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antimatterpod · 5 years ago

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Transcript - 46. #MeToo - Terok Nor

Liz here! Thanks to Covid ("thanks”), I’m either wildly busy, all day, every day, or I have hours and hours of spare time to fill.

I hate feeling unproductive, but I’m also a bit creatively drained right now, so I’m using that time to transcribe our back catalogue, going from new episodes to old. (And skipping, for now, episodes about Discovery and Picard episodes as they aired, which are more time sensitive and prone to becoming outdated than our regular two-weekly eps.)

I was a professional transcriber before I was a secretary/legal assistant, so I’m pretty happy with my accuracy levels, but you should know that I make corrections where one of us has clearly misspoken, and also tidy up some of the false starts and interruptions in our conversations, so that it’s easier to read.

[theme music]

Anika: Welcome to Antimatter Pod, a Star Trek podcast where we discuss fashion, feminism, subtext and subspace, hosted by Anika and Liz. Today we're talking about episode 8 of season 5 of Deep Space 9: "Things Past".

Liz: And we have to thank Jules for suggesting this. And I definitely thought fondly of her as we open with Garak basically being an alt-right troll.

Anika: [laughs]

Liz: To summarise the episode, for those who didn't watch it, uh, this episode sees Sisko, Dax, Odo and Garak returning from a history conference on Bajor -- why these four people, I don't know -- where Garak is outraged that no one wanted to debate him about his so-called 'alternative interpretation' of the Occupation, and where Odo was hailed as a hero.

Just as they're about to return, something or other happens, and all four of them end up in a coma, but those characters themselves wake up six or seven years earlier, during the Occupation.

Anika: Nine.

Liz: I forgot the numbers. And there was confusion! Because--

Anika: Yeah, they think it's nine, but then it's eight, or -- I don't know. It was very strange. But that's not important.

Liz: No. The important thing is that they've been thrust into the roles of a group of Bajorans who were executed for an attempt on the life of Gul Dukat, and the man in charge of the investigation is a Cardassian civilian named Thrax, who reminds one of a certain shapeshifter. Who, by the way, is not at all coping with events.

And along the way, we learn that -- turns out Odo was kind of a collaborator, and also Quark's business practices are really terrible, and it's a miracle that he's allowed to operate in Bajoran space. And it turns out the Occupation … was bad.

Anika: Yep. And Dukat was slimy all the way through.

Liz: Oh, well, we knew that. But it's just seeing it, again, and again, and again.

Anika: Yep.

Liz: [dramatic sigh] I make it sound like this episode? I did. I just felt like we didn't need to know right away that the characters were physically in a coma on present-day Deep Space 9. Like, that took a lot of the mystery out of it.

Anika: Yeah. Honestly, I don't think I did like this episode.

Liz: [laughs]

Anika: I'll just start with that.

Liz: Yeah?

Anika: I found it, like, boring. Most of it was boring. It might be because of the whole framing -- they could have taken it out and done more with what was going on.

Liz: Yeah, the tension and the mystery of what's happening to them.

Anika: So that it -- yeah, so that it wasn't just very -- I mean, maybe I knew what was going to happen. I definitely have seen it before, because I remembered it being weird, I remember it being, like, why are they in Bajoran bodies? But they're not? But it's the -- and I knew, because you say it, like, five or six times on the podcast, that Odo's a collaborator.

Liz: [happily] Mm hmm!

Anika: So I knew that was gonna come up.

Liz: [laughs]

Anika: So maybe I was just, like -- because I knew the twist, I wasn't into the mystery? But also, I think they just didn't build it up at all. Like, Sisko did nothing. Garak was just sort of there, being Garaky.

Liz: But an unusually assholey version of Garak.

Anika: Yeah, yeah, especially Garaky. Like, he was Garak to the max.

Liz: GARAK TO THE MAX! Guitar squeal.

Anika: And Odo just moped the entire time, and I just wanted to -- I was just not into Odo at all. And Dax was the best, and she had, like, five minutes of screentime. So it was very -- it was just sort of like -- I dunno, I like the idea of, or the purpose of the episode. I think that it had a lot of interesting questions that they had just started to get to answering, and then it was over.

Liz: Yeah. I found it interesting to watch, because I had forgotten the twist that this is actually all "Odo's dream". And I thought it was a trap set -- like, a psychic trap set to torture Odo by a survivor, or someone who remembered what he had done. So I was disappointed by that "it was all a dream" twist. I think that's always weaksauce, and in this case, it was just particularly disappointing. "Odo's conscience is bothering him!"

But what I liked was Thrax, this Cardassian who turns out to be Odo, is -- he's played by Kurtwood Smith. And it's such a good performance, because he's his own character, but there are these tiny moments where he sounds like Rene Aubergenois. And he moves like Odo. And just these tiny hints that I really appreciated, because I remembered that twist, that Odo was the security chief who had these people executed.

Anika: Mm. I think that part was -- but that's something that could have been -- there could have been more of that.

Liz: Yeah.

Anika: And less of other stuff.

Liz: Yeah. I think Jules was right, last week, when she said this episode came too late in the series. Because I think this was a perfect season 2 episode, and should have held the place of "Necessary Evil", the so-called "noir episode" with black and white flashbacks to the Occupation, and a sexy widow and femme fatale, and all that. And Kira in her Resistance ponytail -- which is always delightful, but I think this story, and the revelations in it, needed to come much, much sooner in the series. And even Garak's behaviour felt more in line with him in season 2 than Garak in season 5.

Anika: Yeah. Like you said, Garak to the max. So I don't love Garak the way that all of fandom loves Garak. This is the episode of Anika's unpopular opinions! But--

Liz: Look, there's a reason we don't talk about Deep Space 9 as much as other series.

Anika: [laughs] But this episode, he was just smug and annoying. But I will say that the one interesting part of the entire episode was when he was basically saying that Bajorans were made to be servants, and are just naturally lower. That was interesting, because it was clearly, like, the Cardassian party line. It's like, that's what he learned in second grade. And so--

Liz: Yes.

Anika: Even though he's met Bajorans who don't fit that, and even though he is trying to learn and grow as a person, he falls back on that. Like, that is his ingrained belief, clearly from childhood. And that was interesting to me! But that was, like, a throwaway line.

Liz: I think it was more than a throwaway line! Because then there's Odo -- or "Thrax" -- Thrax's remark, which must have come from Odo originally, that Bajorans need to accept their place in history as a footnote, and servants to the Cardassians. And drawing a parallel between Odo and Garak, I think, was a really interesting idea. And it didn't quite come out, I think, as neatly or clearly as it could have.

Anika: Yeah.

Liz: But it highlighted to me that Odo is -- "Oh, he's such an outsider, he never took sides!" But he absolutely had a place in the hierarchy, and he was very well aware of it! He was below the Cardassians, but well above the Bajorans. And this makes sense, because, I think, to have the facilities he did, Dr Mora must have been a collaborator. And knew that Odo sort of spent his early years doing party tricks for Cardassians. Like, it makes sense that this is who Odo is. But, as always, it troubles me that they never really grapple with it beyond the occasional very special episode.

Anika: Right. I think that's what it is. This seemed very, "We're going to talk about these interesting ideas of the--" you know, what it was like to be in the Occupation for all of these other characters. For Quark, and for Odo, and for the people who are not actively involved in it, who are not Bajorans or Cardassians. But that's not really what happened.

Liz: Yeah.

Anika: It was just sort of, like, "We're gonna wave at the idea of this story that could happen, but we're not gonna really grapple with any of those thoughts."

Liz: Yeah.

Anika: I mean, part of it is, if they did, then they would be stuck with Odo and Quark being main-cast characters who we still have to see every week and like, and care about, and be invested in. And it's harder to make those characters lovable when you do something like that. But I would have appreciated them more if they had. Both the show and the characters. Like, Odo and Quark are never going to be my favourites. They weren't, and they're not. But -- I don't know.

Liz: And I think, from a 21st century perspective, we can say, not every character in an ensemble has to be "likable" or "lovable".

Anika: Right.

Liz: And there's a real disconnect between what we know Odo and Quark have done, and the consequences and the way the story treats them. And Garak, too. And even Dukat is only -- the only thing that stood between Dukat and a canonical relationship with Kira was Nana Visitor going, "Uh, yeah, no, that's gonna happen."

Anika: "That's gross."

Liz: Yeah.

Anika: Yeah. So Dukat -- coming off of our last episode, where we really talked about Dukat, I was sort of into his smarminess. I was like, "Okay, I get why he--" because he's still charming! Like, he's horrible, and I hate him, but he's still charming. And it's like, this is so awful, and I hate it, but it's way more fascinating than sad Odo.

Liz: Yes!

Anika: Like, if Odo was -- I don't know. He was just Emo Odo, and that wasn't at all interesting to me. I wanted Odo to, like -- the scene at the end, between Odo and Kira was probably the best for it, because he did seem to actually be sort of looking in the mirror, and thinking about it. The fact that Kira is disappointed means more to Odo than anyone else. Including himself.

Liz: That almost annoyed me, because it was like, oh, well, you feel -- you know, do you feel guilty because you did it, or do you feel guilty because now the secret is out, and the woman you're in love with knows?

Anika: I think the second! Which is why it's like -- like, how is this supposed to make me care about Odo more?

Liz: Yeah.

Anika: I just get more upset with him. It's like, no, I don't want this character to be -- I don't. And what you're saying, that not every character needs to be likable, and that's totally true. But they -- I really get the impression that they're like, "Okay, so Odo is the curmudgeon, right? He's the guy who is unlikable on purpose to -- and that's his personality, but he's just hiding the fact that he's really a squishy teddy bear that we all love!" And it's like, no. I don't love him.

Liz: He's a squishy teddy bear who was a collaborator.

Anika: And is just sort of, like, sad about it? He's not--

Liz: Yeah, he's not--

Anika: He doesn't say in so many words, "I wish this didn't happen. He sort of does say it in that, like, when he's shouting at the end, when he's explaining, and when he's revealed. But it's like he's backed into the corner by his subconscious--

Liz: Yes!

Anika: --to acknowledge these things, and if the other people hadn't been there, I don't know if he would have learned from it. Like you said, he only cares because Kira cares. And it's like, yeah, if all these other people didn't know, would he just be sad about it, and not think about it?

Liz: I think that's the conclusion we have to draw. Because at the beginning, it's clearly on his mind, because he's obviously troubled by how he was feted as a hero at this Bajoran conference -- but he wasn't going to say anything. He didn't correct anyone's assumptions. And, you know, the story of how he goes from being a Cardassian yes-man to a person who does stand up for justice, even for Bajorans, would have been really interesting! And I almost wish that this had been an ongoing arc, and we sort of saw Odo's redemption story, and that it wasn't then thrown under the bus by his actions during the Dominion War.

Anika: Mm.

Liz: Because I feel like Odo is a really interesting character, and the writers just didn't realise fully what they were doing with him?

Anika: No. Right. I think that's true. I think they pigeonholed him into the Spock-Data mindset, and didn't realise that it could be different. That you could do different things. Like, they just talk about his identity discovery quest. That's his big arc throughout the whole series.

Liz: Yeah, and that's interesting and all--

Anika: Right. And it's good, and he does get to explore that. And I think it's good for him, and it's interesting. People who love Odo love Odo, and I think that's great. So even if it's, like, an identity arc that I'm not into, that's okay. But I do think that there are these interesting places it could have gone.

Liz: Right.

Anika: That they almost went to, but didn't quite.

Liz: Which brings me to the Ronald D Moore quote I found, and it's a bit long, but I'm gonna read the whole thing out:

"One of the things that always drove the writing staff nuts was the idea that Odo had been a policeman during the Cardassian Occupation, but had never gotten his hands dirty, that he had been above it all, and that everybody had trusted him. We never bought that. it seemed to me that if I were a Bajoran, I wouldn't trust the cop who's still on duty from the Occupation. Somewhere along the line something bad went down on Odo's watch. And "Things Past" was the show to say it."

And I'm like, yes, these are good points, but I do not for a minute believe that this was an ongoing concern for the writers department!

Anika: No. No. Because it never comes out!

Liz: No! No! In the first season episode ["A Man Alone"] -- this is from Memory Alpha -- but a character goes, "Why are you still in charge of security?" But that guy's -- you know, he's targeting Odo because "he's an outsider". Like, Odo is not a victim. Or, at least, he is a victim in the way that Garak is a victim of Cardassian culture, or Narek and Narissa are victims of Romulan culture.

And I do think that it makes a difference when you remember that Odo is actually very young, and much, much younger than Rene Aubergenois made him seem and sound.

Anika: Yeah. It's hard. I mean, it's hard when -- like, the Doctor in Voyager, people are always telling me -- you know, whenever I complain about the Doctor's age difference with any of the women that he is thrown together with, they're like, "Well, he's really, you know, if it's the fourth season, he's only four years old." And it's like--

Liz: THAT DOESN'T MAKE IT BETTER!

Anika: [laughs] THAT IS NOT THE GOTCHA THAT YOU THINK IT IS!

Liz: No!

Anika: So. Yeah. And so, yeah, it's hard to look at Rene Aubergenois and think of a teenager.

Liz: What I think we need is a remastered version of Deep Space 9 that casts Adam Driver as Odo. He's still probably too old, I just think he'd be very good in the role.

Anika: I like that you're just gonna put Adam Driver in every Star Trek.

Liz: I really like him!

Anika: Good goal. Good goal.

Liz: I like his weird face.

Anika: I like it, too. I think that I would have liked this episode more if -- I agree that the framing -- it was very gimmicky.

Liz: Yeah.

Anika: I would have rather someone found the records, or something, and actually confronted Odo about it, or -- I don't know. It was this whole "let's put them"--

Liz: Bajoran investigative journalism.

Anika: Yes. Maybe we go to the history of Bajor conference, and in the middle of his big -- they're feting Odo, and someone comes in and says, "That's not how it happened, blah, blah blah." Like, I don't know, I think I would have enjoyed that more than this super sci-fi play with your mind -- it just seems like -- Worf and Bashir were just there to say quips and cash their cheque. It was just very--

Liz: And Colm Meaney and Cirroc Lofton weren't even in the episode.

