I Love You All (she/her)

Phamily Phriendly ♥️Born in 1984. Lerouxian. Christine Defender. Trauma survivor. This is my place for phandom and fandom

[tempoaryblogformightyjensblog]

Differant interpretations of famous stories are common

But I freaking love how Phantom of the Opera Reimagining's tend to just go completely Bonkers

"What if he was a Bug Monster? What if he was Freddy Krueger? What if he was a Bird dude from the 70s fighting Satanist Paul Williams?"

[telumendils]

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) / Alexandre Cabanel's “Fallen Angel” (1847)

[annabelle--cane]

most novels at their core thematically are usually about some shit like the protagonist's bone-deep feelings of loneliness and isolation and their cravings for but inability to connect with other people. this is largely because novelists are sick freaks who are driven by their demons to spend hundreds of hours sitting alone in quiet rooms to write tens and thousands of words of text. they may not intend to write stories about loneliness, but by week six of the typing timeloop they are writing stories about loneliness whether they like it or not. writing a novel is not a naturally occurring healthy behavior, humans only do this when they are very distressed.

[mariacallous]

[thecactifindahome]

[a-kind-of-merry-war]

this is what happens when they cut "When Love is Gone" from the Muppet Christmas Carol smh

[number1mongrel]

"You hear that? They're saying The Odyssey doesn't even have nobody!"

"They've got nobody in the Odyssey?"

"No I'm saying they don't got nobody."

"Nobody's there?"

"Nobody's not there!"

"So everyone's there?"

"Everybody but nobody!"

[ladystormcrow]

Ooh, director's commentary for Imprints in Time, please! I am soo curious about everything in it, and thinking of it constantly!! ⭐ 🫶

I am so, so sorry it’s taken me this long to answer, Anon! I’m not sure if you still follow me after all this time, but hopefully this will still reach you! 

Imprints in Time came about when I was first developing the plot of Trio Sonata back in mid-2023, not long after I first got into Phantom. I knew that I wanted to base my OT3 fic mostly on the ALW-verse, that I wanted that version of Mme. Giry to be a viewpoint character and play a significant role in the plot, and that I wanted her to begin a romantic relationship with Daroga; all of this meant I needed to flesh her out more as a character and come up with a solid backstory, including explaining why she’s so loyal to Erik. 

I admit, the idea to tie her into Erik’s time with the Romani came partly out of spite towards Susan Kay. I know a lot of fanworks have tried to address the problems with Kay’s depiction of Persia, but I’ve never seen any that try to do that for her depiction of the Romani (if anyone knows of any, please share!) 

Full disclaimer: I’m not Romani myself, but I’ve tried to do my best with the research sources available online. However, it can sometimes be tricky to know how accurate a source written by an outsider is. This was a big part of Susan Kay’s problem with the main source she used, George Henry Borrow’s 1841 book The Zincali: An Account of the Gypsies of Spain (a lot of the details she describes, like secretly poisoning a pig so the farmer will let them have the carcass, are lifted directly from there). Borrow does seem to have been genuinely interested in Romani life and culture, and some of what he describes has been corroborated by other sources, but he was still a 19th century white English author writing for a 19th century white English audience, and not above inventing or exaggerating things to make for a better story (he also acknowledges that the Romani people he got his information from were only willing to talk to him because he deceived them into thinking he was one of them, and that some were deeply upset when they found out otherwise, which is a whole other ethical can of worms). Again, I’ve tried to be discerning in my sources (and I did make use of sensitivity readers), but if I’ve gotten anything wrong or if anyone has any further recommendations, please do tell me!

On that note, I’ve also tried to be careful with the use of the word “gypsy”. There isn’t a full consensus among Romani people on how they feel about that word: many do consider it offensive, but others are neutral, and some even embrace it. For my part, I’ve tried to err on the side of caution: when it’s used in the story, it’s either said by outsiders, or in the context of a Romani character talking or thinking about a negative way outsiders perceive them. 

One thing that’s often ignored when writing about Romani is that they’re not a cultural monolith: there are multiple subgroups, all with differences in language and culture. The Manouche are part of the Sinti group, who are mainly based in France, Germany, Switzerland, and northern Italy, and have a lot of German influence in their language and family names. The Manouche in particular are based in France, so they’re the group Erik would have been most likely to encounter around Rouen. 

The Reinhardt and Escoudé families are named after the Manouche jazz musicians Django Reinhardt and Christian Escoudé. 

The scene of little Anna bringing some dinner to little feral Erik and slowly earning his trust is one of my favorites :) Tastes Like Friendship trope ftw. 

Yes, I borrowed the name Charles for Erik’s father from Kay. Even though I don’t like a lot of things about her book, there are some parts I did like, and other parts where I went “eh, it’s as good a name as any” (though it’s hard to look at the names Charles and Erik now without thinking of X-Men, lol). 

There’s a lot going on behind the idea that Charles/Erik was named after his father despite how his parents felt about having a deformed child. Building on Leroux’s line about how Erik’s father never saw him without his mask, I imagine that his father tried for a long time to pretend his son was normal, somewhat out of love but mostly out of stubbornness and denial: naming him after himself, having him wear a mask that somewhat resembles a normal face, educating him, and trying to take him on as an apprentice, but that eventually the social rejection his son (and the rest of the family by association) faced made him give up and consider sending him away. I also imagine that Erik’s parents secretly hoped he would die from some childhood illness and they would have another, normal son to give the name to; when Erik survived and they didn’t have any more children, it made the resentment even worse. 

I tried to keep a balanced depiction of how the Romani treat Erik overall. Erik being feared and rejected by most of the people he encounters is a core part of what shapes him as a character (and any situation that involves exploiting a child for money isn’t going to be sunshine and rainbows), but I didn’t want the Romani characters to come across as uniquely awful in that regard. All those who mistreat him have their own reasons for doing so: Mami Thérèse is fearful and superstitious (like a lot of people in that time), Constantin is trying keep his power while financially supporting and protecting the community he’s responsible for, Stéphane is jealous of Erik’s talents and the attention his father gives him, and Brigitte is trying to win favor with the community leader and his son. There’s also a deliberate parallel with how Erik and the Romani children have to perform for a living vs. how the ballet girls have to do the same thing, as well as the children working in mines and factories that Constantin tells Erik about; the “period-typical child labor” tag applies to them all. 

Even the way the Reinhardts treat Erik is a mixed bag. They do take him in and accept him, but partly as a replacement for the son/brother they recently lost. The detail about them giving him Mathis’ clothes is kind of controversial: Romani culture has a lot of taboos around the dead, and some sources say that it’s traditional to destroy a dead person’s belongings, but others say that the belongings are distributed to the family first. Given their situation, I think it’s not implausible that the Reinhardts might hold onto some of their dead child’s clothes in case they were needed again. 

I know everyone has their own take on how Erik took his name “by chance”. We know he had it by the time he was in Persia, so the change must have happened when he was still fairly young. The story of Erik the Red has some parallels to our Erik (particularly him having to leave home more than once due to a murder), so I couldn’t resist. 

Soleá is a form of flamenco music originating with the Calé Romani in Spain. I went with it because I couldn’t find any information on specifically Manouche dances (again, sources are welcome if anyone has them), so in-universe I’ll say it’s a case of cultural exchange between the two groups. The first mention of the soleá in writing wasn’t until 1862 (this part of the story takes place in 1843), but it’s likely it did exist in Romani communities before then. 

“À la claire fontaine” is a traditional French song going back to the 1600s, and it’s popular in the phandom for good reason. This is the version I listened to when writing. 

