#super-borg dies

[bladelasdragon]

wario dies being in a borg ship and a bonus

[stra-tek]

Random spoilerific reasons to read Star Trek novels, with little to no context:

Ro/Quark is a thing

A Jem'Hadar joins DS9, tries to fit in but eventually snaps and tries to kill everybody

You learn the origins and final fate of the Borg

A thinly-veiled Dr. House clone joins the Voyager crew

Geordi briefly has 2 girlfriends at once (due to different writers not co-ordinating enough, but still)

There's a TOS book that's a musical

There are YA stories about Jake and Nog making mischief on DS9

YA stories about Worf, Geordi, Picard, Beverly, Kirk, Spock and McCoy at SFA

YA series about the Kelvinverse gang (including Gaila!) as cadets, taking on a drug problem at SFA and a very unique Borg scout in San Francisco

We very briefly meet the people who are to Q what the Q are to humanity

Janeway/Chakotay is a thing

Kirk's first mission in command of the Enterprise! Erm, at least twice.

Kirk was married between TOS and TMP

Her name was Lori

In the future, you have yearly marriage contracts that you either update or you don't and I think that's amazing

Trip didn't die! He faked his death to join Section 31 and go undercover as a Romulan

It's not great, tbh

The ENT books get better after the Romulan wars though, it's proper founding of the Federation stuff

We meet Jack Crusher (erm, the OG) when 4 timelines start overlapping and he's a bit unhinged

Teenage Kirk stole a car and his choice was go to jail or join Starfleet

What happened when Voyager got home? Seven broke up with Chakotay like 30 pages in

Kirk gets cloned, and his clone becomes the sub of an evil invincible super genius and its all very gay

George Kirk was Robert April's first officer on the first ever mission of the unnamed starship with the Naval Construction Contract 1701

Robert is a hard-core pacifist and has to turn command over to George whenever it's time to fire weapons

Data becomes fully human for a couple of days and it's really sweet

They never say "wristwatch" or "phone", it's always "wrist chrono" or "personal comm"

There are gays but they don't say that word because it's the 1990's and Rick Berman runs the franchise

Spock has a son in the past with Zarabeth

Everyone in the post-Nemesis era does spy missions all the time non stop, as if Starfleet has abandoned exploring the cosmos for doing Space Mission: Impossible

Bashir does it better than anyone else, he takes on Section 31 from the inside

Remember Control? It's from the novels, except the novels do it SO MUCH BETTER.

Remember how we never found out who Future Guy was? We do.

It's very underwhelming, nobody we know

We find out how the Romulans and Vulcans split

Surak was a Vulcan internet blogger

A Borg Cube eats Pluto

Janeway dies

Janeway gets better

At least one TOS book features a wizard

There's a Star Trek TOS/Here Come the Brides crossover novel

It had cameos from The Doctor (as in, Who), Han Solo, Starbuck and others

Whole book series about Section 31

Whole book series about the Department of Temporal Investigations

One time they do the Bill and Ted thing to escape confinement and it works

Wanna know how Riker and Troi met?

Wanna know what Picard got up to on the Stargazer?

Andorians have 4 sexes and it's very complicated

Data comes back from the dead as Data 2.0, and it was fresh and exciting because it happened long before ST: Picard did it twice.

Lal comes back too and we get father/daughter android stuff! They have a home and everything but keep having to save the universe

One time Mirror Seven is led around on a leash naked on Terok Nor

Geordi becomes captain of the USS Challenger, decides it's not for him because plot, and goes back to engineering on the Enterprise

Kirk is shot on the bridge and dies

Kirk gets better

They watch 3D holos of old Doctor Who episodes in the Enterprise rec room

The Enterprise also has an AI named Moira, which was Zora long before Zora

The TOS crew get together for one last mission. About three times.

There's a Perry Mason book except it's about Kirk's lawyer from that TOS episode

Data 2.0 owns and runs a massive gambling empire on Orion

Spock keeps randomly showing up everywhere in the TNG era

Scotty keeps randomly showing up everywhere in the TNG era

Bones keeps randomly showing up everywhere in the TNG era

You're on Tumblr so you already know about Killing Time

There's a guy named McKenzie Calhoun and he's a total badass and captains a ship of weirdos and misfits

Kirk comes back from the dead, saves the galaxy repeatedly, has an intersex child (who identifies as male) with a Romulan/Klingon hybrid

Kirk beats up Worf

Kirk's child has superpowers

Kirk's child saves the galaxy at age 6

The Kirk stuff is 100% ignored in the other novels

About 50% of the novels are ignored in the other 50%, and the ones that are meant to be in direct continuity with each other aren't always quite

Just like the TV shows and movies, then

Lwaxana Troi meets Q, and it goes as well as you'd expect

Someone tells Data, yes you idiot you had emotions all along and he's like, oh shit you're right

McCoy is left in command of the Enterprise as a joke by Kirk, who is then immediately kidnapped

Ro Laren is captain of Deep Space Nine

Picard/Beverly is a thing, they get married and have a child named Rene. No running away and raising your kid in secret here

Riker and Troi are married, serve on the Titan together with a bunch of adorable weirdos and have a daughter named Tasha

You get to watch all the 24th century characters die horribly in the end along with their entire universe. Holy fuck it's a bleak horror show. Personally, I love it. But if that's not your cup of tea I'd skip the Coda trilogy

[zebaji]

au where I mix up all of the Ninja's powers and backstories into a slushie mess and see what happens.

So far I have:

Wu gets bitten by the Great Devourer and becomes super manipulative and toxic, as he tries to make Ninjago perfect, neat, and orderly with the Golden weapons. (Think lord business from the lego movie) Too bad he refuses to use his Oni side to obtain four arms to use them together.

Garmadon still trains under Chen and practices the Dark arts, but understands the balance of good and evil, and is filled with guilt over the fact that Wu got bitten when it should have been him. Wu, who doesn't like that Garmadon leans into "evil" practices and banishes him to the underworld.

The Green Ninja is Morro, who is biologically Wu’s son. (yeah, you thought canon morro was bad, this morro is so much worse since he's literally the weapon in making Ninjago in Wu's image) His personality is pretty much the same as canon (perfectionist, obsessive, crazy) it's just that he is in fact the Green Ninja and Wu enables him a lot.

Before everyone figures out that Morro is the Green Ninja, they think it might be Kai, who is the brother of Maya and has the power of Wind. He's Morro's replacement in this au, in the sense that he is also desperate to become the Green Ninja by whatever means necessary, and Wu pits Morro and Kai in a rivalry to see who becomes the Green Ninja. And Morro, who cannot fail his father, becomes violent and kills Kai. Kai isn't great in this au either and ends up in the cursed realm and later becomes a ghost.

Misako sees how problematic Wu is and after Garmadon gets banished, she runs away with baby Lloyd and tries to take Morro too, but Wu freaks out and thinks she tried to kidnap Morro so that she could use the Green Ninja's power for her own gain and he kills her to "save Morro," and thinks he kills Lloyd too.

Lloyd's actually fine, and just grows up at Darkley's until he gets adopted by the Royal Family, much to his dismay, and becomes the Quiet One who is willing to punch a dude to get his dad back. Because he doesn't have his powers, he relies a lot on his dragon and Oni heritage.

Nya is the only child of Ray and Maya, and when they disappear, Chen finds and adopts her, and she becomes the sister of Skylor. Despite having the element of fire, she relies heavily on mechs, and loves to invent, letting her sister use her powers while she designs Chen’s button chair.

Pixal is Ninja of Ice and still was created by Cyrus Borg, so Zane is still in the Birchwood Forest, forgotten and stuck there until Lloyd finds him and offers him a place in the cult group he’s starting.

Cole's dad dies, and while he tries to honor his dad's dancing legacy, he still inherits his powers and is forced to become a ninja. He's still a popular entertainer and pretty well known in Ninjago as such, and he really doesn't want to be a Ninja full-time and is only doing it because he's scared of what Wu will do to his loved ones. I do not know what power he should get and I am open to ideas.

Jay was raised as Cliff Gordon's son and so he's wealthy but he is also extremely talented in robotics. He and Cyrus Borg collaborate a lot and is best friends with Pixal. He does not have powers and tries to help Cole get out of the team. Honestly, I have no idea about Jay either.

Harumi releases the Serpentine after her parent sends her to a boarding school and forget about her. She does not want to be forgotten, and in a rage over it, discovers she can control Lightning.

Morro finds her and takes her in, reassuring her that there is a place for her on his team.

The team consists of Morro, Ash, Cole, Pixal, and now Harumi, all trained under Wu.

And then Lord Garmadon crawls out of the Underworld, eyes glowing purple and with four arms, demanding to see his son, and everyone starts to panic because they are pretty sure Lloyd is dead.

[defira85]

With the proviso that I have not finished the game and I in a really shitty mood about my Rook's body type breaking in the romance cut scene specifically, I have thoughts-

I saw a post that said that Veilguard is so fundamentally determined to say nothing that sometimes it comes out as incredibly offensive with just how aggressively noncommittal it is

and that's really it, isn't it

Shadow Dragon Rook got into trouble for saving slaves, and the Viper is a vigilante saving slaves, but we never SEE any slavery. We see poverty and abuse, but there's no talk about the rigid castes within Tevinter. Maybe the Venatori were drawn primarily from the lower classes of mages, those without family seats in the Magisterium, who were drawn to the promise that they could accumulate power instead of being trapped in a system that dooms them to failure and looks down its nose at them for being born not important enough

Tevinter's whole thing across the series has been slavery!!! And we get one or two codex entries about how Dorian gave such a nice speech about "slavery bad :c" and that's it

The Crows are so utterly toothless. Just an aggressively white-washed cool vigilante group, no hint of their child abuse or slavery practices, where's the acknowledgement that they make a lot of their money from slavery?

Lucanis' year in solitary confinement and torture is just window dressing. Again, haven't finished the game, but no examination of it at all 45 hours in. There's so much literature about what solitary confinement does to a person, how it's a form of torture, and just thinking about how much of Zevran's past abuses were woven into his characterisation so carefully... it's like chalk and cheese

Davrin once again filling the role of Bioware's obligatory "elf who hates being an elf and aggressively denies all elven heritage" companion

And like... every mini villain is just someone who was too ambitious and that made them eeeeevil. All the companions' rivals get dropped on Rook without any build-up, no casual conversations to say "oh I had this ex-friend/rival/foe who shaped me". Maybe I've been spoiled by Baldur's Gate 3 and how carefully all of the companions' abusers were woven into who they were as a character and how it shaped them and their story. Gortash didn't just come out of nowhere, Karlach was mentioning him in chapter 1! There were codex entries about him to be found weeks before you met him! But who the fuck is Johanna Hezenberouasertrousers or whatever the fuck her name is. She was ambitious, TOO ambitious, so she's evil and Emmrich's mirror. Cyrian joined the Forgotten Ones, and sure the Evanuris turned out to be super evil abusers that all the myths and religion was super wrong about but this is WORSE CYRIAN HOW COULD YOU

Don't get me started on whatever the fuck the game is trying to say about religion and about faith. Gods, it's so mid 2000s atheist edgelord memeing "unfortunately for you.... I have reason and logic on my side....... checkmate religion..." There's no nuance at all!!!!! Just "religion is a lie so faith dies now" no acknowledgement of faith as a cultural force!!! Of CULTURE being shaped by faith!!!! Okay I said don't get me started, I'll stop now

Whatever the fuck they're doing with the Qunari. They really just have gone back to their incredibly racist roots of "islamic borg" as David Gaider called it but they've made it even more offensive by making them all so... I don't know what word I'm looking for is, but it's about the sex appeal. How they've got their entire chiselled asses out. They look like they're trying to take part in Mister Bodybuilder Treviso, not a vaguely regimented army that was incredibly carefully structured up until about 5 minutes ago

This was more than what I intended to write lmfao. It's a fun game! I'm enjoying myself, as a fun action RPG. But after Baldur's Gate 3, it's just so utterly spineless. It has nothing to say. Evil people are evil, good people are good. It doesn't take a stand about anything. It is so determined not to be offensive to anyone at all that I find it gross

I'll finish it, and then I'll go back to BG3

[biblioflyer]

The Cardassian War was worse than you probably think.

I wrote a lot about the Maquis with every intention of posting quite a bit more about it, but then I got cold feet. Its actually been a while since I watched some of the critical Maquis episodes. In some instances, I haven't seen them since they aired. So I decided to go back and rewatch some of them. I started with TNG 7x20 "Journey's End." Where I expected a very strident lecture on the evils of forced relocation, I found something deeply nuanced and something that also reframed how I understood the Federation's conflict with the Cardassians.

If you're in a hurry, the big revelation was that, per Picard, millions of people died in the Cardassian - Federation War.

If you haven't been part of debates about what the scale of the Star Trek setting is or are more attuned to more recent series, millions may not actually seem that many people. Star Wars and 40k fans are probably squinting and wondering what all the fuss is about.

So let me provide some additional context. This is going to be mostly Doylist in nature, i.e. "meta" commentary.

Millions of people equals thousands of Galaxy-class starships. At a time when we'd seen not more than two Galaxy-class starships on screen at the same time and per the Next Generation Technical Manual (which was quasi-canon at the time, essentially given high regard by creatives working on Trek but always subject to being overruled if the needs of the story dictated) there could be as few as five Galaxy-class starships active at the time, but perhaps eleven including the initial batch of six and assuming the six framed out but not completed hulls were built to completion and subtracting poor Yamato.

Just a few seasons before, the loss of 39 ships and 11,000 personnel at Wolf 359 was considered a pretty devastating loss.

If it were strictly Starfleet and Cardassian military personnel, millions would be staggering losses representing the equivalent of thousands of starships or some mix of ships and major stations or ground forces. My gut tells me that given the way TNG seems to be a smaller scale setting than Trek would later be depicted, this wasn't intended to be solely military losses but also inclusive of and maybe even disproportionately falling upon civilians. Given that the Federation doesn't directly target civilians as a general rule, I do have some theories on how this might come about: namely by making space warfare messier than its generally presented: Star Wars and The Expanse have both done great representation of how conflicts that play out in space can still result in collateral damage to civilian stations and planetary settlements.

Notably, later series like DS9 and Discovery will do a "soft" retcon of Starfleet to include as many as 7,000 ships in the 23rd century and perhaps around 30,000 in the 24th century (citation: Ron Moore & extrapolation based on fleet size quotes) but while this isn't a hard retcon in that it doesn't override firmly declared facts and figures, it also doesn't seem like these larger numbers were ones TNG was operating with when it threw a mere 40 ships at the Borg or had Starfleet yet again being unable to avoid pulling ships out of dock mid-refit and stuffing Enterprise crew on them to catch the Romulans smuggling arms to House Duras.

