space forest

The absolutely pervasive mentality that unwanted criticism or critique shouldn't be given and should be ignored is why fans of color don't stay in fan spaces.

And I am not going to mince words here:

A lot of you are racist. A lot of your fan works are racist.

That might have been difficult to hear. And if it was, you should probably reflect on why that was.

"Fandom etiquette" has created a space where fans of color either bite our tongues and eventually leave or say something, get dogged on, and then eventually leave.

If I say "I am uncomfortable with fandom's tendency to write trans men as feminine and submissive" I do not mean "I think every person who writes feminine submissive trans men should be chased with pitchforks". I don't even mean "any cis-person who writes feminine or submissive trans men should be chased with pitchforks". I mean "I would like writers to seriously think about why this is so common, why they write that, and if it fairly and genuinely engages with what it means to be a trans man, or if they just think it's hot when submissive people have vaginas and didn't want to write omegaverse of m/f".

Similarly, when people say "fandom is systemically less interested in black characters, less willing to give flat black characters rich fanon than flat white characters, and less interested in black characters in ships", the response is not to explain why you, personally, just happen to like popular white guy in that fanon. Your job is to look at yourself and ask if you tend to "just happen to be more interested" in the popular white guy across fandoms, be honest, and start unpacking that. Sometimes it's easier to love the flat character who's already getting 10,000 fics with headcanons and art and meta.

If somebody says "I wish there were more gluten free options at the potluck. I hate always showing up and not finding anything I can eat*", they are not asking you to throw your cake in the trash and weep. They do not want to hear your long speech about how actually this is your grandmother's recipe, and you've tried it with rice flour actually, but it just didn't work. You think about what you can do, and you listen to how they feel.

i don't mean like absolute silence. obviously in an ideal community, there would still be sound and noise from people and music and work etc. but it haunts me that when i camp in the forest i can hear the howl of semi trucks on the interstate miles away. and the people who live beside it never know quiet. it haunts me that many people will live their whole lives never seeing the stars in the sky that were fully visible with NO electric light pollution as recently as my great-grandparents' childhoods.

so much of our lives is bright bright unnecessary noise. neon mcdonalds signs 200 feet in the air so we can see it from the road. led lights over billboards. parking lots lit up like sports stadiums at closed office buildings. advertisements playing at gasoline pumps. streets lined with led porch lights and decorative garden lights that genuinely threaten entire species of wildlife. music blaring outside pharmacies to deter homeless people. everything always shining and wailing for no purpose but profit and cruelty.

book you’ve reread the most times?

top 5 books of all time?

what is your favourite genre?

what sections of a bookstore do you browse?

where do you buy books?

what books have you read in the last month?

is there a series/book that got you into reading?

what is the first book you remember reading yourself?

when do you tend to read most?

do you have a guilty fav?

what non-fiction books do you like if any?

did you enjoy any compulsory high school readings?

do you have a goodreads?

do you ever mark/dog ear books you own?

recommend and review a book.

how many books have you read this year?

top 5 children’s books?

do you like historical books? which time period?

most disliked popular books?

the characters' family trees/connections

the way people die

plot twists (among others to explain actors' departures)

the dramatic zoom-ins on characters' faces

A good soap has all of the above, but which one does COC have in abundance?

The skimmer has its own dedicated subforum on the biggest fan site and people regularly post pictures of themselves with skimmers of the same make. All location data monitored by the Order of course. Someone got into big trouble for selling off what they claimed was pieces from the wreck of the original skimmer. They were going for mad prices before the investigation got underway.

Incredibly, the actual skimmer was tracked down postwar to a quarry two hours outside Ses’erakh by former Order filing clerk Akem Retel, and is now held in pride of place at the Culat Museum of Popular Culture, opened by Castellan Garak in 2388,

CoC causes of death list:

- White skimmer (multiple times)

- Cardboard boxes

- Fall down a turbolift shaft

- Mauled by regnars

- Poisoned by the highly toxic pollen of the perek flower

Also: who is that one character that regularly gets killed and then miraculously comes back, "bitch you thought you'd seen the last of me" style and is it Mathra's niece?

One of the longest-standing actors (played Mathra’s second husband, she was his third wife) foolishly confused his fame with reality and was embroiled in a real-life marital scandal with a girl young enough to be his daughter. Wasn’t seen on screen again. Or off.

Also, post fire, is there a character that is absolutely not a thinly veiled version of Gul Dukat?

THE LAST TIME HE TRIED TO THUNDER STEP HER OUT AND AWAY SHE WAS NOT WILLING.

THAT WAS KINGS CAGE.

Once upon a time (Dec 1, 2020), a group of Star Trek fans on Twitter led by the intrepid author @unamccormack were imaging what it would be like if people in TNG and DS9 actually watched non-20th century Earth media. I, having recently read "The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation," suggested the following:

There must be a years-long-running Cardassian historical soap/drama with multiple generations of warring families, sneaky politics, star-crossed romance, duty to the state…every so often Garak gets a big batch of eps from the black market, closes his shop, and binge-watches.

@unamccormack happily picked up this thread and ran with it, naming the show "Clouds Over Culat." Eventually twitter imploded and our thread was lost, but here we are nearly six years later on Tumblr keeping "Clouds Over Culat" alive. I wanted to make a post where we can put everything we remember about the show and can add all our new headcanons. This starting post is what I can reconstruct from my downloaded twitter archive before I shut down my account. We've got more material in the replies to various posts on Una's Tumblr, hopefully one of us will dig it up and add it here :)

Men are not inherently Evil

Everyone has the capacity for evil

Transgender Men are men

Transgender Women are women

Excluding Cisgender Men from your spaces requires Transgender Men to out themselves if they want to engage (Same for Women)

Anyone can be Non-Binary, there is no "look" or requirement

Non-binary masculine presenting people should be welcome in queer spaces, many are just treated as men and predators

Non-binary feminine presenting people should be welcome in queer spaces without being seen as "Woman-Lite"