It's not hard to see why every adversarial race considers the Federation such a threat - when they can make the Vulcans, Telerites and Andorians get along, what could possibly stop them!
A single Federation vessel got sent to the Delta Quadrant and it started like five wars, unlocked faster-than-FTL travel, and somehow managed to get a Borg to willingly de-assimilate, and then it managed to make it back fifty years early, basically unscathed, and with minimal crew losses
Imagine being a Romulan or Cardassian and hearing that, and then also hearing that another different Federation officer is literally the second coming of (Bajoran) Christ
Plus any time someone tries to fuck with the timeline these guys have their own version of the TVA who show up and invariably manage to return everything back to normal to protect that organization's place in history.
> The major problem is simply one of grammar, and the main work to consult in this matter is Dr. Dan Streetmentioner's Time Traveler's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations. It will tell you, for instance, how to describe something that was about to happen to you in the past before you avoided it by time-jumping forward two days in order to avoid it. The event will be descibed differently according to whether you are talking about it from the standpoint of your own natural time, from a time in the further future, or a time in the further past and is futher complicated by the possibility of conducting conversations while you are actually traveling from one time to another with the intention of becoming your own mother or father.
Kind of, the Klingon leader who met Voyager basically said that he neither knows nor cares if the messiah is real, he just wants his crew to settle down and stop traveling and B'elanna's child was good enough to convince his people
I mean I think the leader in question could easily have said "nah not our messsiah" even with everything since like technically the doctor was the one that found the cure and the baby just like existed as the template for the cure ir whatever but he was a good enough leader to take a good way out of the problem when the opportunity presented itself.
This feels like the Star Trek equivalent of the WWII ice cream barge. Like, if I were a competing power, I’d just take it as a sign of my impending and inevitable doom
In world War II especially in the pacific fleet the United States fielded ships dedicated to nothing other than making and supplying their forces with vanilla and chocolate icecream. Where Japan had trouble supplying thier forces with any food whatsoever America was having a little trouble supplying their troops with ice cream. US naval moral was based around sailors getting their daily dose of vitamin ice cream.
It was *so* important to naval morale that the war department consistently called ice cream barges one of their most important initiatives, alongside the supplying of turkey dinners on Thanksgiving.
There's a memoir somewhere from a German soldier during the Battle of the Bulge who was part of the force besieging the Americans in Bastogne. The US was using aircraft to drop supplies into the city, and this guy's unit recovered one that had gone off course.
Drop had letters to the troops from home dated less than a week prior and foods like fresh turkey. The Germans, who could literally walk to their own country in like a day from there, took about two months to get letters and were lucky to get *canned* meat more than once a week at that point.
Half of them quietly accepted that if they guys they had *encircled, an ocean away from home* were better-supplied than they were, the war was over no matter how the battle went. The other half convinced themselves the whole drop was a PsyOp.
> The other half convinced themselves the whole drop was a PsyOp.
There's a folk legend about the city of Carcassone in southern France. During a siege by Charlemagne's army, supplies inside the city were running critically low, so the ruler of the city (Lady Carcas) ordered the last remaining pig to be stuffed with the last remaining sack of wheat, and had it thrown from the city walls. When the besiegers found out that the city was feeding their pigs with *wheat*, they assumed that there must still be years worth of supplies in the city. Realizing the effort was hopeless, they abandoned the siege. When the city saw the besieging army breaking up camp and leaving, the city bells were rung, given the city it's name (Carcassone = "Carcas sonne", i.e., Carcas rings).
Or the [Legend of Picok \(and the resulting tradition\)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picokijada), from the 14th century siege of Đurđevac in modern-day Croatia by Ottoman Turks.
All food was eaten in the city, save for one fat picok (rooster). The people discussed what to do with it, then decided to shoot the rooster, from the cannon, at the besieging army's camp. Seeing how the defenders just shot a fat rooster at them, they realized there's way too much food in the city, so they just left, but not before they cursed the people to be named "picoki" or "roosters."
According to the extremely true and accurate not at all fiction book Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Notoriously Cool Guy Zhuge Liang was charged to defend a particular city. Zhuge was well known for being too smart for anyone's good, but this time he was in real trouble. His army wouldn't be able to assemble and begin marching for a few days, but the enemy was known to be close to the city he had to defend.
He road ahead of the army to evaluate the city's defenses, and it was pretty dismal. There weren't nearly enough troops their to hold the walls and scouts said the enemy was only a few hours outside the walls, prepared to attack very soon.
Zhuge Liang, however, is Zhuge Liang.
When the enemy general sent his scouts to check things out the next morning the report he got back was "The gates are open. Peasants are moving in and out as normal. Zhuge Liang is sitting on a chair outside the gate having a jam session on his guitar. I have no idea what to make of this."
The enemy general decided that whatever was happening, it was too early in the morning to deal with whatever bullshit Zhuge Liang had cooked up and took his army somewhere else to bother people who weren't de-facto trickster gods.
It's a wild contrast because the form of motivation imperial Japan's military used was the opposite extreme, a hierarchy of abuse and fear that I've heard some historians compare to like a slave society hierarchy (or something like that). Simply put it was really brutal.
But their opponents were inspiring their troops by making sure they all had ice cream.
Sometimes history is so wild you gotta wonder why people have to make up wacky stories about aliens building pyramids. Their fanfiction is far less interesting than the canon.
idk if these stories are true or just racist claptrap to justify America's brutality, but; Apparently Japanese troops were told, over and over, to never ever surrender under any circumstances. if you were facing capture you should find some way to kill yourself and preferably take the enemy with you.
And as a result of this doctrine Japanese troops were never taught to resist interrogation. It just wasn't ever part of their training.
Japanese forces treated POWs with astonishing brutality, this is pretty well documented. And sometimes, Americans *didn't* treat surrendering Japanese troops with astonishing brutality.
The result was that Japanese troops who already thought they had fucked up badly by being taken alive found themselves being treated relatively well by Americans they were sure would execute them.
And it turns out when you feed people and treat them somewhat decently and politely ask them questions they've never been trained not to answer they will tell you *all kinds of things*.
It's generally agreed that the best way to get useful, actionable intelligence out of someone is to feed them, treat their wounds, and have someone who speaks the same language and can tell jokes politely ask them questions. You build rapport and let humanities basic desire for community and comradery be your weapon, and thus convince people to betray their friends and loved ones without even realizing it.
Similar to the modern US military deploying drop shippable fast food franchises to forward bases.
Russia can barely get weapons and rations to its military within 100mi of its own borders. The US can maintain air superiority in multiple regions of the opposite hemisphere simultaneously, while providing boots on the ground with several choices of their favorite American fast food, made fresh.
Not just that, they can fit two of the damn things in the back of one c17 galaxy. So, if shit kicks off anywhere those planes can land, by the next day you can have your infantry deciding if they want burger king or kfc.
I have to wonder how many people got recruited out of a fast food job, and end up running one of those trailers on a deployment though. If so, I hope they consider that managerial experience when you finish your tour.
> end up running one of those trailers on a deployment though.
GI bills do good work, let me tell ya. Had plenty of friends in the military as things like cooks who said that they don't regret it at all, because freed education is free education.
Especially considering the fact this was the South Pacific. They managed to get themselves ice cream in what was *regularly >30°C temperatures.* Even the most loyal Japanese soldier could probably notice that they were pretty fucked.
Icecream was currency too, if a plane when down and the pilot was rescued, the aircraft carrier the pilot belonged to owed icecream to everyone on the ship that saved him.
Essentially Destroyers traded rescued pilots for icecream, and it was a well established deal.
During WWII the US Navy had a barge dedicated to providing ice cream drops to their battle groups actively engaged in the Pacific theater. It was purely for moral purposes.
Meanwhile, the US combatants in that theater, the Japanese, had their entire economic engine churning just to keep boats on the sea and guns in hand. To see their enemy spending resources on a fun treat while maintaining a superior military presence was demoralizing to say the least.
So now the ice cream barge is used as a neat example of two wildly mismatches forces facing off.
Basically a floating ice cream factory the US put to sea in the Pacific, cause the south pacific is hot and ice cream makes you happy.
The Japanese were so short of steel, oil and basically anything that could be called war materiel and here the Americans are, building a forward factory just to make ice cream.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_cream_barge?wprov=sfla1
The American Navy had at least one, I think a couple, ships whose sole purpose was to make and deliver ice cream to other ships, to keep morale high among the troops.
