#i FINALLY actually started watching ds9

[hitrone]

i’m gonna be insane guys

[captaincrusher]

A thought on a queer Star Trek timeline

Watching Star Trek from the original series to modern times is to fast forward through the evolution of queer rights through the 20th and early 21st century.

In the original series queerness must be imagined in the close relationship between Kirk and Spock. We can only see ourselves in what we hope and dream about for the future. We get Amok Time.

In the 80's queer people start to materialize in the background. TNG takes tentative steps towards telling our stories, still cloaked in the allegory. We get Outcast.

In the 90's Ds9 gives us Rejoined. Still cloaked in allegory, but the lines get sharper, the mist starts to lift. A character has a monologue about how two people that love each other should be able to be together. Hidden winks has turned into words.

Voyager, while a good show in other respects, does not give us a single crumb of queerness. Aside from the relationships we ourselves imagine.

In the 2000's we are on the cusp of actually having queer people on screen. Enterprise tries to tell stories of gender (Cogenitor) and the AIDS crisis (Stigma), two episodes that are still filtered through a limited understanding of both. When Enterprise ends in 2005 and this Star Trek era ends with it, queer representation in film and tv is still scarce.

The AOS era instead is where queer people, for the first time, stepped out of subtext. Sulu is married to a man - a nod to George Takei, the original series actor. Star Trek Beyond comes out in 2016, the year after same sex marriage is legalized in the US.

It isn't until 2017 that a Star Trek show officially, without subtext or allegory, gets queer characters, when Paul Stamets and Hugh Culber are married on Discovery. Discovery also adds further queer characters down the line, finally saying that yes - queer humans do exist in the future.

I know you all will have opinions on what is queer or not. But when tracking the evolution of queer representation it's important to separate subtext from text and to separate when something is allegoric verses not.

I interpret Jadzia Dax as queer - but she is not human. She is an alien wrapped inside a gender non confirming shroud of gray areas. That is the strength of her character - that it allows the writers to explore themes that otherwise would have been taboo. But the fact that they could only pursue queer storylines with non human characters tells you something about the times.

it really feels like Star Trek was late to the party with queer representation. I think there's multiple reasons for that. One is that when Enterprise was created, it still carried the legacy of shows created in the 80's and 90's. Enterprise itself is also literally a prequel - there seemed to be little desire to be bold and innovative.

Timing is I think the main reason why Star Trek trailed behind. Between Enterprise ending in 2005 and Star Trek Discovery starting in 2017 there's a whole era of representation. If Enterprise had dared make an actual queer character, like Malcolm Reed, it would have been just ahead of the wave of representation that started popping up in the late 00's - but instead it closed on a similar note as DS9 did 10 years earlier.

Feel free to add your favorite queer episodes. There are some "official" queer episodes - but there's a bunch more that meant a lot for us as queer people, for one reason or another.

[idrawweirdstuffnominors]

hey can you write a girl dad josh fic about his daughter meeting milestones while growing up? like her first words, first steps, first day of school, etc?

(YES I LOVE MY FATHER AU OF JOSH BEING A GIRL DAD

“Firsts” – Girl Dad Josh (Father AU)

First Words

Josh had a running list.

An actual list, taped to the fridge.

It read:

– Dada

– Enterprise

– Leonard Nimoy

– Hyperspace

So when your daughter’s first word was “dog,” Josh stared like she’d just committed fandom treason.

> “Dog? Dog?! We don’t even have a dog! This is how it starts. This is how the brain rot begins.”

“She was looking at a picture book, Josh.”

> “A picture book with a golden retriever on the front. This is educational sabotage. She’s been indoctrinated.”

You bit your cheek to hide the smile, scooped her up, and kissed her cheeks while Josh paced, muttering about “cultural decay through toddler vocabulary.”

An hour later, she looked up at him and chirped, “Dada!”

Josh froze mid-rant. Just froze.

> “... Say it again. I need to hear you say it again or I will combust.”

“Dada!” she squealed, tiny arms reaching up to him.

He snatched her into his arms like she was the Ark of the Covenant.

> “I knew you’d come around,” he said, voice cracking. “You’re brilliant. A prodigy. We’ll burn the ‘dog’ thing from the records.”

You caught him wiping his eyes when he thought you weren’t looking.

---

First Steps

Josh was not ready.

You told him. You warned him. You said, “Babe, she’s been pulling herself up for days now.”

> “That’s a conspiracy. She’s manipulating gravity. She’s not ready for bipedal motion!”

And yet—there she was. In the middle of the living room. Hands out like a zombie. One wobbly step. Two. Then a glorious faceplant onto a pile of pillows.

> “OH MY GOD.”

He sprinted over like she’d been tackled by a linebacker.

She started laughing. Giggling, even. Proud.

> “You think this is funny?” Josh gasped, lifting her up. “You realize you just evolved? You unlocked a whole skill tree, and you’re laughing?! You can get into my figurines now. We’re doomed.”

“She walked, Josh.”

> “Yeah. Into an era of chaos and destruction. You’re smiling but I know you’re scared too.”

But later, when he thought she was asleep, you found him crouched in her room, just watching her breathe.

> “She walked,” he whispered, like he still didn’t believe it.

---

First Day of School

You dressed her. Josh tried but nearly had a breakdown over sock patterns.

> “If they’re mismatched, they’ll judge her. Kids are monsters. Have you seen elementary schoolers?! They eat their own kind.”

“She’s five, not a fandom forum.”

> “Worse. She’s going in raw. No allies. No moderator. No canon to defend her.”

He didn’t stop pacing the entire walk to the car. Or the drive. Or standing outside the school doors while your daughter bravely charged into the building without a backward glance.

> “She didn’t even look back,” Josh muttered, voice wrecked.

“She’s confident. That’s good.”

> “She’s gonna forget me. I’m gonna get replaced by a gym teacher named Brad.”

You took his hand and squeezed. “Josh. She’ll always look for you in the crowd.”

> “She better. Or I’m pulling her out and homeschooling her with DS9 episodes and NASA documentaries.”

That night, she came home and drew a picture of the three of you holding hands.

Josh hung it on the fridge like it was the goddamn Mona Lisa.

---

Every Moment In Between

He reads to her in voices. Bad ones. Half of them devolve into William Shatner impressions.

He gets into screaming matches with other parents on the PTA forum when someone says Pokémon is “too violent.”

He builds her a science fair volcano so elaborate it sets off the smoke alarm. Twice.

When she’s sick, he’s the one sitting next to her all night, whispering comfort and conspiracy theories about germs.

And every night, when he finally stops talking long enough to breathe, you catch him watching her. Just… watching.

> “She’s the only thing in the universe that actually matters,” he murmurs one night, voice hoarse. “And I don’t want to mess her up.”

You wrap your arms around him from behind.

> “You won’t. Not as long as she’s got both of us.”

He exhales, shaky. Pulls you in closer.

> “You’re my rock, you know that?”

> “You say that every milestone.”

> “And I’ll say it every damn one.”

“Away Mission”

The living room is wrecked. Pillows stacked like asteroids, blankets twisted into makeshift uniforms, cardboard tubes doubling as phasers. Your daughter’s wearing a too-big red shirt with a glued-on insignia, yelling commands into a toy communicator.

Josh?

Josh is in full Starfleet officer mode—tie pulled across his chest like a sash, dramatic expression carved into his face like he’s hosting a one-man stage play.

> “Commander,” he barks, pointing at a stuffed bear on the couch. “Divert power to the deflector shields! We’ve got a Klingon warbird on our tail!”

Your daughter shrieks with glee. “Yes, Captain! Initiating shield sequence!”

You peek in from the kitchen, smiling to yourself as you rinse a plate.

> “The Klingons are just your laundry pile, Josh.”

He gasps, spinning on his heel with the flare of a man who has never broken character in his life.

> “Lieutenant,” he says, stalking toward the kitchen. “That’s Commander to you. And you're not authorized to talk back to your superior officer.”

You raise a brow, eyes twinkling. “Is this about last night or—”

Before you can finish, he sweeps in like a warp-speed maniac and scoops you into his arms, dish towel and all.

> “Captain’s log: Stardate NOW. We’ve recovered the rebel communications officer. She's feisty. And wildly disrespectful of Federation protocol.”

You yelp, laughing as he hauls you over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

> “Josh—Joshua Levy, put me down, I am covered in soap—!”

> “Negative. You’re under arrest for dissent and temptation. The Federation has strict policies about distracting commanding officers with that face.”

You can hear your daughter giggling from the couch.

> “Daddy, beam Mommy to the brig!!”

> “Already en route, Ensign!” Josh hollers, adjusting his grip like a dramatic pirate.

And just as you’re about to protest again, he flips you around in his arms and kisses you. Hard. Deep. So over-the-top it should be illegal in at least seven alien cultures.

The dish towel slips to the floor.

You blink at him, dazed. “...You’re ridiculous.”

> “And you’re mine,” he smirks, still fully in-character. “End log.”

From the couch:

> “Ew! Dad! That’s gross!”

Josh just smirks, kissing your forehead.

> “Kiddo, when you grow up and marry someone way out of your league like I did, you’ll understand.”

You shake your head, leaning into him.

> “Back to the bridge, Captain?”

> “Only if my best officer’s with me.”

> “I’ll allow it.”

And just like that, he sets you down gently, grabs his cardboard phaser, and heads back into battle with his daughter

[walkingstackofbooks]

My vision for endgame Data/Julian which has consumed me ever since I watched Picard 😅

1.DS9

A few months after the Dominion war, the Enterprise docks at DS9 for a short while allowing Data to meet his long-time pen-friend, Julian, again. Julian's not doing well, but since he seems to enjoy Data's company, Data decides to take a couple more weeks of leave to spend some more time with his friend.

However, Julian starts becoming more and more withdrawn and anxious, and after an incident one evening where he becomes agitated to the point of storming out, Data reaches out to Deanna to see if she can give him any insight into his friend's behaviour. She has some ideas, but also suggests that Data ask Keiko, and after talking with the O'Briens, Data believes he understands what's wrong.

When he asks Julian if he's correct in thinking that his impending departure is what's upsetting the doctor, Julian's surprise at the question is enough that he answers truthfully - yes. To Data, the solution is obvious: if Julian is distressed by the idea of someone else leaving him, then Data will not leave. (Julian begs him not to make promises he cannot keep, and has a minor breakdown when he realises that Data is deadly serious.)

After a lot of conversation, some favour-cashing, and the fortunate coincidence that one of Beverly's doctors was beginning to look for a promotion to CMO, Julian ends up transferred to the Enterprise: technically a demotion, but after so long having so much on his shoulders, it's actually a relief.

2. Enterprise

While on Enterprise, Data and Julian get closer and closer. Their relationship brings some difficulties when it becomes public, though: some see the fact Julian's dating an android as proof that he's not really human; others wonder how Data's affection can be real, and feel that if he were as human as he wants to be, then he wouldn't be dating an augment. Julian's parents definitely berate him for wasting all the gifts they gave him by marrying an android - if only he'd talked to them before the wedding, they could have adbised him against it! - making him a zillion times more grateful Data talked him out of inviting them every time he started to feel guilty about it.

But that's by the by. They're together, happily married, endgame Julian/Data achieved, right?

3. ...

Wrong. I hate Nemesis, but imagine Julian following Data down before he throws himself into space, knowing he could probably stop Data from doing this if he asks. Data saying, "I know I promised never to leave you," and Julian shaking his head and barely being able to choke out the words "It's okay," and then Data's gone.

And Geordi's trying to reassure Julian (Geordi's trying to convince himself...) that Data will be alright, he's got the emergency tranport unit, and they get back to the bridge, and Picard transports in, and Data's still on the ship that's blowing up, and Deanna's asking what happened and Julian's sliding down against a wall, horarsely whispering "I let him go..."

4. Picard: s1

20 years later... I haven't quite decided when I want Julian to appear, because the idea of Julian fighting for android rights is everything to me, but also I kind of like the premise of changing as little as possible in canon...

(Maybe Julian had tried to be part of the movement for android rights, bu the media had really latched onto his augment status and used it as another reason to discredit the movement, and so he'd withdrawn from it, as it seemed his presence was doing more harm than good….)

So the Picard crew all return to the Riker-Troi household after the final showdown and Deanna welcomes them in with a "Guess who we finally managed to get in contact with" and bring them into the lounge where Julian' anxiously waiting.

And of course the initial introduction is awkward and Julian's talking a million words a minute until Will pokes him and then over the next few days he's trying to keep his distance so that Soji doesn't feel that she needs to let him into her life...

And meanwhile Soji is still, you know, coping with ALL the feelings and trauma that the last - what, week? - have given her and so she has no idea what to do with this man, who was apparently her father's husband, especially as she has no clue how he feels about the whole suddenly-having-an-android-stepdaughter thing.

But eventually they do manage to have a conversation (/are forced to talk it out) and they get on so well and Soji realises how much Julian genuinely wants to get to know her for her sake and while Julian's terrified at the prospect of having a daughter, he's also delighted (and Will and Deanna make them both stick around for a whole while, 1. because they do enjoy having them both around, 2. because Kestra adores Soji, and the two are pretty good for each other, and 3. because, while they have kept in contact with Julian over the years, they also know how long he's been on his own for, and they want to make sure he's got a solid base and people to lean on. As much as Julian wants to be a good father, Soji deserves more than one traumatised, lonely man doing a best that would quite possibly not be good enough...)

5. Picard: s3

Julian and Soji are visiting Geordi at the museum when the Picard crew come along, and are swept into the action...

Julian learning that Data's alive - kind of... Julian tenderly kissing Data before they take down the partition, telling him he has to win so he can meet their daughter... The two of them barely having time to reunite before having to rush off to their respective duties in saving the ship...

(I have VISIONS of Soji and Julian working desperately together to find a cure for the transporter virus, while Julian's augment physiology has done something weird to make it that he's turning, but very, very slowly. Julian making sure that Soji is armed, and making her promise to shoot him if he turns too quickly. Soji telling him he has to keep fighting it and refusing to think about what it might come to. Julian realising he's about to lose control and getting Soji to restrain him. Soji despairing that she won't be able to find a cure by herself - she's not a doctor doctor like he is - and Julian reassuring her that he believes in her, she just needs to do her best... but most importantly, if she doesn't find it, it's alright, it's not her fault, and he loves her. Resistance is futile. A phaser shot.)

And afterwards, when Soji's found the cure and it's been distributed, Julian wakes up to find Data sitting next to him and Soji hovering nearby. He tries to scramble up and leave to help the rest of the crew, but Soji informs him that just as he took longer to turn, he took longer to get better, and he's the last one to wake up from it. And then she makes to leave, to give the two of them some time alone, and Julian tells her that's nonsense, she needs to meet Data, and Soji says that it's fine, they've been talking while he was asleep, and Julian replies that now he feels left out, so she definitely can't leave, come here, sit by me, I'm not letting either of you out of my sight.

[trx34ksh]

I just finished watching S5 E11 of DS9 called “The Darkness and the Light” and it genuinely made me so upset.

BIG TW: pregnancy, mentions of forcing birth, medical procedures/devices, death and assassinations

The premise of the episode is that members of the resistance cell that Kira was in during the cardassian occupation are getting killed off one by one and no one knows the culprit. (Spoilers ahead of u haven’t watched the ep yet)

Throughout the episode, like each time Odo or someone else comes to tell her another of her old friends got killed, I feel like they don’t do much to actually comfort Kira. They just sorta stand around her while this shocking info sets in. Like in one instance, a woman who was never an official member of the resistance cell but frequently help them/ longtime friend of Kira dies from a disruptor placed on her mid transport beaming her up to the defiant, Kira is grief struck on the floor next to her deceased friend and she asks for a moment alone but the door to the room is wide open and behind her you just see Bashir, Odo, Sisko, Worf, and Jadzia standing and staring at her. Maybe that was intentional to draw viewers attention to Kira, but it just felt so weird??

