That Unicorn Looks Happy, Eh?

Spock has had James T. Kirk as a friend for over three decades. He spent 13.63 years serving as Kirk’s first officer across three separate deep-space missions. He has sought and struggled and triumphed alongside him for nearly every single incident of significance in his adult life.

He has not seen Jim in four years.

Podfic of "One (1) Daily Shoulder Pat" by @android-and-ale

Shenanigans ensue when one middle finger to the Academy too many gets Starfleet Cadet James T. Kirk booted off planet for a summer internship aboard the VSS. Sh'Raan.

He's hiding a major secret from the oh so earnest and helpful Vulcans, but the longer he's on the ship, the more Jim starts to wonder if they're keeping secrets from him, too.

Captain Spisee handed Jim a heavy sheet of rich, cream paper embossed with gold dusted Vulcan calligraphy bearing the ship’s name. In the most elegant handwriting he’d ever had the privilege to lay eyes on, it read: Human Enrichment and Optimal Health Program: - One (1) Daily Shoulder Pat (more provided upon request) - Seventy (70) Seconds of Hug Time Per Week (divided between crew members as you deem necessary) - Three (3) Discrete Instances of Daily Praise - Three (3) Structured Entertainments per week - Minimum of One (1) Social Companion per meal (more available upon request)

It also includes these fascinating paragraphs about the role of estrogen in different types of physical activity, directly debunking the widespread notion that estrogen is the weak human's hormone and only does weak human things:

Given the fitness world's persistent touting of the hormone testosterone for athletic success, you'd be forgiven for not knowing that estrogen, which females typically produce more of than males, plays an incredibly important role in athletic performance… The estrogen receptor—the protein that estrogen binds to in order to do its work—is deeply ancient. Joseph Thornton of the University of Chicago and his colleagues have estimated that it is around 1.2 billion to 600 million years old—roughly twice as old as the testosterone receptor. In addition to helping regulate the reproductive system, estrogen influences fine-motor control and memory, enhances the growth and development of neurons, and helps to prevent hardening of the arteries. Important for the purposes of this discussion, estrogen also improves fat metabolism. During exercise, estrogen seems to encourage the body to use stored fat for energy before stored carbohydrates. Fat contains more calories per gram than carbohydrates do, so it burns more slowly, which can delay fatigue during endurance activity. Not only does estrogen encourage fat burning, but it also promotes greater fat storage within muscles… which makes that fat's energy more readily available. Adiponectin, another hormone that is typically present in higher amounts in females than in males, further enhances fat metabolism while sparing carbohydrates for future use, and it protects muscle from breakdown. Anne Friedlander of Stanford University and her colleagues found that females use as much as 70 percent more fat for energy during exercise than males. Estrogen's ability to increase fat metabolism and regulate the body's response to the hormone insulin can help prevent muscle breakdown during intense exercise. Furthermore, estrogen appears to have a stabilizing effect on cell membranes that might otherwise rupture from acute stress brought on by heat and exercise. Ruptured cells release enzymes called creatine kinases, which can damage tissues… Linda Lamont of the University of Rhode Island and her colleagues, as well as Michael Riddell of York University in Canada and his colleagues, found that females experienced less muscle breakdown than males after the same bouts of exercise. Tellingly, in a separate study, Mazen J. Hamadeh of York University and his colleagues found that males supplemented with estrogen suffered less muscle breakdown during cycling than those who didn't receive estrogen supplements.

writing “long” paragraphs is not a sign of AI — it’s a common narrative choice many writers make both in fanfiction and in traditionally published novels, and AI stole it from us.

using an em dash is not a sign of AI. it’s a stylistic sentence choice that’s been an option in place of commas and semicolons for a very long time, and AI stole it from us.

long sentence structures are not a sign of AI, but are yet another stylistic choice writers often make to create a cadence and tone that mimics the flow of poetry, and AI stole it from us.

“YA narrative breaks”? i don’t even know what the fuck this means, but i can guarantee that AI stole it from us.

italics are once again a stylistic choice that many writers love to use to create emphasis, and it’s a more stylistically acceptable and traditional form of emphasis than bold or underline text. oh, and just to be extra clear: AI STOLE IT FROM US.

stop creating fandom witch hunts over AI when you know fuck all about what it means to sit and write a story, and to spend hours fiddling with sentence structure and dialogue to get the exact right tone. writers will stop writing out of fear that their work “sounds like AI” — IT DOESNT! AI STOLE FROM US! AI SOUNDS LIKE US! — and after a while, all that will be available on AO3 is shitty AI-generated fanfiction.

because yeah, people are going to continue to use AI to write fanfiction whether you “call them out” or not. but making a laughable thread on X that uses asinine criteria is not going to fix that problem. it will just push the real writers out because people will accuse them of using AI when they haven’t, and they will (rightfully) stop writing for spaces that attack them.

The Beekeeper Who Cried “John!”

John! John! by ShirleyCarlton (explicit)

Sherlock cried “John! John!” one too many times, but didn’t live to regret it. At all.

Tags under the cut. Thanks for reblogging!

For @priestofthepremise lovely fic: