 when canonical bisexual Kirk is RIGHT THERE and we could have had ex-boyfriend Gary Mitchell instead of Unnamed Nanny??

Also Sulu is a hella random choice because again, like... he may not have had an s.o. in TOS but nor was there any indication he was gay. So it seems a LITTLE like they picked him because (1) his original actor is gay and gay people can’t play straight people duh so probably Sulu was Gay All Along I mean did you not get vibes???; and/or (2) asexual Asian stereotypes preclude giving Sulu any kind of love interest, male or female, that is actually... sexual, outright romantic, anything.

Anyway I can’t remember if I had any other thoughts, but I’ve said quite enough I think.

I miss Kirk so much... real Kirk... even my version of AOS Kirk who is probably not even characterized that well but at least I worked with love!!!

#the year 2021 #2021: star trek #2021: fandom thoughts #star trek aos #anti-beyond

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transxfiles · 4 years

Text

A Roll Of The Dice by two_drama_nerds_in_a_boat | @homeworkforpigeons

Summary: Star Trek is an incredibly popular tabletop roleplaying game. Mostly gen with some Spirk at the end.

Word Count: 1822

Find this fic on AO3

Gliding through the stars would never get boring, he decided. Even at Warp Speed 9, with all the bright lights zipping past him so quickly they were nothing more than blurry spots in the sky, it was a simultaneously haunting and stunning sight. The Captain sighed, leaning back in his chair-

“Oh, do get on with it Jim,” muttered Hikaru from across the table, rolling dice between his fingers. “We don’t have all day.”

“But the monologues are important. For… character development.”

Nyota rolled her eyes. “Not when you spend an hour on them every turn. Besides, we already let you have the Captain’s Log thing. Now come on. I want to fight some hostile aliens.”

“Aren’t you supposed to stay on ship with Scotty in case things go wrong, Communications Officer?”

“Goddamit you two,” Bones said, fist slamming the table, sending papers fluttering and figurines toppling onto the board. “We’ll never get anything done with the two of you fighting.”

“Come on Jim,” said Rand, shoving some dice into his hand. “Your. Turn.”

He looked at Spock, who just did that thing where he would raise only the one eyebrow, and sighed in defeat.

“Fine.”

He dropped the dice, watching them roll until they made their way a surprising distance from him, finally stopping by Scotty.

No one really knew how they’d all gotten together. Jim had to admit, they were an odd group.

In the end, they were all just sort of bored, and lonely, and they needed something to do after school. Originally, it had just been Jim and Bones. They took turns DMing, setting up short campaigns for the others to play, but it got incredibly boring very quickly. They got tired of it. They needed a permanent DM - so they’d found Spock, who, despite his attempt to put on mask of no emotion, seemed to take both happiness and pride in being Dungeon Master. And after that, everyone else had sort of fallen into place. Because once they had Spock, they at least a consistent location to play - his basement. Which, though still not ideal, was better than bouncing between Jim’s too-cramped (shared with his brother) bedroom and Bones’s tiny garden shed. So while Spock’s basement was a bit musty, it was honestly ideal, really, because though it was dark and sometimes damp, they made it their own. They had a little cooler with snacks and drinks it, and they’d put down a rug, and they had a little table, and every time a new person joined them they all went down to the local flea market as a group and helped pick out a chair for them, and ever so slowly the basement became theirs.

After Spock joined, Nyota was close behind him. She was new to their school that year, and she wanted friends, so she sought them out. She knew Spock through T’Pring, of course, and though Spock’s relationship with T’Pring was more than a bit strained, still, Nyota didn’t seem to mind. She wanted “Something amusing to do outside of school,” she’d said, something to “fill the time” and “make an afternoon more enjoyable.” A statement to which Jim had (nearly) replied with a few lewd, though somewhat humorous comments - though he did instead opt to stay quiet. Somewhat due to Bones kicking him not-so-discreetly in the shin, telling him that “She won’t stay if you don’t play nice.”

And with Uhura came Rand, a new friend of hers, and with Rand came Chapel, a blonde girl Jim recognized from one of his science classes (he was taking a lot of those; it was one of the few things in school he actually enjoyed taking part in, and since he was on one of those advanced tracks, he was taking as many as possible) and it also drew a young Scottish kid, who was quickly nicknamed Scotty (because if you’re that goddam Scottish, James Tiberius Kirk is sure as hell going to give you some sort of nickname) and Scotty drew a kid named Hikaru, and Hikaru drew in the Russian exchange student, Pavel, and in some way or another, they managed to get together enough people to create a long-term campaign.

They named their ship the Enterprise, and decided on their mission: To explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life, and new civilizations. To boldly go where no one has gone before.

(That last bit used to be no man, but Nyota, Rand, and Chapel had all insisted that was at least a little bit sexist, and so they decided to change it to no one.)

The first time they’d all played a campaign on their own had resulted in some of the most fun Jim had in months. Spock DMed (of course) and they got to go down to a planet for shore leave and Scotty got with some prostitute (or planned to, at least) and then she was murdered and they all needed to work together to solve the mystery, and it turned out that the entity that had murdered the woman was actually Jack The Ripper (a reveal that had prompted many of them to ask Spock what exactly he was on when he wrote this) who was an immortal alien who basically ate fear.

