Fishs Cross The Road.

shibari figurines by constant heaven

Paul Wesley gets a lot of shit for not looking much like Shatner’s Kirk (even though he’s got the mannerisms down perfectly), which seems unfair considering he looks exactly like TAS Kirk

I love when the star trek alien actors decide to give their characters traits that they personally think of as the respective alien species influence, because they never line up with other actors decisions. Like we have early seasons Nog, who has that very particular Ferengi accent and vocal rhythm, and then his uncle Quark shows up and he just sounds like a guy who owns a bowling alley. Garak, who moves in this strange reptilian fashion, has his eyes wide open, and then his dad shows up. And its like. Yeah thats just Paul Dooley. Hes not even acting thats just Paul Dooley right there. What we learn from this is that Garak is just a freak.

The concept of Bashir knowing nothing about cardassian biology until Tain gives him a bunch of medical files in The Wire. Which he then abuses to learn every reproductive fact about Cardassians he possibly can.

Therefore abusing Garak's dad's gift to give his son the best bj a cardassian has ever received.

You’ve NEVER considered this VACATION HOTSPOT!

With the news of a supernova threatening the Romulan homeworld, the Romulan Star Empire has started to open up its borders in a way that was previously unthinkable. With the planet’s days numbered, this is a vacation opportunity you don’t want to miss! However, let’s not pretend that a trip behind the neutral zone is now a holiday on Risa. The economy is collapsing in the face of armageddon and Romulans do not let their guard down easily. So we checked out the planet to see what you can expect from a holiday to this grey world.

Where to Stay

We were met planetside by our guides, Caidee and Kyuvok, who followed us everywhere during our stay. We stayed in the only hotel open to non-Romulans, situated in the capital inside a walled compound under heavy guard. Starfleet had told us to expect that our rooms would be bugged but hanging from the ceiling were very obvious surveillance devices that followed us around as we moved. We took this in our stride and began greeting them each morning.

Inside the hotel, we enjoyed a single Romulan restaurant. It was vast, but mostly empty aside from a handful of Starfleet personnel working on evacuation preparations. The restaurant’s single fixed menu (starring a grey-looking soup) got a little repetitive after a week but any visits to restaurants in the city proper were deemed unnecessary. Our guides explained that this restaurant was clearly the best that Romulan cuisine had to offer and mingling with the locals would be distracting to us. They also said that their food demonstrates Romulan ingenuity and self-reliance; they proudly don’t import a single grain and certainly don’t dabble in non-Romulan cuisines.

Tomb to the Glorious Dead

Caidee and Kyuvok ensured we had a full itinerary for our trip, starting with paying homage to the military dead; many of whom we were told died gloriously in battles with the Federation, Klingon Empire and various barbarian worlds. Kyuvok provided us with a bouquet of flowers to leave at the base.

The monument itself is a group of Romulan centurions in 23rd century uniforms carrying an imperial banner. The figures are besieged by rather barbarous and demonic-looking figures I was told represented Federation corruption. It was a little hard to make out the details as the monument is around half a kilometre high and we were viewing it from the base but I’m told the detail on the faces is the most intricate in the galaxy and carved entirely by Reman “volunteers” (note: the guides do not understand the use of air quotes for sarcasm so feel free to use them liberally in conversation).

Imperial Theatre

After that, we saw a play at the Imperial Theatre about how the Romulan Senate bravely defeated the rebel Shinzon and his Federation allies. I queried Caidee on the accuracy of these events but she assured us that Romulans would have a far better understanding of these events considering how oppressed Federation subjects are only fed propaganda by Vulcans. 

It was interesting to note that many of the people in the audience looked very similar to each other and moved to clap in perfect synchronicity. Kyuvok dismissed the idea that the seats were padded out with holograms and it merely demonstrated how Romulans were in perfect sync as a single, perfect society.

Caidee offered a recording of the play to take home. I suggested we could trade holonovels; her eyes lit up at our description of Captain Proton. Alas, after a glare from Kyuvok she explained that Romulans have no need for corrupt Federation stories. It’s at this point we realised why we had two guides for such a small group. 

The Firefalls

On the third day, we asked Caidee to take us to see the firefalls at Gal Gath'thong. After a loud “debate” with the Tal Shiar officers stationed outside our rooms, Caidee announced gleefully that they’d love to show us. The shuttle had its windows blacked out and seemed to make so many course corrections we could have sworn we’d circled the entire planet before arriving at our destination. 

The falls indeed were magnificent, even if we had to view them through a chainlink fence in a small supply compound a kilometre away. We wish we could show you, but all our holo-imagers were confiscated on arrival along with all our communicators. We did however catch a glimpse of someone outside the fence being chased by uniformed officers. 

We were told by Caidee, as she hurried us back into the shuttle, that it was a Vulcan spy. Vulcan spies appear to be everywhere in Romulan society and are responsible for everything that goes wrong; Caidee says it’s common knowledge that the supernova is a Vulcan plot against the Romulan people because of their deep-seated jealousy ever since Romulans left Vulcan. 

The Tal Shiar Museum

The following day it looked like Caidee had been replaced by a different Romulan, but Kyuvok assured us Caidee was still Caidee and had just changed her hair to one of the alternate state-sanctioned looks. There are 5 haircuts allowed on Romulus and anyone deviating from them is usually suspected of being a Vulcan spy.

That proved to be a suitable segway as Kyuvok and new-hair Caidee decided we should see The Tal Shiar Museum. This exhibition outlined the work the Tal Shiar does to ensure the safety of every Romulan against galactic threats. Displays condemned traitors and spies who the Tal Shiar have executed to keep the people safe, including M’ret, Toreth, Jean-Luc Picard and Spock. We asked Kyuvok about how Picard could have been killed when he made a speech to the Romulan Senate recently. This, apparently, is a Federation lie because Picard was killed by the Tal Shiar in 2365, 2369 and 2379.

Conclusion

Romulus is still fairly closed and sadly we couldn’t talk our guides into a trip to the palatial Senate building or anywhere else exciting. But when they returned our equipment to us as we left we found they had filled our holo-imagers with picturesque landscapes and historic buildings we didn’t even know existed. So they were at least gracious enough to give us a slideshow to share! 

We did of course hand all our gear to a Starfleet liaison to remove the tracking software that had been installed.

It may not be Casperia Prime, but it looks like Romulus is only around for a few more years so best book your trip today! After all, the rate at which they put Federation visitors on trial for espionage has dropped 13% in the last year so you're safer than ever.

I want to believe the Tumblr staff is overall LGBTQIA+ supportive.

Except xenobotanist got punished JUST YESTERDAY for posting 2 drawings of aliens with just a hint of genitalia, while there are still blogs operating that are completely full of sex videos. I'm not saying those should be blocked or punished either, but why would those stay active, while xeno got several pictures removed, including a picture of mica and a drawing of a plant? They are no longer allowed to even upload a pfp or banner! And we all know that once that happens, people start blocking you because they think you're a bot.

Is it because those are naked cis women for cis men to admire? While xeno reblogs a dozen trans-positive posts every day?

A message from a few of the trans staff at Tumblr & Automattic:

We want trans people, and LGBTQ+ people broadly, to feel welcome on Tumblr, in part because we as trans people at Tumblr and Automattic want it to be a space where we ourselves feel included. We want to feel like this is a platform that supports us and fights for our safety. Tumblr is made brighter and more vibrant by your presence, and the LGBTQ+ folks who help run it are fighting all the time for this, for you, internally. 

A few days ago, Matt Mullenweg (the CEO of Automattic, Tumblr’s parent company) responded to a user’s ask about an account suspension in a way that negatively affected Tumblr’s LGBTQ+ community. We believe that Matt's response to this ask and his continued commentary has been unwarranted and harmful. Tumblr staff do not comment on moderation decisions as a matter of policy for a variety of reasons—including the privacy of those involved, and the practicalities of moderating thousands of reports a day. The downside of this policy is that it is very easy for rumors and incorrect information about actions taken by our Trust & Safety team to spread unchecked. Given this, we want to clarify a few different pieces of this situation:

The reality of predstrogen's suspension was not accurately conveyed, and made it seem like we were reaching for opportunities to ban trans feminine people on the platform. This is not the case. The example comment shared in the post linked above does not meet our definition of a realistic threat of violence, and was not the deciding factor in the account suspension.

Matt thereafter failed to recognize the harm to the community as a result of this suspension. Matt does not speak on behalf of the LGBTQ+ people who help run Tumblr or Automattic, and we were not consulted in the construction of a response to these events.

Last year, the "mature" and "sexual themes" community labels were erroneously applied to some users' posts. An outside team of contractors tasked with applying community labels to posts were responsible for this larger trend of mislabeling trans-related content. When our Trust & Safety team discovered this issue (thanks largely to reports from the community), we removed the contracted team’s ability to apply community labels and added more oversight to ensure it does not happen again. In the Staff post about this, LGBTQ+ staff pushed to be more transparent but were overruled by leadership. The termination of a contractor mentioned in the original ask response was for an unrelated incident which was incorrectly attributed to this case. We regret that the mislabeling ever happened, and the negative impact it has had on the trans community on Tumblr. 

Transition timelines are not against our community guidelines, and weren’t a factor considered by the moderation team when discussing suspensions and subsequent appeals. We do not take action against content that is related to transitioning or trans bodies unless it includes violations of the Community Guidelines.

When it comes to the experience of trans folks on Tumblr encountering transphobic content, and interacting with bigoted users, we understand and share your frustrations. Tumblr’s policies, and Automattic’s policies, are written to ensure freedom of speech and expression. We prohibit harassment as defined in our Community Guidelines, but we know that this policy falls short of protecting users from the wider scope of harmful speech often used against LGBTQ+ and other marginalized people.

Going forward, Tumblr is taking the following actions:

Prioritizing anti-harassment features that will empower users to more effectively protect themselves from harassment.

Building more internal tooling for us as Staff to proactively identify and mitigate instances of harassment.

Reviewing which of the tags frequently used by the trans community are blocked, and working to make them available next week.

We’re sorry for how this all transpired, and we’re actively fighting to make our voices heard more and prevent something like this from happening again in the future. We know firsthand that having to deal with situations like this as a Tumblr user is difficult, particularly as a member of an already frequently targeted and harassed community. We know it will take time to regain your trust, and we’re going to put in the work to rebuild it.

We appreciate the space we have been given to express our concerns and dissent, and we are thankful that Matt’s (and Automattic’s) strong commitment to freedom of expression has facilitated it.

We will continue to fight to make Tumblr safe for us all.

— This statement was authored by multiple trans employees of Tumblr and Automattic.

could we see julian bashir please? i'm curious to see how polarizing he really is...

I don't know if I'm just lucky or perhaps Star Trek has just the nicest fans ever but this commission was - again - such a lovely experience! This time @hobbithabits was the client and wanted an age swapped version of Bashirs and Garaks first meeting based on this fic: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54883567 (Past Prologue (Introductions and Intrigue)) Older Bashir was no problem, I've already drawn him and we got lots of beautiful pics of Sid. But younger Garak was a fun challenge. And I couldn't resist giving him Andys fluffy choir boy hair >:D. Commissions still open <3