#me? posting self shipping art on tumblr dot com? more likely than you think

[faneth]

savior

[evangelina830]

-📌 -

🤍Side blogs

- @catfortress (tf2 fan au ask blog where they are cats!)

- @outofthisworld69 (rp blog for my tf2 sona, Bandit!)

🩵Intro

- Hallo! I am Evangelina but u can call me Evan :D and mutuals can call me Miles if they want^^ I love cats (especially my torti, Molly :>), singing, piano, romance, taking photos of the sky/bugs, and art !

- I lack a thing called gender so I kindly ask for they/them pronouns :3

- I’m currently learning Spanish

- Commissions!! - currently open

- I’m 17 and my bday is August 30th

- Feel free to send art requests through that button, but I can’t promise a fast answer xdd (ocs, other ships than I post, and just questions are fine!)

- Anxiety is apart of me, so apologies if I’m weird sometimes or something x,))

🚫Boundaries

- DNI - Proshitters, non-con likers, zoophile, AI ‘artists’, racist, homophobe/transphobe, gross people like lolicon, yeah (and anyone that just likes to cause problems lol)

- Don’t trace/repost my art anywhere!! If you want to use it (like for profile), please ask me first. If I say you may, please credit me!

- If we are mutuals, you’re more than welcome to DM me anytime, but I’m not 100% quick at responding x)

- If we are NOT mutuals, please don’t message me unless it’s within reason or you are wanting a commission. (I’ve had plenty DM me constantly and get upset when I didn’t always respond :,3)

- I don’t care for suggestive, so as long as things you post aren’t on the dni list, you’re welcome to follow/interact with me^^

💙Things on my account

- my current interest is TF2! (Sometimes when I find a new interest, that’s all I think about, so I apologies if I suddenly move to something else😭)

- Every fixation in media or so, I have a favorite pairing… and I tend to make fan-kids for them :3 (usually just one), also I like to make other ocs for the fandom

- When i get fixated on said media, pretty much all I think about is that ship… but I love others and I’m not picky! (I love bloody suit lol)

- It’s probably necessary to put that I’m a sucker for the enemies to lovers trope - and somehow at the same time, am I an absolute sucker for romance. So I suppose prepare for cringe (?) on Tumblr dot com!

- I’m always drawng!! Digitally, occasional traditional^^ (crafting included)

✨Tags

- #EvanSona - the way I draw myself in fandoms

- #EvanArt - renders!

- #EvanDoodles - doodles and sketches

- #EvanCrafting - felting, origami, needle felting

- #EvanDrawing - traditional drawing

- #EvanUpdates - self explanatory lol

- #EvanAnswers - answering asks^^

- #EvanReblogs - for reblogs

- #EvanOther - other stuff

🤍Socials

- Instagram - @evangelina_830

- Twitter - @evangelina_830 (barely active)

- Discord - ask

[corpsentry]

allahrakhii (dot) tumblr (dot) com/post/148596180152/honestly-the-depths-of-ignorance-of-white-people

this is a really good post for those who want to learn more about the harmful portrayal of brown women in the legend of zelda series. theres a bunch of helpful links that direct to articles throughout the post as well. if you scroll through a bit youll find the section that covers why the gerudo outfit is racist.

i would appreciate if you post this and not simply brush it aside! this message isnt intended to be hostile or offensive, but rather it is an opportunity for learning and discussion. thank you.

i find the insinuation that i might brush this aside rather ominous anon! first of all, thank you for sharing this post. as someone vaguely from southeast asia i uncovered another facet of the fuckcluster of internalized racism in my system while reading it and will be thinking about it for a while to come. the post is well-written and thoughtfully phrased, plus op provides links to several other resources that i’ll be checking out in my free time too so i’d recommend anyone passing by here give it a read. i also want to apologize for responding to the earlier ask (now deleted) where op was like ‘how is the gerudo outfit racist’ and i was like ‘fuck all if i know’. i was talking out of my ass and failed to consider alternate perspectives. i retract that statement and replace it with this much longer and much more eloquent one.

now everything from here on is frankly quite unrelated to this ask so to the person who sent it please feel free to stop reading right here right now from high school musical as i want to talk about the previous anon message i received and some general stuff regarding fandom and none of that has anything to do with you (you are lovely and the rest of the world is a shithole).

i don’t know if the original anon who sent the ‘i like your art but the gerudo outfit racist :(’ is gonna see this but let’s take a moment to unpack it. i’m not quite sure what anon was going for with this ask. what did they want from me? did they want me to apologize for drawing and posting it? did they want me to delete the post? did they expect me to say oh thank you so much!!! sorry about the racism xd or did they want me to call up shigeru miyamoto and be like ‘hey dude your shit’s racist’ and then take down the entire nintendo corporation in one fell swoop like i was somehow implicated in either the development process or the game by pure merit of drawing fanart of it(????). this was the shit running through my head when i woke up at 6 am this morning because jetlag and opened tumblr and there was this Person sitting there trying to :( me. what’s up with the :(. why are you :(. what do you want from me.

this is where the second anon above comes in. relative to this ask, if the first anon had so much as dropped one (1) link to one (1) post explaining how the outfit might be racist (and taken out the :(, which is lame) then instead of being like ‘which reaction image should i use for this’ i would’ve been like ‘oh here’s something i didn’t know about the world and here’s how i can learn more’. ‘your art great but this racist u___u’ reads like someone trying to guilt-trip someone for shits and giggles. a B grade on a paper is useless unless your prof tells you where you went wrong and before anyone Calls Me Out i’m going to acknowledge that there is a broader issue with marginalized groups having to bear the burden of ‘explaining themselves’ to privileged people who aren’t willing to go and seek information on their own, but let’s just look at this ask for a moment.

what the fuck is this??? what am i even supposed to do with a statement that not only tells me nothing but also seems to have no clear purpose? i am sitting here drawing video game fanart in a college dorm in pennsylvania and i know like 3 things about western media because i don’t like live-action film. if you want to have a conversation please give me something to work with instead of trying to sound sad in my askbox. i can’t turn your :( into a :) because i have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about because i am not god (yet) (although i am trying to).

but let’s talk bigger. racist stereotypes are a huge fucking problem in everything the ideological west gets its hands on. i promise you i know this because i grew up in singapore where the racism was directed towards everyone including ourselves because sir dickbag raffles stuck a flag in the ground and then ruined everything. i can see how nintendo has replicated those racist stereotypes, especially given that east asian countries generally have a long history of racism towards black and brown people. singapore fucks with it too because we’re majority chinese-singaporean and majority lighter-skinned (relatively speaking). op makes a lot of excellent points. perpetuating stereotypes in popular media serves to reinforce racist ideas and further entrench discriminatory beliefs. it’s a chicken egg chicken egg thing. people are socialized into racist beliefs. they create media with racist depictions. young people consume said media and are socialized into racist beliefs. and so on. egg chicken egg chicken.

so, question: where does fanwork figure into all of this? is that 5k ganlink (is this the ship name lol idk if it’s wrong feel free to take me out with a bazooka) e-rated smutfic the egg or the chicken? who is it socializing? who’s writing it? what kind of audience is it reaching? and, more broadly speaking, what is fandom here for, and what does fandom want to achieve?

here we’re going to take a huge detour into another very popular disco horse (at least on twitter i have fuckall clue what’s going on on tumblr at all times) of the present times: the wmulti level wmarketing (wlw) discussion. it is statistically true that there are far less f/f fics on ao3 than m/m fics and f/m fics. this clearly reflects something about fandom’s habits, but the floor is divided. in fact, the floor is on fucking fire all the time. several arguments have been made over the years, of which 1) media creates less-nuanced female characters which makes them harder to connect to (mass media’s fault) and 2) everyone is a gay fetishizer (the individual’s fault) are, arguably, the most popular.

as a head ass philosophy student i’m going to pick the option no one likes and say that i think it’s a combination of all of these factors. and i’m going to step out further and say that people are so inseparable from our communities and societies that it’s impossible to tell where external influence ends and personal preference begins. what this means, more simply, is i think that both individual arguments are insufficient. media is fucking complicated and so are people so imagine when you put all of this shit together on one webpage and then you light a match. tell me, bethany, can you truly say that you like twinkies because You Like Twinkies or was it that advertisement you saw at the bus stop every day for eight years that finally got to you? are you trying to rebel against society’s fear of fatness? are you depressed? do you just like sweet things, and anyway, can anyone “just like” something?

now let’s transplant this issue of societal/self influence (a fandom friendly version of the nature/nurture argument, if you will) onto fandom. so okay, there aren’t a lot of f/f fics. what do?

some popular options i’ve seen are: 1) make angry posts/tweets about how everyone sleeps on f/f relationships in fandom and we’re all secretly lesbophobic 2) call everyone a gay fetishizer 3) write f/f fic

and so here is the other (other? i don’t remember how many problems i’ve listed lol i’m trying here guys) problem: fandom doesn’t have a single cohesive goal. like people don’t come to fandom and then sign a 5 page contract at the end of which is the company vision. everyone comes here to do their own shit. some people use fandom as a means of escape. some people are trying to spread a message (like the evangelists) or educate the youth. some people fuck around and find out.

concept: if the goal of fandom was social activism, then the argument could be made that We Should Write More f/f fics. that make sense to you? because there’s something we’re all striving towards, we can agree that we have an obligation to our community to do something. but the goal of fandom isn’t social activism, is it? maybe it is for you. but it isn’t for everyone here including the 14 year old kid in chinese orchestra and the 56 year old who just wants to read some good werewolf smut. and because we’re all different people who do different things and fandom is not and cannot be your entire life, we can’t make these prescriptive statements. we can’t tell people what to do. ‘people should write more f/f fics because there are very few right now’ that is a valid statement and observation. now will you write those fics? because you’re the only person whose fandom life you can control. because the point of fandom is we’re away from the rules and regulations of Society. because when people are told they can do what they want they will do what they want and if you tell them to do something else, it’s hard to fault them for not taking kindly to it. i’ve written 5k character studies. it’s work. not everyone wants to do that work. that’s why i do it.

detour end and now we return to the chicken egg problem. in my opinion, the shit we create in fandom isn’t the chicken or the egg. it’s the onsen egg that’s been placed on top of your ramen. it’s a product of several complex societal processes, but now it’s here you and maybe the dude sitting across from you are the only ones, by and large, that it’s going to affect. this onsen egg isn’t for the children of the world (broadcast via disney+). this onsen egg isn’t for the politicians who’ll decide on the policy of your country for the next hundred years. they’re not even going to see it because it’s a fucking onsen egg now and no one has taste anymore these days except for yourself, which is why this onsen egg is just for you. put in clearer terms, i agree with op that people in fandom often replicate societal bias in their work (people are copy machines, bethany), but i don’t think most fanfiction has the power to influence society the way that popular media can (see: marvel movies, i dunno, fucking, like, austin powers?), and to critique it with the same mindset we use to critique tony stark is to say that we earnestly think every 15k smutfic is going to be read by millions of people of all ages from across the world. which is not the case. ao3 has a thing you have to click if you’re not logged in you know where you have to agree that you’re 18 or older o read adult stuff. if you lie about that that’s your own goddamn problem. they asked.

and now, part 2, we come around to several interesting points made in the post. op mentioned that ganon is often portrayed as hypersexual (which is fascinating to me i don’t read e rated fic I See What Zelda Fandom Is Doing) or just fucks a lot in general. since i don’t go here i will take op’s word and roll with it, but i have my own word to add: so ganon fucks- what do we do? do we tell people to stop writing fics where ganon fucks? do we force them? do we tell people to write more gen rated character studies (please join me i sit here alone and i (pensive homo stare))?

we could. but we can’t make them. and we also can’t tell them where their ideas are coming from. i don’t, like, read a lot of smutfic but i sure know that shit exists because half my friends are horny as shit and can we all agree that fandom as a whole is just super fucking horny. like yes if ganon as a whole is portrayed more often in sexual situations than the other characters in the franchise, it’s a good and fair observation that Something’s Up Here. but can we really point to individual authors? the premises mentioned in the post by op are premises i’ve seen for haikyuu fanfiction. multiple times. tens of hundreds of times. what if someone’s just really fucking horny? what if they’re replicating racist ideas taught to them by mass media? can we tell? can THEY tell?

the answer is no because humans are black boxes that can’t be opened up even if we drop into the pacific ocean and instead screech helplessly at walls all our lives. the answer is these are complex issues and i don’t think prescriptive ‘Never Write Sexy Ganon’ statements or pointing fingers at random 30 year old smutfic authors will improve the situation. the answer, or at least my answer, is that we should consume media with a critical eye and be aware of potential biases perpetuated by the authors/creators, but striving towards ideological purity is impossible on principle (i promise you everyone on this planet is problematic in some way or another because this purity thing from christianity is fucking lame and also completely fake) and so we should all give that up. my personal answer is i’ve learned a lot about stereotypes about middle eastern and south asian people and i’ll take all this info with me moving forward, but i honestly and earnestly do not think me drawing link and zelda in dumbass princess jasmine outfits is going to directly correlate with an increase in racism as observed in the island city-state of singapore. i am aware now. that’s a good thing. but just like how the h*rry potter fandom has completely detached itself from its horrible creator and now fucks around in its own space doing its own thing, i think it’s fully possible to engage with flawed media because, surprise surprise, all the media in the world is flawed.

[mittensmorgul]

Can’t everyone use tumblr how they want?

YES!

This site is exactly what people make of it for themselves. That was the exact point of that post. The fact that people reacted negatively to it at all proves my point. Seriously.

I have a number of other anons that are clearly from people who don't actually follow me, and are only here in a reactionary fashion having seen it on someone else's reblog, or else heard about it in passing and decided the best reaction to an ultimately harmless and rather bumbling post was to take personal offense and bring anonymous hate to a stranger on the internet. (and at least one not-anonymous "go kill yourself" type comment on the post itself)

THAT was the point of making that post.

