#star trek art department

[aquamonstra]

was rewatching Birthright pt 1 and suddenly became obsessed with Data's corridor painting. I WANT IT.

I managed to track down this Christies listing from 2006 with the MOST GARBAGE PHOTO that makes it look like it's been sitting in a smoker's house for 20 years.

So I took the liberty of downloading it and retouching it to better match it's original condition. Et voila! It's too gorgeous for that awful Christie's photo to be the only memory of it.

I wish I could give credit to the original artist but I don't know who it is, only that it's credited to the "Star Trek art department" whom I definitely have GREAT RESPECT FOR. If anybody knows who is the actual artist behind Data's paintings I would love to know!!!

[aboutl0ve]

[bumblingbabooshka]

The T'Pels & Tuvok! - An introduction to our fighters!

[T'Pel A: T'Pel is a quiet and dedicated woman who works as a doctor. When Tuvok is stationed on ships she often registers to work in sickbay as a nurse. She and Tuvok didn't like one another at first but once they began to get along they became inseparable. She has a soft voice with a country twang that typically only Vulcans identify. She is less strict than Tuvok and more willing to stray outside of her comfort zone.] [T'Pel B: T'Pel is a prissy and straightforward woman who works as a professor. She and Tuvok taught at the same university when he was an archery science professor. T'Pel and Tuvok got along well right away. However, she is not often well liked by others due to her domineering attitude and exacting standards. She is not a very open-minded person when it comes to non-Vulcans. She often accompanies Tuvok on ships and stations but she is typically lonely when there aren't other Vulcans around. She is an extrovert and a bit clingy to the people she likes but they are few and far between. Enjoys parties.]

[landfilloftrash]

earlier beliefs had the butterfly symbolizing a departed soul

I figure him and his beloved’s soul might have had a few instances like this

[liquidatorbruntfca]

nothing makes me wish i could draw more than star trek

i want to draw them all so bad

[departmentq]

HD television have encouraged art departments to stretch their abilities.

Data squares, which were slabs of painted wood in TOS, are richly detailed, with small insignia and the textural circuit paths.

Starfleet legal texts, which would have been old encyclopedias dyed red in TOS, are now embossed, with foil/silver leaf.

AD ASTRA PER ASPERA star trek: strange new worlds 

[renthony]

Lost in the Remaster: Star Trek, Vintage Special Effects, and the Charm of Old Media

by Ren Basel renbasel.com

Originally created by Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek is a franchise that spans decades. From the original series of 1966 to current shows such as Lower Decks, it stands as a titan of television and pop culture. The real world has undergone incredible change since Star Trek’s first appearance, yet nerds everywhere still find entertainment, inspiration, and hope in its classic episodes. Recently, along with my husband and best friend, I decided I wanted to attempt the gauntlet of watching the entire franchise from beginning to end, revisiting favorites and finally checking out the ones I missed. Media and fandom studies are my passion, after all, and Star Trek is a foundational part of modern American nerd culture.

Starting with the original series proved more difficult than expected. Living in a tiny apartment, we don’t have much space for DVDs, so Star Trek wasn’t in our existing collection. The local public library didn’t have copies, either, and putting in a purchase request doesn’t guarantee it will be made available. My family doesn’t have the funds to pay for every single streaming service on the market, and Star Trek isn’t available on any we do have access to. Piracy was starting to look like the only option, but even that fell flat when we couldn’t find a version with subtitles. Finally we dug it up officially and with subtitles, for free via PlutoTV, but there were still limitations: PlutoTV only streams season one, and season one is only available in the remastered edition that replaced the original special effects with new visuals.

It wasn’t ideal, but, hey, it was Star Trek.

Watching just one episode a week gave us enough time to scrape together savings to get what we really wanted for seasons two and three: the official BluRay release, which includes both remastered and original-release versions of each episode. The remasters are fine, but as a lover of media history and practical effects, I’m always disappointed to lose a chance to appreciate the originals. It doesn’t matter how good it might look, remasters are never as much fun to me as matte paintings, camera tricks, and whatever the prop department could pull off with ten dollars and some glue.

Finally having the BluRays in hand for season two only affirmed my love of vintage practical effects. Seeing the Enterprise in her original glory, before she was ever rendered in digital form, felt like opening a time capsule. I love time capsules. My favorite pieces of media are always those which capture a moment in time, showcasing the aesthetics, concerns, and culture of the time and place they were created. Star Trek: the Original Series is rooted in the late sixties, when mainstream culture in the United States was experiencing immense upheaval and social change. That context is written all over the show. The vintage effects add to it, grounding it in a very specific time and place. Updating the show’s effects takes away some of that 60s aesthetic, and while some may see it as making the show more timeless, I don’t care for it. To me, seeing what they could pull off before modern technology is half the fun of watching old shows. The ingenuity and creativity of propmakers, makeup artists, and set designers working on shoestring budgets is unparalleled.

To be clear, digital effects are also done by skilled professionals who deserve much more respect and many more labor protections. There are some truly stunning works created with digital tools. That said, I hate when digital effects are used to cover up the practical effects that came before. It feels disrespectful to the original artists, as if telling them their work wasn’t good enough; as if their work was just a placeholder until something better could come along and fix it. Practical effects aren’t a placeholder, they’re an art form in their own right, and that art form is one for which I have deep appreciation.

It frustrates me that the original, non-remastered episodes were such a pain for us to access, but I’m very glad to have added them to my personal media collection. No matter what future tweaks Star Trek’s rights holders might make, I can always pop in our personal copies to enjoy the Enterprise and her crew in all their vintage, “outdated” glory. If you’re also too young to remember the show’s original airing, and you have the opportunity to watch the unedited version, I highly suggest you do. Watching the version that aired in 1966 gives the show a charm that no amount of remastering can ever match.

_

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[ckret2]

Oh! Quick Question!:

Who is your favorite Henchmainac (and I mean any of them that is seen in the apocalypse as a henchmen) And why?

Follow up question:

Did it change at all after reading TBOB?

Amorphous Shape, entirely for personal "what if that's a hive mind made by fusing a bunch of shapes together into one person?" headcanon reasons. Plus Morph's got one of the weirdest body shapes among the Henchmaniacs (the majority of whom are either "the Star Trek costume department could pull that off" or "inanimate object with human limbs stuck on").

TBOB upended almost all of my Amorphous Shape headcanons (I had them as an interdimensional quantum physicist and the source of Bill's portal blueprints—and, also, they're visible and vocal), so aside from the "that weirdo's from the second dimension and made out of multiple people" headcanon (which I'm keeping), I'm gonna have to restructure her from the ground up. But I like the new Amorphous shape we got—incomprehensible artist and/or art project you can't see without psychedelics that just casually invited herself to couch surf in Bill Cipher's clubhouse, that's terrific, 10/10 no notes.

Every other Henchmaniac has to fight to the death in a Burger King ballpit for the honor of joining Bill's gang, meanwhile this deconstructed Rubik's cube moves in without asking and Bill just goes "sure."

[thomas-jefferson-miku-binder]

Dying to know your thoughts on arcane season 2 act 2 (and how you think they handled orianna specifically) ^-^ take your time though and I hope you feel better soon

I talked a little bit about it on Twitter because I use that place as a sketchbook for most meta posts I write.

I... actually did not vibe with the Orianna moment. In a show where so much happens in so little time (and especially in Act 2), the whole thing just felt like taking up minutes that could’ve been used to shed a little more light into whatever the fuck is going on with the Hexcore, which is a point I'll be circling back to later.

I don't think Singed’s character asks for that deep explanation of why he does things the way he does, even if I appreciate his writing and lines. That whole moment felt like This Is League of Legends and Arcane-canon bullshit and “we need to tie everything into lol lore”. And it kills me because I'm sure this wouldn't be a problem if they didn't make Arcane the main canon universe.

Going back to the Hexcore, a thing that really bothered me was Act 2’s lack of storytelling clarity regarding Viktor. We leave Act 1 with the understanding that there’s something going on with Hextech and that whatever is influencing Viktor has a deeper, more sinister intent. This shows in how he handles his and Jayce's relationship, the effects over his voice lines during their conversation ("It was affection that held us together"), the way the anomaly behaves during EP3's showdown, and Sky's role in all of it. To me, in Act 1, it's implied that the Sky Viktor sees throughout his journey in the underground and how it behaves wasn't in fact Sky, but something using her skin to guide Viktor using a familiar form (a form which coincidently provokes in him a lot of guilt) for its own purposes. I thought showing Sky without her glasses was a really clever way to also convey that, stripping her of what made her human, showing there's something off.

And we get to Act 2, especially EP 6, and I'm beyond confused. The space sequences show Viktor talking and acting like he did before the events of Season 2. He looks like he previously did. He sounds like he previously did. And then they show Sky! Just behaving like a person! No more sinister undertone, no more just despersonified screams of agony from her dying moments to guide Viktor. And I'm so confused about what they're trying to tell me! And it's not the good confusing feeling you sometimes get from art, it's the "I think you fucked up whatever message you were trying to convey".

I know that the Arcane is written to be fucked up. Evil horrors beyond our comprehension is the point, I know that. Most people know that. But the space scenes did not seem to know that at all! All the wariness and tension and lack of agency were just… gone. Idk

And I can't even bring myself to be mad at the "Jayce ruined everything" people because for once I do think it was a failure in the writing depart. It facilitates this type of interpretation 👎👎👎 (this tweet has 20k+ likes)

Not exactly knowing what drove Jayce to act like that is killing me inside, also. They're obviously planning on doing some alternate dimension, multiverse, time-travel-ish thing ("I won't fail"), which scares me on its own merit, but merely knowing something happened isn't as sufficient as I myself thought it would be. I feel like it’s one of the few moments where Arcane’s wait-a-week Act structure backfired because not knowing his process takes A Lot from it.

I tend to really enjoy Arcane’s type of storytelling where not everything is acted out, leaving space for you 🫵 the viewer to fill in those gaps (for example, the enforcer Vi scenes). It's why I like League of Legends in general and Star Trek TOS. Enough is shown for it to feel satisfying but it still invites you as a spectator to participate in this story. I do think, however, that Jayce's major decision change should have been explained a bit further.

And yeah I complained a lot, but I loved a lot about it as well. All the Jinx scenes, the Warwick plot, Vi, Isha, Sevika, Mel, Leblanc... that was all insane in the best ways possible. I have some thoughts on Act 2 Cait but that will gain its own separate post

[philtstone]

24. Showing up injured at their friend/mentor’s house: for shawn? :)

[emerges from writing this fic bloody and beaten and on the verge of collapse] ill explore karen vicks character in an overly complicated post-episode missing scene fic or die trying! set immediately post "right turn or left for dead". i genuinely dont know if im happy with this but i also cant figure out how to fix it. actually, it would have probably been easier to write if i was willing to rewatch the episodes its based on. which i am not, because i am a sensitive little soul. so i winged it. i think there are like 10 different ideas that crop up and theyre all equally fascinating as character threads but i have no idea if i tied them together in an even remotely coherent way. also, WOULD she say that??? i had to call my brother twice to ask. this is what yall get for sending me actually interesting prompts, huh

“Oh, it’s no problem,” Henry’s voice said on the phone. “I’ll send Shawn over with them on his way out. He's going in your direction, anyway.”

In her short tenure as the junior detective to Henry Spencer’s lieutenant, Karen Vick observed two things:

First, that he was a far more clever strategist than most people gave him credit for. Despite the ongoing wreckage of his impending divorce and a kid who was slipping through his fingers as everyone looked on, Karen didn’t agree with the other junior detectives’ impression of him as a smash-the-door-down old school hard ass with thinning hair and a worst attitude. The man played four dimensional chess right out of a bonafide Star Trek episode. When he really wanted something done, Henry Spencer could bullshit and bluff and battle plan with the pros, and half the time you’d get too caught up in the blustering misdirect to realize his game was intricately thought out three steps in advance.

It was how they caught the Shorttown Killer, and also how they got that idiot Trembley at the mayor’s office to finally replace their coffee maker. Karen went home to her then-boyfriend, now-husband, and, right before bed, pulled out an old school workbook and took notes.

The second thing was that Henry Spencer loved his son. 

Not a lot has changed since then, Karen thinks, staring down the weirdness that she now faces through her open front door.

“… Oh — Mr. Spencer,” Karen says, because it’s rude not to greet your employees when they show up at your home outside of work hours, and are also your old friend-slash-colleague’s kid. “Hello. Thanks for — bringing these over.”

“Dad said it was urgent,” Shawn says.

Urgent isn’t quite how Karen would describe it, but hearing through the grapevine that your department might be facing an audit sometime in the next quarter does light a fire under the proverbial ass. Karen would rather bend a few rules and make sure the last year’s i’s and t’s are dotted and crossed right than leave her detectives vulnerable to the whims of a mayoral stooge. 

In general, Karen prides herself on caring about the people under her command just enough that it inspires genuine friendship and loyalty. The just is important. Care needs tempering – it’s important to pull back, press pause, keep certain lines uncrossed. It’s especially important if you want to be successful as a woman in an authority position where lives are often on the line. 

What she’s saying is that she tries to make it none of her business what her employees get up to in their spare time. She really genuinely does. She’s shut O’Hara down gently midway through the twelfth sweetly-frazzled attempt to overshare about her dating life (or her efforts to befriend her next-door neighbor, or the endearing personality quirks of her last cat – rest in peace, Triscuit, you will be missed –) enough times to be well-versed in the art of I Won’t Ask, You Won’t Tell, But You’ll Probably Know I Care Anyway.

An invaluable rapport to maintain. In any situation, Karen thinks, but especially when you’re a person who regularly hires and works alongside Shawn Spencer.

She’s not sure whether what she’s looking at right now makes her want to second guess or double down on her usual policy. 

“Special delivery,” Shawn adds, like everything is super normal.

Karen narrows her eyes. She glances behind them into the quiet residential street.

“Shawn,” she says.

“Yes, Chief?”

“You didn’t drive here, did you?”

“Ha,” he says, half rolling his eyes to accompany a weird aborted grin. “No. Even I don’t think riding a motorcycle with a concussion is a good idea. What if someone who wasn’t me got hurt? That’s — that would be no good, then you’d have to arrest me. Wouldn’t that be a huge bummer for the whole team, Chief? Gus would cry. And my dad wouldn’t let me take his truck.”

Karen stares at him. Shawn stares at the ground.

“I got a cab,” he says.

“And you are … taking another cab – home?”

Shawn looks quite suddenly like he’s going to be sick.

“Sure,” he says. 

Shawn looks terrible. Bruised face, bags under his eyes, and a weird frenetic energy twitching in his limbs that doesn’t pair well with his general air of exhaustion. He’s holding his shoulders stiffly and can barely meet her eye. His t-shirt and sweatpants are rumpled, like he slept in them, even though it’s too early in the evening for Henry to have woken him up to send him here, and when he thrusts the promised files out into the air toward her, abrupt and, admittedly, Shawn-like, he only just hides the awkward wince that immediately overtakes his left side.

The last couple days have been a bit of a whirlwind, so Karen can’t say she necessarily blames herself for not looking more closely. 

Even so.

Slowly, Karen reaches forward and divests him of the case files. They slip a little bit, because Karen can’t seem to stop peering shrewdly at Shawn’s face while she does it, and on instinct he reaches forward to stop the stack from toppling. 

It does help, but the autopilot he moves on makes it harder to mask what is to Karen’s eyes a very obvious flinch. 

“Alright,” is all he says. “Well, good to see you. Time to head back to the old hay stack.”

Like a needle in a haystack and time to hit the hay, Karen supplies needlessly in her own head. Aloud, she says, in many ways against her better judgment, 

“Mr. Spencer, are you okay?”

Shawn sways on the spot for a second, one fist clenched, mouth half open. For a strange moment, Karen gets the impression that he’s trying really hard not to say the wrong thing.

“... As rain,” he finally manages, then nods to himself like he achieved some great feat. “Okay. Well –”

“Did something happen to your shoulder?” 

“What? No!” Shawn’s eyes flutter closed and he shakes his head, “I’m – fine, Chief. It’s not – I mean, I’m – normal, fine. Fine in a normal way.”

“That’s not something an individual who’s fine in a normal way would say,” Karen says. 

“Uh, is it not! It is. I would know, because I am that individual. It’s – I was – there’s just mild – pfft … stab wound – or something, who would even …”

Is Shawn broken? is the unhelpful thought that pops into Karen’s head. She’s never heard an attempt to bullshit collapse so quickly into pathetic nothingness before – certainly not from Shawn.

Perhaps even more than his father, the kid’s a pro.

And then the rest of the sentence catches up with her.

“A mild stab wound?”

Oh boy. She watches Shawn’s eyes widen with the panic that proceeds an unquestionable blunder.

“Chief –” 

“In.”

“Chief, I really, really don’t think –”

“Inside my house. Now.”

He’s certainly uncoordinated enough that he doesn’t put up much of a fight. Karen herds him  through the door as firmly as possible and leads them in a beeline past Richard’s office toward the bathroom, ignoring the reedy stream of consciousness that spills out of Shawn’s mouth as they go.

“Oh, hey, woah, it’s been like forever since I was in here. Did you redecorate? I swear that lamp wasn’t there the last time we visited. It could be the tacos I had earlier, but I’m sensing a distinct neo-modern Chinese aesthetic going on here, Chief, which calls to mind the merits of cultural appreciation in suburban home decor – hey, is that your husband’s office? Can I meet him? Is he home? That man is a true enigma to us, Chief, and it’s leading me to believe that he must possess all the facial and personality qualities of the pop superstar Mr. Pitbull Worldwide –”

Richard is home, actually, and Karen needs to alert him to the fact that they have an unexpected house guest, so, ignoring Shawn completely, she calls out,

“Honey? Shawn Spencer’s here for a couple minutes about a work thing! I’ll go up to put Iris to bed in a second!” in the finely-honed There Are Many Layers Of Complicated To This secret married tone that Richard should probably be able to catch through the closed office door. 

“Alright,” floats out her husband’s pleasant voice. “Tell him hi from me.”

Perfect. There’s about a ninety-three percent chance he understood.

They make it to the bathroom, only stumbling slightly. Shawn says,

“-- or The Rock. Does your husband look like Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson? I really think that would make so many things about the Chief Vick family make sense –”

Karen closes the bathroom door with a snap and crosses her arms.

“Sit,” she says, in a voice that even he knows brooks no argument.

Shawn does. He looks – well, beyond uncomfortable, and more than a little bit miserable, and probably closer to completely dissociating than either of them are prepared for. Karen wonders belatedly if he's gotten any sleep at all in the last forty-eight hours.

“I’m assuming you have not been to the hospital.”

He gives her a baleful look, like he really expected better of her. She only just stops herself from rolling her eyes in response. And there’s that huge goose egg on his forehead, too. What, exactly, he got up to in between Carlton’s wedding reception and oh-eight-hundred hours this morning Karen has no idea, but he looks like someone’s run him through the world’s most aggressive industrial tumble dry cycle and spat him mercilessly back out. 

Or maybe over with a truck.

Sending a silent prayer to the universe that Iris never hit puberty and remains a sweet-tempered six-year-old forever, Karen gets to business.

“Well, I had to at least ask. Shawn. Does it need stitches?” He mumbles the answer the first time, and then looks beyond startled when she grabs him under the chin so he’ll look her in the eye. “Listen. I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to do. But you’re going to tell me the truth. Got it?”

Shawn grimaces so hard at her words it’s almost a flinch. 

“No,” he says finally, clearly enough that she hears him. Karen raises an eyebrow. “No, I don’t think it needs stitches,” he articulates, but doesn’t meet her eye.

“Hm. Alright. I have gauze and tape in the medicine cabinet. Can I … is it alright if I pull up the sleeve of your t-shirt?”

Released from her hold, he groans and presses his face into one palm. “Chief –”

“I don’t really know what you expected, coming here! It’s not like I’m any less of a hardass than your father.”

“Yeah, but I can bitch back at my dad,” Shawn says, sounding like he’s finally realizing the magnitude of his mistake. Karen smiles grimly.

“Tough. Now pull your shirt up while I get the first aid kit.”

While Shawn proceeds to wrestle awkwardly with his t-shirt in a muted shuffle against the toilet seat, Karen rummages efficiently through the cabinet and eyes him through the bathroom mirror. He seems oddly reluctant to expose himself. In fact, in a stark contrast to his usual insistence on making his presence and contributions as obtrusively obvious as possible, Shawn seems intent on shrinking into the aforementioned Asian-flavored floral wallpaper (which does need an update, unfortunately) with all the equanimity of an anxious chameleon. Karen feels her eyebrows crease. Taking the first aid kit in hand, she brings it over and deposits it into his arms, ignoring his small startle.

“How about you hold that,” Karen says. Shawn does, against his chest, like a pillow. She walks around him and surveys the damage, antiseptic gauze in hand.

He wasn’t lying about the severity, at least. It’s a shallow thing, already mostly congealed, and has only stained his shirt in a small smattering spot of crusty brown blood.

Karen swabs at it with the alcohol using light careful fingers.

“Ow, ow ow ah –”

“Don’t be such a baby. It’s hardly a life-threatening injury.”

“Super insightful, Chief,” Shawn snaps, as genuinely sarcastic as he’s probably ever been with her, “never thought of that myself. Totally the reason why I just had to go to the hospital.”

He doesn’t pull away, but she can feel the tension radiating through his back. She blinks, one eyebrow crawling up her forehead. 

Alright then. So that’s how it’s going to be. 

“I’m assuming your father doesn’t know about this,” she says.

Shawn grunts, noncommittal. Huh. Maybe he does know, then, and has just been disallowed from doing anything about it right now.

She tosses the first used antiseptic wipe into the trash.

Goddamn four dimensional chess.

She supposes she’s never been bad at the game. She may as well work her way backwards through the moves: Guster, the most obvious node in Shawn’s turn-to-in-a-crisis-system, would never voluntarily abandon his friend in a time of need, so Karen assumes that whatever this is has either already included his support or not been made known to Gus at all yet. Henry’s likely exhausted his own usefulness in the situation, and Detective O’Hara is …

Karen has to work very hard for her hands not to pause in a way that gives away her hard-earned mental sleuthing. A bad feeling wholly unrelated to her ill-advised hangover of the day before begins to bloom at the back of her gut.

“You have really small hands, Chief.”

Shawn’s voice is notably more subdued than before.

“Do I?” 

“They’re like … little kangaroo hands. Like the mom kangaroo from Whinnie the Pooh.”

“Didn’t you know?” Karen says, not unkindly. “They’re given out at the hospital when all first-time moms leave with their baby.”

He lets out a tired little laugh, more boyish than he probably means it to be, and in spite of herself Karen feels her heart clench. She isn’t blind. In all her last seven years as the leader of their chaotic little precinct, she has never seen Juliet O’Hara look as ill as she did yesterday morning. The usually sweet-faced young woman had all the pallor of a Victorian ghost, and stood so far away from Shawn in any given room that to an unassuming observer he might have had the plague.

There are only a handful of things, Karen thinks, that could have invited that particular evolution in their dynamic. She rips the surgical tape from its canister a little bit more harshly than is strictly necessary and fights the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose between her fingers.

“So,” she says conversationally, laying the tape down in neat, gentle little strips, trying not to pinch the wound too tightly. “Any fun plans for the evening?”

Shawn sniffs. She can see him gripping his hands together over his knee from where she stands above him.

“Um, yeah, uh –” he clears his throat, “you know me, Chief. We’re working our way through a Robert Guillame marathon, which means some good old fashioned Benson, running commentary on the quality of that child acting, naturally.”

“Naturally.” 

“Then Gus and I were gonna hit up the new, the new chili cheese joint up by Hermosa, you know – they’re doing sliders –”

“Chili cheese sliders?” Karen hums, contemplative.

“Buy ‘em by the pound,” Shawn agrees. “Then I was thinking of getting a tattoo, maybe a belly button piercing, I’ve been really – really needing a change – would you let Iris get one, if she asked?”

“A tattoo?” Karen clarifies, cutting off the next piece of tape. The skin around the cut is warm to her touch but Shawn’s arms have goosepimpled. The hair at the back of his head sticks up unstyled, like he slept weirdly and couldn’t be bothered to fix it come morning.

“Of a marmoset. That’s what I’m thinking. With distinctly effeminate vibes.”

“Well, Dick hates marmosets. So I’d probably encourage her toward something else. Perhaps a sea lion.”

“Like Shabby.” The nervous note has bled into his legs again, and his earlier subdued tone has gone back to sounding strained. “Yeah, that’ll – that could be it.”

“All in one night, huh?” Karen says.

“I –” Shawn doesn’t even hiss when she presses down with a cotton gauze to cover the last of the thickened blood. His legs are properly jittering again. “I was – yeah, y-you know me, Chief, total night owl.”

“Shawn?”

“Yeah?”

“What about going home?”

Silence. Shawn doesn’t answer for a moment long and pregnant enough that Karen wonders if her question will be ignored entirely. 

Then,

“Chief,” he says finally, in an awful, tiny little voice, “I really, really fucked up.”

Finally, her hands do falter in their ministrations; as emotionally exuberant as Shawn often is, she doesn’t think she’s ever actually heard him close to tears. For a horrible moment she wonders if Shawn Spencer will suddenly start crying atop her toilet seat for reasons neither of them are capable of discussing honestly. Then she wonders if her horror makes her a terrible boss.

Boss – mother – person.

Oh, dear.

She sets down the surgical tape and lays a ginger palm over the newly-bandaged gouge in his shoulder. It’ll probably scar, but not at all badly. She doesn’t like to think about the far more obvious one just below, puckering in a violent yet unassuming divot. Another narrow miss for Henry’s boy. 

At this point there are so many of them to count, Karen has to question the statistical likelihood of the whole thing. Becoming a mathematical anomaly is, Karen can attest with confidence, not exactly the future the Lieutenant Spencer she knew dreamed of for his increasingly unmanageable teenager. 

Doing what he loved, on the other hand – absolutely. Being with a person he loved, even more so. Karen grits her teeth at the irritating web she’s spent the last six years constructing around herself and wonders if this evening right here is some kind of cosmic karma for leaving Iris in the care of nannies for the first three years of her life.

That sounds like the kind of thing those horrible parenting magazines and Karen’s mother-in-law would claim, anyway.

“Shawn,” she says slowly, because she has to at least knock this possibility off the list before risking her career in an attempt to mediate her detectives’ love lives, “did you … you weren’t – unfaithful, were you?”

“What?!” 

Shawn yanks his shoulder away and whirls around to face her with such a look of horrified betrayal on his face that it’s almost comical. 

“No!” 

Thank fucking God, Karen thinks. Aloud, she says,

“Well, I’m sorry, I had to at least ask!”

“No! No! What the hell, Chief!”

“Oh would you be quiet! I’m gathering my evidence here!”

“How could I – I would never – you’d even think that I could –”

“I know! Shawn, for God’s sake –” He’s scrambled to his feet in the cramped bathroom space, glaring, and has probably messed up all that surgical tape in the process. The half open first aid kit and his crumpled shirt press lopsided against his front and her garbage can is now full of oxidizing bits of cotton. Karen officially gives in to the urge to press her palms against her forehead. “I had to ask!” she repeats finally. “You and I both know you’re not gonna give me much else to work with, and you sounded so – so sad!” 

Shawn barks out a hysterical little laugh. Karen almost growls in frustration. 

“I am not going to risk all the very hard-earned rules I have in place without knowing for sure that my instincts aren’t wrong. Is that so hard to appreciate?”

Does it count as sound police work when the framework for your investigation is an unacknowledged lie? Karen doesn’t really know. Probably there’s another math metaphor to be made in there (you screwed your proof from the very beginning, maybe, Richard the professor would definitely have thoughts), or just a straight up joke. How to solve a case that’s cold before it ever has the chance to go live; a cover-up if she ever saw one. Unlikely that O’Hara will peep a word, and things will be a true mess for a few weeks, if she can’t make an educated guess about it. And no one will be explaining anything to Carlton, either …

Right before their goddamn audit, Karen thinks, aggrieved. She wonders if Henry considered this in his calculus. Send Shawn over, have her deal with him. Offer a huge unspoken you’re gonna be walking into a shitstorm tomorrow canary for her perennially chaotic mess of a coal mine. 

She can’t help but feel begrudgingly grateful, but that doesn’t mean she and he won’t be having words about this later.   

“Jesus, Karen,” Shawn mutters, pressing his face back into his free hand. Karen shakes her head and squares her shoulders.

“Well then! Back to the issue. You fucked up.”

“You know what? I can’t talk about this with you.”

“Oh, Mr. Spencer, I assure you I am more than well aware.”

Shawn blinks at her between his fingers, looking genuinely confused for the first time since he showed up at her door. 

Karen does not bother to clear up his confusion; it’s better this way, anyhow.

“Will you be sleeping at Gus’s place or your father’s?” she asks, crossing her arms.

“I’m – I don’t –” Shawn doesn’t meet her eye. The earlier thread of anxiety is back. “I wasn’t …”

So, neither. 

“Put your shirt back on,” she says. “We’re relocating to the living room.”

“Chief –”

“That was an order, Mr. Spencer.”

The living room is as quiet and mundane as it was an hour ago. It’s past Iris’s bedtime – she’ll have to go up, and soon at that. Karen seats her guest, retrieves a mug and a bag of chamomile from the kitchen, and removes the fluffy throw blanket from the basket behind the couch on her way back in. He’s deflated completely by the time the tea and blanket are set in front of him. Small and exhausted. Caught. It’s a horrible way to think about it. But she can’t avoid the hundred yard stare – Karen has seen it one too many times in people only just realizing they’re about to go away for life.

“Shawn,” she says, firm as she can make it. “Drink the tea. You’re dehydrated.”

“I’m … what?”

“Your lips are dry. You shouldn’t be dehydrated with a concussion.”

He doesn’t say anything for a minute, and Karen suddenly wonders if he’s going to get up and leave. She has experience with these things – she knows a runner when she sees one.

“I might as well have,” Shawn finally whispers.

She doesn’t catch it the first time. “What?”

“I – I might as well ha – Chief, I …” Deep shuddering breaths. He’s finally shutting down, she realizes. She can’t send him back out like this; Henry would give her the stink eye for a month.

Goddamn Spencers and their goddamn irritating overcomplicated lives.

Karen pushes the tea directly into his hands and tilts her chin so she can meet Shawn’s eye. He’s still lucid enough that she doesn’t think he’ll start hyperventilating, but now that the outrage and adrenaline has worn off, the symptoms of shock are pretty hard to miss. “Shawn,” she says again, and wills for him to understand.

“What if she – what if I never –” He can’t get the full sentence out. He looks at her, eyes wide and terrified.

Life sentence, Karen thinks again. The messy stack of files Shawn brought over sits almost unimportantly on the coffee table between them and a memory comes to her, unbidden, of words penned carefully in the corner of a modified police report that she pulled the minute the door closed on the McCallum case seven years ago. 

Date: May 4th, 1995. Reporting Officer, Spencer, Lt. H. Perpetrator a caucasian male, brown hair, five foot nine, insists on wearing those stupid earrings just to spite me. What the hell do you want me to write here, Chief? Spent two hours in the fucking principal’s office convincing them not to expel him one month off from graduation. All that effort, and I still booked the kid. It’s gonna follow him for life, and it’s gonna be me that did it to him. For life. You think he’ll ever forgive me? He’s the greatest thing in my pathetic little world and he keeps breaking my heart, and I can’t even properly accept that it’s my fault. 

How’s that for a fucking crime.

She needs to go put her daughter to bed. It’s the thought that keeps running through her head, oddly enough, like a strange antidote to the impotent anger and heartbreak and frustration she’s feeling for the people under her care.

With all the notes she took in that little workbook, she still let herself become complicit in the painstaking, convoluted resolution of Henry’s mistakes without accounting for all the variables.  

Richard’s footsteps sound muffled in the next room; he’s made his way upstairs in Karen’s absence. She needs to go. She wants to hear the soft and sleepy love you Mama that with her unpredictable hours and regular long nights isn’t nearly routine enough.

“Shawn,” she says evenly. “Do you love her?”

It’s hard to reconcile the smarmy kid who tried to barter with her for twelve hundred a day with the devastated young man sitting on the couch in front of her.

“Chief …” he starts, barely above a whisper.

“Good. Then she’ll see that. Detective O’Hara is a smart and observant woman. What she chooses to do next is her decision, but … you might be – well, comforted by the fact that she’ll know that – truth.”

Shawn stares at her. The tea steams in front of him, cooling in increments. She takes a deep breath and gets to her feet, patting his uninjured shoulder brusquely. 

“I have to go check on Iris. When I come back down, I can drive you to the Psych office.”

Iris is fast asleep when she gets there. A library book lays open face down over her stomach, and her soft brown hair fans out against the pillow, silhouetted by the soft glow of the unicorn nightlight in the wall above her. Karen turns off the bedside lamp, tucks her daughter in, and kisses her forehead. Just before she leaves, she hears it: murmured, half-awake.

“Love you, Mama.”

“I love you too, baby.”

Karen goes back to her living room, car keys in hand. She’s planned her next move in the driver’s seat enough times throughout her career that it shouldn’t be too hard. 

[lakemojave]

Tonight at 6pm Pacific: The Direct Actors, A Baldur's Gate 3 "Adventure" pt. 19!!!

WE'RE BACK!!! Today we begin the 3rd season of our RP series and the 3rd act of the game! We've all had a hard time trekking through the Shadow-Cursed Lands and received some harrowing revelations, but we'll soon find out if the gang can pull themselves together! Come see @radiofreederry as The Green Knight, Elf paladin, @mayflowers429 and Nana as Leviathan, Dark Urge monk, @caputvulpinum as Micah Harper, Tiefling wizard, and myself as Delilah "Mama D" Harper, Halfling bard!

Character art by @bijillion, recap under the cut!

THE STORY SO FAR: On the way to a union rally, Delilah "Mama D" Harper and her grandson Micah were abducted and taken aboard an ilithid nautiloid, which they escaped with mysterious dancer Leviathan and the self-proclaimed "Champion of Ilmater and Paladin of Good" known only as the Green Knight. Each infected by a mind flayer tadpole, but so far immune from transforming into mind flayers themselves, The Direct Actors, as the party have come to be known, have arrived in Rivington, the gate to Baldur's Gate, and find themselves in the middle of a town with some big problems of its own...

LAST TIME: After defeating Ketheric Thorm and claiming his Netherstone, the Direct Actors prepared to depart the Shadow-Cursed Lands. As the rest of the party discussed their circumstances and the aftermath of the battle, the Green Knight scouted ahead for the road to Baldur's Gate, spending a lot of time alone in the shadows, dwelling in his grief. After dispatching an ambush of Githyanki sent by Vlaakith, the Direct Actors at last left the Shadow-Cursed Lands, just as the curse broke and the sun once again began to shine.

The party made camp just outside the town of Rivington as night fell along the Chionthar. As the Direct Actors settled in for the night, Micah was met by none other than the god Ilmater, who apologized to Micah for not being there for him in the suffering he had faced in his youth, and promised to be with him forevermore as penance, proclaiming that the position of his Chosen would be Micah's so long as he desired. Afterwards, Micah and the Green Knight talked, with the two reconciling after their previous fight and the Green Knight gifting Micah a new set of clothes he has acquired in town even as he waxed miserable about the nature of his immortality. Levi and Mama D, meanwhile, had a chat about both Lord Gortash, another Netherstone holder, and Mama D's emotional state.