Regardless of how the numbers breakdown, this was anything but analogous to a protracted series of border skirmishes and raids ala the colonial theaters of various European imperial wars, which full disclosure, was my working mental model for understanding this conflict.

So why does this matter for understanding the Maquis?

I think it matters for understanding the Federation's motives in signing what most fans and many in universe characters feel is a "bad" peace with the Cardassians. This wasn't a vanity war that super powers sometimes find themselves in where they'll fight for years in some corner of the globe that is strategically irrelevant to the imperial heartland but has somehow gained incredible psychological significance in the minds of defense planners, politicians, and yellow journalists. This is a conflict that cost the Federation quite a bit of blood for planets that are described as having been settled for at most a few decades and, at the very least, we've never really heard anyone from the Federation complain about a lack of satisfactory M-class planets.

Of course as represented by the North American Indians (TNG's term, not mine) that had settled on Dorvan V, from the perspective of the colonists, they had roots and distinctive cultural identities that they desired to have respected and felt warranted their own planets. From the Federation's perspective, these are people who have barely settled their worlds and one world should be as good as another. If you run the numbers through "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" then this starts looking even more tilted towards the Federation's perspective.

Now the counter argument is the bog standard opposition to authoritarianism and violent revisionists argument. This is the argument that the moral responsibility for avoiding catastrophic loss of life is on the one who is the first to use violence to try to advance their interests, at least at the level of astropolitics. In this framing it is not the responsibility of the Federation to mollify the Cardassians by conceding on irrational fears or immoral demands.

A cynical reading of this argument might find within it the notion that the Federation should just do what it wants, as long as its consistent with the Federation's values, and if the Cardassians have a problem with it up to the point of attacking, then the Federation should fight back and not stop until it reaches Cardassia and overthrows the military junta in charge or at the very least, removes any Cardassian presence from Federation borders and denudes Cardassian capacity to strike across the border.

The idea here being that conceding to the Cardassians rewards them for their willingness to use violence to achieve their goals, which further incentivizes them to use violence, and arguably did incentivize them to use violence as evidenced by accusations of poisoning wells and damaging infrastructure to drive ex-Federation citizens off the worlds that were ceded to the Cardassian Union.

But this argument has always contained within it the implicit assumption that the Federation had the capacity to rollback Cardassian warmaking capability and to keep up pressure on the Cardassians until the Cardassians cry uncle. A war in which millions died and where the Federation is trading away planets is not one that seems to imply the Federation had the capacity to hammer the Cardassians until they relented or there was a deficit of will to fight this war to the hilt, recognizing that pushing the war all the way to the orbit of Cardassia Prime would result in Union space being ungoverned and insecure until the infrastructure and ships were replaced.

Anyone who has watched the outcomes of the Global War on Terror or the various civil wars and revolutions that have happened in recent years should be very cognizant that a lack of order and security often results in problems being exported to adjacent regions. Problems meaning traumatized and impoverished refugees seeking safety and sustenance in places ill equipped to provide for them materially and often with some or a lot of mutual incoherence and mistrust happening at the cultural level as norms clash. Problems also meaning unaccounted for military equipment finding its way into the hands of revolutionaries, terrorists, and pirates who pursue their own goals and survival needs through the use of weapons on anyone who has something worth taking.

The United States did not kill a million or more people in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other MENA region countries through the use of weapons from 2001 to date. Iraq from 1991 to 2001 didn't have a million excess deaths* because of bombs detonating in people's homes, those deaths resulted from damage to infrastructure and internal supply chains because civilization is actually rather fragile and even people we regard as "less developed" are not meaningfully closer to nature and more resilient than we in the WEIRD category. If anything they exist in a more delicate state because they are often living on more marginal and stressed land with infrastructure that lacks redundancies or substantial state capacity to move people and resources around quickly to address sudden need.

*It should be noted that while these figures are widely quoted, the methodology has been questioned. I would encourage readers who want to get their historical facts correct to examine the evidence and decide whether Iraq sanctions are something one wants to use in a context other than describing the potential consequences of a fictional war.

When considering how to deal with Russia and its invasion of Ukraine, there are moral debates about how hard to press the civilian economy. Namely because so much of the infrastructure and daily necessities of life in modern countries count as "dual use." As in there are legitimate civilian uses that it doesn't seem productive to deny people: transistors are essential for access to information - both state controlled but also outside channels, and operate everything from thermostats to live saving medical equipment. The distinction between a transistor appropriate for running an insulin pump and one for a hypersonic missile is increasingly blurry.

An analogy could easily be drawn to isolinear chips and replicators. We in the fandom often assume that the Federation's ability to be precise in its application of lethal violence is practically omniscient and omnipotent, and that with its august technology, it has been liberated from having to make hard decisions. Yet if the Federation wants to destroy the warmaking capability of the Cardassians, how "deep" into the Cardassian infrastructure does it need to go?

Can you imagine Captain Picard sleeping well at night after calling a senior staff meeting to debate the legitimacy of striking a fusion reactor in a dense urban area that has been unplugged from the civilian grid and hooked up to an industrial replicator pumping out photon torpedo thrusters?

Further, the moral and political science assumptions of the Federation seem to rule out the idea that Cardassian civilians suffering and dying is an appropriate form of justice for Federation lives nor does suffering seem to predictably and reliably lead to revolution. Historical evidence is at best mixed and perhaps even damning. Try wrapping your head around the idea that Russian forces continued to fight their foreign enemies in WW1 at the same time as different Russian formations were fighting each other during the civil war that broke out as a direct consequence of World War 1. In short, while the war had certainly radicalized much of the public, there was still a lot of anger and blame directed to those who had been killing Russians before Russians were killing Russians.

So what is the Federation to do?

Keep fighting a war it probably wasn't technically losing but definitely didn't seem to be winning?

And perhaps the Federation couldn't win without paying a cost in both Federation and Cardassian lives, many of whom might be noncombatants, that was unpalatable?

What was it supposed to do after Wolf 359?

Postscript:

A bit more about the plot of the episode itself. "Journey's End" is probably one of the best TNG moral dilemma episodes. There are critiques to be made obviously. That the Indigenous people depicted seem to be a bit generic to the uneducated eye and do not claim a specific tribal / national identity feels weird at the end of 2024, but it also provokes an interesting discussion about the degree to which there isn't already a lot of syncretism among peoples who have experienced massive depopulation and loss of political agency, whether through intentional genocides, loss of territory, or disease. Its not hard to imagine this "North American Indian" identity found on Dorvan V being a syncretic identity that emerged in the 2100s once interstellar colonization really took off. Its strongly implied to be a "fresh start" movement that was itself controversial and many indigenous North Americas opted not to join them; but its membership could be plausibly drawn from many cultural identities.

However, the moral dilemma at the heart of the episode is handled with exquisite care and steadfastly refuses to make anyone objectively the bad guy. Every Federation character, even hardline consequentialist Admiral Nechayev, is respectful to the people of Dorvan V and mindful of their historical trauma even as it recognizes that the Federation's own interests are largely incompatible with respecting their demands.

Even Gul Evek, the named Cardassian leader of the show, relents after an impassioned plea from Picard. Evek admits to losing two out of three sons in the war and speculates that if the Dorvan V inhabitants leave the Cardassians alone, they will be left alone. Evek was convincing at least to this member of the audience. The framing felt hopeful rather than like everyone was being asked to swallow a Targ dung sandwich.

In checking to make sure I spelled his name correctly, I've become aware that Evek becomes a recurring character and I'm intrigued to see if there are clues to be found as to whether you could argue that he was lying or that events took on a life of their own and Evek was simply proven wrong. Its possible that Dorvan V was largely spared but the Obsidian Order or other elements of the Cardassian government decided to act in places it thought the Federation wouldn't be paying as close attention and the radicalization of the Maquis in turn radicalized Evek.

After all, since that the Cardassian Union was in effect waging a proxy war in the Demilitarized Zone, it would take little to convince some Cardassians that a guerilla movement with ex-Starfleet in almost all command roles and using Federation hardware represented a Federation proxy war with top level support. Which would in turn require the Federation to at least make some efforts at combating the Maquis in order to sell the Cardassians on the idea that the Maquis are not a plausibly deniable arm of Starfleet Intelligence.

But the Maquis are obviously are going to do what they need to do to defend their worlds, whether its their actual colonies or because they object to Starfleet sitting on its hands in the face of reports of atrocities.

In retrospect, for an era that was just testing the waters for multi-season arcs, this is such smart and tragic world building. Unlike say, the plot to destroy Qonos in Discovery or the anti-Changeling bioweapon being the Chekov's gun necessary to resolve the Dominion War, very little about the Maquis arc feels contrived and much more well supported by the world building around it.

[arcadia75]

Why Janeway needs a therapist

I got a request for a follow-up to list out why Janeway also needs to see a therapist

Note: I'm treating at least Mosaic as canon. Some of the Voyager stuff might be out of order and probably forgetting stuff.

Got captured by Cardassians and had to listen to her Captain be tortured (and was possibly tortured herself)

Lost her fiancé and father in a shuttle accident, in which she could maybe have saved one of them but didn't

We have no knowledge of what she may have been thru in her career before Voyager. Wolf 359? Other battles?

Lost x% of her crew when thrown to the Delta Quadrant

Made the decision to blow up the Array that stranded the remainder of her crew 70 years from home

Effectively lost another fiancé by stranding herself 70 years from home

Had to deal with a race wanting to steal her crews organs

Had to deal with a Cardassian spy on her ship

Had to deal with integrating the Maquis crew into her Starfleet crew

First Officer got kidnapped by above Cardiassian spy

Got hyper-evolved into a salamander and had babies with her helmsman

Had to deal with Q, on multiple occasions

Saw a double of herself blow up her ship to save them, plus had to accept a duplicate Ops officer and baby onto her ship

Had to kill one being to get her Security officer and Morale officer back

Got stranded on a planet with her first officer, fell in love with him, and then got rescued where they had to go back to being just friends

Got ship taken over by hostile force and then stranded on another planet, where crew died

Had to rescue her Ops officer and Helmsman from prison

Ferengi fucked up a way home

Had to deal with time traveling back to 1996 Earth and saving the future

Single handedly fought a macrovirus to save the ship

Died. Then gaslight by an entity posing as her dead father

First Officer brainwashed by a bunch of former Borg

Had to save officers from a rouge holodeck program written by the Cardassian spy from 3 years ago

Had to make a deal with the Borg, that her First Officer kind of went back on and then fought with him

Had to rehabilitate a former Borg drone

First Officer brainwashed to fight in a alien war

Brain chemistry messed with by aliens doing experiments

Destroyed the ship in a timeline that reset

Fiancé officially broke up with her.

Aliens captured the ship and brainwashed entire crew to participate in war simulations

Switched bodies with some of her crew (was this in Vis a Vis or just fanfic?)

Had to deal with the Omega particle

Alien that they all forget was on their ship and fell in love with her First Officer

Duplicated into goo, then dies later when she doesn't realize she's a duplicate

Major depressive episode during a part of space with no stars

Gets her crew killed by deciding to try a slipstream drive

Demoted helmsman for defying orders

Had to play mind games with alien who wanted to fuck her

Had to discipline her love struck ops officer when she's not getting any herself

Drove her First Officer/Best Friend/Would be lover to the brink of madness to save the ship

More temporal mechanics shenanigans

Found another Starfleet ship and then they turned out to be killers and crazy

Holographic boyfriend malfunctions

Former alien crew member who evolved to a higher being comes back super pissed off

Willingly assimilated into a Borg

Had to help First Officer put the ship back together after it was split into 37 different timeframes

Brainwashed to work in a factory, falls in love with an alien, forced to give him up when her memory gets restored

Had to deal with future self coming back and telling her the awful things about the future

Watched First Officer/Best Friend/Would be Lover get involved with her protégé

At least a year we don't know about. Hopefully she saw a therapist

Promoted to Admiral then sends Starfleet flagship on a mission that costs the life of one of their most beloved officers

Three years we don't know about. Hopefully she at least took a couple vacations

Sends Former First Officer / Best Friend / Would be Lover on a mission where he gets lost 52 years into the future

Spends possibly 3 years looking for said First Officer / Best Friend / Would be Lover

Retires! Buys a nice house! Gardens!

Forced out of retirement cuz synthetic beings attack Mars shipyards

[problematic-yuri-poll]

Problematic Femslash Ship Tournament - Losers' Round 3

J7 - Kathryn Janeway x Seven of Nine (Star Trek Voyager) VS. Kanabiki - Kanade Otonokoji x Hibiki Otonokoji (Super Danganronpa Another 2)

Winner will go up against Harumiku.

Info and propaganda under cut! This will not be spoiler-free.

Problematic elements for J7:

Age gap, position of authority, relationship sometimes construed as maternal

Problematic elements for Kanabiki:

this is an absolute trainwreck of a ship love them for that. twincest, yandere, murder, grooming, brainwashing, all that fun stuff ^_^

--

Propaganda for J7:

Back when the show was airing, there was a famous j/7 fanfic in which Seven was recaptured by the Borg and Janeway gave up her ship to infiltrate the Borg cube alone because she couldn't let Seven go but she couldn't risk her ship and her crew. Not a year later, the official episode Dark Frontier aired, in which Seven was recaptured by the Borg… and canon Janeway absolutely did risk her entire ship and crew to get Seven back. They challenge each other in interesting ways, with different kinds of experience and knowledge so that the balance isn't completely lopsided, and also some things they both have to learn together.

Propaganda for Kanabiki:

when you first meet the twins, kanade comes off as the soft and sensitive younger twin and hibiki the loud and brash older twin with a tendency to bully her younger sister. this is what hibiki believes their dynamic is too, for the record. you will gradually realize something's up with kanade when she starts talking in detail about murder methods during the trials, and it all comes to a climax when kanade decides to murder a girl she's noticed hibiki getting close to. in their trial, you (as well as hibiki, for the first time) discover that kanade has, for the twins' whole life, been killing anyone that hibiki gets close to or shows affection for. that kanade isn't the soft and shy girl she presents as, but an egotistical serial killer who thinks that she and hibiki are above the rest of humanity and is incestuously obsessed with hibiki because she deems her the only one good enough to be with her. that kanade has effectively learned to brainwash hibiki into a trance state wherein she will obey any of kanade's commands and not remember what happened when she wakes up. hibiki learns then that kanade had put her into this state, and taken advantage of the perfect sync they have as twins and the ultimate musicians, to kill hibiki's new friend together, striking at exactly the same time so that both of them are considered to have dealt the killing blow and both twins are executed together. during their execution, when kanade witnesses hibiki get decapitated, she makes a final expression of orgasmic pleasure, and then dies herself. love these girls!!

