#35 fucking years ago.

[oldmemoria]

Every time someone tries to tell me that everything happening with Palestine is somehow new I just think about this

[a-gay-bloodmage]

Me, making my Dragon Age OCs in my mid to late teens: Hehe, all but one of them are in their twenties or above... They're so mature...

Me, now, aged 23 with a far more developed brain: Why the fuck are these CHILDREN in charge of SAVING THE WORLD?

[olsonholloway]

Big day for Heathers girlies

[cinemaocd]

This dead person had same sex relationships but I'm not allowed to speak about it because it's offensive to label someone with something that would have been insulting/endangering to them when they were alive.

[agirlnamednix]

Chat, I'm vibrating.

Tomorrow I have to go on a three-hour public transit roadtrip to get my new ID card. I'm changing my gender marker and name, Chat. I'm legally becoming myself, Chat. I'm so FUCKING excited, Chat.

[tuttle-did-it]

(a rant about Star Trek: Picard)

So I just watched an episode of The Ray Bradbury Theatre (S.2, e11), 'There was an Old Woman.' It aired in May of 1988.

In this episode, an old woman, Tildy, played by Mary Morris, is surprised when men come into her house with a wicker basket that is the general shape of a coffin. There's a strange man who is completely silent. Tildy talks to him, yells at him and eventually tells all the men to get out of her house.

Turns out, predictably, they've come to collect her body and she is dead. The silent man is obviously Death, and he seems to respect the fact that she's spent all this time yelling at him because he eventually just puts his hat on and leaves.

For 30 minutes, this 70+ woman essentially monologues about her life. How she had refused to marry, how she had refused to have children. How she had raised her sister's daughter (and loved her) when she died. How she had never compromised her needs and wants for men. And how proud she was of all of this.

In the end, Tildy screams at the men at the funeral parlour to give her back possession of her own body. Confused, they agree. She gets back into her body, and goes back to her house.

Tildy was the primary focus for the entire show. Her needs, wants and desires were paramount. Sometimes she talked about men, but most of the time, she talked about herself and her own life.

Tildy was allowed to be angry. She was allowed to be emotional. She was allowed to tell men to leave her space. Tildy demanded autonomy over her own body- she literally screamed at about 10 men and argued to get possession of her own body back. Tildy yelled at all the men to take her body back home, to pick her up and put her back over her body, and then SHE found a way on her own to take control back over herself. And then she kicked all the men out.

Raffi's entire storyline in season 3 has been Worf telling her to control herself and calm down, but Tildy, in 1988, was allowed to be angry and emotional the whole time.

Tildy, as a ghost, got more respect from all the men in the room than Shaw has shown Seven in every scene.

The final scene is her in her chair, Tildy happily muses that the coroner's sewing up of her chest during her autopsy was 'decent sewing, for a man.'

Tildy had more agency and identity in a show from 1988 than ANY of the women from Star Trek: Picard have had in season 3 in particular.

All I could think about when watching this was how much more progressive this episode was compared to what I've seen from Star Trek: Picard.

How, in Picard, they keep everyone (but especially the mature women) in dark corners so you can barely see their faces. Picard's age is one that feeds directly into the plot at various points- sometimes there are light-hearted jokes, but for the most part, we're encouraged to relate and understand what life is like for man 'past his prime'.

Where is this discussion of age for Crusher? For Troi? For Laris (remember she exists?)? For any of the women? Riker gets to complain that his knees are shot- where's Crusher talking about her shoulder replacement? Oh, wait, that's right- Crusher's barely allowed to speak. Instead, she has to have long meaningful glances. And Gates does this amazingly well, but the men are allowed to monologue whilst the women are stuck in dark gloomy corners with ~meaningful glances~.

Tildy had her own unique storyline and identity that had nothing to do with the needs, wants and trauma of all the men around them. Because Seven, Crusher and Troi in particular have each been denied independent storylines, forced instead to orbit the men and mitigate the men's trauma and stories. Even Sidney's plot revolves around Daddy issues and a love interest with Picard's son.

And all I could think was how sad it was that this 70+ year old woman had more agency and identity in a show from 1988 than ANY of the women from Star Trek: Picard have had in season 3 in particular.

How we're allowed to SEE her -- LOOK at these lines.

Picard keeps all of their characters, but especially the ~women of a certain age~ in dark shadows. Gates McFadden literally said that she couldn't even see Patrick Stewart during filming for their scenes.

The saddest thing is, this episode from 1988 is not that groundbreaking; rather, it's just that Picard is that much of a failure when it comes to women.

In DS9, they gave Keiko her own storyline, and she wasn't even a main character. They gave Grilka her own storyline and she was in two episodes. So why can't Picard bother to give Seven something more to do than sit there and listen to abuse from Shaw and trauma-dumping from Picard and Jack? Oh, and wax lyrical nostalgia. Not enough.

And this isn't just a Star Trek: Picard thing. Yes, hands down, TOS was awful toward women and rarely let women even speak to each other. TNG only let Crusher and Troi talk to each other when it was about men and they were in leotards. But by the time they reached DS9, things were better. Kira is allowed to be angry when we meet her- and she stays angry for a long time. There are storylines about her anger. Keiko hates DS9. She's allowed to have a storyline about that. And for Voyager, Janeway has plenty of chats with B'Elanna, Kes and Seven that are not about men. B'Elanna is, like Kira, allowed to be angry (though VOY often takes a step backward saying that she is 'out of control' with her emotions-- notice the white woman (Kira) is allowed to be angry, but the woman of colour (B'Elanna,) is out of control. Some racial bias there, I think). Janeway is allowed to be occasionally batshit crazy, and that's okay.

Point is, by the time DS9 and VOY came on, they figured out that it was okay to have women as a focus for a story, and they were allowed to have their stories and plots and identities and needs and wants and mistakes of their own. There was room for improvement, but it was the 90s and it was better than TNG. Kira and Dax were allowed to be together to talk about nothing significant. They did this well on DS9, and although they could have done better on Voyager, the women were still autonomous and had their own identities.

So if Janeway, B'Elanna and Kira were allowed to be angry and emotional more than 2 decades ago, why is Raffi is treated as defective for her emotions? Why is she treated as a time-bomb who can't be controlled-- who is so out of control, by the way, that they have to separate her and Seven?

Dax (and Evil Kira!) are allowed to have romantic relationships with women and a career at the same time- something Seven and Raffi are not allowed to do because Matalas doesn't think you can have both simultaneously.

Star Trek: Picard has NO EXCUSE.

Gates McFadden, Jeri Ryan, Michelle Hurd, Michelle Forbes, Marina Sirtis and Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut have done amazingly well with the tiny crumbs they've been given this season. They've managed to make what are completely forgettable and insignificant moments realised just through brilliant acting- to move their characters beyond what few bits there are for them on the page. They deserve so much more than to only exist in order to further the needs and wants of the men in the show, and to give the men a sounding board to process their trauma.

But here's what I'm asking myself...

WHY IS AN EPISODE FROM A SHOW FROM 35 YEARS AGO MORE PROGRESSIVE IN ITS DEPICTION OF WOMEN THAN STAR TREK: PICARD?

In conclusion... tl;dr

The petrol of Nostalgia that this show [Picard] is currently running on is not enough because the very era they're being nostalgic about was more progressive than the current show.

[thatgoddamngingerundercut]

Still losing my mind over Yoongi wearing a Mayhem patch lmfao

[robbed-ghost]

“Damian isn’t ooc what are you talking aboutttt he’s only 14 and wants to trust his dad so badlyyyy guyssss don’t get upsettt” have you never read a comic with Damian in it in your life

[princessconsuelapark]

the 'i am thankful to be his padawan' to 'it's his fault i committed genocide' to 'he's like a father to me' pipeline <3

[125storejuice]

.

[witchwhaat]

saw akira at cinema

[butchlifeguard]

parents be like when i was yr age i totaled my moms car coming back from a party in another state. also dont skateboard too fast the neighbor said something to me ☹️

[mieczyhale]

one of the guys that runs a reaction channel i've been watching for ages just announced that they're ending the channel next year bc he got a job offer and he's getting married and he's thinking about his family and his future and like...

my son in christ you are 21

i literally want to fucking die

[nyxneon]

.

[knowerofuselessfacts]

Me, trying to remember to use CBT: Would *you* be mad at someone for doing xyz? No? Then they probably arent either!

[whereisthedamndaddymanual]

Alright let's try to review the old man's news feed.

Riots....but not in the south

Self explanatory

A union Biden but they only do inside construction

What the fuck does that even mean?