For people who might be new to this fandom or new to tumblr in general (or even for people who have been here for years), your experience here is exactly what you make of it. I haven't seen that sort of vitriolic kneejerk reaction to anything I've written or posted in years. That post touched nerves. So it was a bit of an experiment, and I'm sorry to everyone who experienced any of that negativity second-hand. NOBODY should be made to feel like shit when engaging with something that is supposed to be fun. But I've learned over the years that that's exactly what some people consider fun.

There are new people to this fandom since the absolute free for all of the weeks after November 5th. We all reveled in those weeks before the show collapsed in on itself two weeks later. It was like 15 years worth of Hiatus Blogging followed by... well... some of the worst genuine hurt and disillusionment I've ever experienced or witnessed inflicted on a fandom by a piece of media.

There have to be at least a few people who floated into this fandom during that emotional roller coaster who want to make sense of it all, who were at least curious enough about how a show could've brought the characters to that emotional moment in 15.18 before effectively ignoring it all and burning the entire 15 year narrative to nothing just two episodes later.

Some folks stuck around to dig through the ashes of fandom in search of carrion, and that's fine. Some have zero desire to ever engage with the show or the fandom beyond mocking it for ever having existed at all, and that is also fine! But some folks? They might be wondering why anyone ever saw anything in this narrative to begin with, and they might be interested in knowing that there is this vast collection of information available to them (funny that none of my self-righteous anons even mentioned those, outside of one pointing out that my phrasing introducing that section of links was easily interpreted as condescending... which... yeah... again that was the point, and no I will not edit that language. none of us are free from sin).

Tumblr hasn't "changed." It was always this way. This site is not a monolith. Fandom is not a monolith. Even smaller groups within fandom aren't monoliths. Things that are considered "tumblr standard etiquette" do not exist across this entire website. And even within the supernatural fandom, and even within the tumblr-destiel-portion of the fandom there aren't "rules" dictating how you interact with anyone. Well, the one specific rule we should all be able to agree on is that you don't bring hate to real actual human beings, and yet...

There has ALWAYS been the option to engage with fandom here on whatever level an individual chooses. And that hasn't really changed since the finale aired. Anyone who thinks that Tumblr or the fandom has "evolved" or "changed" has likely just fallen in with a different fandom bubble then they'd existed within before. None of the bubbles have actually popped or disappeared. But which one you experience is entirely your own choice. You curate your experience here.

That was the point, illustrated by the vast array of comments I actually got on that post, structured with a little bit of everything including "tumblr mom from 2014." Everything pisses some people off, you know? Even the perception that some stranger on the internet might dare to lay down an arbitrary "rule" that zero people actually have to follow. See what I mean?

Because if any of the people who kneejerked at it actually followed me, or knew me at all, they wouldn't have kneejerked. They would've seen the point.

So your experience is what you make of it here. There are resources for people actually interested in engaging with the narrative or the fandom or the history of it. People mock "tumblr moms" or "fandom moms" all the time, but there wouldn't ~be~ a fandom without the people who actually build those resources. I.e. adults with the time, money, and personal investment in actually sustaining the fandom, instead of running around with torches trying to burn it down at every new whiff of perceived ~drama~ to latch on to.

For example, all of the scripts we've been acquiring and sharing with the entire fandom free of charge. I know that the fandom bubbles who seize on those scripts like hungry vultures to cough back up out of context "gotcha" posts postulating whatever theory of the differences between script and screen will dredge up the most drama or outrage in their fandom bubble... they haven't even considered how those scripts were acquired and made available to them. To them, they are "leaks." They are gifts that fell out of the sky and landed in their laps. There isn't even the barest curiosity about their origins or relevance beyond whatever social nourishment they derive by making up stuff and spouting it out with unearned authority. It's sad. But if that's how they enjoy the fandom, it's nice to remind them that none of the fandom they cannibalize would exist without the rest of us, too.

Yes, even the people you disagree with. Even the people who ship the things you find disgusting or repulsive. Even people who have an entirely different experience to your own. Even the people who are only here for those gotcha posts.

Fandom is not by nature a nihilistic shitshow, or no fandom would survive the amount of drama the 1% try to bring to it. Here have a fanlore article about this phenomenon. Right now, in Supernatural fandom, it feels like more than 1%, but I promise it really is only 1%. They're just really loud. There's actually other avenues to participatory fandom available to anyone who chooses to find them. Parts of this vast fandom that aren't focused on that 1% of reactionary leg-chewing at every turn. None of them are (as the linked article confirms) truly 100% free of unnecessary drama or bad behavior (including ME, I mean I MADE THAT POST!), but on tumblr you can curate your own experience. Fandom actually can be fun without burning down the thing you claim to be a fan of, or attacking other real human people for having the audacity to exist on the internet in a way you might believe is out of touch or pathetic. Seriously, nobody deserves to experience that from anyone over a fucking television show. Like seriously, take a step back and examine your life and your choices at that point.

Tumblr was exactly the same as a fandom community when I joined as it is now. Throughout my entire time here, I've curated my own personal experience to exactly what I derive the most personal satisfaction from. During that time I have had numerous friends and mutuals lament that their personal experience had become so toxic, but they were afraid to trim those blogs from their dash for fear of having no content left to engage with at all. For years there have been follow lists and blog recs and people desperate to find a more "peaceful and fun" fandom experience. People grow exhausted and embittered when their entire experience of fandom is an emotionally draining drama train. It's like pandemic doom scrolling, but for the thing that should be a respite from that sort of mindset, something that's supposed to be entertainment. The show did enough to us all, we don't have to turn around and re-inflict it on each other day in and day out on tumblr dot com.

So if even one person saw my post and thought well shit maybe I actually want to engage with a wider swath of fandom and see what's there, after seven months of post-finale drama, this whole other region of fandom is still here, still being the curators of the archives, the creators of stories and art and meta and gifs and videos and actually caring about it all that will keep this fandom going long after the current round of exhausting drama inevitably plays itself out.

The amount of in-group language in the negative replies I got was unsurprising. It's like folks are living in an alternate universe that doesn't mesh at all with what I experience on this exact same hellsite. Almost like we exist in entirely different bubbles of fandom, with entirely different purposes for existing at all. Everyone on this hellsite gets to pick which bubble (or bubbles) to take up residence in. Some people simply forget that their personal bubble isn't the universal defining experience of this site. Unfortunately, I doubt my little disruption to their bubbles will actually make any of them see that, but you anon... I think you did.

You are highly encouraged to engage with fandom EXACTLY THE WAY YOU CHOOSE. You have the ultimate power in controlling your entire experience here. Tumblr and Supernatural Fandom on tumblr is not Just One Thing that everyone who wants to participate in must conform to one specific code of ethics or behavior to be part of. And that NOBODY has the right to tell anyone else they're doing it wrong (including ME! I am 100% including myself in this!).

