So, this past weekend, I took my 11-year-old daughter to SuperCon to meet her favorite actor (and favorite Doctor), Peter Capaldi.
She wore a little blue TARDIS-decorated dress and some Doctor Who pins, and she nearly cried with joy when Capaldi greeted her for the photo op. He was a consummate gentleman and such a sweet and enthusiastic person.
An hour or so after the wonderful photo op experience, she and I were sitting at a table in the food court area.
A burly, older man plopped down nearby. He looked at my little girl’s outfit, smiled, and said, “Do you even KNOW anything about Doctor Who?”
WTF, dude?
I was too stunned for a second to even respond, so he started right in with the ‘quizzing.’
“Who are the Doctor’s biggest enemies, and what planet does he come from?” this stranger asked.
Now I had moved past shocked and right into indignant/angry/protective mode.
“I don’t want her to be quizzed on something she loves, because I don’t want her thinking she has to prove ANYthing in order to be a fan,“ I told him.
Looking at my daughter, I said “You don’t owe strangers explanations or information, ok?“ She said OK and looked relieved.
Still he pressed on, patronizing grin and all: “Oh, I just want to be sure parents are raising their kids right.” Then he turned to my daughter again and asked “Who was the first Doctor, then?”
I cut him off right there. “No. I don’t want her quizzed. At all.”
Dude blinked in disbelief, sighed, and left about a minute later.
“Thanks,” my daughter said. “He was making me feel awkward.”
I held her hand and looked into her eyes. “Some men think they can have power over you by making you prove yourself. You never have to do it. They’re just insecure and pitiful, so they want to make you feel like it, too. It’s not only about fan stuff, and it’s not always just men, but be careful not to fall into that trap, ok?”
That crap isn’t harmless fun. It sets up a pattern of approval-seeking, self-justification, self-doubt, and fear of exclusion that is very dangerous for children (particularly girls).
Fuck that.
TL;DR: Do NOT come at me, my little girl, or anyone in my vicinity with your condescending, gatekeeping bullshit.
The next time, I won’t make the mistake of even TRYING to be polite.
Dos Santos: I think Quintessence, if anything, it sort of grabs on to the worst of us and accentuates those elements. Like anything, it corrupts.
Montgomery: Anything at all, even, whether it’s good or evil. Medicine in large doses can kill you. So that’s really what Quintessence is. It’s not innately good or innately bad. It’s a power source, and if you misuse it, it can be very disastrous.
Dos Santos: I think that was the point also that Alfor was trying to get across. He was saying, “Guys, look, you’ve got to covet this stuff extremely cautiously,” in mind that there’s a balance with all of it.
A little more insight into Quintessence and exactly what it is and what it does!
nothing tears the fragile veil between fiction and reality like the phrase “star trek: voyager got obama elected”
ok so @thefordokami asked me to explain this and explain i will because it’s one of my favorite weird star trek stories
so in the early 90s jeri ryan was married to a guy named jack ryan, who worked for goldman sachs and had some political aspirations in chicago. when jeri got the part of seven, she commuted to la from chicago and it was a big strain on their relationship and the marriage kind of fell apart. they got a divorce. later on, jack ryan was running for one of the us senate seats for illinois and the press (who were looking for a way to make a senatorial race interesting and decided that diving into ryan’s former marriage to a celebrity would do the trick) unsealed the divorce case, revealing that he had done some, for lack of a better word, turdish things during their marriage, he dropped out of the race, and his replacement republican was handily defeated by young barack obama. so without voyager, it’s possible that obama’s political career, which eventually led to the presidency, would have been very different, and basically the world is a weird place and everything is connected and if i ever got kicked back in time i’d just stand in one place sweating because literally everything leads to something else that you’d never expect and the timeline is unimaginably intricate and delicate
theclumsiestninja 