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electronickingdomfox · 3 months

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"The Prometheus Design" review

Novel from 1982, by Sondra Marshak & Myrna Culbreath. I didn't like any novel by these authors, and this one is just as bad. The writing seems less messy though, except at the very end, when they start with the philosophical, unintelligible discourses. But otherwise, it's pretty much in line with the old Bantam books. There are also continous references and throwbacks to the old episodes, despite the novel being set post-TMP, which gives the impression of a lack of fresh ideas. The previous Pocket novel ("The Covenant of the Crown") captured much better the feel of the older, more mature characters from the movies.

The plot involves aliens that are experimenting with humans to prove the point of "The Enemy Within": that the strive for greatness in humans comes hand in hand with their most violent impulses. This is what the novel calls "the Prometheus Design". And even if I can see the theme of reaching for greatness and surpassing the gods in the Prometheus myth, I fail to see what it has to do with "aggression" (after all, it's not Prometheus or the humans who are aggressive in the myth; it was the gods who punished the titan). Whatever, guess the authors liked the ring of it.

The main problem is the characterization. Kirk is again this submissive wimp, while Spock is this over-powered, authoritarian (and pretty obnoxious) character. And the plot device by which Kirk is stripped of command, so it's transferred to Spock, is just ludicrous. It's obvious the authors wanted so bad to push a dom/sub dynamic into their relationship, which is, in my opinion, completely antithetical to Kirk and Spock's friendship. Vulcans are again the coolest in the galaxy; humans suck again. In fact, the way Vulcans are portrayed as supremacists that look with such contempt at humans, I don't understand why they joined the Federation in the first place... What happened with IDIC, and Spock's gentle, understanding nature? I don't know. As for McCoy? Well, I guess he trails behind Kirk and Spock...

Spoilers under the cut:

The Enterprise is investigating a series of riots and disappearances in the planet Helvan, when the landing party (Kirk, McCoy and a few others) are approached by a different kind of aliens (named the no-mouths because... they have no mouths). The no-mouths extend their finger-tentacles and probe their victims all over (WHAT!!?). And afterwards, the victims fall unconscious and have lapses of memory, associated with feelings of rage and shame.

Back in the ship, Kirk has a couple of nightmares after the encounter (though in general, he's not any worse than other times when the ship fell under alien influences). Nonetheless, a Vulcan Admiral called Sevaj (who is like the most badass, awesome Vulcan ever) comes onboard and seizes command of the Enterprise and the mission, just like that. Sevaj determines that Kirk is unfit for command, and that all humans who were approached by the aliens are also unfit. But not Vulcans, of course: they're immune to the effect (proof? he gives none, might as well have pulled this out his ass). So the only choice for Kirk is relinquish command to Spock, which he does immediately, since he lacks any backbone in this novel. You may wonder what kind of Captain is Spock. After his encounter with V'Ger, and his understanding of "this simple feeling", and the importance of emotions, and all that, he should have mellowed a little, right? Wrong! As soon as Spock seizes power, he becomes a complete fascist, falls into full "Vulcan command-mode" (WHAT!!?), and starts treating Kirk like crap, suddenly addressing him just as "Mr. Kirk". Okay, let me make an aside: this is NOT how things work. For starters, it should have been McCoy the one who can determine whether the Captain is fit or not for command, not some random dude, awesome Admiral or not. And if unfit, Kirk could have been confined to sickbay, or his quarters, or if truly problematic, to the brig. But that doesn't mean he's suddenly stripped of rank, and can be ordered around, and even punished!, by someone with a lower rank, like Spock.

Nonsense aside, Sevaj explains that the sudden riots, disappearances and accelerated development, that are observed in Helvan and other planets, are all related with some mysterious aliens that are experimenting with aggression in living beings (the so-called "Prometheus Design"). And these experiments will soon destroy the galaxy if they're not stopped. Thus, the Enterprise has to return to Helvan. At this point, the novel spends a good while describing Kirk playing chess with Spock and Sevaj (but he sucks at chess because he's dumb human, and we learn that Spock let him win all those past times). And then Kirk engages in some sort of homoerotic combat/dance with Sevaj (and he also sucks at it, because he's weak human). I don't know, there are lots of invented Vulcan shenanigans and mumbo-jumbo in this part. After one of these training sessions, Spock is changing clothes inside a replicator machine, that creates and destroys clothes around one's body (WHAT!!?), when the machine malfunctions and almost kills him. And Spock is left naked, just so you know. There are several more murder attempts on Spock and Sevaj, and Kirk is the principal suspect, because of the alien influence. Though to be honest, the two Vulcans are so obnoxious, that I'd suspect anyone in the crew as the murderer...

Back in Helvan, Sevaj and Spock beam down alone to learn more about the no-mouths. Despite their superiority, they're captured immediately and strapped to experimental tables to be dissected (and Spock is naked again). So Kirk, McCoy, Uhura and Chekov go to the rescue, and manage to capture one of the no-mouths to interrogate him. Needless to say, Kirk gets zero gratitude from the Vulcans, and instead is threatened with more punishment for not following orders blindly (sigh).

Kirk must be addicted to punishment, though, because he disobeys again when he interrogates the no-mouth. From him, he learns that these creatures are simply following orders from other, higher beings: the true designers of the experiment. Kirk is also shown the path to these new aliens' lair.

In the last part, Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Sevaj go find the designers to make them see reason. They're captured, Kirk has sex with one of the female designers because reasons, and kisses other female designer for reasons too. Also, the designers turn Spock and Sevaj into giants, and force them to fight to the death... while half naked. The aliens explain why their experiment is so important to avoid the destruction of their own race. Well, I say "explain", but in the end I didn't understand much of their reasons. Finally, the heroes convince them to stop their experiments through some "power of friendship" speech, so the aliens leave. The End.

And I'm sorry if this review seems disjointed, but this novel left my brain pretty disjointed too.

Spirk Meter: 9/10*. Kirk and Spock share a permanent mind-bond. At one point, Spock refers to Kirk as t'hy'la (and the novel clarifies that he's using the term with multiple meanings). There are constant comments about how strong and special is Kirk and Spock's "friendship", even suggesting that the aliens chose them as experiment subjects because of their unique link... And I'm probably forgetting some examples; it's more like a continous obsession with each other. I'm not giving it a 10, though, because other novels are more sincere and open, just plainly call love "love", and are not afraid to show it. Here instead, I get an impression of "denying the obvious". Like, there's an effort to hide the homoerotic intent behind Kirk and Spock's strained relationship, and Kirk's sudden womanizer tendencies towards the end.

There's a bit of Spones too, when Spock treats McCoy's wounds while caged, and eases his pain with a mind-link. But let's be honest, McCoy is more like a pet here.

*A 10 in this scale is the most obvious spirk moments in TOS. Think of the back massage, "You make me believe in miracles", or "Amok Time" for example.

#star trek tos #star trek novels #novel review #spirk #k/s

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homerforsure · 3 years

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Whumptober No. 5

betrayal / misunderstanding / broken nose

(Hockey AU)

***

He’d always thought the night Jay took the picture would be the worst of it.

Buck’s hands were clutching the rails of Jay’s iron headboard, where Jay had wanted them, where Jay had placed them after stripping Buck of his clothes, saying “Don’t let go.” His slow, sexy, predatory smile was the last thing Buck saw before the silky black blindfold was tied in place. Jay was gone after that, climbing off the bed, telling Buck how good he looked and what he thought he might do and Buck had arched into the words until he was begging to be touched.

“Be patient,” Jay had purred, appeasing Buck with a single finger drawn shiveringly down his thigh. Buck could feel that he’d climbed back onto the bed, but Jay was too far away and he wasn’t teasing; he just wasn’t there. Stretching out longer on the mattress, trying to find him, he’d said, “What’s going on up there?”

Then the flash went off, the bright light cutting through the thin fabric of the blindfold. Jay swore, “Shit. Fuck,” and when Buck let go of the bed with one hand (one hand because maybe he misunderstood, maybe it was fine, maybe he’d laugh and put his hand back and they’d-)to push the tie away, he’d seen Jay, crouched above him with his phone in his hand.

If he’d asked, Buck might even have agreed. He liked posing. He liked having his body appreciated. But Jay’s expression was the alarm of being caught red-handed and Buck knew, knew with a sinking feeling of dread and betrayal, that Jay wasn’t just taking a memento to savor later. He was taking a picture of Rangers center Evan Buckley, naked, smirking, and vulnerable, to use exactly the way those kinds of pictures get used.

Buck forced Jay to delete the photo, made him prove that he’d done it, and then had somehow managed to get himself dressed and down to the street to get a ride without throwing up. His face burned the whole drive home and for half of the night.

And that was the worst of it until five years later. In a new city. When Buck was finally playing the way he’d always known he could. When he was finally earning the respect of his team and the hockey world at large. When he started thinking he might stay. That was when the anonymously authored post was retweeted and reblogged and shared and gleefully discussed on all corners of the hockey internet.

MY WILD NIGHT WITH AN NHL ALL STAR

The Good, the Bad, and the Kinky

His agent’s was the first text he saw when he got done with practice: “Do NOT respond yet. Call me first.”

It had taken another couple messages before Buck realized what he wasn’t supposed to respond to and in the meantime, the texts kept rolling in. Half of them from numbers he didn’t even have saved in his contacts.

“Dude, is that shit true?”

“Are you okay?”

“Do you know who it is?”

“You dog 😜”

“You never told me you were into that 👀”

“Ignore it, Buck.”

“We’re all with you.”

“Fuck that guy.”

“Hey if you need something to take your mind off of it💋💋💋”

“Evan, Mike from the Tribune. If you want to set the record straight, please give me a call.”

From the looks on the faces of his teammates as they tried to pretend they weren’t stealing glances at him, they were getting messages of their own. Hen was the first one to start to approach him with a look of concern, but Buck avoided her, grabbing his bag and sneaking out the door without bothering to hit the stationary bike like usual.

“What the hell did you do to piss this guy off?” Geoff said as soon as he answered Buck’s call. “More importantly, what else does he have on you?”

“Nothing!” Buck answered, nearly merging directly into another car as his hands shook on the steering wheel. “What do I do? How do I fix this?”

“I don’t know, Buckley. None of my other clients get up to shit like this. You need to get yourself a publicist. I’m going to get in touch with Grant and make sure they’re not already shopping you.”

His agent hung up and Buck’s phone continued to buzz and chime all the way back to his apartment.

There were cameras outside which there almost never were. Mostly only hockey fans cared about pictures of hockey players and the press was limited to the arena and their official events. Maybe one or two regular guys who Buck knew by name. It was just his luck that he lived in LA where there were almost more cameras than there were disasters to photograph.

“Buck! Do you know who the author is?”

“Have your teammates seen the post?”

“Are you worried about other former partners coming out with similar stories?”

Buck pushed past them, but the questions followed him inside. His phone didn’t stop. His mentions were a nightmare on every platform. He shut Twitter as soon as he opened it and saw his name in the trending topics. The statements put out by the Kings and Buck’s agent condemning the piece and the interest in it were drowned out by outlet after outlet picking up the post and sharing it out wider and wider.

Can you guess this NHL player by his sexcapades? (Hint: It’s exactly who you think)

Hockey players used to be the humble, hard working gentleman of sports. What happened?

Should the Kings trade Evan Buckley? Can they?

Nash should make Buckley sit for embarrassing the team like this.

Aw, man, don’t do that. Sitting’s a little tough for Buckley right now

🤣

And I thought it couldn’t get worse than the time he fucked that mascot in Carolina

{This post may contain explicit content}

😵‍💫

🤮

Excuse you, Gritty has standards

[98 more posts]

Whether from a latent masochistic streak or just because he didn’t want to look away and find that the story had gotten bigger while he was gone, Buck couldn’t stop refreshing the pages. He read Jay’s words over and over again as his stomach roiled. If it had all been lies, Buck wouldn’t have spent the morning pressed into the corner of his couch, hoodie pulled up over his head like armor. If it had all been lies, he could have made a fiery statement, condemning the mystery author and condemning everyone who thought they had a right to consume and critique another person’s sex life.

There were some lies, of course, but it was true enough that Buck’s heart clenched with it. True enough that he could remember how he felt when it was happening, during the three times they’d been together before the photo. Soft and desired and joyful. There was a part of him that was still exposed to Jay, that always would be, this man with the sharp wit and the sharp smile who got Buck bare, begging and biddable all to make him a joke. As he read the smug asides in the unforgiving narrative, he could hear Jay’s voice in his ear.

The sixth time he read it, there was an addition.

Edit: Ha ha wow this really blew up. Doing an AMA at 6 eastern if you’re looking for more dirty details.

And for the first time, Buck felt the burn of tears in his eyes. Furious. Powerless.

The buzz of his phone started making his skin crawl so he shoved it between the couch cushions and tried not to think about it. He sat with his knees pulled up to his chest and his arms wrapped tightly around, rocking just a little as he felt panic creeping in.

What else could Jay possibly have to say? Would he make up more and more audacious lies as long as he had an audience? Would an NHL team want to touch Buck when he was done?

Were there more pictures?

It was the fourth night, the night that Buck caught Jay. Not the first night with the blindfold. What if? Buck shuddered, sinking lower, deeper into the couch, folding himself tighter and smaller, trying to crush the mounting, hopeless fear. He was there for a long time.

When the gentle knock hit his door, Buck jumped and then crouched tighter into his ball. He didn’t answer. There was no one he could face right now.

The knock came again.

Then the door opened.

Buck was up like a shot, nearly falling over the coffee table as he whirled around toward the intruder. Eddie stood in the doorway, holding up one empty hand and pulling his key out of the door with the other.

“Just me.”

“What are you doing here?” Buck asked, shoving his hands into the pocket of his hoodie to hide the fact that he’d been digging his nails into his palms for the last hour.

“Well, you took off. And you weren’t answering your phone.”

Hot shame flushed across Buck’s skin. Eddie knew. Eddie had seen the article and the articles about the article and the tweets about the articles and been shouted at by the cameras outside and Buck wanted to sink into the floor.

“Notice you didn’t take the hint.”

The attitude in Buck’s response didn’t faze Eddie at all, “Do I ever?”

And that almost made Buck feel like smiling, because no, no he didn’t. He said, “No. But there’s always a first time.”

Eddie came a little further into the apartment and Buck felt crowded. Eddie always seemed to take up so much space around him. Maybe it was just that Buck felt his presence most strongly than anyone else’s. Especially when he was like this: arms crossed, focused, not letting Buck wiggle out of a conversation that he didn’t want to have.

This time was no exception. When Buck turned and went back to the couch, compulsively refreshing the comments on Jay’s post again as he went, Eddie followed right after him.

“I came by to make sure you were okay,” he said and Buck flinched again, hating that Eddie knew. Hating that the team knew.

“I’m fine,” he answered, keeping his eyes down and away from Eddie. “Coach is going to rip me a new one tomorrow, but my agent hasn’t called me to tell me I’m being traded so yet so I guess that’s-”

“Who the fuck said you were being traded?” His voice was loud enough that Buck looked up, surprised to see the intensity of anger in Eddie’s face.

“THN. NHL Network did a round table on it too, but they didn’t think anyone would take me. Oh, then Kirk Davis did a radio interview.”

Everyone had picked up those soundbites. Even through the heavily bleeped broadcast, the future hall-of-famer’s opinion on Buck had been crystal clear. At least that wasn’t new information for Buck. Davis had all but refused to shake Buck’s hand when he first joined the Predators and was a big part of why his tenure there had only lasted until the trade deadline.

“Kirk Davis is a fucking asshole. There’s a reason they never made him captain.”

“He’s not the only one who said it.”

“Then he’s not the only fucking asshole out there.” When he didn’t respond, Eddie came around the couch to stand face to face with him, noticing the open comments page as he did. “Christ, have you been reading that shit all day?”

Somehow it made Buck laugh. “It’s the same shit I’ve been reading for 8 years. Since I got drafted. Buckley’s a distraction to his team. Buckley’s an embarrassment to the game of hockey. Buckley cares more about getting laid and partying than he does about winning. It’s guys like Buckley that hurt the NHL.”

His voice pitched up as he recited the familiar accusations, staring somewhere over Eddie’s shoulder because Eddie already knew all this about him. Eddie was the opposite of Buck in every way. He would never make himself the center of attention. He’d never do anything to make his teammates ashamed to play with him. He’d never be so stupid as to go home with a guy like Jay.

“Buckley’s finally getting what he deserves.” Buck whispered.

“Look at me,” Eddie said. When Buck couldn’t, Eddie reached out, setting a light hand on his shoulder that got tighter when Buck tried to shrug out of the hold. “Hey. Look at me.”

He moved his head into the space where Buck was staring into the middle distance and waited. Until Buck couldn’t help but flick his gaze to meet Eddie’s. Once he did, he found a furious compassion that startled him.

“You don’t deserve this, Buck. You did nothing to deserve this. It is not your fault. Nobody in our room thinks it is. Bobby doesn’t think it is.”

Buck shuddered under the weight of the words. He wanted to pull himself free and he wanted to step in closer, “My agent told me I should own it. Post a couple thirst traps and a middle finger on instagram and just wave it off like another classic Evan Buckley weekend.”

There was a time when he would have. Times when he had. But this wasn’t a ridiculous paparazzi photo outside a bar, it was… It was private. It hurt.

As if reading his mind, Eddie said, “That’s not what this is. Fire him if he wants to make you pretend this is okay.”

“I just keep thinking if I was anyone else. If I was someone good, they’d all go after him and not me. I didn’t even do anything to him, Eddie. I didn’t-”

Before he could finish his sentence, Eddie tugged him forward and his arms were tight around his back. Buck should have tried to fight it, but he couldn’t help but fall against his chest and cling on. “You are someone good,” Eddie said, making Buck’s breath hitch. “And if you weren’t, it wouldn’t matter. It’s wrong. They’re wrong.”

“I shouldn’t have trusted him,” Buck confessed into the soft fabric of Eddie’s shirt. “I was so stupid back then. I just wanted- I wanted him to like me. And I’m still- It still hurts that he didn’t. How fucked up is that? He did this. And I still just wish he liked me.”

One of Eddie’s hands moved up to cradle the back of Buck’s head. They were swaying, just a little, Eddie rocking them gently. “I know,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

He managed to keep from crying, but Buck couldn’t stop his breath from coming out in soft, stuttering gasps. Couldn’t keep his fingers from digging into Eddie’s back. If he thought about it, he could imagine this post too (Evan Buckley cried like a baby on my shoulder AMA), but Eddie would never do that. The warm heat of him against Buck’s chest was like a blanket hiding him from the world. It was the most vulnerable he’d been all day and the most sheltered.

Eddie didn’t let go until Buck pulled back and even then he didn’t go far, “Have you eaten since practice?”

“I didn’t think I’d be able to without throwing up,” Buck said honestly.

“Do you want to order something from-”

The timer on Buck’s laptop shrieked and they both jumped. Eddie recovered quickly, but Buck’s heart leapt into his throat. He’d almost forgotten. How could he have forgotten? Pulling away from Eddie, he turned off the timer and refreshed the post, looking for the link he knew would be there.

“Come on, Buck, really?”

Eddie reached out to slam the laptop closed, but Buck shoved his hand in the way. “I have to, Eddie. He’s doing an AMA. I have to-”

“I’m not going to let you torture yourself reading what a bunch of sick assholes have to say, Buck. No way.”

“I have to.”

“No, you-”

“Yes, I do!” He shouted it, standing up to look Eddie in the eye. “I have to read it. I have to see it now because if- if- if I wait and it gets reposted- I have to know if he has- I have to-”

“Buck,” Eddie said, putting his hands on Buck’s arms, trying to rub calmness back into him even as Buck’s heart-rate accelerated. “What does he have? What could be worse than what he already-”

“Pictures,” Buck yelled. “I have to know if he has pictures.”

A dark, dark look came over Eddie’s face and he stopped rubbing Buck’s arms to squeeze instead. “You think he has pictures?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Buck whimpered. He saw himself as if from above, stretched out long and lewd against Jay’s sheets. He imagined ten thousand other people seeing it. “He took- I caught him taking one. Once. But I don't know if it was the only one. I don’t- I can’t let them get out. If he has them, I have to know. I have to report the post. I have to-”

“No,” Eddie said.