It's not MY job to dictate how anyone else experiences this fandom, as much as it was not the job of the people who reblogged my post (which I did not personally shove into their eyeballs with a demand for compliance... how did any of those people even *find* my post?) solely to tell me how *I* need to change how I experience the fandom, you see? Don'tcha love hypocrisy!

But the point was made for those who care, and a lot of people got to update their block lists (I still don't block anyone, as I said I curated my fandom space here and generally don't follow folks that don't personally make me happy and enrich my life by engaging with their content. However other people choose to engage with *my* content (any of it, going back nearly 50k posts over the last decade) is their business entirely. Sometimes I just feel the need to draw out people who are all too eager to expose their own whole asses in public. Mission accomplished.

[starfleetdoesntfirefirst]

Popping back into disco fandom after a busy week and decided to give my incomprehensible meta from earlier this week a reblog; however, discovered that this webbed site hid it and realized that, despite my scrupulously including no links, it very likely was hidden because of my tongue-in-cheek use of a certain phrase, so decided to just repost instead sans webbed site phrase. Anyway, 

Thinking about the degree to which Cpt. Georgiou’s story is about kindness and integrity, and the degree to which that means that (long before the events of later in the season make this incredibly explicit) it is therefore about the enemy within.

Like any self-respecting Star Trek captain fangirl, I have firm opinions on Georgiou’s Coolest Moments, Most Underrated Qualities, etc. The moment that beats out of a hell of a lot of Cool Underrated Moments/Qualities to reach second-place, extremely-close-to-first place for me is the moment when she tells Burnham that retreat is not an option not only because they’re in Federation space but also because they are the only line of defense for the space station and the Andorian colony behind them.

It’s not really a quotable-quote, but to me, it’s one of her most awesome moments, because it’s what makes much of the rest of the pilot episodes an awesome story about a captain and her crew looking out for innocent people, rather than about a captain risking and ultimately losing her ship and multiple members of her crew for the sake of space!diplomatic posturing.

But my first-place Underrated Georgiou Moment is the one that it’s tempting to call that moment’s inverse: We don’t start shooting on a hunch, and we don’t take innocent lives, period.

Georgiou looks out for the people on the base behind her, and she looks out for people in the starship confronting hers, which is only the inverse of looking out for innocent people if you’re willing to stake their lives on the assumption that they are not innocent.

<food/diet talk> I once read an advice column where someone had written in to say that they wanted to eat more ‘healthy food,’ but that fast and processed food was faster, cheaper, and better-tasting. The advice columnist began their response with Well, you’re right–fast food is faster, cheaper, and better-tasting! At the time, having grown up with years of war-on-obesity type messages about how home-cooked fresh-vegetable-based meals were in fact Faster and Cheaper and More Delicious than fast food, I clutched my pearls at this.

What the advice columnist said was, of course, in many contexts, correct. We tell our children that fresh food is always cheap and easy to prepare and will save them, </food/diet talk> and that kindness feels good and pleasant and makes their lives better, and sometimes it does, but sometimes it’s brutal and painful and entirely capable of making things worse. I think one reason I find Georgiou’s Trek Captain StoryTM comforting is because of the way her story as a whole makes me feel less alone in not necessarily associating acting with kindness with feelings of softness or pleasure or fulfillment.

Acting with kindness is so often swallowing a grenade; wrapping your arms around it. Matter can’t be created or destroyed and even in the movies whose directors haven’t seen the Mythbusters episode about how jumping on a grenade probably wouldn’t work anyway, you can’t put the pin back into it. The pain has to go somewhere.

Kindness and integrity are about shouldering the pain–even though you don’t deserve it; even though the very act of taking the pain onto yourself not only hurts you but also might in turn hurt someone else. Or, sometimes, kindness and integrity and supporting someone else are about finding a way to offload some of the weight onto another, different someone-else who doesn’t deserve the pain either but maybe, in this moment, is more capable of shouldering it than the person you’re looking out for would be. Kindness is entirely capable of wounding its practitioners, or, to paraphrase Seven of Nine: It’s hopeless and pointless and exhausting, and the only thing worse would be giving up.

Despite all those poems about women being wolves (the idea of wolves), and letting our teeth drip with blood and thorns grow from our hair, much of the time the person in the path of our aching teeth is not the person who deserves to cut by them. Have you ever wished someone, a good person!, ‘Good morning,’ and gotten a perhaps-justified glare from their exhaustion-smudged eyes? Because they’re in such a bad mood, because they’re in so much pain, because of course they would have glared at anyone who spoke to them? Except that, of course, it turns out they were quite capable of warmly greeting their boss or their lover or the more valued–and less visibly disabled–person who walks into the room after you. Even justified rage and pain and desire, when released indiscriminately, often do discriminate.

Near the end of Discovery Season 1, I remember reading a review that encapsulated Mirror Georgiou as being mirror-universe-evil but also a better strategist than Prime Georgiou, because she was quicker on the uptake than Prime Georgiou had been when Burnham spoke with each of them, respectively, about the current relevant threats. But deciding who is better at threat assessment necessitates defining what is a threat.

There’s a piece of fan art I’ve always wanted to paint if a) I had significantly greater art skill, b) I had the literal weeks it would take to paint a multi-panel art piece, and c) art on the theme of ‘person protecting someone else with their body’ didn’t inevitably come across looking like the “this is so sad” poorly-scaled soldier protecting cartoon toddler meme: Captain Georgiou and a small Shenzhou, a la all those sick Janeway-chilling-with-small-floating-Voyager-in-space artworks, standing in space with the space station behind her and the Klingon fleet in front of her. She is protecting the space station behind her from war; in subsequent panels, the viewpoint revolves around her and the little Shenzhou, and the images behind her shift to show the people we know and love on the Discovery–Culber and Stamets kissing; Burnham and Stamets releasing the tardigrade back into space; everything we recognize from ST:DSC’s Federation as innocent and loveable and worth protecting.

But as we circle back around to the same viewpoint again, the images shift. Instead of the Klingon fleet in front of Georgiou and the Shenzhou, we see the innocent people living their lives on Qo’noS; behind her, we see Mirror Georgiou bombing the rebel base; Mirror Georgiou preparing to execute Burnham; Cornwell and Sarek working with Mirror Georgiou to destroy Qo’noS; Qo’noS exploding into fiery nothingness. Is Prime Georgiou defending what is behind her from what is in front of her, or holding back what is behind her to protect the rest of the universe?

What is a Star Trek captain’s coolest #Underrated Moment?

Would Captain Georgiou have been able to effect more net positive good in the universe if she’d been just a bit more ruthless, a bit less Captain Kirk and a bit more Chrisjen Avasarala from The Expanse, and had elbowed her way up in the ranks to become an admiral by the time of the war? Maybe! To quote another advice column: “Should” Éowyn have stayed behind in Edoras to be Queen? Probably.

(Because that one’s a complimentary quote and Tumblr will hide the post if I link: “Commander Logic tells you how to get unstuck,” captain awkward dot com, which I do not endorse entirely as an advice site but which definitely has its moments.)