Later on, Kira gets a list of names of prominent suspects and gets on a shuttle to go to some remote planet in hopes of avenging her friends. The guy suspected(and guilty) of being behind the attacks is this old cardassian guy who got injured in an attack by the resistance cell during the occupation. He traps Kira in a chair surrounded by medical devices and monologues about how ‘the light and dark need to be separated’ and by that, those guilty/those in the bajoran resistance will get what’s coming to them (just general evil villain dialogue.)

The actual batshit crazy part of this episode comes when the old cardassian guy pulls out some hand-held lazar/cutting thing and pretty much is like telling Kira he’s gonna cut out the baby she’s pregnant with and kill her. That alone is so wild to me that people in 1998 would air (not in the way of like “these horror stories shouldn’t be told” but more in the way of “I really hope Nana Visitor, who in real life was pregnant at the time, is ok with the storyline of this episode and didn’t get half traumatized from acting in this episode”) Kira begs for a sedative, gets it, then it looks like she passes out, but earlier in the ep Bashir informs Kira to keep taking some root medicine for pain(? I think) but that root cancels out sedative medication she was also taking. So Kira didn’t actually pass out and was able to escape the restraints and kicks the old cardassian guy over and knocks him out. FINALLY Sisko and the other senior staff beam in to help her out and the episode ends with all of them standing around Kira while she sits on the ground in shock while she explains in the same “light/dark” metaphor. It felt really similar to the ending of the episode called “Through the Looking Glass” where Kira and co go to the mirror universe. At the end Sisko asks her where she was and she just says like “through the looking glass, commander!” Like really corny sounding. It made the ending so unsatisfying and just more sad because it’s like, they couldn’t just let Kira tell them just how horrible the experience she just went through was??? It was like I wanted to jump through the screen and shake everyone by their shoulders !! Like hello?!?!

Maybe that feeling was the intended response the writers wanted from the audience. Idk. I just think the episode was so mind boggling because it starts out like an average heavy/sad DS9 ep and then just turns darker and darker.

Maybe Kira just didn’t want to tell people straight up what just happened. I can understand because she just went through something crazy traumatic, so being sorta silent or reserved isn’t out of the norm for Kira. In this episode and many in the past, it seems like Kira holds her deeper feelings to herself and just lets those feelings out when she’s alone (I guess??) But on the other hand DS9 is still a very male dominated show infront and behind the scenes. I really hope this is an acting choice Nana made and not just writers lacking on her character, ykwim??

[noitsbecky127]

rebecca watches ds9: the search part 1

luckily it’s 2025 and I can start season 3 the same night i finish season 2. let’s go!

don’t worry kira AI is bullshit

what is jadzia’s hairstyle here

kira ily but I don’t think resistance tactics will work here

well there would be no show if they left ds9 or collapsed the wormhole, so i’m guessing they’ll find a different option

why is julian just standing behind jadzia? if this is an emergency shouldn’t he go to the infirmary in preparation for injuries?

star trek doctors in general have a bad habit of not being in sickbay

are we sure this is a federation ship

the defiant?

i’ve heard mentions of the defiant online actually! glad to see it firsthand

oh so the original target was the borg. guessing it’ll adapt to fighting the dominion well enough

a romulan???

you’re working with romulans now??? enemy of my enemy i guess

“well i AM here to make friends :)”

pleased to meet you michael eddington

odo sometimes you gotta learn to compromise

I worry about what he might do if he had the authority he wants

well don’t RESIGN

jake with the spice pudding is me with mac and cheese. i order it at so many restaurants only to be disappointed

oh also with hot chocolate. i’m a hot chocolate snob

ig when you live someplace for two years and counting it becomes home, even if it’s a cardassian monstrosity

odo is Brooding

why would they want odo as a bajoran representative, he’s not even bajoran

awww she just doesn’t want him to leave

I’m guessing Odo will be on the Defiant

why would you bring QUARK with you though

not quark immediately throwing his brother under the bus 💀

how did sisko get his hands on that scepter

I love him invoking the space capitalist pope to get quark to do his bidding

jadzia that hairstyle is doing you NO favors

god I love her and sisko’s friendship so much

wait hang on it’s been two months since the s2 finale???

why has the dominion just been twiddling its thumbs for two months then

a starship bridge! haven’t seen one of these in a while!

odo’s here!!!

is there a spare bucket for him anywhere

alright, we’re back in the gamma quadrant! time for things to go to hell again!

oh ok odo brought his bucket

“i take that as a personal insult, doctor” “you should 👍” julian my beloved

odo is plotting quark’s murder. probably easy to get away with it when you’re in charge of investigating all the murders

into the bucket he goes

hopefully he can get out of the bucket before they make contact with any jem’hadar

guess it’s good to have a romulan on board, they know everything about cloaking

i’m guessing this will indeed be the last thing to go right in the gamma quadrant

why does no one know anything about the founders

kira’s earring is not for sale

the vorta?

odo! he is here!

what does odo know about this nebula that we don’t

quark’s gonna wind up in peril offscreen isn’t he

these are some cramped bunks

i mean going through the proper channels can be important. like yeah red tape sucks sometimes but still

however we can’t have odo leaving. maybe he could be persuaded to be a bit more of a team player

wonder why they can’t transport while cloaked

interesting computer room we’ve got here

oh this is definitely a trap of some kind. whenever smth is too easy it’s a trap

oh god and the replicators suck. as if things weren’t bad enough

yep! it was a trap!

t’rul shut up, maybe romulans would leave their crew to die but that’s not how they do things on ds9

or. hm. apparently it is. how are jadzia and miles going to get out of this one then?

we return to the show on a close-up of julian looking contemplative. he’s so pretty

odo fym you’re presently indisposed

what is he looking at

is this still about the nebula

why does he want to go there

instinct? that’s almost worse than if he had a reason

ok i’m worried now

there is truly no evading the jem’hadar is there

oh they’re on board. that’s very bad.

I’m not sure they can win melee combat against jem’hadar

yeah it looks like they lost

kira and odo are on the shuttlecraft but what about the others??? did we just leave them on the defiant?????

oh god kira thinks she’s lost her friends and you KNOW she’s already buried too many :(

this nebula had better be fucking worth it

a planet with no star? is that even scientifically possible???

what is this lake

ODO’S PEOPLE?????

why are they all just chilling and being a lake

guess i’m about to find out!

[dragontamerno3]

DS9 S2 E22 - The Wire

HOW DOES ANYONE THINK THESE TWO ARE IN A STRAIGHT??!!!???!!!

Ahem.

Seriously. How?

The episode starts off with the two going to their weekly lunch having the gayest banter about books and food and there is genuine concern for Garak when he starts showing signs of illness. Yes, Bashir is the station Doctor but it's also very much a "my friend is in pain, whats wrong" look when it happens.

This is cemented when Jadzia brings her plant to him to diagnose. Their conversation was primarily about the plant he was examining but her "its not like you're friends" comment and them him agreeing angrily while he stabbed said plant? There was no mistaking that he does (at least on some level) think of them as friends. Honestly, that whole conversation kinda felt like a ton of "I'm not jealous" conversations where I've seen two friends discussing a third party who was hanging out with a new person. Or more specifically a crush starts to spend more time with someone new. I have had similar moments myself as a baby queer.

I applaud Quark for his ease of lying. He was so smooth with a line or two to give to Bashir to get him to walk away. Wonderfully done.

The other smooth part with Quark was when Bashir is trying to usher Garak out of the bar and convince him to go to the infirmary and how they just swapped the bottle without a word.

On that same note, when Quark called Bashir to the bar to get Garak and Garak was like "Yes, quiet is better, lets go to my quarters", I wondered how often he actually brought people back to his room. He is so secretive that it seemed to me that he'd rarely (or never) let anyone come by so it seems significant that he offered that.

Of course Odo has tapped Quarks bar to monitor his transmissions, so much so that he even knows when Quark makes his more "sensitive" calls.

From the moment they said Garak was having head pain I figured there was some kind of implant in his head that was either malfunctioning, it was finally deteriorating or something similar. That paired with the fact that Garak was most definitely a spy, whether he still is or isn't is questionable sure, but at one point he was somehow tied to the intelligence network. So it wasn't a surprise to find out that was what causing him pain. It was fun to watch Quark give the Cardassian dude a code for a highly classified piece of tech though that may or may not cause both of them some hiccups later. Karma.

