Daily OpusEverything I write is freely rebloggable. Just keep the source and tell people about my books :D [Until I decide otherwise, my pronouns are Ze/Hir/Hirself. As in "Ze went to the shops to get hir medication hirself". Thank you for the respect.]
Update: he finally got the cat to the vet to see if she had a microchip
I was already on board with his sweet wholesome open-to-love-and-nurturing heart but I was fully unprepared for getting to that last tweet and seeing how off the hook HOT dude is
concept: willy wonka and harry potter take place in the same universe the ministry of magic haaaates Willy Wonka
“Mr. Wonka,” Dumbledore smiled warmly, looking down into the Pit from his podium. The members of the Wizengamot muttered disapprovingly, shifting in their seats. Willy Wonka, clad today in a bright magenta suit and tophat, beamed cheekily up at them from his chair, his silver-gloved hands cradling his chin.
“Mr. Dumbledore,” He replied brightly, with the barest hint of a lisp.
“I trust you know why you are here?” Dumbledores question was crisp and businesslike, but the twinkle in his eye gave away his amusement at the situation.
“Not at all! I’ve nary a clue,” Wonka wiggled his eyebrows. Dumbledore audibly stifled a laugh.
“You are accused of improper use of magic, improper use of muggle artifacts, and several counts of using magic in front of a muggle,” Dumbledore reminded him. He conjured a projection with his wand. Displayed in grainy sepia was Willy Wonka, arm around a boy of around 10. Behind his back, he twitched an ash wand, and machines in the background around them whirred to life, producing all manner of sweets.
The projection ran its course and collapsed, and Dumbledore stowed his wand back inside his robes.
Wonka smiled and fiddled with his hat.
“How do you plead?” Dumbledore asked, leaning forward eagerly for what would surely be an amusing trial.
“Not guilty on all counts,” Wonka said, perhaps a tad smugly.
The members of the Wizengamot muttered amongst themselves. Not Guilty? Impossible!
Dumbledore hushed them quickly. “Explain, if you would. We have, after all, quite a mountain of evidence.”
Wonka stood and brushed a bit of dust off his suit. He tipped his hat mischievously. “Of course,” he grinned.
“Firstly, use of magic shall only be considered improper whereby it is applied to cause harm or applied recklessly. All magic used in my sweets is rigorously tested for both safety and taste. It is not used to cause harm, but to bring joy.” Wonka paused to adjust his jacket.
“But surely,” Dumbledore said, leafing through his notes, “you cannot deny that you illegally charmed several thousand muggle artifacts?”
“Ah, but I can,” Wonka said, now twirling his cap in his hands. “Muggle artifact refers, of course, to any muggle made object. But, you see, I built those machines, each and every one. They are not muggle machines at all, but wizarding machines, built by a wizard. The factory itself, as well. You could argue that, as machines are a muggle invention, I still broke the rules, but then I could argue that every wizard dwelling with any charms applied to its walls is in violation of the law, as muggles were the first to make bricks.”
The Wizengamot glared silently. He was right, of course. Violating the spirit of the law was not illegal if one followed the letter.
“And the last charge? These are definitely Muggle children, are they not? No magical talent, raised in muggle society?” Dumbledore straightened his glasses and peered down at Wonka, his eyes still bright with intrigue.
“Not at all,” Wonka grinned, placing his hat back on his head. “You see, the ticket system was not nearly so random as I pretended. The tickets were charmed, they would only becomes visible to children with magical heritage. All the children chosen were second generation Squibs.” Wonka bowed low, as if he were finishing a particularly well executed play.
“Well, ladies and gentlemen, it seems no laws were violated after all.” Dumbledore stifled a grin at the groans of angry disapproval from the Wizengamot.
“But he very clearly violated the intent of the rules!” Spluttered a large, rather red faced wizard in the second row. “He’s just…cheating! He’s cheating!”
“Ah, this is true, but he did not, technically speaking, break any of the rules. He did not expose muggles to magic, nor enchant muggle made objects, nor improperly apply magic anymore so than any magical confectioner. I’m afraid we have to let him go.” Dumbledore smiled gently and put away the rather thick file with Wonka’s name embossed on the cover. For the brief second it was open, a list of hundreds of charges with “Not Guilty” inked beside them was visible. It was carried off by a house elf, and the Wizengamot began to file out until only Dumbledore was left.
“You’re a very clever man,” He called down to Wonka. “We could use you at Hogwarts, you know.”
“No thank you,” Wonka called back, grinning. “Skirting the law is far more fun!”
I’d prevviously said ‘Yes! Gene Wilder! Wonk!’. Now there’s pics.
BUT…
OMG.
MS. FRIZZLE! (and the MAGIC School Bus).
She must be before the Wizengamot ALL the TIME.
(Is her excuse; ‘Well, it’s educational’???? And it WORKS?!!)
Cornelius Fudge sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. Behind him, the members of the Wizengamot muttered amongst themselves, wondering what his next move would be. When he finally looked up from his podium, all he could do was glare at the chipper redheaded woman perched on the arm of the interrogation seat in the Pit. A bright green lizard poked its head out of the collar of her planet patterned dress and skittered around her shoulders to stare back at him.
“Mrs. Valerie…” He checked the file again. “Frizzle?”
“Good morning, Minister!” She replied happily, a hint of a laugh in her voice.
“It’s 3:30 in the afternoon, Madam,” He replied. He was tired.
“Here yes, but in America, its 10:30 in the morning! Aren’t time zones incredible?” She smiled and he could see all her teeth.
Fudge’s eye twitched irritably and he took a deep, steadying breath.
“Do you know why you’ve been called before the Wizengamot today, Mrs. Frizzle?” He asked, shuffling the papers from her file.
“I’m probably in trouble,” she smiled serenely, absentmindedly petting the lizard. “That is, after all, what the Wizengamot deals in!”
Fudge stifled a groan as he began leafing through her file. He didn’t even know where to begin. “Mrs. Frizzle, you are charged with no less than two hundred and thirty two counts of violating the Statute of Secrecy. Note that this is one count for each muggle known to be exposed to magic through your actions, and not a reflection of how many actions you have taken.” He drew out a page from the file. “Actions that include unlawful use of a sentience charm upon a muggle bus, unlawful use on that same bus of indestructibility charms and some sort of curse or hex that made the damn thing not only unresponsive and utterly unusable to anyone but yourself and your students, but also made us unable to decharm, move or even hide it, several unlawful uses of shrinking charms, bubble head charms, transfiguration, and at least one unregistered charm of your own making that allowed you to leave the planet entirely!” He slammed his hand down on the podium. “Do you have anything at all to say for yourself?!”
Mrs. Frizzle smiled politely. “Prime Minister,” she said calmly, “With all due respect, I have a question for you. Have you ever captured lightning in a bottle?”
“Have I- What?” Fudge spluttered, taken aback by her odd question.
“Have you ever captured lightening in a bottle?” She repeated, eyes flashing.
“Of course I haven’t, what sort of nonsense-” He began, but she threw up her hand and interrupted him.
“Muggles have. They’ve known how to use the same energy that comprises lightening to light their homes for over 100 years now. They can generate what amounts to lightening in a bottle with water, or the light and heat from the sun, or the wind. They can carry music in their pockets. They have been able, for nearly 30 years now, to leave the Earth and stand on the Moon.” Mrs. Frizzle straightened her dress. “I have, yes, been using my magic to help teach my students, but what I’ve been teaching them is science! It’s a shame that we don’t learn science as children the way muggles do. They know how the planets move! They know why the Earth turns! Muggles have a wealth of knowledge that rivals that of the centaurs, and we just,” She gestures around incredulously. “We just ignore it! Did you know they are able to not only capture movement, but also sound on film? It’s incredible!”
Fudge waved a hand to silence the incensed grumbling of the Wizengamot. “Mrs. Frizzle,” he hissed angrily. “It does not matter how many trinkets and non-magical work-arounds the muggles have made, regardless of how incredible you find them. Their ‘science’ is not on trial here, you are, for exposing muggles to magic!”
“Minister, you do know my students are all muggle borns,” Mrs. Frizzle said, perhaps a touch angrily, her usual enthusiasm for science replaced by an anger at tech marvels being referred to as ‘trinkets’.
“They’re not the only ones who have seen your…Magic Bus!” Fudge roared, slamming his fist on the podium and eliciting a dull rumble of approval from the Wizengamot. “Mrs. Frizzle, since you have failed to mount a defense, we will now take a vote. All in favor of conviction?”
A sea of hands shot into the air.
“All opposed?”
2 or 3 hands were placed waveringly in the air, then quickly fell.
“Mrs. Frizzle, you are found guilty of 232 counts of breaking the Statute of Secrecy. The wand you surrendered upon entering the Ministry will be kept, and you are fined in the amount of 1,160 galleons. If you cannot pay this fine, you will be given a job on low level staff or doing community service until such time as the debt is paid. Good day.” Fudge closed her file and handed it the the Junior Undersecretary, who ferried it back to the Hall of Records.
Mrs. Frizzle stomped out, angry but not ready to give up. Luckily for her, they hadn’t taken her backup wand. She had classes tomorrow, after all, and they couldn’t very well explore the world of pollen without a proper shrinking charm. She made a mental note to stop by her cousin Xenophillius’ house to pick up her backup to her backup. She loved his house. Shaped like a chess peice, can you imagine?
This is why the Wizarding World of Harry Potter is just so…..dumb.
I think you’re all forgetting the obvious… Mary Poppins.
“Back again, Mary?” Dumbledore twinkled at the woman in the
felt hat standing ramrod straight in front of the chair in the pit. She’d
always been one of his favourite students.
what the fuck dude this is awesome i want this too now
Okay, but what about those deep sea fish that produce light at a wavelength that *only they can see.* Predators that can somehow sense you in a completely undectable and unfathomable manner to you; they might as well be psychic.
YES, EXACTLY–vision is SUCH an asspull?? Sometimes it’s “"dark”“ and we can’t see anything. And also we’re impaired for plot reasons! Sometimes ALIEN WEAPONRY or otherwise-innocuous ship components are ”“too bright”“ and we yell and try to hide, subject to some sort of obscure, tortuous imperative. The rest of the time we can UNERRINGLY tell when anyone is trying to play pranks on us, the names and emotional/physical status of EVERY SINGLE BEING IN THE ROOM (or, when outside civilized warrens, ”“line of sight”“)–and yes, of course, can’t forget about our nigh-mythical fighting arts revolving around insane dodging skills.
And SNIPING. And also, god, fuck–don’t forget about completely arbitrary “”””atmospheric disturbances””” (fog, smoke–the new “ionic interference”) ALSO plottasatically rendering our abilities moot.
Plus, some people have more powerful Vision than others, but some people have a very short effective range of Vision. However, humans have come up with devices that “change the angles of refraction” of the “light” so that the naturally impaired have their skills enhanced–but they can always be knocked off their faces or be broken.
Also some people are terrible at normal Vision work, but have excellent night vision and are skilled at working under adverse conditions.
Oooh, and human art is almost entirely Vision based. Think about non-seeing aliens trying to access the majority of human art!
IM!!! SCREAMING!!! GLASSES. Glasses are SUCH another great Weird Alien Gimmick. God–you get all used to your Human friend and their bizarre abilities, you just start to really trust in and rely on them in tight places and problem-solving a little bit, then you get fucken marooned on a fucken planetoid somewhere and they just in this very small little voice, after you have pulled them from the wreckage and sat down to go over your options, inform you that they’ve lost their glasses.