“The crew of the Starship Enterprise is once more face to face with the hostile Klingons,” Spock said, hiding behind his notepad.

Jim grinned. “I walk past the Science Officer, our hands brushing as-”

“Oh shut up,” said Nyota, obviously suppressing a giggle. “You’ve tried to seduce him, what? Thirty times now?” She looked to Chekov. “How close am I?”

“Well, it’s a bit higher than the thirties,” he said. The bastard was reaching into his backpack for a notebook, no doubt to add another tally to some list he’d made for keeping score.

“I’m getting closer every time!” Jim said.

Spock raised an eyebrow in his direction. “Roll for charisma,” he sighed.

He did, tossing the die across the table. And, as was the usual, he rolled a two.

“Oh come on,” Jim groaned. “Can I try again?”

“Jim, we have discussed this before. You cannot spend the entire game attempting to seduce your Science Officer.”

“Now that we have gotten that over with,” Spock said, “I feel as though I must inform you that, due to a yet unknown technical malfunction, you now find yourself stranded in uncharted space, and, as I previously stated, surrounded by Klingon warbirds.”

After that, the game resumed as usual.

There was, of course, a miraculous victory from the crew of the Enterprise (with only a few casualties, mostly in the NPC department) and somehow Jim’s player character had ended up shirtless again, but they defeated the Klingons and saved the day. And then, soon enough, it was seven in the evening.

Time to leave.

Jim made his way over to the sofa, picking up his backpack where he’d dropped it earlier that evening. He slipped it over his shoulders before turning to his friends.

“Psst,” Jim said, careful to be quiet as he beckoned Nyota and Bones over to him. “Guys.”

Bones looked confused at first, but after a glance at Jim’s face, he knew exactly what was going on. “Oh no. No, nope, no way, not gonna happen.”

“Jim,” Nyota said, trying a different approach, “come on. Just wait a little longer if you’re nervous. I told you I could coach you if you wanted, and that offer still stands.”

“I don’t know… I just. Ugh. I have this gut feeling that I have to do it now.”

“Then just do it!” Bones said, voice getting gruffer with each passing moment. “You don’t need us with you to ask him out.”

“Well, it would be helpful?”

“Helpful,” Nyota deadpanned.

“Like… cheerleaders?”

"Cheerleaders?" Bones made a face.

“You’ve never actually asked someone out before have you.”

“Sure I have!”

Nyota and Bones gave each other a look.

“Please,” he hissed, voice still held at a whisper. No one could really explain why, but Spock had excellent hearing. He was just kind of like that. And Jim wasn’t willing to let him overhear this conversation. “You don't have to be right next to me, just nearby? In case something goes wrong. Or I catch on fire. Or Spock catches on fire…”

“I’ve got a date with T’Pring,” said Nyota. “I can’t help you with your love life right now, Jim.”

“Bones looked up. “Sorry Jimmy Boy. I’m busy too.”

“What? No excuse Bones? At least Nyota had something prepared.”

“Oh shut up.”

“You shut up.”

“You-”

“-are both acting like toddlers,” Nyota finished. “Come on Jim, get it together. Ask him out.”

“On what? A date? Does Spock even do dating?”

“You’ll never know until you get your shit together.”

With that, she slung her backpack over her shoulder and left, saying goodbye to them all on her way up the stairs.

Jim groaned.

“Well, that’s one way to do it,” Bones muttered.

“Bones…”

“Come on Jim, it’s not that hard. You just go over to him, tell him you like him. Ask him if he wants to go out with you.”

“And what do I do if he says no?”

“Say that it’s okay, you understand. Smile. Hold it together until you get somewhere you can cry safely.”

“Bones.”

“What? It’s solid advice.”

“Okay.” Jim took a deep breath. “What if he says yes?”

“You tell him that you’re really happy, and you like him a lot. I’d say give him a hug or something, but this is Spock we’re talking about, so avoid physical contact for now. And whatever you do, don’t say ‘cool’.”

“Don’t say cool?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Just don’t do it.”

“Mm-hm. That’s how you charmed Miriam?”

“Oh shut up.”

And then, as though following in Nyota’s footsteps (probably purposefully, the bastard), Bones grabbed his backpack and ran up the stairs. Leaving Jim alone with Spock in the basement.

“Fuck,” Jim muttered.

“I fail to see a reason for such language,” a cool voice said from behind him.

Jim almost jumped out of his skin.

He spun around, face-to-face with the boy himself.

"Hi Spock!" Said Jim, voice jumping an octave from nerves.

Cue signature eyebrow raise. "Jim."

Jim took a deep breath. "I was wondering..." he felt his hands drop to his pockets as he tried to get the words out. "Well, you see... I like you-"

"I should hope so. We spend a fair amount of time together, in school and outside of it."

"Spock-"

"I am messing with you, Jim."

Jim looked up.

Spock was smiling.

Jim looked up the stairs, eyes tracing the paths Nyota and Bones had taken, then looked back at the ground at his feet, then looked back at Spock. "Did you overhear-?"

"Your entire conversation?" Spock shrugged. "Perhaps."

"Do you want to-?"

