#minefield

[eternal-confusion-of-han]

this rave sucks they don't even have platypus controlling me

[scipunk]

Hardware AKA MARK 13 (1990)

[elliotthedemon]

day 25: favorite friendship, i love Prototype and Scag so much they're probably my fav friendship in any game i know :3 credits to @lilalienz4ever for the original drawing down below, they make really cute alien drawings

[chronic-optimistt]

so like what if mickey wears a chain w a ‘J’ charm. cuz its easy to tell everyone it stands for ‘James’. but then it’s actually for ‘Jaysen’. brb lying in the middle of the pavement.

[whatareyoureallyafraidof]

[falloutconfessions]

“I just slept in a bed for two hours that already had two skeletons in it...”

Fallout Confessions

[boltedgarlic]

04/05/2013

[goatpaste]

makin today an oc drawin day between while I work on commissions :)

[Commission Prices][Etsy][Buy me a Kofi]

[retrocgads]

UK 1987

[wildfiresofchaos]

"I'd love to live inside your head"

No you wouldn't, seriously... Inside my brain there's a beautiful meadow, it's all whimsical and shit ya know real fairytale stuff and nothing can hurt you in a fairytale right? Wrong. Under this gorgeous field is an infinite number of landmines and you have no idea where any of them are.

Why not just stand in the single patch of grass you spawned on? Because if you do nothing for too long you die that's why, so you gotta move forward, good job you spawned with the immune to landmines ability isn't it?

Again no. While you can't actually be killed by one it will render your avatar completely frozen for an undetermined amount of time, okay that's not too bad... Wrong Again! Remember if you do nothing for too long you die? Yeah that's also an undetermined amount of time too, so you spend the whole time you're frozen convinced if it lasts a second more you'll die.

Now what happens if you somehow make it across the field? Well then it's great there's loads of other worlds for you to explore behind an infinite amount of doors. Some you can stay inside for an hour, some a week, and a few give you a few months break from the minefield meadow. But there a some doors that will just teleport you straight back to the middle of the field, and even worse sometimes it's the doors to your favourite worlds.

Yeah my head isn't a fairytale landscape of whimsy at all, it's a majestic minefield meadow surrounded by hundreds of thousands of millions of doors that keep you alive by being opened but at any point any of the doors could send you back into the minefield. Sometimes it rains, sometimes it snows and sometimes the sun shines deliciously with a calming breeze almost convincing you that the beautiful meadow surrounding you on all sides is nothing but innocence and whimsy, a paradise without pain, suffering or hardships.

Oh and all your actions inside both the minefield meadow and the many worlds you explore have consequences on those you love and care about, your friends, your family, your colleagues and even total strangers but I won't get into those.

~ CJ ~

[no7er]

Space Mines Digital artwork by me, 2024

[eternal-confusion-of-han]

we are so back

[sshbpodcast]

Well, Season 2 of Enterprise deescalated quickly

by Ames

After an extremely underwhelming season one of Enterprise, your hosts here at A Star to Steer Her By were over the moon to see season two start out with some material that got us actually excited. New ideas? Character moments? Actual stakes? Was this season going to make up for the recycled ideas, boring premises, and missed opportunities of the first?

And then the season went immediately downhill with some of the worst Trek we’ve seen since The Animated Series. Archer might be our pissiest captain to date. T’Pol is so constantly sexualized that it makes our stomachs turn. Every time Mayweather tries to get a line, he’s conveniently injured so we don’t need to have him appear in scenes. Are we being too hard on Enterprise? There is some good stuff, as you’ll see below and in our discussion on this week’s podcast episode (jump to 1:03:49) as we wrap the season with our usual top and bottom episodes, but we’re feeling frustrated. I guess we don’t have faith of the heart.

[images © CBS/Paramount]

Top Three Episodes

We’re starting with Tops this time because we have stronger emotions over this season’s Bottoms list, so we’ll get to those in a minute. There were still some highlights (or at least higher-lights), and you’ll notice that the best of them are clustered around the beginning of the season:

“Judgment”: Caitlin Like in season one when we got episodes with Jeffrey Combs, Ethan Philips, and Fionnula Flanagan, a Trek-experienced guest star can redeem an otherwise standard plot. Sure, “Judgment” treads a lot of the same ground we’ve trod before, but J.G. Hertzler as Advocate Kolos is something new for Klingon culture and he chews the scenery so well!

“Regeneration”: Jake We love us a good Borg episode, and this one pulls it off. You could argue that Borg don’t belong in a prequel series, and you’d probably be right, but the tension created throughout this episode, the creepy environment we find ourselves in, the clever way the writers got around the canon issue, and the sense that there were actual stakes for a change are all commendable. Resistance is futile.

“Singularity”: Chris Like a “The Naked Time” or a “The Naked Now,” this one really thrives on how committed all of the actors are to their respective bits. Most of the plot feels like filler – an anomaly of the week affects the crew in weird ways; we’ve seen this a million times – but there’s just something about watching Trip fixate over a chair and Hoshi obsess over her soup recipe that’s just so charming we can’t help but enjoy it.

