I Think Andrew's Desperation To Live Is A Little Overlooked In The Fandom. It's Not Explicitly Stated

also. something about the deadpool movies that i really appreciate is that even underneath all the gratuitous violence and the dick jokes, the characters actually give a shit about each other. it's silly and over the top and chaotic but it's still heartfelt. "why would i give a fuck about the world when my entire world is in this picture." laura's quiet pep talk with logan. logan throwing himself into a bolted metal door over and over again trying to save a guy who's been annoying him since the second they met. wade asking the TVA to fix logan's timeline so he can have his family back and then, failing that, inviting him to come live with him. it kills me. twelve years ago i wanted to see superheroes getting shawarma and then actually staying friends afterward and in 2024 deadpool and wolverine finally gave it to me. i love this stupid silly movie so much dude

McCoy: Well, that's the second time man's been thrown out of paradise.

Kirk: No, no, Bones. This time we walked out on our own. Maybe we weren't meant for paradise. Maybe we were meant to fight our way through. Struggle, claw our way up, scratch for every inch of the way. Maybe we can't stroll to the music of the lute. We must march to the sound of drums.

Spock: Poetry, Captain. Non-regulation.

Kirk: We haven't heard much from you about Omicron Ceti Three, Mister Spock.

Spock: I have little to say about it, Captain, except that for the first time in my life I was happy.

---

This might legitimately thee most beautiful ending of any episode of Star Trek ever made. The dialogue, as per usual from Dorothy Fontana, is exquisitely written, and it's performed perfectly by all three.

But I find it especially interesting that Ralph Seninsky chose to cut to Spock while Kirk is talking about how "we must march to the sound of drums", because while it's a philosophy that Kirk wholeheartedly agrees with, this episode seems to show that it's one that Spock has taken onto himself - his self-made purgatory. To Kirk, marching to the sound of drums is the only way to find true happiness. To Spock, marching to the sound of drums is the life that he has chosen, and for it he must sacrifice happiness.

But I also find it additionally interesting, as Spock plays a Vulcan harp/lyre/lute. It's almost as if Kirk's poetical philosophizing is speaking directly to various parts of who Spock is as a person. Perhaps he cannot stroll to the music of the lute, but that does not mean he cannot embrace that music all while marching to the beat of the drum.

Like I said earlier, I feel like Spock genuinely did grow after this episode because he does seem to embrace an appreciation for beauty after this more than he had before, and this is the final moment showing that. In his own way, Kirk is telling Spock that he does not have to give up the former in order to achieve the latter. And in his own way, in response, Spock gently denies that.

And it's heartbreaking, and beautiful, and amazing in every way

I am once again thinking about how in The Naked Time, Spock has an emotional breakdown after contracting the virus and cries about the regret he feels for not loving his human mother vs his shame he feels for his ongoing friendship with Kirk, but before he contracts the virus, Spock finds LOVE MANKIND written on the wall. And it's been written and discussed to death about what it means, I know this, but it's telling that Spock not only loves in spite of his Vulcan upbringing and continued adherence to their customs but that he holds regret and shame deep down inside because the love is still there, regardless.

Whereas Kirk likewise has his virus-induced breakdown over the opposite: his self-inflicted pressure to not love an individual, either due to fear of distraction from duty, losing his position as captain due to the ethical conundrum of "How can a captain date one of their crew?" (no, I do not know the details of how Starfleet manages crew relationships, but I'm assuming rank is an issue, especially where captains are concerned), or even the unspoken taboo of the show's production era, his sexual orientation, hence his focusing on the ship as the only safe and constant outlet for his love. But after this, Kirk finds SINNER REPENT written on the wall, as if to say his altruism isn't the full truth, as if what he desires is what he denies even with the virus lowering his inhibitions.

And like my god. What foils to each other! How damned telling the literal writing on the wall is for them! I am going to eat my fucking sweater!

I can't get over how beautiful the name "The City on the Edge of Forever" is.

I want it tattooed. I want it engraved in my soul. I want it to be a painting I can hang in my room and stare it all day long

Hozier writing De Selby (Part 2) inspired by a character in Flann O’Brien’s novel The Third Policeman makes the music video so much more compelling and absolutely bananas to watch, not just because Domhnall Gleeson is a treasure and delivers a killer performance without even saying anything, but also like… let me get into the lore of this:

The Third Policeman is about this mad scientist/philosopher/scholar who robs and murders someone in the midst of academic pursuit and enters this literal nightmare world where he’s punished by these policemen who are monsters and is doomed to repeat his mistakes forever. And the visuals of Domhnall Gleeson’s character are so similar the drawing of the central characters of the novel as seen above. The shabby brownish clothing, the hair colour, the shovel in hand, it all matches.

The story is also a slight condemnation of science and views trying to establish ultimate truth as prideful and heresy. As an article from The Irish Times on The Third Policeman states: “As a consequence, all theories are crackpot, all knowledge is useless and the only meaning is that life is a hell of endless repetition.”

it also states, on the novel: “To illustrate the futility of scientific theorising, O’Brien uses a recurrent theme of infinite regression. One of the characters has eyes with a pinpoint behind which are eyes with another pinpoint and so on to infinity; the narrator wonders if his soul is “a body with another body inside it in turn, thousands of such bodies within each other like the skins of an onion, receding to some unimaginable ultimum”; De Selby studies in a series of parallel mirrors infinite reflections of his face going back to early youth; and Policeman MacCruiskeen has constructed a series of nested chests with the last few so small that they are no longer visible to the naked eye. So speculation and experiment are mad activities that literally disappear into nothingness.”

And then we see Dumhnall Gleeson in the music video on a cycle he doesn’t know how to break, some violent repetition where he’s burying himself and going crazy, and the imagery of several versions of one person fits this PERFECTLY.

Kirk: You mean to tell me your people just walk into a disintegration machine when they're told to?

Don't make comparisons to Tarsus IV, don't make comparisons to Tarsus IV, don't make comparisons to Tarsus IV

Is this why Kirk is so instantly, adamantly, ready to disrupt this entire culture?

He's the survivor of a genocide, and I can't imagine that the thousands of people murdered by Kodos walked quietly, willingly, obediently to their deaths. Like those who walk into the disintegration machines, their deaths were painless, but they are all still dead.

And now Kirk is watching the same thing happen, only on a much larger scale. And it lacks the terror, the fighting, the starvation, the horrors that stain his early childhood, and because of that it continues.

No wonder he's almost gleeful when he threatens to give them the horrors of war - because he knows from personal experience that even the threat of that, even the memory of that, even the echo of what was or what might be - it's enough to make it stop.

Thinking about AOS Mirror!Verse Spirk is fucking me up a little because, canonically, in the prime Mirror!Verse, Spock killed Kirk, tried to reform The Empire, and caused the fall of The Empire in doing so by weakening it to invading parties. This man must regret basically every single thing he did with his life. He thought he was doing the right thing, the logical thing, ensuring the longevity of his world, and all he got was a dead soulmate and a legacy of failure.

And now he’s been granted the chance to tell his younger self to not do any of that. That there’s no saving The Empire from itself, but The Empire doesn’t matter. That killing Kirk would feel like killing himself. That he would regret it every day of his life. That his life will feel so, so content if he just follows this man and his trail of bloodshed through the galaxy.

Torture for him.

Kill for him.

Die for him.

And he will, and he does, and this time when The Empire burns itself out, Spock regrets absolutely nothing.

my favorite dune posts ever

trelane really said punish mr. spock rn and kirk said no, actually, mr. spock gets a gold star.

then trelane said but i don’t like him! and kirk said get off my ship.

it’s the fact that ed doesn’t know. he doesn’t know that badminton kidnapped stede with the intent to kill him. he doesn’t know that stede was so filled with self-hatred that he ran back home because he believed what badminton said: that he defiled beautiful things. and ed is the most beautiful thing he knows of. ed doesn’t know that stede is completely in love with him and knows it now. ed doesn’t know stede concocted the most elaborate and ridiculous fuckery (with the help of his awesome wife) to fake his death just so he could sail off and find ed and be with him forever. because faking your death means you have no intention of ever coming back; stede faking his death was a commitment to ed. and ed doesn’t know that stede is waxing poetic about him and staring at the moon thinking about him and being oh so in love with him.

instead, ed thinks stede lied to him about ed making him happy. he thinks stede lied to him about how much he cared for him. he thinks stede just up and left, because he’s ed and no one good stays for him.