In Life’s name, and for Life’s sake, I say that I will use the Art for nothing but the service of that Life. I will guard growth and ease pain. I will fight to preserve what grows and lives well in its own way; and I will change no object or creature unless its growth and life, or that of the system in which it is part, are threatened. To these ends, in the practice of my Art, I will put aside fear for courage, and death for life, when it is right to do so—till Universe’s end.
The Wizard’s Oath, So You Want to Be a Wizard. Diane Duane.
I bet you every kid who’s ever read this book stood in the middle of their room, paused, took a breath, and then read this part out loud. Just in case. I vaguely remember what that moment felt like, feeling a little silly but a little apprehensive too. Probably similar to how kids in the late 90s and earlier 2000s felt when their 11th birthdays came and they secretly all waited for the letter from Hogwarts.
This post brought to you by my currently reading the New Millenium Edition of So You Want to Be a Wizard and enjoying myself immensely. I have the old edition open so I can go back and refer to it when I think I spot a change. I was a little sad to see that Kit’s first ever line of dialogue in the book is no longer “balls.” Balls are always funnier than not balls.
I, too, avoided reciting the Wizard’s Oath specifically because of “just in case”. I make no oaths lightly; I make no oaths I am unsure whether I would even want to uphold, let alone whether I could; I make no oaths that would be enforced by the same entities that enforced Nita’s oath regarding the Song of the Twelve, despite the fact that she did not give informed consent.
(The Sea fed the words of the oath into her mind. It could have fed her what they meant. But no, she recited the words in ignorance of the full nature of what they entailed, and everyone, including Nita herself, blamed her for not realising she needed to do more research.
(And since the Sea is an alternate form of the wizard’s manual, explicitly asking the Sea to feed her the meaning (or a manual-based equivalent action) would be the research she would do. Whenever conversations of the form “You didn’t tell me that!” “You didn’t ask.” happen, we generally conclude that the “You didn’t ask” person is a pedantic asshole trying to obey the letter of what is right while subverting the spirit. Yet this is pretty much what happens, and nobody seems to have any issue with it.))
Tags:
#also #*given* that Nita has ended up in this situation #going through with the Twelvesong is not a noble sacrifice #because you see #if she doesn’t do it they wipe large chunks of her memory #and if she does do it she goes to heaven #this is one of those edge cases #where *strictly in terms of maximising self-preservation* #it is actually better to commit suicide than to not commit suicide #(once your continued existence is assured the next thing on the self-preservation list is preserving your memories) #as you can see I have Issues with that book #Young Wizards #rants
Is “identifying foreign words by phoneme cluster” a thing that many/most people have trouble with? It’s something I’ve been instinctively able to do for as long as I can remember, but quite a few people have told me lately what an uncanny ability it is.
I’ve studied only a couple of foreign languages, and both of them were Romance-based. I pick up languages and grammatical rules very quickly, though. Even when I don’t understand the language being used, I can almost always pick out which language it is, or at least which language family.
This comes so naturally to me that I’ve never thought of it as weird, but recently people have been downright awed that I can, say, pick out the Thai dishes from the Vietnamese ones on a pan-Asian menu. Even though Thai and Vietnamese have totally different phonemic structures! It’s not that hard! People are often frequently baffled when I identify someone’s ethnic extraction by their surname, which, like – I dunno, all I can say is it’s not that hard!
I swear this isn’t me humblebragging – I am legitimately confused that this does not seem to be a common thing.
I too do the thing. I always figured most people’s lack of ability to do the thing was primarily related to most people’s disinterest in learning even the tiniest bit of foreign languages unless the language in question is going to be directly useful to them in a way they can quantify. But also I’m hyperlexic so, maybe that’s a factor too.
In my case people have more frequently expressed surprise at my ability to pronounce surnames, but that’s directly tied to recognizing their derivation – when you know what language a name derives from, and have a vague idea of the pronunciation rules of that language, it’s generally not too hard to at least come really close to correct pronunciation of the name.
Hyperlexia nation checking in! @ozymandias271 is the only other hyperlexic I know off the top of my head; do they also do the thing?
Same re: pronunciation. Weirdly enough, though, that often leads to me pronouncing it incorrectly, or at least what the person in question considers incorrectly. French names are very common where I live, but most of them have been Anglicized to the point where the original pronunciation becomes wrong.
