oh woah i waited for the holidays to be over to answer this because i have so much to say on this subject.
to start with: yeah. probably. star wars and star trek are two very different genres of science fiction (and in fact star wars is more fantasy than anything else) so they have to very different styles associated with them.
and i don’t want to diminish star wars as a franchise because it is a good franchise but it is pulp. george lucas writes and directs pulp. and that’s fine. i love pulp. indiana jones is still my favorite. star wars is defined by its aesthetic: big clunky technology, iconic designs and outfits, hundreds of aliens occupying bars while space wizards wave around magic swords. and the force awakens perfectly encapsulates that aesthetic. it has all of the feel of a star wars movie.
star trek is not pulp. it can touch on that territory, sure. handsome space captains dashing in to kiss alien babes, but that is the pop culture view of star trek. star trek is defined by its politics. it was insanely progressive for its time. it has an international ship with black members at the helm and women doing the same job as men (admittedly in shorter skirts) and pushed envelopes on a social level. action isn’t even a large part of the original series (i’m less familiar with the rest of the incarnations), where often there was deliberation on the action to take. there was an entire episode of jim kirk thinking on whether it would be justifiable to murder a man who’d slaughtered thousands. he didn’t react in anger upon seeing him. he sat and waited and discussed it.even in amok time there is a large chunk of episode before they get to the fighting.
so they are two entirely different beasts. but i think the argument of jjabrams star trek vs jjabrams star wars is not predicated on just the writing, or the directing, or the aesthetic. the argument is that jjabrams clearly loved star wars. he loved star wars and he wanted to do it justice on the screen. he used techniques of the older films to simulate the experience of seeing star wars on the big screen. he hit emotional beats of the old films, followed the pathline set out by the original, took the space opera nature of the original and used it. jjabrams does not have this love for star trek. he does not see it as more than an action movie set in space. he made the star trek movies to entice people who don’t care about star trek. which is fine. to make money in a movie everyone has to see it, but i’m not even sure if he’s ever really seen an episode. he doesn’t care about star trek. and it shows.
so it really has nothing to do with style or writing. it’s that they gave star trek to the wrong person. and i don’t even think he does a poor job with it. i found both movies entertaining on some level. they made money. people like them. but after seeing star wars every star trek fan saw what could be done by someone who absolutely loved a franchise and wanted to rebuild it for another generation, and they also saw that he didn’t.
this. this thing i’ve been griping about for too long to be interesting to my friends and family anymore.
also someone i follow, i’m sorry i can’t remember who, threw out some extremely succinct tags on on the issue. something to the effect of jj used star trek to audition for star wars.
which yes, exactly. i’m sure he is totally capable of understanding the thematic differences between trek and wars, but he just didn’t care.
Tag: long post
If you give me any positive reinforcement whatsoever i will go full doggo and hang on to that shit forever and my internal thought process will pretty much boil down to “!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
The Pet Names Thing
Ok so five different people have asked me now to blab about my Bucky-uses-pet-names-and-Steve-LOVES-it thing from Ain’t No Grave. So here you go! BLAB AHOY.
Why I Have Bucky Use Pet Names
1. You have to figure that by the time Bucky gets away from Hydra he would have a hell of a time figuring out his own opinions about things, and even whether or not he can rely on his own sense of objective reality. Whenever we see the Winter Soldier when he’s not actively Fucking Shit Up, he’s being told what his own thoughts and opinions are. “You are the new fist of Hydra.” “You have shaped the century.” When he ventures to state something that he’s perceived for himself that differs from Hydra-approved reality (but I knew him) he gets violently reprimanded. The Winter Soldier doesn’t get to decide what things are or what they mean or how he feels about them. So Bucky calling people he likes by pet names allows him to practice A. identifying his own opinions about things (I like you) B. making those opinions known (so I’m going to call you sweetheart).
2. It’s also a way of getting his perception of reality confirmed when he’s spent decades being told that he’s wrong about his own memories, feelings and instincts. If he calls Steve “sweetheart” and gets backhanded across the face, then that means that his feeling the way he does is a malfunction and should be eliminated. If he calls Steve “sweetheart” and Steve smiles at him, then that means what he feels is correct and appropriate. It’s a way of asking for reassurance (Do I really love you? Am I allowed to love you? Do you love me back?) without having to actually ask, since asking for things isn’t something that the Winter Soldier would have been encouraged to do.
