i fucking love tumblr on new years i scroll past a glittertext gif wishing me a happy 2002 i scroll past my mutual wishing me a happy 2018 i scroll past a gifset wishing me a happy 2013 i scroll p
like, if you're a bomb disposal guy and your team has a cool bomb-disposal robot which you've given a cutesy name to, you may hesitate to put that robot in harm's way, which is NOT OPTIMAL in the bomb-disposing field.
it also doesn't help if you hold funerals for the robots after they get exploded (this happens pretty regularly).
anyway nobody has worked out how to stop humans from pack-bonding with literally inanimate objects and they probably never will. (like even knowing it's a problem, I *still* think those EOD robots deserve funerals).
listen all im saying is we get jims trauma and we get spocks trauma but…
bones was really, really traumatized by the five year mission too
there was a lot of things that happened to him. he was closer to death more times than the other two were. you could argue that he’s more or that he’s less equipped to handle those things than jim or spock are, but either way, it weighs on him.
we know this. he drinks heavily, more heavily than jim does. in high stress situations he picks at people – not just spock but everyone. when he feels like he’s failing he’s mean, to himself and to others, but especially to himself; he is willing to sacrifice himself not because of the good of the many or because he believes he owes it to the ship, or even really because he loves jim and spock (although i think all of those are true in his mind too), but because he would feel so damn guilty if someone else died. if another person died and he couldn’t save them. he thinks he is less deserving of life than anyone else on the ship and he blusters and covers it up and we ignore it but it’s true. spock and kirk, they know they’re valuable. they’re willing to sacrifice themselves because its the right thing. but bones will sacrifice himself because he believes there’s no other option, because he believes that his death is the only solution, the best solution.
that is not a well adjusted human being.
he is consistently driven to sickness, insanity, and in one notable instance, literally death. he is consistently given impossible tasks and impossible choices. he is not a command officer. he is not given command training. but the choices come down to him, and the only thing he can rely on is his ethics as a doctor, and first do no harm to others.
all im saying is… we’re really sleeping on this potential. we see it a lot in post-mirror fics, but i want some truly gorgeous fics like we get exploring spock and jims interiority (particularly in relationships or pre-relationships) with bones. he deserves it. he is just as complex and interesting as they are
One of the things I love about this is that it’s so consistently in character even in the movies too. Despite certain aspects of The Final Frontier, when we see that backstory about Bones not able to save his dad (and then later finding out he could’ve saved him if he just made him wait! just a little bit longer! and the treatment for his illness would’ve been available to him!) it really colors just how far Bones’ trauma and pain go and how ingrained in him it is.
He is a natural leader but only in certain contexts and he had to learn some of that through his experiences on the Enterprise when it comes to ship situations. He’s able to be a leader in medical emergencies but he ends up putting everything on the side and when the event is over does it actually hit him, and that’s definitely not healthy either without properly addressing and processing it.
I do remember a fic, it’s old, where Bones actually does attend a few therapy sessions because it was affecting his work, and it was a pretty powerful story. I do agree, there’s not enough fic that digs deep into this aspect in comparison to the other two. The few that are are pretty wonderful though.
God you’re so right and its so important: so many people have pointed out Bones is a natural leader
My original point which i think you put quite nicely is he’s not supposed to lead
Chief officers are ADMINISTRATIVE. They’re like managers. In spocks case, he’s an administrative science officer, but he’s also a command officer in a heavily military organization. A command officer is so different from an administrative officer. Administrative officers lead in a specific capacity; command officers are generalized; the training, however, is reversed – admin officers get less training, command officers get more, because command has the power over life or death, the power of information, etc
As a result, command officers are trained for torture, coersion, stress; they are psychologically profiled and required to have tests at least annually. Or at least, this would make sense. They have to protect themselves and their own minds to make the best decisions, to save the most people
Bones does not have this training, nor do we ever see him seek it out
Its part of the reason his reactions to hard situations vary SO WILDLY from spocks or jims or even, and this is notable because he IS command trained, scotty
He does not have their tools to deal with these situations. Regardless of how good he is at it, he should not be leading or making those decisions.
And the thing is, people know it. In TOS canon, for all intents and purposes, bones is the equivalent of a civilian contractor. He doesn’t see himself as starfleet, he sees himself as a country doctor. Aliens KNOW he’s not equipped to deal with those decisions, which is WHY he’s in those positions so often. They think he’s the weakest link.
THIS is why his trauma is so complex. Because he IS good at it. And he’s especially good at hiding it. But it’s so much more real than for command trained officers, he doesn’t have the same level of disassociation to the situation they do. And we can see that.
I think it’s very interesting to note too that from a press release he did, he talks about putting this very human touch into McCoy, about how he wanted McCoy to embody these traits he hadn’t seen much in doctors (I have some pics and can quote the document if y’all would like to read it some time), and it certainly fits in with Bones not being totally command trained.
There’s also a deleted scene I’ve been meaning to gif where Bones also asks Scotty about what he plans to do in command, that kind of also hits your point home:
SCOTTY: Well, they’ve got them, Doctor. And they’re trying to get us.
MCCOY: What are you gonna do, Scotty?
SCOTTY: Well, if you have a soft foot, it’s an easy enough thing to grab a tiger by the tail. But the problem arises when you try to let go. Now what do you think a thoughtful tiger would do in a case like this?
He makes this kind of expression at Scotty after he asks that question and it’s a look of thinking and somberness, I’d have to screencap it sometime, but it’s better seen in action. But he does that stance where he’s kinda tightly wound but with his hands are clasped behind his back. And he’s asking for that kind of reassurance that he sometimes does with Spock.
It’s also fitting that, once you get into TNG and beyond, medical officers end up having training that’s much more comprehensive in terms of command training, at least if someone’s in a lead position – it’s not as full on as those who follow into command track, but they enforce it more, which probably indicates Starfleet understanding these kinds of things can’t be swept under the rug. That since they are in some kind of leadership position they need to be taught things that they might be exposed to in order to protect those under their command.
(That and finally counselors on board! Bones has a degree in space psychology and for all he could possibly help consult for other people, he certainly can’t for himself.)
And I agree, all these combinations really make him much more complex, including his own trauma.
(Interestingly, this makes AOS!McCoy a fun juxtaposition to TOS!Bones because of this inherent knowledge of basic/rudimentary command track knowledge. But that’s a digression.)
When it comes to doing what needs to be done in a medical capacity, he’s able to handle it – but when you compound that with things that happen to him outside of that setting, mental torture, sickness, and even death, and no one to let that outlet out, and compounded with his father’s death and how the effects of that color everything else? Really fascinatingly complex.
But also props to Deforest Kelley for managing to act the hell out of that too – a lesser actor might have made it all more one-dimensional but he didn’t.
THE BIG VULCAN BIOLOGY POST (aka Vulcan is a Hell Planet)
DISCLAIMER: I am not a biologist, astrophysicist, neurologist, animal psychologist or literally anything that would qualify me to talk about this with 100% confidence. This is the result of dozens of headcanons and obsessive deep dive research. I don’t want this post to be three miles long, so after I address the planetary stuff I will oblige y’all with a Read More.
Adsfasdkfjhaslkdfh I’ve been working on this post for almost a month SO HERE WE GO!
First of all, Vulcan (aka T’Khasi) is a HELL PLANET, which is part of the reason they’re so badass, I say this for the following reasons:
No moon(s) (natural satellites)
Sodium (Salt) is so rare on the planet that Vulcan’s oceans are freshwater
It’s a “Super-Earth” (as in big chonkin’ planet of similar composition to earth in the “goldilocks region”)
Let’s do this.
“Vulcan has no moon Ms. Uhura.”
-Spock, The Man Trap
Tons of things change about our planet if there was no moon:
Much darker nights (no moonlight)
Much lower sea levels since there is no gravity from the moon to pull it upward.
Lower and weaker tides because the water is pulled by the sun instead of the moon, and it depends on how large the Vulcan solar system’s sun is for how big the waves are.
Stronger winds from faster planet rotation.
Depending on whether the axis of the planet would straighten or tilt further without the moon’s pull, combined with the faster rotation would lead to more severe seasons (strong tilt) or no seasons at all (no tilt)
The first factor may lead to Vulcan eyes being very catlike even if they aren’t nocturnal (I think they’re crepesucular but we’ll get into that later). Which given the likely nature of their blood and their herbivorous eating habits they probably aren’t. The sky would still be so dark that our human eyes couldn’t even see our hands in front of us, being blind when the sun goes down could be a death sentence. Alternatively, if they didn’t develop strong night vision that may be one of the reasons why they have such strong senses of hearing.
The stronger winds, faster rotation, and stronger (or nonexistent) seasons come from the lack of resistance and friction that stronger tides and the moon’s pull create on our planet. I suspect that Vulcan is larger, or at least denser than Earth, but I’ve been informed that according to the TMP novelization that it does rotate faster. I also think that Vulcan’s tilt is on the more extreme end to get the hostile extremes like storms and heat that we see on Vulcan.
If you look at this image of Vulcan, water covers way less of the planet’s surface than Earth. I don’t think this is necessarily because Vulcan has less water, but that it isn’t spread as far because of the lack of moon, and the fact that the oceans are freshwater, I’ll get into that shortly.
“My ancestors spawned from a different ocean than yours.”
-Spock, The Man Trap
In the Star Trek: The Original Series (third) pilot The Man Trap, there is a creature that kills its victims by draining their bodies completely of salt. Spock encounters the creature but does not die, implying his (and Vulcans overall) body contains little to no salt. His justification is that his species did not evolve from a salinized ocean.
What does it mean to have oceans with no salt?
This has to mean that sodium is a very rare mineral on Vulcan, as the reason our oceans are so salinized is due to erosion of minerals by rainfall, carried from river to ocean. Salt in the ocean is also generated by submarine volcanic activity, which means either that the volcanoes on Vulcan (which we definitely know exist) somehow don’t produce salt, or the vast majority of the submarine volcanoes have been inactive for millions if not billions of years. The active volcanoes on Vulcan must be very far inland and/or Vulcan has almost no rivers, which given how hot the planet is, wouldn’t actually be too much of a stretch of the imagination.
Which means every single lifeform on T’Khasi, including Vulcans, evolved biosystems that exist without (or with very little) salt content. Any salt that exists would likely be deep beneath the planet’s surface, and within volcanoes.
No saltwater has a ton of consequences:
Plants (like underwater algae) are rarer and may not photosynthesize the same way Earth plants do, meaning less oxygen and more carbon dioxide, which means more greenhouse effect, which means higher temperatures.
The lack of salt would also mean less diverse plant life (at least as humans know it) and given the lack of visible rivers and vast swaths of desert on Vulcan, we can safely say vegetation must be hardier and infrequent.
Lower sea levels as the oceans would have lower density due to lack of salt.
Little to no water convection, which salt is crucial for on Earth. Which means warm ocean water doesn’t move to cold regions and vice versa. Creating extremes, the equator being obscenely hot, and polar waters freezing at the poles more extensively.
Lack of convection means more frequent and stronger storms like hurricanes.
If you thought the lack of a moon made Vulcan inhospitable, compound it with the low sodium factor and you’ve got a planet of even more severe extremes than before. The heat, and the decrease of plant diversity definitely explain why the vast majority of Vulcan is rocky desert, even being near the water poses more extreme dangers than it would on earth due to the increased frequency of hurricanes.
“Mr. Spock is much stronger than an ordinary human being.”
-Kirk, This Side of Paradise
I am almost 100% sure that Vulcan is either bigger or denser than Earth. Which would explain why Vulcans are so much stronger than Humans and other species that exist on similar gravity worlds.
Effects of a high-gravity planet or “Super-Earth” include:
Everything is shorter or has very strong foundations, plants, animals, structures, and people.
More “Armageddon” class asteroids would hit the planet (like the one that killed the dinosaurs and created the Gulf of Mexico)
Larger liquid mantle under the planet’s surface, higher pressure under the surface as well.
