Gormongous

I know that Roddenberry is important for the original series, but his influence on TNG seems so terrible. He apparently floated that the twenty-fourth century would have no spaceships, just people teleporting across the galaxy, and would see the rise of a one-galaxy government. Like, kudos for your optimism but that's bad TV.

Man, I should rewatch Voyager... It's also interesting because fidelity when apart assumes that abstinence is a possibility, but pon farr literally kills Vulcans who do not mate. Sadly, Star Trek prides itself on being to staid (although, now, probably more on being too grim and gritty) to explore that fully.

Yeah, "non-emotive" would be a better way to describe it, but it's still really incredible to watch, say, "Far Beyond the Stars" and see how all of Auberjonois' character work is really subtle and pointed, not just gruff, awkward, antisocial Odo.

Come to think of it, Star Trek has a nasty habit of trapping its most expressive actors behind emotionless characters: Leonard Nimoy, Brent Spiner, Rene Auberjonois, Tim Russ, Jeri Ryan...

Jeri Ryan truly is a treasure, and it's interesting to watch Voyager's writing gradually go from giving her lead roles in episodes because she's the sexy eye-candy to giving her lead roles in episodes because she's got chops. I still think that Bob Picardo is the most talented actor on the show (although I wonder if that's partly an accident of the writing, since many interviews with cast members mention Tim Russ as incredibly brave and capable as an actor) but man, they bungle a fair bit of that. All the rigmarole about choosing a name for himself and then they never use it, for instance...

I think the "favorite son" dynamic that badly sidelined some characters (mostly Kim and Chakotay) and gave others (mostly Seven and the Doctor) lavish attention was created, as has been said before, by Berman's hands-off role as lead executive producer and the turnover of showrunners every couple of seasons. Piller ran the first two seasons of TNG, DS9, and VOY, and his focus on monsters or technobabble of the week means that Janeway, Tuvok, Paris, and B'Elanna get all the development. Jeri Taylor takes over and suddenly it's the Maquis crew with all the airtime (except Chakotay, because who knows what to do with him). And we all know about Brannon Braga and his sexy robot girlfriend Seven of Nine...

It became enough of a thing among the producers that they basically decided to keep him an ensign forever, except Timeless where they make him an admiral as a joke. Actually, that's a good way of explaining where Voyager went wrong with its characterization... An ambitious and talented ensign whose career is derailed by the extraordinary circumstances of his ship becomes a running joke rather than a chance for character development.

Yeah, I thought we already had "grittier" Star Trek TV with Enterprise and that was the worst of the lot, but maybe narrative grit is like real-life grit and you can't get rid of it once you've added it in.

I believe that the Borg were introduced because the producers for TNG realized that they had mishandled the Romulans. All the interesting features of the Romulans were predicated on their mysteriousness, their potential for violent action, and their unpredictability, so they'd become just another alien race if they ever came into open conflict with the Federation. The Borg were designed to be the antidote to that dynamic: all of their features were predicated on their belligerence, so they couldn't be "ruined" like the Romulans could. Now, the Borg getting ruined in other ways...

This is really good, but I think the other half of strategy gamers projecting video game "balance" back onto the real world is strategy gamers projecting an often wrongheaded understanding of real-world "realism" or "accuracy" onto a video game. It's honestly stunning to me how many games try to "realistically" reflect the challenges and struggles of women in pre-modern times with sweeping penalties to their stats, something that the developers of Battle Brothers have floated for if and when they add female mercs to their game, and The Witcher 3 is not even remotely the worst offender when it comes to replacing the lands of brown people with impassable mountains or deserts and brown people themselves with pointy-eared or exceptionally short white people, in order to make an "accurately" all-white fantasy Europe. It almost seems as though the average "apolitical" strategy gamer believes in "balance" when it comes to political and economic systems and "realism" when it comes to social and cultural systems.

We're not trying to dogpile on you, it really is difficult to track how this thing is going when most of it's through Twitter and Twitter's not always interested in letting you find that tweet you saw once. The way I see it, a lot of people both close to and distant from Nick said that he has a pattern of inappropriate and unwelcome sexual behavior towards women, these statements were confirmed by more people close to Nick, and, when colleagues of his like Ben Pack and Matt Kessler found out, they showed no difficulty in believing them, which is fairly damning for me on its own. No one's been like, "Come on, guys. You all know Nick! He's just really forward," and that rings true with me. I have had friends, not now but in the past, about whom I've never heard anything particularly bad, but if someone ever did say that they'd spun a bunch of bullshit to get them in bed or they'd harassed them in private for nudes or whatever, I'd believe it in a second, because "creepy" is so often just the tip of the iceberg. I don't think people get fired instantly for consistent, shitty behavior if there isn't have physical, well-documented proof like that Google anti-diversity memo. It's usually collecting testimony, often from people who don't really want to say anything, and mediating a solution with the accused and with the victims who do want to talk. I also suspect, from my time at universities and corporations, that the investigation has to take a long time and be largely silent to outside perspectives, to avoid liability issues. I don't think there's any situation whatsoever, barring a published manifesto, where Polygon pushes him out the door right away and proclaims fault.

A lot of the people who tweeted about it, like Gita Jackson, know Nick a whole lot better than any of us do, though. If she says it's harassment or abuse, I really don't see why she would be wrong, especially since her tweets that "everyone knows but no one says anything" got retweeted so much by other people who know and work with Nick. Like... I don't know, I'm having difficulties. Would detailed accounts actually help Nick's situation, if that's your concern here, or would they just turn a likely career-ending scandal into a definite career-ending scandal?

