#btw DS9 is my favorite

[fetlockflowers]

[fru1tt0ast]

star tyrek.... ugh....

[shapelytimber]

It's my birthday todayy !! (No I'm not 12, but I'm not 21 either so we had to make a choice)

(@quijicroix is the fucking best friend there is, they sneaked off in the morning to buy me my favorite cake ;w;)

And to celebrate, all my prints are 15% off for one week ! :D the promo code is : UJABTZ (you can use it as much as you want on my shop)

[LINK TO MY INPRNT]

xoxo <3

PS : I think the promo code is in addition to the site wide sales, so rn it's 30% off <3 (don't know how long the sales will last tho-)

[dadbodbensisko-moved]

answer me these: how long have you been into star trek? what was your first series? what's your favorite series? who is your favorite character? and who is your favorite captain?

i'll go first: 11 years, tos, ds9, spock, sisko

[pissfaggit]

Watching the tng movies but I only put them on if the stars line up just perfectly as in I'm home alone + just in the mood + don't have anything better to do which is coming out to like 1 movie a year and anyway I'm watching Generations and BWHU BU. CONNOR??!!

[peachviz]

I finally finished Voyager so you know what that means.

It’s a Voyager Wrap Up and notes party:

(Beware: hot takes ahead)

- I like and I hate this show. It was my slowest watch. I should have probably started with this instead of DS9 bc as you all know nothing can top DS9 and when you start out with the best meal nothing can compare. But tbh I don’t know if it would have made a difference.

- There’s a problem with this show that I’ve noticed that it’s a common problem within Star Trek as a whole. This one was just noticeable. There’s parts where they build up plots and characters and then half way through they just give up.

Kes was the biggest atrocity, they couldn’t figure out what to do with her so they give up on her and replace her with a new shiny toy. Won’t even get into the misogyny of the situation, we are all aware I don’t have to keep beating a dead horse. (Also aware of the hostile situation on set I’m not interested in that debate)

Chakotay is another example. He starts to lose lines and he kind of just floats. Tuvok is another big one. Because why tf did I have to sit through more Neelix focused episodes than Tuvok???????

Like the writers constantly do this but it’s so noticeable with this series. It’s like Patrick trying to open Sandy Cheeks’s door in SpongeBob and he just holds his hands over the door and goes, “Open Seasme!” The door doesn’t open and he shrugs and goes “Well, I’ve done all I can do.” That’s the writers of this show.

- while on the topic of Neelix. Here’s a hot take. What an incredibly pointless and annoying character. He made a lot of episodes unwatchable. Kes and Neelix have to be the worst poison I’ve ever ingested from Star Trek as a whole and I had to sit through TNG sexism and somehow this pairing was the worst. How incels feel about JarJar Binks is how I feel about Neelix. If you like him, great. If you don’t like him, let’s hug.

- there is something about this show that I feel they do better than DS9 and that is mental health episodes. It’s so subtle and there doesn’t have to be a lot of theatrics. While DS9 is good at portrayal, there are things that Voyager does with the Doctor, Seven, and even B’Elanna that I found the most relatable

- which btw B’Elanna is like super relatable it’s almost scary. I love Kira Nerys, she’s still my all time favorite, but I find myself gravitating to being like B’Elanna. I feel like she had the best character development besides Seven. Now granted, she can do some really selfish fucked up shit. Like the Doctor’s holofamily, etc, but I find her character refreshing. This show needed that.

- Seven of Nine. Idk what to say to make everything fit so here’s a lightning round. The cat suit is fucking annoying. We had to have Gene Roddenberry dying to get Deanna Troi in a real uniform and then we have the goodness of DS9 just to have the men be like “we need to bring back sexy” and then bring this wonderful character just to keep her in a cat suit. A suit, btw, that she doesn’t even want to be in bc in all her holo fantasies she’s either in a uniform, pants, or literally anything else. And don’t even get me started on Chakotay and Seven. What an odd paring with zero chemistry. It felt almost fatherly and then that shit happens bc they had to dispel the J/C shit and I think it was along the lines of Beltran getting tired of Chakotay being a “chump”. ??? Idk if that’s the exact quote but like boooooo that’s boring. It’s just ew no thanks.

- but seven is a wonderful character and if there weren’t so many men in the writing room then we could have had it all. Looking forward to seeing what Picard retcons

- Janeway is an amazing captain and I’m glad we have a complicated female captain but this goes along with my first topic. For the first four seasons, until she cuts her hair, there’s still too many cooks in the kitchen. You have her naked somehow multiple episodes per season until 4 (?) and then she has that dumbass governess holo program. Like by the time she has her hair cut, we could have just had all that from the start. Everyone say thank you Kate Mulgrew

- lastly, I’m glad that J/C didn’t become canon while they were away bc sometimes yearning is hotter than having. Kate Mulgrew stating that it was inappropriate for an office place romance bc young girls shouldn’t have to see (once again generalizing a quote) is totally valid. And tbh I feel like it would be a distraction to Janeway specifically

Idk in closing it’s an alright watch. It wasn’t really spectacular to me anyway. There were a lot of good parts, but I feel like it lost steam midway through season 6 and a lot of it was rocky. I could just be getting Star Trek fatigue.