Anika: Yeah. They were just not there. Kira gets one good scene, and it's still almost the best scene.

Liz: I understand that Nana Visitor was heavily pregnant at the time, but it is so frustrating that there is no -- that Kira has no presence beyond that final scene, when this story is so integral to her experience of the Occupation, and her understanding of Odo. And I almost wish that they had ditched the framing device and the conceit of Thrax, and just had an episode set seven or nine years in the past, and -- you know, get some high profile guest stars to play these doomed Bajorans, and … you know?

Anika: Yeah. Right. Because our cast were the doomed Bajorans, I didn't care about them at all! Nothing was going to happen to our people. They were just some random Bajorans. We didn't know any of them. We got the "Siri, tell me about this guy" -- you know, so we got their name and occupation and whether or not they had family. So who cares?

They're just -- on the one hand, you know, if they were saying, "The Occupation was bad all around, and any Bajoran dying is wrong" -- which I agree with! Like, I'll just say, yes, true. But that's not how it came across to me. It came across as, "We think that, by having Sisko playing this guy, that you're gonna care what happens. We're gonna put it entirely on Avery Brooks's ability to act two different characters at the same time in the middle of Odo's memory." What?

Liz: But he doesn't, really. Brooks is outstanding, and I think Sisko comes out -- Sisko and Dax come out the best of all characters in this story. But he's just playing Sisko.

Anika: Right, he's just playing Sisko. We never even see these people as Bajorans.

Liz: No!

Anika: Their picture and at the end, that's it.

Liz: The only character that I was concerned for was Dax, because I felt like, even if -- you know, execution, blah, blah, blah,she survives -- but whatever Dukat intends to put her through, that's an experience that she'll have.

Anika: Yeah!

Liz: And that tension in those scenes was palpable. It was really hard to watch!

Anika: Yeah, it was. I was sitting there, I was like, this episode should end with DAx holding up a Me Too: Gul Dukat sign.

Liz: [laughs]

Anika: That's all I could think, the entire scene, was, poor Jadzia is gonna end up--

Liz: I know!

Anika: --on one of Gul Dukat's lists by this psychic nonsense. And the fact that she was using Leeta as her name made it doubly -- argh! All of the women are going to end up on Dukat's list because of this horrible thing! Which the episode was not about at all?

Liz: No, which -- you know, I think, when sexual grooming and implicit assault is, you know, just a sidebar, that's maybe a problem. And we've complained about the all-male writers room for DS9, but yeah, it really jumped out at me that Dax is so important to driving the plot along, and she takes out Dukat, and she tries to free the others, and it's only the rules of Odo's dream that stop them. But the script treats her as an afterthought. She's barely -- she is not important to Odo's journey. And it's really frustrating!

Anika: Yeah. It was really frustrating. That's a good summary of my thoughts on this episode.

Liz: No, no. Like, I'm so glad that they have belatedly decided to confront Odo's presence in the Occupation. I think Quark comes out very, very badly in terms of using slave labour--

Anika: Oh my gosh. And his condescending tone of, you know, "Okay, now you're going to step out here with me. And now we're going to walk in a line together." And it's like, wow. WOW, Quark.

Liz: The amazing thing is that his bar isn't being firebombed once a week by people who hate the fact that he's still in Bajoran territory. I feel like, if Sisko had known about this, he wouldn't have been, like, "Oh, you're a community leader" back in the first episode. But, at the same time--

Anika: He's not a community leader.

Liz: No. No. But, at the same time, I think that Sisko did not know that, or did not suspect that, and that maybe suggests that Starfleet's understanding of the Occupation is pretty limited. And that makes sense, because--

Anika: Which I would believe.

Liz: --all of these terrible things on Terok Nor are happening during, like, mid to late Next Generation.

Anika: I know.

Liz: This is not the distant past.

Anika: It's weird. You know how we were saying, again, last week, how the Kazon were, you know, thirty years ago, they were the Bajorans. And this is a decade ago. A decade ago! Less than! The Bajorans were under everyone's thumb, and all of this stuff was going on, and it's kind of still happening. It's kind of still, like, yeah, they have Terok Nor, now, but they don't, really?

Liz: Hashtag decolonise Bajor.

Anika: They're asking a lot of questions, and really not interested in answering them.

Liz: Yeah, and I think that's one thing I found frustrating about the final scene. It's like, oh, Odo is sad, and Kira is judging him. But we know that there's going to be no long-term consequences. We know that his relationship with Kira doesn't change, and her trust in him persists. And I know this is very early in serialised or semi-serialised mainstream television, but it's just so intensely annoying.

Anika: Yeah. Mm hmm.

Liz: Like. Yeah.

Anika: I want there to be more consequences.

Liz: Yeah. And the thing is, like, I enjoy the complexity of Bajor suffering while the Federation is happily doing its Federation thing. I think that's terrible! But it's interesting, and it feels real. And it's the sort of thing that I wanted Star Trek: Picard to deal with, that sort of complex moral and ethical question. And it didn't.

Anika: Yeah, but -- yeah. They're really good at bringing up the question, and saying, "This is a question we could discuss." But then sort of sidestepping it, and saying, "Instead, we're going to tell a Star Trek story."

Liz: Yeah, and we're going to end--

Anika: And I get it, they're fiction, it's all good. But it's sort of, like, this is another [case where] we're going to rest on the idea of "Starfleet" and "Star Trek" as a thing, and we're not going to actually engage with it in any way. We're just going to rest on the laurels of "Star Trek is moral and good, and asks moral questions, and is telling us about society", and yet they don't say anything about society. They don't say anything about collaborators, they don't say anything about Quark and making money off of people's suffering.

Liz: No, it's usually just a funny joke.

Anika: None of that is actually being addressed in any way. It's just sort of there.

Liz: Yeah. Which I think--

Anika: And that's not going -- I just want it to go further. I'm not expecting Star Trek to give me answers. I think that asking questions is their role. But I think that they do need to engage with the questions, and explore the questions.

Liz: Right, and not just go, "Yeah, this is really complicated. Anyway, roll credits!"

Anika: Exactly. Exactly. This is really complicated. The end. We are Starfleet.

Liz: Yeah, and we can go, "This is really complicated," and maybe some regular characters feel differently about Odo, and maybe others like, say, Worf, go, "Oh yeah, that was a shitty situation, but you were doing your best. Hey, I nearly sided with Admiral Satie that time."

Anika: Yeah, Worf one hundred percent would, too. And I think that would be a great conversation because it would tell us something about both characters.

Liz: Yeah!

Anika: And how they were similar to each other and different from others, and finding those connections between people who -- on the surface, Worf and Odo are not much alike. Okay, I guess they're both in security, that's it.

Liz: No, and they're not friends. Yeah.

Anika: They are not alike. And so something that brought them together to have that conversation, and say, "This is how we're alike," and different from Kira, because Kira would rather die than make that choice -- that's interesting!

Liz: Right! And it's not that they don't answer the questions, because I don't think these questions can easily be answered. But the fact that they don't grapple with them at all, and it's just business as usual afterwards, that, to me, is disappointing. And this is not a problem unique to Deep Space 9, obviously. You know, that's--

Anika: No, and it's not a unique Star Trek problem, it's not -- like, every story -- we get it. And I'm not saying that I would do any better. So I'm not saying, "Ooooh, Deep Space 9 is bad! And Ron Moore is bad!" Like, obviously not. That's not true. That's not what I'm saying.

Liz: No.

Anika: What I'm saying is, as good as it is, it could be better.

Liz: Yeah!

Anika: Because these are really interesting questions that could be discussed in more nuanced conversations.

Liz: And I think that there is a level of dishonesty, now, in the approach to Odo and Quark after all of these long-overdue surprise reveals. You know, we can't just go back to seeing them as our lovable curmudgeon and his thief best enemy.

Anika: Yeah. That's what's -- that's hard.

Liz: Yeah. Yeah. It's that they ask the audience to make that leap, without going to any particular effort to improve it? Without going to any effort themselves to make it work.

Anika: Right.

Liz: And it's sort of the same with Garak, because this is his first episode after he spent six whole months in jail for attempted genocide! And he's back, complaining that the Bajorans aren't nice to him.

Anika: You know -- ugh. Like, shut up, Garak.

Liz: Right, no one wants to hear your opinion.

Anika: That whole episode! The whole episode, I was just, like, no, you are not contributing to this. And then, when he stole the thing, and Odo is like, "I'm gonna add pickpocket to your resume," and he says something like, "Why would a simple tailor have high-level codes," or whatever -- and I was like, it is season 5.

Liz: Right!

Anika: We have to let the simple tailor stuff go.

Liz: You were just in jail for attempted genocide.

Anika: Like, I get that that's the party line. But it's stupid at this point. Odo is not an idiot, and Garak is not an idiot, and so, like, this whole, you know -- just saying it sarcastically, it just made me angry. I was just angry at the whole thing.

Liz: It reiterated my feeling that this is a lost season 2 episode.

Anika: Yes, I agree with this. Because I think that no one -- like, they weren't making sense. And, like, O'Brien could have had Worf's lines and nothing would change.

Liz: Right!

Anika: So, therefore, it could be -- whatever. Or Kira. Like, there was nothing Worf about that. And Bashir was just … Bashiring.

Liz: And bless his heart and all, but, you know.

Anika: So it was all just -- I don't know. Missed opportunities and lost potential. Because I wanted there to be more. I felt like we were past this, and we should be really digging deep into it instead of... [laughs] It's ridiculous how angry that line about the tailor made me, but I was just so over it.

Liz: It's just sort of emblematic of the problems with the episode. It's not that it's a bad episode, it's that it comes so late in the story as to be meaningless.

Anika: Yeah. So. Oh well!

Liz: You got a message asking if we wanted to talk about Deep Space 9 and Babylon 5. And you have not seen Babylon 5--

Anika: I can't do that.

Liz: --but I have.

Anika: I'll pass it onto you. Please discuss Deep Space 9 and Babylon 5.

Liz: So my secret shame as a Trekkie is that I like Babylon 5 better than Deep Space 9. I don't think it's necessarily a better show? But I think J Michael Straczynski was watchig Star Trek and seeing the things that annoyed him, and going, "I'm not going to do that." And then he does a whole lot of other annoying things. It's a show that I love, but I don't recommend it to new people because I don't think it's aged very well?

But one thing -- I will say it has more overt queerness, in its mid-90s way, than one season of Star Trek: Picard in 2020.

Anika: Well, that's yet another -- yeah. Let's just push that over. Yep.

Liz: Yeah. Yeah. But one thing I felt like it did very well was that -- there's a character, Londo, who comes from this fading, once-glorious Empire. And he's -- I don't want to say he's Make The Centauri Empire Great Again Guy. Because it's more about Rome, and that sort of metaphor.

But there comes a point where he commits genocide against -- or a partial genocide -- against the people of another main character. And he is literally standing on the ship, watching as asteroids are driven down onto their homeworld.

Anika: Yikes.

Liz: And then he … is not forgiven. Or -- no. Some characters forgive him, and some characters even come to love him again, but no one forgets that he did this. And there is not a single point in the series (barring some of the weaker spots in season 5, which had a lot of behind the scenes drama) where -- "This is Londo, he is our funny alcoholic who has a terrible past. He also killed a whole million -- you know, millions and millions of people, and we kind of side-eye that." And it's not forgotten! It's so important! And it's important because he becomes a character who is determined never to do it again, but he goes through that whole story.

I don't know if I explained it very well [I didn't!], because I didn't want to get into the details of who, and what, and alien names, and whatever. But the funny alcoholic clown man with the vertical hair goes through this, and I think it's a much more nuanced take on this sort of story than Deep Space 9 did.

Anika: And I think, again, it comes back to that -- like, it was okay for Dukat to be the charming guy we love to hate. It was not okay for Odo to be that. That was a bridge too far for Star Trek. He could have this quote-unquote "dark past" -- and, you know, in that Kira scene, at least he admits that it probably wasn't the only time?

Liz: Yes!

Anika: But the fact that she was like, "If you tell me this is the only time, it'll be okay." It's like, no! That's not the lesson here. The lesson here isn't, "I did this one bad thing this one time, and I'm sorry about it twenty years later, so now you should love me again." The lesson is, I need to make up for this, and never do that again, and grapple with the fact that I am the type of person who could do it. Like, that's the story we need to be telling here.

The show had that moment, where they almost gave themselves an out from making Odo spotless except for his one spot, I guess? And at least--

Liz: No, and they didn't take it, and I respect that.

Anika: --they didn't do it, so that was good. But the fact that not much changes, that this doesn't change him, it doesn't change his relationships, it doesn't change the series, means that it still sort of is. You have this one spot, and whatever, we all have that one spot.

Liz: And I think that's the sort of disconnect that fic writers love -- and part of the problem is that I don't love these characters enough to do that work. Whereas, like, I just watched the Voyager episode "The Chute", and I'm like, "Wow, Janeway is really more than usually implacable this episode, and that's kind of inconsistent with past characterisation, but I think she's just still recovering from losing her ship in 'Basics' and she's more determined than ever to hang onto it and protect her crew?"

So, yeah, I think people who are bigger fans of Deep Space 9 will do the work.

Anika: That's fair.

Liz: And that's sort of the joy of being a Trekkie.

Anika: Yeah, 'cos we can go read those fics if we want to explore more. We can go looking for it, and it's probably there.

Liz: Right, and as much as I am not a Deep Space 9 fan now, there is always the possibility that one day I'll wake up and go, "Man, you know what I really want? I wanna read a lot of Kira/Odo!" It's gonna happen, I hate Kira/Odo. She can do so much better.

Anika: [laughs] I was just gonna say! NoTP, noTP!

Liz: No. No. I opened Netflix to watch this episode, and for some reason, it went straight to "His Way". I think that's where my flatmate and I noped out on our last rewatch. And I'm like, I'm a good person, I shouldn't have to see this!

Anika: [laughs] I mean, to be fair, none of the people that Kira dated were good enough for her. None.