But then, of course, there’s no woman-Hobbit tag team to kill the Witch-King of Angmar (who is most definitely not Innocent People), and then maybe Admiral Georgiou helps create a better Federation that flawlessly averts the war in the first place and buys all of its citizens a new puppy, or maybe a Georgiou who would make the choice to ruthlessly cut her way to the top is, in fact, the Georgiou we meet at the end of Season 1 who made the choice to ruthlessly cut her way to the top and now stands there, using a mirrored Starfleet to control a mirrored universe.

Here is the story we got instead: Georgiou was a captain and not an admiral, and she didn’t avert a war, and she lectured Burnham like a child and was space-racist about Saru and didn’t even always wrap her own indiscriminate cruelty and pain and desire safely in her arms.

(And yes, I’ll always be disappointed that we didn’t get seven seasons of Captain Georgiou, or one season of Captain Georgiou and six season of Captain Burnham and background Admiral Georgiou, or… Prime Georgiou isn’t just comforting and hopeful and inspiring; she has flaws and impulsiveness and ruthlessness herself. What would it be like to see the story where she grows?)

But she did not start shooting on a hunch, and she did not take innocent lives. She put her own ruthlessness into the service of holding back what was behind her as much as facing down what was in front of her. She changed the people who she served with and captained, like every other cliched metaphor of ripples in a pond, and when Starfleet became the enemy within, and partnered with her own mirrored enemy within to try to kill millions of innocent adults and babies and children, it was the woman who had been the Shenzhou’s first officer who was the first to stand and say No, and the woman who had been the Shenzhou’s pilot who was the second.

I enjoyed seeing Mirror Georgiou stab Mirror Lorca as much as I enjoyed seeing Éowyn stab the Witch-King of Angmar. I don’t have a problem with the power part of power fantasy. But sometimes the Underrated Moment looks uncool. Sometimes the only way to act with integrity is to give something up rather than to Stand Up For Yourself The Way You Deserve, and the only way to look out for someone else hurts you in a way that is painful and awful and unfair. Even the most satisfying power fantasy is still a fantasy.

I would have preferred to see Lorca live and stand trial for crimes against humanity not for his sake but because a Terran Empire that condoned death as a consequence for failure is only a mirror to a Federation that condoned life in prison as a consequence for mutiny.

What do you see as Starfleet’s greatest threat?

[ayekanaru]

{Anonymously or not, tell me who you ship my muse with. || Because this all honestly couldn’t fit into one ask and I didn’t want to split it up into multiple ones}

I know you are aware that I ship our muses for a fanfic I’m trying to write, but I’ve kept mention of it to a minimum on my blog because (1) don’t wanna make it seem like I expect something and force you along with it cuz that’s force shipping and that’s no bueno and didn’t want that coming off as my intention for rping because it really wasn’t. A disappointing and toxic roleplay group plus a mighty need to share my Nappa portrayal with Tumblr was (2) Our muses hadn’t interacted much anyways so who knew if they’d get along well enough?

I’ve been enjoying the threads we’ve had together, they’re worth waiting for and I am pleasantly surprised by how the two muses get along as friends. Their social chemistry is better than I expected, and the banter is so entertaining to read and write for both when they get along and when they don’t see eye-to-eye.  

I know your muse already has @asktenchi as an interested Tenchi and they do an awesome job being IC with him. There are also a great number of other muses that Ayeka gets along with too. However, if you and your muse ever feel a pull towards wanting more than friendship with Nappa, I’m gonna let you know that as of right now she’s one of the few muses I’ve had Nappa interact with that has a legitimate chance of sparking his interest for a romantic relationship. It’s alright if you don’t see it ever going down that road, because that can certainly happen too and both my muse and I would be fine with that. But I figured now was a good time to bring it up since this ask meme has had me thinking about this lately.

I know it may seem like a biased thing, but I’ve been lookin’ around at the other muses who try to flirt seriously with Nappa and…it’s difficult to find muses who have mutual chemistry with the big guy. The only one who did have mutual chemistry with him wasn’t interested in shipping at all so we kept it to flirtatious banter. She left Tumblr because she wanted to focus on her family, understandably. That was so many months ago and since then Nappa’s not felt anything like that from another muse.

Other interested female muses only remark on/compliment his physical appearance – mostly his muscles too lol – as what makes them interested. Honestly it makes me and my muse feel like Odette from the beginning of The Swan Princess. “Thank you…but what else?”

Again, I wanna reiterate that I love and value the friendship between our muses and if it only stays a friendship I’d be perfectly happy with that. And I hope I don’t make you feel uncomfortable bringing it up or make you think I will be counting on things to go down a romantic road. Just wanted to say while we do ship Ayeka with happiness and self-confidence first and foremost, we also wouldn’t turn her away from forming a ship with Nappa. 

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Some things to clear up first: 1) Sydney @nappainanotherdimension​ and I have talked about this on Discord after this ask was sent [because uh, whoops thesis and grad school, I wasn't on tumblr???] so some of this may seem repetitive to her but new to you, dear followers; 2) Nyuck, nyuck, Odette. Who would be Derek then? 2) *Zsa-Zsa Gabor voice* Please. Ze followers. No drama.

Okay, now that this is already pretty long, my answer to this is under the cut. I'm not going to do point by point, bur rather a general full-fledged answer!

I've already told you this, but when I first found your personal blog, and went through your Tenchi tags, I really liked what you had reblogged and written in your personal text posts. It must have been one of the first pro-Ayeka --or at the very least, someone who appreciated Ayeka, because she might have not been your fave, I didn't know lmao-- blogs that had accumulated enough content related to Ayeka and/or Tenchi. I did notice that you, like me, were a fan of the...crossover ships ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

What I found "whadda heck" worthy was that you shipped Nappa with Ayeka! My first thought, to be honest, was "...the bald guy from the Team Four star memes?"

[ I knew of him from DBZ, but since most people my age apparently found out about him and liked him from the TFS videos, I thought maybe that's where your like of him came from? At the time, because now I know better :y ]

I'm the type of person who isn't a shipper hardcore, and for most ships that don't make sense to me initially, I go "okay, well, whatever floats her boat!" XD I did like the pieces of art there were, and I think I liked your Raditz/Mihoshi icon more because yay, somebody also appreciates Mihoshi! XD And they like the buddy cop angle of things? LMAO

But anyway, time passes, we get to chatting and then you say you want to make a blog. Cool! You want to make a blog for Nappa!

Aw, jiminy christmas.

Your worries that I'd think you were force shipping on me were the same as mine. I've seen it enough times on Tumblr that I honestly was surprised I found myself in a situation where that could've been a possibility. I enjoyed your fanfics, even the lemon ones lmao, just because they were funny but also it was me going okay, how does she believe this ship works again?

and lemme tell you, I am the absurdist around here in terms of crossover ships, both platonic and romantic. [We've talked about some others of our own too, nyuck nyuck.] I really wanted to understand because obviously, I supposed we were going to interact and I'd wanted to know how you saw them so I could back the heck away, ignore it, and try to do my thing with Ayeka properly. I didn’t really want to think of the ship when I wrote, I wanted to approach it as if Ayeka really did meet Nappa for the first time or had him enough time as a guest in your DBZ/TM verse.