Believe me, I was in a room with six other people who'd watched every other Bond movie over the course of a month, three months ago and it was resoundingly the least favorite of everyone there, beating out perennially hated installments like License to Kill and Octopussy. Die Another Day is a grueling two and a quarter hours long, most of the action is an endless succession of chases and escapes that make it feel like Bond just gets caught so that he has an excuse to drive a car around an exploding ice palace, it's got the gross dynamic of a Korean guy getting surgery to look white, the villain's plan is another hyper-destructive satellite, Brosnan is visibly bored the entire time and never makes a connection with Halle Berry or anything else... The only part that anyone enjoyed was the fencing scene near the beginning and even that lasts a full minute longer than it has to because Tamahori's directing is on autopilot. Moore partaking in a skiing or speedboat chase, en route to scenes that aren't more chases and escapes, this is not.

Haha, that's my bad! Still, that means they're responsible for Die Another Day, which is by far the worst Bond movie ever made.

I believe his exact words in Time Out were "I'd rather break this glass and slash my wrists" than make another Bond movie, and that he didn't "give a fuck" who replaced him. He's since said that he may have been "overtired" during that interview, haha. Yeah, it's confirmed: one last Craig Bond, from the scriptwriting team that brought us The World Is Not Enough. Blergh.

Yeah, it was definitely targeted for maximum twistiness and it ended up kneecapping the previous movies. My friends and I did a full rewatch of all the Bonds back in May (which was a lot of fun, but holy fuck a lot of time and a lot of vodka to get through) and, while Quantum of Solace improved with time and space, I don't feel that Spectre did. Waltz's performance is cheesy and jarring in an otherwise very self-serious movie, the best parts of the previous Craig movies (especially Skyfall) are sold off like a fire sale, and the third act still feels like a dream because it's so over-the-top and unearned. I'm honestly surprised that Craig's coming back for one last movie after it, regardless of what his contract says.

Fair enough. I think the internet has produced an odd hybrid of opinions about the "softboy" anyway: for years, I'd only ever heard it used negatively, to refer to the kind of guy who is emotionally sensitive and uses that sensitivity to be emotionally unavailable or emotionally present at the moments most beneficial to whatever he wants from other people, especially women, but then I started listening and watching to the McElroys and their adjacent projects, and that fandom uses "softboy" very positively, to describe a sweet nice good good boy who loves all the stuff you love and will never ever hurt you. It's also used in the internet at large as a broad and clumsy descriptor of male-coded anti-masculine behavior, and that's often the medium connecting the version that exists to hurt you with the one that promises never to.

It's peddled softly (hah) but I think it's there.

I have more than a few female friends for whom the popularization of the concept of "softboy" was a revelatory moment, connecting a pattern of emotional-availability-as-emotional-abuse with a lot of former partners and dates, especially the kind of guy who makes an effort to become a really close friend and always be there for you unless you want honesty, intimacy, or commitment on your own terms. It seemed to speak to them?

Quoting these and bolding parts of them for absolute agreement.

Man, that sounds like a rough situation. I get wanting to hear him out, in good faith, because of your history with him, but it doesn't sound like you're expecting a positive outcome of any kind. In your shoes, I would apologize for being stressed and busy, remove him from Skype, and sell his stuff. If I'm wrong and you are hoping for an outcome that's not as unrealistic as him admitting he's wrong, then maybe stick around, but it doesn't sound like he's reliable for that sort of conversation. Also, I've never gotten Christian objections to trans individuals that involve going against God's will. Unless these people aren't wearing glasses or getting their teeth fixed or doing any kind of medical or cosmetic work, I'm pretty sure that it's all just bullshit and double standards. It's funny how many exceptions to "Love thy neighbor as thyself" many Christians find in day-to-day life.

Yeah, it's a good thread with a lot of points worth restating. I wish I could find a few that the slack put up, about dealing with problematic faves, too.

Specifically with regards to discussions of the value of softness, I do sense a little schadenfreude-tinged glee in the people who are denouncing a straight, cis-gender male who presented himself as nice, sweet, shy, awkward, goofy, and harmless as a predatory figure, just as toxic as the bros and the nerds to which he's supposed to be the better alternative. Though it's distasteful, it's not like they aren't butting up against the real lesson here, which is that there's no mode of masculinity that's magically toxicity-free. A nailpolish-wearing, feels-having dude is just as caught up in male privilege, male entitlement, and rape culture as any other kind of dude, and maybe more so if the nailpolish and the feels are used to deny those things when navigating female-coded spaces. I've got lots of thoughts, but this is all very depressing for me to deal with, so I'm going to take it slow.

All interpretations are valid if supported by the work itself, of course, but it's worth noting that Kurt Russell has said several times on the record that the ending is supposed to be completely ambiguous, an object lesson that all of human ingenuity cannot prevent disaster from returning things to a clean slate, and that the "clues" about who is the Thing (the breath, the drink, the musical swell) are relics of a hurried shooting schedule, much like the dummy's slight movement at the end of 1978 movie Magic.

I actually was just talking with an acquaintance who let her daughter get her ears pierced at six. She's been trying to teach her about body autonomy and consent, and her daughter's requests to get her ears pierced grew out of the whole "it's your body to do with as you want" worldview that she's been taught. She had her daughter talk to her friends and do most of the research herself (well, "herself," because she's six) and then took her there. The poor kid got one ear pierced and started screaming for them to stop. So she's got one ear pierced now, although I think they're planning to take out the stud and let it heal, and has decided on her own to wait at least another year before she's ready to try again. I guess it's been a good life lesson for her? Kids are weird.