Star Trek: Enterprise 03.08 Twilight

there is not a unit of time currently in existence small enough that it could accurately measure just how fast archer would kill tuvix

getting tumblr notifications from trek accounts with quirky usernames always makes me giggle like yes im so glad to hear that dukatgettinghitinthedickwithahammer has resurfaced

The grimy, unpatrolled streets of Laket are a dark and dangerous place. Inspector Levok of the Ministry of Justice is one of the few men standing in the way of total anarchy.

When the industrialist and philanthropist Pravet is found brutally slain in his opulent mansion in a room locked from the inside, it is just one item too many on Levok’s docket. In a city full of drugs, gangs, theft, and mysterious disappearances, the murder stands out because of its victim’s prominence. His civilian supervisor advises him to close it quickly, but the deeper he digs, the less the case makes sense.

The wealth on display in the family's townhome doesn't match the numbers in his account books. His grieving widow is desperate to protect the family's reputation. His eldest son stands to inherit a fortune but from where? His younger daughter harbored a bitter feud against her father, while the man's ambitious brother insists his business is above reproach. The missing nephew is not mentioned at all.

Worse still, Levok's on-again, off-again lover, a streetwalker named Saraol, was with the industrialist the night he died, but despite leaving while he was still alive, Saraol confesses to the murder the moment she's brought in for questioning.

As contradictions mount and powerful interests close ranks, levok finds himself trapped between family secrets, political pressure, and a crime behind a locked door that should be impossible.

Who is Saraol protecting? Where did the eldest son’s fortune come from? What happened to the missing nephew? And most of all, how did Pravet die, and who killed him?

when i say i want strong women on television this is what i mean

STAR TREK: VOYAGER - S1E11 State of Flux

[ E!’s Inside Star Trek: Voyager - Fashion ]

The reason I reached for genre romance novels for Star Trek is Ive read so so so many of them and I know roughly how most of them convey something about the culture that produced them, in content and structure and what it means for what a culture values in a partner, and in themselves. It’s somewhat easy to use the scaffolding I already know to use existing genre conventions to explain something about the aliens in Star Trek.

I have not read enough murder and thriller novels to articulate what the genre is establishing about culture and values so I can’t be like ‘this is the dime airport novel about women getting sexy murdered but in Vulcan’ because I don’t know which genre conventions are load bearing and which are just more traditional. The murder mysteries i HAVE read are literally just Agatha Christie and maybe a handful of others that are directly inspired by her. I’ve watched a lot of murder television, but that is nottttt the same medium.

Bringing out those tags because so, so interesting, perhaps one of my favourite things, to mess around with patterns of story*. When I sat down with Spock to transcribe his autobiography, we came up with a form for what Vulcan memoir might look like, which he subverts. (There’s some of Sarek’s poetry too.)

Meditations on a Crimson Shadow is described as being set during a future war, so is a Cardassian sf novel. I figured it would surely, at least superficially, tell the story of Cardassian supremacy and permanent conquest, like Orwell’s boot stamping on a human face forever. Except maybe if you were reading it in the basement of your father’s home as your whole civilization implodes around you. Then I thought it might read differently. Or at least you would start the previously unimaginable work of imagining differently.

If historical fiction tries to reconfigure what we think was possible for people in the past, sf tries to configure what we think can be possible to us in the future. They feel very close, in my mind. Can we find sources or traditions in the past that give us succour or hope? What visions of the future are available to us, or do we need to imagine, and how do we map our way there? I think about these things all the time.

Walter Benjamin, On the Concept of History, VI

* Patterns of Story was the title of my MA creative writing module where we read 6 novels and mucked around with them in as many ways as possible. This week we’ll go through one scene in Madame Bovary and see how meticulously it’s constructed. This week we’ll read some post-apocalyptic Kentish dialect and I’ll do my party piece from Ulysses. This week I’ll tell you why Moll Flanders is like the Doctor Who Hartnell-era story “The Sensorites”. This week I’ll explain what I think are the two distinctive modes in the crime novel. And this week we’ll read a modernist novel that you’ll doubt at best or hate at worst but ten years later you’ll email me to ask the title because you haven’t been able to get it out of your head. I loved teaching that class. What an amazing technology novels are. I really do like them, probably nothing nicer than novels.

