Sometimes an episode is just so stuffed with really good line deliveries theres nothing i can do except put em together in a compilation its out of my control im powerless to stop it. Goodbye.
I perhaps have too many ideas for a Grace, Rocky, and Stratt in Starfleet AU (completely inspired by the realization that 40 Eridani houses both Vulcans and Eridians).
Bullet pointed ideas are going to be below a read more because I fear the length
- Grace teaches upper level biology at Starfleet Academy
- Captain Stratt of the USS Hail Mary is hanging around with some fellow captains and admirals and such
- Grace is getting into a heated debate with a fellow professor about biology (as he does)
- Stratt is just like-- "That one. That's my new XO."
- The poor admirals try to tell her but you know what Stratt is like on a mission
- Now every time they go on landing missions she's stuck with a partner who Will Contact Chief Engineer Rocky the Eridian for transport whenever there's danger
- This man will do everything possible to not get Red Shirted
- despite never wearing a red shirt but whatever
- She takes the cowardice with the competence
- Grace got headhunted for the Mary and didn't even realize he was XO for like-- a week and a half.
- don't ask him how. He was mortified when he found out.
- "Man it's kinda cool being part of the science team on a ship"
- someone else: "yeah, you get to be Chief Science Officer AND Second in command!"
- ". . . I'm what and what."
- "Strattttttt people think I'm? Your XO?"
- "That is correct"
- " . . . "
- "Who did you think it was?"
- " . . . Rocky?"
- " . . . The engineer? The engineer that spends 80% of his time in the vents . . ?"
- anyway the first month of their mission is chaos.
- the Eridians and Vulcans may be nextdoor neighbors planet wise
- but they both hiss at each other whenever they get too close
- Cain instinct.
- Touch Telepathy vs. Echolocation
- GO!
- the only thing they agree on is music.
- Rocky and Grace become fast friends obviously
- Rocky is charmed by Grace constantly asking to be Beamed Up
- Grace finds himself in the vents when too many people try to talk to him
- I think they have a lot of fun trying to get Grace to learn Eridian without universal translator
- Also I just need y'all to imagine Rocky in his shirt from the books but like-- as a red Starfleet uniform
- let's also just handwave away the need for different atmospheres
- anyway this is like already half-way to becoming a fic and a plot
- but like--
- time is not on my side.
- I already have like-- 2 WIPS and more in the wings
It has come to my (belated) attention that the Vulcans and Eridians come from the same star system (40 Eridani). I propose a plot bunny that is free for the taking, in fact I may write it myself one day if I figure out logistics.
Consider: Instead of Grace making first contact with Eridians (and Rocky), he makes first contacts with Vulcans (possibly Spock if you want to bend the timeline). This would make Vulcan's first contact with earth happen approximately 40-50 years before it occurs in Star Trek.
Oh boy, I just realized. The Vulcans initially made first contact with earth after monitoring them for ages, even learning their language beforehand. I propose that this occured because of their Resident Human who Saved Their World.
It has come to my (belated) attention that the Vulcans and Eridians come from the same star system (40 Eridani). I propose a plot bunny that is free for the taking, in fact I may write it myself one day if I figure out logistics.
Consider: Instead of Grace making first contact with Eridians (and Rocky), he makes first contacts with Vulcans (possibly Spock if you want to bend the timeline). This would make Vulcan's first contact with earth happen approximately 40-50 years before it occurs in Star Trek.
Oh boy, I just realized. The Vulcans initially made first contact with earth after monitoring them for ages, even learning their language beforehand. I propose that this occured because of their Resident Human who Saved Their World.
Hello my dear rangers! I know I've never interacted with this fandom directly but just gauging general interest: who wants to see a fic of Halt fucking around with a sword?
Let me elaborate. People like to theorize that a big reason why Halt is the one who trained Gilan is because, as royalty, he must have SOME experience with swordsmanship. Yet, I don't think I've ever seen a fic actually explore this (please link me to any you may know). So the idea is "Fives times people see Halt with a sword, and one time it makes perfect sense".
So yeah! Interact with this post in any way to help me gain motivation to actually put this into reality! Also go find @pangolinsandnewts because they are one of my very best friends who helped me brainstorm this idea and may end up co-authoring/betaing if this thing ever gets written.
Hello my dear rangers! I know I've never interacted with this fandom directly but just gauging general interest: who wants to see a fic of Halt fucking around with a sword?