Weaker magnetic field due to lack of convection in the planet’s core (not to be confused with the mantle interacting with the planet’s crust). Which means a weaker atmosphere, lower magnetism in surface metals, and increased vulnerability to solar flares.
More volcanically and seismically active due the the increase in the mantle’s size and generated heat, more earthquakes, and more volcanic eruptions.
Would have to have a smaller sun but be closer in orbit to it than earth.
Extremely deep oceans, potentially with water under so much pressure at the bottom that it becomes solid like ice. Luckily Vulcan is not an ocean world, because the pressure would block the planet’s core from interacting with the atmosphere, which would prevent life as we know it from happening.
There is plenty of evidence for this on so many levels. We never see any plant life similar to trees on Vulcan. Nor animals significantly larger than Vulcans, the ones that are bigger are much more muscular. Vulcan’s sky is more red than blue because of the lack of oxygen molecules for the light from the sun to filter as blue. I actually headcanon that Spock is unusually tall for a Vulcan because of his human heritage (Leonard Nimoy was around 6ft tall) , and may have had heart and muscle problems in his teens and early adulthood while on Vulcan.
Perhaps Vulcans are the result of many more extinction level events than we are, contributing to their hardiness. Perhaps they are, evolutionarily, not too much older than we are, and had more incentive to develop extraterrestrial technology than we have, so that they could repel Armageddon Class meteors and defend their planet against Solar Flares? Space travel being born out of self-preservation rather than curiosity. Which would absolutely account for their attitudes in the beginning of Star Trek: Enterprise.
It could be that Vulcans still maintain a semi-nomadic lifestyle even today because their planet is so incredibly volatile. Unsentimental and utilitarian in anything less than the most sacred of architecture long before they adopted the teachings of Surak. Their own survival more valuable than any structure that would inevitably be damaged or destroyed by their planet’s harsh environment.
In summary, Vulcan is a Nightmare Planet because:
So, so many much natural disasters, like, so many, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, hurricanes, twisters, just, so many more than Earth.
Water is relegated to specific locations in the world rather than spread across it due to lack of flow and lower sea levels.
Extreme temperature changes, intense heat, intense cold, hard to breathe, stronger gravity.
Due to the planet’s hostility, there is a smaller diversity of life than we have here on earth, which means fewer and hardier food sources that, like Vulcans, are very difficult to kill.
So… How do they handle it? What features have they developed to adapt and thrive in such an inhospitable place?
“the millenium falcon would wipe out the enterprise in seconds” lmao the enterprise is just an innocent science class floating thru space…. all they wanna do is look at some rocks… kiss an alien…. find some space plants….. why would you fight that its not a battleship theyre just nerds…… leave them olone
If anyone was wondering, I absolutely subscribe to the hc that post tmp era spones retire mostly to Vulcan and Bones gets a psyciatric service Sehlat bc he fucking needs one ok by the time he's finally out of immediate stressors that man's gonna need a service animal and I think he deserves a teddy bear with 6 inch fangs
Sometimes I forget how much shit McCoy canonically knows, at least to a degree of competence. Like ok sure he’s not an Engineer or a bricklayer but he’s damn well more than “a simple, country doctor”; he’s got the sciences badge instead of the medical one for a reason
[Image Description: a screenshot of a series of tags from user @fuckyeahspones. Lightly reformatted and punctuated for readability, the tags are as follows:
Meta.
Leonard McCoy.
Don’t get me started on how people like to write or treat his character like this; feeding into the slower than fuck southerner stereotypes on top of others (eye-roll emoji). Drives me bonkers.
He is the CMO on The Flagship of The Federation, that means his competence is high.
He is as much of a miracle worker as Scotty, but he tries to be more “humble” about it, until it needs to be stated he has the qualifications.
Treating people comes first, not his ego.
He’s not dumb; he’s the head of several departments; it drives me up the wall when people just kinda dismiss it.
End description.]
@fuckyeahspones No but you’re so correct.