“Yes, Eddie. I have-”

“I hear you. Okay? I hear you, but I’m not letting you do that. I’m not letting you put any more of that garbage in your head.”

“Eddie.”

“I’ll do it. I’ll report every goddamn post.” Lifting one hand, Eddie stroked a thumb softly along Buck’s hairline. “Let me do it. Let me protect you.”

Buck swallowed hard, fear and relief and longing fighting for control of the tears that were building up again. He didn’t want Eddie to see any of that. He didn’t want Jay’s words in Eddie’s head. But Buck really really didn’t want them in his own. He wanted someone to protect him. “Thank you,” he said, falling forward again to rest his head on Eddie’s shoulder.

“I’ve got you,” Eddie replied, rubbing his hands firmly up Buck’s back.

Eddie wouldn’t let Buck sit on the couch while he monitored the thread. He fished Buck’s phone out of the couch and made him answer the important messages. From Maddie. From Bobby. From Hen and Chimney. Then he’d told him to order food from the Lebanese place they always ordered from when Eddie came over, asking for extra of the pickled turnips. All the while, Eddie’s fingers slammed onto the keyboard, that sound the only reaction he gave to any of the posts.

It should have been unbearable, letting Eddie comb through the messages. Even without seeing them, Buck knew what they were like. He blocked people every week for the same kind of thing. But Eddie had a defense against them that Buck never had: he didn’t believe they were true. Not even a little bit. He didn’t believe there was a chance that Buck was getting what he deserved for being a show off, for never being a points leader, for being open and soft hearted, for being himself. Eddie believed Buck deserved to be protected and he was ruthless about it.

“No pictures,” he said, a while later, when Jay had finally stopped replying to every comment on the page. “And the rest of it is… well. It’s nothing new.”

“Really?”

“Really. I think it’s done.”

Eddie closed the laptop as if by making that gesture of finality, he could make the words true. Buck, allowed back on his own couch, let himself believe it too. Let himself lean into the safety of Eddie’s arm over his shoulders, breathing in a deep sigh of relief as they caught the Canucks game.

The next morning, Jay’s story was hardly anywhere to be seen. It was replaced. By an essay in The Players’ Tribune. It excoriated Jay. It called out Kirk Davis by name and hundreds of online posters by their bad intentions. It praised Buck’s grace, tenacity, and backhand shot and it demanded respect and compassion and privacy from anyone who called themselves a hockey fan. And it wasn’t anonymous.

#whumptober2021 #no. 5 #betrayal #fic #911 #hanging out at the angst end of the spectrum #911fic #evan buckley #eddie diaz #hockey au #allison can’t write a short fic to save her life #minimal edits #messy ending #questionable formatting #230 am #😴

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imagine-organization-xiii · 3 years

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Organization XIII - Going to a Club

I woke up and the babes on Discord had done this - all of this was done by MissSilverspoon, NoPantsSaturday, and Xionnamon Roll with just a bit of tweaking and added details by me. welcome to the chaos train lmao

WARNING: drug use, drunkenness, alcohol use, sex/hooking up in club bathrooms etc.

Club nights are fun nights for most of them, but they can be a little chaotic. Demyx has definitely had too much to drink way too early and he’s definitely trying to sweet talk his way into performing with the band. He succeeds and he sounds amazing despite how drunk he is.

Xemnas sticks to the walls and glares at anyone who’s brave enough to approach. He’ll last maybe two songs, at most, before he gets fed up with everyone else and leaves. He’ll leave Lexaeus and Xaldin in charge before bailing.

Xemnas: “I’m leaving before I kill everyone in this room. Please don’t call me for anything less than an apocalypse.”

Luxord is hitting on the bartender, trying his best to impress him or her with card tricks to try and get free drinks. It doesn’t work on the bartender, but the other drunk people around him are like a bunch of impressed monkeys and keep buying him drinks. He absolutely loves the attention.

Marluxia has taken up refuge in the bathroom with Larxene. He was supposed to meet someone he had met on Grindr, but Larxene takes precedence. In the women’s restroom but no one seems to mind because he compliments everyone’s shoes and gives out makeup tips to all of the other drunk ladies.

Marluxia: “Listen. Listen, Cindy. I don’t care how good the dick is, if he doesn’t appreciate you then you need to pack your shit and leave. With that ass, you can do so much better.”

Random Girl in the Bathroom: “Now I know that’s right!!!”

Xigbar is causing absolute chaos no matter what he does. It’s either hooking up in the club bathroom with someone (one time it was Demyx. neither of them could look each other in the eye for a week,) picking up mysterious pills off of the floor and trying to get people to take them (is it drugs? is it Advil? is it tic tacs? Who cares?)

Zexion varies depending on how he’s feeling. He’s either sitting in the corner and brooding with Xemnas (and usually bails around the same time), or he’s in the middle of the dance floor dancing like he’s gone absolutely insane.

On rare occasions, Zexion can find a kindred spirit in the club, but that isn’t always a good thing. Aside from doing his own thing, Vexen is also on ‘Zexion Duty.’ Will Zexion make a friend? Will he get into a fight? Who the hell knows? Once, Zexion met two people who were equally as interested in Star Trek - thirty minutes into their newfound camaraderie, Zexion had to be dragged out of the club by Xaldin.

Zexion: “Next Gen wasn’t as good as the Original Series but Picard was five hundred times more incredible than Captain Kirk and you can suck my dick if you think otherwise you stupid - ”

Xaldin, covering Zexion’s mouth: “I think it’s time to go home, bud.”

Vexen usually volunteers to be the designated driver because he’s not much of a drinker at clubs, anyway. He has shit to do the next day and WILL NOT be one of the ones to suffer through a hangover. Designated Driver, BUT will leave at nine o’clock with or without you. Often called a buzzkill. Doesn’t care.

Axel is the most normal in the club, believe it or not. He’s having a good time, dancing with everyone and having a complete blast. Would drag Saix on the dance floor if Saix showed up, but settles for dancing with Demyx instead.

Lexaeus and Xaldin are pretty chill. Lexaeus is more of a bar person than a club person, so he’ll probably spend most of his time at the end of the bar with a glass of strong whiskey or bourbon, just people watching and making sure his friends are having fun. He’ll be on the lookout for any potential fights, but he’s mostly just fine with sitting around and enjoying the atmosphere.

Xaldin is pretty similar to Lexaeus, except for the fact that he’ll probably dance once or twice. He likes dancing as much as the next person, but somehow, he inevitably gets mistaken for one of the bouncers/doormen. Suddenly he’s standing outside the club making sure that everyone is paying their entrance fees and he has no idea how it happened.

Lexaeus, who’s been looking for Xaldin for the last fifteen minutes: “What the hell are you doing out here?”

Xaldin, who has no idea how he ended up in this situation again: “I think I have a new job.”

Besides Roxas and Xion, Saix is one of the only ones who doesn’t bother attending. He doesn’t think that clubs are very fun and he has other things to do with his time. Instead of partying, he’s sitting in an armchair under a lamp waiting for the other members to return so he can scold everyone from staying out late. It’s one of his favorite things to do.

The next day, Saix holds an early, mandatory meeting on the dangers of alcohol, drug abuse, and having safe sex. Roxas and Xion, who are upset that they aren’t allowed to go to the club, are given airhorns to make sure that everyone with hangovers stays awake during his lecture. One of these moments was the closest that Xigbar and Saix ever came to killing each other.

On those rare days that Saix does go with them, leaving the children at home, grumpy and plotting revenge, he goes from stoic to a giggly, drunken mess. He somehow ends up hanging out with a bachelorette party and returns to Axel with glitter all over him and a party hat hanging off the side of his head. He had the worst hangover the day after and no one will ever let him live it down.

#organization xiii headcanons #kingdom hearts headcanon #this was fun

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traincat · 4 years

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I’ve read Waid and Hickman’s FF runs and am currently reading Zdarsky’s 2 in One. I’m planning on eventually reading the Lee/Kirby run. Can I ask, what other runs would you recommend? Is Claremont’s good? Sorry for bothering.

I LOVE Waid and Hickman’s Fantastic Four runs, and Zdarsky’s Marvel Two-In-One was excellent to the point where one of my lingering disappointments is that Marvel brought the Fantastic Four back in a way that prematurely cut off Zdarksy’s 2n1. I know I said I wanted them back but wow did we all get monkey’s paw’d on that one. Zdarsky did really excellent stuff with both Ben and Johnny and the multiverse hopping was honestly fun and interesting. Lee/Kirby is also, in my opinion, just a really terrific run -- it lays the groundwork for not only the future of the Fantastic Four but a lot of big concepts for the Marvel Universe in general, and I think it holds up really well by modern day storytelling standards. Lee’s sense of humor works well with the retrofuturistic vibe and Kirby’s art is always wonderful. In particular I think it’s interesting to look back on The Galactus Trilogy (Fantastic Four #48-50) as the granddaddy of all event comics, for better or worse.

Claremont -- okay, I love Claremont’s run, let me start off by saying that. Claremont’s run follows on what is in my opinion one of the worst periods of Fantastic Four canon, and I mean bad to the point where the literal canon at that point was that to get things back on track the Fantastic Four had to be put in a bubble universe. Claremont’s run kicks in one or two issues after their return to the main Marvel universe and it’s so fun. I think Fantastic Four is one of those series that kind of flourishes in adversity and Claremont’s run starts off with the Fantastic Four trying to regain their footing in a world that had assumed them dead, their Baxter Building gone, living in a warehouse property. Claremont, in my opinion, also has one of the best if not the best handle on characterization for a lot of key Fantastic Four figures, including Johnny, Reed, and Sue. His Ben is also very good, but I think Ben in particular tends to be an easier sell for a lot of comic book writers -- the outcast, the gruff man, the comic relief. He’s easier to identify with than Reed, the Smartest Man on Earth, or Johnny, defined by his youth and beauty and queercoded since the ‘60s, or Sue, by sheer factor of being a woman. So I think a lot of writers identify with Ben first and foremost and put the most love and care into his depiction, whereas the others are a little easier for them to leave by the wayside. Which isn’t a bad thing -- I love that one of the most beloved comic book characters is also one of Marvel’s few canonically Jewish characters, but there is a wealth of truly excellent Ben canon in comparison to the other three. Especially with Johnny, there’s no one else who has written for Fantastic Four who has put nearly as much thought and detail into Johnny’s relationship with his powers, both the positive and the negative, as Claremont has, even reworking the origin story from Lee and Kirby’s joyous scene of Johnny flaming on for the first time into a deeply traumatizing incident -- being sixteen and traumatized and bursting into uncontrollable flames.

(Fantastic Four v3 #11) There’s also a lot of women in Claremont’s run! A valid criticism of Fantastic Four canon is that by its initial core team makeup it tends to be lacking in female characters compared to some other big Marvel staples, but Claremont brings in a ton, from Reed’s college friend and fellow genius Alyssa Moy (who has been done dirty by pretty much every other writer who’s ever touched her, including Waid and Hickman) to multiversal bounty hunter Bounty to the most platonic of Johnny’s gal pals Caledonia to Valeria Von Doom, a “time dancing” teenage incarnation of the baby Sue lost back in Byrne’s run, who sets up baby Val’s eventual return. Claremont is also king of Reed vs Doom setups -- if you haven’t read his Fantastic Four vs X-Men miniseries, I highly recommend it, and he brings a lot of the two sides of the same coin energy from that into his Fantastic Four run.

The downside of Claremont’s run is that the plot is always there and always running and I could not explain half of it if you paid me. Things certainly happen! Like all the time! For seemingly no apparent reason! Stuff gets set up and then it’s not resolved and now we are in Latveria! I don’t think this is necessarily all that detrimental -- the run is still massively fun and the characterization is always fresh and interesting. It’s just that sometimes you have no idea what’s going on and you have to roll with it. And then sometimes you do know what’s going on but in the way where you know Claremont was just writing it because it’s his kink. Which is like, whatever. As authorial ids go, you can pretty consistently do worse than Claremont’s, I’ll give him that. So I do recommend on it the whole, as long as you’re not going into expecting the kind of plots either Hickman or Waid brought the book. Claremont’s is kind of like “stuff happens and it’s either weird or fun so just don’t pay too much attention to it.”

Aside from Claremont, I feel like I generally like far more Fantastic Four runs than I dislike -- but also I don’t hate Millar’s run, which is honestly bad, so it’s possible I’m just very forgiving with the Fantastic Four. I really like Robinson’s run, which is the last run before the Great Fantastic Four Drought of 2015-2018. It’s short, self-contained, and devoted entirely to one story, so it’s pretty tightly written, with good characterization and some very shiny art by Leonard Kirk. Straczynski’s run is decent enough for the fact that it intersects with Civil War -- I think he does his best to get into the heads of the characters re: their actions in Civil War -- and it leads directly into Dwayne McDuffie’s run, another brief one where Black Panther and Storm take over for Reed and Sue. Very fun. Marvel Knights 4 is also a fairly recent run that’s got some strong moments in it, although I feel it’s a little inconsistent in its handling of the characters. It’s still fun, though. For an older, longer run, I like Simsonson’s -- the art is very dynamic, even if the storyline kind of gets too involved with itself.

(FF #337)

I recommend Byrne’s run with the caveat that there’s plenty to dislike about it and plenty of reasons to avoid it, not the least of it being Byrne himself as a creator and a person. It’s heavily sexist in how it deals with Sue, it retcons a huge age gap into Sue and Reed’s relationship, and Byrne’s early departure sets up my all time least favorite Fantastic Four story. (Though that one is Roger Stern and later Tom DeFalco’s fault.) It is historic as Fantastic Four runs go, though, and there’s a lot in later runs that’s built over it or references it or borrows from it. So it’s a rec with a lot of caveats and I also understand why people might give it a skip -- I think it’s more important for an understanding of the greater body of Fantastic Four canon and the impact it had than for the actual run itself. I do think Byrne has some very interesting subtext with Johnny, although it never come to fruition, and while his Sue falls victim to a lot of sexism, I really like what he does with the character of Frankie Raye, who like poor Alyssa Moy I don’t think has ever gotten really good treatment ever since.

I have mixed feelings on both Millar and Fraction’s runs, not in the least because I think they end very similarly -- and that Millar did it better, which doesn’t say great things. Millar’s run is kind of like a trashy popcorn flick version of Fantastic Four; it’s not actually good, but I can’t say I don’t like the terrible eldritch monster in Scotland Christmas arc (Fantastic Four #564-565) and I’m sort of into future Sue. Fraction, on the other hand, takes a space road trip and makes it boring, which is the greatest Fantastic Four sin of all. He’s one of the rare writers who I think actually writes a bad Ben Grimm -- not the least because his run goes out of its way to try and label it Ben’s own fault that he was transformed into a monster. I do really like his FF (just the initials) though.

The only Fantastic Four runs I can say I really truly dislike are Tom DeFalco’s and Dan Slott’s, which sort of unfortunate because DeFalco’s is both long influential (I have no idea why because it’s honestly terrible like in terms of storytelling) and because Slott’s is happening right now. DeFalco comes onto the book on Fantastic Four #356 and stays on until Fantastic Four #416, at which point Marvel hit a literal retcon button to get out of the mess he’d made. (This leads into Fantastic Four v2, which is largely skippable -- it’s basically a mid-90s retelling of a bunch of early Fantastic Four stories that leads back into the FF heading back to the main universe.) DeFalco’s responsible for the Skrull retcon in the JohnnyAlicia marriage and for dragging that out for over 50 issues, the entirety of which feel like he was writing without a plan or outline or literally anything, and I have never felt like a comic book was attempting to gaslight me through its own incompetence or refusal to commit to things it set up itself as badly as I do with DeFalco’s run. (I like other non-Fantastic Four Tom DeFalco runs. I just hate this one.) Dan Slott’s run is just 25 issues and counting of badly written emotionless unfunny pages blandly stapled together and I so badly want Marvel to kick him off the book for its own good.

#almosteverythingnerd #fantastic four #traincat talks comics #comic recs #long post/

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feverinfeveroutfic · 3 years

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chapter thirty-five: guardian angel

The Halloween party proved to be quite the event, especially once the Cherry Suicides showed up in their bloody dresses and the false knives. Sam sat there at the bar with her hand rested upon the bottom of her glass. She gazed on at the rim of the glass and she thought about Cliff. He was so close to her and yet there was still so much to him that she didn't know. She took one glimpse over at the other side of the bar and she pictured him there next to her.

His scent still lingered in her nose, and yet it must have been a part of her imagination. It had vanished from the inside of the hat he had given her, and all that remained was the feeling of the rain. The feel of his fingers on her skin still lingered over her, right over her hip: he had touched her while they were at her parents' house. He lay next to her in her old bed. If only she could touch him again. If only she could feel him again.

To feel his fingers again. To feel him laying next to her again. She moved her hand out from the base of the glass and she rested it on the bar next to her. Out of the corner of her eye, Marla set a hand on her shoulder. Sam had wished for a quiet moment, and she got it right there at L'Amour, right when they first started, right back at square one for her.

It was only a month after the accident and yet she still hadn't lived up to Lars' promise. So much to do in Cliff's wake and yet she knew it was the perfect time for that. Halloween night and Day of the Dead followed suit. Something big and powerful to show that she would always love him no matter what the odds.

She thought about all the things that came with Day of the Dead, all of the colorful skulls and the overall grim feeling. All so contradictory and yet it all rang true with her. She thought about the times she had drawn with color before the last month and yet there wasn't much depth to it all. Cliff left something in his wake, a dark void there in the seat next to her and Marla: his colors had faded away into that total darkness. All the times she had drawn with colored pencil and yet there was something underneath it, a slight darkness, and it took Cliff's absence to realize it.

She had cried all of the tears into Lars' shirt but she knew there was something more inside of her. The first real loss in her life and it extended before her like an eternal dark field with no way out. Indeed, she flashed back on that dream she had with the mysterious man, the one in the forest, and how it seemed to extend on for eternity. It made sense right then. Losing Cliff felt exactly like that dark forest, and the empty spot next to her made her think of the void over his face. Nowhere to run and nowhere to seek out the safety of: the void was sucking her inside.

She thought about the other dreams she had had about him, if any of them were about to come true or give her some sort of sign. If only she could look at them a second time, not at the man himself, and uncover them before something big happened again. To see the forest for the trees.

Sam bowed her head a bit to the stool. She could still feel him there next to her. A month onward and she could still feel his presence right next to her. She wondered if James, Kirk, and Lars had paid their grievance at that point: they were about to head out on tour in less than a week; indeed, they had already left for Europe. She pictured Lars alone in his hotel room, seated on the edge of his bed.

The fact he coaxed her to do the same thing Cliff had done with his bass playing made her sit perfectly still. Her fingers crept across the wooden surface of the bar. She and Cliff had crossed paths for only a brief time and yet it felt as though she had known him forever. The two of them belonged together: every second with her hand there on the bar made her think that over and over again. They had met up in the proverbial forest where they were supposed to keep on walking, keep on walking to find the way out of there, and then after that, she had no idea what had happened there. It was as if he had ducked into the trees in search of food and shelter, and he never returned: she could only hope he had lost himself on the way, but hope only lasted for so long before the darkness swept over her again. He left her there in the forest without a compass, left her up the river without a paddle.

Marla stroked her upper back and Sam let her eyes wander to the stool. She thought about those yellow tulips back in her apartment: they were still big and yellow even a year after he had given them to her. Still big, bright, and that beautiful perfect yellow: still with such that flawless color even with Cliff gone. She managed to keep them alive, but she couldn't keep Cliff alive. She couldn't keep him from going.

She thought about one of the last things he had said to her, how it could be the last time they would ever see each other. A completely innocuous comment to her, but when she looked back on it, a fleeting thought crossed through her mind that told her he knew what was going to happen to him.

The cramped bus. The girls not there. The ace of spades.

To think the arts could be so deadly and he knew where he was headed, to boot. All the bright bold lush colors, the bright yellow of the tulip petals, and right next to them were the dark shadows: the dark green of the tulip stems and leaves. The arts were deadly and monolithic, but it kept him going, and it kept her going in his wake. It kept her going in those last few hours of Halloween, right before the Day of the Dead.