What I WAS surprised by was that is was more of a drug like situation. The whole break down in his room about how he had spent years being tortured and so 2 years ago he decided to say fuck it and to just live in a drugged state permanently was well done. I felt for both men in that moment. I can't even imagine what Garak was going through but I can tell he was suffering even when he had been drugged. And then Bashir hearing that the man he had come to think of as a friend (even if it was reluctantly) claim he wanted nothing to do with the dear Doctor. But then the trust in Garaks face as he relented? There was no heterosexual reason for this.

I need more of Bashir being a guard dog for all those under his care cause clearly that's a pattern I enjoy. It was a great character moment when he protected Jadzia against the trill transfer earlier in the season and it was a great moment here where he told Odo to fuck off.

The whole withdrawals scene was a rough one to get through in that way that I could see where it was going and I could tell both sides of that were very uncomfortable but the "the problem is I DID enjoy it" gave me life.

Every single story Garak told in this episode was both contradictory and very much believable, to me. I believe he blew up a Cardassian ship that held civilians and his "friend" on broad because it sounds like to me that this was the moment that part of him died, the part where he was dedicated to the cause. I also believe he let the Bajorian "prisoners" go and his "friend" was angry/appalled because this might have been one of the first steps to him questioning his involvement in things and how he hated himself for having these thoughts. I also believe he tried to hack the Cardassian systems to self sabotage himself subconsciously while thinking he was fixing things only to discover he purposely screwed himself over.

"I need to know SOMEONE forgives me." 😭💔

The thing that I loved most about this episode though was how Bashir was willing to risk his own safety to go to Cardassia on his own for Garak, who is in exile, to confront a highly respected man of the deepest, darkest intelligence network. That took guts and he did it without even blinking. Hell, he did it without even flinching when it was clear Tain was giving him vague threats.

I am disappointed about how quickly this one wrapped up, it seemed like we were worried about Garak dying and he was just suddenly okay again and having lunch, but that's a whatever moment. We don't honestly know how much time had passed and we knew he was going to get the info he needed to remove the device. It just seemed... fast?

Overall very much one of my favorites so far.

9/10 - will watch a million times

[inthevoidzone]

okay so I'm just now FINALLY watching the ONLY trek I've never seen a single episode of and don't know many characters from -- Enterprise. Here is an exhaustive list of things I knew about Enterprise before starting it: - Captain Archer is a guy - T'Pol is a Vulcan - It's post Star Fleet but pre Federation - 9/11 That's it. So now that I'm a couple episodes in, here are some off the cuff observations of the only Star Trek I don't already know: Love the lo-fi tech stuff! When some basic, classic Trek tech doesn't work right. The way the med bay feels like a abattoir. The ship doesn't even have shields. Three tries at firing a photon torpedo and all three failed. Brilliant. Giving Archer that beagle was the best call ever, because he's kind of a dick but then he picks up that tiny dog and I am just filled with patience for him. No one who loves a dog that tiny can actually be a POS. I turned to my wife at the start of episode 4 to shake my head and sigh that I kinda hated Trip Tucker, only for him to spend the entire episode trembling and sweating and shouting and tripping balls. Then spend the first half of the episode after THAT... trembling and sweating and crying and tripping balls, before coming down and immediately getting pregnant. So okay, Trip Tucker, you know what? You can stay if this is what they're write for you. T'Pol is a Vulcan! I haven't much to say about her but I do have stuff to say about the Vulcans. Mostly that I imagined this show would be about how the humans need to grow to catch up to the Vulcans, and instead it's more about how they need each other to challenge their ideas and grow. I like that. There's a certain irony inherent to a prequel imo and here a lot of the good stuff comes from knowing that these judgey space guys who think each other are weird and gross end up becoming BFFs who found the ultimate BFF club. My wife says that this doctor is a Tuvix of Neelix and the Doctor. She was correct and also I love her for talking VOY to me.

I really like Hoshi so far, and I've gotten some really interesting conversations/thoughts about the role of the comms officer on the bridge of a starship and how interesting the surrounding history is. Hoshi is one of the most crucial members of the ENT crew, but in 200 years, her job will be so automated by the Universal Translator that fuckin Worf will do most of it. Not entirely -- those duties are actually spread between Captains, counselors, ops, and security, but it's definitely different! It's interesting seeing Hoshi build the UT. Does she know it'll eventually replace linguistics? How would she feel about that? Or how would Uhura feel about it, for that matter?? That generic british white guy who is the security chief sure is a security chief, isn't he?? Got me thinking about the inherent conservatism of the security chief, how the security chief tends to be the least 'evolved' person on a starship capable of seeing the least nuance. Maybe that type of person is cool if they're tempered and not in charge? Maybe a tiny little dose of fascism is good because order can be good??? God I fear a Captain who came up through security tho! Also, they tend to be some of my faves lol... Odo, La'an, Tuvok... sigh. They're always there stubbornly advising we shoot it and then learning you don't always have to shoot it. I have definitely noticed these guys seem a lot more flawed than the VOY or TNG crew -- more than DS9 too, I guess. Like, less likeable? But I think it's on purpose. T'Pol and Archer and Trip are all kind of awful to each other. Hoshi is scared shitless. British White Guy seems like a real dick. I think it works for me because I honestly just like unlikeable characters lol, but I hope it's in service of GROWTH. It excites me to imagine them coming to see how they're wrong. It excites me to imagine these NASA ass motherfuckers becoming the Federation. I hope I get to see it, and the coming 9/11 doesn't completely derail these arcs and the show doesn't become 24.

[thelongestway]

Star Trek Lower Decks, s05e10, notes on the watch

I really can't believe this is the last episode (for now! hopefully!)

Season long flashback! Please tell me it's all going to be relevant!

YES IT WILL KLINGON FLEET!

OH GOD WHAT IS THAT CHIHUAHUA

yeah, no, Klingon friend out for revenge, I'm sorry, but tachyons are always bad news

wait a second, that transformation. are they becoming Solanae??? WAIT WAS THAT A DISCO BIRD OF PREY FALLING OUT OF THE WORMHOLE??

ah my friend's favorite warp wasp, it is the saddest thing that this is the last time we're seeing you T_T

Shaxs and T'Ana doing well together, good for them!

What is up with Rutherford's implant. Is that like a steady through-line I didn't see in this season? Is his old self coming back a little?

Aw, captain Freeman!

okay yeah not sure if Kahless but that is a huge ass warbird

ahhh sudden Klingon vengeance

also this is why you have a first officer, Ma'ah! so they can overrule you if you're an idiot :P

ah yes quantum entanglement for why it's not the Enterprise (also please please can we get Va'Kel Shon showing up???)

Meredith, Olly, new engineer dream team go! Also, Rutherford, you keep complaining like that, Livik will outdo you!

poor Freeman saying "as long as there aren't any complications" but knowing full well what starfleet missions are like

bugs can be salty and sweet!

ahhh alternate universe intrusion

or the Klingons have actually gotten decent at fake video?

no, I think this is those glitches coming through. if so, I like it. realities bleeding together should be confusing and terrifying

as an aside, I really like the second-to-second pacing in this one. they've slowed down, very slightly, and it has such an effect

Thank you for the reaction shots, Lower Decks!

one nacelle, how fucked are they now?

thank you Tendi XD

but also the Klingons are going to be a lot more fucked

Rutherford, you're gonna wind up missing the Cerritos' trusty old build by the end of this episode

Aww Rutherford >_<

Also yeah, Tendi and T'Lyn didn't work out their problems fully, and now it is biting them

Terran Cerritos! Also Shaxs has no luck XD

AHAHAHAHAAHAHAAHA ok, the reason her ship isn't changing because Klingon ships are basically heirlooms is hilarious

Ransom, every time I need motivation to work out, I will use this shot:

She did fake the message!

Meredith and Olly DREAM TEAM!

Interesting look at proto-Klingons!

AHAHAAHA It's Another Enterprise!

What exactly did it turn into between the two Enterprises? Ship buffs, help me out here

Ok, I'm gonna need a rundown on all those ship types

Ok, wow, Livik comment - and reconfigurability as an asset of the Cali-class, very cool!