Oh my god and an episode where we’re up against Evil Humans and our heros turn to their humans like ‘you can see them, right, you can tell when they’re near? you can counter them?’ and our hero is genuinely shaken and worried— they’ve got high-tech military mechanical enhancers, the devices strapped to their heads let them see anywhere, they can operate in near-absolute ‘darkness’, they can operate in near-lethal ‘brightness’, they can see through walls— not doors, not glass, but walls.
Then we have a heroic scene where the crew’s human is the scrappy, desperate underdog for once instead of the cool and collected superbeing. It is super cool. The human and the captain probably mack wildly on one another in medbay after this. Roll credits.
Person 1: I dunno, dude. This ‘light’ stuff sounds like a bunch of mumbo jumbo to me. I mean, how do we know it’s even real?
Person 2: Seriously, how can something be a wave and a particle? That doesn’t even make sense.
Mysterious Human: Even if you cannot perceive the light, you can feel its warmth–
Person 1: Oh my god, please shut it with the mystical hoo-hah. You’re insufferable.
Mysterious, somewhat exasperated Human: the ‘light’ enters the sensitive paired apertures in our faces, passing through biological lenses and chambers to stimulate specific nerves we call ‘rods’ and ‘cones’. one set of nerves tells us the volume of light we’re perceiving, while the other estimates the wavelength frequency. the total input creates in our mind a continuous sonarscape of immense complexity, where we can perceive ‘textures’ that are impossible to understand with mere sound or touch. this is why my people’s communication devices are small, flat, silent boards: we ‘read’ the patterns of light they emit as language and ‘watch’ the patterns of light they emit as sonarscapes.
Captain: okay…. sounds fake, but okay…
And they just keep on making up new bullshit rules for how light works, like
Navigator: Warp drive engaged. We are approaching 90% of the Lorentz limit.
Human: What now?
Navigator: Oh, uh, it’s really complex, but lemme try. So, matter can only move so fast through space, right? Like absolutely, nothing can ever ever possibly go faster than like about 3 hundred million meters per second–
Human: Ah yes. The speed of light.
Navigator: …oh for fuck’s sake.
Captain: My god! Time! Has… frozen!
Human: Fuuuuuuuuck.
Captain: What?
Human: Remember how light is a wave and a particle?
Captain: Yes, we mention this every episode.
Human: Yeah, light’s frozen along with everything else. I can’t see shit.
Captain: My god! Our sonar doesn’t work either! The soundwaves— they can’t propagate through this frozen air! We’ll have to use just our whiskers!
Human: Fuuuuuuuuck.
The fanfiction for this show has to be amazing.
“Shh. Don’t try to hide your needs, Captain,” Hue Mann soothed. “My sight has told me all about your traumatic memories of the war.”
“What?” Captain gasped. “But…how…?”
“The light knows all,” explained Hue. “Time slows down at the speed of light. It sees all of the past..and all of the future.”
“And what is it telling you now?” questioned the Captain.
Hue leaned in close. “It tells me, ‘Mate with them now, you lovestruck fool!”
“Damn you, Hue Mann. Damn you and your penetrating ‘eyes.’”
“Oh,” breathed Hue, voice husky and sexual. “That’s not all my eyes can…penetrate.”
goddamn, you people amaze me.
I love the idea that the protag species has telepathy as ‘boring normal standard’ senses and they can’t understand why human thoughts seems so strange, fragmented, occasionally blank… until they realise that a great of human thought is ‘visual’ and so can’t be heard…
“Lori, what do your Human eyes see?”
“Coupla billboards, and it looks like it might rain.”
This keeps getting better
This is so cute. Your human crewmember is getting a crush on another human. Time to observe the humans’ weird yet endearing courtship rituals.
“Tell me all about them! What do you like about them?”
“Well, they have these amazing eyes…”
“Yeah? Better at the the wavemapping thing than yours?”
“…I don’t know how good their eyes are at seeing. They’re just this beautiful shade of brown.”
“Wait. You wavemap each other’s wavemapping organs? And have opinions about what nice frequencies they refract the waves at?”
“Yes? What’s so strange about this?”
“I thought your ‘vision’ was passive. Do you listen to each other’s ears too? And like the smell of each other’s noses?”
“Like you’ve never touched someone’s whiskers with your whiskers.”
my fav trope is like, nonhuman characters not understanding human needs/customs but still being super supportive of their human companion
“look what I found while exploring this planet’s surface!” “kilrak please I’m trying to sleep” “ah yes your human circadian rhythm. *stage whispering* I am supposed to be quiet during this time in your rhythm, yes?”
“the book I purchased on ragnok V says humans require physical touch when upset. therefore, I shall engage in a ‘hug’ with you.” *supremely awkward five-armed hug ensues*
*human sneezes* “OH MY GOD SIL'EEN GET THE MEDIC OUR HUMAN IS DYING”
“this pamphlet I received recently says that humans require companions and packmates in the form of small earth creatures. you should have told me this before we departed earth, but it is no worry. we will have to stop at the next trade planet to get you one of these ‘cats’ or ‘dogs’.”
imagine the aliens really purchasing a kitten for one of their rough and world-weary scifi badass human companions and watching in helpless wonderment what ensues
“she’s been cuddling that small animal for the past fifteen minutes just going ‘kitty, kitty’. did we - did we break our human?”
a more seasoned alien puts one of their tentacles around the younger one as the rest of the team gathers to watch their human make kissy noises.
“no, kilrak,” the alien says. “we did good.”
