The Gorn AND the Vazda!
Aspiring middle-grade novelist, Trekkie, podcaster. Find me at antimatterpod.com, squiddishly.net and all the cool places: https://linktr.ee/lizbarr
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The Gorn AND the Vazda!
YES! This series needs a Righteous Nemesis! Not Ancient Evil That's Absolutely And Definitely 100% Evil!
Get a massage. Eat cake. Not necessarily at the same time.
You gotta have a hierarchy of grudges, I understand.
Meanjin Journal is 85 years old; older than the Sydney Opera House. Closing it down is cultural vandalism of the highest order, roughly equivalent to demolishing the above mentioned opera house. I am disgusted @meanjin.bsky.social
Bruenig makes Catholic millennials named Elizabeth look bad. It's PERSONAL.
I came up with a whole alternate ending, which I have lovingly illustrated as best I can...
Woolworths Rewards will give me comprehensive coverage for $75 a month! YOUR MOVE, AAMI ugh I suppose I will need to make a phone call
AAMI wants to put my car insurance up from $140/month to $168, and that is TOO MANY DOLLARBUCKS, time to shop around.
NEWS YOU CAN USE (seriously, I am not a Hobonichi girlie, but I'm looking at Hobo season and casting a nervous eye in the general direction of Jibun Techo)
Yes! It has a decided "best country in the world/no I've never left the US, why do you ask?" vibe. (Which brings up the peculiar fact that the Enterprise in SNW rarely seems to actually LEAVE Federation space on its "mission of exploration".)
Yes, I think that's a big part of it! And obviously there has always been a thread of US exceptionalism in Star Trek, even when it's trying to be more self-aware, but this version seems especially insidious and subconscious.
The fandom seems really solid on that front, for which I'm grateful -- I assumed I'd end up muting keywords for 24 hours, but so far there has been no need.
My flatmate now has tap class on Alien: Earth night, so I have to watch it a day late!
(There are definitely cut scenes, because they wouldn't have gotten Melanie Scrofano in just to be an extra in the final scene, but I suspect it was a subplot about the loss of the Cayuga.)
Yes! I don't believe the conspiracy theories that this was hastily recut so as to not offend Skydance/the Trump administration, but it's such an inept episode that I absolutely understand how they arose.
"We're the good guys, so everything we do is good, even when it's terrible, and hey, it all works out in the end" is not a good way to run a starship or a science fiction series.
But it's very much an "if you are Pike's chosen, nothing you do is wrong, and you will never face consequences." Obviously M'Benga doing a murder is the most egregious example, but there are a handful of others, and it's really troubling.
Trying to articulate my feelings about the moral philosophy of Strange New Worlds in season 3, and how it reflects certain US evangelical cultures, but unfortunately I keep summing it up as "the only moral abortion is Pike's abortion".
“Author, Author” is a weird episode in that it pivots from holodeck shenanigans to legal drama, but also I do need to know everything about how intellectual property and defamation law work in the Federation.
NZ has the BEST birds!
But it is about transphobes!
Literally just realised that I've been pronouncing "sehlat" like I'm saying "ssssssssLUT", soooooooooo
Shout out to this queen who walked out of her own wedding ceremony because her fiancé used ChatGPT to write his vows.
I mean, she lives with me, so that wasn't really a viable solution. The person who gave the cold to HER, however...
This is a massive fucking win! Never mind a day or 48 hours, you should take the whole month of September to celebrate.
No, you're right, I am also immunocompromised thanks to my arthritis meds, I'm doing this for other people and also so my cold doesn't turn into a more serious chest infection.
Which is a real shame, because it's a great show that deserves a better fandom.
Right, and it's embarrassing when the Doctor finds out, but he doesn't give her shit about it OR make it all about himself. (I still have trouble buying Seven as anything other than aro-ace, but at this point that's a Me Problem.)
This episode is us doing the PinkPantheress TikTok meme ("Is this transphobic?"/"It feels transphobic."), but we also talk about racism! Ableism! The absolutely shocking sexism! Misuse of romcom tropes! Bad dance-offs!
My most problematic Voyager take is that I actually like "Human Error" even though it has Seven doing literally everything I hate Barclay for. It's just classic "queer adolescent girl trying comphet" for me.
