⭐smorf⭐️ @steriodsmurf - Tumblr Blog

p-ssy-deactivated20201210-deact

hello dark mode users :)

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maveragical

This is very nice thank u

kats-blogg

Thank you

centracks

"Star Trek is so serious!!!!1!1!!”

Literally star trek and its cast:

aehallhyon

Seeing lots of Vulcan hand-touching shitposts on my dash which is delightful but also always makes me laugh a bit because like...

Guys, the reason Vulcans are weird about touch isn't because it's sexual. It's because they're touch-telepaths. It's uncomfortable for them because it means feeling the other person's emotions and, if the other person is Vulcan, exposing your own emotions in return. The reason hand-touching is also the way they express sensuality is an extension of that: it's voluntarily going in for empathy because you want to share emotions with someone. Vulcans are very private. They have a whole religion built around controlling emotions. Of course it will be weird.

We see many examples of Vulcan hand-touching that is not sexual but is instead 100% about their telepathic or energy-manipulation abilities. Humans giggling about Vulcan accupressure and T'pol going "I don't get why you find this amusing" is a whole plot point on Enterprise. T'pol also uses touch to assist Hoshi through a panic attack using a Vulcan meditative technique. On Discovery we see that just merging electrical fields via thresh-tor kashek is contact enough to establish telepathy.

Romulans are not immune to this either. In Vulcan's Heart we get a bit of dialogue from Spock where he bumps into a Romulan, feels a flash of Big Grumpy Romulan Emotion, and thinks basically, "This must be why everyone here is always on edge. You can't help but touch each other in these crowded streets, and they're very private, culturally."

Now if you want an actually canon weird Vulcan touch thing, please know that in one of the Saavik books we learn that the space between the eyebrows is an erogenous zone so like... go wild with that, fam.

startreklightning

Other Star Trek characters when pretending to be part of another species: professional make up/prosthetics made by their doctors.

Meanwhile, vulcans while pretending to be human:

1shirt2shirtredshirtdeadshirt

Funny enough, this concept is explored in The Motion Picture novelisation by Gene Roddenberry.

It is very, very rare for Vulcans to have a mind link, or bond, with another individual that can be achieved without some form of physical contact -- thought to be unheard of between a Vulcan and a human.

That is what a lot of Vulcans aspire to achieve in their relationships and connections. Roddenberry coined that as a*T'hy'la* bond in Vulcan culture.

Spock is basically outed as having that type of bond with Jim Kirk in TMP novel when he is attempting to complete Kolinhar. He fails it because when the Vulcan elder melds with Spock's mind, she can actually hear Jim Kirk's worried ruminations in Spock's mind -- on Vulcan -- all the way from Earth.

Anyway, that is particularly scandalous, and largely unheard of, in Vulcan culture. The elder instructs Spock to take leave of Vulcan and answer this call, as "his place is elsewhere".

This post summarizes that moment in the film beautifully while conveying more of the emotion of TMP novel -- that it was the connection to Jim that Spock could not sever or let go of in order to complete Kolinahr.

Shout out to @kristascoffee-blog1 for creating these gorgeous gifs and the OP which articulates this moment so well.

In the movie version, Spock's summoning is depicted as solely being about sensing V'Ger.

In the novel, it is because he is essentially caught having a T'hy'la bond with Jim Kirk that is strong enough for them to hear each other *on other planets*.

In TMP novel, Roddenberry describes Spock and Jim's mind link as a very unique, rare and much sought after type of bond that is revered in Vulcan culture.

Roddenberry wrote: "For Spock, theirs had been the touching of two minds which the old poets of Spock's home planet had proclaimed as superior even to the wild physical love which affected Vulcans every seventh year during pon farr." I mean . . . That's pretty major. LOL

I thought they were intentionally nodding to that quote about poets and the T'hy'la bond from the novel when Pelia referred to Kirk and Spock's connection as "poetic", a reference to how Spock himself thinks of their bond in TMP novel.

