#ds9 for ts

[benicebefunny]

I'm sorry, but when it comes to telling fans, "Oh, yeah, my character definitely had a thing for that guy," Andy Robinson will always beat out James Lance.

Not gay as in "journalism bro with a crush on a pair of khakis," but queer as in "middle-aged lizard propositions beautiful young man for sex and espionage."

[pluralzalpha]

Galactic Gazetteer: Tyree

Class: L (probably)

Quadrant: Alpha

Terrain: desert scrub

Atmosphere: highly ionised

Inhabitants: unknown

Affiliation: United Federation of Planets

Appearance: DS9 "Shadows and Symbols" (1998)

Fun fact: the Orb of the Emissary was hidden here by the Bajoran Prophets, waiting for Ben Sisko to discover it in 2375.

[stephantom]

Haven't watched any DS9 in a looong while, but between you and another blog posting a lot of it lately, I realize I absolutely should watch it. Do you recommend starting from Ep 1, or is it a TNG situation where it really gets enjoyable after a season or so in?

Oh, gosh, I feel a lot of pressure to answer this right! Lol like I love the show but it’s a mixed bag and people’s enjoyment of things can be so particular, you know? But hmm, so, I DO think that it gets more enjoyable a season in or so. But I’m also really glad that I didn’t skip anything with it, or with TNG. The goofy bad stuff was part of the good for me, and part of how I bonded with the show. And you probably get that since you have already seen both shows at least in part?

There’s stuff in the first few episodes of DS9 that establish a lot of kind of important things, but OTOH if you’re already familiar with the story and characters, maybe it’s skippable? (God, my autocorrect tried to make that “shippable”—I’m ridiculous.)

Season 1 is a little slow and not all of the characters have really been figured out yet, feels like. (Maybe Dax and Bashir particularly so?) But some episodes that stand out in my memory: “Emissary” (the first episode(s) is important for everyone (the setup of the entire situation and political backdrop, etc) but especially the Siskos. “A Man Alone” is good for establishing some major aspects of Odo as a character (and even Odo and Quark, a little—and “Babel” has some good moments between them too). “Move Along Home” is widely regarded as a ~Bad episode~ I think? but it’s the first episode that I remember really enjoying—it’s just really silly fun, idk. I think it was the first moment where I was like, “ah yes, this is stupid, just like TNG.” “The Nagus” and “The Vortex” both have some good Quark and Odo content (respectively). I think “Dramatis Personae” was fun? (Can’t fully remember. But it felt similarly stupid-TNG to me.) “Duet” was kind of impressively heavy, maybe the first good example of how intense DS9 can get, aside from the opener? “In The Hands of the Prophets” ends the first season and iirc is the first multi-parter (not counting the season opener) and creates some good momentum and character/character dynamics growth. It’s either this episode or a directly related one afterwards that has one of my favorite found-family moments with Kira and the others.

Some people say the show really takes off in the 4th season, but I feel like that’s skipping so much character development and fun. Idk. DS9 tends to have great narrative multi-episode runs that start at the end of seasons and run a few episodes into the following season. The one which starts near the end of season 5 and goes several episodes into season 6 was especially good, in my opinion (even if it then proceeded to completely drop some threads, devastatingly). But it might be weird to just jump into that?

Idk, there are a lot of different “if you’re watching for this” episode lists out there, so I would recommend googling a little if you’re interested in something like that. But I guess I’m kind of a completionist with these shows. There are skippable episodes, definitely, but it’s hard to know which moments you’ll be glad you caught ultimately and which slower points make the payoff better for the points that pull things together in a satisfying way. But I also don’t know how much you remember if the show. A rewatch is a different matter which I haven’t given enough thought to!

Sorry, this response was way too long with too little specific advice!

[transpathfinder]

u know i’ve been rewatching DS9 and Far Beyond the Stars came up and i was just thinking how much Discovery could absolutely use an episode like that right now, in fuckin 2019

how people are always complaining about no one liking Disco cos it’s dumb ~breaking canon~ or whatever when really they just need to get hit over the head with an episode telling them how they cannot handle a black woman in the lead where the story revolves around her or a south asian man as her love interest and how they’re basic for wanting another show with Pike as a lead and spinoff from that as if we haven’t already seen white captains multiple times over 50 years of the Trek franchise

‘‘you want me to print it? make the captain white’’

that’s all of y’all complaining about Disco non-stop

or thinking shipping f/f or m/m is instantly elevated over something like Ashburn just cos it’s gay with zero analysis of how media never gives us 2 poc in love as a leading couple. or how you don’t see the problem with Ash or Hugh being sidelined to this extent this season, with one of them very possibly being written out of the show to set him up for a black ops spinoff which won’t aid his healing arc at all

it’s not like Discovery has no issues but there’s a fine line between a white person whining about the show vs anyone else critiquing it and that line is racism

[freaky-federation]

I made these, feel free to use them if you wish

[a-star-that-fell]

top five fave star trek characters? 🥰

hi im 💚

1. julian (big shocker there)

2. tasha

3. data

4. culber

5. tie between dax (both jadzia and ezri) and geordi

[seren4d3]

WAIT WHAT IS LOGAN’S FAVORITE RACE IN STAR TREK?! HIS FAVORITE SERIES?! DOES VIRGIL WATCH STAR TREK WITH HIM?! DOES HE HAVE MERCH?! DOES HE WRITE ABOUT CANON CHARACTERS OR DOES HE HAVE OCS?! WHAT IS HIS STYLE OF WRITING?!

SO MANY QUESTIONS

[fangirltothefullest]

One day Roman heads into the imagination feeling woosy upon sudden entry and everything looks strange and everyone in his kingdom is acting strange too, different in some way, and they keep treating him as if he leads the mindspace and are actively afraid of him.

He is confused until he is escorted to the throne room where he meets his mirror half, the dreaded Prince Romulus who is all too excited to play with his new and interesting toy. What better for the man who has ever thing than to have himself to talk to and understand him and admire? It's not just the imagination which is messed up though, all of the other sides act so strange and different in the Thomasphere- darker, more sinister, pushing thomas to make a future of his own, taking advantage of every opportunity and doing very well but also by being very selfish and manipulative.

Roman has to get home where his fellow sides are less scary and mean, and he strangely finds an ally in Deceit who has been trying for months to free the good side of creativity from his prison cell.

Trouble is that the good one in the mirrorverse is Remus and Romulus is on a manhunt for the prince because he doesn't want Roman to go back. He wants to keep his new little pet!

[lenniershairlessredacted]

sometimes it seems like search engines have gotten really good at natural language, but until I can type in “the ds9 episode that starts with dukat space skyping kira to tell her he fucked her mom” and actually get the right episode back, we’re basically still in 2000 tbh

[biomic]

how to win baseball: kill the opposition

[regalpotato]

Not me remembering the absolutely horrendous ending to the Kira/Odo relationship whilst accidentally falling right back into love with them

[stephantom]

Do you guys want to know the bullshit waste of time I’m up to now?

I spent the last couple hours relearning how to re-color in-game clothing so that I could start making custom clothes for Quark. This was the first attempt (based on this outfit from Rules of Acquisition) and I’m not happy with it at all but hey, it’s a start! lmao.

Most of the other custom content is made by other people, and so are all the designs for everyone (although I did some tweaking here and there, applied more custom stuff I found, etc). Too many creators to credit here right now, but I’ll try to make a master post at some point, if I ever start making edits I like.

[transpathfinder]

got to the first Barclay heavy episode on my TNG rewatch and honestly i stand by my first assessment in that he’s annoying as f. i can’t believe people think he’s cute and awkward and defend him over Riker when Barclay is a grown ass man who’s a fucking loser. every ep with him is unbearable

ANYWAY! my love for TNG and the crew is rushing back again esp Picard, Riker, Troi, and Data/Geordi. it’ll be really interesting watching this and then DS9 back to back now and seeing whether DS9 and Sisko is still my fav show and captain lol i really think it might switch huhuuuhu IDKIDK

mostly cos i think when younger on first watch i looved the arc and story of DS9 and Sisko was a refreshing captain BUT... my prob with DS9 is i just dgaf about the crew enough since i don’t like Quark and Bashir, and i’m not sure how much i’ll like Odo now on rewatch with my new politics and ideals lmao. with TNG i really get the family vibe and they’re the only crew i feel everyone loves each other. 

SOYEAH LET’S SEE IF MY OPINIONS CHANGE it’s def between these 2 shows and captains though. and..... on rewatch now... i gotta say..;.. i’m kinda gay for Riker a bit rn i loved him back then even he’s such a good first officer and so rational and competent but now? added gay feels esp from s3 onwards with the new uniform he is attractive 👀👀👀👀

[hunterinabrowncoat]

No, but seriously the reasons why I will adamantly defend Sisko and Kira as fascinating, endearing, complex, and incredible characters, and why they will always be my favs ever, is not in spite of their anger, it’s because of it.

Sisko is a black man who loves to cook and is a fantastic single father who makes major life decisions with his son’s best interests at the forefront of his mind, and is actively, openly, gleefully enthusiastic about things. He’s also a Captain who shouts and screams and loses his temper, like there are all of these videos of compilations of him shouting, and it’s funny because it’s so unlike the Captain that everybody got used to - Picard. But it’s not treated as a flaw - he never loses respect for losing his temper; his anger instills respect and sometimes fear into his crew. And he doesn’t get angry because he’s an angry person, he gets angry because he’s passionate. He yells about justice, about people doing morally reprehensible things, about making the right choices.

He’s a black man who gets angry without being an Angry Black Man. He gets to be soft and gentle and also passionate and angry.

And Kira is a woman who grew up under an oppressive occupation, and she was a terrorist. She’s a woman who is also passionate, who gets incredibly angry, who could be described as volatile, but is never demonized for it. And she spends the entire series learning to come to terms with that trauma, and learning who she is outside of that war which is all she’s ever known. She’s able to be a hot ball of repeated trauma coming out as rage, while also being sensible, tactical, level-headed, incredibly compassionate, and deeply religious.

It’s why I think they are super important characters, but it’s also why I love their relationship with each other so much as well. They’re both war trauma victims, and neither of them hold up the Federation as a perfect ideal, but as the positive and functional - but not perfect - operation that it is. They’re two people trying to figure out how to navigate life and be high ranking officers after war has made and changed them.

[a-star-that-fell]

i think the thing that gets me about julian is how the canon narrative treats him versus how his (mostly queer and neurodivergent, from what i’ve seen) fans treat him. i know it was the 90s but the narrative really is not kind to him — you can read between the lines and see his good qualities, but there is so much about his character arc that bugs me, especially season 1-2 and 5-7 in the series.

early julian is seen as annoying by both canon characters and a lot of fans. admittedly, with my hyperempathy, he gives me second hand embarrassment at times, especially with dax, and his “frontier medicine” spiel shows his own internalization of the federation colonialist savior complex. not inherently a bad character choice on either front, but i feel like he’s reduced to this naive, “annoying” character, when he’s also shown to have this amazing capacity for compassion and eagerness, plus his medical skills are shown to be outstanding.

late series julian still has these qualities, but he is very obviously traumatized by this point, which isn’t inherently a bad character choice. but even though he’s beaten down, not eager and naive anymore, he’s still mocked — that scene from late s6 where sisko goes “i like him better this way” gives me rage because it just mirrors how people treat neurodivergent people in real life. it reminds me of how autistic people are subjected to ABA in order to make them “easier to handle” — the theme that connects these two ideas is trauma. ABA is traumatizing, emotional abuse is traumatizing, being on the front lines of an interstellar war is traumatizing.

julian’s arc is all about trauma, from his childhood to his service in starfleet, and that’s why i think so many of us vibe with him on such a deep level. not only because many of us have been through similar experiences, both on that low level constant and pervasive “everyone thinks i’m annoying and different and wrong” day-to-day front and on the catastrophic-events front. but because even through all of this crap, julian is still such a kind character. he’s not always soft, he’s not always nice, hell his kindness isn’t always appropriate for the situation. but he has this incredible compassion that can’t be taken away by anyone — not his parents, not the dominion, not sloan.

that resonates with me, and probably other julian fans as well. my therapist, to whom i’ve explained my attachment to him many times, says that by loving him, i’m loving myself, because i’ve been through some of this shit too as an queer autistic person. people find me annoying, too much, too different, just like how they see him. but i love him, even through his mistakes and warped worldview, and other people love him too. that gives me hope.

[kelasparmak]

garashir for the ask meme? :)

full disclosure i don’t remember which ask meme this was because as has been established i’ve been a Mess, but i’ll assume it’s this one:

Fake dating/marrieds: it is COMPLETELY unnecessary. there is no need for them to pretend to be dating or married at all, but julian suggests it because that’s what happens in Spy Books, and garak goes along with it because a) he’s pining and/or b) this is bound to be hilarious. then they both realise they’ve signed up for more than they intended to, but of course they are fucking stubborn as hell so they just keep making it worse for themselves (and, though they’re probably completely oblivious to this, each other). if this were a fic i was writing, i would end it with them not getting together and just having the bluest balls in the world, because they’re fucking idiots. (but maybe i’d write an epilogue a few weeks later, where jadzia and kira are loudly rolling their eyes about how those dumb fucks who are now dating didn’t realise they were in love with each other despite unnecessarily making out in front of an ambassador to ‘prove’ they were married even though said ambassador had had no reason to doubt it and didn’t give a shit until they started with the pda on the bridge and sisko had to pull them apart because it was just making the situation less believable)

Bodyswap: julian is THRILLED - cardassian doctors are super secretive about medicine and anatomy so this is a great way for him to find out things like how a cardassian body reacts to penicillin! garak is initially worried about being super fragile and squishy in a human body but then realises that actually he is much safer in julian’s body than his body is under the care of Excitable Knowledge-Hungry Pupppy Dr Julian Bashir. the episode is basically everyone trying to stop julian from killing himself and garak by performing medical trials on himself.

Telepathy: again - it’s sad. it’s unavoidably sad. they probably just go get drunk and have sad sex. boohoo.

OH NO only one bed at the hotel: julian probably volunteers to sleep on the floor (and probably puts his foot in his mouth by implying that garak is old and will hurt his back if he doesn’t take the bed) but fortunately garak is used to him being a doofus and convinces him that it is in everyone’s best interest if they share the bed. the room has a thermostat which julian has considerately already turned up, but garak ignores this in order to make the body heat argument. they end up both being too warm and uncomfortable. they’re disasters.

Accidental time-travel: BISEXUAL DISASTER TEEN GARAK. always my fave. alternatively, i kinda like the idea of them meeting as kids - like, before jules’s engineering, before garak finds out tolan’s not his dad and he doesn’t get to be a gardener when he grows up. it’d be super poignant, esp if the time travel incident was fixed within the episode but they both remembered it afterwards and had a tiny little piece of ‘before the world happened to him’ of each other to hold onto.

Their first kiss: awkward, uncomfortably positioned, probably in a near-death scenario that they definitely could’ve avoided. julian says something dumb.

Meeting the parents: well, again, julian has met tain and that was…. something. probably better than most would manage with tain. i like to think that garak subtly made richard bashir’s life difficult, not so much because of the engineering (which i personally, as a Real Life Autistic, think is awful, but garak, as a Fictional Cardassian, might understand the motivation behind) but because of his attitude when he talks to julian. if this child is your legacy and you really just want the best for him and will break the law and do immoral things to give him the best opportunities in life that you can, at least do it in such a way that he appreciates it, you idiot. (or, going off garak’s own experiences: if you’re going to give your son horrible lifelong trauma for your own purposes, you have to at least go through with making sure those purposes work, or it’s just a waste!). garak’s perspective is fucked up but ultimately, even if it’s largely for different reasons, i can see him being just as disgusted w richard bashir as the fandom is.

Moving in together: again - a disaster. they’re both very particular about their living space, but julian at least has a very meticulously planned chaos sort of thing going on. ‘yes, i know all my clean shirts are under the left cushion on the sofa, that’s where they’re supposed to be, it keeps them pressed just right’. ‘yes, i know there’s been a half-eaten scone on my datapad for six hours - i’m saving it for later’. et cetera, et cetera.

A crossover of my choice: fuck. uhhh - all i can fucking think of (and i don’t know why) is jane austen novels. semi-canonically, garak adores them, and i think they fit really well. the only question is which of them fills the plucky and a tiny-bit-obnoxious heroine role, and which fills the awkward and extremely obnoxious hero role. i think maybe neither of them are either one. i think maybe they’re background/side-characters who have their own thematically fitting adventure and love story while the main drama is going on.

An au of my choice: i’m always a sucker for section 31 julian! whether the semi-reluctant, taking-it-down-from-within version that we get in the eu, or an initially-idealistic ‘i’m a spy! wow! so cool! … fuck, my actions have consequences!’ version, or a full on ‘ends justify the means’ version. this could be the only change from canon, or garak could still be with the order, or it could be a situation swap where julian’s an outcast spy and garak has a Big Secret about his childhood but actually never got involved with the order.

If you like, another trope/scenario of your choice: predictably, i’m gonna go with polyamorous domestic bliss on post-canon cardassia. just let my middle-aged disaster son be happy with his idealistic traumatised doctor husbands! …. no but for real, please let this happen, it’s all i want in life.