[carsontheweirdo]

!TWS: Death, sewerslide, fire!

This is my info for my oc dia so far!! :3

BASIC INFO

Name: dia Lovelock (Later lastname changed to borg)

Pronouns: she/they

Gender: enby

Sexuality: lesbian Ace (up until DR; only a lesbian in DR)

Dia is cyrus' adopted child!!!!!!!

Backstory: Dias house gets burnt down when she was 6. Her parents die but dia survives. (Scar by her eye as a result)

She then gets sent to multiple foster homes and such and she didn't stay in any of them permanently. She was treated like garbage in every one. Until when shes 14 (right before S3) cyrus finds her and adopts her

S3: Dia ‘dies’ by cryptor (Stabbed in the stomach ; scar as a result)

Gets revived and returns in the final episode

S4: gets super depressed after zanes death and pixals disappearance and attempts (Stabs her arm; amputated arm as a result)

Cyrus makes her a prosthetic before they go to chens island

S5 + 6: nothing major

S7: has a major outburst after cyrus gets kidnapped and tries to badly hurt the time twins ; some of her oni features show but she doesn't notice

S8/9/10: in S8, her and another oc of mine, crypto, start dating

(Crypto is enby too, uses they/them and has been working at borg industries since the beginning)

Back to dia!!

She's Traumatized by the SOG taking over borg tower, and also traumatized during MOTI when cyrus is frozen, also starts to question if shes human or not

Fire/ice chapter: gets traumatized (again!!) By Zane's Dissapearence and also gets super depressed, but she goes with the ninja to find zane

Prime empire: Oni form revealed during episode 3 (?) when the mechanic and co enter borg tower

Stays in ninjago w zane n pix

Seabound: traumatized by nyas death

Crystalized: Depressed up until nyas revival, wants to get revenge on the overlord for what he did to cyrus

Dragons rising: found in S1PT2 in the administration (I'm still cooking up DR lore for her, kinda waiting for S3 to release)

@champmorado YOU WANTED DIA INFO!! YOU GOT IT!!!! :D

@erosionn

[inevitablecorgi]

So I went to see Old 97s the other night and, see my vision, "Longer Than You've Been Alive" as a Big Four Song. It's a long song and I'm editing out the parts that are "booze, drugs and rock & roll" specific but you still get..

This part that's Nadalcaraz, and Murray with Draper, Roger and Novak with the young guys at Laver Cup:

We've been doing this longer than you've been alive Propelled by some mysterious drive And they still let me do it as weird as that seems And I do it most nights and then again in my dreams Infinite hallways and giant hotels Dressing room looks about as good as it smells

. . .

2. Time on the road, highs and lows over the years

We've been in nightclubs and we've been in bars Honky-tonks and theaters from Memphis to Mars Most of our shows were a triumph of rock Although some nights I might have been checking the clock

3. This next verse is EXTREMELY Andy Murray:

I'm only human though I'm super at times I jump off of risers I should not have climbed Rock jumps won't kill you until one of them does Well they'll say "He died doing what he loves"

4. Pick your ship:

We got our share of loving in our past Although we were all looking for someone who'd last

Well, it must be hard to get partnered with me Some narcissism, some OCD [OK THIS ONE IS Novak/Rafa though]

Well love that comes easy's a fake or a fluke Love is a marathon, sometimes you puke

Rock 'n' roll's been very very good to me The open road's the only place I wanna be

5. The grind of fame/the long tour:

I'm not crazy about songs that get self-referential And most of this stuff should be kept confidential Aw but who even gives half a fuck anymore You should know the truth, it's both a blast and a bore

6. McEnroe, Borg, Connors. . . Rock stars were once such mythical creatures Up there with Presidents, playmates and preachers

7. ALL OF THEM (but maybe we start with Novak doing a striptease):

Now I've made a living out of shaking my ass And if you offer me an office, I'd have to pass But our jobs are all jobs, and sometimes they suck I love what I do, and I've had pretty good luck

8. And the great moments...

All the fans are all clapping screaming and squealing And I won't lie to you, that's a pretty sweet feeling And I might butt heads with the guys in my band But I never once went to work for The Man The men and the woman like you him & her We're sharing this night that will soon be a blur

We've been doing this longer than you've been alive Get on the bus, and tell the driver to dri-i-ive

[star-trek-fandom-confessions]

#250

"At the risk of being accused of being a racist white man or female misogynist, I fail to understand how the existence of La'an Noonien-Singh on the Enterprise fits into the rest of Trek canon or is even necessary. SNW's expansion on Uhura, Chapel, and Number One's characters I can understand since Uhura is the main girl of TOS and Una and Christine are TOS characters too. Even Erica being Sulu's predecessor doesn't really mess with TOS canon too much. Same with Pelia being Scotty's, or even the expansion of T'Pring's character since she is the fiance of a main TOS character Spock.

Like, don't get me wrong, she's not the first Trek character to have a "famous" relative, but if being Khan's descendant and called "augment" is so bad, why didn't she or her parents change their last name? To me, that is the biggest facepalm moment since Magnus and Erin Hansen deciding to bring little Annika on their Borg studies mission. Heck, I'd argue that Una's augment prejudice storyline is better-written and less ham-fisted since her being Illyrian doesn't fuck TOS canon too much, plus her super strength and perfect immune system make her a bigger "threat" to Starfleet than La'an's last name and ability to be a better drunk than everyone else. I also feel like La'an's character hinges on her last name and retconning of the Gorn. Idk how to explain it, but what else is there to fall back on compared to other characters? Even the crush on Kirk is strange because she retroactively never existed during the events of "Space Seed" and The Wrath of Khan, and Kirk never mentions her during those events. One could argue how TOS Chapel is a "passive" or "shallow" character compared to La'an, but TOS Chapel's personality can still be explained by her grief and regret over past relationships with Spock and Roger Korby.

Like don't get it wrong, this rant isn't a hate-boner on La'an herself, I'm just very critical of her character's existence and how it will fit into the future of SNW and TOS' canon events. Does she die of Gorn parasite eggs laid inside her? Is her super-duper special Khan DNA the reason TOS era Gorns look more human? Do she and Dr. Marcus become friends, or love rivals over Kirk? (I personally hope it's the former because I hate prolonged love triangles and toxic Kirk/La'an shippers.) If she even dies in SNW, is it to contrast with Khan being awoken from cryosleep in some kind of narrative irony? Or does Temporal Investigations mess up and screw her out of existence? I don't think I would say her character is boring but my God, does it's existence confuse me sometimes."

[cheeeerie]

Nya Pixal's dorme suit whatever it's called mates should be Vania and akita!! That would be fun!

Tell me about the parents I wanna know the relation ships the gang have with their parents

That WOULD be fun!!

Also I know some other places do it differently so if anyone is confused: where I come from, your roommate is the person you share a bedroom with, but if your room is connected to someone else’s by a bathroom or a common room, that’s your suitemate, so that's what I mean when I say roommate or suite mate :)

Alright, the College AU Gang and their parents in order of how good/existant they are!

Nya and Kai have been in foster care since their parents died when Kai was 6 and Nya was 5. Neither of them remember their parents, and they never became particularly close to any if their foster parents until they moved in with Wu a whole ten years later. They lived with him for two years until they both graduated high school (Nya graduated early so she could stay with Kai) and moved out for college, and they still stay with him over breaks. That's actually how they met Lloyd, he's their foster cousins :)

Zane is the other orphan, he was raised by a single dad that died during his senior year of high school. He doesn’t talk about it very often but he thinks about it a lot. Pixal is the only one who knows much about it (she knew Dr. Julien growing up, he and Borg were work friends, and Zane and Pixal went to th same private prep school and were kind of childhood frenemies), so she's the only one Zane will talk to about it. The rest of them just know that he doesn't have parents anymore.

Pixal's relationship with her father is... strained. She never had an other parent so it was just the two of them growing up, and they were super close. They still talk and see each other all the time, but since she left the nest and started expanding her world view a bit, she's become kind of critical of his business practices and what exactly Borg Industry's values are. Whereas most of their conversations used to revolve around work, now both of them carefully don't mention it so that they don't end up in a screaming match. She also doesn't love being recognized as Borg's daughter all the time, she wants to be recognizedfor her own merits.

Cole is pretty close with his dad, but that’s kind of a recent development. His dad was a classic dance-parent growing up and put way too much pressure on him, which really intensified when Lilly died when Cole was in his early teens. Cole even quit dance for a year. However thanks to the magic of family therapy, Lou is now much more supportive and he and Cole are very close :) however Cole still gets super embarassed when he sees his dad on campus. Lou tries his best to give Cole is own space, but they have dinner together at least once a week.

Lloyd's parents divorced when he was a baby but he's still close with both of them. His mom is actually a professor too, though she is MUCH better at being professional about it than Lou is with Cole. Lloyd wasn't as close with his dad growing up, since he mostly stayed with his mom or with Wu when she was out of town, but he really enjoys living with his dad and step dad now, even though he is pretty eager to move on campus to be closer with his friends.

Jay is by far the closest with his parents, they call him every day. Ed and Edna are very supportive of everything he does and they absolutely ADORE all his friends, which is why they make sure they include goodies for them in their frequent care packages. Jay doesn't bring his friends home with him often, just because they live in a trailer and there's not really any space for six extra young adults, but Ed and Edna DO come to visit him at university and will take the entire gang out to dinner. If they call Jay while he's hanging out with the other's he'll put them on speaker so they can talk to whoever he's with, which means that they are always up to date on the goings on of the group.

TY FOR THE ASK!!!

[giddlygoat]

tbh i did not know who cyrus borg is nor have i ever interacted with the ninjago fandom but i am obsessed about him. blorbo via osmosis.

anyways if you have any headcanons about him i would like to hear them :3c

cyrus borg my beloved blorbo babygirl <3

thank you for asking about this man. he is like a chew toy for my brain. hold onto your butt bc it’s 2 am as of writing this and that’s when all the big brained stuff happens 

in his mid/late thirties and slaying <3 he started his tech business at about 17 and now he’s got a crazy monopoly on like half the city but it’s okay bc he’s a kind philanthropist and actually treats his employees like human beings so no one cares that he’s effectively one of the most powerful men in the city lmao 

i see cyrus as autistic and adhd tbh. the way he gets so hyper focused on his work that he literally does not perceive anything else around him is a bit too relatable, and he strikes me as a very brilliant man who simply does not retain information unimportant to his interests. he could tell you the precise components of the most advanced computers and explain their relationships with one another, but hell if he knows who the president is. you’re lucky if he even remembers what day it is. this man constantly uses reminders and alarms for sure. 

he’s on the aroace spectrum i think. i’m not exactly sure how but he just gives me those vibes. 

also transmasc swag tbh?? i think i’ve seen that hc around and it goes hard 

hear me out. cyrus listens to rap. this is based on absolutely nothing at all i just know it with my very being. he likes stuff with fast, predictable and heavy beats. would totally blast shit like masquerade by siouxxie sixxsta at full volume in his office. it helps him get in the zone. idk what to tell you man [<- 100% projection] 

cyrus is like. absolutely fascinated by zane. he admires dr julien’s work so much and wants to study zane under a microscope. as he gets to know zane better personally though, i think he would realize that he has been looking at things through the lense of an engineer for so long that he forgot zane was just like his human family. it’s not that he ever viewed zane as simply a machine, quite the opposite - he fully acknowledged that dr julien had created a full person, and an incredible one at that - but cyrus still has to remind himself that people don’t like being poked and prodded. [the moment he makes the mental connection between zane getting put on an examination table and himself getting operated on by the overlord against his will, he realizes the error in his line of thinking] 

oh yeah. the trauma! yeah cyrus might be just a little bit majorly fucked up over the overlord thing. the overlord did amputate his right arm after all, which leaves him with only one fully functioning limb. he still has nightmares about it. getting used to a prosthetic arm wouldn’t have been such a hurdle if the overlord had put any sort of thought or care into the operation, but it left him severely scarred up and just fucked in general. however! as the years pass he becomes pretty much fully accustomed to his situation and doesn’t let it inhibit his creative passions. 

also when zane died in s3 cyrus was super broken up about it and blamed himself for it in part. then, not days later his daughter disappeared for reasons he would not understand until like a year later, which totally messed him up. he inevitably threw himself into his work in an effort to not feel anything. he didn’t take very good care of himself during this time. when zane returned from chen’s island, he let pixal explain everything to cyrus, who was just glad they were alive, but the whole situation took a really long time to get over. 

when he’s hyper focused he forgets to eat/sleep etc and can run on fumes for hours before his body suddenly becomes a wet paper towel in a parking lot at 3 am and he has to konk out at his desk. thankfully he has people looking out for him, and he’s slowly getting better about it, but once he gets started sometimes the only way to stop is by brute force. 

i absolutely love @alanshee’s amazing cyrus headcanons, so you should totally go check out her takes. she has some really cool headcanons about his 16 robot children [in reference to a line where cyrus mentioned pixal was the 16th iteration, i believe] and they always make me smile so big. a lot of my headcanons are inspired by her stuff! 

[sorry for the late ass reply it’s been a crazy week and then i forgot rip but thank you sm for the ask!!!]

[ssaalexblake]

It is funny though, because at the start of the stp season a bunch of themes and plot lines were identifiable, and while i wouldn’t have picked them, that’s not an indictment to the story or writing, it just meant I wasn’t a fan. Had those plots played out, again, wouldn’t have been super happy but in an opinion kind of way. Sadly, Most of those plots that were hinted at, structured and set in motion at the start have just failed to come to fruition in any way, let alone meaningfully. It’s just devolved into. Something. I don’t even know what to call it. I would not use the word meaningful Anywhere though. 

I honestly thought this would be an examination of trauma, I thought this would be a changing of the guard in all senses where it would Basically be kid!fic where you’d slowly get intro’d to the offspring and they’d all band together to save the day in the end when the parents got themselves into heaps of problems, hence the ‘the next generation’ name of episode 1 that was So tone deaf I thought it had to be there for a reason, I expected the finale to be called ‘the next generation part 2′ as the bookend (to be fair, it might be called that, i have not looked) like how Discovery had parts one and two be the premiere and finale in S3. 

I thought maybe that we’d be given a narrative that cared about the trauma that apparently drove Beverly to act as she did, but she’s basically been a stock character. I thought maybe we’d get more than a line about how Thad dying really traumatized Deanna, I thought that since he died that Deanna and WIll would be fighting tooth and nail and worried about their daughter whom they don’t seem to have spared more than a thought for with No explanation to us as to why they’re Not terrified for her. Not only should they be worried in general, but as parents who have lost a kid, they should be beside themselves Because of that pre-existing trauma. I thought maybe somebody Might tell Data about his kids, and how one is dead but the other is alive and well and how they could meet. I thought maybe they might mention Alexander, have Worf and Picard talk about finding out they have sons years after the fact. I thought maybe Alandra LaForge might get to do more than, well, not doing anything really than being there. I am at least glad that Sidney got that small micro plot with Seven. 

