I cannot heave my heart into my mouth

astraltrickster:

nimblermortal:

chubbycaptain:

chubbycaptain:

im really losing my shit thinking about vulcan childrens music and television. who could forget such hits as “3 is an appropriate number” and “walking in the street could lead to maiming or death”

the vulcan equivalent of the wiggles is just 3 normally dressed individuals reciting multiplication tables in unison

Speaking as someone with very little knowledge of Star Trek - I’ve seen like three episodes from random versions and I read Spock’s World - I violently disagree with this.

Even before I had such minimal knowledge as I do now, I thought that “vulcan” was a very appropriate word for them. It’s not that they don’t have emotions, if anything they have more than humans, they just run hard and deep, like volcanoes. You don’t want that thing to erupt.

So I imagine vulcan children’s TV is much like Sesame Street. Here is a muppet with anger issues! He spilled his milk and it made him ANGRY!!! Here comes someone dressed in completely normal clothes to say yes, that was indeed unfortunate, but anger is an irrational response to such a thing and not in keeping with the teachings of Surak; let us now explore different forms of meditation as emotional control, one of which includes three normally dressed individuals reciting multiplication tables in unison.

The Vulcans got their own version of Sesame Street - under the same name (albeit localized; it is still called Sesame Street according to the universal translator) - after first contact. To both cultures’ surprise, it required very little adaptation overall, and many Vulcan parents didn’t even realize at first that it was a localized spinoff of a show from an entirely different planet. If anything, the transitions between the parts aimed at teaching kids emotional regulation and social skills, and the parts aimed at teaching basic math and phonics, are even smoother than in any of Earth’s versions.

The most conspicuous addition is a pair of twin Muppets - Sovak and T'pela. They’re eternal toddlers, much like our own Elmo, and thus at the same stage as a large chunk of the target audience - when much of their early development of emotional regulation skills take place. Sovak is quick to panic, often getting himself into danger trying to hide, or causing small boo-boos to his friends and teachers and parents clinging to them for dear life. T'pela is quick to anger, often breaking things or frightening other children - barely at a more advanced stage in their own emotional regulation skill development - until she calms down. The two are never shamed for their outbursts - after all, they’re only toddlers - but at least once an episode, one or both of them is sent into, well, an episode.

And from there, it’s up to an adult to step in and coach them through their grounding exercises.

But again, they are only toddlers, so they don’t know enough math or phonics to find a good grounding exercise on their own! How are they supposed to count by threes if they don’t know how to count to three at all? How are they supposed to find everything in their vicinity that begins with the letter B(-equivalent) if they don’t know what the letter B is? Well, it’s time for a lesson!

And so, once we’ve had our lesson about the wonders of 3, or B, or any other lesson of the day, we can calmly - and logically - resolve whatever caused the problem.

Their segments end up being adapted back into Earth languages because they turn out to work wonders on neurodivergent human children, as well.

(via alternatefuturesao3)

mattbors:

From a poetry collection by Mary Oliver, where after a hundred poems showcasing gentle observations on nature and animals, she hits you with this:

(via smellectric)

fcntasmas:

y’all ever read a fanfic that you cannot believe an author just wrote for free?? what an honor it is to read a piece of someone’s soul they shared out of nothing but love for a piece of media. what a privilege it is to be allowed their talent because you share an interest!!

(via crazyassmurdererwall)

ahotknife:

YOU don’t have to be perfect to be loved. but I do

(via slut-jpeg)

goatman-blood-enjoyer:

1shirt2shirtredshirtdeadshirt:

I like how in SNW they’re making an effort to bring these aspects of the character back. They are also simultaneously playing with the pop-culture version as a kind of a wrong first impression that people sometimes get, and confuse with the real thing.

Originally posted by schifty-al

I absolutely love this approach to tackling Kirk Drift.

That is exactly how Roddenberry wrote Kirk in the TMP novel. He was written as a person that many talked about due to his reputation via his career, but only a handful genuinely knew him personally. The rumours often preceded the person, and Starfleet wasn’t always necessarily kind to Jim. There was a lot of contention there.

