futuresoon:

so my grandma died recently, and my parents have been dealing with the quantities of Stuff accumulated over the course of her and my grandpa’s lives, which could be interesting on its own as a family matter, but, well, grandpa was a science fiction writer, and they knew a lot of science fiction writers, which means a lot of the stuff is classic sci-fi and fantasy. books, artwork, that kind of thing. what i had not realized, but perhaps should have predicted, was that knowing a lot of science fiction writers in the ‘60s meant that they knew people who had written for this one TV show in the ‘60s that some science fiction writers worked on, and these people liked to share stuff.

what i’m saying is that i have now held in my hands one of the original, physical scripts for the star trek episode “amok time”.

it was like holding a piece of history. my own hands, carefully cradling the origin of sex pollen and fuck or die. a work whose influence went far behind what the writer could have expected–sacred, almost, in its way. who knows how much spawned from this episode? how much fanfiction would never have existed were it not for this holy text? indeed, the very concept of slash itself? an artifact, a priceless relic, sitting on my parents’ couch.

i haven’t seen the entirety of the episode itself, so i don’t know if there are any real differences between the script and what was aired, but i had to skim it anyway–and i did find something that is perhaps worth mentioning, whether or not this actually counts as canon. but hey, hard to get more canon than an Actual Official Script, right?

VULCANS BLUSH YELLOW, BITCHES, IT’S CANON

also, this:

thanks for specifying “karate-type”, theodore sturgeon. coulda gotten confusing, that.

anyway, it was a deeply surreal experience and i’m pretty sure the script is getting donated someplace with a lot of the other stuff, but man, my grandparents were cool

halfhumanhalfworld:

Look, if someone was convicted as a rapist or pedophile, there’s no purpose in pointing out that it took place six years ago. Such things take more than time and self-reflection to overcome, and if it defines the person for the rest of his life, well, that’s the kind of price you pay for a crime that heinous.

If someone tells crass jokes about rape and pedophilia, and the next day apologizes for them, that’s still suspect. Nobody changes their ways that quickly – more likely he’s just sorry he got in trouble.

Now if someone used to tell crass jokes, but hasn’t done so in six years, and has long since apologized for it and explained how he’s grown since then? 

By firing James Gunn, the only message that Disney is sending to him – and by extension all of us – is that working to become a better person is pointless. You’ll be judged by the worst part of your past, even you’ve changed, even there’s been no lasting harm to anyone from what you did.

I’m not concerned about Gunn’s career; I’m sure he could live comfortably for the rest of his life without ever working again. I’m not even concerned about his feelings; he’s a grown man and I’m sure he’s aware that life involves suffering. What matters to me is that he found a way to use his talents to put something good into the world instead of more filth, and it’s being taken away from him. 

That means he won’t be spending his life creating honest and inspiring entertainment anymore. That means we won’t ever get to see what he would have created. The negativity he added to the past won’t be erased, but the positive energy he could have brought to the future has been.

51wheezes:

reblog if your inbox is always open for new members of the fandom who may be a little shy or intimidated. doesn’t matter whether or not you’re a “popular blog”; everyone here is equal and if you’re reading this as a new person/someone considering entering the fandom, we will not turn you away!!!! talk to us!! make friends!! i more than understand being shy but trust me this fandom is chill come join us in this hellhole

I am not policing anyone. I am saying that you have a moral responsibility (or at least you SHOULD) once you post something like that on the Internet. Warnings don’t do shit. We all know that people are curious. Children are curious. No kid actually cares about the under 18 warning. They are impressionable and easily copy behaviour. I was like that, my friends were like that. I’m not saying don’t post things like that. I’m just asking, are you ready to take responsibility for the aftermath?

farashasilver:

You seem to be laboring under the misconception that I am responsible for internet teenagers’ poor choices. I’m not. Neither is any content creator. Do you spend your free time going after the adult film industry and asking whether they’re ready to “take responsibility” for teenagers that deliberately ignore the 18+ notification and click through to their weird diaper fetish porn?

I was a teenager on the internet once (I’m not going to say back in the day because I have followers that were on Usenet and that’s REALLY back in the day). We didn’t used to have any kind of content warnings at all. I say this jokingly a lot but seriously, back in my day, you could trip over xeno tentacle non-con in the middle of a fic that didn’t look like it was going in that direction, and it wasn’t labeled at all. Ever! You know what was labeled and warned for, left right and center? “This story has slash in it! That’s GAY KISSING!!!” 

Seriously though, there used to be a time when the fandom and fic-writing atmosphere was so toxic to same-sex relationships that the content was usually hidden behind a splash screen with an obnoxious warning in cyan comic sans. Sometimes there were “secret instructions” on the disclaimer page – people would hide how to get into their website (“if you read the disclaimer you’ll know to click on the ^_^ face in the bottom left corner of the page to get to the site!” and such nonsense). I grew up in a time on the internet when it was easier to find graphic torture porn and rape-as-woobifying-backstory than it was to find fluffy hand-holding fic with my gay OTP.

And all I can hear when y’all roll up all “THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!” is all the people who forced slash and femslash fans out of their archives, away from their internet space, and into the loosely-organized circle of Geocities webrings that defined fandom in the early 90s. Eventually we all started to congregate on LJ, where content could be locked behind a friends-only filter and people could gather in closed communities where we could be free from harassment by homophobic morons. When the Great Purge of FF.net happened and NC-17 was officially added to their rules as banned content, guess who was most reported to the moderators and most impacted by the policy change? Slash fans. And when Strikethrough happened, it disproportionately effected slash fans. Again.

Teenagers may not be old enough to have fully developed consequence/reward centers in the frontal lobe, but the average age for being able to discern reality from fiction is five years old. It’s horrifically condescending and disingenuous to pretend that teens are so delicate and fragile that reading some smut that disturbs them or isn’t to their tastes is going to drastically upset their psyche. The most that’s going to happen is they’re going to come away from whatever smut they deliberately clicked through the warning to read knowing that people have some weird kinks when it comes to sex. And you know what? YKINMKATO. The end.