#I had a big Star Trek era about six years ago

[sciencewife]

Oooh drawing requests! Neat! How about…Caroline (SC or vanilla, dealers choice) but in whatever outfit you currently have on? Or if not that, maybe your favourite outfit? Show off a bit of your own fashion sense!

What do you do when the prompt is for whatever you have on or your favorite outfit, but the favorite outfit is the Caroline outfit in your wardrobe? Pick a secret third thing: my second favorite outfit, my Star Trek uniform, which I always have in my closet in case there’s a con and I have no other ideas on what to wear.

Let’s be real though: Caroline looks sharp in this uniform yes, but she is NOT starfleet material lmao. She’s probably broken several Federation laws by now…

[fancoloredglasses]

Star Trek, Part 3: The movies I-VI (Thank you, George Lucas!)

[All images are owned by Paramount. Please don’t sue me]

[QUICK NOTE: This is a bare-bones review of the films rather than my usual tongue-in-cheek blow-by-blow review since I’m trying to cover six movies in one review. If you would like to see any of the films reviewed in-depth, please let me know]

After the end of the original series (and the brief flirtation with animation), fans were certain that was the end for Star Trek. There were rumors that a new series was in the works, but most knew they were just rumors.

That all changed in 1977 when a film set a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away hit theaters and changed the landscape. Suddenly, Paramount was VERY interested in a movie based on Star Trek! Fortunately for Paramount, everyone was on board for a motion picture-sized paycheck.

A few years have passed since the end of the series in canon. The entire crew has received at least one promotion.

Since most of the sets, models, and costumes were either destroyed or not suitable for a larger screen, a number of changes had to be made, starting with the uniform.

(Thanks to veniceogar.xyz)

Most fans complained about the new uniforms, saying they looked like sleepwear.

But if they complained about the updated uniforms, there were little objections to the updated Enterprise!

(Thanks to Paul Scollon)

The ship looked much more futuristic than the series (in canon, following the five-year missions, the surviving Constitution class starships underwent a major overhaul with updated warp drive, updated deflector array, and a larger body. In fact, there were so many changes that the class was re-designated “Constitution Refit”) One interesting cosmetic update: The class lost the “battleship grey” paint job in favor of the metal plates of the hull being visible.

But if the exterior was significant upgrade, wait until you see the interior!

Yes, the controls were still chunky as hell, but at least it didn’t look like the 60's vision of the future (more like the 70’s vision)

There was another major change when the franchise hit the big screen…

The Klingons somehow developed bumps on their forehead. This has been mentioned in canon (over a decade later), but was never explained until over 20 years later!

The film felt like a 2 hour episode of Star Trek (in fact, you could say it was inspired by an episode!)

The film was well-received enough that a second film was green-lit. However, the tone would shift to be a bit more action-oriented as Paramount brought in Harve Bennett as executive producer with little input from Roddenberry.

The sets were a little darker and another uniform change was made that would endure through the next six films (though I'll only be covering the next five in this review. Stay tuned for the sixth in a future review!) and (canonically) the next 70 or so years.

(Thanks to Nerdist)

The second film (considered by many to be the best film of this era, if not the entire franchise)…

…brought back a villain from the episode Space Seed…

Khan Noonian Singh (played by Ricardo Montalban, who was famous for playing Mr. Roarke on Fantasy Island), the result of genetic engineering in the late 20th century (you all remember that, right?) In the episode, Khan was awakened after being asleep for 200 years, attempted to take over the Enterprise and was marooned when he failed. Now he’s back and looking for revenge!

The movie also introduces Carol Marcus, an old flame of Kirk’s who developed a technology known as Genesis that could instantaneously terraform a planet (of course, if there’s already life on said planet, it wouldn’t be there for much longer!) In addition to revenge on Kirk, Khan wants the Genesis technology.

Fans were excited for this new take on Trek, but were up in arms due to a scene near the end…

(Thanks to TheAmazingSkipper)

It seems that Leonard Nimoy was tired of being associated with Spock over the past 2 decades and wanted out. However, perhaps due to fan backlash, he agreed to return…if he could direct his return!

In the third film, it’s revealed that the planet Genesis (that was created at the end of the second film) has somehow brought Spock back to life. The Enterprise is due to be decommissioned, but in a desperate attempt to save their friend, the command staff of the Enterprise steal the ship to rescue Spock.

(Thanks to Prometheus of Videos)

…but run afoul of a Klingon Bird of Prey (commanded by Christopher Lloyd of Taxi and Back to the Future fame)

If the fans were happy about the return of Spock, they were horrified about what needed to be done to do so!

(Thanks to spartakirk109)

In the end, Kirk and the crew capture the Bird of Prey and seek asylum on Vulcan, which is where we begin with the fourth film (also directed by Nimoy)

In this film the Earth is threatened by a giant vessel looking to talk with whales (which are extinct in the 23rd century), so the crew (finally returning to Earth to face judgement for stealing the Enterprise) goes back in time to the 20th Century to get some, saving the planet.

Starfleet is grateful, but someone needs to be punished for stealing the Enterprise, so they demote Kirk to Captain and ship the crew off to their new assignment.

(Thanks to April 5, 2063)

Yes, their new assignment is the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-A (AKA the Enterprise-A, but we’ll just keep calling it the Enterprise) In canon, the ship was the USS Yorktown, but is re-commissioned as a thank you to Kirk.

As far as the fifth film…it is considered the worst of the franchise. There are a number of issues, beginning with the film being made in the middle of a strike by the Screen Writers’ Guild (see? It’s not just a modern issue!), meaning no possibility for rewrites (and boy howdy did they need several!). Additionally, the film wanted to work with Industrial Light & Magic (the company responsible for the effects on the Star Wars franchise), but their primary teams weren’t available. Rather than work with one of the secondary teams, the producers went with another company that…well, let’s just say they should’ve gone with the ILM B-Team. Finally, William Shatner made his directorial debut, and let’s just say he should’ve stuck to acting.

The final film of this era of the franchise (released in time for Star Trek’s 25th anniversary), The Undiscovered Country, dealt with a conspiracy to end peace talks between the Federation and the Klingons with the Enterprise stuck in the middle. It also marked the decommissioning of the Enterprise-A after only 3 films (though canonically it's as old as the original Enterprise was when it was destroyed)

(Thanks to Arrow Of Videos)

Of course, this would not be the end of Star Trek, as a brand new television series debuted shortly after Star Trek IV hit theaters, but that’s a tale for another review.

If you would like to see any of the films reviewed in depth, please let me know!

[meta-with-anne]

Fan Ethnography

In a conversation a few days ago, my best friend, Rose, asked me what should have been a very simple question. “What fandom do you plan to focus on for class?” 

I knew Rose’s answer before they told me, our fandom discussions have been a highlight of my life every few days for going on four years, and I knew that mine—as it seems so many of my answers in life tend to be—was much less concise. “It doesn’t feel right to pick one, but I already know my lens,” I tell them in an Instagram voice note, an on-going “whenever you’re around” conversation that after about a year of use must amount to hundreds of hours worth of discussion, nearly all involving our fandoms and fan culture at large.

Me 'n Rose (Bestie in Fandom)

I have identified as a “fangirl” for as long as I can remember, long enough that I still can’t always bring myself to use the more widely accepted term of “stan”, long enough that although I was officially too young for an account I have vivid memories of 2013-15 tumblr culture, long enough that despite only being twenty-one I have earned the term “fandom elder” entirely on accident. Maybe I was six? When my older sister Abby introduced me to a song called Fearless, only for me to be paying out the nose to see Taylor sing it live fifteen years later on the Eras Tour. I might’ve been eight, when this madman in a bow tie lit up the hospital room where I was getting cancer treatments. I definitely couldn’t have been older than eleven, though, by then I had a tumblr account, a rotating cast of dedicated fandom OC’s, and a t-shirt reading “Booknerd” with the classic Harry Potter-Percy Jackson-Hunger Games “Big Three” logo right beneath. By the time I entered middle school I was a self declared expert on the television shows Doctor Who, Glee, Star Trek, and Criminal Minds, and had read (or rather listened) to the Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, and Lord of the Rings series’ over a hundred times through, etv. There’s not much else to do when you’re a chronically ill child, stuck in bed, alone, and desperate to live without having to leave the hospital. 

Me, at 12, thinking my Eleventh Doctor shirt was hot shit

Although it is arguably the least interesting branch I hit while falling down the tree of intersectionality, as the child of lesbian parents, as an ethnically Jewish person, and as a someone who was born—and has spent my entire life—chronically ill and disabled, my identity as a woman has always been the one that has effected my fandom experience the most. (I must acknowledge here that I can only speak to my experience as one cisgender white woman, and that the experiences of those who are women of color, trans, nonbinary, and/or not attracted to men, are invariably going to be not only much different, but in many ways much more difficult than my own.)

For as long as I can remember, I have navigated the world with a hyperawareness of gender-based violence and discrimination, I think it’s impossible not to do so when growing up in an all-girl family, much less one where both my moms had experienced said violence, and where they both used fandom to cope themselves. If there was a time I did not, it was before the age of ten, when I was a victim of CSA at the hands of the medical system and the men who run it; to this day I can’t listen to the particular Lord of the Rings audiobook I had playing when it happened without bursting in to tears. It is imperative, in my view, to understand my hyperawareness of misogyny, to understand my experience with fandom. I came in to fan communities, and spent much of my formative time in them, in the proliferation of the peak NLog (not like other girls) years.

Who run the world? I mean not my family of girls...but it would be cool if we did

Bombarded with memes, texts posts, and a general atmosphere that the only “correct” way to exist as a girl, and especially a young girl (specifically one who was twelve pretending to be fifteen), was to not be like other girls. I must not be “shrill”, overly argumentative, disdainful of the casual sexism that lurks underneath the surface of many fan spaces, I must not bad-mouth venerated male creators (bad mouthing, of course, including questioning why it is so unreasonable to wish for a television writing team with more than a single woman), I must not overtly enjoy things like makeup, but I must still be effortlessly pretty (preferably with blue “orbs” and a red messy bun), I must not like pink (purple is usually fine though), and I must not actually say I am not like other girls, but must look upon their love of Taylor Swift, Gossip Girl, One Direction, and Twilight with disdain all the same.

This avalanche of expectations, reinforced by my online companions in fandom communities, as well as by my “enemies”, those who sent anonymous messages that I should kill myself for committing the great sin of writing a Doctor Who Jack/Nine/Rose “Makeover” one shot, caused an inordinate amount of cognitive dissonance, and was often deeply isolating. In my “real life” girls who shared my interests in clothes, makeup, sewing, and my nearly decade-long membership in Girl Scouts were not interested in talking about X-Men comics, Star Trek Expanded Universe novels, or the latest episode of Doctor Who. In my online world I could get my head bitten off in an instant simply for saying I thought it was unfair “girly girls” were usually portrayed as vapid and dumb in series like Percy Jackson and Harry Potter, and god forbid you have the audacity to like Molly Hooper on Sherlock or worse, Sansa Stark from Game of Thrones. 

An edit I made circa 2015 of my favorite Sansa Stark quote

Over the years my involvement in fandoms have waxed and waned, I’ve been bullied out of three (including anonymous death and rape threats in two and getting doxxed at the tender age of thirteen over one), Doctor Who, Marvel, and Taylor Swift. All for different reasons, but all really coming down to the idea I like “traditionally feminine” things too much, whether that be “pretty” actors like Matt Smith, “feminist” heroes like Captain Marvel, or “girly” albums like Lover. And yet, I keep coming back, I came back after the Game of Thrones finale (and have two over 100k viewed fanfics on AO3 to show for it), I came back for the thirteenth and fourteenth (no, I will not call him fifteen) Doctors, and have even tentatively poked my head back into the Avatar the Last Airbender and Percy Jackson fandoms with their respective renaissances.

BEHOLD A very dumb photo montage I made at the ripe old age of thirteen of aforementioned pretty actor (I still quote "I was called dumbo as a child" on a regular basis)

It’s easy to ask why I continue to subject myself to the “fandom experience”, and in turn to chalk it up to the chemical processes involved in my ADHD, my desperation for a community I can participate in despite my chronic pain and fatigue, or simply the fact I got involved so young I don’t know how to live without them. I think it’s a lot simpler than that, though, I think it’s because I process the world through writing, and because above else I love to write. Whether it be fan fiction, meta, or original works branching off from the questions the media I love continually invites me to ask, writing is my great passion, and the fandoms and franchises I fall in love with are the ones that spark my motivation to write; whether I’m analyzing Taylor Swift lyrics, breaking down the celebrity culture I’ve watched for over a decade in my original novel, or writing fan-fiction where once in a while I still love a good makeover montage. Fandom introduced me to writing, writing became the way I process the world, and in the circular nature of life, writing is what will always bring me back to fandom.  

That was a long post, thanks for reading, here's the best meme anyone has ever made for me (everyone say thank you Rose)

@theofficeofdocmalone

[green-blooded]

So, I want to talk about Bread and Circuses. Or, I want to talk about Spock and McCoy in Bread and Circuses... plus the rest of the first half of the second season, because this episode isn’t actually good aside from the Spock and McCoy moments.

We start with this:

SPOCK: Fascinating. This atmosphere is remarkably similar to your twentieth century. Moderately industrialized pollution containing substantial amounts of carbon monoxide and partially consumed hydrocarbons. MCCOY: The word was smog. SPOCK: Yes, I believe that was the term. I had no idea you were that much of a historian, Doctor. MCCOY: I am not, Mister Spock. I was simply trying to stop you from giving us a whole lecture on the subject. Jim, is there anything at all we know about this planet?

(This post got long--nearly 4000 words???--so here’s a cut to save your dashboard!)

Which is kind of an odd argument for them? McCoy gets on Spock for a lot of things, but not usually for talking too much. In fact, it’s usually the reverse. In Trouble with Tribbles (the previous episode by production order), they have this exchange:

MCCOY: Spock, I don't know too much about these little tribbles yet, but there's one thing that I have discovered. SPOCK: What is that, Doctor? MCCOY: I like them better than I like you. SPOCK: Doctor? MCCOY: Yes? SPOCK: They do have one redeeming characteristic. MCCOY: What's that? SPOCK: They do not talk too much. If you'll excuse me, sir.

Far be it from me to accuse Star Trek of having continuity, but don’t these arguments seem related? In fact, both of these episodes have had particularly heated arguments between Spock and McCoy for no apparent reason in the plot. There are also a few heated exchanges in The Deadly Years (about Spock’s health, and then Kirk’s dementia).

Put a pin in this. Let’s return to Bread and Circuses.

MCCOY: Odd that these people should worship the sun. SPOCK: Why, Doctor? MCCOY: Because, my dear Mister Spock, it is illogical. Rome had no sun worshipers. Why should they parallel Rome in every way except one?

Let’s just ignore the fact that yes Rome did have sun worshipers and that there have been a hell of a lot more than one discrepancy, because if we talk about inaccuracies we’ll be here all day. The point is, they’re both postulating about this odd ‘parallel’ Earth, but McCoy’s interjection seems to annoy Spock for some reason... To the point that he brings it up again later, but in the meantime, they also have this exchange:

SPOCK: Even more fascinating. Slavery evolving into an institution with guaranteed medical payments, old-age pensions. MCCOY: Quite logical, I'd say, Mister Spock. Just as it's logical that twentieth-century Rome would use television to show its gladiator contests or name a new car the Jupiter Eight. SPOCK: Doctor, if I were able to show emotion, your new infatuation with that term would begin to annoy me. MCCOY: What term? Logic? Medical men are trained in logic, Mister Spock. SPOCK: Really, Doctor, I had no idea they were trained. Watching you, I assumed it was trial and error.

Hey guys, remember an episode called Amok Time (only 9 episodes earlier in production order instead of a whole season apart), where McCoy said this:

MCCOY: My orders were to give you a thorough physical. In case you hadn't noticed, I have to answer to the same commanding officer that you do. Come on, Spock. Yield to the logic of the situation.

And it, y'know, worked to convince Spock to listen to him that time. BUT let's also look at I, Mudd where they have one of those curiously heated arguments again:

MCCOY: All right. There's something wrong about a man who never smiles, whose conversation never varies from the routine of the job, and who won't talk about his background. SPOCK: I see. MCCOY: Spock, I mean that it's odd for a non-Vulcan. The ears make all the difference. SPOCK: I find your argument strewn with gaping defects in logic. MCCOY: Maybe, but you can't evaluate a man by logic alone. Besides, he has avoided two appointments that I've made for his physical exam without reason. SPOCK: That's not at all surprising, Doctor. He's probably terrified of your beads and rattles.

(Notice, McCoy realizes he’s offended Spock and immediately tries to fix it, but Spock remains annoyed with him.)

A couple of things here. First, like in Trouble with Tribbles (the next episode), Spock seems actually offended by McCoy. This was almost entirely absent from the first season, and not particularly prevalent in the first few episodes of the second season. There was plenty of banter and teasing before, but Spock seems more sensitive to it in this middle section of the second season. Then, again, McCoy brings up logic. McCoy argues that logic can't be the only means to evaluate a person. Then, Spock insults McCoy's medical skills. AGAIN, this is a newer development that makes it into almost every episode in the middle of the second season, including I, Mudd, Trouble with Tribbles, and Bread and Circuses. All back-to-back episodes in production order! 

So we have some things repeating in their arguments over multiple episodes. McCoy's interpretation of logic, Spock being offended by McCoy's teasing/insults, and Spock insulting McCoy's skill as a doctor. PUT A PIN IN IT. Returning to Bread and Circuses again. 

MERIK: There's been no war here for over four hundred years, Jim. Could, let's say, your land of that same era make that same boast? I think you can see why they don't want to have their stability contaminated by dangerous ideas of other ways and other places. SPOCK: Interesting, and given a conservative empire, quite understandable. MCCOY: Are you out of your head? SPOCK: I said I understood it, Doctor. I find the checks and balances of this civilization quite illuminating. MCCOY: Next he'll be telling us he prefers it over Earth history. SPOCK: They do seem to have escaped the carnage of your first three world wars, Doctor. MCCOY: They have slavery, gladiatorial games, despotism. SPOCK: Situations quite familiar to the six million who died in your first world war, the eleven million who died in your second, the thirty seven million who died in your third. Shall I go on?

I think this is one of the better exchanges that speak to the themes of this episode, which they should’ve elaborated on but instead went the Jesus Saves route... Whatever. The important thing is that this is another example of their philosophical differences AND very similar to an argument they had in The Apple a few episodes ago.

SPOCK: In my view, a splendid example of reciprocity. MCCOY: It would take a computerized Vulcan mind such as yours to make that kind of a statement. SPOCK: Doctor, you insist on applying human standards to non-human cultures. I remind you that humans are only a tiny minority in this galaxy. MCCOY: There are certain absolutes, Mister Spock, and one of them is the right of humanoids to a free and unchained environment, the right to have conditions which permit growth. SPOCK: Another is their right to choose a system which seems to work for them. MCCOY: Jim, you're not just going to stand by and be blinded to what's going on here. These are humanoids, intelligent. They need to advance and grow. Don't you understand what my readings indicate? There's been no progress here in at least ten thousand years. This isn't life. It's stagnation. SPOCK: Doctor, these people are healthy and they are happy. What ever you choose to call it, this system works, despite your emotional reaction to it. MCCOY: It might work for you, Mister Spock, but it doesn't work for me. Humanoids living so they can service a hunk of tin.

It’s super interesting to me that Spock is using relativistic contract theory to judge these cultures while McCoy is just a straight up anarchist, let’s be real. He hates hierarchical structures and authority figures, and believes that they go against human nature. Which you might say is weird for a Starfleet officer, but he also yells at people above his rank constantly and gets really upset in episodes like The Doomsday Machine when Spock refuses to ignore rank. He’s in Starfleet because he wants to help people, but I can’t imagine him staying if his captain weren’t someone he totally trusts. I mean, you could forget that McCoy has any rank at all with the way he carries himself. Meanwhile, Spock is Very, Very strict in his understanding of hierarchy and rank.

This is one of those deep divisions between the two of them. Put a pin in it. Let’s move on to the gladiator fight.

SPOCK: Need any help, Doctor? MCCOY: Whatever gave you that idea? ACHILLES: Fight, you pointed-ear freak! MCCOY: You tell him, buster. Of all the completely ridiculous, illogical questions I ever heard in my life!

The fact that McCoy is not a fighter is really brought out in this episode, and I have a lot to say about it in another post. The main thing here is McCoy bringing up logic again and agreeing with an argument that is, in my opinon, a step beyond something that McCoy would actually say. He makes fun of the ears, but freak is a little far, I think.

And all of this leads to the Big Scene in the prison, which I will break into parts. Part #1:

MCCOY: Angry, Mister Spock, or frustrated, perhaps? SPOCK: Such emotions are foreign to me, Doctor. I'm merely testing the strength of the door. MCCOY: For the fifteenth time...

McCoy is lightly teasing Spock for being more emotional than he lets on, while Spock denies having any emotion at all... this is a pretty typical part of the exchange. What really makes it work is Deforest Kelly's delivery. He says these lines with a degree of affection. He's not yelling, and he's not even using the tone he usually has when teasing Spock. In this moment, you can see that McCoy points out Spock's incongruous moments of emotion because he likes that about him. While it sometimes comes across as a 'gotcha' moment (like at the end of The Galileo Seven), the sheer number of times McCoy mentions Spock's emotions shows more than just a passing amount of interest in them.

Then, McCoy continues:

MCCOY: Spock, I know we've had our disagreements. Maybe they're jokes. I don't know. As Jim says, we're not often sure ourselves sometimes, but what I'm trying to say is-- SPOCK: Doctor, I am seeking a means of escape. Will you please be brief? MCCOY: Well, what I'm trying to say is you saved my life in the arena. SPOCK: Yes, that's quite true. MCCOY: I'm trying to thank you, you pointed-eared hobgoblin!

Before I talk about this, I need to take a moment. I think that McCoy often gets painted at someone with his heart on his sleeve, who feels a lot and expresses all of his feelings. And it's just not true! He's very expressive when it comes to some things, sure. He can yell all day about how much he cares about people in general, but when it comes to expressing how much he cares about an individual? It's pretty damn rare. Look at his words AND his body language in Balance of Terror when he has a vulnerable moment with Kirk.

KIRK: I look around that Bridge, and I see the men waiting for me to make the next move. And Bones, what if I'm wrong? MCCOY: Captain, I-- KIRK: No, I don't really expect an answer. MCCOY: But I've got one. Something I seldom say to a customer, Jim. In this galaxy, there's a mathematical probability of three million Earth-type planets. And in all of the universe, three million million galaxies like this. And in all of that, and perhaps more, only one of each of us. Don't destroy the one named Kirk.

McCoy himself says here that he doesn't usually say this kind of thing, and if you look at the series, that bears out. He does NOT find it easy to tell people he cares about them, and when he does, he does it in this abstract way, barely able to make any eye contact. This is AGAIN why the conflict between Spock and McCoy is NOT logic vs. emotion. McCoy is not fully emotional, and he doesn't find emotion easy to express. I would argue that he has almost as much difficulty expressing his feelings for another person as Spock does. I would also argue that McCoy does not LIKE this about himself, and that is part of why it frustrates him so much when he sees it in Spock. 

 So, when he tries to be vulnerable and thank Spock, first of all, he doesn't just say "Hey, thanks for saving me in the arena." He starts with a lot of waffle, and when Spock interrupts him and insists that he keep it short (again, callback to the arguments in this episode and Trouble with Tribbles about which one of them talks too much), McCoy tries to simply thank him, but gets upset when Spock is still impassive and reverts to his usual way of talking to Spock. One remark from Spock, and McCoy loses his ability to be vulnerable and resorts to a sharp tone and insults. Leading into part three of this conversation: 

SPOCK: Oh, yes. You humans have that emotional need to express gratitude. You're welcome, I believe, is the correct response. However, Doctor, you must remember I am entirely motivated by logic. The loss of our ship's surgeon, whatever I think of his skill, would mean a reduction in the efficiency of the Enterprise and therefore-- MCCOY: Do you know why you're not afraid to die, Spock? You're more afraid of living. Each day you stay alive is just one more day you might slip and let your human half peek out. That's it, isn't it? Insecurity. Why, you wouldn't know what to do with a genuine, warm, decent feeling. SPOCK: Really, Doctor? MCCOY: I know. I'm worried about Jim, too.

The last bit is powerful, and I think generally something people remember more than the rest of the conversation, but I really need to focus on that first exchange first, because there is a LOT going on, and I've been pinning things through this whole overly long post for this moment.

PIN 1: Their arguments have become more heated in the middle portion of season 2.

This is a very clear example of that. McCoy doesn't drop the issue after the insult and Spock insists he wouldn't have saved McCoy if he weren't logically useful to the ship. Ouch.

PIN 2: The repetition in these heated arguments. McCoy's view of logic, Spock getting offended, Spock insulting McCoy's skill as a doctor.

What Spock says here brings up all three of those issues. Spock has been frustrated by McCoy bringing up logic throughout this episode, and now he's shooting back at him with a logical view of why he saved McCoy's life--while still maintaining that he doesn't think McCoy is a good doctor. McCoy's been using logic against him, and now Spock is returning the favor. Spock understands Human interaction better than this! Something as simple as a "thank you" and "your welcome" is everyday for him, not only on the Enterprise but with one of the people who RAISED him. He is exaggerating his own non-Human qualities throughout this conversation to a truly absurd extent, because McCoy has repeatedly offended him for several episodes. However, McCoy seems unaware that his usual teasing has actually gotten under Spock's skin, because he has been surprised, again and again (especially in I, Mudd where he chases after Spock to apologize to him) when Spock actually acts hurt by him.

And then there's McCoy's response.

It's not "damn your Vulcan logic" or ending the conversation. He grabs Spock and forces him to look at him--which Spock has been avoiding throughout the conversation--and tells Spock that he's so afraid to be human that he doesn't fear death, because that would put an end to the fear that his Human side would show.

IF WE ARE ONLY LOOKING AT THIS ONE EPISODE, this doesn't make sense. This didn't build from the conversations in Bread and Circuses, which is why I keep bringing up several different episodes and why I'm insisting on production order.

PIN 3: These two have deep, deep philosophical differences that they are constantly discussing.

As I said in another post, Spock and McCoy have a different standard for morality which causes the two of them to butt heads a whole lot. In the first season, it was pretty much the same argument over and over again (should we risk a larger number of people to save a smaller number of people), but it's been evolving in this season to the discussion of freedom and cultural differences and more.

If these two men did not have any respect for one another, I don't think these arguments would continue. Yes, they work together, but they don't actually need to interact as much as they do, and they are VERY often seeing walking into a scene on the bridge together or walking down a corridor together, etc. It's not just missions. They choose to spend time together.

So, when Spock says he only saved McCoy because he's useful as the ship's surgeon, McCoy doesn't respond to THAT, because 1) he knows he's a good doctor and never seems fazed by Spock insulting him about that and 2) he knows Spock is not being honest with him here.

This is one of the reasons why I think McCoy gets frustrated with Spock because they have a similar difficulty showing how much they care about other people, and they have an especially difficult time showing affection toward one another.

While the ending of Operation: Annihilate! where McCoy tells Kirk not to tell Spock he called him the best first officer in the fleet is memorable, it's hardly the most vulnerable moment for McCoy in that episode. No, it's when he thinks he's blinded Spock because he didn't consider using the non-visible parts of the light spectrum to kill the parasitic aliens. McCoy can't even say for himself the deep guilt he's feeling about harming Spock--he never says that he's blaming himself. It's Kirk who tells him he's not at fault, and McCoy can't even bring himself to respond. If you look at those last lines about Spock being the best first officer in the fleet in context of how devastated McCoy was when he thought he'd blinded Spock permanently, it definitely hits different, right?

And then there are the times in the first season when Spock believes McCoy is badly hurt or dead. In Miri, Shore Leave, and City on the Edge of Forever, Spock has a strong reaction to seeing McCoy injured, but he does not verbalize this obvious emotional reaction at any time.

They don't know how to say that they care about each other, because that's something they both struggle with in general. They also both struggle with being emotionally vulnerable and allowing other people to know them on a deeper level. Spock uses his Vulcan otherness to keep people at a distance, while McCoy uses a the charm offensive of his "bedside manner" as his defense system.

So, McCoy says this thing about Spock not being afraid to die because he's so terrified of his Human side coming out IN DIRECT RESPONSE to Spock being unable to even look at him when McCoy is not only trying to thank him for saving his life but ALSO putting it into the context of how difficult their friendship is and how rarely they show any straight-forward affection for each other. And the most telling thing is, McCoy didn't seem to know for sure that he was right until he sees Spock’s reaction. Look at his expression when Spock turns away from him.

And look at his intensity when he says that Spock wouldn't know what to do with a "genuine warm, decent feeling."

When Spock turns to him and says "Really, Doctor?"

THAT is when McCoy is the one who breaks eye contact and changes the subject to someone that they both feel affection for, but who isn't in the room to hear it. I understand that there are other readings of this moment, and that's fine, but... I don't think this has to do with Kirk specifically. For one thing, it never comes up in the episode when they are reunited with Kirk, and for another Kirk is in the least danger out of the three of them. Instead, this moment is about how both of them struggle so deeply with showing affection when someone's right there in front of them.

By the end of the episode, we can see the two of them spending time together again, apparently by choice, and seeming very comfortable with each other... and the next episode is Journey to Babel, in which they are very friendly again with The Immunity Syndrome only four episodes after that, and the episodes in between showing them with much less contentious banter again.

Dare I say it, but I think this is a legitimate arc! And it's a shame that most people see the episodes in broadcast order, because it makes their relationship much more incoherent and makes this little escalation of frustration with each other more random and may make it seem like they genuinely dislike each other.

Anyway... this was. Not supposed to be such a long post, but I have a lot of Thoughts and Feelings about these two, and I can't help myself sometimes.

[frasier-crane-style]

Let’s talk about Treks baby

The One Where Riker Stars In The Grey.

When Riker is reassigned to go over a terraforming colony bedeviled by pesky, genetically engineered wolves, a new first officer is assigned to the Enterprise. And he’s kwazy.

The irritatingly named Quintin Stone is sort of the Nick Locarno to Peter David’s later Mackenzie Calhoun. Brooding rogue, troubled past, gets the job done, you know how it goes. It’s a pretty unabashed power fantasy/Mary Sue in New Frontier, but there the whole thing is so over the top and tongue in cheek that you really can’t take it too seriously. Quintin, on the other hand, is more played for drama--for most of the story, there’s a question as to whether he’s outright homicidally insane. Luckily, Troi is on top of things, checking on his mental well-being and also kinda being his love interest, like a literal version of this gif.

Spoiler alert: It turns out he’s deeply traumatized by a not wholly believable incident in his past*, so good on ya for catching that one, Troi. 

Looking back on it, this book would almost seem to count as a deconstruction of the ‘broody antihero’ trope, showing that the character type just doesn’t work in TNG. He infuriates most of the cast and doesn’t get the girl, while those who are taken in by him are presented as saps (yup, Wesley). 

Speaking of New Frontier, with the self-aware jokeyness and tongue-in-cheek acknowledgment of Trek’s campier elements, would it be fair to say PAD was ahead of the curve in predicting the modern incarnation of Trek? Its take on Star Trek would definitely fit in with the Kelvinverse movies and especially with The Orville, which is pretty much the people’s choice for Trek these days.

*Okay, I get the interpretation of the Prime Directive as not interfering or revealing yourself to alien cultures until they develop warp drive, at which point they’re going to figure out you’re there anyway. And if you can stop an asteroid from wiping them out without them knowing about it, fine. Cool. I get that. But I don’t get Star Trek stories where the PD means you can’t interfere with the Romulans’ development, even though they’re showing up on your doorstep every other week and shooting at you. It’s like saying if Hitler 2.0 showed up in Germany and started amassing power, the US shouldn’t try to discourage that shit or, I guess, engage in any diplomacy whatsoever. It’s mindbogglingly isolationist. And isn’t it arguable that part of a culture’s natural development is interacting with other cultures? Like the back and forth between America and Japan driving forward the medium of animation?

The One Where Picard Nearly Bangs Guinan’s Sister

This one has a bit of nontroversy attached to it, because it came out while Star Trek was still kind of hashing out the Borg, so there’s a disclaimer at the beginning basically going

The gist of it is that Borg aren’t supposed to have gender (a bunch of people with blue hair just had their ears perk up, didn’t they?), but PAD here has a drone that gets detached from the Collective and is a girl. It seems pretty self-evident to me--Picard gets assimilated, they get him back, he’s still a dude, so why wouldn’t it work that way with a chick? But this is back when assimilation wasn’t the Borg’s m.o. the way it would later become. They assimilate a Ferengi in this book (yup) and it’s kind of a big deal. Oh, and as you might’ve guessed, Girl Borg bears a few similarities to Seven of Nine, who would show up later in the franchise, although PAD’s take on it is more “we rescued a girl from a serial killer’s basement after ten years and she’s totally catatonic,” less “what is this human emotion you call ‘kissing’?”

Good thing we have Deanna Troi, a counselor, to ease Girl Borg through the healing process. Oh, wait, she basically takes one look at GB and goes

Thanks for the help, Troi. I guess this subplot is supposed to prove that it’s pointless to try to save any assimilated person other than Picard, because mentally they’re already dead, so might as well just have a bunch of fun guiltlessly blowing them away

(And that goes for you too, audience.) But still, bit of a downer. At least Spock would’ve tried a mind-meld.

There’s also this chick Delcara, who in a pretty XXtra Flamin' Hot narrative choice is like Picard’s soulmate and he’s sort of in love with her slash obsessed with her after having a psychic vision of her in Starfleet Academy and y’know? TNG might’ve opened the door to this by having Crusher bang a ghost, but we should close that door. We should close it right now.

