One of my favorite phrases my Creative Writing professor had for when you’re writing fantasy is ‘giving your story a Flux Capacitor’.
Because it’s not real, it doesn’t exist. But the way it’s thrown into Back to the Future, at no point does it throw the audience off or suspend any more disbelief than time travel would. You believe Doc when he says he created the Flux Capacitor - the thing that makes time travel possible, because the universe never questions him.
So it essentially means like, there are going to be elements to your universe that are just not gonna make any sense, even if you set up a whole system based on it. And the only way to make it work is completely own it. You cannot second-guess your system or else the reader will too. You can give it the strangest explanation, but write it like you own it.
Either you’ve got to follow the rules of reality and physics and shit TO THE LETTER, or you have to say “naaaaaah” and fuck off with your magic/sci-fi/whatever to have a marvelous garden party where reality isn’t invited.
*Steps in quietly* hi, i’m Kry and i get stupidly excited when i see posts like this one in my dash.
So, okay, what you are talking about has to do with two very intertwined concepts: one is the concept of verisimilitude, the other is the concept of “fictional pact”.
So the first one is a term that comes from Aristotle (and also Plato, but he spoke of it negatively, as is the habit of the asshole of Plato). The verisimilitude is basically the credibility of a particular element within a book, a poem or a play. It is something that has the appearance of truth (it is not necessarily true, it can be false) for the purpose of persuading someone, getting someone’s attention and maintaining that attention.
That concept of verisimilitude is mixed with the concept of the fictional pact that was born (more or less) of the expression of the poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “willing suspension of disbelief”: what he meant by this is that when a subject is reading a book must suspend their critical sense, ignoring inconsistencies or incompatibilities of the work of fiction in which the subject is immersed (such as existence of a Flux Capacitor) that may clash with their reality, allowing them to enter and enjoy the world of fiction exposed in the book.
To simplify all this, my friends and I like to explain it in the following way, using “The fossilized mosquito paradigm” of Jurassic Park: “So you have the fossilized mosquito. In our reality (for the moment, mehehe) it is scientifically impossible for this theory to happen. But it has an argument that is sufficiently consistent, believable and possible (aka: verisimilitude concept) to work on a book/movie/video game and to create a pact of fiction by which it is easy to accept that what is narrated could have happened although it is pure fiction.”
If the plot of the story is sufficiently credible to immerse the reader in the story, it doesn’t matter if it’s a fossilized mosquito that revives dinosaurs or a Flux Capacitor that teleports ya which in reality would be impossible, because what matters is that in your fictional world works enough to suspend those thoughts of doubt and enjoy the story!
"Wait, there has to be a trap here." "But I don't see anything." *"Exactly."*
for @words-writ-in-starlight: the Star Wars D&D AU. bc nothing makes me feel better than taking the piss out of Anakin in a tabletop game setting.
–
Ahsoka kicks her feet up on the table, leaning back in her chair. “I pick the lock,” she says, confident.
Padmé looks up from her sheets and says, “Okay, roll for it.”
She rolls, then nearly falls off her chair when she pumps her fist into the air and shouts, “Natural twenty!”
“Aw, come on,” says Anakin, glaring at the dice as if they’ve personally offended him. “You roll twenties for Ahsoka and not for me? I own you, you fuckers.”
See, I probably need to get this out here before it’s potentially jossed by the next new episodes.
In the meantime, consider:
Luke Skywalker being a young Daddy to baby Rey by the time A New Hope begins.
Rey’s Mama has not been fridged, btw. By mutual agreement, Luke is raising the kid himself and Mama just visits. Luke still wants to get off Tatooine, but he wants to bring his kid with him because he doesn’t want the little one growing up always and forever wondering about her biological parents, just like he did.
So Luke has Plans, okay? He wants to travel the stars but he wants to embark on this adventure with his little girl.
So imagine Luke’s terror when he comes back home to the homestead and finds Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen dead.
Imagine his relief at finding Rey, quiet and terrified in some secret cubbyhole that the Larses once devised for baby Luke. She was quiet, because Aunt Beru told her to be. And so she was never found by the stormtroopers.
Obi-Wan Kenobi, knowing the possible Disaster Scenarios in leaving Rey Skywalker behind (even if she was to be hidden with her biological mama), encourages Luke to bring his toddler with him.
Han made the obligatory grumbles about having kids on his ship but they’re really just for show and basically Chewie has declared that he’s adopting the Skywalkers, even as he’s happily cuddling the baby girl.
Han cannot protest.
When Rey meets her unknown “Aunt” Leia, she takes to the Princess immediately.
Also, Ben Kenobi does not get killed on the Death Star. He’s got Skywalkers to look after. Again.
Also, Rey would be Very Unhappy with him if she doesn’t have her Grandpa Ben.
Luke Skywalker has an even bigger reason to make that Death Star shot.
When a certain wheezy Dark Lord of the Sith finds out the name of the Rebel pilot who destroyed the Death Star, he’s understandably Pissed Off.
When he finds out that said Death Star Destroyer is a happy Cinnabon Roll Sunbaby with his own precious happy Cinnabon Roll baby girl, welp - this just in: Darth Vader Defects to the Rebel Alliance.
I’d just like to add more happy/hilarifying headcanons to this:
– Basically Darth Vader does a Hunt for Red October style defection and brings himself and the Executor and her loyal-to-Vader crew over to the Rebellion.
– Also Vader has ALL THE HOLOS of Baby Rey in his private chambers.
– “Who’s Grandpa’s cute little future Empress? You are! Yes you are!”
– “Father, she’s TWO YEARS OLD, you can’t hand her the galaxy to rule just yet!”
– “Well, you and Leia would be her Regents.”
– “FATHER!!! BEN, DO SOMETHING!”
– “I’m sorry, I must do as Her Imperial Highness bids me.”
– “Rawwarrrrgaaaaggghhhhhhhh!!”
– “See? Even the Mighty Chewbacca agrees with me. Everyone knows it’s best not to argue with a Wookiee.”
— The Clones would totally dote over “The Little Empress” and there’s always a couple of them as her “honor guard.”
– Luke has cottoned on that this is really Darth Vader’s idea of a Dad Joke™ but he knows he has a role to play and dutifully registers his mock protests.
– What Luke doesn’t know is that Vader is totally planning to hand HIM and Leia the galaxy on a silver platter. This is Anakin Skywalker’s idea of making up for twenty years winning the Galaxy Deadbeat Dad Award™.
– Ben Kenobi knows that the Skywalker twins are actually going to dismantle the Empire once handed the throne but he’s just happy to let Anakin wreak havoc towards more deserving targets.
– Also, he thinks “Little Empress” is totally a cute nickname for Rey.
It got better!
- When Vader first arrives for his scheduled defection, there is some initial tension between him and Obi-Wan, for obvious reasons, but when baby Rey coos and waves at him from Obi-Wan’s hip, he’s like, “Eh, more important things to worry about.”
The Rebels finally realize that Darth Vader was absolutely SINCERE in his defection when they find him helping to change baby diapers and being HAPPY about it.
All this crap about convincing the electoral college to change their votes and these screaming protests about the outcome- it all seems crazy.
But you know what seems a lot crazier? Taking it. Taking a decision foisted on us, taking every damn thing trump and his people hurl at minorities and youths, taking the decision that got made for us by manipulative media and backroom deals and unadulterated hate.
Yeah. Protesting at this point seems crazy. But do you really want to go down in history for not doing Every. Single. Thing. to stop this? Do you want to be recorded as the people who let the most hateful, Racist man since Andrew Jackson into office?
Or are you going to go down as the people who fought tooth and nail at every step and at every damn angle to keep EVERYONE here safe, not just the white majority.
ARE YOU GOING TO LET THE COUNTRY FALL INTO DARKNESS OR ARE YOU GOING TO RAGE AGAINST THE GODDAMN DYING OF THE LIGHT?!?
So go to every protest, volunteer as often as you can, sign those damn petitions. Not just for your own peace of mind but because there’s people out there that can’t and they need you. In the streets, online, and in town halls, America is going to need everyone to do everything they can if they’re going to be ok.
This is about history. We are at a turning point, here. So, you tell me: will you and yours be remembered for standing down and letting this happen because you couldn’t be bothered, or will you be the people who stood up and stood firm in defense of those who couldn’t defend themselves?
I wish people wouldn’t make posts about how to deal with tear gas/protests unless they actually know what they’re talking about.
I am a trained street medic and I’ve personally been tear gassed more times than I can count.
- Do not use soda or water to wash tear gas out of your eyes. Use a combination of liquid maalox and water, 50:50. That’s what works.
- They can literally tear gas you anywhere you stand in relation to the police because riot cops have gas masks. I’ve been tear gassed within five feet of the front line of police. They do not care.
- Before my very first protest I asked my friend who’d been doing this for over 5 years if I should soak my bandana in vinegar. She laughed and said, “I have no idea who started that rumor but it’s never done shit for me or anyone I’ve ever known.”
- If you are bulimic or have chronic vomiting, please keep in mind that the mucus membrane in your throat is a precious tender baby and you will be much more effected by tear gas than everyone around you and you will feel it in your throat for weeks afterwards and NO ONE EVER WARNS YOU ABOUT THIS.
- The police probably won’t zip tie you with your hands in front, they pretty much know how easy it is to break out of those.
- People with asthma should always carry their inhalers because that shit is real bad when you get sprayed with tear gas.
- Never go to a protest alone. Always have a buddy there and always let someone who isn’t going know where you are, your legal name, and your birthday so if you get snatched they can check the jails and the online database for you. (note: this does not work when they grab hundreds of people at once or sometimes they just never put your name in the database yay!)
Seriously y'all, this is not the time for posturing. If you don’t know something, ask a street medic or google it.
A bright spot today: I work a truly awful job at a juice bar (I hate people who come up and try to convince me to, say, drink things with raw eggs in them, and vegetable juice has vitamins and shit but I POINT BLANK REFUSE to tell people blatant lies about magnetized water et al), but today. Oh god. Today I had my FAVORITE CUSTOMER EVER, oh my god I want him to be a regular, he was amazing, I want to be him when I grow up.
So it’s me and @twistedangelsays killing time and pretending like we aren’t slowly building up the Leaning Tower of Dishware next to the wash sink when an older gentleman in a very fine hat (elderly but spry, you know the type) walks in with his wife and granddaughter. He strides up to the counter, and we give our usual creepily-peppy greeting and brace ourselves for another crazy in a long line (someone earlier informed us that she does wheatgrass enemas, and…I just really didn’t want to know that, okay?).
“So,” he says, leaning on the counter and observing us with the kind of wry nothing-is-funny-but-if-I-show-fear-the-bad-guys-win smile I’ve been seeing a lot lately. I decide I maybe like this guy enough to drop the creepy pep. He looks us dead in the eye and says, “What juice do you have to get me through the next four years.”
And of course I’m me, so I laugh a little and go, “Trust me, if we had something I’d be hooked up to an IV of it right now.” I am not a professional soul.
He nods very solemnly and sighs and goes, “Well, all right, then what do you have that will give me the strength to fight?”
Adler and I just stand there in this state of delighted awe for a moment before she manages to recommend a juice. We start making his juice and he asks if we’re “a pair” and we tell him that no, we’re not a couple, everyone asks, don’t feel bad, we’re just best friends. And he kind of humphs and nods and goes “Well, that’s still a pair,” and tells us about his best friend of sixty years who he texts every day after meeting in college (meaning that ABSOLUTE MINIMUM this guy is 78).
So we hand him his juice, he takes it, and without further ado tells us the time, date, and location of a protest in our town. And he and his lovely wife swan right on out with their adorable granddaughter with her froyo, and he tells us he’ll see us at the protest.
