I want someone to write a book where Mermaids are the women thrown off ships when the sailors got afraid because having a woman on the boat is bad luck. And as they sink to the bottom, legs tied together, they change slowly until they can breathe, until they can use their tied up legs to swim. And they drown sailors in revenge, luring them in by singing in their husky voices still stinging from the salt water they breathed.
Since joining Tumblr, I’ve met a lot of young queer people. Look, I’m a bisexual man in a gay relationship, and I’m approaching 30. I was still a kid when Matthew Shepard’s story was being covered on the news. I remember thinking, “I better keep my mouth shut about these feelings I’m having.”
And then I met Dominic when I was 12, and people could see how in love we were. And we got the shit beat out of us. The year I met him, some kids in the grade above me held me down against the bleachers in our gym and stomped on my hand until my fingers broke. Instead of sending me to the nurse, the teacher sent me to the assistant principal to explain the situation. She asked why the kids had beat me up. I said, “They were calling me gay.”
Her response was, “Well, are you?”
My, “I don’t know,” earned a call to my parents, and I was outed. Efforts were made to keep me from seeing Dom. Throughout high school, Dom’s stepmother intensified these efforts. He slept in the basement of the house. Although he was an incredibly talented student, he was prohibited from participating in any extracurriculars. He suffered a lot of physical abuse during those years.
The day he turned 18, he packed up everything he had and walked to my house, and we’ve lived together ever since. Things are better, but they’re not perfect. I’ve had trucks pull up next to me at stoplights and, seeing the pride sticker on my car, through old drinks and garbage into my window. I no longer speak to my dad’s side of the family. I haven’t been to see them for Christmas or Thanksgiving in years. One of my uncles had cornered me at Thanksgiving when I was 17 and said, “I’m not going to judge you, but I’d be happy to break your neck so God can do the judging a little sooner.”
I joined a support group for trans and intersex people. When I joined, 40 people attended regularly. Within the year, the group was half the size it had been. Some couldn’t make it anymore, because they were staying at the shelter, where their stay hinged on them agreeing to instead to attend homophobic sermons. Some were put in correctional therapy. Five of them died. Three of those, I didn’t know, but I knew Alex, the 19 year old who was fag-dragged in Kentucky and died a day later in the hospital, and I knew Stephanie, who went home to Alabama to care for her mom in hospice and was beaten to death with a baseball bat by her mom’s boyfriend.
Tumblr is not reality. The dynamic here does not reflect the dynamic out there. Here’s the part where I finally make a point, and it might be extremely unpopular – but guys, value your allies.Value each other. We are met with enough hate in our daily lives to enter an online safe-space and meet more hate from our own, over petty things. Don’t go after one another over every little thing you find problematic.
Learn to see nuance. Maybe the word “queer” bothers you, and you see a gay man using it as an umbrella term. Maybe someone called a trans man a trans woman because they’re confused about terminology, but the post where they did it was voicing support for the trans community. Maybe someone is just asking a question, wanting to learn more. Stop. Attacking. These. People.
Allies are being driven away. Members of our own community are being ostracized. Others are feeling nervous and estranged, and it’s largely because of places like Tumblr, where the social justice movement is quickly becoming violent and radical. I am begging you, stop nitpicking “problematic” things and start directing your efforts to create real change. When it comes to comes to your allies, forget the “social justice warrior” mentality and put down your torch. Educate calmly. Be respectful. Be understanding. Be forgiving. And I’m certainly not saying that your anger doesn’t have a good place – when you are met with bigots on the street, congress members who want to pass hateful laws, violent protesters, abusive parents, prejudiced teachers, that is when you need to be a warrior. That’s when it counts. In the real world. When you have the opportunity to protect people from real harm. Attacking your would-be allies via anonymous asks is just going to lose us ground in the long run. And we don’t have time for that, not when trans women of color are being murdered every day, not when states are still fighting against marriage equality, not when there are politicians in office who believe that trans people are possessed by demons, not when we’ve just lost 50 brothers and sisters to one gunman, not when the media won’t even admit that the attack was homophobic.
