#shaw thoughts

[stardate44002point3]

Shaw and Risk - some thoughts

Rewatching Picard S3 and to turns out I have more thoughts about Shaw. Who out there is surprised?

So, much of what follows is actually derived from the many, many Todd Stashwick interviews about Shaw that are all over the internet right now. With some additional insightful commentary from the Shaw Nation Discord server (thanks all y'all).

Here's the thing. In response to all the people who hate Shaw, who think he isn't a "real" Starfleet captain; who think he's a coward (thanks dudebros on the ST Facebook pages); who think he's boring. He's actually none of those things. He's what actual military (and quasi military) leaders look like. Our first introduction to him is him talking about structure and tempo and meter; structure exists so that when you are doing something inherently risky (exploring the final frontier) you have guidelines so that you aren't always relying entirely on your own judgement. Rules and guidelines and procedures exist to keep people safe in an inherently risky environment.

To make a real life comparison, in search operations, coastguard, marine and mountain rescue there are specific conditions under which a rescue will NOT be initiated because the weather or other conditions are too dangerous, exceed the tolerances of the equipment etc. Think back to the beginning of the year when Julian Sands went missing in the San Bernardino Mountains, there were entire days when not only were the helicopter search and rescue teams grounded because of weather, but even the ground team didn't deploy because it was too dangerous (and there were multiple people lost on Mt Baldy at the time). Are they cowards? Of course not, they have procedures and criteria that are laid down by risk management experts that advise whether there is too great a risk to the rescuers. If the risk is too great, they don't go out.

But we're used to fictional universes where those are exactly the kinds of high-stakes situations that make for good drama, and that always end well because our deontological heroes always have to be vindicated.

Presumably Starfleet has exactly those kinds of structures and procedures that govern their operations; so taking a crew of 500 out beyond the edge of Federation space to rescue Bev Crusher from some unknown peril is exactly the kind of thing that Starfleet would have policies for, and those policies would say NO. As they should. We're just used to our Starfleet heroes blithely ignoring those structures, taking the 1% of success chance and of course, succeeding because the writers make it so.

Although it has often struck me that, if we actually were able to count the 'redshirt' (they aren't all redshirts, that's just shorthand for unnamed characters) deaths in Star Trek, the attrition rates for our favorite captains might be surprisingly high, even with writers giving us deus ex machina saves every second week. It's just that they aren't main characters so their deaths are meaningless.

Back to Picard: there is a moment in Episode 2 that struck me at the time, where Seven is really disingenuous. She asks Shaw if he wants to be known as the captain that let two legends die; or the hero who saved them. As his XO she should also have pointed out option 3; that he be known as the captain who led his crew of 500 into a face off against a much more powerful opponent and they all died. Now, why didn't the writers put those words in her mouth?

Added to which, Shaw is an engineer, I think there's a reason the writers made him an engineer. A huge part of his professional life is risk-management, that's much of what engineers do. They are consequentialists. They look at the equipment tolerances, margins of safety, human capacity for error, and then they make rules to allow certain actions to take place (exploring the final frontier) and also keep as many people as possible safe (bringing most of your crew home alive).

And finally, there's all that accumulated trauma from Wolf 359. Shaw lived, undeservedly as far as he is concerned, his job as captain is to make sure everyone else lives. And using Starfleet protocols is one way to make sure that happens, to the best of his ability.

I mean, Shaw is clearly not a coward, he has commendations for bravery in his ready room, he's all in once he makes a decision to commit to a course of action, and he puts himself in the frontline every time he has a (realistic) chance of shielding his crew from harm. The man was willing to die to stop the Changelings from taking the bridge.

And that's the only niggle I have about his last appearance, and his speech about Seven; Shaw is not boring and rules don't necessarily need to be broken because again, the rules exist for a reason, they are generally not arbitrary and, in reality, breaking the rules gets people killed. The only reason rule breakers are celebrated in Star Trek is because it is FICTION. It's how we would like to see the world, not how it is, but it's actually a pretty dangerous way to think.

[sebastianshaw]

re THIS QUOTE it's one of the best that sums up Shaw, I think. He doesn't intend to KILL this woman to silence her, it's messy and uneccsary and would just draw MORE attention. And he doesn't NEED to. He can just buy out all the publishing houses. And doing so doesn't even conflict with his own ideals----freedom of the press, of course, but the press has the same freedom to refuse a story. And if he owns the press.... Honestly, I think it's a GREAT example of just how powerful someone like him really is in ways that have nothing to do with punching or violence, and how that power can be used. And it's way more interesting to me than if he just murdered her.