"Yes."

"Oh... wow, I...."

"Jim?"

"Spock?"

"Do not say 'cool'."

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mentalmimosa · 6 years

Text

a shift in the sands

Prompts: Ancient Rome and Marriage. Prompts from this generator and this one.

“What I don’t understand is why you married me in the first place.”

Spock turned away from the night sky, from the high temple of stars that glittered far above them, and looks towards James in the dark. “Are you questioning the merits of my decision?”

A dry chuckle. “Me? Of course not.”

“Then from whence does your lack of understanding arise?”

In the shadows, James sighed, and Spock moved towards him, his fingers already outstretched, eager on their own for the cool brush of his mate’s skin.

“It’s not so much a lack of understanding,” James said as Spock’s hand found his hair and sank into the sleeping furs beside him, “as a sense of...gratefulness.”

Spock drew him close. His mate smelled of freja blossoms and ash, of his own spend and Spock’s, and something very old in Spock, older even than the sands that surrounded them, reveled in this, the simple sort of claim he staked every day on this man of Earth. How he had come to Vulcan in the first place, Spock was still not certain; it was not a matter that James wished to discuss. Few humans came to this planet of their own accord; fewer still survived capture by the wal-tukh clan, as James had, much less emerged with flesh as unscarred as had he.

He smoothed his palms down James’ arms, swallowed the first hint of the night’s shiver. “You have made your gratitude plain to me, ashayam. Many times.”

“That’s not--” He could feel the human blush, the peculiar way the blood rose and coiled in his cheeks. “I mean, I know I have, it’s just--” James tilted his face, pressed his mouth against Spock’s throat. “You’ve never told me why you did it. Married me. You didn’t have to. You could’ve just freed me and walked away.” “I could have, yes.”

A soft stroke of James’ tongue. “Then why?”

“Because I am selfish. Because I admired your beauty and your strength.” He caught James’ face, lowered his mouth to meet it. “Because,” he murmured, “I could not bear the thought of any Vulcan endangering either again, and I could think of no better way than to bind you to me.”

He’d been in chains when Spock first saw him, tied to a docile mount that trotted obediently at the side of T’Pring’s steed.

“Spock!” she called as he approached, raising a hand and bringing her camp to a halt. “I thought that was you.”

He bowed low over his reigns, holding his own mount steady. “It is I. And I am honored by your presence, T’Pring.”

She laughed, a bright bloom in the desert, and swung from her horse, moved towards him through the thick sands. “What brings you out this far? We did not think to meet you until tomorrow.”

“Our requests could not wait so long as that. The aikum clan is but a few days' ride from my father’s southernmost lands.”

T’Pring squinted up at him, swept her wild hair back from her forehead. “Well, then. We will not make you wait any longer.” She turned and called to her party, who began to dismount and reach for their wares. “Do you have time enough for a fire, at least? And some refreshment.”

He had not, not at all, but to turn down the hospitality of a chieftain was akin to sticking a sword through one’s own throat. He bowed his head. “I would be honored.”

The meal passed pleasantly enough beneath the broad shade of the tent T’Pring’s people struck. As they ate and exchanged news, the clan’s wares were arranged neatly at the back of the tent, weapons of death laid out lovingly by the Vulcans who’d forged and shaped every blade. But despite the urgency of their meeting, Spock found his eyes drawn not to the swords but to the human who knelt at T’Pring’s side. His hands were bound before him and his mouth was stopped with a long, silken cloth and it seemed to Spock that he trembled, cold somehow at the peak of the day's heat.

At last, T’Pring tired of the sound of her own voice, of her own adventures, and made notice of Spock’s attentions. She reached over and smoothed a hand through the human’s dusty hair. “He is extraordinary, isn’t he?”

“I have never seen his like,” Spock said truthfully. He had seen few humans with his own eyes, it was true, but he could not recall one as lovely as this. He was dressed in loose desert silks of T’Pring’s clan’s design, pale now in the bright assault of the day, but designed to fade dark in the twilight. The skin of his throat was tan, flushed into color by the sun, and his eyes--they were a pale, glittering blue that reminded Spock of summer stars. And they were staring straight into Spock’s.

Help me.

“One of my scouts found him wandering near Selaya last month,” T’Pring said. She turned away, signaling for more wine. “Blundering around in the hottest part of the desert.”

“What was he doing there?”

She shrugged. “I do not know. He refuses to speak.”

And yet, to Spock, it seemed as if the human were shouting: that gaze again upon him, pleading: Please. Help.

“Did you meld with him? Perhaps his mind would--”

“Spock.” T’Pring shook her glass at him, playing at scandalized. “Do you think so little of me that I would subject my thoughts to whatever strange tempest I’d find in him?”

Spock dropped his eyes. “No, no. Forgive me.”

She laughed at him and sat back on the furs, stretched out her legs towards him. “I had no idea you were so interested in humans.”

He wondered why the man was so desperate to be freed. T’Pring was no sadist; she would have ensured her prize came to no harm. Until she could sell him for the right price, anyway. And there were many, many unscrupulous Vulcans in this sector who would pay a great deal and show far less restraint.