As the party settled in to sleep, they were attacked by a horde of Gith, and followed them through a portal into the astral realm contained in the Astral Prism, where it was revealed that their Dream Visitor was in fact a mind flayer known as the Emperor, who held the Githyanki Prince Orpheus hostage, using his abilities to shield the Direct Actors from ceremorphosis. Everyone but Mama D had already figured this out. The party saved the Emperor, though the Green Knight vowed to return to free Orpheus and slay the mind flayer. Afterwards, as sleep took hold of the party, the Green Knight did... something that wiped his true name from their memories. Only Micah realized something had happened, and made it clear to the Green Knight that he was furious.

What did the Green Knight do? Will he and Micah ever be able to reconcile again? Will any more of Leviathan's memories return? Who is the sadistic shapeshifter known as Orin? What dangers lurk in the gateway town of Rivington? Find out in another exciting instalment of Baldur's Gate 3, starring the Direct Actors!

[pod-together]

Pod-Together Day 4 Reveals 2024

Strawberry-Coated (Hannibal (TV)) written by Artemiaz, performed by Dr_Fumbles_McStupid Summary: At last, the monster turned its head. Cunning had departed from mercurial eyes. There was no pride in that sharp face; no wicked smile hidden at the corner of an insatiable mouth. Right now, Hannibal Lecter was just a man. “Will… don’t do this.” After five sweet years of domestic bliss, there’s only one thing that could sour the atmosphere between Will and Hannibal: the anniversary of Abigail Hobbs’ death.

Gifts Are Given (Not Taken) (Original Work) written by Hagar, performed by DuskDragon39 Summary: It is the tradition dictated by King Tharus, founder of the Kingdon of Artium, that his heirs renew his treaty with the dragon Kess'ar before they ascend to the throne. Unfortunately for them, Kess'ar also retains his right to not renew the treaty - and the dragon does not suffer fools kindly.

holding on where i am able (RWBY) written by hopelessgemini, performed by MistbornHero Summary: it is a quiet night in vacuo, and ruby rose can't sleep.

Death's Champions (The Sandman (TV 2022)) written by Lalaith_Quetzalli, performed by godoflaundrybaskets Summary: It is said that there can be no true life without death. Likewise, it is known that without one of the Endless, reality will eventually crumble. When the Magus and his Order of Ancient Mysteries prove smarter and stronger than expected, and succeed in summoning and capturing Death, something must be done in order to rescue her. What kind of individuals can be expected to undertake such a mission?

Brownstone Ghosts [text, audio] (Red White & Royal Blue - Casey McQuiston) written by Mansikka, performed by ToughPaperRound Summary: It's time for Henry to share some secrets with Alex. Past time, actually; if only he'd figured out a way to explain before those secrets all but introduced themselves. "Alex," Henry says, clutching a bottle of whiskey for support while giving him a nervous smile. "How do you feel about... ghosts?"

Perfect Days (The Furious Pain of Living) (Batman - All Media Types, Green Lantern - All Media Types, DCU) written by Mbira, performed by Poluche Summary: The thing is, Hal was meant to fly. To go, to see, to be, to not be stuck in the same place without moving forward, isolated without future. So yes, he was freaking out. Enough to ask a sketchy dude whose real name he didn’t even know for help. Or Hal is stuck in a time loop. Batman and Robin are there for him.

How Steve became "Sir Steve the Brave" [text, audio] (Stranger Things (TV 2016)) written by MeggieJolly, performed by steddiestories Summary: Eddie tells Steve a story about how Eddie the Banished and Sir Steve the Brave met. It was only supposed to be a fun little story, but it sort of turns into an accidental feelings confession. ~ »This is the story of Eddie the Banished, Sir Steve the Brave and their merry band of fools.« Eddie started with his usual dramatic flair. He had been stretched out on the bed next to Steve, but now he sat up to do his story - or well, maybe ‚performance‘ would be the better word - justice. »Their story happened a long, long time ago, somewhere in Europe. A place with castles and fortresses, with princes and knights, bards and fools. The kind of place that only exists in history books and fantasy these days. This was the world in which Sir Steve lived in a castle up on a hill overlooking a small town that was ruled by his parents. Sir Steve had been knighted a few years ago and fought in some tournaments to prove himself, but nowadays he was mostly stuck on his parents’ estate.«

A Gift of Flexibility (titanium) (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) written by BardicRaven, performed by BardicRavenReads, audio production by onegoldenraptor Summary: When Julian is struggling, someone gives him a gift. A gift that helps. A gift of flexibility. When Garak is struggling, Julian gives him a gift. A gift of flexibility. A gift he hopes will help.

The Art of Not Letting Go, Chapter 2 (Ted Lasso (TV)) written by rockinhamburger, performed by klb Summary: Beard takes a deep breath and gives in to the impulse he’s been restraining for weeks: “But with your permission, I'd love to run off this plane and into her arms.” Ted’s eyes widen now, and Beard watches anxiously for hints of how he’s taking this. Ted leans back in his seat and closes his eyes for a few moments, like he’s doing some internal reflection. Then he opens his eyes again, looks at Beard, and says, soft and quiet, “No.” No. The no hangs in suspension as Beard struggles to make sense of it, that’s how sure he was Ted would say yes. He’s too surprised to speak. He must be taking too long because Ted shifts forward, expression conflicted. “Now, obviously you got free will, Beard. I’m not about to tell you what to do. You’re free to make whatever choice you want, so if you wanna stay here… stay with her? I trust you to make good choices, and I’ll support whatever you choose.” Ted lets out a slow, emotional breath. “But if you’re asking for my permission, I—” He visibly swallows, “I’m not giving it.”

The Doctor Doesn’t Text [text, audio] (Doctor Who (2005)) written by waltztangocache, performed by rscreighton and oddfront Summary: The Doctor shares some near future communications technology with Donna.

refreshing as an evil forgotten [text, audio] (魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù) written by unitaryexectheory, performed by Wonderlandian_Geek Summary: Mo Xuanyu dies to bring back Wen Ruohan.

[northern-passage]

i've shared some of Alex Freed's narrative writing advice before and i recently read another article on his website that i really liked. particularly in branching/choice-based games, a lot of people often bring up the idea of the author "punishing" the player for certain choices. i agree that this is a thing that happens, but i disagree that it's always a bad thing. i think Freed makes a good case for it here.

...acting as the player’s judge (and jury, and executioner) is in some respects the primary job of a game’s developers. Moreover, surely all art emerges from the artist’s own experiences and worldview to convey a particular set of ideas. How does all that square with avoiding being judgmental?

[...]

Let’s first dispel–briefly–the idea that any game can avoid espousing a particular worldview or moral philosophy. Say we’re developing an open world action-adventure game set in a modern-day city. The player is able to engage any non-player character in combat at any time, and now we’re forced to determine what should occur if the player kills a civilian somewhere isolated and out of sight.

Most games either:

allow this heinous act and let the player character depart without further consequence, relying on the player’s own conscience to determine the morality of the situation.

immediately send police officers after the player character, despite the lack of any in-world way for the police to be aware of the crime.

But of course neither of these results is in any way realistic. The problems in the latter example are obvious, but no less substantial than in the former case where one must wonder:

Why don’t the police investigate the murder at a later date and track down the player then?

Why doesn’t the neighborhood change, knowing there’s a vicious murderer around who’s never been caught? Why aren’t there candlelight vigils and impromptu memorials?

Why doesn’t the victim’s son grow up to become Batman?

We construct our game worlds in a way that suits the genre and moral dimensions of the story we want to tell. There’s no right answer here, but the consequences we build into a game are inherently a judgment on the player’s actions. Attempting to simulate “reality” will always fail–we must instead build a caricature of truth that suggests a broader, more realized world. Declaring “in a modern city, murderous predators can escape any and all consequences” is as bold a statement on civilization and humanity as deciding “in the long run, vengeance and justice will always be served up by the victims of crime (metaphorically by means of a bat-costumed hero).”

Knowing that, what’s the world we want to build? What are the themes and moral compass points we use to align our game?

This is a relatively easy task when working with a licensed intellectual property. In Star Trek, we know that creativity, diplomacy, and compassion are privileged above all else, and that greed and prejudice always lead to a bad end. A Star Trek story in which the protagonist freely lies, cheats, and steals without any comeuppance probably stopped being a Star Trek story somewhere along the line. Game of Thrones, on the other hand, takes a more laissez-faire approach to personal morality while emphasizing the large-scale harm done by men and women who strive for power. (No one comes away from watching Game of Thrones believing that the titular “game” is a reasonable way to run a country.)

These core ideals should affect more than your game’s storytelling–they should dovetail with your gameplay loops and systems, as well. A Star Trek farming simulator might be a fun game, but using the franchise’s key ideals to guide narrative and mechanical choices probably won’t be useful. (“Maybe we reward the player for reaching an accord with the corn?”)

Know what principles drive your game world. You’re going to need that knowledge for everything that’s coming.

[...]

Teaching the player the thematic basics of your world shouldn’t be overly difficult–low-stakes choices, examples of your world and character arcs in a microcosm, gentle words of wisdom, obviously bad advice, and so forth can all help guide the player’s expectations. You can introduce theme in a game the way you would in any medium, so we won’t dwell on that here.

You can, of course, spend a great deal of time exploring the nuances of the moral philosophy of your game world across the course of the whole game. You’ll probably want to. So why is it so important to give the player the right idea from the start?

Because you need the player to buy into the kind of story that you’re telling. To some degree, this is true even in traditional, linear narratives: if I walk into a theater expecting the romcom stylings of The Taming of the Shrew and get Romeo and Juliet instead, I’m not going to be delighted by having my expectations subverted; I’m just going to be irritated.

When you give a player a measure of control over the narrative, the player’s expectations for a certain type of story become even stronger. We’ll discuss this more in the next two points, but don’t allow your player to shoot first and ask questions later in the aforementioned Star Trek game while naively expecting the story to applaud her rogue-ish cowboy ways. Interactive narrative is a collaborative process, and the player needs to be able to make an informed decision when she chooses to drive the story in a given direction. This is the pact between player and developer: “You show me how your world works, and I’ll invest myself in it to the best of my understanding.”

[...]

In order to determine the results of any given choice, you (that is, the game you’ve designed) must judge the actor according to the dictates (intended or implicit) of the game world and story. If you’re building a game inspired by 1940s comic book Crime Does Not Pay, then in your game world, crime should probably not pay.

But if you’ve set the player’s expectations correctly and made all paths narratively satisfying, then there can be no bad choices on the part of the player–only bad choices on the part of the player character which the player has decided to explore. The player is no more complicit in the (nonexistent) crimes of the player character than an author is complicit in the crimes of her characters. Therefore, there is no reason to attempt to punish or shame the player for “bad” decisions–the player made those decisions to explore the consequences with you, the designer. (Punishing the player character is just dandy, so long as it’s an engaging experience.)

[...]

It’s okay to explore difficult themes without offering up a “correct” answer. It’s okay to let players try out deeds and consequences and decide for themselves what it all means. But don’t forget that the game is rigged. [...]

Intentionally or not, a game judges and a game teaches. It shows, through a multiplicity of possibilities, what might happen if the player does X or Y, and the player learns the unseen rules that underlie your world. Embracing the didactic elements of your work doesn’t mean slapping the player’s wrist every time she’s wrong–it means building a game where the player can play and learn and experiment within the boundaries of the lesson.

[cellarspider]

Qunlat 1/??: Introduction

⭅ Previous =⦾ Index ⦾= Next ⭆

First dive into canon Qunlat! I’ll be starting with a bit of history and background on constructed language creation, what I think the strengths and weaknesses of Qunlat are, and how they likely came about. 

Note: This post and all others in the series will contain image alt-text that includes optional side-material. It's not necessary to read to understand the main text, but it does contain spicy details like "How old is Sten?" and "who could the Witch-King of Angmar have been defeated by, if the prophecy about him had been written in Qunlat?"

People have always been making new languages–ever come up with a secret code between friends, siblings, or partners? Congratulations! You’ve dabbled in making a new language. 

Constructed language creation goes back many centuries–usually for religious use, such as Hildegard von Bingen’s mystical use of her Lingua Ignota. In the 18th and 19th century, an interest in language reform and international communication created attempts at more “logical” and “universal” languages like Esperanto, Volapük, Ido, and Novial. Constructing new writing systems also has a long and successful history–Hangul is used by 81 million people! The Cherokee syllabary, wholly created by the singularly dedicated Sequoyah, is still in use today! 

But for our purposes, the story starts with a fellow named Tolkien.

As a historian, linguist, and big ol’ nerd who wanted to write a mythological epic, Tolkien famously built the elven languages of Middle Earth first, and then folded the rest of the world around them. He also produced limited amounts of Khuzdul (dwarvish), Adûnaic, Rohirric, Entish, and the Black Speech, creating a rich and alive-seeming world in the process.

Ever since him, big ol’ nerds have been influenced by this. Most constructed languages since have flourished in the hobbyist space of “conlangers”, folks like me who do this for fun. And oh boy, is it fun. Here’s a sample of an original language I’ve created:

But the most well-known conlangs sit at the intersection of art and commerce: languages constructed for mass media. These have a unique set of constraints, which will explain a few things about Qunlat. Yes, I promise, I haven’t forgot about Qunlat. I’m just excited to talk about my hobby.

When Star Trek made the jump to the big screen, James Doohan threw together some words that linguist Mark Okrand eventually transformed into the Klingon language. Doohan wasn’t really focused on making a usable language, he just wanted something that sounded right–it had “phonaesthetics” that matched the audience perception of the Klingons. This created something unfamiliar to English speakers, requiring you to make guttural sounds that most dialects of English never touch. Phonaesthetics were also among Tolkien’s leading principles with his languages–Quenya was influenced by the sounds of Latin and Finnish, Rohirric by Old English, and the Black Speech by the extinct Hurrian language. To him, these had certain associations that informed the character of the language’s speakers.

Phonaesthetics are usually priority number one in constructed languages that appear in mass media. While many modern projects will hire professional linguists to create something robust and to instruct actors on how to speak their lines, this isn’t always the case. In fact, it’s a very recent development. 