I feel like I’ve been visited by the Angel of Revolution, I want to be that guy when I’m 78.
ill respect any woman who chooses to take off her hijab after yesterday but i just want to say like. if you choose to keep wearing it, and someone harasses you, i will stand up for you. you will always be welcome to wear it in my car, in my home, and i will fight for you wherever we go
im just one person, but there are millions of people like me who are gonna support you
To any of of you who are thinking of going to protests:
- Bring water and snacks.
- If you get pepper sprayed or tear gassed, milk on your face will help. Do not put soap directly in your eye. A damp cloth with soap and water can also help irritated skin. I’ve also heard that toothpaste beneath the eyes can help.
- Bring anxiety medication if you need it
- if you have a form of medical ID, do not wear it around your neck. Someone could yank on it and hurt you.
- Boots. Trust me on this one.
- Also goggles.
- Have a plan B/emergency contact in case you need a way to leave quickly.
- Wear long sleeves and long pants to reduce chance of injury.
Your safety is important. If you have any corrections to this post or things to add, please do. I want people to be informed.
Stay safe. Stay strong.
tooth paste helps for tear gas as well.
another good thing to bring is a rag soaked in lemon juice or vinegar in a plastic bag, this can be used to breathe through for some protection against gas.
pack wet bandanas to wrap around your face when tear gas is release.
Extra pairs of clothes too.
Don’t wear contacts. Wear glasses or goggles, tear gas with contacts causes unimaginable pain.
Avoid wearing oil based moisturizer or sunscreen as chemicals cling to these on your skin. Remove with detergent-free soap before going near the riot.
BE CAREFUL GUYS
Reblogging for my American followers. I support this fight but I also need you to stay safe. You’re all too important to get hurt.
in traffic just now i watched a middle aged white man put his car in park, get out of the car at a stop light, and punt a trump/pence sign on the side of the road
me too buddy
there was a whole row of signs, it was on the bumper grass between a church parking lot and the road, and he just went down the row of trump/pence and local election signs and punted like five of them before the light started to change and he got back into his car and (presumably) drove to work
i hope that dude feels better now
i feel a little better at having seen it happen tbh
I try not to get political on my art blog, but I am gonna share this sentiment from my twitter.
It’s nice to hear “Fuck Trump” but piling all hate on him is misguided, Trump is not the only person who should be factored into protests, impeachment and human rights lawsuits: his team DEFENDED him and ENABLED him.
There are a lot of people who either played down, ignored or supported his conduct
Fact is, if Trumps impeached, all the people who helped his campaign will flip and agree and chastise him, cuz it’ll make them look noble, which they would LOVE, they get to sweep house and senate, have Pence be president, and pretend they’re on our side. “We hate Trump too, friends! We agree, he’s a bad man, let us fix his mess for you.”
Think about it, anyone on his team right now looks really good by comparison to him. People who’re just as bigoted and heartless.
Do not forget that Vice President Pence is poised and ready to help anti-women and anti-LGBT legislation roll out and take away 50~ years of human rights progress. [source] And he just sat back and watched Trump be Trump, cuz all he cares about is getting his foot in the door – and we all just held it open for him and welcomed him inside. Slam it on his stupid foot, friends. Fact is, Pence is a hateful bigot, but he looks really good superficially next to Trump.
If we’re gonna support lawsuits for human rights violations, impeachments, etc, we can’t fixate on Trump alone. A lot of people made Trump happen via complacency and lies, with smiles on their faces.
Not My President… Not My Vice President.
Note: I genuinely don’t have time for debates or arguments on Tumblr even on my good days, so sorry if you wanted to engage me about this, even if you agree with me. I’m not ignoring people (unless, you know, insults), I just can’t give this more time. I have to get back to work and stuff.
Mike pence said literally that “cigarettes do not cause death.” He wants to fund gay conversion therapy. He is the literal embodiment of Satan.
I know there are a lot of people terrified of a Trump presidency for a lot of reasons, but some of the most vibrant horror I’m seeing is coming from young queer people. These people were in middle school or grade school when Obama was first elected, when Glee came on with its revolutionary act of portraying a blatantly Disney-saccharine gay love story. RuPaul and Ellen are huge tv stars, Sulu owns Facebook. RENT is a musical theatre standby performed in high schools. Marriage equality and bathrooms have been their biggest fights. So this? Looks like the apocalypse.
It’s not. Within my lifetime, a president laughed at hundreds of thousands of people dying of AIDS. Within my lifetime, that was a death sentence, not a footnote on a Grindr profile. Within my lifetime, “transsexuals” only existed as cruel punchlines. The only trans guy I had even heard of at 19 was from a movie about him being murdered. Ellen was a pariah who had lost her show for coming out. Being gay was career suicide if you were anything but a hairdresser. It was automatic dishonorable discharge from the military.
This is not saying Trump couldn’t undo a lot of that. But not all of it. And even if, EVEN IF he did? Queer people survived. Flourished. Got to where it is now. And where it is now includes a younger generation who will not go back, and in another 20 years, will be the CEOs, the senators, the governors, the president.
If you don’t give up.
Don’t you fucking dare give up.
i’m scared and angry and tired because yeah, i marched in the 80′s, when people threw rocks and bottles at the pride parade, and i thought we were fucking DONE with that.
but don’t for one second think i won’t fight again if they make me. don’t for one second think i won’t fight to my last breath.
trump voters are an extinction burst. the last diaper baby tantrum of straight whites who are terrified that the loss of their privilege means they’ll be treated the way they’ve always treated others. if we hang on through this, if we keep fighting, we will prevail.
so quit planning your fucking suicide, kidlets. let uncle jesse show you how we do it when we’re fighting against The Man under threat of death, not sending anon hate to shippers. you think you can’t do it, but i did it when i was your age, thinking all the while that russia was gonna nuke us any second, and i’m still here.
don’t get me wrong, babies, i wish you didn’t have to see this. i’d protect you from it if i could. i tried to protect you from it. but assholes persist. so i’m taking the old sword down from over the mantel, and i’m gonna show you how to take a swing.
when i say “unfollow me if you support trump” im not saying it ironically. no, seriously, if you support trump then i dont want your disgraceful ass to be in any way associated with my blog. get out.
i’m seeing a lot of people reblogging suicide hotlines and this is just a reminder that this is a suicide help line that works like a text-based instant messenger for people who may need to talk to someone but have trouble/are uncomfortable making phone calls
Never don’t reblog this. There are so many people who have such bad anxiety about phone calls. This can save so many lives
Also helpful if someone is in a situation they may not feel like talking out loud about their problems is a viable option (for instance if they live with a douchecanoe who would mock them for seeking help)
I was up until almost four last night with terror. I stopped watching the polls at two-thirty, and I have yet to make myself watch our “illustrious president-elect’s” acceptance speech. I feel as if I’ve been diagnosed with something terminal–my heart is pounding and my head is spinning and my hands are shaking so hard I’m having trouble writing.
