* who has shipped Spirk since that night in 1967 that Amok Time first aired * and helped storm NBC to keep TOS on the air for a 3rd season * and wrote fanfic way back in the day * and was privileged to be around for the earliest days of fandom, when Leonard used to come to your house if that’s where the fan club was meeting and sit on the sofa with you in that Spock hair cut and eat cake
All of you who are writing TOS/AOS fan fiction and creating fan art now: remember, YOU are the ones shaping the traditions of fandom. You have inherited the kingdom. Bless you for keeping it vibrant, growing, alive. In fifty years, you will be the ones who are remembered for molding it and handing it down to the future. It probably doesn’t feel like now, but you are making history.
Your current addiction to TOS and the feels you get when you contemplate the love between Jim and Spock will be with you for life. It won’t always be in the forefront; you will sometimes go years, sometimes go a decade, without Star Trek being more than a passing thought. But then something will remind you and every consuming feeling you feel right now will come rushing back, every bit as powerful and deep and strong as it is today. All there, right where you left it.
The friendships you make in fandom will be with you for life. Like all friendships, they will wax and wane as the focus of your life shifts over time, but you will always be able to pick up the thread. You will — to give you a hypothetical example — be 77 years old and discover Tumblr and get a rush of Spirk feels after a decade of not giving TOS a thought, and contact your 83-year-old fangirl friend in the nursing home, to whom you haven’t spoken in several years. You will open the conversation with, “So, Jim and Spock love each other and that just makes me so happy.” And your friend in the nursing home will sigh and say, “Yes. They do love each other. It’s such a comfort.”
That look that Jim and Spock give each other, of absolute adoration and acceptance and love? That’s real. It’s rare, but it’s real. One of my greatest joys in life is to see my son and his husband give each other looks like that. Of course I don’t know you; I don’t know your strengths and struggles or your place on the spectrum of gender or anything about your sexuality or what you look like or what your life has taught you to believe about yourself, but I do know this: YOU DESERVE TO BE LOVED AND LOOKED AT THE WAY JIM AND SPOCK LOOK AT EACH OTHER. Please don’t accept less than that in your life.
The future of our planet does not seem very hopeful at the moment. But please remember that when Gene created Star Trek, the world was in turmoil and the future seemed very bleak. Star Trek is, was, always shall be about hope. Reach for it. When TOS first aired, we hoped to see some form of a Starfleet on the horizon in our lifetimes. That vision must be passed on to you. Do it. Make the world worthy of launching the human race out into space. CREATE STARFLEET.
You are all creative and funny and amazing. Far more amazing than you know. Be kind to yourselves. Live long and prosper, kids.
Tags are in reference to my first bullet point. Meant as a kudos to your work, but feel free to untag yourself if you don’t want to be linked to my ramblings; I won’t be offended! (Also, this extends to a thousand other artists and writers out there who deserve kudos. tag at will.)
Aren’t you glad that this woman didn’t leave fandom once she graduated college/got a job/got married/had kids?
Do you get it now?
This is so lovely. Dear OP, you’re wonderful.
Where was that one person who was claiming that any “adult” in fandom spaces was inherently damaging to younger fans? They need to read this fifty times and then ask themselves if they really think fandom is better off without people like this and the messages they have for us.
Because I think we feel weaker, more uncertain, and more forsaken without people who’ve lived through these things here to remind us that *you can live through these things*.
Scientists invented a pill that enables dogs to fully speak and understand English. It lasts for ten minutes, and will only work one time. You give a pill to your 12 year-old Border Collie, whom you’ve had since they were a pup. Your dog immediately says “Alright, listen very carefully…”
“…you have always been the good boy. You get down on yourself but the good boy was you all a long.”
people are saying these look protective. each creature represents a self-destructive coping mechanism: ruminating obsession, isolation, the false idea of control, and martyr complex. they feel comforting, but are harmful
ultimately i think kindness is the most radical thing you can do with your pain and your anger. it’s like, you take everything awful that’s ever been done to you, and you throw it back in the world’s teeth, and you say no, fuck you, i’m not going to take this. you say this is unacceptable. you say that shit stops with me.
humans are fucking terrible and this awful world we live in will fucking kill you but if you are kind, if you are brave and clever and try really hard, you can defy it. you can impose on this bleak and monstrous structure something beautiful. even if it’s temporary. even if it doesn’t heal anything inside you that’s been hurt.
i’m gonna sleep and i’m gonna wake up and i swear by everything in this deadly horrible universe i’m gonna make someone happy.
i’ve seen a number of comments and tags where people feel that they must swallow or repress their anger in order to engage in kindness. that is not at all what i am recommending here. radical kindness is an expression of anger. it is not passive. it is not repressive. it does not require you, in any way, to forgive those that have fucked you up. it does not require you to be quiet.
it just requires that you be kind. viciously. vengefully. you fight back. you plant flowers. give to charity. play games. pet someone’s dog. scream into the dark. paint and write and dance, tell jokes, sing songs, bake cookies. you have been hurt and you don’t have to deny that hurt. you just have to recognize it in other people, and take their hand, and say: no more. enough. fuck this. no more.
have a cookie.
i will say this again: we are all going to die. the universe is enormous and almost entirely empty. to be kind to each other is the most incredible act of defiance against the dark that i can imagine.
i will say this again: we are all going to die. the universe is enormous and almost entirely empty. to be kind to each other is the most incredible act of defiance against the dark that i can imagine.
3. Two good quotes by Kurt Vonnegut: “Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the
winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you’ve
got a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of,
babies-“God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”
And: “Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do
not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your
sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may
disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.”
UGH HAD TO DO IT THIS WAY because tumblrs fuckin STUPID
anyways heres an image thats been sitting around in my folders for over a year now, and i dont think ill ever get to finish it the way i REALLY wanted to finish it, so here u go homestucks! hope you dig it.
Today I’m thinking about how even though Equius was surrounded by things he damaged without meaning to– he bruised his own lusus, he broke his bows, he broke his robots, he broke his shades, hell, he even broke his own teeth and horn–
Even with all of that, we never once saw so much as a single scratch on Nepeta.
…I have feels.
#I can’t decide whether I like it better if he just tried EXTRA HARD #because IMPORTANT #or if she was just talented enough to keep herself safe around him #and that skill was part of why he could relax around her and trust her if he couldn’t trust himself
Equius being Very Careful around his tiny, breakable moirail and Nepeta being even more careful because she isn’t fragile at all, really, but HE is
Ok but can we talk about how emo, as a genre, defied gender roles in a big way? Like, everything about the culture, from the guys wearing makeup and womens’ skinny jeans, to the way they got unabashedly emotional in spite of the “men aren’t supposed to cry” narrative they’d obviously been socialized with, was just this complete “fuck you” to the idea that there’s a certain way to be a “man”.
And a lot of their detractors called them “girly” or “gay”. And they didn’t give a fuck! Fall Out Boy has a whole song entitled “Gay Is Not A Synonym for Shitty”, which referenced a famous Pete Wentz quote, where he basically said that if you thought his band sucked, to just say it sucked, and not be a “homophobic asshole” about it.
And, then, geez, My Chemical Romance took it a step further, and Gerard Way outright kissed one of his bandmates at concerts purely to infuriate homophobes who were at his shows.
A lot of these bands were openly for LGBT rights, for womens’ rights. I remember one instance where some band MCR was touring with asked women to flash their tits in exchange for backstage passes. And Gerard was so horrified by this, and told his female fans to “spit in the faces” of misogynists in the rock scene.
Like, god, these bands were so progressive. And they still are. Right after the Pulse tragedy, Brendon Urie literally danced around in a pride flag and told his queer fans what they meant to him. Pete Wentz said that “Uma Thurman” was meant to show his female fans that they could be “badass”, too. And Gerard pretty much admitted in an interview to somewhat identifying with the label “nonbinary”.
That’s the most lasting impact that emo is going to have. Showing fans of all genders that there’s nothing wrong with being whoever the fuck you are, that there’s no specific way to be a man or woman. And, god, I just fucking love that.
“So every day during my set, when I’m playing my own shows, I talk about people that are transgender. I talk about it a lot because everyday basically I say: …”
I feel like disco and emo should team up and that should be the next big music thing, sort of a defiant apocalyptic dance party, because disco did this sort of thing too, the rejection of straight white male heteronormativity, and that was basically why it was killed, so, like, emo plus defiant zombie disco would be the perfect thing to play in the Mango Menace era.
I love meta posts like these bc now i understand why my diehard defiant teenage ass was in love with these bands and this culture
Congratulations, genius. You convinced your best friend, the Protagonist, not to marry the story’s Love Interest, and instead go off and have awesome adventures with you forever. But in doing so, you pissed off the Author.
After the third bandit ambush, the Unnecessary Character waits until the Protagonist falls asleep to turn an accusing look at the sky.
“Hey,” the Unnecessary Character says, jabbing a finger stupidly at the non-sentient array of stars, “you quit it. You quit it right now.”
The Unnecessary Character, henceforth known as TUC so as not to waste too many letters on them, looks rather rough. Their hair is a tangled mess from the swallows who’d mistaken the horrendous strands as nesting material.
“I know that was you,” TUC hisses. “Swallows use mud and spit to make their nests, not twigs.”
TUC is unaware that they actually look like dirt, just terrible, smelly dirt.
“This is a lot of unnecessary anger,” TUC says to the sky. “You’re the one who thought Ally needed a friend and now you’re mad that I’m being a friend to her? Josiah was a creep, you know. Maybe you think he was charming, but he’s borderline abusive. No, scratch that. He was straight up abusive.”
TUC’s main weakness has always been the inability to see the big picture. They don’t know that the Love Interest would do anything for the Protagonist, up to and including battling the dragon that would inevitable be coming to the castle.
TUC pales until they begin to resemble watery porridge. “The what?!”
Their voice is shrill and stupid. The pitch of it nearly wakes the poor, exhausted Protagonist who’s had it rough these past few nights with TUC waylaying her with their idiocy.
“Let’s…let’s swing back to the dragon later,” TUC says. They pinch the bridge of their nose, trying to ease the headache thinking so hard has given them. “Look, Josiah wanted to keep Ally in the castle, okay? Like, all the time. She’s an adventurer, dude, not a stay-at-home wife. And have you already forgotten how Josiah locked her in the dungeons when those rebel forces tried to break in? And then just forgot about her in the aftermath until she broke out?”
It’s not surprising that TUC has misinterpreted that lovely and gallant action. Ally is a lady, forced to work hard all her life to support her mean family. She needs someone to take care of her so she can finally be happy.
“Her mean–they were poor!” TUC says, missing the point completely. They direct a hideous look at the sky. “No, I’m not missing the point! Everyone in her family was worked to the bone, not just her! They all had to work insane hours just to pay taxes! Taxes, may I remind you, that Josiah and his father set!”
just moving along like everyone else 