thegreatwordologist:

lemonsharks:

dontbearuiner:

wearmanyhats:

obscuruslupa:

skankplissken:

I had a dream about a Star Trek series with a ferengi captain and he was super endearing but it was like…the worst ship in the fleet and it was full of the misfits of starfleet But I loved this captain I loved him who is he

this is an amazing idea

It’s Nog.

Despite its face as a purported utopia, Starfleet’s got some unfortunate cultural hangups to work through when it comes to certain species, of course. Being the only Ferengi in Starfleet, Nog has to deal with all kinds of racist bullshit from his peers, his superiors, those he eventually outranks.

He makes captain real quick, through a combination of a few open-minded mentors, bull-headed determination, and the good old-fashioned lobes for the business of dealing with people. And he does it despite the bullying, the unfounded rumors and stumbling blocks thrown in his way. He campaigns to have his own ship and gets it simply because the bigots at the top can’t find a legitimate reason to deny it.

But they still try to set him up for failure. They crew his below-substandard ship with the dregs, the misfits, the near-dropouts of the Academy. But instead of getting frustrated, Nog sees opportunity. He knows what his ragtag crew feels like- the unwanted, expected to crash and burn, pushed out to be forgotten.

They know why they’ve been dumped together, pushed aside in the hopes that they’ll just go away. After an admittedly rocky start, Nog sits the crew down in the mess hall and tells these square pegs to start carving corners into the round holes Starfleet has shoved them into. You can’t fit the job? Make the job fit you. We could just give up and be bitter that we’ve all clearly been put here because Admirals Whats-Their-Faces are just waiting for us to bumble into a black hole, or we could surprise them. Prove them wrong.

For himself, Nog adapts the Rules of Acquisition to be compatible with Starfleet culture. His uncle Quark would need a fainting couch if he ever heard, but Nog is thinking profit in a much longer game. He wants to be just the first of many Ferengi to join Starfleet, so he must be a consummate cultural pioneer. More Ferengi in Starfleet might mean eventually Ferenginar joins the Federation. It’s a… very long shot, admittedly, and he might be long dead of old age by the time it happened, but Nog has faith in his people. The females’ liberation movement, going full steam ahead back on his home planet, proves his people can change for the better; it’s a start. Wider acceptance in the galactic community = profit for Ferenginar’s people, and Nog’s idea of profit has expanded somewhat beyond just latinum. (Quark would also need that fainting couch if he ever knew the radical altruistic turn his nephew’s philosophy had taken.)

Ishka listens to her grandson’s weekly transmissions home and could just burst with pride with each one.

He susses out the talents and skills each of his crewmembers has to offer. Puts them to work in ways that dance just around the edges of regulation, finding loopholes in only the way a good Ferengi can. The jerks in charge of handing out assignments keep giving him missions either designed to be a guaranteed fail or are so terrible and frustrating that they should just want to quit, but he turns these fetch quests and garbage details on their side to not only succeed, but return with valuable data or objects of interest. Nothing galaxy-shaking, but more than enough that it makes Nog’s detractors fume at the thought of this upstart shrimp of a Ferengi and all those should-be washouts doing well. Pretty soon Nog’s supporters, the handful of teachers back at the Academy, are all smirking quietly at each other in the faculty conference rooms.

Then Nog and his crew land the big one. One of their little throwaway missions turns over just the right space rock and there’s some universe-ending anomaly staring back at them. Their calls for assistance are treated casually at best- ‘Ugh, it’s the Ferengi and the USS Jury Rig (not their little tub’s real name, but the insult backfired, and Nog’s pretty sure Jenkins is the one who handpainted the nickname on the nacelles during a spacewalk; Nog pretends not to have noticed.), what, did they get caught behind a flock of asteroids?’

Nog and his crew realize help is dragging their warp-speed asses and they’re on their own. Defiantly, they roll their eyes, sigh (gee, shouldn’t we all own condos here at the back of everyone’s priority queue by now?) and get to work. By the time the first ship arrives to help, its just in time to watch the crew of the Jury Rig banish the terrible thing in the sky.

In the fallout, Starfleet command is made aware of all the things Nog and his crew has actually accomplished, along with all the shit they’ve put up with from superiors who set them up to fail. Nog is offered a newer, better ship. Some of the crew are offered promotions, positions on more prestigious ships. To a one, they decline. They’re staying with Captain Nog.

…they take the new ship, though.

I WANT SIX SEASONS AND A MOVIE.

OR A NETFLIX 23 EPISODE SEASON.

EITHER WAY. GIMME.

I NEED THIS SHOW SO MUCH OMG

I want this desperately!

One thing that was entirely new to me and refreshing about being in Japan was that for the first time I was smack in the middle of people who really paid no attention to the US, or pretty much anywhere else. They didn’t concern themselves in the slightest with what we’d make of things. They make their products for the local scene, and will happily take westerner money for them, but nuts to our issues and what we might want, we’re just a convenient extra. So I’m certain SE is going to do what they do and we’ll just have to deal with the English-speaking fandom fallout and yet another influx of noobs who think they see ffvii better than us old farts. Not looking forward to that part, it was tiresome enough the first time.

freedom-of-fanfic:

an ask I got just reminded me of this story.

‘ask any normal person and they’ll agree with me,’ is a claim often made by antis when arguing that your bad ships are bad or your kinky fic is dangerous. and as it happens: I did have occasion to talk to ‘normal people’ about anti-shippers and get their opinion. as this is an anecdote it doesn’t actually prove anything, but as someone who has a fair amount of contact with non-fannish people on a daily basis I can say their reaction wasn’t exactly a surprise.

–

after the third doxxing of a she1th fan in the vld fandom (late last year, if I remember correctly), I finally became concerned enough that I decided to pre-empt any attempts on my employment by talking to my boss about the remote possibility that some strangers on the internet might contact our company and accuse me of being a pedophile.* in places that aren’t fandom, being accused of pedophilia is still very serious business – not the sort of thing one does lightly. this made me rather apprehensive about bringing the subject up in the first place, but I thought it couldn’t be avoided. 

I asked for a meeting with my regional manager and my immediate supervisor, who are both very much not nerdy or fannish, and had (more or less) the following conversation:

me: so I’m a fan of this cartoon called V0ltron

me: which is a kids show about a giant robot piloted by 5 humans, defending the universe from the evil alien emperor zark0n.

manager, supervisor: *laugh (as I intended)*

me: it got rebooted this year and there’s an active community of fans of the reboot online. i’m part of that community. and there’s a lot of people who are focused on romance, like which characters are kissing other characters

manager, supervisor: *amused looks* *expressions that clearly say ‘okay you weirdo, go on i guess’*

me: but because the two characters I like to imagine in a relationship is a guy who might be in his early to mid twenties and a guy probably in his late teens, there are some people who would say that i’m a pedophile

manager, supervisor: *both burst out laughing and don’t stop for a bit*

manager: what? are you serious?

supervisor: are they st*pid? you said this was a cartoon, right?

me: yeah

manager: that’s the most ridiculous thing i’ve ever heard in my life. so why are you telling us this?

me: because some of the people who would think this are also doxxing people and contacting their jobs to tell them they’re employing a pedophile.

manager: … wow, that’s fucked up.

supervisor: who gets this worked up about a cartoon?

supervisor: if someone contacts me to tell me that you’re a pedophile, I’ll laugh in their face and report them to the police.

after this conversation I had to talk to the company lawyer so he could be made aware of how being a she1th fan in the vld fandom made me a potential PR disaster. he gave me some legal advice on how to avoid getting doxxed and concluded with ‘if anything happens, we’ve got your back.’

in conclusion: 

• no ‘normal people’ don’t always agree with antis about what counts as ‘pedophilia’
• in fact, in my experience ‘normal people’ are mostly too busy pulling a mental ‘who cares brenda’ about the fact we’re all arguing about cartoon characters to even give a shit about the character ages. they think we’re all collectively ridiculous and/or obsessive
• ‘normal people’ are way more bothered by doxxing than they are shipping choices
• if an anti ever says ‘i asked normal people and they agreed with me’, take it with a grain of salt. because i can almost guarantee you they got the desired answer by how they asked the question.**
• also the laugh I got out of this with my coworkers was really cathartic. if you ever need a reality check, talk to normal people about fandom drama. they’ll have your back.

*’pedophile’ being incorrectly treated as synonymous with ‘csa offender’, of course.

**framing is everything. ‘is it okay for a teen and an adult to have a relationship?’ is a very different question from ‘is it okay for people to imagine or write or draw about a fictional teen and adult in a relationship?’ but being precise isn’t a strong point for people who see everything in black and white.