fatalism-and-villainy

[fatalism-and-villainy]

The term 'ship' is too vague. I don't think they should date i think they should be fucking regularly. I don't think they should date i think they should yearn for eachother endlessly but never have it be requited. I don't think they should date i think they should kiss one night and never talk about it again. I don't think they should date i think they should hate eachother so much that it turns into bottled up lust. I don't think they should date i think one of them should have a one-sided crush on the other. I don't think they should date i think they should have a situationship that ruins their lives. I don't think they should date i think they should stab eachother

[fatalism-and-villainy]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Julian Bashir/Benjamin Sisko Characters: Julian Bashir, Benjamin Sisko, Elim Garak Additional Tags: background garashir and siskarak for maximum gay drama, Post-Episode: s06e19 In The Pale Moonlight, Canon Compliant, Angst Summary:

Sisko and Bashir process the events of In the Pale Moonlight.

I was inspired by this thread and went ahead and drafted 6k words of Sisko/Bashir in as many days (six days. not 6,000 days). It’s a very Me fic in terms of featuring a) eroticized power differentials and b) two people fucking with an absent third person who is sort of thematically in bed with them. 

Enjoy and happy Friday!

[fatalism-and-villainy]

Replying now because I have further thoughts now that I've finally reached the episode in this rewatch -

Yeah, he's certainly nothing like his parents. But the language Sarina uses during that scene - she owes him everything, she wants to be the woman he wants her to be - feels very reminiscent of the mindset that his parents undoubtedly impressed upon him. And I suspect that's present on his mind, and is part of why he's so viscerally ashamed of his behaviour (of course, alongside the reason he gives in the episode, namely that he put his own needs ahead of his patient's).

Re: the second paragraph, I do think he was genuinely romantically interested in her, although more as a projection of his own romantic fantasies/fears of loneliness than in her as a person. Significantly, the episode opens with all of his friends being too busy with their families or romantic partners to spend time with him, and it's pretty clear that he's internalized the idea that a romantic relationship is the only way to avoid loneliness. And of course, there's the scene where he tells Miles that he'd always dreamed of meeting another genetically enhanced person who was like him.

Putting his romantic ideals ahead of the actual person he was pursuing was also a problem in his pursuit of Jadzia early on, which she herself implies in Starship Down - she says that he came on too strongly and didn't give her a chance to get to know him. Given both his approach to Sarina and the resurgence of his feelings for Jadzia at the end of s6, I do think he's emotionally backslid into that tendency at this point (likely due to the stress of the war and the negative headspace he seems to be in in the late seasons).

I do agree, however, that Sarina showing up in his quarters was the catalyst for him projecting those fantasies onto her. The part where she gives him breakfast is especially telling, imo - you can tell he's suddenly imagining a a domestic partnership. (And it is a very gendered dynamic, that says a lot about the show's very heteronormative conception of relationships - it feels reminiscent of how the O'Briens' marriage is presented, where there are all these references to Keiko making dinner or saving dinner for Miles, even though she has a career of her own as well.)

Regarding Sarina's perspective, I think she latches onto him because he respects her and treats her like a person in a way that's really unprecedented for her. There's the scene after the surgery where he goes to see her in the cargo bay and she's retreated into herself again, because when she tried to speak up, Jack and the others shut her down. When Julian talks to her, she snaps out of it and smiles (which is honestly really cute) and tells him that the others are used to her being quiet, so "it's easier this way", pretty much passively accepting the role the other augments have placed her into in much the same way she feels she should accept the role Julian wants for her. But something that really comes through in the episode is the complicated truth that Jack and the others clearly love her and feel protective of her, but also have a pattern of not listening to her or taking her seriously, which Julian at that point has consistently done.

That dynamic is present even back in Statistical Probabilities. When he first meets them all, Julian makes a point of saying hello specifically to her, and Jack immediately jumps in and says Sarina can't respond (with the implication that there's no point in Julian talking to her at all). In the scene where they're all drawing inferences about what the Dominion's negotiation strategy is, Julian is the one who notices that Sarina's listening to them and making a contribution to the discussion. And he's able to stop them from going to the Dominion because he convinces Sarina to let him go, when Jack and the others never even considered that she might have motivations or agency of her own in that scenario. So I think she feels so much gratitude towards Julian not only because of the surgery, but also because he affords her thoughts and feelings more legitimacy than she's ever experienced.

And given the paternalistic treatment she's received not just from the staff at the institute but also from the other augments, I really don't think she has any idea how to navigate a more egalitarian friendship or working dynamic, much less a romantic relationship - which is why she doesn't display appropriate boundaries when she shows up in his quarters, and why she doesn't know how to tell him he's being too pushy and intense. It's on Julian to set those boundaries, and of course he drops the ball there.