Ma'ah just casually sitting on the bridge, lol

Interesting thing there with the dam. What *did* Mariner do?

Also, looking good there, Ma'ah and Malor!

STARBASE 80 THE NEW DS9 PLS MAKE THIS HAPPEN

also please please please can we get them in STO please

Hi, Anaximander, good to see you!

Damn, that goodbye. T_T

"But I'm an admiral!" "So what, your arms don't work?"

Welcome to the Cali-class, admiral Freeman! And to Starbase 80!

Oh, what a finale speech, Mariner. Y'know what - you really are my faves. Cerritos strong!

Migleemo finally discovering that strange new food?

Damn, Ransom, congrats! You started out as my least favorite XO, but... I'm glad to see you get your four pips. You earned every single one.

JACK. OH MY GOD. GOOD PEP TALK, CONTEST NOT SURE IF TERRIBLE IDEA OR GOOD IDEA

but yes, now we can get these two XOs to talk to Dal XD someday there will be fanfic about this mwahahaha

"Engage the core" is the only one outside of plain old "engage" that I will allow XD

Beautiful. 10/10, no notes, thank you Lower Decks team!!!

[quinn-of-aebradore]

Get to Know Me Better tag game

Over the past few weeks I've been tagged by a couple folks for this (thank you @chronurgy @valakiir @soedblackchaos and @luddlestons !) and I am finally actually sitting down to do it XD

Last Song: Leather for Hell by Bitter Ruin

Favorite Color: I finally admitted to myself a little while ago now that it is no longer purple, but green XD so many green-themed OCs, not enough green dice to go around. Purple is still a close second, though.

Last Book: not counting The Complete Language of Herbs or The Complete Language of Trees, since those are reference guides, so it was Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands! @rainbowcaleb recommended my the first book in the series a while back and once I finally sat down and started them, I devoured them both. They're such fun reads, I love the worldbuilding and the dynamic between the leads. It got some AU ideas rattling around in my head, though they'll probably never come to fruition. Also, Shadow and Poe are the best boys ever :3

Last Movie: I really am not sure. It might've been Boy Kills World, which I watched with my dad? That was a little bit ago now though, there might've been something more recently. Very excited for Star Trek: Section 31 to come out in a few weeks though! Michelle Yeoh my beloved. That's next on the list.

Last TV Show: Been watching DS9 with my dad recently! We were watching through Voyager for a while, but switched to do a full rewatch of Lower Decks when it ended, and that's led into a DS9 watch XD just finished the S2 opening three-parter last night.

Sweet/Spicy/Savory: I will take either sweet or savory, my spice tolerance is prettyyyyy bad. It's gotten better recently (the last year or two), I've been trying to eat more spicy things, but it's still pretty low level. Would definitely reach for something sweet or savory before I went for something spicy.

Relationship Status: single and very happy about it. I do not have the time or energy for Any Of That XD

Last Thing I Googled: "what time zone is denver in" because I got a Switch Lite yesterday and couldn't remember which time zone option to pick XD (it was the Chicago one, which I had a scroll just a little bit to find) (Denver is mountain time) (I am not)

Current Obsession: Critical Role, as always, though I've also been back on the floral dragons nonsense lately, which has been fun!

Looking Forward To: I'm going to CR's Chicago liveshow in April! And then C2E2! I don't really travel, but I've said for ages that if they ever went back to Chicago for a show, I would go, and now they are, so XD it feels a little unreal that it's only three months away now but also I cannot wait.

No Pressure Tags for: @spottedenchants @flashhwing @saintspringsteen @rainbowcaleb @glossolali @marymauk @wanderingbasilisk @wizardpostingworld :3

[multiverserift]

Why do so many people not like Star Trek Enterprise?

Different reasons.

The theme song broke the rules Star Trek traditionally had big orchestral arrangements as intro songs. Enterprise tried something different. The song “Where my heart will take me” is a pop rock song with actual lyrics. It also sounds like country music, which many fans associated with a rather conservative mindset. Many fans criticised the song for being campy, right wing, not Star Trek. I personally like the song, but I'm not from the US. They ruined it with a horribly worse version from season 3 on, though.

Enterprise right-wing mindset 9/11 happened two weeks before the first episode of the show aired. Especially Enterprise's 3rd season gets a lot of criticism for being too right-wing, it's basically an allegory for 9/11. This assessment seems a bit unfair. in contrast to the real US, the Enterprise crew went out of their way to clear the air and explain a misunderstanding. Not let their emotions and rage control their actions. In that regard, it's very Star Trek.

Character development The show focuses on Archer, Trip, P’Pol. Phlox and Malcolm Reed get their (fewer) moments too. But Hoshi Sato and Travis Mayweather are totally abandoned by the writers. And those two are the black man and the asian woman. Malcolm’s actor wanted to play the character gay, which was shut down by Rick Berman. So what we get from ENT (Enterprise) ist straight white characters, others get left behind. The Original Series (TOS) did the same thing. The show focusses on Kirk, Spock, McCoy. But time moved on since then. We had DS9, with a great diverse cast, a black, widowed father as the captain. Voyager with Janeway and a (sadly, fake) native American XO. After this, ENT felt out of date. The focus on the core characters gets also critiziced on Discovery.

Sexism Also out of date and forced felt the blatant “sex sells” attitude. Decon gel. Hoshi falling out of an air shaft, losing her shirt so she has to cover her breasts. Shower scenes. Star Trek in the past liked to code their sex stuff into alien metaphors. ENT was more like “look, sexy straight white people in the nude!” No nuance. Gets critiziced a lot up to this date.

Simply bad episodes Star Trek always had episodes that are really bad, since TOS. Spock's Brain is a good example for that. But ENT did worse: They even copied previous episodes. In season 1, we have an episode where a man fills his home with fake hologram people, for his daughter. Ironically the man is played by Rene Auberjonois, who played Odo in the Deep Space 9 (DS9) episode where a man fills his home with fake hologram people. Phlox in season 3 has to stay awake while the whole crew sleeps. For weeks. He starts hallucinating. In a precious Voyager episode, Seven of Nine had to stay awake while the whole crew sleeps. For weeks. She starts hallucinating. Even in the (liked and well received by many) season 3, there are episodes that are just bad, like Extinction. And they are so bad that you can't even watch them and have fun, like DS9’s Move Along Home. And the there are episodes where the solution of the ethical dilemma just feels off and un-Star Trek-y. Cogenitor. Dear Doctor. Yeah, some episodes of ENT simply suck. More than usual.

Akiraprise The NX-01, the titular ship of Enterprise, is just an upside down version of the Akira class from the TNG (The Next Generation) era. Felt like copy-paste. People were upset.

Enterprise is still good Finally, I want to tell you that , besides the bad stuff, I like ENT. I love the design of the NX-01. They had to ruin it with the refit, though. Although this doesn't happen in the show. Just in extended canon. There are great characters here, great stories, great retro design. The interior design, the retro bridge, the retro warp core were actually of the most expensive assets created at the time. For all of TV. So I recommend to watch Enterprise. It's mostly nice. It has Shran. The final episode never happened.

[annakie]

From "Broken Bow" to "Calypso"

Since 2010, I rewatch all of Star Trek every five years during that calendar year.

Obviously since 2017 this has become an increasingly daunting task.

Usually I'd start with TNG + those movies then do DS9 --> Voyager --> Enterprise and end with ToS and the movies. Since 2015 I did the TNG/DS9/Voyager by stardate instead of full series. (Which means mixing episodes the last 2 seasons of TNG and first 2 of DS9 together, and the same for the last 5 DS9 + first 5 Voyager)

This time, I decided to do the entire universe by stardate.

Which means yesterday I started with Enterprise, Broken Bow.

Honestly I think starting with Enterprise is going to mean the first four dozen episodes are going to make it a bit rough of a beginning. But, I've been wanting to do the complete Stardate rewatch for a long time.

And also I forgot Broken Bow is double-sized premiere, like most of the series start out with a double sized episode, so I only made it through half last night and half today.

According to this list, which includes the movies and Short Treks, there are 897 episodes of Star Trek. But was last updated a year or so ago so it doesn't include the latest/final seasons of Prodigy (20 episodes), Discovery (10 episodes) or Lower Decks (10 episodes), nor the upcoming Section 31 movie or Strange New Worlds (10 episodes), so that's more like 948 episodes to get through.

*edit* Oh, it also put all 3 Kelvin movies on one line. So we're looking at an actual 950 "episodes".

(Not going to think about Starfleet Academy or Tawny's resort planet project, though those could happen before I make it there, too, since both will happen relatively late in the stardate order, but would be added in.)

Which means I'd have to watch an average of about 3 a day to get through all in a year.

For TAS, Short Treks, Prodigy and Lower Decks, that's easy.

But there's... what like 15 movies (including the Kelvin movies!) to get through in there, too, and this list counts double episodes like Encounter at Farpoint and Broken Bow as one episode.

Also, I paused keeping up with Robert Duncan McNeil & Garett Wang's Delta Flyers podcast when they started doing DS9 with Terry and Armin because I realized since it'd been 4 years or so since I'd watched any DS9 episodes that I wanted to rewatch as I listened/watched the podcast. When I get to the DS9 part of the rewatch it's going to be watching an episode or two then catching up on the podcast along with it, and Delta Flyers episodes (unlocked on the patreon) are often close to two hours long.

So yeah, I may turn this into a 2 year project now instead of 1. I may also want to re-listen to some of the Delta Flyers episodes when I watch Voyager, which, the first 5 seasons will also be mixed in with DS9 anyway.

There's other shows I want to watch besides about 950 episodes of Star Trek, too. So I'm going to commit to one episode a day of hour-long Trek and two of animated Trek and who knows how long the DS9/Voyager bit might take. I'll more than likely be ahead of that timeline most of the time, but then the Great DS9 Slowdown will happen so... I might even it out by then.

I'll give myself 2 years to get it done, that's more than doable.

Some of the watching will probably be more background noise while I'm working or doing other things. I've seen every episode of 1960's - 2000's (Enterprise) era trek at least 4 times each, many of them many more times, some TNG episodes I've probably watched closer to 20 times, (as a teen, any Wesley Crusher episodes got heavy VCR rotation time, OK?) so unless it's one I'm really looking forward to, they probably won't always get my full attention.

---

Also I have a ton of Star Trek novels which I've never read. I also own original copies of the first 30 or 40 TNG novels from the 80/90's when I would buy them with my allowance, so I may re-read some of those for the first time in 35ish years, and I think it'll be time for readthrough #3 of Kristen Beyer's Voyager novels pretty soon, too to get my J/C fix in.

First up, I want to read all of the post-Enterprise "Trip lives!" novels in the next year or two. I've read The Good That Men Do, which brings Trip back, and loved it, so I'm planning on making some reading time in the next few months as well.

---

So hey, I'll probably make some commentary about it all here on tumblr along the way.

Add "annakie's star trek stuff" to the blacklist if you don't want to ever see anything about this ever again.

[fast-moon]

DS9 Season 5 Thoughts

So, last season ended on... pretty much the same note season 3 ended on, which was that the Changelings had infiltrated positions of power across the galaxy. Let's see if this season they actually do anything about that.

1. Apocalypse Rising: Sisko, O'Brien, and Odo get to cosplay Klingons as they infiltrate the Empire in order to expose Gowron as a Changeling. But it turns out they had the right place, wrong guy.

2. The Ship: Sisko finds a downed Jem'Hadar ship and says "finders keepers", but a Vorta shows up and asks for it back. It takes half the crews of both sides dying before they realize that the Vorta just wanted to retrieve a sick Changeling from the ship, making the entire stand-off pointless.

3. Looking for par'Mach in All the Wrong Places: WTF is this title and WTF did I just watch? Worf wants to make the moves on Quark's Klingon ex-wife, so Dax sexually assaults him to take his mind off it. Meanwhile, O'Brien has to keep removing himself from situations where he could cheat on Keiko with Kira because he totally would if he could.

4. Nor the Battle to the Strong: Good lord, this series was even prescient about putting yourself in dangerous situations for social media clout and then quickly getting in way over your head. At least Jake was able to admit he was a dumbass.

5. The Assignment: Keiko trolls the shit out of O'Brien by pretending to be possessed by a wraith in order to finally get some goddamn respect. That's my interpretation of this episode and I'm sticking with it.

6. Trials and Tribble-ations: lol. To be fair, I did see this specific episode back in the 90's because a friend of mine taped it and insisted I see it, but at least now I have context for who all the DS9 characters are, and it made it even funnier.

7. Let He Who is Without Sin: Dax drags Worf to Pornworld against his will, then calls him "controlling" when she does her own thing without any regard for his feelings. Then she acts all surprised when he sides with the people protesting irresponsible self-indulgence.

8. Things Past: Odo, Sisko, Dax, and Garak get Quantum Leaped into some Bajoran slaves in the past, but it turns out Odo was just having an anxiety attack over a mistake he'd made and dragged everyone else into it.

9. The Ascent: Odo and Quark get jealous of Kira and Dukat having gotten two "mortal enemies go road-tripping" episodes, decide to go on one themselves. Meanwhile, Jake and Nog become roommates, but now ironically it's Jake who's the undisciplined one while Nog is more responsible.

10. Rapture: Everyone gets new uniforms, causing Sisko to see obelisks, make maps out of his mashed potatoes, and go on crazy rants that are enough to deny Bajor entry into the Federation, eventually forcing Bashir to lobotomize him.

11. The Darkness and the Light: Someone who wasn't even part of the Cardassian military manages to covertly murder most of Kira's former resistance members, putting the competence of the actual Cardassian military to shame.

12. The Begotten: Odo's a dad... again, and has to lose the child... again. But at least he got his shapeshifting back from it.

13. For the Uniform: The Maquis start using chemical warfare against Cardassian settlements, so Sisko uses chemical warfare right back at them. And everyone's just... okay with this?

14. In Purgatory's Shadow: The episode opens teasing a Garak/Bashir road-trip, only to bait-and-switch it to a Garak/Worf road trip, only to Uno-reverse-card it back to Garak/Bashir. Also, if Bashir's been replaced by a Changeling since before the uniform switch in episode 10, then which one got frisky on Risa?

15. By Inferno's Light: Dukat gets tired of being the butt-monkey for the past couple seasons and joins the Dominion. Meanwhile, Worf spends the entire episode getting beaten up, as Worf does.

16. Doctor Bashir, I Presume?: One episode after getting the real Bashir back, the Doctor from Voyager shows up to offer to make a new fake Bashir, but then Bashir's parents show up to reveal the real Bashir has been a fake Bashir all along, so they're already all good.

17. A Simple Investigation: Odo gets his cherry popped by a woman who turns out to be a bit of a Changeling herself: in that she's actually a completely different person living under an assumed identity, and also already married.

18. Business as Usual: Quark gets roped in with some weapons dealers and sabotages the deal after learning the weapons would be used for genocide, deciding that financial bankruptcy was better than moral bankruptcy.

19. Ties of Blood and Water: Kira decides to copy Garak from a couple episodes ago and has her Cardassian father figure show up just so he can die in front of her of medical complications.

20. Ferengi Love Songs: Quark goes back to his mother's house to help other Ferengi come out of the closet.

21. Soldiers of the Empire: Worf takes an assignment on a ship with the worst Klingons in the galaxy, and Dax invites herself along because she can't imagine Worf being able to function without her telling him what to do all the time.

22. Children of Time: The crew find a planet inhabited by their descendants, who inform them they they're going to get sent back in time and then have nothing better to do but breed like rabbits. But Future Odo realizes they've already hit their time-travel quota for the season and stops it from happening.

23. Blaze of Glory: Sisko and Eddington go road-tripping to stop some missiles that don't exist, because it was all a ruse to allow Eddington to go down fighting for... basically no reason.

24. Empok Nor: O'Brien and Garak take some gold-shirts with them to go exploring a seemingly abandoned Cardassian station, with predictable results for the gold-shirts. Garak also realizes there hasn't been an outbreak of crazypox for a few seasons and wants to have his go at it.

25. In the Cards: Jake really, really wants a Pokemon card.

26. Call to Arms: The Federation is forced to abandon the station after the Dominion and Cardassians attack, but Sisko swears he'll be back because they're not about to change the title of the series to "Terok Nor".

So, now that we've left on a cliffhanger of the station being abandoned to the Dominion, I'm curious how long into the next season that status is going to remain. Even Picard getting kidnapped by the Borg only lasted until the first episode of the next season. Plus things are going to get pretty cramped if they have too many episodes with only the Defiant set to work with.

Bashir is finally growing on me now that he's abandoned his bravado and womanizing and focusing on being a doctor. He was single-handedly ruining the series for me in the first season due to being such an insufferable creep. But it's also been revealed that he's genetically enhanced, so he's still kind of annoyingly The Special in some way, but at least he doesn't rub it in people's faces.

Dax is also starting to finally develop a personality of her own, which is conceptually a plus, it's just that her newly-developed personality is really annoying. She's basically just a troll and a gossip and doesn't seem to care about how she makes other people feel. She forced herself on Worf, then he entered into a relationship with her out of what seemed like obligation, at which point she's just been incredibly controlling and manipulative of him. Which, maybe that's a Klingon thing and they go for that, but from a human perspective, it's uncomfortable.

Also, I recently learned that Nog's actor was nearly 30 while playing him here. All this time I thought he was, like, 12, but no, he is just the ultimate short king.

Also impressed at Kira's actress being able to fit back into that jumpsuit so soon after having a baby. Hopefully she'll get more episodes next season, since her pregnancy this season limited what the story could do with her.

So with that, onto the next season of Terok Nor Deep Space Nine.

[olderthannetfic]

https://www.tumblr.com/olderthannetfic/740136068340482048/the-funniest-dni-i-ever-encountered-in-all-my-12?source=share

As a House Martell stan, it's been interesting to watch the evolution of that particular corner of the ASOIAF fandom over the years. For a while, because they were less present on the show (and their actual focus on the show was pretty bungled), they were mostly the favorites of superfans who'd read the books and therefore were deeply devoted to the whole ASOIAF universe, and given how much that means memorizing various types of Targaryen incest over the years, were almost never antis. A lot of people were also drawn to that they were the ~sexy, liberated house, as well as there being a fair number of POC who identified with some of the few non-white people in those books who were actually fully-realized characters (in the books, not so much in the show). IME it was usually people who were also shipping a lot of the other popular "problematic" ships in the fandom like Jaime/Cersei and Sansa/Petyr Baelish.

Then, at some point - particularly after the show ended and the fandom shrunk a lot - it got infected with a bunch of people writing long essays about how Daenerys and the entire Targaryen family were inherently "white supremacist" (previously, it had been more common for POC and other fans who focused on anti-racism to stan Daenerys, and point out that what the final season did with her was some white bullshit that tried to conflate killing oppressors like slavers with killing poor downtrodden people) and there ended up being a fandom fight between those people who saw the Targaryens as the more racist house or the Starks, but they all stanned Martells but in a very shallow sort of way just because they were the POC house. It's also worth nothing that Dorne has equal primogeniture - women can inherit, and in the books it's Doran's eldest daughter, Arianne, who is his heir, even though he has two younger sons - and it also is more accepting of LGBTQ+ people and bastards and general "sex outside of marriage" than most of the rest of Westeros, so it attracts a lot of people who are into them for that reason. I mean, I like them for that reason among others, but of course that's going to be a magnet to people who want to prove that they're extra special progressive for stanning them over like, the Lannisters.

Also, probably worth noting, the people in the second group were generally younger. Book-centric fans generally tend to be older IME in ASOIAF fandom. I feel like whenever a fandom is younger, there's more likely to be more anti behavior.

Anyway it was very weird to get back into ASOIAF when I read Fire and Blood and then when House of the Dragon started airing, and feeling like "my corner" of the fandom had become completely unrecognizable in my absence.

Also, I suspect it's probably drawing in some people who just really like Pedro Pascal. (It was better when it was drawing in the Alexander Siddig stans from DS9 fandom, snerk. Although even that fandom has had an obnoxious influx of younger purity-policing virtue-signalling types discovering it these days, writing stupid discourse about how Garak/Garashir is problematic and people should instead ship characters who don't like each other that much and don't interact much one-on-one because the combinations of them are more progressive or something.... sigh! Anyway, probably not helped by the fact that Game of Thrones completely wasted him, even though his character was one of the best ones in the books and a big one that drew me into loving House Martell. He would've been great as book!Doran, but alas....)

I'm also going to say that as others have pointed out, I'll always be mystified by the fact that ASOIAF even HAS antis. If you're that opposed to incest, age-disparate relationships, violence, etc. anything controversial, how can you stan the actual canon of that show? Or the books, which arguably have even more rape and incest and ephebephilia going on. It just seems like you'd have to have a very adversarial relationship with canon to a point that I just don't understand why you don't pick another fandom. Of course, it's probably really just that antis are hypocrites.

--

Hypocrites, yes. But also drawn to material that they're not comfortable being drawn to. The younger they are, the more the cognitive dissonance makes them act out.

I don't condone it, but I do understand it.

[eponymous-rose]

So I've been rewatching Star Trek: TNG as comfort TV during/post-move and just got to Yesterday's Enterprise, which I remember liking well enough, but man, it's really unusual in the context of the rest of these early episodes. For one thing, the violence shown is a lot more stark than we've seen in the show thus far - Riker with his throat cut, Captain Garrett with the metal shrapnel in her head, lingering close-ups on dead faces. It's dark and moody and the "happy ending" resolution (as far as we know at this point, anyway) is saving the few survivors of a brutal battle, patching them up, and then shipping them straight back into that battle to be killed.

Given the show's not-so-great track record with its female characters, it's weirdly refreshing that we get a re-do for Tasha Yar. And yeah, she falls in love with a dude and goes off with him on his ship, but she was ready to say goodbye to him and that would've been that - what finally prompts her to step willingly into the meat-grinder is the realization that she had an "empty death" (Guinan had some really raw lines in this one) in the other timeline, and that now her death can have some meaning. It's nicely done, if a bit of a self-flagellating "mea culpa" on the writers' parts.

The alternate timeline isn't the gleeful, campy evil of the Mirrorverse, it's just an exhausted grind through the final days of a losing war. Lots of little touches show how desperate things have become - Wesley's been fast-tracked to a full ensign, Picard is a tactician first and foremost (he takes officers' opinions under advisement, yes, but he's also keeping from them the inevitable, imminent surrender), the bridge is laid out so the captain is front and center with everyone else in the background. As a contrast with the actual Enterprise's chill 90s living room lounge vibe, it's pretty striking. It's like a sneak preview into the bleak and war-heavy sci-fi that would start saturating pop culture a decade or so later, and then it's a firm rejection of that premise - "This isn't a ship of war. It's a ship of peace."

I have a long, long history with TNG - DS9 is my favorite Trek on balance, but TNG is encoded in my DNA. From around ages 3 and 5, my brother and I were watching and rewatching TNG constantly. (My parents would laugh over the fact that my brother didn't know how to read yet but had memorized the episode titles of the first couple seasons.) We had pajamas. We scoured every garage sale and had a giant metal can full of action figures and phasers and tricorders and ships and even, shockingly, that transporter toy that made things disappear using mirrors.

The tactile experience of those toys is burned in my brain - the loose nacelles on the Enterprise model, the click of the left phaser button, the little hole at the bottom of the Borg cube that we once stuck a pencil in and had the tip of the graphite snap off and rattle around forevermore. My brother and I played incessantly with our action figures, to the point where most of them had the paint at least partially rubbed off - we created hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of new episodes over the years. The first time I ever used a touchscreen was at some sort of Star Trek exhibition in Canada in the early 90s that we stumbled across on our way to visit my grandparents.

I'm always fascinated by how kids interact with fictional media - my brother and I were so young, but we obviously knew Star Trek wasn't real. Except... I just always assumed that important people watched it, realized "well, that seems nice", and were actively working to make that future happen. I was (perhaps a little embarrassingly) older when I realized that no, we weren't gonna be out there on science missions to the stars during my lifetime. At least, not in an Enterprise kind of way.

At any given time, there's just this Star Trek filter over how I experience the world - when I got to go to college thanks to scholarships, I had that weighty feeling of responsibility and awe that came with daydreaming about Starfleet Academy. I saw my career shift from the gold of engineering to the blue of science to the red of command. And the older I get, the more I appreciate a show that, for all its flaws, managed to make a utopia interesting and complex.

Because TNG was such a phenomenon when I was a little kid in the early 90s, a lot of my family relationships also have TNG tied up in them. I remember going to my grandparents' apartment and my uncle showing us a fan magazine about the show. I remember another uncle who didn't really "get it" but gifted me and my brother astronaut ice cream because he knew we liked that space stuff. I remember watching most episodes curled up on the couch or my parents' bed with my brother and my mom and dad. When Mom got sick and we talked about death, I remember the way she wistfully brought up the Nexus from Generations or how she hoped she could see the next season of Picard (she didn't, sadly, but she really enjoyed that first season). Hell, one of the first real bonding moments I had with my otherwise hyper-professional and businesslike PhD advisor was when she made a TNG joke, I laughed at it, and she said, "I just love that show, everyone's so nice to each other."

It's just been a lot of fun coming back to this show, is all. I think I periodically forget how much it's affected me and the extent to which it was a fundamental, formative influence. While a lot of it either hasn't aged well or fails to hold up to modern media analysis, so much of it is still lovely, and occasionally there are these moments of shockingly good storytelling.

Star Trek good.

[thegeminisage]

star trek update time. i'm WAY behind. friday we watched voy's "tattoo," saturday i finally womaned up and agreed to watch ds9's "the visitor" and then we also bravely soldiered on to "hippocratic oath," and last night we did ds9's "indiscretion" and "rejoined."

tattoo (voy):

it's a real shame about (waves vaguely at racefaking "expert" on voy's writing staff) because, due to my own lack of education, i never know which stuff is based in fact and which is just wholesale bullshit. i remember one time i googled something about chakotay's culture because it seemed so obviously fake, and it turned out to be Kind Of True But Not Like That. it sucks because not ONLY was it a huge missed opportunity for Representation And Education (tm) but chakotay is a really interesting guy and i'd like to know more about him and see him get to do more stuff without him getting buried in the like. mysticism and racism of it all. it's no good for him and it's no good to sit through either

bc like. at this episode's core. if you could somehow remove the racist panflute and the whole thing where we portray people from THE SPACE TRAVELING FUTUREEE as primitive savages, you could have had a good story. chakotay struggles with not feeling at home where he lives/in his own culture, goes to space about it, then has an emotional crisis when his dad dies while the two of them are on bad terms. i know that's a good story and i know star trek can make that a good story because do you know who else has that story? SPOCK.

LIKE. IT COULD HAVE BEEN SO EASY. WHAT WERE YOU DOING!

anyway, chakotay naked. i know he was naked for the wrong reasons but that man had his whole ass out. bold moves heretofore only taken by sir patrick stewart himself. GOOD FOR HIM!

oh yeah the b plot of this episode sucked. we have to give the doctor a cold because of his lack of compassion? since When has he ever complained about sick or whiny people? been gruff with them, sure, tough-love kind of guy definitely, but no one would program a doctor who hated serving patients?? i did like that kes gave him an extra hour to be evil though. i love her so much

the visitor (ds9):

i don't want to talk about it.

or, no, i actually already talked about it, and i don't have anything to add, except that 1. christopher nolan can still suck it 2. every episode of ds9's 4th season so far has made me feel like i need to give it a "must see" on the spreadsheet. i almost can't believe i'm watching star trek. i have to start grading the damn things on a curve

hippocratic oath:

THIS IS WHAT I MEAN. stuck with the jem'hadar and julian is like "i can fix them" and o'brien is like "i have been racist my whole life and i'm not about to stop now and also you cannot fix them so i am going to condemn them to a horrible death in order to save your life" because he did at the beginning of the episode say out loud with his mouth that he wished his wife was more like julian bashir and then promptly refused to examine that thought even a little bit

like this had EVERYTHING. gay people. ethical dilemmas. twink with a spine of steel. worf forgetting he's no longer in tng. my best friend odo disguising as an inanimate object. and i'm supposed to just give it a WATCH?

like, i was right there with julian. fix them fix them fix them it's so easy they CAN be weaned off of it this could change everything i was so livid with o'brien for condemning those guys to a painful and undignified ending and for repeatedly ruining julian's attempts to help with all his attempts to escape and then he was like. yeah. i did all that to save YOUR LIFE because i saw that YOU were in danger.

and it obviously doesn't excuse anything and you get the feeling julian COULD have helped them with enough time and the right tools and and and...but he didn't have all that, and obrien KNEW he didn't have all that, and he wasn't willing to risk his friend's life on a gamble when it came to helping enemy soldiers

like, it's his fucking cardassian ptsd. note how he didn't speak when they were captured but bashir did because the gun was on his friend. note how he had to explain why the commander couldn't escape with them. IT MKAES SO MUCH SENSE FOR HIS CHARACTER. who hasn't done horrible things for the people they love? if his wife doesn't get back soon he's going to be asking for julian's hand in marriage by season 5

indiscretion (ds9):

KIRA PULLING THE THORN OUT OF DUKAT'S ASS. sorry i'm good i'm normal

something about dukat...at first he was very boring and flat, and then he was funny but still pretty 2-dimensional, and then he was funny AND gay with sisko but still 2-dimensional, and now he's got all kinds of depth. i completely wrote him off as generic cardassian villain at first but i am genuinely thrilled to see him every time he shows up

like, the bajoran lover and the daughter is such an amazing plot twist, but also, sorry to say this, he and kira have q and picard energy. as in, q wants picard to fuck him so so so bad, and picard has zero interest in doing this, and somehow that interest gets even lower the more q wants it, and the lower his interest gets, the more rabid q is for him, and it's probably the only thing i really enjoyed about either character, a few of sir patrick stewart's better speeches aside. dukat is exactly like that with kira. he is GAGGING for her strap and she finds him vile and rephrensible and the closest they got to fucking was when she pulled the spine out of his ass cheek and laughed at him and he probably is going to put that in the spank bank for the rest of his life. and she will still never fuck him

really fun when she told him to shut up and he shut up <3

i just love episodes that deal with the fallout of the war...it's always such incredible character work. i was worried that with the dominion threat these kinds of episodes would go away and i'm glad that's not the case

also, hi, sisko fumbling things with his gf for the b-plot. dax and julian giving him romantic advice and then mocking him when he leaves. jake being the only one who can talk sense into him. incredible. 10/10

ALSO, not only did capt yates make him work at that apology she did NOT kiss his ass goodbye. and he deserved it.

even quark was funny in this episode, despite the misogyny. he was nice to jake in "the visitor" so i think i've forgiven him because i've made at least two quodo jokes since then. my first love will always be kiraodo (kodo?) though

rejoined (ds9):

LESBIANS IN STAR TREK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

as previously stated about 600 times on this blog i DID NOT KNOW there would be a gay kiss happening. i thought btvs held the honors for the first gay kiss and that this was going to be like an allegory or a metaphor like in tng. and i did like the tng ep for what it was! but holy shit this blows that out of the water.

i think it's so important that this would have been absolutely NO different whatsoever if either half of the couple had been a man. for the time period especially it's very much like. Queers Are Just Like Us which i think is an important step 1 to reel in potential bigots who are still on the fence. i cannot believe my mother is going to watch this episode someday

also, hi, the allies in this episode...? julian sitting through that WHOLE dinner without the first word of complaint. sisko telling dax it's a bad idea but he'll back her tf up. kira bewildered that any of it is any problem at all. sisko's moment was especially nice bc at first you think he's being a dick which is out of character for him and then you realize 1. he's scared for her 2. he loves her 3. he would probably fight the homophobic (recursionphobic...?) trills with his bare hands if he had a good excuse

it's also nice that zero people in this episode were weird about the idea of two women together. it was SO NORMAL. god i can't believe andor let those two women touch hands for a single shot and called it progressive between that and spn my standards are through the FLOOR!!

TONIGHT: ds9's "starship down" and "little green men," and then we're finally back to voyager.