#and I'm getting lost in subjectivity as a concept. there's no correct choice here

[autistic-shaiapouf]

Will yall help me ease the autism for a moment bc I was looking at 2 cars and am very settled on the first one but in the back of my mind I'm like. the other car will be so sad if I don't also transfer it in to test drive it

[beatriceeagle]

I'm more of a fantasy than sci-fi person, but consider my interest piqued. Why should I watch farscape?

Okay, the thing is, every Farscape fan’s pitch on Why You, Yes You, Should Watch Farscape ends up sounding very similar, and that’s because Farscape is a black hole that sucks you in and does things to your brain, and after you’ve watched it you are never, ever the same, which incidentally is basically the plot of Farscape.

I would summarize the basic plot for you, but that’s work, and luckily, the show’s credits sequence includes a handy summary that I will provide instead of doing that work: “My name is John Crichton, an astronaut. A radiation wave hit, and I got shot through a wormhole. Now I’m lost in some distant part of the universe on a ship, a living ship, full of strange alien life forms. Help me. Listen, please. Is there anybody out there who can hear me? I’m being hunted by an insane military commander. Doing everything I can. I’m just looking for a way home.“

So let me break down that monologue into its component reasons you should watch Farscape.

1) Some of the strange alien life forms are Muppets.

Farscape a co-production with the Jim Henson Company, and while there are many aliens played by humans in make-up, there are also a considerable number (including two of the regular crew) who are Muppets. By which I do not mean Kermit. I mean really gorgeous, elaborate works of art.

Also, even a lot of the humans-in-makeup aliens just look cool, and incredibly weird. Here’s an alien who appears in a single episode of season 1:

Not that there aren’t, you know, occasional Star Trek-style “these guys are just humans with weird hair,” or whatever, but in general, the aliens on Farscape look really alien. And that’s more than an aesthetic choice; it’s Farscape’s driving narrative principle. The aliens look alien, they act alien, they have alien values.

You know how a lot of sci-fi shows will have a stand-in for “fuck,” like Battlestar Galactica has “frak”? Well, Farscape has “frell.” And also “dren.” And yotz, hezmana, mivonks, loomas, tralk, snurch, eema, drannit, dench, biznak, arn, drad, fahrbot, narl. Some of those are swear words, but some of them are just words, never explicitly translated, that the alien characters will pepper into their speech, because, well, why should translator microbes be able to completely translate all the nuances of an alien culture? You’ll pick it up from context. One time, in passing, a character mentions that he’s familiar with the concept of suicide, but there’s no word for it in his language. I cannot emphasize to you enough how fleeting this moment is; the episode is not about suicide, we’re not having a great exchange of cultural ideas—at the time, the characters are running down a corridor in a crisis, as they are about 70 percent of the time—it’s just that the subject got brought up, and this character needed to talk around the fact that he literally didn’t have a word, in that moment. Things like that happen all the time, on Farscape.

Because more than anything else, Farscape is a show about culture shock. John Crichton is this straight, white Southern guy, at the top of his game—he’s an astronaut! he’s incredibly high status!—and then he ends up on the other side of the galaxy, where none of his cultural markers of privilege hold any meaning, where he doesn’t know the rules, where he literally can’t even open the doors. And he has to unlearn the idea that humanity is central, that he is the norm.

2) John Crichton, an astronaut, is pretty great.

A show that’s about a straight white guy with high status having to learn that he’s not the center of the universe could easily be centered around a really insufferable person, but one of the subtle things that makes Farscape so wonderful is that Crichton is, for the most part, pretty excellent. He has a lot of presumptions to unlearn because almost anyone in his cultural position would, but he’s also just a stand-up guy: compassionate, intelligent, open-minded, decent, forgiving, brave, hopeful.

And the galaxy tries to kick a whole lot of that out of him. It doesn’t succeed, mostly, but if Farscape is about anything other than culture shock, it’s about the lasting effects of trauma. How you can go through a wormhole one person, and experience things that turn you into someone you don’t recognize.

That’s kind of grim-sounding, but ultimately, what I’m trying to say is that Farscape is almost fanatically devoted to character work. Crichton is not the only character who sounds like he should be one thing and ends up being another. All of the characters—all of them, all of them, even the annoying ones—are complicated wonders. And you don’t have to wonder whether the events of the episode you’re watching are going to matter. They will. Everything that happens to the characters leaves a mark. Everything leaves them forever changed. Whether it’s mentioned explicitly or not—and often enough, it’s not explicit—the characters remember what has happened to them.

3) The living ship houses a lot of excellent women, among them the ship itself.

Ah, the women of Farscape, thou art the loves of my fucking life.

There’s Aeryn Sun, former Peacekeeper (that’s the military that the “insane military commander” hails from) now fugitive, currently learning the meaning of the word “compassion” (literally). She will break your fingers and also your heart. John/Aeryn is the main canon romantic ship.

There’s Pa’u Zhoto Zhaan, a priestess of the ninth level, current pacifist, former anarchist. Sorry, leading anarchist. She orgasms in bright light! (Oh my god, Farscape.)

There’s Chiana, my fucking bestie, a teenage(ish? ages in Farscape are weird) fugitive on the run from a repressive authoritarian state. Chiana is like a seductress con artist grifter thief who mostly just wants to survive so that she can have fun, damn it. Characters on Farscape do not really discuss sexualities (sex, yes, sexualities, no) and it would be fair to say that several of them do not fall along human sexuality lines generally, but I’m gonna go ahead and say that Chiana is canonically not straight.

Then there’s Moya, the ship herself, and it’s hard to get a straight read on Moya’s personality, since she mostly can’t speak. But she definitely has opinions, and things and people she cares about. And she moves the plot, though that gets into spoiler territory.

Past first season, further excellent women show up: Jool (controversial, but I like her), Sikozu (I once saw a Tumblr meme where someone had marked down that Sikozu would lose her shit when someone pronounced “gif” wrong, and that’s absolutely correct, and it’s why I love her), and Noranti (who is incredibly weird, and incredibly hard to summarize, but man, you gotta love her willingness to just show up and do her thing). Plus, there’s a recurring female villain, Grayza, who I could write probably multiple essays about. (I don’t know how you will feel about Grayza, as not everyone loves her, but I think she’s fucking fascinating, especially because she’s not actually the only recurring female villain. We also get Ahkna!)

(Side note: I should mention, here, that the cast of Farscape is really, really white. There is one cast member of color, Lani Tupu, but he pretty much represents the entirety of even, like, incidental diversity in casting for the series.)

Anyway, Farscape is full of awesome women, and also awesome and unexpected men, and it really enjoys playing with audience expectations of gender roles, generally. Literal entire books have been written about the way that Farscape fucks around with sex, sexuality, and gender. It’s a little weird because it was the late 90s/early 2000s, and sometimes that does come through, but Farscape’s guiding principle was always to try not to present American culture of the time as the norm, so like. It is not.

(An aside on Farscape and sex: Literally every character on Farscape has sexual tension with every other character. If you are a shipper, this is a Good Show, because no matter who you ship, there will not only be subtext, you will get a Moment of some kind. Multiple characters kiss the Muppet. Farscape is dedicated to getting into the nitty-gritty of the galaxy—I like to think of it as showing the guts of the universe—so a lot of the show is kind of squishy. They live on a biomechanoid ship, instead of androids there are “bioloids,” there’s a lot of focus on strange alien biologies, and lots of weird glowing fluids and things. I think the sex thing is kind of part and parcel of the larger biology focus: Farscape is really fascinated with how we all eat and evolve and live and die and, well, fuck. Which is in turn, kind of part of its focus on making everything really alien.)

4) Other stuff you should know.

Farscape as a whole is excellent, but it was kind of the product of creative anarchy—an Australian/American coproduction (oh yeah, everyone except Crichton speaks with an Australian accent) that was also partnered with the Henson company, whose showrunners were based in America but whose actual production all took place in Australia, and who was just constantly trying new things. So individual episodes can vary wildly in quality. It really takes off in the back half of season one, but no season is without a few off episodes.

It is extraordinarily funny, and I really think I haven’t stressed that enough. It’s one of the shows I want to quote the most in my daily life, but almost all of its humor is really context-dependent, and if you just wander around going, “Hey Stark? What’s black and white, and black and white, and black and white?” people look at you really funny.

It’s very conversant with pop culture generally (although obviously sci-fi  specifically, and Star Trek most specifically of all) and really enjoys deconstructing tropes, often to the effect of, “Well, Crichton really does not know what to do here, does he?” but sometimes just to be interesting.

There are also a lot of themes about science, and its uses and misuses.

The whole thing is fucking epic, and if you get invested at all, will take you on an emotional ride.

This show is weird. I know that that’s probably come across by now, but I think it’s worth reiterating as its own point: Farscape is so weird. Like, proudly, unabashedly, trying its hardest, weird. An amazing kind of weird.

If you’re into fantasy, you should know that there’s a recurring villain who’s just a wizard. Like, they don’t bother to explain it any more than that, he’s just a fucking wizard.

In summary: You should watch Farscape because it is a weird, wild, emotional, epic romance/drama/action/allegory full of Muppets and leather and one-liners and emotional gut punches and love, and if you let it, it will worm its way into you and never let go, which, now that I think of it, is another Farscape plot.

Send me meta prompts to distract me from my migraine!

[be-quiet-bimbo]

i know guys like bimbos but i'm not one.... but i'd like to be... how do i do that? i'm pretty intelligent and do not come across like that!! please help!!

There’s multiple things to address in this question.  I’ll try to hit them all.

First, there is certainly an appeal toward bimbos for a lot of men, but don’t make the assumption that all men like them, or that they’re even the most preferred type of woman.  It’s more correct to say that many men are drawn to certain aspects of a bimbo.  But the total bimbo package may not be what they want to spend their time with.  So don’t become a bimbo just to try landing a guy, if that’s not what you feel you are inside or truly dream of being.

The aspects that seem to have the greatest appeal for a large number of men, and what seems to be the core of what makes a bimbo, are hyper-sexualization, superficiality, and low intelligence.

Hyper-sexualization: This one is the probably the biggest attraction for men toward bimbos.  I think it’s pretty obvious why.  Big boobs, butts, and lips; tight, revealing clothes; showing lots of skin and fully exposing themselves; engaging in casual or wanton sexual acts... all those are playing to primal male urges toward sexual conquest.

But this is achievable without having to be a bimbo.  Exercise, implants, and other surgeries can alter the body for a more sexualized appearance.  And anyone can choose to engage more freely in sex.  While bimbos are generally regarded as sluts, not all sluts are bimbos.

Superficiality: Bridging between the other two topics, superficiality is a hallmark of bimbo nature that also expands outside of those topics to stand on its own.  A bimbo is anything but deep.  They focus on appearances and surfaces: clothes, jewelry, cuteness, bright or stark colors, soft textures.  The common theme is that it must be pleasing without requiring much attention or consideration.  Complexity and subtlety are, at best, lost on a bimbo.  More commonly, they will confuse or disturb a bimbo.

Aspiring bimbos should start turning their focus toward the superficial.  If something requires thought to appreciate it, reject it and find something else to pay attention to, something that is instantly pleasing the moment you see it or feel it.

Low Intelligence: This is probably the hardest one to deal with for most aspiring bimbos, because it’s counter-culture, and difficult to engineer.  On the whole, humans are extremely intelligent as a species, and our culture (as a species) leans toward advancing that intelligence.  Some regional cultures insist on advancing male intelligence while trying to deny advances in female intelligence, but the effectiveness in achieving that is debatable, but not really the subject here.

Whereas there’s lots of ways to alter a body, it’s actually quite difficult to permanently alter a person’s brain without doing significant damage to them.  What can be done is to retrain someone to think or behave differently; this is not an instantaneous - or even quick - change, though.

The best advice I’ve seen or heard on this subject is short but profound: choose dumb.  We are faced with more choices than we even realize every day of our lives.  But when you realize that you have a choice, you can start choosing the less intelligent option.  I don’t mean to start making choices that would be harmful or destructive because it would be stupid to make that choice.  But when having to select between options, go for the one that does less to engage or promote intelligence.  A magazine is less intelligent than a book.  A fashion magazine is less intelligent than a news magazine.  Reality TV is less intelligent than a documentary.  Avoid the things that make you think.  Go for the things that trigger easy and instant gratification, and are then just as easily left behind.

Any of the three characteristics above can be achieved without going the route of “full bimbo”.  Choose what works for you, and then work to embody that as fully as you can.  If you really want to be a through-and-through bimbo, you’ll need to fully invest yourself in all three.

If, in the end, you’re really just trying to do it to get a guy, let me tip you off to the common theme in the traits that make bimbos appealing for many (not saying all) men.  Simplicity.  That’s it.  They’re easy.  Or at least, the concept many men have about bimbos is that they’re easy.  Easy to have sex with. Easy to please (i.e., shiny things). And easy to dominate intellectually. (Not talking BDSM, there.  Just talking about being smarter than them.)

Now, before everyone gets up in arms, thinking I’m saying men are weak or can’t handle strong women or can’t deal with challenges in life: I’m not talking about reality.  Men (who are drawn to bimbos) are attracted to the fantasy they have of what a bimbo is.  This isn’t a negative, though; it’s natural, and essentially universal.  Pretty much everyone fantasizes about a life of luxury and ease; isn’t that the essence of the bimbo fantasy?  But many men who go after the fantasy and encounter the reality of a bimbo often have to deal with the disappointment of realizing that bimbos are real people too.  That means they’re complex, have emotions and reactions, have and cause problems, and everything else that goes with real life.

Many men who run into that reality reject it and go seeking their fantasy again.  Some recognize that it’s a fantasy, and give up on it, leaving it as just a fantasy.  But there are some who accept the fantasy, find someone whose fantasies closely match their own, and work together on making their reality as close to their shared fantasy as they can.

To those in the last group: I salute you!