“They are a rarity, as you well know,” Spock said sharply, with more bite than he had intended. “Otherwise, why would you be flaunting yours in front of a guest?”

That got him an eyebrow. “You asked to be shown my wares, Spock. And here they are.” She downed the last of her drink and stood. “Now, will you buy what you came for, or do you wish to spoil the rest of my afternoon as well?”

Spock got to his feet, sparing one last glance towards the human. His eyes were on the ground now. He did not dare to look up.

There were moments, Spock knew, had long been taught, when the long dunes of one’s life suddenly part, when the sands of one destiny run one way and the sands of another move another. Now, as he stood in T’Pring’s tent, a silent human at his feet, an impatient warlord at his side, he felt the very desert shifting beneath him.

There were instruments of death at hand, instruments of life, and in that moment, Spock found himself caught between the two.

And then the sands settled and his path was as clear, as open, as it had ever been.

“This human,” Spock said calmly, as if it were a matter of no consequence. “What price do you ask for his head?”

#k/s #aos spirk #pre-reform vulcan #or a vulcan that never reformed #warlords #rescue

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lauravanarendonkbaugh · 7 years

Text

It’s been a busy month!

First I went to Realm Makers, which has become one of my favorite writing conferences, and then to a small local writing conference at Taylor University, my first time visiting there. In a couple of weeks I’ll head west again to attend the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers conference. It’s like I’m trying to get my annual allowance of writing conference in just a few weeks!

This little girl was so excited about the fairy unicorn wings she made herself.

Gen Con sold out completely. Not a badge to be had.

Then I had Gen Con, an awesome gathering of 65,000 or so (final attendance not yet released for this year) of your geekiest friends to talk about games, books, history, film, anime, and pretty much everything related. Gen Con is always super-busy for me, because I teach sessions (this year I presented twice on Japanese Folklore & Mythology and once on Norse mythology, as well as teaching costuming workshops from Featherweight Armor to Moldmaking to a make-and-take for simple, hallway-safe wings) and because we compete in the costume contest, which because of Gen Con’s process is mostly a whole-day affair.

Stonn getting into makeup.

Mr. Spock and his Pon Farr friends!

This year, by request of my talented friend Emi, we went as a group of Vulcans from the iconic Star Trek episode “Amok Time.” I played Stonn, Spock’s romantic rival for his bride T’Pring. We paraded through the convention center, aggressively jingling Vulcan jingle-coffins and displaying our lirpa (it’s that improbably off-balance weapon) and nodding politely at everyone who recognized us. It was fantastic fun, and we got a lot of crowd love from fans, and then we won third place in the Professional division. (First and second place went to Queen Amidala and historically-accurate Belle, who totally deserved it. Their costumes were far more complex than our low-budget ’60s television designs.)

Our stage presentation was live-singing “A Message From T’Pring.” If that title prompts you to start humming the Hamilton soundtrack, yep, you’re right.

We also had one of my favorite joke-props ever.

I did get to play some Pathfinder, including the Season 9 opening special, and that was fun. (I have a level 12 kitsune sorceress. Of course.)

We saw cars from all over the US and even Canada.

The Solar Eclipse

After the fourth day of Gen Con, we went home and loaded the car to drive to Kentucky the next morning, where I’d reserved a parking spot in Hopkinsville, the point of longest totality for the 2017 solar eclipse. The community college campus was an eclipse festival, with food trucks, lectures, and a weather balloon launch.

I’d seen partial solar eclipses before, but never totality, and wow. I’d read repeatedly that there is a real difference, and it’s true. The partial coverage was fun, especially nearing full coverage, when the sunlight got all weird like someone had screwed up the Photoshop brightness/contrast settings. You want to worry that you have eclipse blindness already (you don’t, it takes a day or two to show effects even if you stupidly stared directly into the sun), but it’s just the atmosphere refracting the reduced light.

Remember those old serials where they’d just put a filter on the camera to pretend it was night? It looks like that. –my sister Alena VanArendonk

Totality was a very trippy experience. The sun was SO BLACK, and my poor phone camera just wasn’t equipped to handle the contrast. Cicadas sang as twilight fell. I could see the corona with my naked eye. There was a 360-degree sunset. It was really cool, and not nearly long enough even at the country’s longest totality.

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solar-power

We noticed a curious gap in the campus’s solar power generation feed….

You don’t realize how bright the sun is until you see how much of a shadow it casts at just a tenth of its power.

During totality, we had twilight with a 360-degree sunset.

20170821_190328

Passing over parkway traffic on the way home.

telescope

My cheap solar telescope did the job and even let me grab a few photos.

crescent

This tiny sliver of sun was still throwing strong shadows — or shade. Photographed through the telescope.

20170821_120326

Being from the Midwest, I thought I’d seen all the fair food, but this gravy-and-eggs-stuffed pretzel was new to me. (No, it wasn’t tasty. They were just out of most else.)

20170821_115051

decorated car window

Then we started the trip home. We gave up trying to leave and went inside the community college to wait in the air conditioning for an hour, until the parking lot had cleared enough that we could get on the road. Then we headed off to charge the car and go home.