Picard is next and then Prodigy. Probably won’t even go near Enterprise and I’ll be doing an actual rewatch of discovery to finish it. And another rewatch of lower decks bc now I’ll be able to understand it in total. So the Rankings below will exclude prodigy, ent, Picard, and discovery.

Current Series Ranking:

1) Deep Space Nine

2) Strange New Worlds

3) The Original Series

4) Lower Decks

5) Voyager

6) The Next Generation

Current Captain Ranking:

1) Sisko

2) Janeway

3) Pike

4) Kirk

5) Picard

6) Freeman

Anyway, I have two voyager edits to get off the ground and my notes app looks like the Bible so getting this footage is going to be super time consuming.

Now onto Picard

[suzteel]

🐠 people I wanna know better tag game 🐠

Thank you @fleet-off for tagging me! Also I’m stealing the cute fish.

Last song?

Portrait of a Dead Girl by The Last Dinner Party

Which is very VegasPete coded btw (And I wish you had given me the courtesy of ripping out my throat / And I wish that I let you have the dignity of letting me go)

Favorite color?

You can never go wrong with a mustard or golden toned yellow, but also lately I have been on an orange and green kick.

Currently watching?

Doing a lot of rewatching recently actually. I have a group of friends doing a SGA watch and then I’ve been putting on DS9 in the background while I knit. I’ve also started like 3 BLs that idk if I’ll finish. Nothing is really hitting for me atm.

Last movie?

I rewatched Bend It Like Beckham with my mom a couple weeks ago. But I think the last new movie I saw was Monkey Man.

Sweet/spicy/savory?

Oh but why make me choose? It all depends on my mood! Ahh. It’s probably more of a toss up between sweet and spicy than savory though.

Relationship status?

Aromatic baby 😎

Current obsessions?

Well fandom-wise I’m also still very much in the VegasPete hole though there have been a few fandoms that have been cycling through in the background (TGCF, KDTM, Yuwu). But honestly the big thing capturing my attention right now is my knitting. It’s the thing I spend a good portion of my free time doing at the moment.

Last thing you Googled?

The metric system. And actually if anyone reading this lives in a place where the metric system is the standard, I have some questions about common usage if you have a moment.

Selfie?

I have gone 13 years on this website without sharing my face; not gonna break my streak now.

I think Fleet got a lot of the people I would usually tag for something like this, so I’ll leave an open tag here for anyone who maybe has been shy or nervous to talk to me but would like to talk more. Introduce yourself! I can always use more friends 💛

[thegeminisage]

star trek update time. earlier tonight, my eyes were cursed with star trek generations, a very very bad movie. if you don't know the big spoiler for this movie (the character death), please stop reading here. or keep reading actually i'm not your mom. fuck this movie anyway.

with the tos movies, i tried to keep notes on notepad as i watched so as to better type up a "liveblog" later. i was a bit spotty at remembering to do that this time, but i have enough to put together a reasonable write-up. here's kind of how it went

cried multiple times during this movie. first time was when kirk showed up because i knew it was the last time we were ever gonna see him. got bonus aftershock tears when i saw scotty and chekov - i was under the impression it was JUST kirk. second time, i THINK, was when he showed up again, though i just misted up a little. big boo-hooing when he mentioned spock, naturally. MORE crying when he finally bit it, though it was mostly because i was angry!!! and finally, even though i promised myself i wouldn't cry over data, i did start sobbing when he was reunited with his cat. gave myself a crying headache.

it was difficult watching kirk be on the bridge and want to be captain and he's not captain. and then crisis strikes and oh yeah he is. and really, the captainly thing to do WAS to go down to the lower decks and do whatever the fuck. needs of the many. he saved that guy's life. that would have been a fine death.

it was a little ruined by chekov going "was there somebody in there?" like to me it struck me more as funny than anything

oh, spotting guinan in the tos era made me absolutely thrilled btw. i missed her so much in s7 it was UNREAL.

