#Helen Evans

[sitting-on-me-bum]

Sweet Carolina

‘This beautifully coloured wood duck, also known as the Carolina duck, was happily feeding with the local ducks by the lake at Cae Ddol Park in Ruthin, Denbighshire. It made my day.’

Photograph: Helen Evans

[ekirina]

Era una película que tenía pendiente y una tarde noche que tenía festivo, me la puse a ver con mi prometido.

Ganadora del Oscar como mejor actriz de reparto (Alicia Vikander). Se basa en una historia real donde Eddie Redmayne interpreta a un joven que siente disforia de género. Al ser en los años 20, es casi inimaginable que pasara algo así a una persona, y todo lo que desencadena en su matrimonio con Alicia Vikander y a los más allegados.

Es una película obligatoria de ver actualmente, porque cada vez más se destapa la diversidad de tipos de relaciones y también el romper con los esquemas que se han heredado de nuestras generaciones pasadas en cuanto al género.

Yo conozco de un caso así, y la verdad que el apoyo que tuvo fue un ejemplo a seguir. El protagonista escribió un diario de todo lo que sentía con este proceso y como influía en su vida personal: Man into woman, de Lili Elbe (la verdadera Lili, donde su autobiografía ha sido la base de esta película). Este libro ha sido toda una inspiración para la comunidad LGBTTTIQ y en todos sus marcos de apoyo.

Dadle una oportunidad, se la merece.

The Danish Girl (UK - USA - Belgium - Denmark - Germany, 2015)

[manny-jacinto]

BARBIE (2023) dir. Greta Gerwig

[lady-stardust-incarnate]

A brief summary of how each character is doing at the end of the trojan war

Menelaus - alive!!! (somehow)

Helen - alive! was gonna get killed but she's too hot for that

Achilles - dead

Patroclus - dead

Paris - dead, shot in the dick (ha)

Hector - dead, body absolutely desecrated (you were a dick for that Achilles)

Agamemnon - alive then dead (you were a queen for that Clytemnestra)

Odysseus - blublublublub (jk he gets Penelope and Telemachus back but not before slaughtering most of the nobles of Ithica, there's kind of a whole book on it)

Ajax - dead

Penthesilea - dead

Diomedes - cucked (aphrodite's punishment for fucking up her wrist)

Aeneas - bringing the squad to Italy (there's kind of a whole book on it)

[guigz1-coldwar]

The Faces of Lily

4K: https://deviantart.com/guigz1/art/The-Faces-of-Lily-1096905432…

Tagging: @efingart , @adlerboi

[piaojun335]

This is still some of my scratch paper at school (I was miserable living at school🥲

都是我瞎画的你们凑合看看

[bastardtrait]

It was funny, Toby thought, that Evan Caulfield's opinion once mattered to him. Now, he was just another kid who paid for a uniform and let it get to his head. And Toby had no reason to care about that at all.

transcript:

EDDIE: Ma, I'm okay… HELEN: We've gotta leave Copperdale. We've gotta leave. I'm serious this time. SHANIA: Dear, let's slow down before we decide anything major like that…

EVAN: (pant) Wait! Toby! EVERYONE: Huh? TOBY: Evan. What the fuck do you want?

EVAN: You left the team?! Toby, you can't! We're fucked! TOBY: I can do whatever the fuck I want, actually. EVAN: We just lost Konner, we can't lose you too!

TOBY: You can, and you should get used to it. Oh, you're gonna lose the game to Boundary? I don't care. EVAN: Toby, you have a commitment to keep. And you already paid for this year's uniform! What are you just gonna walk away because of something that had nothing to do with you?

TOBY: You can, and you should get used to it. Oh, you're gonna lose the game to Boundary? I don't care. EVAN: Toby, you have a commitment to keep. And you already paid for this year's uniform! What, are you just gonna walk away because of something that had nothing to do with you?

TOBY: Actually, once someone fucks with my friend--my best friend I've had since I was a kid--it does involve me, Evan. And don't take it out on me because you can't keep your attack dog on a leash. EVAN: (grunt) TOBY: Fuck your game, fuck your team, and fuck you. I'm done. I hope Boundary tears you guys a new asshole at the end of the season.

IAIN: A fine choice of words back there, buddy. TOBY: A waste of words, more like. (sigh) Let's just go, dad. Let's…get Burger King. IAIN: Burger King it is.

[uwmspeccoll]

Shakespeare Weekend

This weekend we enjoy Shakespeare’s romantic comedy, Twelfth Night the thirty-fifth volume of the thirty-seven volume The Comedies Histories & Tragedies of William Shakespeare, published by the Limited Editions Club (LEC) from 1939-1940. The original full title of the play is Twelfth Night, Or What You Will, and it was written between 1600 and 1601 with its first performance noted in 1602 at the Middle Temple in London. Twelfth Night was not published until 1623 with its inclusion in the First Folio.  

Italian artist Francesco Carnevali (1892-1987) illustrated the LEC’s edition with colorfully detailed watercolors. Carnevali was a professor at the Academy of the Book in Urbino, Italy and was serendipitously already working on illustrations for Twelfth Night when the LEC wrote to him asking if he’d like to collaborate on their Shakespeare publications. The resulting watercolors are unique in their angled perspective providing readers with an elaborate view of the action as if they were sitting in balcony theater seats and transporting them into the ambiance of a seaside town. 

Laid in with our holding is a program from the Spring 1941 performance of Twelfth Night performed at Milwaukee’s historic Pabst Theatre. The performance starred Helen Hayes as Viola, Maurice Evans as Malvolio, and was presented by The Society of Allied Arts. 

The volume was printed in an edition of 1950 copies at the Press of A. Colish. Each of the LEC volumes of Shakespeare’s works are illustrated by a different artist, but the unifying factor is that all volumes were designed by famed book and type designer Bruce Rogers and edited by the British theatre professional and Shakespeare specialist Herbert Farjeon. Our copy is number 1113, the number for long-standing LEC member Austin Fredric Lutter of Waukesha, Wisconsin. 

View more Limited Edition Club posts. 

View more Shakespeare Weekend posts. 

-Jenna, Special Collections Graduate Intern 

[darkdeception-incoquotes]

Malak: What is the easiest way to steal a man's wallet?

Elise: Knife to the throat.

Doug: Gun to the back.

Bierce: Poison in his cup.

Evans: You're all horrible...

[katie-krum]

Lily Evans can't wait for the Triwizard Tournament. James Potter tries to understand how to overcome Lily's dislike for him. And Alice, Lily's roommate, finds out that Lily likes Peter.

[ratleyland]

I honestly wasn't expecting much from this movie.

I thought it was gonna be a easy watch just to pass the time... but I was seriously blown away by it.

Highly Recommended.

[heartofstanding]

In contrast to the multifaceted figure that emerges from medieval sources, the she-wolf image of Isabella began to be perpetuated in theatre and poetry from the sixteenth century onwards, despite or perhaps as a result of the lack of satisfactory research with regard the queen. The careful balance that had characterized the medieval approach to Isabella weakened if not disappeared in modern historiography, which focused most attention on certain adverse events in Isabella’s life. Paul Doherty is rather characteristic of this approach, which one may label biased, when he called his excellent study of the queen, Isabella and the Strange Death of Edward II, thus relegating the queen’s political contribution to the history of England to a secondary role. James C. Davies argued in this regard that “the minor position she occupied before 1326 has caused her character to be neglected until the last crisis of the reign”. However, this claim is barely supported by the narrative sources from Edward II’s reign, which reflect a clear interest in the queen and her deeds at least since 1308, when she arrived to England. Although historiographical research on Isabella has grown considerably in recent years, much attention is still devoted to the scandalous events of her life while relegating her important insight into English politics to secondary consideration. Isabella became the symbol of the unfaithful wife, an adulteress, a woman of strong character and violent passions whose evil nature stood in complete contrast to the alleged morality of the English people. More than once has Isabella been accused of allowing the frail female variety in her to overcome the queen. Harold Hutchison represents in this regard just another example in a long line of critics when he refers to Isabella’s “savage temper” and in reference to her death remarks that “it is ironical that the “she wolf of France” met her peaceful end in the innocent habit of the Order of the Poor Clares”. Alison Weir, in an effort to change the balance in favor of Isabella, defines the aim of her recent book in these terms: “to restore the reputation and rehabilitate the memory of a remarkable yet grossly maligned woman, who was the victim, not of her own wickedness, but of circumstances, unscrupulous men, and the sexual prejudices of those who chose to record her story”. Such an attempt to improve Isabella’s memory while turning her into a victim of circumstances or of unscrupulous men, actually challenges the queen’s independent character and relegates Isabella to the dubious rank of a victim of circumstances. Furthermore, in the chapter devoted to her activities between 1326 and 1330 in his well-documented study on Edward II, Roy Martin Haines opts to approach Isabella as “the Iron Lady” – a rather anachronistic comparison with the former English Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher.

Sophia Menache, "Isabella of France, Queen of England. A Postscript." Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire, tome 90, fasc. 2, 2012.

[outof1emons]

Anna (2019) Dir. Luc Besson

[thebiggerbear]

Hurricane Helene Relief

Please give what you can for Hurricane Helene survivors and the communities affected.

For other charities and non-profits contributing if you'd like to donate to one of those, please see here: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/help-victims-hurricane-helene-rcna173627

Thank you in advance to all of those that share this post. ❤️

[isabelpsaroslunnen]

My best friend and I have been watching Star Trek: The Original Series for months, mostly because we're both sometimes busy and can't coordinate, but he does adore Star Trek (it is hard to overstate how much, except with regard to Picard) and even though I'm a TNG kid, I am almost always having a great time with it.

Overall: I love the stage-y Pepto-Bismol meets bisexual flag aesthetic of so much of the show, the actual bisexual vibes of so many characters (unintentionally? allegedly? I guess?), the effects that have aged remarkably well almost as much as the ones that have aged terribly, but are part of its charm, and of course, many of the characters. And I definitely have enjoyed the mixture of cheesy silliness with deeply earnest aspirations towards transcending its own era, even though it falls short (I'm an early modernist; I have a high tolerance for works that are ultimately of their times, but visibly trying to cut through the miasma of their eras' norms).

Anyway, some thoughts on each episode I've seen thus far!

[It's every episode up to "Metamorphosis", so there are a lot.]

1— "Where No Man Has Gone Before" - a pretty solid way to start the experience for me, and I see the religious skepticism has been baked in from very early, even though it's obviously still finding its footing at this point. I actually enjoyed seeing the wobbly character dynamics and world-building as it's figuring itself out.

2— "The Man Trap" - I really enjoyed this one! Despite some fundamental silliness, there's an interesting mix of horror and pathos (I support the salt vampire!).

3— "Charlie X" - a mixture of "oh God, poor Janice" (an impression that will repeat often) and an interesting take on the interaction of power and youthful masculinity. Charlie's outrage at his desires being stymied by literally anything or anyone at any time feels unfortunately timely, as does his petty vindictiveness against ... um, every woman ever, and Kirk's entirely correct lecture about it. I also found something particularly intriguing in the contrast between Charlie's admiration of Kirk's form of masculinity and how viscerally threatened he is by Spock.

4— "The Naked Time" - I adored this episode with zero irony. I particularly loved the revelation that Spock is ashamed of his feelings for Kirk (......) and the guilt he feels over his emotional distance from his mother combined with his understanding of how isolated she must feel in Vulcan culture. But I also laughed through the entire rest of the episode. Just a great time.

5— "The Enemy Within" - oh, hella yikes take on, uh, the inherent need for a good leader to have an anxious, violent, rapist side to his personality kept under control by a fearless, but vacillating and cerebral other side. (The premise seems even more egregious after "The Galileo Seven" makes a whole episode out of the idea that Spock's intellectual discipline and reserve undermine his leadership capabilities unless he behaves in a way that can be seen as fitting into human emotional norms.) I did cackle over the space dog fluffy alien creature and its evil twin, but poor Janice x100 :(

6— "Mudd's Women" - easily the worst episode to date, good God. Quite apart from "I guess sometimes you just have to be complicit in sex trafficking carried out by a lovable scamp who definitely hasn't gotten the post-capitalism newsletter" and the godawful ending, I am baffled by everyone on the Enterprise acting like they've never seen a beautiful woman. None of Mudd's women can hold a candle to Uhura (who I think isn't even in this episode?) and women getting obsessed by eternal beauty and devoting themselves to unappealing men is a tiresome aspect of ST that I wish had stopped here. Or never shown up at all.

7— "What Are Little Girls Made Of" - ah, the iconic phallic stalagmite! Nice to have context. I appreciate how smart and resourceful Kirk ends up being here. I liked Shatner's performance as the Kirk clone (he's actually been good in all the various Evil Kirk performances I've seen thus far), too. But I also really liked Spock's entirely justified annoyance at Kirk using racial slurs to communicate IT'S NOT ME.

8— "Miri" - this one is unfortunately dragged down by Kirk using his femme fatale allure with a girl framed as barely pubescent even if the actress was technically an adult. He's clearly not remotely attracted to her and working to save his crew, but it's still really unpleasant to watch, especially with a very young-looking actress. That said, the disease is creepy as hell, and it's a great McCoy episode. I was pretty fascinated as well by the concept of a drastically protracted childhood where the horror is not being trapped in the body of a child, but of actually remaining a child for enormous lengths of time.

9— "Dagger of the Mind" - this one would have been pretty mediocre, in all honesty, if not for the existence of Helen Noel. Helen is staggeringly beautiful, yes, but she is also better than everyone else in this episode, even my usual fave Spock. I like Kirk a lot and I still don't know what she sees in him.

10— "The Corbomite Maneuver" - it's a fun episode with some very good lines, but a bit like cotton candy.

11— "The Menagerie" - I had heard about this one, but didn't know all the details! The show-within-the-show only slightly strains credulity, and the plot is certainly more compelling than SNW (sorry to SNW fans; I watched a few episodes and it was fine, but too polished and heterosexual to feel like a true prequel to the boundary-pushing Candyland of TOS).

12— "The Conscience of the King" - this one was a bit over-theatrical in the most literal way, but I still really enjoyed it. The episode provides a genuinely fascinating backstory for Kirk, revealing that in his youth, he was a survivor of a terrible atrocity (and from what else we've heard, it seems he was moved elsewhere and became a bullied nerd for awhile before finding his true calling in space). The "real" villain of the episode doesn't really work for me, but doesn't need to, because her villainy is vastly and rightly overshadowed by the atrocity.

13— "Balance of Terror" - I can't describe this episode any other way: it fucking rules. This is maybe my favorite Star Trek episode that I can remember ever seeing. The revelation of the Vulcan-Romulan kinship is super compelling, and the intensity to this episode's take on the frequent Spock vs the Microaggressions subplot feels entirely organic and believable.

14— "Shore Leave" - fine, but rather a letdown after the glory of the previous one. The back rub early in the episode is as hilariously unsubtle as reported, and Spock's emphatic indifference to the sexbot ladies is, hmm, interesting. Otherwise, it is silly, entertaining-enough ST ephemera for me. I like these episodes existing as part of ST as a whole, but also don't feel especially invested in most individual cases of it. And God, Kirk's youthful nemesis Finnegan is so incredibly obnoxious and his little jig motif is so awful that (given "The Naked Time") I'm starting to wonder what gripe Star Trek has with Irish people.

15— "The Galileo Seven" - you know how I said that Spock vs the Microaggressions is a frequent subplot in these episodes? This one is "what if that was just the whole episode?" It's not terrible, but it's not terribly interesting, either, and the implications are pretty gross if you think about them.

16— "The Squire of Gothos" - I guessed the reveal a bit early in this one, but not in a way that made me feel like it was super obvious. The hints were there if you were paying attention, so it was rewarding to figure it out, but not obvious. Spock's speech about intellectual discipline and power really speaks to me right now, by the way.

17— "Arena" - the Gorn finally appear! Or a Gorn, anyway, and it's kind of wild that the 1967 episode's twist is that the real villain is colonialism, not the Gorn at all. Yet in 2020s Star Trek ... well, anyway, it's a good episode despite the incredibly dated monster effects.

18— "Tomorrow is Yesterday" - time travelllllll hell yeah, and it's quite a decent plot.

19— "Court Martial" - this one was tense and interesting, though I don't have much to say about it apart from really liking the lawyers.

20— "The Return of the Archons" - this was actually very effective, quiet terror for me (maybe extra for me as a queer person raised Mormon, lol). I think it also has one of the better instances of Kirk Fries A Machine With Logic.

21— "Space Seed" - an absolutely fascinating villain alongside absolutely dire gender politics. I did like seeing Khan for the first time.

22— "A Taste of Armageddon" - this had a very interesting war game concept, but I don't remember much about the episode beyond the concept tbh. It was fine.

23— "This Side of Paradise" - this one was interesting, especially given the allure of the "paradise" for Spock specifically (also for everyone else, but there's something especially bitter about whatshername's total indifference to his consent, and yet how complicated his feelings end up being about the whole thing). Kirk's fixation on his authority!!!!! in this episode feels unappealing and rather strange, but I didn't think it was really all about authority and The Human Need For Struggle(TM) that ST will keep returning to (don't like that aspect, though!).

24— "The Devil in the Dark" - an excellent episode IMO, including the incredibly dated rock alien special effects. Wouldn't have it any other way! I honestly appreciate how often the reveal in TOS has been that a scary "monster" is just some innocent person from another species getting screwed over by human ignorance and colonizing.

25— "Errand of Mercy" - Kirk is a patronizing asshole in this episode, can't lie, but given that he's being very obviously paralleled with the Klingon officer, it serves a function that's at least interesting. I'd like if that aspect of his personality went somewhere a bit more cohesively, but I'd rather have the episodic yet forwards propulsion of TOS as a whole, so it's okay.

26— "The Alternative Factor" - this has an interesting concept, but I remember thinking that it was forcing a bunch of usually competent people to make some very stupid decisions (though, tangentially, the fact that this is a change from the norm is at least something: I really enjoy that TOS in general avoids my beloathèd "our protagonists are the protagonists of the entire setting and every other character is an NPC who lacks moral vision and competence independent of the protagonists' influence"). I will say that the repetition of the alternate-universe effect is honestly pretty bad even when I'm grading on a 60s curve.

27— "The City on the Edge of Forever" - this is a very compelling, tightly-written episode that does good character work for Kirk, Spock, and McCoy, even if its underlying premise is a bit challenging to buy at points. I always enjoy getting to see McCoy's medical ethos at play, as we do here. Spock's jealousy is also amusingly transparent against all the high drama.

28— "Operation -- Annihilate!" - this is a hilarious title for a pretty good episode, actually. I enjoyed it and especially enjoyed Leonard Nimoy's performance as Spock here. It's not like I ever don't, but it did some substantial heavy lifting.

29— "Amok Time" - so it turns out, the Spock/Kirk fans have not been exaggerating all these years. I didn't think it was likely they had, just given what I've seen this far, but damn. This is a fantastic episode, it's got interesting world-building for Vulcan, it's incredibly homoerotic even by TOS standards, and despite my fondness for Spock and Kirk, goodforher.jpeg with respect to T'Pring. If Vulcan men don't want their childhood brides plotting their deaths, maybe they should legalize divorce! Just a thought.

30— "Who Mourns for Adonais" - so this episode relies on "actually, every broadly appropriated cultural detail from an exotic distant land was just given to its people by ancient aliens," only this time, it's targeting Greeks! It does get details about ancient Greek culture and religion very wrong, if anyone was wondering. In any case, I guess Star Trek's weird issues with "ethnic whites" is not only with the Irish, though given that my father's background is specifically Greco-Irish, it feels like a weird personal attack. That aside, while "ancient aliens did it all!!!" was not as much of a thing at the time as now, Greek people were definitely more racialized in the USA then, so the use of the trope here was not as trivial as I think it can "read" to modern audiences, esp in the USA.

Apollo's actor does a good job with some hard dialogue, I will say, but I really wish Carolyn had just been playing along and biding her time rather than obviously being a silly female swayed by flattery of her beauty and delusions of vicarious power. Kirk's speech to her is good, but really dragged down by how bad the writing for her is. I did like Kirk's "actually, I'm a strict monotheist" retort to Apollo, though. I know Kirk's characterization eventually goes down a different route, but given the heavy involvement of Jewish people including Shatner in Star Trek (despite Roddenberry's antisemitism), and the historical use of the Greek and Roman pantheons in the oppression of Jewish communities, Kirk's indignation at the idea of worshipping any other god feels apropos.

31— "The Changeling" - Jim Kirk DESTROYS another implacable machine foe with LOGIC!!!! I can just imagine the YouTube series now. Seriously, though, it's fine and a drastic improvement from the previous episode, and I always enjoy a solid ST:TOS episode while I'm watching it. But it was not exceptional IMO.

32— "Mirror, Mirror" - YESSSSS I TOO GET TO EXPERIENCE THE MIRROR UNIVERSE. I loved this episode, honestly. The Mirror Universe is terrible, but super fun both in concept and execution. I love the competence of the prime universe team in the brief cut to them immediately clocking Mirror Kirk's group as imposters (though I did want more from Mirror Uhura who is just kind of there, though...). I love Mirror Spock being this warped but recognizable version of the character. I love the concept of Mirror Kirk being the perpetrator of war crimes exactly like Kirk's formative trauma back in "The Conscience of the King." I love the evil cutthroat BDSM space Byzantines vibes of the Terran Empire (is there an unimaginably decadent and deadly Byzantine Empire in the history of the Mirror Universe? I hope so. We deserve it after "Who Mourns for Adonais" tbh).

33— "The Apple" - this is a pretty fun one. The protagonists as the sort of serpent of this "Edenic" garden, coupled with the awful god creature is super entertaining, and it works well enough despite the show's erratic approach to religion.

34— "The Doomsday Machine" - damn, the commander in this episode is such an asshole. He's clearly meant to be, though, and his Ahab campaign turning out to not be entirely in vain at least makes it seem like there's a point to spending so much time on him being the worst.

35— "The Catspaw" - by coincidence, my best friend and I ended up watching this not far into November, just a few days after Halloween. About five minutes in, I said to him, "Is it just me, or is that castle clearly just Spirit Halloween?" He delightedly said, "This planet is Spirit Halloween!"

There's a bit of racial essentialism about ALL HUMANS that would be uncomfortable if it were not so patently ridiculous. The idea is that human beings have a basic racial fear of cats that the tiny aliens exploit—yes, "cats" in this episode refers mainly to the human fear of the house cat, aka the most successful and beloved domestic species on Earth, not lions or even cougars. The alien terrorizes the cast by taking the shape of a fluffy black house cat of varying sizes, but never any other kind of cat. This concept is hilarious, just to be clear. I enjoyed every moment. Even a super-large house cat is just even more friend-shaped floof to your basic human, let's be real, so the deadly threat is impossible to take seriously even before the giant house cat is revealed to be an incredibly horny alien lady with illusion powers (this persona is also an illusion, but the horniness is real). But are not all cats at some level horny alien ladies with illusion powers? I feel pretty sure that Star Trek thinks so.

36— "I, Mudd" - and the award for Most Improved Character has got to go to Harry Mudd. My bff and I actually had a great time with this episode, in part because the entire cast seem to be having a great time with it. I especially loved the twist with Uhura seeming to fall to the womanly weakness of desiring eternal beauty and the easy life only for it to be a trick. Mudd is still a sleaze, but a much funner one to watch this time, and we've just started quoting Spock's "He didn't pay the royalties" at random moments. The stereotypical nagging wife is what it is, but I'm grading Mudd episodes on an extra curve.

37— "Metamorphosis" - and at least, we've reached the most recent episode I've seen, so my impressions of this one are much more fresh. Somehow, I had no idea we first met Zefram Cochrane in TOS and not in First Contact. Also, wow, the actors for him and for the Commissioner are really attractive—not quirky 60s attractive, either. Cochrane reminds me vaguely of Henry Cavill and the Commissioner is simply gorgeous despite the blinding color scheme of her costume.

The gender essentialism sure is something at this point, I've got to say, when the characters are blandly agreeing that of course a sentient electric cloud must have a fundamental gender that you can kind of tell by the color scheme. Uh huh, but it is genuinely interesting that Cochrane clearly cares about the cloud and tries to protect her from our heroes until he realizes she loves him, but is so affronted at the idea of the cloud being in love with him and his (very obviously sexualized) communion and companionship with her being part of that.

He projects his revulsion primarily onto Spock (Spock vs the Microaggressions strikes again!), but literally everyone finds his attitude narrow-minded and weird. The feeling is kind of like if you met an idolized long-dead relative only for them to use a homophobic slur you've never even heard of.

The resolution of this little drama comes from the cloud bodysnatching the dying Commissioner, a young woman who longs to be loved by anyone at all after a life of being a loveless career woman. She is, to be clear, a career woman whose job is all about preventing warfare and who is deeply stressed about it, which seems a kind of love to me. But she is mostly framed just as this super abrasive, loveless career woman because it's TOS (and they eventually conclude that any woman could do her job and they'll just find a different one to stop the war).

Anyway, all this results in the somehow-female cloud fusing with what remains of the Commissioner's consciousness, curing her body of some fatal disease. Now that the cloud is fused with an actual (hot) human woman, Cochrane is totally chill with her love for him, and decides he can have a very strange threesome love her after all, and they'll live out these bodies' natural lives together until they both die (since she lost her electric cloud powers of healing and immortality when she bodysnatched the Commissioner, I gather). It feels weird and low-grade shitty on his part, although I like his actor's performance, because it makes it so clear that his aversion was only about appearances.

I think the cloud should have moved onto someone who would appreciate her devotion and restorative powers, like, say, the dying Commissioner lady who actually has this whole speech about how badly she longs to be loved and how she doesn't get why Cochrane is being such a baby about the adoration of a cloud. Look, I'm just saying the cloud could be bi and deserves someone who would appreciate her.

I know this was never going to happen on a nationally syndicated show in 1967, but I think it would make more narrative sense and be much more satisfying! Cochrane would love space adventures 150 years in the future—he was thrilled and excited about the idea of seeing the reality of the Federation and alliances with other species! And the Commissioner would appreciate a cloud girlfriend and immortality so much more than him. Hire me, Paramount.