Liz: No.

Anika: Zero.

Liz: One thing, though -- the other week, I read My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell. It's a contemporary novel, semi -- it sort of straddles the boundaries between commercial and literary fiction. But it's about a woman looking back at an affair she had with her teacher when she was fifteen, and it's a very stark depiction of grooming. And it made it really hard to watch those scenes with Dukat and Dax. Like, just so -- awful.

Anika: Yeah. It's strange how I really had a visceral reaction to that more than the whole rest of the episode. And it might partially be because -- okay, so I watched the season finale of SVU this morning. And it was their take on the Harvey Weinstein ordeal.

Liz: Oh no.

Anika: The season opened with this, you know, big case taking down a Harvey Weinsteinesque person, and it closed with his trial, and how absolutely impossible it was, because all of the -- you know, there was so much intimidation, and he was having these medical problems, and his lawyer was just completely--

Liz: Awful?

Anika: Like, her whole thing was, "Well, I'd rather have ten guilty men go free if one innocent man is brought down." And it's just, like, ugh. It's an interesting math equation you got going there, of lives for -- you know. But whatever, lady. And so that's how I woke up this morning, is what I'm saying.

Liz: That sounds nice.

Anika: And so maybe, when I got to Deep Space 9, and I watched the scene between Dukat and Dax, and I was just, like, "Oof, #MeToo: Dukat," that's what's going on here, you know, I was already in that mindset. So that's what I connected to, maybe?

Liz: Yeah.

Anika: Because it was -- and it's obviously not just SVU, it's in the news all the time. It's reality. Before Covid took over everything, it was like the backlash of the #MeToo movement.

Liz: Right, right, and then Fiona Apple's new album came out, and that was also about predatory powerful men, and her anger towards them, and all of that. It's sort of the wallpaper of our lives.

Anika: Right.

Liz: But I watched Dukat monologuing about, "I'm a father to the Bajoran people," and I was like, yeah, you also want them to call you daddy. And then I just felt like I'd really squicked myself out, because he is--

Anika: I need a -- [laughs]

Liz: Like, this fictional man preying on fictional women--

Anika: "I need a friend," and, you know, "you're the only one I can--" ugh. It was so gross. And there was a whole, like, flashback to Schindler's List, because they seemed very similar to the wine cellar scene. I was just, like, this is exactly what's happening here. And it was just really disturbing on every level. I was way more invested in that non-storyline--

Liz: Right!

Anika: --than I was in everything that was happening with Odo. And that is maybe just because, you know, quote-unquote "women's issues", and that's what I was interested in, because I'm a woman? I don't know. Because there weren't--

Liz: Not a lot of women in this episode!

Anika: --a lot of women in this episode. And so if I am -- and also, I don't relate to Sisko. I don't relate to Garak, for heaven's sake.

Liz: [laughs]

Anika: I definitely don't relate to Odo. So my options are limited in -- even if it was some -- even if I was going to relate to a man, or a male character, as a woman, there weren't any that were for me anyway.

Liz: I kind of related to Garak a little, in that he was being very much a Karen, and I--

Anika: [laughs] Sorry!

Liz: I said it to make you laugh!

Anika: That's perfect.

Liz: But, you know, as a middle class white lady, I am certainly prone to that sort of attitude, and sort of check it in myself. But what really interested me was Dax's story, and how -- you know, none of the men really play the role they're assigned. Whereas Dax throws herself right into the part -- if that's the right way to put it -- of this Bajoran woman who doesn't even get a name! But, like, she's a method actor, apparently. She eats the food, and tells him that she doesn't eat very well very often, and -- I was so scared for her! But so impressed by her at the same time.

Anika: Yeah. And she, like, gets out of the whole -- and it's also, like, because Odo's not in any of her scenes, it's like, what is even going on there? If she's just lost in his subconscious--

Liz: Right!

Anika: --then how is -- like, why is Odo's subconsicous writing a scene between Dukat and Dax? I was just -- like, if you think about it too much, you'll go down a bad rabbit hole.

Liz: Yyyyyeah.

Anika: So just, let's not

Liz: No, it's too late, I am already asking why Odo is writing this fic.

Anika: And just say, Dax is great, and she was smart and clever, and playing along, and getting rid of him, and could have actually -- could easily have actually killed Dukat, as opposed to being accused of killing Dukat, like everybody else. There was just so -- it was like, wow, the fact that he doesn't -- he's not afraid of her at all. He thinks he is in control of the entire situation.

Liz: Right!

Anika: And she, like, with two scenes, is able to completely destroy him. It was just, like -- that's what I'm saying, that story was way more interesting. Dax being cool, and getting one over on Dukat, was way more interesting than everything else.

Liz: And it also felt like a better depiction of the treatment of Bajoran women under Dukat than the episode where Kira goes back in time to judge her mother for being a comfort woman, essentially.

Anika: Yes.

Liz: Because I think that's another interestingly complicated episode that, in that case, does try to draw easy answers, and the answer is that Kira is incredibly judgemental.

Anika: Yeah, right.

Liz: In a way that I think was bad at the time, and has also aged badly.

Anika: It's just -- especially when you have this episode, where she's judgemental, for sure, but--

Liz: But so much more gently.

Anika: Yeah. And it's not -- it's like, "I'll forgive you, Odo, but I'm not gonna forgive my mother." Why? What is the--

Liz: Which I think is an interesting psychological choice.

Anika: Right! It is interesting! And it sort of -- it's another thing where you learn about Kira, and I don't think the writers intended us to learn this about Kira, but I absolutely believe that she is the type to hold her mother, and women in general, up to a higher standard.

Liz: Right.

Anika: And even, like, Bajorans, in general, up to a higher standard than she would Odo. I believe that of her. Not consciously, and not on purpose, but she would.

Liz: Oh no!

Anika: And so it's like, that's interesting, but I don't think they meant that to happen. I think that's just what happened.

Liz: No, and it's not a story I would want this all-male writers room to tell.

Anika: No. Definitely not.

Liz: One thing that I think this episode hinted at, but didn't really explore, is that after fifty years of occupation, like, no one comes out of this oppressive regime untainted. And so, of course -- everyone knows collaborators, and everyone -- except the most hardline Resistance cell members -- has to make a compromise to survive, for themselves or their loved ones. And that was a really -- they don't really discuss it, but it's come up in other episodes about the Occupation and Bajoran politics. And I just think it's worth remembering that Kira's attitude is sort of in the minority, because most people are more pragmatic and less idealistic than she is.

Anika: It's true.

Liz: Which is not to say that anything Odo did was okay, but I don't think he was -- I'm sure that there were Bajorans serving in security roles and police roles that also committed crimes against their own people.

Anika: Yes. And, again, those are interesting questions. Those are the people who are not the heroes of the story, and not the villains. They're the people who are just trying to survive.

Liz: Right.

Anika: And making choices. And some people make better choices than other people, and that's interesting, that's life, and that's -- again, those are interesting questions. And so, yes, Odo -- and when you brought up his age earlier, I think I cut you off before you actually got to your point, but if your point was that, at that time, he was young, and he was also alone--

Liz: Yes.

Anika: --because we know Odo as Odo, a part of our ensemble, who has these relationships with these people. But at that point in Odo's history, he didn't have those relationships, he didn't have people, he didn't have friends.

Liz: Right, exactly.

Anika: He was just the law and order guy. That was all he had, "I'm gonna create order." And so I can understand, from that perspective, of Odo, this choice.

Liz: Right!

Anika: And I wish that Odo took the time to try to understand his former self making this choice, and actually acknowledging that. Instead of me doing it for him.

Liz: Yes! And the journey he made from being straight-up law and order guy, and more about the order than the law, to developing an understanding of justice, and of becoming a competent investigator who did the work. That's an interesting story, and I wish we knew more about it, and I wish we knew how he learned, and who taught him, and all of that.

Anika: Yeah. And these are the whole -- I think I would be pretty into a Deep Space 9 prequel. I would love to know terrorist!Kira. Like, I wanna know more than what we get.

Liz: This feels like a great topic for, like, a high quality graphic novel. So, call us, whoever has the rights to Star Trek comics right now!

Anika: Yeah! [laughs] Exactly. I think you're right, it's a little too gritty for the high budget television series, but a graphic novel would be just right.

Liz: That, and -- yeah, I just -- if this is how Quark is treating his temporary bar staff, and waiters, what is he doing to the dabo girls?!

Anika: Oh God. Ew.

Liz: Yeah.

Anika: What are the Cardassians doing to the dabo girls?

Liz: #MeToo: Terok Nor is something I've never really considered before, but--

Anika: It's very, very real, though.

Liz: Yyyyyeaaaaaahhhhhhh.

Anika: I get why people like Deep Space 9, because it is that realism, that gritty version of Star Trek. Like, I get it. I get it.

Liz: It just--

Anika: But it's still a little too -- I dunno.

Liz: To me, it half-asses the realism.

Anika: Yeah. It's santised.

Liz: Yeah. And I do understand that it's the nineties, and all of that, but that doesn't mean we have to acclaim it now. Like -- it tried, it was important at the time, it does many things well, even now, but -- you know? And I don't even think that, necessarily, uh, modern, twenty-first century Trek is doing hugely better. I was more optimistic after Discovery's first season, but then, you know.

Anika: Then Discovery's second season.

Liz: And Picard.

Anika: And Picard. Going backwards. I don't know. Star Trek is imperfect, and that's part of its charm.

Liz: And, to an extent, every series and every spin-off has to reinvent the wheel. And there is always a shakedown period of awkwardness, and trying to figure out how to do things.

Anika: Yeah, but that brings it back to, THIS IS A FIFTH SEASON EPISODE.

Liz: Right.

Anika: This season is supposed to be the best season. So what happened?

Liz: Yeah. Yeah. Should we wrap up?

Anika: Sure. Yes.

Liz: It's a little bit short, but I don't know that we have more to say, and honestly, I've been at my desk -- I have been doing work every single day since Easter Sunday. And I'm so sick of being at my desk.

Anika: I'll say one positive thing.

Liz: Yes?

Anika: At the very beginning of the episode, when the shuttlepod is coming, and Worf is on the bridge, there is a woman -- who is his person on the bridge, I don't know -- but she's wearing the Bajoran uniform in grey, with the quilted -- it looked really good.

Liz: Oh, nice.

Anika: I was like, I really like these Bajoran uniforms. And I always liked Kira's, but in the grey, it was really interesting. It was more utilitarian, and also sort of more Starfleety, but looked really good. It was interesting, so I liked it.

Liz: As long as we're talking about costuming, there's a full-length shot of Kira at the very end, and you see her boots. And I've always liked the boots that she wears, whether the high heels or the flats, but they just looked like -- because she's so pregnant, they looked like very nice, solid, appropriate heels. And they looked really comfortable.

Anika: Kira boots over leggings is super nineties, and I love it.

Liz: Right, I was looking at them going, I remember coveting slouchy boots.

Anika: I dressed like that all the time.

Liz: Yeah.

Anika: All the time! That was me. So good on you, Kira.

Liz: I spent the nineties dressing like Janeway in "Resolutions". So, yeah.

Anika: [laughs] No, but seriously, Kira was my fashion icon.

Liz: Did you own a crochet singlet?

Anika: She had -- yes, exactly! The crochet things. I still, whenever I go to a thrift store, I look for crochet vests and little dresses and things. And it's like, Kira and Kes were what I dressed like. Just, you know. Has nothing to do with this episode, but: fashion icon.

Liz: My other shameful Trekkie confession is that, as a feminist, obviously I think it's terrible that Nana Visitor was put in steadily tighter costumes and higher heels as the series went on. But from an aesthetic point of view? I'm really into it. See also: Seven of Nine's catsuit.

Anika: [laughs]

Liz: And I did -- I went through a phase of wearing heels like that everyday. And then I had to have foot surgery, and I never wore heels again.

Anika: You know, T'Pol's pastel velour faux uniforms that she wears in the last two season? Those are my favourite. I love them. They're so good.

Liz: I think it was TrekCore who retweeted a picture of a cosplayer wearing that outfit, and she looked amazing.

Anika: So bad and so good. Yes.

Liz: It's just kind of the Star Trek equivalent of the Juicy Couture tracksuit.

Anika: It is exactly! And it looks so comfortable.

Liz: By catsuit standards, yeah!

Anika: By catsuit standards, yeah. You know, it's probably horrible to wear. But it looks cosy.

Liz: I reckon it'd be more comfortable than what Jeri Ryan had. Like, it just seems like it moves better, and doesn't have an inbuilt corset, and has separate shoes.

Anika: Honestly, it looks more comfortable than what [T'Pol's] stuck in, what I call her couch catsuit.

Liz: Yeah, it does look like a cushion.

Anika: That is rough. Like, that looks really -- like, at least the velour is soft?

Liz: Yeah, the couch one often looks a bit cold. Like, it's very thin fabric. It looks cheap, basically. All the constuming on Enterprise looks cheap.

Anika: It was bad choices. Bad choices. T'Pol was happier in the later seasons, and I think it's partially because of her clothes.

Liz: I found a bunch of photos of myself from the early 2000s, and that was a bad time for fashion in general. Like, I was unfortunately very trendy then, and I have regrets. [laughs]

Anika: Yeah.

Liz: The extremely revealing singlet and boot cut jeans? Don't know what I was thinking, not gonna go back to that. I just wanna go back to my past self and put a cardigan over her shoulders.

Anika: And right now, it doesn't even matter what we wear, so.

Liz: I'm wearing jeans right now, but that's because, once we're done here, I'm going to mow the lawn, and I don't want my neighbours to see my terrible tracksuit pants.

Anika: I will be honest that I am back to leggings and boots.

Liz: Good.

Anika: That is, once again, what I wear everyday. And it's very cosy.

Liz: Yeah, I had some money set aside to upgrade my autumn work wardrobe, and instead, I spent it all on hoodies.

Anika: That was a good choice!

Liz: I'll probably regret it, come spring, but that's a spring!Liz problem.

Anika: That's right. That's the future. Who even knows what's gonna be -- pfft. Anything could happen between now and then.

Liz: [big dramatic sigh] Well, I know what's happening on our next episode, so!

[outro music]

Thank you for listening to Antimatter Pod.

You can find our show notes at antimatterpod.tumblr.com, including links to our social media and credits for our theme music.

You can also follow us on Twitter at @antimatterpod. Sometimes we post cat pictures, and questions for our audience.

If you like us, leave a review on apple podcasts or wherever you consume your podcasts -- the more reviews, the easier it is for new listeners to find us.

And join us in two weeks when we’ll be discussing an iconic TOS novel: Diane Duane's My Enemy, My Ally.

#star trek: deep space 9 #antimatter pod #podcast transcripts

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mia-cooper · 5 years ago

Text

Fanfiction Questions

from here

Fandom Questions

1. What was the first fandom you got involved in?

Involved as in ‘frantically read every book I could get my hands on, daydreamed about being part of that universe and wrote stories/made art inspired by the books, if not actual fanfiction’? Mm, probably The Chronicles of Narnia when I was six or seven. The next great obsession was The Silver Brumby when I went through my horse stage around age 12, and then Sweet Valley High when I was 15. Hahaha.

2. What is your latest fandom?

Marvel! I’m not into comics and I’m definitely not interested in consuming every last bit of canon material or memorising the variations of every universe, but I love (most of) the movies and Agents of SHIELD is pretty cool.

3. What is the best fandom you’ve ever been involved in?

Star Trek Voyager. No contest. I venture to suggest that the older fandoms, the ones that are all about defunct shows, are a hell of a lot more chilled. Maybe because we’ve come to terms with our shitty canon endings and learned that liking the ship you hate doesn’t make someone problematic, unlike some newer fandoms I could name (Yes I’m talking about you, Game of Thrones fans. What the fuck.)

4. Do you regret getting involved in any fandoms?

I’ve dipped a toe into one or two fandoms for shows or books I’ve really enjoyed and backed the fuck out when the vibe gets weird (oh hey, it’s GoT again), but nope. No regrets.

5. Which fandoms have you written fanfiction for?

All the Star Treks except TOS, and a Trek/MCU crossover. I’d like to write more for MCU someday. Plus I’ve written longhand entire notebooks full of teen romance shit that bore an uncanny similarity to SVH, and my first short story was a fantasy fic that featured a girl whose guardian was a wise talking lion who led her into mystical secret worlds, which is kind of familiar.

6. List your OTP from each fandom you’ve been involved in.

Wow. I’m going to define ‘involved in’ as ‘cared enough about to have an OTP’, but I’m guaranteed to forget a ton. In no particular order:

Voyager: Janeway x anyone who can get her off

Discovery: Lorca x Cornwell or Pike x Tyler x Burnham (or any combination of)

DS9: Kira x Jadzia Dax

TNG: Picard x Vash, I guess? I don’t really have any TNG ships

ENT: T’Pol x Trip x Hoshi (or any variation therein)

MCU: Cap x Widow

AoS: Coulson x Skye... no May... no Skye... I don’t know

CAOS: Madam Satan x Zelda

Timeless: Garcy

The Good Place: Eleanor x Tahani

The 100 (shut up): toss up between Clarke x Bellamy and Kane x Abby

Veronica Mars: Veronica x Leo (first run), Veronica x Logan (s4)

Orphan Black: Cosima x Delphine

BSG: Apollo x Starbuck

SG1: Sam x Jack

Arrow: Olicity (so over the show now though)

This Life: Milly x Egg

Yeah you know what... I’m drawing a blank. I can’t think of any other shows where I’ve been invested in The Romance that much.

7. List your NoTPs from each fandom you’ve been in.

I’m too tired to do every fandom, and besides, I can come around to almost any ship if the headcanons (or fics) are convincing enough. I do have a few hard no-gos, but they might be someone else’s OTP so I’ll shut up about them.

8. How did you get involved in your latest fandom?

Reluctantly. The MCU movies are not something I ever thought I’d enjoy beyond a dull evening’s entertainment. I never expected to get attached to the characters. And yet.

9. What are the best things about your current fandom?

Voyager is my forever fandom and the only one where I’ve really interacted with other fans. The best things about it? In general, everyone is just cool, accepting, open and basically awesome. And talented. I love my Party Bus people.

10. Is there a fandom you read fic from but don’t write in?

Sure. The 100, Veronica Mars and Agents of SHIELD are the ones I’d dip into more frequently. I really enjoy crossovers between Trek and BSG or the Stargate variants, too.

Ship Questions for your Current Fandom

11. Who is your current OTP?

Janeway x Chakotay.

12. Who is your current OT3?

Janeway x Chakotay x Paris.

13. Any NoTPs?

A few.

14. Go on, who are your BroTPs?

Janeway & Tuvok! Also Torres & Chakotay, and I’d have killed for more Janeway & Torres in canon. (If they kissed sometimes that would be okay too)

15. Is there an obscure ship which you love?

Yeah. Paris x Seven. There are like two fics in existence, and yet ... the potential! (Sorry, B’Elanna)

16. Are there any popular ships in your fandom which you dislike?

Nope.

17. Who was your first OTP and are they still your favourite?

Janeway x Paris. And they’re still way up there, but not quite at the top.

18. What ship have you written the most about?

84% of my fics feature Janeway x Chakotay as either the primary or secondary pairing... holy shit.

19. Is there a ship which you wished you could get behind, but you just don’t feel them?

Paris x Torres. I mean, I feel them. I just don’t generally feel the need to write about them.

20. Any ships which you surprised yourself by liking?

Chakotay x Seven. In another universe, it could’ve been beautiful.

Author Questions

21. What was the first fanfic you ever wrote?

Actual story that was clearly fanfic? A farcical drunken romp told in the 24th century equivalent of email format called PADDemonium (see what I did there?)

22. Is there anything you regret writing?

Lol, a few things that should probably have never seen the light of day for various reasons, some of them leola related. But I’ve only deleted two fics that I can recall.

23. Name a fic you’ve written that you’re especially fond of & explain why you like it.

Relieved. It’s a 30k AU Chakotay moral dilemma backstory that brings in DS9 characters, Section 31 and his longstanding history with AU Janeway. I did so much research for it (way back in the days before memory alpha and chakoteya.net) and I’m really proud of how I wound in canon stuff across series but changed a few key bits and pieces. Only problem is, it’s a sequel to ...

24. What fic do you desperately need to rewrite or edit?

... Pressure, which I can’t even read without cringing. My characterisation of Janeway, even Angry Maquis AU Janeway, is way over the top and there are moments that verge on Mills and Boon and give me first, second and third hand embarrassment. God, I’d love to rewrite it. Actually, that’s a lie. I want someone else to rewrite it so I can read it without covering my eyes and moaning.

25. What’s your most popular fanfic?

Desperate Measures, by about 70,000 light years, lol. Although Fragile Things beats it on bookmarks.

26. How do you come up with your fanfic titles?

You know what? A fair percentage of the time, I think of the title first and come up with a plot second. Aside from that, I prefer shorter, punchier titles that clearly tie into the story (Flight Risk, Speechless), though sometimes it’s song lyrics (Burn Our Horizons, your body like a searchlight) or a literary quote (Required to Bear, All the Devils are Here) or a turn of phrase from the story itself (The Prisons You Inhabit). Hey that was fun. Thanks for letting me pimp the shit out of my stories.

27. What do you hate more: Coming up with titles or writing summaries?

Ugh, it depends on the day. Summaries are harder, I think. I never want to give away too much of the plot, but there has to be enough there for people to know whether they’ll bother clicking. Funny story: I actually ran the stats on this a few months back. Here they are for your edification:

Fics with a one line plot summary = 54%

With two or three line plot summary = 18%

With a short snippet directly from the fic = 16%

With a snippet + a one line explanation = 3%

With a one line plot summary plus a line to date the fic (eg "set in season 3", “episode tag to Worst Case Scenario") or the fic prompt = 7%

And finally, a quote from something other than the fic = 2% (that's only 3 fics).

28. If someone were to draw a piece of fanart for your story, which story would it be and what would the picture be of?

Ooh. I’ll say the final scene in Explosive.

29. Do you have a beta reader? Why/Why not?

I used to regularly ask @jhelenoftrek and @littleobsessions90 to beta for me, and both of them are brilliant at it. Lately I’ve been posting without sending my stuff off for editing. This is partly because I’m impatient to get stuff out there, partly because I don’t have as much time to write/edit, and partly because I’m a little less focused on improving my writing and more on enjoying it for its own sake.

30. What inspires you to write?

Little bits of episode dialogue I haven’t noticed before, other people’s fanfiction, stray conversations, fic prompts, song lyrics, random headcanons, fever dreams, dares ...

31. What’s the nicest thing someone has ever said about your writing?

I’ve been really lucky with comments on my fic. The least helpful comment I’ve ever received was on one of my early 30k fics and all it said was “Did you have to take the name of the lord in vain?” Which is kind of funny. The nicest thing anyone’s ever said? I’m very partial to the feedback that starts “I don’t even like this pairing/genre/trope/show but you made me love it”, and particularly “I’ll read anything you write, I don’t care what it’s about.” But all comments are gold. The little heart button is cool too.

32. Do you listen to music when you write or does music inspire you? If so, which band or genre of music does it for you?

I’m not someone who can tune out music I love, or leave it in the background to inspire me. If it’s on, I’m fully invested in it. I’m that annoying person in the car who flips radio stations every three seconds until I find something I like and then it’s on 11 and I’m singing along to it. I’m also really picky but extremely eclectic, although there are genres I can’t stand (anything with autotune makes me stabby). That said, sometimes I find a song that I can’t stop listening to for weeks and often that perfect combination of music and lyrics will inspire me to write a fic. For example, I just plotted out an entire J/C story because of this song.

33. Do you write oneshots, multi-chapter fics or huuuuuge epics?

All of the above. Although I’m not sure if my longest epic is huuuuuge or just huuuge.

34. What’s the word count on your longest fic?

101,467.

35. Do you write drabbles? If so, what do you normally write them about?

I have two drabble collections. One is all J/C, full of responses to random prompts and I add to it sporadically. The other is episode additions set on Kathryn Janeway’s birthday (May 20) and added to annually.

36. What’s your favourite genre to write?

Angst, definitely. Sometimes it’s smutty angst or fluffy angst or hurt/comfort angst, but often it’s just fucking unrelenting angst. And I’m okay with that.

37. First person or third person - what do you write in and why?

I did the stats on this once, too, haha. Pretty sure I came out fairly even on first and third person with a smattering of second person in there. I’m probably even-ish on present vs past tense, too. I make it a point to mix it up to avoid my writing getting stale or same-y. And sometimes a fic doesn’t really click for me until I try it in a different POV or tense or from a different character’s perspective.

38. Do you use established canon characters or do you create OCs?

I mostly write for canon characters - the fun is in all the different ways you can interpret and imagine them - but I’ve been known to throw in the odd OC, or focus on a character who only got a brief cameo appearance, or write about someone who only appears in beta canon, or who only rates a mention on screen.

39. What is your greatest strength as a writer?

Oh, wow. I’m not sure. I guess the thing I value most about my own writing is my willingness to try different styles, characters, pairings and so on. The thing I strive for most is characterisation that feels true, and I really love it when I get comments on that. Exploring a character in a way that rings true with a reader is the best thing ever.

40. What do you struggle the most with in your writing?

Overly long sentences and adverb abuse, haha. No, truthfully, there comes a point in most of my fics, particularly the longer ones, when I really just want to scrap it because in my heart I know it’s dreadful. Usually that passes once I slog through the ‘I don’t wanna’ stage because I’m a bloody-minded bitch, but sometimes fics do get left in the dust half-written. Honestly, though, they’re the ones that probably should stay there.

Fanfiction Questions

41. List and link to 5 fanfics you are currently reading:

This is hilarious because I was just talking on discord about my problematic ‘to read’ pile. My unread AO3 subscription emails currently number 29 and my phone browser has 71 tabs open. So here are 5 random picks from that list of exactly 100 fics I should be reading:

Sex on the Beach (E, Janeway/Chakotay) by @traccigaryn

The Ruby Ring (T, Janeway/Chakotay, Janeway/Tighe) by @trinfinity2001

Earth is But an Idea (T, Janeway/Chakotay, Carter/O’Neill) by @caladeniablue

Home (E, Janeway/Chakotay) by Cassatt

Wise Up (E, Janeway/Chakotay) by KimJ

42. List and link to 5 fanfiction authors who are amazing:

Only five? Shit. Okay. In no particular order, these are five of the writers I keep coming back to:

quantumsilver (also here)

northernexposure

LittleObsessions

Helen8462

Cheshire

But there are so many others. My chosen fandom is chock full of amazing talent.

43. Is there anyone in your fandom who really inspires you?

All of the authors above for various reasons, but also august because her writing is so spare and delicate and devastating, and runawaymetaphor because she writes the most delicious Janeway/Paris, and @seperis because I read In the Space of Seven Days literally 20 years ago and I still haven’t recovered, and I could be here all night raving on this topic but there are still many questions to get through.

44. What ship do you feel needs more attention?

Janeway x Paris. I’m so happy there’s been a little bit of a resurgence in J/P fics lately. Thanks, @curator-on-ao3, you’re doing the lord’s work.

I’ll also take Janeway x Johnson content any day of the week.

45. What is your all time favourite fanfic?

What the hell? I can’t pick just one! Ugh!

... but okay, here’s the first one that came to mind when I tried to think about this: if you came this way by tree. I’m not sure I’d call it my favourite, but it’s one I revisit often. Ugh, there are so many other fics I’m thinking of now that I really want to list.

46. If someone was to read one of your fanfics, which fic would you recommend to them and why?

Oh, that’s hard. I should probably pick an angsty smutty J/C because that’s a fair proportion of what I write and it’s good to let a new reader know what they can expect. But honestly, I think the best fic I’ve written is The Uncharted Sea. (It’s safe for work. Maybe not for makeup.)

47. Archive Of Our Own, Fanfiction.net or Tumblr - where do you prefer to post and why?

The Archive, of course. Where else can I find ad-free hosting on a stunningly user-friendly interface with absolutely no moralising content restrictions and the world’s best tagging system? That Hugo award is well deserved.

Tumblr is good for headcanons and meta and gifsets and a few other formats that I’m less likely to post on AO3 because I’d feel like I was pissing off people who subscribe to me by giving them some random garbage.

I also have my own website, but I’m not really sure why. Sometimes I post fic there that doesn’t make it to tumblr or AO3.

48. Do you leave reviews when you read fanfiction? Why/Why not?

I try to. Honestly I do. I love it when I get reviews, so I figure paying it forward is the least I can do. I’m less scrupulous about leaving comments when I’m busy or reading on my phone.

49. Do you care if people comment/reblog your writing? Why/why not?

I mean, I love it when people reblog, but I certainly don’t expect it. @arcadia1995 is amazing for reblogging stuff *blows kisses*

Nobody owes fanfic writers shit, but I feel like there’s a tacit agreement that if you like what you just read for free and you’re on a platform that makes it easy to do so, you leave a review or at least a kudos, because I’m not gonna lie, posting a fic you’ve worked super hard on and seeing it get very few kudos or comments is a bit deflating. I’m sure a lot of us have been there.

50. How did you get into reading and/or writing fanfiction?

During Voyager’s original run I was trawling the internet for Endgame spoilers (I don’t know why; I usually love surprises) and I guess I googled (or whatever the 2001 equivalent of googling was) something like “how does voyager get home” and somehow I stumbled across Revisionist History. At first I had no idea what I was reading - was this a lost story pitch that somehow got leaked? A professional novella commissioned by the showrunners?

Then I started following links and discovered yahoo groups and webrings and Trekiverse and fanfiction.net and all sorts of incredible things I’d never guessed at, including the now defunct ‘archipelago of angst’, a collection of Voyager writers who focused mainly on a darker Janeway than most of the other fic writers I was encountering, and I was hooked. So I wrote a few of my own pieces, and then I lost interest for 15 years. I’m still not sure how I got dragged back in.

51. Rant or Gush about one thing you love or hate in the world of fanfiction! Go!

Honestly, in what other way can I indulge my obsessions, hone my skills and talk about it endlessly with like-minded people? Where else can I instantly find a plethora of fiction about the exact topic I feel like reading about on my mobile device and for free? Fanfiction is fucking amazing and I’m so glad it exists in my life.

#miamemes #fanfiction #fanfic asks

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jimmycarrhairlinesurgery · 6 years ago

Note

hey abby guess what. 1-30

1: Favorite season?

you KNOW you KNOW a softe bitch loves season 5 its just pure and nice and comforting to watch and also has so many goode episodes and macden moments in it... i literally have the url iasipseasonfive saved like need i say more

2: Favorite character?

its mac... like ofc it is ive loved dennis and dee in the past and of course i still have a soft spot for the trash twins esp their childhoods but mac’s coming out arc is just perfect and he just wants to be a happy boye! honestly it might change but my big three are den dee and mac sorry gruesome twosome

3: Favorite cast member?

i kin glennato and like LOVE his weird music taste but i have 2 say kaitlin olson shes so present on social media and the utter reverence with which the other cast members speak abt her is just. beautiful! she’s credited with literally saving the show by making dee just as despicable as the rest of the gang she’s a feminist queen and also managed to cuff rmacelhenney like kudos girl! angel queen gorgeous etc

4: OTP?

it’s mac and dennis honestly their relationship can get my heart pounding and it was the main reason i was drawn to the show in the first place... kings of being repressed sexually and emotionally and honestly i related to that feeling of being repressed and in love w your best friend like not to project on characters that have nothing to do w me but they rlly helped me work through some issues!!! im not as ride or die as before because theyve already done so much but fingers crossed for s14 lads

5: BROTP?

ooooo this is difficult bc i love charmac but mac and dee is the friendship we deserve.... she could help him get over his raging misogyny and he could introduce her to the gay lifestyle how perfect would that be?? also i just feel like when they r alone they could be so nice to each other and i want that for them

6: NOTP?

one of them raped the other, what more can i say?

7: answered

8: Least favorite character?

it has to be frank like i get so angry thinking about how he abused dennis and dee as children he has almost zero redeemable qualities but like.. i could learn to love him if mfhp was a turning point... i just can’t ever get over the fact that he owned a sweatshop the joke stuff just isn’t even funny to me it makes me feel ill

9: Least favorite episode?

uhhhh if you’ve seen iasip ranked you’ll know that we ranked a cricket’s tale and frank’s brother as the worst but i’d also like to put up there the gang goes on family fight bc dennis’ breakdown is painfullll... other episodes that hurt me personally are the gang broke dee and how mac got fat

10: Favorite crack ship?

deetress started off as a crackship but it’s become honestly very serious and i hold it v close to my heart... if you don’t believe me watch one single minute of the boggs ladies reboot.... honorable mention is charden

11: Favorite headcanon?

hhmm i think that one of my favourite ones of all time is dennis is the bar like that was inimitable... also like hc that dee is lesbian bc she is

12: An episode you wish you could change?

all lethal weapon episodes... imagine how iconic they could be and quotable as well if they didn’t include blackface :(

13: An episode you wish you could write?

i want to write a vegas ep for sure.... like imagine also i would NOT do it justice but the episode where mac and dennis first get together, oof actually you’d do a better job of it tbh

14: Favorite thing about the show?

it has to be rcg like what other showrunners would care so much about the fate of the show and adapt it so much as time goes on... as much as i slander them on this website they really created one of the best shows to ever air

15: Least favorite thing about the show?

hmmm aside from all the blackface and the fact that they should have hired black writers if they wanted to address race in the show.... the fact that the gang r being so mean to mac and the whole ddl thing it’s a nightmare why didn’t they tell us what was going on with dennis??

16: Favorite running gag?

charlie’s illiteracy......... iconique also repressed mac was a good gag while it lasted i am glad he is out though

17: Best Mac shirt?

BEAST COAST

18: Best Dennis rant?

hnndg im gonna have to say the whole keeping the skin,, skin glass box thing in season 10 i forget the name of the episode but GOD that kills me every time glenn really went to julliard huh

19: answered

20: answered

21: Favorite end credits message?

idk i never watch the end credits messages! send me your favourites if you have any lads :)

22: A character you’d write off the show?

ngl probably cricket... he really bores me and like a cricket’s tale cemented that i think everything they can do with the character they have done but for longevity they have to keep him so he can supplement the gang’s schemes

23: An actor you want to see on the show (bonus points if you can think of a character for them)?

ooooooooo i’d love if dax sheppard came back on the show!! also i WISH lili reinhardt could come on but as betty from riverdale.. like a 30 second betty from riverdale cameo would be so ideal you have no idea it would be so stupid but like... hh

24: Favorite fic?

Yphrum’s Law by @lesbianfreyja chapter one made me BAWL (andchaos on ao3) and also anything by @macfoundhispride (yennefers on ao3) and also your fics michelle !!! everyone go check her out she’s peraltiagoisland on ao3

25: Favorite promo shoot?

the fuckign ingrid bergman one for season 8 i have no idea why they would do that but it’s incredible..... so niche i feel like it was glennato’s idea

26: Best Waitress hair-style?

sexeyyy episode charlie and dee find love her hair was so pretty long but also i love it now im glad she went brunette again good for her!! any waitress hairstyle is a good hairstyle

27: Fluffy hair Mac or hair-gel Mac?

FLUFFY HAIR MAC ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?

28: answered in GREAT DETAIL

29: Overrated character?

cricket... not to bash cricket again.... but also frank and charlie are overrated imo i can’t understand why charlie is the show’s darling i’ve never been that interested in him

30: Underrated episode?

the most underrated episode of all time is pop-pop the final solution i love it sm.... GOD it’s so good it truly has everything and like the nazi stuff was well executed.. questions abt life and death,,, deception, ryan gosling? i love it also dennis reynolds an erotic life is amazing

this took me like an hour and a half michelle i hope you’re happy!! also if you’re still reading thank you for putting up w my bullshit

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head-and-heart · 7 years ago

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Do you have any favorite fighting scenes? You know, there many fighting scenes in the show, but weirdly enough my favorite fighting scene was between Clarke and Anya and probably one of my favorite C moments. And I think it's because this scene is NOT pretty AT ALL. It felt SO REAL. C is not a warrior, she doesn't know how to fight like O, but DAMN girl did not give up. She used her slytherin skills, and then she punched Anya in the face and then boom C won. I mean yeah Anya was hurt before (pt1

(pt2) and if she was not hurt, she would probably have handled C, but holy shit C did not back down. Bitch did not back down from the fight and I LOVED it so much. And I think again weirdly enough I saw myself in C in that moment. I wouldn’t be a skilled fighter in that world, but damn I would use everything I had to fight in this moment.

I really, really like this ask!

There are TONS of fight scenes on the show, and after spending some time organizing my thoughts to type up a response to this ask I realized the pure extent of the action scenes that this show actually has. There are so many. Some amazing, others less so.

This Anya x Clarke fight scene is one of the better ones. I love it because, like you said, Clarke is not a fighter. She can shoot a gun, but she is hardly one to get into hand-to-hand combat, but DAMN did she try. That scene is so great because it clearly demonstrates Clarke’s resilience and her refusal to give up. Her moves were desperate and far from graceful, but with her determination to defeat Anya (and - yes - like you said, Anya’s injury definitely aided her) she actually managed to. And it didn’t even feel hard to believe (like I found Octavia’s sudden transition from getting her ass kicked to taking out highly trained warriors like it was nothing to be at many times). It felt realistic.

Personally, I’m not a huge fan of the organized fight scenes on the show. And I also don’t like the slow-mo they started using in Season 3 because it takes away the rawness of the battle scenes and makes it feel more like they’re just trying to dramatize fighting and make it seem “cool”.

I like the raw, messy, desperate fight scenes on the show. I like it when the characters struggle.

Many of the battle sequences - particularly involving the Grounders - come off as seeming so rehearsed and effortless and are extremely lacking in the emotion that makes it feel real. And while they may look cool, I find them to be sort of boring.

There’s no way I can pick just a few fight scenes as my favourites (like you said, there are A LOT) so I’m going to do my top ten favourites.

In no particular order:

1. The delinquents fight back in Mount Weather - 2x13

I can’t find a good gif for this scene but this battle sequence is fucking savage. The pure desperation in this scene verges on being animalistic, almost like someone flipped a switch in all of the delinquents and unleashed all of their pent-up pain and anger towards the Mountain Men. It shows a certain kind of darkness to the delinquents that we hadn’t really been exposed to at any other occasion.

There is a kind of wildness in their eyes, particularly in Jasper (as he is most prominently focused on) as they hack at their captors, blood spraying. There is no mercy, no coordination or fighting skill. Just pure emotion and rage. It’s brutal.

MORE UNDER THE CUT

2. Bellamy killing Lovejoy - 2x11

Bellamy’s entire plotline in Coup De Grace is absolutely grueling, but boy does everyone involved really kill it. I have to put the fight between Lovejoy and Bellamy (assisted by Echo and Maya) on this list because it is one hell of a scene. I love the combination of Maya - a girl who is not a fighter who is fighting against her own people for a stranger - working alongside Bellamy, who has all the odds stacked against him (he’s literally hanging upside down with nothing but his underwear when Lovejoy walks in) and Echo, who is defenseless and locked in a cage but still manages to assist Bellamy. The fusion of Mountain Man, Sky Person, and Grounder all on the same side in this scene is really great.

Eve Harlow and Bob Morley are killer together, and this is peak acting on both of their parts. The tension is palpable. You can sense the fear and uncertainty in Maya and Bellamy’s desperation to escape and save his friends. I think this may be one of Bellamy’s most brutal kills, with him literally biting Lovejoy (hence the blood on his mouth) and using all his muscle to strangle him, intimately watching the life drain slowly out of his eyes. I love the moment where Maya watches Lovejoy die, and lowers her gun slowly, and how disturbed she appears in the moment after.

So often the emotional impact of the victim’s death on The 100 is lost, but not with Lovejoy. Maya’s presence clearly shows how seeing one of her own die affects her, and later in the episode Bellamy has to deal with the emotional consequences of what he’s done when he sees Lovejoy’s son.

This is a top-knotch scene. Gritty and raw - it’s The 100 when they do their fight scenes best.

3.Raven, Gina, and Sinclair fighting the spy in Mount Weather - 3x03

Few episodes of The 100 have done a more exceptional job at building up suspense than Ye Who Enter Here. This is a controversial episode in The 100 fandom but I don’t know how anyone can argue against the brilliant structure and emotional beats in this episode.

Admittedly, Gina doesn’t get much of a chance to put up a fight in this scene but her desperate attempt to warn Raven and Sinclair, and the latter’s frantic battle against the Grounder assassin create an emotionally hot-wired and tense scene that is hard to forget. And the consequences of their failure are absolutely devastating.

This fight scene makes it onto my list because of the extreme emotional fall-out. Watching Gina struggling to talk to Raven and Sinclair on the radio, only to see the final countdown reflected in her lifeless eyes as they - inevitably - do not succeed, is grueling to watch. Even more so is listening as Raven tearfully calls Bellamy on the radio to inform him of what happened, leaving the latter reeling with the knowledge that everything he thought he knew from Echo was a lie, and he failed too. The acting is absolutely amazing in the final moments of this episode, and the action sequence has high enough emotional stakes and desperation for it to really work.

I literally get goosebumps when I watch this episode.

4. Clarke killing Emerson with the chip - 3x12

This scene was so disturbing and intense and Eliza killed it (pun unintended). Emerson forcing Clarke to watch her friends die is extremely grueling and Clarke’s scream of desperation is palpable. You can literally feel the emotion of the moment - I don’t think we’ve ever seen Clarke quite so desperate before.

This is one of those scenes where you truly believe that all hope is lost for our characters and that there is no way that Clarke can come through in time, before all of the delinquents suffocate to death. She is unarmed (or so Emerson thinks) and her friends get closer and closer to death with every second that passes. The clock ticking ramps up the stakes for the characters and makes the struggle that much more effective.

The flame killing Emerson was one of the more gruesome deaths this show has featured but shows - once again - how far Clarke will go to save the people she loves.

5. Bellamy and Clarke fighting Dax - 1x08

No offense but Bellamy stabbing Dax in the neck with a bullet was kinda fucking insane. That’s such a savage way to kill a person.

But that’s not the only reason why this scene is on my list. Its such an interesting scene because Bellamy’s hallucination where he is begging Jaha to kill him precedes it and - for a moment - you really think that Bellamy might actually let Dax kill him. But then Clarke shows up, and Bellamy may be willing to let himself die, but he won’t let Dax hurt her.

It’s a great fight scene because it happens so early in the series and Clarke can’t really shoot a gun or fight yet, and Bellamy is unarmed. There’s no reason why they should be able to fight off Dax and yet, as a team, they do. But not only is it a great struggle, it also leads up to a great emotional scene and marks a turning point in Bellamy and Clarke’s relationship (and Bellamy’s self-perception and character arc, in particular).

6. Monty killing his mom to save Octavia - 3x11

This is such a heartbreaking scene. I love how Chris actually screams as he fires the bullet - he doesn’t hold back on any of the emotion that Monty would have to be feeling in killing his own mother.

Another thing I liked about this scene was how it showed Octavia actually struggling when she was fighting Monty’s mom. She wasn’t an OP “badass” like most people like to call her - for once, she was just a girl who got caught off-guard. And it showed that, despite what she may think, she does need her friends. She can’t just survive on her own.

It was a prime moment of the delinquents fighting for each other, rather than participating in meaningless fight sequences that don’t really mean anything besides “looking cool”. *intense side eye at Season 4*

7. Luna killing her own people on the rig - 3x14

A round of applause for Nadia Hilker because the rawness and devastation of this scene is entirely due to her. I really like it because Luna approaches fighting in a very unique way for a Grounder. We see during this fight scene where she effortlessly takes down all of the Grounders who are waterboarding and essentially torturing her just how skilled of a fighter she is. She could have saved herself at any moment … but she didn’t. Because she refused to kill her people, refused to give into the darkness.

Until Adria is in danger. Then she gives into it, except maybe giving into it at all was too much for Luna, and this is the beginning of her unraveling until we find her where she is in 4x10 - determined to bring an end to the human race.

This is a very dark moment and Luna’s cries of grief are absolutely haunting.

8. Murphy and Bellamy’s elevator fight - 3x15

I mean, just look at that brewing bromance right there. How could I be wrong? This scene is clearly a cinematic masterpiece.

But, all joking aside, this really is a great fight scene because it forces Bellamy and Murphy to work together when in the past they have historically been at odds. Bellamy and Murphy have a consistently complicated relationship over the course of the series, but in this scene it shows that - at the heart of everything - they will have each other’s backs. Bellamy and Murphy are a dynamic duo when they want to be, and they function best when they work together as opposed to when they are at odds.

Symbolically, Bellamy saving Murphy’s life is an indication of him finally burying the hatchet in their relationship and maybe - just maybe - starting something new. An equal relationship built on respect (although we see on later occasions that it is still not perfect). I particularly like the shot where Bellamy is pointing the gun at the chipped Grounder’s head and is forced to make a choice on whether to save Murphy or let him die … and he chooses Murphy.

It shows just how far they have truly come.

9. Murphy getting beaten up and hanged - 1x04

I loved the way that scene was filmed - starting from when the crowd started beating up Murphy and ending with Clarke cutting him down from where they hanged him. The situation escalates so quickly and the tension builds. You can feel the pressure of the situation and Bellamy’s internal struggle the entire time, on top of Murphy’s pleas for help - it is even more grueling to watch because the audience knows that Murphy is innocent.

Murphy’s Law is one of my favourite episodes from Season 1 because it clearly demonstrates how quickly things can get out of hand when groups attempt to function without unity. The way the scene is shot, with the camera cutting shakily from one perspective to another, and the indiscernible chanting/yelling in the background really accentuates the chaos of the moment.

It’s a tense moment that has widespread consequences for the characters over the course of Season 1.

10. Octavia getting her ass handed to her in training - 2x10

It’s not exactly a secret that I am not Octavia’s #1 fan - however this scene of Octavia trying to spar with Fio makes it into my top ten scenes because it is, in my opinion, one of the only fight scenes that actually acknowledges Octavia’s struggle in training. For once, she isn’t this God-like warrior who skipped past the first thirty levels of training - she is the girl under the floor. She is the girl who fell from the sky and is trying create a name for herself. This scene acknowledges both Octavia’s background as well as her potential, showcasing all of Octavia’s best characteristics.

While I am not a huge Octavia stan myself, watching this scene makes it clear as to why people do like her. Her resilience in this scene is in full-force - Octavia refuses to give up, even as she is covered in mud and her own blood (and is disarmed). She would rather get her ass handed to her than appear a coward, so she keeps fighting.

As much as Octavia’s storyline has its faults and pitfalls, I think that this scene is absolutely essential to explain where her story goes after. Based off of this fight, it’s not hard to see why Indra would desire Octavia as her second, and what drives Octavia to prove herself over and over again.

Honourable Mentions:

It was extremely hard to pick just my top ten favourite fight scenes, but I eventually narrowed it down to the scenes that I thought held the most emotional weight or overall importance in the story. The following are a few scenes that I enjoyed but did not include for some reason or another.

1. Lincoln killing Cage - 2x16

You would be hard-pressed to find a scene from The 100 filled with more vindication than when Lincoln forces Cage to feel the pain he inflicted on Lincoln, and mimicking his words - “the first dose is the worst”. There is something both riveting and chilling about the last words Cage hears being a reminder of his sins. That said, it’s not much of a fight scene, as Cage doesn’t put up much of a fight, but it does serve as an extremely satisfying (while disturbing) way to wrap-up Lincoln (and Cage’s!) storyline in Season 2.

2. Bellamy disabling the acid fog - 2x14

This scene is one of my favourites because of the pure satisfaction of it. Against all odds, Bellamy manages to evade the Mount Weather guards, blowing up their acid fog weapon in the process and burning them all to a crisp in the process. Bellamy’s fast thinking on top of an action-packed sequence make it feel like it was pulled straight out of an action movie. The moment at the end, when Bellamy flies through the vents - unharmed - and just laughs is a great moment. It’s an exhilarating and adrenaline-filled moment to watch - however, it doesn’t have as much emotional weight to it as most of the other scenes I put in my top ten list.

3. Jaha and co. fight the sea monster - 2x16

I’m not entirely certain if this qualifies as a fight scene but this scene where Jaha sacrifices Craig to the sea monster is truly batshit crazy Jaha at his finest. The way Jaha responds to Murphy’s question of “why” with “because you can row” is absolutely chilling, and the delivery from Isaiah Washington is on point. What a way to open the Season 2 finale.

4. Raven fighting against the guards in Mount Weather - 2x16

As emotionally rich and grueling this scene is, where Raven fights back against the Mount Weather guards before they drill into her for bone marrow (even biting one of their necks), it did not make my top ten simply because I’m not entirely sure if it’s really a “fight scene”, as Raven and co are tied down the entire time. That said, Raven’s fire is far from extinguished in this scene and you can feel the desperation in the way she tries to resist against the guards. It is heartwrenching and painful to watch and Lindsey Morgan does an amazing job at portraying both the fear and the strength in Raven.

That covers all of my favourite scenes! Thanks for the great ask.

#the 100 #bellamy blake #raven reyes #john murphy #clarke griffin #monty green #jasper jordan #kate's ask box #meta: what all great things are made of

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gotgifsandmusings · 7 years ago

Text

Quick asks roundup

I’m going out of town this afternoon for labor dabor, and probably won’t be around much during the weekend. Thought I’d answer a few asks below--just a grab bag, with a vague focus on S7. Should be able to do a video one of these next week, and Julia and I are eyeing a UBS podcast episode pretty soon too.

Anonymous said to gotgifsandmusings: Have you read David Benioff's book City of Thieves? I'm curious how it compares to GoT.

I haven’t, no. I’m not sure if that’s something I want to subject myself to (it has been mostly positively received from what I know, though not across the board) when there’s so much I’ve been putting off reading as it is.

Anonymous said to gotgifsandmusings: Is cerseï pregananant in the boox?

She’s actually gregnant.

Anonymous said to gotgifsandmusings: Just read your criticism about Fair Game and wholeheartedly agree. You touched on the core of why your (and Julia's and Caroline's and Jess' and Turtle's) GoT analysis are so great: they understand the intersection of narrative flaws and social issues. Sure, some people may complain that they don't want "SJW" stuff, except, y'know, you don't stop being a feminist when you write a review. As you say, media is not produced in a cultural vacuum. Sadly, I admit I feel reluctant to...... Actively criticize GoT with people around me because the ones who dislike it also dislike ASOIAF and fantasy/sci-fi ("The show is bad because GRRM is a bad writer who isn't really character-driven, but it's not surprising since genre stuff is awful"). That sucks :(

Yes, exactly! This is in reference to this piece by myself and Julia, btw. That’s really depressing about that perception of genre fic, especially given what Martin does being so unique. I’ve never particularly understood that attitude; I want to read about cool places and stuff happening as much as I want to read about weighty character journeys, and why scoff at any that pull off both? Though Julia has a piece on that too.

But absolutely, as we said, it’s asinine to ignore the ways culture shapes media and vice versa, and often the reason the writing is so poor is because it’s so sensationalist or reliant on shitty tropes and stereotypes. “Just enjoy it (or critique) without focusing on social issues” is the ultimate sign of privilege, and it drives me crazy because it’s tossed out as an appeal to “objectivity.” IF YOU’RE IGNORING PEOPLE’S EXPERIENCES YOU’RE ALREADY NOT BEING OBJECTIVE.

Anonymous said to gotgifsandmusings: I'm curious why you guys interpret Cersei's internalized misogyny as nothing to do with gender dysphoria. All because Cersei doesn't break down during her period doesn't mean you must read her as cisgendered. She treats femininity like her least-favorite subject in school, not like part of herself. You're welcome to read her story as about women internalizing misogyny, but her thoughts feel familiarly trans, and outright denying that reading closer-to-earths her

This is really interesting, and my assumption would definitely a result of my own distance with that experience. Are there any metas on it? I haven’t really considered this before (I’ve seen the case argued for Brienne), and I’m not very convinced Martin had much intentionality here, but that’s a reading of her character I’d definitely like to learn/think more about.

Anonymous said to gotgifsandmusings: How can Euron "Crow's Eye, Terror of Pentos" Greyjoy come across as such a wimpy villain that I'm missing Ramsay? Hell, effing Joffrey could have torn that cuddly pooh bear a new one.

But...he’s the storm. You weren’t quaking in your boots when his fleet armada magically descended on Yara’s?

Anonymous said to gotgifsandmusings: I haven't seen anyone else comment on this, but did you notice Cheryl says "You expect me to command our troops to fight beside foreign scum?" almost immediately before telling Jaime she's bringing the foreign Golden Company from Essos to fight beside their troops? Do you think the writers ever make it to second drafts or do they just knock out the first on the back of a Hooters napkin over Natty Ices and fist bumps and say, nah, we're good bro?

A showpologist would tell you it’s clearly demonstrating what a horrible hypocrite she is and actually rather cutting commentary.

It’s really, really hard for me to imagine a world where Operation Capture a Wight received a look-over. A whole lot of what they do feels thoroughly unedited.

Anonymous said to gotgifsandmusings: Hey, I really appreciate all your GoT analysis. 1) Is Cheryl's assistant actually Ezri Dax? 2) Did you see Linda's episode review where she called D&D "smug idiots?" 3) Is it possible to enjoy GoT as schlock? I can't and don't, but It is certainly bad enough and dumb enough. Thanks!

Thank you :)

1) According to wikipedia, Ezri Dax’s actor is currently starring in “Corrupt aka Trust No One” and “Where’s my Baby”, but I’m glad you made me look her up, because the resemblance there is quite uncanny. The maid is played by Sara Dylan, and has actually been a consistent, recurring character since Season 2. Apparently her name is “Bernadette” because why not.

2) Was it her newest review? I do listen to those in the background of work when I’m doing spreadsheet kind of stuff, so I may not have caught that exact phrase, but I did hear the part where she basically said “just don’t even bother writing a plot. Only write battles because everything else is terrible.”

3) I mean, the people enjoying GoT are watching schlock, so it must be possible. I happen to think the ardent defenders/honeypotters aren’t the majority, and most people turn it on to watch dragons for 60 minutes, then talk about how cool the dragons looked the next day at work. It’s just that GoT comes with a stamp of “SMART ADULT SHOW” for reasons that will never cease to amaze me. So yeah, totally, but for me, I have a hard time enjoying something when the more you think about it, the worse it gets.

Anonymous said to gotgifsandmusings: I would bet my right hand that someone in the GoT writers' room probably rewatched season 1 which is why there's so many callbacks to it like Arya's "that's not you", Dany's infertility, Bran's "I told you not to trust me", etc etc. Like it just seems so obvious that they realized they ran out of content and decided to just revisit past seasons to make themselves seem smart and like they planned ahead so much.

Oh 100%. Season 1 was this year’s Lord of the Rings, which they had obviously binged before last year. I love it because then all the critics are like, “ohh my god it’s so well-planned and deep.” But no. It’s essentially grinning into the camera going “remember when?”, completely on par with Gendry’s boat joke.

Anonymous said to gotgifsandmusings: The writers gave up 3 seasons ago, but it feels like no one was really trying this year. The cast looked bored. The wigs were trash: Dany's fire-proof wig is also boatsex-proof and freezing wind-proof. The costumes were either too anachronistic for a so-called prestiege Medievalesque Drama or straight up uninspired: Cersei's modern office wear, Dany and LF are shopping at the same department store, Lyanna S dressed up for a college roman-themed party. I guess the special effects were ok.