OH YEAH AND. sulu's daughter. wah. ik aos sulu is gay do we think tos sulu is gay too. either way i;m very happy for him

apparently one of the guys in this is from succession. i'm choosing to blame this whole debacle on him.

switching directly to a fucking holodeck scene KILLED me. i HATE the holodeck. at first i thought they were giving worf a retirement party to send him to ds9 but they were just doing all of that for fun. deanna's outfit was hot though. also, data shoving beverly WAS FUNNY tng writers just hate autistic people

i have mixed feelings about data and the emotions chip. i was surprised they never covered it in tng proper and i think it would have been handled better there...data having the chip WAS the reason soren got away, which makes it plot-important, but it felt like a b-plot to a normal tng episode and this is supposed to be a feature film. instead it was a tng two-parter with a budget and william shatner. it was fun watching data experience emotions (happiness, terror) and struggle to control them, but there ironically wasn't enough time to really get into it, except when picard gave him the tough love speech, which i think was uncalled for. why is he so against suicide when it's data when he was out here telling worf to kill himself over an empty barrel??

titty klingon sisters. i never remember their names or their faces but i ALWAYS recognize those boob windows. at first it was really annoying because it is pretty sexist but honestly i've become very endeared. it's absolutely devastating that this movie killed them too. they were everything to me 💔

hey, sorry, side bar, were they watching geordi bathe through his visor? freaks.

also, geordi in the bondage gear while he was kidnapped. ALSO, wasn't he growing new eyes in the tng s7 finale? whatever happened with that???

stellar cartography looks better than it did in tng but it brought back memories of picard running around on poor beverly. idk what he's so worried about continuing his family line for wesley crusher IS his affair baby

hey, also, the lighting??? the "distant sunlight" atmosphere when the lights are off vs the brightly lit interior of the show? truly, the upgraded lighting was probably my favorite part of the movie. it looked SO fucking good. i really felt like we were on a spaceship.

no, wait, ACTUALLY my favorite part was data getting to say "oh, shit!" that was really good. they got one bad word for this whole movie and used it in the perfect place

no, my favorite part was the spock mention.

did not like kirk referring to picard repeatedly as the captain of the enterprise. kirk's the real captain here, bitch. picard doesn't have what it takes to die for his ship. he doesn't love his ship the way kirk loved his.

i did like the nexus reference to the tmp wife. in the novel she was named lori but she didn't show up in tmp proper much less get a name so i'm ok with them calling her the wrong name, but i just know it's the same woman. less okay with kirk's nexus dream being all about some random woman we've never met. he's in love with the IDEA of a woman to come home to, sure, but it's just lazy writing. we don't have any reason to care about this girl. at least if it had been carol ruth marcus or something we'd have SOME basis to give a shit on. the nexus was the perfect place for spock and bones! i wish they and uhura and sulu had had cameos...

i also liked him warning picard to NEVER retire/accept promotion, bc retiring wound up being so traumatizing for him. this is not really consistent but i'm making it that way in my mind palace.

also, kirk being a horse girl is FAKE. they just made him be into horses bc picard is into horses. gross. he was really good at chopping wood though lol

the scene with the kids evacuating the spaceship...WHY WOULD YOU HAVE CHILDREN ON THIS SHIP. i also worried about the pets the entire time, which is part of why i lost it when data found spot :(

it's sad that a piece of guinan was left behind in the nexus...does that happen to everyone? is a piece of kirk in there too? i really wanted to write a fix-it for this someday but they have given me so little to work with that it's hard to imagine a fixit that isn't just 80% "yeah we're ignoring that" which isn't very satisfying.

the crash was SO long. also, why was data holding troi? she's got 2 different boyfriends who could be doing that for her

since i was going into this knowing kirk died, i expected that he was gonna die because the nexus swallowed him or something. i was expecting something grand. instead it was like, tos scene, an hour and a half of very mid tng content, and then half an hour of rushed and poorly paced kirk and picard scenes. typical tng episode that it didn't get to the point until it was almost over, but jesus. i can't believe they got shatner for their movie and then barely had him in it. like, kirk at the end was a total surprise narratively (obviously everyone watching it knows bc of the opening at LEAST that he'll be back, but imagine if this guy had been some rando - it would have been so unsatisfying and weird).

see, this is the thing. the nexus actually has the potential to be incredibly compelling. the way picard's scenes were shot were very very good, if one could ignore the clothes from 1790 and the horrific portrait of himself looking like he stepped out of les mis and also how creepy his kids were and WHY WASN'T HIS WIFE BEVERLY I HATE HIM. kirk's were rushed and messy (he likes horses? his dog? none of this connects us to the character we knew in tos...), and picard's involved, well, picard. but the CONCEPT absolutely fucks, and i did love the creep factor in spite of it all. this whole movie had huge potential and instead it's a steaming pile of shit. i could have learned to live with a good kirk death but living with a bad one is gonna kill me. at least he had good last words. "oh, my" right before he dies kinda fucks tbh.

my final note is that i think sir patrick stewart got sunburnt filming some of those scenes near the end. there were a few shots where he looked quite pink. give the man some sunscreen. oh yeah also why did some people randomly wear the ds9 uniforms...what on earth

anyway, terrible movie, 0/10 stars, i'm never gonna recover. tng never disappoints in disappointing me.

