CHIMERICAL

HERE BE DRAGONS

[paksthestoic]

star trek voyager characters on Open Mic Night in the mess hall.

Tom Paris: organized it. roped people into it. claims the first slot. spends his five minutes telling jokes like “I just flew in from the New Zealand penal colony and boy are my arms tired!!”. polite chuckles all around because he leans into telling awful jokes.

Harry Kim: technically perfect jokes delivered with too much nervous laughter until tom starts heckling and suddenly his five minutes is all crowd work

Tuvok: Tom did not expect him to agree, but Tuvok delivers a series of deadpan riddles and knock knock jokes to devastating effect. runaway success of the evening.

Chakotay: was NOT going to participate until the captain teased him about stage fright. observational humor, the type of person to pick someone out of the crowd and deliver his material directly to them.

Neelix: a TIGHT five entirely on leola root. stuns the crew with his self-awareness, makes them all wonder if he’s been inflicting Leola root on them for the Laughs this whole time

B’elanna Torres: does alright until tom also decides to heckle her. she throws the mic at him, chaos ensues, she does not complete her five minutes.

Seven: her jokes themselves are not funny. What gets people is when she informs them they may proceed to laughter. Similar to Harry in that they are technically perfect jokes. Some nervous chuckles, most people are relieved when she leaves the stage.

Kathryn Janeway: has been having a Good Time watching her staff do this, very alarmed when Chakotay says turnabout is fair play and she ought to get up on stage. no structured jokes, tells anecdotes from childhood/the academy that get laughs because for some reason people on her ship think she is straight laced and she’s always been That Reckless. Probably leaned up against a lectern or piano or something with a glass in her hand like Frank Sinatra the whole time.

The Doctor: demanded to “save the best for last”, absolutely distraught when people start yawning and getting up to head out. his fault for turning his five minutes into fifteen on the history of the commedia dell’arte style of improvisational theater

[womanguy]

you should get a second evening for reading fan fiction. And you should get an extra day in the week to do arts and crafts.

[hungwy]

Another reason why trains would be good is that most people are not good at driving

[fwizard]

all i need is a sweet treat. and six thousand dollars

[quinnception]

Reblog to give prev a sweet treat and $60,000 instead of $6000 due to inflation

[achesspiece]

is that simple task bothering you queen

[000l]

[shrewreadings]

like to charge, reblog to cast.

[fageleh]

hobbies should not take up this much space. there ought to be a hobby pocket dimension, where I am able to store everything I need in a breadbox that weighs no more than my cat.

[oflightningandstars]

"actively hungry" + "none of the foods sound good at all" is one of the worst combinations. who let this happen

[jakeperalta]

not using AI genuinely feels like the rest of the world is experiencing some kind of mass amnesia. if someone says they never use it, the immediate response is that can't be true because "everyone" uses it to write their emails or answer their questions. saw a comment suggesting that not using chatgpt to write an essay is "like the 90s". girl I graduated in 2021 and we weren't doing that! how is it that everyone has suddenly forgotten that they were entirely capable of doing these things all by themselves for their entire lives up until the past few years!! am I going crazy!!!

[hometoursandotherstuff]

[ekjohnston]

This feels like it should not be real. But it is real.

[mywingsareonwheels]

I honestly think that if you watch the fight on the ice between Shane and Scott and blame either of them or lack compassion for them both... you have rather missed the point of it, and maybe even some of the point of the show as a whole.

Scott's in the closet largely because he feels like for Hockey Saved Him And Is His Family reasons he's obliged to be. He's dedicated his whole life and energy to the game (which he loves, but his relationship to hockey culture is fucked up and self-abandoning in the extreme), and he's burning out. Being told, in effect, that he's not trying hard enough after a brutal loss is naturally going to hurt him massively more than Shane intended, especially when he's just met a man he has feelings for and is beginning to question his choices and what he's been sacrificing. And being on the receiving end of that from a young player he likes and respects, and the day after Ilya chirped him too, and when commentators Will Not Stop Crapping On Him (and he's too fucked up not to keep listening to that)? Ouch.

And of course (which is the bit most people do get, since it's more obvious) Shane's going to think Scott's clocked him and Ilya and is being homophobic, rather than... what's actually happening here. Whether Scott's actually clocked them or not is ambiguous (I think he hasn't), but there's no threat intended that's for sure (I think at worst it's, "ugh your crush is a terrible influence on you", which is unfair but still). But Shane is rightly terrified of being outed; even some of his friends on his team say homophobic shit (eg JJ's casual use of a slur). So of course he's going to think Scott is threatening to out him and is absolutely and understandably terrified and furious. Also ouch.

It's not "crime"[1], it's tragedy. Two sad, scared gay men, one definitely neurodivergent and the other probably so, who have hit each other's rawest spots without meaning to, who probably sound like each other's jerkbrains in that moment, and when they would naturally be friends and allies at that. They don't know each other's contexts, they can't know each other's contexts, and neither of them is being their best selves but omg neither of them intended to do damage. It fits in exactly with the themes of ep3, of how much the closet and the pressures of existing within a homophobic sport fuck with these men. Scott being aged up for the show is a stroke of genius for partly this reason: the closet is making him increasingly ill; it's going to do the same to Shane and Ilya. It's already doing it somewhat.

Also worth noting: by Sochi Shane and Scott are fine to hang out with each other and Scott is happy to support Shane's friend (even if less.. loudly so than Carter, bless him ;-) ), and by 2017 Shane refers to Scott as "a nice guy", continues to be obviously amused by Ilya's blatant crush on the man, doesn't hate the Admirals doing well (given the Metros are already out), and is clearly blown wide open by The Kiss. <3 So either they apologised to each other shortly after the fight (I see an awkward but rather sweet embarrassed text exchange the following morning), or they just... both put it aside because this is hockey and fights over misunderstandings happen all the time, and once they each calmed down they each realised the other didn't mean it like that.

Do I wish they had both handled things better? Oh yes. I do also want to bang their heads together a bit! But also: hug the fuck out of them.

Two characters can be (temporarily) at odds without either of them being even the villain. Especially when they're both in a bad situation like that one. <3

[1] I am once again begging everyone to stop using the "gay on gay" crime or what have you, especially as a joke; it derives from a grotesquely racist phrase. Esp. fellow white people: we do not get to use that construction, please.

[katchystar]

We should also note that Shane was being a massive dick first. He's not chirping Scott in the heat of a scrum or over a face-off. He skates over to Scott after the game (a game his team won 5-1) while Scott is nowhere near him for the sole purpose of chirping Scott. He's being a sore winner and engaging in poor sportsmanship.

[oedipalrivalry]

being a team sports fan really is like oh what if you stanned the ship of theseus

[creaturepeaches]

i hate it when i can tell my perception of a character is diminishing in real time because of fandom wank. like nooooo i want to maintain an objective relationship with the text but everyone is so annoying about you nooooo

[kerovousphoto]

Iris

[vehder]

i miss u so much (pre ai internet)

[photowilliams]

A Tranquil Corner

Old boathouse. Cumbria. UK.

[specialagentartemis]

”AI is just a tool you have to learn to use responsibly!” yeah just like cigarettes are just a tool you have to learn to use responsibly. People want there to be a “responsible” way for ChatGPT to generate your school essays for you soooooooo bad