“Human-Steve! I have heard that today is the anniversary of your hatching! According to my human culture pamphlet, it is customary to set a sugary pastry on fire while chanting your species’ growth incantation and presenting sacrifices wrapped in shiny paper. I am afraid to ask, in case this ritual is sacred and this request therefor insensitive… but may I be allowed to participate? It sounds much more fascinating than molting.”
“Human Steve, I have read about your ritual dance called ‘The Hokey Pokey,’ performed mostly at mate-bonding celebrations after the guests reach an elevated level of intoxication. But Human Steve, how do I know WHICH left foot to put in, put out, and shake all about? I do not… Human Steve, why are you laughing?”
“Human-Steve, you are… you are eating, but it is not one of your ritual fueling times. Are you dying? Is everything alright? Have you not been receiving enough sustenance? Do I need to get you better things to eat? Human-Steve, why are you trying to hide that food?”
“Human-Steve, my research has informed me of a grave oversight in your care that I, as your companion, have made! Thus, I have gathered collections of fictional human literature to read aloud at the time of your bed. Which is more to your liking: “The Care and Keeping of Cacti” or “1001 Crossword Puzzles?” Human-Steve? Human-Steve, I am serious.“
One of the things I love the most about this post is how “Human-Steve” makes me think that there is also an alien called Steve in the squad, and I just imagine the first meeting and introduction where there is the human guy introducing himself as Steve and then there is this huge blue guy with like 5 legs and bug eyes and apparently Steve is like a completely regular name on his planet too in some intergalactical coincidence
I wonder when exactly it was that Star Trek stopped being perceived as light, fluffy, not-really-legitimate sci fi that ~housewives~ liked and started being seen as serious nerd business that girls had to keep their gross cooties off.
Also when did the Beatles start to be remembered as rock legends rather than a silly boy band teenaged girls liked?
When men decided they liked them.
this is seriously exactly how it happened. Women were actually the first rock and roll ‘critics’ because they would write in to women’s papers and magazines to share and discuss what their kids were listening to when men still thought it was trashy teeny bopper music. once it became a lucrative, mainstream genre men shoved women out of the space. Men also tend to be gatekeepers once they move into formerly female spaces - early trek fandom was incredibly open and inclusive; women would set up fan get togethers in their own houses to discuss the show or invite the actors to visit before conventions became a thing, and then were huge in organizing the first conventions - but now the stereotype of a trekkie is a nerdy white dude who scoffs derisively at casual fans and newbies with his encyclopedic and pedantic knowledge of trek
I propose we call this “mentrification”
YES
MENTRIFICATION that’s genius
by the way every single man i’ve ever explained this to is completely boggled to hear about it. they genuinely don’t fucking know. they’re always like ‘okay name a field this happened in’ and you’re like ‘beer. writing novels. gynecology. computers.’ and they’re completely fucking distraught. men didn’t invent beer???? men didn’t invent everything?
Speaking of women and the history of brewing beer -
@dduane is well-known for not keeping her gross cooties off Star Trek, and in fact writing it in more forms than anyone else (novel,
computer game,
comic,
short story, manga,
audio adaptation script,
live-action TV, - AFAIK the only forms missing are feature film, animation and RPG supplement).
She also knows about brewing beer - in our case it’s seriously fizzy, seriously spicy, seriously strong (+8-9%) ginger beer - (more here, yes indeed!)
When the women and beer connection came up while we were chatting to the manager in The Porterhouse brewpub in Dublin
a few years ago
she put him right off balance.
He’d heard of alewives etc., but it was her comment “oh, women know all about yeast, don’t we just,” that did it…
So there has been a bit of “what if humans were the weird ones?” going around tumblr at the moment and Earth Day got me thinking. Earth is a wonky place, the axis tilts, the orbit wobbles, and the ground spews molten rock for goodness sakes. What if what makes humans weird is just our capacity to survive? What if all the other life bearing planets are these mild, Mediterranean climates with no seasons, no tectonic plates, and no intense weather?
What if several species (including humans) land on a world and the humans are all “SCORE! Earth like world! Let’s get exploring before we get out competed!” And the planet starts offing the other aliens right and left, electric storms, hypothermia, tornadoes and the humans are just … there… counting seconds between flashes, having snowball fights, and just surviving.
To paraphrase one of my favorite bits of a ‘humans are awesome’ fiction megapost: “you don’t know you’re from a Death World until you leave it.” For a ton of reasons, I really like the idea of Earth being Space Australia.
Earth being Space Australia
Words cannot express how much I love these posts
Alien: “I’m sorry, what did you just say your comfortable temperature range is?”
Human: “Honestly we can tolerate anywhere from -40 to 50 Celcius, but we prefer the 0 to 30 range.”
Alien: “……. I’m sorry, did you just list temperatures below freezing?”
Human: “Yeah, but most of us prefer to throw on scarves or jackets at those temperatures it can be a bit nippy.”
Other human: “Nah mate, I knew this guy in college who refused to wear anything past his knees and elbows until it was -20 at least.”
Human: “Heh. Yeah everybody knows someone like that.”
Alien: “……. And did you also say 50 Celcius? As in, half way to boiling?”
Human: “Eugh. Yes. It sucks, we sweat everywhere, and god help you if you touch a seatbelt buckle, but yes.”
Alien: “……. We’ve got like 50 uninhabitable planets we think you might enjoy.”
“You’re telling me that you have… settlements. On islands with active volcanism?”
“Well, yeah. I’m not about to tell Iceland and Hawaii how to live their lives. Actually, it’s kind of a tourist attraction.”
“What, the molten rock?”
“Well, yeah! It’s not every day you see a mountain spew out liquid rocks! The best one is Yellowstone, though. All these hot springs and geysers from the supervolcano–”
“You ACTIVELY SEEK OUT ACTIVE SUPERVOLCANOES?”
“Shit, man, we swim in the groundwater near them.”