“Remember those gourds we had last year?” Marla asked her out of the blue: the very sound of her voice took Sam off guard.

“How could I forget?” she sputtered.

“I have an idea to bring them back for tomorrow night. Given it's Day of the Dead and whatnot.”

Sam sighed through her nose, and she moved her hand to the edge of the stool.

“More gourds to celebrate the life of Cliff.”

“The life and the loss of him,” Sam added in a soft voice.

“I believe that is the point of these three days,” Marla told her, “all I know is it's a celebration of life as well as death, hence the name. But it could probably help out with those last vestiges of grief within you.”

“I hope James, Kirk, and Lars do something for themselves, too. You know, because Jason came in rather quickly. I hope they do something over that way.”

“Well, Day of the Dead does happen in other cultures, I would assume. Lars being Scandinavian—I'm sure there is something from their culture that he can employ, not just for himself but for James and Kirk, too.”

A few more people came into the club, also donned in Halloween costumes: she wondered where Scott and Dan had run off to, the two of them evil clowns. She wondered if Joey had anything in mind for himself when he showed up.

“What's Kirk's heritage?” Sam nudged a lock of hair behind her ear. “Do you know?”

“I think he's Filipino? I'll have to ask Zelda when she gets back here again—”

Sam leaned forward for a look past her: Marla turned her head a bit to follow her gaze.

“What you see over there?” she asked Sam.

“I thought I recognized someone we knew over there by the door—” She leaned forward again, and she recognized that smooth lush dark hair and those bangs over his eyes. Wrapped in a black cloak and with a silver scythe in one hand. How appropriate for her to think about her deceased boyfriend and one of her best friends appeared as the Death herself.

“Hey, it's Frankie!”

Marla shifted all the way around the head of the stool for a look herself.

“Frankie and another dude,” she added. Sam rested her chin on her shoulder for a better look: indeed, there was another guy next to him, one who looked a little like Frank, but with a smooth pompadour upon his head. Where Frank was dressed like the Grim Reaper, he wore a plain soft blue shirt over plain black jeans, as if he had come from a church session rather than for a Halloween party. He had a big black and beige Polaroid camera slung around his neck.

Marla waved at them and Frank nodded at her. Indeed, he nudged the hood off of his head a little bit so they could better see his head. His dark hair hung around the sides of his head like the floppy ears of a dog: he kept the scythe rested upon his shoulder as the two of them padded over to the bar. The guy next to him showed them a sly little grin.

“Hey, Sam and Marla,” Frank greeted them.

“Death herself played by a dude,” Sam declared.

“Death herself played by a dude, yes!” They both laughed in unison. “Anyways, this is my brother Anthony. He just wanted to come along 'cause he wanted to meet you ladies.”

“I also wanted to come to a party,” said Anthony with a shrug of his shoulders.

“I guess the Cherry Suicides are playing in a bit,” Marla told them. “In their bloody dresses and their knives. So I'm told, anyways.”

“What a name, right?” Frank said to Anthony.

“Great name. Sexy and dangerous at the same time.”

“I just wonder how Zelda is gonna play drums in that dress and that knife right out from her stomach,” Sam confessed.

“She's a drummer—she's tough, though,” Marla assured her.

“Yeah, she's got a fake knife jutting out from her belly,” Frank told Anthony, “well, you saw her when we came in. But those girls give absolutely no fucks, dude.”

“And they're opening for Metallica when they come back here to the Northeast around Thanksgiving,” Sam added.

“Right on!”Anthony showed both girls another smirk and he tucked his hands into his pockets. They seemed so unlike each other, but then again, Frank and Charlie seemed close enough in age that Sam swore there was no way they could be nephew and uncle to each other. But aside from the similar sparkle in each other's eyes, Sam swore they emerged from two completely different families. She spotted Zelda at the doorway from whence Frank and Anthony came in, still donned in that white frilly dress and that big floppy hat, both splattered with that fake blood, and with that fake knife in one hand.

“Speaking of Zelda,” she remarked with a nod to the other side of the room; Frank and Anthony peered over their shoulders in unison and Marla tilted her head to the side for a better look. Zelda nodded at them, and she clutched at the crown of her hat with one hand and held onto the skirt with the other. She sauntered over to them, to which Anthony gestured at her feet.

“You oughta walk on over on your tiptoes,” he said, which brought a laugh out of Frank. Zelda chuckled at that once she came within earshot: she had put on a heavy layer of dark but glittery eyeliner all about her eyes.

“My band's not playing tonight,” she informed them.

“What!” Marla gasped.

“Why?” Sam asked.

“Min's sick—she's got a little bit of a problem with her heart and she's been having palpitations lately. Morgan and Rose both told her to take it easy and we'll hope to try out for tomorrow night for Day of the Dead. We got a song for that, anyway.”

“Aw, man!” Frank groaned. “Brought my brother along with me and everything.”

“Yeah, you did—what'd you say your name was again?” Zelda asked with a wave of her finger.

“Anthony.”

“Anthony, that was it. Yeah, you kept looking at my knife, especially when I took it out and waved it around like I was gonna do something with it.”

Frank laughed out loud at that and his hood fell off of his head all the way.

“Belinda's here, too,” Zelda said to Marla. “She's outside with Aurora and some guy who looks like—question mark, getting her costume fixed.”

“Some guy who looks like question mark,” Marla echoed, “that's probably Emile.”

“Emile.”

“Her friend—I think?” She peered back at Sam.

“He's my landlord but Aurora's pretty friendly with him. A little too friendly if you ask me—and as far as I know, the dude's still married. As far as I know, anyways.”

“Oh, damn.” Zelda chuckled a bit at that, but then Sam spotted Belinda herself dressed in that beige jumpsuit at the doorway. Aurora congregated right behind her.

“Got the camera ready, Anthony?” Frank asked with a twinkle in his eye.

“Right here, Frankie!” He picked the camera off of his chest, and Sam and Marla met up with Belinda and Aurora for a group shot. Sam and Aurora were the only ones without something to stand in for a ray gun, otherwise they were in fact the Ghostbusters. Belinda had put on big knee high black leather boots with two inch high heels and so she stood taller out of the four of them. Anthony held the camera up to his face and he kept the finger over the shutter button.

“Alright, ladies—gimme your best pose—like four models—”

Sam and Aurora stood with their shoulders pressed to each other and their index fingers pointed out to imitate the lasers. Marla pointed right at him with her eyebrows raised, while Belinda held her ray gun close to her chest. He pressed the button and the bright flash filled their eyes. Sam fluttered her eyelids: all the spots floated around her in a little flurry. Aurora shook her head about.

“Another one?” Frank offered; Anthony took the fresh photograph out of the slot and shook it about, and handed it to Frank. “Oh, perfect!”

“But yeah, let's do another one,” said Marla as she extended her arms out on either side of her; Belinda put her right arm around her, while Aurora took to her left side. Sam stood on the far left as if she was a third wheel, but she wasn't. They were all together for the group photo, courtesy of Anthony.

“Fucking hell, that's a bright flash,” Frank remarked, even though he stood right out of the line of sight. Zelda offered to join in for a second group shot: all five girls, all together under the Halloween lights. A third flash and shutter later, and Sam brought her hand to her eyes for them to better adjust.

“Excellent, ladies!” Anthony declared.

“There should be like a photo wall over here,” Zelda suggested with a gesture to the wall off to the right, right next to the bar and right behind Cliff's former spot no less.

“Thrash metal and punk parties at L'Amour,” Frank added with a grin on his face; he reached into his pocket and took out a pack of gum. That gave Sam a chance to pipe up: she took one look at that stool off to the side there and she brought her attention to Frank, dressed as the Grim Reaper. She stood in between Belinda and Zelda and in a few hours time, the party would be over for them. Marla mentioned the gourds while they were sitting there. Time to act.

“Seeing as tomorrow is Day of the Dead,” Sam suggested, “and the Cherry Suicides aren't playing tonight, you guys wanna go do something together?”

“All of us?” Marla asked her.

“Yeah. I would think that it's an all night affair, too.”

“It pretty much is,” Frank joined in as he offered Anthony a piece of bright white mint gum.

“There's a weird, graveyard looking place not too far from here,” Belinda told her. “It's not exactly a graveyard—in fact, it's a few miles from the real thing, but it's like a field with a bunch of monoliths over the surface. At night, it resembles to it. Only drawback is it's across the river so we'll have to drive.”

“Well, we better boogie because the rain's coming down right now,” Anthony insisted. “And y'know how it gets around here. All sopping wet and crazy.” He flashed her a smirk.

“Sopping wet and crazy—yeah, you wish,” Belinda scoffed, but she couldn't help but laugh at that.

“Alright, I'll tell Charlie where we're going,” Marla said as she tucked two locks of violet hair behind both ears.

It was a small line of cars, with Belinda, Zelda and Marla at the front, all the way from the heart of Manhattan to this stretch of grass and trees on the other side of the East River. Given it was raining, and night had fallen, Sam peered out the window as they crossed the bridge at the black waters down below. She remembered what Frank and Charlie had told her about the East River before, how it was off limits to everything and everyone. The very sight of that water in the darkness made her think of that patch of earth where they had spread Cliff's ashes about. His final resting spot.

The East River was where New York City came to die and bury itself. Those black waters that didn't even glimmer under the bright lights of the city or with all the big fat droplets of rain. The shadow under all the bright colors, almost like a hallucinogen.

Of course.

They reached the other side of the bridge and she didn't realize they were on the actual Long Island at first.

“There's so much of this place I've yet to explore,” she confessed to Aurora, who was nestled back in the driver's seat and with those goggles rested high upon her head.

“Oh, yeah, me, too. I remember when I first moved here, I was told that this is Brooklyn, but we're also en route to the community of Long Island. But we're on the actual Long Island right now. So for the first month I lived here, it kept throwing me that you could be talking about Long Island, but not the community itself. It's almost like how it's called Catalina Island but the actual community is called Santa Catalina. Or how Lake Elsinore is called that but Lake Elsinore itself isn't anything special.”

“Or, it's more like—how the whole entire L.A. area is just referred to as L.A.,” Sam added. “But the actual city of Los Angeles is buried in there somewhere.”

“Exactly, yeah! Or how we refer to the San Diego area as San Diego, but you could be referring to anything from La Holla or the beaches or San Diego itself.”

“Right!”

They made their way along the pitch dark freeway into the heart of Brooklyn, but then Belinda and Marla flashed their lights.

“Already?” Aurora wondered aloud.

“It's so freaking dark, I can't see where we're going,” Sam admitted.

“There's a lot to get through, Sam. There's a lot to unpack here.”

They took the next exit after Belinda, Zelda, and Marla, right into a quiet neighborhood outside of the Brooklyn.

“This is actually not too far from where I live,” Aurora told her.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah, I get off a couple of exits up from here. I went walking through here when I first moved here just because it reminded me of San Diego a bit. It's mainly the backs of things on this street here. Extra calm and quiet pocket from the rest of the city. Emile came here with me about a month ago and he told me the French Quarter has something really similar. Amongst the chaos and brilliance of the cities we all hail from, there's that one tiny pocket where it all falls quiet.”

“Right before where it goes to die, of course,” Sam muttered under her breath, as she knew they were still near the East River.

They pulled up to a stop sign right near the actual park itself: through the darkness, Sam spotted five dark figures against the trees. One of them had a candle lit.

“Looks like someone beat us to it?” Aurora remarked.

The car in front of them pulled off to the side and parked at the curb, and they followed suit right behind them.

Zelda rolled down the window and said something over the roar of the rain. One of the figures lifted his head so the candle light washed over his skin.

“Is that Chuck?” Aurora wondered aloud.

“Looks like it? It's hard to tell.”

“Zelda!” Louie's voice caught Sam's ear.

“Yeah, it's them! It's Legacy!”

“The hell are they doing here?” Sam and Aurora climbed out of the car in unison and they hurried up to the sidewalk with Marla, Belinda, and Zelda: the five girls clustered under a tree to stay away from the rain. With nothing more than the candle light in Chuck's hands, the five men padded up to them. They each wore long black hooded cloaks, much like the cloak that Frank wore.

“You guys look like a bunch of monks,” Sam declared.

“What if we actually are a bunch of monks?” Louie teased her as he lifted his head and nudged the hood off a bit: his smooth inky black hair spread across his forehead. Alex moved the hood back a little bit so she could see the little sliver of gray over his forehead: even in total darkness, it stood high and bright like a little pearl. Even in total darkness, his eyes were clear and bright, and Sam knew that that bit of acid had long flushed out of his body. The light from the candle flame washed over his oval face and those deep set eyes, and the small plume of gray over his forehead, so he actually resembled to a ghost. Sam was taken aback by him, and he was taken aback by her, or by something else. But his deep eyes were big and wide, as if something spooked him.

“My stomach is kind of nervous, sorry,” he muttered to them.

“It's alright, Alex, it's not like we've got a Ouija board with us,” Greg assured him.

“It was your idea to do this anyway,” Louie added.

“His and my idea,” Chuck joined in. “We came here to grieve over Cliff for Dia de los Muertos.”

“Funny 'cause—” Frank's voice floated in from right next to Sam: the sound of his voice was so sudden that it made her jump a bit. “—we all did, too.”

Sam gazed on at the candle, which burned bright in spite of the torrential rain. She remembered one thing that Lars had told her in that room, in that the flame that burns the brightest burns twice as long. This flame shone bright against the darkness of the rain and the trees. The bright yellow against the darkness.

The bright yellow of the tulips against the imminent wilt that would overcome them at some point no matter how long she took care of them.

She felt a tap on her shoulder and she looked over at Belinda, who held a small pale white gourd in her hand: the candle light made the lines of glitter near the stem twinkle and shimmer like the stars behind the clouds, and like everything the East River could never do.

“It's Dia de los Muertos,” Chuck announced with a break in his voice. “Two minutes to midnight, and we are among the dead.”

“The living walking among the dead,” Eric added in an absent tone. The five of them clustered together just like a small group of monks. Sam looked over at Frank and the scythe in hand: the fake blade shone in the candle light. To her left stood Zelda and the blood upon that dress. The living among the dead.

“To the one Cliff loved,” Chuck continued with a gesture to Sam. “Dear little Sammich.”

“Samantha,” Alex almost breathed her name.

“He's like a guardian angel to you now,” Belinda told her, as she handed Sam the glittered gourd.

“Mourn over him, Sam,” Chuck encouraged her. “Mourn over him!”

Sam cradled the gourd in both hands. She remembered the room: her and Lars alone together, away from the world. She remembered everything Lars had told her. She closed her eyes and let the rain wash over her.

Cliff next to her. The man of her dreams. Disappeared into the dark forest and he never returned. Disappeared into the East River and never made it out of those black waters. He was never coming back.

The rain helped the tears out from her. Her shoulders quivered. A dead weight emerged in her chest. She was never going to see him again.

She wept like a widow in front of those five men and among her friends. It was more torrential than the very rain itself. Aurora threw her arms around her and cried with her. She felt another body behind her, a larger more slender one, and she knew it was Frank. Her best friend Frank, who told Cliff he was going to see him the next day for the show in Stockholm.

They may have had the funeral, but she never got to grieve in the way she should have done so then.

Her body shook but Aurora held her so close to her own. They were the only ones crying: the guys from Legacy were silent as far as Sam knew. Frank held them both close to his body to protect them from the rain and he wept right into their ears.

Sam gasped for air and she stared up at the black sky as the tears on her face mixed with the rain: Cliff was up there somewhere. He watched over her. He had become an angel for her as Belinda had said. Gone away for good but he was never far away.

He would never be far away from her even as more and more tears fell down her face. Aurora lifted her head and looked up at Frank, whose chest and shoulders shuddered underneath his black cloak. Marla joined in right next to them: Sam rested her head against Frank's chest and closed her eyes. It would be something to tell her parents about when she found the chance.

But on the other hand, she felt a dead weight lift off of her even as the rain came down harder over them. The candle light extinguished and Chuck swore to himself.

“Had a feeling that was gonna happen,” Belinda confessed with a break in her voice.

“Eh, swings and roundabouts,” Chuck told her, also with a break in his voice. They were all grieving, but Sam did it the loudest for Cliff, and even as the tears continued to fall, she could feel him officially laying down on the cold drenched earth for his final sleep. The Day of the Dead had started and she opened her eyes to see it happen for herself. A brand new day to celebrate the living once more as she stared on at those five shadowy faces next to her, Frank, and Aurora.

Frank sniffled and let out a long low whistle.

“Fuck, I needed to do that,” he confessed.

“I did, too,” Sam added as she brushed away more tears. Aurora lifted her head for a better look at her despite the darkness: Sam raised her hand from behind her head to show off the gourd, which still glittered and sparkled despite the darkness.

“Where'd you find that, by the way, Bel?” Sam asked.

“Glove box,” Belinda replied; in the dim light, she could see her brushing away a tear. “Felt appropriate enough—”

“Good night, Cliff,” Eric declared up to the black sky.

“Yeah, good night, Cliff,” Chuck added. “We love you, buddy.” As the words left his dark lips, Sam couldn't help but feel closer to them. She still had a lot more to figure out with them, but she had time. Time before she could join Cliff once again.

“Let's get the hell out of this rain,” Zelda said as she ruffled her frilly skirt, “good thing this fake blood doesn't actually bleed otherwise your car would be a complete mess, Mar...”

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per-ineptia-ad-astra · 4 years

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fixing The Menagerie

The circumstances behind The Menagerie pose an interesting writing problem: how do you take an already shot, totally completed episode for an earlier version of a TV show that differs considerably from the version that actually made it to air, and turn it into an episode that you can use now, as part of that later version, in a way that actually makes sense for your audience? That would be challenging enough without the additional problems that 1.) you can't reshoot any of the original episode because you no longer have access to the sets, costumes, most of the cast, etc., and 2.) the whole reason you're doing this in the first place is because you can't get a completely new episode out in time to meet your air date, so whatever your framing device is it has to be something that can be shot and finished very quickly--and cheaply, because at absolutely no point in the making of this show has there been spare money to throw around.

When I recapped The Menagerie (eons ago, it now seems) I said in the conclusion to the second part that I thought the framing device used wasn't as effective as it could have been. So, I figured I’d put my money where my mouth was and see if I could come up with another one. Before I start I want to put out the same disclaimer I used for the Return of the Archons post: I am not a professional TV writer (or a professional anything) and I intend this only as a fun exercise and not an angry and serious screed about the writing quality of TOS, which I do very much love for being what it is. I can only offer what, in my opinion, would make a more enjoyable episode, which may not necessarily be what you would find to be a more enjoyable episode. And if you already greatly enjoy The Menagerie as it is, you probably won’t want to read this.

For the purposes of this post, I’m going to take The Cage itself as written. It has its own problems, and that might be worth its own post at some point, but I’m not going to take it on here. We’ll assume The Cage exists exactly as it was produced, and the problem now is entirely focused on how to turn it into an episode—or two—of TOS.

(And, just to get it out of the way: I’m not going to talk about how either The Cage or The Menagerie play into Discovery, AOS, or the rest of Star Trek in general. It’s obviously a very important episode backstory-wise, but for this, right now, I’m just going talk about it purely as a TOS episode.)

So, with that out of the way, let’s talk about The Menagerie for a moment. What’s wrong with it?

Well, the framing device could certainly have been worse. It’s not terrible. Hell, Part I even won a Hugo, so, guess I’m up against the Hugo committee on this one. But, there are a number of things that I find awkward about it.

In a general sense, there’s the way that, once the flashbacks start, the story is attempting to maintain two separate threads of tension: the flashback story, with the tension being on what’s going to happen to Pike, and the present-day story, with the tension being on what Spock is doing, why he’s doing it, and whether he’s going to wind up getting the death penalty for it. This second thread starts out well—by this point in TOS, we’ve gotten to know Spock well enough to know how out of character all this is for him, which makes the mystery quite gripping. However, once the flashback starts, the story struggles to maintain the tension of this second thread. The attempt to keep the present-day story as tense as the past story only results in breaks away from the action for scenes in the courtroom where something or someone stops Spock from showing the footage, which never results in anything because by the next commercial break they’re back at it. Most of these interruptions are either arbitrary (the screen goes off for no reason and then comes on again for no reason; fake!Mendez randomly decides he’s had enough and tries to stop things) or just not that interesting (Pike fell asleep), and with each one it only becomes more obvious that the only real purpose they’re serving is to pad out the framing story.

