#i can talk about star trek

[secret-side-hetalia-blog]

I love having friends that will listen to me ramble about anything else, any other stupid interest.

But just not hetalia, thats the line.

[daftmooncretin]

spock’s room decor is actually fucking bonkers. The weapons??? the big red velvet curtain??? like ok phantom of the opera go crazy.

for reference jim’s room has some photos and a plant so we can surmise this is uniquely a spock being a dramatic weirdo thing

[muirmarie]

jim being canonically the shortest one of the triumvirate is genuinely so important to me lmao, like yesssssss, let that beefy babe be shorter than both his boyfriends!!!!

[andyoullhearitagain]

Literally they could have stopped making Deep Space Nine and made seven seasons of this show and I would have been happy.

[isagrimorie]

Star Trek Voyager 4x09 - Year of Hell, part 1

Janeway: We're going through their space whether they like it or not.

[dreamerdrop]

Julian does kind of strike me as someone who just sort of. Endures suffering and then pushes it way, way down and pretends it doesn’t hurt.

Bad things happen and he just sits quietly and then pushes it down and pretends he’s okay so he can get on with whatever he needs to get on with.

Doesn’t know how to process trauma or misery inside himself, but he can help other people with theirs, so he just. Keeps going. Keeps working. Keeps trying.

It makes sense, I mean, the pivotal traumatic incident in his life was one he has never been allowed to even allude to out of fear. His parents don’t seem very emotionally available for him either, so he’s definitely never talked out those issues with them. So he’s probably just grown up pushing any off feelings back down and focusing on something else.

And even when his big ol secret is finally out, he still doesn’t really talk about it or acknlowedge it unless someone basically drags him kicking and screaming into having to focus on it. He never really talks about or addresses like. Anything.

Like his attempts at curing the blight and how fucked up he was over that. Or the time he thought he could save the Jem’Hadar from their ketracel white addiction. (And boy howdy does that episode take on new layers of pain when you think about him being so sympathetic to entities that were genetically engineered to suffer and his own backstory.) Surviving a psychic attack that basically involved his own subconscious mind trying to talk him into embracing death. A month in a prison camp where he probably definitely thought he was going to just die there, and then realizing no one knew he was gone, and his friends are not anywhere near disturbed enough by any of what just happened.

(To be clear, I think it’s fine that they didn’t realise it was a changeling. I think the reaction they have when they find out retroactively, however, is like. Guys. A minute ago you thought Julian Bashir, your close friend of several years, beloved station doctor, had betrayed the federation and had to be killed. Guys. Forget Julian for a second. How was this not traumatic for the rest of you?)

Then there’s all of that Sloan fuckery which is basically just three episodes of one man trying to gaslight Julian into a dissociative break for reasons.

And he just. Bounces back. Next episode, time to move on, insists he’s totally fine. Except he’s not. He gets gradually more and more tired and miserable and closed off but he just. Never fucking talks about it to anyone. Never deals with how messed up he’s slowly becoming. Never recovers. Never heals. Never gets closure for any of it.

He has so many wonderful moments where he comforts someone else when they break, when they’re scared, when they let all the bad stuff finally make them collapse.

But Julian just never really collapses like that, and it’s like he actively ensures he will never have the chance to collapse because he doesn't want to (and probably doesn’t know how to) deal with any of his issues.

Can you imagine what it would look like when he finally breaks.

[vaguely-concerned]

I think finding yourself getting life advice from quark in his PJs in the middle of the night (and desperately needing it) is how you officially know you've hit rock bottom

+ just us girls together at the sleepover right. anyway get your life together bitch you're scaring the profit margins

[trektown]

I very much enjoy the reputation I’ve made for myself at art school. I walk into every class with my big Star Trek bag and my Star Trek phone case and I talk about Star Trek. People know me as ‘the Star Trek person’. When my roommates mention that they live with me, other people have said they remembered who I was because I talked about Star Trek a lot. This is my legacy

[youngpettyqueen]

was talking with someone irl about Star Trek the other day and this person really hates Discovery for many stupid reasons (misogyny) and he was whining about like. casual swearing. in Star Trek. like he was mad they said fuck. and he looks at me and he's like "it completely sucks you out of the experience right??" and I just looked at him and went "no it makes me want a modern DS9 show of some kind cause I think Kira Nerys deserves to say fuck" which wasn't the answer he wanted I dont think

[mostly-natm]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DATA!

