Official PIC Bracket

best-star-trek-character:

best-star-trek-character:

And here’s the final bracket! Round One will go live tomorrow, 4/28 at 10 am EST!

Full List:

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AND ROUND ONE IS DONE! Thank you everyone who voted! The results will go in the first post, and Round Two will begin tomorrow 5/6 at 10 am EST!

#I am cackling that Picard got knocked out in round one of his own show#Laris you deserve it you absolute gem I love you#bit sad Soji got knocked out but all the other round one brackets went how I like#but but oh no the next round is 😬 it’s going to be a bloodbath#Data seems to sweep most things and he’s up against Seven it’s not the final and I am genuinely worried for Seven#Raffi vs Worf and will nostalgia beat Raffi’s awesomeness? I mean Worf was great in season 3 but Raffi was there the whole time#Elnor vs Hugh is like physical pain#Riker vs Rios will be one to watch#it is probably ridiculous how intently I am going to be watching this 😂

regionalpancake:

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Watching TNG characters consistently beat original PIC characters in the (checks notes) Best PIC Character Competition is making me want to bite things

#and *waves hand* this so much this just ugh#like nobody is saying TNG characters aren’t good (I mean opinions obviously vary) but they have their OWN show#I mean Worf bless him is still in the TNG and the DS9 bracket!!! this is Raffi’s only eligible bracket#and Raffi is amazing like defies words amazing because it’s just such a lot#sighing forever

quasi-normalcy:

So the thing about Star Trek: Picard is…

Say what you will about the first season, but it’s meaningful. In fact, Rios says explicitly what it’s about in the fourth episode: “the existential pain of living with the consciousness of death and how it defines us as human beings.” Pretty much all of the character arcs are about different reactions to this, and the supposed “grimdarkness” of the setting reinforces this point; the Federation has become reactionary and xenophobic because it was a utopia that experienced mass death right on its doorstep for the first time in living memory. The conflict with the Synths is ultimately rooted in the fact that we die; they don’t. The fact that the finale was called “Et in Arcadia ego” really just telegraphs this; “Even in Arcadia [utopia], I [Death] am.”

And the second season, for all its many flaws, carries this theme forward, proposing that love, togetherness, and companionship are the only meaningful candles in the dark. Q is dying; he awaits meaning, and he doesn’t find it. And so he opts instead to do one last favour for Jean-Luc so at least he can spare his favourite mortal from his own fate of dying alone. Jurati is able to connect with the Borg Queen because she recognises that her own motivation is something similar: the Queen can feel herself dying across infinite realities and she doesn’t want to be alone. Seven and Raffi find each other; Rios gives up his entire life for a shot at love. It’s an infernal mess, a budget-saving exercise in want of a plot, but I’m going to be honest: I kind of adore it. I think it’s beautiful for all its flaws.

Throughout the first two seasons, we have serious contemplations of transhumanism and identity in the face of death. Picard escapes death using technology, even as his friend, a living machine, embraces his end as a necessary part of being human. Soji loses her identity even as she gains knowledge of herself as an immortal android. Jurati too embraces transhumanism and, to some extent, loses her identity by so doing, but–in an interesting twist for Star Trek–this is not stigmatized; this is framed as what’s best for her. All of this is philosophically rich, high-octane fuel for thought, as speculative fiction should be.