Half of my worries went away when yay, you weren't going to force ship and wanted to actually interact! Whhhaaat, true build up of characters through rp on Tumblr dot com? The devil, you say!

And like you say, and I agree, the banter has been really fun? Surprisingly not really, Ayeka finally gets some respect in the manner that sometimes she doesn't get lmao. Her attempts at cooking, her own thoughts and views -- not saying everyone in the Masaki house's a jerk [they're not, and listen, Ayeka really does mean stuff too without thinking or on purpose] but you get different things with different people, and with Ayeka, it's probably getting some maturity and two-way respect in conversations befitting two super old people 8D

To be honest, sometimes I get a tinge of the cynic in me, and wonder if the writing turns out the way it does because maaaybe it's being geared towards something else? But then, like, I remember Nappa and Skuld --and Sasami!-- and how believable your headcanon about him and children is, how real it feels. Of course, the fact that you would write with anyone, and even with my Skuld who you know less about in comparison, just makes the cynic go shoo-shoo. You don’t seek out ships either -- like most people will notice if they peruse your blog, the ladies come to Nappa LMAO.

Plus, again, the threads are fun. I'm still laughing at the Xmas one where Nappa thinks Ryoko and Ayeka are the alpha females XD

In that sense, I can see why Ayeka throughout our rps would have a better chance with him. I mean I've seen your threads, it's pretty obvious who Nappa gets a conversation with, who Nappa gets a Conversation with, and who Nappa gets small talk-y with. Sometimes it's the writing, sometimes it's the character. That's the way rp works. Ayeka and Nappa have Conversations.™

I think I didn't really answer your ask as is, so I'll just say this, which applies to everyone: if the writing takes us that way, it takes us that way. I'm slowly beginning to see your crossover ship as it is, but still feel "hmm, but is it really?" It's like Ayeka and Fang: I didn't expect it, but the writing took those muses to some place along the lines of "are they...or are they???!" I would hope the end result takes us somewhere where we’re both satisfied with whatever relationship our muses have.

Or maybe you know, either polyamory polygyny or Nappa fights Tenchi, I guess. [I vote for the Pay Per View fight during the Space Travels arc of Universe.]

[getfuckedstayfucked]

callout post for aineedhelp dumbposting majimaguro

@dumbposting @majimaguro since you've been harassing my friends I figured I'd lay this out for you in no uncertain terms. Kyle, if you read this, scroll down to the bottom where there's a screenshot of Charlie literally telling you to die.

Hi Charlie. I deadass had to make a tumblr for this bullshit because your lying has really gotten excessive. I mean really? Telling people you’re 23? Telling people that you were groomed by us? Telling people we forced you to ditch your friends when all you’d do is complain to us about how uncomfortable x person would make you with their requests for sexual roleplay, or their aggressive demeanor, or their shipping wants? Telling people you were abused by us when you clearly have done this more than twice to different friend groups and when one group falls apart you move on to the next and start your predatory cycle all over again???

I can see you do this for every friend group you make, no matter who it is, where they are. You know how I see this? Because you are saying that we did what you told us your old friends were doing - Jasper, Robin, and Merc. You’ve moved the narrative that THEY were sexually abusive groomers/manipulators over to us since your new group of friends doesn’t know about them outside of the parts those new friends (your dear friends who never hurt you ever even though you consistently complain about said new friends behind their backs!) play and now, suddenly, WE were sexually abusive groomers/manipulators because you milked the attention and pity you could get out of us over the awful things you said about Jasper, Robin, and Merc, and in the process you eventually abused the two people who had the patience to stick out that behaviour SO MUCH and for SO LONG that you alienated them. Once they were over how you treated them, then suddenly, they were the bad guys. And you wouldn’t stop rocking the boat because you needed to have your endless little baby tantrum. Now that you’ve pulled the trigger, you can’t unshoot that bullet.

Newsflash? When these people told you THEIR BOUNDARIES - something that amazingly seems to only be valid when you do it - you got pissed at them. When people told you THEY COULDN’T HANDLE SOMETHING - like, oh, you know, detailed descriptions of severe animal trauma/death, or being told repetitively and graphically that you were going to kill yourself/how you were going to do it, they were suddenly awful. Well, you know what? That is textbook manipulation, to use a phrase you seem so fond of. Guilting people for having boundaries and making them feel bad for drawing lines because they want to have a healthy relationship with their friends isn’t bad, you just don’t like it because it means you can no longer do what you want or treat people like crap without repercussions. 

You are a cruel person. You don’t care about anybody but yourself. You are a self-serving, self-driven, emotionless asshole that knows how to twist situations to be in your favor because your favorite tactic is to divide people up from one another so they have less and less outside views of what your treatment is actually like. It takes a lot of practice to be able to do something like you do for so long and so aggressively so I imagine you’ve been doing this for years. You hook someone - or multiple someones - in by being nice and personable and funny and relatable, then you destroy your friend groups by pitting people against one another and when you’ve isolated the people you’re obsessing over, you flip the switch and start to abuse them in private.

And you know what? You are not the victim in this narrative. You are just another abusive jerk who knows you can get that attention from someone somewhere as long as you twist the narrative to fit your ‘I’ve been abused my friends all treat me horribly’ angle. And you know what? I’m sick of you. I’m sick of how you treat my friends, I’m sick of how you treat people in general. You make me sick and if you’re proud of that, that’s not a badge of honor or pride. That means that you are exactly like your father. 

You don’t get to be out here and be like ‘oh no! it was me who was hurt by these people!’ when you're the one harassing them with your nasty, miserable anon hate even though they’ve blocked you time and time again. 

Steven showed me the conversation where you exploded at him for saying he needed a moment, because apparently it’s fucked up to not be able to handle graphic depictions of an animal’s death, and somehow saying that he couldn’t handle that in that moment was a personal attack and he was betraying you by being an unsupportive friend? People have triggers, hunty, you aren’t god’s gift to this earth and you aren’t the only person to have those! HE tried to set his boundaries and what did you do? You shit all over them. You only care about boundaries if they’re your own and if anybody else has one they try to set with you they’re suddenly awful and someone to be tossed aside. 

And you know what else? You forcing Sam to deal with your maladjusted stalking all the time because you’re out here harassing him via tumblr dot com isn't cute. You’re entirely, creepily obsessed with him and irrationally upset that he stood up for himself and got tired of you treating him like your own personal emotional punching-bag. You are a pathetic, vengeful little person who has no life and nothing to do but troll the internet for victims and people you can trick into giving you sympathy until you inevitably wring them dry too and then you abandon them because they won’t give you what you want anymore.

Go fuck yourself. Get fucked, stay fucked. You complained to us and cried to us about Merc and Jasper and Robin and how they either wouldn’t stop bothering you for sexual RP or wouldn’t stop guilting you or pushing you in that direction, or how Robin wouldn’t stop trying to force you to say what she wanted you to say, and now you’re LITERALLY saying that about Steve and Sam? You are not. The fucking. Victim. Here. You are the orchestrator to an amazingly convoluted drama that rotates around you and you alone and I’m sick of this and I’m sick of you and I’m sick of having to hear about the lies you’re posting about my friends.

