#Trek discourse

[peachviz]

ok TikTok may not think unification confirmed spirk but I keep seeing old insecure bigoted men on Facebook angrily calling the short brokeback mountain so that right there is solid confirmation of spirk

[freepassbound]

A Note On Reality

Okay, one more Picard-related thought (though it applies beyond just that) - lots of people seem to either be forgetting or being intentionally obtuse about the fact that this is a television show? Something that has to be created in the real world?

And that basic reality usually explains so much:

"why wasn't Character X, etc. there?" - well, probably because they couldn't afford the actor, or couldn't get the scheduling sorted out

"why didn't they do this, etc.?" - well, probably because they couldn't afford it, or didn't have the time

Relating to Picard, I have read for some time from multiple sources notes to the effect that they were having to scrimp on various things to save money - sets, locations, actors, effects. Which is a damn shame... but is, again, reality: Paramount has to pay for that giant video set, and the TNG cast, somehow - to say nothing of Champions League football or Kiefer Sutherland or any other thing.

And then, there's another aspect of reality... which I think had a direct bearing on the last two seasons of Picard. This is just my guess, and it's wholly unsubstantiated... but... I think Sir Patrick Stewart did Season 1 - and realized he may not be able to do this for much longer.

He hadn't done a TV show since 2016 (which means it was probably shot in 2015), and I don't think any of his movie roles had been major ones since Logan (which was around the same time, maybe a bit later - anyway, movie filming is an entirely different animal).

SPS originally said the show wouldn't feature the TNG cast, and would have nothing to do with Starfleet - and I don't think Sir Patrick is a liar. But I feel like, after Season 1, he started thinking about how his career was going to end, or at least how that character was going to end... and he changed his mind.

So they shot the last two seasons back-to-back, in the middle of the pandemic no less (I also feel like people forgot that fact), because he wanted to get them done while he still could... and they brought back the TNG cast for a season because SPS wanted to work with his friends one last time. And to me, that explains several important things about these past two seasons.

[letsplaythermalnuclearwar]

Which best describes the ship you're currently most obsessed with?

it doesn't have to accurately describe the ship, just the descriptor you think is the most fitting. all gendered language is there to preserve the meme and should be read as gender neutral. please reblog for a greater sample size. if you are equally obsessed with multiple ships or currently not obsessed with any, just pick a ship you enjoy (if you don't like any ships, the dynamic you think sounds the most entertaining)

edit: if multiple fit perfectly, chose the aspect you like best about the ship

[curator-on-ao3]

Like, I respect y’all who enjoy big-budget Star Trek.

And, ngl, when a starship does swoopy things, I screech my little screech of joy.

But I fell in love with a show that has a captain holding a dick rock that glitters. With a show in which the rocks falling on Beverly Crusher bounce because they’re obviously painted styrofoam. With a show that uses the same cave set across every alien world with a cave.

I don’t know why so many of those examples were rock/cave oriented.

I also love a show that didn’t have the budget to depict Wolf 359 and that lack of money made the pain of the battle so much better, imo, since we saw the broken aftermath that these characters would have to live with for the rest of their lives.

Anyway, I want everyone involved with making Star Trek to be appropriately compensated for their art.

But there’s something special about story and character being more important than big budget, eye-grabbing special effects.

[bonesibegyou]

I judge Kirk by his exes. We see a couple of them in TOS and in the movies (two or three I guess? It's been a while) and every one of them is happy to see him. These are not women who were used and unceremoniously dumped. They had fulfilling (if short) relationships and went their separate ways in mutual agreement.

I feel like people who write off Kirk as a "womanizer" don't really draw the lines in the right places.

To me the division is not "man who has a lot of sex | man who doesn't." It's "man who treats women as objects to collect and enjoy | man who genuinely sees women as people and loves them."

It's the post scarcity future, I'm sure there's a vaccine for every STI and we know their birth control works great. There's no reason not to have sex if you want to have it. There shouldn't be shame involved in having lots of it.

But if you watch Kirk carefully, he does not ever treat women like collectibles or disposables. He interacts with them very much as people. Some he flirts with and it's not serious (which they know). Some he's trying to help. Some manipulate him, which sucks. And some he presumably has sex with, but only because he genuinely likes them as people and wants to do this fun thing with them.

None of this fits the idea of a womanizer as a man who takes advantage, pretends to be in love only long enough to score, cheats, gropes his employees, can't see women as people because he's only looking to get as many of them into bed as possible.

So I wish people would stop painting him as that. He's a flirt, he falls for people easily, he's noticeably horny, but he's never disrespectful of women. The writers were very careful about that. They saw the world around them full of that kind of caddish behavior and wrote a man who would never. They show Kirk being tempted by Rand, Marlena, etc., and then making the deliberate choice not to act that way. Because they were making a point about how a hero acts. We even see him give Charlie a lecture about how to treat women, and it's a lesson he personally follows. It's a bit heavy handed if anything.

And then people watch like half of one episode and go "oh yeah ha ha that Kirk, such a sixties womanizer hero, so backward, I'd never watch that." I thought that initially before my recent rewatch, but....that is simply not what's in the show.

[velvetvexations]

LeVar Burton is one of the sweetest guys in the world which makes how justifiably pointed he was about the way Geordie was treated by the writers on TNG rule even harder.

