#anon I am bitter about this concept routinely

[morelikedoccock]

Do you ever feel like sometimes an old piece of media was better enjoyed before modern fandom revival of it? I feel sad sometimes about it.

Listen anon….. I’m in the witcher fandom, I absolutely feel this so fucking hard, it’s unreal.

Angry fandom rant below

I was/am very into the witcher franchise (specifically the 3rd game) for a few years before the Netflix show dropped and HOLY SHIT the influx of shallow and terrible and frankly irritating content after the show came out was astounding. The show basically sapped a huge amount of the meaning, the fucking lifeblood of the franchise, away and turned it into a sexed up Hollywood version that has absolutely zero soul in it.

The original source material is dark and gritty and intense and meaningful but also funny and interesting with well-rounded and nuanced and interesting characters, and the games follow fairly well in the source material’s footsteps. (I’ve mostly played the 3rd, it’s a stunningly beautiful and fascinating game btw)

When I joined the fandom it was a small place, mostly full of quiet older fandom members who loved the books and the games (and occasionally the old show too) a lot and made the most incredibly good and nuanced and well-made content. After the show came out, I watched those creators get shoved to the side and often then get pushed fully out of the fandom by random people who watched the show and wanted two of the main characters (terrible depictions of really good and well-written characters, made to look like a stupid gruff hunk and a loud fabulous twink by the Netflix show, haven’t seen those stereotypes done before🙄🙄🙄) to fuck. It’s especially frustrating just considering the way fandom treats gay stereotypes in general, and the fact that both of the characters are so nuanced and beautifully fleshed-out in the books/games/the old show.

Basically, I’ve been really outspokenly bitter and angry about what the Netflix show has done to the fandom for a while now😒

And I suspect you’re mostly referring to how NWH has affected the marvel/spiderman fandom (specifically the doc ock people?) and as much as I’m newer to the fandom, I promise I really do understand the sentiment😂😂😂

[writethatdown]

how can i reprogram my subconscious mind?

i have been thinking about the past and past people who i idealize (even friends) who aren’t even in my life anymore. i am trying hard to let go and reinvent myself during this time in my loneliness.

i try to journal and workout but i don’t think im being consistent enough because i rarely have motivation sometimes.

hi anon! this is a question i had been asking myself for a couple of months and as someone who consumes stoic content and believes in spirituality, i'll try to answer this in a way i view and perceive situations and life in general.

past is an amalgam of both sweet and bitter transitions of our adulthood. more often than not, we tend to tie ourselves to the version of us which we are most familiar with i.e victim mentality, bad habits, mistakes and regrets etc.

it's a beautiful thing to grow and taking the strive to work towards it. and i know i know i know it is just so hard sometimes because we are in a place we haven't been before.

now, to specifically answer the part: how can i reprogram my subconscious mind—it all comes down to mental diet.

your subconscious is what you feed it consciously for a long period of time. it's your self talk, the content you consume, the books you read, the songs you listen to, the people you surround yourself with, the belief system that you inculcate, the self concept, and the mindsets that you have.

workout and journaling are really good practices. i would advice you to not push yourself to a hurting point. it's a good thing to have discipline, but please don't push yourself too hard or be too hard on yourself! setbacks are normal! you can always get back up and continue whatever routine you are aiming for.

generally, to fully transform the way you think and believe, you have to sit and get down to the details of the exact type of person you want to be. and ask yourself—how does that person act? what does that person listen to? what boundaries does that person have? who is that person surrounding themselves with? how do they speak? how do they carry themselves? what are their habits?

habits like meditation, journaling, working out, daily walks will help a lot in mental clarity, strength and getting in tune of oneself.

hope that helped! <3

[enterprisetrampstamp]

The Martinstown WIP Part 3

Part 1 Part 2

This is Part 3 of what is likely to be a nice, long t’pura fic once I’ve banged it out. It’s a bizarre length and actual amount of plot by my standards, so I’m in want of comments and breaking my usual rules to post sections of it before it’s fully complete. Please, holler at your ambiguously gendered author with any #thoughts you have!

This one goes out in particular to the one lovely anon who cares about this fic as much as I do.

***

Vulcans do not dream. But- on occasion- a lack of focus during their nightly meditation can lead a Vulcan to ruminate so deeply upon past events that they relive them, in a strange and filtered way. "Through the looking glass," a human may describe it.

T'Pring does not know why her mind lingers this night on a day long past--one where the heat of Vulcan's sun beats heavily on her shoulders, and her robes are filled with fruit they have foraged. She is accompanied by Spock. They sit huddled on a rock, deep in the craggy valleys of the desolate mountains, with only I'Chaya as supervision.

