Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Erika Chappell 🏳️‍⚧️ Stop Asking For STLs

@opensketchbook.bsky.social

3K followers 130 following 2.3K posts

Magical Girl. RPG designer & author. Milhist nerd. Buckling spring keyboard shill. Made Flying Circus that one time. Now working on Torchship. https://opensketch.itch.io/

opensketch.itch.io

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Erika Chappell 🏳️‍⚧️ Stop Asking For STLs @opensketchbook.bsky.social · Nov 15

lexie and i have a patreon, if you want to be a cool person and make good decisions

www.patreon.com/c/opensketch

Get more from Erika & Lexie on Patreon

creating Roleplaying Games & Interactive Fiction

www.patreon.com

11 24

Reposted by Erika Chappell 🏳️‍⚧️ Stop Asking For STLs

Dragon Cobolt @dragoncobolt.bsky.social · 54m

It *sounds* like a wildly optimistic, upbeat plot point (cause it is) that creates a faction that are straight up good guys (cause it would be) but also it'd make SO MUCH MORE WAR

1 2 22

Reposted by Erika Chappell 🏳️‍⚧️ Stop Asking For STLs

Dragon Cobolt @dragoncobolt.bsky.social · 55m

my 40k pitch is that Ultamarr, a chunk of the T'au, and some Eldar craftworlds should break away and form the New Interex,

2 3 24

Reposted by Erika Chappell 🏳️‍⚧️ Stop Asking For STLs

Dragon Cobolt @dragoncobolt.bsky.social · 14h

the thing I miss most Canada was the endless impromptu Rick and Morty and or Mad Bull 34 riffs me and @opensketchbook.bsky.social would go on like ahh gee, Sleepy, I dunno we can't use a colony for cover uhh... LISTEN DAIZABURO...IF THEM SPACOIDS DIDN'T WANNA GET SMOKED THEY'D BE BORN ON EARTH

1 4 14

Reposted by Erika Chappell 🏳️‍⚧️ Stop Asking For STLs

+EthosSketches+ COMMS OPEN @ethossketches.bsky.social · 1d

new OC

26 250 890

Reposted by Erika Chappell 🏳️‍⚧️ Stop Asking For STLs

piper @roodypatooti.bsky.social · Aug 21

1 340 1K

Erika Chappell 🏳️‍⚧️ Stop Asking For STLs @opensketchbook.bsky.social · 1d

gun alchemist has innovative method to turn lead into gold

4 11 69

Erika Chappell 🏳️‍⚧️ Stop Asking For STLs @opensketchbook.bsky.social · 1d

(at one point they take out a suliban ship with a close range torpedo with no warhead, at another Reed and Trip try to hack their missiles into something that might work in an emergency and accidentally get a self-lock lol)

Erika Chappell 🏳️‍⚧️ Stop Asking For STLs @opensketchbook.bsky.social · 1d

(in my old enterprise rewrite fic, NX-01 has nuclear missiles with no targeting computer yet, and laser turrets that are basically worthless when its launched, and the hull plating is great against kinetics but worthless against these new 'disruptors' people are using)

1 9

Erika Chappell 🏳️‍⚧️ Stop Asking For STLs @opensketchbook.bsky.social · 1d

it kind of puts it in an ideal spot; they *have* it, but they really don't want to use if if they can send a shuttlepod; we've never found ourselves wondering why they couldn't just solve the plot with it so far

1 5

Erika Chappell 🏳️‍⚧️ Stop Asking For STLs @opensketchbook.bsky.social · 1d

yeah, they really don't do enough of that, and do it way too quickly, like with phase cannons getting installed midway through season 1 and photon torpedoes in season 3

one thing that *does* work super well is the crew's growing, but still tepid, trust in the transporter though

1 5

Erika Chappell 🏳️‍⚧️ Stop Asking For STLs @opensketchbook.bsky.social · 1d

we point at the screen and cheer every time the armoury shows up on screen with its torpedo loading mechanisms and ready racks

Erika Chappell 🏳️‍⚧️ Stop Asking For STLs @opensketchbook.bsky.social · 1d

the number one thing dragon and i are taking away is "god, t'pol is hot", but the number 2 thing is that NX-01, more than any star trek ship before or since, feels like a real, consistent, comprehensible place, and a genuine piece of working machinery

1 5

Erika Chappell 🏳️‍⚧️ Stop Asking For STLs @opensketchbook.bsky.social · 1d

it is a missed opportunity, but honestly by season 2 the dissonance is basically gone because even when hull plating holds, *something* breaks. and in season 3 they're gleefully fucking up the ship every chance they get lol

