the once and future fangirl

"You find the art of politics more engrossing than…" / "Than the art of love?” | The Borgias (2011-2013)

Katee Sackhoff's jawline appreciation post

Tyranny

AI, for related reasons

Racism

Men who refuse to be goddamn grown-ups and use birth control

Gut emotionality that isn't disciplined by reflection and rationality

Racism

Shore leave in particular, and relaxing in general

Julius Caesar

Going to cafes full of gorgeous hedonistic women by himself

Losing the Enterprise

Men being entitled douchebags about women, particularly in a kind of sexual vending machine situation

most 60s US soldiers

Interruptions to his meals or the prospect of anyone going hungry or starving

Any expectation of being some kind of masculine role model and paternal authority (maternal is fine)

The expectation of being some kind of alpha male sexy Lothario (sexy femme fatale is fine)

Young boys, whether little kids or teenagers (girls are fine)

Most high-ranking older men (powerful older women are fine)

Insecure masculinity games

Mass murder, especially as a means of control or "for the greater good"

An impromptu back massage coming from his pretty yeoman instead of Spock

Any kind of paradise fantasy or lotus-eater situation that removes the need for critical judgment and reflection and ethical responsibility

Ecofascism

Threats to his crew and other captains who don't do right by theirs

Spock even jokingly suggesting he (Spock) doesn't respect his (Kirk's) intelligence

Chaos/disruption in general, at least if he didn't cause it

Being alone

The many colossal assholes who don't take no for an answer (whether from him or others), or situations where refusal isn't a real option

Needless death

When for some mysterious reason there are sexy women but no sexy men :(

Inadequate information, especially with no ability to use delaying tactics and trickery to get enough information to make a properly informed decision

Information and evidence getting disregarded without a compelling reason

Always having to make the decisions and be in control of everythinggggg, even in what little personal life he has

Dehumanization

Sex pollen/pheromones

Anyone with pretenses to divinity

COLIN FIRTH as MR. DARCY and JENNIFER EHLE as ELIZABETH BENNET

Why is the mountain range square. How did the mountain range form. Why is there one singular volcano in the center. Why does it act like a composite volcano but have magma that acts like it’s from a shield. If it’s hotspot based volcanic activity why is there only one volcano.

my favorite thing is the american great lake snowbelts! so, the 'flow' of weather across north america, in very general terms, blows from the northwest on down south and east to the gulf of mexico.

so the wind is blowing from west to east, and in the winter it's a dryer wind than in the summer because it's colder. but after blowing across a great lake for a hundred miles, the wind is wet again. and that wet turns into snow. so for all of these lakes, the big cities are on the west side, not the east sides, because the east sides absolutely suck to live on.

the sole exception is buffalo, NY, which literally has to be there because, unfortunately, that's where all the important canal stuff between lake ontario and lake erie is happening.

also this always strikes me as cool, check out where cleveland is:

On a Watsonian level, sure.

On a Doylistic level, Mordor looks like that because plate tectonics was a fringe, ludicrous, laughable theory that nobody outside serious geology nerds had ever heard of until scientists proved seafloor spreading in the early 1960s. The first edition of the LotR trilogy was published in 54-55. We literally did not know that plate tectonics was real until almost a decade after the book was published, so obviously, it was not something Tolkien could have been considering as he made his maps.

LotR has recurring themes of the reckless imposition of one's will on the natural world creating ugliness, an order you thought was inherently an improvement that in fact is inferior to what you have displaced. (Typified by reckless tree-felling; a reflection of the despoiling of the English countryside and the world by Progress.)

Moria is the only place in Middle-Earth where mithril is found, right? That's kind of a big deal. So, why? What makes that location so special? Is it just random?

I found a paper that had just been published *that year*, 2011 or 2012 as I was writing it, that studied the locations of precious-metals mines in the Pyrenees, the similarly long skinny mountain chain that divides Spain and France. This paper discovered that where there was a bend in the mountain chain, from one of the continental plates having an awkward corner in it that got subducted under the other plate, that had dug deeper into the mantle and caused precious-metal-bearing ores to flow up to the surface in ways they didn't do anywhere else in the Pyrenees.

There's a conversation in The Fellowship of the Ring where one of the hobbits -- I don't have my copy handy or I'd get the direct quote -- asks why they can see the Misty Mountains ahead of them at one point if they're still heading south from Rivendell, and it's explained that south of Caradhras (which you may recall is the surface mountain under which Moria runs) the mountain chain bends and runs southwest instead of due south for a while.

Tolkien had absolutely no way to know *why* this particular feature of a mountain range was associated with intrusions of rare and unique metal ores, but he had gone backpacking in mountains enough to know How Things Should Look.

Starbuck/Kat fanvid by Patt5

TWO BEDS

i watched the episode with me own TWO EYES