#janeway: (is seven leaving?????)

[moonhuit]

captain janeway & seven of nine ft. trust & being protective of the other // the voyager conspiracy + relativity + collective + one + the killing game

[lesbiangabriellle]

"Janeway is given a blessing in the form of a half-human, half-Borg, very beautiful girl, who we call Seven of Nine. So, I am taught vulnerability. I am taught my limitations. I am taught how small I am, in the face of this kind of possible love. Seven of Nine is what brought Janeway to life, as a deeply human woman... and I am deeply grateful for that" - KATE MULGREW

[lesbiancalkestis]

Scenes that make me want to fight the writers of Picard with my bare hands: Janeway saying “you belong here” to Seven after she admits she’s not sure where she fits in anymore between Borg and Humans in Hope and Fear

[lonely-night]

You're saying I should go? I don't want you to go... but it's not my right to tell you what to do.

[voysubplots]

When Harry taunts Tom over his narrow taste in historical media, he decides to host a Barbenheimer movie night to show that he has range in both genre and era. He tries, and fails, to convince Harry to dress up as the Alan to his Ken.

In a bid to look more mature, Harry goes in an (ill-tailored) 1930s-style suit (which makes him look more childish than the Alan costume).

Neelix makes Los Alamos cocktails with grapefruit juice, lab alcohol from Sick Bay, and “just a couple special ingredients.” It is undrinkable. He dresses as “Bartender Barbie,” despite that being one of the few jobs which Barbie has never officially done.

B’Elanna dresses as Weird Barbie and spends the evening fielding odd stares and comments from crew members who “thought she’d go for more of an Oppenheimer look” and “have just never seen her so… colorful before.”

When Janeway asks Tuvok why he’s in uniform instead of a costume, he says he’s dressed for Oppenheimer, as he “was a member of a Starfleet team for the development of a new type of bomb” and that “the knowledge of [his] contribution to that work plagues [him] to this day.” There’s no record of any such work in Tuvok’s personnel file, and Janeway swears she heard a hit of irony in his voice, but she decides not to press the issue, just in case.

Janeway herself is dressed as Gloria from Barbie, with all the jackets from the travel sequence layered.

Chakotay first arrives in a suit not unlike Harry’s, although much more properly sized. This surprises most of the crew until he reveals his costume of Gloria’s unnamed husband in the break between films.

The Doctor takes advantage of the easy wardrobe changes made possible by his holographic nature, switching costumes every few minutes, distracting and frustrating the other moviegoers.

Seven decries the event as frivolous, but attends anyways, with a pink bandana worn as a wristband, at Janeway’s direction. She watches most of Oppenheimer intently, but must step out as the depiction of guilt over the creation of a weapon of mass destruction becomes unbearable.

She rejoins the group for Barbie, now wearing her bandana around her head, clearly more ready to give the idea of movie night a fair chance. Again, she’s completely immersed in the film and even tears up at the emotional scenes in which Barbie cries for the first time. Afterwards, when asked her opinion, Seven refuses to discuss either movie.

[janewaysevenalways]

I’m not leaving without you 😭Dark Frontier Seven of Nine Captain Kathryn Janeway.

#Dark Frontier #Captain Kathryn Janeway.

#Seven of Nine #Dark Frontier #J/7

#I’m not leaving without you

[revolutionsoftheheart]

Trust - A Star Trek: Picard drabble

“Commander Seven of Nine to Admiral Janeway.”

A spread of photon torpedoes hits the Titan. Seven grasps onto the armrests of the Captain’s chair as she’s jolted around.

“Hold position!” she orders. They need an ally on the inside, someone with the power to disable the compromised fleet. “Seven to Janeway. Please respond.”

Finally, the Admiral’s face lights up the broken viewscreen.

Alive. Uninjured.

Seven catches her breath. Hope swells inside her chest.

Their eyes lock over subspace. Janeway remains stern as she takes in the damage on the bridge of the Titan. Seven stands, walking towards the viewscreen.

“Scorpion.”

[scifitism]

Every time I rewatch Voyager I have to go through the same "maybe Neelix wont be as bad as I remember in the first few seasons :)" and then be extremely disappointed and slog through it until he finally stops being a fucking weirdo with Kes

[simptasia]

like, i have this feeling that if trek ever brought back tom and b’elanna, they’d have ‘em be divorced or give them an unhappy marriage

because cynicism has infected star trek

[bumblingbabooshka]

People honestly portray Tuvok as far too "rolling his eyes, reluctantly going along with Janeway's silly little shenanigans" - he's literally so serious about being right there with her on every decision she makes. Janeway's like "I'm going to stay behind if the ship blows up" and Tuvok's like "I'm staying with you." Janeway's like "I'm going to deliver every member of the Equinox crew into the jaws of death via an alien revenge massacre" and Tuvok protests a grand total of one time before being fully on the bridge assisting her. He was the only one with her when she made the decision to honor the caretaker's wishes and save the Ocampa, dooming them all. He was willing to get court marshalled in order to fulfill a wish she couldn't grant by her own hand: Get them home [no matter what happens to me] <- wherein 'me' is Tuvok. This was the same wish that spurred him forward when he had to leave her on that planet and everyone left thought him cold for trying to fulfill it without her when in his mind it was akin to a dying wish, the last thing she'd ever express to him: Get them home [no matter what happens to me.] <- wherein 'me' is Janeway. He told Seven that the golden rule to follow is that the captain is "ALWAYS RIGHT" <- (His ACTUAL words) and when Seven asks if the captain should be followed even if someone KNOWS she's wrong he says "Perhaps." This man is perhaps the most ride or die dude in the universe about Janeway. Despite her labeling him her 'moral compass' he is by NO means impartial or unbiased. He'd defend her to his last breath. He canonically makes detailed psychological observations about her and has for years. He accounts for her luck when calculating the success of certain plans. It's implied in 'Twisted' that Janeway typically listens to Tuvok's suggestions and follows them nearly without fail - to the point that he's surprised and obviously irritated when Chakotay doesn't. Despite this they've been inside one another's quarters so infrequently that Tuvok can remember each instance. They call each other "Captain" and "Mr. Tuvok" even though they've known each other for twenty years. There's something wrong with them.

[assassinbugs]

Neither of you can leave before the entire shelf/table/whatever is finished. (It can't be the easiest/tiniest furniture though. It has to be kind of complicated and/or take at least an hour.)

other versions: ds9, lower decks, tng, tos/aos/snw

[trillscienceofficer]

I would like to clarify that when I say that Seven's situation on Voyager is fucked up (like in this post I wrote yesterday) I don't mean that Janeway should've listened to her demands and let her go in “The Gift”, or that Janeway and the Doctor had no right to start removing her implants (leaving them would've killed her after all). What I mean is that the fucked-upness is in the whole situation that made Seven's reclamation from the Borg possible but also put her in an environment (the USS Voyager) where survival is guaranteed by the close collaboration of everyone on board, which also means concessions of personal freedom and privacy. Other crewmembers entered this pact voluntarily (we can discuss some other time what choice did the Maquis actually have other than join the crew), but Seven unequivocally did not. Yet it's the only way she could've been reclaimed because we know, and the show drives this point home multiple times, that she was so young when she was assimilated that Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One alone would always choose the Borg. She knew of no other alternative.

I don't think letting Seven go back to the Borg in “The Gift” would've been an actually ethical choice, even if it's true that that was what she wanted. She was undoubtedly a prisoner, but I think that we forget (well, I do sometimes at least) that Seven, outside of any metaphor, can be very dangerous. She is strong and quick, she has Borg weaponry and technology at her disposal, she is relentless when pursuing her goal, and even as a drone she knows how Voyager works inside and out. Janeway took the gamble of disconnecting her from the Collective in “Scorpion, part 2” because they were expecting her to try and assimilate Voyager on her own, which she promptly tried to do as soon as the Species 8472 was no longer the main threat. So imho the ethical question posed by “The Gift” is, what do you do when an extremely dangerous individual asks you to be freed so she can rejoin the genocidal alien army of brainwashed zombies that terrorizes the galaxy? They will likely pursue you afterwards, but even if by some lucky chance they don't, you'll still have given back both a weapon and cannon fodder to the genocidal alien army. In addition to that, there's the concrete possibility that your prisoner might one day start living a different life once the brainwashing loses its hold on her.

So no, I really don't think that Janeway made a bad or even questionable choice in “The Gift”, even if it's painful to see Seven struggle against it. The complication has only just started at that point, imho. The fucked-upness comes from her having to “become an individual” in a highly-regulated and closely-surveilled community, one she could've never chosen on her own. On one hand this allows Seven to develop skills she completely lacked in a somewhat safe environment, but on the other hand it limits quite severely what she can or can't do. And while at first she rails against those limitations (she spends the entirety of season 4 doing just that), with time she starts understanding the value of living on Voyager. She manages to resist the Borg Queen's threats in “Dark Frontier” because she has learned compassion in the meantime, eventually choosing voluntarily to return to Voyager. It's a turning point that definitely does a lot to compensate for her lack of agency in “The Gift”. She thinks of Voyager as her new collective, which is equally a testament of how far she's come as much as it is a worrying admission that her new group identity is not that far off the Borg, in her mind.

By season 7 Seven is outright grateful for everything Janeway has done for her, but it still doesn't make her arc learning to ‘fit in’ any less of an exercise in shaping herself into the mold she was given as her only possible future. Is it better than being a murderous, mind-controlled zombie? Yes, it absolutely still is. Seven's independent thoughts and actions now matter, even when they clash with the rules, which is just not comparable with being a Borg drone in any way. Yet it's easy to see why her role on Voyager is also stifling, and that again she can't choose differently because she knows of no other alternative, and none are available to her anyway.

The fucked-upness also comes from extra-diegetical, production reasons, of course. The stupid ideas about what a woman is and what Seven should do to really be one (does she even want to be one?), the fact that a medical practitioner could control so closely how she presents and what she eats, the lack of actual clothes in order to make her a sexy babe for the 90s Trek target audience (“males aged 16-40”), the lack of locks on Cargo Bay 2 where she regenerates, and many other aspects that I'm sure I'm forgetting now... Ignorant, ‘default’ assumptions on how things ‘are’ that the show simply refuses to acknowledge. I know they only seem so obvious now because more than twenty years have passed since Star Trek: Voyager was on the air and the culture (in the US) has changed so much since then. This, I agree, is the kind of fucked up that I could easily do without and Seven's story would be better for it.

So in conclusion, when I say that Seven's situation is fucked up it's not so much because I think Kathryn Janeway should have chosen differently when it came to her; it's more that Seven's arc on Voyager is very complicated, for the most part, by design. Even if I think Janeway could've handled some things in a different way, in most cases it makes sense for her character to have taken those decisions regarding Seven, and I don't always think it would've made for a better story if she hadn't. Obviously I wish the production-level assumptions weren't there, and I think part of what Star Trek: Picard did right in its first season was flipping a lot of those assumptions on their head in just a handful of episodes where Seven appears.

Personally I find it valuable to keep in mind that Seven's storyline on Voyager can be complicated and fucked up without necessarily wanting to make it ‘better’. It still is interesting and effective because it's far from perfect, because everyone tried the best they could given the very difficult circumstances, because we've never seen the whole crew, much less the Captain, outside of survival mode. Yet Seven is also a survivor of almost unimaginable violence and coercion and it makes sense, I think, that her presence regularly poses ethical challenges to what other characters and even the audience might consider ‘right choices’ or ‘right behavior’. Survivors in real life, I think, often challenge our societies (none of them perfect, and where many also live in survival mode) in precisely the same way.

[lostyesterday]

I’ve been thinking about disabled protagonists in Star Trek recently, which got me thinking about Seven of Nine. It’s interesting because I’m almost certain the writers of Voyager did not intend to write a disabled character, but they ended up accidentally writing one anyway, and one whose arc I find surprisingly compelling as a disabled person myself. Seven is dependent on electronic devices both inside her body and external to it in order to survive and she requires regular medical treatment and specialized adaptations to her environment in order to function. She is absolutely canonically disabled (as are all the other ex-Borg in Star Trek), even if the writers probably weren’t aware of that. The major reason that I think Seven’s arc resonates with me so much is because it reflects a deep tension between independence and dependence that is a fundamental and complex part of so many disabled people’s lives.

To be disabled is to be deeply aware at all times of your own dependence on external things (such as wheelchairs, canes, medications, etc.) and other people. At the same time, to be disabled is to also be deeply aware of the societal standards of independence and self-sufficiency you are constantly failing to live up to. You cannot do things that people are “supposed” to be able to do independently. You need help for basic tasks, and you have no choice but to trust that these external supports you are dependent on will not suddenly disappear, causing you to be unable to participate in society at all. It’s difficult to express to someone who hasn’t experienced it how much being disabled forces someone to consider their own level of dependence and independence constantly, how it becomes a deep part of one’s identity and can often be a source of trauma.

Seven’s arc on Voyager is often focused on the nature of individuality, but it is interesting how often “individuality” becomes a stand-in for independence. Seven’s disability makes her deeply dependent on the crew and resources of Voyager for survival. She could theoretically leave and use her own skills to do maintenance on her implants and install an alcove somewhere to keep herself functioning, but it would be a great risk, and her safety would be constantly in doubt. At the same time, Seven hates this dependence. She tries to rely on other people as little as possible, hating her need for the Doctor to diagnose issues with her implants and refusing to ask for help until she has no other choice. She hates this dependence because she sees it as challenging her ability to become a complete “individual” who is able to make her own autonomous choices. She hates this dependence because it forces her to rely on other people who could at any time abandon her or abuse their power over her.

So it’s far less frightening to pretend this dependence doesn’t exist, to hide it even from herself. Seven’s arrogance in her own abilities, her focus on her intellect and vast knowledge and superior physical abilities are in many ways genuine, especially early on. But at what point does this confidence in her own abilities – this reassurance that she is smart enough and strong enough to control her own destiny and be a true individual – become a coping mechanism to deal with the reality of her dependence on objects and people outside of her direct control?

Seven is told often by members of the Voyager crew that being an individual who makes her own choices and decisions is what she should strive for. And at the same time, those same people often exert control over her, attempting to restrict her autonomy. Janeway or the Doctor tell her that they know better than her what her needs are – that being an individual only goes so far. Seven’s anger at this contradiction is one of my favorite parts of her character, partially because it captures a similar feeling of anger deep inside me when I think about the ways society constantly pressures disabled people to maintain standards of independence impossible to live up to while at the same time deeply restricting our autonomy and freedom.

In the episode “Imperfection”, Seven says that what she wants most is to be useful. To be useful is to be a valuable part of society – someone who is self-sufficient and talented and certainly not deeply dependent on other people for basic survival. To be disabled is to have society constantly demand that you be useful, that you be independent and strong and never let your disabilities limit you. And at the same time, to be disabled is to discover over and over that you can never be that fully autonomous, fully functional human being seen as ideal in society. No matter what you do – no matter how far you run from the truth – it’s an impossible reality to escape.

[lonely-night]

ELNOR: Would the xBs be better off dead? Everyone hates them. They have no home. They don't belong anywhere. 

SEVEN: Am I better off dead?

[space-morningstar]

One of the things I love about Star Trek is how some of the characters use their free time, to name a few: ● Kirk spent his free time playing chess with Spock, reading books or collecting antiquities. ● Picard spent his free time reading poetry, "ancient" literature, looking at archaeological items or on the holodeck playing detective. ● Janeway tended to spend it playing mystery novels on the holodeck or playing an extreme version of tennis with Seven. ● Data would spend it with Geordi, either in engineering helping out or playing Sherlock Holmes mysteries, he would also play with his cat or practise drawing ● Seven watched the stars, studied anything that caught her attention. ● Beverly practised yoga and prepared plays. ● Riker practises the trombone ● Sulu spends time with her family or practises fencing ● Uhura practices with musical instruments Everyone has time to dedicate to themselves, in things they really like, beyond their ranks and their important positions they dedicate to enjoy their lives, they don't leave their responsibilities but they also don't forget about themselves and their "humanity" to dedicate themselves to the arts or "silly" moments that are just for fun It is the message that "Being professionals or adults should not stop us from enjoying our lives and being ourselves".

[lesbian-of-nine]

can't believe janeway pulled out the full glam look just cuz she heard that seven might be leaving... ok lesbian