NEXT TIME: back to ds9, thank god. we're doing "meridan" and "defiant."

[aurorawest]

Twenty Fanfic Writer Questions

Tagged by @lowkeyed1 - thank you and sorry it took me so long to do it!

Tagging @bereft-of-frogs, @rosieposiepuddingnpie, and @nostalgia-tblr

1. How many works do you have on Ao3?

An even 150!

2. What’s your total Ao3 word count?

2,230,050

3. What fandoms do you write for?

At this point my fanfiction output is pretty sparse, but in the last two years, I've written primarily MCU. I've also written for Captive Prince, Six of Crows, The Daevabad Trilogy, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue, Some Desperate Glory, and The Watchmaker of Filigree Street. Over the years I've written in tons of fandoms.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

The Real Asgardians of the Galaxy (MCU, Loki & Thor)

The General Mess and Imprecision of Feeling (MCU, Loki/Stephen Strange)

Sleight of Hand (MCU, Loki & Stephen Strange)

You Come to Me Wild and Wired (MCU, unrelated ficlets, Loki/Stephen Strange)

They Change Their Sky, Not Their Soul, Who Rush Across the Sea (MCU, Loki & Thor)

The first three are all part of my 10 fic Loki series, it's not going to matter if we fall down twice.

5. Do you respond to comments?

Goddddd I've become so bad at it. I used to respond to every single one. One of my projects/goals is to go back and respond to people, but of course, my AO3 inbox is totally overwhelming at this point, and every time I see the number of comments I haven't responded to, I become paralyzed. I need to man up and just start chipping away.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? 

Do No Harm (MCU, Loki/Stephen Strange) and Anamnesis (Weyoun, Star Trek: Deep Space 9) are probably tied on this one.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? 

I primarily write happy endings so...most of them, haha. But I guess The General Mess and Imprecision of Feeling, since it's the HEA at the end of 10 fics. It's a seriously hard-won HEA haha.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I have! I've been called a pedo on some Wreck-It Ralph fic (that was my introduction to purity culture, btw). Idk if I'd call this hate, but I once had a reader get pretty upset that an OFC in A Full and Factual Account of Asgard didn't turn out to be a love interest for Loki.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Sure do! Honestly writing smut might be my favorite thing to write, haha. Whenever I get to a Big Sex Scene in my original stuff, I sigh in relief that I'm finally going to have an easy writing night. I've written m/f and m/m, but I have way more m/m, and an occasional m/m/m. It's mostly sappy, vanilla, OTP stuff, but I love me some dub and noncon, so there are a few of those amidst the gooey soulmate smut.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

Not really, though I did in my youth. Honestly they're...all kind of crazy. When I was in my early teens I wrote a 4 fic series that was a crossover between The Enchanted Forest Chronicles (the books by Patricia C Wrede), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (the Disney movie), and Newsies (the movie). It had time travel. And dragons, obviously. I also at one point was writing a crossover between Newsies (yes, I had a Newsies phase) and Doctor Mordrid, an obscure fantasy B-movie from the 90s starring Jeffrey Combs. Fun fact! It was actually supposed to be Dr. Strange, but they lost the rights before they made the movie.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Yep. It was a Harry Potter fic. I threatened legal action (lol) and they took it down.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

People have definitely asked me if they can translate my fics, so I think so!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yeah, I had a friend I wrote a Loki & Thor fic with. I also used to collab on fics with my sister when we were kids.

14. What’s your all-time favorite ship?

I guess it's gotta be Loki/Stephen Strange.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I have a DS9 fic about Eris, a Vorta who was only in one episode, where she's an agent who's infiltrated a rebel Vorta/Jem'Hadar cell. I LOVE that fic, but I just...don't see myself ever finishing it. Maybe someday I'll file the serial numbers off and turn it into an original work. It probably wouldn't be that hard because it's set hundreds of years before DS9 takes place, and I did a lot of original worldbuilding.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Dialogue, character, romance, sexual tension, pretty polished first drafts. I don't know if I'd consider it a strength yet, but I feel like I've really improved my pacing over the past year.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Probably visual scene setting, haha. I'm pretty thin on describing what the physical location LOOKS like. I'm better at describing sounds and smells, because honestly that's what sticks with me personally from a place, not how it looks.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I've definitely done it. I took many years of Spanish so I'm pretty confident that when I write in Spanish, it makes sense. I can tell when google translate is wrong, haha. One of my novels (coming out next year!) has some Afrikaans, and a South African sensitivity reader didn't say any of it was wrong. Though that reminds me, I really should message my friend/former safari guide to see if she has any complaints about the Afrikaans in it, haha.

