it absolutely blows my mind when i think of how much star trek is just straight up bad…..like three entire movies are irredeemably Bad ™, 5-10% of the episodes are Bad, so many tie-in novels are Bad, and yet i love it with my entire body and soul and would die for it
I want to be offended, but you’re not even wrong. And I would still die for the Federation in a heartbeat.
my mom asked why i don’t read as many books as i used to and i just said it was because i read a lot of unpublished stories from independent writers online and she thinks that’s very good of me to give undiscovered authors a chance
skymurdock asked: Star Wars/Star Trek? pls imagine Han and Jim having the weirdest friendly rivalry ever bc Han maintains the Millennium Falcon is the Best Ship and Jim maintains the Enterprise should have that honor.
I
just got out of Beyond last night and I am DRUNK on the Star Trek thing right
now. LET’S GO. I did a little more with the crews than the ships but like. Yeah.
The thing about
exploring space is that it’s big, but
not infinite. So sooner or later the final frontier pushes
right up to the raggedy edge of a galaxy far far away. Specifically, a ramshackle ship at the outermost
edge of Republic space. (They’re on a
sort of ‘remember the good old days when the three of us plus Chewie and a
couple droids were on the fucking run’ sort of trip. Han doesn’t know why he’s doing this but
sure, Leia, for old time’s sake, something like that, and Luke just looked at
him and blinked and somehow the farmboy eyes still work on him after all this
time.) The Enterprise sees it on its radar and…well, to be completely honest,
Spock takes one look at the readings and announces that there appears to be a
ship in distress. They go investigate—the
Enterprise makes the Falcon look like a slightly haphazard
guppy beside a sleek and shining whale, a sheer wall of matte white kissed with
space dust. (Inside the Falcon, everyone has a completely
independent moment of holyfuckingkriff we’re
going to war again before the polite text hail comes through and the ship
translates the message.)
Okay so…it turns out
that Republic Standard and Federation Basic have basically nothing to do with
each other, and the universal translators aren’t in the mood to translate an
entirely foreign language. The crew of
the Falcon and the Enterprise away team spend a good long while
cycling through every language they know (and with Uhura with them, that number
is prodigious) before they figure out
that there seems to be at least a degree of commonality between Bocce and Ferengi,
and between an archaic Vulcan dialect that even Spock barely knows and an
equally dated Naboo dialect that Leia knows a few scraps of and C-3PO knows a
few more scraps of (Padmé believed in knowing her planet’s history). They cobble together a pidgin that at least
lets them introduce themselves while half the engineering team scrambles to
clap together a translator. (It takes
two hours and Scotty is bursting with
pride over the thing, which turns Basic into Standard and back again with no trouble
at all.)
First contact with a
foreign Republic: pretty much par for the course for the Enterprise, and hey, they have a Senator of said Republic right there, so for Kirk and his crew
this is going great. They have a war
hero, a general in the military, and a political figure on hand, in addition to
a droid loaded with a massive amount of history and a soldier. The Falcon’s
crew is pretty much exactly the diplomatic cadre most planets send out to meet
the Federation, so it doesn’t even occur to them that they’ve pretty much caught
the Falcon with their pants down. The Falcon
isn’t a diplomatic vessel on the best of days, and even if it was, the Republic
hasn’t made a business of making first contact with anyone in quite a long time.
So when a clutch of various aliens—including humans, who aren’t so alien after all, and ain’t that a kick in the
head, as Han says—in brightly colored uniforms introduces themselves as members
of Star Fleet, representatives of something called the United Federation of
Planets…that’s new. Leia pushes Han out
of the way with an elbow, and shuts Luke up with a glance, and does her best to
look Senatorly and In Control.