Oh, just to add that if we go with Harold Bloom (wait! come back!) and read Shakespeare as "inventing" the human, then Garak's blustering that Shakespeare is rubbish and pointless can of course be taken as yet another crock of performative bullshit - not only does he QUOTE HIM TO TAIN (let me throw words learned from my beloved in your fucking face), but Shakespeare represents his encounter with humanity by which we mean Bashir by which we mean the crumbling of Garak's belief in Cardassian supremacy. Shakespeare by which we mean the human by which we mean Bashir rewires (see what I did there) Garak's brain to such an extent that I would not be surprised if Garak regularly catches himself thinking in blank verse.

I think the concept of crimson shadow as a example of sci-fi literary fiction is genuinely fascinating, bc now I am thinking about the terrible copy cats after Orwell of pulpy shoot em up sci fi dystopias. (Also can’t believe how often I fall for The Canonical Liar who Lies. I’m genuinely so easy to trick.) Novels about surveillance robots and scantily clad beautiful reptilian women, and the concrete pillar of patriotism and nationalism you will always be able to build your identity around. I’m not gonna lie when I was first thinking about crimson shadow I didn’t make this leap of science fiction, I believe I was thinking about the Norse legend of ragnarok, where it’s spoken of in concrete future tense as though it both has happened before and will happen again in a cyclical nature of conquest.

I’ve done a piece before of rugal and ziyal and Jake discussing Star wars franchise as a piece of cardassian literature, with decades of one family either serving or destroying the state, with the filial obligations to the generation before as a repetitive epic, now I really want to revisit it with your incredible class lens of Patterns of Story.

I know there’s something on the bones of murder mystery thriller pulp that could be translated to Vulcan, something probably closer to the Detective kosuke kindaichi books, where it takes you through every single clue and a diagram of the house so you can see the logical leaps and make them yourself, as opposed to a Sherlock Holmes where you only really get the clues after they’ve amounted to a solution. The elements of murder mystery undertone of an empire in decline and a new era struggling to establish itself while ancient secrets come unburied that’s in both Agatha Christie and in Yokomizo is really the part that I cannot figure out how to change for Vulcan culture itself.

The other somewhat silly book genres I’ve been thinking about as I stretch a little outside my comfort zone is medieval travel writing (Marco polo, Ibn Battutaʼs Journeys,etc) as it would appear in really really early warp and pre warp cultures, and hard supernatural horror to lean into fears and anxieties

the first ever pride flag (1978) versus the TMP movie poster (1979)

happy pride month!

star trek heritage post (June 2nd, 2017)

#pretty much what he said (insp.)

Billionaire crypto-executive Rutash controls everything—his monopoly, his image, his life. But when meticulous, fascinating, female FCA accountant Biano is called in to audit his sprawling fortune, he discovers a ferengi who he cannot afford… or so she thinks.

Rutash is used to people falling in line, but Biano’s sharp mind and strange independence ignite a dangerous curiosity in him. He starts testing her limits with subtle bribes—illicit luxury clothes, secret allowances, whispered promises of indulgence—but each offer is a challenge, a dare. With every temptation, the game intensifies: will she uphold her integrity, or will she raise the stakes even higher?

As the audit dives deeper, the lines between money and desire blur. Every ledger, every transaction, every bribe becomes a pulse-quickening act of dominance and submission. Biano finds herself drawn to Rutash’s wealth, his power, and the intoxicating control he wields—learning that sometimes pleasure comes at a price, and sometimes the cost is more than she ever hoped.

In a world ruled by profit, bribery is seduction, and temptation is irresistible. The ultimate question looms: who truly controls whom, and what will they sacrifice when lust and power collide?

Featured here from Girls Monthly, both the original illustration and the publication cover with ads.

another lighting study ft. geordi! i moved the chess set out of the way so it looks more like he’s staring out into space…. contemplating

we brought your gay little boyfriend back from the dead. happy pride ig

Quick B'Elanna for practice! Timelapse on Reddit.

The Klingon text reads "beylana", which is how you spell her name in tlhIngan Hol.

sometimes kathy drops some bombs on her crew that gets everyone flustered and enamored and everyone has to take a sec before moving on, especially chakotay