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rpgsandbox · 3 years ago

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Part homage, all farce, the AWFULLY CHEERFUL ENGINE! is an irreverent, affectionate parody of pop-culture tropes and a love-letter to 80s roleplaying games in a new, modern comic-book sized format! It’s a wacky roleplaying game of action comedy!

Hardcover collector's omnibus, softcover rules and adventures, blank ID cards, monster cards, hero role cards, VTT tokens

Are you a fan of the Ghostbusters RPG from the 1980s? Danger Mouse or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Bill & Ted or Rick & Morty? Back to the Future, Indiana Jones, Dracula, or sci-fi adventures on the final frontier? Do you enjoy chortling at TV tropes or chuckling at pop-culture parodies? Then the Awfully Cheerful Engine! is here for you!

ACE! is brought to you by Russ 'Morrus' Morrissey (EN World, WOIN, Judge Dredd & The Worlds of 2000 AD), Dave Chapman (Doctor Who, Star Trek Adventures), and Marc Langworthy (Hellboy, Judge Dredd & The Worlds of 2000 AD). With a foreword by Sandy Petersen, co-author of the Ghostbusters RPG!

ACE! is designed for everybody! From talking animals to pulp heroes to eldritch horrors, kids and adults alike will find adventures to love with the Awfully Cheerful Engine!

This tabletop roleplaying game, which we’re calling ACE! with an exclamation point, is one of fast, cinematic, action comedy. To play you need a handful of six-sided dice, a pen, and some paper. Each player plays one Hero, except for one player who takes the role of the Director.

Think of ACE! as an irreverent, fun-packed movie. You might play as ghost hunters in New York City, a band of plucky galactic guardians, vampire slayers, or soldiers of fortune in the Los Angeles underground. Heck, you might even be cartoon animals. Good grief!

This is a multi-dimensional, time-hopping, genre-mashing, pan-galactic portal into any type of adventure you can imagine! Want to play in a fantasy world full of elves and orcs? Crew a starship as it explores the galaxy? Hunt vampires in Victorian London? Play as animal detectives, robot cowboys, wizards, ninjas, or time traveling bounty hunters?

The only limit is your imagination, and the requirement that you have fun.

This Kickstarter is for the full five-book set.

What? Five books, you say? Fear not -- they're pretty small books! They include the core rules, and four hilarious genre-hopping adventures. Each book is about 30 pages long. Except for one which is longer, but we wrote 'BUMPER SIZE ISSUE' on the front of that, so it's OK. If you’ve ever held a comic-book in your hand, the Awfully Cheerful Engine! will feel very familiar!

The core rulebook is just 30 pages in a bright, colorful comic-book sized format. We even gave it an issue number, like a comic-book! After that, each 'issue' is a standalone adventure, designed for one-shots or short campaigns with new characters each time. One week you might be fighting ghosts on the streets of Manhattan, and the next you might be exploring the frontiers of space in your trusty starship!

You don't have to play them all, or in order. The standalone format means you can fit them in whenever and however you feel like it. GM can't make your regular game? Go bust some ghosts instead! Pickup game at a convention? Investigate the strange goings-on in a small American town in the 1980s. Running a livestream? Board a starship and fight the Kulkan Empire! Play one of them, some of them, or all of them! It's up to you!

Are they comics? Or are they RPGs? (They're RPGs)

ACE #1: Introducing the Awfully Cheerful Engine! With a foreword by Ghostbusters RPG author Sandy Petersen, this book tells you the rules, how to create your Heroes, and gives you a bunch of Extras (NPCs & monsters) to use. By Russ Morrissey.

ACE #2: Spirits of Manhattan. Strap on your Anti-Plasm Particle Thrower, grab your Electromagnetic Field Detector, and jump into your Ghostmobile. New York City needs your help! By Dave Chapman and Russ Morrissey.

ACE #3: Montana Drones & The Raiders of the Cutty Sark. At the request of Army Intelligence, Montana Drones and her team travel the globe in search of lost or hidden artefacts, often exploring dangerous sites and racing against hostile enemy agents to keep the objects of their quests from falling into the wrong hands. Striking locations, exciting chases, dangerous enemies and monotonous classroom lectures await! By Marc Langworthy.

ACE #4: Strange Science. Welcome to Wilden Falls, your average American town in the heart of the country. Surrounded by trees, nature, and there’s a wonderful waterfall that brings the tourists. It’s a quaint little town. Until weird things start happening at the local research facility, people go missing, and there’s a sudden influx of fitness nuts in the town. That’s before we get to the time travel, bodysnatching, and portals to other dimensions. Maybe ‘strange’ isn’t strong enough a word for it! By Dave Chapman.

ACE #5: Beam Me Up! These are the voyages of the starship FSS Brazen. Its continuing mission: to recklessly go where plenty of people have probably been before… and hope a major interstellar incident isn’t sparked in the process. In this highly illogical adventure for the ACE! roleplaying game, you’ll explore frontiers you never thought you had. By Marc Langworthy.

We give you four adventures to start with, and we have plans for more, but there's also a free compatibility license so anybody can write and publish material powered by the Awfully Cheerful Engine!

Hardy Hobbit. Teenage Samurai. Cheerful Stuntman. Clumsy Vampire. Squeamish Ghost. Who knew you could say so much in just two words? The possibilities are endless.

It’s not just Awfully Cheerful! It’s fast and fun, too!

You won’t get bogged down in endless rules and character sheets that look like tax forms. Your ACE! ID Card contains everything you need to know, and it’s only about the size of a credit card! But don’t try to spend it. It’s not a real credit card. Honestly, we tried, and it didn't end well.

You can download blank ID cards from our website. Don’t worry, there’s a printer-friendly black-and-white version too!

Making your Hero takes about five minutes. And that includes a coffee break.

You can choose from an array of talking animals, alien and fantasy species, and occupations from a bunch of genres. Play a cat, a crow, or a turtle. An alien, an elf, a robot, or a vampire. A knight, a pirate, or a wizard. An astronaut, a burglar, a reporter, or a spy. The core book has dozens of Roles to get you started with, and each adventure book introduces more!

Even better, you can already use our online character builder and make a character in about 30 seconds! It's so quick! Give it a try! And if you felt like sharing your Hero on Twitter with the hashtag #awfullycheerful and a link to this page, well, we'd be most awfully grateful!

Build your Hero online!

Alternatively, each adventure comes with its own selection of pre-generated characters. If you don't want to make your own characters, you can simply use those - perfect for one-shots or new players!

Download the pre-gens for all four adventures from the official website!

In A.C.E! each Hero (that's you!) has a Role. Your Role gives you a special ability only you can use. Here's a quick look at some of the Roles you can play!

Talking animals like Ape, Cat, Crow, Dog, Kangaroo, and Turtle.

Species like Alien, Dwarf, Elf, Ghost, Goblin, Golem, Hobbit, Monster, Ogre, Robot, Vampire, and Werewolf.

Fantasy roles like Alchemist, Assassin, Barbarian, Cleric, Druid, Knight, Ninja, Outlaw, Pirate, Ranger, Samurai, Slayer, and Wizard.

Occupations like Actor, Archeologist, Astronaut, Athlete, Bounty Hunter, Boxer, Burglar, Chef, Con Artist, Cowboy, Detective, Doctor, Engineer, Gambler, Gangster, Hacker, Hermit, Inventor, Musician, Pilot, Priest, Professor, Reporter, Scientist, Smuggler, Soldier, Spy, Student, and Stuntman.

Even a couple of superheroes like Speedster and Vigilante!

Yep, you can play a Ghost. You don’t take damage unless its from a holy source or some special sci-fi ecto-gadget. But you also can’t pick things up. So there’s that.

Each of the adventures adds some more Roles (or recommends some old ones)!

Spirits of Manhattan adds Ghost, Demonologist, Doctor, Engineer, Exorcist, Inventor, Priest, Professor, Scientist, and Student.

Raiders of the Cutty Sark adds Botanist, Double-Agent, Socialite, and Witch.

Strange Science adds Brain, Cheerleader, Outsider, Protector, Radio Presenter, and Tycoon.

Beam Me Up adds Captain, Chief Engineer, Comms, Hologram, Gunner, Counsellor, and Pilot.

ACE! is a pretty fast, light game. If you played 1986's Ghostbusters RPG, you'll see the influence immediately.

Stats! The AWFULLY CHEERFUL ENGINE! is a d6 dice pool system*. You have four Stats -- Smarts, Moves, Style, and Brawn. If you have a Moves score of 3, you roll three six-sided dice when you try to jump a motorcycle over a ravine. If you roll high enough, you succeed. It's pretty simple!

Focuses! For each Stat you also have a Focus. For Smarts it might be a science, or chess, or history. For Style it might be bluffing, singing, or fashion, and for Brawn it might be brawling or swimming. You can choose from plenty of focuses. Foci. Focuses. Whatever. Anyway, if the thing you're trying to do relates to a Focus, you get to roll an extra two dice.

Trait! You choose a trait, like Angry or Cheerful or Rebellious or Despondent. This, combined with your Role, makes you a Gullible Vampire, a Brave Turtle, or a Squeamish Scientist.

Karma! Finally, you have a bunch of Karma points. These can be spent for extra dice or to absorb damage from attacks, and they're recovered by using your trait.

*Fun fact -- did you know that 1986's Ghostbusters RPG, by Sandy Petersen, Lynn Willis and Greg Stafford, was the first ever dice pool RPG? Also Sandy Petersen has written an awesome foreword for the AWFULLY CHEERFUL ENGINE!

What, I hear you ask, is a CALAMITY DIE?

The Calamity Die is how you find out that your friends really aren't your friends. You see, when you make a roll, one of those dice is a different color, and is called the Calamity Die. And if your roll fails, and also the Calamity Die rolls a 1, your so-called 'friends' decide what happens to you. It won't kill you or anything, but...

Well, we'll leave that thought with you.

Nooooo! And it was all going so well!

Kickstarter campaign ends: Fri, June 18 2021 10:00 PM BST

Website: [Awfully Cheerful Engine] [EN Publishing] [facebook] [twitter]

#RPG #kickstarter #Awfully Cheerful Engine #EN Publishing

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spectrumed · 3 years ago

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2. voice

As a child I could not pronounce the letter R. I once complained to my mother for being so careless as to give me a name that had two R’s in it. Fredrik. Or as I pronounced it back then, “Fledlik.” Cute, right? I was a cute child, all blonde and with big blue eyes. At one point, I got surrounded by a group of older girls who forced me to pronounce my name, even though I really couldn’t. They laughed and laughed, teasing me for my inability to pronounce even my own name correctly. If I ever had a reason to develop a fetish for femdom, I think this would have been it.

Like it or not, in speech, there is no room for individual quirks. No, we’ve all got to learn how to speak properly. Historically, that has led to some pretty heinous attitudes towards regional accents, any tongue that was the standard was seen by default as being less or developed and intelligent. Regional accents were seen as practically unhygienic, the worry being that if people just got to speak as they wished, they might end up potentially thinking dangerous thoughts. While I understand the importance of being understood, it’s clear that the stigma that exists around speech difficulties stems from a place of prejudice. If a person has a lisp, do you really struggle to understand them? And while stammering can be quite debilitating, it should be blatantly obvious that shaming people who stammer, suggesting that they are bereft of intelligence, is not the way to help them. Humans are social animals, and language may be the one thing that distinguishes us as a species, it is natural that proper elocution should be treasured. But some people do struggle with their speech, and that should not cost them any respect or kindness.

As a child, I didn’t speak nearly enough. As an adult I am speaking too much. That’s the problem with you, Fredrik, you’ve never understood that there is a middle ground between two extremes. There is a way you can speak that is neither too quiet, nor too loud. It is how normal people speak. Why can’t you be normal, Fredrik? Are you going to spend this whole blog post talking about how difficult it is for you to simply learn to be like everyone else? Self-pitying yourself, much? Back in my day people pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, if they had something they struggled with, they learned to sort it all out, and they didn’t start complaining about society being all mean to them. You’re just spending too much time inside your own head, go take a swim, take up a hobby that requires you to step outdoors, it will serve you well. Don’t be a freak, Fredrik. Be normal, for once.

On a side note, “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” is meant to be understood as an impossible feat. You can’t possibly pull yourself up by your bootstraps, it’s ludicrous to even suggest that such a thing may be feasible. While, yes, there are many things you can do to help yourself, ultimately, you can’t profoundly escape from a sorry situation you’ve found yourself in without some outside help. There is no shame in requiring help. To guilt someone into thinking that if they can’t do it alone, they are weak, is frankly sociopathic. Humans need each other, we take care of each other, we are there for each other. Self-sufficiency is great, but let’s not take it to levels of absurdity by suggesting that needing help from others is anything but normal. No-one succeeds in life without others there to prop them up. Instead of telling someone to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, you might as well tell them to go and swallow the sun, which is clearly another impossible task.

Most people will never in their lives experience what it is like to go through a neuropsychological evaluation. Turns out that it is not always such a pleasant experience. Though, considering the popularity of pseudo-scientific nonsense like the Myers-Briggs test, I am sure some folks would lie and pretend to love it. Certainly, there is a charm to being there and talking about yourself for several hours near-uninterrupted, but the exhaustion that you will feel at the end of it cannot be understated. Naturally, it does vary between who does it, and why they’re doing it. But if the stated goal is to find out whether you’ve had a neurodevelopmental disorder since you were but a young babe, then of course, there are going to be some pretty long conversations happening about those early days. Lots of stuff you may not have considered or thought about in a very long time will suddenly become very relevant to your current situation. And at the end of it all, you get some papers detailing your fashionable new diagnosis. Your entire life, all written down. Can make you feel rather wistful. And there’s really quite a surprising amount of typos included in the text, and barely any jokes.

Still, as part of my official diagnosis, there is a reference to my speech at being at times “stilted.” Though, the diagnosis does take very good care to mention that I appear intelligent and thoughtful, exhibiting a wide vocabulary and a good sense of the right words to use at the right moment. It’s flattering, for the most part. Yet, it does irk me that I could be perceived as being stilted. I know that at this point, I am being petty, because who cares if I sometimes come across as maybe a little robotic. I’ve got Asperger’s. Of course I am a robot. The closest role model we folks with Asperger’s ever had for the longest time was Star Trek: The Next Generation’s android named Data. God forbid anyone like me ever turned out to be the protagonist of a series, we’re all doomed to play the part of the robot, the alien, or the socially awkward geek. I should just be delighted that I am high-functioning. I know how much worse some have it. I should be grateful and pleased that I come across as mostly normal, mostly neurotypical. But… I really just don’t want anyone to think my speech is stilted. I don’t want to be Data. I want to be Riker.

It is never enough, you’ll never be good enough. If you fake it, they’ll see through it. If you struggle and if you work honestly to appear more normal, they won’t recognise it. As soon as they get an inkling you may be an imposter, looking like them, but having a neurologically deviant brain, they’ll single you out. For you, normalcy is an illusion. To attempt to be normal is to remake yourself only to receive nothing. Sure, you can be disingenuous, pretend you're not yourself, but it’ll never fool them. In the end, you’ll only lose yourself. Maybe I should just own the fact that my speech sometimes comes across as being stilted. Maybe I should own it. Be proud of who I am. But… sometimes I just don’t want to be me.

I want to be ignored. Sometimes, not always. But that goes for everyone. But most of all, I’d like to be able to go unseen whenever I’m not trying to impress anyone. When I’m just off to buy some milk. When I’m sitting on the bus. When I’m walking through the park. I know it is partly paranoia, but I can’t help but feel like I stick out. It’s always been like that with my friends growing up. The metaphor I used with my therapist is that I felt like a thumb. That they, my friends, were the fingers and I was the thumb. Sure, we’re similar. In many ways we’re the same. You could even say that I was crucial to making the social dynamics work. Who doesn’t like the thumb? What would you do without your thumb? But still, I was different. Some people would do anything to be different like that, to feel special. Some folks feel all invisible and forgotten in the crowd, and I’d lie if I told them that I didn’t envy them sometimes. The ability to go all invisible? That seems swell! There’s this question people like to ask as a sort of personality test. If you could choose a superpower, would you rather be able to fly, or would you rather be able to go invisible? The answer is obvious, as far as I’m concerned. Of course I’d love to be able to go invisible. To be able to exist without anyone seeing me. Without anyone judging me. Without ever having to worry if someone is going to treat me as different. For a moment to feel what it is like not to be some big, dumb, stupid, thumb.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not too anguished. Nowadays, I feel like I am in a relatively good place. But I would be lying if I told you that I still don’t get frustrated at the plethora of difficulties I face just trying to blend in. Even with family members, people who are supposed to know you the best, even then I have to go out of my way to behave a certain way, to exist a certain way, because fundamentally, they just don’t seem to get you. Not in that way. They have an image of you that you need to try and match. It doesn’t matter how many times I tell them that sometimes you need to be more direct in your communication to truly reach me, I don’t pick up on the many smaller little social cues they may throw my way, it’s still just me being silly and looking for excuses for why I didn’t understand them the first time around. And I am deathly afraid of hurting anyone’s feelings. A very prevalent misconception about autistic individuals is that we don’t care if we’re being rude. That if we are rude, our rudeness can simply be overlooked because, y’know, we’re autistic. While this sort of thing is commonly represented in media that is supposed to depict autistic characters, in real life, things don't quite work like this. Believe it or not, readers, being autistic is not a free pass to act like a dick. Autistic individuals still very much have to modulate our behaviour if we wish to fit in and be accepted. No-one will ever excuse you for being autistic. To be autistic is living with extra hurdles in your way, thinking that it’s anything but a social handicap is romanticising a diagnosis you clearly know very little about.

When I was a kid, I didn’t speak much. As far as I was concerned, I merely spoke whenever I needed to speak. It took until adulthood for me to learn that my parents and teachers were actually concerned about that. I was made to see a specialist, under the guise of learning elocution, but I’ve later come to realise that those meetings were about more than just learning to pronounce the letter R. Like, what does testing my memory have to do with diction? Yes, her job was partly to help my speech develop more in line with the other kids, but she was also there to evaluate whether or not I was intellectually disabled. I have come to learn that I had teachers at the time that were adamant about me going to a different school, more equipped to handle kids like me, but my mother vehemently defended my right to stay in the school I was in. After all, I did have friends, and to anyone who really knew me, they knew that I was a bright child. Sure, I wasn’t as communicative as the other children, but I clearly had no issues processing information, and it’s not like I was disruptive in some other way. But that was also part of the problem. The teachers that thought that I may need specialist schooling were concerned about the fact that I was too placid and too agreeable. They wanted me to express frustration at my lacking pronunciation, to see me get mad at others for not fully understanding me. That amazes me, if anything. The fact that I was a happy kid they took as some indication that I wasn’t quite right.

My mother delights in a memory of me as a kid once slamming my fist on the table and declaring that “now, I am speaking!” May I remind you that I was a cute kid. Sure, it is the sort of behaviour that parents of the old times would have spanked their kids for. Kids in the past were supposed to be quiet. To be seen, but not heard. I wonder if there’d be any kind of hubbub about my early development if I lived back then. I’d probably be seen as the ideal child, all pretty and docile and never too loud. Still, it was a moment my mother cherished, because for once, I really proved that I did have the capacity to speak. Though, I still couldn’t pronounce my R’s. But it was time for Fledlik to speak.

#neurodiversity #neurodivergent #autism spectrum disorder #autism #aspergers #mental health

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kinetic-elaboration · 3 years ago

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September 17: 3x07 Day of the Dove

I am incredibly discombobulated today—usual weekend nocturnal shenanigans I guess! Anyway it’s somehow midnight. Gonna try to write up these note on the Classic episode The Day of the Dove in as efficient a manner as possible.

Hmm, a planet with wavy pink Fraggle plants. I like it already.

But where is Spock? Very suspicious.

I really appreciate Kirk giving a little speech to set up the overall question/issue for us. (I know he does this all the time with the Captain’s logs but this is out loud and so… more obviously expository.)

Oh no, it’s our old friends…the Klingons.

I will admit that this ONE TIME, the Klingon is being reasonable. Like, it is reasonable to think that Kirk and the Enterprise attacked his ship, given that his hip WAS attacked, and who else would it be?

Three years of peace between the Klingons and the Federation? That is inclusive of the show so all this tension must technically be “peace” and also implies there was something more like a direct war going on, like, right before Kirk got the captaincy.

Zoolander voice: What is this, a colony of the INVISIBLE?

“We have no devil. But we understand the habits of yours.”

No takers? No takers on the torture? No volunteers to be mercilessly tortured by the Klingons?

Star Trek Beyond could have had Kirk and Chekov bond over being brothers! I mean, to other people.

They’ll kill 100 hostages at the first sign of treachery. He does know there are only 400-some people on the ship right? Maybe you should pace yourself, Kang.

Kirk’s so badass he needs MULTIPLE guns trained on him just to use the phone.

Oh-ho secret message to Spock. Which version of the iPhone will be capable of doing THAT?

The Klingons are “suspended in transit” is an awfully nice way of saying they’re just dematerialized atoms in space. Philosophy major and/or Bones nightmare fuel.

How did Kang not see this coming, by the way? Like, he just says “I’m taking your ship now, me and my 6 men versus your 400-some men, and I’ll do this by simply declaring it to be so. Now let’s beam up to your ship, where I’ll be greatly outnumbered, and there are armed security guards all around me.” Guess he’s been reading The Secret!

WIFE AND SCIENCE OFFICER

Aka the most important part of this whole episode.

Kirk’s face is very ?????? You can have both????

It’s legitimately not even important for her to be the science officer tbqh. Like that is so gratuitous. That’s just in there to drive me insane.

"We're prisoners, somehow, after I demanded to come on the ship, assuming they'd just give it to me without any kind of fight. How DID this happen?”

Federation death camps lol—someone’s been watching Fox News.

I do kind of wonder… is this an actual rumor that goes around the Klingon homeworld or is it something that the alien entity put in her head specifically to make her angrier right now? I mean it really could be either.

I also appreciate this episode for being pretty much the only one to actually attempt to give the Klingons a reason for being as they are. The Romulans… maybe aren’t well-described, but they do have a sort of regalness to them, appropriate for being related to Vulcans, and you can kind of imagine that they are the way they are because they’re Vulcans without the intense self-control. Plus they’re literally only in 2 TOS eps and in the second, the Federation are the aggressors. But the Klingons show up a half-dozen times only to be depicted each time as just like Cartoonishly Bad, aggressive, violent, and selfish for basically no reason. And I mean, some people really are!! But TOS has so much nuance in other places, that it always seemed a little disappointing to me that the Klingons are really just like ‘well we’re just bad and we hate everyone and we really like killing I guess.” At least in this ep there’s a little more added to that: that there is poverty on their world, that they feel aggrieved, that they feel unprotected, that taking and conquering is how they look after themselves…

I think that’s later in the episode though.

He’s detaining them in the LOUNGE lol. With their favorite dishes available to them to eat. Absolutely barbarous conditions.

I can’t believe Chekov is hanging in the elevator with the cool kids. Like, one of these things really isn’t like the others.

Kang is officially sure of himself for someone currently imprisoned in the lounge, that most fearsome of Federation death camps.

Hmm, could the glittery light alien have taken over??

You know what, that's a lot of tasks for Johnson to do all by himself: search the whole ship, fix the engines, and free 400 people.

Sulu would love this: everyone gets a sword!!

“Bridge. I gotta show this to Sulu immediately.”

Klingons have maintained a dueling tradition. That’s interesting. Finally some characterization going on.

Spock is really living up to his logical nature today. Everyone else has gone off the emotional deep end and he’s like “have you considered this completely rational explanation that accounts for the actual, observed facts??”

Whoops Chekov is actually an only child. Scratch that previous Beyond headcanon. (Interesting that his dead brother does really resemble Sam though—killed on a research colony??)

Love that Sulu knows that about him though.

Oh, that’s a pretty schematic picture of the Enterprise. I want that on a t-shirt.

Lol the pan out to the armory, now filled with… swords!!

Do ALL of these men have a fetish for swords? Sulu and fencing, Spock displaying swords in his quarters, and Kirk in his San Francisco apartment, and Scotty salivating over this Scottish blade.

“Klingon units.”

Finally Sulu gets his sword! It’s what he deserves.

Love that the shiny light alien also has a fetish for swords.

Oh no, it’s our old adversary, an alien life force.

What is the alien’s purpose? Um, I’m pretty sure its purpose is to start shit.

“An appropriate choice of terms, Captain.” I don’t even remember what this is referring to but I think it’s pretty clear that Spock is enjoying himself during a crisis again.

Bones, being so dramatic. Were there atrocities? He’s talking about the Klingons as if they were literally hacking off limbs—it’s a few stab wounds here and there, chill.

Oooh, time to behave like military men—strong words. (But I thought it wasn’t the military?? @ S**** P****) (This might not even be my best argument, given the context of this episode, but I’m sticking with it.)

This is like a giant game of capture the flag.

AU that’s just about the Enterprise crew playing capture the flag with the Klingons.

Sulu in the background standing guard with his sword

Damn, turning on Spock with the slurs now!!

Spock was absolutely ready to kill him. Like he would 100% have taken him out with a blow to the head. And he’d been doing such a good job of not feeling the alien’s effects so far! Admittedly, that was a strong provocation though.

Honestly, I really like this scene. It’s uncomfortable and tense and you can really see how the alien is bringing out the worst possible influences of their respective races. And I liked how Spock was definitely full on pre-Reform Vulcan for a minute there. It was a more effective portrayal of what that might have looked like than All Our Yesterdays tbqh.

A result of… stress?

Kirk got himself out of it first. He’s so strong. He knows himself so well, he cannot be outsmarted by any alien.

“We’ve been taught to think in terms other than war.”

“The alien brings out the worst of us—patriotic drumbeating…even race hatred.”

He’s so sad; he can’t imagine thinking like that about Spock :(

Sulu in a Jeffries tube! A man of many talents. It’s okay bb, take credit for turning on the lights.

The alien must have been getting bored. The Klingons must have been doing too well, and the playing field needs to be leveled for maximum shit-stirring.

“Let’s find that alien.” That’s how I ALWAYS feel.

Oh, Kang, you’re so close—“What power supports our battle but thwarts our victory.” So, so close to getting it.

ALIEN DETECTED.

Spock takes his sword, of course.

“Jim.” Obligatory Jim moments hit differently when they’re not so obligatory.

“Jim—stop hitting my protégé. And put that sword down.”

Kirk looks so sad, picking Chekov up to carry him bridal style.

Also in addition to ‘race hatred’ I think we need to add ‘rape-y tendances’ to the bad stuff that the alien is inspiring here.

“A brief surge of racial bigotry. Most distasteful.” Spock winning for understatement of the year.

They're assuming the alien is trying to test out their relative powers but I think it just wants entertainment. I mean, doesn’t it look like a naughty little thing?

Mara’s outfit is… little shorts? Interesting. Usually not my style but she makes it work.

Spock doesn’t even look at Johnson as he falls lol. Another one bites the dust.

“It exists on the hate of others.”

What does this remind me of? Oh, the Vast of Night and the whole “aliens made us do every bad thing ever” conspiracy theory. At least this one makes more sense, in part because it is not quite so overwhelmingly broad!

All hostile attitudes must be eliminated, he says, and there's Mara right behind Kirk giving him a death stare lol.

Kang is so obviously posing. Google Earth, always taking pictures.

Only a few minutes before drifting forever in space becomes inevitable? Good thing Kirk works well under pressure.

“Well… do whatever you can, Scotty. You know the drill.” Doesn’t even bother giving real directions anymore. We’ve been in this scenario before.

“So we drift in space, with only hatred and bloodshed aboard.”

And the 392 people below just get to…live in Enterprise prison, I guess.

Star date: Armageddon. So dramatic!

I’m not even making that up; that’s an actual quote. Can you imagine being an Admiral listening to this?

“Stop the war now.” An actual line, really aired on television.

Spock wants to threaten the wife lol. That's the old pre-Reform Vulcan seeping through. Surak who?

Damn, Kang is cold. “Eh, she gets the concept of being killed in battle.” They’re gonna need marriage counseling after this.

“There is another way. Mutual trust and help.” Yes that’s my hero!!

“No one can guarantee the actions of another.” Can’t remember the context of this entirely anymore, but great line.

The entity is loving this—multi-person choreographed sword fight!!

"Those who hate and fight must stop themselves. otherwise it is not stopped.” Another baller line. Spock has a lot of deep thoughts today. And so does Kirk. And Kang.

Kirk tries to reason with the alien. Nice try.

“Shoo. Shoo, alien. Off the ship, go away.”

Omg that last moment—Kang slapping Kirk’s back way too hard, Spock’s completely ridiculous wide-eyed expression when he does, like some sort of combo of amusement and confusion, and then Sulu just passing on by in the background….

Then the alien just yeets itself into space. And that’s the end!

Always feels weird when there’s no wrap up on the bridge.

Also, what are they going to do with the Klingons? They have no ship. They really did come out of this a lot worse than Kirk and co. No ship, huge casualties—and no one to blame even, but the alien.

I feel like the alien messed up a little in killing so many Klingons. Like, it could have accomplished its purpose, angering the Klingons and turning them on Kirk, by attacking the ship a little less violently—you know they’d react to 5 deaths pretty much the same as 400, and then there would be many more people to fight forever and produce that sweet sweet anger!

Maybe the alien’s powers aren’t strong enough to influence 800 people though. Also it wants equal forces and 800 people wouldn’t fit on the Enterprise, one assumes. So it still makes sense.

That was, of course, an excellent episode. 100% agree with is classic status, even though the main things I remembered going in were the wife + science officer bit, and everyone laughing at the end in a really forced, fake way, in order to make the alien go away.

I thought the Klingons were a lot better/more interesting today than usual. First, I think Kang is a better character, or a better actor maybe, than the others; he has a certain way about him that is… more watchable, more sympathetic. And he’s always saying these really dramatic things that make it seem likely he writes patriotic Klingon war poetry in his off time. Also, including his wife made them seem more… not human obviously, but normal. Not just cardboard cut-out villains. And of course the actual lightly specific motivations I earlier mentioned helped too.

Also, the plotting was very good: it built up slowly but surely over time, so at first the alien’s influence wasn’t that obvious, and then it became more so, and then it became horrifically obvious and extreme. And then you had to re-evaluate earlier moments: was that the alien changing facts in their heads, or a real part of the animosity between humans and Klingons? And it wasn’t always clear, which I appreciated. The tension when the people were at their worst wasn’t overdone, like in that moment with Scotty, Spock, and Kirk—or even in Chekov’s assault on Mara, tbh. The various strategies of the different sides were very entertaining too; there was never a dull moment, and they fit in a lot of straight-up actions and twists into 50 minutes.

The possible threat was truly terrifying, also: stuck in a space ship, forever, unable to die, feeling the worst possible emotions all the time, besieged, angered, despairing, fighting a war that can’t be won, being injured and suffering only to recover and fight again, and it never stops… A perfect nightmare mixture of insanity and violence and pain. And the alien, in encouraging hatred and anger, doesn’t discriminate between sides: they turn on each other just as much as on the Klingons, breeding paranoia and infighting. For eternity.

The episode also felt much more strongly anti-war than I remember tbh. Like it was not subtle. Kirk literally says “stop the war” in so many words. He has a part in his speech where he talks about the possibility of other aliens out there, encouraging other wars. And while I do think “maybe the aliens are making us do it” is a cop out explanation, or would be if it were real, the scenario gave the show a lot of room to say, like, pretty ballsy things: to include “patriotic drum beating” along with “race hatred” in a list of corrupting feelings they were experiencing; to show how the same instincts that lead to warring also lead to sexual assault and the aforementioned ‘race hatred;” to reveal the true horror of an endless war by making the participants unkillable and sticking them in a singular space ship in the middle of nowhere; to imply that the combatants of war gain nothing from it, but outside or third-party entities will pull strings of their own design to profit from the conflict as long as possible; even to make an impassioned plea to camera to stop the endlessness of the conflict. Like I can’t even totally unpack this but it is a lot!

Finally, it was also a great Kirk episode, which of course is my most important factor. He’s smart; he’s strong; he’s so sure of himself and his values that he cannot be manipulated to mindless hatred, he represents the values of the Federation, and the show itself; he treats even his enemies with basic respect and humanity; and ultimately, he saves the day.

Okay I was not efficient in writing this up at all! It is very late!!

#the year 2021 #2021: star trek #2021: fandom thoughts #star trek tos

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caitlinsfandomthoughts · 3 years ago

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Watching Star Trek TOS For the First Time! Season 1 Reaction

I’ve been a TNG, DS9 and Voyager fan for maybe 10 years but had never watched TOS until I decided that I would. And then I realised I couldn’t live with the possibility of the internet not being able to know my incoherent rambling reactions if it so desired. Most of these were written the day after I saw them but with the early ones it was later so sorry if I don’t remember your favourite.

Season 1:

The Cage: Be still my beating heart why must number 1 leave the show? Why?! Imagine a world in which Majel Barrett got to continue to be her in the Star Trek universe instead of Lwuxana (sorry I don’t love her) and Nurse Chapel. She’s so beautiful I love her. And she gets to where pants and be the second in command. While the episode for sure has sexist moments it does seem like there was more of an actual effort to present to future as having gender equality. When you compare this to the ultra mini skirted version of the actual show, it does feel like executives went through it to make it more marketable. It’s been noted by others that she is quite similar to what Spock’s character became: the cold, logical one, while Spock smiles in this episode. While I ended up loving Spock I still would’ve loved to see a woman in that kind of role, especially in the 60s. Although I’m not sure she would’ve been treated that well.

So Vina can’t like, get medical treatment from Starfleet doctors who know how to put a human body together? No? We’re just gonna leave her there? She’s too ugly? She’s better off living in a fantasy world where she’s pretty? Ok then…

The Man Trap: I don’t even really remember this one so I’d have to rewatch it.

Charlie X: Charlie sees women and becomes an incel, Kirk has to try and teach him not to be. This is a decent goal that somehow culminates in a space boxing match. Kirk loses his shirt. Sexual tension is presumably resolved. Uhura sings.

Where No Man Has Gone Before: The pants are back. Man becomes some kind of god and Kirk beats him up if I remember correctly.

The Naked Time: This is where The Naked Now comes from. This one was less sexual, which is probably a good thing, and less drunk, which is too bad cause I love drunk Crusher and Picard trying to focus on work while their brains won’t brain. Highly relatable mood. This one is where the immortal line “sorry, neither” comes from, spoken by Uhura in response to Sulu calling her a “fair maiden.” According to the internet that was an ad lib and I so hope that’s true cause it’s amazing. Also according to Spock Sulu is a “swashbuckler at heart” which is cool and all but I wish we got to find that out by him actually being a character that we know the personality of rather than a background diversity guy who gets to say a couple of lines sometimes. Also each to their own but shirtless Sulu is infinitely more attractive than shirtless Kirk.

The Enemy Within: Bad. Women at Warp podcast said it best, it’s bad because they say the evil Kirk is still Kirk and is needed for him to be a good captain/person. This could’ve been ok if he didn’t do something so irredeemable, or they could’ve not had him be defined as a true and necessary part of Kirk, but you can’t have both and sell it as an ok message. Rand not being able to look at ‘good’ Kirk after really makes it feel real, her acting in general makes it feel too real.

Mudd’s Women: Women take beauty pills that make them have makeup on and men find them too ugly to marry without them even though they are still beautiful. Also said women were kinda slaves but don’t worry about it! *hand waves*

What Are Little Girls Made Off: I don’t know what the title has to do with the episode. This is the episode where Nurse Chapel is introduced even though she was in a previous episode. And she’s taken more seriously than I thought she would be. Kirk gets an android version of himself made by a guy who he already doesn’t trust and doesn’t predict that maybe that’s not a good idea. Apparently to make an android all you need to do is put one person and one dummy on a giant plate and spin them around real fast. If only the guy who wanted to take apart Data in Measure of a Man knew.

Miri: Problematic. I think the crush angle could’ve worked if it was one sided, but Kirk played into it and it was creepy, and you know, also manipulative, assuming Kirk doesn’t actually feel the same way and is using it to get her to help them. That’s my more charitable interpretation anyway. Also McCoy doesn’t know how vaccines work. Also this episode doesn’t know what puberty is, or rather when it starts. If the virus is supposed to get to you then, that starts round the preteen age. Miri is older than that even though she’s not an adult.

Dagger of the Mind: This was the first one where I was starting to quite like it and it was feeling a little more like Star Trek to me (I know this is the first Star Trek but there’s a certain way 80s/90s era Star Trek feels to me). I really liked the beginning where it was setting up this whole maybe prisoners become violent because of how the prison treats them thing and that it was challenging the viewpoints of some of the main characters, although McCoy was already team prisons are bad and I love him for that. It then went more into the lobotomising asylum type story which was still ok. The guy turned out to be a doctor rather than a prisoner which I didn’t like cause I wanted the prisoners to be humanised. Although you could’ve done a “see anyone, even ‘innocent’ non criminals can be turned violent with this treatment” but they didn’t really emphasise that.

The Corbomite Maneuver: I don’t remember this. Kirk playing poker with some alien I think. Edit: I’m been informed this is the one where the alien turns out to be a lollypop guild kid lip-syncing to an adult’s voice, which I do remember, and probably thought it was some kind of sleep-deprived fever dream.

The Menagerie Part 1 & 2: I laughed so much when they wheeled Pike out and I finally got the Futurama reference in Where No Fan Has Gone Before. I mean I obviously knew the whole thing was a Star Trek Reference, but I had never seen that specific imagery before and now the joke makes sense! Also Pike wanting to go back there seems kinda wrong. I mean they say he’s a vegetable mentally I think but he doesn’t seem to be? I can kinda get that he’s got more incentive to be there than Vina who could probably be helped by Federation doctors but also, he hated that place and spent the whole episode trying to get out of it and it doesn’t feel like a fitting ending for him.

The Conscious of the King: And here begins Star Trek’s love affair with Shakespeare. The only thing I have to say really is, if I didn’t mishear something… a father and daughter played Macbeth and Lady Macbeth? A married couple. And no-one thought that was weird? She was the daughter of a dictator though so there was an Ivanka Trump vibe.

Balance of Terror: Romulans. Spock wasn’t sure that they were related to Vulcans till this ep, though he suspected it. How far back did they split for it to be unknown? I like that the Romulans were sympathetic and we had scenes with them just in their ship from their perspective, and they had some conflicting views with each other. And I really like how Spock was suspected as a spy cause racism and of course he wasn’t and saved that guy cause he’s the better person. That said I found this episode pretty boring and I don’t know why. I kinda wish it turned into a witchhunt situation and was more about the racism on the Enterprise, kinda like The Drumhead from TNG.

Shore leave: Wtf was this episode?! And I don’t ask that because the white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland showed up, or that it was a random holodeck planet episode, that’s fine. When the White Rabbit appeared I was just like, ok it’s going to be one of those episodes, that’s fine. Holodeck episodes are fun, I don’t even mind a random magic alien or two appearing for no reason to wreak havoc, say by making everyone larp as Robin Hood, that’s all Star Trek, that’s Star Trek doing a Star Trek, what I didn’t like is this episode goes nowhere! McCoy sees the White Rabbit, we’re off to a good start, Sulu “Swashbuckler at Heart” sees an old gun that he geeks out on, cool. Kirk sees some woman of course. Also there’s some guy fending off a tiger. Random female guest star of the week rather than letting Uhura be part of the story gets her uniform torn by some guy. Then she imagines a princess dress and if that were me as soon as I realised I could think things into existence I would just imagine all my dream clothes. Kirk imagines an old student friend who is attempting very hard to be Irish (thank you Colm Meany for saving us from this).

Anyway so the planets a holodeck cool. And I’m like, Spock should beam down, I wanna know what he’ll see, this is where the episode could get interesting. And then it happens, but nothing happens, they don’t even make much of a deal of him not seeing anything. But then I thought what if! What if Spock didn’t beam down and this was another imagination?! What if he was some alien with some ulterior motive OR better than that we get to see Spock as imagined by whoever was thinking of him. You could go down a very fanfic road if it were Kirk’s imagined or desired view of him, or maybe you could show different people’s perceptions and then they still suspect he’s not acting like himself even though it’s how they see him, but its not quite right, cause it’s not actually how he is. Or at least I thought they were going to find out what was going on. But NOPE none of that happens. Instead leprechaun guy shows up again and Kirk just wonders off to fight him for the next fucking millennium! The uniforms they wore at the academy seem like they were made out of better quality material than that of a Starfleet captain’s. Poor Kirk must be having to replicate new uniforms every other day. Then they laugh I think, and sexual tension is presumably resolved. Then the aliens show up and are like yeah this planet is a holodeck we thought you’d like it also McCoy died but he didn’t and I’m like THEY DIDN’T CONSENT TO THIS. But then they decide to party.

It reminded me of a Red Dwarf episode called Better Than Life where they knowingly go into a virtual reality game which is basically the same as this planet. But over time Rimmer keeps sabotaging what he imagines cause he hates himself so much his brain won’t let him have nice things. And it’s still a comedy, but there’s an opportunity for exploring the character’s psyche with this setup that wasn’t done here and that made it boring.

The Galileo Seven: This episode was good!! In contrast to the last one it delivered on promises it made, it had a satisfying ending, it’s probably my favourite so far. The whole time I was like this should be about how Spock can be wrong and logic isn’t everything to be a good commander. But given the quality of the previous episodes wasn’t that great and Spock was always right about everything I didn’t trust them to do that. BUT I WAS WRONG. I thought it would be about how just because you don’t have emotions doesn’t mean you can disregard those of the crew. But instead it was about how he couldn’t predict their enemy wouldn’t act based on emotion rather than logic. And then he admitted he was wrong and helped the guy bury the other guy, and then they were about to die and McCoy was like at least I’ve lived to hear Spock say he fucked up. And then Spock jettisoned the fuel so that it might act like a flare but it gave them less time and I was like no you’ve learned nothing! Don’t just do things that severe without asking your crew. But then after they were saved it was described as an act of desperation rather than anything logical and Kirk was like that’s an emotion isn’t it? You acted on emotion? And Spock was like well yes but I’m not gonna say it like that.

I like that emotion was good actually. I think it’s a fine balance between the message of its ok to be different and using Spock as an analogy for racism, and inadvertently neurodiversity, but also not buying into the idea that emotions = weakness and lack of emotion, or emotional repression = objectivity. Even if you don’t factor emotion into your decisions (which would be impossible unless you don’t experience emotions at all) it doesn’t mean that you don’t have personal biases in your perspective. So I’m glad Spock was wrong for once.

The Squire of Gothos: This is Q this is Proto-Q. He does all the same things that Q does; he shows up in clothes that are way out of date (and he thinks they’re from 900 years ago when they’re clearly early 19th century) and he flirts with the captain. Oh and he has powers, maybe they were computer powers, but not all? And he goes on about humans being brutal, warmongering people but he’s kinda into it. He fights Kirk but there was actual tension so it wasn’t annoying like the one with the Irish guy. And then it turns out he was just a kid exactly like the Futurama episode, except he is a kid not 35. I think him being a kid makes the flirting seem weird though.

Arena: Kirk and the Gorn at Tanagra. Kirk fights a lizard because aliens wanted to encourage them to not fight by telling them to fight. I thought maybe these lizards could be proto Cardassians but then I thought they can’t be they don’t talk, but then he spoke so I thought they could be, but then he was the one who was invaded and was only defending his people so I thought they couldn’t be, unless that was actually just lies and justifications in which case they definitely would be, but then that would undermine the message of the episode so I guess not. I wonder how many leaders have killed each other before these alien’s negotiation tactic actually worked.

Tomorrow is Yesterday: This was fun. There were a lot of twists and turns. I wonder if it was before or after the moonlanding. Every plan just makes it worse and more and more people keep getting exposed to the future. Kirk could’ve easily just closed the door and beamed back at the end but instead opts to punch like six people. (I think this is where “a woman?” “Crewman.” Comes from).

Court Martial: What if Kirk actually did it though? Would that be more interesting? Maybe. At least here he has an age appropriate love interest. She’s prosecuting against him which is surely a conflict of interest. AND she has a uniform with a longer skirt! And it actually looks good, like it looks like an actual dress that she can sit down in and it still looks like a dress and not a crumpled up shirt. It’s elegant but it’s still short. I could see this being an option (for any gender) as a dress uniform but it would still make no sense when they’re serving on a ship.

Return of the Archons: I am LIVING for Spock in a medieval style hood. It’s giving me Peter Cook in a Mother Superior’s wimple in Bedazzled vibe, it’s not quite on that level of beauty, but it’s close. For some reason Sulu returned from the planet in 18th century gear but then everyone else is dressed like it’s the 19th century, with some medieval robes thrown in, and this annoys me more than it should. Maybe it’s because he’s a swashbuckler at heart. Apparently they had a completely peaceful society except for the nightly purge they seemed to have going on that is never mentioned again.

Space Seed: KHHANN! I liked this a lot until the end. I want to know the lore behind Data’s Dad having his middle and last name. Edit: Actually only the middle name is the same and the last name is just similar. I still think there’s lore there (excuse the pun), probably he’s a descendent of his cult followers or something. The story seemed to be eugenics bad and also the type of guy to basically be a eugenics cult leader would be super manipulative and abusive but just charming enough in a relationship. It does a pretty good job of showing the abuse in his relationship with the historian woman, how he switches between being loving and I guess charming, and flattering to being abusive and degrading. I wish that the historian woman could find someone that she can explore domination and submission with consensually cause that seems like it would be what she really wants. Anyway but in the end they just let him go? Like he tried to take over the ship but they were like here have a colony. They compared the place to Australia when the colonists arrived at Botany Bay and that it could be... I forget what the word was but basically ‘civilised’ and No NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO STOP RIGHT THERE NO Australia was already populated and didn’t need eugenicist cult leaders who were demonstrably bad to show up make it ‘better.’ AND THEN the historian is given the choice to go with them and she does and its framed like it’s good? Or at least ok? When they just did a pretty decent job of showing how abusive and manipulative he was and she had redeemed herself by turning against him? So I get that they probably wanted to bring him back although they’re probably not gonna bring her back, but they could’ve easily had him escape instead.

A Taste of Armageddon: Suicide machines. I forget the rest.

This Side of Paradise: SEX POLLEN! Well it’s more fall in love pollen, I guess, for one character. There’s a woman and there’s the music and the soft focus and BUT WAIT then the camera cuts to Spock not Kirk! Because she has taste. It’s about this point that I think the ‘Spock’s the most popular but Shatner wants to remain the star so we’ll emphasise their character’s relationship thus inadvertently inventing slash fic’ might’ve started. It’s time for a love triangle! She makes Spock get the sex pollen, which is not getting consent, and then he falls in love with her and is climbing trees and is all happy. Kirk can’t get a text back from Spock. Then Kirk and two others get the pollen except Kirk didn’t, but he did, but anyway I thought everyone would be horny but they weren’t they were just brainwashed. Soon Kirk is all alone on the bridge, then he gets the pollen and is happy to live as a poly triad but then he gets angry and it’s gone. Then he calls Spock to the ship and approaches the situation in the only way Kirk knows how: Homoerotic punching! So they fight for not long enough and then Spock is cured but he’s a little sad, there’s sadness in his voice, it’s not quite so matter of fact. Then Spock’s gf gets sad and the sex pollen is gone too, Spock might still have feelings for her but he has responsibilities to the ship and “to that man on the bridge” which if he was saying to just mean once again the whole ship, and its mission and the captain in a professional sense, seems a little redundant, which would surely be illogical.

The colonists get sad that they haven’t done anything for years because the sex pollen made them unambitious but I would argue maybe the sex pollen was right and you were better off just vibing. This episode was more interesting and less silly than I thought the creator of sex pollen would be. At the end Spock says that for the first time in his life he was happy. While every other character could still easily become addicted to a thing like that they could at least know they would experience happiness or any feelings again in their life, for Spock it was going back to nothingness.

Devil in the Dark: Spock calls Kirk Jim which I don’t think he has before, when he’s talking over the communicator and he’s worried he’s in danger, there’s some actual fear or urgency in his voice. Also the moment that got me was when Kirk wanted to send Spock back the ship cause he didn’t trust him to kill the creature and Spock was like “but… I’m not really as useful there I am here… so…” If I was writing it I would’ve played that up more but anyway, I like that they didn’t kill the creature. I like that McCoy said the thing. And also said “I’m starting to think I can cure a rainy day.” He’s my favourite.

Errand of Mercy: It’s kinda becoming the Kirk Spock show now, I like the ship but I miss McCoy. I like that the passive pacifists who Kirk was so angry with were actually more powerful. And KLINGONS! Oh yeah the orientalism, the yellow peril, it’s… it’s there all right. They were played a lot colder here, a little Cardassian maybe, still bloodthirsty but I don’t believe this guy has to do it himself to feel honourable, he can kill for sure but he’s fine ordering someone else to do it and being a chessmaster too.

The Alternative Factor: God this one was boring. But it does have a man with the worst beard wig I’ve ever seen. Now he’s stuck fighting the bad version of himself or something to save the universe. So remember that when you’re watching later Trek series, all of this could suddenly be destroyed if one of them gets tired.

The City on the Edge of Forever: UHURA GETS TO GO ON AN AWAY MISSION! Aaaand she doesn’t get to do anything :/ The usual three go back in time! To the 60s again! Oh wait… that’s meant to be the 30s? Oh. That’s some tall hair that lady has for the 30s. But at least said lady is a character, she’s a little perfect but she does things, she has strong beliefs, she might be written a little idealised, but she is still written like a person compared to almost every other Kirk love interest. “He says it (captain) even when he doesn’t say it” is an interesting line. So she has to die, I still think they could’ve just convinced her that you don’t make friends with fascists but ok. They never say what the Clark Gable movie is.

Operation Annihilate! Kirk’s brother dies, and so does his sister in law, leaving his nephew without parents. This is never resolved and the episode ends with them laughing about how Spock got his eyesight back.

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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Star Trek Villains Who Actually Had a Point

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This article contains spoilers for various parts of the Star Trek franchise.

Last fall, airing just a few weeks apart, both Star Trek and Star Wars debuted season premieres of new streaming TV episodes in which the heroes of each show had to fight a giant, legless worm-monster. In Star Trek: Discovery’s “That Hope Is You Part 1,” it was the deadly Tranceworm, while The Mandalorian’s “Chapter 9: The Marshall” had the murderous Krayt Dragon. The differences between the Final Frontier and the Faraway Galaxy could not have been made clearer by these dueling beasts: in Mando, the plot involved killing the monster by blowing up its guts from the inside, while in Disco, Book taught Michael Burnham how to make friends with it.

The Trek universe deals with the concept of evil a little differently than many of its famous genre competitors. There is no Lex Luthor of the Federation. Palpatine doesn’t haunt the planet Vulcan. The Klingons have no concept of “the devil.” (At least in The Original Series.) This isn’t to say Trek doesn’t have some very memorable Big Bads, it’s just that most of the time those villains tend to have some kind of sympathetic backstory. Even in the J.J. Abrams films!

So, with that in mind, here’s a look at seven Star Trek villains who maybe weren’t all bad, and kind of, even in a twisted way, had a point…

Harry Mudd

In Star Trek: The Original Series, Harry Mudd was presented as a straight-up con-man, a dude who seemed to be okay with profiting from prostitution (in “Mudd’s Women”) and was also down with marooning the entire crew of the Enterprise on a random planet (in “I, Mudd”). He’s not a good person. Not even close. But, he does make a pretty could case against Starfleet’s lack of planning. In the Discovery episode “Choose Your Pain,” Mudd accuses Starfleet of starting the war with the Klingons, and, as a result, putting the larger population of the galaxy at risk. “I sure as hell understand why the Klingons pushed back,” Mudd tells Ash Tyler. “Starfleet arrogance. Have you ever bothered to look out of your spaceships down at the little guys below? If you had, you’d realize that there’s a lot more of us down there than there are you up here, and we’re sick and tired of getting caught in your crossfire.”

Seska

At a glance, Seska seems pretty irredeemable. She joins the idealistic Maquis but is secretly a Cardassian spy. Once in the Delta Quadrant, she tries to screw Voyager as much as possible, mostly by hooking up with the Kazon. That said, Seska is also someone caught up in hopelessly sexist, male-dominated power structures and does what she has to do to gain freedom and power. The Cardassian military isn’t exactly enlightened nor kind, so the fact that Seska was recruited into the Obsidian Order in the first place certainly explains her deceptive conditioning. You could argue that Seska could have become a better person once she had Captain Janeway as an ally, but, the truth is, she was still a spy caught behind enemy lines, but suddenly without a government to report back to. So, Seska did what she had to do to survive, even lying to Chakotay about having his child. The thing is, again, outside of Starfleet, Seska is at the mercy of the sexist machinations of the Kazon, so again, she’s kind of using all the tools at her disposal to gain freedom. Had Voyager not gone to the Delta Quadrant, and Seska’s villainy may have been more clear-cut. But, once the reason for her espionage becomes moot, her situation gets more desperate, and, on some level, more understandable.

Charlie Evans

In The Original Series, Kirk loves telling humans with god-like powers where to shove it. In “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” he phasers Gary Mitchell and buries him under a rock. But, in “Charlie X,” when teenager Charlie Evans also gets psionic powers, Kirk does a less-than-a-great job of being a good role model. For most of the episode, Kirk tries to avoid become Charlies’ surrogate parent, and when he does try, it results in an embarrassing overly macho wrestling match featuring those famous pink tights.

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Charlie was a deeply troubled human being, and there was no justification for him harassing the crew and Janice Rand in specific. But, angry, kids like Charlie have to be helped before it gets to this point. Kirk mostly tried to dodge the adult responsibility of teaching Charlie the ropes, and only when some friendly aliens arrived, did everyone breathe a sigh of relief. But, don’t get it twisted, those aliens are basically just social workers, doing the hard work Starfleet is incapable of.

The Borg Queen

Because the origin of the Borg Queen has dubious canonical origins, all we were told in Voyager is that she was assimilated as a child, just like Seven of Nine. As Hugh and Jean-Luc discuss in the Picard episode “The Impossible Box,” basically, everyone assimilated by the Borg, is, on some level, a victim. The Queen was never presented this way in either First Contact or Voyager, but, at one point, writers Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens had pitched a story for Enterprise which would have featured Alice Krige as a Starfleet medical technician who made contact with the Borg.

Because both Alice Krige and Susanna Thompson played the Borg Queen, it’s possible the backstories of each Queen is different and that maybe they aren’t the same character. Either way, assuming the Borg Queen retains some level of autonomy relative to other drones (likely?) then she’s pretty much making the best of a bad situation. In fact, at the point at which you concede the Borg are unstoppable, the Queen’s desire to let Picard retain some degree of his independence as Locutus could scan as a kind of mercy. The Borg Queen actually thinks she and the Borg are making things simpler for everyone. And with both Data and Picard, she tried to make that transition easier and, in her own perverse way, fun too.

Ossyra

Yes, we saw Ossyra feed her nephew to a Trance worm, and we also saw her try to kill literally everyone on the USS Discovery, including Michael Burnham. However, in the middle of all of that, Ossyra did try to actively make peace between the Emerald Chain and the Federation. And, most tellingly, it was her idea. Ossyra also pointed out one of the most hypocritical things about the United Federation of Planets: the fact that Starfleet and its government rely on capitalism without actively acknowledging it. Essentially, Ossyra was saying that the ideals of the Federation are great, but the Federation has all kinds of dirty little secrets it doesn’t want to talk about. In her meeting with Admiral Vance, pretty much everything she said about the Federation was true—and her treaty proposal was fair.

Q’s Return on Star Trek: Picard Season 2 will Follow “Significant Trauma”

By Joseph Baxter

Why Star Trek: Discovery Needed to Write Out Its Klingons

By Lacy Baugher

The only snag: she wouldn’t turn herself over as a war criminal. Considering the fact that the Federation made Mirror Georgiou into a Section 31 agent, despite her war crimes in another universe, this also seems hypocritical. Why not just do the same thing with Ossyra? Tell everyone she’s going to prison for war crimes, but make her a Section 31 agent instead? Missed opportunity!

Khan

Khan was genetically engineered by wacko-a-doodle scientists at the end of the 21st Century. At some point on Earth, he became a “prince” with “power over millions.” But, as Kirk notes in “Space Seed,” there were “no massacres” under Khan’s rule, and described him as the “best of the tyrants.” Kirk’s take on Khan in “Space Seed” is basically that Khan was an ethical megalomaniac. Most of what we see in “Space Seed” backs this up. Khan doesn’t actually want to kill the crew, and stops short of doing it when he thinks he can coerce them instead. His only focus is to gain freedom for himself and his exiled fellow-Augments. In the Kelvin Universe timeline, Khan’s motivations are similar. Into Darkness shows us a version of Khan who, again, is only cooperating with Section 31 because he wants freedom for his people. Sure, he’ll crush some skulls and crash some starships to get to that point, but in his dueling origin stories, Khan is, in both cases interested in freedom for his people, who, are by any definition, totally persecuted by the Federation.

Khan is still a criminal in any century. But, we only really think of him as a villain because he goes insane in between the “Space Seed” and The Wrath of Khan. The Khan of The Wrath is not the same person we met in “Space Seed.” As he tells Chekov, “Admiral Kirk never bothered to check on our progress.” Had Kirk sent a Starfleet ship to drop in on Khan and his “family” every once in awhile this whole thing could have been avoided. In the prime timeline, Khan goes nuts because Ceti Alpha VI explodes and nobody cares. In the Kelvin timeline, Admiral Marcus blackmails him. Considering that Khan is Star Trek’s most famous villain, it’s fascinating that there are a million different ways you can imagine him never getting as bad as he became. In “Space Seed,” he and Kirk basically part as friends.

In “Encounter at Farpoint,” Q accuses humanity of being “a savage child race.” And walks Jean-Luc Picard through the various atrocities committed by humanity, through the 21st Century. Picard kind of shrugs his shoulders and says, “we are what we are and we’re doing the best that we can.” When we talk about the philosophy of Star Trek, we tend to give more weight to Picard’s argument: the idea that by the 24th century, humanity has become much better, in general than it is now. But, the other side of the argument; that there’s a history of unspeakable violence and cruelty baked into the existence of humanity, is given less weight. We don’t really listen to Q when he’s putting humanity on trial, because we can’t see his point of view.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

But, because Q wasn’t a one-off character, and because he said “the trial never ends” in the TNG finale, he’s actually not really a villain at all. Q exists post-morality, as we can imagine it. His notions of ethics are far more complex (or less complex) than we can perceive. Q is one of those great Star Trek characters who is actually beyond reproach simply because we have no frame of reference for his experiences or point of view. In Voyager, we also learned that even among other members of the Q Continuum, Q was kinder, with a more humanitarian approach to what he might call “lesser” lifeforms. If Q is villainous, it’s because of our definitions of villainy. Of every Star Trek antagonist, Q is the best one, for the simple fact that he’s not a a villain at all.

Which Star Trek villains do you think had a point? Let us know in the comments below.

The post Star Trek Villains Who Actually Had a Point appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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miss-spooky-eyes · 4 years ago

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OC Inspirations: Devinahl & Indy

I was (delightfully) tagged by @vespertine-legacy a while ago and I’ve hesitated to do this because I knew I was going to talk WAY too much - but it was weighing on me, so I decided to open up about the sources from which I stole, that is, drew inspiration for Devinahl and Indirae.

What three fictional characters is your OC a combination of?

This doesn’t apply to every OC - not even mine - but its certainly true for a few : Many of our characters are, to an extent, inspired by characters we see in movies, books, games, TV shows, etc.

Does this apply to any of your OCs? Was it a conscious decision on your part or not? Is your OC a combination of three (or more) fictional characters?

If so - post some GIFs / pics and tell us about them! What does your OC draw from other characters?

Too much Devinahl & Indy chat after the cut.

DEVINAHL

The truth is that when I came to creating my Imperial Agent Devinahl, and in particular fleshing out her backstory in far, far too much detail, there were some sources that I went to extremely explicitly and deliberately. And chief among them was ...

1. Garak, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

That’s right. Garak from Deep Space Nine. Plain, simple Garak. Outcast. Exile. Spy. Addict. Perennial liar. Patriot. Terrorist. Would-be genocider. Very good tailor.

(If you haven’t seen DS9, then you need to. It’s like Star Trek, but if it was actually good? And Garak is a big part of what elevates it.)

Is it weird to compare my ancient video game Barbie/gorgeous sex bomb badass assassin and seductress to a cold-blooded space lizard who spends his days hemming pants? Possibly. But there are aspects of Garak’s character that, consciously and unconsciously, I made parts of Devinahl’s DNA.

Firstly, Garak is a patriot. He loves Cardassia so much that despite seeing its flaws with absolute clarity, despite having been exiled and reviled by it, he would die without question to serve it (of course, he’d much rather make someone else die). And while seeing that as a weakness, despite knowing that the Cardassia he has committed to serving is disappearing before his eyes, there is still a part of him that believes that that commitment - that neverending sacrifice - is noble. The only noble part of him. That’s central to Devinahl’s character (which is, in turn, the way I made sense of the IA storyline). That while hating and despising the Sith, she would nevertheless believe in the Empire - not so much believe that it is good (at best, I think she sees it as order and stability where the Republic is corruption and chaos) as believe that her commitment to it is the only redeeming thing available to her.

Secondly, the way that Garak will take his needs, vulnerabilities, sincere emotions and package them in ways which gets him what he has to have to keep going, without ever giving up full control? Particularly in the extraordinary episode The Wire, in which a dying Garak tells Dr Bashir a series of lies about himself in order to elicit Bashir’s forgiveness, because he needs to be sincerely forgiven but without ever telling the truth?

Out of all the stories you told me, which ones were true and which ones weren’t? My dear doctor, they’re all true. Even the lies?

That is everything I tried to do with Dev, particularly in my fic about her and SCORPIO, particularly when it comes to her and Arcann. To know what she needs, as Garak needs absolution from Bashir, and tell just enough truth - put herself into just vulnerable enough a position - to get it, but never without reserving something, holding something back, whether it’s the knowledge that she can maneouvre herself out of SCORPIO’s clutches at any time or her real name? That’s a fucking survivor.

Thirdly, the relationship between Devinahl and Sifter (the spymaster who finds her as a traumatised child and grooms her for Intelligence) and specifically, the deathbed scene I wrote in Riddle was directly inspired by Garak’s relationship with Enabran Tain and that death scene.

Yes, Devinahl was not Sifter’s actual daughter, but in every real sense she was formed by Sifter - and had Sifter had just one day with Dev like Tain had with Garak, Dev would have been lost. She would have turned herself into a carbon copy of Sifter, and she would have died. But the bittersweetness? The acknowledgement that the parental figure you love will never, not even now that they’re dying, love you as you want them to?

‘I should have killed your mother before you were born. You have always been a weakness I can't afford.’ ‘So you've told me. Many times. ...’ ‘Elim, remember that day…in the country. You must've been almost five.’ ‘How can I forget it? It was the only day.’

(The love and infinite sadness with which Andrew Robinson says that line, ‘It was the only day’? I’m crying just thinking about it. Anyway, it was everything I was thinking about and wanted to achieve in that scene.)

Oh ... and Devinahl’s ambiguous relationship with her implants? Well, Garak also has an implant in his head. And that’s all I’m saying about that.

2. Oryx from Oryx & Crake by Margaret Atwood

A novel character rather than from TV or movies, I hope that’s OK. And I know that there are ... very problematic elements to the way Atwood writes about Oryx, her family, her culture, her background. But she was one of the strongest elements that went into creating Devinahl and her backstory.

There were specific aspects of the story Oryx tells to Jimmie - particularly the parts about being told to scream and make a fuss if a man tries to take you away to a hotel room, and then being told not to make a fuss when a man tries to take you away to a hotel room - that became part of Dev’s story. But there was also a general attitude and way of looking at life I wanted to capture and incorporate. Oryx’s philosophy of value?

Of course (said Oryx), having a money value was no substitute for love. Every child should have love, every person should have it. . . . but love was undependable, it came and then it went, so it was good to have a money value, because then at least those who wanted to make a profit from you would make sure you were fed enough and not damaged too much. Also there were many who had neither love nor a money value, and having one of these things was better than having nothing.

I wanted to create a character who could look at life and suffering and abuse, even her own, and view it in that dispassionate way which horrifies someone from my middle-class Western background - and then I wanted to test that idea, to bring it up against SCORPIO and have SCORPIO try to break it down with torture, to see if it was just a cool facade/necessary illusion. I wimped out of really testing that belief, instead having Dev always know that she could get out of her situation/having her find a way to be loved without truly having to sacrifice her protective patterns ... but if I was a little braver and better, I’d have tested it to breaking point. How far can a character go who thinks like that while still remaining, on some level, compassionate/human/likeable?

3. Saffron (Firefly)

I could have gone Black Widow (definitely the inspiration for Dev’s aesthetic in terms of outfit etc). But the plain truth is that I thought more about Saffron while dreaming up Devinahl/writing her backstory than I did about Black Widow (yes, Widow turned her weakness into strength in a manipulative fashion all the time, but Garak did it better, and other than that she mainly looked after boys in a way that I did not want Dev to be limited to).

Firefly, for a show that had - what - 13 episodes? - exercises far too much of a hold on my imagination and Saffron, especially in the first episode in which she appeared, was such a tremendous character. The way that she found exactly the triggers to turn each member of the crew inside out? (And if she’d had more time, it absolutely would have worked on Wash and Inara, too - it only didn’t because she had to hurry.) Dev has that. I can’t write it, because I suck, but she has it.

Oh, and nobody will ever know Devinahl’s real name (apart from you, if you read my fic about her backstory) and she’d die before letting you know it. That’s straight from Saffron. As is, I suppose, the man who would accept her just as she is without needing to push to know her secrets, except it worked out a little better for Dev and Arcann than it did for Yolanda and Durran Haymer because Dev and Arcann will always have pegging.

INDIRAE

(This will be a lot shorter than the section on Devinahl, I promise.)

1. Steve Rogers, Captain America (and whatever else)

I have never been super into the MCU, but the key reference I used to find a way into Indy’s character, back when she was nothing more than a cool-looking Cathar Bounty Hunter, was Steve Rogers. (November can attest to this)

Indy’s physical size - she’s six foot if she’s an inch, and big - is key to her personality, but equally key is the idea that she would always experience that size as uncomfortable and slightly alien to her. Like Steve Rogers, she started out as the scrawny kid always getting beat up by everybody ... And when she got her strength (with a hefty assist from the toxic waste run-off into what was her family’s only source of water) and suddenly got TALL and STRONG? She did not like bullies - which was what led her to help Coda out of a jam at the spacesport and started them on their road.

(If there’s a better way to play the BH storyline than as a stone-cold mercenary with an utterly unwilling heart of gold ... then I don’t know about it.)

2. Xena, Xena Warrior Princess

I’ll be completely fucking straight with anybody about this (so to speak): I love Xena, I had an obsession with it as a teenager I’m still unpacking, and the show tends to feed into my characters in an ... odd way.

Indy is physically imposing like Xena, is the main thing; and her dynamic with Coda owes a lot to Xena’s with Gabrielle (although Coda is as big and tough as Indy, she is the fast talker/smooth operator to Indy’s laconic strongman). I wanted Indy to dominate action scenes the way that Xena does, be that kind of a force of nature; and watch her struggle to find ways to channel that charisma, to need Coda’s help to understand how to do it.

3. Dottie Henson, A League of Their Own

OK, first of all, I do not want to hear any kind of mockery. This is, unironically, one of my favourite films of all time.

Again, we come back to the core theme of a character struggling with her own greatness/potential. That’s what is the most fascinating through-line of A League of Their Own: Dottie, this unbelievable baseball player/physical presence (yes, she’s very tall, just like Indy) who is so terrified to admit that she wants anything more than her smalltown life and dreadful husband, even while the evidence of her talent and passion for the game is burning up these ... fields? Diamonds? I don’t know baseball apart from this film.

Indy certainly hides behind not wanting to be a bounty hunter. She doesn’t believe in any Mandalorian nonsense about romanticising what is an unglamorous job. She’s just doing it for credits and afterwards, once she’s secured her family’s future, she’s totally going to go home and settle down in some acceptable, domestic way. Being on the Mantis with Coda, it’s absolutely just a means to an end. She doesn’t want to be there, she doesn’t care about it, it’s not who she is, she doesn’t need it. This life, the adventure, the freedom, the fighting for survival, it’s certainly not what gets inside her and what lights her up, no, not at all.

Oh, and Dottie is also a reluctant leader. She doesn’t see why her talent should put her in the position of telling other people what to do - but then, on the other hand, she sees so clearly what they need to be doing, and when she says to do it, they listen. She doesn’t want to carry this team, but they’re only a team so long as she carries them.

(Don’t worry, Coda’s not going to let her lie to herself for too long.)

#swtor #excessively long answers to memes #oc: devinahl #oc: indirae

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miss-musings · 5 years ago

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TROS Review - after second viewing

I’m glad I knew all the spoilers going into my first viewing. If I hadn’t known Ben died, I would’ve screamed. Although I’m pretty sure I heard someone at my second viewing go “What?!” when he fell over and vanished into the Force.

OK, let’s break this down.

THE GOOD

The movie looks great.

Daisy, Adam and John Williams all FUCKING brought it for this movie.

I actually liked some of the fan-service-y bits like Wedge getting a cameo, Han having a memory chat with Kylo/Ben, and Luke motivating Rey. I also noticed on the second go-around that Kylo flies an old Imperial TIE fighter (one from the Death Star ruins) to Exegol. And I like that shot of the old X-Wing of the Rebellion and the old TIE fighter of the Empire there alongside each other.

Most of all, I loved ALL the Reylo scenes we got in this movie. About 70 percent of the runtime seems to be dedicated to Rey, Kylo/Ben or both. I mean, it’s basically Reylo: The Movie, and I’m totally here for it. (But more on that below.)

I actually liked seeing Kylo in the mask again. I think it makes him look... sexy? Idk what I feel, y’all.

Some of the new creatures and characters were cool, even if we didn’t spend much time with them. (Again, more on that below.)

Loved Leia’s moments and how she had a big part to play in the story even if Carrie is gone. 😢

Those are all the big things; there might be a few small things that I’d remember if I were watching the movie in real time, but I can’t remember them now.

So, let’s get into it:

THE BAD

Oh, boy where do I start?

The pacing in both the very beginning (first 20-30 minutes?) and the very end (last 10) was ridiculous. My dad even agreed that the beginning felt rushed and disjointed.

While I love Kylo/Ben and Rey, the movie spends so much time focusing on them that no one else really gets an arc. Say what you will about TLJ, but Finn and Poe both had arcs in that movie, even if they were small. I felt like Poe did in this movie what he did in that last one: took to heart the words of wisdom of others around him (or at least, regurgitate their lines). He did it with Leia and Holdo in TLJ, and he did it with Zorri and Lando in this one. Finn doesn’t get any arc in this and the fact that he’s supposed to be Force-sensitive is like ... ??? What? I don’t even have time to unpack all that.

Also, Rose and Hux were sidelined majorly. I don’t even like Hux but even I felt his character and end were poorly done in this movie.

Something about both Finn and Rey’s Force abilities that bugged me was that I thought all Force sensitives can intuit or understand what others are saying in any alien/droid language. Remember how Rey could understand Chewie when she first met him but Finn couldn’t? It makes sense why Rey could understand a droid like BB-8 but why a Wookiee? Are there a lot of Wookiees on Jakku? No, she could understand him bc she’s Force sensitive and it’s an ability she has. But, in this one, neither she nor Finn could understand Babu Frick. I know it’s a small detail, and I could be misremembering canon, but it just bugged me both times.

So, Rey being a Palpatine... makes no sense. How and when did Palpatine have a kid? Was Rey’s dad a cloning experiment, or a naturally conceived and born child? This is something I’m morbidly curious about. I liked it better in TLJ when we thought she was no one, and this seems like a GIANT retcon and slap in the face to Rian Johnson. They even had to write a line about how Kylo supposedly never lied to her. Part of me wonders whether the Emperor was lying??? Maybe making Rey think she was his granddaughter would trick her into being obligated to come and end his life herself? But then, why was that Jedi Hunter looking for her parents? Oh well. Anyway, I did want her to be Rey of Jakku and no one else. But I also appreciate the thematic parallels and the yin/yang thing going with her and Kylo/Ben. He’s the embodiment of the Dark Side even though he’s descended from the Light, and Rey is the embodiment of the Light Side even though she’s descended from the Dark. So I’m a bit conflicted, but I hate it more than I love it.

I also HATE that Ben died. BUT, at least he didn’t die from falling into the pit, and at least there’s still a possibility that he’s coming back. The worst of it is that after he disappears, he’s never addressed again at all. Wouldn’t Poe or Finn ask about him? They don’t necessarily know he’s dead, and he would be a major threat if he were still alive. And why wasn’t he a Force-Ghost at the end? I HOPE it’s bc they’re leaving it open for him to come back. Or maybe his energy is living on in Rey whether spiritually (the dyad thing) or physically (maybe pregnant???).

But here’s the deal: in some ways this movie felt like the series finale of beloved TV show. All your favorites come back for little cameos, your main characters go out on a high note, and everything is resolved to a greater extent. Sure, there are more stories to tell, probably, but the Main Conflict has now been resolved. Think Avatar: The Last Airbender TV show or Star Trek: Voyager as examples.

BUT, in other ways, it DOESN’T feel like a finale. It feels like they’ve left doors to open and questions to explore in future properties. Is Finn Force-Sensitive? Is Jannah Lando’s relative? Is Ben Solo really dead? What’s gonna happen to Rey? Etc.

So, the movie needed to pick a lane. Either be The End of an era, or not. You can’t wrap up a story but then tease us with more stories. That’s not how this works. Fuck, even Harry Potter — as much as everyone hates JKR — got this right. Big Bad Guy is dead and instigating conflict is now resolved. Palpatine was the one who started this whole thing, so now that he’s dead, all is well???

Well, here’s my other big complaint about the movie. JJ & Co don’t seem to know how the Force works.

The Force is about a balance between the Light and the Dark. When one side becomes too strong, the other side grows stronger to compensate. When one side wipes out the other, the other responds. There must always be balance. Snoke even pointed this out in TLJ that Rey was Kylo’s Equal in the Light bc he was growing stronger.

And the Sith and the Jedi are religions on their respective sides. Not all Dark side users are Sith; not all Light side users are Jedi. And there are some Force users who use both freely and some who stay in balance.

The Mortis arc of TCW demonstrates this very well.

This is why so many people were pissed that Ben died. Not only are you losing a great character but you’re also losing the potential of what Ben and Rey could’ve been together as Force-users.

Palpatine and all the Sith are dead. Luke, Leia and all the Jedi are dead.

Except for Rey, who is descended of the Sith but trained by Jedi. So, she (and Ben) would have to figure out exactly how to keep the Force in balance. If the last Jedi just destroyed the last Sith, then the Dark Side is going to have to respond. But, if Rey could find other Force-users and teach them how to be in balance and use both Light and Dark in harmony then balance could be restored. There would be no need for these extremes if everyone stays in the middle.

This means Rey would have to end the Jedi. Which is what Luke wanted in the last movie. But then we find out that Leia received Jedi training??? So was Leia a Jedi? Is Rey? I’m so confused.

I like the fact that Rey’s saber has a darker hilt but it’s a yellow/orange blade. It kinda hints that maybe she will stay in balance — using both light and dark, being neither Sith nor Jedi, but something in between — a Skywalker, if you will.

So I guess, that’s a tiny win. The theory that the Skywalker(s) could be a new religion of Force-users in balance with the Force could still happen after that scene of Rey on Tatooine.

But, still, I hate all these retcons and the idea that the Jedi are the end-all, be-all. The Sith definitely aren’t good; but the Jedi weren’t always great either. And I hate that Rey had to fight Palpatine alone when it should’ve been her AND Ben — the balance between the Dark and Light should’ve been stronger than him, but whatever.

Also, one last thing, but why did Rey have BB-8 on Tatooine? Didn’t Poe make a big deal about Rey hurting BB-8 at the beginning? Why wasn’t BB-8 with Poe? Why wasn’t Chewie with Rey on the Falcon? (I guess he might’ve been and just never got off the ship.) Wouldn’t R2 and C3PO have been more appropriate in that final shot? They were in all 9 films. They’re more iconic and thematically appropriate than BB-8 to close out the saga, but oh well.

😪

TL;DR: I have really mixed feelings about this movie. At the end of both showings, I was smiling, so that’s something. I had fun... I think?? But yeah, it’s definitely bittersweet.

#reylo #rey x kylo ren #tros #tros spoilers #the rise of skywalker #rise of skywalker #kylo ren #ben solo #rey palpatine #star wars #force dyad #dyad #adam driver #daisy ridley #john williams

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agentmarymargaretskitz · 4 years ago

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Us Against the Universe

Happy massively belated birthday, @fezwearingjellybananas! I’m sorry this took so long and I hope a Marvellous Ladies of DC has been worth the wait.

AO3

A loud wail came from the bassinet just as Zari finally got her piece to the other side of the checkerboard. Her mother looked directly towards her baby brother and got out of her chair. Zari watched her mother pick up her baby brother, shushing him and rocking him back and forth. It didn’t calm him down, so he either had a dirty diaper or was hungry. Probably both.

“Zari, I think we need to pause the game for a while until he calms down,” her mother said as Behrad wailed louder.

“Nah,” Zari pushed her chair back. “He’s probably hungry or something. I’ll just go read.”

She stomped off towards the stairs. The prospect of having a little brother was exciting when Mama and Baba first told her. She’d seen the other kids in her class talk about their younger siblings and been a little jealous she didn’t have that. But Behrad was too little to do anything fun. All he did was cry and sleep and poop and he couldn’t even eat halva yet. Her parents were always busy with him and barely had time for her.

“Zari.”

She looked down from the steps at her mother, still swaying with an angry Behrad. “I know it’s been harder to do things together, but we’ll be able to do it more when he gets older.”

Zari shrugged. “Okay, Mama. I think his diaper’s getting full.”

“You’re right. I’m going to change him.”

She rushed off and Zari trudged up the steps to her room. After shutting the door and opening her window, the young girl flopped heavily on her bed. Staring at the ceiling got boring quickly, so Zari grabbed the new book Baba had given her and sat next to the window. She had been meaning to read it for a while. Now seemed like a good time.

“No!” came a scream through the window.

“I’m so sorry, Lily. I-”

“I HATE you!”

“Lily, please-”

The commotion made Zari peer out her window over at the next-door neighbors to see Lily Stein crying out in the backyard. The Steins were good friends with the Tarazis and had let her stay with them when Mama had to go have Behrad. They were really into science and insects, but they had talked to Zari about their computer and how it worked. She really liked them and hoped everything was okay.

Zari stuck her head out the window. “Lily!”

Lily’s lip trembled. She didn’t respond, but just ran toward the bushes. Zari knew exactly where she was goin.

“Wait for me! I’m coming down!”

Zari backed up and grabbed her backpack. She stuffed in her new book and Mama’s old Walkman inside. Zipping it up, she bounded down the stairs and to the front door to get her shoes. Mama was sitting on the couch with Behrad, watching Zari as she stuffed her feet in her sneakers. “Going somewhere?”

“Next door to see Lily,” Zari explained.

“Be back for dinner.”

“I will! Bye, Mama!”

She ran out the door and around the house towards the bushes she’d seen Lily go through. She ran through the bushes and looked both ways before crossing the road to get to the park. Once she made her way to the other side, Zari bolted towards the woods and ran along the trail until she found the hideout that she and Lily had built. Her friend was inside, clutching her Beebo doll and crying.

“Lily?” she called out.

Lily stopped her sniffling momentarily. “Zari?”

“What’s wrong?” Zari asked as she crawled into the small fort made of sticks and branches. “Is everything okay?”

Lily shook her head. “My dad’s dead.”

Dr. Stein was dead? Zari didn’t get it. “What happened?”

“He and Mom were going on another business trip,” explained Lily. “Mrs. Jackson came over with Jax to watch me. They were supposed to be back two days ago, but then Mrs. Jackson got a call that it was going to take longer. Then Mom came back and told me Dad was dead!”

She started crying again. Zari reached out and patted her shoulder. It wasn’t fair at all. Lily’s dad had come into their class sometimes to do science demonstrations. He let her help him fix the computer when she’d been staying with them. Hearing that he was dead was awful and scary. Poor Lily.

“I’m sorry,” was all she could say.

Lily sniffled and sat Beebo between them. Zari remembered it’d been a Hanukkah present from her father. “I want him back.”

Zari nodded. She couldn’t imagine how she would feel if Baba was gone and didn’t want to.

“Want to listen to music?” she finally asked after a few minutes of silence.

Lily gave a small nod. Zari pulled out her Walkman and passed the headphones to the other girl so she could listen first. She also took out a notebook and pencil too for hangman. They played for a little while, going back and forth with different topics to eventually make each other laugh. It wasn’t until a drop of water hit the paper that either girl realized it was starting to rain. Zari stuffed everything into the bag before it could get too wet and took off with Lily.

The rain was coming down harder and the sky was getting darker as they raced down the trail. Lily grabbed Zari’s hand and pulled her back as a tree branch came crashing down on the trail. They ran through the mud and weeds to the clearing where kids played soccer. Once they were out of the woods, Zari saw something large in the clouds as lightning split through the sky. She ran further into the field with Lily on her tail, now a lot more curious.

“Did you see that?” she called over the rain. “Lily?”

“Zari!”

Beams of light suddenly shone down on her. Zari held up her arm and looked up to see something hovering above her. It was some massive thing, floating up in the sky. The lights grew brighter and Lily ran forward to stand at her side. Colors began to swirl around the two of them. Zari grabbed Lily, who clung back to her as they were lifted into the air. She shut her eyes as the light grew too blinding, holding onto Lily tighter.

Then the brightness cut out and Zari’s sneakers touched down on something solid. She cracked an eye open, then the other. No longer was she on the soccer field with Lily. They were on a pad in some large metal room. The people surrounded them all wore red jackets, but they didn’t look like people. Some had scales, others were slimy. There was a fellow with two heads and one with just eyes.

Aliens. They were surrounded by aliens.

They said something in a language Zari didn’t understand as another alien came forward. She (Zari thought the alien was a she) seemed almost human, but there were blue markings under her eyes. Pointing in a direction, she barked out something. Three aliens grabbed her and Lily and lead them away.

~~~

They put Zari and Lily in some kind of cell together and locked it. Almost immediately, they both started making a racket and screaming to be let out. Yelling felt good for Zari. But then a large alien growled something at them and gave them a stern look. Zari was pretty sure that they wanted them to shut up. She screamed at the alien again only to get a roar back that got alien spit on her before they were left alone.

“We’re on a spaceship,” Lily commented quietly as Zari took a seat on the bench next to her. “I thought if this ever happened, it would be more like Star Trek.”

“You’ve thought of being on a spaceship before?”

Lily shrugged. “It was more fun in my head.”

“Whatever happens, it’ll be an adventure,” Zari assured her. “We’ll get home and we can have dinner at my house and tell our families everything. We just stick together, and we’ll be okay.”

“You and I against this,” Lily grinned for the first time since their hideout.

Then the aliens came back but there was no yelling at them this time. They unlocked their cell and guided them down a bunch of halls. It didn’t seem like they were letting them go though. Zari reached over and took Lily’s hand as they were brought into a cabin. The woman with marks under her eyes was seated inside, two cups in front of her. Both girls were put in seats and aliens held them down as the woman approached with the cups. Zari felt her mouth get forced open and something went down her throat, despite her attempts to gag it up.

“What was that!” she shouted as Lily got the same treatment.

The woman put the cups down on their desk. “Ingestible translators.”

Zari gaped at her. “You speak English.”

“It sounds like English to you Terrans, but I’m speaking in the tongue of my homeworld,” the woman said. “Now you can understand what everyone is saying and stopping screaming your heads off at us.”

Lily narrowed her eyes at her. “Who are you?”

“Captain Mary Xavier, and this is the Refuge.”

“I’m Zari Tarazi,” Zari introduced. “This is Lily Stein. Can you take us back home? We live on Earth and I’m probably late for dinner now.”

Captain Xavier laughed and shook her head. “You’re a long way from Terra, child.”

She pressed a button, opening a shade behind them. There was no Earth. Just stars and blackness and something of swirling colors. It was beautiful and terrifying all at once.

“Terra’s three jumps away,” Captain Xavier continued, motioning for the other aliens to leave. “You’re not going home, kids.”

“But my parents-”

“Won’t miss you,” Captain Xavier barked. “You’re part of the crew now.”

“How?” Lily crossed her arms. “Aren’t you supposed to sign something? I didn’t sign up for this!”

“You have now,” Captain Xavier smiled at them. “You’re with us, girls. No going back.”

Zari crossed her arms too. “I don’t want to be part of your crew.”

“You should consider yourself lucky, child. If it wasn’t for me, the rest of the crew was going to gobble you up. They haven’t tasted Terran before. You owe me, child.”

Zari really didn’t want to be eaten. She uncrossed her arms, and Lily followed her example. “So we’re part of your crew then, I guess. What do you do?”

“We’re Ravagers. We find things and get them to people who pay us the biggest price. Sometimes we have to fight for them.”

“Like pirates? Just in space.”

Captain Xavier nodded at Lily. “You’re right. Both of you are small. You’ll be good at thieving in the tight spots.”

Zari and Lily looked at each other. Stealing seemed better than being eaten by aliens.

“Listen here,” Captain Xavier’s voice became a touch softer. “You’re with the Ravagers now. We look out for each other. You two already seem to do that. The rest of the crew’s gonna see you as Ravagers soon instead of the next meal. Okay?”

Zari nodded.

“Now, get yourselves to the galley. Food’s gonna be served and you’ll miss it if you don’t hurry.”

Lily got out of the seat. “Where is it?”

Captain Xavier sighed. “I’ll show you two today. You’re on your own tomorrow.”

~~~

Dinner was a mishmash of things that Zari had never seen before and didn’t know if they were okay to eat. Lily wasn’t sure either until another crew member whose skin reminded them of a hedgehog came over and talked to them about the food. She didn’t know much about Terran religion but seemed interested about halal and kosher food. There were other religions in space too with their own requirements about food. They ended up eating everything except the meat before Captain Xavier came and showed them to their room.

“You two share this room. Don’t start any fights or you’ll get floated.”

She shut the door, leaving them alone. Lily let Zari have the top bunk and settled into the one below.

Zari stared out at space from the small porthole. This was a whole lot different than the videos she had seen at school and when her parents took her to the planetarium. Her parents were probably worried sick about her now. She’d missed dinner for certain. When she’d left, she’d said bye to Mama but not to Behrad. Zari had been annoyed by him for so long, but she missed him and Mama and Baba so much now.

A muffled cry came from below. Lily.

Zari leaned over the edge. “You want to come up here?”

It didn’t take long for Lily to scramble to the top. Her eyes were red and puffy in the light from outside of the spaceship.

“I miss Mom,” she whimpered. “And Dad and Mrs. Jackson and Jax.”

Zari felt her own eyes well up. “I miss my family.”

“I told my mom I hated her.”

“I was jealous of my baby brother. Mama didn’t have time to play checkers with me.”

“I feel really bad,” Lily cried, staring out the window.

“Maybe it’s all a dream,” Zari suggested. “Maybe we’ll wake up tomorrow and today was a bad dream. We’ll be home and your dad will be there.”

“And if it’s not?”

Zari had to think about that now. “We’ll find a way to break free. We can run away from the Ravagers in a spaceship and go back home to Earth.”

Lily smiled. “Terra is a cooler name though.”

“It is. And we’ll make it home to tell people. Even if it’s us against the universe, we’ll make it.”

~~~

A month passed, or at least they were sure it was. Zari was using an old class calendar from her folder to keep track and Lily had made a twelve-month calendar on a sheet of paper. They’d been with the Ravagers long enough to pick out the ones who were nice and those who were mean. Captain Xavier wasn’t so bad. She acted like a mother, a teacher, or a captain. Zari had heard her once whispering with another alien about them and ‘Mon-el’ but missed the rest when she’d heard them coming and ran.

Today was their first job. Captain Xavier had a buyer asking for them to steal fuel cells. The Refuge’s crew would provide cover while Zari would go steal the cells with Lily and another crew member. It was a lot of responsibility, but the captain felt that they were ready. If they failed, the crew would eat them. Success was very crucial for their survival.

One upside of space and the Refuge was the technology and how much more advanced it was than on Terra. Zari had spent a lot of time with Lily learning about the ship and its computers and how they worked. She was doing great with learning about how to use different settings and systems. Lily was too, but she preferred learning about the mechanics of the ship.

They’d also become exceptionally good in lockpicking, diffusing energy fields, and fighting offensively from Captain Xavier’s lessons.

After a stressful hour of crawling through vents and avoiding sentries whilst holding a case of powerful but tiny fuel cells, Zari was back on the ship with Lily. Both were grimy and sweaty and had some small burns from the cells, but overall alive. Captain Xavier had been satisfied with what they’d done, and a few other Ravagers even congratulated them. For the first time, Zari felt like she’d found her place.

Then she remembered Mama and Baba and Behrad.

~~~

“What are we doing out here?” Zari asked as she followed Captain Xavier into the forest.

“You said your birthday was today,” the captain said, ducking under a branch with orange vines that seemed to be moving. “Figured I can teach you something more useful now.”

Zari climbed over a fallen tree and ran forward a little bit to catch up. “I know how to start up the ship and reboot it. I can control the thrusters now too. That’s useful.”

“You’re still a long way off of me letting you fly. No, today you’re learning how to use a blaster.”

“A blaster?”

“Yes, child. I can’t keep sending you and Lily out on your own unprotected.”

She unclipped her blaster and showed Zari how to fire it. Then she took a few shots, taking down tree branches. The young girl watched with wide eyes while they fell to the floor, like the tree branch had in the storm before the Refuge had taken her.

“Your turn.”

Zari took the heavy weapon in her hand. Captain Xavier knelt beside her, talking her through the steps. Aim it the right way. Check the levels on it. Aim again. Turn the safety off. Squeeze the trigger when ready.

“Watch out for the kickback,” Captain Xavier warned gently when Zari was ready.

She squeezed the trigger. Its force made her stagger back a little, but there was a burning hole on the bark of the tree she’s been aiming for. Captain Xavier looked proud as Zari turned the safety back on.

“I hit it,” she murmured.

“You did,” the Kree woman ruffled her hair a little, causing a few pieces of her braid to come out. “We’ll practice some more.”

“Okay.”

Captain Xavier stood back up. “You don’t like using it that much, huh?”

“You kill people with these. I don’t want to kill people.”

“That’s a good thing. Good people never want to kill.”

“But the Ravagers kill sometimes.”

“We do. I don’t like to. Some evil just needs to be taken out. Others you have to just run from.”

She got a faraway look for a moment. “Evil might come for you one day. I want you to know how to protect yourselves. I was younger than you when I got taken away from my family and forced to work for someone else before the Ravagers saved me. If I’d known how to defend myself, then I would have never been taken away in the first place.”

“But then you wouldn’t have met the Ravagers.”

Captain Xavier shrugged. “I probably would have found them eventually. I was a bit of a free spirit.”

Zari scuffed her foot against the dirt. “I don’t want to use a blaster though.”

“How about a stunner?” Captain Xavier said. “You’ve seen them. Had to use that with the Dominator that snuck onboard. It doesn’t kill, but it does sting like crazy.”

Zari nodded. “I like that better.”

“Fair. It works like a blaster. You can take a few more practice shots with it if you want. The rest of the crew is probably still getting supplies out here. There’s time.”

Zari hefted up the blaster. “Okay.”

~~~

“Come on!”

Lily was a few paces ahead of Zari as they ran down the hall of the Valeronian outpost. In the two years they’d been in space, a lot had changed. They were Ravagers now, which sounded more official than space pirates. Zari had become masterful at putting together and taking apart electronic systems. Lily worked well with small pieces and mechanical bits. When they put their skills together, they created some great things. It was enough to let Captain Xavier start trusting them to go on assignments without someone watching out for them.

“I though you said it would work to keep the door jammed!” Zari sped up a little, which was hard while holding a large axe they had been tasked to bring out.

“It was supposed to! I need something stronger to keep the bolts powered. Like dwarf star!”

“Lily, we can’t get dwarf star on the Refuge.”

“Well, I’m saving credits for-”

She skidded to a stop as a large Valeronian came out of the crater in the wall the Ravagers had blasted for them to slip through. Zari stopped, nearly running into her. The axe this guy had was a lot bigger than the one they were stealing.

“Stay back!” Zari shouted, holding the axe they had out.

Lily backed up beside her as he drew closer.

Something blasted him through the other wall. As the dust settled, Captain Xavier was there, blaster in hand. There was murder in her eyes.

“Get back to the ship,” she ordered. “Now!”

Zari and Lily didn’t waste time. They booked it.

~~~

“Beebo la-la-loves you!”

Zari pulled off her headphones. “It still works?”

“Yeah, you just have to squeeze him a little harder. Wonder if Terra still sells these things?”

“Maybe they do. We could go and see it one day.”

“How?” Lily set Beebo back on their desk, away from some of the tools so they didn’t set it on fire again. “We’re with Mary’s crew. You don’t just leave the Ravagers.”

“You can if you have a fast ship. Remember the last gathering? People say it’s happened.”

Zari closed her book and slid off the bed. “Think about it. When we get old enough and have enough credits, we can leave. It doesn’t have to just be Terra we go to. It can be anywhere! We can see all kinds of galaxies. See if Krypton is really still out there. Find the Lantern Corps. A whole life of adventure for you and me.”

Lily grinned. “I like it. But it means we’re running from the Ravagers forever.”

“But we can outsmart them! I know we can! And we’re both learning to fly and you know how to fix the ship and I’m good at managing the programming of it all. Just think of it.”

“We’d be like outlaws for the Ravagers. Outlaw space pirates. We’d need names.”

“Good point,” Zari glanced out the porthole at the stars. “Something with space.”

The preteens were silent for a few minutes, watching the stars and a few bits of space junk floating off in the distance.

“I’ll be Star Lady,” Zari finally declared. “How about you?”

“Cosmonaut,” Lily told her. “Like astronaut, but with cosmos. It sounds cooler.”

“You know, it does. Makes me think of the nebulas.”

“Star Lady and Cosmonaut, explorers and rogues of the galaxy.”

“Us against the universe. We’ll be amazing.”

~~~

Zari stared out at Xandar as she flew the ship in closer. She brushed a stray piece of hair back as she waited for the clearance to come through to the ship. Maybe she should have taken up that offer from Lily to cut her hair short. It looked really good on her friend, who was seated off to the side.

“So what are you going to do once we get the clearance?” Mary asked.

“Gradually accelerate, but not too much to damage the shield,” Zari answered. “Coast on the descent and don’t aim downward.”

“Good. Now do that as soon as we get clearance.”

Zari nodded. Lily strapped herself in as they were approved to go in.”

When they landed, Mary patted her on the back and congratulated her on the landing. Then she ordered the girls to stay on the ship while they sold off some of the things they’d picked up and stock up on supplies. Zari and Lily could practically say the speech with her now, but never knew why they had to stay aboard. Mary never disclosed the details.

“Lily,” Zari said, turning to her friend as they watched the rest of the Ravagers leave. “I want a ship.”

“Me too. But ships cost money.”

“Then let’s start saving credits.”

~~~

“Hey, Zari?”

Zari had nearly been about to drift off to sleep when she heard Lily’s voice. “Hm? Everything okay?”

“Yeah…I just want to say something.”

“Do I need to turn on the light for this?” Zari asked, pulling off her covers. It would be easy to get to the lights now that she was on the bottom bunk. Lily had wanted to switch a few months ago and Zari was happy to have her feet on the floor without having to jump down.

“No, you don’t have to. But I want to tell you something now before I chicken out.”

“Lily, you’re scaring me.”

“No, no, no! I’m fine. It’s just, um, I don’t like men. I…like women.”

“Oh,” Zari blinked. “Okay.”

“You knew?”

“Not quite,” Zari didn’t exactly lie. She had noticed that Lily always blushed more around aliens who identified as female than she did with males. “Had a feeling but I didn’t want to assume. So I figured I’d wait until you said something before I did.”

“What do you mean?”

Now it was her turn. Zari inhaled and braced herself. “I like women too. And men. Women more though.”

“That’s great!”

“Yeah,” Zari nodded. “I don’t know I would have figured it out if I was still on Terra. I didn’t know you could even like women. When I did, I figured it was either one or the other. And then we kept growing up and seeing more and learning more and…it hit me a year or two ago. But I didn’t know if I could tell you.”

Lily’s head appeared upside down from the bunk. “Why not?”

“I was afraid that if I did, I would lose you.”

“You wouldn’t. And you won’t. You’ll never lose me, Z. It’s like you always tell me. Us against the universe.”

“Us against the universe,” Zari repeated. “Star Lady and Cosmonaut stay together, no matter what.”

~~~

Zari fell back as the fist crunched against her nose. “Ow!”

“Take that, Terran- hey!”

Lily had jumped on the new girl’s back and drove her elbow into her shoulder blade. While the two fought, Zari, wiped the blood away with the back of her hand and swung her fist at her. It connected with the other girl’s eye, toppling her and Lily back. Zari was ready to go at her again before she looked up.

“Uh-oh.”

“I should say,” Mary snarled, looking down at the three of them. “I thought I told you two to teach Eve about taking inventory.”

Lily scrambled away from Eve. “She called us stupid Terrans.”

“She did.”

Eve scoffed and crossed her arms. “They are.”

“You’re one to talk. I pulled you out of that cesspool of a town and I can easily put you back there. You respect everyone on this crew, no matter from where they came from.”

Eve scowled and picked herself off the floor.

“And you two…”

Zari grimaced as Mary turned to her and Lily. “You’re old enough to know better. Both of you are. You need to show her the way. There’s still time for the crew to taste Terran.”

She’d been using that threat for years. Zari and Lily knew she’d never see it through, but they had been kidnapped from Terra nearly ten years ago. They were stuck with the Ravagers, even though they were working to get a ship and fly away from the Ravagers. Still, they’d make it out one of these days and explore the galaxy.

“What’s she mean by ‘taste Terran’?” Eve asked after Mary stalked out of the room.

“If we don’t do as she says, she’ll kill us and feed us to the crew for dinner,” Lily explained. “Probably in a stew. It’s easier to hide whatever meat is in there that day. Everyone on the Refuge could eat us and then realize afterwards we weren’t there.”

Eve wrinkled her nose. “I don’t eat meat.”

“Then we can count on you not eating us,” Zari nodded. “Now let’s just finish this inventory so we don’t have to stay in the same room for much longer.”

~~~

“You’re really trusting us to run our own job?”

Mary nodded. “You’re old enough, Zari. You can fly a ship, hack any system, and you and Lily are a good team. I trust you to do this without getting yourself killed.”

Zari nodded eagerly. This was their chance to finally escape the Ravagers. Lily was looking over at her, not saying a peep but no doubt having the same thoughts run through her mind.

“I’m still sending you with two other Ravagers,” Mary continued. “Back-up. I don’t want to lose my best thieves.”

Zari felt her heart sink a little. They wanted a clean escape. She and Lily could fight, but they didn’t want to get freedom that way. Maybe the Ravagers weren’t the best people morally, but they had been family for the last thirteen years.

“Can Eve come?” Lily asked.

If they got Eve to come, then that could help. They were on better terms with her now. She also didn’t mind getting her hands dirty if it came to it.

Mary shook her head. “I’m still teaching that girl how to fly. She’s staying around. So what are you thinking of taking?”

“We need to take a moment to do some research on what we can take,” Lily spoke up. “Right, Zari?”

“Right. Thank you for this opportunity. We’ll get back to you on what we’ll take.”

The two left the cockpit and headed to their room.

“We’re so close,” Lily sighed. “If Mary didn’t have us being supervised still, we could make our break.”

“I know,” Zari nodded, brushing loose strands of her hair back. She’d let Lily cut it short this time. When she grew it out long, she was going to keep it that way again. “How much do we have right now?”

Lily opened Zari’s old backpack where they were keeping the credits. “Probably enough for an engine and some controls.”

Zari pursued her lips. Still a long way to go. “We just need to keep saving up.”

“Yeah. Do you think Mary will pick which ship we can use?”

“If we can, we have to pick the Waverider. That’s the best one.”

~~~

Their first solo theft was a success. Mary even let them keep a share of the profits of the refined metal they stole from an Almeracian ship. She started trusting them to run more operations on their own for the Ravagers. Unfortunately, they were always supervised by at least two Ravagers that were supposed to serve as ‘muscle’. Zari just saw them as glorified babysitters.

Years kept on passing for the two girls. Even though more of their lives had been lived in space than on Terra, their home planet was not forgotten by Zari nor Lily. They still held onto their traditions or what they remembered of them, celebrating holidays and birthdays according to their Terran calendar. Everything from Zari’s backpack was around the room they shared, remnants of their culture reminding them where they came from. But they celebrated other festivals on different planets that held significance to their lives now. Space was as much as home as Terra had been.

Zari wondered about her family back there. At this point, Behrad was older than she had been when the Ravagers picked her and Lily up. Did her parents think she’d run away from home or that someone had taken her and Lily? Did they still remember her at all? And what about Lily’s mother? What became of her- losing her husband and daughter on the same day?

“Zari?” Lily peeked her head up from the floor. “Hey, Zari?”

Zari looked down at Lily’s grease-streaked face. “Huh?”

“I asked if you’d pass me the wrench. The little one?”

Zari found what she was looking for and handed it over. “Do you ever wonder about your mom?”

Lily stared stonily before shifting her eyes down and ducking beneath the floorboards to use the wrench. “Sometimes. I don’t like to.”

“How come?”

“Because the last thing I said to her was that I hated her. I wish I could have done something different that day.”

Zari thought back to how eager she’d been to leave the house to be with her friend and not stay around her brother. “I do too.”

~~~

Zari sat upside down on the bench, tapping her foot against the wall. Lily was pacing.

“Mary isn’t going to be happy with us,” her friend finally stated.

“You think?” Zari asked, picking at the hole in the pocket of her pants. “Here I thought she’d be pleased we got arrested!”

“It wasn’t just because of me.”

“Okay, Lily. But you’re not totally innocent.”

“Because the Infernian fled! He tried to drug us!”

“So you punched him?”

“Because he was trying it on another girl. When I stopped him, he punched me first! And then you joined in.”

“I’d say sorry, but I wouldn’t be sincere about it,” Zari admitted, examining the burns across her knuckles. “He was disgusting to Eve. I would do it again. But at least she made it out.”

Lily finally took a seat next to her. About time, since she’d been pacing for at least twenty minutes. “Do you think she told Mary?”

“Stein, Tarazi!” a guard came in with a key.

“Actually, she’s Star Lady and I’m Cosmonaut,” Lily piped up with a grin.

The guard rolled his eyes and unlocked their cell. “You’re free to go.”

Zari swung her legs down so she could stand upright. “Say what now?”

“Nova Corp took a look at it, and they’re after the guy now,” the guard told them. “But you’re still in our systems. Next offense and your stay here will be longer.”

“Thank you,” Zari smiled as she exited the cell with Lily. “We wouldn’t dream of causing any more trouble.”

Lily raised an eyebrow, but waited until they were outside before saying more. “We wouldn’t dream of causing any more trouble?”

“I might have thought the rest to myself. We wouldn’t dream of causing any more trouble and then get caught by the Nova Corp.”

“Good idea on not saying the rest. Now let’s go find Mary and make up a reason for why we didn’t make it back last night.”

~~~

“Tarazi!”

Zari quickly stowed the credits she’d been counting under her bunk and ran to the door, meeting Mary just in time. “Hey there.”

“I heard you didn’t bring in anything on the last assignment.”

“It’s true,” Zari crossed her arms, staring Mary down. “I gave it away.”

“You did what? I know I’ve taught you better than that. We’re Ravagers-”

“There were kids,” Zari’s voice broke. “They had children in captivity. Apparently, they were planning to sell them off to the high and mighty of the galaxy as servants. More like slaves. So I backed out of taking the haul for us. Eve, Lily, and I set the kids free. We gave them the credits we were taking and got them to ships. We left a beacon for Nova Corp to find them and get them home.”

Mary tilted her head. “So your plan that took a week just got thrown to the wind because of some children.”

“I won’t ignore a crying child.”

Mary was silent for the longest moment before nodding. “Did the children get picked up by Nova Corp?”

Zari nodded.

“Good. But you’re going to have to make up for those lost credits.”

“And I will.”

Mary walked off and Zari exhaled, shutting the door.

Lily sat up from her bed. “Are we getting closer to our own ship?”

“More than halfway there. But we might have to lose some of it to make up for giving the kids the credits.”

“That’s okay. The universe might have taken this round financially, but we win morally.”

Zari smiled to herself. “I hacked into the Nova Corp when we got back. They found the kids’ families or ones that will take the orphans. We did a good thing.”

~~~

“Well then, Star Queen and Cosmos again?”

“Star-Lady,” Zari grumbled as she and Lily sat in front of the desk of the Nova Corp officer.

“And it’s Cosmonaut,” Lily mumbled, trying to move her hands up to wipe the blood from her cheek.

“Eh, you’re still officially Tarazi and Stein in here. So what was it this time?”

“Mine,” Lily raised a hand. “My date was not who she said she was.”

“And I had to help her out. So I followed her to where they were holding her and set her free. Yes, there was some fighting, but we didn’t know there was flammable material.”

“And no one died. That’s important.”

Zari nodded. “She’s right, no one did die. Just a few minor burns.”

The officer groaned. “This is the third time I’ve seen you this cycle.”

“Did you miss us?”

“No. You’re about to lose a bunch of credits for bail.”

Zari’s shoulders slumped. They had to get better at dealing with their money.

~~~

The Dominators had invaded Terra. It was buzzing all across the galaxy. Zari didn’t think it was a coincidence that she grounded the Refuge when they first got the reports. Someone had managed to get footage of what was happening on the planet. Lily and Zari watched together, wondering about their families again.

But there were people fighting back. Mostly a bunch of people in colorful costumes. A beautiful woman with dark hair with a hammer used lightning to fight back. A robot flew around sending energy blasts out while another with pale skin and white hair frozen them solid on the streets. Two archers fought from above and on the ground. The most surprising to both of them was a woman dressed like Captain America, who Zari remembered hearing about in a book when she was in school.

Then it all ended. The Dominators all collapsed dead on the streets. Their hive had been hit and severed their links, rendering every single one lifeless. A whole species gone in an instant. Even if they had been warriors used for muscle, it still chilled Zari. If something ever happened to Terra and everyone died, it would truly be them against the universe.

“It’s still there though,” Lily said that night. “Terra. We can go back one day.”

“One day,” Zari agreed.

They just needed more credits.

~~~

The banner was silver and blue, rippling in the wind in front of the museum. Zari stopped and looked up at it. When she and Lily had been younger, Mary or someone else had taken them to museums on other planets. Part of it was teaching observation with some light pickpocketing, but it also served an education purpose. As a result, Zari knew about most of the habitable planets along with some dead ones. She had never heard of Morag before, but what was the harm in asking about it.

“Hey,” she greeted someone who looked official when she walked in. “You’ve got a banner out about an exhibit on Morag. What’s that?”

The alien smiled, her three eyes focusing on Zari. “Most people haven’t. It was once home to an advanced civilization before global warming wiped the whole planet out thousands of years ago. The only people who really know about it are archaeologists. With the artifacts we’ve found, we figure we can teach people about the influences they gave to the galaxy as well as a warning about the fragility of the environment.”

“Artifacts?” Zari asked.

“Mostly tools, a few books, and remnants of a temple. We sent a team to search for the Orb, but the water levels were too high. Now we’re trying to raise money for a recovery of it since the water levels lowered.”

“What’s the Orb?”

“No one knows,” the alien smiled dreamily. “From what we’ve recovered, it was an object of great power. Too much power, according to some texts. The inhabitants of Morag built a temple to guard it from those who might try and steal it for their own selfish purposes. After the planet flooded, the temple became inaccessible with the increased water levels.”

Zari frowned. “I thought you said the water levels were lower and you could recover it.”

“The seas lower every couple hundred years. This might be our only chance in my lifetime to retrieve it if we get enough funds. If we do, people will come from all across the galaxy for it.”

“So it’s a pretty big deal?”

“Extremely.”

Zari thanked her and headed out of the museum. If this Orb could bring people across galaxies to see it, then it had to be worth a lot. She and Lily could get it, sell it off for money or give it to the museum for a reward. But they would definitely get a lot of money out of it. It would likely be enough to buy their own ship and leave the Ravagers. They could do everything they planned, including Terra.

She set out to find Lily, thankfully finding her coming out of their favorite fence’s office. “Hey!”

“Hey, yourself!” Lily laughed. “Guess who just got us another hundred credits.”

“You didn’t sell Beebo, did you.”

Lily put a hand to her chest in mock offense. “I wouldn’t dare!”

“Good, because I’ve got an idea of a new job.”

#fezwearingjellybananas #marvellous ladies of dc #legends of tomorrow #zari tarazi #lily stein #mary xavier #eve baxter

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snakebitcat · 4 years ago

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In Loving Memory Of Leonard Nimoy (Repost)

(We lost Leonard Nimoy six years ago yesterday, so I wanted to revisit the tribute I wrote to him in my review of Star Trek: Into Darkness. I hope you enjoy it.)

As you may have noticed in my Wrath of Khan review, Star Trek was a huge part of my childhood. And my favorite character, far and away moreso than anybody else in the cast, was Spock. I was a scrawny little kid who was too smart for his own good, was never sure whether he would ever manage to fit in, and didn’t really understand this whole “emotions” thing. They couldn’t have made me identify with the character more if they had named him after me. It’s beyond cliché to say “part of my childhood is gone” when somebody who starred in something you loved as a kid dies, but that was the only way I could feel when Leonard Nimoy died. Losing him made me feel old as hell, and when they acknowledged his death in Star Trek: Beyond by having Ambassador Spock (the final connection between the origi9nal and reboot timelines) die, it punched out my fucking heart.

But I digress.

Star Trek: Beyond is the movie that Star Trek: Into Darkness should have been, but to be fair we needed Into Darkness to be able to appreciate that fact. It begins with the crew of the Enterprise three years into the five year mission to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life forms and new civilizations; and to go boldly where no one has gone before.

Kirk (Chris Pine) has grown weary of exploration, and has requested a transfer to a desk job. When Spock (Zachary Quinto) learns of the death of his older self he is no longer certain that his place is with Starfleet rather than with the other Vulcans. Before either can tell the other about this, however, an alien refugee from the planet Altamid arrives at the starbase where the Enterprise’s supplies are being replenished to ask for help. As the Enterprise is the ship best equipped to provide the requested assistance, and so Kirk and Spock embark on what each plans will be their last mission together.

And we get the scene that made a lot of people hate the trailer when the Enterprise gets the hell kicked out of it. The crew are scattered. Most are taken captive by Krall (Idris Elba), the alien warlord whose hatred for the Federation drives the plot. Scotty (Simon Pegg) encounters Jaylah (Sofia Boutella), a scavenger who has turned a crashed starship into a refuge safe from Krall’s soldiers. Spock and McCoy (Karl Urban) land together, as do Kirk and Sulu (John Cho). From here, the crew struggles to reunite, uncover Krall’s secrets, and find a way to escape Altamid to thwart his plans.

I could say more about the plot, but you deserve the chance to be see it unfold for yourself so I’ll digress a bit more here. Star Trek is at its best when the creators remember that while the audience wants impressive visuals, it’s the emotions and relationships that drive the characters’ stories that determine whether a new installment succeeds or fails.

Star Trek: Beyond is a resounding success. Spock and Uhura (Zoe Saldana) still have great chemistry but are dealing with the frictions that happen in romantic relationships. Kirk and Spock have become the sort of friends that Into Darkness tried but did not quite succeed at portraying. Scotty and Keenser (Deep Roy) are still the best of engineering bros, with Jaylah making a great third member of their duo. And McCoy and Spock have finally become the bickering best friends that we got on the Enterprise that had no bloody A, B, C, or D.

And Krall’s got a secret. A lazier writer would have given us someone like Admiral Evil Robocop from Into Darkness, but Simon Pegg understood that you have to make an effort, and he did. I can’t say why Krall hates the Federation and wants it destroyed because spoilers, but he has solid reasons and they matter on both a plot and an emotional level.

I don’t rate movies in number of stars; I rate it by how much you should be willing to pay. Go see this in the theatre, not just because it’s worth a full-price ticket but because you shouldn’t wait to see it.

Beyond closes with the actors playing members of the bridge crew delivering the speech about the Enterprise and her mission, dedicates itself to the memory of Leonard Nimoy and Anton Yelchin, and plays the classic theme song as the last of the credits roll. It honored where Star Trek has been while setting the stage for it to truly go where no other incarnation of the franchise has gone before.

And as the lights in the theatre came on and I exited, I thought about McCoy asking Kirk how he felt at the end of Wrath of Khan. And I realized that my answer was the same as Kirk’s:

I feel young.

#grumpy old manchild #reviews #star trek #star trek beyond #i miss you leonard #may his memory be a blessing #live long and prosper #he did both

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yet-another-fan-girl9 · 4 years ago

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Who We Are (4)

Summary: With both your parents dead, you are sent to live with your uncle, Tony Stark. With your new friends, Peter and Ned, you investigate the people selling the alien tech weapons.

Warnings: Canon violence, language (?)

Word Count: 1322

THIS FIC WAS TRANSFERRED FROM MY WATTPAD

Chapter 4

"C'mon (Y/N)" Peter pleaded. You were sitting next to each other in English. "Come to the party with us."

"I'm sorry." You shake your head. "I don't know anyone."

"Well, you can meet new people."

"I'm busy." You said softly.

"Oh yeah, you're moving."

"How did you know?" You narrowed your eyes slightly. "I didn't tell you, did I?"

"Uhh." Peter hesitated, his eyes darting around the room, then pulled out his phone. "You texted us last night." He held up the message you sent explaining why you couldn't help with building the LEGO Death Star.

"Okay." You nodded and turned your attention to your work. You could still feel Peter's eyes on you. You turned your head so he couldn't see the red creeping up your cheeks.

~*~

That night you lay on your bed playing on your phone. Everyone was probably at Liz's party.

Laying alone in your empty room, you now wished you had gone to the party. If you were there, you would probably be wishing you were at home.

You sigh and put your phone on your bedside table. It was late on a school night and you were tired. You turned off your light and pulled the blankets over your head. You imagined Peter asking you to Homecoming. You imagined how you two would coordinate your outfits and how he would kiss you before you went home.

~*~

Peter sat on the jungle gym, shivering from the cold. "How'd you find me?" He asked after explaining the story to Mr. Stark. "Did you put a tracker in my suit?"

"I put everything in your suit." He replied. "Including this heater." Mr. Stark moved his hand slightly and Peter instantly warmed.

"That's better. Thanks."

"What were you thinking?" Mr. Stark asked angrily.

"The guy with wings is the source of the alien weapons. I gotta take him down."

"Alien weapons? Take him down?"

"Well," Peter said hesitantly. "I'm the one who has the powers and my friends Ned and (Y/N)-"

"(Y/N)?"

"Happy had the same reaction, but I think it's a different (Y/N)."

"How many (Y/N)s are at your school, kid?"

"I don't know."

"Exactly, just keep the alien tech away from her. I don't want her in any danger."

"Why do you care so much about (Y/N)?" The gears in Peter's head were already spinning.

"Look, forget the weapons and flying vulture guy, please." "Why?"

"Why? Because I don't want you or (Y/N) getting hurt."

"Mr. Stark, I'm glad you care so much that you came all this way, but I had that."

"Oh, I'm not here." The mask opened and revealed that the suit was empty. "Thank God this place has Wi-Fi or you would be toast right now. Stay close to the ground. Build up your game helping little people, like that lady that bought you the churro. Can't you just be a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man?"

"But I'm ready for more than that now." Peter protested. "I took on Captain America."

"Trust me, kid. If Cap wanted to lay you out, he would've. Listen to me. If you come across these weapons again, call Happy." The sound of an engine starting up came from the suit.

"Are you driving?"

"You know, it's never too early to start thinking about college." Mr. Stark ignored the last comment. "I got some pull at MIT. End call."

"No, I don't need to go to-"

"Mr. Stark is no longer connected." FRIDAY's voice came from the suit before it flew off. Peter hopped off of the jungle gym, muttering under his breath, and trekked back through yards to find the weapon one of the guys dropped.

~*~

At lunch the next day you found the boys whispering to each other. You didn't get to talk to them this morning. When they saw you they stopped talking.

"Hey, (Y/N)." Peter greeted you.

"Hey, guys. How was the party last night?"

"Not good. Spider-man didn't show up so I- we were laughed at all night." Ned explained.

"Why couldn't Spider-man show up, Peter? Did he give you an excuse?" You looked at him.

"He, uh, must have been busy with superhero stuff." Peter looked at his hands.

Ned leaned closer to Peter and yell-whispered, "Should we tell her about the thing?"

"What thing?" You questioned leaning towards Peter as well. "What secrets do you have?"

"What thing, Ned?" Peter shot a warning glare at Ned.

"The stone thing that you found last night." At those words Peter relaxed slightly.

"Uh, okay," He hesitated and looked at you. "I found this thing with a weird purple glowing stone wired into it, and we were going to check it out in the workshop room during our free period. Wanna join us?"

"That sounds dangerous." You smiled. "I'm in. Where's the workshop room?"

~*~

You turned the corner to the hallway where you agreed to meet and saw Peter waiting by himself.

"Where's Ned?" You ask. You wanted and, at the same time, didn't want to be alone with Peter.

"He got a surprise test he needs to finish in one of his classes."

Peter opened the door behind him. You followed him down some stairs into a room lined with big, dangerous looking machines.

You went to one of the far desks and Peter got out the stone. The stone was purple, oval shaped, and looked smooth. It was hooked up to some sort of device.

"Well," you say inspecting it. "It looks like it acts as a battery."

"Whoever's making these weapons is combining alien tech with our own." Peter looked at you. "Wanna trade a secret for a secret?" As he said those words your heart started pounding. Does he know about my feelings for him? I might not have been hiding it well.

"Uh, I-I don't have any secrets." You busy yourself with inspecting the device.

"What's your connection to Tony Stark?" Peter takes the device out of your hands, forcing you to look at him.

"N-nothing. No connection." Was this worse? No, I would rather he find out about my uncle than him rejecting me.

"Fine I'll go first." Peter whispered and leaned closer to you and your heart started racing again. "Only Ned and Mr. Stark knows this," He hesitated. "I'm Spider-man." You looked at him for a second, eyes opened in shock. Then you wack him on the shoulder.

"I told you so much on the roof, that one night," You groan into your hands.

"I told you my secret." Peter grabbed your wrists and pulled them away from your face. "Now it's your turn."

"Um, well, I, uh." You took a deep breath and tried again. "Tony's my dad's brother, so he's my uncle."

"Okay, that makes sense." Peter nodded. You smiled at him. Telling secrets were fun. "Now let's look at this." He picked up a hammer and hit the device. The stone popped out and a wave of purple energy radiated out from it. You doubled over when it hit you and felt a sharp, burning pain.

"Keep your fingers clear of the blades," The teacher yelled, still reading his book.

"(Y/N), are you okay?" Peter put his hand on your back.

"Not really," You gasped as another wave of pain shot through your midsection. "Didn't you feel it?"

"No..."

"It'll get better." You try to convince yourself. But by the end of the period, the pain seemed to have spread to your chest.

"Maybe you should go home." Peter looked at you with worry. He helped by supporting you up the stairs. "I'll text you if anything else happens." You agree by nodding weakly.

You told the school secretary that you weren't feeling good and she allowed you to call Happy. When you got into the car, Happy said something about calling your uncle, but by then you were seeing black spots. Before you even got to the tower you blacked out.

#who we are #spider-man #spider-man: homecoming #peter parker x reader

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transxfiles · 4 years ago

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A Roll Of The Dice by two_drama_nerds_in_a_boat | @homeworkforpigeons

Summary: Star Trek is an incredibly popular tabletop roleplaying game. Mostly gen with some Spirk at the end.

Word Count: 1822

Find this fic on AO3

Gliding through the stars would never get boring, he decided. Even at Warp Speed 9, with all the bright lights zipping past him so quickly they were nothing more than blurry spots in the sky, it was a simultaneously haunting and stunning sight. The Captain sighed, leaning back in his chair-

“Oh, do get on with it Jim,” muttered Hikaru from across the table, rolling dice between his fingers. “We don’t have all day.”

“But the monologues are important. For… character development.”

Nyota rolled her eyes. “Not when you spend an hour on them every turn. Besides, we already let you have the Captain’s Log thing. Now come on. I want to fight some hostile aliens.”

“Aren’t you supposed to stay on ship with Scotty in case things go wrong, Communications Officer?”

“Goddamit you two,” Bones said, fist slamming the table, sending papers fluttering and figurines toppling onto the board. “We’ll never get anything done with the two of you fighting.”

“Come on Jim,” said Rand, shoving some dice into his hand. “Your. Turn.”

He looked at Spock, who just did that thing where he would raise only the one eyebrow, and sighed in defeat.

“Fine.”

He dropped the dice, watching them roll until they made their way a surprising distance from him, finally stopping by Scotty.

No one really knew how they’d all gotten together. Jim had to admit, they were an odd group.

In the end, they were all just sort of bored, and lonely, and they needed something to do after school. Originally, it had just been Jim and Bones. They took turns DMing, setting up short campaigns for the others to play, but it got incredibly boring very quickly. They got tired of it. They needed a permanent DM - so they’d found Spock, who, despite his attempt to put on mask of no emotion, seemed to take both happiness and pride in being Dungeon Master. And after that, everyone else had sort of fallen into place. Because once they had Spock, they at least a consistent location to play - his basement. Which, though still not ideal, was better than bouncing between Jim’s too-cramped (shared with his brother) bedroom and Bones’s tiny garden shed. So while Spock’s basement was a bit musty, it was honestly ideal, really, because though it was dark and sometimes damp, they made it their own. They had a little cooler with snacks and drinks it, and they’d put down a rug, and they had a little table, and every time a new person joined them they all went down to the local flea market as a group and helped pick out a chair for them, and ever so slowly the basement became theirs.

After Spock joined, Nyota was close behind him. She was new to their school that year, and she wanted friends, so she sought them out. She knew Spock through T’Pring, of course, and though Spock’s relationship with T’Pring was more than a bit strained, still, Nyota didn’t seem to mind. She wanted “Something amusing to do outside of school,” she’d said, something to “fill the time” and “make an afternoon more enjoyable.” A statement to which Jim had (nearly) replied with a few lewd, though somewhat humorous comments - though he did instead opt to stay quiet. Somewhat due to Bones kicking him not-so-discreetly in the shin, telling him that “She won’t stay if you don’t play nice.”

And with Uhura came Rand, a new friend of hers, and with Rand came Chapel, a blonde girl Jim recognized from one of his science classes (he was taking a lot of those; it was one of the few things in school he actually enjoyed taking part in, and since he was on one of those advanced tracks, he was taking as many as possible) and it also drew a young Scottish kid, who was quickly nicknamed Scotty (because if you’re that goddam Scottish, James Tiberius Kirk is sure as hell going to give you some sort of nickname) and Scotty drew a kid named Hikaru, and Hikaru drew in the Russian exchange student, Pavel, and in some way or another, they managed to get together enough people to create a long-term campaign.

They named their ship the Enterprise, and decided on their mission: To explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life, and new civilizations. To boldly go where no one has gone before.

(That last bit used to be no man, but Nyota, Rand, and Chapel had all insisted that was at least a little bit sexist, and so they decided to change it to no one.)

The first time they’d all played a campaign on their own had resulted in some of the most fun Jim had in months. Spock DMed (of course) and they got to go down to a planet for shore leave and Scotty got with some prostitute (or planned to, at least) and then she was murdered and they all needed to work together to solve the mystery, and it turned out that the entity that had murdered the woman was actually Jack The Ripper (a reveal that had prompted many of them to ask Spock what exactly he was on when he wrote this) who was an immortal alien who basically ate fear.

“The crew of the Starship Enterprise is once more face to face with the hostile Klingons,” Spock said, hiding behind his notepad.

Jim grinned. “I walk past the Science Officer, our hands brushing as-”

“Oh shut up,” said Nyota, obviously suppressing a giggle. “You’ve tried to seduce him, what? Thirty times now?” She looked to Chekov. “How close am I?”

“Well, it’s a bit higher than the thirties,” he said. The bastard was reaching into his backpack for a notebook, no doubt to add another tally to some list he’d made for keeping score.

“I’m getting closer every time!” Jim said.

Spock raised an eyebrow in his direction. “Roll for charisma,” he sighed.

He did, tossing the die across the table. And, as was the usual, he rolled a two.

“Oh come on,” Jim groaned. “Can I try again?”

“Jim, we have discussed this before. You cannot spend the entire game attempting to seduce your Science Officer.”

“Now that we have gotten that over with,” Spock said, “I feel as though I must inform you that, due to a yet unknown technical malfunction, you now find yourself stranded in uncharted space, and, as I previously stated, surrounded by Klingon warbirds.”

After that, the game resumed as usual.

There was, of course, a miraculous victory from the crew of the Enterprise (with only a few casualties, mostly in the NPC department) and somehow Jim’s player character had ended up shirtless again, but they defeated the Klingons and saved the day. And then, soon enough, it was seven in the evening.

Time to leave.

Jim made his way over to the sofa, picking up his backpack where he’d dropped it earlier that evening. He slipped it over his shoulders before turning to his friends.

“Psst,” Jim said, careful to be quiet as he beckoned Nyota and Bones over to him. “Guys.”

Bones looked confused at first, but after a glance at Jim’s face, he knew exactly what was going on. “Oh no. No, nope, no way, not gonna happen.”

“Jim,” Nyota said, trying a different approach, “come on. Just wait a little longer if you’re nervous. I told you I could coach you if you wanted, and that offer still stands.”

“I don’t know… I just. Ugh. I have this gut feeling that I have to do it now.”

“Then just do it!” Bones said, voice getting gruffer with each passing moment. “You don’t need us with you to ask him out.”

“Well, it would be helpful?”

“Helpful,” Nyota deadpanned.

“Like… cheerleaders?”

"Cheerleaders?" Bones made a face.

“You’ve never actually asked someone out before have you.”

“Sure I have!”

Nyota and Bones gave each other a look.

“Please,” he hissed, voice still held at a whisper. No one could really explain why, but Spock had excellent hearing. He was just kind of like that. And Jim wasn’t willing to let him overhear this conversation. “You don't have to be right next to me, just nearby? In case something goes wrong. Or I catch on fire. Or Spock catches on fire…”

“I’ve got a date with T’Pring,” said Nyota. “I can’t help you with your love life right now, Jim.”

“Bones looked up. “Sorry Jimmy Boy. I’m busy too.”

“What? No excuse Bones? At least Nyota had something prepared.”

“Oh shut up.”

“You shut up.”

“You-”

“-are both acting like toddlers,” Nyota finished. “Come on Jim, get it together. Ask him out.”

“On what? A date? Does Spock even do dating?”

“You’ll never know until you get your shit together.”

With that, she slung her backpack over her shoulder and left, saying goodbye to them all on her way up the stairs.

Jim groaned.

“Well, that’s one way to do it,” Bones muttered.

“Bones…”

“Come on Jim, it’s not that hard. You just go over to him, tell him you like him. Ask him if he wants to go out with you.”

“And what do I do if he says no?”

“Say that it’s okay, you understand. Smile. Hold it together until you get somewhere you can cry safely.”

“Bones.”

“What? It’s solid advice.”

“Okay.” Jim took a deep breath. “What if he says yes?”

“You tell him that you’re really happy, and you like him a lot. I’d say give him a hug or something, but this is Spock we’re talking about, so avoid physical contact for now. And whatever you do, don’t say ‘cool’.”

“Don’t say cool?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Just don’t do it.”

“Mm-hm. That’s how you charmed Miriam?”

“Oh shut up.”

And then, as though following in Nyota’s footsteps (probably purposefully, the bastard), Bones grabbed his backpack and ran up the stairs. Leaving Jim alone with Spock in the basement.

“Fuck,” Jim muttered.

“I fail to see a reason for such language,” a cool voice said from behind him.

Jim almost jumped out of his skin.

He spun around, face-to-face with the boy himself.

"Hi Spock!" Said Jim, voice jumping an octave from nerves.

Cue signature eyebrow raise. "Jim."

Jim took a deep breath. "I was wondering..." he felt his hands drop to his pockets as he tried to get the words out. "Well, you see... I like you-"

"I should hope so. We spend a fair amount of time together, in school and outside of it."

"Spock-"

"I am messing with you, Jim."

Jim looked up.

Spock was smiling.

Jim looked up the stairs, eyes tracing the paths Nyota and Bones had taken, then looked back at the ground at his feet, then looked back at Spock. "Did you overhear-?"

"Your entire conversation?" Spock shrugged. "Perhaps."

"Do you want to-?"

"Yes."

"Oh... wow, I...."

"Jim?"

"Spock?"

"Do not say 'cool'."

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fanficsbytoast · 4 years ago

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Mischief Tango Chapter 1

After Tyler Cowie has a disastrous run-in with the Tesseract, she has to team up with the god (or sometimes goddess) of mischief to get rid of her new powers. Or at least, that’s plan.

Warnings for story: M Language, T violence, T sex

Warnings for chapter: M language

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

I don’t think this date could have gone much worse if I’d shown up in clown shoes and a Darth Vader mask. I tiredly stared at the guy across from me, resting my face in my hand while he tapped away on his phone.

“You like…medieval literature, right?” I asked, hoping to make this less awkward.

“14th century manuscripts,” he said bluntly.

I bit back a ‘isn’t that the same thing’ by taking a long drink of water.

Brendon had been a lot friendlier a couple of days ago, when we’d run into each other in a coffee shop. Oh, yeah, it had been real cute and cliché when I’d bumped into him, knocking his drink all over him and then buying him another. Then we’d hit it off because I was carrying books with me and he was a bookbinder.

By basic romance literature standards, we were basically made for each other. But it turns out that you needed more than just a common interest to click with someone.

“Do you like any…like, modern books?” I asked. I traced my fork around my plate, drawing little rake-marks in the cheese sauce of my pasta.

He snorted. “Modern writing lacks even the most basic literary competence. It’s nothing more than the same tropes recycled with angst and poor grammar.”

I held back a grimace. “Oh.”

Giving up, I stared down at the book on my lap. First off, I know it was rude, and secondly, this was Twilight and any normal, thinking person would be appalled by it. Maybe it was just a sign of how terrible this date was, but I thought the book was hilarious.

I took another drink of water, my gaze still on the words.

Wait, did it just compare the freaking vampire to a disco ball?

Before I could stop myself, I snorted water right out of my nose and onto the table…and into Brendon’s face. The poor guy sat there in shock, and I stared on in complete mortification.

“Oh gosh, I’m sorry—um, here!” I grabbed the nearest napkin and tried to wipe some of it off his face.

“Tyler—” He tried to push me off, but I ended up knocking over his wine glass into his lap.

At this point, all I could do was close my eyes.

“I’ve…got to go,” he said stiffly. “I forgot—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.”

“Eleanor—”

“Tyler. Just go.”

The table shifted as he got up and, and I didn’t open my eyes again until I was sure he was gone. At that point I just paid the tab, only to realize that Brendon had left the whole thing for me to pay for.

Jerk. I shoved some breadsticks into my purse and got the heck out of there.

Two months. I was two months into trying to ‘restart my life’ and I had suffered through five failed job interviews and eleven failed (or even set-up) dates.

I wandered out onto the busy London sidewalk, a lump forming in my throat.

Maybe I should call my parents back in New York. I hadn’t spoken to them in a month; even though those aliens had stormed Manhattan less than a year ago. My parents lived outside the city, but still: Aliens! Actual aliens! What if they came back?

And superheroes? I could hardly believe they were real, either.

A car roared by and slid through a puddle, sending a sheet of mucky water sloshing into me. I squealed and jumped back, but it was too late. The muddy water was all over my dress.

I wanted to cry. A nineteen-year-old woman shouldn’t cry over a bad date or a ruined dress, but I was done. I’d been trying my darnedest for weeks, and I was no closer to turning my life around than when I first got off that plane.

I covered my mouth and took a deep breath. People were probably wondering why a muddy girl was hanging around the sidewalk with tears in her eyes.

Oddly enough, the place was empty.

I’d never seen the sidewalks and streets so devoid of life, especially out here by all the restaurants and night life. Maybe I’d taken a wrong turn or something?

I looked down at my phone for directions. My GPS would have to tell me how to get home. I’d walked here with Brendon and he’d left me, so there was no telling if I was even heading towards my appartment.

“Damn it, Brendon,” I muttered under my breath. I thought about calling him and just asking for some directions, but I didn’t want to hear his voice or see his face or anything until I had some time to cool off. Right now, I kind of wanted to put worms in his shoes.

That wouldn’t be fair to the poor worms.

At least if I calmed down, I could drag him with some dignity: I bought you a donut! You shared it with me! I LET YOU USE MY STARBUCKS POINTS TO ORDER YOUR CHAI LATTE!

Seriously, was there a way to refund those? Like an I-just-got-dumped-on-the-first-date refund?

“Your game is over.”

Say what now? I looked around to try and find out who was speaking, but all I could see were shadows and the soft, dancing glow of the streetlights.

“I’m sorry,” said a softer, yet no less cold, voice. “I haven’t the slightest idea of what you’re—”

“Shut it, Asgardian.”

The voices were coming from down an alleyway. What kind of a name was Asgardian? Sheesh, that was even worse than Eleanor.

Seriously, though, was someone getting mugged? Nah, these guys seemed to know each other. Maybe it was a drug bust.

“You have it,” said the rough voice. “We know you do.”

“Have what?” asked the softer. It was taunting.

“You know what we mean. We want the casket. Now hand it over.”

I started to hurry on my way, but then a blue light shone around the corner of the building. What the heck…?

I should run. I should definitely run. But what was that light coming from?

My ‘monkey brain’ won out and I crept between the buildings until I was just at the corner of the alley It stretched on, long and narrow, between the shops and houses and the privacy wall behind them. At the far end, where a wall blocked off all escape, stood a man dressed in a long coat.

He cornered by two towering, hunched creatures. And even despite the blue light, I could tell that they truly were blue. Like, Blue Raspberry Jolly Rancher blue—like giant, mean-looking Smurfs.

But my attention was drawn to the source of the light. The man in the coat was holding a blue box in one hand, and it glowed so brightly that it illuminated the entire alleyway.

“That’s not the casket,” growled one of the big evil Smurf creatures. “What have you done with it?”

“Oh, I don’t have it,” said the man, eyeing them with contempt. I could just make out his facial features: Smooth and elegant, but harsh and full of hatred for the things standing before him. His eyes glittered with anger. “Odin is keeping it in his treasure hoard. I would suggest that you go to him if you’re so interested in the Casket of Winters.”

Was this some kind of role-play? Like that guy with a LARP group I’d ran into a few weeks ago?

Ugh, he’d stood me up.

One of the monsters raised his arm. In the blue glow, I saw a shimmering weapon extend from his hand.

It was a blade of ice.

Okay, definitely not some kind of Live Action Role Play. This was real.

“Now,” said the man, a little smile on his lips, “what good could come in killing me without reason?”

“Oh, we have a reason,” said the other creature. “You killed Laufey.”

Holy—what? This guy had killed somebody?

The man laughed. “Preposterous. How would I ever have the opportunity to do that?”

“You lured our King into the heart of Asgard and killed him where he stood.”

“I gave Laufey every opportunity to kill Odin,” said the man. “It’s his own fault he was an incompetent beast who couldn’t even defeat a few guards.”

“That’s a funny thing,” said the monster. “I heard it was you who killed him. You saved Odin’s life, that’s what the rumors said.”

“Well, people have been known to spread gossip,” said the man, beaming with that salty, fake smile again. “I can assure you that—”

“You are a liar and a murderer,” snarled the monster with the blade. “And you will pay for your transgressions against Jotunheim!”

Yoda what now? I didn’t think they were talking about Star Wars.

Despite every fiber of my rational mind screaming for me to get out of there, I crept a little closer, hunkering just around the corner of the nearest building so I could hear better.

I knew it was stupid. This was murder and who knew what else. But it’s not every day that you start seeing stuff that could have come straight out of Star Trek, and my butt was not moving.

“Now would that truly be wise?” asked the man. He was completely unphased by the monsters’ threats, which made me think he was probably even dumber than I was. “I regret to say this, but I have been humoring you.” He raised the glowing cube. “Do you know what this is?”

“I don’t care,” said the monster who seemed to be the leader.

“You say that, but with its power I could defeat the both of you with a wave of my hand.” The monsters glanced at each other, and the man grinned again. “So why don’t we end these negotiations on a pleasant note, in which we go our separate ways and you don’t interfere with my plans?”

The monsters glanced at each other, but then they stepped aside. The man waved his hand and the cube suddenly disappeared.

It was all starting to make sense. All this talk with names I couldn’t pronounce? Weird creatures? Mysterious creepy magician man? I was in an anime.

Just kidding. No, I was witnessing a legit alien invasion—or maybe the alien mafia. It didn’t matter. I needed to get out of here before they realized I was watching them.

I turned around, only to collide into a wall. Except, it wasn’t a wall. I stumbled back, and in the pale light of the overhead lamp, I could see the man in the long coat. Even in the shadows, I could see the glower on his face.

Shit! How’d he get here so fast?

I tried to run past him, but he grabbed my arm and dragged me around the corner and into the alley.

“I don’t suppose this is yours?” he asked the monsters. I tried to wrench and squirm out of his grasp, but he was unbelievably strong.

Right. Aliens.

Tyler, you fucking moron, why didn’t you run?

“A mortal?” asked one of the monsters.

“Mortal?” I repeated. “What the—”

“You insult us,” said the other. “Just kill it and let’s get on with it. It’s probably a spy.”

“I’m not a spy!” I said frantically. “I just heard voices and—I mean, I didn’t hear much—really! You guys were just, uh, talking about…um…Chicago, right? You know, cyanide, squish, spread eagles—"

The man’s hand clapped over my face. I wanted to scream, but my mind was suddenly filled with flashing images of my past.

I was at my third birthday party; donning a cheap, shimmering Cinderella dress that was two sizes too big while my then-dark curls got covered in pink frosting from my cake.

And then I was seven, blonder headed now, playing in the hayloft of a pig barn at the state fair. My sister’s son, who wasn’t much older than I was, pushed me out and I landed in a mucky mess, surrounded by panicked, squealing pigs.

I was sixteen now and staring to a mirror, half clothed, and wondering why my thighs looked like zebra legs.

During my first driving lesson, I backed the car into my dad’s van. He yelled. I cried. He took me out for icecream and taught me to parallel park.

I graduated. Got my license. I tried getting a job. And then I came here, and brief glimpses of my failed dates and job interviews flashed before me for mere seconds. I was walking down the street; I heard the voices in the alleyway. I saw it all play out again.

And then it was over.

A wave of exhaustion slammed into me, and my knees threatened to buckle under my weight.

“She saw everything,” said the man.

Wait, had he been reading my mind? Oh no. He’d seen everything. Even my zebra thighs.

Maybe being killed by alien mobsters wasn’t so bad after all.

“Then it must die,” said the monster with the weapon. I was about to ask what ‘it’, was, but then he raised the blade over my head. Oh. I was ‘it’. You know what? Never mind. This was much worse than my thighs.

“Whoa!” I tried to back up, but Trench Coat there still had a hold of my arm. “Can’t you just, like, wipe my memory or something?”

They all stopped.

“What?” asked the man. I glanced between him and the monsters. Maybe I was getting somewhere.

“Uh, y-you know. Like in Men in Black? If you can read my mind, you should be able to wipe—”

My voice cut off in a squeal as the monster swung his weapon towards me. I raised my free arm to protect my face, but the man shoved me behind him.

“Are you so thick as to think that her death would go unnoticed?” he growled. “I have no interest in alerting the entire city to my whereabouts.” He looked back at me, his gaze hard. “You won’t say a word, will you?”

Words came tumbling out of my mouth. “Tell them what? I didn’t see anything. Who are you again?”

“And if you do,” he leaned closer to me, so close that I could feel the heat of his breath on my face. He wasn’t as tall as the monsters, but he still towered over me. And he needed a mint. “I may not be as merciful as I am now.”

I gulped, but I nodded frantically. I hardly knew what he was saying except that he was promising not to kill me. And right now, that was all I cared about.

He shoved me away, and I stumbled before starting to hurry down the alley. I was almost around the corner when I glanced back at them again, just to see if they were about to jump me.

The lead monster was now raising his weapon behind the Trench Coat man, who was staring me down with a horrible scowl. He didn’t even realize what was happening.

“Look out!”

I was too late. The blade struck through his back and out through his stomach, splattering blood across the pavement. I wanted to scream, but all I could do was cover my mouth as the man gasped and fell to the ground. The monsters looked to me. Uh-oh.

Turning on my heel, I started booking it in the opposite direction. Something cracked like lightning, and a blast of cold energy crashed into me from behind and sent me sprawling onto the pavement. A freezing-cold hand gripped my ankle and dragged me back into the alley.

I clawed at the ground and screamed, but the hand hoisted me right off the ground. It was one of the monsters. He sneered at me and raised his weapon again, his frozen fingers burning my skin like boiling water.

With my free foot, I managed to kick him in the face. Let me tell you: A high-heel to the face is nothing to laugh about, even if you’re an eight-foot giant and I’m a relatively small (uh, short) woman. The monster howled and dropped me, and I hit the ground with what I imagined was a splat. The shock from the impact had me choking, but I somehow managed to scramble away.

His arms swiped at me, but I dodged and dove between the shadows. I lost my shoes, tore my dress, and my hair was unpinned and flying around my face as I desperately avoided his weapon and hands.

I rolled out of the way of his blade. This time, it collided with the stone so hard that it shattered on impact. The monster roared in pain, and I ran down the dark side of the alley to hide.

A blue glow bathed the world around me. I ducked down behind a trash can and peered around to see what was happening. The man was hunched over and holding onto his stomach, but he clutched that blue cube thing in his hand.

The monsters hesitated, but then the one nearest to him went to club him over the head. The man ducked to the side, and energy cracked around the alley, momentarily freezing the giants—and me—in place.

The best I could describe it as was like two magnets repelling each other. I felt a crushing weight, but I couldn’t move at all. I could barely breathe, and blue light swirled around the alley like Disney fairy magic or something.

Then the man cried out in pain, clutching at his wound. The energy cut out, releasing the lot of us. The nearest monster backhanded the guy across the alley, and he crashed into the privacy wall. The cube slid across the ground and landed a few feet away from me. Both monsters advanced.

What was I supposed to do? That cube was obviously really powerful, and these guys were clearly like, well, villains. I couldn’t just let them have it!

And so I dove for it. I threw myself out from behind the trashcan and grabbed the cube in my bare hands.

“No!” screamed the man, but it was too late. Energy surged through my veins. Pain tore through my every nerve, but my mind was spasming. I couldn’t let go. It wouldn’t let me! I could feel the power holing up in my arms, but I couldn’t do anything to stop—

BOOM. The energy in the cube exploded, sending the monsters, the man, me, a ton of trashcans, and a tomcat sailing through the air. My body slammed against the wall, and before I ever hit the ground, I was out cold.

#loki #loki fanfic #loki fic #loki fiction #loki mcu #oc #loki x oc

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itsclydebitches · 5 years ago

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So the story goes like this: I’m in London for the month, popping into every used bookstore I find, and while in one I spot Captains' Logs Supplemental: The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages. Though baggage weight limits won’t let me buy it (I have already bought so many books) I did snap pics of the “Past Prologue,” “Cardassians,” and “The Wire” entires. And then transcribed them. Because I thought the other Garak stans might enjoy this info!

Worth the read imo 💜

Episode #3 “Past Prologue” Original Airdate: 1/11/93 Written by Katharyn Powers Directed by Winrich Kolbe Guest Starring: Jeffrey Nordling (Tahna), Andrew Robinson (Garak), Barbara March (Lursa), Vaughn Armstrong (Gul Dunar), Richard Ryder (Bajoran Deputy), Susan Bay (Admiral), Gwynyth Walsh (B’Etor)

“We didn’t want your typical Cardassian in there,” says director Winrich Kolbe of the creation of one of DS9’s break-out characters, the Cardassian spy Garak. “Obviously it would have been hard to put a real Cardassian soldier in a clothing store. Perhaps it would have been terrific, who knows, but what we felt we had to deal with was somebody abnormal—at least as far as the Cardassians were concerned. It was one of those things where I wasn’t quite sure whether Andy Robinson would be the right guy. I had a different idea as to what type of actor I wanted, but Andy Robinson was available and turned out to be terrific. What I wanted, which shows how far off I was, was Sydney Greenstreet. I have to admire an actor who has to come in at three in the morning and stay in that kind of makeup for the rest of the day and still be able to give a performance.”

Comments Michael Piller, “One of the things about ‘Past Prologue’ that bothered me was that Bashir’s performance was in a very broad range—and this was newness. I believe we have strange aliens, strange makeup, spaceships, explosions and wormholes and costumes that are crazy, so that the people within them have to be entirely credible. If those people get too big in their performances, then you go into opera, and it becomes space opera, foolish and unbelievable. Patrick Stewart really led the way with us in Next Generation, which is to underplay. When you think you’re going to go big, you come down, and it has much more power and credibility. You believe there’s a space station or a spaceship like Enterprise. The biggest problem with the early shows is that some of the performances were too big or too restrained. We had to find the even tone for the ensemble to work together. Our voices weren’t quite right, and the performances were uneven. The first episode hurt the character of Bashir because he was so broad in those scenes with Andy Robinson that he looked like the greenest recruit in the history of the Starfleet, and that hurt him for two or three episodes. If we were shooting it today, his performance would be much more credible, and he wouldn’t have the same reaction from the audience that he has now.”

Klingon renegades Lursa and B’Etor, of course, were introduced in the Next Generation two-parter “Redemption,” and were used as part of an attempt to tie Deep Space Nine into existing Trek continuity. The characters eventually perished in battle against the Enterprise in the feature film Star Trek: Generations.

“The creative synergy allows you incredible opportunities,” remarks Piller. “It’s interesting how we used them. Essentially, we had a story and, in the case of Lursa and B’Etor, we said, ‘Hey, we’ve got a real kind of Casablanca spy story and we need someone to really be doing double dealings and bringing money and doing gun exchanges; why don’t we use the Klingons—and use those characters that we love so much? It works out just fine to use those guys because then there’s a connection and an identification. There’s a backstory, there’s a history, and all of these things make for such a richer series.”

Says Ira Behr, “There’s no doubt that people like [TNG characters like] Lwaxana [Troi] and Q and Vash and a bunch of others. They have a certain life to them as characters and an energy that certainly helped The Next Generation and helps us too. The characters that don’t have to be Starfleet and don’t have those strings we have attached so often. A lot of times you have people performing those characters who take a lot of relish in doing them, so they’re fun to have come back.”

Piller doesn’t feel that in exploiting The Next Generation’s voluminous history Deep Space Nine has an unfair advantage, appealing to those already familiar with Trek lore. “You have to look at the shows themselves,” he insists. “There’s no question in my mind that conceptually, each of these shows would work because they’re about the new characters. In ‘Past Prologue,’ there’s a moral dilemma for Major Kira where she has to confront her loyalty to her past life and what her new life is going to be. It’s really about her. It’s illuminating our new characters. As I’ve always said, the guest stars are catalysts. There have been times when I have not been satisfied, more prior to my arrival, that the shows have been about the guest stars, but ultimately the shows that succeed are when the guest stars are serving as catalysts to illuminate our characters.”

Episode #25 “Cardassians” Original Airdate: 10/25/93 Teleplay by James Crocker Story by Gene Wolander and John Wright Directed by Cliff Bole Guest Starring: Rosalind Chao (Keiko O’Brien), Andrew Robinson (Garak), Robert Mandan (Kotan Pa’Dar), Terrence Evans (Proka), Vidal Peterson (Rugal), Dion Anderson (Zolan), Marc Alaimo (Gul Dukat)

“I didn’t have a lot of faith in this show at first,” admits Ira Behr. “It was such an issue-oriented show that I thought we would oversimplify a complicated issue, but what got me into the show was when I realized this was not only a chance to bring back Garak but to do this whole weird little number with what’s going on between him and Dukat. To me, that nailed the character and I knew after that happened we were going to see a lot of Andy Robinson, who’s become quite popular on staff. What did not work for me was the kid and O’Brien. I thought that was very obvious stuff compared to the rest of the episode. Sometimes we have a tendency to overload the stories. Ultimately, who cared about this kid? It was weak compared to the rest of the episode.”

“As an actor, when I got the script, I didn’t realize Dukat was being set up to take the blame,” says Marc Alaimo, who portrays Gul Dukat. “But I played him as a man who was being set up. A man who was taking the dive because he had wanted to remove the children but his orders were to leave them. I never really understood that story. It seemed complicated to me, and I never quite understood how he got blamed for it.”

Episode #42 “The Wire” Original Airdate: 5/9/94 Written by Robert Hewitt Wolfe Directed by Kim Friedman Guest Starring: Andrew Robinson (Garak), Jimmie F. Skaggs (Glinn Boheeka), Ann Gillespie (Nurse Jabara), Paul Dooley (Enabran Tain)

“It just so happens some of the best shows are the least expensive, because we’re forced to be concise,” Ira Behr comments. “Our conceptual thinking of two guys in a room who are struggling for survival, or against each other, frequently makes for very good drama. This episode was an opportunity to show Bashir with a real strength that he hasn’t had before.

“[Story editor] Robert Wolfe talked passionately about doing this show, and we had always talked about the fact that Garak might have been George Smiley back in Cardassia and maybe we should explore that. Then I went to the movies and came back and said, ‘He’s Schindler.’ Why don’t we do Schindler and Smiley, and then Michale [Piller] said do all four stories, every one different. Robert came up with the idea that he tells this story about his best friend and it turns out to be him. Then you meet his mentor and best friend, who says, ‘I hope he dies, but tell him I miss him.’ That’s perfect; it’s all great stuff.”

Admittedly, “The Wire” could be perceived as an attempt to repeat the success of first season’s “Duet,” and the staff was aware of the similarities. “‘Duet’ was Kira’s crisis as much as the guy’s crisis, and this was much more Garak’s show,” offers Behr. “I thought that was a little dangerous, and we knew we were doing it, but let’s face it, the Cardassian monologue is great and Cardassians like to talk. They’re also great fun to write.”

Says David Livingston, “It’s a bottle show. It’s basically Andy Robinson in a room, but it’s very compelling because it’s one man intervening. Kurt Cobain needed Siddig. If he had had Sid he might have pulled through, because Sid knocks some sense into Andy’s head and says, ‘You’ve got to get off this stuff.’”

According to director Kim Friedman, “‘The Wire’ was kind of a challenge because most of the episode was two people in a room, Sid and Andy Robinson. It’s very hard to create pacing and energy for a show that is basically set in a room. But ultimately I was very pleased with the whole episode. I think my favorite moment was the implant withdrawal scene, which results in a fight between Bashir and Garak. It was just a very powerful moment.”

Paul Dooley, who played the menacing Enabran Tain, returned in DS9’s third season two-parter “Improbable Cause” and “The Die is Cast.” He is known for his role as Martin Tupper’s gay father in the HBO sitcom Dream On.

#DS9 #star trek #garak #julian bashir #garashir #deep space nine #I have things to say about Piller's reading of Bashir #but that's for another post lol

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fyrapartnersearch · 5 years ago

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Why can't I hold all these cool stories?

CURRENT CRAVINGS: Please see this GDoc, because I have some plots I’d like to try! I’m primarily interested in original plots and characters; setting them in original worlds or fandom worlds is fine. I am not interested in playing canons other than as side characters/world filler as of right now.

DISCORD: KYLO REN AT CHILI’S#8808

PERSONAL PREFERENCES

I’m over eighteen, and would prefer my partners are, too. This doesn’t mean I’m interested in NSFW-heavy plots; I do not write smut. It just means I’m more comfortable writing and interacting with other adults.

I consider myself to be lit-adv. I tend to enjoy partners in the lit+ category, but as long as you’re an enthusiastic and engaging partner, I don’t care about perfect grammar. I would rather write with someone just as involved and excited as I am, than I would with someone who isn't very engaging but knows exactly what to do with obscure punctuation.

I’m not interested in playing only one type of character or playing against only one type of character. I typically don’t enjoy writing with people who are only interested in playing one type of relationship dynamic or one kind of character (such as only m/f, playing the female, or m/m, playing the “bottom”). I have no problem with these dynamics or characters at all, nor do I have an issue playing against them. I just prefer more variety, compromise, and opportunity.

OOC chatter is really important to me. I can’t write with someone that I don’t feel like I can get to know. I’m looking for friends, not a faceless reply robot. I won’t communicate over any medium but Discord. I've tried Kik, Hangouts, etc.; they just don't stick for me. If you would prefer first contact be through email, you can shoot me a quick message and your handle to [email protected].

I’m fine with threading in a GDoc or a server, but I will not thread over DMs. It’s difficult to have OOC chatter and the thread over the top of each other.

If you're looking for a partner that writes a reply a day without fail, that's not me. I prefer that we don't have "posting schedules” or set posting times, because I find that it turns writing into a chore. It's great if you reply immediately, and it's totally okay if you need a week to figure something out! You’re absolutely free to poke me. I’m not always the most mindful. However, I’m not going to reply every day. Three to four times a week is my frequency.

PLOT PREFERENCES

I’m interested in both fandom and original settings, and I’m down for playing both canon characters and OCs. I don’t necessarily prefer one or the other.

I definitely prefer canon doubling from my partners in fandom plots; I mesh better with people who do a little give-and-take when it comes to that. If you only play one canon character or only play OCs against canons and won’t play canons, I don’t think we’ll work.

I can play as many characters as needed, whether it's just one or it's six. Whatever our story calls for, I can manage that. In fact, I would love to play multiple “main” pairings so we can both get what we want, versus a single main pairing (unless it’s a pairing/dynamic we both like equally well). I find more than one facet to a plot really interesting, and multiple characters helps flesh out a story’s dimensions.

I’m absolutely interested in joining groups, so please don’t be shy about asking me to participate in plots with more than two players. So long as they don’t involve me writing sexual NSFW, we’re Gucci; everyone else writing NSFW isn’t a deal breaker for me.

Multiple threads and plots at the same time are no issue for me. In fact, I love the idea that we click so well that we just can't stop coming up with good ideas! So definitely don't be afraid to pitch something new to me, whether it's because you want to switch gears (and drop a thread for another), or want to do everything at once.

Romance is a must for me! I prefer slow and agonizing journeys to get there, but my attention is best held by romantic chemistry between characters.

I can provide writing samples upon request, though I never require them from my partner. Additionally, I have some plots written out if you're interested in that sort of thing. Otherwise, we can brainstorm together!

FANDOMS

I’m very much a fandom player. I’m always down for AUs, or inserting our own characters into the plots of fandoms! This is in no way a complete list; never be afraid to ask if I’m into something! I’ve probably forgotten a hundred things I love.

Most of my fandoms will have favorite canon characters listed with them, both who I like playing and playing against; you’re always welcome to ask about others not listed.* There’s a good chance I’m pretty good with them!

*I will play OCs in every fandom, but I might not play canons in every fandom.

ALWAYS

The Bartimaeus Trilogy (Nathaniel, Kitty Jones, and Bartimaeus), DC (any Titan, Jinx, Arthur Curry, Steve Trevor, Circe, and Diana Prince), Elder Scrolls (player canons and/or OCs preferred, but feel free to ask about canons), Fallout: New Vegas and 4 (Arcade Gannon, Paladin Danse, R.J. MacCready, Arthur Maxson, Veronica Santangelo, Cait, Rose of Sharon Cassidy, and player canons), Game of Thrones (Sansa Stark, Robb Stark, Jon Snow, Cersei Lannister, Jaime Lannister, Ramsay Bolton, and Willas Tyrell), His Dark Materials (OCs preferred), Hunger Games (OCs preferred), Inception (Arthur, and Eames, but OCs preferred), Marvel (Peter Parker, Scott Lang, Bucky Barnes, Miles Morales, Loki Laufeyson, Thor Odinson, Gwen Stacy, Jean Grey, Ororo Munroe, Kitty Pryde, and Megan Gwynn), Miraculous Ladybug (Marinette Dupain-Cheng and Adrien Agreste), The Mortal Instruments (Simon Lewis, Raphael Santiago, and Alec Lightwood), Percy Jackson and the Olympians (Percy Jackson, Nico di Angelo, Annabeth Chase, Will Solace, Piper McLean, and Leo Valdez), Star Trek (Jim Kirk, Leonard McCoy, S'chn T'gai Spock, and Pavel Chekov), Star Wars (Obi Wan Kenobi, Jacen Solo, Jaina Solo, Jagged Fel, Mara Jade Skywalker, Rey Skywalker, Poe Dameron, Luke Skywalker, Boba Fett, Sintas Vel, and Ahsoka Tano), The Walking Dead (Glenn Rhee, and Negan), Warriors (Firestar, Squirrelflight, Jayfeather, and Hawkfrost)

SOMETIMES

Boku no Hero Academia (Bakugo Katsuki, Midoriya Izuku, Shinsou Hitoshi, Kaminari Denki, Kirishima Eijiro, Todoroki Shoto, and Uraraka Ochaco), Bungou Stray Dogs (OCs preferred, but feel free to ask about canons), Digimon (OCs preferred), Dragon Age (Fenris, Cullen Rutherford, Cassandra Pentaghast, and Dorian Pavus), Final Fantasy VII (Cloud Strife, Zack Fair, Reno, and Sephiroth), Harry Potter (Narcissa Malfoy, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, James Potter, Regulus Black, Draco Malfoy, Hermione Granger, and Luna Lovegood; play my favorite ship with me, and I'll do whatever you want, literally.), Mystic Messenger (Choi Saeyoung, Han Jumin, Kang Jaehee, and Choi Saeran), Naruto (Hatake Kakashi, Umino Iruka, Gaara, Hyuuga Hinata, and Uchiha Sasuke), Ouran High School Host Club (Ootori Kyouya, Hitachiin Hikaru, and Hitachiin Kaoru), Pokémon (Red, Blue, N, Guzma, and player canons)

NOT SURE, BUT WILLING TO EXPLORE

Avatar: the Last Airbender (particularly Zutara), Eragon, Howl's Moving Castle, Kiznaiver, The Legend of Zelda, Soul Eater, Steven Universe, Tokyo Ghoul, Twilight, Yuri!!! on Ice

GENRES

For the most part, I’ll genuinely play most any genre! Of course, everyone says that, but then they shoot down all your suggestions because everyone has stuff they don’t like doing. I’ll try to make this as brief as I can, and know that if something isn’t listed, but you’re pretty sure (based on everything else) that I’m into it, then definitely let me know what you’re thinking!

SETTINGS

A/B/O (I will not play only alphas for only omegas, nor will I play overly trope-y, non-con, “boys love”/"yaoi" plots.), Age of Sail, alien worlds/alien invasions, celebrity, fairytales and mythology (including “inspired by” retellings), fantasy (including medieval, urban, and high fantasy), alt-historical and modern royalty, mutants/gifted, organized crime, science fiction (especially including aliens), some historical (excluding medieval, colonial, and the Roaring Twenties/Great Depression), supernatural, Victorian (especially the London ton), post-apocalyptic

PAIRING DYNAMICS

arranged marriage (I’m always down for slinging our characters together, whether or not they want to. It’s always a bonus if their families hate each other.), enemies to lovers (I love conflict of any sort, especially romantic!), human x not-human (The not-human must be sentient.), bad guy x good guy, intellectual x emotional, captive x captured (especially when the captured is willful, annoying, and full of fight), step-siblings (I don’t play step-parents x step-kids, so please don’t ask!), status/power imbalances (such as characters being from different socioeconomic strata or different ranks/positions in an organization), celebrity x bodyguard (I’m okay with the celebrity being the son/daughter/offspring of someone famous!), famous x not famous, rivals of any sort, unwilling traveling companions, unwilling soulmates

If any of this interests you, please feel free to reach out to me however! I'm really looking forward to hearing from you!

#oc rp #multiple paragraph #para #semipara #oneline #long term #messenger #marvel rp #harry potter rp #marauders rp #mcu rp #dc rp #submission

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