I thought that maybe, with all the absurd amount of set up they gave Shaw and his borg trauma, they might Actually talk about the complexity of it At All? I would not have picked a character like him taking up so much narrative time if it were my choice, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t say something interesting with him. But not only did he take up space from so many other things, they didn’t even bother to Discuss his problems! Instead they have him show zero remorse for any of the objectively shitty things he’s said and for no reason apparent, suddenly decide to call Seven by her actual name and drop dead. He didn’t Learn. He didn’t Heal. He was stagnant. They wanted me to care that Seven’s name was used? then write it competently. It was possible, easy even. Didn’t bother with it. 

I thought maybe they’d write Raffi as a continuation of S2 Raffi instead of cherry-picking her out of her state of mind from some time before S1 started. This is all the more insulting because it was in No way necessary to do this. Raffi’s plot would have worked out just fine Without this all. She cares so much, her choosing to go undercover into danger and temptation just to save people even thought it’d be hard because of her relationship with Seven would have been just fine, but it would have involved writing about Seven and Raffi as a pair even the tiniest bit i guess. I suspect that in the finale we’ll get an ‘oh we never stopped loving each other’ moment that absolves them of degrading the gay ship by virtue of it working out fine in the end. The very end. The kind of end where there’s just no Time to go into depth about it. Really. We Wanted to but couldn’t! yeah. Sure Jan. 

I thought Maybe they’d remember the past two seasons of this show? I’ve never seen a whole season of this show more than once, I do Not know the absolute nuances of these seasons, and even I know how much they openly fucked up/disrespected what happened before and I am not running at expert level, more at casual fan level. 

It’s just that i have listed a massive list of things they could/should have done, and i cut myself off an could have gone on. And it’s not that they’ve gone with messages I didn’t like instead of the above because if i’d had the choice I wouldn’t have really even picked those things. It’s that they set up a bunch of things and didn’t bother to say hardly anything interesting they start to say they veer off of for the #nostalgia. They’re not even Trying to say something at this point. 

at first, they veered off course for the self insert white man OC whose parents Happened to be That Cool Ship Off That Show. Ain’t that a fanfic insert of the times. And yes, it was annoying. But now they seem to even be veering off even That because the gang’s back together and that offers more TNG worshipping than the Fruits of Their Loins I guess. 

The bottom line of this season should not be ‘wasn’t tng super cool!!!’. I would take a plot i do not personally like Any day over something this objectively badly written with the depth of a puddle. 

In any other show, i’d now be predicting what i think would happen in the series finale from what has happened before in the show. 

I am not bothering. There’s no point. It doesn’t matter. If there is a chance for a great moment, supported by the narrative and relevant to themes, and there is a chance for a scene where we get to see the whole TNG crew reminisce together, the latter will win out instead. A good story will be in some ways predictable to those paying attention, and i cannot predict a thing because i cannot rely on them to follow their own lead. 

[filipfatalattractionrblog]

This reminds me of my greviances with current metaplot in Magic: the Gathering. They had this HUGE story building over the course of several years. Phyrexians, the worst possible combination of the Borg, Cenobites and a religious cult, took over a whole world and then slowly but steadily built towards invasion on every world there is. And then it finally happenned. March of the Machines. Phyrexians simutaniously invaded every world in Magic canon. They were rebuked and eventually their whole world has been exiled outside known Multiverse and a different world, long thought destroyed, returned to take its place. But the events in this story were carrying HUGE Rammiffications. On Greek-inspired Theros several Gods either died or have been turned into Phyrexians and then slain. The Sun grew dark, oceans withdrew, forges went cold, wilds withered, Death himself succumbed. On Norse-inspired Kaldheim their equivalent of Yggdrassil was burned down and their versions of Fenrir, Yormungandr and Rattoskr assimilated and slain. On dead world of Amonketh, where life and magic was running out, the oil and blood of slain Phyrexians were shown revitalizing the plane. On New Capenna one of five mob families have been decimated, another had to turn their source of wealth into weapon and they only managed to repell the invaders by dropping highest of three layers of their city, where the elites lived, on enemy commander, killing her. Some of most powerful monsters on Ixalan and Zendikarr have been assimilated and killed, so was one of super powerful dragons running Tharkir. Each of them would leave huge power vaccum. On fairy-tale like Eldraine all Fey Courts have been exterminated. So what Magic has done with rammifications just ONE of those things would have on each of its worlds? Jack and Shit. Ever since March of Machiens Ended, they either put their expansions on brand new worlds, like wild west-inspired Thunder Junction, or try to do everything to avoid talking about the invasion. Expansions returning to Ixalan, Eldraine and Ravnica took places, respectively, underground, in uncharted before forest and inside a single mansion, just to avoid comitting to what horrible thing just occured in each of these worlds. They'll likely keep this up until people stop asking, just so they can say "enough time passed everything went back to normal". So many story and drama possibilities threw away because it would be too hard to sell or marketing department was afraid people would get bored of it. The tragedy of a huge shared universe is that only a huge, souless corproation, that has no interests utilizing its full potential, can actually sustain one.

The thing is that the most interesting and novel invention of the MCU is a universe where billions of people turned into dust and then were physically reconstituted on the spot five years later, in a world that had just barely adapted to their absence.

That is wild. That is intense! That is a series of pathos-ridden emotionally complex doorstoppers waiting to happen. Half the entire world! All dead! And somehow we coped with that! And now we have to cope with them all being back?

A whole street of empty houses--surely not everyone there became ash. Some of them moved to better places, now opened by the mass mortality. Some of them died afterward. Who will live there now? Even if inheritances are reversed by resurrection, surely leases aren't renewed. What the fuck happens to everyone who remarried?

What happens to the children snapped back to a world where their parents didn't survive, or the reverse?

But they had to then hastily smooth over this utterly batshit sci-fi premise and get the world mostly back to normal working order as rapidly as possible, without too much emphasis on how literally every person in existence has been placed in a mason jar by a narcissist and shaken twice in five years.

So they could get on with more superhero whack-blam business, which is customarily done against a background of Normality.

This is, tragically, the most Comics thing these movies have ever done.

It is beyond satire that they did this immediately before and during a worldwide pandemic that everyone was pressured to smooth over and 'return to normal' about within 2 years if not sooner.

[fredborges98]

"Cemitério de carros elétricos na China faz crescer esquema de ‘importação cinza’ para permitir a entrada de carros elétricos usados ​​e potencialmente perigosos no mercado automotivo" Em: https://clickpetroleoegas.com.br/cemiterio-de-carros-eletricos-na-china-cresce-esquema-de-importacao-cinza-para-permitir-a-entrada-de-carros-eletricos-usados/

Parametrização- Quando o cinza se torna a regra e não a exceção ou a CHINA e sua força demolidora!

Por: Fred Borges

Parametrização-É o processo que estabelece parâmetros, padrões ou modelos, para o desenvolvimento ou processamento de alguma coisa, sendo possível realizar, a partir disso, comparações.

Parametrização no Comércio Internacional- A parametrização no processo de importação é um procedimento criado pela Receita Federal para análise das mercadorias durante o despacho aduaneiro. Essa atividade tem início a partir do registro da Declaração de Importação no Siscomex ou do registro da Duimp no Portal Único de Comércio Exterior.