2 4

Erika Chappell 🏳️‍⚧️ Stop Asking For STLs @opensketchbook.bsky.social · 1d

i think the presence of lieutenant reed helps a lot; having a guy at the tactical desk with weapons grade gun autism whose day is absolutely made every time he gets to slice the engines off a suliban ship makes the turnaround moment when NX-01 comes out on top feel *awesome*

Erika Chappell 🏳️‍⚧️ Stop Asking For STLs @opensketchbook.bsky.social · 1d

one of the things we've been noticing in our enterprise rewatch is how solid the space battles are, helped immensely by the fact that NX-01 and everything it fights are all janky, tiny piece of shit ships. fights are short, to the point, and half the time end with impulse manifolds getting fucked up

2 12

Erika Chappell 🏳️‍⚧️ Stop Asking For STLs @opensketchbook.bsky.social · 1d

we all live on this planet together, affecting one another, and always have, for good and ill. we will never stop affecting one another, there will never be a clean break from history. making the world better will be slow, hard, worthy work.

you are looking for cracks in the mortar of a cliffside.

3 8 81

Erika Chappell 🏳️‍⚧️ Stop Asking For STLs @opensketchbook.bsky.social · 1d

sometimes it feels like people, especially american leftists, believe that the united states of america is the final boss of history, that it is the sole nexus of every evil in the world, that it single-handedly sustains every evil humanity has faced for millennia

sorry. it's not that easy.

8 16 110

Erika Chappell 🏳️‍⚧️ Stop Asking For STLs @opensketchbook.bsky.social · 1d

like every goddamn thing in history, the harder you try to pull up the roots of a given thing, the deeper you find they go. did the nazis take inspiration from america? yes! and from russian antisemitism, and from the european wars of religion, and from roman citizenship laws, and from-

1 8 57

Erika Chappell 🏳️‍⚧️ Stop Asking For STLs @opensketchbook.bsky.social · 1d

... which may be derived from holdover roman law, but we don't actually know?

even before that we can see european stories sorting their moorish enemies into hierarchies by the colour of their skin, but that's not even unique to europe; colourism was a thing in india even before british rule

1 2 47

Erika Chappell 🏳️‍⚧️ Stop Asking For STLs @opensketchbook.bsky.social · 1d

blood hierarchies in colonial mexico were derived from the reconquista and the persecution of moriscos, marranos, and conversos in spain, which had its origins in reversing islamic dhimmi laws to apply to muslim spanish mudéjar as christian kingdoms conquered territory from the al-andalus...

2 3 49

Erika Chappell 🏳️‍⚧️ Stop Asking For STLs @opensketchbook.bsky.social · 1d

unfortunately, oppressive hierarchies are not a unique evil to any one group of people, and there's no point in history we can point to as the moment the Oppression Virus sprang forth and spread. we can trace how these horrid ideas emerged, diverged, and synthesized, but there's no ultimate source

1 6 55

Erika Chappell 🏳️‍⚧️ Stop Asking For STLs @opensketchbook.bsky.social · 1d

sometimes people spin that as 'american race laws were *too racist* for the nazis!' but like, no, the nazis were trying to build a set of racist laws to do a different kind of evil thing for their own reasons, because they're different places with different histories.

1 6 56

Erika Chappell 🏳️‍⚧️ Stop Asking For STLs @opensketchbook.bsky.social · 1d

like, to be clear; what was happening was the nazi leadership sat their legal system down and said "we need you to create a consistent legal definition of who is and isn't jewish". those lawyers looked at the exacting american legal race definitions and went "oh, that doesn't work for us"

that's it

1 4 57

Erika Chappell 🏳️‍⚧️ Stop Asking For STLs @opensketchbook.bsky.social · 1d

so when german lawyers looked at american laws for inspiration, it didn't work; US race laws are rooted in the blood hierarchies of spanish conquistadors used to keep settler, indigenous, and slave populations apart; the nazis were trying impose those delineations over fuzzier social divisions

1 2 57

Erika Chappell 🏳️‍⚧️ Stop Asking For STLs @opensketchbook.bsky.social · 1d

this is also why nazi hyperdiffusion conspiracies allowed them to engage in some truly insane cognitive dissonance by declaring, like, tibetans or whatever secret aryians if it would help establish the mystic destiny of the eternal reich, which is well outside the 'rules' of american white supremacy

1 2 52