Sounds like the “Damned” trilogy by Alan Dean Foster.
“And you say the poles of your world would get as low as negative one hundred with wind chill?”
“Yup, with blizzards you cant see through every other day just about.”
“Amazing! when did you manage to send drones that could survive such temperatures?”
“… well, actually…”
“… what?”
“…we kinda……. sent……….. people…..”
“…”
“…”
“…what?”
“we sent-”
“no yeah I heard you I just- what? You sent… HUMANS… to a place one hundred degrees below freezing?”
“y-yeah”
“and they didn’t… die?”
“Well the first few did”
“PEOPLE DIED OF THE COLD AND YOUR SOLUTION WAS TO SEND MORE PEOPLE???!?!?!?”
My new favorite Humans are Weird quote
“PEOPLE DIED OF THE COLD AND YOUR SOLUTION WAS TO SEND MORE PEOPLE?”
aka The History of Russia
aka Arctic Exploration
aka The History of Alaska
Being from Alaska, this was sort of how I felt going to college in the lower 48′s and learned that no one else had been put through a literal survival camp as a regular part of their school curriculum, including but not limited to:
1. Learning to recognize all forms of animal tracks in the wild so you can avoid bears and moose and search out rabbits and other small animals to eat.
2. Extensive swimming and climbing on glacial pieces with competitions to see who could last the longest, followed by a group sit in the sauna so we wouldn’t get hypothermia (no, not kidding, I really did this many times as a kid!)
3. How to navigate using the stars to get back to civilization.
4. How to select the right type of moss from the trees to start a fire with damp wood (because, y’know, you’re in a field of snow. Nothing is dry.)
5. How to carve out a small igloo-like space to sleep in the snow to preserve body heat and reduce the windchill so you won’t freeze to death in the arctic.
“I’m telling you, I don’t think we need to worry about territory conflicts with the humans. You know all those deathtrap hell-worlds in the Argoth Cluster?” “Those worthless rocks? Yeah.” “80% of them are considered ‘resort destinations’ by those freaky little primates.”
I wonder if, in superhero universes, the villains ever get contacted by those “Make a Wish Foundation” and similar people.
I mean, the heroes do, of course they do, kids who want to meet Spiderman or Superman or get to be carried by the Flash as he runs through Central City for just thirty seconds.
But surely there are also the kids, who - because they are kids and sometimes kids are just weird - decide that what they really, really want is to meet a supervillain. Because he’s scary or she’s awesome or that freeze ray is just really, really cool, you know?
Oh, man, that would absolutely be a thing. The heroes would be so weirded out by it. The villains with codes of ethics would totally band together to force the villains without one (should they be the one requested) to do their part for the cause.
But imagine the person who has to track down the villains and organise everything?
Like, the first time it happens, no one actually thinks it’s possible, but one of the newbies volunteers to at least try. They get lucky, the kid wants to meet one of the villains who is well known to have a personal code of ethics (eg one of the rogues), and it takes them weeks to track the villain down to this one bar they’ve been seen at a few times, plus a week of staking out said bar, but they finally find them.
So they approach the villain, very politely introduce themselves and explain the situation, finishing with an assurance that, should the villain agree, no law enforcement or heroes will be informed of the meeting.
The villain, assuming it’s a joke, laughs in their face.
At this point, the poor volunteer, who has giving up weeks of their time and no small amount of effort to track down this villain, all so a sweet little girl can meet the person who somehow inspired them, well, at this point the employee sees red.
They explode, yelling at this villain about the little girl who, for some unknown reason, absolutely loved them, had a hand-made stuffed toy of them and was inspired by their struggle to keeping fighting her own and wasn’t the villain supposed to have ethics? The entire bar is witness to this big bad villain getting scolded by some bookish nobody a foot shorter than them.
When the volunteer is done, the villain calmly knocks back their drink, grips the volunteers shoulder and drags them outside. The bar’s patrons assume that person will never be seen again, the volunteer included. But once they’re outside, the villain apologises for their assumption, asks for the kid’s details so they can drop by in the near future, not saying when for obvious reasons. They also give the very relieved volunteer a phone number to call if someone asks for them again.
A week later, the little girl’s room is covered in villain merchandise, several expensive and clearly stolen gifts and she is happily clutching a stack of signed polaroids of her and the villain.
The next time a kid asks to meet a villain, guess who gets that assignment?
Turns out, the first villain was quite touched by the experience of meeting their little fan, and word has gotten around. The second villain happily agrees when they realise it’s the same volunteer who asked the other guy. Unfortunately, one of the heroes sees the villain entering the kid’s hospital and obviously assumes the worst. They rush in, ready to drag the villain out, but the volunteer stands in their way. The hero spends five minutes getting scolded for trying to stop the villain from actually doing a good thing and almost ruining the kid’s wish. The volunteer gets a reputation among villains as someone who can not only be trusted with personal contact numbers but who will do everything they can to keep law enforcement away during their visits.
The volunteer has a phonebook written in cypher of all the villain’s phone numbers, with asterixes next to the ones to call if any other villains give them trouble.
Around the office, they gain the unofficial job title of The Villain Wrangler.
The heroes are genuinely flabbergasted by The Villain Wrangler. At first, some of the heroes try to reason with them.
Heroes: “Can’t you, just, give us their contact details? They’ll never even have to know it was you.”
The Villain Wrangler: “Yeah sure, <rollseyes> because all these evil geniuses could never possibly figure out that it’s me who happens to be the common thread in the sudden mass arrests. Look man, even if it wouldn’t get me killed, it would disappoint the kids. You wouldn’t want to disappoint the kids would you?”
Heroes: “… no~ but…”
The Villain Wrangler: “Exactly.”