They speak of everything and nothing, in the way of children. They become sticky as they eat, and their skin grows hot and flushed with the sallow yellow-green of sunburn, for they have not heeded the words of their mothers.

"No," she insists, as he demonstrates a hand gesture, a tiny furrow of focus between his slanted brows. "That is too close to the regular word."

"We should not wish to forget our symbols," Spock argues, "or we will lose our ability to communicate in secret."

"I will not forget." She peels the skin from her fruit, sniffing. "Are you saying you would?"

He bristles immediately. "I would not."

"Then why would I? I am smarter than you."

"You are not!"

"This argument is illogical."

"You are illogical."

It is her turn to bristle. "I am not!"

"You are always angry. Anger is illogical. Therefore, you are illogical!"

T'Pring remembers how this is meant to go--she should consider her fruit for a long second, the colors red and orange and juicy in her palm. "If you wish to see angry," she should scoff, and then reach over to shove the fruit in his face.

But this time she is older, in her thirties and sitting next to a Spock so small she could easily hold him aloft with one hand. Her fingers are still sticky; she can still feel the heat of her planet's sun against her shoulders--now bare, in the modern style of the rebellious Vulcan woman. A flyaway of hair is caught in the breeze. She stares at the fruit in her palms, feels the roughness of the rocks against her ankles, and something inside of her is screaming. It has been for a very long time now.

"Yes," she says. "I am often angry. I think perhaps that is why our minds were found compatible. You have always struggled to maintain a Vulcan lifestyle, and I have always struggled to accept one. That has not--gotten easier.” She breathes out into the air of a dead planet. “Since this.”

"I do not understand," Spock says.

He is so small. It is illogical to doubt her own memories and more illogical still to question the realities of biological aging processes, and yet still she finds herself questioning how it is possible that either of them were ever so small as he is sitting next to her.

"You would not," she says. "We had not lost this, yet. The innocence of childhood. Our people and our planet. Each other." T'Pring does not look at him in pity, because he does not need it--not as a child, trying to find a place on a world which could not accept him, and not as an adult who has found his place on a starship far away. "There is nothing so illogical as grief, Spock; not even anger, for all that they so often go hand in hand. You have not learned that yet. I regret that one day you must."

"You should not say such things," he tells her, looking worried. In time, he will grow better at hiding these feelings, but she will only grow angrier. "T'Pring, you are being emotional."

"Yes," she says. "But no one is around to know. You do not exist outside of my mind, tiny Spockling." She reaches out to ruffle his hair, and he squawks much the way he had once upon a Vulcan afternoon, with his face covered in fruit.

"I find your behavior illogical and unsatisfactory," he says, all harsh and small. It is adorable. "This will be the first thing I say to you when we complete our private code."

"That is exactly so," she tells him, fond. "Although I think you have secretly always enjoyed seeing another Vulcan behave in this way, no matter how you raise your little eyebrows."

She grows quiet, pensive, and then says quietly, "I miss you, illogically. I was the one who ended this easy camaraderie, fearful that the scrutiny our classmates placed on you for being half-human would reflect back on me to reveal my own struggles. It was the logical move to protect myself, I believed. Now I must wonder if I did not hurt us both instead; we were never on the path to romance, but there was a time when I regarded you as a friend."

There is no one here but yourself, she chides. You need not twist your words to obscure the truth.

"That time continues now," she admits, begrudgingly. "I maintain sentiment towards you, despite our divorce. After all, though it was I who initially suggested our severance, you held nothing but support for my decision despite the future peril in which it places you, should you enter pon farr without our bond to fall back on."

(It had not been her motivation behind the divorce, but she is grateful in a desperate and primitive way that she has been spared from the decision to either kill him by inaction or be forced to cure his fever herself--she is grateful because she knows what she would have chosen, and his agreement to divorce her has denied her conscience the weight of his death.)

"Is this what your meditation seeks to have you acknowledge?" Spock asks in that young voice, but with all the perception of his older self. Or her own, perhaps, since there is no one in her mind but her. "That your path of solitude is a choice you have made on your own?"

T'Pring peels the rest of her fruit, and feels the heat of a sun that she will never again encounter outside of memory. "If that is the case," she says, "I struggle to see the logic in regretting what has already come to pass. My family has perished in the genocide of our people, my friendship with you has long since wilted, and I cannot bear to set foot on our supposed new homeworld. I am alone, but for the humans among whom I live."

"You like these humans," the Spocklet says. He has a handful of freckles along the bridge of his nose. “But you find it difficult to trust them.”

T’Pring does not see a point in answering, even within the meditative construct of a conversation.