By the end of a few
hours’ meeting, there’s a tentative alliance drawn up and a friendship in place
between Leia and Jim, who, Bones and Han agree, have bonded over being reckless
idealists too stubbornly brave for their own health. Spock interrogates Luke at length about the
Force—fascinating, he pronounces at
once—and is disappointed to find out that the Jedi have largely been wiped out
will all their information. (Luke, on
the other hand, is a little dazed from the rapid-fire queries and thinks that,
if all Vulcans are so emotionless, it’s probably for the best that the Jedi
never met them, because can you imagine
if that was the Jedi standard for emotional control. Also, Luke is smarter than your average
bantha, thanks, and knows a telepath when he sees one, so he makes a mental
note to look into testing the Vulcans for Force-sensitivity, if he can figure
out how the hell to do it.) Uhura corners
3PO and commands him to start teaching her Republic Standard. She makes terrifying
progress, and also learns enough Shyriiwook to understand Chewbacca’s careful
and kind farewell (C-3PO is in love, he’s
never met someone so brilliant in his entire existence, he almost follows her
home like a lost puppy).
Regarding the ships: Jim
is very polite about the Falcon
because there’s just no point in being rude about other people’s ships when yours
is so evidently the best in the
universe—honestly, if Han tried to insult his ship, Jim’s response would be a
blank expression and “Are you blind? We
can have Bones look at that.” Han
grumbles a bit, but he’s not an idiot, and the Falcon is a damn good ship, he mutters, even if she’s not
flashy. (It should be noted that, here, ‘not
flashy’ means ‘occasionally unwilling to hit hyperspeed without some serious
antics,’ which is kind of the equivalent of saying, about a car, that ‘not
flashy’ means ‘hope you don’t want a second gear that works all the time.’) So the two captains get along pretty well,
because if there’s anyone that Han Don’t-Tell-Me-The-Odds Solo is going to
click with, it’s Jim Rules-What-Rules Kirk.
Scotty, on the other hand, is
apoplectic the first time he hears Han compare the Falcon to the Enterprise. That bucket of bolts! Falling apart at the seams! Compared to his lady! The Falcon
is unworthy to pass through her ion wake!
Chekov sees the Chief of Engineering puff up and Jim shoots him a look,
and Chekov claps a hand over Scotty’s mouth, towing him out of the room with
Sulu. Han’s back is turned and the nod
Luke gives, to say nothing of the hidden smirk, suggests that he won’t be
telling, so Jim has avoided, once more, starting a diplomatic incident because
of Scotty’s determination to defend the Enterprise’s
honor. This is a fairly regular occurrence,
and a large part of the reason that Scotty is on probation from diplomatic
missions.
Bonus sixth headcanon: Jim is the most fucking Force-sensitive. They find this out because Luke, still
half-trained and a bit prone to error, brushes a brief mental probe across his
mind and gets thrown out with all the violence of hitting warp three from a
dead halt. Luke asks where his mental
shields came from and Jim gives him a blank look and Luke has a moment of horrible
revelation: he’s not only going to have to scrounge up some teaching ability,
he’s going to have to comb an entire
Federation for Force-sensitives.
When the nav officer—Chekov—sees the look of appalled shock on his face
and politely offers brandy, with the additional remark that the Captain can have that effect, Luke takes him up on it.
Luke does not know how he’s going to get around to DOING that - searching through a whole Federation and then teaching the people he finds to use the Force. Luke kind of wants to cry a little. (the Vulcans are - a whole ‘nother bag of Loth-cats that Luke is going to poke when he is SOBER, okay, but right now the brandy is calling his name.)
(years later, Jim has his very own lightsaber, not that he uses it very much outside of “glorified laser cutter”. he runs into Luke at a Federation-Republic thing and one thing led to another and they’re going to check out an ancient Jedi temple now - with a full expedition team by the Federation’s insistence bc they’re all about exploring new things and this is a New Thing and Luke does not actually mind - he is SO EXCITED, the nerd.)
Bones takes one look at the Millennium Falcon - held together by spit, duct tape, prayers and the Force - and immediately starts screaming internally. he can list about fifteen things off the top of his head that could happen to the inhabitants of this ship should this thing finally give out, and also ten viral diseases that this could possibly be carrying from its history of smuggling, how have any of you SURVIVED in this hunk of junk.
(“HEY,” yells Han, Offended.
“true,” says Leia, affectionately patting the walls.)
Artoo is having the time of his life onboard the Enterprise, by the way. Sulu walks in on him beeping away on the bridge, plugged into the console. is he having a conversation with the Enterprise? (he most definitely is.)
Luke eventually figures out a method to hash through Star Fleet for Jedi, and ends up with a surprising number. To his joy, they’re not all human (to his equal dismay, easily half are Vulcan). He ends up with a whole academy and is the Republic’s first diplomat who stays there out of necessity. But only for half a year. He reasons he needs to search for Jedi in his own galaxy as well.
Years later, Luke’s Federation personal apprentice becomes a full Jedi and takes over teaching at the Federation, so Luke can focus on the sudden influx of Republic Jedi students. Among them is one Ben Solo. And when Ben goes on a rampage, the Federation Jedi hear, because they just lost students from a cultural exchange. And the Federation is Pissed. Luke’s former Federation apprentice grabs Luke as soon as they can get there, and drags his depressed ass across the galaxy looking for Ben. They find him and arrest him and his storm troopers (and find Vader’s half melted helmet on a veritable alter, to which Luke is seriously disturbed) with permission from both the Federation and the Republic.
(He happened to be away from the main First Order ship he’s been apart of, much to the Republic’s dismay.)
Among the troopers with him is one who is so tired, an outcast despite being top of the class, and he defects willingly. His first partner in the Republic is one certain pilot who refuses to use his designation, instead dubs him “Finn.”
Luke’s not-apprentice refuses to leave Luke alone, makes arrangements, and moves in with him. Together they start a new comb of the galaxy for Jedi students, coming across one desert child sleeping in a fighter. And a certain missing ship. (“You want the trash?!” The apprentice laughs. The Flacon of notorious among Star Fleet because how is that little piece of junk so agile and a main ship used in the Republic’s rebellion. How.)
Reblog if you would be comfortable living in a dormitory with an openly transgender or intersex individual. We’re working on a campaign for gender neutral housing and we could use your support.
If Sanders doesn’t get the nomination, and you can’t see yourself voting for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, then don’t. Vote third party.
Consider the Libertarian or Green Party.
Don’t feed the establishment by voting for Clinton, and don’t feed authoritarian isolationism by voting for Trump.
No. The absolute largest chunk of people considering changing their votes at the moment are disappointed non-conservatives. There was barely any competition among republicans; from the get-go, the voter base united behind Trump. If non-conservatives split their votes across multiple fronts, they WILL lose.
Voting third party in America throws your vote directly into the garbage. Our system does not work like Australia’s. You don’t get a second or third choice, and candidates who win aren’t going to look at the numbers and say “I see 25% of Americans voted Green, I should implement Green policies.” That’s not how it works. Conservative voters overwhelmingly back a single party, the GOP, while non-conservative voters are the ones that scatter across multiple, weak fronts when faced with an unappealing Democratic party nominee. Think about it like this:
The majority of Republican voters support Trump and are not changing their vote even though party leaders and figureheads are universally decrying him. They’ve been groomed for decades by the GOP to be this way, and now party leaders have lost control of the impressionable voter base they created for themselves. There’s nothing they can do about it at this point. While a small number of Republicans can and are switching parties, it’s not very much. Meanwhile, Democrats are floundering, trying to decide which front to unite under. Some of them go to the Green party or Libertarians, sure; the rest stay with the Democratic party in the hopes that even with people leaving, they will have enough to block Trump. But Trump doesn’t need a majority of total Americans to vote for him; he only needs more than the other candidates have. Do you understand what I’m saying? Trump could get 10% of the vote, but as long as no other party has more than 10%, he still wins. The second you split the left and middle across three or four fronts, the right seizes control. This is how it goes down every single fucking time we go through this.