The third season, meanwhile–for all that I have loved (some of) the nostalgia hits injected directly into my veins–bugs me because of how absolutely lightweight it feels. Death is gone. Not just as a theme, but gone from the narrative. Sure we kill off Ro, and T’Veen, and Vadic, and Shelby, and Shaw, but it feels like nothing. Death holds no dominion; Data is back; so’s the Enterprise-D; so’s Q (or maybe he’s come in from an earlier point in his timeline; it’s not clear). Kirk apparently is alive again, resurrected offscreen sometime after Generations and kept in a covert warehouse awaiting new adventures. Apparently Terry Matalas has already formulated plans for bringing Todd Stashwick back if when he gets his “Legacy” spinoff. I’m half-surprised that they didn’t reveal that Romulus magically popped back into existence in a background Okudagram somewhere. The Federation is as “grimdark” as it has ever been depicted, but unlike the first season (or Deep Space Nine, or even the first season of Discovery), this is never seriously interrogated or problematised. We go through the motions, cargo-cult-like, of moral debate in episode 7, but it’s not connected to anything. We hear that Vadic was the product of Section 31 war crimes; Picard looks shaken up by this, but then he and Beverly immediately decide to commit some war crimes of their own by executing her. This is never mentioned again. The whole exercise feels perfunctory, as I have said above: like ten-year-olds playing with action figures. It doesn’t feel like Picard, and frankly, for all of the surface detail it gets right, it feels even less like TNG.

So no; I’m not pleased that the first two seasons were ignored.

(via captaininsaneway)

#I don’t know enough about behind the scenes to say but did someone else do most of the work on season one?#this has flavours of ouat and how the early seasons setup was rumoured to be someone else’s#and then when Adam and Eddie had to continue on their own that’s when it lost the plot#that and their favourite self-insert history does love to repeat#I just can’t fathom how anybody looked at season 3 scripts and didn’t just burst out laughing and go you are kidding right?#it’s a fever dream well more of a nightmare#what were they thinking??#i am salty

I have a made a decision. In the true spirit of:

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‘Word of God’ aka social media tweet ≠ canon.

Picard finale said “a year later” and showed Raffi and Seven on the bridge.

It did not say they were still broken up.

If it’s not on screen I can ignore it.

Hell even if it is on screen I can ignore it but in this case canon literally does not contradict.

There I feel better now.

#I’m gonna get back to writing my fic#the feels can not be contained

girlpornparadise:

galactic-pirates:

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prev tags:

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I’m not here to change anyone’s mind. I know there has been a ton of discourse around Shaw deadnaming Seven, but I’ll wade into the muck anyway.

Firstly, I am aware that deadnaming is a triggering subject for a lot of people and as a cishet woman I can’t truly understand it.

But I also think we need to contextualize it in Star Trek as a piece of fiction. Yes, Shaw is my Blorbo. No, deadnaming Seven isn’t okay. However, television has been reduced to 10 episode seasons. We literally don’t have time for subtlety or character development the way we used to. The writers picked deadnaming as shorthand for Shaw being an asshole and as a quick way to flip the switch to him showing respect with his dying breath as a character redemption. Was it lazy? Probably. But I’m genuinely curious how you would change it. How would you get the same effect given he is a new side character in a series focusing on a half dozen legacy characters who take screen time getting excited about the carpet on the Enterprise D (fact, not complaint). 

I just get the same vibe as people who think characters should talk out all their feelings like a therapy session to divide all the good guys into white hats and the bad guys into black hats. I want assholes to redeem themselves and heroes to make bad decisions. I want scenarios that make me question my own day to day actions and motivations. For the love of all that is fictional, can we keep characters of varying character so not everything is a Disney movie.

Hey I think we’ve had a miscommunication. Probably entirely my fault as like I said I have never used the meme format to make a point before. It was probably too complex which is why I wrote too much and the font is so tiny.

What the writers motivations were for why they wrote it is… well a friend just explained to me Watsonian vs Doyalist textual analysis which is basically in universe vs out of universe. I was coming at this from an in universe perspective. What happened, happened, and if the characters were real people (obviously they are not) about how they would process that/feel about things etc.

I am incredibly conflict averse which is why I tagged the way I did. I want to stay in my lane. If Shaw is your blorbo I am honestly happy for you. Seriously not being sarcastic. Fandom is an expression of love. Different characters resonate with different people etc. so I’m not in any way saying you are wrong for your feelings.

