#and no one is probably gonna read it

[pilots-and-protons]

Ok I’ve been reading a ton of Tom Paris related fanfic lately (with many different pairings), and I just need to talk about two Big Pet Peeves I have regarding certain uh, “tropes” - especially in older fanfic (from the 90′s and early 2000′s).

Head’s Up: I’m not trying to pick on anyone or start shit, I just really need somewhere to vent about WHY these two specific things bother me, so it’s going to be under the cut. This is my side-blog and I literally made it just to scream into the void about Tom Paris and Star Trek, okay?

Just be aware that I’m going to be talking about my own personal opinions and I don’t know how to NOT be intense about my autistic special interest (AKA any aspect of Star Trek). So don’t read unless you don’t mind hearing my thoughts about other people’s writing/character choices in fanfiction, and I definitely don’t want to hear anyone arguing with me because that’s not why I’m here. 

Anyways if you’re fine and dandy with that, then by all means you’re welcome to read more. Or don’t, I don’t really care.

Ok so there are two specific things that I noticed appear rather often in many Tom-centric fanfics, and they really bother me.

ok there’s also the prison rape thing, but that’s a whole other can of worms

ANYWAYS, my issues are:

#1: Taking the blame for Caldik Prime away from Tom

#2: Conflating Tom Paris with Nick Locarno

To explain the first one, I’m talking about there being multiple fanfics (from many different authors), where either:

- We’re given a reason why Tom wasn’t actually at fault for the accident (there was something unknowingly wrong with the ship, he was an undercover agent and it never really happened, etc.)

- The author tries to soften the blow by explaining why Tom messed up (he was emotionally compromised, for example, because his mother had died, or some big fight/problem with his father had just happened, etc.)

- Or the author tries to say that Tom never wanted to lie about the accident in the first place (he was unconscious/too wounded and his father lied for him, he was coerced into lying from either indirect or direct pressure from his father, etc.)

And personally? I have a problem with all of these. A huge foundation of Tom’s character is that he messed up in the past - big time. It’s something he had to learn from and grow. It affects so many aspects of his character - like wanting to offer support to Seven because he knows what it’s like to want to put your past behind you. And, at least in my own personal opinion, it’s why he’s the one that finds the error in “Timeless” - because he’s not willing to put other people’s lives at risk ever again.

But not once does Tom ever try to push the blame for this mistake on anyone else. The very first thing we hear about it from his own mouth is to tell Harry that yeah, it was his fault and he shouldn’t have lied about it. He knows this, he accepts this, and is even prepared to put up with the backlash for it (which, as we see from the original Voyager Doctor and Cavvit, is probably pretty common).

I understand that people probably felt bad for Tom or maybe just wanted some extra angst, but it feels so wrong to remove this from his character. It negates the growth he goes through - getting rid of the chip on his shoulder, learning to trust people and open himself up. It also negates the good aspects that came from something awful - he did tell the truth in the end, even though it ruined his Starfleet career. That shows what kind of person he really is, to have owned up to his mistakes even though, in his own words, he would have gotten away with it if he hadn’t.

Now for the second issue: meshing together Tom Paris with Nick Locarno.

I’ve seen fanfics where the people who died at Caldik Prime were Tom’s friends (this is sometimes also a reference to Pathways, which I don’t find canon either). There were fics where Tom blamed the accident on one of the dead officers like Locarno did in “The First Duty, and I’ve even seen someone referencing the Kolvoord Starburst as the reason why Tom’s accident happened. In some ways I get it, because we don’t know hardly any details about Tom’s past history so I can understand why many people decided to mesh the two characters together - especially because Locarno was the initial starting point for the idea of Tom Paris. 

The thing is, it bugs me - both because Nick Locarno’s character was much nastier than Tom’s, and also because canon explicitly contradicts this possibility.  

First of all, Locarno was expelled from the Academy - but Tom was thrown own of Starfleet. He had already graduated and was even serving aboard a Starship at some point before Caldik Prime. These are canonical facts that we know, and probably came from the writers intentionally deciding to separate the two characters. Second, there isn’t a single reference to Tom’s relationship with the people who died at Caldik prime other than his own reference of “those three dead officers” - not his friends, not cadets. Even as bitter as he is in the first season, Tom Paris doesn’t seem like the type to be that detached if he had gotten his own friends killed. 

But also, Nick Locarno did not confess to what he did. And that is such an important distinction between the two. Tom fessed up - Nick Locarno was caught, and the only semi-decent thing he did was convince the higher-ups to spare his team the full punishment. It's also implied that Nick Locarno used his position as team leader to pressure the rest of Nova Squadron into trying a very dangerous and banned maneuver in the first place - to boost his own ego. And when things started to get dicey, he blamed the accident on the cadet who had died, to save himself and his team.