But there's a really interesting tension in both this episode and Statistical Probabilities wherein Julian obviously has internalized a lot of ableist ideas about productivity and normality and contributing to society (and this shows up even in him taking it for granted that Sarina is fully prepared to leave the institute just because she can pass as "normal" now). But, at the same time, when he's not being waylaid by his own selfish desires, he is genuinely very good at engaging with all the augments, and treating them like they're people. (And there are moments, like when he's telling Sisko that they would be better able to abide by society's rules if they were allowed to live in society, that show signs of him being potentially able to push past the harmful beliefs he's internalized.) That's why one post-canon scenario for him that I yearn for is him pushing for disability rights.

Would you guys burn me at the stake if I say that I think Chrysalis is actually a really important insight into Julian's character and his view on his own life and the people around him at the time it takes place. It's an episode that doesn't hold up today cause of the very ableist writing and kind of shitty moral but I think it's necessary that it's there and also occurs at the time it does in the show

I'll have a more insightful analysis on it one day cause I really want to talk about it (I want to make better researched ds9 analyses with actual clips from the show and whatnot instead of just vaguely referencing events from memory that could be completely wrong but unfortunately I do not have the time to be doing all of that. I would really like to in the future though)

[fatalism-and-villainy]

ppl misunderstand me when I say "I want more [thing] in stories". I don't mean "I'm going to love every single one" I mean "I'm very picky and I want more of it in circulation so I can actually choose from a wealth of them and be discerning". I see ppl being like "you say you want more of [this thing] but you don't like [example of it]" YEAH CUZ I'M PICKY!!!!!!!! I have opinions and standards????? not all of them are gonna be the same I wanna be able to look at 100 of them and go "I want these 20" not "I only have 3 to choose from and I don't like any of them" you feel me??????

[fatalism-and-villainy]

A reality where they adopted her

PRINTS on my fixed post

[fatalism-and-villainy]

Listen, sometimes a ship is less about wanting them to kiss or have sex or whatever, and more about needing them to be so endlessly intertwined and connected to the point where they might as well be one creature.

[fatalism-and-villainy]

K'EHLEYR in THE EMISSARY | STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION

[fatalism-and-villainy]

i've had an epiphany

[fatalism-and-villainy]

tfw "popular" fanon becomes so embedded in a fandom & discussions within fandom spaces that people just start treating it as the default and all interactions with others are coloured by this interpretation. have you considered that I actually don't subscribe to this take, which is nowhere in the source material? wait nvm, clearly not.

[fatalism-and-villainy]

4th dimensional farmer : stop horsing around

The horse in question:

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Lady Gaga for her new single “ABRACADABRA” out now!

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bleeding out in the snow must feel good as hell if you're a detective

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Equilibrium!!! I mean, I don't know if that episode took place a year before this one, because I don't understand stardates and time passes in bizarre ways on this show (the fact that there's only a month between His Way and The Sound of Her Voice is insane) but it is a really key episode in their friendship imo - Jadzia comes to his room on the Defiant because she's feeling nervous and vulnerable about returning to Trill, and he comforts her and invites her to stay in his room so she won't be alone, and it's not sexual at all. They have some interactions that aren't about his attraction to her before that, particularly in The Wire, but Equilibrium is really where the texture of their dynamic for the rest of the show starts to show imo.

Star Trek DS9: Starship Down

[fatalism-and-villainy]

there’s something…well, interesting but also depressingly predictable about how much benjamin sisko is de-fanged, sexually, in fandom creative spaces by venerating him as “space dad” or “station dad” without acknowledging how much those dad/dy qualities are also erotic and alluring and how those qualities inform his power and leadership in really rich ways. and the show gives us so many examples of this, namely through avery brooks’ acting choices, but also through little things like the absolutely luxurious silk pajamas sisko wears, the pleasure he takes in cooking, the way he smoothly navigates conversations, the way he’s fiercely protective of his crew, his tenderness and physical affection with those he’s close to. yet most of the fandom content about sisko rests on dad jokes or celebrating him as a de-sexual authority figure (or, setting him as the Stern Unflexible Father against whose authority the other characters chafe). it parallels the “mammification” that happens with black female characters whereby they’re lauded for caregiving and emotional labor but stripped of their sexual and erotic power. i understand that because we live in a society where black sexuality is simultaneously feared and fetishized people might be afraid of broaching the subject with characters like sisko, but imho it’s just as problematic to de-sexualize his character and fix him as “space dad” for the nonblack/light skinned/white characters on the show.

[fatalism-and-villainy]

          S01E01/02 ’Emissary’

[fatalism-and-villainy]

Men invented dueling so they could shoot hot loads into eachother