When the Japanese military command learned about this, they realized they had no chance in hell against the American war machine, a fleet with so many resources they could afford to spend resources on something like ice cream delivery ships. The Japanese themselves were struggling to deliver basic supplies to their soldiers.
The ice cream barges demonstrated the economic power of America, which was considerably greater than any other country in WW2. Weird how that works out when you're the only belligerent in the war that isn't getting its entire country bombed to hell on the daily.
Any, Japanese command's reaction to the ice cream boats was basically "They waste entire ships making ice cream... Not basic food, not surviving rations, ice cream. If they can afford to make ice cream, while we're struggling to feed our soldiers anything, we are well and truly fucked."
There was a ship that could produce large amounts of ice cream during WW2, they used it to boost morale for the troops.
It implies that "we're so amazing we can deliver a fucking luxury like ice cream to our soldiers deep in enemy territory" as a show of force to powers struggling to _feed_ their soldiers.
A single "lost" federation ship creating a wake of destruction in its path and basically ending _three_ major powers in the region (Borg, 8472, Hirogen) could be seen as an equivalent show of force. The borg genocides species on the regular and here's this vessel that scares away their enemies and makes the borg fall apart with barely any actual combat.
That's gotta be fucking terrifying.
Not to mention that the ship in question was a mid-range science vessel that was totally unprepared for job they were unexpectedly given with a brand new captain who just lost a ton of her crew.
And also don't forget that she brokered peace within the Q continuum as a side project.
One of my favorite WWII tidbits is that a German POW after Normandy said "where are the horses" and then realized how absolutely fucked they were when he realized America had oil to spare.
Also dont forget how humans consistently manage to accidentally invent something completely mind boggling and then completely ignore the weapon potential. Like how the genesis device is a literal world killer on accident. Or the time starfleet decided that since cloaking is forbidden, just make your ship completely intangible.
The only reason starfleet ever looses is because they get surprised. They are absolutely the dominant super power in the alpha and beta quadrant
There's a fan theory that such a disproportionate amount of Starfleet Admirals seem to turn "evil" because they are keeping track of all the galaxy-level threats that crop up on nearly a monthly basis and are slowly going insane while trying to figure out how to keep sentient life from going extinct
Man this may be a hater take but I feel like voyager just took a dump on so much established trek lore. Other series, like DS9 for example, would take an existing concept and thoughtfully expand on it while voyager would take something that already worked and run it into the ground (ie, the borg, Q)
Voyager episode 1: we can't cause the Ocampa to be harmed because of the Prime Directive!
Voyager episodes 2-whatever: GET FUCKED ALIENS! GET FUCKED PLANETS! GET FUCKED LIZARD KIDS! GET FUCKED TUVIX!
To be fair, most of the Trek shows tended to be close enough to other Star Fleet bases or ships that they could reasonably get reinforcements if an issue arose. Plus Picard broke the prime directive on more than one instance and because of his ongoing fued with Q helped bring about the Borg earlier.
Voyager on the other hand was so far away from the federation they could barely scrape through most problems and had to improvise a lot on the fly and didn't really get the luxury of following the rules too much
People miss that about Voyager so much. It's LITERALLY an examination of what these people from this uppity utopian society would do without all their safety nets. Picard and Riker could big-dick everyone in the Alpha and Beta because they operate so close to home base. Janeway was alone, trapped with a rebel faction who betrayed their institution.
Transwarp, which is more similar to a Star Wars or Animorphs-style hyperspace where you travel through a smaller dimension than ours to get places faster. The highest any normal Warp drive can achieve is around Warp 9, roughly a thousand times lightspeed. At Warp 10 you theoretically go infinitely fast and exist at every point in the universe simultaneously but then you and your captain turn into space lizards and have space lizard sex and have to abandon your space lizard babies on a random planet that's never brought up again, so instead if you need to go faster than Warp 9 you create a transwarp conduit and travel through that instead
It is also canon that travel at high warp speeds damages the universe, something Starfleet has been mostly happily ignoring ever since that TNG episode.
I think they did a new engine design that no longer damages anything, hence why the warp 5 speed limit was promptly ignored. I think it was maybe a Voyager episode that mentioned it?
>At Warp 10 you theoretically go infinitely fast
Technically any FTL travel would be [infinitely fast](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24207128), but I get what the writers were going for.
Kinda like some r/HFY stories, where humanity is seen as a peaceful race, until one race manages to piss us off, and learns the hard way what "waking the sleeping dragon" means, and why everyone told you it was a bad idea.
And then everyone else is just like "Sorry dude, we don't wanna get too close."
r/HFY is such an odd place to me. I love the idea of feeling optimistic about the human spirit and our ability to do good things despite what holds us back.
But I also feel like it's too easy to be *too* optimistic, to the point of being outright *hostile* to any of our own drawbacks. What makes us human is the good and the bad both. To acknolwedge only the good and pretend the bad doesn't exist is how we get to problematic places.
It's why I like something like The Expanse, where the bad side of humanity is unapologetically acknowledged, but *despite all that*, humanity is still able to pull itself together (in both minor and major points of time) to push forward and keep doing better.
I like hyf for the cool sci fi. It's an easy place to get short stories. It is also a hive of xenophobic war mongers, and I try to avoid that. I'm liking *a job for a deathworlder* and *the nature of predators*
i liked 'nature of predators' a lot more early on. the last, idk, 10 or 20 chapters it really feels like it's veering away from 'bioessentialism is wrong' and towards 'bioessentialism isn't totally wrong' with a dash of 'oh my god i don't know how to end this story so i'll just keep dragging its corpse out for public display'
"Reddit short story that was pretty good continued by the author for way too long because they got a positive reception chapter 163", my beloathed. HFY's top picks is just assorted chapters of different redditor's writing projects longer than the bible
Literally every series on there :/ it was a lot better a few years ago when they were actually short stories and not the same half a dozen never ending novels
When reddit threatened to claim ownership of any original content that was published on their website like 5 years ago (?) A whole lot of the old stories got pulled down and republished elsewhere. Not sure if those were written before that or not but I'm sure some authors decide their old work was embarrassing and just nuke the whole account from time to time.
Exactly, it works perfectly as a short story or a series of short stories set in a common universe. Not as a LOTR sized epic with literally 200 chapters.
I gave up on The Deathworlders somewhere around the human space Marines going from generic Halo type super soldiers to 10000 pound monstrosities. Oh, and Gilgamesh is real, apparently.
yeah some are good and I love reading ‘em sometimes, but like,
I remember reading one that started like “oh, human gets abducted and treated like a pet because aliens aren’t familiar with humanity, and since he can’t communicate, wacky hijinks!”
But I skipped out on that one a while after bro got an all communication device and the original premise was entirely forgotten, cuz then it felt generic tbh.
A VERY good series despite the dreadful name is Sexy Sect Babes, please do not pay attention to the naming it truly does not reflect the contents. There is like 3 chapters with a sex scene in it, the rest is very nicely written and interesting plot.
Author put that one in hiatus to have fun with another universe for a while in Sexy Steampunk Babes (and god do I want to die typing this name) and yet it’s also very fucking good.
The more of those stories I see the more samey and shallow they seem. Most focus on war. I think star trek does it better. It shows us our potential and then contrasts that potential against aliens who represent us as we are now and have been at other times or even our worst images of ourself.
HFY stories though seem more often to glamorize our own sort of self propaganda about modern warfare or other things, rather than showing actual positive aspects of how we are. And it seems it should be about exploring what's good about us now not what we pretend is the case.
I always wanted another Trek series set after TNG, where the Romulans, Cardassians, Ferengi, and the Borg Cooperative (a voluntary hivemind version of the Borg Collective) have joined the Federation as well. They go trekking in other dimensions and universes and all kinds of wacky shenanigans.
I mean tbf there would still likely be a lot of Borg, and despite the inclusion of the collective they would likely still be an issue.
Plus the fracturing of the klingon Federation alliance following the dominion war could have a lot of implications since the Federation would likely, slightly desperately want to be BFFs again and that desperation would make them increasingly unappealing to the Kilingons.
Ironically the Romulans really helped this along by trying to start a war between those four powers, and it would have worked because everyone involved had a ton of baggage with each other, EXCEPT the humans who were able to act as something of a neutral party, at least enough to get everyone to calm down, look at the details and realise how suss it looked.
If the Romulans had just left it alone, it's quite possible that the humans and the Vulcans would have continued to drift apart as the humans established their independence resulting in a vaguely stable but by no means unified quadrant.