Anna/Antoinette’s fascination with ballet and seeing it as a path to a better life is a familiar story. Many ballet dancers came from poor families who supported their daughters going on the stage to earn money, knowing that it would also likely include sex work with the male patrons. By running away to Paris at age 13 with no supports except Erik, Antoinette is very, very lucky she didn’t end up in a much worse situation, something she acknowledges later in the story. 

I was bothered by Kay’s depiction of Erik as a god-like genius who learns ventriloquism, hypnotism, and other skills pretty much on his own (even very smart children Do Not Work That Way), so I included a mention of him learning his skills from the community of other performers. 

Marime is a concept in many Romani cultures that refers to ritual pollution or uncleanliness. It covers things like menstruation and other bodily functions (for example, the lower body is considered impure and clothes that touch it should be washed separately), as well as handling of food, dead bodies, and how much contact with non-Romani is permissible. 

I admit, I do love the detail about young Erik using ventriloquism to make it sound like Stéphane soiled himself. Even our Phantom was once a preteen boy with a gross sense of humor. 

The fossil Erik gives Antoinette is based on the Calcaire de Caen, a limestone deposit in Normandy that was the source of much of the stone used to build cathedrals in France and England (the real quarry is nowhere near Rouen, but I thought it was too fascinating not to include). The limestone formed during the Jurassic and is well known for its fossils. In the 1830s-1840s paleontology was only just getting started as a science (the word was invented by Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville in 1822), but there were some books written by then that young Erik could plausibly have read. 

The Paris Opera Ballet School was founded in 1713. While it does have scholarships and dormitories today, I couldn’t find any information on whether it did in the 1840s (I suspect not), so this is a case of artistic license. Hey, it’s no worse than the 2004 movie having dorms in the Opera itself! 

Antoinette dealing with prejudice and microaggressions (especially the scene where she’s told she’d be prettier if her skin was lighter) is a familiar experience for many POC, and as a white person I’ve tried to handle it carefully. The setting and context makes it more complicated: as a lone teenage girl who’s trying to “pass” in the 1800s, Antoinette’s not in a position where she can safely challenge or call out the prejudice she sees, either toward herself or others. The parallel between how she tries to hide her old life and how she slowly turns her back on Erik (a living reminder of that old life) is deliberate. 

One thing that’s always bothered me about Erik’s backstory in Leroux is how little music features in it. We know he spent years as a traveling magician and branched out from there into mechanics and architecture, but him becoming so interested in opera that he spends 20 years composing one of his own kind of happens out of nowhere. I’ve tried to address that with this subplot about him spending years working behind the scenes at the Peletier.

It’s clear that Erik’s feelings for Antoniette turn romantic as the two of them grow up (the red rose he planned to offer her is a dead giveaway, and it’s confirmed during Erik’s POV scenes in Trio Sonata), but her feelings are more ambiguous. While she does see him as a friend, the scene where he plays his composition for her late at night hints that there was some attraction and she could have eventually developed romantic feelings for him too. As for whether Antoinette was aware of Erik’s feelings during this time, I think she was deliberately not considering it: she pushed the thought away like she was pushing Erik away in general. 

Le Bijou de Málaga is based on two real ballets from the 1840s-1850s, Paquita and Le Corsaire. Paquita has the plot about a Spanish Romani girl who has a forbidden romance and learns she’s really a white girl of noble birth, while Le Corsaire has the plot about the heroine being abducted by pirates and another woman switching places with her (and yes, both plots feature a lot of racism and Orientalism). Imelda Tessaro is based on Carlotta Grisi and Carolina Rosati, the respective female leads of both ballets when they debuted. 

Funny detail: Jean-Marc is one of the names I considered for Erik’s birth name before I decided to name him after his father. 

I became a fan of the lesbian!Meg headcanon early on, so the detail about La Tessaro’s relationship with her seamstress being an open secret (and the flirty goodbye kiss she gives Antoinette later on) is meant to tie into that as an experience that shapes Antoinette’s later views on same-sex relationships. 

The confrontation between Antoinette and Erik was sad and painful to write. While Antoinette was wrong for slighting the friend who’d supported her for so long, Erik’s temper has always been a problem (recall the earlier scene where he bites Constantin after the man had already let him go) and he definitely deserved to be slapped by the end. It doesn’t help that both of them are still confused, hormonal teenagers (they’re both 17 by this point) who don’t have any adults to guide or support them. 

Erik running away after their confrontation is a pattern that comes up again in Trio Sonata: when someone rejects him, he flees before they have a chance to talk or work things out. He does it here, he did it in Persia after the night he tried to kiss Nadir, and he did it again when he abruptly sent Christine back after she first unmasked him. Erik really is his own worst enemy when it comes to relationships, and not because of his face. 

It doesn’t come up directly in the story, but I decided to have Antoinette reject taking a patron partly for cultural reasons: virginity before marriage is heavily emphasized for Romani women, so even though she’s distanced herself from her people, that’s still a mindset she was raised with and not one that’s easy to let go of. 

We’re not told anything about Jules Giry in Leroux, so the character is pretty much free real estate. I liked the idea of him also being somewhat of an outsider (in his case due to being part Jewish) and that being something him and Antoinette connect over, the same way she did with Erik and will later do with Nadir. Leroux seems to imply that their marriage was fairly happy (she speaks of “her poor husband” and Erik wins points by calling her “Mme. Jules”), so I wanted to depict him as a supportive, loving husband whose untimely death will further shape her into the Mme. Giry we eventually see in canon. 

I do love the scene where pregnant!Antoinette shows Jules the fossil and remembers how much Erik meant to her, and how she later puts the fossil in Meg’s nursery. If I ever get around to writing that fic about Meg’s eventual relationship with the Baron de Castelot-Barbezac, the fossil will definitely make an appearance. 

The scene where Antoinette finds out her parents have died and the Romani community no longer trusts her is important: Erik isn’t the only person she’s lost because of her obsession with becoming a famous ballet dancer, and it’s something that will continue to have consequences for the rest of her life. 

Musically-inclined readers might recognize that Erik is singing Mozart’s Requiem when Antoinette hears him at the traveling fair, and the lyrics are narrative foreshadowing for his later misdeeds (Day of wrath, that day / Shall dissolve the world in ashes and What trembling there will be / When the Judge is to come), as well as ones that poke at Antoinette’s conscience (What shall I, a wretch, say then? / Whom shall I call upon as my advocate?). 

For all the many issues with the 2004 movie, I do like the idea that Mme. Giry actively helped Erik escape from the fair. The scene where she dreams about how great it will be to bring him home and introduce him to her family, only to have Erik murder Faucher and make her realize how dangerous he’s become is probably my favorite scene in the whole fic (I’m especially proud of the line “he might as well have been speaking of tossing a dead mouse from a trap”). 

The brown leather mask Erik finds in the Peletier cellars is the same one he’ll later take with him when he flees the lair in Trio Sonata. 

I’ve never seen any fics that include Meg having brothers or sisters, even though there’s no reason to assume she doesn’t (Leroux even calls her “the eldest daughter” of Mme. Giry, implying Mme. Giry has at least one younger daughter). However, I do understand not wanting to clutter a story with too many characters, and the dynamic of Mme. Giry and Meg only having each other is also compelling. I went for a middle ground: the Girys did try to have more children, but they died from diseases and medical complications that could probably be treated (or vaccinated for) now. There’s also the added tragedy that Antoinette named her son after her dead brother, only to have her son die too. 

Speaking of medical complications, the description of Antoinette having weakened joints and chronic pain as she gets older (my reason for why she carries her signature cane) is a real problem that many dancers experience later in life. The Paris Opera currently offers a pension for ballet dancers when they turn 42; again, I couldn’t find out if they did in the 1800s, so call it artistic license. 

I really like the idea that Jules Giry died in the fire that destroyed the Salle le Peletier (I couldn’t find any evidence if anyone died in the real fire, so again, artistic license). It ties his death into the Opera and its haunted legacy, and it gives Antoinette a very personal reason to resent the Opera management and be willing to help Erik screw with them. 

I love the gothic atmosphere of Antoinette and Erik’s final meeting: two black-clad figures in front of the dark, half-finished opera house on a foggy autumn night. I also love breaking the tension a little with Antoinette’s quip about Erik’s new wig; for all that they’ve both changed in the last 30 years, some of the old fondness between them is still there, and it’s enough to make Antoinette believe she can still trust him. 

When I was writing, I joked with my beta reader about how Antoinette helping Erik for Meg’s sake is darkly ironic:

Antoinette: If I do this, he can help protect my daughter from predatory men! *Cue everything that later happens with Christine in canon*

And, that’s my long-delayed director’s commentary for Imprints in Time, and I hope you enjoyed it! If you have any other questions about the fic (or any of my other fics), I’m always happy to answer.

[fatehbaz]

My tags got too long again. Had this in drafts (vibing on progesterone and thinking about masks/mischief and nineteenth-century state paradigms of control/deviance) but I came across this same photo in the wild/research a couple weeks ago.

She was a ("suspected") sex worker. The original photo includes a hand-written note, dating it 11 October 1874 and naming her as "de Beyren (La Comtesse)." It was a self-promotional portrait she had taken before it ended up as File 329 in the "Register of the Ladies Galantes" (BB1 registry) of the Paris police division known as "Service of Morals" (Cabinet of the Prefect, 1st Division, 2nd Office, Service des Mœurs).

Collected between 1861 and 1874, "moral agents" kept the register to track the "perversion" and "insubordination" of 415 sex workers of Paris. The police describe the women they're tracking as "insoumises"--rebellious, insubordinate, unruly. Among the 415 women, the files include portraits of 143. Many of the photos were originally commissioned by the workers themselves, as promotions and advertisements for their dances/performances/services, before they were co-opted by the police.

Police photography became an essential tool/method by the 1890s of Pinkerton agents, counter-revolutionary and surveillance departments, US police forces tracking Black residents and union workers, British/German/French officials monitoring "crime"/dissent, and US military officials tracking anticolonial dissidents in the Philippines. Though state use of photography to monitor transgression was being experimented with on the sex workers of Paris earlier, in the 1860s. (Notably, the police's fear/anxiety in response to dissent after the rebellious fervor of the Paris Commune of 1871 may have influenced police/state to pursue the use of photos like this.)

-

A historian in a 2006 text analyzed some written records of the BB1 files, but it apparently remained difficult to encounter the photos of the women outside of limited museum/gallery exhibitions.

Though Clara Bouveresse had a nice article synthesizing both, from 2024 (which includes plenty of the photos, including that of the anonymous La Comtesse de Beyren; while the Countess chose to withhold her name, most of the women attached their names to their portraits): Clara Bouveresse, "From advertising promotion to police surveillance: Photographs of courtesans (1861-1874)," Clio. Women, Genre, History, Vol. 1, no. 59 (2024), pages 207-231.

Bouveresse describes the deliberate play with and manipulation of image/representation/expectation by the sex workers; the rising affordability of circulated print material among bourgeois audiences; and the police's simultaneous vilification of yet fascination with "vice," an "oscillation between seduction, curiosity, and moral condemnation." (More context: Portraiture circulation corresponds to Victorian-era rise of "celebrity"/print marketing, though predates the 1880s/1890s, when cococttes/sex work may have been more-visibly the object of Parisian bourgeois discourses of repulsion/fascination/"modernity.") But she also uses the files to acknowledge the rise of photography as a utility of policing.

-

So-called "police photography" later became a central/critical tool of US, British, and French police/surveillance institutions in both colonial and metropolitan settings at the turn of the century and in earlier twentieth century. (Think: Pinkertons, Chicago cops of the 1890s, tracking transnational "radicals" in Europe, workplace strikes, President McKinley's end.) Photography was also essential to the other central/critical tool of policing at that time: the also-originating-in-France "Bertillon system."

This "bertillonage," developed by French cop Alphonse Bertillon, was interested in categorizing/taxonomizing bodies ("anthropometry," body-measuring), and depended on photos to track subjects/"offenders." Basically, akin to mugshots. From this, the notion of the "filing cabinet" as a tool of state power is also strengthened.

The Bertillon System became widespread in practice in US/Europe in the 1890s. Same time that police photography/filing cabinets did, too. What else became popular tool in the 1890s? Fingerprinting.

British official William Herschel developed/popularized fingerprinting among police. Herschel first experimented it while he was a colonial officer in India and made a local contractor imprint his hand on a legal contract. He sent copies of his experiments to Francis Galton, fellow Brit and infamous "founder of eugenics."

It came full circle: Galton got really into anthropemetry/body-measurement (he was Charles Darwin's cousin, after all) and, as Bouveresse importantly points out in her article, Galton developed the method of "composite portrait" to "categorize" people as "types."

(I'm thinking again of Ravi Sundaram's e-flux article, where he cites Taussig's description of Herschel, who Taussig says was influenced by "a colonial administration dependent on writing and signatures" which had a "fear of massive fraud" and dissent, so "British administrators unable to discern ... Indian subjects ('they all look the same')" turned fingerprinting into "a type of modernizing sorcery by the colonial bureacracy." But we might add police photography to this modernizing magic. Sundaram acknowledges this: "Allan Sekula once wrote that the central innovation of nineteenth-century police photography was not the camera but the filing cabinet." Maybe so! Both the fingerprint and the photograph, these forms of body measurement and surveillance, collected together in the filing cabinet. Bouveresse, to her credit, in this article, also cites Sekula, who wrote in 1986: "Bertillon sought to blend the image in the archive, where Galton undertakes to blend the archive into photography.")

---

The Countess and her "insubordinate" colleagues were early subjects (victims) of this trend.

If the 1880s/1890s saw the rise and institutionalization of fingerprinting, police photography, and filing cabinets, then it's notable that French police were already systematically practicing this shit on women in the 1860s/1870s.

Bouveresse acknowledges the potential significance of widespread rebelliousness after which Paris police formalized their photography project among sex workers and beyond: "In the BB1 register, the presence of photographs does not yet have an official or explicit utility function. It seems to be part of the administrative zeal, the tast for collection [...]. At that time, many police officer felt that they knew the populations under their control [...]. The year of the Commune of Paris, in 1871, marks a turning point. [...] Photographs of accused people began to be produced methodically by maritime prefectures and military courts."

(Also: In 1871, the same year as the Commune, the French nation-state also lost the Franco-Prussian War, in which the victor re-established itself as the German Empire, potentially contributing more anxiety to French police/institutions.)

Bouveresee notes that between 1874 and 1882, Parisian police had collected 75,000 portraits.

---

The "Register of Convictions for Morals" (the BB3 registry) from the same Service of Morals appears like a taxonomy, a field guide, a textbook. Pages are bifurcated down the middle: Text documenting "crimes" on one side, and photos of the unclothed women on the other side.

Alongside the Countess in the files is "Alice la Provencale," a "former public ball dancer," pictured smiling while lacing (un-lacing?) her boots, and whom the police say engaged in the "vices" of "lubricity" and "homosexuality."

I like the photo of "Emma Brach" (1 February 1873, File 116), who is rolling her eyes as she sits atop a desk, one leg raised, displaying her leather boot.

Emma's super-short dress features, across her chest, the emblem of a black bat, its wings sprawled.

[theimpossiblecool]

“It’s so freeing, it’s beautiful in a way, to have a great failure. There’s nowhere to go but up.”

David Lynch.

[inthefallofasparrow]

[inthefallofasparrow]

[inthefallofasparrow]

[inthefallofasparrow]

[inthefallofasparrow]

[penny-anna]

anyway sound off. at what stage do ppl think Han figured out the Force was real. the boring answer is after seeing Obi-wan vanish but i think he could rationalise that away as his eyes playing tricks on him. what do we think.

[my-last-brain-cell-is-socrates]

Let me demonstrate my answer for you:

That's it. That's my answer. Endor.

Please just take a look at Han's face right after witnessing 3po float. The man just had his entire worldview blown to smithereens.

[whetstonefires]

that's so funny. that means he accepted Vader deflecting a blaster bolt with his hand as just something freaky government cyborgs can do, and stuck by Luke for multiple years as he tried to figure this Force stuff out, and just treated it like your friend getting really really into neopaganism to cope with a loss.

like yeah kid good job with the witching. i'm certain it will be more useful against your enemies than your sharpshooting. no i do not think your witchcraft is supplementing your aim but i'm not gonna argue about it.

[penny-anna]

yeah Luke was like 'I heard Ben Kenobi's voice in my head telling me how to blow up the Death Star :)' and Han was like 'kind of an unusual coping mechanism but I'm not gonna argue with him'

[davetheshady]

thanks to carbonite han not only misses learning about luke's training montage on dagobah, he's also half-blind during their whole escape on tatooine. luke's out there force-kicking henchmen with his gucci boots and doing flips and shit and han can't see a goddamn thing. now on endor luke's yeeting threepio with the power of his mind and han's just like 'the last time we hung out i had to stuff him in a tauntaun sleeping bag'.

[bogwitch-extraordinaire]

@softness-and-shattering I hate you I hate you I hate you

[overseer-picard]

Fun fact from the Jonathan Frakes commentary on "First Contact":

That is not Alice Krige's hand, which is why it looks so freakishly large. She only had her makeup done from her shoulders up for this day of filming so they got one of the other Borg drones and had him kneel out of shot then reach up and seductively stroke Patrick Stewart's face.

[overseer-picard]

For everyone saying it’s a normal sized hand, here’s a crash course on basic proportion.

If you line your palm up with the bottom of your chin, the tips of your fingers should end right above your eyebrows. Obviously there’s individual variance but in general, your hand is basically the size of your face.

Now look at the screencap. That hand is way too big to even be Patrick Stewart’s, let alone the much more petite Alice Krige’s (my lines aren’t even accurate due to the angle of Picard’s face but you get the gist).

So yes it’s a normal sized hand for someone who is not Patrick Stewart or Alice Krige. But in the context of this picture, it’s very large.

I’m also not the one who pointed out how big it is, Jonathan Frakes did in the commentary. Which is funny because I never noticed it in my 400+ viewings of the film but now I can’t ever unsee it.

[tinsnip]

okay that is super fucking cool from the doylist perspective

but imagine from the watsonian perspective

that you are being seduced by the queen of a million drones, any of whom she can control, and right now, while she is talking to you, while she is smiling at you, she is, without a second thought, using one of their bodies to stroke your face

[taylortut]

the “sexy lamp test” but for disabled folks: if you can replace your disabled character with a beloved pet dog that needs an expensive surgery to survive then you have to throw out your manuscript 

[taylortut]

reblogging one of my most underrated posts: the dying dog test

[the-last-teabender]

I’m gonna make my medical school advisees do this on their application essays too I think.

[whencartoonsruletheworld]

[mxtomituck]

[calllynx]

Op turned off reblogs but I MUST

[hazard-symbols-that-fuck-hard]

found backstage at my local theatre 👍

[blessyouhawkeye]

spock is the greatest character of all time because he lives in a society without homophobia but managed to reinvent internalized homophobia from first principles

[fishsticxz-art]

a friend wanted to commission some silly mtg bird tokens so i did a couple! ducks are kinda their thing so the bird choice was obvious