Mostly, constructed languages have been the province of some jobbo in the writer’s room or sound department, who has fifteen other things they have to be doing. They create something they think sounds good, and then send it off in the script. When the conlang is plonked down in front of an actor, they may not be given any direction on pronunciation, because nobody in the room has been given a pronunciation guide.

All this is to say: Many constructed languages in media are produced very quickly, they’re poorly-documented, and they’re often performed by people who haven’t been coached on their use. Those that survive are often passed through multiple hands, which may lead to refinement of the language, or artistic direction may be lost.

Qunlat has a lot of the hallmarks of this sort of language. So does Elvhen, but I’m only passingly familiar with it. Qunlat, though. It has a very simple, very Indo-European language structure, which primarily functions in ways English considers “default”. 

This is very common when an English-speaker makes a constructed language without a lot of practice: you write what you know, after all. And because most people never have to think too hard about their native language, they recapitulate the bits they think are vital, shave off a lot of the complexities that they don’t want to deal with, and never replace them with anything else. If a complex sentence does rear its head, something is slapped together ad-hoc. There are specific examples I can point to throughout the series that fit these patterns.

The phonaesthetics of Qunlat also have the hallmarks of a project that’s passed through many hands, or been poorly documented. While it began with a fairly strong sense of phonaesthetics, some additions are notable for their dissonance with the rest of the language. It's on a journey without a road to follow.

So while I focus on canon Qunlat, I’ll also be trying to point out the things I like, and the rough edges that make things difficult or uncertain, while attempting to take an understanding view of it all–Heck knows, I’ve made some real clunkers in my time as a conlanger, and I didn’t have to publish any of it on a deadline.

We start with a discussion on how I’ll be handling sources next time, as Dragon Age is… well, it’s complicated.

⭅ Previous =⦾ Index ⦾= Next ⭆

[t0ast-ghost]

You know this has got me in a pretty deep (Obsession) which is the name of S2 episode 13 of Star Trek tos.

Better luck next time on that opening:

- Kirk’s on edge…

- Star Trek horror episode when?

- is this inspiration for when Doctor Crusher fucks a ghost

- god I love Chapel

- Hot new redshirt is probably the shapeshifter (edit: this is just wrong)

- The fucking gas is sneaking up on ‘em. Of all the things to die to it’s the vampire gas

- Kirk’s boyfriends both think that they should leave and deliver the supplies. Two versus one AND it’s the two that always fight against their favourite idiot

- Kirk ignoring both McCoy AND Spock is not a good sign

- The chief security guy dramatically flopping on his bed is so relatable bbygirl

- Kirk getting paranoid about his bridge crew “conspiring” is like. haven’t you learned trust? Haven’t you learned love? I guess he’s still a soldier at heart or smt

- “I hope I’m not disturbing you, Doctor.” “Interrupting another autopsy report is no disturbance, Mr. Spock. It’s a relief” I just remembered that they’re married and in love

- Spock outright asking McCoy for his advice/opinion is like. YEAH he respects you, he has his own beliefs and ideals but he wants to hear from you! And when he’s worried about your (boy)friend he wants you to be on the same page as him. He wants you to validate his thoughts.

- whatever the fuck this is

- “Mind if I come in?” McCoy you shouldn’t be able to just enter people’s quarters like that. Can’t you see he’s writing his diary and listening to Mitski in bed?

- Oh my Bones pulling out the big guns.. AND SPOCK. Oh they really were conspiring. You know if they worked together like this more often, they could literally do anything. Like kiss.

- Genuinely unsure if the gas is intelligent or not. I like the mystery of this one.

- “Jim, we’re not trying to gang up on you.” They are though and it’s probably for the best

- Love how the entire bridge crew is just like “this isn’t healthy. Kirk, this is concerning behaviour.”

- OH WOW Kirk came so close to blowing up his own ship

- “Self pity’s a terrible first course, how about you try the soup.” Christine Chapel is literally the best. She also knows how to make threats, not even McCoy knows about (I love how terrifying the medical department is)

- I want a pair of those slutty boots

- McCoy is fucking furious

- “I’m sorry, Jim. I was wrong.” McCoy in short sleeves <3

- Spock genuinely trying to comfort Kirk cause he has an unhealthy obsession with the creature and Kirk dismissing it

- Spock then trying to comfort the ensign

- He breaks the vent controls with his strength then tries to COVER IT WITH HIS HANDS. Spock, babygirl, that is not logical

- “Don’t misunderstand my next question. Mr. Spock, why aren’t you dead?” Happy to see you too, Jim

- “Bet he left a bad taste in the creatures mouth.” “Colloquially expressed, but essentially correct.” That is a fucking banger line

- KIRK HEALING ARC

- Spock and Bones at odds once again

- Of course Kirk is gonna be self sacrificial and Spock is going to try and self sacrifice himself.. admittedly Spock had the more logical thought process

- HE FUCKIN KARATE CHOPPED HIS NECK . WHAT THE HECK NEW GUY?!?

- I’d love if I lived on the enterprise and got little updates through the comms by Chekov “stand by for shockwaves.” Of course thank you :))

- Spock is like “I’m to thank, not god, thank me Jim.”

- Kirk healing <3

Better episode than I thought it would be :)

Masterpost

Episode written by Art Wallace

[ourflagmeansbts]

Source (Season 1 - June 13th 2023)

contestabile: Hi everyone! Wanted to share some @ourflaghbomax insights after stumbling upon a fantastic Tumblr post by @mondfahrt (google it!). They captured the meaning and subtext perfectly, but here's a little extra. Mary's painting studio embraced a non-period-correct style inspired by Cubism, Expressionism, and American modernism. While the iconic lighthouse painting had already been established, we needed to fill the entire art studio/barn with similar styles quickly. To achieve that, we drew inspiration from the works of Georgia O'Keeffe and Carl Newman. Many artists contributed, but a special shoutout goes to @ozone_ue_skp for creating some incredible paintings. O'Keeffe-inspired close shots of flowers were “easily” rendered in the cubist/lighthouse style. Interestingly, we sourced rough sketches by Carl Newman, expanding and completing them in Mary's unique style. Multiple pieces were painted in different states of completion, reflecting progress throughout the episode. The set was a redress of the Warner Bros Jungle cabin, used in various productions from Dexter to Star Trek. It's interesting to see how it can transform to fit so many different atmospheres. I also must say it’s amazing to see the #ofmd community embracing the show and appreciating the attention to detail. As a follower myself, I'm grateful for the fans' passion. Although I didn't work on season 2 due to it being filmed in New Zealand, I'm eagerly anticipating it alongside all of you. Lastly, congratulations to the OFMD Art Department for their well-deserved @adgawards_official win earlier this year. It was an absolute honor to have been part of such a talented team. PD: @kohatuworkshop @bradrubin Supervising Art Director: 🏴‍☠️ Art Directors: @sam_c_avila, @brittbradforddesign, @sdudebro AAD: harshi_800, @brontejc, @lovingjimmorrison Set Designer: @mexiruviann Construction Coordinator: Joe Ondrejko Art Coordinator: Josh Dobkin Art Production Assistants: @el_trashpanda, @phillipburgess Set Decorator: @daddyjkc Keep the creativity flowing, and thank you for supporting Our Flag Means Death!