Please step back. Look at the big picture. Look at where we are, globally. Don’t just log on to your safe space and attack your allies over small missteps. That’s like washing the dishes in a house that’s on fire, kids. Let’s fight on the battlefield, and when we come home to each other, let’s just focus on bandaging up our wounds so we can go out and win the war.
Signal boost to this unbelievably important message.
I’ve been lucky enough, well maybe unlucky enough, to have had a lot of friends who have had their ups and downs. And for an actor, that’s good. Life experience in any regard is good. So I’ve seen a lot and I’ve had my own experiences.
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”
Oh please please someone write this
the best thing about this post is that the way it’s written – by multiple human authors getting over-excited about ridiculous, wonderful, impossible ideas that ought by rights to be terrifying – is itself proof that we’re like this
“One of the serious problems with planning against Federation (especially human) doctrine is that Starfleet officers do not read their manuals nor do they feel any obligations to follow their doctrine.”
Bruce: When I moved in, he insisted on funding all of my research. Except, you know, ever since The Incident, all my work’s been theoretical. It’s not actually that expensive. I’ve started just spending all the extra on fruit pies, just to see if he was keeping track. He isn’t. There are a lot of unused rooms in this building, and at least three of them are stacked floor to ceiling with fruit pies. He hasn’t said a word.
Natasha: It turned out Pepper and I both speak French. Tony doesn’t. Now, whenever he walks in, we just start whispering in French and giggling. Half the time we’re just exchanging recipes. He pretends not to be eavesdropping, but the other day I caught him asking JARVIS what ‘des oeufs’ meant.
Clint: I bought this big bag of little plastic flies, right? And whenever he’s not paying attention, I throw them into his drink. Half the time he doesn’t even notice and just drinks the damn things, but the other half? He starts checking all the house filtration systems, the exterminators, the works. He can’t figure out where all these flies are coming from. He’s fumigated three times in the last month.
Thor: I attempted to provide assistance with a project, but Stark assured me that it was ‘very technical’, and that I would not understand the intricacies. I can see why he would think so, as I am a mere Prince of Asgard, taught such basic engineering when I was a child and his ancestors could not yet walk. It has been five weeks, and he still has not corrected the misaligned condenser coil causing the problem.
Steve: I don’t know what Howard taught that kid, but he seems to be under the impression that homosexuality was invented in 2000. He keeps leaving magazines and pictures lying around like the sight of two men holding hands is going to give me a heart attack. I don’t have the heart to tell him about the Greeks.
Interviewer: So how are things in Avengers Tower?
Tony: How are things? I have no idea. I really don’t. There’s some kind of insect infestation in the vents and I think a spy is trying to seduce my girlfriend into moving to France. I tried to prank Captain America with gay porn, but him and Thor just started trying to reverse-engineer workout routines. The other day I went into one of the spare rooms, and I found some kind of one-armed sex hobo sitting on a throne of empty fruit pie boxes. I just walked out and closed the door. I don’t even wanna know.
We first obsessed over Sebastian Stan back in the good old Gossip Girl days, then he repelled as Tonya Harding’s abusive husband Jeff Gillooly in I, Tonya. More recently, he’s been polishing his shiny magic superhero arm as Bucky Barnes in Avengers: Infinity War. Bucky’s had a rough time lately. In the last Avengers film, he’d volunteered to be frozen and shipped to Wakanda to fix his nasty, murderous mood swings. Luckily, scientific genius Shuri (Letitia Wright) came to the rescue and fixed him. We got a sneak peek of them taking a stroll together in Wakanda at the very end of Black Panther, so we expect to see him fully operational in Infinity War.
Stan chatted to ELLE.com about transforming from Gillooly-style slob to ripped superhero, his tough high school days, working with Nicole Kidman, and a very serious bromance with Avengers co-star Anthony Mackie.
Getting superhero muscles back after I, Tonya was not fun.
“Jeff [Gillooly] actually did ask me if I was gonna work out for the part of playing him, and I was like, “I’m gonna look like you did, Jeff, so…” I mean it was a tough situation, because I had to go into this [Avengers] I think, really about a month-and-a-half later, and there was no way I was going to have time to gain a bunch of weight. I mean, in a way it worked out, because Bucky’s in a place in this movie where he’s kind of had a bit of a different lifestyle for a minute, and so it makes sense that he would look a little different—maybe more weathered, or more grounded, or just in a different place altogether. But it’s tough. I think gaining weight is a lot harder, actually, than losing it, if you have to do it quickly. I always thought, “Oh, it’s gonna be amazing to be able to eat a lot of food all day,” but you’re the worst to be around at that point, because you can’t really go to dinners, and you’re probably following some specific diet. You’re always full; you’re never eating for pleasure anymore. So the whole thing just gets off balance.”
He’s all about women saving the day and taking the power back.
“Shuri certainly did save Bucky. I really feel like the movies have taken that much more under account lately. But you’ve also got to give credit to Zoe Saldana, and Scarlett Johansson, and Danai Gurira. I think you’ve had a real female presence there because of the way that they play those characters. They come in and stand their ground, and are direct, and they’re a strong presence in the films. I think Marvel is definitely conscious of that. I feel like when I look at the movie’s poster, I feel that.”
Moving countries while he was growing up made him feel out of place.
“I wasn’t born here. I lived in three different countries. Looking back, I certainly have had moments in life where I felt like I needed to fit in. It was about survival. It was about fitting in, adapting, and what that causes, for better or worse. So this character being out of time, out of place, kind of trying to fit in, is trying to figure it out in a way I think is relatable. I think that’s a universal thing that you can relate to—the fact that you’re sort of out of place sometimes, and you’re the odd man out, or somebody in school calls you an introvert. I’ve had a lot of people come up to me and share very personal things about their life struggles that they felt like this character somehow had helped them through, and that’s powerful at the end of the day because yes, you’re making a comic book movie, there’s escapist aspects to it, it’s a cinematic experience, but then also you have to factor in that you may end up actually connecting with someone at some point.”
High school was brutal until he realized being weird was good.
“Until you figure out that being weird is a good thing, that being slightly from a different place is a good thing, and that’s what sets you apart, high school is tough, isn’t? High school is brutal.
And I don’t think it’s gotten any easier. I mean, now I feel like it’s even harder. I can’t even imagine kids that have to go online and look at Instagram and stuff to find out whether or not they were invited to something. It didn’t even used to be that way when I was around. But in a way, if you can get through that, and you learn to be self-reliant, I think in a way that helps you down the road.”
Anthony Mackie (Falcon) is into making a spin-off buddy movie with him.
“A lot of people would be worried about that, but Anthony Mackie would shoot it tonight. He would be like, “Let’s go.” And I would, of course I would. We have a very funny thing, and I actually think that if it was scripted and within a parameter, like a script, and in a story, then it could be very cool, and it could be very fun, because he’s an incredibly witty, very funny person, and he has a really good time doing what he does. So I think it would be great to see that one day. I mean, the relationship has sort of developed on its own at this point, and we’ve got to see where it’s gonna go. Whether it’s with Marvel or somewhere else, I think something’s gonna come out of it at some point.”
IRL, it’s a full-on bromance.
“He likes to golf, he likes to fish. I feel like I’m talking about my partner now. I like to sit at home and make daiquiris, take long walks on the beach, stuff like that. But I don’t think I’ll be walking on the beach with Anthony Mackie any time soon.”
He leads Nicole Kidman astray in his next movie.
“I did this film with Nicole Kidman called Destroyer that was a really great experience earlier this year. It’s directed by a female director who’s very, very talented and fierce, named Karyn Kusama. I just had a real blast. I play an undercover cop who takes her [Kidman] into this undercover situation where things take on a destination of their own, so to speak, and that leads to kind of some pretty traumatic experiences.”
“Fan fiction is what literature might look like if it were reinvented from scratch after a nuclear apocalypse by a band of brilliant pop-culture junkies trapped in a sealed bunker. They don’t do it for money. That’s not what it’s about. The writers write it and put it up online just for the satisfaction. They’re fans, but they’re not silent, couchbound consumers of media. The culture talks to them, and they talk back to the culture in its own language.”
ealdor 