Tom Paris never did any of those things, and it feels pretty damaging to his character to lump the two in together. There is no canonical evidence to suggest that Tom was trying anything dangerous, that he blamed anyone for the accident, or anything like what we know Nick Locarno did. All we know for sure is that it was a pilot error and that he lied, falsifying reports. But he makes it clear to Harry that he would have been home free if he’d just stuck to his lie. Nick Locarno was, if nothing else, facing a mark on his permanent record and a group of Academy officials who clearly thought he was lying already, but just couldn’t prove it. If we can go by Tom’s own words, he was facing much better circumstances, but chose to come clean anyways - because of his own conscious. Because deep down, Tom is a decent person and we see that throughout the rest of Voyager.

Personally, I think the best description of the character’s differences came from Robert Duncan McNeill himself - when he said that Nick Locarno seemed nice on the outside, but was a terrible person on the inside. Whereas Tom Paris had made mistakes and pushed people away, but deep down was a good person (I’m paraphrasing, but you get the point).

So yeah, both of these tropes bug me - one because it tries to make Tom into a less flawed person (maybe to seem more likeable somehow?), and the other because it turns him into a much more selfish and unlikeable character when there’s no reason to.

Anyways I just needed to get that off my chest.

[iceagebaby]

Despondency / Refuge

that's supposed to be Bennys lighter, the Courier is dealing with cosequences of being thrown into a mess they had nothing to do with

the halo was something that turned out on an accident but i love it

Rant below

[babacontainsmultitudes]

RIP Will Campos the only person who was murdered this episode.

[nuzipilled]

been really normal about @interstyx ‘s fic kenosis as of late, really great character study + made me feel things. huge thx to @drowninginfelines for the rec

[umblrspectrum]

do you ever like wanna make something cool but you dont know how so you just sit around like a moron for 5 hours straight pretending you know how

me neither

on a more serious note i know ad astra as a whole isnt over but i still want to thank daybreaker for their fics. what friends are for was the very first md fic i ever stumbled upon when trying out ao3 for the first time, and prior to joining the server i was checking it near daily for uploads. god knows if i'd be as deep in ao3 as i am now if it werent for this story and convenient timing. Thanks for the story.

[thewormsdontstop]

this guy could give the Worst handjobs

[smoosie]

The 'We need to talk' scene

but I've made it into a wet cat short comic

(and it only gets worse for him...)

Bonus secret 5th panel :

(intrusive thoughts so strong they make his brain crash)

[voidlesscreator]

Haunted Doll AU.

If anyone has watched that Wizard of Oz movie where it's the prequel this'll make a lot more sense.

Instead of being one of those antique anabelle type dolls that are typically haunted, Danny is possessing a china doll instead- or a porcelain doll, kinda like this

So imagine Danny gets hurt by either the GIW or the Fenton dr duo and flees to the Infinite Realms, only for CW and Frostbite to suggest putting his ghost core in a movable container while his body heals. Normally Ghosts would probably just be able to switch up their body while their core heals and just reform their body after, but since Danny is a halfa his body will still be there but in a comatose state so it needs to stay under watch.

CW suggests a doll to put his core in and when they do, he is able to move and talk since his voice comes from his core and the doll is ball-jointed.

After getting used to the new body, Danny is sent back to Earth to wait for his body to heal fully, and accidentally takes a wrong turn and ends up in Gotham.

Cue one of the batfam finding a walking doll and taking it home after finding out that it's sentient and a ghost healing.

(Probably Damian during a patrol but it could be any of them.)

[deoidesign]

I animated a trailer for my webcomic and it took forever

Please look!

[lav3nder-bees]

happy february to them and absolutely nobody else

[buck2eddie]

-Rick Riordan, The Last Olympian.

[arttsuka]

Based on somewhat real events

I spent way too much time drawing this...

But yeah, Ford finally saying thank you

A continuation (kinda)

[welcometogrouchland]

(ID in alt) hi sorry for back to back marvel fanart I swear I still have dc stuff lmao. However I did recently read X-Men: first class and got a bit carried away doodling this after Lmao

[hoofpeet]

Various experimental doodles paired with [part of] yesterday's journal entry 👍🐄

[humans-are-tasty]

inspired by this post

[nonebinary-leftbeef]

children's xeno fiction is wild bc it will feature intense politics and wars but it gets labelled as being for kids bc the characters dramatically dying on the field of battle r like cats or owls