The crew of the Martinstown is a self-described family, and that T’Pring finds difficulty with such a concept should be self-evident. They are also of a largely psi null race; to obtain mental intimacy with them would require a deliberate conscious undertaking, and to trust without knowing the inside of another's mind… The very concept is unnerving.

There is a role she plays for her crew, much as there was a role she played for her family on the lost sands Vulcan. Unlike the silence and stoicism of the past, she enjoys the teasing and bluntness of her new persona--but it is a persona nonetheless. 

"You like me," her diminutive companion says, thoughtfully. "Do you trust me?"

She slants a sharp, sideways look at him. "I might," she says begrudgingly. "Though I do not prefer to say so, even within the privacy of my meditation. Must you force me to admit these things?"

"The only one here is you," he reminds her. "You are, as you always are, alone."

"I prefer it that way," she says. "Isn't that what we decided a moment ago?"

"No." Spock stares up at her, his thin arms wrapped about his knobbled knees, and his too-human eyes are small, and dark, and troubled. "We decided that it is what you have chosen; not that it is what you prefer."

T'Pring's heartbeat is quick and loud in her ears. "I see," she says. "I shall need to meditate on this properly at a later date. And there is no logic in telling you goodbye, as you do not exist."

"Very well," he agrees.

She opens her eyes.

The smoky haze of incense fills the air of her quarters- barely large enough for her to stretch her arms to either side and not brush the wall with both fingertips- and her ankles chafe not on Vulcanic rock but on the fibrous fabric of her meditative mat. That this particular hour is classified as “morning” is, of course, arbitrary, but she can smell coffee percolating and hear the distant sounds of movement as the Martinstown’s other habitants likewise stir.

Upon waking after a poker game, the crew is often quiet by their usual standards; Cristobal and Elina will sit in the kitchen among the detritus of the festivities, sharing their dark, bitter coffee as they skim their PADDs for the news, and Pinga and the Captain (whose camaraderie stretches back the longest) can often be found sharing a peaceful silence- and occasionally a stiff drink- on the ship's modest bridge.

(No matter the circumstances, the Leiman siblings independently and uniquely refuse to arise before the theoretical sun. "Artists," Pinga says, as if this word explains everything.)

T’Pring rises from her meditation, first dousing the last smouldering heat of her incense before bending loosely at the waist to roll the mat into a neat cylinder and tuck it beneath the austere desk which takes up nearly a third of the room.

(She uses the surface and the wall behind it to meticulously track not only the Martinstown crew's path through the stars, but also their adventures within them. T'Pring had been hired on, originally, as a record keeper; it has proven a difficult habit to break, even now that her position aboard this ship has little to do with a need for employment.)

T'Pring moves about her routine without haste, but neither does she linger in reflection as she brushes her teeth and hair and sheds the simple robe- of a silken, Terran style- which she had chosen for her meditation.

The revelations of the hallucinatory Spock-child are undoubtedly worth considering--but at a later date, in the darkness and stillness of her quarters, among the smoky haze of the alien scents she has adopted as a meditative focus. (Not only have many Vulcanic spices been lost among the rubble of her planet, but those that remain are difficult to obtain this far away from major Federation outposts.)

She thinks of other things, instead, such as how the braid of her hair is not entirely unlike the elaborate hairstyles of her youth--though less cumbersome, not being piled high atop her head. It is left hanging loosely down between her shoulder blades, tracing the straight slope of her spine.

So too does her manner of dress evoke a reminder of Vulcan without mimicking it; there is the freedom of movement of a traditional robe, combined with the metallic sheen of formal dress. T'Pring typically clothes herself in a simple, lightweight, sleeveless jumpsuit which cinches at her ankles but flows loose about her legs, as well as a stiff, tight vest in a heavy fabric which cuts a sharp line at her shoulders and reaches high up her throat. Both are a deep purple in color- matching her gloves- though the vest is slightly darker and shimmers with the play of light across its surface.

T'Pring has found this combination of garments to be comfortable, casual, and in keeping with the common fashion trends across the galaxy, thereby rendering it inconspicuous.

For economy of space aboard their small ship, the crew have few items of clothing and opt instead to clean them frequently; their choices in attire must therefore be well-suited to a variety of tasks. The combination of sleevelessness and drapery allows her a wide range of motion, while the stiff vest provides additional protection to her torso--a flawlessly logical combination, given the life she leads.

Flawlessly logical. She would roll her eyes if she were human. As if logic is something more than a tool--as if it is the beginning and end of the argument, when incomplete or incorrect data can result in a perfectly logical decision which is nonetheless wrong.

Such scandalous thoughts. T'Pring wishes she could blame the humans for them.