Specifically, the note about him being somewhat humbler than Scotty about his abilities; he consistently sells himself short right before doing something unprecedented. Just about every “I’m a doctor, not a–” is followed by him doing The Thing anyway and succeeding, which was the initial impetus for my post, along with seeing a completely unrelated tweet that reminded me just how many specialized disciplines there are in medical science that Bones nonetheless shows proficiency in to a wild degree.
And his skills clearly matter to him and his sense of self; on top of the Spock Stuff, one of the biggest things that hurts my heart abt TMP-era Bones is all the times he has his competency called into question, explicitly or implicitly, and how much it rattles him to be unable to save people.
Another difference between him and scotty, too I think, though really I think it might just be a longer, more involved version of what you said in your tags, is that Scotty is well aware he exceeds most expectations for a chief engineer with the bullshit situations he has to put up with, which means when he’s struggling to get around it the audience knows they should worry. But McCoy…I’m genuinely not sure he realizes just how ridiculously cool he is?
Like, I’m of two minds about it. And I think they could potentially be reconciled but I’ve never thought abt them at the same time. But anyway.
The first point to me is that McCoy doesn’t realize that he is exceptional specifically because he already places such high expectations on himself. As Final Frontier showed us, his deepest pain has been his inability to cure his father or relieve his pain; he’d kept him alive and suffering, then let him die, only for a cure to be discovered weeks later that could have justified keeping him alive and in pain longer; it was one of the world’s worst moral quandaries and it’s implied McCoy has been living with that trauma for most of his career. Also, just. The trauma of being his own father’s literal actual doctor in that time frame. Even without the cure discovery, being the one to actually pull the plug; there was never a way he could have left that scenario with a healthy sense of his skills and responsibilities. But all that to say; I wouldn’t be surprised if he thought it was just, like. The bare minimum to have as much medical knowledge that he does.
My second thought is that calling himself a simple country doctor neither negates nor recognizes his immense skillset. It’s not as tied to his trauma as the above idea, but it does also posit that this is standard, and leans more into the fact that he is more of a civilian than the other officers we spend time with. Sure, Scotty’s work is exceptional in terms of also being a lieutenant commander who is 3rd in the line of command onboard the ship. But we don’t have civilian engineers to compare him with. In TOS, anyway. That is to say, with this idea Bones is absolutely aware that he knows A Lot of Shit, at least to people who are Soldiers that also do science, but in understating his own abilities he’s also doing some maneuvering/posturing. Sure, it might be remarkable that a Federation CMO could jerry-rig a life saving patch for a silicone-based life form, but try being the only doctor of any kind for miles around back home; I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if he knew a level of veterinary care.
But anyway, yeah, common denominator there is that I feel like, for Bones, part of why he doesn’t make a big deal of his abilities is because to him, doing what he does is already the expectation; it’s the mark of competency. Which is a big part of why we see him get hit so hard when he fails.
Sometimes I think about the fact that Harry Mudd had a more sizeable role as a villain in TOS than Khan did, which leads me to wonder what a Wrath of Mudd movie would have been like
The more I see of the inner workings of the Enterprise, the more I’m convinced it runs on rainbows and the spirit of adventure.
I mean, like, are those kidney beans glued to expired library cards? Is that a kazoo coming out of half a pinball machine? Is that a pile of unconnected silly string on top of a broken Fender Super Champ? (Yes, and everything is beautiful.)
Oh my dear, sweet children. The Commodore 64 came out in 1982. This was produced on a typewriter and probably mimeographed. And while it may seem funny now, it took more courage to write and distribute this than you will ever know.
Children, in the olden days fanfiction was written on a typewriter, copied and sent by snail mail. Getting one one of those letters from across the world was every bit as exciting as getting a notification that your favorite writer posted a new fic.
It’s been said before, but the fact that this fic begins with the dialogue assertion “We’re by no means setting a precedent” is endlessly amusing to me.
Diane Marchant changed all our lives. May she rest in peace.
The precedent line is especially amusing when you bear in mind that “A Fragment Out of Time” is not only the first Star Trek slashfic to be published in a widely distributed magazine: it’s believed by some to be the first slashfic of any kind to be widely published.
dededos
janainaart
areudirty
blakekathryn
stormborns
ellievsbear
