If we don’t test for hurricanes, the problem will go away. Don’t look up.

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The scene where Picard needs a heart transplant around season 2 of TNG was pretty bad. You can’t just make up words for a procedure we already have. My girlfriend still isn’t over it.

That, and even if she has sudo perms so to speak, that doesn’t necessarily make it impossible for her to be a manifestation or byproduct of the borg collective consciousness.

That’s how I feel, but I don’t think it takes away from people who see the situation as similar to being trans.

I was speaking more about the intention of the writers at the time they made the character. Seeing it as an allegory for being trans is still 100% valid despite it probably not being the intentions of the writers.

I edited my comment to make that more clear.

And also, just in general, it’s so easy to treat trans people with respect. It’s very easy, and if you do make a mistake on their pronouns or accidentally deadname someone, I’ve never ever had them take it offensively, just apologize and we move on.

Agreed

I still wouldn’t say that one reads as a trans allegory. The conflict arises from failing to meet social expectations, not from changes in gender.

But yeah, it definitely reads as a queer allegory.

Don’t forget putting entirely too much effort into building contraptions with sticks, clay, wood, rope, etc. Somebody had to invent the forge bellows.

I don’t think the writers intended the Trill to be a an allegory for being trans. It was probably just supposed to be a cool sci fi stand in for being different. You can only show current, real life discrimination being non existent in the Federation in so many ways before you have to make up new things.

But it also doesn’t change anything. Trans allegory or not, it’s yet another instance showing how Star Fleet and the Federation value everybody, no matter if they’re different or how they’re different. Fuck the transphobes.

Fear is one bad incident away from hate.

Sure. But that doesn’t mean it is a logical from an evolutionary standpoint.

It took a long time to get over that and realize why it happened but in between all I could think was black people are mean bastards because they think all white people are racist.

I am glad you got past that.

Fear is inherent, but not hate. Racism is hate.

Hate is learned, not inherent.

Unrelated, but nice username

They absolutely did want to squeeze every last drop out of you. They’ve never not. The only difference is that we’ve had decades of regulatory capture, unrestricted corporate mergers, and lower tax rates for the rich. So now they’re free to squeeze much harder than they have previously.

What I’m trying to get at is that all the aesthetics are there for a conservative to read it in a way that is compatible with their ideology

I agree that’s the case. What I disagree on is the vagueness of the values of Star Fleet/The Federation, and how much of it we see in effect. There is plenty both on screen and off screen to see.

vague enough and alien enough to not map 1-to-1 onto any modern political system.

Sure, it doesn’t map one to one. But it also makes it very clear that conservatives values are wholely incompatible with Federation philosophy. It’s a psuedo democratic socialist state.

I have to disagree a little bit on some of that.

What we do see is people who are absolutely certain that their way of life is superior to everyone else’s,

I’d say we see a hell of a lot more than that. We see within the named characters their drive to become better versions of themselves. We see people doing cheesy acts of self sacrifice for the good of others without an expectation of payment, gifts, etc. We see terraforming doing their job for the sake of it. There is a multitude of scenes that take place on earth and various colonies, all in which people are well fed, and live in walkable communities in which quality of life is the primary purpose of production.

I’ve only read two of the Star Trek books at this point (The first two in the Picard series), and we see humanitarian aid missions. We see how production facilities on Mars/Earth operate.

that the status quo must not be questioned

Could you give an example?

and that the military represents the pinnacle of society.

Star Fleet is definitely a military organization, but it is not solely a military organization by a long shot. It seems few people join for the military aspect of it, it always seems to be a decision based on family tradition, or exploration. And when they’re jerking themselves off over the values of Star Fleet, it’s never about the military aspect.

It’s a common theme. There are a lot of conservatives who are still somehow fans of Star Trek because they the lack media literacy needed to figure out that they’re values are not shared by the good guys on the show.

People commonly burnout and run themselves ragged trying to make ends meet. I know I did.

If that’s the case, then it sounds like people aren’t getting paid. At least not a living, stable wage, which was sort of the implication.

And this may at least be in a very small part be a good thing, because it incentivises creators to switch to direct from creator purchases, which we’re both in agreement is preferable.

CEO wages and capitalism doesn’t seem to care.

It still does seem to hurt them though. Because if it didn’t in some way hurt them, then they wouldn’t give a fuck about piracy.

Sure, the CEOs and execs just pass off potential lost revenue to buying users, but they can only do that to an extent. At a certain point, people are gonna say “fuck it, I don’t care to pay $80/month for music, I’ll switch to something else”.

At a bare minimum, piracy is an ever present threat to their business model, that if they push too hard with prices, everybody is gonna ditch them for piracy. Because at the end of the day nobody has a pathological need for any particular media. And if someone really likes a particular type of media, they’ll find some other way to get it without getting price gouged.

That’s the way forward.

I think we’re in full agreement of this section here. Fuck the current system.

I have like zero ability to determine when people are joking, and the internet only makes it worse :/

IIRC he passed up a full ride of chemo treatment, and his family getting taken care of by his rich friend all to serve his ego.

the question it leaves unanswered is how the creator of the pirated media will afford basic necessities like food and shelter.

Under the current capitalist system, they don’t. Scientists often have to pay the publisher to have their work published, often receiving nothing in return. Services like spotify pay next to nothing to creators that aren’t already at the top.

There will be no solution to this problem until the underling source (capitalism) is dealt with. Piracy is just a stop gap that fucks over the CEOs and shareholders until the problem is dealt with. An before anybody brings up indy games/music/etc bought directly from the creators, that’s a different story obviously.