The other thing to consider is that the electoral college is NOT going to weigh in favor of a third party. Doing so would be political suicide. They are paid to vote certain ways, and not doing so would fuck up their careers. Even if an entire state votes in favor of a third party, the electoral college is going to vote for whichever primary party matches up the closest, and sometimes not even that. Their votes are counted when making the actual choice of president; ours are not. They proved that with Gore. The majority of Americans voted for him; the electoral college installed Bush anyway and told us to suck it up. The question at this point is whether they’d risk it a second time, and we have to hope that they won’t, which is why we have to unite under a single front to block Trump.
Please don’t Nader us into 4 years of President Trump, people. Don’t vote Green.
Honestly I think my fav part of Beyond was at the end when do the “Space the final frontier.” Montage and THE WHOLE CREW JOINS IN AND OVERLAPS with each other AND UHURA FINISHES IT with “Where no ONE has gone before.” And then my soul ascended into heaven.
Part of me is like “Jean Valjean is the main character of Les Miserables and that’s very important and maybe the miniseries will remind people of that” and part of me is like “listen. I literally only care about Les Amis and would watch six hours just of Enjolras and Grantaire sitting in the same room doing nothing” so I’m a little conflicted
Nothing is going to change. Americans love their guns more than they love people and after Sandy Hook we decided that killing over 20 children was acceptable and not outrageous enough to make reasonable restrictions on guns. This is America, a country that has been around for 200 years, a superpower, a 1st world nation, and one of the wealthiest countries on the planet and we refuse to protect our own people. We respect guns more than we respect the lives of people.
What specific gun control measures would you propose and how would they directly and effectively make society safer?
Absolutely get rid of all AR-15′s and the like.
Intense background and criminal background checks and anything violent automatically disqualifies you.
Make getting a gun/gun permit more like getting a driver’s license:
permit to learn
includes an exam with 18 or more questions on the policies, laws, and etc of guns and gun ownership
if you get more than 8 questions incorrect you must retake it.
30 hours of practical experience at a gun range with a licensed teacher
Must take a 5 hour class on the dangers of guns and how to use them safely which will then yield you a certificate that grants you to take the practical exam and lasts for one year. If you don’t gain the license within the allotted year you must retake the class.
A practical exam with a licensed instructor who will grade you on various skills. If you pass you may be granted a permit on the weapon of your choice, the exams may differ on the type of firearm you want.
Follow the Japanese model where you must have two gun safes in different areas of the house, one to store the gun and one to store the bullets and you must provide the police with information on where those safes are.
No concealed carry and only handguns may be allowed to be out in public.
If transporting a weapon, it must be in the trunk of the vehicle, in a bag or some other case, safety on and unloaded and may not leave the vehicle until you are at the destination.
If you’re a hunter or some other gun hobbyist that requires a functional weapon other than a handgun then the gun must stay on the premises, whether that is a gun range or the Fish and Wildlife facility.
If you live in a rural area where police (and people, for that matter) are few and far between, something akin to a deer hunting rifle should provide plenty of protection from predators and poachers, you still have to follow the aforementioned steps.
This doesn’t cover everything but I think it’s a good place to start.
Can you show me evidence that this would directly and effectively create a safer society?
I have never laughed so hard at a gun law post. Like seriously, the evidence is in fucking reality. The proposed restrictions are just fucking logic.
Anonymous asked: Headcanons for your Claire Temple Ao3 fic? Maybe five random run ins Claire has with superheroes while not on the clock saving their lives. Also, since I know you are a bastard, preferably /funny/ or happy run ins. Try to rein in the pain, agony inc.
Oh God, that’s right, that fic exists. For those of you who are new to the party,
it’s this, and I haven’t updated it in literal months, for which I am formally
sorry. In unrelated news, yes I am a
bastard, and Agony Inc. is my new favorite thing, I will be tagging all
upsetting writing as such.
There’s actually
tentative plans for this to be a sister-fic, but since it’ll obviously take me
a millennium to write that, here: Superhero Adjunct Drinking Night, facilitated
by Natasha Romanoff (who won’t hear argument that she’s a superhero, and therefore part of the problem) and enabled by Pepper Potts’ gold card. It starts after Natasha comes and gets Claire
to help her fish Clint out of a dumpster, and when Natasha turns up not a week
later Claire’s first response is to grab her first aid kit. Instead, Natasha waves her down, hands her a
jacket, and steers her out of the apartment and drives to a bar—it feels more
like a kidnapping than getting drinks with friends, but Natasha generously pays
for drinks all night, and Claire could stand a few more kidnappings like
this. This proceeds to happen about once
a week for two months, at which point Claire gets a call from an unknown number
on her personal cell, and a polite voice asks, “Would you mind if I accompanied
Natasha to your girls’ night tonight?”
Pepper proves to be a riotously funny drunk, with enough stories about
her time as Tony’s PA to keep them laughing too. The next time Claire treats Jessica for acute
failure to demonstrate the common sense God gave a squirrel (technical terms)
and sees Malcolm silently working up a stress ulcer, she invites him out with
them—he gets juice rather than liquor, but he’s witty and wry and only a little
starstruck, all in all a good addition. Karen
is the next addition, after she spends a full hour shouting at Matt while
Claire stitches him up, and it’s lucky that she doesn’t bring Foggy that first
week, because there’s a deeply
awkward moment where she and Natasha eye each other like feral wolves and greet
each other by strange names. “Vasilisa,”
Natasha says, “I thought you were dead.” Karen bares her teeth politely and replies, “Natalia, I thought you were
a better spy.” Pepper looks up at the ceiling
like she’s praying for strength and orders an entire bottle of vodka, setting
it between the two other redheads like an olive branch. All is calm, after that, although the two are
eerily alike, dark gallows humor flecking their speech. Foggy comes, the next week, then a woman
named Candace who drops into a chair like she belongs there and introduces herself
as ‘an ex of an X-Man’ and snickers at their faces, then a dark-haired
twenty-something in glasses who complains about Asgardians, then a cranky blind
woman who refuses to talk about her roommate….
It snowballs pretty bad, is the point, and it gets to the point where
Pepper is comfortably dropping a grand on drinks. Claire likes it, though, it’s the most normal
thing she’s handled lately.
Also: she’s not
sure how anyone finds out about Superhero Adjunct Drinking Night, but
apparently it’s sovereign, because
through mysterious happenings there’s never once an attack or other disaster on
the night in question, even though they’re a perfect target for any
enterprising villain in the mood for hostages.
“Mysteries of the life,” Claire says dryly. “Another round of tequila, I think.”
Claire definitely sees Steve Rogers in her
preferred grocery store. Actually, she
sees him in her preferred grocery store a
lot, so much that she corners him and interrogates him about who made him
follow her. He looks pretty alarmed—for a
six-foot-plus brick house, he does ‘alarmed’ remarkably well—and sheepishly
admits that if he gets groceries anywhere closer to the city center and the
Tower, he gets accosted. Hell’s Kitchen
is a little out of his way, but apparently it’s worth it for a few minutes of peace. Claire huffs, grabs the cheap box of cereal
he’d tossed into his basket, and informs him that if he’s shopping on seventy
years of back pay he can afford to get the name brand stuff that doesn’t taste
like paper. They see each other about every
other week, and Claire works really hard not to laugh at his offended tirade
about bananas.