Let me tell you some things that you may not be aware of.
I am a person who gets into shouting matches when I see hijabi girls mocked or shouted at in the street.
I am a person who believes that Black Lives Matter.
I am a person who once shut down an entire classroom to fight with someone grandstanding about how “homosexuals are going to hell,” and I am a person who almost cried when the one trans kid in my school came up afterward and hugged me and said that no one had ever protected him before.
I am a person who was raised Jewish and aches for the anti-Semitism I see on the street and directed toward my friends.
I am a person with no ties to most of my family’s history except that we were Romani and we fled to this country under a false name for the capital crime of striking a soldier.
I am a person who has survived six sexual assaults and remembers every single day that the statistics for being raped go up after each assault.
I am a woman who, until this morning, was reasonably confident that–while it might be hard and people might try to stop me–I would be able to get a safe, legal abortion if I ever needed it, I am a woman who believed that no one would use my gender as a reason to stop me from having a voice.
I am fucking QUEER. I cried when the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, I kiss girls and boys and everything in between because people are beautiful and I don’t see why I shouldn’t revel in that, and until this morning I believed that I could marry anyone I wanted.
Let me be perfectly clear. If you voted third party because “your conscience demanded it” and you “just couldn’t vote for Hillary,” you have condemned us to this. Your devotion to your ideals is laudable. Your complete disregard for the actual lives that will be lost is not. You bear responsibility. Congratulations on voting your conscience. I’m sure it’s a great comfort to you this morning.
If you voted to “Make America Great Again,” you have voted for a racist, misogynist, xenophobic monster. You have told everyone who ticks even one of these boxes that you do not care about them, that their safety, their well-being, their inalienable right to Life, Liberty, and pursuit of Happiness, does not matter to you. You have told the world what America is really made of, what our ideals really are. I am appalled that I share a country with you. You have gone down in history for this. Imagine what future generations will say about you.
TL;DR: I’m here, I’m queer, and I genuinely do not think I’ve ever been so angry and terrified in my life. If you voted for Donald Trump, I cordially invite you to unfollow me immediately and never speak to me again.
After all. I’m a dyke bitch who supports people of color and immigrants and believes that locker room talk is a real threat. If you voted for Donald Trump, you probably don’t want to talk to me either.
On the other hand, if you’re like me, do not go fucking gentle. Stand up and fight for those who cannot fight for themselves, defend your right to be a human being. I have your back.
Random Headcanon: That Federation vessels in Star Trek seem to experience bizarre malfunctions with such overwhelming frequency isn’t just an artefact of the television serial format. Rather, it’s because the Federation as a culture are a bunch of deranged hyper-neophiles,
tooling around in ships packed full of beyond-cutting-edge tech they
don’t really understand. Endlessly frustrating if you have to fight
them, because they can pull an effectively unlimited number of bullshit
space-magic countermeasures out of their arses - but they’re as likely
as not to give themselves a lethal five-dimensional wedgie in the
process. All those rampant holograms and warp core malfunctions and
accidentally-traveling-back-in-time incidents? That doesn’t actually
happen to anyone else; it’s literally just Federation vessels that go off the rails like that. And they do so on a fairly regular basis.
So to everyone else in the galaxy, all humans are basically Doc Brown.
Aliens who have seen the Back to the Future movies literally don’t realise that Doc Brown is meant to be funny. They’re just like “yes, that is exactly what all human scientists are like in my experience”.
THE ONLY REASON SCOTTY IS CHIEF ENGINEER INSTEAD OF SOMEONE FROM A SPECIES WITH A HIGHER TECHNOLOGICAL APTITUDE IS BECAUSE EVERYONE FROM THOSE SPECIES TOOK ONE LOOK AT THE ENTERPRISE’S ENGINE ROOM AND RAN AWAY SCREAMING
vulcan science academy: why do you need another warp core
humans: we’re going to plug two of them together and see if we go twice as fast
vsa: last time we gave you a warp core you threw it into a sun to see if the sun would go twice as fast
humans: hahaha yeah
humans: it did tho
vsa: IT EXPLODED
humans: it exploded twice as fast
I love this. Especially because of how well it plays with my headcanon that the Federation does so much better against the Borg than anyone else because beating the Borg with military tactics is nigh-impossible, but beating them with wacky superscience shenanigans works as long as they’re unique wacky superscience shenanigans.
Yeah, I love this.
Reminds me of the thing I wrote a while back about Humans in high fantasy realms - they’re basically Team Fuck It Hold My Beer I Got This.
Impulsive, passionate to a fault, the social structures they build to try and regulate this hotheadedness ironically creates even greater levels of sheer bull-headedness. Even their “cooler” heads take action in months or weeks.
