Quilt No More
Dec. 6th, 2023 12:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lydamorehouse The dino quilt is in pieces now and the fabric has been set aside for some other day. I looked at for a long time and just decided that, even if I liked it (and the majority of people who commented on it had positive things to say), I was now going to associate it with a very dumb internet fight that made me feel bad. That's enough to kill the thing. So I did. It may seem petty, but it's actually self-care.
A weird thing about me: I remember the shows, the conversations, the songs I listened to when I look at a quilt I've made. I can pick up a piece I worked on for months and get a full wave of sensory memories about the things that happened while I was making it. One of the baby quilts I sent to the UK? My strongest memory is working the actual quilt hook (for the first time, I think?) while listening to the podcast Wolf 359 with Mason.
So, I was never going to love that quilt the same way, even if I had been happier with it when I started it.
Alas.
Today is supposed to be "What Did You Read Wednesday" and I have a big pile of TBR manga in the other room (which I need to renew!) I could talk about one of them, which was Cat + Gamer, which was quite cute, but instead I want to talk about my newest evening routine. I've been picking one old Star Trek episode and rewatching it. Last night I watched "Mirror, Mirror," a classic. The night before was "The Turnabout Intruder."
It's been interesting to watch these again. For me, it's the first time I've seen them in color. The TV I grew up with was black & white, which, no, I did not grow up in the 1950s. My parents were just very late adopters when it came to color television. If I remember correctly, they didn't get a color TV until I had moved out to go to college, so that's after 1985.
Star Trek is pretty startling in color, I have to say. The colors are so vibrant that a lot of the special effects actually feel like they stand the test of time. I mean, some don't, of course, but a shocking number actually look very good. Like, almost believable. Which, feels counterintuitive? My brain apparently only remembers the very obviously Styrofoam rocks or whatever. But, the transporter looks fine. The planets, at least when the Enterprise first goes into orbit, look good, honestly.
Things I had forgotten include things like, how much time is spent discussing mutiny in "The Turnabout Intruder." I remember it for all the reasons I'm sure most of you do, which is how grossly anti-trans it is, how sexist it is, and how badly Shatner hams up being inhabited by a woman (see point number one).
In "Mirror, Mirror," I had forgotten how sleezy a captain Kirk is once he returns to our dimension, In the final scenes (actually as the credits start rolling), he OVERTLY hits on an ensign who has been transferred who happens to be the counterpart (at least visually) to the woman who was "the Captain's woman" in the Mirror, Mirror 'verse. Bleh. The episode was decently good up to that point, for all its cheese.
Tonight I am considering either "Who Mourns for Adonis?" or "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky." I am taking recommendations. Do you have a favorite that I should rewatch?
A weird thing about me: I remember the shows, the conversations, the songs I listened to when I look at a quilt I've made. I can pick up a piece I worked on for months and get a full wave of sensory memories about the things that happened while I was making it. One of the baby quilts I sent to the UK? My strongest memory is working the actual quilt hook (for the first time, I think?) while listening to the podcast Wolf 359 with Mason.
So, I was never going to love that quilt the same way, even if I had been happier with it when I started it.
Alas.
Today is supposed to be "What Did You Read Wednesday" and I have a big pile of TBR manga in the other room (which I need to renew!) I could talk about one of them, which was Cat + Gamer, which was quite cute, but instead I want to talk about my newest evening routine. I've been picking one old Star Trek episode and rewatching it. Last night I watched "Mirror, Mirror," a classic. The night before was "The Turnabout Intruder."
It's been interesting to watch these again. For me, it's the first time I've seen them in color. The TV I grew up with was black & white, which, no, I did not grow up in the 1950s. My parents were just very late adopters when it came to color television. If I remember correctly, they didn't get a color TV until I had moved out to go to college, so that's after 1985.
Star Trek is pretty startling in color, I have to say. The colors are so vibrant that a lot of the special effects actually feel like they stand the test of time. I mean, some don't, of course, but a shocking number actually look very good. Like, almost believable. Which, feels counterintuitive? My brain apparently only remembers the very obviously Styrofoam rocks or whatever. But, the transporter looks fine. The planets, at least when the Enterprise first goes into orbit, look good, honestly.
Things I had forgotten include things like, how much time is spent discussing mutiny in "The Turnabout Intruder." I remember it for all the reasons I'm sure most of you do, which is how grossly anti-trans it is, how sexist it is, and how badly Shatner hams up being inhabited by a woman (see point number one).
In "Mirror, Mirror," I had forgotten how sleezy a captain Kirk is once he returns to our dimension, In the final scenes (actually as the credits start rolling), he OVERTLY hits on an ensign who has been transferred who happens to be the counterpart (at least visually) to the woman who was "the Captain's woman" in the Mirror, Mirror 'verse. Bleh. The episode was decently good up to that point, for all its cheese.