I’m hyperlexic and okay but not great at this? (I can’t distinguish Swedish and Norwegian, and I can tell the difference between Korean and {Chinese, Japanese} but I can’t tell Chinese and Japanese apart, etc.)
I am pretty good at doing the thing, because I pick up linguistics rules really easily. (My project for the past two days has been teaching myself the grammar of Classical Sanskrit (hence the Bhagavad-Gita blogging), which I expect to take about a week to get mostly-down. I’m not planning to memorise Panini’s entire generative grammar, though.)
However, I am really awful at remembering vocabulary, which is why I’m monolingual. Give me the words, and I’ll successfully make sentences in half a dozen languages. If I’m allowed to make the sentences really simple, I could probably do two dozen languages. However, expecting me to remember any of those words the next day is a lost cause.
Despite hyperlexia, I’m not all that good at distinguishing languages by phoneme usage.
I’m a lot better at picking up vocabulary than grammar. I mentioned “read[ing] okay Packaging French, but don’t expect me to write it” recently: when presented with an everyday French sentence of the sort one might see on a sign or a bag of food, there’s a fair chance I’ll be able to work out the gist of it. If you ask me what the French word for [insert thing here] is, a significant-though-still-fairly-small amount of the time I will be able to answer. (As long as I am allowed to submit my answer in writing.) I cannot predict the grammatical structure of a sentence that isn’t currently staring me in the face, and I might not recognise it in a sentence that is currently staring me in the face.
Ingredient lists, which have almost no grammar and consist mostly or entirely of terms that any Canadian who doesn’t grow all their own food would be naturally exposed to†, are easiest. I am frequently able to read entire French ingredient lists without any guessing at all.
(One time, I actually understood the French side of the package better than the English.
Me, in grocery store: *looks at chocolate bar*
Me: “Chocolate with marzipan”. What is marzipan, anyway?
Me: *reads French side* “Chocolate with almond paste”. Oh.)
†Though I can’t promise how much attention other people pay.
Tags:
#combine me and Alison and you get someone who almost knows what they’re doing #language #reply via reblog #food mention #our home and cherished land
So, I think I might actually start a secondary blog about some of the things that have been getting discussed this weekend. I think it’s a topic worth being openly talked about, and I think it would be good to have a space specifically for that, so that people can stop worrying if what they’re talking about is appropriate and just say what they have to say.
(I also think it would be good to get the conversation off my main blog, because while I find it interesting, I’m sure it’s making a number of my followers uncomfortable.)
A couple of thoughts:
For aces, by aces, about aces.
Topics would definitely include masturbation/sex toys, including reviews/how-tos.
Additional topics can potentially include BDSM gear, partnered activities, talking about porn/erotic materials, and general sexual health/sex ed/anatomy, etc. Basically anything ace people are curious about or want to discuss, but don’t feel comfortable doing it in regular ace circles. Any other topics that should be explicitly called out?
Matter of fact and open, with a sense of “Yes, this is normal, yes, it’s okay to feel like that, it’s okay to do this” in most answers. Non-judgmental and inclusive (at least inclusive of ace-ID’d people).
Clinical where it needs to be, fun where it needs to be.
Deliberately not wankfodder. This isn’t Letters to Penthouse.
Open to questions from non-ace people about ace people, within limits. This will attempt to be a safe space for aces (at least as much as it can be on this site), so anyone disrespectful, etc., will be shown the door.
Anon submissions/asks would be on. 18+
Toy pictures allowed (including anatomically accurate models), but images of toy usage/porn not allowed (including pornographic images on packaging). Maybe use another toy as a demonstration stand in?
Maybe a discussion prompt once in a while?
I would probably need co-moderators. Any volunteers?
A couple of concerns:
As I’ve learned from my “An Asexual’s Guide To …” series, any time someone talks about topics like this, you will get a lot of non-ace people wandering by and offering their, um, “thoughts”.
I’d like it to be findable by aces who are interested in it, but I don’t want to be intrusive to those who are not. Are there good ways to do this?
So there it is. Thoughts?
I’d probably read it. I might participate, depending on which topics and how far the inclusivity goes. (When it comes to conversations about sex, I always feel like I’m being Too Weird and making people uncomfortable, even in places with relatively high Weird levels. The only place I didn’t feel like I was being intrusive was Ace Fet, which vanished off the face of the Internet a couple years ago without a trace.)