Eventually, one of the anti-hero types gets frustrated, and decides to take a stand. They kidnap the Villain Wrangler and demand that they give up the contents of the little black book of Villains, or suffer the consequences. It’s For the Greater Good, the anti-hero insists as they tie the Villain Wrangler to a pillar.
The Villain Wrangler: “You complete idiot, put me back before someone figures out that I’m missing.”
Anti-hero: “…excuse me?”
The Villain Wrangler: “Ugh, do I have to spell this out for you? Do you actually want your secret base to be wiped off the map? With us in it? Sugarsticks, how long has it been? If they get suspicious, they check in, and then if I miss a check-in, they tend to come barging into wherever I am just to prove that they can, even if they figure out that they’re not being threatened by proxy. Suffice to say, Auntie Muriel really regretted throwing my phone into the pool when she strenuously objected to me answering it during family time. If they think for even one moment that I’ve given them up, they won’t hesitate to obliterate both of us from their potential misery. You do know some of the people in my book have like missiles and djinni and elemental forces at their disposal, right?”
Anti-hero: “Wait, what? I thought they trusted you?!”
The Villain Wrangler: “Trust is such a strong word!”
Villain: “Indeed.”
Anti-hero: “Wait, wha-” <slumps over, dart sticking out of neck>
The Villain Wrangler: “Thanks. I thought they were going to hurt me.”
Villain: “You did well. You kept them distracted, and gave us time to follow your signal.” <cuts Villain Wrangler free>
The Villain Wrangler: <rubbing circulation back into limbs> “Yeah well, you know me, I do whatever I have to. So I’ll see you Wednesday at four at St Martha’s? I’ve got an 8yo burns unit patient recovering from her latest batch of skin grafts who could really use a pep talk.”
Villain: “… of course. Yes… I… yes.”
The Villain Wrangler: “I just think you could really reach her, you know?”
Villain: <unconsciously runs fingers over mask> “I… yes, but, what should I say?”
The Villain Wrangler: “Whatever advice you think you could have used the most just after.”
Villain: <hoists Anti-hero over shoulder almost absently> “….yes.”
The Villain Wrangler wasn’t lying to the Anti-hero. They know that the more ruthless villains would not hesitate if they thought for one second that the Anti-hero would betray them.
But this is not the first time the Villain Wrangler has gone to extreme lengths to protect their identities.
Trust is a strong word. The Villain Wrangler earned it, and is terrified by what it could mean.
My first official deadpool headcanon is this. This this this.
Okay but this whole concept actually makes a lot of sense, because villains are a lot more likely to be disfigured/disabled/use adaptive devices (bc ableist tropes), so of course, say, a child amputee is going to be more interested in the villain with a robot arm who almost destroyed New York than the heroes that took him down.
Also, imagine one of the kids gets better, and a few years down the line becomes a villain themself, except their crimes are things like smuggling chemo drugs across the border for families that can’t afford treatment, or stealing from corrupt businessmen to make donations to underfunded hospitals (idk this turned into a Leverage AU or something) and every time the heroes encounter her, they’re like “oh no. she’s getting away. curses. welp, nothing we can do.” Though it isn’t that she can’t take them on; bc of course once the villain from way back when found out what she was up to, he started helping/training her.
“I thought they just hired someone to dress up and pretend to be you,” she says, amazed, when he reveals himself. “I didn’t think they actually got the real you!”
Every year the Villain Wrangler gets a very expensive gift basket from the pair.
and for the kids who don’t get better the villains are there too, they show up to every funeral, they bear too small coffins on their shoulders and the heroes stand aside
they are fierce with grieving families assuring them that their child will not be forgotten, and they don’t balk at negative emotions, they don’t tell people to be strong or “celebrate their child’s life,” because these parents have every right to their grief and anger
and the lost children are never forgotten. flowers appear on graves during birthdays and anniversaries, heroes find pictures of those kids and they carefully take them down and ensure they’re delivered to the villain’s cell, and a few villains can be seen with friendship bracelets wrapped around their wrists the cops have learned not to try and take them off
This is all soooo good, but I wonder what effect this has on the villains. Like, can they really wreak indiscriminate havoc when they know the kids that worship them might be in the area? Like, what if they attack a shopping mall and it just so happens that Annie’s mom ran in for a pair of shoes or something? What then?
So what you’re saying is that there is now an organization of henchmen who do round the clock, exhaustive research in order to make sure the villain’s plan isn’t going to ruin the life of some kid. Just imagine some aunt getting a call from an unlisted number.
“I swear I am not a bill collector ma’am. It’s just. Well. Ok and I swear I am not a stalker even if this is actually going to be a very creepy phone call, but you said you were going to the mall at four? Is it possible you could reschedule or postpone that trip for about an hour? That mall is way too close to…well. It just wouldn’t be safe. I could wire you some money, and you could go to the much nicer mall one town over? Would that work for you? No? You are calling the police? Yes. Yes that is the sensible thing to do. Definitely do that. You have a nice day, ma’am. Tell Marcus Doctor Evil says hello and to have a nice day.”
And then the poor minion has to call the villain and explain why robbing X bank isn’t a good idea that day.
“Yes. Hello. Sir? Oh good I caught you before you left the base. Look, Marcus Smithson’s aunt is going to be near the blast radius for that job you have scheduled so-yes. Yes I am aware that rescheduling is going to be a lot of work since most everything is already set up, but….but, sir think about poor Marcus! She’s his favorite aunt, and the woman refused to ‘reorder her life around some crazy mastermind’. ……no…..no, please do not kidnap the aunt, sir. It’s terribly rude. Yes I realize you weren’t going to keep her or doing anything other than drop her off at an alternative location, but, well, citizens frown upon that sort of thing and….yes….Yes, of course. You have a good day, too, sir.”
