vice-president to pain

*prolonged silence* “oh my…”

“sir…sir how will we make first contact with them? surely we…we cannot refuse this handclasping ritual, they will take it as an insult, but what vulcan would agree to such a distasteful and uncomfortable ritual??”

Bonus: here’s a screencap of Solkar doing the “my body is ready” pose right before he shakes Zefram Cochrane’s hand:

That’s why he’s so slow in doing it, and so sensual. A part of Solkar can’t believe this is happening, despite it being a perfectly logical thing to expect from a human, and the rest of him can’t believe how good it is.

I bet that if the camera zoomed in any further we would see the dilation of Solkar’s pupils and a quickly-repressed shiver of delight. Cochrane’s firm, businesslike clasp is probably (in sexual terms) being perceived as a deliciously carnal display of dominance.

edit in case any of you think im joking.

Wisteria

Albert Watson

Christopher Eccleston: Why my Doctor had to be northern

“If you’re an alien how comes you sound like you’re from the north?” Billie Piper’s Rose Tyler asked The Doctor ten years ago – now Christopher Eccleston has finally revealed why his Time Lord had a northern accent.

“Lots of planet have a north” the Doctor told Rose way back then, but Eccleston (who returns to our TV screens in ITV’s new thriller Safe House on Monday April 20th at 9pm) gives a rather different answer in this week’s edition of Radio Times.

“I wanted to move him away from the RP (received pronunciation) for the first time because we shouldn’t make a correlation between intellect and accent” he says, “although that still needs addressing”.

The self-described working-class actor also says that cultural inequality is “much more pronounced” in Britain than it used to be, and that it would be difficult for a young actor with his background to succeed in the industry today.

“You can’t blame Eddie Redmayne or Benedict Cumberbatch but inequality will lead to a milky, anodyne culture. To an extent that’s already happened,” he argues.

My default is long tail in pattern, but I may have to try out twisted German (the image is linked to the source blog and an entry about the Twisted German Cast On).

here are some papers! i’d suggest when you’re searching to think specifically about neoliberal capitalism, because the compulsory isolation neoliberalism promotes is itself a promotion of social media parasociality –– that is, we identify, often pseudo-familially, with the influencer figure (and their brand) as a surrogate for the community we are trained not to need. we’re then able to frame consumption of an individual’s videos, tweets, whatever as acts of individual self-maintenance (”self-care”) even as engagement is always-already interactive. so much of parasociality is rooted in the idea that this relationship is not a relationship at all, but an act of identification, a consumer staking their claim.

Mediating Neoliberal Capitalism: Affect, Subjectivity and Inequality

Friends, not ATMs: parasocial relational work and the construction of intimacy by artists on Patreon

@ realdonaldtrump: political celebrity, authenticity, and para-social engagement on Twitter