Let me elaborate. People like to theorize that a big reason why Halt is the one who trained Gilan is because, as royalty, he must have SOME experience with swordsmanship. Yet, I don't think I've ever seen a fic actually explore this (please link me to any you may know). So the idea is "Fives times people see Halt with a sword, and one time it makes perfect sense".
So yeah! Interact with this post in any way to help me gain motivation to actually put this into reality! Also go find @pangolinsandnewts because they are one of my very best friends who helped me brainstorm this idea and may end up co-authoring/betaing if this thing ever gets written.
Hello my dear rangers! I know I've never interacted with this fandom directly but just gauging general interest: who wants to see a fic of Halt fucking around with a sword?
Let me elaborate. People like to theorize that a big reason why Halt is the one who trained Gilan is because, as royalty, he must have SOME experience with swordsmanship. Yet, I don't think I've ever seen a fic actually explore this (please link me to any you may know). So the idea is "Fives times people see Halt with a sword, and one time it makes perfect sense".
So yeah! Interact with this post in any way to help me gain motivation to actually put this into reality! Also go find @pangolinsandnewts because they are one of my very best friends who helped me brainstorm this idea and may end up co-authoring/betaing if this thing ever gets written.
#idk why i’m so unreasonably angry#maybe cuz it’s my fav line
it’s also because Leonard COHEN (!) was Jewish and this is a quintessentially Jewish line, and changing it to that level of Annoying Certainty is stripping it of its Jewish meaning and imbuing it with that particularly American smug evangelical Christian attitude that makes me tired, so very tired
I don’t think I’ve heard any cover artist sing my favorite verses
You say I took the name in vain
I don’t even know the name
But if I did, well really, what’s it to you?
There’s a blaze of light
In every word
It doesn’t matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah
I did my best, it wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch
I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah
I will always hit the reblog button so hard for Hallelujah but ESPECIALLY mentions of the elusive final verses which are just about my favorite lyrics ever. Why do people always omit the best part of the song??
Yeah, I wonder why the verses that reference specific Jewish mystical and chassidic concepts that aren’t readily understood by American “I love Jews, you know, Jesus was Jewish!” Christians never get any airtime. Funny that.
You say I took the name in vain
I don’t even know the name
But if I did, well really, what’s it to you?
There’s a blaze of light
In every word
It doesn’t matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah
These are specifically about Chassidic Jewish theories of the holy language, how each letter and combination of letters in Hebrew contains the essence of the divine spark and if used correctly, can unlock or uncover the divine spark in the mundane material word. And of course, there are secret names of God which, when spoken by any ordinary human would kill them, but if you are worthy and holy and righteous can be used to perform miracles or even to behold the glory of God face-to-face. The words themselves have power. Orthodox Jews often won’t even pronounce the word “hallelujah” in it’s entirety in conversation, because the “yah” sound at the end is a True Name of God (there are hundreds, supposedly) and thus too holy to say outside of prayer.
None of this is to mention how David’s sin in sleeping with Batshevah (the subject of much of the song, with a brief deviation to Shimshon and Delilah) is considered the turning point in the Tanach that ultimately dooms the Davidic line at the cosmological level and thus dooms Jewish sovereignty and independence altogether. From a Christian perspective this led to Jesus, the King of Kings, and that’s all very well and good for them, but for the Jews, the Davidic line never returned and is the central tragedy of the total arc of the Torah. Like, our Bible doesn’t have a happy ending? And that’s what this song is about? There’s no Grace - you just have to sit with the sin and its consequence.
Of course, Cohen is referencing all of this ironically, and personalizing these very high-level religious concepts. Like the point of this song is that Cohen, the songwriter, is identifying with David, the psalmist, and identifying his own sins with David’s. The ache that you hear in this song is that the two thousand year exile that resulted from one wrong night of passion and Cohen feels that the pain he has caused to his lover is of equally monumental infamy. Basically, in a certain light, the whole of Psalms is a vain effort for David to atone for his sin and I think Cohen was writing this song in wonderment that David could eternally praise the God who would not forgive him and would force him and his people into exile. But he ultimately gets how you have to surrender to the inexorable force of God in the face of your own inadequacies and how to surrender is to worship and to worship is to praise - hence, Hallelujah. You can either do the right thing and worship God from the start, or you can fuck up, be punished, and thus be forced to beg for His forgiveness. It’s the terrible inevitability of praise that’s driving him mad.
Like honestly, I identify with this song so strongly as an off-the-derech Jew, I sometimes wonder what Christians can possibly hear in this song, as it speaks so specifically to the sadomasochistic relationship that a lapsed Jew has with their God. It’s such a different song from a Christian theological perspective it’s almost unrecognizable, man. This song continues to be a wonder of postmodern Jewish theology and sexuality from start to finish. Don’t let anyone give you any “Judeo-Christian” narishkeit. This is a Jewish song.
(Sorry about the wild tangent it’s just 2AM and I love this song so dang much, you guys.)
That last bit from @stoneandbloodandwater, that’s a great articulation of the well of feeling, memory, storytelling, and culture packed into one of the most Jewish songs ever to get real famous. The song is both surrender and defiance, and that those are actually a single path together, not two opposite choices.
A small addition: This song is such a deeply resonant Jewish touchstone that every synagogue I have ever attended uses its melody in services from time to time.
It is so important, so powerful, so spiritually resonant that we use it in prayer.
If memory serves me, the cover we most often hear came about specifically because Jeff Buckley was like “man, this song is badass but I don’t know that I can do its concepts justice” and Leonard Cohen was like “you need different verses? Here, I wrote over eighty of the fuckers, pick what you want to use” and so Buckley put together verses that spoke to him as a non-Jew about sexuality and this idea of a failed relationship.
Which wouldn’t be an issue if Christians didn’t then take his adaptation (done, I emphasize again, with Cohen’s blessing) and rewrite it in ways THAT DO NOT COME FROM THE ORIGINAL VERSES.
Hi there! Former English nerd/teacher here. Also a big fan of jazz of the 30s and 40s.
So. Here’s the thing. Given a cursory glance and applying today’s worldview to the song, yes, you’re right, it absolutely *sounds* like a rape anthem.
BUT! Let’s look closer!
“Hey what’s in this drink” was a stock joke at the time, and the punchline was invariably that there’s actually pretty much nothing in the drink, not even a significant amount of alcohol.
See, this woman is staying late, unchaperoned, at a dude’s house. In the 1940’s, that’s the kind of thing Good Girls aren’t supposed to do — and she wants people to think she’s a good girl. The woman in the song says outright, multiple times, that what other people will think of her staying is what she’s really concerned about: “the neighbors might think,” “my maiden aunt’s mind is vicious,” “there’s bound to be talk tomorrow.” But she’s having a really good time, and she wants to stay, and so she is excusing her uncharacteristically bold behavior (either to the guy or to herself) by blaming it on the drink — unaware that the drink is actually really weak, maybe not even alcoholic at all. That’s the joke. That is the standard joke that’s going on when a woman in media from the early-to-mid 20th century says “hey, what’s in this drink?” It is not a joke about how she’s drunk and about to be raped. It’s a joke about how she’s perfectly sober and about to have awesome consensual sex and use the drink for plausible deniability because she’s living in a society where women aren’t supposed to have sexual agency.
Basically, the song only makes sense in the context of a society in which women are expected to reject men’s advances whether they actually want to or not, and therefore it’s normal and expected for a lady’s gentleman companion to pressure her despite her protests, because he knows she would have to say that whether or not she meant it, and if she really wants to stay she won’t be able to justify doing so unless he offers her an excuse other than “I’m staying because I want to.” (That’s the main theme of the man’s lines in the song, suggesting excuses she can use when people ask later why she spent the night at his house: it was so cold out, there were no cabs available, he simply insisted because he was concerned about my safety in such awful weather, it was perfectly innocent and definitely not about sex at all!) In this particular case, he’s pretty clearly right, because the woman has a voice, and she’s using it to give all the culturally-understood signals that she actually does want to stay but can’t say so. She states explicitly that she’s resisting because she’s supposed to, not because she wants to: “I ought to say no no no…” She states explicitly that she’s just putting up a token resistance so she’ll be able to claim later that she did what’s expected of a decent woman in this situation: “at least I’m gonna say that I tried.” And at the end of the song they’re singing together, in harmony, because they’re both on the same page and they have been all along.
So it’s not actually a song about rape - in fact it’s a song about a woman finding a way to exercise sexual agency in a patriarchal society designed to stop her from doing so. But it’s also, at the same time, one of the best illustrations of rape culture that pop culture has ever produced. It’s a song about a society where women aren’t allowed to say yes…which happens to mean it’s also a society where women don’t have a clear and unambiguous way to say no.
remember loves: context is everything. and personal opinion matters. If you still find this song to be a problem, that’s fine. But please don’t make it into something it’s not because it’s been stripped of cultural context.
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