[thoughtkick]

I like how sleeping next to someone means more than sex sometimes, the body’s way of saying ‘I trust you to be by my side at my most vulnerable time,’ you have no defenses when you are asleep, you tell no lies

Eric Shaw

[perfectfeelings]

I like how sleeping next to someone means more than sex sometimes, the body’s way of saying ‘I trust you to be by my side at my most vulnerable time,’ you have no defenses when you are asleep, you tell no lies

Eric Shaw

[thehopefulquotes]

I like how sleeping next to someone means more than sex sometimes, the body’s way of saying ‘I trust you to be by my side at my most vulnerable time,’ you have no defenses when you are asleep, you tell no lies

Eric Shaw

[linusbenjamin]

Amy Acker as Root Person of Interest Created by Jonathan Nolan

[dolleyedoe]

꒰ა ♡ ໒꒱

me with billy, stu, ethan and roman

[demigodofhoolemere]

“The female companions in the classic series never did anything but scream and twist their ankles”

[darling-solaire]

sketches of a couple of redacted couples

(This is a new side blog to hopefully convince me to post more redacted content but we’ll see if I fully commit to it)

[justjensenanddean]

‘Tracker’: Justin Hartley on Working With Good Friend Jensen Ackles for First Time

ET has a first look at Justin Hartley and Jensen Ackles on set of ‘Tracker’ season 2, which airs Wednesdays on CBS.

[perfectquote]

There are too many books I haven’t read, too many places I haven’t seen, too many memories I haven’t kept long enough.

Irwin Shaw

[renaultmograine]

Another shitpost dump from my misc tag

[sebastianshaw]

TL;DR I don’t write Shaw as taking sexual advantage of unequal power dynamics and I have a pretty solid canon basis for that. Throughout the 80s and 90s, Sage is undercover in the Hellfire Club as Shaw’s trusted assistant Tessa. She’s constantly clad in lingerie like all the other women, and is shown as totally faithful to him and always at his side, but never ever shown or even hinted to be romantically or sexually involved with him in anything that I’ve read of them. And Shaw is a guy who was shown to be, well, sexually active. And if I were the writers, I feel like it would have just been natural to think “hey what’s a good way to play up he’s evil and sexual? Have him be sexually evil! How about to his sexy subordinate, Tessa?” But that never happens. I have not found even the barest hint of that in canon except for this one miniseries where she’s written as weirdly super-flirty and OOC and doesn’t even LOOK like Tessa tbh so I don’t really count that. And like...Claremont was writing most of the stuff where she’s his assistant AND the stuff after her reveal as Sage. Claremont LOVED sexually predatory villains. So I think if Shaw was ever meant to be taking advantage of their power dynamic, Claremont would have played that up to the MAX, instead of never even hinting at such a thing. As I discussed with my mutual @emmatriarchy who writes Sage, her being in lingerie as “Tessa” probably had more to do with horny artists than anything, and it would make SENSE for her as a SPY to blend in with the other women as much as possible (also, if men there think she’s Shaw’s “property” they’re less likely to bother her) There’s also the scene in The Legacy Quest trilogy I’ve mentioned many time when, despite his attraction to Storm, he flees the room when she offers herself to him sexually because she’s not in her right mind. And for all his horny, he’s NEVER been creepy to a female opponent, never done anything Like That to a captive or even hinted he’d like to, etc. Dude keeps villainy and sex separate. So that’s why I don’t think he would attempt to sexually exploit the power dynamics her has with @the-blackened-dove (who is in a similar role to Sage as Tessa, just with magical binding to boot) or demand it of @hraunwyf because he bought her in marriage from Odin. It’s clearly a line he finds distasteful and beneath him as a gentleman, however horrible he may be in MANY other regards. I realize writing an entire thing on “my character is not a rapist” is not normally a thing you need to do, but the idea Shaw’s pervery crosses over this line is pretty common in fandom + there were some hints dropped in Th 2010s Retcon We Don’t Acknowledge Here that he might have been sexually abusive to Emma on top of everything else (you know, just to make it even more OOC why not)

[thoughtkick]

I like how sleeping next to someone means more than sex sometimes, the body’s way of saying ‘I trust you to be by my side at my most vulnerable time,’ you have no defenses when you are asleep, you tell no lies

Eric Shaw

[perfectfeelings]

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

George Bernard Shaw

[pigeon-princess]

The duality of DnD characters. Silas is in the nightmare castle of a thousand rats while Tybalt has no thoughts in his head.