Icon by @ThatSpookyAgent. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. The X-Files. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
I love you Horta I love you ignoring the prime directive I love you homoerotic fights on Vulcan I love you planets that look indistinguishable from earth in the 60s I love you Gorn I love you titty-window I love you a vision of the future where money doesn’t exist I love you pink spaceship walls I love you always have been and will be I love you pointy Starfleet uniform boots I love you Mr Spock dig it in there
Been experimenting with digitally upscaling some of Trekcore’s DVD screencaps. Results have been hit or miss so far, but here’s some of the better ones.
Why is amazon treating its employees like teachers treat students
Because infantilizing your underpaid workers is the best strategy to instill feelings of inferiority and fear, while also encouraging them to want to please middle managers for better treatment while not actually improving their situation at all. Its very effective.
Everybody needs to take a good, hard look at the history of West Virginia, so they can understand just how badly companies will sink their claws into your life, and how to stop them from doing it again.
We are really gonna replay the 1920s all over again
Happened in the 1800s in Wales. They were called “truck shops”, and the English coal barons paid the miners in coupons that could only be used in their own shops, where goods were massively overpriced. The Merthyr Uprising was, by some accounts, the first place the red flag of worker’s rights was raised, and it was in part because of this.
reminder that the state joined the war on the side of the corporations
Some specific facts about this from the Battle of Blair Mountain:
The US Army fires over 1 million rounds of ammo at striking coal workers
around 100 workers were killed, nearly 1000 were arrested over the strike, some were tried and imprisoned for years
the bombs dropped on the workers by the state were the first time aerial bombs fell on US soil
As a minor correction, Blair Mountain was not the very first time aerial bombs were dropped on the US. Two months prior, aerial bombing was used in the Tulsa Race Massacre. Never forget that the capitalist state’s oppression of workers and the oppression of its internal colonies are connected.
One of the most life-changing things I ever learned came from Mythbusters, where they tested and proved (with cognitive testing puzzles and reaction time tests) that lying down and resting with the intention to sleep STILL provided significant mental benefits over just staying awake, even if a person couldn’t fall asleep in the amount of time they had.
It helps me to actually sleep to know that just lying down with my eyes closed is still doing me some good, and helps me to not freak out/beat myself up when I stay up later than intended. Any amount of rest is better than no rest!
[ID/ Digital drawings of a tall, broad-shouldered Jem’Hadar in a lab coat. He has a stocky build and grey skin with black nails and white horns along his jawline and forehead. He’s wearing intricate, angular black and silver armor with a tube connecting it to his scaled neck. He’s holding a book in one hand, looking up and smiling softly as if pleasantly surprised. The first image has a transparent background, where the second has a white rectangle on a grey background. both are signed “Jekyll”. /end ID]
i drew @vortahoney ’s OC Tian'Sha❣️ he is so so delightful, it was an honor <3 and thank you again for writing the ID!
The beginning of a four-part journey of overwhelming nonsense, featuring more research than was strictly necessary. But fuck it, here we go.
Figure 1. Local man commits to least possible physical interaction imaginable with new fiancee.
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Because it was driving me bananas that I was picking up on this thing that very few others seemed to notice, and also because I am desperate for a particular brand of hurt/comfort Stede-fic in this fandom:
I watched the entire series again and made up a bunch of charts detailing all the ways Stede is touched, touches others, and the degree of “closeness” of those touches.
You can find the finished product here – first page is an overview, and remaining pages are breakdowns of each episode, including notes. If I missed something, or you disagree with a classification, pop in a comment. (You can also see my progress and original notes here.)
Broadly, though:
Stede is both touch-starved and touch-sensitive.And you can see it on the screen.
Because there’s so much here, this essay got ridiculously fucking long. As such, I’ve divided it into four parts – links to each section will be at the bottom of each post, but I encourage people to engage with whatever part of it they want.
Why is this important, though? Why go to all this trouble?
I think this behavior tells so fucking much about Stede, and that understanding his relationship with touch is crucial to getting a more rounded idea of his character.
I’m this close to calling it criminal that we aren’t more thoroughly acknowledging how much nuanced work Rhys Darby and his various scene partners put into this, holy shit.
