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Spoilers Star Trek: Picard 3x09 - "Võx"

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Is this a "you're sexist too" response? Because I don't think that was necessary to get your point across. Unless that was your primary point.

I agree that it's a bullshit motivation for any character. It devalues their humanity in a way. And I think we're all mostly in agreement that as a motivator for right action "this time it's personal" trope is stupid. But I would argue with the idea that the trope in myth can be called up to illustrate your point here since the average modern audience would probably not make the connection. "Wait a minute, this is just like those women/goddesses in mythology." The trope in modern entertainment media over the past 75 years or so is primarily used as a motivator for male protagonists. They still use this stupid-ass trope in broadcast television in nearly every cop show/procedural (at least in the US) - more than once! If it's been used as often for women as men over the past 75 years, I'd really like to see the numbers.

Not at all. Just an observation about how certain ‘tropes’ and trends are picked up on, usually with a limited grasp, in popular media. (YouTube Thumbnailification of society)

And I doubt that it has been used as often for women characters in that time frame as for men either. Certainly not in its undiluted form. (Private Benjamin popped into my head earlier when I was thinking about that very question, and I wondered if that counts as an example or not, for example.)

But that comes down to particular cultural dominance over the dominant narrative form (basically, Hollywood) and while I am far from a person that thinks Jennifer Lawrence invented the female action star, I do think that too often such stories are often still carved down outdated lines that really turn up in the thirties or fifties. To go back to Private Benjamin, we have a ‘fish out of water’ story that is at least in part about ‘woman in a man’s world’ and as opposite to that we have ‘Mr. Mom’ about ‘man in a woman’s world’ both of which at their core may challenge gender roles, but is also all about laughing at at reinforcing those stereotypes.

But then we end up going down the path of what that is, and what shape we expect such stories to be — then I wonder why we didn’t get more Tomb Raider films, and the whole thing spirals into criticism of media culture in general. Like you said — cop shows and procedurals love a bit of it all. Because such things are now written almost in shorthand.

‘Fridging’ is not a new thing, but maybe noticing it, or why audiences notice it, is.
Thad was essentially fridged in Picard without even meeting him. At least it’s been given character weight rather than just story weight now.
 
When did Tellerites have pig hooves? I don’t remember that.

It's funny. For YEARS, I was convinced that Tellerites had pig hooves, but when I tried to verify this . . . no luck.

(My memory is fuzzy, but I dimly recall having described them as hooved in a manuscript -- and getting a note back from an editor that this was a mistake.)
 
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Not at all. Just an observation about how certain ‘tropes’ and trends are picked up on, usually with a limited grasp, in popular media. (YouTube Thumbnailification of society)

And I doubt that it has been used as often for women characters in that time frame as for men either. Certainly not in its undiluted form. (Private Benjamin popped into my head earlier when I was thinking about that very question, and I wondered if that counts as an example or not, for example.)

But that comes down to particular cultural dominance over the dominant narrative form (basically, Hollywood) and while I am far from a person that thinks Jennifer Lawrence invented the female action star, I do think that too often such stories are often still carved down outdated lines that really turn up in the thirties or fifties. To go back to Private Benjamin, we have a ‘fish out of water’ story that is at least in part about ‘woman in a man’s world’ and as opposite to that we have ‘Mr. Mom’ about ‘man in a woman’s world’ both of which at their core may challenge gender roles, but is also all about laughing at at reinforcing those stereotypes.

But then we end up going down the path of what that is, and what shape we expect such stories to be — then I wonder why we didn’t get more Tomb Raider films, and the whole thing spirals into criticism of media culture in general. Like you said — cop shows and procedurals love a bit of it all. Because such things are now written almost in shorthand.

‘Fridging’ is not a new thing, but maybe noticing it, or why audiences notice it, is.
Thad was essentially fridged in Picard without even meeting him. At least it’s been given character weight rather than just story weight now.

What is fridging? I've never heard this term before.
 
It's funny. For YEARS, I was convinced that Tellerites had pig hooves, but when I tried to verify this . . . no luck.

(My memory is fuzzy, but I dimly recall having describe them as hooved in a manuscript -- and getting a note back from an editor that this was a mistake.)


It may have been from this.

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It's funny. For YEARS, I was convinced that Tellerites had pig hooves, but when I tried to verify this . . . no luck.

(My memory is fuzzy, but I dimly recall having describe them as hooved in a manuscript -- and getting a note back from an editor that this was a mistake.)
in Shatner’s Ashes of Eden they are described as having hooves.
 
It's funny. For YEARS, I was convinced that Tellerites had pig hooves, but when I tried to verify this . . . no luck.

(My memory is fuzzy, but I dimly recall having describe them as hooved in a manuscript -- and getting a note back from an editor that this was a mistake.)
I think because they had porcine faces, we Mandela'd ourselves into thinking they also had hooves.

They also had hooves in the Medical Reference Manual published in 1977, which probably colored a lot of the thinking for older fans.
 
Killing a loved one to motivate a character. Comes from a Green Lantern comic where Kyle Raynor comes home to find his girlfriend dead and stuffed in a fridge by a villain.

Yep. The term was coined by (excellent) comics writer Gail Simone, who, yes, pointed out that, more often than not, this involves killing off a wife or girlfriend just to motivate a male hero.

To be clear, she was not objecting to female characters being killed in general, just to the specific trope where the woman's death matters only to the extent that it serves to motivate the hero.
 
Killing a loved one to motivate a character. Comes from a Green Lantern comic where Kyle Raynor comes home to find his girlfriend dead and stuffed in a fridge by a villain.

Okay. Thank you.

Regarding how Icheb's death and Seven going off because it's personal... I don't see how that dismantles her humanity. It actually reaffirms it. By this, I mean she is experiencing an aspect of humanity that's been around since humans first existed. Not saying it's a good thing, but people are more likely to take action when it becomes personal to them... abuse or death of a family member, someone abused as a child will take even more issue with other abusers, etc.

It's part of our nature. And seeing your child, or someone you see as your child, die in front of you because of the actions of someone else, there's no way one of your responses will not be wanting to after that person. Whether you act on that or not is another matter entirely.
 
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It's funny. For YEARS, I was convinced that Tellerites had pig hooves, but when I tried to verify this . . . no luck.

(My memory is fuzzy, but I dimly recall having described them as hooved in a manuscript -- and getting a note back from an editor that this was a mistake.)

I always thought they were. Maybe it was a combo of hands and hooves.
 
It showed us a ship being taken over, the scale of the problem, and showed the audience that yes, this is every ship being violently taken over. From a certain perspective, there are now hundreds if not thousands of Picard/Locutus, and there will be even more people like Shaw. So what are we going to do?

The level of influence on Sevens motivations is overstated — is she so cold that it has to be personal? — and the level of influence on the TNG crews motivation is understated here, I feel.
Shelby could have been any captain. Icheb had to be Icheb.
 
The problem that seems to be the case here on the board is that one person *really* didn’t like Shelby (which was the case when the character was introduced — she was written as an antagonist in episode one of BOBW) and some other people have overly politicised a reading of that and the scene.

Very well said.
 
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