I think some sort of “Safe, Legal, Respectful” principle might be a good guideline as to what’s allowed. (Although, strictly speaking, “Legal” would probably be a bit flexible, as there are some places that outlaw the sale of “any device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs”, for instance. Not to mention the countries that still have enforceable sodomy laws. Things like that.) And maybe a “Don’t yuck my yum” principle. (The big problem is that you can’t control the audience response on Tumblr. You can encourage and cultivate the first readers to be respectful, but after that, the “Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory” applies. And I don’t know how to fix that.)
I think, in general, that this place would have to work against the idea that something is “weird” or “icky” or whatever. I mean, for many people, masturbation itself is too icky to talk about. Many people think sex toys are weird. And that’s okay. What’s not okay is turning that “This is not for me” into “No, you can’t have it either”. If it’s not your thing, skip to the next post. If none of the posts are your thing, unfollow or even block.
I think it would be good to have some of those “Too Weird” things talked about in a place that’s a safe environment, presented in a way that says “This is out there. If you’re interested, great. If not, maybe the next topic will be more your style.” Sort of like a sexualized asexual 60 Minutes. (If that makes any sense.)
“good idea, but what part about this is 18+??? if there’s going to be a large piece of sexual health and sex ed happening, i think it would be most effective if it’s safe for minors, the people who would be most in need of sex ed? i think? i’m not sure what you meant by 18+ but that sounds like the worst idea, the rest sounds pretty great”
Okay, so I was angry about this at first, but upon reflection I think it simply demonstrates a rift in people’s understanding of what this project is supposed to do.
See, sex ed is broad. It deals in generalities: it can, say, tell you that pornography is a thing that exists, but it won’t recommend specific pieces of erotica. (And indeed, any sex ed trying to be available to minors wouldn’t dare make such recommendations.)
I know many people who advocate for “inclusive” sex ed, but there is no such thing. Don’t get me wrong, some sex ed is less exclusive than others, but every sex education resource has to draw the line somewhere. They might discuss only the most common form of sexuality, or the top two, or the top several, but people with rare manifestations of sexuality will always be sacrificed on the altar of the greatest good for the greatest number.
I can’t contribute to a sex ed blog. When it comes to sex education, I am not and never will be a participant: I’m collateral damage. And maybe that’s worth it, but that is the price you’d be paying if you go the sex ed route.
I, on the other hand, interpreted this idea as being about a space for asexuals to discuss their sexualities. (I was going to say “the presences, rather than the absences”, but apparently some people conceive of their asexuality as a presence?) Such a space is not inherently exclusive of me. The risk is high, as I mentioned in my previous post on this reblog chain, but it could have a place for me.
@katakacat, tagging you to make sure you get the whole post. I didn’t want to add this as an edit because then people who have already read the original might miss it.
I swear I’m going back to studying after this, but it occurred to me I didn’t make it all that clear why the non-18+ thing in particular bothered me.
IME, obscenity rules are enforced more strictly the weirder you are. Something can be considered fine when a vanilla person says it, but someone saying the analogous thing about a kink gets smacked down as inappropriate.
At my level of out-there, there is very little I would dare say in an environment trying to be safe for minors. Almost any statement, no matter how innocuous the normal-person analogue would be, risks censure and penalties.
Tags:
#reply via reblog #sexuality and lack thereof #asexuality #oh look an update #I hope I haven’t crossposted
So, I think I might actually start a secondary blog about some of the things that have been getting discussed this weekend. I think it’s a topic worth being openly talked about, and I think it would be good to have a space specifically for that, so that people can stop worrying if what they’re talking about is appropriate and just say what they have to say.
(I also think it would be good to get the conversation off my main blog, because while I find it interesting, I’m sure it’s making a number of my followers uncomfortable.)
A couple of thoughts:
For aces, by aces, about aces.
Topics would definitely include masturbation/sex toys, including reviews/how-tos.
Additional topics can potentially include BDSM gear, partnered activities, talking about porn/erotic materials, and general sexual health/sex ed/anatomy, etc. Basically anything ace people are curious about or want to discuss, but don’t feel comfortable doing it in regular ace circles. Any other topics that should be explicitly called out?