It took a bit over 5 hours, including charging and heavy traffic, to reach Hopkinsville Community College that morning. It took a bit over 10 hours to get home, because traffic was so bad. Gas stations (we stopped for snacks) were packed with lines 4 and 5 cars deep waiting for fuel (consumed even faster as people idled and ran their air conditioning), and some ran out of gas. A station I was in for snacks was out of Rand McNally maps, as people looked for alternate ways home. A woman there said she’d been trying to leave the area for 4 hours. Did you know that Google Maps traffic layer has a color beyond red?

That was when we could get Google Maps at all. Cell signal is patchy at the best of times in rural Kentucky; the network simply could not handle the demands of a couple hundred thousand extra phones all searching for signal.

We did better than most, though. We left the main roads and hit remote back routes which haven’t seen five vehicles in a row since Daniel Boone was guiding settlers through. While the back roads had their own issues — clearly some of the eclipse drivers weren’t used to driving rural roads at night, with the lack of street lights and clearly-painted lines — they were at least moving steadily.

It wasn’t really anyone’s fault. Western Kentucky’s infrastructure just isn’t built to handle that quantity of humanity. I saw that the town of Kelly’s annual August festival usually draws about 2,000 visitors to the town of 300, but they were expecting 20,000 for the overlapping festival and eclipse. And that was just in tiny Kelly, and the eclipse path ran nearly the length of the state.

The slow trip home gave me a chance to read up on the aliens, though.

Little Green Men

That festival in Kelly is the annual Little Green Men Days, commemorating an alleged close encounter 62 years ago.

On August 21, 1955 — yes, the solar eclipse date is an anniversary — 5 adults and 7 children reported an assault on their farmhouse by “little men” they claimed were extraterrestrials. (The color green was added in later media reports, and this may be the trope-namer for the phrase.) They fled to the Hopkinsville police station (their farm was between Hopkinsville and Kelly) to ask for help, saying they’d been fighting the creatures for 4 hours.

The whole affair started when one of the men, visiting from out of state, had gone out to retrieve water from the well. He saw a bright rainbow-colored light which he described as a flying saucer shoot overhead and land beyond a nearby treeline, hissing. He went inside and reported it to the family, who didn’t pay him much heed — until not long after when the little men, with gangling arms, stumpy legs, and a swaying gait, approached the house and began to peer in through the windows.

(It occurred to me, as I read, how much these “little men” sounded like the cinematic character E.T. in their description. But guess what? Steven Spielberg actually developed a film based on the Hopkinsville encounter, originally in the horror genre but ultimately gentle in nature and titled E.T. the Extraterrestrial. I’m gonna bet E.T.’s physical shape was a direct lift from the Hopkinsville reports.)

A dozen local police, state troopers, military police, and county deputy sheriffs went out to the farm and found no aliens, just plenty of evidence of the family’s shooting out the windows and an iridescent substance where one of the creatures had allegedly been shot. The Suttons and Taylors did not go with them to investigate. After a few hours they left the farm and told the family to go home, which they did — and the creatures returned at 3:30 am. Some of the family and friends were gone by morning. The rest left the farm within days, whether from fear of the creatures or because of harassment from disbelieving neighbors. None ever retracted their story, and the three surviving witnesses refuse to speak of it today. The goblins, as they became known, have not been seen in the area since.

Project Blue Book lists the incident as a hoax in a single typewritten line, with no further explanation or comment. However, Geraldine Sutton-Stith, daughter of Elmer “Lucky” Sutton who saw and shot at the creatures, says that a man knocked at her door to share his father’s deathbed confession of retrieving UFO wreckage for the federal government on that very night and just a few miles away. Of course, no evidence of this deathbed confession was provided.

Modern psychologists have concluded that drunken farmboys mistook some owls for space aliens. It’s clearly bunk. No, not the farmboys’ story, but the debunking of it.

Great Horned Owl talons, courtesy of Flikr user khyri, https://www.flickr.com/photos/khyri/628646383

Rodney Schmaltz and Scott Lilienfeld, famed debunkers of pseudoscience, wrote in 2014 that the Suttons and Taylors were probably intoxicated and mistook Great Horned Owls for aliens. This simply reeks of some smug ivory tower professor dismissing those they consider their clear intellectual inferiors. Sure, Billy Ray Taylor was just an out-of-work carnie, and had a stereotypical hillbilly name like Billy Ray, and it would be easy to make fun of him. But the professors need to keep in mind the following basic points about farmboys and owls:

These were rural folk who had to go outside to get their water from a well. They would have been familiar with owls. They would have known if owls had a nest nearby, as alleged.

One of the creatures allegedly grabbed Billy Ray’s head as he went onto the porch. A grab from an owl leaves a significant mark; there’s a reason raptor caretakers use those heavy leather gauntlets. He would have received a lot more than a hair pull, and there would have been a significant injury for law enforcement to document, had it indeed been an owl defending a nest as suggested.

Nothing fits with normal owl behavior. The Suttons and Taylors described the creatures’ rolling gait with long arms and short legs. Owls don’t walk around vulnerable on the ground, especially not when defending a nest, and especially not during 4 hours of gunfire (and, the farmboys say, at least a few direct shots). And they don’t tolerate 4 hours of gunfire and then come back later to start up again.

The family emptied 4 boxes of .22 ammo at the creatures, plus an unknown quantity of shotgun slugs. (The men reported that bullets make a clinking metallic sound when they struck the silver-clad little men, and that one was knocked from a tree but could not be found later.) Keep in mind .22s generally come in boxes of 100 or even 500. The smallest I’ve seen is 50, and I cannot imagine that in rural Kentucky of the 1950s, when people used guns weekly for varmint control and hunting for food, that the boxes were smaller. The report doesn’t specify the size of the boxes, but I find it unlikely that men who almost certainly hunted for meals couldn’t kill a bird in several hundred shots.

The eyewitnesses described the “little men” as “silver” and “shining.” It’s suggested that this was a confusion of the owls’ reflective eyes, but owl eyes don’t reflect silver. Nor do their bodies shine.

Most key, the initial news report specifies that law enforcement found no evidence of drinking. While every skeptic’s take I’ve seen includes words like “intoxicated” or “moonshine,” the only support I’ve found for this is that a later visitor to the farmhouse saw “a few beer cans” in the trash. A few beer cans is not enough to work 5 adults into a panic, if the beers were even consumed that night, and not in the trash from a previous or later time. Law enforcement at the time said it was a respectable family without a history of absurd behavior, and the matriarch who’d owned the house for decades had a reputation for avoiding alcohol and disallowing liquor at home.

Does this mean I believe they were aliens? Of course not. I don’t have any evidence to say what happened that night, whether aliens or escaped silver-painted circus monkeys (another explanation, somewhat weakened by the lack of local circuses or reported missing monkeys) or straight-up hoax. I only say that I find the popular owl explanation arrogant and insupportable. Look, I live in the country, I’ve been startled by owls — a screech owl 15 feet over your head in the inky creepy midnight will definitely get your attention — and I knew each time within a second that it was an owl and I just had to wait for my heart rate to drop back to normal. That 5 country-bred adults would be convinced for hours that it was something else? I just don’t buy it.

It was certainly a less expensive and less destructive invasion than most Hollywood versions.

Billy Ray wasn’t the only one to report lights in the sky that night. Were they meteors? Maybe. Or maybe Billy Ray and his friends successfully defended Earth from alien invasion and we owe them a debt of gratitude for scaring off the extraterrestrials with cheap .22 ammo. May all invasions be so easily repelled.

Sableye

Today, the close encounter is remembered in Kelly’s festive Little Green Men Days, but also in several geeky pop culture specimens. I’ve already mentioned E.T., but allegedly the Pokémon Sableye is also based on these creatures. And Paizo borrowed the name and concept for their goblin creature the Hobkins, which you may fight in Pathfinder, should you play at Gen Con or another geeky gathering.

What did you do for the eclipse? Spot any aliens?

Conferences, Cons, and Solar Eclipse 2017, Or What I Did On My Summer Vacation It's been a busy month! First I went to Realm Makers, which has become one of my favorite writing conferences, and then to a small local writing conference at Taylor University, my first time visiting there.

#travelogue #video

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lazarusisgogo · 7 years

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The chronology of Star Trek absolutely makes me want to die because while in terms of episode order This Side Of Paradise is right before Devil In The Dark, the actual order is City On The Edge Of Forever, then a number of episodes including Return Of The Archons, Errand Of Mercy, and Devil In The Dark, all episodes in which we see some of the best teamwork and camaraderie between Jim and Spock, and then Operation Annihilate.

Okay, so we have City On The Edge Of Forever, where Jim falls for a Spock surrogate, where Jim talks to Edith about how helping others and the phrase “let me help you” is more powerful even than “I love you” and then chronologically we have several episodes in which Spock literally embodies the concept of “let me help you” because we have all these episodes that are totally centered on the teamwork between Jim and Spock, culminating in the episode that actually aired next, which is Operation Annihilate where Spock literally says the words “Jim, let me help” even as Jim is mourning Spock’s blindness, the thought of losing Spock, of having hurt Spock, caring more about Spock than his own family, etc. Okay, great.

So to recap: in The City On The Edge Of Forever, Jim falls in love with a surrogate for an unavailable Spock, worries that he and Spock won’t end up together, and Spock struggles with his feelings for the captain (”Captain -- even when he doesn’t say it he does” hmm I wonder what else is going unsaid). Then technically there are two episodes in between Operation Annihilate and Amok Time.

One of these is Metamorphosis, in which Jim and Spock encounter Zefram Cochrane and the Companion, a sentient creature composed largely of electricity that has a “female” personality and is in love with Cochrane (to Cochrane’s dismay). Jim spends the episode trying to convince the Companion to let Cochrane go. He argues that Cochrane and the Companion are too different. He argues that humans need obstacles to overcome. Meanwhile, the Commissioner who is down on the planet expressed confusion over Cochrane’s attitude -- that someone would reject love when it is offered to them. Jim argues that if the Companion loves Cochrane, it will let him go -- a sacrifice of its happiness for his. But the Companion is what has been keeping Cochrane alive all this time. Without the Companion, he will die. Ultimately, the Companion inhabits the body of the Commissioner as she finally succumbs to her illness. The Companion now has a human form with which to love Cochrane, and the two of them stay on the planet.

Cool, so we have a direct fucking parallel to Jim and Spock: the refusal of love freely offered out of fear of what is different, strange, and unknown; love bridging difference and species; conforming and sacrificing an alien identity for the love of a human; etc. Also, in this episode Jim is hung up on ideas of femaleness, arguing that maleness and femaleness are universal constants that seek each other out in love. Clearly Jim is still hung up on Edith -- more accurately, what Edith represented to him i.e. an attainable love that reminded him of his relationship with Spock -- and deals with this by projecting his loss onto Cochrane, urging Cochrane to leave the planet, to reject the Companion’s love. Which, of course, Spock sees, and interprets as Jim rejecting the idea of love, rejecting the idea of a love that is foreign, not human, sees Jim emphasize the importance of femaleness in love and knows he can’t have Jim. Meanwhile, the episode ends with Jim, referring to the Commissioner’s death, saying "I'm sure the Federation can find another woman, somewhere, who'll stop that war." Hmm, I wonder if Jim could be referring once again to Edith, once again to the idea that he will find a woman who could stop his internal war, his feelings for Spock.

And then, finally we have Amok Time. Jim shocked to discover that Spock is engaged, and to a woman no less. Jim, shocked by Spock’s vulnerability, rawness, emotion. Jim, willing to do anything for his friend. Spock, fighting the pon farr that very obviously wants Jim. Spock, letting Jim in, as hard as it is. Spock, whose plak tow vanishes after his “fight” with Jim. Who cares far more about Jim than about T’Pring’s rejection. Spock, who says “having is not so pleasing a thing as wanting.” Spock who finally “had” his captain....and killed him (or so he thinks.) Spock, who perhaps is thinking about Jim and Edith, about Jim’s heartbreak. And then, of course, learns that Jim is alive and well, shows his true emotions, his joy and love.

But wait! It doesn’t end there! Because, chronologically, Amok Time is immediately followed by This Side Of Paradise. Where Spock is affected by spores that make him happy, emotional, loving. He “falls in love” with Leila Kalomi, who he had met several years before the mission, who loved him and who he had feelings for but could not reciprocate her affections. Leila, who is honey blonde with soft eyes, much like someone else we know. Spock tells Jim that the planet it “a true Eden” and Jim once again retorts (just like in Metamorphosis) that without struggle and challenge, humans stagnate. “I don't know what I can offer against paradise” Jim laments in his Captain’s Log. What could he possibly offer Spock that is better than this untroubled euphoria? So Jim has to break Spock out of his bliss, attacking him, insulting him, insulting his heritage, calling him a half-breed, a computer, telling him he could never truly love Leila, telling Spock that he is a freak who belongs in a circus. As Spock is about to kill Jim in his rage, Jim’s touch on his bare wrist stops him. A direct parallel to Amok Time. Spock tells Leila that he cannot stay with her, that he has a duty to the ship and his captain. “I am what I am, Leila. And if there are self-made purgatories, then we all have to live in them. Mine can be no worse than someone else's.”

In fact, let’s break down some exact quotes from this episode:

1. “Emotions are alien to me. I'm a scientist.” - Spock

Spock, deep in denial about his emotions, despite the fact that his clear emotions for Jim were made clear in Amok Time, preceding this very episode.

2. When Spock is in pain after being hit with the spores Leila says: “It didn't hurt us.” Spock replies: “I am not like you.”

Spock, who is in pain as his emotions are ripped from his control and forced to the surface, all the pain, rejection, disappointment, and loss he’s felt associated with attempts at love and happiness.

3. “I love you. I can love you.” - Spock, to Leila, after the spores

Spock, shocked to realize that he feels no shame in his emotions, no impediment to his ability to feel love and, moreover, to feel loved. Free from repressing himself, from hiding, from shame.

4. “Man stagnates if he has no ambition, no desire to be more than he is.” - Jim, talking to Spock about the drawbacks of an “Eden”

Jim, referencing the fact that he needs Spock and Spock needs him, that they are better together, challenging each other and bringing out the best in one another. Sounds familiar: Ma etek natyan teretuhr lau etek shetau weh-lo'uk do tum t'on // We have differences. May we, together, become greater than the sum of both of us. (Surak)

5. “And you've got the gall to make love to that girl!” - Jim, mid-rant, taunting Spock into violence

Why would Jim bring this up in his criticism of Spock, in trying to make Spock angry, if not in reference to Spock being a traitor? He refers to Spock being sub-human, and implies that such a lowly being should not be with a human, but reading between the lines clearly indicates that this, to Jim, is a betrayal as much as Spock’s mutiny.

6. “I have little to say about it, captain. Except that for the first time in my life, I was happy.” - Spock, when Jim asks him about the spores and the experience

Spock, acknowledging that he understands what it is to be happy; that is, he understands what it is to be able to express him emotions, to love and to be loved without judgment or shame. Spock has experienced happiness before, although he would not allow himself to experience it for long, or to enjoy it, but this particularly is a form of happiness Spock has never known. The spores did not make him happy, but they allowed him to experience the happiness that he has so long denied himself: love.