“Minefield”: Ames Of all our main crewmembers, Lieutenant Reed remains the most vague, and this episode makes us fully okay with that! We get a glimpse into his stiff-upper-lip brand of British Gumption™ paired with the stress his family put on him to succeed, and he just works! So this sweet little character piece about Reed preparing to sacrifice himself for the ship is just the right amount of character insight we need into our pineapple-loving security chief.

“Cease Fire”: Caitlin Andorians are just fun. A large portion of the appeal of the blue baddies rests on the shoulders of Jeffrey Combs as Shran, who is so capable of playing just about anything. But this episode deepens the culture of our antennaed friends by adding some infighting to the mix with the addition of Lieutenant Tarah, played so hypnotically by the ever-great Suzie Plakson! Always a good day when you get to see her!

“Carbon Creek”: Ames, Chris, Jake The episodes that we see agreement for among your SSHB hosts are also those early episodes I was referring to when we still had hope for the season. This bedtime story of Vulcan lore succeeds in showing us a different side of our pointy-eared allies, basically pulling a Coneheads. Nothing wrong with that. And we get such fascinating new characters out of them that I actually amended my Favorite Vulcans list!

“Dead Stop”: Ames, Caitlin, Chris, Jake The one we all put on our Tops list this season is also one of the more original stories from Enterprise. The idea of an enigmatic race of aliens who created an automated repair station is interesting enough on its own, but the creepiness builds throughout; the clean, white design sets an appropriately offputting tone; and everyone is left on edge. And we already know Roxann Dawson rocks at voicing homicidal computers.

—

Bottom Three Episodes

And now for the nerd rage portion of our wrap up. We had such hopes when we started this season, but then the rest alternated from “this has been done before and better” to “well, that was unsatisfying” to “cringe cringe cringe cringe cringe!” Here are this season’s biggest offenders, in every definition of the word:

“The Expanse”: Chris We can see the season finale is trying to set something up with the Xindi attack on Earth, but what we get are a lot of expository scenes, an entirely disjointed sideplot with the unfathomably present Klingons, and a not-at-all-subtle 9/11 allegory that is going to taint a lot of our future watching. Why are the Xindi stupid enough to test their probe on Earth and then do nothing for months? Find out next season on Enterprise!

“Bounty”: Caitlin While the A-plot of this episode is fine, it warrants inclusion because the B-plot is so enraging. We’ve already had enough of pon farr after train wrecks like Voyager’s “Blood Fever” and the uncomfortable Saavik scene from The Search for Spock. So we’re all the more done with it when Enterprise forces T’Pol to writhe around erotically in her underpants and sexually assault Phlox and Reed. YUCK.

“Cogenitor”: Chris If you were looking for more reasons to be angry at Archer, we’ve got an episode for you. It could have been successful if we could be sure what its messaging was. We fume at the Vissians for how they treat the cogenitors and assume that’s the point... Until Archer just starts screaming at Trip for standing up for a marginalized person, and refuses to grant Charles asylum after they begged for it. So. Whose side are we supposed to be on? Because it can’t be Archer’s, right? Right?

“Vanishing Point”: Caitlin, Jake What a let down. What could have been an interesting new concept about early uses of the transporter, in an era when they were even more terrifying than usual, gets entirely negated by the conclusion that “it was all just a dream.” These cop-out ending pull the rug out from under you and make everything you watched feel like a trick. As if we needed more to hate about dream episodes.

“Stigma”: Ames, Jake Just when you thought last season’s rape-happy episode “Fusion” was behind us, it rears its ugly head again in this HIV/AIDS allegory that comes decades too late. Yet again, T’Pol gets stripped of her agency so that various Men In The Room can decide what’s best for her. And to make matters worse, the incongruous B-plot seems to suggest that Trip is close-minded for not wanting Phlox’s wife to sexually assault him all day!

“A Night in Sickbay”: Ames, Chris I disliked Archer and Phlox enough after season one – and things were looking up for season two – when this episode comes crashing down. Archer is just a Big Baby all episode long because he refuses to apologize for Porthos pissing on the Kreetassans’ sacred tree, Phlox is nothing but obnoxious and disgusting the whole time, and we get even more objectifying T’Pol in Archer’s dreams for no reason!

“Precious Cargo”: Ames, Caitlin, Jake But the worst of the worst this season just has to be this rehash of TNG’s “The Perfect Mate,” which we hated enough to begin with! Another Kriosian woman is being transported in cryostasis, allowing for an episode of Kaitamma and Trip running around in their underwear until they predictably make love by a stream. Add to that Padma Lakshmi’s awful, awful acting and you’ve made it to the bottom of the season. Woo.

—

It’s been a long road, but we’re already halfway through Enterprise. Season three promises to at least shake things up a little, for better or for worse, so we have that to look forward to as we’ll have SO MUCH to discuss over on the weekly watch-through on SoundCloud (or wherever you podcast). You can also tell us your favorite and least favorite season 2 episodes over on Facebook and Twitter. I, for one, welcome our new Xindi overlords!

[wastelandruckus]

me back on my bs...

I LOVE EXPLOSIONS!

[denislieak]

How to get Bosnia and Herzegovina away from the mine

[giffingthingsss]

I'm sorry, I'm still not over Malcolm Reed trying to die in space as redemption for being afraid to drown.