Purely talking about this from a character perspective my point actually had very little to do with Shaw at all. It was entirely about Seven’s (potential) POV/reactions as related to prior trauma. She’d been in an abusive relationship, and Shaw’s actions (while much less than what Bjayzl did) would have been like a callback. That part wasn’t Shaw’s fault, he wasn’t to know about triggering trauma/bad memories. The end part of my point, about how it was worse coming from the Captain, is again from Seven’s POV, because Janeway I guess and Picard maybe and how ultimately Seven wouldn’t have expected that behaviour from StarFleet. Not to say that StarFleet hasn’t disappointed her before but the Captain was someone her subconscious could have reasonably assumed would be a safe person, someone she could trust and Shaw wasn’t that.

If you’ve ever been in a long term abusive situation you form certain behaviours to protect yourself. When you get out you swear it won’t happen again but triggers are triggers. You want to think you’d fight but those self-protective behaviours are fairly ingrained, it’s instinct to curl in yourself and just endure. Obviously this isn’t going to be true for everyone but it’s my perspective, and my read of this fictional character. Now there wasn’t much to go on at all in season three but enough for speculation, and perhaps yeah a lot of projecting. Seven is so strong and so for her to simply accept it. I couldn’t help but go “oh. Conditioning from Bjayzl” and that was my point.

And in the spirit of attempting to avoid miscommunication. As I felt you missed my point I would like to address my understanding of yours. I wasn’t arguing at all that the writers shouldn’t have written that Shaw did what he did. In fact I was going deep with it, finding meaning and connections, and yeah all the shades of grey and varying levels because life is messy. We all have our own perspectives based on life experiences/beliefs and that is true for characters as well. I would agree with you that’s the interesting part. I wouldn’t remove this plot element even if I could. I’m just exploring the consequences of it.

trillscienceofficer:

I literally live in fear that Paramount will find the flimsiest reason to shove Seven back into the closet and knowing that a not insignificant part of this webbed site ships Seven/Shaw is making me lose all of my remaining marbles

#everytime I see their names together it makes me feel physically sick#like I do have a couple of NoTPs but now I have whatever this is#I am usually very ship and let ship but this bothers the hell out of me#it is so viscerally wrong that yes I am with you on having extreme anxiety about it#so wrong so so wrong#I just how? why? it makes no sense#people really will ship any woman with a man she stands next to I guess#excuse me while I puke#hate it hate it hate it#picard fuckery#live in fear indeed#please season 3 was bad enough I can’t take anymore

Ok so it’s a day ending in Y and so I am thinking about Star Trek.

What keeps echoing in my head right now is the “all men are born equal but some are more equal than others.”

I’m newly pissed because at its core Trek is that frustrating, maddening dichotomy of hope for the future vs. the reality and inability to really break away or imagine something truly different.

The thought of a post-scarcity sort of utopia especially given the current political hellscape is such a comfort. The future can be better if we let it.

Where the maddening dichotomy comes in is something that has always threaded through Trek. In that people are people, they are imperfect and so while they always try, they sometimes fail. But the characters we root for, they are ultimately supposed to be the good guys. The Federation might make a misstep, but our hero, is supposed to call them on it or wryly accept the hypocrisy and that they still have work to do, or something along that lines. That doesn’t always happen obviously because people are writing the show, and those people have biases and prejudices and those blinkers come through. There have been some damn uncomfortable Trek episodes that went wide of the mark.

I’m rambling and I’m not sure I’m making my point. Narrative framing. Once Upon a Time was absolutely awful for this. The objective facts of the events said one thing like a certain character was a bad guy, but the writers made the characters say what a hero he was. Evidence didn’t match. There was a real dissonance. It made for bizarre viewing.

Picard has the same kind of shit going on. Jack Crusher got upset, and threw one hell of a tantrum. Hours went by in which he stole a shuttle and of his own free will went to the Borg cube. Yes he was then assimilated, and yes I would usually argue that the assimilated are the Borgs first victims and are not responsible for what they do as drones. They aren’t in control of their own actions. Except Jack broke his own link to the collective so how deeply assimilated was he? Seems like a lot of free choice here. And his “fire fire fire, kill the unassimilated” killed a lot of people. They aren’t specific how many but with 50 ships, and space dock, and planetary defense etc. I’m thinking a few hundred bare minimum, probably more like a few thousand.

What happened next? Was there any justice? No. Daddy is a human Admiral. So fast-tracked through StarFleet, assigned to the Flagship as a special officer.

Brings back an old sore point of Picard and his legacy vineyard estate. The events of Romulus happened, Picard was on the right side of history in terms of wanting to help the Romulans but when he failed to convince StarFleet he just fucked off to his large country estate, and what was sad? 15 years, nice comfortable life, staff to take care of everything. Raffi had a small broken down trailer in the desert. Maybe that was partly her choice, maybe she could have had an apartment in the city or whatever, but not everyone can have huge legacy country estates.

So much privilege and yeah that’s the unfortunate nature of reality. But it makes me so damn frustrated. The Federation is an ideal, principles and hope, and the best of Trek shows how they try but people are flawed, so they make their best effort. Power corrupts and institutions can be rotten but our heroes are supposed to be better. To try.

The changelings might have infiltrated StarFleet but they wouldn’t have replaced all the top brass. Some but not all. Which even if I am generous and say the changelings suggested some things, the rest of them agreed. It’s like The Winter Soldier where Hydra won because Shield sleep walked down the road to trading freedom for security. Our heroes are supposed to call that out but Picard at least is leveraging his position of privilege and benefiting from it. If the narrative framed that as a mistake, I would find it compelling, but that’s not what’s happening, and it feels bad.

I’m all for the struggle that Trek embodies of reality vs dreams of something better but the narrative needs to frame it that way. And it’s not.

Ok Picard finale.

Spoilers below.

My expectations were very low. I had made a list of cynical predictions. I was scared as deep down I was worried it would be even worse. I really thought they might kill off Raffi and I just did not want to see that.

So actually in a lot of ways going into the finale expecting it to be terrible, I wound up almost pleasantly surprised. It was still not good but it was much better than my worst fears, so I ended the episode as a bit of a puddle of relief. It could have been so much worse.

Continue reading

@milflover

I have two things to say about the finale, #1 seven calls raffi, first as a joke, number one in bed and then it sticks, and #2 I’m pissed we didn’t get to hear her say her ship go line

I am guessing they didn’t want to “lock themselves into a line” in case the spin-off does happen and the creative team for that wants something different/they wanted to save the iconic first time for the new show.

Although as I said in my ramble I want a spin-off so badly just not like this, not how they treated the characters. I do not trust them so I do not want. I would much rather no spin-off than the queer-baiting and outright character assassination.

So big nope. I mean if they make it I will have to watch (at least at first) and then just be stressed and upset. As I have zero faith they would do it well.

I mean would they continue with the shit awful lighting? Maybe if they gave the spin-off to the SNW team it might be ok. I mean that show has its definite issues too. Although for the most part I do love it but at least I can see everyone.

Ok I am undecided about the Picard finale. Up until now I have almost welcomed spoilers to soften the blow a bit. US gets it tomorrow, I will get it (UK) day after.

But I am so damn heartsick already I don’t know if I can take it. If I login and see something truly terrible…

Is it worse to see, to then have to wait, and then have to watch knowing what is to come?

Or it is worse just waiting, not knowing how bad it is, and then watching it unfold with no warning?

I really don’t know 🙁

Honestly I am trying to remember the last time I felt this damn upset about a TV show. It’s been a while. It’s disappointment really more than anything else. I mean whatever happens the characters will live on in my heart happily. But just ugh. What’s happening on screen is… they deserved better.

I’m actually looking forward to the Picard finale next week. As I want this season to be over.

Then I’ll know everything in all it’s… existence. And I can move on. At least until any potential spin-off drama rears it’s ugly head.

Right now it’s making me sad to be honest. And I don’t need that from my entertainment.

Somebody I follow keeps tagging with “salt level Dead Sea” and honestly just big mood.

OTP: angst and pain

Just once I would like that tag to not be accurate 🙁