(By the way, in case you’re wondering if this Guinan’s sister business means Picard is down with the swirl, it turns out she’s Guinan’s adopted sister, so is it just me or is that weirdly ambiguous? She’s a beautiful black woman and Picard wants to do her. You can come out and say it, book. No one minds.)

Anyway, Delcara is piloting one of dem planet-killers from back in TOS--in hindsight, it’s weird that the Abrams movies never did anything with the one big Death Star-y thing that actually is canon to TOS, isn’t it? They gave Khan and Nero ridiculously super-sized ships, but the one kaiju that’s actually in continuity, nothing--on a vendetta against the Borg, who basically killed her family twice over. Man, if only there were some kind of psychologist on board the Enterprise to help her through that trauma.

I sense she feels great bitterness, Captain.

Yeah, why does she get a seat next to the Captain again? Let Worf have that seat. How is it fair that he has to stand around all day, he actually does stuff!

Anyhoo, as you might’ve guessed from the opening set on a holographic rendition of Don Quixote, with a Data Discussion(tm) of quixotic endeavors... and the fact that Delcara intends to totally wipe out the Borg, gosh, I wonder if she’ll succeed--this one’s something of a downer. It does give the promised Planet Killer on Borg Cube action for those fanboys who’ve wondered who would win in a wrassling match, and Picard learns a valuable lesson about not pursuing suicidal vendettas against the Borg, which he definitely takes to heart...

(Wow, he did that one-handed? What kind of gains does Sir Patrick have?)

But still... bit depressing.

The One Where Bones Becomes A Space Pirate

Another giant novel, I’m surprised this one never got raided for parts in any adaptation. Even on the page, it’s pretty breathtakingly cinematic, and yet, the only part of it that’s really been used is, if you squint, Bob Burnham in Discovery being a disgraced Starfleeter.

The premise is that, some months ago, the TOS Enterprise crew was involved in a breaking of the Prime Directive that resulted in the destruction of a world and the ‘Enterprise 5′ of bridge officers blamed for the tragedy being shunned and hated wherever they go (ah, that utopian Star Trek future, predicting an entire population that’s politically engaged). 

Now, with the command crew scattered, everyone’s trying to get back to the planet where it all happened to find out what tf went down for reals. In a bit of a stretch, this is really hard for them--no one seems to be able to call in a favor or hire Han Solo to take them there or anything, which I suppose is in keeping with Star Trek 3′s similar situation six years prior. They don’t have to go so far as to steal a Constitution-class this time. I suppose it’s fitting for the wild and woolly TOS era. In TNG time, they’d probably be able to dial a Space Uber. (As it turns out, it seems like if they’d just coordinated their plans, they all could’ve hitched a ride with Spock, but then there’d be no book, much less a Giant Book.)

Anyway, Kirk’s been court-martialed and is working as an asteroid miner, Chekov and Sulu fall in with Orion pirates, Spock is challenging the whole thing in court, and Uhura’s in jail........oh. It’s like that, huh, Starfleet?

Like I said, most of the plot involves the crew going off on all their separate adventures, eventually getting the band back together and figuring out what went down. Apparently, the book was criticized for its nonlinear structure, but I think it worked out really well. Starting months after the incident, with everyone disgraced, gets you pumped to find out what happened. Then when they flashback to the shit going down, there’s a great sense of foreboding because you know something is going to happen, just not what exactly. 

If I can make a criticism, it’s that after some great build-up, the ending seems a bit anticlimactic. The nature of the threat requires some unbelievable Hollywood Evolution to buy (nothing new for Star Trek, admittedly, and this is a crew that’s fresh off meeting Apollo and Abraham Lincoln) and while it is fitting that they’re able to resolve the situation without blowing up anything or punching anyone (Star Trek loves to talk the talk about how anti-military it is, then end their movie with some Klingons getting blasted), it still seems a little... dry. You’re not going to have Kirk hang off of anything, story? Not even a little? Okay. I still had fun. 

And you’ll note that once again, Deanna Troi was of no help whatsoever. Geez, woman, you’re oh for three here!

[all-hail-the-witcher]

“It hurt me being away from you” for your favorite ship bc I can’t think of one 😬

alright so this is totally inspired by 1. Julian blackthorns ramblings about love, as seen in the above quote and the rest of the quote that I decided to use in this 2. An episode of signed sealed delivered and 3. a movie I watched last night on Netflix called the guernsey literary and potato peel pie society, which was really good, it had strong women and a brief mention of gay people but it was post ww2 and had some war flashbacks so don’t watch if you don’t like that stuff

also this is not modern era but it’s also not canon era, idk, it takes place in a time period that’s not now but when type writers still existed and people traveled using wagons. so it could be 1899, who knows

race and friends live in a small town in maine where they are all farmers. Albert is an author. They are together

___________

ship: ralbert

genre: very soft angst

word count: 4771 wowe

warnings: long distance relationships and the flu

editing: ah no

___________

Albert Dasilva gazed out the window of the fifth avenue apartment he was staying in. He had a wonderful view of Central Park. It was November, and he could see the people below him on the street walking briskly in their jackets and scarves as street vendors called out to them. It was beautiful, it really was. But it wasn’t home.

He turned away from the window and back to his desk. Normally he would type his letters on his typewriter, but Race had once told him he preferred handwritten ones because it gave him a piece of him to hold onto while he was away.

My dearest Antonio, he wrote, the nib of his pen gliding smoothly across the creamy paper. I miss you. I wish you could be here with me in the city. It’s absolutely beautiful at night. The street lamps come on and the lights from the stores and the apartment buildings light up the night sky. It is beautiful and glistening and magical. Almost like the stars back home. Except, nothing can compare to those. But for now, I shall have to make do with the stars of New York City.

The publishing company here is decent. I was matched with a man named David Jacobs who is to be my agent. He is very nice. The company loves my work, but insists that I write at least one novel while I’m here. I have a few ideas so far, but none of them seem quite right.

I have also met another author of the same publishing company named Katherine Plumber. She and I have gotten on quite well. Tomorrow she’s taking me through Central Park to “gather inspiration” as she calls it.

How are you? I hope you don’t miss me too terribly. I’ll be home soon. Six months is barely any time at all, especially when each day I live here brings me closer to you. Don’t forget to feed the animals. And don’t forget to eat. I told Jack to check in on you every now and then to make sure you’re taking care of yourself. So, please don’t kill him.

I love you and I miss you.

Yours always,

Albert Dasilva

Albert folded the note carefully and placed it into an envelope. He addressed it and sealed it with a kiss before climbing into bed. He would mail it tomorrow.

•••

It had been about a month since Albert had departed for New York when the first letter had arrived.

As always, Race stopped in the post office just before making the trek home from town. He had just stepped inside and was rubbing his hands together to warm them - Maine winters were harsh - when Finch called out to him from behind the counter.

“Ah, Racer!” He called. “I’ve got a letter for you!”

Race ran over to the counter, he could hardly believe it. “Really? Is it from New York?” His heart began to pound. Could he finally be hearing from Albert?

“Yes, it’s from Albert,” Finch said, winking at him as he handed him the letter.

Race checked the return address. It was from New York, and it was written in Albert’s unmistakable elegant handwriting. Hungrily, he tore off the envelope.

His eyes ran back and forth along the letter three times, soaking in Albert’s much awaited words, a smile forming on his lips. After all of the words were ingrained in his memory he looked up at Finch.

“Do you have-”

“Yes,” Finch cut him off, handing him a sheet of rough paper and a pen.

Race smiled back at Finch before hunching over the counter to write his letter.

Dear Albert, he scribbled awkwardly in barely legible writing. I am very happy to hear from you. New York sounds wonderful, I hope that you might take me to see it one day. Especially the “stars.” I am also very glad that you like the publishing company and your agent. I hope to meet him and Katherine one day and thank them for looking out for you in that big city. For you book, might I suggest: “how to survive in New York City” or “I miss my boyfriend very much and wish I was home with him.”

Jack has stopped by on several occasions - pretty much every other day, actually. Didn’t you tell him I can take care of myself? And yes, I have remembered to feed the animals. Although, they seem to like you better because most of them, especially your horse, have been quite, oh what’s that big fancy word that you use all the time? Ah yes, temperamental. And I have been taking care of myself as well, there’s no need to worry about me. Jack has insisted that I eat dinner with him on Fridays and all the rest of our friends have taken to stopping by the house several times a week to check on me. I don’t really know why, I am quite capable of surviving without you.

Albie, everyone here is incredibly proud of you, especially me. I can still hardly believe that you were picked up by a publishing company, especially a New York one. We all knew you were a great writer, but this is fantastic. I am so proud of you for going and making a name for yourself. Try some of those roasted chestnuts you get at the street carts for me, okay? Merry Christmas, Albie. (Well I suppose it’ll be much after Christmas by the time you get this, but Merry Christmas all the same)

Come home safe to me.

All the love and then some,

Antonio Higgins

“Here, Finch,” Race said, handing the envelope over to him. “Can you mail this for me?”

“Right away, Racer,” Finch said. “So, how is Albert?”

Races face lit up. “He’s good. He got set up with an agent at the publishing company and he made a friend with another author. He says he misses us, though.”

“Well, I’m glad he’s having a good time,” Finch said, offering Race a smile. “You get home safe now, it looks like snow and we don’t need you trapped in a storm and frozen to death before Albert comes home.”

“Will do,” Race said, giving a mock salute. As he opened the door he coughed into his sleeve. Hm, must have swallowed some dust, he thought before making the long trek back to his and Albert’s farm.

•••

It was mid January when Albert walked into his apartment building with Katherine, the two of them laughing hysterically.

“Mr. Dasilva, pardon me, but there’s a letter for you,” the concierge apologized, handing Albert an envelope.

“Thank you, sir,” Albert said, turning it over to read the return address. Maine. A smile stretched across his lips. Race. Hastily, he ripped open the envelope.

“Who’s it from?” Katherine asked, looking over his shoulder.

“Race,” he said, pulling out the letter and squinting at his boyfriend’s terrible handwriting.

“Oh yes,” Katherine smiled. “The one you won’t shut up about.”

Albert elbowed her in the ribs. “Oh shut up, I’m not that bad,” he mumbled, his eyes scanning Races words as they made their way upstairs to his apartment. He let out a laugh. “He wants me to call my novel ‘how to survive in New York City’.”

“Seems fitting,” Katherine said, as Albert paused to unlock his door. “What else did he say?”

“Everyone at home is very proud of me,” he read a few more lines. “And Merry Belated Christmas, and that he misses me.”

“Well, at least you have someone to go back home to,” Katherine said. “My father kicked me out for wanting to pursue writing.”

Albert looked up from the letter. “Katherine, that’s terrible.” Then his face lit up with an idea. “Why don’t you come home with me? I’m sure my friends would love to meet you. Race does, anyway. We’re a fairly large group, I’m sure you’ll find your place.”

“Well, Katherine said from her place on the couch, a small smile forming on her lips, “as long as I’m not inconveniencing anyone, I would love to go home with you.”

“Fantastic,” Albert smiled. “I’ll tell Race.”

My dearest Antonio, he wrote quickly. It’s wonderful to hear from you. Thank you for the Christmas wishes. Katherine and I spent Christmas here at my apartment drinking hot chocolate and writing. It was fun, but I’m sure you all had a better time at Jack’s place. I’m sure I want to know what kind of mischief you all got up to. And yes, I have eaten some street cart chestnuts. They’re surprisingly pretty good. As for your book title recommendations, they are good, but I have decided to call it “The Art Of Missing Someone”. I think you can guess who it’s about.

Have you gotten any snow this season? We have here, but not nearly as much as back home. Still, it was fun to watch the kids play in Central Park, reminded me of you.

Katherine took me up to the top of the Empire State Building a few nights ago. It was beautiful. I have never been so high up nor known that buildings could be that beautiful. Nothing beats our mountain view, of course.

Oh, speaking of Katherine, she’s told me that her father kicked her out years ago, so I offered that she come back with me to Maine in May. I think you all will love her and I’m fairly certain there’s a house still for sale in town if she wants to stay.

I know that Jack can be incessant sometimes, but I asked him to look after you for a reason, so please don’t annoy him. I look forward to seeing you again in the coming months. I’ll be home before you know it. Tell the fellows hello for me.

I love you and I miss you.

Yours always,

Albert Dasilva.

Albert put the letter in an envelope, addressed it, and set it on his desk. He’d mail it in a few hours after Katherine left.

•••

It was the end of February when Race got sick. Jack had brought him to his house and had him sleeping in a bed he had set up near the stove to keep him warm. Usually when Jack went out he would get one of the others to come by and sit with Race in case something happened. However, no one was around today and Jack was expecting a package so he left Race on his bed with strict instructions not to move unless the house was burning down and said he would be back in a few hours.

Jack had already been out for a few hours and Race was beginning to get worried. He could just see out the kitchen window without moving and he was fairly certain it had started to snow again. But, all Race did was snuggle deeper into his blanket. Jack had told him not to move and for once he was abiding what he was told.

It wasn’t like he had the strength to go out and look for Jack anyway. At present, he could only walk about three feet before collapsing. And, despite Jack's best efforts, he had lost weight. Jack was convinced he had the flu, as did most of their friends. They all said he would be fine in a few weeks but Race wasn’t too sure. Maybe he would get better faster if Albert were here.

Just then, the door blew open with a blast of cold air. Race pulled the blanket over his head so he wouldn’t freeze. There were noises that sounded like jack taking off his boots and coat.

“Racer?” He called out.

“Mmphhh,” Race groaned from under the blanket.

Jack laughed, sitting down on the side of his bed, and pulling the covers off his face. “How are you feeling, buddy?”

“Bad,” Race mumbled before bursting into a fit of coughing.

Jack frowned, pulling Race up into a seated position and rubbing his back.

After the coughing had subsided, he pulled away from Jack with tears in his eyes. “I miss Albie,” he whispered, pressing his face into Jacks shoulder. It wasn’t the same. Jack smelled different and his presence didn’t offer the same comfort as Albert’s.

“I know you do,” Jack said comfortingly. “Which is why I think you’ll be quite pleased to know that there was something for you at the post office.” He smiled, drawing a slightly battered envelope out of his breast pocket.

Race eagerly snatched the envelope and ripped it open with his shaking hands. After a few seconds he was staring at the familiar loopy handwriting, a sense of comfort washing over him.

After reading the letter several times he looked up at Jack. “Do you have any paper?” He asked hopefully, feeling better for the first time all week.

“Yeah, let’s just get you over to the table, okay?” Jack moved to help Race up, but he waved him off.

“I can do it,” he insisted as he pushed himself up. It took longer than necessary, but Race did manage to get over to the table and sit down without Jacks help. Maybe the prospect of communicating with Albert had given him an extra burst of strength. Hastily, he grabbed the paper and pen that Jack presented him with and began to write, trying extra hard to make his shaking hands write legibly.

Albie, he began. I miss you so so so much. It’s really hard to be here without you. But, I’m glad you’re having fun in the city. I’m excited that Katherine wants to come home with you, I think she will very much enjoy our friends, maybe we can hook her up with Jack as a thank you for him taking care of me.

We have gotten lots of snow. In fact, it’s snowing right now. I can’t really enjoy it though because I’m sick. Don’t worry about me, though. I’m fine. I’m staying with Jack for a few weeks until I get better and all the fellows have taken turns sitting with me while he goes out. They all say it’s the flu and that I’ll be fine in a few weeks. But I’m fine. I’ve just been sleeping a lot. Being sick also makes me miss you more. I can’t wait for you to come home. We’re halfway there.

I love the title of your book by the way. But make sure it’s not too sad, you don’t want your readers to cry while they’re reading it. I’m sure it’s going to be amazing, everything that you write is.

Try not to worry about me too much, okay? I’ll be fine, I promise.

All the love and then some,

Tony

“Here Jack,” he said, handing the finished letter to him. “Can you mail this tomorrow?”

“Of course, Racer,” Jack said, tucking the letter into his pocket. “I’m going to make some dinner, is that okay?”

“Yeah, I’m actually kind of hungry.” The last few days Race had just pushed his food around on his plate without really eating and he knew that Jack was worried about his lack of food intake, but he blamed it on the fact that he was sick.

As Jack began to start dinner, Race sat at the table and daydreamed about Albert.

•••

The next time Albert received a letter from Race it was mid March. Spring had sprung in the city and the trees in Central Park were budding.

Albert had picked up his mail and at first was elated to find a letter from Maine, but when he got to his apartment and took a closer look at the letter he noticed that it was not addressed in Races slanted and hard to read handwriting.

He ripped open the envelope, a pit forming in his stomach. Had something happened to Race? Inside the envelope there were two pieces of paper, one written in handwriting that wasn’t Races and one that was. He decided to read the one not written by Race first, hoping that it would calm his nerves.

Hey Albert, it’s Jack, the letter read. I didn’t read what Race wrote to you, I’m not about to invade your privacy and read your secret scandalous romance letters, so I don’t know if he mentioned this or to what extent, but Race is really sick.