All their great heroes of the past were impossibly rash by galactic standards. Humans Just Go With It, which is their great flaw but also their greatest strength.
klingons: okay we don’t get it
vulcan science academy: get what
klingons: you vulcans are a bunch of stuffy prisses but you’re also tougher, stronger, and smarter than humans in every single way
klingons: why do you let them run your federation
vulcan science academy: look
vulcan science academy: this is a species where if you give them two warp cores they don’t do experiments on one and save the other for if the first one blows up
vulcan science academy: this is a species where if you give them two warp cores, they will ask for a third one, immediately plug all three into each other, punch a hole into an alternate universe where humans subscribe to an even more destructive ideological system, fight everyone in it because they’re offended by that, steal their warp cores, plug those together, punch their way back here, then try to turn a nearby sun into a torus because that was what their initial scientific experiment was for and they didn’t want to waste a trip.
vulcan science academy: they did that last week. we have the write-up right here. it’s getting published in about six hundred scientific journals across two hundred different disciplines because of how many established theories their ridiculous little expedition has just called into question. also, they did turn that sun into a torus, and no one actually knows how.
vulcan science academy: this is why we let them do whatever the hell they want.
klingons: …. can we be a part of your federation
Come to think of it, I mean. Look at the “first human warp drive” thing in the movie. That was… Not how Vulcans would have done it.
you know what the best evidence for this is? Deep Space 9 almost never broke down. minor malfunctions that irritated O’Brien to hell and back, sure, but almost none of the truly weird shit that befell Voyager and all the starships Enterprise. what was the weirdest malfunction DS9 ever had? the senior staff getting trapped as holosuite characters in Our Man Bashir, and that was because a human decided to just dump the transporter buffer into the station’s core memory and hope everything would work out somehow, which is a bit like swapping your computer’s hard drive out for a memory card from a PlayStation 2 and expecting to be able to play a game of Spyro the Dragon with your keyboard and mouse.
you know what, I’m not done with this post. let’s talk about the Pegasus. the USS Fucking Pegasus,
testbed for the first Starfleet cloaking device. here we have a handful
of humans working in secret to develop a cloaking device in violation
of a treaty with the Romulans. they’re playing catchup trying to develop
a technology other species have had for a century. and what do they do?
do they decide to duplicate a Romulan cloaking device precisely, just
see if they can match what other species have? nope. they decide, hey,
while we’re at it, while we’re building our very first one of these things, just to find out if this is possible, let’s see if we can make this thing phase us out of normal space so we can fly through planets while we’re invisible.
“but why” said the one Vulcan in the room.
“because that would fucking rule” said the humans, high-fiving each other and slamming cans of 24th-century Red Bull.
there
must be like twenty different counselling groups for non-human
engineering students at Starfleet Academy, and every week in every
single one of them someone walks in and starts up with a story like “our
assignment was to repair a phaser emitter and my one human classmate
built a chronometric-flux toaster that toasts bread after you’ve eaten
it.”
Humans get mildly offended by the way they are presented in non-human media.
Like: “Guys, we totally wouldn’t do that!” But this always fails to get much traction, because the authors can always say: “You totally did.”
“That was ONE TIME.”
There’s that movie where humans invented vaccines by just testing them on people. Or the one about those two humans who invented powered flight by crashing a bunch of prototypes. Or the one about electricity.
And human historians go, “Oh, uh, this is historically accurate, but also kind of boring.” To which the producers respond: “How is doing THIS CRAZY THING boring????????”
There are entire serieses of horror movies where the premise is “We stopped paying attention to the human and ey found the technology.”
reblog for new meta.
RE that last line: McGuyver.
“MacGuyver” is the equivalent of Vulcan vintage human horror television.
during orientation at a human college, vulcans are presented with a list of swear words.
“what is the word ‘fuck’ for,” the innocent young vulcans want to know. “surely there are more logical intensity modifiers.”
“yeah, you’d think so,” say the weary, jaded vulcan professors. “you’d really fucking think so.”
there is a phrase in vulcan for ‘the particular moment you understand what the word ‘fuck’ is for’.
This is why the Federation is the only organisation to ever stand a chance against the Borg
The Borg can adapt to the brilliant millitary strategies of the Romulan Star Empire, the Klingons and even the cold logical intellectual prowess of the vulcans
The Borg weren’t prepared for a starship captain to lure them into his 50′s noir detective holo-novel and then machine gun them to death with a weapon made out of hard light
This thread is amazing. Even as a baby star trek nerd that only really knows the new movies.
“there is a phrase in vulcan for ‘the particular moment you understand what the word ‘fuck’ is for’.”
I just died
I lost my shit at “toasts your bread after you’ve eaten it”
no but people who don’t like pacific rim because it wasn’t logical or scientifically accurate like
yes
we know
we don’t care
it is an homage to that genre. the original godzilla was a dude clearly in a rubber suit stomping cardboard tokyo and we were supposed to just accept that. pacific rim is a movie where a government council sat around like “what are we gonna do about these giant aliens coming from the ocean?”
“let’s build equally giant robots to punch them in the face”
“yes perfect” and like, that was of course the logical response because it’s friggin cool
mako didn’t use the sword because she had to wait until the perfect cinematic moment to do so
this movie is a love letter to painfully dumb action movies, but it is also one of the smartest movies i’ve ever seen. it’s just telling a story in a different way. instead of having audience vehicle main character explain everything to us, the movie shows you a world and asks you to accept its premise, and then lets you discover the story yourself.
this movie glorifies platonic love and familial bonds, this movie is about how we as people are stronger together, that it’s not one lone hero guy who can save the world, but the unity of all of us. it’s about the sheer unmitigated gall of humanity- “fuck this noise, we’re canceling the apocalypse!” it’s about the stupid dumb loud optimism that looks at the world and wants it to better, demands it be better, and does so with fists of steel.
it’s bombast and noise and i love it to bits so shut up and sit down and let me enjoy my giant robots punching giant monsters in the face okay?
this is such a good post…..such a good post….pacific rim stayed truer to the kaiju movie genre than 2014 godzilla did
Unlike Godzilla, Pacific Rim doesn’t try to be serious even when it’s being serious. Characters have names like Stacker Pentecost and Hercules Hansen. The film requires you to believe that the best way to battle a giant monster is to build an even larger robot to fight that monster.
Much of the Act 2 drama derives from inter-pilot tension airlifted from the Val Kilmer scenes in Top Gun. It’s the polar opposite of the Godzilla school of drama, where everyone is a total professional who has absolutely no personal goal besides Saving The World. In Pacific Rim, Idris Elba is Rinko Kikuchi’s Obi-Wan Kenobi, and two of the last Giant Robot-pilots in the world frequently get into sneering fights over who’s the bigger badass, and Charlie Day is a scientist.
So, for all these reasons, Pacific Rim is a movie that I’ve heard perfectly smart people describe as “stupid” or “silly.” The problem with this line of thinking is that, really, that every blockbuster is pretty “silly,” in the context of Things Adults Should Care About. Godzilla is not less stupid than Pacific Rim just because people frown more. […]
The difference, I think, is that Pacific Rim glories in its own silliness. There’s a flashback scene where Idris Elba rescues a little girl, and when he emerges from his giant robot, the sun shines upon him like he’s the catharsis in a biblical epic. There’s a moment when one giant robot swings an oil tanker like a sword. Then it grows a sword out of its wrist. Then it falls from space to earth.
There are real complaints to make about Pacific Rim, I guess, all of them fair and most of them pedantic. I know a lot of people who have issues with the story. (“Why didn’t they use the wrist-sword earlier?” is a popular one.) Conversely, I don’t really know anyone who minds the story in Godzilla, possibly because everything stupid that happens is prefaced by Frowning Watanabe saying “This is why the stupid thing that’s about to happen makes sense.” Godzilla wants so badly to make sense. Pacific Rim wants so badly for Ron Perlman to wear golden shoes.
”—Darren Franich, “Entertainment Geekly: A call for an end to serious blockbusters” (via rahleighs)
Do not assume Hillary will win. Do not assume other people will vote. You know what they say about assuming. It makes us citizens in a dystopian nightmare.
*squeak* YAY MORE ASK MEME. Y’all should send me more questions because YAY ASK MEME.
8) favorite genre to write
I already said this here, but it’s short so *throws confetti* FANTASY MOTHERFUCKERS
14) do you make playlists for your current wips?
HahahaHA yeah. Wow yeah. Not for fics, but my original works get HUGE playlists on Spotify, which then get subdivided by character or pairing or whatever. The Polaris playlist is like…seven hours long, with subsets of playlists for Seb/Jun Li, Lessa/Max, Lessa and Max individually, Marshal North, Marshal North and her wife, and one just titled Music for the Dead for the wakes and funerals at Polaris. The Falls the Shadow playlist (actually the Gunmetal Revelations playlist, because FtS is the first in a trilogy) is twelve hours long, with subplaylists for Sam/Michael, Oz/Kit, Billy/Colin, and the archangels and Lucifer. I go HARD AS FUCK on the playlist thing. And as usual you can blame the fuck out of @twistedangelsays for all of that, because prior to her encouragement I was too sheepish to make myself playlists for novels that didn’t even exist.
I’ve seen this post a whole bunch of times but something only just clicked-
Early on during the introduction to Les Amis, Grantaire is described as not understanding exactly what he feels for Enjolras, bar knowing it’s a fascination. Hit by a coup de foudre at the very last second, Grantaire finally realises that what he’s feeling for Enjolras is love.
*runs around flapping arms* So many people did the thiiiiing, I love it!
7) when asked, are you embarrassed or enthusiastic to tell people that you write?
Um…depends on my mental state that day. If I’m having an ‘up’ day where I’m in good mental shape and the anxiety et al are chill, I’m really enthusiastic about it. Because, God, guys, gals, and nonbinary pals, I love my writing, it is my whole heart, and I basically live in a constant state of “SOMEONE COME YELL WITH ME ABOUT THIS NOVEL THAT DOESN’T EXIST BECAUSE I HAVEN’T WRITTEN IT YET.” On the other hand, if I’m having a ‘down’ day, or a slightly precarious sort of day, I’m not embarrassed per se, but one disinterested remark or sarcastic comment can put me into a spiral that can last for a long time. I’ve abandoned whole universes without a backward glance because of stuff like that. There was this one universe that I created as an assignment for a science class that ended that way–we were supposed to create superheroes based on the four major biomolecules, and the whole class turned in crappy comics about, like, ‘Daring DNA’ and ‘Lady Lipid’ or whatever, but naturally I created four real people and gave them superpowers/secret identities and wrote up whole justifications for why their powers and personalities and places in the group fit each biomolecule and handed in twenty pages of origin story and action figures, and I got a D on the assignment. The teacher actually failed me at first, but raised it because “at least I knew what the four biomolecules were” and even though I had an entire novel and universe plotted out, I scrapped the whole thing and never touched it again.
8) favorite genre to write
*throws confetti* FANTASY, MOTHERFUCKERS.
10) write in silence or with background noise? with people or alone?
In…what sense? In the positive sense, all my characters kind of haunt me, more so if I finished their novel or one of their novels. Like, they’re real people, my head is a pretty cluttered space with all the people up there. In the negative sense, the characters in the novels I’ve abandoned kind of…loom. Like that novel I mentioned up there? Fucking haunting me.
Just here to say I reallyove your writing. You da bombdotcom👌👌
Oh my god, oh wow, you’re so nice. Thank you!!! I…suck at accepting compliments, so pretend I said something witty here.
I used that gif of Tamaki blushing as a response to a compliment once already in the last like week or two, but that’s like. My default response to compliments. Covering my face and retreating like *shoop* I’m dead. Is it etiquette to use the same gif in response to every compliment I ever receive?
I love ask memes, I really do, they’re very soothing. From this!
3) what order do you write in? front of book to back? chronological? favorite scenes first? something else?
I start on page one and write until I get to the last page. Every once in a while, when I’m bored and/or distracted and/or need motivation, I’ll do what I call ‘writing ahead’ and write individual scenes or events ahead of time and then integrate them later, but if I write ahead at length, it’s something that’s taking place immediately after the writing that I’m caught up on. I just really hate having to meticulously go over the stuff I’m integrating in to make sure it’s all contiguous and everything.
5) character you were most surprised to end up writing
6) something you would go back and change in your writing that it’s too late/complicated to change now
Um…I dunno. It might have been kind of interesting to make Sam Lightworth a lesbian, but I like the dynamic of “tall snarky angry dude crumbles all over tiny lethal wicked-eyed girl with the fate of the world in her hands” that I ended up with in FtS. I just…have a lot of things that I write and generally I get pretty committed to the way things are, because my characters are very real to me. Altering them after the fact feels kind of like a betrayal.
1. DEMAND condom use 2. Hold your partners accountable for what happens in the bedroom. None of this “baby I can’t control myself around you” or “I just wanted you so bad” bullshit. 3. Coercion is real and it’s very scary and hard to identify in the moment. Establish a dialogue with your partner. Be clear on what you both want. Be clear on what you don’t want. Your boundaries should ALWAYS be respected. 4. Sex can be really emotionally and physically over-stimulating the first few times; don’t be afraid or ashamed to ask your partner to slow down, take a break, or even stop. 5. Focus less on pleasing your partner and more on exploring your partner. Everyone’s body is different and there are no “tricks” to better sex. Chances are, if you psych yourself out worrying over how well you’re “performing” then nobody’s going to have a good time. 6. Ask questions, offer suggestions. Despite what porn has probably taught you, talking during sex isn’t weird or taboo. Your partner isn’t a mind reader. They don’t know what feels good to you. [Pro-tip, a looot of people without clitorises aren’t fully aware of just HOW sensitive a clitoris is. They can be a little rough with them. Tell them to chill!!!!] 7. Your sex life is YOUR business. Don’t ever feel ashamed of how many or how few sexual partners/experiences you’re having. Do what you want, touch the people who want to touch you back, forget the rest. 8. DON’T FAKE YOUR ORGASMS!! Don’t fake your orgasms!! DON’TFAKEYOURORGAMS!! If your partner isn’t getting you there, let them know! Tell them how!! 9. There is more to sex than orgasms. Sex is a really cool way to establish intimacy and trust, to have a fun time, to relieve stress, to explore a person’s body and bring them pleasure. Don’t get me wrong, orgasms are really cool and good, but your sex life is going to be a lot better if it doesn’t revolve around them. 10. LEARN ABOUT YOUR BODY!! This goes for everyone, but ESPECIALLY if you are a person in possession of a vulva, you have been discouraged and even actively kept from vital knowledge about your anatomy! Do some google searches, buy a human sexuality textbook, masturbate. 11. Virginity is a useless concept. It’s completely okay if your virginity is something important to you and I’m not trying to belittle that idea. Just, for the record, in the grand scheme of things it’s not a big deal. Literally nothing about you changes just because you bumped uglies with someone else.
This has been a public service announcement from your friendly internet poet.
Talking about sex when not being sexy is the best first step to having sex. Don’t talk about it to turn on your partner, just discuss it casual. Talk about your thoughts and feelings, what you think you want, what scares you, what interests you, etc. Like anything you can think of. It makes the act easier and can help you establish boundaries before the act starts. Try doing it on a phone or over text so you know sex won’t start. Sometimes the distance helps you be honest.
i like how positive this post is and how it isn’t gender specific <3 <3 <3
Honestly my favorite part about this post is that from the time I uploaded until now ive never gotten hate for this we all agree the orange man needs to go
Somebody actually put “post this in the south and see what happens” Bitch, this is a website. They can read it in the south.
I am from the south and I agree the angry cheeto needs to go.
5) character you were most surprised to end up writing
Whenever I end up writing someone genuinely nice, I’m totally baffled. Like, okay, in my Falls the Shadow novel, one of the Four Horsemen is named Kit (Famine) and she’s just flat-out a genuine sweetheart. Will Hargrove, from my unfinished novel Emrys Ascendant, is Too Nice for any of this supernatural shit to be happening to him. Or Lessa, from Polaris? Like, yes, she can murder a dude with lightning, but also cartoon birds probably braid her hair in the morning.
10) write in silence or with background noise? with people or alone?
Background noise, always background noise, I hate silence, I build incredibly expansive and intricate playlists for my various novels. And if I’m around people, they have to be background people–I write really well in coffee shops, libraries, ice cream stores, that sort of thing.
15) why did you start writing?
I always told stories, you know? I was really into playing pretend as a kid, and I started memorizing fairy tales and folklore as a very smol bean. And then when I was like eight or nine, my beloved aunt (sarcasm) told me that I was too old to play pretend and I needed to stop living in my own world and get my head out of the clothes and grow up. I was a pretty messed up kid, so naturally I took this as gospel, but I still had stories to tell, so I started writing them down. Flash forward a decade or so and I’m putting out about a novel every 18 months.
20) do you write in long sit-down sessions or in little spurts?
Both! When I have a few hours I can scrape together without feeling like I’m volunteering to have more dirt shoveled down onto my coffin (literally fuck college so much), I can write straight through that whole time period without trouble. If I have a whole day, I’ve been known to forget meals or sleep or water. On the other hand, I also carry a notebook and scrawl down bits of scenes and conversations whenever I’m sitting and waiting for things. Whenever I’m talking to someone who says something like “I’ve always wanted to write a novel but I don’t have time” my response is usually “No one has time, you usually make time.” I mean, I sure as hell don’t have time to write novels, I just kind of do it anyway.
25) copy/paste a few sentences or a short paragraph that you’re particularly proud of
Okay I know this is more than a few sentences but I am!!! Literally so proud of this!!! It’s from a story I just now started about…um, basically a story about how I never got over my smol bean rage about the whole “Getting kicked back into the real world as a kid again after growing up in Narnia” schtick.
“A
drink for the Wanderer,” I said, switching from the bland notes of English to
the hard lilt of Alleiran and pouring out a dribble of scotch into the northern
mug. “To fire, to travel, to lies and
battle. Bring us home alive and send us
out again.” The familiar benediction warmed
something cold in my chest, left me trembling on the dangerous edge of
tears. “Bless your servant, Wanderer, for
I am far from home and have no war to fight.”
The last part of the prayer was personal, individual. I had been making the same simple request for
years.
I
passed the bottle across the table and he took it, tipping it not quite far
enough to pour scotch into the southern mug.
“An empty cup for the Lady of Stars,”
he said in Alleiran, subdued. “To storm,
to sky, to the fallen light. Raise us up
and let us fly.” He paused and let out a
breath that shook, closing his eyes as if he couldn’t stand to look at me
during the personal prayer. His prayer
had been the same as long as mine had. “Bless
your servant, Lady, for I have done great harm that cannot be repaid. Watch over my sister as she walks between
days, where the living cannot go. Grant
me clarity, guard my sanity, show me a bright path.” He opened his eyes and offered me the bottle,
adding quietly, “Save us from the past.”
I’m usually pretty particular about the sorts of traits that get assigned as humanity’s “special thing” in sci-fi settings, but I have to admit that I have a weakness for settings where the thing humanity is known for is something tiny and seemingly inconsequential that it wouldn’t normally occur to you to think of as a distinctive trait.
Like, maybe we have a reputation as a bunch of freaky nihilists because we’re the only species that naturally has the capacity to be amused by our own misfortune.
Alien: Why are you happy? You’ve been seriously injured!
Human: *struggling to control laughter* Yeah, but I can imagine what that must have looked like from the outside, and it’s pretty hilarious.
Alien: …
Captain XXlr’y: First Officer Jane The Human, your olifactory protuberance is severely damaged! Why is this a matter for mirthful celebration???
First Officer Jane The Human: A SPARKLY LITTLE POMERANIAN THING WITH A GODDAMN UNICORN HORN CHASED ME STRAIGHT INTO A WALL! OH MY GOD! DID YOU SEE THAT? I RAN STRAIGHT INTO THE WALL.
Captain XXlr’y: Yes I just observed this sequence of events! It was terrible!
First Officer Jane The Human: OKAY WHO GOT THAT ON CAMERA, I WANNA SEE.
Captain XXlr’y: So you more fully understand that this is a situation you should never get into again?
First Officer Jane The Human: SO I CAN SEND THE VIDEO TO MY MOM!
Captain XXlr’y: For… for the solicitation of maternal concern…?
First Officer Jane The Human: NO, BECAUSE SHE’LL THINK IT’S HILARIOUS TOO.
viewings of the ancient human art based seemingly entierly around purposefully inducing misfortune are a source of constant xeno-anthropological arguments. As near as anyone can discern, these acts are some kind of core human performance form- so meaningful to their culture that recording these acts was very nearly the first concern on the invention of moving visual media.
Somewhat more disconcerting is the fact that these aren’t just recordings of accidental happenstance, but carefully choreographed, practiced, and refined to such a degree that there are nearly species wise recognizable symbols and routines performed.
There are thesis’ on ‘large wedding cake destroyed’, and hotly argued debate on the purpose of ‘Jackass’
Reblogging this again to suggest a different view of humanity, one where it’s not that we find injuring ourselves to be hilarious is the “defining quirk”. No, this one’s got to do with why you always want a human engineer or programmer (or both) if your ship’s going to be within two parsecs of a human.
Humans break things. They don’t mean to, and it can’t just be their curiosity – other species are curious, but they don’t break things like humans do. Humans make things stop working by trying to do things that they were never meant to do in the first place. I should know, I’ve seen it firsthand – one of the stubborn little bastards decided he was going to get the holodeck to show him an outdated media format called a “Vee-Ay-Chess”, and he spent twenty chrons trying to fix it after it started belching black smoke – and then he was at it AGAIN! And don’t even get me started on how he almost wiped our nav computer to try and play something called “Wolfenstein”.
But the scary part is, for every time it fails, there’s three times it works. There was a time when our warp drive broke down. You know, it was a Caledon Industries model, they’re cheap but they like to break. The problem was that it was a Tritium Reactron Fitting, and it got wedged in the back. Like, “take the ship apart and put it back together to get the fitting out” wedged. We were convinced we were going to be stuck for a few days before our signal got noticed.
And then the human – same one who broke the holodeck twice with his Vee-Ay-Chess crap and almost wiped all our nav data with his Wolfenstein game – he goes into the engine room and begins calling over the intercom for random tools, trash, parts of other things that were working just fine. He spends maybe twelve chrons in there, and when he comes out, he tells us to fire up warp. It sails us right to the nearest star system, no problems. And then the chief engineer takes a look at what he’s done. It looks like – I kid you not – it looks like the entrails of a Galthan Wingbeast. One that got splattered by a bomb.
Says he “jury rigged” it, whatever the hell that means, and we should get it replaced before it breaks again. And that’s why I never go anywhere without a human anymore.
If a cat or dog is eating vegan meals, they’re doing it out of their own free will, just saying. Give a dog a piece of Tofu turkey and they eat it, i didn’t force them to eat it, so.
Give a dog anti freeze and they’ll eat it. Feed a dog rat poison and they’ll eat it. Give a dog grapes, nuts, chocolate, beer, etc. They’ll eat it. They don’t know that it’s dangerous for them. As their caretaker you are responsible for knowing better, not them. If you deprive your cats or dogs of meat, especially cats, you are actively killing your companion in the slowest way.
I once adopted a kitten who was being systematically starved by his previous human who insisted in feeding him vegan food. He was so excited when he got meat-based cat food from us that he gorged himself until he puked. He was left with digestive tract issues for years because of his previous human’s neglect. Do not do this. I don’t care what you believe in personally - cats are carnivores (not omnivores), depriving them from meat is cruel and animal abuse.
VEGAN DIETS KILL CARNIVOROUS ANIMALS
Say it with me, kids: obligate carnivore means no vegan diets ever.
sometimes i think about the fact that Dreamworks was working on the Prince of Egypt and Shrek at the same time and would apparently send people to work on Shrek instead of the Prince of Egypt as a form of punishment
the night i posted this i couldn’t find a source and i’ve been wondering ever since if maybe it was just some kind of fucked up fever dream or something. but no, it’s real:
