katt, migrating 🌟 🌈 @starkatt@awoo.space

Anyway TNG has a lot of garbage but also some pretty okay stuff and if you go in expecting it to be the kinda thing you half pay attention to it can be pretty fun.

if you start with s2 TNG you'll miss the Extreme Gayness that is Tasha Yarr though.

I recommend people wanting to get in to Trek start with TNG (possibly at season 2) but consider DS9 to be the best the property has to offer.

Hey, just. Y'all are good and I appreciate having you in my life.

@crom I just noticed your current display name here and it is 👌🏻

Fleeting thought: It's *really* difficult to constructively communicate "I accept and will go along with this decision but would like to take this opportunity to express that this decision is not my desired outcome".

Have there been any essays on Bojack Horseman's relationship with millennial affect and culture? Because hoo boy is that a complicated thing.

I want fingernails that glow bright blue and leave phosphorescent trails hanging in the air.

So, conclusion: Star Trek TNG actually has a pretty cool example of how reading about a culture is not nearly the same as being an actual participant in it.

When Worf interacts with other Klingons on the show, there's a distinct cultural divide.

He's been raised with heavy emphasis on Klingon values such as aggression and honor, but only as seen through the filter of Federation (i.e. 1990s american liberal) values.

As practiced by native Kilingons, Klingon cultural values are expressed very differently than how Worf understands them. This frequently catches him by surprise and makes him feel like an outside.

Now here's the interesting part, which was implicit but not overt in the show.

Worf's parents were raising him basically on the Wikipedia version of Klingon culture. They did their very best to expose him to Klingon rituals and cultural values, but only with the imperfect knowledge of cultural outsiders. There was no Klingon community on earth they could participate in. They could teach the declarative content and nominal meaning of the culture, but none of the actual texture as practiced.

Worf wasn't raised by other Klingons though. When he was very young his dad died in a space battle with the Federation, and he ended up being adopted by a Russian couple on earth.

They genuinely loved him, and wanted what was best for their son. As part of this, they didn't want him to grow up alienated from his cultural identity as a Klingon, and made a point of exposing him to Klingon cultural traditions as a major part of his upbringing.

As teased last night, here's a thread on Lt. Worf and cultural context:

Starting from the very basics: Lieutenant Worf appears in Star Trek TNG as the tactical officer of the Enterprise. He's a Klingon, trek's Proud Warrior Race. (the proud warrior race thing has both inherent problems and issues of racial coding, but I'll leave those aside for now.)

bedtime for me now, though 💜

Hey, if any of y'all know a good introduction to the concepts of affect I'd really like to pass it along. It's an increasingly important part of my understanding of the world and I want to share that with people, but I don't actually feel prepared to explain affect clearly.

@starkatt hi I've spent literally all day watching youtube film criticism and it has prompted me to want to write more, even if informally.

@starkatt another topic I've been wanting to talk about for a while and need I remember to actually do so: Worf, cultural context, and the inadequacy of received texts as cultural guides.

my brain seems to have made the affective shift from "it's summer!" to "it's winter!" in like three days and that feels kind of strange.