It is implied in the novel that there are many rumours about Jim, a lot of old blood who were resentful that such a young man speed-ran by them through hard work and ambition to the flagship.

As we see in SNW, even his older brother exemplifies the sentiment of the older crowd who resent Jim for hustling so hard and succeeding so young.

Originally posted by acecroft

Originally posted by acecroft

We also get to see how vulnerable this makes Jim at times in TOS, and he will fret with McCoy or Spock privately about the pressures he feels; he is a young captain trying to live up to the magnitude of what he fought to get.

They beautifully worked in similar moments throughout SNW to showcase this:

Originally posted by weyoun-five

Originally posted by weyoun-five

Originally posted by weyoun-five

Originally posted by weyoun-five

He feels isolated and lonely, and he is aware that there are people just banking on him to fail so that they can have their shot at the flagship. His own brother has even voiced resentment toward him, and teases him about the fact that he got a posting on the Enterprise while Jim was assigned the Farragut.

The Enterprise isn’t just Jim’s dream, it is the dream of countless people enlisted at Starfleet during that time.

His intelligence carried him there, but he often self reflects and worries – sort of haunted by the things people say behind his back, and occasionally to his face.

He isn’t actually unflappable – we learn that in private conversations with Spock and/or Bones when he goes to pieces and then puts himself back together before facing the crew in TOS.

He has deep insecurities, and valid ones, because people he has worked alongside of and even looked up to started side-eyeing him for his ambition.

His reputation/the Starfleet-Jim hate train also gets him blacklisted on a number of occasions, and it is mentioned to Spock multiple times that sticking with Jim and his shenanigans could potentially hurt his reputation in the fleet.

In Lower Decks, it is revealed that Spock gets invited to a Fleet party to be accoladed, and Jim isn’t even invited. In fact, they won’t let Spock in if Jim is his plus one.

Spock ends up having to choose between going to the party, or leaving at the front door with Jim.

Spock chooses to bail on the party to go to a dive bar with Jim, and it turns into their regular place.

Originally posted by 1shirt2shirtredshirtdeadshirt

There were times when Spock and the crew were the only friends Jim had in his corner at his own workplace.

It just goes to show that despite his self confidence, Jim was actually bullied and hazed quite a bit by Starfleet alumni. He was routinely bullied by Finnegan. And he continues to be undermined and talked down to for his youth throughout TOS by high ranking officials. It even continues into the movies.

When the crew is reprimanded for their actions in ST III, Spock is not accused of any wrongdoing. But when the rest of the Enterprise crew comes out to hear their charges, Spock walks down and stands with them explaining: “I stand with my ship mates.”

We have always known that Jim was a cheerleader of Spock’s, and how he would defend him when others said terrible things about him. But honestly, it also worked both ways. The fleet and people Jim worked for would frequently undermine or talk down to him. Spock would go out of his way to support Jim, and vice versa.

In a way, together, they tackled one another’s demons. They had each other’s back when nobody else did.

For all of Jim’s hang ups, he still manages to show up for himself and his team.

**With them**, he feels like the best version of himself. They help him realize his potential. We see that in the SNW pep talk that Spock gives Jim during his first stint in the chair. I think the show has nailed that, and tied together a number of facets about Kirk threaded throughout the canon nicely.

SNW has an incredible opportunity to re-introduce him as he was in TOS, as opposed to the Kirk-Drift Zapp Brannigan take that folks seem to think TOS Jim was.

It isn’t just a great opportunity to correct false ideas about Jim, but it is an awesome platform to let us get to know other characters such as Nyota Uhura better. I love her so much, and I’m glad we are getting better acquainted with who she was. Much later in life she apparently goes on to lend a hand in training a young Jean-Luc Picard – I’ve always wished we could have seen that in a show, too. Obviously not SNW as it’s a completely different time period, but spinoff series? DELULU FANTASTIES

Anyway, I digress.

TOS was never just “the Jim Kirk show”. Of course it focused on the triumvirate, but it was always the story of the Enterprise crew, and how that group of people who as individuals felt like they belonged nowhere – and they came together to build a home and place to belong. It reminds us time and again that Jim would not be the Captain he was known to be without that crew. It’s so evident at the beginning of TMP when he doesn’t have Spock and how things keep going awry. What a change in dynamic and efficiency there is when Spock returns.

I love that they are showing the incredible impact that these specific people had on Jim, as well as their hand in helping to shape the type of Captain that he will later become. It’s a cornerstone to the TOS story which was never just a Jim Kirk story, but a story about how him and his found family made a home for themselves on the Enterprise.

(via cookiemom6067)

anghraine:

rainbowresurrection:

anghraine:

firstofficerkittycat:

star trek is about. .,the sixties

It sure is.

This is fantastic, and it very much captures the essential queerness of their relationship in a way that I feel is sometimes sidelined from discussions of what’s going on between them. There’s a quote from George Takei about the intensity of the scenes between Kirk and Spock that sticks with me:

“from the perspective of gay people, seeing that is eye-opening. They see the gay passion, the gay attraction, and the gay anguish depicted in those scenes.”

I understand the desire for one of the most iconic quasi-utopias in SF/F to also be a quasi-utopia for queer people, to imagine we could just fall in love and get married and nobody would blink an eye because it’s the better future. I get the desire to imagine that as the context of Kirk’s and Spock’s lives specifically. It’s not any kind of moral affront. But it’s just not what I see happening on the screen in TOS.

Keep reading

Hey @anghraine do you happen to have a link to the article/interview where Takei says this? I’m ass-deep in a college project regarding K/S

@rainbowresurrection:

I saw it as a clip and just typed out the line, unfortunately. My brain wants to say it was part of the conversation between Adam Nimoy and George Takei from “For the Love of Spock,” but I’m not 100% sure.

#YEAH #made my roomie watch an episode or two #and their reaction was damn I wish it were queerer #and I basically yelled this entire post at them #like come on!! #there is nothing on this planet queerer than the line #‘when I feel friendship for u I am ashamed’ #that’s catharsis babey (via @dontbe-lasanya)

Thank you and yes! Of course I’d heard about them, but had no conception that it would feel queerer than a thousand bland queernorm settings, certainly as much as could be nationally syndicated on US television in 1966-1969 and still felt incredibly cathartic so many decades later. I was raised Mormon and a neurotic closeted lesbian for a long time, and that scene (and the way it so easily transmutes into violence towards Kirk and Kirk stumbling off and staring bleakly at the “SINNER REPENT” scrawled on the wall, signifying nothing) hit like a truck watching in late 2024. So did the recurrent strain of fear and melancholy that runs through all the heartwarming intimacy and intensity of their relationship: fear of being too much/too little, fear of abandonment, fear of separation, fear of being supplanted, fear of being accurately seen—their dynamic is so deeply caught up in navigating a consciousness of taboo and potential danger that simply is not present for their other friendships.

(I don’t know about your roommate, but I feel that a lot of the “it could be queerer :" have a sense of "queerer” as maximally mainstreamed/signaled by het conventions and in-universe normalized, to the point that there’s this idea—sometimes explicitly stated—that queerness in any and all SF/F should be completely unchallenging and without stakes as far as the in-world status quo is concerned, as if the less disruptive and engaged with navigating queerphobia of any kind it is, the more “queer” it also is. I’m very much “uh, speak for yourself” about that whole concept, but I do think one result is that heavy queer coding that’s intrinsically informed by rhetoric around the closet either looks less queer than it is, or you get all these attempts to deny that context and any direct RL relevance to the stakes and obstacles and fraught threatened intensity that are so fundamental to that kind of depiction—that was all over the earliest notes on this very post in response to my reblog tbh. But then you’re left with something that doesn’t even make sense and has a lot less substance in terms of the original.)

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(via rainbowresurrection)