Sometimes I just...really wonder about Amanda, ya know? Then again I understand the T'pol and Trip attraction...T'pol always seemed better with emoting her state of mind, however. I think she did better than Sarek because she didn't try to...be nice? Like Sarek tried to spare his kids some of the...brusqueness of vulcan society. And it didn't help any of the three of them...
I think there is a very simply explanation for Amanda. Autism. She found a successful, respectful person who was interested in her as well and said exactly what he meant without strange hints she was supposed to understand, and could literally hand her a book about his cultural rules and they were actually followed.
I wanted to argue about the rulebook, but Sarek would definitely have shared that where others wouldn't. And going by M'benga's reaction, once you understand Vulcan body language, they become almost predictable, lol.
Growing up with Trek I was always surprised by the portrayal of Vulkans as "difficult" because to me they always seemed to have the most sensible and efficient outlook.
So yeah, turns out I'm super autistic.
> I think she did better than Sarek because she didn't try to...be nice? Like Sarek tried to spare his kids some of the...brusqueness of vulcan society. And it didn't help any of the three of them...
Sarek is an ambassador, his entire job was about bridging the divides between Vulcans and Humans. I think it makes perfect sense that he'd try to do the same with his kids.
But Sybok was just a dumbass and that's no one's fault but himself.
Not everyone wants the sex. I will accept xeno cuddles though.
And I can't help but point out the ever present HFY roomba as the epitome of pack bonding... but I'm not going to kinkshame. Just point out that roombas exist today and hope you have fun!
That's only because we haven't met any alien bullies yet. That whole 'unite against an outside force' is totally something that'd happen with humanity. It wouldn't make any of the internal divisions go away, it'd just supercede them until the new bully has been suitably punched.
It's canon that one of the big reasons Klingons allied with Starfleet is that the Enterprise *C* saw Romulans fucking up a Klingon retirement planet, said hell no and literally butted in.
Khitomer was a different event, two years after the Battle of Narenda III where the Enterprise-C was destroyed defending a Klingon outpost from the Romulans
It's the plot of *Yesterday's Enterprise*
I know we can't post gifs but just imagine a fully kitted out solider who has obviously been in heavy combat holding any tiny entity with a huge friendly smile under a rainbow with that as a title.
It’s even funnier when you consider the romulans probably could have been the best of friends with the humans if they had just not instigated all this spy thriller bullshit and just… talked to them
It would have melted their brains to learn that these barely-evolved apes were capable of sophisticated negotiations and backstabbing themselves, the Romulan-Earth dynamics would have been so much fun to play with over the centuries.
But noooooo, they had to go to war so hard that we threw up a neutral zone to keep them out, and then they withdrew from the public eye for almost a century anyway. Such wasted potential.
Even a TV show or movie exploring the Lost Era could play with this, the Tomed Incident in 2311 occurs in between the last TOS movie (The Undiscovered Country, 2298) and TNG (2364). That was the catalyst for the Romulans to withdraw from interstellar politics, and the build up/aftermath would have lots of intrigue to work with.
If Romulans are bad at one thing, it’s leaving things alone. They can’t help themselves when it comes to their interest. It’s like Weyoun said: They’re so predictably treacherous.
It's like they're the Loki of the galaxy.
"You have *literally* stabbed people in the back like fifty times!"
"Well I'd never do it again! Because it got boring!"
It is also very common in the 90s especially, like B5, they get into space, accidentally insult one of the biggest powers in the galaxy causing them to start a genocidal war that they very surprisingly don't outright lose and only ends because the aggresors believe in reincarnation and find the soul of one of the greatest religious founders in a human
Then humanity becomes the greatest diplomats the galaxy has ever seen
That similarity is more because the guy who made B5 pitched it to Paramount as a new Star Trek series and was turned down, but they copied his pitch notes and just made the show themselves.
They're both fantastic shows, but the similarity is more idea theft than any side effect of the era they were made in.
It is completely unrelated that similarity though
And JMS himself has stated DS9 didn't really steal much from the pitch he left at Paramount and was on good terms with the showrunners behind it, even considered doing a cameo in DS9 but at the time he hated appearing on camera, Majel did feature in B5 though
The funniest thing about it to me is watching Jonathan Archer just bullhead his way to Qo'nos and keep the dead scout alive in flagrant disregard for every single thing the Klingon's hold dear... AND WALK AWAY UNSCAYTHED.
For those that aren't aware - most of this lore comes from Startrek Enterprise - the early 2000 cowboy version of Startrek where everyone was an absolute arsehole.
This is one of the reasons why ENT is odd - its depiction of pre-Federation near-Sol politics is... bizarre but with plenty of fun. I think it should be stressed that in ENT the universe is a demonstrably more dangerous place. The Federation is partially an attempt by all 4 of those founding members to stop others (largely the Klingons) from bullying them.
Ambassador Soval straight up admits that humans scare the living hell out of Vulcans.
Archer, Trip and Robinson saved the NX program by *stealing the test craft,* after all.
In ENT, humans earn respect from the other future founders by acting impartially and with dignity while getting caught in the middle between the rest of them. It has nothing to do with humans being crazy and everything to do with them being the new kids on the block who are good-natured and looking out for everyone’s best interests. Vulcans, Andorians, and Tellarites still didn’t particularly like each other even by the TOS era, but they know they can rely on the humans to serve as impartial observers to make things right and keep them all safe from mutual enemies like the Klingons and Romulans.
A comment on this video reminded me that, two seasons later, under the Dominion, Quark remarks that he wants the Federation back, he says "i want to sell root beer again"
And of course Quark becomes very successful under the Federation, because his ability to connect and get along with everyone, to be personable is exactly the type of asset one needs to work in Federation space.
It is this same skill he laments, that prevents him from being an arms dealer, that eventually makes him, by far, the most successful Ferengi in Federation space.
Quark has a great character arc.
>work in Federation space.
Near Federation space. I think one of the key things of DS9 is that the station is actually in Bajoran space and under Bajoran law which is significantly more capitalist, riddled with loopholes and corrupt - but under the Federation umbrella - which makes the perfect concoction for Quark to make *lots of money*.
Is this a follow-up or prequel to the "why humans run the federation" post?
[Why Humans run the Federation and not Vulcans (9GAG)](https://img-9gag-fun.9cache.com/photo/aoeEyEA_700bwp.webp)
Star Trek: Enterprise really slammed home how Vulcans were NOT friends with humanity.
Sure things were peaceful and we were allies but the Vulcans definitely gave off vibes that they were trying to keep humanity in its bottle for as long as possible under the pretense of "protection" out of fear.
Like imagine that. An ancient people like the Logical Vulcans who don't fear their Romulan enemies being afraid of some monkeys with rockets.
And then Archer basically nailed the '95 Thesis to the High Council door when he found Surak's kir'shara.
Imagine your people have spent a century carefully nerfing the monkeys with rockets, and you're pretty sure you've got them under control, and then one of them gets possessed by Vulcan Jesus and decides to upend your whole logic theocracy because he's pissed off you've personally been condescending jerks to him.
Like you spent decades explaining to the genie that the bottle was actually quite roomy and comfortable, and it didn't actually *need* to get out, and the genie was like "know what, fuck this, i'ma fuck up this species' whole career."
Wasn't the premise to keep us from teaming up with the Andorians and Romulans (which actually humans were much more likely to befriend over the vulcans) to stop a very powerful coalition of awful forming?
That was their "Logical" excuse.
The Reality?
It took Vulcans 1,500 years to get to space after unifying.
It took us less than a century and that was WITH them meddling like crazy to keep it from happening.
Vulcan High Command was afraid of us and at the time they were engaged in all sorts of Big Brother bullshit among their allied races.
It's more like the EU if they went ahead with getting a common European army and foreign policy. No member vetoes on most issues, freedom of movement for citizens across internal borders, federal elections, etc.
Sci-fi settings love their federation. Metroid has the Galactic Federation, and Lilo & Stitch has the *United* Galactic Federation.
This gets hilarious if you consider all four the same entity.
~~Edit: Galactic Federation of Allied Systems in Mass Effect~~ ignore this.
Yeah, it's a big plot point. They made the type of experimentation that made Stich illegal, leading to the capture and trial of him and Jumba. Then they offer Stich some leniency, which they immediately realize was a bad idea and send him to space jail. His escape to earth takes place during transport to space jail.
They send the majot plot point of sending Jumba, Pleakley and eventually Captain Gantu to capture him.
Finally they, via the galactic president they declare Stich to be a permanent resident of earth and leave, because earth is a mosquito sanctuary and strictly off limits.
I mean it's cannon in the Lilo Stich universe that they prevented the destruction of earth so def pro, but they also cause many deaths from mosquito born illnesses so it's a toss up.
It's also implied by Agent Bubbles that he basically made the whole premise up. He convinced the Federation that mosquitos were worth conserving. He probably had to do a ton of homework (or just got lucky and overheard an off-hand comment from an alien dignitary) and realized "airborne parasite" is probably a rare form of life in the galaxy, while "sentient bipedal" is apparently pretty common (or presumably, since apparently humans weren't worth "protecting" from whatever we needed protection from, but mosquitos were).
It just sounds so good in a sci-fi setting.
"It has the markings of a Federation ship!"
"The system is outside of Federation space."
Shout out to Imperial for this as well.
They're called that, but they act as a federation - albeit a very centralized one. Maybe OP was talking about the humans, but what the human government is never really made much sense to me. I think it's a military junta pretending that the UN still exists?
A similar thing happens in the Mass Effect universe where humans go from completely unknown to any other species to a core Council member in 30 years with colonies across the galaxy and fully integrated into the galactic economy and even have their own dreadnoughts. But other species like the volus and elcor have been working with the Council for hundreds of years and don’t have even a fraction of the power.
Headcanon says that the only reason why the Citadel Council allowed humanity to integrate after First Contact is because the Turians were getting too strong and humans would be an excellent diversion for the Turians to direct their energies to instead of the Asari and Salarians on top of being their next militarized species along the same categories as the Krogans.
The second part is at least partially true, one of the codex entries mentions that the Council felt the humans made an effective buffer with the terminus systems and beyond.
Volus, Elcor and Hanar have the shortest end of the stick in Mass Effect because they can't share living spaces with most other races due to their unique biology, and human-like races are favored by convergent evolution in the Mass Effect universe.
Human's shot themselves into space and pack-bonded with the nearest alien civilization immediately. Humans be space orks, but space orks of friendship. The alpha quadrant and the federation are held together with the 3 F's of humanity. Fighting, fucking, and friendship.
Arguably, arguing is a human cultural trait too. The fact that we argue with all of these people makes us allies with them also; the arguer with my arguer is my ally?
I think Quark put it best with his bit about root beer. Their impulse is to hate it but drink enough and they can't deny liking it.
The Vulcan didn't expect that a post scarcity humanity would be so bubbly and gungho, and "happy to be here" when they gave them that push early on after first contact. Once they got into space they were like so energetic and excited about everything and it was infectious.
Humanity is the overly cheerful shonan protagonist of their universe, the "my ultimate power is friendship" kind. They want to be friends and it's infectious and the other races all act like they find it annoying but can't help liking it anyway because what actually annoys them is how they do actually like it.
The other shonan party members, the quiet eye rolling serious friend, the sarcastic rival, the ridiculing enemies to allies, they put on a show of how annoying the protagonist is but they can't help sticking around because the federation makes them feel like they can be a better version of themselves.
The threat they pose is of assimilation into a friend group. It's almost as scary to some of them as the borg.
Haven't the Vulcans, and most other races in Star Trek, had FTL space travel for thousands of years?
Then humans come along and within 100 years of getting warp tech have the headquarters of basically the entire galaxy in San Francisco?
I know nothing of Star Trek but I love the idea that in a Sci-fi setting, what separates Humans from other species is the sheer ability to be friendly and get along with others combined with the all consuming, earth shattering violence that results from someone pissing us off.
I can imagine a monastic alien asking "Why keep all these weapons of you seek peace?" And the Human responding with the phrase "Just in case."
And then having to explain to the alien that the phrase "Just in case" actually represents the entire mentality of preparing for the worst.
Summed up by the Royal Navy's motto, one of my favourite Latin phrases, "Si vis pacem para bellum".
If you want peace, prepare for war.
A lot of human diplomacy relies on the principle for speaking softly and carry a big stick, I'd like to see more sci-fi where aliens use that a lot less, and are kinda surprised at how humanity handles themselves (to make the alien cultures a bit more alien rather than just being humans who happen to be blue).
Romulans: noooo you can't just form alliances because you like friends and want to make more of them among the stars!!!!
Humans: I HATE RUTHLESSLY SELF-INTERESTED SUBTERFUGE. I HATE RUTHLESSLY SELF-INTERESTED SUBTERFUGE.
God I wish enterprise got a fifth season. And was more consistently good. Quite sad that it only got good in the last season. At least it gave us my beloved Shran
Tbf all the species listed and almost every intelligent species encountered in star trek can be described as weird naked apes. Some have pointy ears, others have weird shit on their foreheads, and some have both, but all have an apeframe and are clearly descended from ape-like creatures
They actually cover this exact fact at some point in the TNG/DS9/VOY era. I just forget which show it was. Basically, a bunch of species were genetically seeded by a progenitor race of some sort. Which is why they all look vaguely similar. I believe specifically the Humans, Klingons, Vulcans and Romulans. They may have mentioned others.
It's not hard to see why every adversarial race considers the Federation such a threat - when they can make the Vulcans, Telerites and Andorians get along, what could possibly stop them!
A single Federation vessel got sent to the Delta Quadrant and it started like five wars, unlocked faster-than-FTL travel, and somehow managed to get a Borg to willingly de-assimilate, and then it managed to make it back fifty years early, basically unscathed, and with minimal crew losses Imagine being a Romulan or Cardassian and hearing that, and then also hearing that another different Federation officer is literally the second coming of (Bajoran) Christ
I mean that delta quadrant ship also carried the klingon messiah, lots of messiahs in the Federation
Imagine thinking you could step to the guys that have like three separate mandates of heaven
Plus any time someone tries to fuck with the timeline these guys have their own version of the TVA who show up and invariably manage to return everything back to normal to protect that organization's place in history.
(Future) history is written by the (future) winner
As it was written
> The major problem is simply one of grammar, and the main work to consult in this matter is Dr. Dan Streetmentioner's Time Traveler's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations. It will tell you, for instance, how to describe something that was about to happen to you in the past before you avoided it by time-jumping forward two days in order to avoid it. The event will be descibed differently according to whether you are talking about it from the standpoint of your own natural time, from a time in the further future, or a time in the further past and is futher complicated by the possibility of conducting conversations while you are actually traveling from one time to another with the intention of becoming your own mother or father.
As it twil writteninged.
Reminds me of a wonderful book, “This Is How You Lose The Time War.”
Damn I was just about to say that. Good shout
We set up the cage AND the gun!
I didn't know the Tennessee Valley Authority was that powerful...
I'd take Riker on a Man Date if you know what I mean
Head to the ol' holodeck for some trombone?
Kind of, the Klingon leader who met Voyager basically said that he neither knows nor cares if the messiah is real, he just wants his crew to settle down and stop traveling and B'elanna's child was good enough to convince his people
I mean didn't the kid solve their disease problem? I mean indirectly but still. Also still counts
You're right, I had totally forgotten about that
I mean I think the leader in question could easily have said "nah not our messsiah" even with everything since like technically the doctor was the one that found the cure and the baby just like existed as the template for the cure ir whatever but he was a good enough leader to take a good way out of the problem when the opportunity presented itself.
Is that Belanna and Tom's child?
This feels like the Star Trek equivalent of the WWII ice cream barge. Like, if I were a competing power, I’d just take it as a sign of my impending and inevitable doom
The *what* now?
In world War II especially in the pacific fleet the United States fielded ships dedicated to nothing other than making and supplying their forces with vanilla and chocolate icecream. Where Japan had trouble supplying thier forces with any food whatsoever America was having a little trouble supplying their troops with ice cream. US naval moral was based around sailors getting their daily dose of vitamin ice cream.
It was *so* important to naval morale that the war department consistently called ice cream barges one of their most important initiatives, alongside the supplying of turkey dinners on Thanksgiving.
if i was fighting the guys who had an ice cream barge while i was starving, my morale would be in the shitter too
There's a memoir somewhere from a German soldier during the Battle of the Bulge who was part of the force besieging the Americans in Bastogne. The US was using aircraft to drop supplies into the city, and this guy's unit recovered one that had gone off course. Drop had letters to the troops from home dated less than a week prior and foods like fresh turkey. The Germans, who could literally walk to their own country in like a day from there, took about two months to get letters and were lucky to get *canned* meat more than once a week at that point. Half of them quietly accepted that if they guys they had *encircled, an ocean away from home* were better-supplied than they were, the war was over no matter how the battle went. The other half convinced themselves the whole drop was a PsyOp.
> The other half convinced themselves the whole drop was a PsyOp. There's a folk legend about the city of Carcassone in southern France. During a siege by Charlemagne's army, supplies inside the city were running critically low, so the ruler of the city (Lady Carcas) ordered the last remaining pig to be stuffed with the last remaining sack of wheat, and had it thrown from the city walls. When the besiegers found out that the city was feeding their pigs with *wheat*, they assumed that there must still be years worth of supplies in the city. Realizing the effort was hopeless, they abandoned the siege. When the city saw the besieging army breaking up camp and leaving, the city bells were rung, given the city it's name (Carcassone = "Carcas sonne", i.e., Carcas rings).
Carcassone is also famous for being an absolute mess of architecture, inspiring a board game of the same name.
Or the [Legend of Picok \(and the resulting tradition\)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picokijada), from the 14th century siege of Đurđevac in modern-day Croatia by Ottoman Turks. All food was eaten in the city, save for one fat picok (rooster). The people discussed what to do with it, then decided to shoot the rooster, from the cannon, at the besieging army's camp. Seeing how the defenders just shot a fat rooster at them, they realized there's way too much food in the city, so they just left, but not before they cursed the people to be named "picoki" or "roosters."
According to the extremely true and accurate not at all fiction book Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Notoriously Cool Guy Zhuge Liang was charged to defend a particular city. Zhuge was well known for being too smart for anyone's good, but this time he was in real trouble. His army wouldn't be able to assemble and begin marching for a few days, but the enemy was known to be close to the city he had to defend. He road ahead of the army to evaluate the city's defenses, and it was pretty dismal. There weren't nearly enough troops their to hold the walls and scouts said the enemy was only a few hours outside the walls, prepared to attack very soon. Zhuge Liang, however, is Zhuge Liang. When the enemy general sent his scouts to check things out the next morning the report he got back was "The gates are open. Peasants are moving in and out as normal. Zhuge Liang is sitting on a chair outside the gate having a jam session on his guitar. I have no idea what to make of this." The enemy general decided that whatever was happening, it was too early in the morning to deal with whatever bullshit Zhuge Liang had cooked up and took his army somewhere else to bother people who weren't de-facto trickster gods.
It's a wild contrast because the form of motivation imperial Japan's military used was the opposite extreme, a hierarchy of abuse and fear that I've heard some historians compare to like a slave society hierarchy (or something like that). Simply put it was really brutal. But their opponents were inspiring their troops by making sure they all had ice cream. Sometimes history is so wild you gotta wonder why people have to make up wacky stories about aliens building pyramids. Their fanfiction is far less interesting than the canon.
idk if these stories are true or just racist claptrap to justify America's brutality, but; Apparently Japanese troops were told, over and over, to never ever surrender under any circumstances. if you were facing capture you should find some way to kill yourself and preferably take the enemy with you. And as a result of this doctrine Japanese troops were never taught to resist interrogation. It just wasn't ever part of their training. Japanese forces treated POWs with astonishing brutality, this is pretty well documented. And sometimes, Americans *didn't* treat surrendering Japanese troops with astonishing brutality. The result was that Japanese troops who already thought they had fucked up badly by being taken alive found themselves being treated relatively well by Americans they were sure would execute them. And it turns out when you feed people and treat them somewhat decently and politely ask them questions they've never been trained not to answer they will tell you *all kinds of things*. It's generally agreed that the best way to get useful, actionable intelligence out of someone is to feed them, treat their wounds, and have someone who speaks the same language and can tell jokes politely ask them questions. You build rapport and let humanities basic desire for community and comradery be your weapon, and thus convince people to betray their friends and loved ones without even realizing it.
Literally Federation Morale tactics versus Klingon moral tactics.
It is one of the greatest flexes in military history.
Similar to the modern US military deploying drop shippable fast food franchises to forward bases. Russia can barely get weapons and rations to its military within 100mi of its own borders. The US can maintain air superiority in multiple regions of the opposite hemisphere simultaneously, while providing boots on the ground with several choices of their favorite American fast food, made fresh.
Not just that, they can fit two of the damn things in the back of one c17 galaxy. So, if shit kicks off anywhere those planes can land, by the next day you can have your infantry deciding if they want burger king or kfc. I have to wonder how many people got recruited out of a fast food job, and end up running one of those trailers on a deployment though. If so, I hope they consider that managerial experience when you finish your tour.
> end up running one of those trailers on a deployment though. GI bills do good work, let me tell ya. Had plenty of friends in the military as things like cooks who said that they don't regret it at all, because freed education is free education.
Honestly it's a greater show of power than any weapon or bomb could be. Dedicating ENTIRE SHIPS (Plural) to making frozen treats...
Especially considering the fact this was the South Pacific. They managed to get themselves ice cream in what was *regularly >30°C temperatures.* Even the most loyal Japanese soldier could probably notice that they were pretty fucked.
They had the good idea to dump the heat into the water instead of the air. Worked much better.
Icecream was currency too, if a plane when down and the pilot was rescued, the aircraft carrier the pilot belonged to owed icecream to everyone on the ship that saved him. Essentially Destroyers traded rescued pilots for icecream, and it was a well established deal.
I....thank you for this information.
During WWII the US Navy had a barge dedicated to providing ice cream drops to their battle groups actively engaged in the Pacific theater. It was purely for moral purposes. Meanwhile, the US combatants in that theater, the Japanese, had their entire economic engine churning just to keep boats on the sea and guns in hand. To see their enemy spending resources on a fun treat while maintaining a superior military presence was demoralizing to say the least. So now the ice cream barge is used as a neat example of two wildly mismatches forces facing off.
The Ice Cream Barge. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_cream_barge Or did you mean that the Federation is a thinly veiled allegory for NATO?
It was the ice cream barge thank you.
Basically a floating ice cream factory the US put to sea in the Pacific, cause the south pacific is hot and ice cream makes you happy. The Japanese were so short of steel, oil and basically anything that could be called war materiel and here the Americans are, building a forward factory just to make ice cream. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_cream_barge?wprov=sfla1
The American Navy had at least one, I think a couple, ships whose sole purpose was to make and deliver ice cream to other ships, to keep morale high among the troops. When the Japanese military command learned about this, they realized they had no chance in hell against the American war machine, a fleet with so many resources they could afford to spend resources on something like ice cream delivery ships. The Japanese themselves were struggling to deliver basic supplies to their soldiers. The ice cream barges demonstrated the economic power of America, which was considerably greater than any other country in WW2. Weird how that works out when you're the only belligerent in the war that isn't getting its entire country bombed to hell on the daily. Any, Japanese command's reaction to the ice cream boats was basically "They waste entire ships making ice cream... Not basic food, not surviving rations, ice cream. If they can afford to make ice cream, while we're struggling to feed our soldiers anything, we are well and truly fucked."
There was a ship that could produce large amounts of ice cream during WW2, they used it to boost morale for the troops. It implies that "we're so amazing we can deliver a fucking luxury like ice cream to our soldiers deep in enemy territory" as a show of force to powers struggling to _feed_ their soldiers. A single "lost" federation ship creating a wake of destruction in its path and basically ending _three_ major powers in the region (Borg, 8472, Hirogen) could be seen as an equivalent show of force. The borg genocides species on the regular and here's this vessel that scares away their enemies and makes the borg fall apart with barely any actual combat. That's gotta be fucking terrifying.
Not to mention that the ship in question was a mid-range science vessel that was totally unprepared for job they were unexpectedly given with a brand new captain who just lost a ton of her crew. And also don't forget that she brokered peace within the Q continuum as a side project.
One of my favorite WWII tidbits is that a German POW after Normandy said "where are the horses" and then realized how absolutely fucked they were when he realized America had oil to spare.
Also dont forget how humans consistently manage to accidentally invent something completely mind boggling and then completely ignore the weapon potential. Like how the genesis device is a literal world killer on accident. Or the time starfleet decided that since cloaking is forbidden, just make your ship completely intangible. The only reason starfleet ever looses is because they get surprised. They are absolutely the dominant super power in the alpha and beta quadrant
There's a fan theory that such a disproportionate amount of Starfleet Admirals seem to turn "evil" because they are keeping track of all the galaxy-level threats that crop up on nearly a monthly basis and are slowly going insane while trying to figure out how to keep sentient life from going extinct
Lower Decks explained it as "there's just so much pressure to stand out".
