#not sure i would've said as much about worf without the prompting but clearly i care about the dude a lot lol

[leohtttbriar]

for the reverse unpopular opinion meme, Worf!

worf is special bc, to me, he is both the funniest and most serious character in ds9, without particularly trying to be both. which i think has something to do with the invested expression of his cultures and all the values he means to represent. sometimes these characteristics are played for the pathos---the intense empathetic feeling you get when you watch him do and say things that fit in a specific heroic poetic. other times it's played for the humor, his honorable presentation in an honorable fight leading him to say things a little out of context, like "death to the opposition" in a baseball game.

but for all the ways he's a character that comments on how one can perform respect for one's self and multiplicities of loyalty, how cultural values of "heroism" might clash with others, how quite often one's acts are a choice--depending on how aware one is of why they are acting a certain way and what they want to project with their actions, the best part of worf is that he really is sincere.

i've compared worf to kira before and i think that's the thing they have in common and why both those characters work so well with characters like dax--the contrast of a loudly resolved person against a willingly variable one. worf and dax are so interesting in their scenes together because this contrast is true of them but they also interrogate that which is surface-level in each other: worf sees in dax someone who can and will commit in many (often brave) ways, and dax sees in worf a breadth of contradictory feeling and expansive experience. many of their fights as characters is refusing to acknowledge they know this about each other--even expect it.

so my favorite part of worf's character (his sincerity) is showcased in my favorite narrative for worf--the fact that he really does spend all of season 7 grieving his wife. he loved her deeply and does not back away from still feeling it, no matter the hurt. and it feels so appropriate to what these characters were to each other, in the story, and it leads to the best exchange possibly in ds9:

WORF: Perhaps not, but I am certain that you will do whatever is necessary to complete your task. EZRI: And how do you know that? WORF: You are Dax. It is your way.

worf is the kind of character that is meant to hold up some sense of resolve in a show and genre that is all about the anxieties of uncertainty. worf, of course, faces a lot of uncertainty and personal struggles (and probably it's the sort of thing that gets more focus in the next generation, which i haven't seen yet, than in ds9), but his ethic purpose among the cast of characters is to be more sure than not--not by means of arrogance but by means of choice.

other characters like this i feel are generally cast as the leaders/captains of the crew, but the difference between a character like janeway or kirk and a character like worf is that worf is not "sure" out of an obvious external pressure to choose but out of internal impulse to be. he is who he strives to be through his striving. he sometimes does and says the funniest things in the show because he doesn't bend to unspoken social demands of propriety, no matter if he senses these demands or not. and he doesn't feel the need to explain himself which makes his one-liners all the funnier. and it's so easy to see why ursula k le guin was obsessed with him.

would like to conclude the gushing by just saying that michael dorn is extraordinary as an actor imo: he has so much makeup on for the character, normally the most out of everyone in any one scene he's in, and still he turns in a Performance, implying so much interiority and perspective, making even worf's most judgy moments inherently fascinating in their distinct and unmistakable personhood.