Matter of fact and open, with a sense of “Yes, this is normal, yes, it’s okay to feel like that, it’s okay to do this” in most answers. Non-judgmental and inclusive (at least inclusive of ace-ID’d people).
Clinical where it needs to be, fun where it needs to be.
Deliberately not wankfodder. This isn’t Letters to Penthouse.
Open to questions from non-ace people about ace people, within limits. This will attempt to be a safe space for aces (at least as much as it can be on this site), so anyone disrespectful, etc., will be shown the door.
Anon submissions/asks would be on. 18+
Toy pictures allowed (including anatomically accurate models), but images of toy usage/porn not allowed (including pornographic images on packaging). Maybe use another toy as a demonstration stand in?
Maybe a discussion prompt once in a while?
I would probably need co-moderators. Any volunteers?
A couple of concerns:
As I’ve learned from my “An Asexual’s Guide To …” series, any time someone talks about topics like this, you will get a lot of non-ace people wandering by and offering their, um, “thoughts”.
I’d like it to be findable by aces who are interested in it, but I don’t want to be intrusive to those who are not. Are there good ways to do this?
So there it is. Thoughts?
I’d probably read it. I might participate, depending on which topics and how far the inclusivity goes. (When it comes to conversations about sex, I always feel like I’m being Too Weird and making people uncomfortable, even in places with relatively high Weird levels. The only place I didn’t feel like I was being intrusive was Ace Fet, which vanished off the face of the Internet a couple years ago without a trace.)
I think some sort of “Safe, Legal, Respectful” principle might be a good guideline as to what’s allowed. (Although, strictly speaking, “Legal” would probably be a bit flexible, as there are some places that outlaw the sale of “any device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs”, for instance. Not to mention the countries that still have enforceable sodomy laws. Things like that.) And maybe a “Don’t yuck my yum” principle. (The big problem is that you can’t control the audience response on Tumblr. You can encourage and cultivate the first readers to be respectful, but after that, the “Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory” applies. And I don’t know how to fix that.)
I think, in general, that this place would have to work against the idea that something is “weird” or “icky” or whatever. I mean, for many people, masturbation itself is too icky to talk about. Many people think sex toys are weird. And that’s okay. What’s not okay is turning that “This is not for me” into “No, you can’t have it either”. If it’s not your thing, skip to the next post. If none of the posts are your thing, unfollow or even block.
I think it would be good to have some of those “Too Weird” things talked about in a place that’s a safe environment, presented in a way that says “This is out there. If you’re interested, great. If not, maybe the next topic will be more your style.” Sort of like a sexualized asexual 60 Minutes. (If that makes any sense.)
“good idea, but what part about this is 18+??? if there’s going to be a large piece of sexual health and sex ed happening, i think it would be most effective if it’s safe for minors, the people who would be most in need of sex ed? i think? i’m not sure what you meant by 18+ but that sounds like the worst idea, the rest sounds pretty great”
Okay, so I was angry about this at first, but upon reflection I think it simply demonstrates a rift in people’s understanding of what this project is supposed to do.
See, sex ed is broad. It deals in generalities: it can, say, tell you that pornography is a thing that exists, but it won’t recommend specific pieces of erotica. (And indeed, any sex ed trying to be available to minors wouldn’t dare make such recommendations.)
I know many people who advocate for “inclusive” sex ed, but there is no such thing. Don’t get me wrong, some sex ed is less exclusive than others, but every sex education resource has to draw the line somewhere. They might discuss only the most common form of sexuality, or the top two, or the top several, but people with rare manifestations of sexuality will always be sacrificed on the altar of the greatest good for the greatest number.
I can’t contribute to a sex ed blog. When it comes to sex education, I am not and never will be a participant: I’m collateral damage. And maybe that’s worth it, but that is the price you’d be paying if you go the sex ed route.
I, on the other hand, interpreted this idea as being about a space for asexuals to discuss their sexualities. (I was going to say “the presences, rather than the absences”, but apparently some people conceive of their asexuality as a presence?) Such a space is not inherently exclusive of me. The risk is high, as I mentioned in my previous post on this reblog chain, but it could have a place for me.