I always felt the film version lacked a great deal of that incredible humanity and affection found in the novel because they were so late getting Nimoy involved. They didn't have enough time filming with him to deeply explore some of the more meaningful moments with Spock on screen outside of what we did get.

In the novel you get to hear all of his pained, desperate, and insecure thoughts. How much his heart is bursting when he first comes aboard the Enterprise. But we see little of that inner turmoil displayed in the film, sadly.

I know given the opportunity and time, Nimoy would have done a wonderful job with fleshing out Spock's story, because honestly, TMP is about Spock. V'Ger simply mirrors what he is going through and helps him realize where he belongs.

They just took so long getting Nimoy involved, they barely had time to film with him. So the story feels very cold on screen, and that's too bad, because the book actually made me weep when I read it growing up because it moved me so much. It has so much heart, and it is at its core a beautiful story of self acceptance -- a willingness to be vulnerable and accept love.

Spock starts the book like V'Ger -- cold, broken, and desperately seeking answers to the meaning of his existence.

He attempts Kolinahr and is refused by Vulcan when they realize he has a T'hy'la bond. They tell him to seek out the voice calling him, as that is where he belongs.

He comes full circle in the sickbay scene when he takes Jim's hand and admits that V'Ger is what he had aspired to, and he doesn't like what he sees -- he realizes the incredible value in the simplicity of love, trust, and loyalty.

TMP is actually supposed to be about Spock and how his journey from shame about his connection to Jim to unabashed pride mirrors V'Ger's experience.

V'Ger also goes from being cold and barren to discovering the potential and value of human love. Sadly, they took so long to get Nimoy signed on for TMP that the end result was a story that really wasn't about Spock or his journey, even though the novel almost entirely focuses on what Spock and Jim went through and how that parallels V'Ger.

Spock tries Kolinahr, Jim tries admiralty, and they both end up miserable pursuing what they *think* the next step naturally should be, not what they actually want. The conclusion is them actually accepting that they are far, far better together than they are separate.

Their T'hy'la bond, this form of Vulcan bonding thought to be so rare it is often considered a myth on their planet it is considered so unattainable -- this bond is shared between a human and half-human Vulcan.

It solidifies that Vulcans actually stifle themselves and their potential when they get too hung up on being pragmatic, stop at logic, and don't explore beyond logic as a meaning to life. As Spock says many years later, logic is only the beginning of that exploration, not the end. Spock has grown by not permitting himself to have such limitations.

So in summary, you are absolutely right -- this kind of mental bond or connection is extremely rare in Vulcan culture, and seldom seen without there being a physical connection to establish a link.

The absolute irony is, a rare Vulcan T'hy'la bond is shared between a human and half-human Vulcan, while many full Vulcans will live out their long lifetimes without ever knowing what that is like.

dykespirk

human things I think Vulcans would be good at:

getting a return processed at Target

COVID compliance

birdwatching, but for like. algae and slugs and stuff. (they’re too advanced for just birds)

dealing with medical negligence

online shopping (they have 2k tabs open at all times)

marketplace bartering (in any locale)

elementary school riddles (green glass door, etc.)

starting underground rainbow loom empires (adult or child, doesn’t matter)

cutthroat pitchfork reviews

letterboxd (rating film by various, limited metrics? they consider it humanity’s greatest contribution in eons; one of the reasons they make first contact)

writing unhinged YouTube comments

patiently discovering, and reviewing, each ending of a choose-your-own-adventure book

you may add your own

aphrostiel

various star trek: first contact drawings

I loved this movie so much, so far my favorite along with TWoK. also made this in honor of the movie's 30th anniversary this year!

vulcanlovetriangles

I feel deprived that we never saw these two meet, though they likely crossed paths at some point in their careers.

tossawary

I just know in my heart of hearts that in "Star Trek" at one point, there was some moral panic somewhere on Vulcan (among the uppity sorts) because Human culture was "infecting" the local youth with their overly emotional, destructive, unproductive, frivolous, and uneducational ways.

And what was actually happening was that a bunch of Vulcan kids got really into 23rd-century "Minecraft" or something.