[1960z]

how people go about interpreting dr bashir I presume? really frustrates me sometimes ngl especially the “jules bashir died” scene.

like that whole scene is about julian revealing the depth of how deeply his augmentations fractured his sense of identity and who he is - which feeds into the themes of the whole episode surrounding how disability and then by extension disabled people are often viewed as a problem to be solved and because of that are often denied the ability to have fulfilling lives because the able bodied people around them don’t believe that they can.

but… idk, when the fandom talks about it there’s always seems to be a push to read a trans allegory into it that I don’t think is really there? I keep mulling over this post in my mind and when I initially reblogged it I didn’t really want to talk about this because the post is about how stories about racism can be hijacked by white people to be made about their own transness and it felt like as a white person, using that post to complain about ableism would be missing the point. but it really helped me articulate in my mind why the trans reading of this episode feels off to me because the same general principle seems to apply and that is taking a story trying to discuss a specific type of marginalisation and putting a trans reading above it because you can relate more to it personally.

“jules bashir died in that hospital because you couldn't live with the shame of having a son who didn't measure up!” this scene is the culmination of julian expressing his pain about what was done to him as a disabled child by his parents due to how they viewed his disability. but often when I see it being discussed, people aren’t really interested in talking about that. instead supplanting it with a trans reading instead which, in my opinion is an allegory that doesn’t even really work when you think about what’s going on in the broader context of the scene.

julian didn’t stop going by jules because he came to the conclusion on his own that the identity didn’t suit him similar to the way a trans person questions or rejects the gender they were assigned at birth, he stopped going by jules because he felt like the identity attached to that name was taken from him because of what his parents did. it’s not julian affirming who he wants to be it’s grieving over who he can’t be and to me at least, it’s honestly kind of harrowing.

and as an aside: when people read transness into a story about parents who change their child’s body and mind at a very young age without consent, which is literally a narrative projected onto trans people by transphobes to justify the curtailing of trans rights, that also doesn’t sit well with me. I think people latch onto this reading because of the idea of “killing a name” but again in the context of the whole episode the trans reading really doesn’t feel appropriate.

I think it’s okay for people to have trans headcanons about julian of course or literally any character they want to really, but I think saying that specific episode codes him as trans isn’t all that great honestly.

[satans-trek]

It's so funny how much of a Kira fan Garak is.

[aspiringnexu]

Star Trek but there's an alien species that's only just met humans and they meet someone who's genderfluid and then someone who's transgender and are absolutely convinced that all humans are capable of shifting sexes at will.

[azazelsazaleas]

Another thing I absolutely loved about Ad Astra Per Aspera is that the victory didn't feel cheap. Una and Neera didn't win because of an impassioned speech about discrimination resulting in the court striking down an unjust law, or declaring Riley's service to be sufficiently exemplary to make an exception; they won because they found a justification within the law itself for the court to make a legal decision that was also the right thing to do morally. It gives us a victory that feels earned; not only because the victory is found within an application of an existing law, but because that law is

reflective of both Starfleet's ideals and the practical realities it faces, and

completely plausible because of it (i.e. not simply a plot device that the writers pulled out of their asses).

I also really liked how the episode utilized a certain self-awareness about the franchise, particularly the tendency of Starfleet Captains to defy orders and even ignore the Prime Directive in certain situations. It's become something of a meme within Trek, and it was great to see the show touch on it in a way that not only acknowledges it, but provides a satisfying way for justifying why so many captains are able to bend or break the rules and get away with it - because ultimately, the captain has to have the discretion to actually do the right thing.

[hollis-art]

as the local star trek nerd in my school's theater group, someone was asking me where exactly they should start in order to get into the whole thing, and YAYYY!!! not only will i have another star trek person to talk to BUT I GOT TO RAMBLE ABOUT IT IN CLASS!!!!! AND THEY WERE ACTUALLY LISTENING AND NODDING ALONG!! YAYYYY

[steakout-05]

me when i've been put into a social situation i really didn't want to participate in and i have to pretend that i'm actively enjoying it until i can go home