So, to recap: Jim and Spock both fall in love with surrogates for each other that are ultimately ripped away from them and they return to the ship and to one another, realizing that no one can replace or be an adequate substitute for each other while simultaneously feeling more than ever like love is out of reach for them, an unattainable fantasy.

There is.........so much more to discuss but the arc from City On The Edge Of Forever to This Side Of Paradise is extremely and absolutely cursed thank you for your time.

@spoko @swishyspock i blame these blogs for making me think about this last night and type up this cursed post this morning

#this meta is extremely cursed #read at your own risk #star trek #spirk

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akwelvhi · 7 years

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191

(Trying to kick my Spirk kid!fic AU back into gear)

Heads up!

-Pls note- This fic is a WIP and at the moment very very slow moving, with the author presently having no idea if I will actually write it to completion. -NoteEnd-. I actually started with this idea maybe 2 years ago? And even then I didn’t get much typed out (did too much over thinking and research). And now as I try to write it again, I find myself doing too much research and doubting myself. The Star Trek universe is just so massive with existing canon information, I just don’t wanna mess it up and make some jarring errors - especially since the bulk of this fic is based in Vulcan (the planet. lol, as if I can write this in Vulcan the language).

I’ll put this under the cut for just in-case reader’s do not want to read a WIP. (and also coz this fandom is much much larger x__x)

(PS: I write in random scene jumps. Because I have the rough plot in my head. And my writing style is ‘write-in-weird-jumps and fill-up-plot-like-patchwork)

-Scene: Before Jim goes to Vulcan school. All scenes after this would be Jim&Spock already students.-

“Spock.” Jim said, his nervousness a churning swirl type of emotion which Spock quickly shielded against. It made the young Vulcan feel like he had ingested something his stomach was unable to process.

“Jim, why are you feeling this?” Spock asked, the question and answer process now a familiar exchange between them. After their initial struggle - between Jim’s many emotions and Spock’s lack of reference to understand them. They had agreed that they’d ask and clarify with each other, especially when things about their bond confused even them.

“That- thing.” Jim gestured at the sleek machine that was being set up while Spock and Jim waited by the side. “Is this all really necessary?”

Spock wondered briefly why Jim was asking on the necessity of the school’s verification procedure for newly bonded students. Spock had already explained on what was about to take place. T’Pring and her new betrothed had already went through the procedure a few days prior. As if sensing Spock’s uncertainty, Jim sighed, and Spock recognised the now familiar the zigzag tremble of irritation echoing from Jim’s side of the bond.

“We had the whole ceremony and everything with T’Pau, it’s- it feels as though-” Jim pursed his lips, frowning. Spock couldn’t read his thoughts, but he could tell that Jim was searching for a politer way to verbalise the irritation he felt.

“Shouldn’t T’Pau’s verification of our bond be enough as verification?”

“It is a standard operating procedure to verify students who have recently been bonded. You are also correct in your inference that the verification conducted by T’Pau is adequate in confirming our relationship. I believe that in view of the unique nature of our bond, the school is using this as an opportunity to collect data, which would be essential in the study of bonds.”

Jim was about to say something when they were approached, the machine was ready. They were instructed to stand facing each other on either side of a slim console. On one side attached to the console was a large screen, and the other side was a slim pane of what looked like a netted material made out of glass.

The machine whirred softly as a handprint outline lit up on the netted glass pane. Spock placed his hand against the print, Jim hesitated, but placed his hand up a second later. Jim could feel the heat of Spock’s palm against his own contrasting with the cool lines of glass between their hands.

Immediately, the screen flashed to life with the readings in the Vulcan language Jim was still learning. He understood maybe a quarter of the words so none of it made much sense. There were numbers too, a lot of them scrolling across he screen. But even with his lack of understanding Jim clearly saw the divide where one half of the screen represented Spock’s logical and orderly mind, and the other erratic side representing his own.

“Be calm Jim.” Spock said evenly, channelling his mental landscape of serenity and order across their bond to Jim.

With his attention on the screen, Jim didn’t even notice Spock melding with him until he felt the gentle nudge of Spock asking for permission to enter. With his fingers resting against Jim’s meld points, Spock easily aided Jim’s mind to compartmentalise his emotions aside. Clearing the cluttered space and bringing the ever-shifting tendrils to a standstill. Their breathing synced and the chaotic readings on Jim’s mind chart matched up to Spock’s.

/Can you maintain this for two minutes?/ Spock asked as the mental image of Spock in his mind gestured to the order Spock had aided in. Jim opened his eyes and looked at Spock. /Give me some credit Spock, I can maintain it for two hours./

Spock inclined his head just slightly in reply to the grin Jim gave him. The young Vulcan gently exited Jim’s mental landscape, before his fingers left the meld points one at a time. Their hands still in contact through the porous film of the pane between them.

The researchers - standing unobtrusively at the side - were tapping rapidly at their hand-held Padd’s. When the timer showed zero, Jim pulled his hand away first, appearing visibly relieved when his side of the screen went blank. Spock nodded at the staff and tried to leave the room at a normal pace, despite Jim practically towing him away.

To read. and consider on if I’m gonna use this in the fic.

http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Vulcan - ctrl+f ‘children’, it details the age of vulcan children and what’s expected of them.

#write every day #spirk #spirk fic #WIP

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