So, I think I might actually start a secondary blog about some of the things that have been getting discussed this weekend. I think it’s a topic worth being openly talked about, and I think it would be good to have a space specifically for that, so that people can stop worrying if what they’re talking about is appropriate and just say what they have to say.
(I also think it would be good to get the conversation off my main blog, because while I find it interesting, I’m sure it’s making a number of my followers uncomfortable.)
A couple of thoughts:
For aces, by aces, about aces.
Topics would definitely include masturbation/sex toys, including reviews/how-tos.
Additional topics can potentially include BDSM gear, partnered activities, talking about porn/erotic materials, and general sexual health/sex ed/anatomy, etc. Basically anything ace people are curious about or want to discuss, but don’t feel comfortable doing it in regular ace circles. Any other topics that should be explicitly called out?
Matter of fact and open, with a sense of “Yes, this is normal, yes, it’s okay to feel like that, it’s okay to do this” in most answers. Non-judgmental and inclusive (at least inclusive of ace-ID’d people).
Clinical where it needs to be, fun where it needs to be.
Deliberately not wankfodder. This isn’t Letters to Penthouse.
Open to questions from non-ace people about ace people, within limits. This will attempt to be a safe space for aces (at least as much as it can be on this site), so anyone disrespectful, etc., will be shown the door.
Anon submissions/asks would be on. 18+
Toy pictures allowed (including anatomically accurate models), but images of toy usage/porn not allowed (including pornographic images on packaging). Maybe use another toy as a demonstration stand in?
Maybe a discussion prompt once in a while?
I would probably need co-moderators. Any volunteers?
A couple of concerns:
As I’ve learned from my “An Asexual’s Guide To …” series, any time someone talks about topics like this, you will get a lot of non-ace people wandering by and offering their, um, “thoughts”.
I’d like it to be findable by aces who are interested in it, but I don’t want to be intrusive to those who are not. Are there good ways to do this?
So there it is. Thoughts?
I’d probably read it. I might participate, depending on which topics and how far the inclusivity goes. (When it comes to conversations about sex, I always feel like I’m being Too Weird and making people uncomfortable, even in places with relatively high Weird levels. The only place I didn’t feel like I was being intrusive was Ace Fet, which vanished off the face of the Internet a couple years ago without a trace.)
Tags:
#sexuality and lack thereof #reply via reblog #asexuality
“HELLO NEIGHBOR STEVE, I WOULD LIKE TO INVITE YOU TO BARBEQUE ON THE EVE OF THE BLOOD MOON. I FEEL WE GOT OFF TO A BAD START.”
“NEIGHBOR STEVE, DO YOU NOT WISH TO PARTAKE OF THE UNCLEAN FLESH-MEATS OF PIGS AND THE POLLUTED ESSENCES OF TOMATO? PERHAPS YOU ARE A CAROLINA STYLE MAN, NEIGHBOR STEVE?”
“PUT THE GUN AWAY NEIGHBOR STEVE, YOU KNOW I SHALL ONLY RISE AGAIN WITH THE DAWNING OF THE MOON. WE HAVE BEEN THROUGH THIS MANY TIMES.”
“LOOK AT THIS PICTURE MY SON DREW OF YOU AND CHILD TIMMY, YOUR SON. ARE THEY NOT THE PICTURE OF PACT-MATES? THIS COULD BE YOU AND ME, NEIGHBOR STEVE.”
“YOU MISSED THE UNHOLY NEXUS OF POWER THAT IS THE KEY TO MY CORPOREAL FORM, NEIGHBOR STEVE. YOU WILL NEED TO RELOAD NOW, SO I WILL GO INSIDE TO MY HELL-WIFE AND PUT YOU DOWN AS A SOLID ‘MAYBE’.“
I have the feeling that the families get along great except for Steve. Like, the wives are baking (questionable) brownies together, the kids are playing together, Antler Guy occasionally takes Son and Timmy to school (no car, just carries them in huge swinging strides through a nexus of ungoldly sights in a swirling netherworld shortcut. Sometimes they stop for McDonalds). Hell-wife gave them a potted Audrey Jr., Steve’s wife (who I now christen Sharon) gave them a begonia.
One time Steve tries throwing holy water but all Antler Guy does is thank him, saying that no, Antler Guy isn’t Catholic but it’s the thought that counts, he is so kind to water his creeping deathshade vines regardless.
