Threshold Day is the anniversary of the airing of Threshold, one of the, if not THE, most batshit episodes of Star Trek Voyager, and Star Trek in its entirety. (Spoilers for Threshold below.)
In it, Lt. Tom Paris decides that, due to his enormous daddy issues, he will only be redeemed if he lives up to his potential by making it into the history books. In this case, it’s by breaking the transwarp barrier, which does not mean being trans and going into warp, a barrier which I’m sure was broken way before this, but going Warp 10 (in the new scale). Because apparently exploring basically a new section of the galaxy at the helm of the only Starfleet starship to be there is just garbage in terms of history-making, I guess.
So they find out there’s a 2% chance his personal brain will explode if he does this, and they’re going to let Harry Kim do it instead, but Tom is like, “no, Captain. You don’t understand. I have MASSIVE daddy issues. Also, you’d probably have to promote Harry if he succeeded, and nobody wants that.”
And Janeway is like, “Oh shit, I really don’t want to promote Harry. Also, I have some pretty big daddy issues of my own, so I getchu; have at it. Hope your brains stay unexploded.”
So he successfully does his thing, and he’s like, EVERYWHERE AT ONCE, MAN. He sees everything. Past, present, Harry in the shower – I mean, future – in all places at once. Which is why it’s odd that he’s so surprised when he collapses in the Mess Hall after drinking one of Neelix’s truly noxious brews. He should have known how gross it was going to be.
Anyway, the next twenty minutes or so are the EMH trying to stop Tom from turning into a weird gross scaly creature, with limited success. He stops being able to breathe oxygen. He gets super paranoid and rants a lot. He yells about pepperoni (I am not kidding). He asks for a dying kiss from Kes, which leads to a truly marvelous turn-down line: “I’m sorry, Tom. If we let down the forcefield, you’ll suffocate,” which I will now use for any unwanted come-ons. He legit DIES, then comes back to life a pretty long time later. He yells at Janeway, and then, like anyone who dares yell at Janeway would expect, his tongue literally falls out of his mouth.
Finally, he’s getting pretty close to salamander territory, when the last 15 minutes give up on making ANY sense. He busts out of Medbay, kidnaps Janeway, goes to Warp 10 again, turns them both into complete salamanders (I guess the EMH literally did nothing to help Tom, because apparently Janeway makes it through the transformation just fine without medical attention), and then HAS LIZARD BABIES with her.
Which we know, because the Voyager crew manages to find them three days later, and in that time apparently Janeway has changed over and already had the babies. Also, they were able to find a shuttle that literally could have gone anywhere in the entire universe. Chakotay then shoots the salamanders and they take them back, leaving the babies to…I don’t know, sala-meander around or something. Why is Chakotay’s first reaction to phaser the largely-sedentary salamanders? I have no idea.
Cut immediately to the EMH having been able to just roll back their DNA or something and make them entirely human again as if nothing had happened (If this were possible, why didn’t they just Warp 10 home to Earth and then fix everyone while they evolved? It sounds like it would suck, but so would being lost for 70 years). Janeway insinuates she may have initiated the salamating. (Tom should have said salami instead of pepperoni, in salamander solidarity). They laugh off something that should require about 50 years of counseling. Tom says, “cool, I think I have slightly less daddy issues now.”
YOU KNOW WHO HAS MORE DADDY ISSUES NOW? MAYBE YOUR ABANDONED SALAMANDER BABIES.
AND NONE OF THIS IS EVER MENTIONED AGAIN. OR HAS ANY IMPACT ON THE SERIES. EVER.
And so, we commemorate this weird atrocity (which actually has some nice character development and Emmy-winning makeup, but AT WHAT COST) with a day of commiseration and celebration, largely spearheaded by @captaincrusher. Join us next year…posts are already being prepared.
#oh so that’s why somebody reblogged one of my old Threshold reblogs today #Star Trek #Voyager #Threshold Day #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what
#autism #Star Trek #DS9 #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #art #fanart #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what #ableism cw? #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
If you think you know what these videos will be like you’re wrong, they must have taken DAYS of careful editing
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#oh my god #music #Sesame Street #juxtaposition #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #I think overall I like the juxtaposition of the first one better #(the second *song* is better‚ but Cookie Monster swearing just feels wrong) #but shoutout to ”left‚ right‚ left” and ”I was a chef” #also‚ what Benedict said #(”incredibly impressive lip syncing job here”) #(”how do you even have the kind of knowledge necessary to pick out scenes with the right timing”) #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
#high context jokes #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #A Rental Car Takes a Left Down Rake Street and Disappears #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
guy with telepathy but he can’t use it because every time he tunes into someone else’s mind their unique perception of all of reality is so fundamentally different than his own and so incomprehensible that he just immediately passes out like a lovecraftian horror protagonist
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#relatable #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
Glowfic is an infamously high-context medium and needs a certain amount of tolerance for reading things without having read their prerequisites, but you can get a head start on understanding the background context relevant to my stuff by reading How to Read Glowfic and the glowfic wiki page on medianworlds (people who understood the phrase “the format planecrash was written in” may recognise this as the relationship Keltham’s homeworld has to Eliezer Yudkowsky).
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#(it was not in fact planecrash that introduced me to glowfic) #(my own introduction to glowfic has been lost to the mists of time but was no later than 2018) #(but planecrash was a breakout hit‚ which makes it a useful reference) #and yeah that post from today’s queue is very much a thing #if you told me in early 2022 that I was going to write over 40k words of fiction in the following calendar year #I would boggle at you #I do think early-2022!me would *endorse* this development‚ though #it’s just not something that I ever particularly expected to be *capable* of #and was making no active attempt to change this
You guys want to play a game? REBLOG and put in the tags why you follow this person
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#I am absolutely fascinated by rentalcar #memes #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
Did you know that peafowl are born with a full set of flight feathers? It only takes them 3-4 days to remove the sheaths and put a little length on them, and then they are capable of flight!
It’s very obnoxious!
glad that came through in text
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#birds #the more you know #adorable #(…from a safe distance) #cat on keyboard threeeee-d! #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
Do yall ever just draw/write/do something and go “I did that? Me?? This lil guy??? I had the power in me this entire time, but nobody told me????”
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#me looking at the nearly-three-thousand-words of fiction I have written over the past 48 hours #writing #relatable #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once #(but I moved it up to the top of the queue‚ so that ”last 48 hours” will only be slightly off by the time this is visible)