By the way? You aren’t 23. You are 27 by now! De-aging yourself to seem younger and more vulnerable only works when people don’t know you’re actually older - which, by the way, is SUPER creepy of you to do because it gets you closer to a younger demographic and endears you to them because oh! wow! You’re young and abused just like them! Do you know how fucked up it is to position yourself closer to younger, less experienced, vulnerable people like that? Do you know how fucked up it is to try and net those poor kids with your sob stories and how these ‘bad oldew peopow abewsed yew uwu’ even though that wasn’t the case? It puts you in a position of power and it gives you the reigns in any interactions you have with anybody younger than you and that is creepy and disgusting and you are creepy and disgusting for doing it, especially since your tumblr is filled with a mixture of sfw and 18+ content with zero 18+ follower requirement.

And you know what-- in the same vein, you use your being autistic as a sob story point to make it sound like one more way that you’ve been taken advantage of, but in reality you’re actually the one out here taking advantage of those around you and you’re being ableist while you do it? Wow. Wowiee wow wow.

You infantilize autistic people and say in the process that, in a blanket statement, ALL autistic people can’t fend for themselves or see anything coming at them from a mile away. On top of that, you shit on other autistic people’s special interests? Do you have any idea how many autistic people are out there with special interests focused around kid’s shows, or cartoons in general, or anime, or fandoms? No? Well, here’s a clue: there’s a lot of us (and yes, I am autistic, and yes, I do have special interests involving anime and fandoms, and no, I’m not a predator and I am DEFINITELY not the one out here creepily de-aging themselves to endear themselves to younger people like you are) with special interests ranging from anything from MLP to mushrooms to My Hero Academia (which is, for the record, one of Steve’s special interests, which you shit on him for, you ableist fuck) to Stephen King’s IT and you don’t get to say it’s predatory to have special interests in these areas!!!!!

You are not only perpetuating stereotypes about autistic people but you’re encouraging them because these stereotypes suit you and your current narrative! You’re using the same exact arguments that neurotypicals use! And you know what ELSE? Way to suggest that autistic people who have special interests that aren’t ‘adult’ are predators, too, you nasty little weasel. That’s the kind of narrative that gets autistic people killed!!! How selfish ARE you?

But wait, we really, really aren’t done here. I would really like to address your obsession with accusing people of being groomers and/or predators. 

YOU LITERALLY ROLEPLAYED EDDIE KASPBRACK. YOU ROLEPLAYED HIM AS AGE SIXTEEN AND YOU HAVE DONE SO IN A SEXUAL AND SEXUAL-ADJACENT MANNER. YOU SMUT ROLEPLAYED SEXUAL CONTENT ON A CHARACTER THAT WAS SIXTEEN. YOU ALSO ROLEPLAY AS SHERRY BIRKIN FROM RESIDENT EVIL. SHE IS TEN. YOU CAN’T SAY SHIT. YOU. CAN’T. SAY. SHIT. YOU WROTE SMUT AS UNDERAGE CHARACTERS WHILE USING REAL LIFE UNDERAGE FACECLAIMS AND NOW YOU’RE OUT HERE SAYING THAT SIMPLY WATCHING THESE SHOWS AND BEING INTO THESE FANDOMS IS PEDOPHILIC? I don’t think so. I really, really do not think so.

Saying stuff like ‘reblogging anime posts or gifs or art is child porn’ also belittles and undermines actual CSA/pedophilia victims which is one more tally on the list of fucked up shit you’ve done. Way to be one of those people out there who do their best to divert valuable time and resources that could be spent on actual CSA victims instead of fictional fucking people.

This is a two-way street. You rant about how this is a 13+ site and how adults are responsible for kids in their spaces WHEN THEY HAVE ALREADY GONE TO REASONABLE LENGTHS TO PREVENT MINORS FROM GETTING AT THEIR CONTENT, but you’re always going on about getting high and doing drugs and talking about onlyfans which is AN ADULT SUBSCRIPTION WEBSITE GEARED TOWARDS PEOPLE WHO MAKE PORN OR FETISH CONTENT. You have absolutely ZERO 18+ content warning or follower requirement on your blog! Which is made creepier by the fact that you’ve de-aged yourself by a whole four years, you’re making yourself out to be some kind of abused child who was manipulated by older people, and you’re trying to speak for children. It’s wack. 

For the record, being mentally ill is not an excuse for any of this at all whatsoever. If you hurt someone and you are mentally ill that is still on you. It is on you to learn to live with mental illness and not hurt those around you. When your shitty actions give someone else trauma, that is your fault, and it does have an effect on them, and it does hurt them. Fuck off with that 'no accountability' bullshit you're peddling. That's not how life works. Your actions have affected those around you and it takes a massive amount of willful ignorance to go around acting like you don't fucking know that already, especially considering that other people’s mental illnesses hurt you-- unless you were lying to us about that, too. 

Get some fucking help and get out of our collective DMs........ Or don’t and get high like you always do instead of accepting responsibility for your actions, Mr. 'I'm lucid enough to be able to blame my mental illness for my own behaviour when that bs wouldn't even hold up in court'. Whatever.

I’m done with your shit.

Here's some receipts. Kyle, whoever you are, I suggest you run the fuck away before they start doing to you what they've done to Steve and Sam. Good luck having a friend who non-jokingly says they wish you would die because that is extraordinarily fucked up. 

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Some tea about how you were fed up with the people treating you like shit instead of you being forced to ditch these people 

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[starfleetdoesntfirefirst]

Thinking about the degree to which Cpt. Georgiou’s story is about kindness and integrity, and the degree to which that means that (long before the events of later in the season make this incredibly explicit) it is therefore about the enemy within.

Like any self-respecting Star Trek captain fangirl, I have firm opinions on Georgiou’s Coolest Moments, Most Underrated Qualities, etc. The moment that beats out of a hell of a lot of Cool Underrated Moments/Qualities to reach second-place, extremely-close-to-first place for me is the moment when she tells Burnham that retreat is not an option not only because they’re in Federation space but also because they are the only line of defense for the space station and the Andorian colony behind them.

It’s not really a quotable-quote, but to me, it’s one of her most awesome moments, because it’s what makes much of the rest of the pilot episodes an awesome story about a captain and her crew looking out for innocent people, rather than about a captain risking and ultimately losing her ship and multiple members of her crew for the sake of space!diplomatic posturing.

But my first-place Underrated Georgiou Moment is the one that it’s tempting to call that moment’s inverse: We don’t start shooting on a hunch, and we don’t take innocent lives, period.

Georgiou looks out for the people on the base behind her, and she looks out for people in the starship confronting hers, which is only the inverse of looking out for innocent people if you’re willing to stake their lives on the assumption that they are not innocent.