I want to see this in fic, damn it.
And with that, finally:
✨~My evidence, let me show you it.~✨
—–
1. Stede wants to be touched, but is afraid of it.
Stede expects either violence or withdrawal from loved ones (or ones he’s supposed to have a close relationship with, at any rate) if he’s done something to displease them.
Nearly every memory of Stede’s father involves this on some level: blood on Stede’s face (and castigating him for his squeamishness), yanking Stede’s arm, bending over and getting into his face specifically to yell at him, and not looking at Stede when Stede’s essentially asking for comfort prior to his marriage.
Some of Stede’s memories of Mary at the dinner table show her as angry and physically distant from him (regardless of whether that memory is an accurate one). This is repeated later in episode 10 when we see her and the children again on the opposite side of the table.
The anniversary gift scenes in episode 4 are particularly telling: When Stede gives Mary his gift, he starts by dropping to a kneel next to her, his arm up on the table near her – and then Mary, over the course of realizing what he’s done/doing, proceeds to retreat from him three times – once a little ways, then again farther to the other side of the chair, and then finally leaving her chair entirely to face him. As Mary does that, Stede mirrors her retreat, a few beats behind and in reaction to her withdrawal, finally standing from his kneel, curling into himself, and losing his consistent eye contact with her.
Figure 2. Totally okay and not-at-all concerning body language in response to an upset life partner.
Ed reinforces this belief when he leaves the Revenge with Jack (immediately after Stede has actually expressed anger at someone he believes is Ed’s friend).
Considering all this, when Ed almost immediately runs off to find a dinghy in episode 10, leaving Stede alone right after he’s participated in an act that’s transgressive on multiple counts (gay AND cheating on his wife, tsk tsk)… well. It may not be what Ed intended, but there’s a bit of Stede’s brain that thinks “Ed left; therefore I did something wrong.”
Interestingly, this means that Stede will sometimes initiate the withdrawal if he perceives that someone’s displeased with him.
This could be for a couple of reasons: if he does it first, it makes it a choice on his part rather than a rejection on theirs; likewise, if he does it first, then perhaps that might placate the other person (by removing his “wrongness” from their presence). Most likely it’s some kind of inseparable combination of the two. We see how this maladaptive practice bears out with:
Mary presenting Stede his anniversary gift. At the start of the scene, he stands next to her, leaning in slightly, with his hands to either side; when he realizes he’s insulted her, he doesn’t step away but he does clasp his hands in front of himself, effectively removing the possibility that he might accidentally touch her skin (or she, his).
Stede leaving Mary and the children.
Stede offering Ed a nature walk. Ed demurs (using language that implies Stede’s suggestion wouldn’t be acceptable to various people) and Stede actually subtly leans away from him as his smile drops. You can see it below, particularly if you keep an eye on his relation to the rope in the background between them.
Figure 3. The subtle tragedy of a man whose best friend has just said that maybe his interests aren’t actually that cool.
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Almost as soon as Ed lets go of Stede’s face following the beach kiss, there is a very slow distancing happening between the two of them.
Stede leaving Ed.
Finally, one of Stede’s ways of withdrawing from someone else’s “space” is by losing eye contact.
This is something he developed after childhood – while in flashbacks we see that tiny Stede holds eye contact solidly with Father Bonnet (and only turns his head away when he’s shocked by the goose’s violent death), by the start of the series he’s pretty awful with it (dropping his gaze when Olu shakes him; closing his eyes to hide from the Nigel “ghost”; eventually dropping his gaze when Mary yells at him about the model ship).
He improves over the course of the show and as he gains confidence, though it’s easiest to tell in scenes of threat/violence where he would previously have dropped his gaze– this includes his steady stare at Calico Jack when he orders him off the ship, his violent twist of Doug, and his anger at Mary after the murder attempt.
However, when he feels uncertainty, that trouble with eye contact comes back again… including, unfortunately when Ed asks him to run away to China.
Figure 4. Local baby gay in middle of sudden revelation as to own sexual orientation is faced with object of said revelation asking for a life-changing decision instead of just, like, double-checking the kissing thing some more
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