Os documentos passam então por uma verificação fiscal que seleciona o canal de parametrização adequado para conferência da mercadoria.

A condução de uma mercadoria para determinado canal de parametrização na importação depende não apenas de informações prestadas pelo importador nos documentos, mas também de alguns critérios estabelecidos pela Receita Federal na IN 680/2006:

1-Regularidade fiscal do importador;

habitualidade;

2-Natureza, volume ou valor da carga;

3-Valor dos impostos incidentes ou que incidiriam na importação;

4-Origem, procedência e destinação;

tratamento tributário;

5-Característica da mercadoria;

capacidade organizacional, operacional e econômico-financeira do importador;

ocorrências verificadas em operações anteriores.

Após essa análise, a mercadoria é encaminhada para um dos quatro canais de parametrização, que são divididos pelas cores verde, amarelo, vermelho e cinza. Eles indicam a intensidade da fiscalização à qual a carga será submetida.

Canal Verde: o sistema registra o desembaraço automático da mercadoria, dispensando o exame documental e a verificação física do produto. Contudo, vale destacar que após o registro e antes de “esverdear” a Declaração fica em análise fiscal, período em que poderá ser direcionada para outro canal de conferência aduaneira, quando forem identificados indícios de irregularidade na importação.

Canal Amarelo: pelo qual será realizado o exame documental. Se não houver irregularidades, é efetuado o desembaraço e dispensada a verificação física. Se o auditor detectar alguma irregularidade na documentação, como descrição incompleta na DI, pode ser exigida a verificação física.

Canal Vermelho: a mercadoria será desembaraçada somente após exame documental e verificação física.

Canal Cinza: será realizado o exame documental, a verificação física da mercadoria e a aplicação de procedimento especial de controle aduaneiro, para verificar indícios de fraude, inclusive no que se refere ao preço declarado da mercadoria.

Em abril, o Brasil importou 40,9 mil veículos elétricos e híbridos da China, uma cifra 13 vezes maior que a do mesmo mês em 2023. Com isso, superou a Bélgica como principal destino das exportações desse tipo de carros da China, e também se tornou o segundo maior de todos os tipos de carros do gigante asiático, atrás apenas da Rússia.

O motivo, em parte, tem a ver com o imposto de importação para carros elétricos, híbridos e híbridos plug-in (em que a bateria elétrica é a fonte principal de energia), que foi retomado em janeiro deste ano e deve aumentar até o ano que vem. Vendedores chineses aproveitaram a janela para comercializar mais veículos antes que o aumento progressivo faça a taxa chegar a 35% em julho de 2026.

Além disso, quanto menos baseado em eletricidade for o carro, maior a taxa.

O Brasil implementou as taxas para importação de veículos elétricos, seja qual for o país de procedência. No mês passado, o governo de Joe Biden anunciou que as tarifas para importação apenas dos carros elétricos chineses passarão de 25% para 100%. Depois dos Estados Unidos, foi a vez da União Europeia anunciar tarifas para os mesmos produtos chineses, com taxas que podem chegar até 48% dependendo de qual for a empresa chinesa.

Ambos argumentam que a China faz uso de “práticas comerciais injustas”, com os europeus acusando especificamente “subsídios injustos” na cadeia de valor dos carros elétricos.

O dumping é uma prática na qual uma empresa comercializa um produto no mercado por um preço abaixo do custo com o objetivo de eliminar o produto concorrente que não terá margem para concorrer.

Onde há manifestações sem bases reais de dumping ou alegações de " práticas comerciais injustas" ou " subsídios injustos" ou " importação"cinza", o que existe na verdade é o protecionismo e incompetência da indústria nacional ou de blocos econômicos com práticas corporativistas e retórica política comprada pelo lobby das indústrias locais onde o consumidor ou contribuinte paga pelas " cinzas", "acinzentadas" ou " acidentadas" democracias!

Complementando não há indícios ou provas de que os carros chineses estão estabelecendo um novo "default" para estes estarem passando pura e simplesmente pelo canal cinza da parametrização.

Não há nada de "cinza" na produção de carros chineses, há pura competitividade, produtividade, efetividade e sustentabilidade.

O Brasil não permite a entrada de importações de carros usados, somente " de coleção" ou para exposição sob regime de admissão temporária.

Logo a notícia: "Cemitério de carros elétricos na China faz crescer esquema de ‘importação cinza’ para permitir a entrada de carros elétricos usados ​​e potencialmente perigosos no mercado automotivo" é uma grande inverdade e injustiça a competitividade dos carros chineses.Se os novos carros chineses não se mostrarem competitivos em termos de custos de manutenção, é outra história, quem está comprando está pagando para ver as " cartas dos chineses", ou seja, está investindo e esse investimento é proporcional ao risco.

Quem não tem competência não se estabelece, e o pior perdedor é áquele que não admite a derrota, seja parcial ou total!Que o diga Elon Musk quando declara:

“Se não forem estabelecidas barreiras comerciais, elas [montadoras chinesas] praticamente demolirão a maioria das outras empresas automobilísticas do mundo”, disse em conversa com a agência de notícias Reuters. O bilionário, além de reconhecer o risco, elogiou a indústria chinesa e afirmou que os carros chineses “são extremamente bons”. "São hoje as marcas mais competitivas do mundo", completou.

Logo, não há "cinza", não há dumping,há maus perdedores, há simplesmente a CHINA vencedora e sua força demolidora!

[hoghtastic]

I find it odd that he was super close with Marco while filming, they lived together for few years while filming yet he didn't interact much with him at the Paris con it seems. I get that they may have drifted apart since living back home and after COVID but you would think they would still have some sort of bond or friendship due to their past living together and filming together, they would have been filming together for hours esp that last season as Ivar & Hvitserk were together for much of it. The fact there is no post from either of them in any way shape or form is kinda weird. The Alicia & Georgia drama I know nothing of, I didn't realise he may have had a thing with both as I always thought he seemed to have a thing with Kathryn at some point? I do think Georgia used her privilege of being the boss' daughter to her advantage - she had great storylines for a side part/wife of a lesser known main characters like borg/wife of characters who died/a woman who didnt start of as a shield maiden to suddenly being one of the main shield maidens who seemed to survive really big fights/wars. She was married to really high up and respected men/vikings but when they were killed she was moved on to another relationship with another big male character and ended up with 2 of Ragnar's sons and ended up with 1 of the only ones to survive the end and make a new life. All other women who lost their husbands on the show ended up even further in the background or left the show all together. It's like her character was put above all other females in the show except for the main one - Kathryn/Lagetha. She became Lagetha's main support/best friend. I do wonder if she was jealous of the other women in the show who were just as pretty as her and had big storylines and were big characters.

I believe he (Alex) is talking bullsh*t about his privacy and how he loves it blah blah blah... Someone who loves to have their privacy from fans does not film a podcast from their own flat. You would hire a venue, another place/flat/studio, film from a garage or make a room specifically for filming the podcast from. You would not use your main living area etc to film as now all the fans know what his living area looks like, his balcony, the view from his balcony, the lift in his block of flats, The books on his shelfs, etc. That is NOT maintaining privacy. Marco Ilso is the definition of maintaining privacy and keeping personal life private in the way Alex so constantly speak of doing so.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts, anon. 😊 Personally, I agree with most of what you wrote, except Alex & Katheryn seemingly having a thing at some point, as I believe it was mostly Alex "fanboying" over her, but nothing more than that. Regardless, the rest of your observations are spot on.