whelp... I feel called out.

The complaint I hear from people that they’re sad we learn in Starfleet Academy that Sisko didn’t ever return as he promised ruins Avery Brooks desire with having the “I will return” line to ensure that Sisko wasn’t a Black father who abandoned his kid is valid, but I think

Omg The House of Cerulean Sea is such an adorable book.

Yeah, it's a fundamentally conservative ideology. Klingons are just "like that" and can never change. Culture and genetics are destiny. There is some pure version of being a "true Klingon" to them, that having a gay Klingon is a degradation of because he's not a warrior. It's so fascist coded.

Oh this is so cool!

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God, maybe I’m just getting older but I’m terrified that the most accurate scifi book really is going to be Fahrenheit 451. We’re already kind of there, just with online reviewing bombing instead of fire departments.

Watching Princess Weekes video on romantasy books showed a parallel to me with the Star Trek fandom right now. Everyone wants comfort food, no one is engaging with art as work that has context & depth. They want to forget a work of art 5 minutes after they’ve finished it rather then sit with it x

I WOULD KILL for great negative analysis of Starfleet Academy truly I would. Give me criticism that engages my fucking brain, not endless refrains of "Avery Brooks didn't show up" or "Kassidy's kid wasn't on the family tree" or "it didn't feel like Star Trek to me because it's a new style of show.

Also, keep in mind, by 5 eps into The Next Generation, we had Code of Honor, The Naked Then, The Last Outpost, as well as Encounter at Farpoint. Outside of the strong cast - it was a wildly weak start to a new Star Trek. Pound for pound, Starfleet Academy is better than TNG s1.

I’m not saying people have to like Starfleet Academy. I’ve seen thoughtful, detailed critiques in my comments and elsewhere that engage with its writing, tone, or thematic direction. That’s healthy fandom discourse. That’s great. What makes me sad (1/2)

The discourse on Starfleet Academy has taught me that the media literacy of much of the Trek fandom is really low (reflective of the US). It's all judged on the axis is it good/bad or is it like the thing I liked before - not analyzing its ideas & effectiveness of exploring them.

The conservativism of Starfleet Academy discourse on YouTube just saddens me. Not even the grifters. Like I know a reviewer who complains SFA "is nostalgic slop" and then turns complains we didn't get to see Avery Brooks. No one actually reads art's themes anymore. It's all such shallow analysis.

People are so stressed out and traumatized from the last decade, going all the way back to 2016 that they’re turning their brains off, especially online. Lashing out in unthinking anger even at friends they should show grace to, isolating themselves, and not challenging themself in art or life.

“Your video is too long, I didn’t watch it and you should say it shorter.” God forbid something require time to analyze. Certainly, don’t over-explain, but your lack of desire to engage with something that isn’t easy to consume and takes cognitive effort and time is a you problem, not a me problem.

I keep getting comments that say “YOU KNOW YOURE THE ONLY YOUTUBER WHO LIKES STARFLEET ACADEMY RIGHT?!?” which isn’t true & even if it was, so what? My job as a critic is to share my own critical analysis. Agree or not, I don’t care. People just want critics confirm their preconceptions nowadays.

I hate being an art critic in an inherently conservative culture. And I mean all of American culture, including liberal spaces, is conservative in that people just want to reefy old stories and are so hostile to new perspectives and ideas in the US, generally speaking. It’s so tedious.

lizard is doing so much better today. just got off the phone with the doctor. the blockage has been cleared, he's producing less urine, his heart is beating stronger and his body temperature is going back up we are trying to raise money for his hospital care so please venmo magdalene-visaggio

I just-realized that all the guys who are review-bombing STARFLEET ACADEMY are also review-fluffing MELANIA.

Tin foil hate mode; I would not be shocked to learn if a lot of the Starfleet Academy hate is astroturfed by someone like Elon Musk paying for bots to scrape social media and YouTube to promote the hate, cause it artificially high numbers on so much shit.

Damn, did not expect the Dungeon Crawler Carl books to have a extremely thoughtful discussion on the need to find small moment of joy for yourself to keep you motivated to fight while facing cultural and physical genocide from exploitative capitalist systems of power, but there you go.

Star Trek literally addressed this nearly 40 years ago with this scene. In quote Riker himself, it's "incredibly outmoded and sexist attitude" to think Klingons can't wear skirts. youtu.be/tzE7P3KPi4I?...

Starfleet Academy hate is so fucking forced, hyperbolic and frankly often toxic racist and bigoted, it just angers me that the algorithm STILL rewards this kind of rage-baiting bullshit. Not that they will, but YouTube needs to fix its shit with rewarding this assholery.

To Ted Cruz, yes America, as any centralized government that steals power and land of the people, is illegitimate.

It warms my heart seeing the turn in tone on Starfleet Academy to a celebration of what it’s trying to say, even when people are critical. It’s such a beautiful show and I’ve seen such negatively & also toxicity (the amount of bigotry I’ve had to delete in my comments), so it’s healing to see.

Same energy:

Of all the episodes of Starfleet Academy so far, this is the big one for tying the show into the history of Trek more than any other. It's so good, we even got @jessiegender.bsky.social to come talk with us about it.

And I mean 100% correct in the sense that writing on these fucking microblogging sites make it hard to compress nuanced messaged into short description and cis fucks would rather take the worst possible take on a marginalized trans person instead of actually engaging with them.

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I’m saying this and then I’m off social media for a while. You have my permission to yell at me if I post on Bluesky anything in the next week unless absolutely necessary.

I hate that, just because the GOP is plumbing the depths of depravity, we're not allowed to acknowledge all the times Congressional Dems have (and continue to) fund ICE and such. Or despite decrying GOP executive overreach, never reverse it when they do get in power. Like, this stuff isn't secret.

I am continually depressed by how much I have to fight to be understood, even by people who say they wish to support people like me. There is nothing more depressing than having repeatedly felt like I would be much further in my career if I were a cis man, even if I said the exact same things.

I don't know why I bother. Any art I make gets ignored, any point I argue is "but actually"ed to death or misinterpreted, and I've just stalled out everywhere.

People really look at the power of organizing in MN and think, “I sure can’t wait until I do my part on Election Day.”

And before you say it, I voted for Kamala too. I'm not saying it is immaterial that she didn't win. But my point isn't that she wouldn't have been better then Trump, but that if we want ACTUAL change in this country, we need to enact it outside of just trusting electoral politics.

No, I didn't say elections don't change anything. I said "REAL change doesn't happen in the voting booth." Would things be better then they are now if Kamala had won, sure. Would they be better then before Kamala, no. Because we would not have functionally shifted power.

"We lived many lives in those whirling campaigns, never sparing ourselves: yet when we achieved and the new world dawned, the old men came out again and took our victory to remake in the likeness of the former world they knew." - T.E. Lawrence

We've seen these pile ons again and again. A trans person says a post that is vague, and it gets read in the worst possible light, often put into extreme hyperbolic framing, and then vitriol is targeted at them. They aren't overtly transphobic, but we aren't given the grace a cis person would.

It’s absurd to turn my criticism of the Democrats on restoring the status quo into a claim that I don’t care about Renee Good and Alex Pretti’s deaths. This is how antagonistic pile-ons against marginalized people who are dissatisfied with the Dems get manufactured without being overtly transphobic.

Voting matters, but it isn’t what matters most. And distilling everything to “blue team will save you from red team” is how we end up here. Do the real work. Voting follows that, not leads.

Very much this.

My transness has everything to do with a pile on. Our online culture is so ready to pounce on and not give any grace to a trans woman's words, but if I had a been a cis man, there would 100% be more people saying "well, sure she didn't mean it that way."

Deleted this post because people just love to assume I meant "don't vote, be apathetic, and don't do anything" and just wanted to pile on because nothing gets the juices going more than telling a trans woman on the internet that she's wrong because of something you assumed she meant.

We have so much more power than a vote ballot. Use it. Or are we just going to let Democrats lul us to sleep again by saying “take this anti fascist energy into the voting booth, vote us in, and just let us do the work while you go back to sleep!”

Me saying: “voting isn’t how you effect real change.” People hear: “oh so you just want people to not do anything, and are arguing for voter apathy!” What? No, I’m doing a call to action! Go out and show politicians the change we want in this world. Politicians are only ever reactionary to us.

I’m not saying don’t vote, I’m saying voting is not how you’re going to get change. Big distinction.

The straight truth is this: The Liberal Party of Canada, UK Labour, and the Democratic Party of the US - none of the party brass truly have a problem with what the current US administration is doing. They have a problem with how obviously and openly it’s being done. A short thread.