Claire’s pretty much
over the shock of having someone knock on her bedroom window, which is
inaccessible by human means and on the fourth floor besides, but she’s used to
having it happen at night, not three in the afternoon. But she opens it, lets the person—people—through
and starts working up to a lecture about how she gives them a phone number for
a reason before she realizes that it’s just Peter, sitting on her floor, apparently
uninjured and dressed in civvies and dripping dismally onto the carpet from the
downpour. “You could’ve been seen,” she
says automatically, and he slants a look up at her through the floppy locks of
wet hair falling into his face—it’s pouring, and has been for hours, so it’s
unlikely anyone was exactly paying enough attention to see a kid crawl down a
building. “Mind if I hang out here for a
couple hours?” he asks, and when she doesn’t answer immediately he flicks his
hair out of his face, looking uncomfortable, and adds, “Um, it’s the
anniversary of my uncle’s death and my aunt’s not home and I…didn’t really want
to stay there alone.” Claire sighs and
throws a towel at his face, and walks out into her kitchen, calling back to
grab some dry clothes out of her closet before he gets her couch wet. She’s no great shakes in the kitchen, but she
can make tea, so she does, the chamomile blend Abuela gives her in vast
quantities as a remedy for stress. Peter
sits on her couch in sweats that are about four sizes too big—most of her spare
clothes are for people who aren’t nineteen—and
drinks the tea in silence and watches a Harry Potter marathon on TV while
Claire lays out her first aid kit and sorts through it on the floor. When she joins him on the couch, he leans his
head onto her shoulder and falls asleep, face twisted into a frown and his hair
drying into cowlicks. She sighs, the
deep, from-the-soles-of-her-feet, why-does-this-happen-to-me sigh she perfected
after the second time Matt called her, and shifts them so that Peter’s head is
in her lap and her hand is in his hair.
It eases the frown, so maybe it’s okay that this specific thing is
happening to her.
This is how Claire
Temple meets Frank Castle, AKA the Punisher, AKA a dead guy: she gets a
date. She goes on the date. She brings the date back to her place. She finds a tall and menacing guy standing
outside the door of her apartment building, dressed in a long coat and a
shoulder holster and a black eye under his military buzz cut. He stops her date with a look like steel and
offers Claire a file without a word, and she takes it, because that’s what her
life is turning into these days. The
file is either a threat (unlikely, because Buzz Cut Man is armed and hasn’t
directly threatened her yet) or something that someone thinks will help her
(more likely, because Buzz Cut Man is glaring at her date like he’s pissed him
off personally rather than standing there and looking pale and scared), so she
opens it because either way, it is what it is.
It turns out that the file is a terrifyingly
complete background check on her date, all the way back to grade school and
annotated by three people, and includes his marriage certificate, with a
post-it note in Karen’s tidy handwriting that says ‘no divorce in the works.’ Claire sighs—the guy seemed like a pretty bad
lay anyway, too narcissistic—and closes the file. “You,” she tells her date, “go home to your
wife and ask for a fucking divorce if you’re going to sleep around anyway. You,” she tells Buzz Cut Man, “can come
inside and I’ll give you some ice to put on that eye. And tell Karen and Natasha that I can vet my
own dates.” He mutters something, and stands
to attention when she arches an eyebrow at him.
“You can tell them,” he
repeats, and she snorts.
And a sneak peek of
the next chapter, if I ever have time to write the damn thing: Claire has a lot
of friends in the medical field, and even though she hasn’t spoken much to this
particular friend since undergrad, the Organic Chemistry bond is real, so when
her friend calls, Claire answers. Her
friend helps run a women’s health clinic that offers abortions and has been
facing increasingly aggressive harassment, not to mention their financial
problems, and she’s been calling around looking for anyone, anyone at all, who’s
willing to help protect the women trying to get into the clinic. Claire’s response is “Well, I’ll see what I
can do, and I’ll come up on my next day off.”
And then she calls Jessica, because Jessica knows everyone, and
explains, and Jessica’s whole response is “Leave it to me.” So when Claire goes up to help out on her
next day off, she’s more than a little surprised to find Captain America, Luke
Cage, and Colossus all standing in front of the doors and looking solemn. Not nearly as surprised as her old friend,
though, who’s talking to Natasha and Kitty and a blonde woman—is that Trish Walker, Claire wonders, making a
mental note to invite her to the Drinking Nights—and looks about a second from
fainting.
“Claire, who the
fuck are these people?” her friend hisses when the protesters start turning up
and Steve, Forties charm in full swing, offers his arm to the first girl he
sees, shooting a venomous look over her head at the closest sign-bearing man.
“Uh,” Claire
says blankly as she catches a familiar pair of figures on a nearby roof—one horned,
one sleek and bright red and blue. “My…friends?”