The resolution of the present-day story is also rather unsatisfying for a lot of reasons. After so much tension built up about what’s going on and why Spock is acting this way and is his life on the line and is Kirk’s career on the line and how’s he going to get out of this...it turns out that Mendez has been fake this whole time, so nothing he said or did since Kirk left the Starbase matters at all; Starfleet casually waves the whole thing aside with no repercussions, making all the build-up about Spock risking the only death penalty remaining in the Federation mean nothing whatsoever in the end; and we never really get a satisfactory answer as to why Spock insisted on carrying out his court martial the way he did. Sure, eventually the Keeper says the whole court martial was basically staged to stall Kirk so he wouldn’t focus on getting control of his ship back, but not only does that raise further questions—if Mendez was only ever an illusion sent by the Talosians, why did he try to stop the court martial several times? Why did the Talosians turn off the footage at a crucial point, and why did it come on again?--there’s also no reason given why Spock couldn’t just recount what happened himself, which could have taken up enough time if he was careful enough about it, instead of needing the Talosians to broadcast a video version of the events.

There’s also the simple fact that Pike’s ending is itself rather dubious. I suppose this one comes down to a difference of opinion between me and Gene Roddenberry (one of many) since both The Cage and The Menagerie end with a character going to permanently stay with the Talosians, with no concern at all expressed about the fact that the Talosians are cruel, torture-happy, and frankly insufferable wannabe-slavemasters who see humans as nothing more than brute animals to be caged, bred and make to work. I said I wasn’t going to tackle The Cage here so I won’t go off about its ending, no matter how much it pisses me off. But The Menagerie is also at fault here, because it needlessly repeats the exact same problem (with a bit less sexism, but still). The ending of The Menagerie gives us no sign that the Talosians have reformed in any way, and no explanation as to why they suddenly care so much about Pike to go to all this trouble for him. We’re just expected to believe that Pike’s gonna go have a nice happy illusion-life with them even though the last time we saw them they were trying to breed a race of human slaves. Really, Gene? Really?

On that note, the treatment of disability in both The Cage and The Menagerie bothers me a great deal. The effect of Pike becoming disabled is to essentially strip him of all his autonomy. I mean no disrespect to Sean Kenney here, but if they’d replaced him with a mannequin it wouldn’t have made any difference at all to the episode, because in The Menagerie Pike is not a character, he’s a prop. We’re assured repeatedly that Pike thinks and feels as much as he ever did, but we have to be told that by other characters because the episode certainly never takes any opportunity to let us in on any of it. Here’s the sum total of what we know Pike thinks about the events of The Menagerie:

1. He doesn’t want to visit with Kirk and McCoy at the beginning of the episode but allows Spock to stay.

2. He tells Spock “no” when Spock tells him his plan.

3. He keeps repeating “no” the rest of that day, which everyone is confused by but no one makes any effort to understand.

4. He falls asleep at one point.

5. He votes for a guilty verdict for Spock during the court martial, when asked.

6. He says “yes” when asked if he wants to go live with the Talosians.

Pike is treated with sympathy and the respect due to his rank and history, but mostly he’s an object of pity. We’re told he can move his chair himself, but he appears to be confined to one small hospital room that’s not even set up for his needs, and he spends the entire episode being moved around by other people. Everyone talks about how bad his situation is, but only Spock attempts to do anything to improve it—and he does so knowing that Pike doesn’t want him to do it. When Pike tells him “No,” Spock doesn’t ask any questions, he doesn’t try to find out what part of this whole thing Pike is objecting to, he just overrides Pike’s objection on the assumption that Pike is only concerned about Spock doing something so very illegal, a concern he pretty much disregards. He turns out to be right—as far as we can tell—but for all the information Spock has at the time, Pike might have been saying, “No, I don’t want to live with the Talosians.”

It doesn’t need to be that way. Pike’s condition is certainly very severe, but as I mentioned in the recap, there are plenty of other things that could have been done for him, or at least attempted. And even if none of those were done, there are other ways that the episode could have developed his character, or at least treated him like a character. Spock’s discussion at the beginning of the episode could have been a mind meld that allowed us to hear Pike’s thoughts on the matter. Spock could have heard his objections and addressed them, and he and Pike could have come to come to an agreement and actually become co-conspirators instead of Pike spending the entire episode as a helpless hostage to Spock’s plan. We could have gotten a scene of Pike and McCoy interacting after Spock tells McCoy to look after Pike—McCoy’s not only highly suspicious at that point and unlikely to be greatly put off by Spock's order to not ask Pike any questions, he’s also the one who gives a whole speech about how cruel it is that Pike “can’t reach out, and no one can reach in”--so give us a scene where he does reach out! We could have had a scene of Kirk talking with Pike—he’s certainly got plenty to ask the man about, both in general and in regard to the current situation. All he has to do is put a little extra work into how to frame his questions. The Talosians could have delivered a message from Pike at the end, or one of them could have astral-projected in earlier to have a telepathic exchange with him. We could have seen Pike express himself by moving his chair, turning towards or away people when they talk to him, interjecting a “yes” or “no” into a conversation instead of only replying when asked something, or repeating a response incessantly to show that he’s emphatic about something. (Yeah, we kinda get the latter when he’s saying “no” over and over early in the episode, but that’s only treated as a “what could he possibly be trying to communicate??? oh, if only we knew!” moment.) There were so many ways Pike could have been treated as a character, as a person, instead of a plot element who exists to be pushed around in his chair and have speeches made about how tragic his situation is.

Both The Cage and The Menagerie end with a character who is disabled choosing to spend the rest of their lives isolated from the entire rest of humanity on a barren planet inhabited by jackass aliens because, as everyone around them nods and solemnly agrees, that’s a better fate for them than living among human society. To be clear, it’s not Pike and Vina seeking solutions to their problems that I object to. If Vina wants to be represented by what is essentially an avatar of her own choosing, or if Pike feels that an illusory world offers better quality of life for him, that’s entirely their right. But when life with the Talosians is set up as a situation so horrible that we see four characters literally willing to die rather than remain on Talos 4, and then have two disabled characters say “actually it’s better this way if I stay here,” you kind of wind up with a message that looks a lot like “being disabled is a fate worse than death.” I doubt that was intentional, at least not entirely, since we see other disabled characters in TOS who are treated considerably better—but there it is, all the same.

This is not to say that there’s nothing of value in The Menagerie’s framing story. The tension between Kirk wanting to trust his friend but being forced to act in authority over him because he’s undeniably done something very seriously against the rules, and he won’t tell Kirk why, is great while it lasts. Spock’s character is expanded considerably by showing us that there are some things he places above his honor and obligations as a Starfleet officer—and indeed above his own life. We see a bit of his history, a glimpse of a relationship with a former captain that he respects so much that Spock will put everything on the line to secure a better future for him; and we see how much he respects and values Kirk, that he foregoes the chance to explain himself—and thus gain an ally and aid in his cause—because to do so would put Kirk in danger as well. And we get that great little moment where Spock tells McCoy to call security on him and McCoy has absolutely no idea how to react. And we get backstory! And kind-of-continuity! Okay, it’s not much backstory, but by TOS standards it’s practically a goldmine.

I don’t want to throw all that away. But I think there must be some way to address the problems without totally losing the good parts.

It’s only fair, though, that any attempt to improve the episode should keep in mind the circumstances it was made under. I don’t know enough about budgeting and producing TV in the 1960s either generally in or in this specific case to know exactly what was available to them when it came to producing The Menagerie, so I’m just going to try to deduce roughly what we might have to work with based on what what was in the finished episodes:

Much of Part I and all of Part II take place in preexisting sets, either the Enterprise ones or the shuttlecraft interior set. The new sets include the Starbase 11 exterior—which is mostly a matte painting—Mendez’s office, Pike’s hospital room, and the Starbase computer room. The computer room is a redressed Engineering set; I suspect the hospital room is also a redressed existing set, but I don’t know for sure. It’s quite simple regardless, and is clearly mostly using existing pieces (the bed and the chair). Mendez’s office is likewise set up with pretty standard preexisting TOS set dressing pieces, with the exception of some cut-outs outside the window standing in for the Starbase exterior.

Discounting any background extras we have five new characters: Commodore Mendez, Piper, Chief Humbolt (the computer room guy), Lt. Hansen, and Pike himself. Of these, only Mendez and Pike have much significant screen time. So, we can assume that hiring an extensive guest cast is probably not on the table here.

Most of the original cast from The Cage are probably not available. Pike we know is definitely out—Jeffrey Hunter wasn’t willing to come back after The Cage failed, and probably would have been too expensive to hire for two episodes anyway. Leonard Nimoy and Majel Barrett were, obviously, still working on TOS, so presumably we could incorporate past-Spock and Number One if we really needed to. Since Malachi Throne was also on hand for The Menagerie, we could record new dialogue for the Keeper (as The Menagerie did indeed do), but presumably no new footage (Throne voiced the Keeper, but they and all the other Talosians were portrayed onscreen by female actors). I don’t know if any of the other original cast could have been gotten back, but since they weren’t, let’s assume we can’t use them.

Let’s also assume that all of the sets, costumes, makeup, etc., from The Cage are inaccessible. In reality I’m sure at least something was still kicking around in storage somewhere, or was reused for TOS, but there’s no point in trying to figure out exactly what, so for simplicity’s sake we’ll say anything we might want to use from The Cage has to be recreated from scratch, and if it can’t be then we can’t use it.

Because the entire reason this is going on in the first place is because the effects work was making TOS run behind schedule, we can’t have much in the way of effects for The Menagerie, especially post-production effects. There’s a shot of the planet Starbase 11 is on, a matte painting for the Starbase 11 exterior, a couple uses of the transporter, Pike’s chair and makeup, some shots of the Enterprise and the shuttle flying around in space, and some things being shown on screens—and I think that’s more or less about it.

So. If I was told that I had to take The Cage and wrap it up as a TOS episode with the above restrictions in mind, here’s some things I would keep in mind:

If we look at this from a starting-from-scratch perspective, it seems to me that if you have an episode that you need to incorporate into your main show that has an almost entirely different cast, and one of the characters from your original episode, who has never once been seen or even referenced in your main show, is played by an actor that you can’t get back, the simplest thing to do is to not show that character. We don’t actually need Pike himself to be onscreen for The Menagerie. That he would be at least mentioned in some capacity, sure, but we do in fact have the opportunity to avoid putting some poor dude through five hours of makeup by simply having Pike remain offscreen. We'll probably wind up putting someone else through five hours of makeup, but we'll get to that in a bit.

For me at least, if the Talosians are going to re-appear, they either need to still be villains in some sense or we need to know that they have begun to change their behavior in some way. To have them simply show up again and be treated as friendly after everything that happened in The Cage, with absolutely no acknowledgment of the fact that they did do everything they did in The Cage...it just doesn’t make sense, and it’s much too distracting for me to get past.

Although I’ve set the rule that I’m not going to change The Cage itself, The Menagerie being a sequel to those events opens up the opportunity to follow up on the ending of The Cage in a different direction. In other words, I’m going to rescue Vina, because her fate in The Cage really, really bothers me.

Insisting on the preexisting footage being literally shown as a video in-universe has always felt pointlessly awkward to me. It’s so weird that the characters have to stop and go, “Hang on, what? Where’d this come from? This can’t possibly be security footage. Why does it have different camera angles?” to forestall the exact same questions the audience were probably having at that point. And, as I said above, there’s really not a good explanation as to why the footage did have to be shown in that manner. It seems to me that it would be much simpler to have the flashback footage be just that: a flashback. A story which is being recounted, but not literally shown, in-universe. By doing so you avoid having to open up a bunch of dead-end plot threads about why the footage looks the way it does and is being shown the way it does. I think we can give the audience at least enough credit to assume they’ll understand that if a character starts recounting an event, and the scene cuts to footage of that event, that footage is a representation of what the character is saying, not literally something being shown in-universe.

I’m not going to bother with the whole “going to Talos 4 warrants the death penalty!!” thing. It doesn’t make a great deal of sense to begin with, and it never actually pays off in The Menagerie. We can manage a better source of tension than that, I think.

All of this would ultimately take my version of The Menagerie in a pretty different direction than the actual episode, I admit. It's a rather drastic change, but, if I was tasked with writing a framing story for using The Cage in TOS, here's how I'd do it:

The Enterprise is out tooling around doing their usual business when Uhura picks up a distress call from a ship stranded in space. It’s very faint, distant, and there’s something odd about it, but of course they’re gonna follow up on it because that’s how they roll. So they head off in the direction of the call, but the funny thing is that as they get closer, Uhura says that the source of the distress call appears to be moving around. They follow it, send some hails, and finally get back a scratchy, staticky response: it’s coming from a ship that’s been heavily damaged, and the crew is no longer able to steer it, so it’s drifting erratically through space. Kirk has Uhura send a hail: “We’ve received your signal. Keep broadcasting it and we’ll find you.”

They keep following the ship. It’s difficult—the call is weak, and the Enterprise has to go carefully or risk overshooting it. After they’ve been chasing it for a while, Spock points out that they should be wary of entering a nearby star system, because it contains a planet all Federation ships are warned to avoid. Kirk, of course, doesn’t want to give up on the damaged ship, but Spock steps over to his chair and quietly says, “Captain...I should warn you that it may be the lesser of two evils to abandon this ship, rather than risk going too close to Talos 4.”

Kirk, of course, is stunned to hear Spock say this, and asks what makes Talos 4 so dangerous. Spock says it would take rather a long time to explain. Kirk says that Spock almost sounds like he’s familiar with the place, and Spock replies, “More than familiar, captain. I’ve been there before.”

[dramatic sting, cut to commercial]

Since it looks like the damaged ship will take a while to track down, Kirk has McCoy, Scotty and Spock convene in a briefing room to hear Spock’s story. Spock gives a short introduction: “What I am about to tell you, gentlemen, occurred as I said thirteen years ago, when the Enterprise was under the command of Captain Christopher Pike. I’ve pulled up the log entries of Captain Pike pertaining to this time to provide his own perspective on the matter, as it was he that had the closest encounter with the Talosians. At the time, the Enterprise had only recently escaped a disastrous encounter on Rigel 7 which had resulted in the deaths of three crewmen and injuries to several more, including myself. Some of the injuries were beyond the capacity of the ship’s doctors to treat, so we were en route to the Vega colony for treatment when we began receiving a distress signal...”

Spock’s voice-over fades out over a transition to the Cage footage. We watch that--perhaps interspersed with the occasional bit of narration from Spock, or a question from Kirk or McCoy or Scotty--until about the point where the landing party encounters the fake survivors' camp and Pike is captured by the Talosians. Then Spock is suddenly interrupted by Sulu calling Kirk to the bridge. Everyone hurries up to the bridge, where Uhura reports that the distress call has suddenly disappeared. Sulu says it's not just that: somehow, he doesn't understand how or why, his sensors are suddenly showing that they're not on the same course or even in the same place that they were only moments ago. Somehow, they've wound up in the Talos star system--and they're heading directly for Talos 4.

"It is just as I feared," Spock says gravely. "This has all been a trap."

Kirk orders Sulu to change course, and he tries—but somehow the ship doesn’t divert even a little. It’s like the helm just isn’t responding. Kirk does all the usual things, telling Scotty to do something, etc, nothing’s working, and then Uhura reports that they’re receiving a hail. And it appears to be coming from Talos IV.

Naturally Kirk tells her to put it on. The voice on the other end is staticky and faint. "Greetings. Is this...the Enterprise?"

"This is the Enterprise. I'm Captain James Kirk."

Silence for a moment. Then the voice on the other end, obviously surprised, says, "Captain Kirk? Not Captain Pike?"

"Captain Pike no longer commands this vessel."

There's a long pause. "I see. We were...in error. We apologize for the deception, Captain Kirk. It was important that we bring Captain Pike to this planet, but we feared that his...past experiences here...would leave him unwilling to come close enough to hear our message.”

“That would be a most logical decision for Captain Pike, were he here,” Spock says coldly. “Considering the nature of those experiences.”

“You speak as though you are familiar with what transpired here before, then.”

“I am First Officer Spock. I was present aboard the Enterprise as Science Officer during the events thirteen years ago.”

There’s an even longer pause. When the voice returns, the signal is even more crackly than ever. “Our apologies, this communication is...difficult to maintain. We must wait to deliver the message in full until you are...closer to our planet. However...until then...you may be assured, Spock...that this time...” [pause for more crackling] “This time...the intent of the Talosians...is peaceful.”

The signal cuts out, and Uhura can’t get it back. The ship appears to still be locked on course for Talos 4. With seemingly nothing else to do for the moment but wait, everyone goes back to the briefing room, where Spock continues recounting Pike’s story.

At some point, Spock has to pause so everyone can go take a break, and everyone else files out of the room while he remains behind for a moment, staring at the computer contemplatively. Then suddenly, we hear a voice saying, “Spock--” and Spock turns around in surprise. We can’t see exactly what he’s looking at, only a soft glow at the edge of the camera, and then the scene cuts away.

Kirk’s grabbing a nap in his quarters when he’s woken by an urgent message: they’re still some way from Talos 4, but the ship appears to have stopped moving all on its own. He hurries up to the bridge, where Sulu tells him that it seems like they’re having some kind of computer error with the helm, but they can’t track it down yet. In the middle of all this, Uhura whirls around and exclaims, “Sir! Shuttle bay reports Mr. Spock has knocked out the tech on duty and is boarding one of the shuttles!” Kirk yells for security to get down there, but they are, of course, too late: Spock rigged the shuttle bay doors to open automatically and flies out before they can stop him.

Stunned and confused, Kirk orders Uhura to raise the shuttle, which she does.

“Spock, are you out of your mind?!”

“Negative, captain. My reasoning is quite sound, though I regret I cannot explain it to you just yet.”

Kirk yells for the tractor beam to grab the shuttle, but Sulu can’t get the tractor beam to respond either.

“You need not be concerned, captain. I believe it is well within Mr. Scott’s abilities to repair the computer in due time.”

“You did this to the computer?”

“It was necessary. You will find the transporter similarly incapacitated. I could not risk you coming after me, or stopping me. Not yet.”

“Spock—do you know what you’re risking by doing this? You were the one who warned me not to go near Talos 4!”

“Yes, captain. And it is because I know what the Talosians are capable of that I am doing this. Either they are telling the truth, in which case there is no danger...or they are not, in which case it is better that I alone risk doing this.” A pause. “Jim...wait 24 hours for me. If I do not contact you by then...you must leave in all haste.”

“I’m not leaving you behind!”

“You must. 24 hours.” And with that, Spock ends the call. As Uhura’s trying fruitlessly to reestablish contact with him, she suddenly looks up and says, “Captain...we’re receiving a message from...Fleet Captain Pike?”

“What?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well...put him on.”

So Uhura puts Pike on speaker, and Kirk says, “We’re, er, in the middle of a bit of a situation, sir...what can I do for you?”

“I might ask what I can do for you, captain. Mr. Spock left a message requesting that I contact you.”

Stunned pause for a moment. “He did what?” Kirk finally says.

“About an hour ago. I regret I wasn’t able to return his call earlier, but it’s the middle of the night here...Kirk, what’s this all about?”

Kirk sighs. “It’s a long story, captain, and I don’t entirely understand it myself. Uhura, patch this into the briefing room...it’ll take a while to tell.”

A little later, we see Kirk and McCoy sitting in the briefing room as Kirk finishes up explaining everything to Pike. “What do you make of that, captain?”

“I’m not sure what to make of it, Kirk. I can’t imagine why Spock would want to go to Talos 4. All Federation starships have been warned away from there ever since our encounter with them, and Spock’s well aware of that.”

“Yes...Captain, I confess I’m not familiar with the entire story of that encounter myself...Spock was telling us about it before he, er, left, but he hadn’t finished. Could you enlighten us about the rest of it? We do have your logs, of course, but you might have more information--”

“Yes, I see what you mean. I’m not sure I’ll be able to help, but I can at least tell you what I know...”

Pike continues telling the story where Spock left off. Around about the point where Pike and the others escape from the cell, there’s a call from the bridge reporting that their sensors show that the shuttle has landed on Talos 4. Frustrated, Kirk wonders once again just what Spock thinks he’s doing down there.