Albert looked up from the letter. Race was sick? Was he going to be okay? Albert mentally slapped himself for not being there for him before going back to the letter.

We think he has the flu, the letter continued. I’m keeping him at my place until he’s better. He’s not in danger of dying or anything, so don’t worry about that. But we’re all in agreement that half the problem is the fact that he misses you. We’re all trying our best, we really are, but there’s only so much we can do. So maybe be a little more sappy than usual in your next letter? I don’t know. But we’re all taking good care of him, don’t worry.

Jack

Albert threw Jacks letter aside and quickly read Races. Sure enough, his handwriting was shaky and more messy than usual. And he sounded sad. Hastily, Albert pulled out a piece of stationary and began to write.

My dearest Antonio, he scrawled. I am so sorry you’re not feeling well. I wish I could be there with you right now, I really do. It hurts me to think about you, sick and suffering, so many miles away. Just make sure you’re eating food and drinking water and sleeping enough. As soon as I get back, I promise I’ll lay in bed with you all day and we can cuddle. How does that sound?

My book is almost done, I just have to revise a few more chapters and then give it to Davey for publishing. It’ll be for sale sometime in the fall. I am very excited. Don’t worry, I didn’t make it too sad. And I have a copy of the manuscript that I’m going to bring home so you can read it. I can’t wait to see what you think.

I am realizing that this is probably going to be my last letter to you as it won’t get to you until sometime in early April and I leave to come home on May 14th. There is, however, enough time for you to send me one more if you would like. It should reach me before I leave and I would like an update about your health before I leave the city.

Get lots of rest for me. Also there’s a few shirts of mine that I left at the house in the bottom left drawer in our bedroom if you would like to wear them. I do not mind. Maybe if you put one on it’ll be almost like having me there. I’ll be home before you know it.

I love you and I miss you

Yours always,

Albert Dasilva

Albert quickly addressed an envelope, pressed a stamp onto it, and ran downstairs to the concierge. He needed to post it as quickly as possible.

•••

It was now mid April. One more month until Albert was scheduled to come home. Race had since mostly recovered from his bought of sickness, but Jack had only allowed him to return home a week and a half ago, and only because he was driving him crazy.

Since returning home, Race had returned to his daily trips to the post office to check for letters from Albert. All of his friends disapproved, but we’re at least slightly relieved that he was taking Albert’s horse into town instead of walking. Race didn’t tell them that this was because he couldn’t walk for more than 5 minutes, let alone three miles, without getting winded, but he supposed that they knew that. They had all treated him as if he were made of glass ever since he had gotten sick. Race knew he was definitely skinnier now than he had been when Albert was still here, and so what if he got winded easily? He was fine.

He tied up Albert’s horse and pushed open the door to the post office. “Heya Finch,” he said, offering his friend a smile. “Anything from New York?”

Finch gave Race a disapproving look. “Racer, you gotta stop coming out here every day. We don’t need you collapsing on a back road somewhere.”

Race rolled his eyes. “Finch, I’m fine. Have been for weeks. Now, is there anything for me?”

Finch wordlessly handed him a creamy envelope, which Race tore open in record speed. He read the words on the page gratefully, a sense of calm and comfort washing over him, almost as if Albert were there himself.

After reading the letter through twice he looked up at Finch to ask for paper and a pen, but saw he had already placed some on the counter. Race smiled and set to work.

Dear Albert, he wrote. There’s no need to sound so worried about me, I told you I’m fine. I’m not even sick anymore. Jack let me go home last week. Of course, he still comes over and checks on me everyday and brings me food. But I’m much better now. I’ve been riding your horse into town everyday and I’m also getting plenty of sleep.

I’m so excited to read your book! It sounds wonderful! I can’t believe my own boyfriend is going to be a published author! When you get home I’m throwing a party in celebration. You’re going to famous! And we can all say we knew you when you were just little Albert Dasilva, farm boy extraordinaire.

Only one more month until you’re home, I can’t believe it. The last five months seem both very short and very long at the same time. I can’t wait to hold you again. I’ve missed you terribly. It’s going to be such a relief to have you home. I may take you up on borrowing those shirts, by the way.

Have a safe trip home

All the love and then some,

Antonio Higgins.

Race scribbled the address on the envelope and handed it off to Finch. Then he hopped on Albert’s horse and galloped home with a renewed sense of energy. Plus, he had a shirt of Albert’s waiting for him at home.

•••

Two days before Albert was to leave the city, the letter from Race arrived. The concierge actually delivered it to his room when it got there, since Albert had been checking three times a day for a week to see if it had arrived.

“Thank you, sir,” Albert said, accepting the letter.

“You’re welcome, Mr. Dasilva,” the concierge said, tipping his hat. “That must be one great girl you’ve got back home.”

Albert gave him a smile as he shut the door. “Yeah, something like that.” Then he flooped on the bed, ripping open the envelope, which he was relieved to see was in Races handwriting, not Jacks.

After reading the letter through three times, Albert tucked it into the pocket of his pants. He was still worried about Race, he had a feeling that he wasn’t as fine as he let on. But, he would be seeing him next week. That was a crazy thought. After six months in the city, he would finally be going home. Home to Race, and their little farm, and all their friends, and home cooked meals and mountain air. He could hardly wait.

•••

It was the night of May 23rd. Race had gotten home a few hours before from a long day of sitting in town waiting patiently for Albert’s arrival. He didn’t precisely know when that would be, but he did know it took about a week to get from New York to Maine and it had been just over a week.

Finch has sent him back home around 8, telling him to eat something and get some sleep. Race did go home, but he had yet to do either of those things. He just sat in one of Albert’s old shirts curled up in the old wing chair and listened to the sounds of the night. Albert could be home any minute and he wanted to be awake for it.

He was beginning to doze off when he heard the rattling of wagon wheels outside. He jumped up and ran to the door. Could it be?

Hesitantly, he opened the door and squealed with delight when he saw Albert’s familiar red hair gleaming in the moonlight. He was out the door in a flash, feet pounding on the gravel, moving faster than he had in months. “Albert!” He called.

Albert paused from unloading his luggage, dropped his suitcase on the ground and ran toward Race. They collided halfway between the house and the wagon in a bone crushing embrace.

“Oh Antonio,” Albert whispered into Races hair, holding him as if he let go he would disappear. “It’s so good to see you again.”

Race pulled away slightly from Albert’s tight embrace. “Oh shut up and kiss me.”

“If you insist,” Albert smirked, which earned an eye roll from Race before crashing his lips hungrily into his boyfriend’s.

Race kissed Albert with all the hope, passion and desire of someone that had been without their other half for six months. Time stood still as his mouth connected with Albert’s. His hands reached around Albert’s neck and one of them knotted in his hair. Oh how he missed this. It was almost as if being with Albert made him a whole person again, instead of the shell of a person he had been while he was gone.

After Albert disconnected his lips from Races, Race leaned his head on Albert’s shoulder, breathing in his familiar scent of the outdoors. “I missed you,” he whispered, a few tears escaping his eyes.

“I missed you too,” Albert murmured, planting a kiss in Races hair. His hands ran up and down Races back.

They stood, bodies pressed together, in the dark for several long minutes. The only sounds around them were the crickets chirping.

After awhile, Albert pulled back. “Help me grab my stuff and we can go inside, okay?”

Race nodded slightly, acutely aware of the fact that he was far less strong than when Albert had last seen him. The combination of flu and missing his other half had really taken a toll on him. But, he was wearing one of Albert’s big shirts, so maybe he wouldn’t notice.

No such luck. As soon as they were in the kitchen, Albert turned on one of the lamp lights and turned to look at his boyfriend, a look of surprise plastered on his face. “Race, baby, what happened to you?” He asked, moving closer and engulfing him in a hug.

“What do you mean?” Race said into Albert’s shirt sleeve. He didn’t know what Albert was talking about. He didn’t see a too skinny, overly tired, underfed, frail boy in too big clothes when he looked in the mirror, which is what Albert saw, he just say himself.

“You look terrible,” Albert said softly, stroking Races hair. “How long were you sick for?”

“I don’t know, only a couple of weeks,” Race mumbled. “I mostly just missed you. That’s why everyone thinks I never really recovered, at least, that’s what I’ve heard them say.”

Albert pulled Race closer to him. “See, this is what I was worried about,” he said, pressing his lips into Races hair. Tears formed at the corners of his eyes. He had done this, he was the reason why Race was so unhealthy looking.

“It hurt me, being away from you,” Race gasped, pulling away and turning his big, tearfilled blue eyes up to look at Albert. “It feels like there’s a hook dug in under my ribs and there’s something pulling at the other end. Like I’m tethered to you no matter the distance.”

Albert gave him a soft smile before picking Race up and carrying him into their room. “And I’m supposed to be the poetic one.”

He set race down on the bed and pulled off his shoes before putting on some pajamas. The two of them crawled under the covers, Race tucked safely into Albert’s chest.

Albert stayed awake until Race had fallen asleep. He pressed a kiss to his forehead before wrapping his arms around him tightly. “I’m never leaving you again,” he whispered before closing his eyes and falling asleep.

______________

awwww theyre so cute

thanks fizz for the limited help and brief idea

I’m actually kinda proud of this, one of my favorites by far sorry it took so long to get out

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[christianworldf]

New Post has been published on Nehemiah Reset

New Post has been published on https://nehemiahreset.org/christian-worldview-issues/lgbt/george-takeis-extraordinary-trek-the-washington-post/

George Takei's extraordinary trek - The Washington Post

NEW YORK — As a child, he believed the camp to be a magical oasis, where mythical dinosaurs prowled the woods at night. A native of Los Angeles, he marveled at the “flying exotica” of dragonflies, the treasures of rural life and, that first winter, the “pure magic” of snow.

George Takei spent ages 5 to almost 9 imprisoned by the U.S. government in Japanese American internment camps. A relentless optimist, he believed the shameful legacy of incarcerating an estimated 120,000 Americans during World War II would never be forgotten or duplicated.

At 82, Takei came to understand that he may be mistaken on both counts.

Stories fell into the sinkhole of history, given the omission of the camps from many textbooks and the shame felt by former internees, many of whom remained silent about their experiences, even to descendants. Takei takes no refuge in silence.

The “Star Trek” actor has lived long enough to see thousands of immigrant children jailed near the border. On Twitter, to his 2.9 million followers, he wrote, “This nation has a long and tragic history of separating children from their parents, ever since the days of slavery.”

Sitting in his Manhattan pied-à-terre near Carnegie Hall, the activist for gay rights and social justice calls his government’s actions “an endless cycle of inhumanity, cruelty and injustice repeated generation after generation” and says “it’s got to stop.”

Takei was fortunate. He and his two younger siblings were never separated from their parents, who bore the brunt of fear and degradation in the swamps of Arkansas and the high desert of Northern California. They shielded their children, creating a “Life Is Beautiful” experience often filled with wonder. His father told him they were going for “a long vacation in the country.” Their first stop, of all places, was the Santa Anita Racetrack, where the family was assigned to sleep in the stalls. “We get to sleep where the horsies slept! Fun!” he thought.

[Book review: George Takei has talked about internment before, but never quite like this]

Takei had little understanding of his family abandoning their belongings, the government questioning their patriotism and their return to Los Angeles with nothing, starting over on Skid Row. As a teenager, he came to understand the toll.

“The resonance of my childhood in prison is so loud,” says the actor, who still lives in L.A.

The only surviving photograph of Takei while he was in the Rohwer Japanese American Relocation Camp in Rohwer, Ark., in 1942 and 1943. (George Takei)

This summer, Takei is accelerating his mission to make Americans remember. Almost three-quarters of a century after his release, he feels the crush of time: “I have to tell this story before there’s no one left to tell it.”

He has a new graphic memoir, “They Called Us Enemy,” intended to reach all generations but especially the young, by the publisher of the best-selling “March” trilogy by Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.).

In August, Takei appears in AMC’s 10-episode “The Terror: Infamy,” a horror saga partially set in an internment camp. Four years ago, he starred in the Broadway musical “Allegiance,” inspired by his personal history.

“That experience in the camps gave me my identity,” he says in the apartment he shares with his husband, Brad, which is decorated with Japanese ink drawings and “Star Trek” bric-a-brac: a Starship Enterprise phone, a Sulu action figure in a Bonsai tree.

It’s possible those years in the camps subconsciously nudged Takei toward acting. “To me, the theater was life, its artists, the chroniclers of human history,” he writes in his 1994 autobiography, “To the Stars.” He would star as Hikaru Sulu in a short-lived sci-fi series that would, improbably, spawn more movie and television iterations than furry Tribbles.

In turn, that success created a springboard for social activism. He became “a social media mega-power” — his website’s phrasing, as he has 10 million followers each on two Facebook pages — fueled by a six-member influencer agency, which he calls “Team Takei.” That influence, to a doting and ever-expanding audience, might ensure his experience in the camps matters.

From left, “Star Trek” actors Leonard Nimoy, Takei, DeForest Kelley and James Doohan attend the first showing of the Space Shuttle Enterprise in Palmdale, Calif., on Sept. 17, 1976. (AP)

The eternal frontier

Takei frequently refers to his life as “an American story.” It is also a singular, improbable one.

Who else enjoys continued success through the curious alchemy of “Star Trek,” coming out at age 68 and regular appearances on “The Howard Stern Show”?

“George is a little outrageous, and a little Mr. Rogers. He’s sort of where they meet in the middle,” says filmmaker Jennifer Kroot, who produced the 2014 documentary “To Be Takei.”

After enrolling as an architecture student at the University of California at Berkeley, Takei transferred to UCLA to pursue acting at a time when there was almost no work for Asian Americans except dubbing Japanese monster movies like “Rodan” into English and portraying crass caricatures in the Jerry Lewis vehicles “The Big Mouth” (1967) and “Which Way to the Front?” (1970).

Takei accepted the jobs, the Lewis ones to his everlasting chagrin: “I shouldn’t have done it.” But he learned. Never again.

Fortunately, he landed “Star Trek,” Gene Roddenberry’s utopian vision of space pioneers from varied backgrounds working together in harmony and oddly cropped slacks. Two decades after World War II, it showed an Asian American in a positive role.

Jay Kuo, who co-wrote “Allegiance,” grew up in a household where television was largely forbidden. Not “Star Trek.” Kuo’s Chinese American parents knew “we needed to see ourselves represented. We were invisible. George was the only Asian sex symbol. That shirtless sword scene was groundbreaking,” he says of the scene in which Sulu believes he’s an 18th-century swashbuckler after the crew is infected by a virus.

Mr. Spock (Nimoy), Pavel Chekov (Walter Koenig), Capt. James T. Kirk (William Shatner), Lt. Uhura (Nichelle Nichols), Hikaru Sulu (Takei) and Montgomery “Scotty” Scott (Doohan) stand on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise in the 1968 Season 3 “Star Trek” premiere. (CBS/Getty Images)

The Starship Enterprise was tasked with a five-year mission. Five? The original “Star Trek,” the mother ship of Trekiana, didn’t make it past three, running for just 79 episodes. The final show aired a half-century ago this year.

Takei felt blessed to land the role of the master helmsman. When the show was canceled — “I knew it would be. Good shows were always getting canceled” — Takei was despondent that he would never work again.

Hah! Space became the eternal frontier: six movies with the original cast, an animated series.

[Alyssa Milano’s improbable journey from child star to A-list activist]

Those early TV contracts didn’t favor actors. Takei’s residuals stopped after the 10th rerun. Which happened, Takei says, “about 10,000 reruns ago.”

Fortunately, what the network taketh away, the Trekkies giveth.

Takei jumped on the convention train, across the United States, Canada, Britain, Germany and Japan, signing autographs and posing for photo ops for up to eight hours, his lustrous baritone growing hoarse.

“Star Trek has been enormously bountiful to us,” Takei says. “We had no idea that this phenomenon of Star Trek conventions would follow.”

Now, Takei is one of only four original cast members still alive, along with William Shatner (Capt. James T. Kirk), Nichelle Nichols (communications officer Lt. Uhura) and Walter Koenig (navigator Pavel Chekov).

Takei as Nobuhiro Yamato in AMC’s anthology series “The Terror: Infamy,” set within a World War II-era Japanese American internment camp. (Ed Araquel/AMC)

His professional life flourished, riding the wave of nostalgia and outsize fandom. His personal life, particularly for someone who has always been political and outspoken, was more complicated. Friends and associates long knew Takei was gay. He met Brad Altman, then a journalist, through a gay running club. They started dating in 1987. Brad took George’s last name in 2011.

Takei worried that coming out publicly would deep-six his acting career. So he waited and waited, an eternity, three and a half decades.

“The government imprisoned me for four years for my race. I imprisoned myself about my sexuality for decades,” Kuo recalls Takei telling him. “You can’t imagine what kind of sentry towers you can build around your heart.”

Takei came out in 2005 as a statement, after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill legalizing same-sex marriage in California. Quickly, he moved from the closet to the front of the pride parade.

“I was prepared that I wasn’t going to have an acting career,” he says.

Uh, no.

“The opposite happened, and I was more in demand,” Takei says, almost in song. “They love gay George Takei!

It was as though gay was an honorific — and Gay George Takei was a reboot. Gay + “Star Trek” — the latter listing toward camp with its community theater props, too-tight tops and Shatner’s Hamlet-like readings — was a fitting combination.

Takei was hired as much for his droll persona — his catch phrase, “Oh Myyy!” — as his talent. Work was constant: He had appearances on the sitcoms “The Big Bang Theory” and “Will and Grace,” and in Archie Comics (as hero to gay character Kevin Keller), plus that surprising gig on Stern’s show.

Takei and Brad Altman after their wedding on June 17, 2008, in West Hollywood, Calif. The couple started dating in 1987, and Brad took Takei’s last name in 2011. (Valerie Macon/AFP/Getty Images)

“That was a strategy after I came out,” he says of Stern. “We had reached decent, fair-minded people, the LGBT audience. Howard had a huge national audience.”

On Stern’s show, hired technically as “the official announcer” but also as a routinely pranked foil, Takei surprised listeners by inverting his elegant persona — a man who rarely swears or raises his voice — by being as raunchy as the regular crew.

Takei revealed more about his sex life than perhaps anyone anticipated. Mentions of Brad became a constant. Takei’s once-closeted life was broadcast by the master of all media all over Sirius XM.

In 2017, former model Scott R. Brunton alleged that Takei drugged and sexually assaulted him in 1981. No charges were ever filed. Takei denies the incident, which was never substantiated. The actor says, “It’s a fabrication of somebody who wanted to have a story to regale people with.”

Takei moved past it. “It was a very upsetting experience, but it’s never come up again.”

His optimism buoyed him. And he had important causes to serve.

Takei came out in 2005, after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill legalizing same-sex marriage in California. “I was prepared that I wasn’t going to have an acting career,” he says. “The opposite happened, and I was more in demand.” (Jesse Dittmar for The Washington Post)

A witness to change

The first time I met George and Brad, at a party in Los Angeles last year, they were bickering.

When we meet in Manhattan, they bicker again over lunch, over the smallest details. Brad worries about almost everything. George does not. It was somewhat refreshing. A cult icon and his spouse being themselves in front of a reporter. Takei’s openness contributes to the continuing embrace by fans five decades after “Star Trek” was canceled and why he’s a natural for Stern. He presents authentically as himself, a man who extols life’s fortunes. Why isn’t he angry with the country that imprisoned his family?

“Because it would be another barbed-wire fence around my heart,” he says.

The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 formally apologized to former Japanese American internees. Takei received a reparation check for $20,000. He donated it to the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, which he helped found and for which he serves as a trustee.

Takei, far right, with his sister Nancy Reiko Takei, brother Henry Takei, mother Fumiko Emily Takei and father Takekuma Norman Takei, around 1947 to 1948. (George Takei)

Takei has witnessed his country change, often for the better. “When I was growing up, I couldn’t marry a white woman” he has said, due to anti-miscegenation laws. “And now I’m married to a white dude!”

In 2012, when he was on “The Celebrity Apprentice,” he invited host Donald Trump to lunch at “any of Trump’s properties” — smart move — with the intention of discussing marriage equality. Trump accepted the offer. Takei recalls that Trump told him “he believed in traditional marriage between a man and a woman. This from a man who has been married three times!”

Takei was in New York recently for Pride Month, attending the Stonewall anniversary concert and City Hall ceremony. The events are as vital to his identity as acting.

“I was active in almost every other social justice cause as well as political candidates,” he says. “But I was silent about the issue that was most personal to me, most organic to who I am, because I wanted my career.”

Time was generous. He began life in internment camps and came out in his late 60s. At 82, he’s flourishing in a field that had little use for him when he started.

Takei’s graphic novel “They Called Us Enemy” recounts his experience as a child in Japanese American internment camps during World War II.

The actor says he wants to ensure all generations know the story of what happened to his family. (Top Shelf Productions)

LEFT: Takei’s graphic novel “They Called Us Enemy” recounts his experience as a child in Japanese American internment camps during World War II. RIGHT: The actor says he wants to ensure all generations know the story of what happened to his family. (Top Shelf Productions)

But time can punish memory. Takei wants to ensure we know the story of what happened to his family, in his country.

The worst day of internment was the first one, he recalls. Soldiers marched up the driveway with bayonets on their rifles, pounded on the door and took the family away to who knew where and for how long. Says Takei, “It was a terrifying morning.”

Bayonets and a 5-year-old boy. It is, as Takei says, an American story — a frightening and lamentable one.

All we can do is learn.

At 82, Takei is thriving in an industry that once had little use for him. His graphic novel “They Called Us Enemy” was released this month, and AMC’s “The Terror: Infamy” premieres in August. (Jesse Dittmar for The Washington Post)

Story by Karen Heller. Portraits by Jesse Dittmar. Photo editing by Mark Gail. Video by Erin Patrick O’Connor. Copy editing by Whitney Juckno. Design by Eddie Alvarez.

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[toddlazarski]

On Anthony Bourdain, Istanbul, and the Art of Looking at the World

Shepherd Express

In every writer there exists a towering, ever-struggling duality: the desire to be left alone, to your words, books, thoughts, hidden quiet corners of libraries; and the wish to be celebrated, toasted by everyone as the smartest person in the room. From a staggering array of novels, non-fiction, and cookbooks, to a series of popular and acclaimed travel TV shows, Anthony Bourdain achieved both. In grand fashion. And he did so with such an easy grace and badass authenticity, strident but unposturing, always walking through some faraway airport in sunglasses and jeans, a knowing swagger married to selfless curiosity, a seen-it-all, snobby curmudgeon with the the air of - yes, as it’s been said before, appropriately - your coolest uncle. The one with the tats and back porch stories and faraway look in his eye while describing some distant bar, some endless night in Hanoi, another day’s chilli dog. Which is all why you’ll read one million of just this sort of personal tomes. As is the practice of the day, when someone dies, something big happens, one can almost hear the collective laptops the coffeeshopped world over, softly plodding with hastily penned takes. It is an epoch of “let me tell you what this means to me.” So maybe there needn’t be any more Bourdain tributes like there needn’t be any more gun control facebook posts. But there’s a reason chefs, foodies, fans, all of us, really, can’t help themselves with Bourdain. And the desire feels even deeper still with writers.

Simply, he was living our dream: widely published, successful, adored, pervasive, respected, still cool, on the road while the rest of us squirmed stuck in the quicksand of digital glow, all while seemingly never needing to sell out. He made himself a rock star in an era where nobody cares about writers. While Tom Wolfe and Philip Roth can pass to the next world like a ship in the night, with Bourdain co-workers that had never even read him approached my desk on the day of the news with tears. “I’m sorry”’s passed in text message form like a family member had died, like I had known the man, simply because I idolized him.           

It was easy to feel familiarity - you could go along, exploring, discovering, scoffing, smoking, looking, feeling like you were figuring something out about the world with a poet’s removed involvement. I followed, time and again, through countless joints and ventures, not knowing there was another place to even consider starting travel research. I ended up in a multitude of places like Tadich Grill in San Francisco, Eisenbergs in New York, a cacio e pepe spot in Rome, some chicken joint in Brazil. In a pre-smartphone, pre-Uber era, I wandered for hours through uptown New Orleans, backtracking, circling Audubon park, hailing cabs just to futilely beg directions, assisted only by a known street name - Bellecastle - and a vivid memory of his enjoyment of Domilise’s off-the-menu fried shrimp, cheese, and gravy po’ boy.

There has always been a validation in going to the places he’d been, a way of feeling you were doing things right, appropriately appreciating culture, a place. You’d see him at a dive in Chicago and feel smug with satisfaction over your own life’s pursuits. It was an easy extension to think you knew him off camera too. Everyone knew about his reformed bad boy antics, penchant for drunkenness, graceful entry to fatherhood, budding relationship with Asia Argento. “He doesn’t smoke anymore.” We all knew that. “He loves KFC.” And so I feel no need for shame in occasionally blasting an eight piece with mac n’ cheese and biscuits, sitting solo in my car, in a parking lot on Layton, cranking classic rock radio. “He wears Clark’s.” I have three pairs. I could never remember the name of his new show. And it didn’t matter, there he was, in my living room, showing me someplace in Africa I’ll surely never go, illuminating what I did wrong, misunderstood about Detroit.   

Practically, this is why suicide seemed so wrong. He had it all, but mostly he had perspective. Realistically, it is a reminder: You have no idea what’s going on in another human being. You don’t understand your own brain, let alone somebody else’s. By now we all at least know the “selfish” trope is hooey. But if you’ve been through it, close to it, if the suicide of my best friend, at the age of 25, taught me anything, it’s that you can devote your personal life to pondering the matter, study the professionals that have given their careers to the issue, and never get any closer to an answer of Camus’ “one truly serious philosophical problem.” Really, we all have so little understanding of the world.

Which was actually so much the point of Bourdain’s body of life work.

Years ago, in a random episode of No Reservations, I found myself finding Bourdain perched outside a tiny corner Istanbul kebab shop. He was eating, rapping with a local, mostly always smart enough to balance, to know when to let himself be guided. In my mind, he seemed to go from liking his sandwich to a string-swelling discovery of love moment, just within a few bites. A subtle kind of euphoria played across a thanks-for-showing-me-this type smile, him wrapping up the kebab in typical lyrical summation, “torpedo of joy.” There was something in the combination: the dripping meat package, the contentment, the all-is-well realization amidst a cobblestoned old world setting of winding, shambly, timeless streets, a feel of fearlessness yielding intense hedonist pleasure in the heart of a mysterious world. It was an unscrubbable moment of enlightenment, he had decided for me: Turkey was suddenly the place of my heart.

Through no coincidence, years later, my wife and I found ourselves closing our honeymoon in Istanbul. On our last night, post dinner of endless mezzes, our breaths heavy with smoked eggplant, sumac, parsley, our bodies already sluggish with lamb meat, it was nonetheless the last checkmark I needed, desperately, on my first trip to Europe. At midnight it would be my 32nd birthday. At noon tomorrow we would be on a flight home. But for now, I was after something. Down snaking back alley’s, a stream of dark loud bars pouring boozers onto the street side tables, fish shops still open and stinky and neon-lit, the distinction between patrons and pedestrians blurring, a propulsive cacophony of raised foreign tongues jibing with tinkling glasses, everyone young and hungry and dressed in black and close together, the streets too narrow for anything but whizzing mopeds. By the time we got there - me realizing the ultimate consummation of fresh marriage is when a new bride will follow you into questionable neighborhoods in strange lands for midnight snacks - a man, a brother or cousin of the proprietor it seemed, on my side of the counter with a drugged big-pupil look, upsold me on extra meat. I obliged, forking over Lira, salivating, breathing deep hand-stoked charcoal fumes, noting the coating of the bread with meat fat, noticing everything, stoically, or so I thought, chasing that Bourdain vibe. Bold. At least bold enough to hit a rough-edged corner store on the way home, for a six-pack of bad but frigid Turkish beer, a pack of locally-flavored Camels.

Twenty minutes later I was on our hotel room’s balcony, delaying my meal, swallowing a Bond movie scenescape, mosques doting the horizon, minarets standing rigid like menacing fingers, the Bosphorous River flowing behind me, the hotel where Agatha Christie penned “Murder on the Orient Express” just around the corner. In a grand gesture of chivalry, I eventually tried to wake my wife for a bite. She shrugged me off, opting for some sleep after 2 weeks of trekking around Italy and Turkey, eating endlessly of my deranged itinerary, now facing a 12-hour flight home. Instead I stood alone outside, I let the spice-addled cucumber sauce run down my arm as the rotisserie-ed beef and lamb combo danced, delivered on the wings of crisped lavash bread, popped up by red onion and juicy tomato. Solitary on a balcony, framed in smoke and late night buzz, I ate and drank, Istanbul spread endlessly around me. It was now my birthday. It was also my poetry moment. And Bourdain had brought me here. It was the apex of everything his books and bevy of heavy-hearted shows had taught me, the joy within being an active, discerning participant in life’s sorrows. His was the art of looking at the world. And showing how much better is the view when sided by a cold beer and really good sandwich.

[newssplashy]

World: A horror Western, quick on the draw

It’s a striking level of commitment for a program that only debuted two years ago and has aired a total of 25 episodes.

A fan encounter at the first EarperCon UK in London in 2017 brought up none of those things. Rather than discuss an obscure plot point, a young woman wanted to share how the show, which has a number of LGBT characters, had helped her come out to her father, who brought her to the convention.

“It was awesome and overwhelming,” Rozon said. “I was thinking, this is about way more than my character running from a tentacle.”

The relationships among the cast and showrunner and “Wynonna Earp” fans — known as “Earpers” — are so intense, the next year will bring conventions devoted solely to the show in Toronto, Minneapolis, New Orleans and London (again).

It’s a striking level of commitment for a program that only debuted two years ago and has aired a total of 25 episodes. But it’s a bond that has helped the Syfy series, which returns July 20 for its third season, not just survive but thrive within the ever-changing pressure cooker of peak TV.

With its modest Nielsen ratings, which average less than 900,000 viewers a week, “Wynonna Earp” may not have made it past its first season. But as social media and a growing array of viewing platforms give networks more ways to gauge the value of niche audiences — and executives become more creative about monetizing them — “Wynonna Earp” demonstrates how a distinctive premise, a passionate fan base and a creative team that respects and nurtures that enthusiasm can help an under-the-radar program flourish in a TV landscape that is tough even on acclaimed shows.

Case in point: The space opera “The Expanse” was canceled by Syfy after three seasons, though it debuted with stronger ratings and more media coverage than “Wynonna Earp.” But the network had only one notable revenue stream for “The Expanse”: The money from advertisements within linear airings of the drama, which wasn’t enough to offset its cost. So the network grounded the series (which was then picked up by Amazon).

By contrast, Syfy’s deal with IDW Entertainment, the studio behind “Wynonna” — struck a couple of years after it signed contracts for “The Expanse” — gives the network more ways to make money. Commercials in on-air broadcasts, ads within online and app views and a Netflix streaming deal all bring Syfy revenue. It also helps that “Wynonna Earp” costs less than “The Expanse.”

But “Wynonna Earp,” the tale of a woman and her allies battling monsters, has a value for Syfy beyond balance sheets, according to Chris McCumber, president of Syfy. Viewership among women aged 18-34 was up 44 percent in the show’s second year, and more than half the audience is women — the highest ratio within the otherwise male-skewing Syfy viewership.

“That sense of perseverance and fighting against all odds is relevant right now,” he said.

According to the lore of the show, Wynonna (Melanie Scrofano) is a descendant of Wyatt Earp, who got the clan put under a curse. As the Earp heir, Wynonna is fated to protect the hamlet of Purgatory — and the world — from the demons that bedevil the town. She has the special ability to wield Peacemaker, Wyatt’s gun, which she uses to send Purgatory’s “Revenants” back to hell, usually with a quip — and whiskey — at the ready.

It’s not for every taste — nor was it meant to be.

“It’s such a relief to not have to make TV for everyone,” said Emily Andras, the executive producer and showrunner, who described the comedy-infused, character-driven drama as a combination of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Justified” and “Frozen.” (Wynonna and her younger sister, Waverly, have a tight bond.) “In a world of 500 [scripted] shows, if nothing else, you have to say, ‘Well, I haven’t seen that before.'”

The show has “exceeded expectations” on the social-media front, McCumber said. In 2017, "Wynonna Earp” had an average 224,000 day-of-air Twitter engagements — seven times the next highest Syfy series. Overall, Twitter activity was up 874 percent in Season 2, according to the firm ListenFirst. “I’m a real believer in social media and people using word-of-mouth — that matters more than ever,” McCumber said.

A year ago, Syfy made the slogan “It’s a Fan Thing” key to its marketing campaigns, thus “Wynonna Earp” and its energetic supporters “fit in perfectly with where we were going with the rebrand,” McCumber said.

The core elements of the premise — rogue tentacles, prickly villains, a found family and swoon-worthy romances — are familiar to aficionados of genre entertainment. But the twist it put on those basics helped “Wynonna Earp” stand out and win fans.

Andras’ feminist outlook is much in evidence. This past season, Wynonna was pregnant (as was Scrofano), but she didn’t let that slow her down. Both Doc and the former federal agent Xavier Dolls (Shamier Anderson) are attracted to Wynonna, but the romantic possibilities are just a part of the story, not the main point.

“She’s a female protagonist who is likable, but I think she’s likable because of the freedom we had — she didn’t have to live up to this weird archetype of the ‘strong female character,’ whatever that means,” Scrofano said.

From the start, Andras and the cast have had unusually tight bonds with the show’s enthusiastic, inclusive fan community. The well-known genre entertainment site Den of Geek noted recently, “[In] an era in which internet discourse can bring to light some of the most hateful and divisive values in the world, ‘Wynonna Earp’ fandom is a pretty wonderful, safe place to be.”

“It’s like you’re moving into a new neighborhood and everyone’s there with cookies. It’s an openhearted fandom,” said David Ozer, the president of IDW Entertainment.

Among the most influential fans are Kevin Bachelder and Bonnie Ferrar, who co-host Tales of the Black Badge, a podcast devoted to the show, and weekly video hangouts that sometimes include Andras and cast members. (Ferrar also runs the Twitter account @WynonnaFans.)

They and other fandom leaders, like Bridget Liszewski, the editor of the site The TV Junkies, actively promote and encourage a friendly, tolerant Earper culture that emphasizes consideration and community-building over factional flame wars or personal attacks. Respectful differences are accommodated; toxic meltdowns, like the ones glimpsed in certain sectors of the “Star Wars” fandom, are not. They don’t even record the video hangouts, a decision that aims to make guests, famous and not, “feel comfortable popping in to have fun,” Bachelder said. “It’s not going to live forever on the internet — everybody can just be themselves.”

Awareness, at least in geeky circles, was relatively high from the start, in part thanks to a vocal cadre of fans of a prior show Andras worked on, Syfy’s “Lost Girl.” Within six weeks of the show’s debut in April 2016, #WynonnaEarp began trending on Twitter for the first time. But soon there was a potential snag. In the first half of that year, a large number of LGBT women — who aren’t easy to find on TV in the first place — were killed off on an array of shows. The resulting furor left many gay TV fans angry and wary.

At that point, the most high-profile “Wynonna Earp” couple was Waverly (Dominique Provost-Chalkley) and Purgatory cop Nicole Haught (Katherine Barrell) — a pairing known as “WayHaught.”

“I remember someone tweeting to me ‘I’m scared to fall in love with WayHaught,’ and it broke my heart,” Ferrar said.

Aware of the worry, Andras made a bold and unusual move, in this era of spoiler-phobic showrunners. She told Liszewski and others in the media that Waverly and Nicole would survive the first season, and those TV writers spread the news weeks before the season finale.

“The feeling was, ‘We can enjoy the rest of this ride,'” Liszewski said.

“Wynonna Earp’s” profile only grew once LGBT fans came on board in a big way. Twitter trending happened regularly during Season 2 and WayHaught fan art, fan fiction and T-shirts proliferated.

“Fans love the exploration of LGBT romance on television. Contrary to the media’s obsession with toxic male fandom, female fandom right now is pushing hard for more diverse and inclusive representation,” said Henry Jenkins, a professor at the University of Southern California and a leading scholar of fan communities. “These changes can’t happen fast enough, and this show is out front on those issues.”

Being out front on the business side, in creative arenas and in the realms of inclusion and representation has led to a “bright future,” according to McCumber. And to a packed travel schedule for Andras and the cast, many of whom will be trekking to multiple conventions during the next year.

“I wouldn’t trade the cult success of this show for billions of dollars,” Andras said, and then paused. “Maybe one more dollar.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Maureen Ryan © 2018 The New York Times

source https://www.newssplashy.com/2018/07/world-horror-western-quick-on-draw_6.html

[recentanimenews]

The Best Manga You’re Not Reading: Star Wars

I was five years old when Star Wars: A New Hope blasted its way into movie theaters. Like most members of Generation X, the film cast a long shadow over my childhood, dictating my Halloween costumes, afterschool play, Happy Meal purchases, toy collections, and clothing; I had Princess Leia action figures, Star Wars drinking glasses, Star Wars t-shirts, and a Star Wars beach towel. One of the few tie-in products I didn’t own, however, was a comic book adaptation of the movie. I’d purchased The Star Wars Storybook at a Scholastic book fair in 1978, but never knew that Marvel Comics or manga publishers were peddling something similar.

That’s a pity, because Star Wars has a long and fascinating history in print. Marvel’s six-issue adaptation of A New Hope, for example, was cooked up by a Lucasfilm executive in an effort to drum up business for the film — in essence, it was a trailer for comic geeks, arriving on newsstands a month before the movie opened. Though Marvel executives had been reluctant to license Star Wars — according to former editor Jim Shooter the “Prevailing Wisdom” at Marvel was that “science fiction doesn’t sell”  — it proved one of the company’s best business decisions of the 1970s. “The first two issues of our six issue adaptation came out in advance of the movie,” Shooter observed:

Driven by the advance marketing for the movie, sales were very good. Then about the time the third issue shipped, the movie was released. Sales made the jump to hyperspace. Star Wars the movie stayed in theaters forever, it seemed. Not since the Beatles had I seen a cultural phenomenon of such power. The comics sold and sold and sold. We reprinted the adaptation in every possible format. They all sold and sold and sold.

By contemporary standards, Roy Thomas and Howard Chaykin’s version is skillful but a little stodgy, relying on voice-overs to introduce key characters and explain plot points, rather than allowing the art to shoulder the responsibility of telling the story. Nonetheless, as Star Wars fever crossed the Pacific, Weekly Shonen Magazine republished Thomas and Chaykin’s comic, touching off a Star Wars manga blitz in Japan.

Japan caught Star Wars fever again in 1997, when the Special Edition trilogy hit theaters across the globe. Kadokowa’s MediaWorks division churned out a new set of Star Wars manga, hiring Hisao Tamaki (A New Hope), Toshiki Kudo (The Empire Strikes Back), and Shin-Ichi Hiromoto (Return of the Jedi) to handle the adaptations. And while all three are good, faithfully reproducing the main beats from each film, Tamaki’s version of A New Hope is that rarest of tie-in products: it captures the look and feel of the movie without slavishly copying it, offering both a fresh perspective on a canonical text and a point of entry for someone wholly unfamiliar with Star Wars. 

Part of what makes Tamaki’s version so fascinating is how he compensates for the absence of a soundtrack — no mean feat, given how noisy the Star Wars universe is. While Tamaki uses plenty of hand-lettered sound effects, he never uses them as a crutch, instead finding nifty ways to help us imagine the sound of a landspeeder skimming the desert floor or a Stormtrooper firing his blaster. Tamaki’s most effective tactic is careful attention to the velocity and direction of moving objects; through deft placement of speedlines and artful manipulation of the panels’ shape and size, he conveys the same information that a well engineered roar, squeak, thud, or electronic rumble might.

Then there’s the film’s lush, Wagnerian score, the kind of movie music that had been fashionable in the era of Ben Hur and Lawrence of Arabia but was considered unhip in the gritty, naturalistic world of early 70s cinema. The opening fanfare and dense web of leitmotifs are unquestionably part of A New Hope‘s appeal, goosing fight scenes and capturing the melancholy of a young Luke Skywalker as he gazes at a Tatooine sunset. Absent those musical prompts, however, Tamaki is forced to think about how to elicit the same emotions in words and pictures. One of the most dramatically successful attempts to bridge sound and silence occurs in volume one of Tamaki’s adaptation, right after R2D2 and C3PO land on Tatooine:

In the film, John Williams accompanies C3PO’s trek with music cribbed from The Rite of Spring — a decent choice, as Stravinsky’s dour ostinati and octatonic harmonies imbue the harsh landscape with an otherworldly quality. Tamaki, however, distills this two-minute scene to an evocative two-page spread in which a wide-angle view of the Tatooine desert unfolds beneath the individual panels, reminding us just how small and vulnerable both droids are. These images track closely with Lucas’ own vision, but the implied silence of the first and final panels in this sequence more powerfully conveys C3PO’s isolation than any musical gesture could:

The absence of sound has another unexpected benefit: minus the actors’ desperate attempts to make George Lucas’ dialogue sound… well, like conversation, the script has more room to breathe. Tamaki plays the earnest stuff straight and ramps up the comedy whenever someone is surprised or indignant. Luke, in particular, benefits from such an approach, given his age and naivete; in Tamaki’s hands, he’s Monkey D. Luffy with a lightsaber, freaking out over chores, the Millennium Falcon’s shabby appearance, Obi-Wan Kenobi’s death, a kiss from Princess Leia… you get the idea. Tamaki’s elastic deformations of Luke’s face transform him from blandly handsome farm boy to Shonen Jump hero, equal parts brave and ridiculous:

One of the manga’s other great virtues is its ability to expand and contract time in ways that a purely temporal medium like film can’t. The ability to speed up and slow down the unfolding the plot isn’t unique to comics, of course; filmmakers can use slow motion imagery or cross-cutting to manipulate the viewer’s perception of time, but a good manga artist takes advantage of the fact the reader can, in fact, stop time by poring over an image or a scene for minutes, savoring small but telling details that would otherwise get lost in the cinematic flow. Writing for Animerica in 2004, Patrick Macias offered a thoughtful explanation of how this kind of creative expansion of time adds new layers of meaning to Tamaki’s story:

It is in Tamaki’s take on destruction of the planet Alderaan that he really shows off his stuff. A scene that took mere moments to depict on-screen is drawn out to fill half a dozen pages. He inserts images of the Alderaan populace looking up to the heavens, and you can almost hear those “millions of voices suddenly crying out in terror” with more dramatic impact in the manga than in the film.

Of course, none of this would matter if Tamaki lacked the precision to bring Lucas’ vision to life on page. Again and again, Tamaki delivers amazingly detailed drawings of space ships, aliens, and weapons that pulse with the same life as Katsuhiro Otomo’s AKIRA and Shirow Masamune’s Ghost in the Shell; if you’d never seen or heard of Star Wars, you might reasonably infer that Tamaki dreamt up this world on his own. Tamaki proves equally adept at staging deep space dogfights, too, conveying both the dizzying speed with which the ships are moving and the maze-like surface of the Death Star:

For readers coming to the manga from the films, the biggest stumbling block will be the character designs: did Tamaki get them right? The short answer is yes, if you can tolerate a little artistic license with hairdos and body types. Not surprisingly, R2D2 and C3PO look most like their big-screen counterparts — no pesky noses or mouths to draw — but the rest of the cast bear a passing-to-strong resemblance to the actors who portrayed them, though Obi-Wan Kenobi has gotten a beefy makeover as Chuck Norris. Tamaki does an even better job of bringing Darth Vader and his Stormtroopers to life on the page, adding an extra touch of menace in the way he draws their helmets; you can almost see the soldiers grimacing under their plastic armor from the way he draws their browlines.

If I’ve sold you on manga Star Wars, you’ll be happy to know it’s a relatively inexpensive way to relive the original trilogy. The digital versions — currently available through Amazon and ComiXology — retail for $1.99 per volume. There’s also a Phantom Menace manga for the morbidly curious; Kia Asamiya is the author, and he’s been given the truly thankless task of condensing that stinker into two volumes. At least it won’t be as interminable as the movie.

WORKS CONSULTED

Macias, Patrick. “Star Wars, The Manga.” Animerica, VIZ LLC, 7 Apr. 2004, http://ift.tt/2C9euK1. Accessed 27 Dec. 2017.

Rickard, Ron. “Retro Foreign: Japanese Weekly Shōnen Magazine #18 – 23 (1978).” Star Wars Comic Collector, 20 May 2016, http://ift.tt/2lpIFkQ. Accessed 27 Dec. 2017.

Shooter, Jim. “Roy Thomas Saved Marvel.” Jim Shooter, 5 July 2011, http://ift.tt/2C8vHDo. Accessed on 28 Dec. 2017.

Spellman, Ron. “A Long Time Ago: The Strange History of Marvel’s Original Star Wars Universe.” Comics Alliance, Townsquare Media, 28 Jan. 2016, http://ift.tt/1PI3KCV. Accessed 28 Dec. 2017.

Tamaki, Hisao. Star Wars: A New Hope, adapted from an original script by George Lucas, Marvel Comics, 1998. 4 vols.

By: Katherine Dacey

[nancygduarteus]

How Do You Regulate a Self-Improving Algorithm?

At a large technology conference in Toronto this fall, Anna Goldenberg, a star in the field of computer science and genetics, described how artificial intelligence is revolutionizing medicine. Algorithms based on the AI principle of machine learning now can outperform dermatologists at recognizing skin cancers in blemish photos. They can beat cardiologists in detecting arrhythmias in EKGs. In Goldenberg’s own lab, algorithms can be used to identify hitherto obscure subcategories of adult-onset brain cancer, estimate the survival rates of breast-cancer patients, and reduce unnecessary thyroid surgeries.

It was a stunning taste of what’s to come. According to McKinsey Global Institute, large tech companies poured as much as $30 billion into AI in 2016, with another $9 billion going into AI start-ups. Many people already are familiar with how machine learning—the process by which computers automatically refine an analytical model as new data comes in, teasing out new trends and linkages to optimize predictive power—allows Facebook to recognize the faces of friends and relatives, and Google to know where you want to eat lunch. These are useful features—but pale in comparison to the new ways in which machine learning will change health care in coming years.

The science is unstoppable, and so is the flow of funding. But at least one roadblock stands in the way: a big, bureaucratic Cold War–era regulatory apparatus that could prove to be fundamentally incompatible with the very nature of artificial intelligence.

* * *

Every professional subculture has its heroes. At the Food and Drug Administration, the greatest hero is Frances Oldham Kelsey, who in the 1960s stubbornly refused to license Kevadon, a sedative that alleviated symptoms of morning sickness in pregnant women. As mothers in other countries would learn, the drug—better known by its generic name, thalidomide—could cause horrible birth defects. Kelsey’s vigilance in the face of heavy corporate pressure helped inspire the rigorous evaluation model that the FDA now applies to everything from pharmaceuticals to hospital equipment to medical software.

At the very core of this model is the assumption that any product may be clinically tested, produced, marketed, and used in a defined, unchanging form. That’s why the blood-pressure machines many people use in pharmacies look a lot like the ones they used a decade ago. Deviation from an old FDA-approved model requires an entirely new approvals process, with all the attendant costs and delays.

But that build-and-freeze model isn’t the way AI software development typically works—especially when it comes to machine-learning processes. These systems are essentially meta-algorithms that spit out new operational products every time fresh data is added—producing, in effect, a potentially infinite number of newly minted “medical devices” every day. (A nonmedical example would be the speech-recognition programs that gradually teach themselves how to better understand a user’s voice.) This phenomenon is creating a culture gap between the small, nimble medical-software boutiques creating these technologies, and the legacy regulatory system that developed to serve large corporate manufacturers.

Consider, for instance, Cloud DX: This Canadian company uses AI technology to scrutinize the audio waveform of a human cough, which allows it to detect asthma, tuberculosis, pneumonia, and other lung diseases. In April, the California-based XPRIZE foundation named Cloud DX its “Bold Epic Innovator” in its Star Trek–inspired Qualcomm Tricorder competition, whereby participants were asked to create a single device that an untrained person could use to measure their vital signs. The company received a $100,000 prize and lots of great publicity—but doesn’t yet have FDA approval to market this product for clinical applications. And getting such approval may prove difficult.

Which helps explain why many health-software innovators are finding other, creative ways to get their ideas to market. “There’s a reason that tech companies like Google haven’t been going the FDA route [of clinical trials aimed at diagnostic certification],” says Robert Kaul, the founder and CEO of Cloud DX. “It can be a bureaucratic nightmare, and they aren’t used to working at this level of scrutiny and slowness.” He notes that just getting a basic ISO 13485 certification, which acts as a baseline for the FDA’s device standards, can cost two years and seven figures. “How many investors are going to give you that amount of money just so you can get to the starting line?”

“Twenty percent of my company’s head count is devoted exclusively to regulatory issues,” says Vic Gundotra, a former Google executive who now runs a medical company that detects heart issues early. “At Google, sometimes we’d decide on something, and we’d ship it six weeks later. So when I got here, and we had a breakthrough, I’d say, ‘How fast can we ship this out?’ And they’d say, ‘Two years.’ That digital creed of ‘Move fast and break things’ just doesn’t work.”

Kaul is hopeful, because he believes that the FDA contacts he’s garnered through the XPRIZE will help Cloud DX navigate the system. And like everyone I spoke to for this article, he recognizes that the FDA has a necessary role in protecting patients from false claims and dangerous products. He even sees an upside to the agency’s dilatory processes. “For those few companies who do make it through, they have an enormous competitive advantage,” he says. “We won’t have to worry about the usual scenario: Two guys from Stanford in a garage inventing some app that instantly takes away all our business. We only have to worry about the big players—who might just buy us out instead of competing with us.”

* * *

Complaints about the FDA’s lengthy processes are an old story. Five years before becoming Donald Trump’s FDA Commissioner, for instance, Scott Gottlieb slammed the agency for needless delays in the assessment of lifesaving drugs for children afflicted with Hunter syndrome. But the need for reform has become more acute, as software algorithms have become a more critical component of health systems.

WinterLight Labs, a Canadian start-up, is developing machine-learning software that can detect various forms of cognitive impairment, including early-stage Alzheimer’s disease, by analyzing snippets of a patient’s speech. The technology is currently being tested at assisted-care facilities. But Liam Kaufman, the company’s CEO, is unsure whether or when his technology will be ready for FDA approval—in part because it is still unclear whether such approval would require that he freeze his product in a defined state. His alternative plan is to market the product as a screening tool, which does not purport to diagnose the presence of a medical condition, but merely provides guidance about when users should consult a doctor.

The larger risk, many entrepreneurs in the field told me, is not that new AI-enabled health technologies will go completely untapped, but that they will be shunted into the far less regulated sphere of general “wellness,” where they will be marketed as lifestyle products. An example Kaul cites in this regard is the Muse brain-sensing headband, a technology that could be adapted to all sorts of important medical applications, but which currently is being marketed as a gadget to help “elevate your meditation experience.”

Bakul Patel, the new associate center director for digital health at the FDA, has recently launched a pilot program, “FDA Pre-Cert,” which could eventually allow agency officials to focus their inspections on “the software developer or digital-health technology developer, rather than primarily at the product,” according to an announcement. (The nine corporate participants selected for the initial program include Apple, Fitbit, and Samsung, as well as several much smaller companies.) Official public statements seem to imply that these pre-certified companies might one day be permitted to optimize their software products without seeking FDA approval upon every iteration—though Patel, who comes to his job with a strong background in business development and technology, is studiously noncommittal on this point.

“We are evolving that space,” he says. “The legacy model is the one we know works. But the model that works continuously—we don’t yet have something to validate that. So the question is [as much] scientific as regulatory: How do you reconcile real-time learning [with] people having the same level of trust and confidence they had yesterday?”

In the meantime, Patel is “hiring like crazy” in an effort to ramp up the FDA’s digital bench strength, according to Christina Farr, a CNBC reporter who covers medical regulation. But attracting the right people has proven difficult, because the field is so hot. As The New York Times reported this week, AI specialists with even minimal experience now are attracting compensation packages of more than $300,000 per year at large tech companies—far more than the FDA can afford to pay.

“Yes, it’s hard to recruit people in AI right now,” Patel acknowledges. “We have some understanding of these technologies. But we need more people. This is going to be a challenge.”

from Health News And Updates https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/10/algorithms-future-of-health-care/543825/?utm_source=feed

[hellofastestnewsfan]

At a large technology conference in Toronto this fall, Anna Goldenberg, a star in the field of computer science and genetics, described how artificial intelligence is revolutionizing medicine. Algorithms based on the AI principle of machine learning now can outperform dermatologists at recognizing skin cancers in blemish photos. They can beat cardiologists in detecting arrhythmias in EKGs. In Goldenberg’s own lab, algorithms can be used to identify hitherto obscure subcategories of adult-onset brain cancer, estimate the survival rates of breast-cancer patients, and reduce unnecessary thyroid surgeries.

It was a stunning taste of what’s to come. According to McKinsey Global Institute, large tech companies poured as much as $30 billion into AI in 2016, with another $9 billion going into AI start-ups. Many people already are familiar with how machine learning—the process by which computers automatically refine an analytical model as new data comes in, teasing out new trends and linkages to optimize predictive power—allows Facebook to recognize the faces of friends and relatives, and Google to know where you want to eat lunch. These are useful features—but pale in comparison to the new ways in which machine learning will change health care in coming years.

The science is unstoppable, and so is the flow of funding. But at least one roadblock stands in the way: a big, bureaucratic Cold War–era regulatory apparatus that could prove to be fundamentally incompatible with the very nature of artificial intelligence.

* * *

Every professional subculture has its heroes. At the Food and Drug Administration, the greatest hero is Frances Oldham Kelsey, who in the 1960s stubbornly refused to license Kevadon, a sedative that alleviated symptoms of morning sickness in pregnant women. As mothers in other countries would learn, the drug—better known by its generic name, thalidomide—could cause horrible birth defects. Kelsey’s vigilance in the face of heavy corporate pressure helped inspire the rigorous evaluation model that the FDA now applies to everything from pharmaceuticals to hospital equipment to medical software.

At the very core of this model is the assumption that any product may be clinically tested, produced, marketed, and used in a defined, unchanging form. That’s why the blood-pressure machines many people use in pharmacies look a lot like the ones they used a decade ago. Deviation from an old FDA-approved model requires an entirely new approvals process, with all the attendant costs and delays.

But that build-and-freeze model isn’t the way AI software development typically works—especially when it comes to machine-learning processes. These systems are essentially meta-algorithms that spit out new operational products every time fresh data is added—producing, in effect, a potentially infinite number of newly minted “medical devices” every day. (A nonmedical example would be the speech-recognition programs that gradually teach themselves how to better understand a user’s voice.) This phenomenon is creating a culture gap between the small, nimble medical-software boutiques creating these technologies, and the legacy regulatory system that developed to serve large corporate manufacturers.

Consider, for instance, Cloud DX: This Canadian company uses AI technology to scrutinize the audio waveform of a human cough, which allows it to detect asthma, tuberculosis, pneumonia, and other lung diseases. In April, the California-based XPRIZE foundation named Cloud DX its “Bold Epic Innovator” in its Star Trek–inspired Qualcomm Tricorder competition, whereby participants were asked to create a single device that an untrained person could use to measure their vital signs. The company received a $100,000 prize and lots of great publicity—but doesn’t yet have FDA approval to market this product for clinical applications. And getting such approval may prove difficult.

Which helps explain why many health-software innovators are finding other, creative ways to get their ideas to market. “There’s a reason that tech companies like Google haven’t been going the FDA route [of clinical trials aimed at diagnostic certification],” says Robert Kaul, the founder and CEO of Cloud DX. “It can be a bureaucratic nightmare, and they aren’t used to working at this level of scrutiny and slowness.” He notes that just getting a basic ISO 13485 certification, which acts as a baseline for the FDA’s device standards, can cost two years and seven figures. “How many investors are going to give you that amount of money just so you can get to the starting line?”

“Twenty percent of my company’s head count is devoted exclusively to regulatory issues,” says Vic Gundotra, a former Google executive who now runs a medical company that detects heart issues early. “At Google, sometimes we’d decide on something, and we’d ship it six weeks later. So when I got here, and we had a breakthrough, I’d say, ‘How fast can we ship this out?’ And they’d say, ‘Two years.’ That digital creed of ‘Move fast and break things’ just doesn’t work.”

Kaul is hopeful, because he believes that the FDA contacts he’s garnered through the XPRIZE will help Cloud DX navigate the system. And like everyone I spoke to for this article, he recognizes that the FDA has a necessary role in protecting patients from false claims and dangerous products. He even sees an upside to the agency’s dilatory processes. “For those few companies who do make it through, they have an enormous competitive advantage,” he says. “We won’t have to worry about the usual scenario: Two guys from Stanford in a garage inventing some app that instantly takes away all our business. We only have to worry about the big players—who might just buy us out instead of competing with us.”

* * *

Complaints about the FDA’s lengthy processes are an old story. Five years before becoming Donald Trump’s FDA Commissioner, for instance, Scott Gottlieb slammed the agency for needless delays in the assessment of lifesaving drugs for children afflicted with Hunter syndrome. But the need for reform has become more acute, as software algorithms have become a more critical component of health systems.

WinterLight Labs, a Canadian start-up, is developing machine-learning software that can detect various forms of cognitive impairment, including early-stage Alzheimer’s disease, by analyzing snippets of a patient’s speech. The technology is currently being tested at assisted-care facilities. But Liam Kaufman, the company’s CEO, is unsure whether or when his technology will be ready for FDA approval—in part because it is still unclear whether such approval would require that he freeze his product in a defined state. His alternative plan is to market the product as a screening tool, which does not purport to diagnose the presence of a medical condition, but merely provides guidance about when users should consult a doctor.

The larger risk, many entrepreneurs in the field told me, is not that new AI-enabled health technologies will go completely untapped, but that they will be shunted into the far less regulated sphere of general “wellness,” where they will be marketed as lifestyle products. An example Kaul cites in this regard is the Muse brain-sensing headband, a technology that could be adapted to all sorts of important medical applications, but which currently is being marketed as a gadget to help “elevate your meditation experience.”

Bakul Patel, the new associate center director for digital health at the FDA, has recently launched a pilot program, “FDA Pre-Cert,” which could eventually allow agency officials to focus their inspections on “the software developer or digital-health technology developer, rather than primarily at the product,” according to an announcement. (The nine corporate participants selected for the initial program include Apple, Fitbit, and Samsung, as well as several much smaller companies.) Official public statements seem to imply that these pre-certified companies might one day be permitted to optimize their software products without seeking FDA approval upon every iteration—though Patel, who comes to his job with a strong background in business development and technology, is studiously noncommittal on this point.

“We are evolving that space,” he says. “The legacy model is the one we know works. But the model that works continuously—we don’t yet have something to validate that. So the question is [as much] scientific as regulatory: How do you reconcile real-time learning [with] people having the same level of trust and confidence they had yesterday?”

In the meantime, Patel is “hiring like crazy” in an effort to ramp up the FDA’s digital bench strength, according to Christina Farr, a CNBC reporter who covers medical regulation. But attracting the right people has proven difficult, because the field is so hot. As The New York Times reported this week, AI specialists with even minimal experience now are attracting compensation packages of more than $300,000 per year at large tech companies—far more than the FDA can afford to pay.

“Yes, it’s hard to recruit people in AI right now,” Patel acknowledges. “We have some understanding of these technologies. But we need more people. This is going to be a challenge.”

from The Atlantic http://ift.tt/2xl0Sor

[ionecoffman]

How Do You Regulate a Self-Improving Algorithm?

At a large technology conference in Toronto this fall, Anna Goldenberg, a star in the field of computer science and genetics, described how artificial intelligence is revolutionizing medicine. Algorithms based on the AI principle of machine learning now can outperform dermatologists at recognizing skin cancers in blemish photos. They can beat cardiologists in detecting arrhythmias in EKGs. In Goldenberg’s own lab, algorithms can be used to identify hitherto obscure subcategories of adult-onset brain cancer, estimate the survival rates of breast-cancer patients, and reduce unnecessary thyroid surgeries.

It was a stunning taste of what’s to come. According to McKinsey Global Institute, large tech companies poured as much as $30 billion into AI in 2016, with another $9 billion going into AI start-ups. Many people already are familiar with how machine learning—the process by which computers automatically refine an analytical model as new data comes in, teasing out new trends and linkages to optimize predictive power—allows Facebook to recognize the faces of friends and relatives, and Google to know where you want to eat lunch. These are useful features—but pale in comparison to the new ways in which machine learning will change health care in coming years.

The science is unstoppable, and so is the flow of funding. But at least one roadblock stands in the way: a big, bureaucratic Cold War–era regulatory apparatus that could prove to be fundamentally incompatible with the very nature of artificial intelligence.

* * *

Every professional subculture has its heroes. At the Food and Drug Administration, the greatest hero is Frances Oldham Kelsey, who in the 1960s stubbornly refused to license Kevadon, a sedative that alleviated symptoms of morning sickness in pregnant women. As mothers in other countries would learn, the drug—better known by its generic name, thalidomide—could cause horrible birth defects. Kelsey’s vigilance in the face of heavy corporate pressure helped inspire the rigorous evaluation model that the FDA now applies to everything from pharmaceuticals to hospital equipment to medical software.

At the very core of this model is the assumption that any product may be clinically tested, produced, marketed, and used in a defined, unchanging form. That’s why the blood-pressure machines many people use in pharmacies look a lot like the ones they used a decade ago. Deviation from an old FDA-approved model requires an entirely new approvals process, with all the attendant costs and delays.

But that build-and-freeze model isn’t the way AI software development typically works—especially when it comes to machine-learning processes. These systems are essentially meta-algorithms that spit out new operational products every time fresh data is added—producing, in effect, a potentially infinite number of newly minted “medical devices” every day. (A nonmedical example would be the speech-recognition programs that gradually teach themselves how to better understand a user’s voice.) This phenomenon is creating a culture gap between the small, nimble medical-software boutiques creating these technologies, and the legacy regulatory system that developed to serve large corporate manufacturers.

Consider, for instance, Cloud DX: This Canadian company uses AI technology to scrutinize the audio waveform of a human cough, which allows it to detect asthma, tuberculosis, pneumonia, and other lung diseases. In April, the California-based XPRIZE foundation named Cloud DX its “Bold Epic Innovator” in its Star Trek–inspired Qualcomm Tricorder competition, whereby participants were asked to create a single device that an untrained person could use to measure their vital signs. The company received a $100,000 prize and lots of great publicity—but doesn’t yet have FDA approval to market this product for clinical applications. And getting such approval may prove difficult.

Which helps explain why many health-software innovators are finding other, creative ways to get their ideas to market. “There’s a reason that tech companies like Google haven’t been going the FDA route [of clinical trials aimed at diagnostic certification],” says Robert Kaul, the founder and CEO of Cloud DX. “It can be a bureaucratic nightmare, and they aren’t used to working at this level of scrutiny and slowness.” He notes that just getting a basic ISO 13485 certification, which acts as a baseline for the FDA’s device standards, can cost two years and seven figures. “How many investors are going to give you that amount of money just so you can get to the starting line?”

“Twenty percent of my company’s head count is devoted exclusively to regulatory issues,” says Vic Gundotra, a former Google executive who now runs a medical company that detects heart issues early. “At Google, sometimes we’d decide on something, and we’d ship it six weeks later. So when I got here, and we had a breakthrough, I’d say, ‘How fast can we ship this out?’ And they’d say, ‘Two years.’ That digital creed of ‘Move fast and break things’ just doesn’t work.”

Kaul is hopeful, because he believes that the FDA contacts he’s garnered through the XPRIZE will help Cloud DX navigate the system. And like everyone I spoke to for this article, he recognizes that the FDA has a necessary role in protecting patients from false claims and dangerous products. He even sees an upside to the agency’s dilatory processes. “For those few companies who do make it through, they have an enormous competitive advantage,” he says. “We won’t have to worry about the usual scenario: Two guys from Stanford in a garage inventing some app that instantly takes away all our business. We only have to worry about the big players—who might just buy us out instead of competing with us.”

* * *

Complaints about the FDA’s lengthy processes are an old story. Five years before becoming Donald Trump’s FDA Commissioner, for instance, Scott Gottlieb slammed the agency for needless delays in the assessment of lifesaving drugs for children afflicted with Hunter syndrome. But the need for reform has become more acute, as software algorithms have become a more critical component of health systems.

WinterLight Labs, a Canadian start-up, is developing machine-learning software that can detect various forms of cognitive impairment, including early-stage Alzheimer’s disease, by analyzing snippets of a patient’s speech. The technology is currently being tested at assisted-care facilities. But Liam Kaufman, the company’s CEO, is unsure whether or when his technology will be ready for FDA approval—in part because it is still unclear whether such approval would require that he freeze his product in a defined state. His alternative plan is to market the product as a screening tool, which does not purport to diagnose the presence of a medical condition, but merely provides guidance about when users should consult a doctor.

The larger risk, many entrepreneurs in the field told me, is not that new AI-enabled health technologies will go completely untapped, but that they will be shunted into the far less regulated sphere of general “wellness,” where they will be marketed as lifestyle products. An example Kaul cites in this regard is the Muse brain-sensing headband, a technology that could be adapted to all sorts of important medical applications, but which currently is being marketed as a gadget to help “elevate your meditation experience.”

Bakul Patel, the new associate center director for digital health at the FDA, has recently launched a pilot program, “FDA Pre-Cert,” which could eventually allow agency officials to focus their inspections on “the software developer or digital-health technology developer, rather than primarily at the product,” according to an announcement. (The nine corporate participants selected for the initial program include Apple, Fitbit, and Samsung, as well as several much smaller companies.) Official public statements seem to imply that these pre-certified companies might one day be permitted to optimize their software products without seeking FDA approval upon every iteration—though Patel, who comes to his job with a strong background in business development and technology, is studiously noncommittal on this point.

“We are evolving that space,” he says. “The legacy model is the one we know works. But the model that works continuously—we don’t yet have something to validate that. So the question is [as much] scientific as regulatory: How do you reconcile real-time learning [with] people having the same level of trust and confidence they had yesterday?”

In the meantime, Patel is “hiring like crazy” in an effort to ramp up the FDA’s digital bench strength, according to Christina Farr, a CNBC reporter who covers medical regulation. But attracting the right people has proven difficult, because the field is so hot. As The New York Times reported this week, AI specialists with even minimal experience now are attracting compensation packages of more than $300,000 per year at large tech companies—far more than the FDA can afford to pay.

“Yes, it’s hard to recruit people in AI right now,” Patel acknowledges. “We have some understanding of these technologies. But we need more people. This is going to be a challenge.”

Article source here:The Atlantic

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These Two One-Off SoCal Customs Are Set to Invade Pebble Beach

Picture the 18th fairway at Pebble Beach in mid-August, and you don’t think of golfers trying to keep their Titleists out of Monterey Bay’s picturesque, kelp-strewn waters. Instead, your mind is likely on rows and rows of precious metal: race-winning Ferraris from the 1950s; pre-war, custom-bodied Packards, Talbot Lagos, and Bugattis; and maybe a smattering of unrestored preservation cars, wearing their factory-original checked lacquer paint and pitted brightwork like a badge of honor. But this year, there’s a twist.

Two automotive one-offs known as the XR-6 “Tex” Smith Roadster and The Reactor are crashing the highfalutin Pebble party. They’re part of the larger American Dream Cars of the 1960s special class, open to vehicles designed and built in America in the ’60s, thanks to dreams of individuals as opposed to corporate think tanks. The class has been curated carefully by well-known automotive journalist and historian Ken Gross, whose words have graced the pages of many magazines, including Automobile’s, over the past several decades.

Red-Hot Roller: Few would call the XR-6 a conventionally pretty car, but the asymmetrical styling was radical for its day.

“It’s a mistake to typecast Pebble Beach as a place that all you’re going to see is Delehayes and Duesenbergs,” says Gross, who has been a Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance judge for 28 years and serves on its selection committee. “We really do stretch the envelope on interesting cars.”

“It’s as nontraditional a hot rod as you can possibly find. It is very much a product of its time.”

“Interesting” is one way of putting it. The XR-6 Roadster looks like a full-scale car from a vintage amusement park kiddie ride, and The Reactor seems every bit the Hollywood star car it would eventually become. More than that, they represent the vision of their creators, former Hot Rod editor LeRoi “Tex” Smith and legendary car customizer Gene Winfield. Each car was born in the misty haze of imagination, transformed into real metal and rubber and Plexiglas, belching sooty exhaust as they go.

“These were individuals who had an idea that they wanted to bring to fruition, and we’re celebrating that,” Gross says. “We’re celebrating automotive ingenuity and innovation in that era. Even though all these designers dreamed the same dream, these people were all substantially different from each other.”

Unhappy with the amount of heavy lead filler Barris’ shop used in the XR-6’s nose section, Smith had Gene Winfield re-skin the front end in aluminum.

Take the late LeRoi “Tex” Smith, for example. Born in Oklahoma in 1934 but raised for a time in Texas, Smith was an Air Force fighter pilot before settling into California’s burgeoning hot-rod scene and taking a job as associate editor of Hot Rod magazine in 1957. It was there where Smith, by 1961, began mulling the hot rod’s relevance in an era of ever-increasing performance from new, showroom stock cars. The XR-6 was born from this line of thinking, with the name meaning X-perimental Roadster 6-cylinders.

“The XR-6 became the cover car for Hot Rod magazine,” Gross recalls. “Tex was trying to say, ‘This is the hot rod of the future.’”

The project started in Smith’s home garage, where he welded up a steel ladder frame and dug out an engine—a hopped-up, aluminum-block Chrysler slant-six that came from a warmed-over Dodge press tester. The slant-six was unusual for its six cylinders canted at a 30-degree angle to achieve a lower profile (allowing a lower hoodline) and improve efficiency of exhaust flow. Its unique design also became part and parcel of the XR-6’s asymmetric hoodline—taller on one side than the other. Volkswagen torsion-bar suspension and Triumph disc brakes were fitted up front, while coilover shocks—a rarity at the time and inspired by Indy-car design, custom-made for the project by Monroe—were fitted to the rear, along with trailing links and a Panhard bar.

The interior is simple but looks comfortable enough, a tribute to the car’s usability. Its design echoes contemporary styling cues.

Styling duties went to Steve Swaja, then a student at nearby ArtCenter College of Design, who sketched out a body with a front similar to an open-wheel race car and a rear that was a composite of a 1923 and ’27 Ford Model T body. A timely infusion of cash from scale-model builder AMT—the company wanted this new hot rod to be the basis for a model kit—took the styling to an even wilder level.

“Certain things, like having a six-cylinder engine, isn’t exactly a hot-rod-type thing,” Gross says. “But the car itself was a period piece and in its time represented a big step away from ’32 Fords and so forth. It made a big splash in its day.”

Smith wanted to have the body made of aluminum and found a builder, but AMT had a contract with ace customizer George Barris and mandated the work be done at his shop. The XR-6 was slated to debut at the 1963 Grand National Roadster Show in Oakland, California, but when Smith informed the organizers it might not be ready in time, he was told it had to be ready: The XR-6 had already won the show’s America’s Most Beautiful Roadster (AMBR) award.

The XR-6 was not only a show car but also a model kit. AMT helped fund the project in exchange for the rights to sell XR-6 toy car models.

The car was displayed in Oakland that year. Also at the show, Smith ran into California-based customizer Gene Winfield whom he would hire to remake the XR-6’s aluminum fenders, hood, and nose. Barris’ crew had struggled with the job and used plenty of heavy lead filler. The completed XR-6 graced the cover of Hot Rod’s August 1963 issue.

The XR-6 is now a proud part of the Petersen Automotive Museum’s collection in Los Angeles, after its purchase in 2006 by the late Robert Petersen, founder of both the museum and Hot Rod magazine. Leslie Kendall, the Petersen Museum’s chief curator, explains the XR-6’s place in automotive history.

“I think [Smith] was trying to show that a hot rod could be civilized and styled right for modern times,” Kendall says. “It’s as nontraditional a hot rod as you can possibly find. It doesn’t resemble any other vehicle and is very much a product of its time.”

The Reactor

By the time the XR-6 made its name, Gene Winfield was already big time. He was a well-known car customizer based out of Modesto, California, and he had applied his aluminum-working knowledge gained from the XR-6 project to the Strip Star. When Joe Kizis, organizer of the Hartford Autorama in Connecticut, called Winfield in 1965 about building him a car for the show and paying him $20,000 to do so, Winfield knew aluminum would be a suitable lightweight material to skin his newest creation.

“It’s got a turbocharged Corvair engine, front-wheel drive, on a 1962 Citroën ID 19 chassis,” says Winfield, who at 89 is still sharp as a tack and still hard at work, though his shop many years ago moved from his mother’s backyard in Modesto to the Mojave Desert. The flat-six engine had the same peculiar counterclockwise rotation as the original Citroën mill, but it was able to sit lower in the chassis to fit under the car’s sleek bodywork and made significantly more power.

The Reactor’s original design was a collaboration between Winfield and Ben Delphia, an ArtCenter College of Design graduate who was working in Chrysler’s design department.

The Reactor’s interior is as space age as it got in the mid-1960s, but the seats are office furniture. Pistol-grip steering wheel handles swivel when the wheel is turned.

“When I was a young man and got enthusiastic about cars, I lived in Patterson, which is a city close to Modesto,” Delphia recalls. “I got a ’36 Ford two-door sedan, and I wanted Gene to customize it for me, which is what got me hooked on automotive design. I’d sketch the changes I wanted Gene to make to my car.”

Years later, after Delphia had finished school and joined Chrysler, Winfield knew he had just the person to design his latest show car.

“He was looking for something that had all of the things that … were exciting in the custom-car world at the time.”

“Ben sent me sketches,” Winfield says, “and I sent him sketches back and forth several times until I found what I liked.” Delphia says Winfield was looking for “a car that had all of the things that were going on and were exciting in the custom-car world at the time. Drag racing and custom cars … all kinds of stuff that was intermingled together. We were trying to get it to have a superior power look. A nuclear reactor was the thought that went into the car’s name.”

The result was a hot rod for the space age. The car was low and sleek, with a long, angular front end and a striking concave curve at the rear. The doors, retractable headlights, and Plexiglas windshield and roof were operated with a switch. The Citroën’s original pneumatic suspension was left intact so The Reactor (or more accurately, the Autorama Special, as then-owner Kizis named it) could be raised and lowered dramatically.

The car was a hit at the Hartford Autorama, but Kizis sold it back to Winfield not long after, and it was officially renamed The Reactor. After a little maintenance, Winfield made the Hollywood rounds with the car, where it would be featured prominently in episodes of several television shows, including “Bewitched” as the Super Car, “Star Trek,” where it was known as the Jupiter 8, and even “Batman,” where it grew ears and a tail to become the Catmobile.

“Eartha Kitt (Catwoman) was so short, I had to extend the pedals 12 inches so she could drive it,” Winfield says. “I just found out last year that she did not know how to drive a stick, so she went out and rented a Volkswagen and practiced until 2 in the morning for the next day’s shoot.”

The Reactor’s doors and Plexiglas canopy raise and lower via a switch, but that doesn’t seem to make the car any easier to get in and out of. For TV’s “Batman,” The Reactor grew ears and a tail to become the Catmobile for Eartha Kitt as Catwoman.

We catch Winfield in the single day off he has between returning from a trip to Spain and boarding a flight to Australia, where he’ll chop and channel a few cars for local customers. At his own shop, there’s a right-hand-drive ’54 Chevy just in from Australia for some paint work and an old Buick from Japan that’s waiting to be chopped. Winfield has customized plenty of cars in his lifetime, but is The Reactor the one that defines his career?

“Well, partly … partly,” Winfield says. “I like to say I make a statement with each and every custom car. The Reactor, of course, was a big statement.”

After a succession of different owners, Winfield once again has The Reactor in his possession, and he’s not letting it go anytime soon. “No, no … I’m not going to sell it again,” he remarks, then laughs. “Unless someone pays me a million dollars for it.”

Kindred Spirits

Today, The XR-6 and The Reactor are recognized not only for their advancement in automotive concepts and design but also for being shockingly well-built in an era where show cars were just that—built to show, not to drive. Although both are now undergoing some sympathetic mechanical refurbishment prior to the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, show rules state each vehicle must drive onto that famed 18th fairway under its own power. Winfield will be there, likely placing The Reactor on the grass himself. And somehow we suspect that LeRoi “Tex” Smith, who died in 2015, will be there in his own way, if only to witness the reaction of the blue blazer crowd.

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It’s a striking level of commitment for a program that only debuted two years ago and has aired a total of 25 episodes.

A fan encounter at the first EarperCon UK in London in 2017 brought up none of those things. Rather than discuss an obscure plot point, a young woman wanted to share how the show, which has a number of LGBT characters, had helped her come out to her father, who brought her to the convention.

“It was awesome and overwhelming,” Rozon said. “I was thinking, this is about way more than my character running from a tentacle.”

The relationships among the cast and showrunner and “Wynonna Earp” fans — known as “Earpers” — are so intense, the next year will bring conventions devoted solely to the show in Toronto, Minneapolis, New Orleans and London (again).

It’s a striking level of commitment for a program that only debuted two years ago and has aired a total of 25 episodes. But it’s a bond that has helped the Syfy series, which returns July 20 for its third season, not just survive but thrive within the ever-changing pressure cooker of peak TV.

With its modest Nielsen ratings, which average less than 900,000 viewers a week, “Wynonna Earp” may not have made it past its first season. But as social media and a growing array of viewing platforms give networks more ways to gauge the value of niche audiences — and executives become more creative about monetizing them — “Wynonna Earp” demonstrates how a distinctive premise, a passionate fan base and a creative team that respects and nurtures that enthusiasm can help an under-the-radar program flourish in a TV landscape that is tough even on acclaimed shows.

Case in point: The space opera “The Expanse” was canceled by Syfy after three seasons, though it debuted with stronger ratings and more media coverage than “Wynonna Earp.” But the network had only one notable revenue stream for “The Expanse”: The money from advertisements within linear airings of the drama, which wasn’t enough to offset its cost. So the network grounded the series (which was then picked up by Amazon).

By contrast, Syfy’s deal with IDW Entertainment, the studio behind “Wynonna” — struck a couple of years after it signed contracts for “The Expanse” — gives the network more ways to make money. Commercials in on-air broadcasts, ads within online and app views and a Netflix streaming deal all bring Syfy revenue. It also helps that “Wynonna Earp” costs less than “The Expanse.”

But “Wynonna Earp,” the tale of a woman and her allies battling monsters, has a value for Syfy beyond balance sheets, according to Chris McCumber, president of Syfy. Viewership among women aged 18-34 was up 44 percent in the show’s second year, and more than half the audience is women — the highest ratio within the otherwise male-skewing Syfy viewership.

“That sense of perseverance and fighting against all odds is relevant right now,” he said.

According to the lore of the show, Wynonna (Melanie Scrofano) is a descendant of Wyatt Earp, who got the clan put under a curse. As the Earp heir, Wynonna is fated to protect the hamlet of Purgatory — and the world — from the demons that bedevil the town. She has the special ability to wield Peacemaker, Wyatt’s gun, which she uses to send Purgatory’s “Revenants” back to hell, usually with a quip — and whiskey — at the ready.

It’s not for every taste — nor was it meant to be.

“It’s such a relief to not have to make TV for everyone,” said Emily Andras, the executive producer and showrunner, who described the comedy-infused, character-driven drama as a combination of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Justified” and “Frozen.” (Wynonna and her younger sister, Waverly, have a tight bond.) “In a world of 500 [scripted] shows, if nothing else, you have to say, ‘Well, I haven’t seen that before.'”

The show has “exceeded expectations” on the social-media front, McCumber said. In 2017, "Wynonna Earp” had an average 224,000 day-of-air Twitter engagements — seven times the next highest Syfy series. Overall, Twitter activity was up 874 percent in Season 2, according to the firm ListenFirst. “I’m a real believer in social media and people using word-of-mouth — that matters more than ever,” McCumber said.

A year ago, Syfy made the slogan “It’s a Fan Thing” key to its marketing campaigns, thus “Wynonna Earp” and its energetic supporters “fit in perfectly with where we were going with the rebrand,” McCumber said.

The core elements of the premise — rogue tentacles, prickly villains, a found family and swoon-worthy romances — are familiar to aficionados of genre entertainment. But the twist it put on those basics helped “Wynonna Earp” stand out and win fans.

Andras’ feminist outlook is much in evidence. This past season, Wynonna was pregnant (as was Scrofano), but she didn’t let that slow her down. Both Doc and the former federal agent Xavier Dolls (Shamier Anderson) are attracted to Wynonna, but the romantic possibilities are just a part of the story, not the main point.

“She’s a female protagonist who is likable, but I think she’s likable because of the freedom we had — she didn’t have to live up to this weird archetype of the ‘strong female character,’ whatever that means,” Scrofano said.

From the start, Andras and the cast have had unusually tight bonds with the show’s enthusiastic, inclusive fan community. The well-known genre entertainment site Den of Geek noted recently, “[In] an era in which internet discourse can bring to light some of the most hateful and divisive values in the world, ‘Wynonna Earp’ fandom is a pretty wonderful, safe place to be.”

“It’s like you’re moving into a new neighborhood and everyone’s there with cookies. It’s an openhearted fandom,” said David Ozer, the president of IDW Entertainment.

Among the most influential fans are Kevin Bachelder and Bonnie Ferrar, who co-host Tales of the Black Badge, a podcast devoted to the show, and weekly video hangouts that sometimes include Andras and cast members. (Ferrar also runs the Twitter account @WynonnaFans.)

They and other fandom leaders, like Bridget Liszewski, the editor of the site The TV Junkies, actively promote and encourage a friendly, tolerant Earper culture that emphasizes consideration and community-building over factional flame wars or personal attacks. Respectful differences are accommodated; toxic meltdowns, like the ones glimpsed in certain sectors of the “Star Wars” fandom, are not. They don’t even record the video hangouts, a decision that aims to make guests, famous and not, “feel comfortable popping in to have fun,” Bachelder said. “It’s not going to live forever on the internet — everybody can just be themselves.”

Awareness, at least in geeky circles, was relatively high from the start, in part thanks to a vocal cadre of fans of a prior show Andras worked on, Syfy’s “Lost Girl.” Within six weeks of the show’s debut in April 2016, #WynonnaEarp began trending on Twitter for the first time. But soon there was a potential snag. In the first half of that year, a large number of LGBT women — who aren’t easy to find on TV in the first place — were killed off on an array of shows. The resulting furor left many gay TV fans angry and wary.

At that point, the most high-profile “Wynonna Earp” couple was Waverly (Dominique Provost-Chalkley) and Purgatory cop Nicole Haught (Katherine Barrell) — a pairing known as “WayHaught.”

“I remember someone tweeting to me ‘I’m scared to fall in love with WayHaught,’ and it broke my heart,” Ferrar said.

Aware of the worry, Andras made a bold and unusual move, in this era of spoiler-phobic showrunners. She told Liszewski and others in the media that Waverly and Nicole would survive the first season, and those TV writers spread the news weeks before the season finale.

“The feeling was, ‘We can enjoy the rest of this ride,'” Liszewski said.

“Wynonna Earp’s” profile only grew once LGBT fans came on board in a big way. Twitter trending happened regularly during Season 2 and WayHaught fan art, fan fiction and T-shirts proliferated.

“Fans love the exploration of LGBT romance on television. Contrary to the media’s obsession with toxic male fandom, female fandom right now is pushing hard for more diverse and inclusive representation,” said Henry Jenkins, a professor at the University of Southern California and a leading scholar of fan communities. “These changes can’t happen fast enough, and this show is out front on those issues.”

Being out front on the business side, in creative arenas and in the realms of inclusion and representation has led to a “bright future,” according to McCumber. And to a packed travel schedule for Andras and the cast, many of whom will be trekking to multiple conventions during the next year.

“I wouldn’t trade the cult success of this show for billions of dollars,” Andras said, and then paused. “Maybe one more dollar.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Maureen Ryan © 2018 The New York Times

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