[wadesart]

Um…………. gay.

[star-trek-fandom-confessions]

Confession #148

"So I've seen people complain about the popularity of non-canon ships (Spirk, Garashir, Marinler, etc.), saying "why can't shippers accept that those two are just friends and will always be just friends?"

Well, let me tell you that if the two actors' characters share more chemistry with each other than with their canon love interest(s), then people are gonna ship it. If the two characters share lots of scenes together in the show (and also in tie-in media like games and comics) then people are also gonna ship it because it gives shippers more content for fanfics and fanart. Very few people are gonna be interested in one-episode canon crushes.

I think a lot of people complaining about the shipping of non-canon ships are completely missing the fact that the point of shipping is not to win a competition, but to just have fun (though being canon is always a nice bonus ngl). Also, and I'm not saying all detractors of these popular non-canon ships are like this, but I wonder if there'd be less demands for platonic relationships in popular ships (which also already exist in less popular ships too btw) if both members of said non-canon ships were both white and/or m/f pairings. Just my two cents.🖖"

[cassandraxiv]

I think I finally figured out why AI art irks me (ignoring for a moment the training on data acquired without permission and the fact that what passes for AI nowadays is nothing but a highly advanced Chinese Room).

Let's say Star Trek TNG's resident android lt. cmdr. Data creates a painting, as he does. Data often paints, as he believes it will help him become more human, the mission given to him by dr. Noonien Soong, who built him. Miles O'Brien is leaving for DS9 and has asked Data to create a painting for him to remember the Enterprise by. Data, of course, discusses this with captain Picard, asking for prompts and ideas for this painting that Miles and Keiko might like. The creation process is the B-plot of a whole episode, and at the end, Data presents his heartfelt gift to the O'Briens.

Who created this painting? Was it dr. Soong, who created data? Was it Miles O'Brien, who requested the painting? Was it captain Picard, who prompted Data with ideas and suggestions? The answer is of course none of these. Data created this painting. He is the one who put the brush to the canvas, and though he was inspired by others, ultimately the painting came about through his creativity.

And yet present-day AI "artists" act like it would be anyone but Data who made the painting. AI "artists" don't make the art, they give the AI prompts and suggestions for art. It's the AI who does the actual work - badly, I might add.

[trek-tracks]

I had the weirdest dream last night that they made an AOS animated series which had an episode that made it canon that Bones was secretly a superhuman cursed to remain immortal until he had cured all of humanity's suffering, but also that he gained his powers from the pierogi his mother made in a mall food court. I guess his mother was also immortal, but that was never explained.

This, of course, set off a lot of furious online discourse about whether TAAS (the alternate animated series) was actually canon or not. The cool thing to do when anyone insisted it wasn't was to just reply "ok gene" (as in Roddenberry, who reportedly didn't view the original TAS as canon), and it started trending as a tag. Because nobody capitalized the name, people outside of the fandom had no idea what was going on. Tumblr started speculating that scientists had discovered the "okay gene," as in the gene that made you feel okay, and everyone was saying "brb, gotta get my genome adjusted to add in the okay gene."

It was ironic, I thought, because if TAAS Bones could only actually discover the okay gene, he could cure all of humanity's suffering and finally get some rest.

...I have got to shut off social media.

[luckthebard]

Gotta get this off my chest, but I just saw someone refer to Orym as “getting a little ‘the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few’” as a negative thing, and I would not be the Trekkie I am in my soul if I didn’t immediately want to point out that the referenced quote from Spock is logic that, in the dire situation the character found himself in during Wrath of Khan, was the correct take and saved countless lives — in spite of the fact that it involved sacrifice and grief.

[freepassbound]

A Fundamental Lack of Understanding

I'm not generally much for fandom discourse, so I'm not going to continuously reply to all the posts I'm seeing on the ST:Picard finale (and the season/series in general)... but I am going to vent a bit.

There seems to be a core of people who are dedicated to hating on the show for what it isn't rather than appreciating what it is - which is a perspective I just don't get.

The season as a whole is not terrible - and it not doing what they want it to, or think it should do, does not make it so. It's not great, either, by any means: the plot is decent-to-mediocre and the writing is slightly above that; but the execution of it by the actors is excellent, and the structure is actually workmanlike & functional, and does in fact manage to resolve itself better than many others. There's plenty to criticize or nitpick.

But the language I'm seeing criticizing the show is... absurdly hyperbolic. I've seen (and read) bad Star Trek. This isn't it, not by a long shot.

[ebenelephant]

"my ship's better because it's canon" where were you for the last 60 years of spirk?

[rainbowresurrection]

Kinda got a love/hate relationship with the history of K/S because it's like. Can I please have a queer discussion about this 1960s television show without it being reduced to "shipper discourse". I thought Spock and Kirk were homo long before I knew that their characters spawned a fanfiction counterculture. The bisexual dude who wrote the episode that really kick-started the movement didn't know it was going to coalesce into the fan phenomenon that it did, he was just writing what he knew how to write best: the repression of burning male desire, and two dudes doing homoerotic shit. Can I just talk about the repressed burning male desire please, and the implications of a gay angle to Kirk and Spock's story, without it being referred to as shipper discourse. Can I do that. Does this make sense

[allgremlinart]

I hate you zionist/genocide-apologia Star Trek blogs.