Honestly I missed out on a lot by following her on Dreamwidth but not Tumblr -- I went from "Oh, she has some great fic" to "I completely disagree with her about LoK" to "Oh, that asshole being reblogged has a familiar username, I wonder if it's OH NO I HAVE TO GO REMEMBER HOW TO BLOCK PEOPLE ON DW"
I know it's good that I've taken a sick day instead of coming into work and sharing my cold with the entire Melbourne legal profession, but then there is The Guilt.
I had a friend who went from "what if the Fire Nation thought they were heroes" to "umm, it is super problematic to portray the Equalists as villains who think they're heroes" to "taking credit for harassing Kelly Marie Tran off social media".
I also cannot overstate how many AtLA fans who were crying out for more complex morality in that universe got their wish in Legend of Korra and became antis.
Well, yeah, but that's sort of the show's gift, that it knows it can't be HIGHBROW PHILOSOPHY all the time, it also has to be SHRIMP and BORTLES and Tahani's toxic friendship with Taylor Swift.
Absolutely not, it's a super intelligent show, but I keep seeing that remark about last week's Strange New Worlds (which was allegedly a comedy in the sense that it was intended to be amusing), and I'm tired of low expectations.
I definitely should have clicked for full context, but the pop culture history of what people might expect visually is also super ableist, which is a separate discussion (and not the reviewer's fault).
It's funny how no one says "It's comedy, you're meant to turn your brain off" about The Good Place.
Setting aside the illiteracy, let’s unpack the ableism of “outraged to discover the character with facial differences is sympathetic instead of villainous!”
I miss him so much
Fellas is it good when the antisemitism envoy funds the group promoting the neo-Nazi march?
No one has seen Trump in just under a week. His Truth Social posts don't sound like him, and the White House has posted old photos claiming they're new. Soooooooooooooooooooooooo...
Hoping for another "the Queen is dead" day, but with the added bonus that I don't have to go into work early to start changing Qs to Ks on barrister profiles.
James! Jaaaaaaaaaaaames!
2pm Eastern Standard Time in the US is 4am in Australia.
Sawdust level: only 60%, but my leg muscles have been replaced with udon noodles
Apparently it is Ginger Cat Appreciation Day! Dale continues to regard himself as a victim of feline trafficking and genital mutilation, but yesterday I heard him purr as his brother cleaned him.
The TikTok girlies were right, strawberry matcha lattes ARE great.
I have a cold, so I'm currently racing to get as much work done as possible before my entire head fills up with sawdust.
Spot the difference between Australia's supposedly centerist Prime Minister Anthony Albanese today on the past weekend's violent, Nazi-organized anti-immigration rallies and the fascist dipshit at the wheel in the US after Charlottesville
I think that's absolutely it! They were introduced as characters first and evolved into a romantic couple organically. (So did Janeway and Chakotay, to a point, but Jeri Taylor had some very particular ideas about romance that got caught up in the mix.)
Absolutely! But also I think there was a problem with a LOT of Trek of that era where a male love interest for a female character was always conceived as a soft-spoken, milquetoasty non-threatening boy.
I am always happy to come in and argue that DS9 is more conservative/neoliberal than its fans give credit for, and its (deserved) reputation as The Best Trek means its faults go unexamined. But there is not a single bad actor in the entire show. Except maybe the dude who played Bareil.
Good God. Brooks has a particular style, especially in the early episodes, and in some ways it comes across very old fashioned now, but saying he "can't act" is, uh. A bit of a dog whistle.
We couldn’t have designed a worse government to meet this moment. Absolutely extraordinary.
(Or to switch back from the facehugger model to the under-the-nose elephant trunk one, but that's not very effective in hay fever season.)
Yesterday I woke up and found that my CPAP mask had left a scratch on my nose. So I carefully adjusted the fit ... and woke up this morning with a NEW scratch on my nose. I fear the time has come to order a new cushion.
IT’S SPRING, FUCKOS (hockey edition)
Truly CMAT has arrived: country music fans are saying she’s not making real country music. Related: why are country music fans like THAT?
Yeah, I saw that and said, “Oof.”
Yeah, I hope that being played by a dramatic actress rather than a comedian will give us more insight into the culture!
He’s so persistent! Does he have nothing else to do?
Absolutely! On both points, especially as Wolkoff is credited with some of SNW's better scripts.
I love that “messy blonde hair” and “being played by an iconic actress” are basically genetic Lanthanite traits.
At this point it feels like she has a different personality every week, and i genuinely think the writers forgot she’s not human. Or maybe they don’t think it’s worth exploring Illyrian culture and the cost of spending decades hiding your heritage?
YOUR USERNAME THOUGH
I cannot overstate how difficult the new Transport VIC site is to use compared with the old PTV, but at least it still says there are no disruptions on the Werribee line when I just watched a train get cancelled.
This is a highly competitive category, but Jadzia wins for sure, if only because she's had the most experience in a range of bodies.
No, but I checked out The Death of Stalin by Sheila Fitzpatrick (non-fiction, not the graphic novel that inspired the movie) from the library so I'm prepared.
The problem with age verification is that if I am accidentally deemed to be under 16, I won't be able to log onto social media and humblebrag about it.
It's because we're either self-employed or employed by self-employed individuals.
Oh, uh. That's something we don't have. Soooooo I will have a quiet word with my boss, who will have a quiet word with her boss...
(But also, history is complicated? A fantasy Gilded Age implies the existence of a fantasy Civil War? There is probably a fantasy Queen Victoria and a fantasy Tsarist Russia doing fantasy pogroms that send immigrants to fantasy Gilded Age New York to be fed to the orphan crushing machine?)
Mostly it reminds me that I want to write an adult fantasy where the magical robber-barons are literally feeding souls to the industrial magic machinery. Except that I'd probably have to visit NYC for research, and, um.
If we had locked accounts I would say more about the coworker who chose the day after a neo-Nazi parade to loudly complain about [ethnic group which includes a person in our office]
Congratulations to us for continuing to be innocent of thoughtcrimes. ...aside from lustful thoughts, which are more of a thoughtsin anyway
I do not like what it says about me as a person, however, at least Morgan Spector is a socialist (and very attractive).
Right? I still think the servants are not a fraction as interesting as the Downton Abbey crew, but I would die for the Russells and their problematic shenanigans.
It’s truly dreadful and I need more.
Thank you! That’s so kind! (I think I also looked cute when I was heavier!)
Oh my gosh, so many boomers at the work event last week remarked on my weight! Now I'm retrospectively self-conscious about how I looked a year ago!
None of the adaptations really capture the fact that Jane never stops being a sassy asshole.
My newsletter is out! A day late due to the existence of Sydney (regrettable), but I briefly cover Strange New Worlds, plus Alien: Earth, Foundation, Chief of War, and season 3 of The Gilded Age. (Do NOT click the link at the end of that section if you are at work.)
This is true, but if the assumption is that everyone who is talking about it is 13...
Perhaps I have simply led a very boring life, but I don’t think that blowing up your marriage in favor of an unhealthy sugar baby arrangement whose recipient you eventually decide to murder is a universal experience, actually
Literally a third of Star Trek fandom is going to be told they're 13, not to mention every single author of fiction for kids and young adults
No, no, I am AGOG. I feel very bad for Rayaa's loved ones, who have to read this nonsense, but it's been too long since a privileged white lady of letters made herself the main character.
I guess it's okay as long as they're not in blackface, but I guess I'd ask why? There's no shortage of white characters, after all.
When you think about it, Rumi may in fact be the Emissary of the Prophets.
Listening to the Kpop Demon Hunters soundtrack like, "So we were cowards, so we were liars. We cheated, we bribed men to cover the crimes of other men. We are accessories to murder."
Classic VicPol
Me when the track-listing for the new CMAT album came out: "Lord, Let That Tesla Crash" is gonna be HILARIOUS Me now, listening to it: Gentrification is a metaphor for the unspeakable grief of losing a friend too young, and in this paper I will (sniffle) hold on I have something in my eye
Thoughts and prayers to the antifa counter-protestors, I hope no one pulls a muscle from laughing
I think she's in on the joke, and part of the joke to her is the hand wringing.
Anyway, history is neat!
Reading Inventing the Renaissance, I've learned of the existence of Matthias Corvinus, the Raven King of Hungary, and his invention, the Black Army of Hungary, and WHAT IN THE 600-PAGE FANTASY TOME?
By the standards of his generation, and the way Hollywood worked when he was in his prime, it was tantamount to a strongly-worded statement. Which is sad, but also good?
(I don’t doubt Wolkoff’s sincerity, I just think that with season 4 in post production and season 5 about to shoot, it’s too late to change anything.)