Small Vulcan child @ another Vulcan child: (in a tone that sounds flat to Humans but angry as hell to Vulcans) "You have compromised the optimization of my fortress. I am having an emotional urge to blow up your house... in Minecraft."

risingchaos

So, here’s an interesting little fun fact for y’all.

We all know Vulcan blood is green. It’s been like that since TOS, and the explanation we get is that their blood is copper based instead of iron based like humans, which is partly what gives us that red. Iron is what allows us to transport oxygen throughout our body.

When copper oxidizes, it becomes a green color. That’s my guess as to why they chose such a rich green color. Here’s the fun part, though. We do actually have life forms on Earth with copper based blood.

Quite a few deep sea creatures (squid, mollusks, octopi) and some kinds of land dwelling have copper based blood! Instead of hemoglobin, they have hemocyanin. Their blood is blue, and like, a pretty solid blue, to be honest. Some mollusks actually have been beneficial in medical research due to their blood, but that’s a whole other thing.

Here’s another fun fact, hemocyanin is actually less efficient than hemoglobin. It doesn’t transport oxygen as well, but, it’s more effective at working in cold climates. That’s why these deep sea creatures have it. It’s an evolutionary thing.

Granted, that doesn’t make sense for the arid desert dwelling species of the Vulcans, but I just thought this was fun. There’s a couple species on Earth (skinks in New Guinea) with green blood, but they do have hemoglobin. They just use biliverdin (the cause of green in bruising) differently and don’t process it out of them. Biliverdin in humans gets processed into bilirubin, and then taken out of the body as both are toxic in high concentrations. High bilirubin counts are the cause for jaundice. Right now we don’t actually know why the skinks are able to keep high concentrates of biliverdin in their body.

I just thought this was interesting, thinking about how Vulcan blood works. I think about alien anatomy a lot, what bases can cause different colors, the alternate ways internal organs could be laid out in a humanoid, what other organs we could have. It’s fascinating, truly.

a-most-beloved-fool

I really wish that more pre-reform/pre-surak fics leaned into cyberpunk instead of going for "shirtless men with spears". Like if I'm being honest, it feels like people sometimes turn vulcans into the "noble savage" trope. Which is, I cannot stress this enough, very weird. You're writing about spacemen and you're somehow managing to be racist against native people. And like. I don't think it's deliberate, and I'm aware that this conception of vulcans has been around for decades and that many people have just kind of picked it up by osmosis, but. Like. It's not great. It is, dare I say, a little bit problematic. It also isn't at all accurate to canon? People just made that up. Because Surak died in the 4th century, just about 2000 years before canon, and do you know what his cause of death was? Radiation poisoning. When they say, "vulcans were extremely violent pre-reform, and nearly wiped themselves out," they don't mean they were having tribal battles on the backs of sehlats or whatever. They mean they were having nuclear warfare.

dykespirk

okay this is kind of a stupid thought but I was thinking about the internal debates that Vulcan society must have around logic and it occurred to me that Vulcan must have “logical relativists” in the same way that human philosophy has moral relativists…I just know that there’s at least 30 Vulcan philosophers who want to KILL the noble Storek House of T’Nel (or something) because he can’t stop telling everyone that All Behavior is Inherently Logical as it Makes Sense to the Acting Party at the Time. Humans are Illogical Therefore it is Logical That They Act Illogicaly, thus All of Their Actions are Logical. All Thought, Conscious or Unconscious, Proceeds from Biological and Neurochemical Impulses. Therefore, the Sentient Being Behaves Much like a Computer, Following its Compiled Commands. No Behavior, Knowing the Chemical Commands that Preempt Consciousness, Can Be Considered Illogical.

and everyone else is just like “ohhh my fucking GOD Storek, shut UP!”

katesdaycabin

I was perusing the 1977 Michael McMaster blueprints for the Romulan Bird of Prey, like you do, and caught something I'd never noticed before: Vulcan, Andorian, and other Federation members' units of length and their conversion to Terran meters: