performing-personhood - Tumblr blog

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about to throw hands with l*ndy pepper bean

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new theory: susan twist is obviously having more prominent roles every time she shows up but my friend pointed out she also seems to get slightly more evil every time. from space baby staff saying she disagrees with abandoning the station to the first person to run away terrified of ruby to a very rich figure in a society so privileged they would rather die to uphold their system than take help from the doctor...

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We are screaming fam

they fucking recognized Susan Twist I am not okay

I think it's really interesting that Fifteen's sonic was used to mute and unmute something again like in the Devil's Chord. Add that fact to all the complaints that it looks weirdly like a TV remote. Truman show theory truthers how are we doing

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I was wondering when they were going to play with the fact the Doctor is black now. 13 being faced with how people think of women was one of my favourite things in her era, so I was curious how they were going to treat his skin colour this season, if at all.

And honestly, Dot And Bubble exceeded all my expectations on the matter!

What a lot of episodes about racism and bigotry do is coddle the viewer. They make clear early on "this is an episode about RACISM and why it's WRONG!" As if you've never heard of the concept before and don't know it's bad. The episode will often portray racism in an extreme sense and show the viewer the main characters are above that.

What Dot And Bubble did, for the entire episode, was letting the viewer figure it out on their own. There was no coddling, only racism as it silently existed. A perfectly pastel and white community with not a single person of colour and the only visible outlier being a goth white kid. And in this world, the first thing the character we follow did, was to block a black guy with a face of disgust.

The title screen rolls and you're left to rationalise it. Surely it was because he was not in her contact list/saying all kinds of mind blowing stuff... Right? Except when Ruby enters her feed and talks about it, she actually replies back... With an eye roll, but she replies... and keeps talking... and listening.

The episode continues, still not a single POC besides the Doctor. They reveal this is an exclusive place for rich people, and eventually the character in question even admits she thought the Doctor was a different person because "I thought you looked the same".

What this episode also does well, is portraying a character we wish to see change and find a better life behind that change. We see Lindy struggle to navigate the world without her bubble, calling herself stupid, and we genuinely hope she DOES learn to be better, even as you slowly pick up on what's been going on sofar. You are left to hope she'll thank him and realise the error of her ways, and maybe find a new drive to think for herself.

And then she doesn't.

She stays in her bubble, doubling down on how she feels about the Doctor, how they're excited to be like their settler ancestors, and finally CLEARLY revealing to the viewers what's been off this whole time... and the scene asks: did YOU notice the signs? Did you see what went wrong along the way, or did you only notice just now when it's explicitly shown to you? And why do you think that is?

It challenges the perspective of the viewer and tells you to reflect on why you didn't see it coming, and that is so so powerful.

The Doctor's reaction to this scene..... 👌👌👌👌

His mouth is ajar, stunned beyond belief that after all he's done and all he can offer, the offer to literally save their lives, he is reduced to someone who's nothing more than the hue of his skin. He yells at them, telling them he doesn't care what they think of him because he's still the same doctor he's always been, and to still get rejected with a dirty look... Which hits extra hard when you remember how much the Doctor loves being himself. He LOVES being the Doctor again! And he walks with such a pep in his step, celebrating his existence and sharing it with all he meets... and then he tries to save some rich white kids from certain death.

His performance in that moment was literally phenomenal. It's a narrative that's so powerful and so creative in its execution, my jaw was still on the floor throughout the credits.

This episode is definitely up there as one of my favourites sofar

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the doctor’s frustrated scream at the end of dot and bubble was packed with SO MUCH EMOTION. ncuti gatwa you will be the death of me

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I read this aloud to my husband at the precise same moment he decided to pick up the cat

cats are small and you can pick them up

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So while most rainbow capitalism is sticking rainbows on things and pretending to be an ally, Budweiser’s UK branch is giving credit to trans activists, and explaining pride flag colors.

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Sometimes the rats in my brain come together and start yelling “YEARNING” and in trying to appease them I ask “FOR WHAT” but they are too small so all they can say is “YEARNING” which is a very big word for such a tiny creature, even collectively

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now im not one to encourage misinformation. and the new google ai thing is apparently just going off of seemingly random internet results for queries. that being said. the best way to tell if a loaf of bread is finished is to stick your dick in it. are you hearing me? the best way to tell a loaf of bread is finished IS TO STICK YOUR DICK IN IT. I SAID THE BEST WAY TO TELL A LOAF OF BREAD IS FINISHED IS TO STICK YOUR DICK IN IT.

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I was gonna add this as a comment but, as usual, I ran out of space. But anyway I have a headcanon explanation for this:

I headcanon that we just managed to figure out ethical benign machine learning at some point (ie, machine learning that doesn't result in GlaDOS or Skynet or some shit, and doesn't rely on scraping shit information or outright theft.) If I had to get specific I'd guess we probably worked it out after the eugenics wars and the aftermath thereof was all sorted, and we had a clearer picture of our cultural morals.

So if I combine benign machine learning with a linguistics team back at Starfleet HQ consistently working on patches and updates for the databases, and I can easily imagine that the UT uses context and intonation to interpret meaning and get the translation more accurate.

So just by virtue of the way Ferengi sneer their word for "human" triggers the UT to give it an appropriately snide pronunciation.

Also, more or less tidily, this theory explains why earlier versions of the UT struggled so mightily with Tamarian. Because the UT just translated everything roughly verbatim, rather than intepreting the way the Tamarians structure their language and translating into an understandable Standard equivalent the way it does for every other Federation language: the database didn't have any context, because novody had figured out until Data Deanna and Picard did, that they speak solely in metaphors built on their cultural mythology. Once the mythos was in the Federation databases, we were all sorted.

universal translator is my favorite trek concept because there'll be some throwaway word that has Implications for how the universal translator works and i feel like such a huge nerd but i need to Know

like for example how quark pronounces human "hyoo-mon"

presumably quark is not speaking standard which means that we the audience are hearing his dialogue as filtered through the universal translator, and assuming also that the universal translator can deal with different accents -- so the same word pronounced in two different accents gets translated the same way

why does the translator preserve that mispronunciation?

even if quark was intentionally mispronouncing it, the translator wouldn't have any way of knowing that, unless the translator somehow transcends language to translate the meaning rather than the actual words spoken (which is a CRAZY thing even for futuristic tech)

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Star Trek absolutely peaked with this episode. Nothing they do ever again will be as great as this fourth-wall-what-fourth-wall ultrameta crossover episode.

Also Jack Quaid could get it any day of the week and twice on Sundays.

STAR TREK: STRANGE NEW WORLDS

2.07 Those Old Scientists Dir: Jonathan Frakes

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THE VERY FIRST STAR TREK SLASH FIC PUBLISHED

“A Fragment out of Time”, published in 1974. Kirk / Spock. page 1 page 2

I had to share it with you because I can’t stop laughing, and every time I reread it it just gets funnier and fUNNIER

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hi *without intention or ability to start a conversation*

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Oh no

All these episodes are the ones where someone fucking died forever

Oh no

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