We then cut to a shot of what looks kind of like the barren landscape of Talos 4, only this time there seems to be a small surface settlement among the cliffs. Then we see Spock entering a small, plainly decorated room with windows looking out to the rest of the settlement. “I am here, as agreed,” he says, and then the camera turns to show us a figure wearing a robe and a hood sitting at a table in the middle of the room.

“Welcome, Mr. Spock," the figure says. "Won’t you sit down?”

Back aboard the ship, Pike finishes telling Kirk and McCoy the story.

“So...that’s all of it?” Kirk says.

“Yes. We left Talos 4 and never looked back. Never heard anything from the Talosians, either, but Starfleet marked the place as too dangerous to visit just in case.”

“Poor Vina,” McCoy murmurs.

Pike sighs. “Leaving her there is one my greatest regrets. She seemed determined to stay, but...Even put in a request to go back, once, but Starfleet wouldn’t allow it. Too risky. I often wonder what happened to her. If she was really happy with them after all. But, as you may have gathered, Kirk, none of this explains just what the devil Spock thinks he’s doing--”

He’s interrupted by a call from Uhura: “Captain—message coming from Mr. Spock!”

“Put him on! Spock, what’s going on? Are you alright?”

“Quite well, captain. Has Captain Pike contacted the ship yet?”

“I’m on the line right now,” Pike says. “Spock, what do you think you’re playing at?”

“Ah, captain. I have someone here who wishes to speak to you.”

We then cut back to Spock sitting at the table with the figure, who takes his communicator and says, “Hello...captain.”

Pike is too stunned to speak for a moment. “Vina...? Is that you?”

“The very same. I’ve missed you.”

“I don’t understand. What’s going on?”

Between them, Spock and Vina explain just what is going on. There's been a change in Talosian society since the Enterprise left. Not all of the Talosians agreed with the plan to breed a slave race to begin with—others felt that they could, and should, attempt to reclaim the surface themselves. The incident with Captain Pike brought matters to a head, and a rebellion erupted shortly afterward. Once in power, the new leaders dedicated their efforts to repairing their ancestors’ machines and establishing a colony on the surface.

The reason the Enterprise was lured back to Talos 4 was Vina: she's had medical problems as a result of the crash and the botched surgery, and it's been getting worse for years, to the point that she likely won't live much longer if she doesn't get proper treatment. The new Talosian leaders wanted to make up for what their predecessors had done and gave her the best care they could, but simply didn't have the human medical knowledge to fix the problem. So Vina asked if they could help her get home, instead. The Talosians were concerned, however, that the Federation wouldn't believe a genuine call for help, given their history, so they hatched the plan to lure the Enterprise, and Pike with it, back to Talos 4. They've been waiting for quite a while, listening to subspace chatter, hoping the Enterprise would come near. Once it did, they put out the illusion of the damaged ship to bring the Enterprise close enough that they could maintain an illusion over the helm controls, making sure the helmsmen were not altering their course as they thought they were.

When they discovered that Pike was no longer aboard the Enterprise, they instead sent a telepathic message to Spock, hoping that his own experience with the Talosians would make him see the difference between their current society and the old one, and thus be more likely to believe them. They had to wait until the ship got close to Talos 4, because the new society of Talosians have been deliberately letting their psychic powers weaken, attempting to break the addiction to illusion that was holding them back from reclaiming the surface. They were able to keep up the illusion of the damaged ship for a while, but couldn't manage that and the illusion on the helm and extended contact with the Enterprise at the same time, making the whole thing very nearly fall apart at one point.

Kirk demands to know why Spock ran off on his own, and Spock explains that while he found the Talosians' message plausible, a risk remained that this was all an elaborate set-up. They might have been attempting another pass at the plan that failed thirteen years ago. If that was the case, Spock would be the least risky member of the crew to make contact with them, since as a non-human he wouldn't be suitable for their plans. Since he knew Kirk would never agree to that, he took the shuttle and hacked the ship's computers to ensure that they wouldn't be able to follow him, at least for a while. He now feels confident that this is not a trap, though, as the Talosians' powers have weakened enough that his own mental defenses are strong enough to mostly see through them.

So Vina accompanies Spock back to the shuttlecraft, and they fly back to the ship. Vina's taken to Sickbay while Kirk confronts Spock about stealing the shuttlecraft. Spock says he'll accept all punishment, but felt he had to do it--he saw what almost happened to Pike on Talos 4, and couldn't risk the same fate happening to Kirk. But he also felt he owed it to Pike to investigate Vina's story, and help her return if that was truly what she wanted. Kirk lets the whole matter go, because of course he does, telling Spock not to try that shit again because he can't lose his best officer and all that.

Kirk and Spock go to visit Sickbay, where McCoy reports that with proper Federation medical care Vina's prognosis is good. Kirk wants to talk to her, but McCoy tells him to wait because she's got another visitor. Kirk glances around the doorway and sees Vina sitting up in bed looking at a video monitor, from which Pike's voice is coming. Kirk smiles and says he'll come back later.

Everyone goes back to the bridge, and with the computer damage now fixed, they're preparing to leave, when Uhura reports that there's a call coming from Talos 4. Kirk has a short conversation with the Talosian on the other end, who is glad to hear that Vina will be alright. They also ask that Kirk relay a message to Pike, extending their apologies for what he went through, which Kirk assures them he will. He then adds that the Federation would likely be willing to open trade negotiations with the new Talosian government, and the Talosian says they may take them up on that. And with that, the ship flies off.

Most of this story would only require the existing Enterprise sets, and potentially some brief shots of the shuttle interior. The only new locations needed would be the Talosian settlement exterior, which could be a matte painting, and the inside of the building where Spock meets Vina, which wouldn't require much dressing. The only non-main-cast characters would be Pike, Vina, and the Talosian that contacts the Enterprise. The Talosian is a voice-only role. Pike is also a voice-only role, and would require someone who can approximate Jeffrey Hunter's voice, but it's a lot easier to find a sound-alike than someone who's a sound-alike and a look-alike--plus Pike would be thirteen years older than in The Cage, which allows some leeway. I don't know if Susan Oliver would have been willing/able to come back to play Vina, but if she wasn't, a hood, wig, careful camera shots and some old-age makeup would probably serve well enough to disguise another actress. The only special effect needed is a bit of glowiness for the Talosian that appears to Spock just out of frame.

As for the fate of Pike himself, I don't want to erase a disabled character, but I also don't really feel that Pike's appearance in The Menagerie does any justice to him as a disabled character. Did Gene always envision that kind of fate for him or did he simply seize upon it as a plot device in a desperate moment? I don't know, so in the end I decided to leave it more or less open. There would be considerable leeway for multiple options that would still allow him to serve the same role in this episode: he could be commanding another ship, he could retired and settled down somewhere, he could have suffered an accident as he did in canon and spend this entire episode talking through a voice synthesizer. Imagine whatever one feels most suitable to you.

This is only my own take on the story. I know it would have considerable repercussions to later Star Trek canon and I'm not going to make the claim that those repercussions themselves would be better than what actually happened. It's certainly a more hopeful ending than The Menagerie, on the whole, which may not be everyone's cup of tea. But it was an interesting exercise.

#trek talk #1.11 The Menagerie Part One #1.12 The Menagerie Part 2 #fix-it post #fixing The Menagerie

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Mass Effect Romances: Legendary Edition’s Best and Worst Partners

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The Mass Effect trilogy is a lot of things to a lot of people, but we completely understand if you see the release of Mass Effect Legendary Edition as an excuse to cruise across the galaxy looking for romance or, at the very least, the chance to hook up with an alien.

Mass Effect wasn’t the first RPG with a romance system, and the first Mass Effect‘s romance options could most generously be described as limited, but the ways that the Mass Effect games compellingly use romance as both a character-building device and a fun diversion has long made them a favorite among those who can’t help but look for love in digital places.

Which Mass Effect romance is the best of them all, though? While we could never deny you your memories of the time you spent with your personal favorite partner, this is our ranking of every romance (no matter how brief) in the first three Mass Effect games.

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18. Diana Allers

Players will have the chance to romance journalist Diana Allers while she’s working on a story about the Normandy in Mass Effect 3. It seems like it’s supposed to be a Captain Kirk kind of moment, but the whole affair feels…off.

Actually, Diana even expresses concerns that her brief encounter with Shepard could potentially ruin her career. Between the short flirting phase and the potential lingering ethical concerns, this romance just falls flat.

17. Sha’ira

Asari consort Sha’ira is really the only “hidden” romance opportunity in the first game, but aside from that factoid, she’s certainly not the most exciting partner in the Mass Effect trilogy.

It also always felt a bit strange that Sha’ira only sleeps with Shepard if the player says they’re dissatisfied with her gift of words. It almost makes this encounter come across as a kind of a Renegade option, which would have felt better if there was an equivalent Paragon side relationship available. This whole thing just seems like an afterthought.

16. Samara

The “romance” with Samara is hardly a romance at all (at least by Mass Effect standards). If you push past Samara’s code and keep flirting with her, you can eventually get Shepard and Samara to kiss. However, the relationship doesn’t go much further than that.

It’s interesting that this romance is a bit different than the others so far as that goes, but between the lack of a payoff and the fact you’re kind of forced to push past Samara’s respectful initial “no,” it’s hard to rank this romance above most.

15. Javik

There are different types of romances throughout the Mass Effect series, but few are clearly intended to be “romances” that the player’s character is meant to regret.

Yet, that’s pretty much what happens the morning after Shepard sleeps with Javik. While the joke of these two getting together fits into the humorous style of the Citadel DLC the hookup happens in, this is a one-note romance that’s little more than a quick gag.

14. Kaidan Alenko

Granted, Kaidan becomes a slightly more interesting character in Mass Effect 3 when players are given the chance to rekindle their romance with him before a big battle, but it’s hard to get over just how generic Kaidan was in the original Mass Effect.

Even in a game that offered very few romance options, Kaidan felt like a piece of toast with no butter. It’s not really what you want to see in the morning, but you’ll live with it if it’s your only option.

13. Morinth

A lot of fans hate the Morinth romance option for the simple fact that it’s the only one in the franchise that leads to the direct death of Commander Shepard. To be fair, that’s certainly not the best outcome.

Yet, the shock of that conclusion makes this one of the better “one-off” romance options in the Mass Effect franchise. It’s hardly a legendary relationship, but the surprising “payoff” is at least memorable.

12. Jacob Taylor

One of the great things about the Jacob Taylor relationship from a storytelling and design perspective is that it’s one of those relationships that initially doesn’t seem possible. It’s only after you really start to form a genuine relationship with Taylor that the path to this romance becomes more obvious.

Still, the hilariously awkward nature of Jacob’s main pick-up line (“But the prize…”) takes this one down a few notches on the overall romance rankings. There’s also the simple fact that a lot of people just don’t like Jacob as a character.

11. Steve Cortez

As the first male romantic partner exclusive to male Shepard characters, Steve Cortez helped to break a barrier that some fans wondered if BioWare would ever be willing to break. The absence of that option cast a shadow over the first two Mass Effect games, and it’s great that Mass Effect 3 finally addressed it.

Still, this isn’t the most exciting romance, and Steve is hardly the most developed character that you have the opportunity to be with. Maybe he would rank higher if he were introduced earlier, but such as it is, he’s one of the lower-tier romance options overall.

10. James Vega

Mass Effect 3’s Citadel DLC is sometimes called an elaborate piece of fan service, but there are times when that approach at least led to memorable moments that finally gave some fans the payoffs they had been looking for.

That’s especially true of the DLC’s options romance with James Vega: one of those fan favorites who were previously platonic. It’s hardly the most impactful romance, but so far as one-night stands go, it’s much better than Javik. James even makes you eggs in the morning.

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9. Kelly Chambers

It’s tempting to rank this one higher for the simple reason that many players developed a crush on Kelly and didn’t think they’d have the chance to romance her, but the fact that you can only unlock this romance after making some notable sacrifices (and that it doesn’t last long) means it’s a little tough to put it above some of the other options.

Still, Kelly’s popularity, the unique circumstances of your courtship with her, and her now-famous dance certainly elevate this fling above most of the other quickies in the game.

8. Samantha Traynor

Samantha finds herself somewhere in the middle of the romance pack simply because that’s kind of the best way to summarize your romance with her.

The Traynor romance storyline is pretty engaging, has some great moments, and is surprisingly substantial for being limited to the third game. Yet, there are times when this relationship is almost too normal compared to the more dynamic romances in these games. It just lacks some of that spice you get with other characters.

7. Ashley Williams

If Ashley only appeared in the original Mass Effect, she would be much lower on this list. Her sometimes awkward (if admittedly funny) dialog and the first game’s generally weaker romance storylines meant that her best quality as a partner was “not Kaidan.”

However, Mass Effect 3 pays off this relationship in some surprising ways. The game does a pretty good job of building off Ashley and Shepard’s previous encounter with a storyline that also manages to stand on its own compared to other romances. It’s just a strong multi-game romance overall.

6. Tali’Zorah

It’s very hard to rank the Tali romance without acknowledging that some fans are still disappointed it doesn’t lead to the logical payoff: getting to see her face. We do see a blurry picture of what appears to be Tali later in the game, but some players wanted a more direct reveal.

Even if you were disappointed by that element of the love story, though, it’s hard to deny that Tali and Shepard have one of the most exciting, original, and well-developed romances in the Mass Effect trilogy. Tali’s unique physical restrictions and the chemistry she has with Shepard make the better parts of this romance some of the most memorable in any RPG.

5. Garrus Vakarian

There’s a degree to which the appeal of a relationship with Garrus is based on the appeal of Garrus as a character. In other words, it’s easy to enjoy hooking up with Garrus simply because Garrus is an easy companion to like.

That said, the Garrus romance storyline is also pretty strong in its own right. It really picks up in Mass Effect 3 when the shock of starting a relationship with Garrus has passed and you really get to appreciate how Garrus is one of those romantic partners that are still their own character and not just your love interest when you’re around them.

4. Thane Krios

Not every Mass Effect relationship is a happy one, but few are as outright tragic as the romance with Thane. After all, you start your relationship with Thane well aware of the fact that his disease is slowly killing him.

While that whole thing could have come across like a Lifetime movie of the week, it’s ultimately an incredibly effective story that serves as one of the best examples of how pursuing a romantic relationship with a Mass Effect character really allows you to see them in a different light.

3. Miranda Lawson

Look, there are just times when the romances we tend to look back on with the most glee were also slightly volatile. When you’re far away enough from the bad times, it’s much easier to look back on the more exciting moments.

That’s kind of the dynamic that you get with Miranda. It’s not the deepest romance in the game (and the conclusion of this story in Mass Effect 3 isn’t the best), but the many players who found themselves instantly attracted to Miranda for…umm…reasons will certainly remember the first time they figured out how to make this bad romance happen.

2. Liara T’Soni

Liara’s status as by far the best long-term romance option in the original Mass Effect game is already reason enough to rank her high on this list, but her lofty placement is really all about how your relationship with Liara evolves across the trilogy.

As a potential romance that spans the entirety of the Mass Effect trilogy (even if her best moments in ME2 are limited to the Shadow Broker DLC), Shepard’s relationship with Liara is one of the most complete and genuine in the original games. Their romance is a simply beautiful story that doubles as one of the better examples of the kind of choice-based long-term storytelling that Mass Effect was built on.

1. Jack

You’ll have a hard time getting Mass Effect fans to agree on the game’s best romance option, but the fact that most of them will probably agree that Jack is, at least, one of the most interesting romance options in the game is a testament to the overall quality of this storyline.

The great thing about Jack is that you can either choose to engage in a casual relationship with her or, if you know what to do, establish a more lasting partnership that sheds some light on one of the game’s most fascinating companions. The striking differences between those two options perfectly compliments who Jack is as a character and stands as one of the best uses of romance as a character-building tool within a role-playing game.

The post Mass Effect Romances: Legendary Edition’s Best and Worst Partners appeared first on Den of Geek.

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calliecat93 · 3 years

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Top 15 Star Trek TOS Episodes (Part Two)

(Part One)

Continuing from the last post, here are the remaining seven episodes~! Also picking Number One was SUPER hard. I was stuck between it and two for a long while. But I finally picked, so here we go!

#7. The Trouble With Tribbles

Up to this point, I hadn’t been crazy over some of the goofier episodes of Star Trek. Shore Leave was a mindscrew that left me uncertain about what was even happening by the end, though my opinion has lightened up upon looking back. The Squire of Gothos had a villain that I found far more annoying than entertaining and it remains one of my least favorite episodes. The only more silly one I did like was I, Mudd which remains an utter laugh riot once everyone acts as illogical as possible, including Spock. But then this episode came along, and Dear Lord it is hilarious. Our heroes stop at a space station, but it’s also occupied by Klingons. But wait, it gets better! A sleezy guy convinces Uhura to buy a Tribble, these little puff ball things that are kind of cute... until they begin to reproduce so rapidly that they infest the ship and base. To put it simply, it’s not a good time for Kirk. Honestly Kirk is the best part just because of how much he LOATHES every single thing about this episode. The scene where a whole bunch of Tribbles just topple over him and he just resigns himself to his fate and later his epic death glare at Bones when he orders him to figure out what killed the things. And then there’s what makes him come aorund to them, their shared hatred of Klingons. Seriosuly, Kirk is just So Done in this episode and it is amazing~

But seriously, it’s a very entertianing episode. Far more than I thought it was going to be when I read the description. It’s not an episode taken seriosuly, but not in the ‘they just gave up’ kind of way like in certain S3 episodes. The cast seem to be legit having a fun time with this one. The brawl between Scotty, Chekov, and a few other guys against the Klingons was super fun as was Kirk sulking when Scotty revelas that he got provoked over the Enteprise being insulted and not the captain. Poor Jim XD Cyrano Jones was also just a fun delight with how scummy yet amusing he is. The scene with him and the drinks during the brawl had me laughing so much XD Seriosuly there’s just so many good moments. Spock not being immune to the Tribble’s comforting effect and being embarassed at this revelaiton, Spock and McCoy’s snark, the Klingons utter horror at the tiny little furballs, it’s just an entertaining ride from beginning to end.

Not anything to really note flaws wise to justify the ranking. It doesn’t have that emotional or philosophical umph that I normally seek out in shows like this, so it’s here at seven. But that ain’t a bad thing at all. Not every episode has to have deep meanings or complex stories. Sometimes it can just be something fun and amusing, and the effort was still there to make it entertaining. It’s one of those episodes that I would watch above the others on a bad day just so I can laugh. Probably the most fun episode I have on this list, and that’s nothing to snuff at~!

#6. The Doomsday Machine

Our heroes find a Starship where the only survivor is Commadore Decker, his crew having all been killed when he beamed them to a planet that a planet destroyer... well, destroyed shortly after. The destroyer is still active and now the Enterprise is in danger. As Kirk remains on that ship, Decker is determined to destroyt he doomsday machine once and for all, including taking command of the Enteprrise and risking their lives to do so. Yeah, this is a pretty intense one. Decker, while his sucicdal actions were wrong, is VERY sympathetic. His crew was killed through no fault of his own, the machine that did it is still loose, and the losses have left him utterly broken. He’s very much traumatized but as he is the highest ranking officer and they can’t officially prove that he’s too mentlaly unfit to be relieved (which imo is idiotic cause even someone who isn’t a psycologist can tell he’s mentally unfit, but whatever), they can’t do much to stop him. Spock DOES finally manage to do so, and it leads to Decker’s ultimate choice that leads to his tragic end.

This one really gripped me. There’s this tension throughout. We have an unstable, suicidal man taking control of the Enterprise and willing to get them all killed to stop the doomsday machine. It’s scary to see how broken the man is. Again, he’s wrong to be willing to sacrifice everyone on The Enterprise to destroy the thing even though none of them want to die, but you understand why. I mean imagine if that happened to Kirk, he’d probably snap too if his actions in Obsession is any indication of how he handles major losses like that. Then we have Decker’s final act. Once relieved of command, he steals a shuttle and goes at the machine himself. He knows that he’s going to die and accepts that fact if it means some chance, any chance of destroying the machine once and for all. While he fails to destory it, he DOES give Kirk the opprotunity needed to do so with the ruined ship. A move that almost gets Kirk killed, but still Decker’s act was not in vain. It’s a very interesting character study with themes of guilt, trauma, and desperation. Kind of like in Obsession in a way, only Kirk manages to survive and pull himself together before it was too late. Decker’s only goal was to take down the machine that took his crew’s lives, even if that meant losing his own.

As I said, these are the kinds of episodes I live for. I guess self-sacrifice is also genetic consideirng what happened with his son in The Motion Picture, haha. Flaws... ugh... I guess McCoy disappeairng after the first half sucked? But that’s a me thing that doesn’t affect anything. I just remember watching it wide-eyed despite fully well knowing that everyone I cared about were going to be perfectly fine. It really gripped me! A great episode with great character exploration and themes which for a one off character, is pretty dang impressive!

#5. Journey to Babel

Meet the parents epidsode! Yay! The Enteprise is transporting various ambassadors of various planets to the Babel Conference. This includes the Vulcan Ambassador Sarek and his human wife Amanda, aka Spock’s parents. Yep, it’s time for some good ol’ fashioned family issues! Sarek wasn’t exactly happy with Spock choosing Starfleet and their relationship has been strained ever since. But when Sarek has severe heart problems, the only way to save him is via blood transfusion with Spock the only one compatible. But to make it worse, Kirk gets stabbed and put out of comission, forcing Spock to take command... at the same time that his father needs the surgery. Yeah... it sucks to be Spock in this episode. I know that Sarek is a bit divisive, but I like Spock’s parents. Sarek comes off as good at his job, but not great as a parent. He’s far fromt he worst and we do see that he does seem to still care about his son, he’s just God awful at admitting it and his previous mistakes. Like father, like son I guess. Amanda was a delight, especially when she tells McCoy about the sehlat aka giant teddy bear. Anyone who can make Bones smile that big deserves our thanks. Spock trying to make it less embarassing only made it funnier XD But back on topic, they come off as interesitng characters. They ain’t ideal, but they seem to genuinely be in love, which is nice.

Spock was just great here as we see him in one of the roughest spots he’s been in. He’s naturally not happy about being around the father that cast him aside again, though after his heart issues it’s clear that he IS concerned. Leonard Nimoy once again does such a fantastic job at having Spock express so much but without breaking character. It’s all in the eyes and the strained tone of voice. Then when Spock is more than willing to go through with the tranfusion, Kirk is injured. He has no choice but to take command, knowing that in doing so his father will die. While he COULD give command to Scotty, with the VERY intense circumstances of an assaliant on board and a ship ready to attack wit a number of ambassadors on board, he’s the best bet in handling it. Amanda is of course upset and even smacks him which IS overly harsh, but she’s about to lose her husband and her son, despite clealry hating the fact, has to place his duty above all else. Sarek dying is the least worst outcome to everyone else being killed. It’s the most logical route. Fortunately Kirk is able to pull himself together long enough to take over and the transfusion goes through perfectly despite the fight making it more difficult. Which again, McCoy is the true MVP here for managing to pull that off successfully under those conditions and Thank God that the episode rewarded him by letting him finally get the last word. He earned that one!

It’s such a great episode for me. Family drama, Spock conflict, political tensions, and just some relaly fun bits. Seriosuly, the teddy bear bit will NEVER stop being funny. Hoenstly these last five were all pretty tight and this ende dup here cause the other four had just a little bit mroe to keep me invested for reasons. Spock and Sarek don’t really reach a resolution but we do see that it has the chance to improve, and the movies do show that Sarek DOES truly care about his son and even admits that he had been wrong. It takes a lot for a man, even a Vulcan man, to do that. Although I DID double take when I realized that Sarek is played by the same guy who did the Romulan Captain in Balance of Terror. Guess he was that good XD. But yeah, a really great episode and very much my favorite Spock-centric episode.

#4. The Empath

TRIUMVIRATE FEELS BABY~! Our heroes end up trapped by a duo of aliens and encounter a mute empath woman that McCoy names Gem. They try to figure out how to escape as the aliens known as Vians plan to use them for an experiment as they have others. Shenanigains happen while elad to Kirk getting totured p, and then given the ultimate sadistic choice in having to decide if either Spock or McCoy get tortured to the point of either death (McCoy) or permenant brain damage (Spock). Now the episode has it’s issues, like why the Vians needed to do this to decide that Gem’s people were worth saivng is..l really baffling. But I’m also not a Vian so what do I know anout their mindset? But due to those kinds of plot holes, it landed here at four. It also kind of reads like a hurt/comfort fanfic, which isn’t a surprise when you find out that this was written and submitted by a fan. Which is freakin’ awesome and I can’t complain tbh cause it’s a good hurt/comfort fic. What it fails in some plot tightning it succeeds at in emphasizing the relationship between the main trio and it’s themes of emotion and self-sacrifice. Because OF COURSE that would be relevant for these three numbskulls at some point!

The second half is really what sells it. Kirk of course can’t make a choice like that, so Bones hypos him so that he’ll be spared of it. But that means that Spock is in command and he fully intends to hand himself over to the Vians to spare the two. Just the scene where he looks at Kirk, knowing that it’ll likely be the last time he sees him and Gem touching him to feel his emotions. Her smile sums it sll up. Which sidenote, the actress for Gem was freakin’ fantastic in how she displayed so much emotion and character without saying one word. Excellent acting. Anyways, Spock’s plan seems full-proof... except that he forgot that he’s dealing with McCoy, who promptly hypos him as well and sacrifices himself to the Vians. That was when McCoy became my favorite character, the moment he chose to be tortured to near death to save his two best friends and an innocent woman and even took the time to try and comfort her before being taken away. When we see the ifnal result and are greeted to DeForest Kelley looking at the camera with the most dead expression that he can muster... yeah the image STILL haunts me. Then Bones is dying with the two unable to do anything but try to give him some comfort and Gem is just so distraught and... heah this episode mad eit this high simply because it hit the emotional beats perfectly. That’s not even going into Gem trying to heal him to drive home the themes of the episode, also done VERY well.

This episode really shows how much the three care for one another. They’re all willing to be tortured and die to spare the other two. Ultimately McCoy gets the ‘honor’, but Kirk and Spock were absolutely ready to throw themselves to the fire. The characterization, interactions, and dynamic are just done so well that it’s why I can forgive the plot issues. I’m a sucker for feelings okay?! So yeah it’s not perfect but what it got right it got right. As such, it managed to land here at Number Four with only those plot holes keeping it from Number One. And trust me, I was tempted.

#3. The Tholian Web

Season 3 hadn’t been doing it for me with only one or two episodes really getitng my attention up to that point. This one though? This was the best episode in the seaosn bar none. Our heroes end up in a subspace where they find a starship and it’s crew all dead. Whien they teleport back to The Enterprise, it disappears... and takes Kirk with it. Okay, doesn’t sound liek anythignt hat new right? Kirk goes missing, the crew have to deal without him and find him as quickly as posisble. But this one has a bit of a twist... they cut Kirk out completely. Yeah, from the moment he vanishes in the first act to the very end he is out of the episode. Not only does the crew not know what happened to him, but neither does the audience, this ramps up the fear and emotional weight big time as the longer the crew is int hat space, the influence of it drives them to insanity. Bones wants to get out because of this, while Spock is unwilling to leave Kirk if he is alive. Needles to say, things go off the rails quickly.

With Kirk out of the equation, we keep our focus on Spock and McCoy. Their arguing is probably at the most personal it’s ever been with Kirk seming dead, the crew losing their minds, and it looking more and more uncertain that they can both treat the crew and ge tout alive. While one can say that McCoy may be too harsh here, I think along with the space affecting him in a less intense way, he’s also stressed from all the patients as well as his grief about Jim. Spock is the only one that he can take it out on, especially since his chocie to not leave is why they’re now int he mess that they’re in. Spock is trying to perform his duties despite the hostilities and his own grief that he’s trying to keep a grip on with all the responsibility of the crew and whatever happens due to his choice firmly sititng on his shoulders. What finally starts to get them to resolve this? A tape that Kirk made for them in the event of his death. He gives them his confidence that they can perform their duties withiut him, but that they need to lsiten to and support each other. They CAN go on without him. It’ll hurt but they’re now all that they each have and they need to work together now more than ever. It’s a sobering moment for both with McCoy realizng how ovelry harsh he had been and Spock expressing genuine grief. They do still bicke rone more time, but McCoy catches himself before it goes too far, apologizes, and Spock simply says what Jim would: “Forget it, Bones”. Cue Bones fainting like the Southern Bell that he is, haha!

Now of course Kirk is alive and they manage to save him and get out of the situation fine. But I just loved this because of the focus on Spock and McCoy without Kirk. Why? Because Kirk is the one thing that can unite them. It’s not the only thing, but if anything can make them get over their disagreements quickly, it’s Kirk. So what happens when it looks like he’s gone and never coming back? How will the two deal with it now that that balance is gone? They don’t deal with it well, being at each other’s throats until they see that tape. But it DOES show that if they did lose Kirk, they CAN work together and go on. Like I said, I adore these two’s relationship and while not as slashy as All Our Yesterdays, this is such an excellent one for that relationship as we see that yes, they will bicker but they will also be there for each other when it all comes down to it. It’s such a great episode for that reason and the plot was just well done. Like I said, casitng out Jim and leaving us unsure of what happened to him was an excellent move for this one and I enjoyed the exploration that it allowed.

#2. The Immunity Syndrome

Out heroes are scent to investigate what caused a whole solar system to disappear just as they also receive a message from a Vulcan science vessel. Unfortunately, Spock senses he vessel’s destruction and the Enterprise finds itself against a giant space amoeba that will devour everything unless stopped. That may not sound like much, but it leads into what I think was the most intense situation that the Enterprise has been in. Everything, and I mean everything, is pushed to their limits here. This amoeba can outright destroy galaxies and utterly mindless, so there’s no reasoning with it. But it gets especially tense when, in order to understand exactly what’s going on, Kirk has to send someone in the space shuttle to observe, but in doing so, he’s sending someone to most likely die. And his choices? Either Spock or Bones... yeah.

This is what makes this episode great. Spock and Bones are already on rockier than usual terms due to McCoy treating the Vulcan deaths more like a statistic while Spock sensed all of it outright. That itself is an interesting observation on how we treat these kinds of things, not really understanding how horrific it is unless we’re involved in it outright, otherwise it’s sad and unfortunate but just another number. But then we have the suicide mission. Bones originally volunteers himself, after all he’s a doctor and would have the knowledge to make the necessary observaitons and likely the most fit for it. But Spock is not only also perfectly capable even if not specialized in medical science, but he’s also more fit physically and emotionally to undergo the risk and come out alive. In the end, Kirk picks Spock and McCoy ain’t happy about it. The scene with Spock about ready to go with McCoy still unhappy even when Spock asks him to wish him luck. He does... once the doors have shut and Spock can’t hear him anymore. It’s a very strong scene and it only gets more painful when it looks like Spock is truly going to die and his final words are that McCoy should have wished him luck. Bones’ face says everything.

The episode is just excellent. Great character moments. Great emotional weight. Great stakes that keep going up and up and it truly feels like the darkest hour for the crew. Kirk and Spock outright begin to record their respective final words. Even they’re convinced that this is most likely the end, which is just... dang man. I couldn’t look away during this one. They hit everything perfectly with pretty much everything. If I have any issues, none of them come to mind. It’s just an excellent episode and the best of Season 2. I had a REALLY hard time picking between this and my Number One for the top slot. The top one just had a little bit more emotional impact to get it, but it just barely topped this one. Regardless, it is still an excellent episode and one of the best by far. But what is Number One? Well...

#1. The City on the Edge of Forever

Yeah, yeah, obvious pick I know. I normally don’t go wth popular opinion... but sometimes it’s that way for a reason, and this one I can’t argue about. When McCoy gets badly drugged on accident, he goes into a derranged state and beams onto a planet. The crew is unable to stop him from entering a portal known as the Guardian of Forever that sends him into the distant past where he does something to change histry. In order to figure out what changed and to stop McCoy, Kirk and Spock travel into the 1930’s a few days earlier to cut him off and must now navigate their way though the time period where they end up at a soup kitchen run by a woman named Edith Keller. Which Edith is an excellent character. She’s kind, optimistic, charming, hard-working, ad caring towards those who need it. Kirk ends up falling for her, and... it’s legit really cute. Kirk isn’t being forced to make out with a woman or doing so for information. We see how Kirk is when he genunely likes someone, having been drawn to Edith’s optimism and hopes for a better future. A future that he is from and knows will be reality. He’s really sweet and it’s just cute... which makes what happens at the end all the more tragic.

The 1930’s were fun with Kirk trying to come up with an excuse for Spock’s ears having me dying from laughter. The acting was excellent with DeForest Kelley as drugged!Bones especially being both crazy and scary. I quit doubting that he played villains in Westerns after this episode, haha. But of course Spock soon discovers that the change that McCoy is to make is saving Edith form death, and in doing so she leads a pacifist campaign that delays America’s entry into World War II and... well, things go badly. They are in a time where sadly optimism and peace are simply not options, which is even crueler. In order for time to be restored, they have to let Edith die. Kirk is horrified by this and when the time comes (sidenote, the Triumvirate reunion is utterly adorable), he just grabs Bones, keeps his back turned, and can only listen as Edith screams and is killed via car colission. Whatever grievances I have about William Shatner, he absoluteley nailed Kirk’s utter heartbreak and pain as Kirk just looks utterly boken. His final wordds after they return to the 23rd Century simply being a bitter “Let’s get the Hell out of here” sums it all up perfectly. Bones’ horror at it, especially since he DID have to watch it and him being upset at Kirk is also heartbreaking as he asks him if he knows what he just did. Spock can only somberly inform him that yes, he does.

It’s one of those cases where I wish serialization was more of a thign cause DAMN this is some major emotional baggage for everyone but as per usual. It happens and they go on from there with no lingering development. I guess if I had to complain, that would be it but that’s jut the nature of these shows at the time. Kind of feel like Bones getting as bady overdosed as he did pretty much got forgotten after they enter the 1930’s, but I also know nothing about 23rd Century drugs so... ah well. But the rest of the episode is so good that I can forgive those issues and they clealry did nothing to impact the placing. It had a storgn story, great emotion, great acting, great pacing, and a heartbreaking but fitting ending. The episode has a LOT of history behind it’s making that could be a post all it’s own, but no mater how this episode came to be, it is very much the best of Star Trek TOS. It was fun yet sad and had me gripped form beginning to ed and just htinkign about it now still makes me sad. Thus, it earns it’s place as my favorite episode of Star Trek TOS.

And we are done! There were a lot of really good episodes and some i REALLY did consider. A Piece of the Action, The Enemy Within (that was skipped for... certian reasons), Is There in Truth No Beauty?, This Side of Paradise, and plenty of others that I enjoyed. There were others I.. well, didn’t, but I can’t recall outright hating anything. Regardless I came in apathetic at best, and I left a fan for it’s characters, interesting ideas, and I just had a lot of fun. It’s outdated in many ways, but still relevant in others. Overall, I’m glad to have finally watched it, and I hope that I enjoy TNG just as much. But if not, I’ll always have this~!

(Image Source: TrekCore TOS Gallery)

#star trek tos #callie reviews

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the-busy-ghost · 4 years

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Alright here’s my belated Thoughts on that latest TSP episode. I should add again, I am in no way saying people shouldn’t like this show, I just need to be petty on my own blog.

- Stafford’s Performative Masculinity is a bit Much, even for a sixteenth century man

- Katherine doesn’t want Wolsey appointed chancellor because that would give him too much power and the chancellor is apparently the second most powerful man in the kingdom... so powerful in fact that I’m not even sure we’ve seen the current chancellor on screen, except in his ecclesiastical role as archbishop of Canterbury

- Ah the migrating towers of Holyrood. They weren’t there for the last two episodes and they won’t be there next scene either but they’ll be *theoretically* here all week folks.

- It is mildly hilarious that this show seems to think that every single moment in Scottish politics took place in one wee house in Somerset “Edinburgh”, and the only people who are ever involved are two dozen stereotypical Scottish noblemen, and one Englishwoman (and no clergy? Which is extremely weird given how heavily involved they were in royal administration).

- Not to mention they imply Holyrood is meant to be Edinburgh (it is now, then it was actually in the burgh of the Canongate but close enough) and yet the burgh skyline of Edinburgh is never visible in the background of these shots, just rolling fields and a nondescript hill that I assume is meant to be Arthur’s seat.

- Ok so we’re portraying Angus as the poetic soul instead of his uncle, that’s fine, that makes no sense but it’s fine.

- Who the fuck is Bishop McElroy. Setting aside the fact that McElroy was more common in Ireland than Scotland during the sixteenth century (and there were no major noble or even influential lairdly families bearing the surname), why could they not have just done a google search and found out that, oh yeah, there were Real Life Scottish Bishops in 1515, anyone of whom would have done. And I don’t know why they mucked about with the timeline but if they were going to muck around with the timeline anyway then then how about maybe even, dare I say it, Gavin Douglas, bishop-elect of Dunkeld???

- Also I didn’t quite catch the full line so I may have misheard but I think Margaret states that they got married in the kirk of South Queensferry? I mean tbh this only confirms my belief that the writers think everything happened in the vicinity of Edinburgh (and that they didn’t even bother to think to TRY and find out where the marriage might have taken place, just started tossing a few Scottish place names out there as if that would do. The Ferry’s not even that private, it was on a major pilgrimage route and an important crossing point over the Forth). It’s also a bit irritating because there’s no reason for the inaccuracies? They didn’t have to show the wedding so they didn’t have to change the location or characters for ease of filming or anything, it’s just a throwaway line, there’s no reason for them to make up a bishop and unlikely wedding location? Anyway join us next week as Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn conduct their affair in the middle of London Bridge.

- Also excuse me while I make an unconvinced noise at that line about how the Douglases (i.e. all of them, not just the Red ones) have always ‘licked the balls of England’. While their notoriety for being Shady As Fuck and occasionally siding with the English was certainly well known, no sixteenth century Scotsman worth his salt would have sullied the name of the Good Sir James just to score points off the Angus branch of the family.

- (Maybe this is a bad time to point out that they’re not technically licking ‘balls’ in this instance either...)

- I take it back there was one (1) woman very briefly in that scene where Margaret and “Angus” rushed to grab the bairns. She was promptly never seen again. Confirmed Cryptid.

- Also where did all the other bairns (James IV’s ones, not Margaret’s) go. I mean they were actually there last episode I think, so it’s not like they were implying that Margaret got rid of them as soon as she could. Have they FINALLY grown up?

- How quickly do letters travel in this world? How long have they been in that cellar? Are they still there?

- Wait so now Katherine of Aragon knows his name is Archibald??? Why has everyone been calling him ‘Angus Douglas’ then, even when his dad (and presumably grandfather) was alive?

- Lol @ Henry ‘after all I’ve done for her’. Do tell, what HAVE you done for Margaret.

- Hang on so Thomas Boleyn is Earl of Wiltshire already and yet his father-in-law Thomas Howard still isn’t duke of Norfolk

- Second LOL @ an archbishop of York willfully summoning a naturalised Frenchman to Scotland without the king of England’s permission, as if Scotland lay in his gift and as if that was in any way a good idea, even for some political point-scoring

- “Margaret’s sons must take the throne”- Katherine are you aware that James V was crowned King of Scots not two weeks after Flodden, and approximately seven months before his younger brother Alexander was even born.

- Again, HOW LONG HAVE THEY BEEN IN THE CELLAR? Angus has grown a BEARD.

- He’s not the future king he IS the king. A tiny toddler king. You help him go potty you disrespectful shite, I don’t care if you’re having a nervous breakdown. (May I just point out again it is CRIMINAL that David Lindsay isn’t in this)

- We all pause for An Exaggerated Whispering Scene, that great period drama staple. I mean are we sure they’re gossiping about Henry and a *woman*, because the way people are talking about Wolsey at that dinner once again makes it look like he’s the real Mistress

- So wait how is this ‘letting’ Margaret go with Howard thing supposed to work. Is it like knock-knock special delivery for the duke of Norfolk, here you go please take your princess back.

- And when exactly did Angus do all this negotiating when he has supposedly been stuck in a cellar for weeks. Gavin Douglas has a lot to answer for, and not just the sheer length of the Eneados.

- ‘Bog-fuckers’ - not a bog in sight in this west country version of Scotland. Also er, just how does one fuck a bog. Asking for a friend.

- I’m just being pedantic, Howard’s foul mouth is actually the only genuine piece of comedy the writers can come up with in this tv show.

- Howard putting up a good front here but come on there’s like six of them and about two dozen Miscellaneous Scotsmen. I know that the English were very practised in quartering Scots whenever they liked but eight to one is not good odds, even for the victor of Flodden.

- Yeah that whole scene is not how the history worked. At All. But let’s let them ride dramatically away across a field as if it’s at all plausible. (Also why is it always fields- I know Scotland’s roads were bad in the sixteenth century, but seriously they were at least *technically* roads when you got near Edinburgh)

- And there was definitely no Isabella Hoppringle, which is again, criminal. I mean I expected it but it’s still sad. Mind you I suppose that might imply that Scottish women are real creatures and not cryptids which, as we know, is totally unrealistic.

- Even weirder though, they’re not including Margaret Douglas? Why?

- Only one man has ever been in the king’s rooms? Seriously? You expect us to believe this, not only from a historical accuracy perspective, but also from the tv show that gave us implied Wolsey/Henry?

- The Great English Midwife Shortage c.1509-1516

- Do NONE of the many many grown-up people at the English court understand the lottery of birth and that you can’t just like, assume the baby will be a boy even if you hope it will. Wishful thinking is one thing (and common) but this wholehearted belief thing is frankly unrealistic.

- It’s also unfair how they’re treating Mary as unloved by both her parents. We know Katherine loved her daughter in some way, and it’s also not really fair to say that Henry VIII was anything less than a doting father in her early years.

- And the record for fastest churching goes to Katherine again. Cracking cape though.

- Katherine all ‘he won’t visit his daughter’- you won’t even look at her either though. How is this a sympathetic depiction of Katherine again? Don’t get me wrong, it’s absolutely understandable if a royal mother didn’t always want to hold her daughter but really? After every other negative light they’ve shown Katherine in and called it Empowerment?

- Hey I don’t know much about English customs but seems to me that inviting the French to intervene in Scotland without consulting the king might just be a beheading offence Wolsey. AND THEN HENRY COVERS FOR HIM? THE PAGES OF ENGLISH HISTORY BOOKS ARE NOT STAINED WITH THE BLOOD OF CIVIL SERVANTS EXECUTED FOR FAR LESSER OFFENCES FOR THIS KIND OF NONSENSE TO BE ACCEPTABLE.

- Thomas Boleyn, dad of the year

- People do kiss, Margaret Pole. That was a common thing. MEN kissed each other goddamnit. Not really good enough. I mean by your logic Katherine should have broken up with Henry after her dad laid one on him in the first episode.

- How is it that Thomas More, of all people, has the Goss.

- Oh and apparently there was also a National Laundress Shortage in 1516 too.

Ok so it was about as meh as every other episode but I think this one really brought home to me how poorly thought out Margaret’s storyline was. I mean usually these period dramas have to insert Drama for no reason to keep people interested, but Margaret’s life was FULL of drama and they had so much to work with. Instead they seem to have actually stripped most of the drama out to tell an utterly incomprehensible story about a bunch of stereotypical Scotsmen, who all live in the same house in Fake Edinburgh, chasing the only woman in Scotland into the cellar, and then posting her off back to England a few weeks later.

#TSP #Margaret Tudor #rants #I know I know #I finally got the internet back #And I'm using it to have a really petty rant about a tv show I'm largely indifferent to #This is the true purpose of tumblr

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star-trekkin-across-theuniverse · 4 years

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Red Light, pt 1

Hockey AU - Featuring Star Trek AOS, first person OFC.

XXX

There was something about the smell of freshly cleaned ice that instantly transported me back to my childhood, and every time I came in to work, that reminder of happier times made the stress of this job worth it. It wasn’t that I disliked my job - in fact, I loved it. But it was stressful managing publicity and media for a hockey team.

The San Fransisco Enterprise has been the best team in the United Federation of Hockey for the past four years. After the retirement of General Manager Christopher Pike, however, the team had been struggling. There were new players, and the team just wasn’t gelling under team captain Jim Kirk. The starting line-up was a hot mess. Kirk was at centre, and a new trade, Spock, had traded in at season start with a personal record for goals from his team on New Vulcan. Spock was a precision player, head always in the game, brain always four passes ahead. Kirk, on the other hand, was a cowboy. He played tight in the corners, and was a hard hitter, but his strategy was better summed up as flying by the seat of his pants. The men had nearly come to blows in practice, and barely tolerated one another on the ice. That conflict made for an uneasy team all around.

Team morale was worsened when ‘Doc’ Puri, the journeyman goaltender who seemed to be able to stop anything, blew out his knee on a road trip. It was a career-ending injury, despite the advances to medicine that had come in the three-hundred plus years since the game had been invented. The new GM had to find another goalie, and quick.

Which is what had been the biggest thing on my plate for the past week. Geoff M’Benga, the second string goalie, was in his first year in the pros. He was competent, but lacked the confidence to truly take the reins as the lead goalie. Talks had been heated, but finally, a trade was made with the Proxima Bees. The Enterprise’s draft pick for star goalie Leonard McCoy. McCoy was considered the best in the league, although his year had been off to a rough start. The man could stop almost anything, but the Proxima defense lines were weak and when they allow fifty plus shots on goal per night, there’s only so much one goaltender can do. McCoy was happy to be traded; the Enterprise had a solid defensive corp led by Montgomery Scott and Pavel Chekov, and the rumour was his marriage had just fallen apart and he was longing to get away from the drama.

I cleared my head of my musings, and filled my coffee cup at the pot in the corner of the office. The rich aroma of the coffee, countered with the cool tang of cleaned ice focused my thoughts on the day’s tasks. The press conference to announce the acquisition of McCoy was scheduled for 10. I needed a tight media release and some smiling players to welcome the new goalie. I pressed the button on my communicator to connect with the changeroom.

“Kirk, Spock, please come to the administrative offices when you’re done showering,” I announced. The loudspeaker in the changeroom would be amplifying my voice over the din created by the showers, and I knew I could expect the men to arrive shortly. I logged into my PADD and pulled up McCoy’s current stats to begin the media release.

“I’m afraid Kirk is outside signing autographs and flirting,” Spock announced as he walked into the office. “I let him know you wanted to see us, and he said he would be up shortly.”

“How are you settling in, Spock?” I asked. The team was ten games into the season, and I’d been hoping to see a more cohesive group by now.

“I’m starting to understand Kirk’s playing style,” he admitted. “It’s not to my liking, but his recklessness does have some advantages.”

“You guys need a team-building retreat,” I laughed. “Strand you on an island so you have to cooperate to survive.”

Spock looked horrified at the suggestion. “Every practice is an opportunity to build our team,” he protested.

“Yeah, but part of what makes a team work is when you like each other. You have to be able to see your strengths and weaknesses and figure out how they complement each other. That’s easier to do when you are not only teammates, but friends,” I offered. He shrugged.

“I’m not sure that Kirk and I are destined to be friends,” he replied, without a hint of malice. “I fear we are too different.”

“More alike than you realize,” I countered. “But I have faith it’ll come.”

“We will see. As interesting as your perspective is, I hardly think you called us in here for a pep-talk,” he changed the subject quickly. The doors behind me opened and Kirk strolled in. Spock must have seen his approach.

“Leonard McCoy should land at nine this morning, and we have a press conference scheduled for ten. Marcus wants a couple of players at the scrum to welcome him. As top scorer and team captain, I felt you two were the obvious choices.” I directed my comments to both men. Kirk smiled his lazy, handsome smile and sat on the edge of my desk.

“Is that the only reason you picked me?” He asked. I raised my eyebrow in question and then realized he was trying to flirt. I sighed and rolled my eyes.

“I’m not one of your puck bunnies, Jim,” I reminded him. “I’m immune to the charms of hockey players.”

“I keep telling you that if you just give me one chance, I can change your mind,” he teased. I laughed in response.

“And I keep telling you, I am a professional, and cannot compromise my integrity by carrying on with someone at work.”

“That’s kindest way I’ve ever heard someone say that I’m not their type,” he winked.

“I appreciate that you recognize it as that,” I laughed.

“I appreciate that you allow me to continue to flirt with you,” he shrugged. “Keeps my skills up.”

“As if you need practice, Jim Kirk!” I shook my head again, but couldn’t help but smile. Of all the hockey players I’d ever interacted with, Jim Kirk was the safest. He loved to flirt, he loved to play the romance card, but he always respected the women he flirted with, and never went too far, never made anyone uncomfortable. “Now, scoot, both of you. I have work to do.”

XXX

I checked over everything that was needed for the press conference. Media release was ready, the new jersey for McCoy had just come up from having his name and number sewn on, scrum room was clean, chairs out, mics working. I placed the script for the GM on the prompter, and made sure it was running at his speed, and then double checked it. Marcus was not the kind of leader to make friends, and he ran a tight ship. He made me uncomfortable, and as a result, I actively sought to minimize our interactions. Being called on the floor because I’d screwed up something simple was not on the agenda.

I was waiting at the zamboni bay doors for the arrival of the new goalie, to bring him to the press conference. The shuttle arrived from the airport just moments after I’d stepped outside. Leonard McCoy stepped out, ballcap pulled low on his brow. He swung his equipment bag over one shoulder and grabbed his stick bag with his free hand. He scowled at me as he approached. I reached for the stick bag and he pulled back.

“I can manage my equipment just fine, sweetheart. Just tell me where it goes,” he growled. I cocked my head to one side and gave him a hard look.

“My name is Samantha Nelsen, not sweetheart. You are welcome to call me Sam, or Ms. Nelsen,” I corrected sharply.

“Where do I stow my equipment, Sunshine?” he snapped.

“I was under the impression this move was a happy one,” I countered, my tone equally sharp and I gestured to a dolly sitting just inside the doors. “Perhaps you can put on your big boy pants before the press conference? You have five minutes.”

He dropped his bags with a heavy sigh and turned to face me. He looked exhausted. His jaw was covered in a three day growth of stubble, and there were bags under his eyes that appeared to be packing their own bags. Aside from that, he was as undeniably gorgeous as all his headshots had made him out to be.

“Ma’am, I’m sorry. I’m running on empty,” he apologized, pulling his ballcap off and rubbing a hand across his forehead. “Lawyer met me at the airport this morning to give me all the paperwork on my divorce. She took everything, the house, the car. She may as well have taken the goddamn team and the whole damn planet. All I’ve got left is my bones.”

“And a shiny new contract with the Enterprise,” I reminded him. “So let’s go counter some bad press with some good, shall we?” I offered a smile, hoping he realized I was effectively erasing his bad first impression. I headed toward the elevator, my heels clicking smartly on the hard cement.

“So you’re the media gal?” He asked, catching up with a quick skip. I pursed my lips and nodded.

“I prefer Manager of Broadcasting, Communications and Public Relations, media gal is kind of old fashioned,” I corrected with a wink, wondering exactly how many times I was going to have to straighten up this man’s language and bring it into the 23rd century.

“Of course, ma’am,” he nodded and bit his lip. I wasn’t sure if he was trying not to smile, or trying to bite back a smart comment. I suspected it might be both. I stepped on the elevator and held the door for him. As the doors closed, I turned and looked him over.

“We need to stop in the office and grab you an Enterprise hat. Get rid of that ratty old Bees one. You glad to be back on Earth, at least?” I asked. He pulled his hat off again, and scrubbed his hand through his short, messy hair. I led him from the elevator to the office and pulled a hat out a closet full of swag.

“I’ll let you know after I’ve had some actual sleep.” He pulled the hat on and checked his reflection in the mirror by my desk, slapping his cheeks a little to wake himself up. “This old face has a few more miles in it, anyhow.”

“Yeah, doesn’t look like you’ve stopped many pucks with it,” I teased, tipping my head toward the doors leading to the media room. He smirked.

“Why, Ms. Nelsen, I’d hazard you just told me you find me handsome,” he teased, meeting my eyes. With his temperament improved, and warmth in his eyes, it was undeniable, the man was stupidly hot.

“Focus on the press conference, pretty boy,” I laughed, opening the door for him. He walked in to the press conference, and I headed to the back of the room to manage the media.

#star trek fanfic with OC #star trek hockey AU

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seepunkrun · 5 years

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Things the 2009 Star Trek novelization adds to—or subtracts from—movie canon:

Jim has brown eyes

his brother George runs away from home and their stepfather "Uncle" Frank

Spock is eleven when he beats the shit out of those bullies in the learning pits

Spock spends several minutes throwing up "violently" in a public restroom before facing the Vulcan High Council to see if he's been accepted to the Science Academy

text explicitly compares Spock's parting "Live long and prosper" to a middle finger

at the Shipyard, Kirk isn't drunk at all while flirting with Uhura, getting beat up by Cupcake's gang, or talking to Pike

at no point during the bar fight does Kirk end up on Uhura's tits

but he does still see her in her underwear in her dorm room

Uhura can speak Orion Prime

so can Jim

Pike is at Jim's academic hearing

it's Uhura's dream to serve on the Enterprise

after Kirk's warning, the Enterprise drops out of warp before it reaches Vulcan and tries to contact the rest of the fleet, with no success

Sulu doesn't magically just happen to have his sword on him when they drop onto the mining platform; Kirk throws him one of the Romulan's bladed weapons

Chekov doesn't make a mad dash for the transporter room to beam up Kirk and Sulu, he just does it from the bridge

and fails to retrieve Amanda from there, too

Spock and Sarek hug after materializing on the Enterprise without her

Kirk wants to console Spock, and says he's sorry

after that Kirk goes to sickbay to help care for the injured Vulcans

Spock is also there

their eyes meet, Jim's expression is filled with empathy, and Spock turns and leaves

Jim must have gotten a field promotion at some point because during the conversation on the bridge about what to do next Spock refers to him as "Lieutenant Kirk"

that conversation also does a better job of explaining why Spock wants to shoot Kirk into space

at the end of that conversation Spock orders Sulu and Chekov to escort Jim off the bridge, not security

instead of name, rank, and serial number, Pike gives the Romulans his name, rank, and the Enterprise's license plate registration number

on Delta Vega, Kirk refers to himself as a lieutenant while recording his sassy personal log about Acting Captain Spock

and then he screams at the sky: "Son of a bitch! There's nothing here, you pinch-faced, neck-pinching motherf—"

according to Old Spock (who is 129 years older than Young Spock), Jim was born in 2233 on a farm in Iowa

Old Spock says, of mind melds, "It is impossible to convey information to the unconscious [recipient]."

Keenser has actual dialogue

Keenser doesn't want Scotty to go!

Cupcake calls Jim "Moonbeam" when he rounds him up in engineering

Uhura eventually jumps to Spock's defense when Kirk's trying to emotionally compromise him, calling Jim a "son of a bitch"

Bones catches her arm to stop her, says, "Let 'em fight."

multiple crew members try to stop Spock from beating the shit out of Kirk, but all get thrown aside

once that's over Uhura refers to Scotty as a "vagrant"

everyone demands that Kirk explain how they got there

Jim's all, it's physics, you wouldn't understand

and Sulu blasts him with his qualifications: a doctorate in astrophysics and a master certificate in interstellar navigation

Spock nearly compliments Chekov's math and "Chekov did not quite blush"

Bones is the only one on the bridge who can tell that Uhura and Spock are a thing

because "as chief medical officer" (a job he's had for five minutes) he's "attuned to subtle aspects of crew performance"

a second later Bones whispers to Scotty, translating something Spock said to Kirk, "Which is a Vulcan way of saying they might, just might, come out of this as friends, if they don't kill each other first."

McCoy ships it

contrary to the movie and Chris Pine’s face, Kirk doesn't seem confused, betrayed, or upset at Uhura kissing Spock in the transporter room

Spock is in berserker mode on the Narada, punching Romulans in the face and flinging cargo at them

Spock takes out five Romulans, and Kirk's pretty sure he did it in order of size, from biggest to least threatening

Kirk only took out one Romulan, but, he says, "Mine had a gun."

Spock's trained in the Vulcan martial art of Suus Mahna

Spock couldn't meld with the Romulan!

HOLY SHIT

instead Spock BEATS HIS FACE IN while demanding to know the passcode for the computer

to be fair it was Kirk's idea, which he supposedly made an order

but jesus

Jim's super impressed with the way Spock navigates the Romulan computer system

Spock doesn't try to send Jim off with a dying message for Uhura

in fact, this doesn't seem as much of a suicide mission as they were making it out to be in the movie

Spock uses the Jellyfish to blow some holes in the Narada from the inside, taking the warp engines offline and also killing a bunch of dudes on account of them getting sucked out into space

this Spock is blood thirsty

at the end, in the Starfleet hangar, Spock is super shocked that instead of Sarek, he gets an old version of himself

Old Spock also ships it

he offers to give Young Spock advice if he ever needs help making a decision

at the big ceremony Kirk gets a commendation for original thinking re: Kobayashi Maru

as the Enterprise takes off again for its star treks, Archer's missing beagle safely materializes in the transporter room

#star trek

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starr-fall-knight-rise · 4 years

Text

Humans are Space Orcs, “Survival.”

I had a lot of fun writing this one. Honestly being inside his head is so much fun, and I hope you all like it :). Hope it makes you laugh today.

So, I survived….

Surprise!

Not sure how that is going to turn out for me, and as I wake up lying back down in the sand and my right hand chilled from the cool inland ocean, I begin to realize that the awful ordeal I had gone through wasn’t just a dream. At first it felt like it, warm sand below my back and cool water on my fingertips. Somewhere birds are chirping, and I lay there for a while simply soaking in heaven, that is until I hear the secondary explosion as one the aux engines which jolts me upright sitting there covered in sand, my clothes singed, my arms aching from minor burns…. Completely alone.

Looking around I realize that this is not in fact earth, those are not, in fact birds, and I am not, in fact dead and being shown to heaven, but in fact much of the opposite. This is not earth, those look like tiny dinosaurs, and this is honestly, probably hell.

I take a minute to get my bearings before slowly crawling my way to my feet stumbling upright. The prosthetic takes most of the weight as I limp up the beach and back towards the wreckage of the command deck. I don’t expect to get much out of it considering that the entire thing is on fucking fire, but give me a bit of a break, less than a day ago I had been plunging towards a blakhole (or what I thought was a black hole that clearly turned out to not be) sure that I was going to die. In a way I was just a little pissed off. Don’t get me wrong, its not because I WANTED to die, I am actually one of the few humans on the face of the galaxy who enjoys living, but simply because I had accepted the fact that I was going to die. I had made peace with it, I had expected it, but instead I had been thrown into one of the worst warp experiences of my life, rattled around inside the command deck and then crash landed spectacularly onto an unknown planet.

I mean, it didn’t look like any place I Had ever seen before. Sure the sand and the ocean were almost natural, but tall, skinny, thousand foot trees certainly weren't, and neither were the large shelled crustaceans shambling up the beach .

I sighed and sat down in the sand with a soft plop watching as fire continued to smolder at the wreckage of my ship. It was only now that I realized my shoes were gone, and I could feel the sand between my toes.

Then the slight hissing hits me, and I turn to look down at my arm where a glint of bright silver catches my attention.

The iron eye suit.

I hadn’t had time to take it off.

I flexed my fingers watching the mid morning light run up and down the metal.

Ok, that was interesting.

Of course my dumbass had managed to take off the jetpack at some point….. shit.

I flopped back in the sand staring up at the sky. It was all coming back to me now, the entire ordeal from start to finish. The fight with the Kree, the space battle --that was arguably pretty fucking awesome…. Eat your heart out kirk-- and finally my destruction of the ship and my journey to the sort of blackish but not really, hole.

It occured to me: Everyone thought I was dead.

That stopped my musings for a second. What would happen? They wouldn’t look for me…. Would they? Then again UNSC policy held that no man was considered KIA until there was a body. I would be pronounced missing in action though assumed dead.

Someone else would be given command, my ship would have to be repaired, and meanwhile the crew would be disbanded or sent on leave.