And they turn to their coworker and are just like “So if I don’t come in to work tomorrow it’s because Doctor Evil threw me in his dungeon and/or sent his hellhounds to maul me. Please remember to send help.”
Oooooh yes.
But but but… what happens when one falls through the cracks? When Lord Dominion or whatever does a typical baddie thing but then Penny’s new best friend gets caught up in the damage and Lord D didn’t even KNOW Penny had a new bestie so how was he to know but now the kid is devastated and it’s all his fault? I mean, how does that even shake out?
Penny SWEARS REVENGE! Lord D is distraught but also somewhat proud. He sends Penny a very sincere apology and also a bunch of tips on how to execute a proper vengeance plot, in case she decides not to accept the apology. He sends henchmen to spy on her, and he keeps the surveillance photos of her sitting in her room, plans and schematics strewn all over her desk. He puts them in his wallet and brags to all his villain friends that one of his kids is taking up scheming, look at her go, she’s already started on pattern analysis of his latest heists. He’s so proud. Later this month he’ll show up on her way home from school so she can have her first Confrontation.
omg yes. Yes to all of that. There will inevitably be mistakes and tragedies.
Penny is an intelligent kid. She catches on to the spying henchmen pretty quick and bribes some of them to her side with snacks. That first confrontation does not go like Lord Dominion expected because Penny has minions (minions that are using his OWN WEAPONS against him, even)
Lord Dominion is the proudest villain ever, even if he did almost lose an ear thanks to the impeccable aim of a nine year old with a grudge. He does let the laser blast graze him just so he can have a scar to show people because that girl is a villain after his own heart.
He doesn’t want to ask his villain rivals to help her out because that would imply he doesn’t think she’s capable of eventually growing strong enough to kick his ass. Turns out Penny already thought of that and has mailed letters asking for advice to Lady Sinister, Lord Dominion’s long time, mostly friendly rival. (She mailed a letter to Lord D’s arch nemesis, but man. Heroes are always trying to make you do The Right Thing. Penny doesn’t have time for the high road. Plus, the low road has lasers.)
Lady Sinister thinks Penny is the best thing ever and while she has mostly stopped kicking Lord D’s ass, she still breaks into his hideout to sit in his favorite chair with a glass of wine and brags about her new favorite up and coming villainess. (She doesn’t warn Lord D about the attack rabbits she agreed to train for Penny as a favor, and for obvious reasons, she is going to be a bystander at the next confrontation, filming everything on her phone to post the dark web so all their villain friends can see this)
“we didn’t know any better,” the crewman says, and swallows, presenting the chest to the captain. “what do we do now?”
“kill it,” the captain says, but the ice is melting in his eyes.
“we can’t,” the first mate says desperately, praying she won’t have to fight her captain on this. “we can’t. we - i won’t. we won’t.”
“i know.”
x
“daddy,” she says, floating in a tub of seawater in the hold, “daddy, la-la, la-la-la.”
her voice rings like bells. her accent is strange; her mouth isn’t made for human words. it mesmerises even the hardiest amongst them and she wasn’t even trying. the crew has taken to diving for shellfish near the shorelines for her; she loves them, splitting the shells apart with strength seen in no human toddler, slurping down the slimy molluscs inside and laughing, all plump brown cheeks and needle-sharp teeth. she sometimes splashes them for fun with her smooth, rubbery brown tail. even when they get soaked they laugh. they love her.
“daddy,” she calls again, and he can hear the worry in her voice. the storm rocking the ship is harsh and uncaring, and if they go down, she would be the only survivor.
“don’t worry,” he says, and goes over, sitting next to the tub. the first mate, leaning against the wall, pretends not to notice as he quietly begins to sing.
x
“father,” she says, one day, as she leans on the edge of the dock and the captain sits next to her, “why am I here?”
“your mother abandoned you,” he says, as he always has. “we found you adrift, and couldn’t bear to leave you there.”
she picks at the salt-soaked boards, uncertain. her hair is pulled back in a fluffy black puff, the white linen holding it slipping almost over one of her dark eyes. one of her first tattoos, a many-limbed kraken, curls over her right shoulder and down her arm, delicate tendrils wrapped around her calloused fingertips. “alright,” she says.
x
“why am I really here?” she asks the first mate, watching the sun set over the water in streaks of liquid metal that pooled in the troughs of the waves and glittered on the seafoam.
“we didn’t know any better,” the first mate says, staring into the water. “we didn’t know- we didn’t know anything. we didn’t understand why she fought so viciously to guard her treasure. we could not know she protected something a thousand times more precious than the purest gold.”
she wants to be furious, but she can’t. she already knew the answer, from reading the guilt in her father’s eyes and the empty space in her own history. and she can’t hate her family.
“it’s alright,” she says. “i do have a family, anyways. i don’t think i would have liked my other life near as much.”
x
her kraken grows, spreading its tendrils over her torso and arms. she grows too, too large to come on board the ship without being hauled up in a boat from the water. she sings when the storms come and swims before the ship to guide it to safety. she fights off more than one beast of the seas, and gathers a set of scars across her back that she bears with pride. “i don’t mind,” she says, when the captain fusses over her, “now i match all of you.”
the first time their ship is threatened, really threatened, is by another fleet. a friend turned enemy of the first mate. “we shouldn’t fight him,” she says, peering through the spyglass.
“why not?” the mermaid asks.
“he’ll win,” the first mate says.
the mermaid tips her head sideways. Her eyes, dark as the deep waters, gleam in the noon light. “are you sure?” she asks.
x
the enemy fleet surrenders after the flagship is sunk in the night, the anchor ripped off the ship and the planks torn off the hull. the surviving crew, wild-eyed and delirious, whimper and say a sea serpent came from the water and attacked them, say it was longer than the boat and crushed it in its coils. the first mate hears this and has to hide her laughter. the captain apologizes to his daughter for doubting her.