Tonight I am considering either "Who Mourns for Adonis?" or "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky." I am taking recommendations. Do you have a favorite that I should rewatch?
no subject
Date: 2023-12-06 07:53 pm (UTC)i suddenly realize that i am not sure that i have ever seen "city on the edge of forever" in color--how can that be? maybe parts of it remained in black and white? anyway, it may be facile to say that that one is a favorite, but it is. as is "amok time" (which i remember being in vivid color), but aren't we all tired of pon far :) .
have you ever read barbara hambly's star trek novel, "ishmael?" just starting this discussion has given me a longing to re-read it.
no subject
Date: 2023-12-06 08:35 pm (UTC)Mmmmm, "Amok Time"...! Maybe that's the one I should watch first. Yes, we are all terribly tired of Pon Far on the Turing, but I mean, it is a classic. Can I just say, once again (though probably the first time out loud), that I find it so STRANGE that Vulcans are vegetarians. They LIVE ON A DESERT PLANET. You'd think it would be easier to find animals to eat than plants. There must be a lot more oases then we realize, looking at the planet from orbit.
Anyway, as for the internet, I'm the dummy. I am 56 years old. I should know better than to ask the internet what it thinks of something I'm unsure of. I should generally know better than to ask the internet ANYTHING at my age. (On the other hand, I very much enjoyed your dinosaur pun fest with our mutual friends.)
no subject
Date: 2023-12-06 08:49 pm (UTC)that thought never occurred to me about vulcans--how interesting!
i can't tell you my favorite thing about "ishmael" because it's a spoiler. what i can tell you is that the enterprise gets into some sort of atmospheric disturbance and spock disappears back in time and on the one hand, jim and the remaining denizens of the enterprise are looking for him, trying to pinpoint where in time he might have gone. meanwhile, we are also seeing where spock went and what is happening with him. there is time pressure because other people are also looking for him, probably klingons or romulans (see why i need to re-read it!).
btw, the spoiler might be somewhat obscure at this point to people who are younger than i am (which is you and everybody, practically) so if you were to read it and nothing unusual occurred to you about where spock winds up, let me know and i will tell you.
no subject
Date: 2023-12-07 03:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-12-12 12:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-12-06 08:46 pm (UTC)Some years ago, David gave me a cleaned-up boxed set of all the original Star Trek episodes. I keep meaning to watch them in order, which even the thought of calls back the family room in the house we lived in when the series premiered: the asphalt tiles spattered with gray and black spots over a concrete subfloor (heated in the winter!), the sliding glass door that always admitted the afternoon sun at the time Star Trek first aired, my youngest brother rampaging around with his stuffed animals.
Anyway, I too picked out episodes to watch rather than doing anything organized. The first one I watched was "The Trouble with Tribbles" because David was watching with me, and the second was "The City on the Edge of Forever." I'm also fond of "The Devil in the Dark" (the Horta episode) and "Balance of Terror," which is the Romulan first-contact episode. It's really a repurposed submarine thriller, and I'd been reading a bunch of books of that sort at the time the episode first aired.
For pure hurt/comfort extremely gratuitous very idtastic stuff (for the show; any fanfic can surpass it), "The Empath" is interesting.
"Turnabout Intruder" enrages me, but the actor playing the ambitious Starfleet member was really good when enacting Kirk trapped in HER body. She was a lot subtler than Shatner.
P.
no subject
Date: 2023-12-06 08:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-12-07 12:04 am (UTC)I wrote one chapter of Tam Lin sitting on the bank of Waldon Pond, but I would have to reread it to remember which chapter.
P.
no subject
Date: 2023-12-08 01:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-12-12 12:52 am (UTC)I'm saving "City on the Edge of Forever" to the end of my rewatch. I feel like I still remember that one very well. (Although, I would have said the same of "The Empath," too.)
no subject
Date: 2023-12-11 09:53 pm (UTC)I remember recommending “The Ultimate Computer” a lot because I felt it was underrated as an episode but now can’t recall why. “Journey to Babel” was another fave way back when. I loved the title of “For the World is Hollow and I have Touched the Sky” and loved that it focused more on McCoy than most episodes, I remember that much.
“The Empath” was always a trip for me as the main guest actress in it was someone I’d watched since I was a wee kid on As The World Turns. Sometimes jarring to see such familiar faces from soaps in things. (When I saw Julianne Moore in Hamlet at the Guthrie, it was weird because of soap opera familiarity.)
I should really do a rewatch; I keep considering an epic all things Trek rewatch/watch (there are some things I never watched) but gosh that is daunting. Just dipping in and out might be a better fit.
Given all the reading of fic I’ve done that involve Tarsus, I should probably revisit “The Conscience of the King” one of these days.
no subject
Date: 2023-12-12 12:49 am (UTC)Today, I watched "Enemy Within," which was not great (it's the one where a transporter divides Kirk into evil Kirk and good Kirk, and the first thing evil Kirk does is try to rape Yeoman Rand--ICK,) though Sulu has some amazing lines in it.
I had never seen the actress in "The Empath" before seeing her on Star Trek, so that helped me. The things I didn't remember include: the sound stage is NOT empty, there are a number of scenes on the planet's surface, the Empath is not in the room when McCoy is tortured, and, most shockingly, all of the torture lasts less than 5 minutes total. Cleverly, McCoy begins to pantomime it, they go to commercial break, and we come back to discover him bruised, broken, etc. I would have SWORN on a stack of sacred texts that not only was that a much larger part of the episode, but that the Empath watched as they did things to him. NO. Not at all! She's in another room with Kirk and Spock.
Anyway, I would love it if you joined me in my re-watch. It's a lot of fun.
no subject
Date: 2023-12-12 12:50 am (UTC)