Trektober Day 21 - Canon Event Fix-It. I have a lot of these (Dr Pulaski stays and has a rivalry with Crusher, Sulu is in all of season 2, Tasha survives the evil puddle, Ziyal lives and dates Jake, Julian goes to Cardassia at the end of DS9, etc etc etc) but this will always be my biggie.
Like, seriously. Miles. You are there. You literally saved a person that medical science could not save (albeit with Geordi and Data teaming up) only a few years ago. Did you not remember? Can you not tell Julian to put your buddy in stasis for a few hours while you reprogram a single computer?
This of course brings up a bit of a major problem with Trek. We’ve seen so many different issues be solved that when they crop up later we can look at them and go ’… don’t you know how to deal with this?’ - especially when it involves the same characters.
I’m seeing Miles in my mind’s eye being at dinner a decade later and suddenly just freezing up and slapping himself in the face.
Anyway. We could have double Dax. It would be EASY. Jadzia would be such a good and terrible influence on Ezri. People would be constantly so confused.
This was a bit of a bugger to do in one day for the challenge so I may draw it more coherently in the future.
Trektober Day 20 - Only One Bed. Rosalind Chao gave the impression of trying SO hard to hint the polycule into existence. I hope in some AU or other Keiko was successful.
Gritty sci-fi webcomic where partway through the third major arc the protagonists get trapped in some sort of utopian false reality by a mysterious godlike being, except they never escape and the comic just changes genres to quirky coffee-shop slice of life until it’s unceremoniously cancelled six years later.
Oh like the Riverdale TV series
Strictly speaking, the Riverdale version is an audience fakeout – it initially appears as though the gang is trapped in an idyllic false reality, but after a couple of episodes it’s revealed that everything is real and the gang just got sent back in time; the show’s framing later returns to the present just in time for the last of them to die of old age.
I… what? The fuck even was that show holy shit. That happened??? In “sexy edgy teen drama Archie”?
Maybe i should watch more tv…
Yeah, they all go back in time in an apparent excuse for the writers to spend a season doing a pastiche of the original Archie comics from the 1950s, though this is soon derailed by a Cold War spy drama subplot involving a sinister milkman, and then the show just ends.
Is this related to the *looks at smudged notes* meteor or am I getting things mixed up?
Yes, their being sent back in time was an inadvertent side effect of combining their super powers Captain Planet style in order to destroy the comet the evil wizard had summoned to wipe out Riverdale.
The trick to understanding Riverdale is knowing that it completely changes genres at least three time during its run. Nothing in it is particularly beyond the pale for whatever genre it’s currently occupying – it only seems so because of the incongruity of all of those genres being the same show. It starts out as a second-rate Dawson’s Creek, and by the sixth season it’s evolved into a very convincing pastiche of Buffy the Vampire Slayer – right down to the reveal that there’s a Hellmouth under Riverdale – with a couple of entertaining formulaic detours along the way; it’s unclear whether these genre shifts were always the plan, or whether the writers were just easily bored.
I feel I should emphasise for the benefit of anyone who’s feeling inclined to actually watch the show on the basis of this discussion: it’s also not good.
Don;t watch Riverdale yourself. You don’t need the deep hurting. Watch Super Eyepatch Wolf hurt himself watching it for you.
“We need to bring cringe/shame back” more like you need to learn how to sit with the discomfort of people liking and doing shit you don’t like.
I myself sometimes feel it when I browse social media and then I remember that other people having fun isn’t about me and guess what ? I stop feeling uneasy.
You don’t viscerally need to say or do something about things you found cringe. You can just look away and mind your own business.
The paradox of tolerance is only a paradox if you think of tolerance as some sacred and unconditional moral duty. Some ultimate and absolute law with no exceptions, and if you ever slip into the sin of intolerance, you must repent yourself and beg for forgiveness. Yeah no fuck that. Tolerance is a social contract. You’re in the game as an equal player for as long as you play by the same rules as everyone else, and if you don’t, your ass is fucking out. You’re not entitled to the same respect you won’t give others.
“Oh so you all tolerate each other just because you tolerate each other, but if I want to destroy you, then all of a sudden you want to destroy me?” Literally yes. That’s the gist of it. What’s not clicking. This equation is so simple it barely counts as math.
“I refuse to sign the social contract if it means I have to be polite to people I don’t understand” said the bigot
“Well then you aren’t protected by the terms and conditions” says everyone who has signed
“…we’ve shown different sides of Dukat over the years and that you get the feeling from the cumulative episodes… is that he might evolve into one of the good guys given the right circumstances. And there’s a strong temptation to do just that — to turn him into a likable rogue who helps out our characters and redeems himself in the eyes of the audience. That’s the traditional TV approach — any bad guy on screen long enough will become a good guy if you start showing “humanizing” aspects of his character. However… doing that in this case would be to deny the backstory and the character that we’ve established. He oversaw a brutal and murderous occupation. He sold his people to the Dominion. He waged a war of conquest against the Federation. He was willing to kill his own daughter if she went against him. He’s a bad guy. A fascinating bad guy, but a bad guy… He may help us on occasion, he may save a puppy from being hit by a truck, he may even make us laugh and feel good about him in an unguarded moment, but those things only round out his character, they do not salvage him as a character.”
Or as Strunk and White said in Elements of Style (to the best of my memory), “Feel free to ignore everything in this book rather than write something inelegant.”
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