IMO when you write dialogue in another language in a fic, you have to assume the reader doesn't speak that language, so you need to let them know what that dialogue says through context. I read a book recently where there was quite a bit of Quebecois French, and there were end notes with the translation, and...eh, it was a pain to flip back and forth to the end of the book.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

The first time I sat down with the intention of writing a story with a beginning, middle, and end (I didn't finish it), it was an Enchanted Forest Chronicles fic. This was before I'd ever heard of the internet, so I didn't even know that what I was doing was called fanfiction.

Though, my mom made me a scrapbook of a bunch of childhood stuff for my 40th birthday, and it included what I can only call a Lion King AU where the characters from The Lion King go to Camp Snoopy in the Mall of America. So idk, maybe that.

20. Favourite fic you’ve written? 

I think in some ways Anamnesis is the most ambitious single fic I've ever written, in that it's a difficult story. But I probably have to give the nod to it's not going to matter if we fall down twice. I'm totally cheating because it's a series, but I'm going to be really proud of it for my whole life so I'm going to take every opportunity to plug it, haha.

Thank you again for the tag!

[sirellas]

Left Hand of Destiny (1&2) stream of consciousness review

Overall thoughts: I really liked this book! Or technically 2 books but the second is just the continuation of the first so in my head it was just one long book (~500 pages all in all). This is only the second trek book I've read and also the second written by the actor who played the character in ds9 (shoutout to ASIT, though this one has a non-actor co-writer as well), but even beyond the star trekking of TLHOD, this was a really good read in terms of writing style, pace, emotion. It was very action and character focused which I enjoyed, and especially the characterization of Martok was so great and obviously JG Hertzler had a lot of thoughts about the character he played that translated really well on page.

The memory alpha article on TLHOD says this but I didn't really start to see it until the last half of book 2, but this is very much a King Arthur story (btw don't look at that memory alpha page unless you don't care about major spoilers lol). Down to a lady in the lake handing out mythical swords. That instance was a little heavy handed in my opinion, but I did like all of the prophetic dreams and talk of glorious purpose.

That's something to note though: if you don't like dream sequences, this is not the book for you. There are A LOT of dreams. In fact the opening scene is a dream, but it's now my new favorite opening line in a book because it jumps right in by telling you who this guy is and what his deal is:

I personally am a big fan of overt symbolism like this (even a well done cliché or two), myths and repeating cycles of heroism etc etc. And I think this book melded Arthurian drama with Klingon drama well. The Klingon-ness of this book was great. What better way to get to the heart of Klingon culture in a story but by focusing on the guy chosen to lead his people and getting it ripped out from beneath his feet and having to decide that he actually wants to be chancellor. In a lot of ways this is a story of outcasts finding their way back to where they belong, which isn't always what they expect or want in the beginning. Which leads me to...

The supporting characters really made this book. Without Pharh the Ferengi who got bullied for being as ugly as a Klingon as a child and now runs a landfill on Qo'noS, there would be no book. He's my favorite (little buddy coded to the extreme) but most of the major side characters are really well explored in terms of motivation and actions. Worf, Sirella, Ezri, Darok, Kahless, Alexander, to name a few. Alexander and Kahless were two of my other surprise standouts. And because no one who hasn't read this book knows about my new favorite guy Pharh, I will now include a couple passages I highlighted to spread the word about how great he is:

Wide array of well developed side characters aside, this book is awful for women. Yes the main antagonist is Martok's insane ex, but her character is kind of too outlandish to really have much depth. Ezri shows up at the end of book 1 and plays a big part in book 2 but honestly I'm not sure why she was even there (apart from loyalty etc, but I mean story-wise she didn't add all that much to keep the action moving ((anyone else could have been subbed in for her 9 out of 10 times and it would've made more sense tbh)) except to be another explainer of Klingon things to the reader). Sirella has a few great scenes, but not nearly enough and she wasn't allowed to do much either in terms of agency and impact on plot. Martok's two daughters are barely afterthoughts.

The main plot is that a usurper attacks Qo'noS (and specifically goes after Martok), swaying the Klingon people to their side through a combo of bioengineered charisma and the people's growing resentment toward progressive ideas that Martok (and Worf) represents. That's really only the problem in book 1, while book 2 deals more with Martok accepting the hand fate has dealt and deciding to win so they can save the decaying Klingon heart and so on. But even with the kind of cheesy setup, it rarely felt overwrought or unearned with the emotional beats. The antagonist lady is, yeah, she's a bit over the top. And before 2016 I would've said the quick flip to xenophobia and Make Klingons Great Again (I'm pretty sure they use that phrase almost exactly) in the general public was unrealistic but hey, cycles of destiny and evil constantly shifting and repeating, am I right??

There were... quite a few deaths. I guess I should've expected that, being a Klingon setting and all, but some of them hit me hard. And a few I don't think really needed to happen and kind of weakened the narrative.... maybe I'll put a spoiler section below a cut at the bottom of this to discuss those 🤪

This paragraph will haunt me for a while I think... 😀 sorry for inflicting it on others now but hey that's show business

Even with some hiccups (see spoiler section below), I loved the book pretty much. Shocker: tumblr user girlmartok loves the Martok book, but it was better than I had hoped even. The Martok focus was so good and the side characters just made it even better. Much more of a heroic fantasy than most star trek settings, which fit really well and also was refreshing. It's long! But I would recommend it if you have any interest in Klingons and/or fun little guys who go on adventures and think a lot about death.

SPOILERS ⬇️

Okay ripping the bandaid off. The way Sirella died was not chill. I mean even having her die was not something I would have included, because the story really didn't dive all that deep into her and Martok's relationship. But ramming an enemy ship so Martok could flee near the beginning of book 2... and she doesn't even kill any major bad guys doing it?? It just served no point narratively (the bad guys still outnumbered them, still caught up to them not long after) and it didn't even really affect Martok all that much beyond like one paragraph where he wants to turn around and go on a murder spree in her name... He doesn't even get to go on a murder spree in her name!!!

Bandaid rip #2: PHARH MY LITTLE BABY BOY DIES???? I was glad I had forewarning about this one because I would've been mad otherwise. I am not exaggerating saying he was my second favorite character in this book after Martok. The humor he added, yes, but also just his role as an outsider who's seen as weak by both Ferengi and Klingon, and he befriends the chancellor of the Klingon Empire, HOLDS ONTO THE CHANCELLOR'S RING FOR MOST OF THE BOOK AND BECOMES HIS SQUIRE BASICALLY 🫠💔 I don't know how anyone wouldn't fall in love with him. At least his death was done well, even though I don't think it should have happened. He at least got a murderous rampage in his name 😤 and Martok basically adopted him so he could get into Sto'vo'kor 🥺

Those were my main two criticisms of the book, and really ties into why this wasn't as great a story as ASIT, for example. A lot of things happen to Martok, but some things don't get the resolution they would need to influence him on this character journey he's going on. One of Martok's defining characteristics in ds9 is that he's a wife guy and his wife doesn't take bullshit. But then his wife dies suddenly and he's upset but he's not Upset upset, if you know what I mean. It didn't feel earned and it didn't feel necessary. Literally the first and only time it did feel like a reasonable plot device was at the very end when Worf tells him that people love a tragic victor even more than a victory. The problem is just that Martok doesn't ever explore what that tragedy really means to him.

Justice for Shen and Lazhna, Martok's daughters, who in addition to dying off screen are only brought up to highlight how shitty of a dad Martok has been. He just thinks of them (and his son Drex too but he gets more characterization solely by virtue of appearing in the narrative) in terms of himself and his love for them is more on the side of pity rather than real emotional attachment. Sirella should've been way meaner to him about that tbh.

Non character death related but a big focus of the first book was Martok losing public opinion pretty much immediately. Old friends turn against him and that really shakes him. But then in the second book... that's not really brought up again? The whole second book takes place away from Qo'noS, and yeah they mention that people will probably become less affected by the dumb bioengineered charisma after time, but I cannot stress enough how much the entire planet hated him. So he won the big battle against his foes etc etc, came back to Qo'noS and... just told everyone all that?? That goes along with the lack of fully exploring the consequences of some of these bad things that happen to Martok. It felt like a little too much piled on him and not enough resolution.

[trekkie-polls]

About

Hello! This is a new blog. I’m still figuring out the details.

I’ve been a star trek fan my whole life - it started with getting in trouble in kindergarten for staying up to watch late night tos reruns, and I watched all of tos, ds9, and voy as they aired. I tried ent when it first aired and didn’t care for it. Later as part of a project to watch all episodes in in-world chronology, I did watch all of ent. Still didn’t care for it. But it is trek. I watch all new trek, and for the most part I love it (pauses to side-eye Picard season three), but don’t have the same knowledge base with it because I haven’t rewatched it as many times. I’ve seen all of the movies but I honestly just tend to forget them when I’m thinking about what’s happened in cannon. I think they live in a separate part of my brain? I haven’t read the books or comics yet but I do spend a lot of time on Memory Beta.

Right now I’m rewatching lower decks & tos and that’s what I have on my mind.

Anyway, this is all to say that I plan to be inclusive with all star trek media on this blog, but not everything will get equal attention. There are just some things I know more about or am more interested in.

In particular, there are a limited number of options in tumblr polls, and there is a lot of star trek media out there. I make sure to put “other in tags”, or combine titles in a choice, in cases where every item can’t have its own little box. Yes sometimes my personal opinions influence how I break that up, and that’s ok, because this is something I do in my free time for fun.

You are very welcome to submit polls & posts. If you do, and I repost them, I’ll credit you unless you prefer to stay anonymous. Btw - this is how you can get more content around your favorite series if you’re not seeing as much as you’d like.

Right now I don’t have any rules about submissions. It’s possible I won’t post something that’s clearly prejudiced, malicious etc… but I haven’t figured out exactly where I draw that line yet. I don’t plan to gatekeep what is and isn’t trek. I have personal opinions about what I enjoy and what I don’t enjoy, but star trek belongs to everyone and it’s illogical to try to draw lines around what is “legitimate” trek for everyone.

I haven’t really figured out what to say about trigger warnings, spoilers, and nsfw. I don’t plan for this to be especially nsfw, but I do plan to cuss and touch on adult concepts sometimes (I mean how can we not talk about the many forehead vaginas). I also plan to add content/ trigger warnings that are obvious to me but I’m far from an expert about what the most important ones to include are. And finally spoilers are hard because most star trek media has been around forever and the fandom is here to talk about what happened in it, but some is brand new and it can be hard to stay completely caught up, and even the oldest series are new to someone. So I’m making an effort to consider triggering content, spoilers, and nsfw but can’t responsibly make promises on any of them.

And last but not least, I’m happy to block people who call me names. I’m here on my free time for fun.

Tldr:

This blog will be a mixture of:

Polls I make

Other star trek posts I find interesting

Polls & posts you submit

If I see a star trek poll I find interesting I may write the author and ask for permission to reblog here

This blog will not:

Gatekeep what is & isn’t star trek

Be completely impartial to my interest

Be completely sfw or spoiler free, or include all important trigger & content warnings

P.S. I’m in this for the tags. I absolutely love reading through everyone’s theories, favorites, stories, etc…. So if you want to tip this blog please do it by adding your star trek thoughts :)

[spocksocksrock]

Hey! How are you? I thought I’d give you an update on my ST book reading!

I recently finished the short story Gutted World in Myriad Universes: Echoes and Refractions - Keith R. A. DeCandido… HOLY MOLY! If you like “what if” AUs … and also your heart being smashed into a million pieces… then I’d recommend this story if you haven’t already read it!

What are you reading right now?

hi!! okay omg i looked that book up and that sounds so good?? why have i never heard of it before 😫 i will be reading asap! i’m a little scared of your heart smashed into a million pieces warning… but i trust your recommendation !

i recently read The Long Night by Dean Weasley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch which is a DS9 novel about a long lost ship from an ancient civilization being recovered which sets off a bunch of conflict between all of the main forces in the quadrant (plus jake knocks quark out with a chair at one point) it was pretty good!

I also read The Vulcan Academy Murders by Jean Lorrah, which all took place on Vulcan and explored their culture and stuff! that one is definitely now one of my all time favorite trek books :)) (it was also pretty mcspirky)

next i’m gonna read Prophecy and Change which the collection of ds9 stories by different authors and i’m very very excited

btw if anyone else is reading a star trek book rn feel free to reblog and talk about it!!

[ds9jack]

My Intro Post!!

Hi Welcome to my blog I'm insane abt Jack and Julian. Learn more about me under the cut

My name is Jack, but you can call me whatever else you feel like. I go by he/him. I have autism, so if I accidentally encroach on a social rule, give me some grace and make me aware.

Most of my art is centered around my favorite ship Jackshir. I fucking love Jackshir. I'm also a really big fan of Rom/Leeta, Garashir, Spirk (who isn't), Chahura, Lon/Tuvok, Quark/Odo, Geordi/Data, Mariner/Jennifer etcetera. I LOVE GAY STAR TREK PAIRINGS!!

I started watching Star Trek in 2021, and in that time I've finished these series:

The Original Series

The Next Generation

Deep Space 9

Lower Decks

I'm currently on season 5 of Voyager.

I also like:

Repo! The Genetic Opera

Revolutionary Girl Utena

House MD

Scott Pilgrim

Heathers

Death Note

Spore (the game)

Sims 4

Moths

Doll collecting

Plague history/plague doctors

Astrophysics

Biochemistry

Genetics

I'm not 100% on all of these so even though I really like them I might mess up some stuff sometimes okay Okay

Jack is my favorite character, I think he's really underappreciated, so here's a section in my about me dedicated to him and why I like him. I related to Jack heavily, I see a lot of my traits reflected in him and find comfort seeing a character similar to me. A central part to what makes a character likeable is seeing emotional similarities in them, allowing for catharsis in the viewer. I find these similarities in Jack. He's a good place for me to place my more irrational thoughts, into a little contained pod of a character. I've been focused on Jack since about February 2022. In this time I've watched Statistical Probabilities and Chrysalis over 100 times combined, read nearly every fanfiction involving the members of the Jack Pack, and read every official novel/short story containing them with the exception of the Typhon Pact books past the first and the Section 31 novels. I've also photo-scanned the pages of the DS9 Companion and the DS9 Technical handbook pertaining to the Jack Pack. My sketchbook is full of portrait art of Jack. My inner voice sounds like Jack most of the time. Not only do I find emotional catharsis (also the name of a song I heavily associate with Jack btw) in Jack, I also find him a motivating character for me. Whenever I feel like not doing work or self-improvement, I think about Jack and I find a new eagerness to power through whatever I might be hung up on. I also find a sense of confidence from him. Since I view genetic engineering (in the episode of Statistical Probabilities and Chrysalis at the very least) as an allegory for autism, when Jack talks about finding pride in his genetic identity I can draw a sort of pride in my autism from that as well. Jack isn't just a charaxcter to me but a part of my soul. Okay

Okay, thank you for reading! If you want some of my other socials, I have a Twitter, and my own personal website. My Discord is Jack.scr

[purgemarchlockdown]

Also, not to reveal myself as a big star trek fan on the Milgram sideblog but sometimes I think about how star trek ds9 talked about linear time and then proceeded to describe trauma as "existing in a point in time" (which btw changed my entire life go watch star trek) and I guess I wonder where the cast here exist.

Like, mostly when I think about this, it's because I'm thinking about Amane since...this blog,

And...she doesn't exist in her incredibly cathartic moment of murder, a scene we don't even see in Magic. She exists in all the times she's been hurt

Not to reveal myself as an Enjoyer of Time Loops but I guess I just think about it? Amane revisits those moments, she revisits being drowned, being beaten, the death of the cat, being electrocuted. That's where she "exists"

Purge March is almost an exact play-by-play of Magic, to the point that the two main Amane's share multiple design traits. It's really a retelling of the same story.

Plus Magic is a show and you can always rewatch episodes if you catch them on TV in time. Thinking about that line in Magic where you can faintly here Amane singing along at the end, how many times has she rewatched this episode?

And this applies to other character's. Shidou gets to revisit moments where his family is alive, but Fuuta is stuck in his internet flame wars and the biggest mistake he ever made.

I just wanted an excuse to talk about one of favorite scenes in Star Trek on my milgram sideblog so I could trick people into watching star trek and now I'm really sad.

[butchniqabi]

Hi!!! I’ve been following for YEARS and I just started watching ds9 and wondered if you had some favorite episodes + which one the im a human being quote is from. Really enjoying it so far. Hope ur having a good one ! <3

hello! this has been sitting in my ask box for a hot minute -_-'

the "i am a human being" is from "far beyond the stars" which is unequivocally my favorite ds9 episode (and my favorite star trek episode Period) because its just so....UGH its so good

some of my favorites are: Progress, Sanctuary, Whispers, Blood Oath, The Wire, Second Skin, Past Tense: Part 1 & 2, The Visitor, Hippocratic Oath, Rejoined, Trials and Tribble-ations, Doctor Bashir I Presume?, Ties of Blood and Water, You Are Cordially Invited, In the Pale Moonlight, Take Me Out to the Holosuite, and What You Leave Behind...

these are all technically in chronological order btw sdfghjhgfds

[subbyfoxelf]

[tv review] ds9 4x10 "our man bashir" (1995)

there’s actually TOO MUCH to love about this episode??? like, if i tried to tell y’all everything i love about it i’d just end up giving u a bl0w-by-blow of the entire episode, so i’m gonna do my best to rein myself in a bit.

as someone who considers the bond movies a problematic fave of mine, obviously a big part of the joy is seeing all the bond tropes lovingly made fun of. even little details like how damn accurate the music stings are just makes me guffaw with joy every time. this reaches its apex, btw, when bashir & garak are rushing to their final confrontation with dr. noah and a bond-ified version of the ds9 theme serves as a heroic flourish. fucking priceless.

garak barging in and offering both veiled & unveiled constructive criticism to the bond pastiche’s version of spycraft was brilliant. and having that eventually lead to bashir repeating garak’s words to “dr. noah” (more on him later) was super cute. just a lot of quality garak/bashir stuff in this episode tbh!!

seeing most of the other main cast members playing various bond roles was probably the biggest source of joy here, and they’re all just absolutely golden, but it should come as no surprise that by far the best one is captain sisko playing archvillain dr. hippocrates noah.

i love every time this show decides to get out of avery brooks’ way and just let him be a fucking incredible actor, and his performance here as a bond villain is just unreal. his line delivery, his facial acting, every detail of his performance is just staggeringly great! and just… the combination of “this is incredible acting” and “this is incredibly silly” hits such a weird spot that i kind of don’t even know how to properly articulate it? just trust me, it’s wonderful.

i love this show so much. it’s so willing to go so hard into silliness as well as so hard into seriousness and it just kicks so much ass at both. this episode, btw, is one of the three that made me say that little green men isn’t even in my top three favorite ds9 comedy episodes. looking forward to getting to the other two!

s-rank