3. 1930s Bucky Barnes would absolutely have called the girls he brought out on dates stuff like “doll” and “baby.” “Sweetheart” would have been fine for both dates and little sisters. He hasn’t had many chances to practice social interactions in a long time, but he’s fairly sure that those words are appropriate for women and kids with whom he has a close relationship, and he’s positive that he associates them with Steve (because back in the day he always had to keep himself from accidentally calling Steve babydoll).
4. His handlers told him to kill Rogers, Steven Grant, alias Captain America. He has no standing orders regarding honey, baby, sweetheart, babydoll, or baby boy. Or sugartits, though that one comes with the risk of getting wet-willied.
5. Mindless death-dealing automatons don’t have best guys who they can call sweetheart. In Cap 2 we see a lot of the Winter Soldier sitting in silence as Pierce blabs on and on: he can talk, and he speaks when he needs to give orders/report to his handlers, but he obviously wasn’t encouraged to speak his mind. Being extremely verbally affectionate reminds him that he’s human (he’s also extremely chatty in bed, because narrating the events/talking dirty reminds him that he’s an active participant in what’s happening to his body.).
Why My Steve is Totally Into It
1. Steve has been very deliberately weaponized and dehumanized by people who are supposed to be his friends and allies. The level of callousness and actual flat-out cruelty in the way he’s treated is pretty staggering if you choose to take the events in Marvel movies seriously, which I do. He’s on active duty in a war zone for years, watches his best friend die, dies himself, is brought back into a completely alien environment, and the first thing that anyone says to him is basically “Hi, good to see you’re still functional, we need to use you to kill things.” The way that he’s treated is incredibly fucked up. And he works for SHIELD for years. And then they turn out to be Nazis and actively try to murder him. The one girl who acts like she’s interested in him outside of his function as Captain America is a fucking plant. No one is gentle with him, no one seems interested in whether he’s ok (they send him home by himself with a fucking file with pictures of his friends with the word DECEASED stamped over the top, it’s fucked up to the point of being actively sadistic). The difference between the way that Captain America is treated and the Winter Soldier is treated is really only a matter of degree and subtlety. By the time Bucky comes back into his life Steve is so starved for the barest scrap of kindness and affection that he asks for help in a life-and-death situation from a guy he’s spoken to exactly twice, because he has literally no one else. Coming from this context, being constantly called things like sweetheart, honey or babydoll is mindblowing for him. Because those aren’t things that you call a weapon, those are things that you call someone who you treasure. They also emphasize traits – sweetness, gentleness, vulnerability – that are devalued in the hyper-macho environments Steve’s been stuck in for years. It’s a constant reminder that someone thinks that he’s special and valuable for parts of him that make him less efficient as a weapon, not more.
2. Like I said, Bucky would have used words like “doll” and “sweetheart” before the war. It has to be nice for Steve to hear Bucky still talking like that; a sign that pre-war Bucky is still part of the Bucky that he has now.
3. It would be nice for Steve to hear anyone talking like that. People make the idea of Steve’s talking like he’s from the 40s into a comedy thing a lot of the time, and it is cute, but at the same time it’s just another example of how incredibly isolated and lonely he is (whoops here comes my Somali refugee metaphor again!). Essentially, being called “babydoll” is Steve getting to hear gentle, loving things said to him in his native language for probably the first time since his mother died.
THOSE ARE MY THOUGHTS; I SHALL BLAB NO MORE.
That scene in Mulan where all the ancestors are arguing about whose fault it was that Mulan ran off to join the army except with all the Force ghosts arguing about Ben Solo.
This is the greatest thing I have ever drawn I am so proud
Where Could Life Exist?
When NASA scientists announced earlier this year that they had found evidence of liquid water on Mars, imaginations ran wild with the possibility that life could exist somewhere other than here on Earth.
Scientists continue to explore the possibility that Mars once looked a lot like Earth — salty oceans, fresh water lakes, and a water cycle to go with it. That’s exciting stuff.
So where else are they looking? What exactly are they looking for?
There are nine places in our universe where scientists say life is a possibility. The locations range from a smoking hot planet like Venus to a moon that orbits Saturn called Enceladus, which looks a lot like a massive, tightly-packed ball of ice.
All of these places show signs that water is, or at least was, a possibility. They also appear to feature some kind of energy that could produce heat.
I like to imagine that the Winter Soldier would have been programmed with basically every language that he would need for missions, and, for the sake of versimillitude, his handlers would make sure that he had the appropriate accent/diction and backstory to flawlessly pass as a native of a decently sized city in the country he was working in. So he speaks French like he’s from Toulouse, German like he’s from Cologne etc., allowing him to seamlessly blend in with the locals when he’s out raining destruction across Europe.
Unfortunately, the Red Room – not being known for its commitment to multiculturalism – didn’t think this system through very carefully when it came time to send the Winter Soldier off to do his first ever long mission for their comrades in China. They just program him to speak Mandarin like a statistically unremarkable proletarian from Zhangjiakou and send him on his merry way.
So he arrives in China with his Soviet handler and the following circumstances align to make the entire mission, from the perspective of the Red Room, a disaster from start to finish.
1. It’s 1971, and China is not open to the outside world. Most of the men on the Soldier’s strike team have never met a foreigner in their lives.
2. Those who have met a foreigner have never met one who speaks completely fluent Mandarin with a paint-peeling Hebei accent.
3. This is ENORMOUSLY INTERESTING AND ENTERTAINING to everyone he encounters.
4. Instead of being unremarkable and blending in with the locals he gets mobbed by curious spectators everywhere he goes. His strike team, despite being a little scared of him at first, are so excited to talk to a foreigner who they can actually communicate with that they constantly come up with excuses to hang out and chat.
5. China’s relative lack of development in the early seventies means that there aren’t the facilities to wipe him or put him in the freezer, so the main weapons that Handler Dima has at his disposal to keep the Soldier in line are 1. it’ll be hard for him to run away because he tends to attract crowds, and 2. He sometimes looks very ashamed of himself if you give him a sternly worded talking-to.
6. The Soldier is having the time of his life. Look at me, look at all of my friends, I have so many friends, EVERYONE LIKES ME.
The Winter Soldier, doing shots of baijiu and toasting to the health of Chairman Mao. The Winter Soldier, chain smoking and eating millions of sunflower seeds while playing Fight the Landlord with his new pals on a cross-country sleeper train. The Winter Soldier, doing morning tai chi and calisthenics along with his team. The Winter Soldier, preening every time someone tells him that he looks like a movie star (his handler says “They’re just saying that because they only ever see Europeans in films,” to which the Soldier replies, “But Dima, why don’t they say that you look like a movie star?”). The Winter Soldier, showboating shamelessly for his strike team, who have started calling him Lao Da and looking to him for orders while ignoring Handler Dima, who can’t speak Chinese and definitely can’t shoot two people at the same time while doing a backflip. The Winter Soldier, making elaborate Chinese puns and teaching his guys useful English phrases that he can’t remember learning (Did you come here alone, doll?). The Winter Soldier, harassing his buddies until they show him pictures of their wives and kids and then sincerely complimenting them on their beautiful families. The Winter Soldier, suspecting that he has experienced this kind of camaraderie before but unable to remember when and how.
His next mission, in Vietnam, is the first time that they muzzle him.
You are more than the son of your father, you are the son of the earth, the sea, the sky. Magic is the fabric of this world, and you were born of that magic, you are magic itself, you cannot lose what you are.
(Please also see individual captions.)
On AO3.
Very late holiday art! Happy New Year! Inspired by Hana’s Merthur aesthetic, for which i have no chill. ILU bb! uvu *hold hands* <333
I think what probably gets me deeply into my feelings about this “JKR should have just made her students Of Color to start with, she can’t ret-con and pretend she did it right the first time” is that I grew up with Anne Rice and Anne McCaffery, two female fantasy writers who hated headcanons and fandom and sued people for deviating from their original vision or doing any kinds of derivative works without their express contractual permission.
I feel like people who get irritated with her about defending black!Hermione don’t appreciate how much healthier JKR’s attitude toward the inclusivity movement in her fandom is than theirs was. Or Moffat’s is. Or Gatiss’s. Or Whedon’s. Or Green’s. Or even, until very recently, Lucas’s.
She’s not a PCR, but goddamn, at least she’s passing us the milk rather than pissing in our cornflakes.
Jo is actually almost entirely responsible for fanfiction being what it is today.
BUT WAIT, I hear older fandomers cry. X-Files, Star Trek, Xena, how dare you. And yes, I say to those fandomers, you held those banners first! Be proud of the paths you forged. But Jo–
Jo did something no author or creator had ever done before.
She was a household name who encouraged fanfiction.
When I first began writing fanfiction in 1998, it was common practice to preface your fic with this massive disclaimer about how you weren’t selling it, and it was for fun, sometimes quoting the Fair Use part of the Creative Commons act, and even begging authors not to sue. Because in those days, that was a very real danger. Eleven-year-old me had reams of fanfiction on floppy disks I didn’t dare send to archives because I might get arrested and taken to Plagiarism Jail.
And then there was Jo. And no, Jo said, this is not a private amusement park at which you may stare longingly from the other side of wrought-iron gates. It is a giant sandbox. Here are my pails, here are my toys. Come sit and play with me. Eventually you may decide you like some other sandbox better, and all I ask is that you leave my toys here for others to play with, and not try to take them with you. But why should I lock you out of my sandbox? It is, after all, far more fun to play in a sandbox with many people than by yourself.
People were boggled. They didn’t get it. They thought she was crazy. And the fans? They kept loving, and writing, and drawing, and creating, and Jo kept loving them back. Potter Puppet Pals, A Very Potter Musical, Potter!, Remus and the Lupins, all stuff Jo just kind of went “whatever, they’re having fun.”
And attitudes began to change. And then someone else threw her lot in with Jo, someone who doesn’t get a lot of credit for contributing something massive to fandom culture and should:
Stephenie Meyer.
Yeah, you read that right. The goddamn author of Twilight, who refused to sue teenage girls who just wanted Bella to end up with Jacob. (And who is way more gracious than I would be about Fifty Shades.) She actually has a fanfiction archive right on her website! I’m serious: Smeyer has links to a personally-curated list of Twilight fanfiction she personally enjoyed or found interesting. Whatever you may think of her writing, that loving attitude of “we’re all here to have fun, I love that you love my world and my characters, please enjoy” was such a departure from the days of C&D letters and page-long disclaimers.
These two women changed the face of how fandom works forever. Yes, their work is flawed. They are products of their time and upbringing. But just the fact that they embrace the concepts of “my world as I see it and my world as you see it are not the same, and that’s not just okay, that’s good” is something to be celebrated.
I have a lot of issues with Meyer, but her treatment of fans is not one of them.
This is fascinating and all credit to Meyer and Rowling for being so instrumental in changing the culture. I do just want to add that the producers of Xena actually hired a fanfic writer to scriptwrite on their final season. As it often did (with a female TV action hero, with a musical episode), Xena helped to point the way.
I really want to be stylish in 2016 but in a way that involves minimal outlay of money or energy (like ironing, heels, etc). I have no idea how to accomplish this.
We have no replies so i get to reblog this like a weirdo but i have discovered the secret to this. Its wear plainer clothes, layered, with one to two pieces of noticable jewellery. Tbh this seems to con people into thinking that my unwashed face and exploding hair are part of a Look and that If I Put Big Earrings On This Morning, I Must Have A Plan.
Oh NICE. I like it!
if you don’t know how to mix colors (split complimentary is great tho for outfits), stick with black, brown, and grey.
brown and red looks great. brown is about the only color to mix with a bright yellow, otherwise you look like a bee or worse.
grey and orange, pink, or green.
grey and blue is really sober. grey and dull greens is also really sober, but a little more martial and a little less civil service.
black and most colors, excepting orange and yellow (you’ll look like a bee or like halloween).
black and pink is very feminine and very threatening, so wear that if you want to intimidate. black and green drab has about the same emotional effect for a masculine message.
do not balance black equally with colors. wear mostly black, and one color. especially red. equal parts black and red make you look like a ladybug.
blue is generally neutral but make sure to wear shades and hues that are significantly different from one another— the rules for harmonizing similar blues are really fucking arcane to put into words, but if you fuck it up, to some of us, you are like a walking static blot, it’s just horrible. same goes for tweed fabric.
‘clashing’ colors operate on kind of the same principal. if the hue (what color), shade (how dark), or saturation (how intense) of your colors are too close, and you’ve balanced the colors equally, you clash. the colors are fighting each other for a viewer’s attention— think of the spiral of the golden mean, actually.
half your body is one color. a quarter of your body is the next color. an eighth of your body is the next.
anyway if this is too complicated, and you don’t want to deal with any of it, wear black and gray with bright jewelry or makeup. looks great on anyone.
So, yeah… partly inspired by @elizabethminkel and @flourish of @fansplaining talking about the Year In Fandom in their most recent episode, I maaaaaay have gone kind of bonkers overboard in trying to do a “quick” stats look at what was popular this year. 🙂 A few notes below the cut.
Edit: Fixed the first word cloud – the software I used to create it omitted a lot of longer fandom names the first time around without my catching it.
Zynn's Exodus 