“don’t worry,” she says, with a bright laugh, “it was fun.”
x
the second time, they are pushed by a storm into a royal fleet. they can’t possibly fight them, and they don’t have the time to escape.
“let me up,” the mermaid urges, surfacing starboard and shouting to the crew. “bring me up, quickly, quickly.”
they lower the boat and she piles her sinous form into it, and uses her claws to help the crew pull her up. once on the deck she flops out of the boat and makes her way over to the bow. the crew tries to help but she’s so heavy they can barely lift parts of her.
she crawls up out in front of the rail and wraps her long webbed tail around the prow. the figurehead has served them well so far but they need more right now. she wraps herself around the figurehead and raises her body up into the wind takes a breath of the stinging salt air and sings.
the storm carries her voice on its front to the royal navy. they are enchanted, so stunned by her song that they drop the rigging ropes and let the tillers drift. the pirates sail through the center of the fleet, trailing the storm behind them, and by the time the fleet has managed to regain its senses they are buried in wind and rain and the pirates are gone.
x
she declines guns. instead she carries a harpoon and its launcher, and uses them to board enemy ships, hauling her massive form out of the water to coil on the deck and dispatch enemies with ruthless efficiency. her family is feared across all the sea.
x
“you know we are dying,” the captain says, looking down at her.
she floats next to the ship, so massive she could hold it in her arms. her eyes are wise.
“i know,” she says, “i can feel it coming.”
the first mate stands next to the captain. she never had a lover or a child, and neither did he, but to the mermaid they are her parents. she will always love her daughter. the tattoos are graven in dark swirls across the mermaid’s deep brown skin and the flesh of her tail, even spiraling onto the spiked webbing on her spine and face. her hair is still tied back, this time with a sail that could not be patched one last time.
“we love you,” the first mate says simply, looking down. her own tightly coiled black hair falls in to her face; she shakes the locs out of the way and smiles through her tears. the captain pretends he isnt crying either.
“i love you too,” the mermaid says, and reached up to pull the ship down just a bit, just to hold them one last time.
“guard the ship,” the captain says. “you always have but you know they’re lost without you.”
“without you,” the mermaid corrects, with a shrug that makes waves. “what will we do?”
“i don’t know,” the captain says. “but you’ll help them, won’t you?”
“of course i will,” she scoffs, rolling her eyes. “i will always protect my family.”
x
the captain and the first mate are gone. the ship has a new captain, young and fearless - of the things she can afford to disregard. she fears and loves the ocean, as all captains do. she does not fear the royal fleet. and she does not fear the mermaid.
“you know, i heard stories about you when i was a little girl,” she says, trailing her fingers in the water next to the dock.
the mermaid stares at her with one eye the size of a dinner table. “is that so?” she hums, smirking with teeth sharper than the swords of the entire navy.
“they said you could sink an entire fleet and that you had skin tougher than dragon scales,” the new captain says, grinning right back at the monster who could eat her without a moment’s hesitation. “i always thought they were telling tall tales.”
“and now?”
“they were right,” the new captain says. “how did they ever befriend you?”
the mermaid smiles, fully this time, her dark eyes gleaming under the white linen sail. “they didn’t know any better.”
So I heard this story second-hand, many years ago, but the gist was that a friend of a friend lived in what was generally considered a bad neighborhood, because he was a super poor college student and it was what he could afford. He didn’t have any furniture, he just slept on a blanket on the floor and had a milk crate for a chair and like an old wire spool as a table. No TV, nothing in the fridge, no microwave, basically just bare walls and a roof to keep the weather off. So one day he comes home, and there’s a man in his apartment, just standing there, with this look of utter amazement and horror on his face, and he turns to the guy who’s just entered and says, “This your place? ‘cause I broke in to rob you, but shit, man, you ain’t got nothin’. Wait here, I’m’a be right back.” And the burglar left, leaving a puzzled college student alone in his empty apartment. But sure enough, the burglar came back a while later, and brought some friends, and they delivered a table, a couple of chairs, and a small TV. “I think I got you a bed, too, but that might take a couple days.”
So, the poor college student made some friends. And he didn’t ask where they got the stuff.
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.
So to everyone else in the galaxy, all humans are basically Doc Brown.
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
vulcan science academy: why do you need another warp core
humans: we’re going to plug two of them together and see if we go twice as fast
vsa: last time we gave you a warp core you threw it into a sun to see if the sun would go twice as fast
humans: hahaha yeah
humans: it did tho
vsa: IT EXPLODED
humans: it exploded twice as fast
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.
Yeah, I love this.
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: okay we don’t get it
vulcan science academy: get what
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.
klingons: …. can we be a part of your federation
Come to think of it, I mean. Look at the “first human warp drive” thing in the movie. That was… Not how Vulcans would have done it.
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.”
reblog for new meta.
RE that last line: McGuyver.
“MacGuyver” is the equivalent of Vulcan vintage human horror television.
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’.
This is why the Federation is the only organisation to ever stand a chance against the Borg
The Borg can adapt to the brilliant millitary strategies of the Romulan Star Empire, the Klingons and even the cold logical intellectual prowess of the vulcans
The Borg weren’t prepared for a starship captain to lure them into his 50′s noir detective holo-novel and then machine gun them to death with a weapon made out of hard light
This thread is amazing. Even as a baby star trek nerd that only really knows the new movies.
“there is a phrase in vulcan for ‘the particular moment you understand what the word ‘fuck’ is for’.”
I just died
I lost my shit at “toasts your bread after you’ve eaten it”
Oh please please someone write this
the best thing about this post is that the way it’s written - by multiple human authors getting over-excited about ridiculous, wonderful, impossible ideas that ought by rights to be terrifying - is itself proof that we’re like this