<food/diet talk> I once read an advice column where someone had written in to say that they wanted to eat more ‘healthy food,’ but that fast and processed food was faster, cheaper, and better-tasting. The advice columnist began their response with Well, you’re right--fast food is faster, cheaper, and better-tasting! At the time, having grown up with years of war-on-obesity type messages about how home-cooked fresh-vegetable-based meals were in fact Faster and Cheaper and More Delicious than fast food, I clutched my pearls at this.

What the advice columnist said was, of course, in many contexts, correct. We tell our children that fresh food is always cheap and easy to prepare and will save them, </food/diet talk> and that kindness feels good and pleasant and makes their lives better, and sometimes it does, but sometimes it’s brutal and painful and entirely capable of making things worse. I think one reason I find Georgiou’s Trek Captain StoryTM comforting is because of the way her story as a whole makes me feel less alone in not necessarily associating acting with kindness with feelings of softness or pleasure or fulfillment.

Acting with kindness is so often swallowing a grenade; wrapping your arms around it. Matter can’t be created or destroyed and even in the movies whose directors haven’t seen the Mythbusters episode about how jumping on a grenade probably wouldn’t work anyway, you can’t put the pin back into it. The pain has to go somewhere.

Kindness and integrity are about shouldering the pain--even though you don’t deserve it; even though the very act of taking the pain onto yourself not only hurts you but also might in turn hurt someone else. Or, sometimes, kindness and integrity and supporting someone else are about finding a way to offload some of the weight onto another, different someone-else who doesn’t deserve the pain either but maybe, in this moment, is more capable of shouldering it than the person you’re looking out for would be. Kindness is entirely capable of wounding its practitioners, or, to paraphrase Seven of Nine: It's hopeless and pointless and exhausting, and the only thing worse would be giving up.

The real Not Safe For Tumblr: despite all those poems about women being wolves (the idea of wolves), and letting our teeth drip with blood and thorns grow from our hair, much of the time the person in the path of our aching teeth is not the person who deserves to cut by them. Have you ever wished someone, a good person!, ‘Good morning,’ and gotten a perhaps-justified glare from their exhaustion-smudged eyes? Because they’re in such a bad mood, because they’re in so much pain, because of course they would have glared at anyone who spoke to them? Except that, of course, it turns out they were quite capable of warmly greeting their boss or their lover or the more valued--and less visibly disabled--person who walks into the room after you. Even justified rage and pain and desire, when released indiscriminately, often do discriminate.

Near the end of Discovery Season 1, I remember reading a review that encapsulated Mirror Georgiou as being mirror-universe-evil but also a better strategist than Prime Georgiou, because she was quicker on the uptake than Prime Georgiou had been when Burnham spoke with each of them, respectively, about the current relevant threats. But deciding who is better at threat assessment necessitates defining what is a threat.

There’s a piece of fan art I’ve always wanted to paint if a) I had significantly greater art skill, b) I had the literal weeks it would take to paint a multi-panel art piece, and c) art on the theme of ‘person protecting someone else with their body’ didn’t inevitably come across looking like the “this is so sad” poorly-scaled soldier protecting cartoon toddler meme: Captain Georgiou and a small Shenzhou, a la all those sick Janeway-chilling-with-small-floating-Voyager-in-space artworks, standing in space with the space station behind her and the Klingon fleet in front of her. She is protecting the space station behind her from war; in subsequent panels, the viewpoint revolves around her and the little Shenzhou, and the images behind her shift to show the people we know and love on the Discovery--Culber and Stamets kissing; Burnham and Stamets releasing the tardigrade back into space; everything we recognize from ST:DSC’s Federation as innocent and loveable and worth protecting.

But as we circle back around to the same viewpoint again, the images shift. Instead of the Klingon fleet in front of Georgiou and the Shenzhou, we see the innocent people living their lives on Qo’noS; behind her, we see Mirror Georgiou bombing the rebel base; Mirror Georgiou preparing to execute Burnham; Cornwell and Sarek working with Mirror Georgiou to destroy Qo’noS; Qo’noS exploding into fiery nothingness. Is Prime Georgiou defending what is behind her from what is in front of her, or holding back what is behind her to protect the rest of the universe?

What is a Star Trek captain’s coolest #Underrated Moment?

Would Captain Georgiou have been able to effect more net positive good in the universe if she’d been just a bit more ruthless, a bit less Captain Kirk and a bit more Chrisjen Avasarala from The Expanse, and had elbowed her way up in the ranks to become an admiral by the time of the war? Maybe! To quote another advice column: “Should” Éowyn have stayed behind in Edoras to be Queen? Probably.

(Because that one’s a complimentary quote and Tumblr will hide the post if I link: “Commander Logic tells you how to get unstuck,” captain awkward dot com, which I do not endorse entirely as an advice site but which definitely has its moments.)

But then, of course, there’s no woman-Hobbit tag team to kill the Witch-King of Angmar (who is most definitely not Innocent People), and then maybe Admiral Georgiou helps create a better Federation that flawlessly averts the war in the first place and buys all of its citizens a new puppy, or maybe a Georgiou who would make the choice to ruthlessly cut her way to the top is, in fact, the Georgiou we meet at the end of Season 1 who made the choice to ruthlessly cut her way to the top and now stands there, using a mirrored Starfleet to control a mirrored universe.

Here is the story we got instead: Georgiou was a captain and not an admiral, and she didn’t avert a war, and she lectured Burnham like a child and was space-racist about Saru and didn’t even always wrap her own indiscriminate cruelty and pain and desire safely in her arms.

(And yes, I’ll always be disappointed that we didn’t get seven seasons of Captain Georgiou, or one season of Captain Georgiou and six season of Captain Burnham and background Admiral Georgiou, or… Prime Georgiou isn’t just comforting and hopeful and inspiring; she has flaws and impulsiveness and ruthlessness herself. What would it be like to see the story where she grows?)

But she did not start shooting on a hunch, and she did not take innocent lives. She put her own ruthlessness into the service of holding back what was behind her as much as facing down what was in front of her. She changed the people who she served with and captained, like every other cliched metaphor of ripples in a pond, and when Starfleet became the enemy within, and partnered with her own mirrored enemy within to try to kill millions of innocent adults and babies and children, it was the woman who had been the Shenzhou’s first officer who was the first to stand and say No, and the woman who had been the Shenzhou’s pilot who was the second.

I enjoyed seeing Mirror Georgiou stab Mirror Lorca as much as I enjoyed seeing Éowyn stab the Witch-King of Angmar. I don’t have a problem with the power part of power fantasy. But sometimes the Underrated Moment looks uncool. Sometimes the only way to act with integrity is to give something up rather than to Stand Up For Yourself The Way You Deserve, and the only way to look out for someone else hurts you in a way that is painful and awful and unfair. Even the most satisfying power fantasy is still a fantasy.

I would have preferred to see Lorca live and stand trial for crimes against humanity not for his sake but because a Terran Empire that condoned death as a consequence for failure is only a mirror to a Federation that condoned life in prison as a consequence for mutiny.

What do you see as Starfleet’s greatest threat?