Katie, maverick, Ramirez, Krill, Conn, Narobi, Cannon…. They all thought I was dead.

Waffles?

Fuck… thinking about her made me want to cry. Like I am going to be honest here guys, when a dog dies in a movie or when a dog is sad in a movie because their human dies, I don’t give a shit about the human, but I will cry. I will cry like a weenie because the dog is sad.

Like when all three of your brothers are sitting on your right hand side, and you have this magic ability to be water falling out of one eye while the other is dry to save face with your manhood kind of cry, no? Is that just me

Then my family, my father, my mother, my brothers. What would this do to them? They'd be devastated sure… Imagining my mother hearing about my untimely death was heartbreaking, and I was worried more than ever about Thoams. His quiet struggle with heroin addiction, and his recent one year sobriety was a big step for him…. Would my death mean setting him back? Was I that important to him that something might happen? He never dealt with stress well, so what was going to happen.

And… Sunny?

I had saved her life, yes but what had I done to her in the process? I had made her watch me die, unable to do anything. I had made her helpless, a victim of circumstance: something I knew she would never forgive herself for. I may have saved her life but…. I possibly ruined her in the process.

…

It's a good thing my brothers weren’t here because I wasn’t going to be able to do the one eye waterfall trick. This time it was going to be both eyes…. Still mad that that screwdriver hadn’t ruined my tear ducts too, I could have benefited from that.

I’d say I took about five six minutes to myself to be a pathetic bitch lying there in the sand feeling sorry for myself, and then I wiped my eyes manned up and got to my feet.

Alright.

I looked around at the open planet and the smouldering wreckage of my once beautiful ship. There was only one option here. I had to find a way out, or at least a way to survive, so maybe one day someone might find me somehow…. Yeah yeah yeah I get it is unfounded optimism and it is totally not going to happen, but let a man dream a little.

I was going to have to channel the spirit of one of my childhood idols.

Mark Watney

You know from that book about the guy who gets stuck on mars by himself for a year, the one that was made into a pretty good movie with Matt Damon.

I liked both the book and the movie though they diverge a little towards the end:you know, because hollywood.

There are a couple of problems with this plan of course…. Number one being that I am not a super smart engineer botanist. I am in fact, a fighter pilot, and a raging idiot.

I mean granted I did go to that pilot training school where they drop you out into the forest for a month and tell you good luck, that sucked shit, so it's not like I am completely helpless but still.

However, luckily for me, unlike Mark, I don’t have to worry about air, or water. Granted I have to worry about food, but in a different way. I don’t know what here would be edible to humans, so I am going to have to read carefully. THere is also the issue of clean water which Mark never had to worry about, I do.

YEah, I get it, our circumstances are very different, but I think what I want to channel most about him is his attitude, nihilistically optimistic.

I am going to survive this.

I look up at the sky watching as the planet’s rings glow dimly overhead through the blue atmospheric haze.

First thing was first, water, food and a weapon.

Fun fact about my model of ship:It is already ready for a scenario like this and has emergency packs stored under every seat of the bridge. Of course the problem there being the bridge is now on fire.

I walk over to the ocean and cut strips of my uniform to tie around my hands. I know it won’t give me much, ut it is better than nothing. Then I dunk myself in the water. It’s cold and causes me to shiver, but the air around me is warm, so I am not so worried.

I turn and head back towards the ship keeping a distance from the larger fires and heading towards the more smouldering ones. I don’t strike much luck to begin with, but eventually I manage to haul out one emergency pack from under one of the crew chairs. MY hands get a bit singed in the process, and the hot metal causes me to yowl like an angry cat and drop the case to the ground, but at least I have something.

I wait or it to cool off for a few minutes before dragging it back up the beach and sitting down to open.

Jackpot!

I have a canteen (with purifier) one of those filtration straws, to make the inland ocean my cup, and a handy little device that analyses organic material and tells you if it's edible or not.

I love living in the future

I also had emergency blankets, fire starting material, a knife, a flair gun, a radio. This was also along with a couple of other odds and ends like a compass, paracord, first aid kit, inflatable life raft, a multi-tool , monocular, and a box of nails.

The first aid kit included, bandages, antibiotic ointment, antibiotics of the general: for whatever stabs or infects you variety, painkillers, a turnakit, sewing needle and thread, staple gun: sort of, gauze anti-inflammatories, and fuck yes, a razon a toothbrush and some toothpaste.

If i ever got off this planet and back home I was to kiss whoever made this case, man woman does not mater, they are getting a kiss, cheek if they happen to be married of course, but if they really insist I um up for full mouth contact on the person who saved my life.

All jesting aside, this was good, and I first went to go get a drink of water.

HYdrations is important kiddos.

Next I had to tend to my injuries, minor burns and scrapes, bruises that I could do nothing about. Then it was time for a little shelter, which i erected with great ease between a couple of the strange tall trees, using torn up ferns to provide bedding on the inside and a canopy overhead.

I was feeling pretty badass right now, survivor style, though lets be honest, I was kind of lame since I had so much help from the magic box of wonderful mysticalities.

You know between this gox of medicine and the arc of the covenant, I would definitely pick this box first, for sure.

Took me a good day or two to get settled, and I’ll admit it wasn’t easy.

Gathering food was fine, I found some berries and fruits off of nearby plants, a couple of roots that were ok to eat, and even some of the crustaceans were palatable once I cooked them, using my fire pit and laying them out over a slab of discarded ship metal.

But there were a couple things I failed to think about.

A couple of things being

1# there is no fucking TP on this planet, also I had to dig a hole for fear of accidentally giving myself cholera or some nasty thing on accident by contaminating a water supply.

2# bed uncomfortable

3# no sunscreen

4# After a couple days your really start to smell like ass, now hold on for a minute there, I am completely in the habit of washing my ass,I promise, but I am telling you unwashed human just smells like ass, no way around it, greasy nasty sweaty stank.

The clothes don’t help obviously, and I found a way to wash the clothes by rubbing them in the sand and using some sweet smelling leaves.

OF course you know the problem with all that, right?

Naked.

While on laundry day I am completely nude out in the sun on a tropical planet. If someone were to go flying overhead, they would see more than they bargained for, and way more than they wanted as my pasty white ass flapped around in the breeze as they drove by.

A change of clothes was in order, so I spent the day, while my clothes were being washed, sitting on the sidelines using plant material, scraps and thread to pull together a rudimentary grass skirt/ loincloth of sorts

Now don’t think it didn’t cross my mind everyone.

I half expected god to descend from the sky and ask me what I was doing.

This whole covering your junk with leaves thing seems to be a theme for people named Adam

And yes that was a biblical reference, I am in fact named after the first man, so this is a fitting bonding moment for me and my namesake.

The biggest issue of course is when everything slows down, late at night as I am trying to fall asleep, and I realize that…. I may be stuck here forever.

I will grow old and die alone on this island.

And no one will ever know.

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moderndaybard · 4 years

Text

2020 Weekly Ficlet 42/52(? We’ll see?)

Ever At Your Side, Part 4/7 (Uhura) [New Trek/Pokemon Crossover. Because Why not.]

(Part 1-Kirk; Part 2-Spock; Part 3-Bones; Part 5-Scotty; Part 6-Sulu; Part 7-Chekov)

Beginnings:

Long-term, deep-space missions, it turns out, are long stretches of routine bordering on monotony, interspersed very occasionally with the strangest—and often most dangerous—of exceptions. But despite the long stretches of ‘it-was-a-normal-day-see-previous-recordings’ sorts of log entries and confined quarters aboard ship, it was still somehow remarkably different for Lt. Uhura and Commander Spock to align their off-duty time with any consistency.

(The downside of an over-achiever dating a workaholic, mused more than once.)

Still, they did make the effort, and when they managed to pull it off, they made the most of the time that they had—which was why Uhura was now desperately trying to ignore the rivulets of not-sweat trickling down her back as she joined Spock in his meditation.

With their minds so close, Uhura knew that he would feel the flicker of her distractions, and so tried to stay present—to no avail. As soon as she’d noticed the physical sensation, there was no going back to the moment. The prankster had won this round.

With a silent apology to her boyfriend (who she knew was aware of the situation and finding his own meditation disrupted) she pulled away from the link that Spock and T’Kay had opened, opening her eyes and whirling on the ‘stealth master’ behind her. “I warned you that you’d get bored—I said that you could stay in my room or in your ball. You couldn’t have waited just a few more moments to ask for attention?”

Whatever expression the pokemon behind her bore at the moment was obscured behind the ‘scarf’ that covered everything below is eyes (the ‘scarf’ being, in fact, his tongue, a fact that seemed to throw most people when they learned and/or remembered that fact), but Uhura had been with her partner for so long that she could read the mischievous grin, hidden though it was. Utengo had no shame, at times.

The communications officer continued to glare at her partner Greninja, but she couldn’t help noticing how off the water-type looked in the room set to mimic the dry-heat of Vulcan for its occupant. This time, when she held out the pokeball in invitation, her partner did not sulk, pout, or refuse.

He did, however, lob one last ball of water into the air before he was recalled, which burst and showered the two trainers and other pokemon.

“To be fair, that is a way of showing he likes you,” Uhura offered to Spock.

“I am…aware,” the half-Vulcan intoned calmly. He, too, was used to certain…antics…of the pokemon in question. “Though, by that metric, one could argue that he likes quite a few aboard the Enterprise—if not most.”

She sighed, but couldn’t fully hold back a smile, either. “Unfortunately, he does.”

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

Meetings:

It’d been so many years ago—she was still a teenager still home, Starfleet Academy still a distant someday she was pursuing with all the force of her already-legendary determination. Language was already her passion, xenolinguistics the field she already had her eyes set on, and she’d already mastered three languages with another two not far behind.

But starship assignments were still a long way off, and prodigy though Nyota was, she knew there was still so much about the world—about herself—to be discovered, to be decided. And there was time for all of that.

Today, though, the only choice that mattered was which pokemon she’d be leaving with: who would be her partner in the years and decades to come. She had some ideas—being her, she’d done her research and done it thoroughly—but unusually enough for her, she hadn’t come with a set plan.

Which was good, because the little blue frog blinking up at her was not common in that part of Earth, so she hadn’t originally considered it.

She knew of the Froakie line, of course, knew the final evolution was prized by stunt performers, security officials, daredevils, and some in less-than-savory occupations. Additionally, water-types were not uncommon in Starfleet, especially since some experts (and ‘experts’) liked to claim that trainers that gravitated towards that type were more likely to be cool, rational, and quickly adaptable.

Personally, she thought that was ridiculous—even if the type-to-trainer-personality theory had any actual basis (which she was not convinced of), the young girl privately thought that the water-type lent itself just as easily to impetuosity, storm-like fury, stubbornness undaunted by any obstacle, and even to…

She saw it, in the little Froakie’s eyes, behind what most saw as the wide-eyed perpetually-worried expression of the line’s first stage; and he saw it in her, too, in the dark brown eyes of the girl regarding him thoughtfully, one praised for her intelligence and drive and thought mature beyond her years by those who never took the time to look close enough to see—

—the twin sparks of mischief, the mark of the schemer, the prankster. They’d get where they wanted to go, no question, but they’d reach it on their own, if unexpected, way.

(Not to mention, certain traits of his final evolution seemed like to good a joke for the future communications officer to pass up.)

She’d get questions in the days, months, even years to follow about what obscure language or dialect she’d turned to for Utengo’s name. “English, if you look at it right,” was the answer—and the joke—that so few seemed to get.

Seriously? It’s not that hard a scramble…right?)

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

(2009)

So much and so little had changed in the intervening years: Uhura and Utengo had grown up—the Frogadier that’d entered Starfleet academy at her side having evolved at last into a Greninja early in her (their) final year—and both had found, through trial and error, that it was when the other cadets, the professors, and the officers saw them as the mature, calm, rational, and adaptive water-type and -trainer they wanted to see that they were taken seriously, accepted.

So the twin sparks of mischief were dampened—though not doused—and set aside for the moment in favor of finding and excelling in (if not exceeding) in the expected paths for a Xenolinguist and her partner, learning the rules and expectations, what grey areas were and weren’t safe, observing the Academy staff politics to see who actually had clout, and how they’d gotten it. Uhura told herself that it was easier this way—there was no need to break new ground constantly if a sure path already existed.

Water will follow the channels dug for it, after all.

****

Kirk likely thought that her reluctance to ‘crew’ his third attempt at the Kobayashi-Maru was due to purely personal reasons (namely her unconcealed dislike for his brash attitude—which, admittedly, did contribute a little). He therefore probably wondered why she agreed to do so anyway.

(Career-wise, there were some bridges it did not do to burn, personal personality issues aside, and perhaps the most annoying thing about James T. Kirk’s flippant, arrogant persona was that he had the skills and smarts to back it up—his career would definitely be fast-tracked if he managed to avoid pissing off the very people inclined to do so.)

In truth, it was the test itself that she despised even more—Academy rumor mill being what it was, every cadet knew it was an unwinnable scenario going in. And Academy students being who they were, nearly to a person, they went in believing that they could be the one person to spot the loophole that would win it anyway.

To date, Kirk was the only one who’d tried more than once.

(Continued on AO3.)

#Star Trek 2009 #uhura #spock #pokemon #pokemon crossover #hypothetical pokemon team #well really just one partner #because its fun #my post #writing challenge

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drennalynspast · 4 years

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[ a delicious feeling ]

Saturday, Nov. 03, 2012

it's a delicious feeling: that feeling where you experience emotional anguish or face an internal struggle where it breaks you down emotionally. you brood about it, ruminate for a while and try to let it pass. even though you haven't found a complete resolution to the issue, time passes to where everything just remains calm, still, and silent in this solacing darkness. it could just be numbness or just that point where you experience apathy. you suddenly convince yourself that things will be fine and you can hopefully get yourself out of this. in my other entry http://drennalyn.diaryland.com/120503_99.html, i mentioned another guy i met in an mmo who disappeared for a while.

well, it turns out he managed to message me one day in the guild forum that i checked. we exchanged emails and caught up with each other. we played a bit of dragon nest together. when guild wars 2 came out, we have been playing that together as well. i joined the guild that he was in. i feel a connection with him. it's hard to describe. it's some sort of emotional empthy for the other person. we can read each other easily.

it's pretty obvious i have this stoic, dark personality about myself that i try to hide and other times express to others at times. he sometimes has that nature in him as well. we are just friends. i never had a sexual interest in him. he does have a wife (that he felt shameful and admitted to me). he is unahppy with his marriage, and i suggest that future divorce would "free" him up more.

anyway, there is another female in the guild, and asian too... oh joy. they have been becoming closer friends and whatnot, she confides a lot to him. i understand people can have their moments with other people if they wish. y'know, spend time with a friend and not hang out with their other friend. you just have to juggle them around and help out who you can at the moment. you can't be there for everyone. i fucking get it. past days where i did get to be online the same time as ... oh fuck i need to give this guy a psuedoname... uh, "kirk", he was exploring and talking on voice chat with the taka girl. the female guildie is nice, and he tells me her issues through whisper what she has been going through. i have no animosity towards her. she and i aren't obviously close cause we don't talk a lot as much. i was on voice chat alone with him, but he had to "kick" me out so she could go on and talk to him about her issues and vent. she had a bad day, fine, if she needs someone to vent out to, it's okay to do it with her friend. i will just go about doing my own thing. another night off, i was anticipating just spending more time talking to him and stuff via chat/playing together or whatever. he was exploring and on chat with the female guildie still.

i casually mentioned that i wish i could get on mumble to chat, but i said i couldn't cause he was talking to taka. he said, "right, cause we're exploring together". and so i just kinda felt a small stab in my stomach- like it was my time to just back off and not bother them and what they are doing.

i felt lonely. i felt like i needed to just talk to someone. i assumed that my real life friends were working or dealing with their own personal stuff, work, sleep etc and having no moment for me at that time of.... 10 pm -1 am in the morning. i felt like the one person who did have time for me to be with, they chose not to spend that time with me.

it was a gut wrenching feeling all over again. it made my stomach hurt and my heart beat erratically. it could have been the two smirnoffs that i drank in attempt to quell my emotions. however, drinking didn't do shit for me and made me feel the same. i haven't had that experience ever since i was around dave. it was the feeling that the person who you wanted to hang out with, talk to, was talking or hanging out with other people besides you and you feel so motherfucking sick to your stomach and ache terribly. what's wrong with me? am i inferior to them? are they better than me and more fun to hang out with? iam i just too much of handful sometimes and annoying? memories came flashing back of the feeling i felt: supreme jealousy, envy and inferiority and anger that you put so much hope and energy into someone and you don't feel acknowledged by them.

i work 5 days a week, 12 hr shifts night time. my social time is limited. it sometimes gets to the point where i feel selfish and needy. i don't have a lot of free time, when i do have the time i wish that people would just be there for me. i envy how they have more free time than me, so i just wish they could set some time aside for me. okay. i get angry. it feels better to blame them. i want to lash out at them. i want to make them feel bad and responsible that they are doing this to me. but i shouldn't. i shouldn't....

the righteous side of me that tries not to anger people or get in their way tells me that i should just back off. back the fuck off. i'll disappear. i'll log off. i'll seclude myself in the silent darkness and just handle it alone - wishing that they will seek me out, see that i am missing and attempt to finally talk to me. it only makes the feeling worse when i make expectations like that. sometimes they won't ever seek me out. i will still be left alone to deal with my demon. and so i spiral slowly into this despair and dazzling darkness. i tell myself this is all my fault. it is just my problem. i am too weak to deal with what is the fact and reality. why should i seek out the person who i felt has wronged me when it is the me who has been wrong all this time.

i did this to myself, i made a choice in this lifestyle of mine - working long and odd hours of the week. i am doing this for the money and for myself. if i were truly unsatisfied and unhappy, i could make an attempt to switch to days, but i can't see myself working hard on days at the moment. with that said, i will just have to sacrifice my social life a looot more. i tell myself this isn't permament. i can handle it. i can deal with this temporarily. the results shall pay off eventually... maybe.

as far as the jealousy goes. i don't know why i feel this way. it's stupid and unnecessarily. he has a wife. we are all just friends. why do i put such an emotional investment into kirk though. part of me wishes i could just be friends more with taka. we wouldn't have anything to hide from each other and could talk more freely. but no, just fucking no, i get the impression that i can't because he has to choose one or the other at times. like, it will just be super fucking awkward if i butt in. it's like i will never get the chance to just be a part of their group or something. i fuck things up. i screw things over with my bluntness, vulgarity and my questions of "why" all the goddamn time.

angstymcangst. it's like he feels embarrassed when i portray myself that way in front of the other guildies or something. so, i am not "allowed" to be more personable with the other guildies around him. i just feel so aggravated with these feelings i feel.

i just wish i could tell him all i am feeling, but why am i not surprised he may not have the time to talk to me. if i did email my novel to him, he would probably reply in like 2 sentences. i don't want to be a burden, a hindrance to him with my overwhelming, convoluted thought processes. it's okay to shove me out of voice chat so he can talk to another person in need, but if i want to talk, i don't feel as welcomed.

and so how should i cope. i shut myself down, curl on the couch in the dark with a soft blanket over me and force myself into deep sleep. i wake up. i feel okay, numb. i feel apathetic. it's another time. you are alive at least and can carry on the day as usual.

i think about the past and how i am not truly alone. i may be alone that night. but in the long run, i still have friends and family i can talk to if i am truly in a pinch. if one person that i need isn't there for me, it is okay for me to seek out other people to talk to. i don't want to be the person that puts too much hope, faith, trust into one individual. if that one individual does not meet my expectations, then it could make my world feel crashing down. i shouldn't let allow myself to feel destroyed by one person. it's just a temporary issue, a scenario - not a permanence. if the issue become recurring, then i don't know what to do.

i am avoidant by nature. i will go wherever the wind follows. will it get to a point where i just want to leave the other person and not seek out their friendship as much? i am not sure. holy fuck i am severely passive aggressive. i didn't know there was a comprehensive list of symptoms involving this .. behavior, but apparently there is one.

moral of the entry: we can't all have nice things. don't put too much of your energy and expectations into a single person. the calm after the storm. what a delicious feeling.

#mmo #online crush #efriend #online friend #emo

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