I’m very, very hesitant to call out costuming because I know Michele Clapton is like, making up these immaculate honeypots and ordering the finest fabrics from Lithuania to pull everything together. But...yeah, as a viewer everything was kind of clearly ridiculous (Euron’s jacket), and EVERYTHING WAS BLACK with the exception of Deadpan’s coat, that was, I’m sorry, objectively hideous. The reason people fawned over it was because it was actually contrasting the blah they had been seeing all season.

As for the cast, I mean...I think these guys are decent actors who get into their roles when they can. But who could get into anything happening at this point? Stuff happens, don’t question it. The directing was probably fine (I don’t know enough about that stuff), but when the script is fundamentally lazy and uninspired, it’s going to bleed into everything.

Anonymous said to gotgifsandmusings: (Regarding episode 7) So the only leak that didn't come true was "Cersei's" bed of blood prediction and I'm wondering if she'll miscarry next season because morally evil incest women like Cheryl don't deserve babies while morally good (with the help of our friendzoned Saint T🙏) incest women like Deadpan get to conquer infertility and birth a Targ with the help of Jonny Cardboard's magic seed. That would be one boring Aegon 2(3?) infant. Thoughts?

Honestly, I can’t make heads or tails of why she was even pregnant. Larry didn’t need that to stay on her side at all, and the only thing I can think was that it added an extra TWIST for us. Haha, viewer! You thought she might have actually wanted to fight the threat because of her unborn kid and how many times we’ve told you her only redeeming quality is her motherhood, but now she’s EVHUL and even idealized motherhood can’t save her!

I guess it’s...kind of trope busting?

I kind of agree though, I don’t see them letting a BAD woman give birth and mother. At the same time, I don’t see how enough time can even pass where this would be a relevant plot-point to anything. So...I just, I don’t get it. I’ve gotta figure out how to structure my sexism & s7 analysis, and going back and revisiting Cheryl is probably going to be one of the most confused parts of it. I see many paths for how this unfolds, and none of them are really too promising.

Alrighty, gotta cut it here for today. Everyone have a safe labor day weekend (I guess there’s no heightened risk for non-Americans, but a safe weekend all the same), and I’ll talk to you guys later!

#asks #ask roundup

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moscarific · 5 years ago

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Dear Purim Gifts Creator

Dear Followers, this is a half-finished letter but I wanted to turn in my sign-up form. I’ll reblog when it’s all done on the extreme off-chance that anyone cares.

Hi! And thank you!

I have never done this exchange before, but in a flurry of what might be terrible decisions (and a significant Yuletide hangover) I am going for it. Despite being new to this particular shindig, I am a certified Fandom Grandparent at this point. I will be grateful and excited for whatever you create for me, and I will love that we have shared fandoms that we connect on. Most of my favorite gift fanworks have been the gifts I didn’t expect to receive and couldn’t have come up with myself. Basically, give me gifts that you enjoyed creating (and avoid my DNWs) and I will be thrilled.

Let’s get the DNWs out of the way first.

No pregnancy, no childbirth, no babies or little kids - this is very nearly a bulletproof squick.

Please don’t center my gifts around romantic/sexual pairings that I didn’t explicitly request. Crossovers are the exception - go wild with the crack pairings if you cross over two or more of my fandoms.

For fic, no AUs that change the setting or time period of canon (e.g. no Star Trek coffeeshop AUs, no Schitt’s Creek in space), although this is fine for graphics.

Please do not depict canonically cis male characters as trans women. I am here for your nonbinary/genderqueer/genderfluid/agender headcanons, though.

Please do not depict characters as Jewish unless they are Jewish canonically (or gray-canonically; see individual character prompts below). Writing non-Jewish characters participating in Jewish traditions or rituals alongside Jewish characters is great, though!

Please don’t create crossovers with fandoms I didn’t request. In other words, bring me all of your West Wing/X-Men/B99 shenanigans, but don’t throw She-Ra or Spider-man in there.

I like many more things than I dislike!

This is intended as an off-the-wall exchange, so be as goofy as you like. Bring on your most ridiculous tropes (tentacles! sex pollen! fake dating! Q made them do it!) and feel free to cross over any and all of my requested fandoms.

I do not require porn, but I do enjoy it: oral sex, eroticized hands, drag/gender play, shower sex, public/outdoor sex.

I am Jewish and will be really excited about gifts that explore Jewish themes in a thoughtful and creative way.

I am queer, a lot of the characters I’m requesting are queer, and I will be really excited about gifts that explore how queerness intersects with Judaism and/or female identity.

Please be nerdy about contemporary American and/or world politics, if that appeals to you.

Most of the fandoms I’m requesting have strong themes of found family/logical family, and I will enjoy gifts that explore those themes.

Individual fandoms and character requests!

I am equally excited to receive gifts in any of the fandoms I’ve requested! For each one, I’ll list characters, the criteria under which they fit in with the spirit of Purim Gifts (woman, Jewish, and/or persecuted by an evil vizier), and a brief description of why I want to receive gifts about them. If all my gifts are about one character in one fandom, that’s great; if each gift is about a different person in a different fandom, that’s also great. Create what you know and go with what inspires you.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine

Rosa Diaz (woman) - I love that Rosa has a tough exterior but is warm and cuddly inside. She’s the most fun when she’s letting her guard down a little. I don’t ship her with anyone in particular, although I would not be opposed to an Adrian Pimento reunion or a crossover romance with Stevie Budd. I love her friendships with Jake and with Amy.

Amy Santiago (woman) - I enjoy Amy’s fussiness and anal-retentiveness, especially when it’s played for laughs, but my favorite Amy is drunk Amy. She and Jake are clearly meant to be, although I don’t really want to read porn of them. I enjoy her friendships with Rosa and with Holt.

Crooked Media RPF

Jon Lovett (Jewish) - I would love to receive gifts that explore and celebrate Lovett’s Jewishness. How does his background inform his political and/or moral views? How is his Jewishness figuring into his upcoming wedding? That wedding can stick to canon/real life and be Lovett/Ronan, or give me Lovett/Favreau or Lovett/Tommy or Lovett/Favreau/Tommy.

Schitt’s Creek

Stevie Budd (woman) - Stevie is hilariously deadpan and aloof to hide the fact that she’s a marshmallow who finds most people endearing, especially the Roses. I love her friendships with both David and Johnny, and I’d enjoy seeing her learn about Judaism through them. I also feel like there’s unfinished Stevie/David business and a great deal of room for a Stevie/Rosa Diaz crossover. Or tell me about her relationship with the aunt she inherited the motel from.

Alexis Rose (woman, Jewish, persecuted by evil vizier) - You have a chance at the Purim Gifts trifecta on this one, since Alexis’s misadventures in Saudi Arabia suggest she might have actually been persecuted by an evil vizier at some point. I love Alexis’s moments of stealthy competence - she’s a pretty good receptionist and great at foiling shoplifters - her warm relationship with David, and the way her relationship with Moira develops throughout the show. She and Ted belong together, but I also lowkey ship her with Twyla.

David Rose (Jewish) - There are zero things I don’t love about David, so it is hard to reduce my feelings to a few sentences. His romance with Patrick is one of the sweetest things I have seen on television, and I also feel like he has unfinished romantic business with Stevie. I am also very much auditioning crossover fic with Bobby Drake here. His relationships with all of his family members are distinct and interesting, and would be a good avenue into exploring his Jewish identity.

Star Trek: The Next Generation

Deanna Troi (woman) - One of my main takeaways from recent rewatch activities is that Counselor Troi is secretly a badass, and Marina Sirtis’s extraordinary acting skills got swallowed up too often by poor writing. Bring me stories about Troi smacking down oppression with her skills and ingenuity! I have a little headcanon about her getting recruited by Section 31 post-series. Troi/Riker, Troi/Worf, or Troi/femslash of your choice would all please me.

Worf (Jewish) - Worf’s adoptive human parents, the Rozhenkos, are coded Jewish. Did Worf convert at some point in his childhood? Did he become a Bar Mitzvah? What Jewish traditions or rituals are still meaningful to him? How does his Jewish upbringing intersect with his Klingon identity? I ship Worf/Dax a lot, Worf/Troi is also great, and I would enjoy seeing his non-romantic relationships with Martok, Data, or Odo explored.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Worf (Jewish) - see ST:TNG above.

Jadzia Dax (woman) - Well, close enough to being a woman to count for the purposes of this challenge, although she’s solidly in the genderqueer space no matter how you interpret it. Which is one of the things I’d love to see explored. She’s also an eight-layer jawbreaker of coping mechanisms and habits, and it’s always interesting when those break down or get challenged. How does she respond to finding out about Worf’s Jewish background, and how do they celebrate that together? I’m a little bored with Jadzia/Lenara and have no time for Jadzia/Bashir but would enjoy Jadzia/Kira or Jadzia/Leeta, as well as her friendships with Ben Sisko or Odo.

The West Wing

Toby Ziegler (Jewish) - I love how the show explores Toby’s Judaism, and especially how it shapes his ethics. Solve one of the show’s biggest problems by explaining how Toby’s Jewish ethics led him to leak the information about the military spacecraft! Explore Toby’s process as a writer! Do something fun with him and CJ, either romantically or as friends!

X-Men Comics

[coming soon]

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ashroadtrek-blog · 7 years ago

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Tomorrow is Yesterday

Air Date: January 26, 1967

Writer: D.C. Fontana

Director: Michael O’Herlihy

I want to start off by saying that I fucking love time travel. I love alternate/parallel universes, I love Q episodes, I love crossovers, I love Klingons, and I love all the crazy sci-fi stuff that Star Trek pioneered.

I did not particularly care for this episode. No, it wasn’t a boring pile of action like Arena, but it was a dull episode about some guy from 1967 getting trapped on the Enterprise and Kirk has to go steal some evidence.

Tomorrow is Yesterday starts off by showing us a jet scramble at a contemporary (for 1967) audiences and the Enterprise against a blue sky - a new and exciting image that I found very pleasant.

Apparently the Enterprise went too close to a black hole (which is called a “black star of high gravitational attraction”) and hit a time warp back in time; somehow this puts them over Earth...1967 (or 1966, whenever it was produced - likely in 1966.) The engines and power systems need some time to recover, but nobody is dead...and the Enterprise has a jet on its tail.

Interestingly, Star Trek predicts the moon landing as being in the ‘late 1960s’ - the date of the moon landing was July 20th, 1969 (a proud moment for all humankind.) Less interestingly, Captain Christopher’s son is said to head the first Earth-Saturn probe (presumably in the 1980s or 1990s) - all we’ve got so far is the ISS in orbit (another proud achievement for all humankind anyways.)

So the conflict of this episode is that they beam a pilot aboard after their tractor beam breaks up his jet - now what the hell kind of force does the beam exert, anyway? Is it like a clamping jet that crushes anything not made of cast rodinium? In that case they should have kept the NX-01′s grappling hook throughout the development of later Starfleet vessels. I guess they just rely on the transporter if one crewmen gets blown out the airlock - or more likely, give them up for dead.

Moving on.

They transport the captain on the ship, and he immediately pops off with name, rank, and serial number all bug-eyed. He’s shocked to see Kirk is a human, speaks english, and has a normal all-American name like James T. Kirk. Well, he is from Iowa, after all.

Kirk is fairly hospitable and brings Captain Primitive to the bridge. On the way he guffaws at a female crewman like “A WOMAN ON A SPACESHIP?” It’s one of the best glimpses into the attitudes of the 60s.

What’s next - a black woman, an asian man, and an alien in the command center?!

Captain Chris is impressed by the ship - when he was flying towards it he saw that it was pretty massive, and indeed it is quite the behemoth at 947 feet long (the current USS Enterprise (CVN-65) is 1,122 feet long), 416 feet wide, and 238 feet tall. My house is like 12 feet floor to the peak of the roof. Kirk informs him that there are only 12 like them, which seems like a small number for Starfleet but hey, it was early in the franchise history. UESPA and Starfleet are both mentioned in this episode, though.

Chris looks at Spock like he’s an alien, but I just don’t get it - I mean, back in the 60s, most audiences just getting television and seeing things they never had before, maybe the pointed ears and eyebrows and bangs seemed genuinely alien...but that’s really the only difference between Spock and a human on the surface. I’d be more inclined to buy his shock if Spock were blue and had antennae coming out of his head.

“What are you looking at...pink-skin?”

I’m really surprised Captain Wash-Out doesn’t look at Uhura like “A BLACK PERSON ON THE BRIDGE? WHAAAA?” or “A WOMAN ON THE BRIDGE? WHAAAA?” because part of the problem they had with The Cage was nobody was comfortable with a woman on the bridge in a command position - and while Uhura may be the communications officer, she’s still an officer and presumably still has a higher position of authority over much of the crew. (43 officers, the rest enlisted crewmen. Uhura is 1 of those 43 officers who attended the Academy.)

I wonder what contemporary audiences thought of their silent interaction?

The initial conundrum is that Spock can’t let Kirk have Captain Chris go all Biff Tannen with the timeline, and therefore they have to keep him. Then again, if they get back to their time he won’t really fit as a throwback. Chris does not want this, and he argues that NOT sending him back will affect the timeline - to which Spock responds that he’s already space-googled him and found out he’s not important at all.

"Did he fart or is that the smell of his ego shattering?”

Chris wants to do his duty: report back to base, get home to a hot supper from his picture perfect housewife and 2.5 kid nuclear family. Then there’s another problem - the Enterprise is still stuck in 1967, and they can’t really go anywhere. I mean, what if another Vulcan survey ship passes through the system (ala Carbon Creek)? They can’t exactly risk going into outer space and contaminating the timeline.

Friendly reminder that this guy is still hanging out in Pennsylvania during this episode

Chris tries to escape and Kirk drops him. Bones brings up the obvious predicament if they can’t get home - imagine the damage a Riley can do to the timeline?

This but with a nuclear submarine off the coast of New York and a tab of LSD - it was that time, after all

So Spock shows up and mentions he forgot to include Chris’ descendants in his google search and hey, what do you know, his son heads the mission to Saturn!