For Christmas Antler Guy gives Steve a case of ammunition. To be funny/sarcastically mean Steve gets Antler Guy the world’s most hideous Christmas sweater, singing light-up reindeer included. He immediately regrets it because not only does Antler Guy love it and wears it for several months, it will never need batteries because Antler Guy powers it with his own eldritch aura.
When they come back from a holiday to Hawaii, Steve is horrified to find out Sharon bought them matching Hawaiian shirts. He is even more horrified that his wife means it that if he doesn’t wear it he will forever sleep on the couch.
I want to expand on this, since I see it’s still passing around and the ideas have grown in my brainmeats.
What drives Steve up the wall and down the other side is how… normal… everyone treats the Abominations. (Yes, that is their last name. No, it is not a joke. Son was asked his last name for the standardized testing at school, had a quick conference with Timmy, and decided that Son Abomination sounded good, “Since my dad calls your dad the Abomination anyway and we can paint it on your mailbox just like the Henderson’s did theirs!”. Antler Guy agreed and did a lovely rendition of it for the mailbox, with only a few glyphs of soul-rending terror added to keep up to snuff.)
The Great Plant Exchange went beautifully, though the Audrey Jr. (named Aubergine for the lovely shade of purple poison that drips from her fangs) is on a diet at the moment. She was in cahoots with the cat and the dog to get into the good people food and ate two frozen turkeys all herself. Now she’s restricted to the hallway table to answer the phone and the door. (Steve actually likes her, and keeps slipping her hotdogs when Sharon isn’t looking. Their door-to-door salesman rates have dropped dramatically since she changed abodes.) Hell-wife has almost gotten the begonia to bloom and say it’s first words.
The homeowner’s association just loves the Abominations. All paperwork stamped and dotted, in on time and in triplicate. Antler Guy likes filing, says it reminds him of his old job. There is a resident who spent 20 years as a lawyer and they have long, animated conversations about all sorts of things that make Steve swear to never need legal counsel.
Hell-wife joined the PTA and spearheaded a committee to fundraise in the fall with a haunted house. It was a county-wide hit, though the claims that a particularly rowdy group had been deliberately lost in a timeslip to the Outer Doors Of Chaos was firmly rebuffed. Most young people nowadays, it was agreed, just couldn’t appreciate flute music.
Antler Guy really does try to connect with Steve. The surprise birthday party was perhaps a bit much, given that most participants do not have the ability to suddenly materialize in front of the guest of honor to give them a hug. Sharon assured them that Steve normally screams on his birthday, and the remains of the cake were heartily enjoyed by all. (A plate was saved for Steve once he came down from the treehouse.)
After the Hawaii trip (which was a present for his birthday) and the Matching Shirt Ultimatum (which was Sharon’s attempt at patching things up with Antler Guy, he really was sad about the birthday screaming), Steve finally grabs his courage in both hands (plus the shotgun, which let’s face it is about as useful as a teddybear at the moment but it does comfort him) and confronts Antler Guy, about why such a group of……Abominations could possibly come to his quiet slice of suburban bliss.
“……BUT NEIGHBOR STEVE, WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN HERE.”
“No no no, I read it in a book! Don’t you have to be invited or something?!”
“WELL YES, TO THE HUMAN WORLD. BUT THIS IS NOT THE HUMAN WORLD AS YOUR THREE-DIMENSIONAL BRAIN PERCEIVES IT.”
“What the hell does that mean?!!”
“DID YOU NOT KNOW, NEIGHBOR STEVE? LEGALLY SPEAKING, ALL OF THE VASTNESS OF HUMAN SUBURBIA IS, IN FACT, A PART OF HELL.”
“……..”
“THE FLAMINGOES ARE THE BOUNDARY MARKERS. IT WAS DECIDED THAT THE FLAMING SKULLS WERE TOO KITSCHY FOR MODERN TIMES.”
Yuletide inspiration, anyone?
Tags:
#Neighbor Steve #long post #story ideas I will never write #oh look an update
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.
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
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.
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: 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.
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.”
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’.
Tags:
#Star Trek #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #long post #(IIRC Romulan warp drives actually produce temporal anomalies as a side effect) #(so it’s not just humans who get into weird shit all the time) #(but anyway)
Brinens and Things 