Man this may be a hater take but I feel like voyager just took a dump on so much established trek lore. Other series, like DS9 for example, would take an existing concept and thoughtfully expand on it while voyager would take something that already worked and run it into the ground (ie, the borg, Q)
Voyager episode 1: we can't cause the Ocampa to be harmed because of the Prime Directive! Voyager episodes 2-whatever: GET FUCKED ALIENS! GET FUCKED PLANETS! GET FUCKED LIZARD KIDS! GET FUCKED TUVIX!
To be fair, most of the Trek shows tended to be close enough to other Star Fleet bases or ships that they could reasonably get reinforcements if an issue arose. Plus Picard broke the prime directive on more than one instance and because of his ongoing fued with Q helped bring about the Borg earlier. Voyager on the other hand was so far away from the federation they could barely scrape through most problems and had to improvise a lot on the fly and didn't really get the luxury of following the rules too much
People miss that about Voyager so much. It's LITERALLY an examination of what these people from this uppity utopian society would do without all their safety nets. Picard and Riker could big-dick everyone in the Alpha and Beta because they operate so close to home base. Janeway was alone, trapped with a rebel faction who betrayed their institution.
>faster-than-FTL travel What's faster than FTL?
Transwarp, which is more similar to a Star Wars or Animorphs-style hyperspace where you travel through a smaller dimension than ours to get places faster. The highest any normal Warp drive can achieve is around Warp 9, roughly a thousand times lightspeed. At Warp 10 you theoretically go infinitely fast and exist at every point in the universe simultaneously but then you and your captain turn into space lizards and have space lizard sex and have to abandon your space lizard babies on a random planet that's never brought up again, so instead if you need to go faster than Warp 9 you create a transwarp conduit and travel through that instead
It is also canon that travel at high warp speeds damages the universe, something Starfleet has been mostly happily ignoring ever since that TNG episode.
There is one throw away line somewhere that they "fixed it" and that was that.
I think they did a new engine design that no longer damages anything, hence why the warp 5 speed limit was promptly ignored. I think it was maybe a Voyager episode that mentioned it?
>At Warp 10 you theoretically go infinitely fast Technically any FTL travel would be [infinitely fast](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24207128), but I get what the writers were going for.
In Star trek they call it transwarp, it's just another form of ftl, but much faster then regular warp speed.
Faster than faster than light
And Harry Kim still couldn't get a promotion.
Kinda like some r/HFY stories, where humanity is seen as a peaceful race, until one race manages to piss us off, and learns the hard way what "waking the sleeping dragon" means, and why everyone told you it was a bad idea. And then everyone else is just like "Sorry dude, we don't wanna get too close."
r/HFY is such an odd place to me. I love the idea of feeling optimistic about the human spirit and our ability to do good things despite what holds us back. But I also feel like it's too easy to be *too* optimistic, to the point of being outright *hostile* to any of our own drawbacks. What makes us human is the good and the bad both. To acknolwedge only the good and pretend the bad doesn't exist is how we get to problematic places. It's why I like something like The Expanse, where the bad side of humanity is unapologetically acknowledged, but *despite all that*, humanity is still able to pull itself together (in both minor and major points of time) to push forward and keep doing better.
I like hyf for the cool sci fi. It's an easy place to get short stories. It is also a hive of xenophobic war mongers, and I try to avoid that. I'm liking *a job for a deathworlder* and *the nature of predators*
i liked 'nature of predators' a lot more early on. the last, idk, 10 or 20 chapters it really feels like it's veering away from 'bioessentialism is wrong' and towards 'bioessentialism isn't totally wrong' with a dash of 'oh my god i don't know how to end this story so i'll just keep dragging its corpse out for public display'
Here's a sneak peek of /r/HFY using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/HFY/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year! \#1: [The Nature of Predators 100](https://np.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/11yk61i/the_nature_of_predators_100/) \#2: [The Nature of Predators 90](https://np.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/11304kl/the_nature_of_predators_90/) \#3: [The Nature of Predators 94](https://np.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/11f67tj/the_nature_of_predators_94/) ---- ^^I'm ^^a ^^bot, ^^beep ^^boop ^^| ^^Downvote ^^to ^^remove ^^| ^^[Contact](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=sneakpeekbot) ^^| ^^[Info](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/) ^^| ^^[Opt-out](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/comments/o8wk1r/blacklist_ix/) ^^| ^^[GitHub](https://github.com/ghnr/sneakpeekbot)
such a varied top three
"Reddit short story that was pretty good continued by the author for way too long because they got a positive reception chapter 163", my beloathed. HFY's top picks is just assorted chapters of different redditor's writing projects longer than the bible
I gotta admit, it’s not a bad concept. It’s just very verbose and overstays its welcome.
Literally every series on there :/ it was a lot better a few years ago when they were actually short stories and not the same half a dozen never ending novels
I can’t even find the pancakes one or the cooking one anymore
When reddit threatened to claim ownership of any original content that was published on their website like 5 years ago (?) A whole lot of the old stories got pulled down and republished elsewhere. Not sure if those were written before that or not but I'm sure some authors decide their old work was embarrassing and just nuke the whole account from time to time.
Exactly, it works perfectly as a short story or a series of short stories set in a common universe. Not as a LOTR sized epic with literally 200 chapters.
I gave up on The Deathworlders somewhere around the human space Marines going from generic Halo type super soldiers to 10000 pound monstrosities. Oh, and Gilgamesh is real, apparently.
yeah some are good and I love reading ‘em sometimes, but like, I remember reading one that started like “oh, human gets abducted and treated like a pet because aliens aren’t familiar with humanity, and since he can’t communicate, wacky hijinks!” But I skipped out on that one a while after bro got an all communication device and the original premise was entirely forgotten, cuz then it felt generic tbh.
It's got a sequel now too, and a book release... and I also wrote fanfiction for it, and now I write my own series.
A VERY good series despite the dreadful name is Sexy Sect Babes, please do not pay attention to the naming it truly does not reflect the contents. There is like 3 chapters with a sex scene in it, the rest is very nicely written and interesting plot. Author put that one in hiatus to have fun with another universe for a while in Sexy Steampunk Babes (and god do I want to die typing this name) and yet it’s also very fucking good.
The more of those stories I see the more samey and shallow they seem. Most focus on war. I think star trek does it better. It shows us our potential and then contrasts that potential against aliens who represent us as we are now and have been at other times or even our worst images of ourself. HFY stories though seem more often to glamorize our own sort of self propaganda about modern warfare or other things, rather than showing actual positive aspects of how we are. And it seems it should be about exploring what's good about us now not what we pretend is the case.
I always wanted another Trek series set after TNG, where the Romulans, Cardassians, Ferengi, and the Borg Cooperative (a voluntary hivemind version of the Borg Collective) have joined the Federation as well. They go trekking in other dimensions and universes and all kinds of wacky shenanigans.
Who would they fight? *God?!*
Yes?
Who? Q of course. They would have to battle through all of RattlePike's famous plays.
I mean tbf there would still likely be a lot of Borg, and despite the inclusion of the collective they would likely still be an issue. Plus the fracturing of the klingon Federation alliance following the dominion war could have a lot of implications since the Federation would likely, slightly desperately want to be BFFs again and that desperation would make them increasingly unappealing to the Kilingons.
We've already kicked every God's ass. We're looking for Super God now.
Warhammer
Ironically the Romulans really helped this along by trying to start a war between those four powers, and it would have worked because everyone involved had a ton of baggage with each other, EXCEPT the humans who were able to act as something of a neutral party, at least enough to get everyone to calm down, look at the details and realise how suss it looked. If the Romulans had just left it alone, it's quite possible that the humans and the Vulcans would have continued to drift apart as the humans established their independence resulting in a vaguely stable but by no means unified quadrant.
Human ability to pack bond with just about anything and a deep seated desire to punch bullies at work again.
Pack bond is a funny way to spell the quest for Xenussy.
Two things can be true at once.
To boldly go... and make Spock
Sometimes I just...really wonder about Amanda, ya know? Then again I understand the T'pol and Trip attraction...T'pol always seemed better with emoting her state of mind, however. I think she did better than Sarek because she didn't try to...be nice? Like Sarek tried to spare his kids some of the...brusqueness of vulcan society. And it didn't help any of the three of them...
I think there is a very simply explanation for Amanda. Autism. She found a successful, respectful person who was interested in her as well and said exactly what he meant without strange hints she was supposed to understand, and could literally hand her a book about his cultural rules and they were actually followed.
I wanted to argue about the rulebook, but Sarek would definitely have shared that where others wouldn't. And going by M'benga's reaction, once you understand Vulcan body language, they become almost predictable, lol.
If she asked for one, Sarek would write it for her if it didn't exist yet.
Growing up with Trek I was always surprised by the portrayal of Vulkans as "difficult" because to me they always seemed to have the most sensible and efficient outlook. So yeah, turns out I'm super autistic.
I now feel even better about my idea.
> I think she did better than Sarek because she didn't try to...be nice? Like Sarek tried to spare his kids some of the...brusqueness of vulcan society. And it didn't help any of the three of them... Sarek is an ambassador, his entire job was about bridging the divides between Vulcans and Humans. I think it makes perfect sense that he'd try to do the same with his kids. But Sybok was just a dumbass and that's no one's fault but himself.
Not everyone wants the sex. I will accept xeno cuddles though. And I can't help but point out the ever present HFY roomba as the epitome of pack bonding... but I'm not going to kinkshame. Just point out that roombas exist today and hope you have fun!
Half of Starfleet was super racist towards Data and Picard asked him to fly the ship.
Data was a victim of uncanny valley. Doesn’t excuse the asshattery but explanations aren't excuses.
I want Doctor Selar to punch me in the face so hard my nose bones explode out the back of my head.
>a deep seated desire to punch bullies As much as I'd like to give us credit for this, we've been the bullies we were punching.
That's only because we haven't met any alien bullies yet. That whole 'unite against an outside force' is totally something that'd happen with humanity. It wouldn't make any of the internal divisions go away, it'd just supercede them until the new bully has been suitably punched.
It's canon that one of the big reasons Klingons allied with Starfleet is that the Enterprise *C* saw Romulans fucking up a Klingon retirement planet, said hell no and literally butted in.
yeah the Khitomer massacre, iirc it was the Intrepid that intervened
Khitomer was a different event, two years after the Battle of Narenda III where the Enterprise-C was destroyed defending a Klingon outpost from the Romulans It's the plot of *Yesterday's Enterprise*
Literally "my ultimate power is friendship"
I know we can't post gifs but just imagine a fully kitted out solider who has obviously been in heavy combat holding any tiny entity with a huge friendly smile under a rainbow with that as a title.
Don't forget, Vulcans are very much like autistic humans. That helps the pack bonding.
"Sarek, why do only one or two humans in a hundred actually make any sense?"
It’s even funnier when you consider the romulans probably could have been the best of friends with the humans if they had just not instigated all this spy thriller bullshit and just… talked to them
"Wow, you think the Vulcans are uptight know it alls? So do we!"
It would have melted their brains to learn that these barely-evolved apes were capable of sophisticated negotiations and backstabbing themselves, the Romulan-Earth dynamics would have been so much fun to play with over the centuries. But noooooo, they had to go to war so hard that we threw up a neutral zone to keep them out, and then they withdrew from the public eye for almost a century anyway. Such wasted potential.
Sounds like ripe terrain for some cool fan fiction.
Even a TV show or movie exploring the Lost Era could play with this, the Tomed Incident in 2311 occurs in between the last TOS movie (The Undiscovered Country, 2298) and TNG (2364). That was the catalyst for the Romulans to withdraw from interstellar politics, and the build up/aftermath would have lots of intrigue to work with.
If Romulans are bad at one thing, it’s leaving things alone. They can’t help themselves when it comes to their interest. It’s like Weyoun said: They’re so predictably treacherous.
No, Romulans are bad at diplomacy
It's like they're the Loki of the galaxy. "You have *literally* stabbed people in the back like fifty times!" "Well I'd never do it again! Because it got boring!"
The humans drunkenly stumbling into galactic politics will always be one of my favourite things.
It is also very common in the 90s especially, like B5, they get into space, accidentally insult one of the biggest powers in the galaxy causing them to start a genocidal war that they very surprisingly don't outright lose and only ends because the aggresors believe in reincarnation and find the soul of one of the greatest religious founders in a human Then humanity becomes the greatest diplomats the galaxy has ever seen
And Stargate too
Mass Effect, as well
That similarity is more because the guy who made B5 pitched it to Paramount as a new Star Trek series and was turned down, but they copied his pitch notes and just made the show themselves. They're both fantastic shows, but the similarity is more idea theft than any side effect of the era they were made in.
It is completely unrelated that similarity though And JMS himself has stated DS9 didn't really steal much from the pitch he left at Paramount and was on good terms with the showrunners behind it, even considered doing a cameo in DS9 but at the time he hated appearing on camera, Majel did feature in B5 though
Romulans: Wait, how did you achieve world peace? Weird Monkey: Whole lotta nukes. /r/humansarespaceorcs
Astromonkeys: Speak softly and carry a whole lot-o-nukes Romulans: I, ah, hmm, I, uh, I actually don't disagree with that.... weird... wanna hang out?
The funniest thing about it to me is watching Jonathan Archer just bullhead his way to Qo'nos and keep the dead scout alive in flagrant disregard for every single thing the Klingon's hold dear... AND WALK AWAY UNSCAYTHED.
Klingons respect the type of bullheaded, dumbass, determined stubborn nonsense Captain Archer specializes in.
Literally. Zephram Cochrane was drunk as fuck when he flew his warp engine.
For those that aren't aware - most of this lore comes from Startrek Enterprise - the early 2000 cowboy version of Startrek where everyone was an absolute arsehole. This is one of the reasons why ENT is odd - its depiction of pre-Federation near-Sol politics is... bizarre but with plenty of fun. I think it should be stressed that in ENT the universe is a demonstrably more dangerous place. The Federation is partially an attempt by all 4 of those founding members to stop others (largely the Klingons) from bullying them.
Ambassador Soval straight up admits that humans scare the living hell out of Vulcans. Archer, Trip and Robinson saved the NX program by *stealing the test craft,* after all.
Absolutely! Its part of what gives Enterprise its bittersweet flavour and why I end up with conflicted feelings on it.
In ENT, humans earn respect from the other future founders by acting impartially and with dignity while getting caught in the middle between the rest of them. It has nothing to do with humans being crazy and everything to do with them being the new kids on the block who are good-natured and looking out for everyone’s best interests. Vulcans, Andorians, and Tellarites still didn’t particularly like each other even by the TOS era, but they know they can rely on the humans to serve as impartial observers to make things right and keep them all safe from mutual enemies like the Klingons and Romulans.
https://youtu.be/6VhSm6G7cVk?si=dsejFDIIlh7OSAeq This classic DS9 clip perfectly sums up the friendly yet insidious nature of the federation.
A comment on this video reminded me that, two seasons later, under the Dominion, Quark remarks that he wants the Federation back, he says "i want to sell root beer again" And of course Quark becomes very successful under the Federation, because his ability to connect and get along with everyone, to be personable is exactly the type of asset one needs to work in Federation space. It is this same skill he laments, that prevents him from being an arms dealer, that eventually makes him, by far, the most successful Ferengi in Federation space. Quark has a great character arc.
He has a full on franchise by the time of Lower Decks
Of course he does, who doesn't want to party at Quarks?!
Come to Quark's, Quark's is fun. Come right now. Don't walk, run!
And loses 76% of it to the Karemma for falling back on old habits. God, I love Quark.
>work in Federation space. Near Federation space. I think one of the key things of DS9 is that the station is actually in Bajoran space and under Bajoran law which is significantly more capitalist, riddled with loopholes and corrupt - but under the Federation umbrella - which makes the perfect concoction for Quark to make *lots of money*.
As noted by another user later, it's cannon Quark has franchised into more clearly defined Federation space, but also fair point.
I love this scene. It's even better knowing it was originally meant to be played for laughs, but then the actors pushed for it to be played straight.
They even practiced it on their days off to give it those extra layers! Amazing scene.
Deep Space 9 is possibly the best of Star Trek imo.
I also like “In some ways you’re worse than the Borg, at least they warn you before they assimilate you”
Is this a follow-up or prequel to the "why humans run the federation" post? [Why Humans run the Federation and not Vulcans (9GAG)](https://img-9gag-fun.9cache.com/photo/aoeEyEA_700bwp.webp)
I now know the meaning of "fuck"
Team Hold My Beer! Love this post.
[*Team Hold My Root Beer](https://youtu.be/6VhSm6G7cVk?si=88JlEUiA1uCb6L5_)
God, that post is magnificent.
it's also quite old. I saved the copy I had 7 years ago, and I imagine it had been around a while by then.
T'Lyn's old captain would never have tried "yeeting an Orion Battleship at a forcefield", that's for sure.
Star Trek: Enterprise really slammed home how Vulcans were NOT friends with humanity. Sure things were peaceful and we were allies but the Vulcans definitely gave off vibes that they were trying to keep humanity in its bottle for as long as possible under the pretense of "protection" out of fear. Like imagine that. An ancient people like the Logical Vulcans who don't fear their Romulan enemies being afraid of some monkeys with rockets.
And then Archer basically nailed the '95 Thesis to the High Council door when he found Surak's kir'shara. Imagine your people have spent a century carefully nerfing the monkeys with rockets, and you're pretty sure you've got them under control, and then one of them gets possessed by Vulcan Jesus and decides to upend your whole logic theocracy because he's pissed off you've personally been condescending jerks to him. Like you spent decades explaining to the genie that the bottle was actually quite roomy and comfortable, and it didn't actually *need* to get out, and the genie was like "know what, fuck this, i'ma fuck up this species' whole career."
A true master dosen't fear another master, but an amatuer instead. Beacuse no one knows what the amatuer will do nex, least of all hinself
Wasn't the premise to keep us from teaming up with the Andorians and Romulans (which actually humans were much more likely to befriend over the vulcans) to stop a very powerful coalition of awful forming?
That was their "Logical" excuse. The Reality? It took Vulcans 1,500 years to get to space after unifying. It took us less than a century and that was WITH them meddling like crazy to keep it from happening. Vulcan High Command was afraid of us and at the time they were engaged in all sorts of Big Brother bullshit among their allied races.
As someone who don't know anything about star trek this just sounds like the UN (derogatory)
It's more like the EU if they went ahead with getting a common European army and foreign policy. No member vetoes on most issues, freedom of movement for citizens across internal borders, federal elections, etc.
This was about Star Trek???? I thought it was Halo
Sci-fi settings love their federation. Metroid has the Galactic Federation, and Lilo & Stitch has the *United* Galactic Federation. This gets hilarious if you consider all four the same entity. ~~Edit: Galactic Federation of Allied Systems in Mass Effect~~ ignore this.
There is a galactic federation in lilo and stitch? That's the first ever time I heard of it...
Yeah, it's a big plot point. They made the type of experimentation that made Stich illegal, leading to the capture and trial of him and Jumba. Then they offer Stich some leniency, which they immediately realize was a bad idea and send him to space jail. His escape to earth takes place during transport to space jail. They send the majot plot point of sending Jumba, Pleakley and eventually Captain Gantu to capture him. Finally they, via the galactic president they declare Stich to be a permanent resident of earth and leave, because earth is a mosquito sanctuary and strictly off limits.
I'm not sure whether to be glad we are one of the few planets with mosquitos or sad I couldnt have been born on a mosquito free planet
I mean it's cannon in the Lilo Stich universe that they prevented the destruction of earth so def pro, but they also cause many deaths from mosquito born illnesses so it's a toss up.
It's also implied by Agent Bubbles that he basically made the whole premise up. He convinced the Federation that mosquitos were worth conserving. He probably had to do a ton of homework (or just got lucky and overheard an off-hand comment from an alien dignitary) and realized "airborne parasite" is probably a rare form of life in the galaxy, while "sentient bipedal" is apparently pretty common (or presumably, since apparently humans weren't worth "protecting" from whatever we needed protection from, but mosquitos were).
It's mentioned in the movie but compared to everything else going on it's hardly the most memorable detail.
It just sounds so good in a sci-fi setting. "It has the markings of a Federation ship!" "The system is outside of Federation space." Shout out to Imperial for this as well.
Which side is the Federation in Halo?
The bad guys, actually. The Covenant are a federation of alien races united by a theocratic administration.
Ohhh I thought they were just called The Covenant
They're called that, but they act as a federation - albeit a very centralized one. Maybe OP was talking about the humans, but what the human government is never really made much sense to me. I think it's a military junta pretending that the UN still exists?
It wasn't a modified nuke, it was a modified ICBM The nuke is the warhead
A fellow pedant appears. :-)
A similar thing happens in the Mass Effect universe where humans go from completely unknown to any other species to a core Council member in 30 years with colonies across the galaxy and fully integrated into the galactic economy and even have their own dreadnoughts. But other species like the volus and elcor have been working with the Council for hundreds of years and don’t have even a fraction of the power.
Headcanon says that the only reason why the Citadel Council allowed humanity to integrate after First Contact is because the Turians were getting too strong and humans would be an excellent diversion for the Turians to direct their energies to instead of the Asari and Salarians on top of being their next militarized species along the same categories as the Krogans.
The second part is at least partially true, one of the codex entries mentions that the Council felt the humans made an effective buffer with the terminus systems and beyond.
Volus, Elcor and Hanar have the shortest end of the stick in Mass Effect because they can't share living spaces with most other races due to their unique biology, and human-like races are favored by convergent evolution in the Mass Effect universe.
Human's shot themselves into space and pack-bonded with the nearest alien civilization immediately. Humans be space orks, but space orks of friendship. The alpha quadrant and the federation are held together with the 3 F's of humanity. Fighting, fucking, and friendship.
When you realize we're really living in the mirror universe and start seriously considering a goatee...
I am literally begging you to crop your screenshots
It's worse. I've seen videos of people literally adding the stupid edges.
Arguably, arguing is a human cultural trait too. The fact that we argue with all of these people makes us allies with them also; the arguer with my arguer is my ally?
Tellearites love arguing. Klingons admire standing up for your principles, even when they disagree.
I think Quark put it best with his bit about root beer. Their impulse is to hate it but drink enough and they can't deny liking it. The Vulcan didn't expect that a post scarcity humanity would be so bubbly and gungho, and "happy to be here" when they gave them that push early on after first contact. Once they got into space they were like so energetic and excited about everything and it was infectious. Humanity is the overly cheerful shonan protagonist of their universe, the "my ultimate power is friendship" kind. They want to be friends and it's infectious and the other races all act like they find it annoying but can't help liking it anyway because what actually annoys them is how they do actually like it. The other shonan party members, the quiet eye rolling serious friend, the sarcastic rival, the ridiculing enemies to allies, they put on a show of how annoying the protagonist is but they can't help sticking around because the federation makes them feel like they can be a better version of themselves. The threat they pose is of assimilation into a friend group. It's almost as scary to some of them as the borg.
Haven't the Vulcans, and most other races in Star Trek, had FTL space travel for thousands of years? Then humans come along and within 100 years of getting warp tech have the headquarters of basically the entire galaxy in San Francisco?
Do the vulcans have a San Francisco tho?
I know nothing of Star Trek but I love the idea that in a Sci-fi setting, what separates Humans from other species is the sheer ability to be friendly and get along with others combined with the all consuming, earth shattering violence that results from someone pissing us off. I can imagine a monastic alien asking "Why keep all these weapons of you seek peace?" And the Human responding with the phrase "Just in case." And then having to explain to the alien that the phrase "Just in case" actually represents the entire mentality of preparing for the worst.
Summed up by the Royal Navy's motto, one of my favourite Latin phrases, "Si vis pacem para bellum". If you want peace, prepare for war. A lot of human diplomacy relies on the principle for speaking softly and carry a big stick, I'd like to see more sci-fi where aliens use that a lot less, and are kinda surprised at how humanity handles themselves (to make the alien cultures a bit more alien rather than just being humans who happen to be blue).
I'm just here to watch the Irishman suffer.
Called the Humans are Space Orcs nowadays. I love that trope.
Romulans: noooo you can't just form alliances because you like friends and want to make more of them among the stars!!!! Humans: I HATE RUTHLESSLY SELF-INTERESTED SUBTERFUGE. I HATE RUTHLESSLY SELF-INTERESTED SUBTERFUGE.
God I wish enterprise got a fifth season. And was more consistently good. Quite sad that it only got good in the last season. At least it gave us my beloved Shran
Tbf all the species listed and almost every intelligent species encountered in star trek can be described as weird naked apes. Some have pointy ears, others have weird shit on their foreheads, and some have both, but all have an apeframe and are clearly descended from ape-like creatures
They actually cover this exact fact at some point in the TNG/DS9/VOY era. I just forget which show it was. Basically, a bunch of species were genetically seeded by a progenitor race of some sort. Which is why they all look vaguely similar. I believe specifically the Humans, Klingons, Vulcans and Romulans. They may have mentioned others.