The news is music to the captain’s ears - but now they have to break into the base and get evidence of the Enterprise out and destroy the captain’s credibility so that he’ll become a despondent alcoholic after his career is ruined and spur his son into becoming an astronaut so he can go to Saturn and finally measure up in his father’s eyes. Okay, only part of that is real.

Kirk and Sulu are the ones who beam down, and Sulu is positively delighted to be part of a mission to an authentic 20th century military installation - after all, he did fetishize that old gun in Shore Leave and has a fencing hobby.

"Captain, look! An old-style message array!”

Meanwhile, Spock does temporal equations in his head and Bones experiences mild anxiety.

Kirk and Sulu pull some tapes out of an ancient (even by modern standards) tape-reading computer and then they get caught by base police, leading to this hilarious image:

“D-did the south rise again?”

The guy is in such incredible shock he spends most of the episode standing there.

Anyways, Kirk gets caught (Sulu beams out) and acts like a smartass with the base police. The boys up top figure out how to get him back, Chris makes a bad attempt at betrayal, and the army cop on the ship is still in shock.

At this point I think the chief was just fucking with him

To finish the episode, Spock and Scotty figure the old slingshot-around-the-sun maneuver is just the trick to initiate a time warp, beam Chris and the cop back to where they belong (and erasing their memories to boot) and manage to get back to their own time. There’s a lot of technobabble involved, but that’s the gist of it.

This is the first time they use the slingshot maneuver to go back in time. I wonder why they didn’t use the matter/antimatter intermix from The Naked Time? Well it turns out this episode was to be the second part of a two-parter with The Naked Time as its first part, and the time warp they entered in that episode is what shoots them back in the past of this episode. In retrospect, if you ignore the black star exposition it still works pretty well; canonically, however, this episode is roughly 6 months after The Naked Time.

When they get back they are hailed by Starfleet control; a happy ending for our crew.

This episode was written by D.C. Fontana, a rare female television writer from in the early era of television. Dorothy also wrote Charlie X and has credits on 8 more TOS episodes, TAS Yesteryear, 5 TNG episodes, and the DS9 episode Dax. Notable episodes she penned (or helped pen) include The Enterprise Incident, Journey to Babel, and Encounter at Farpoint. To me, she’s hit and miss, like Gene L. Coon (who wrote my least-favorite episode thus far yet also penned the upcoming The Devil in the Dark), but there’s one thing I agree with her on - Deep Space 9 was her favorite Star Trek spin-off because it had the best character development, and that’s exactly why I love that of all Star Trek series the most.

I actually forgot to mention the sexy-voice computer! So what, Starfleet’s computer systems come from Signet 14, a planet of women? Or did they mean they got it updated at Signet 14 and the sultry voice was a prank by the Signetians? Either way, Kirk did not appreciate it and it was pretty funny.

Rating: 2/5; Don’t Rewatch

Tomorrow is Yesterday is a boring episode that doesn’t have much going on. While it doesn’t mishandle action like Arena, it lacks the interesting events of an average episode like Miri, and there’s nothing in the episode worth sticking around for.

#star trek #Star Trek: The Original Series #TOS #captain kirk #tomorrow is yesterday #ashroadtrek #d.c. fontana

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star-trek-odyssey · 5 years ago

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DS9- Unspoken 1

This story is inspired by my OC, her name is Nozria Bix, but there will be several POVs about every character that appears in this story and there will be many plots. I try to make this fanfiction very similar to an episode of DS9.

I hope it can entertain you.

Thank you if you decide to read this story, I put all my heart and soul to write it.

Chapter 1: A li(f)e I left behind

SISKO’S POV

Captain’s log, stardate 2372.

Since a few months Bajor has been hit by a mysterious plague. The Starfleet sent a scientist. She is in charge of leading the research and helping the scientists of Bajor to find a cure. I still haven’t got the chance to meet this new scientist, I only know, she is a young Trill. Her name is Nozria Bix. She should arrive at the station by midday.

Sisko was lost in his thoughts while he was observing the vast darkness out of his window. It was the space. His dear old space.

There was never a moment of boredom in the station, because new people came and other people left. Therefore, he didn’t have time to get bored, sometimes he didn’t even have time to think about himself. His life was so chaotic, surprising and so exciting. He would not have changed this life for anything in the world.

Sisko’s deep thoughts were interrupted by the click of the door, someone had entered his office: it was his old friend, Jadzia Dax.

In his opinion, Jadzia would be the most appropriate person to welcome their new guest. Because they were both Trills, so they would understand each other. Maybe his idea was a little simplistic and banal but every Trill was different from the other, especially when the mentioned Trill possessed a symbiont. It was always a surprise, so maybe he was the one who needed support.

Jadzia came in Sisko’s office, nodding, “Did you want to see me, Benjamin?“ Jadzia asked in her usual professional tone, her hands behind her back, her eyes always vigilant and curious.

"Yes, we have to welcome a new crew member. It’s a trill, you know?” he said, grabbing his baseball, and playing with it.

“Ah, interesting. So you’ve thought I could be the ideal guide for her, right? I supposed Major Kira would be the most appropriate guide since, it seems, this new officer will work on Bajor. For Bajor.” Dax replied, raising her eyebrow, her tone was calm, but it was a very human thing to feel safe around their same species so, thanks to her vast experience, she was able to understand why the Captain had formulated this particular thought.

Jadzia started observing the baseball in the Captain’s hands, how he was playing with it.

Like every human being, even Sisko was unable to hold his hands steady, as opposed to Jadzia, she always appeared calm and resolute even in front of the most dangerous monsters.

Sisko launched his baseball from his left hand to his right hand, and then observed his friend. “Kira is busy now, then you are the only Trill here, well, not anymore, but then she will know that she’s not alone. Her name is Nozria Bix, she is a doctor, she was chosen for a project at Bajor, she seems capable and it’s good to have another doctor, the medical staff is never enough.” he said, putting down his baseball and then he stood up, adjusting his uniform.

“How can she be alone in a station populated by more than one thousand inhabitants?” Dax commented, and then she followed the Captain out of the door.

“Well, you know what I mean, meeting another Trill could make her feel like home.” He said and then he headed to the dock where Nozria’s runabout would land.

NOZRIA BIX’S POV

The runabout sailed in the space of DS9, ready to reach the dock and land.

It had been a long, tedious and untroubled journey. After all, Nozria was used to these long journeys, this was her job, and space was so familiar to her by now, as if the galaxy itself was her office, her working place.

It was strange to see her job from this point of view, or she was only very tired and so she was not able to create rational and coherent thoughts. It must have been like that. Nozria had drunk too much coffees to keep herself awake, she didn’t like sleeping during journeys.

The Trill had spent the time reading dossiers, observing the space from the porthole, eating –other than drinking a few too many coffees- and chatting with the other passengers on board. Actually, she tried to have conversations with them but it was hard because the other guests could not be defined as friendly and talkative.

There were several species aboard: a Vulcan couple, they did not say a word throughout the entire trip, were certainly not the best interlocutors, then there was a Klingon warrior who had spent all his time polishing his weapon; he had cleaned it so much that she was surprised if it wasn’t ruined.

The other passengers slept or thought about their business, so there wasn’t a lot of entertainment. Fortunately, her boredom was about to end and she would soon arrive on DS9.

Nozria felt excited and curious, she hadn’t felt like this for a while and that made her impatient. Impatient to begin this new adventure, to meet her new colleagues and all the other people who lived in the station. She knew this would be a great beginning full of new possibilities and experience. The greatest aspiration of each Trill was a life full of experience. Her life was based on experience and so she was always looking for it. Always. As if, she never had enough.

Observing out of her window, she took a deep look at the Station and she was left stunned.

The station looked like a big spider, she had never seen a Cardassian’s structure before. It was majestic, threatening and sinister, just like Cardassians after all.

As the little ship got closer to that big mechanical spider, a feeling of confusion took possession of her brain as if it was a mystical fear. She never liked spiders. Her mind was navigating through memories she should have not recalled, she didn’t want to remember, then she turned her head in another direction.

Her imagination was vivid, she was tired and so her mind was making the world around her more absurd than what it really was.

The runabout finally landed on DS9 and all the passengers got out, she took her baggage and followed the crowd of people that was dispersing itself all over the station.

Nozria took a breath, she felt better, the big spider had devoured her but she was still alive. She was not going to be digested by it. Her mind was very cruel with her sometimes. So cruel.

“Welcome on DS9, Dr. Nozria. Bix,” said the Captain, showing one of his most friendly smiles.

“Greetings, it’s a pleasure.” Dax said, still in a professional tone.

“Oh, thank you very much. The pleasure is mine.” Bix replied, smiling.

They both looked like interesting people, Dax was famous on Trill and so Bix had already heard of her and her symbiont.

“I hope your trip was pleasant.” the Captain beckoned her to follow him, then all three of them walked down the corridor, “We’re glad to have you here with us, I heard you’re making research for Bajor.” Benjamin started speaking, “I have already read the report about your work, but I want to know more from you.”

“Yes, I read that there has been an epidemic lately.” Dax added, wading in front of her with her hands behind her back and her torso stiff.

“Exactly, it’s a very complicated case. I’ve already studied that virus in the past, that’s why they called me. It’s a virus that usually affects crops, in fact many of their fields have been infected, they’re unused now.” Bix continued to explain, “This is a very peculiar case because that virus should not be here, it is an alien species, should not be in this corner of the galaxy. This is not its natural environment but it found a fertile ground for its progeny, it became stronger and so it has started destroying the other weaker species. I suppose it was brought here somehow.” Even if Nozria still didn’t know how and who had brought this virus on Bajor but she was here to find it out.

“You seem to have a lot of experience, I’m sure you will help them to find a cure.” Sisko stopped, smiling, “Unfortunately, my work also calls. Have a good day and permanence on DS9.” Sisko said, nodding.

“Oh, I see. It was a pleasure. Thank you, Captain.” Nozria smiled politely.

“Can you take her to her quarters, old man?” Sisko asked to Dax.

Dax nodded in reply, “Sure, I’ll see you later, Ben.” Dax greeted her old friend and motioned Nozria to follow her.

The two Trills walked toward Bix’s quarters.

“I’m sure you’ll be fine here. The station is an interesting place, full of different species, there are many things to see and discover. It’s always a surprise.” Said Dax, showing a friendly smile.

"Oh, I see. I am sure it will be a stimulating experience. I have never visited this corner of the galaxy, so I certainly won’t be bored.” Nozria answered, hinting a smile.

“Oh, where did you work before, if I can ask?” Dax asked, curious.

“I was the medical officer of the Andromeda starship.” she answered, it was a short but concise reply.

That was a great job but it was part of the past, she was here now and therefore had no reason to think about the life she had left behind.

“Ah, interesting. Our official doctor will be very glad to meet you. Julian is a friendly person, he is one of the best doctors in the quadrants, but also a lovely person.” said Dax.

“Ah, I heard about him, I read many dossiers of his research.” Bix replied.

“He will have to be careful, you look very smart. He risks losing his job.” Dax said in her sarcastic tone that almost seemed serious.

“Ah, I have no intention but I never back down when there is a challenge. I am a little competitive, I admit.”, Bix giggled a little.

“It’s a good quality.” said Dax, “Oh, we’ve arrived to your quarters.”

Dax stood in front of Bix’s quarters, she did her guest’s job, and so Sisko should have been proud of her.

“Oh, good. Thank you.” Bix said.

"Enjoy your stay, have a good day. If you have hungry, I’d suggest you to go to Quakr’s. It’s a great place, the food tastes good and you can find interesting company there.” Dax said, giving some suggestion since the other woman didn’t know the station very well, it was a proper advice to give.

“Oh, I will take a look, thanks. Goodbye, Dax.” Nozria greeted Dax and entered in her quarters.

Her first day of work would be tomorrow. Nozria had the whole day off, so she was free to relax, take a shower and wander around the station in search of adventure. Looking for something to do because she had no desire to be alone. She didn’t even want to get bored. It would have been unbearable. Sometimes, thinking too much was unbearable…

Nozria dropped her bag on the floor, careless, and then this room was almost empty.

There were decorations, a couple of plants and furniture. Everything was minimal, she would have thought later to furnish it.

She caressed her hair, ruffling and brushing it with her fingers. Even her hairdo was ruined, her hair, before picked in a bun, was now messy, so she moved her head so she could let her hair down.

A few strands of hair fell in front of her dark blue eyes, tickling her nose and she almost sneezed. She blinked her eyes a couple of times, and knocked her hair off her large forehead. Her hair was brown, almost reddish, wavy and long. They were very feminine.

However, by now, she was used to this femininity, three years had passed since her union with Bix and therefore she didn’t see herself as strange as a girl. Three years were few compared to the hundred or even thirty hundred years when she had been a man. When Bix had been a man and had been hosted by male Trills.

Bix, the symbiont, believed that long hair was very beautiful, most of Bix’s women lovers had long hair. Maybe it was Bix’s way to remember them so Nozria kept her hair long.

Nozria headed to the bathroom, undressing and throwing her uniform on the sofa careless, it was already dirty and so she didn’t care about it. Then she had to change it anyway because that uniform was wrong, she still wore her old uniform, the ship’s uniform and so she had to take another one.

Nozria certainly didn’t have the delicacy of a girl, her manner was very spontaneous, someone would say masculine and rough. They were attitudes she had inherited from Bix’s old guests and could not change them. She couldn’t change herself. She liked to be like this.

She took a look out of her big quarters’ window and contemplated the endless and mysterious space.

This was a real beginning, a new chance, her chance.

Nobody would chase after her. Not this time.

Even in an endless universe like this, there were no places to hide. Nowhere to escape. Nobody to trust. Sometimes, people could not even trust themselves, not even their best friends and so everyone was alone. Lost in deep space. Lost in existence.

Bix lived too long to feel lost, but still didn’t learn anything of the world. Despite her experience should have made her wiser. Years only gave her more questions, doubts, anxiety.

Growing up didn’t mean becoming wiser, it only meant you had to accept that you would have never been wise enough for this life.

to be continued...

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