#they never get Chakotay right!!!!

[bumblingbabooshka]

Me reading fics where Tuvok encourages other peoples’ romantic pursuits:

[possibly-god]

Threshold: Unlocking the Good Ending

Happy Threshold Day, everyone! Here's how that nonsense (and beyond) could have gone differently if Tom Paris had chosen different dialogue options. Inspired by this post by @starship-butterfly

Tom talks his way back into the Warp 10 test another way – he and Harry figured it out together, they should test it together. Plus, two heads are better than one if something goes wrong, and there’s no one he trusts more to have his back.

Just as before, right as everyone’s praising them as heroes, Tom goes down. At first everyone assumes it’s the Doctor’s “2% chance” coming to pass… and then Harry goes out too.

They babble and reminisce together in the surgical bay. They clasp hands as they die and embrace as they reawaken. They butt heads and bond as they mutate – Harry rips Tom’s tongue from his mouth, Tom helps Harry not to choke as his detaches.

Between the two of them, busting out is no problem – for them, at least. Before the Doctor can get them anywhere near the warp core, Tom and Harry are out of Sick Bay, in the shuttle, and off God knows where.

When the crew finally tracks the duo down, they’ve gone full amphibian – including froggy sex-swapping adaptations, because the lizard babies must exist in every timeline (let’s be real, “turn into frogs and have frog babies with your bestie” is such a Harry Kim thing to happen).

As does Chakotay going “fuck them kids” – against Tuvok’s advisement, Janeway agrees to keep the incident classified.

And then, of course, the Doctor spills the beans (“Any other symptoms?” “I don’t know, my abdomen is cramping something awful…” “That’s hardly surprising, you did just give birth.” “…what.”).

The second they’re unsupervised, Harry is dragging Tom to the shuttle bay (he was sedated during the reveal but is onboard as soon as Harry strings together a coherent explanation) because they can work through that mountain of weird feelings later but right now Babies.

Meanwhile everyone on Voyager is freaking the hell out because they just stole the fuCKING SHUTTLE AGAIN-

The second they touch back down on Voyager, Tom is out of the shuttle and straight-up decking Chakotay before he can say “what the hell” and having strong words with Janeway when she tries to object (Tuvok coolly decides not to get involved).

Harry meanwhile is sprinting to the med bay (he’s not risking the transporter with neonates of an unrecorded species) with an armful of deeply bewildered salamanders.

A temporary habitat is set up in Sick Bay while their care needs are established – including enrichment and education, because as a brain scan and mind meld determine, these kiddos are indeed fully sapient (and very confused and scared by the events of the past few days).

The crew asks about reverting them back to baseline human, but the Doctor informs them there’s nothing to revert – his method works off the subject having been human at some point, and these kids have never not been squishy.

They can’t stay in Sick Bay forever, of course, and will require regular care wherever they end up – ultimately, it’s decided the whole family will move into a vacant officers’ quarters, with Engineering converting the common area into a tank/terrarium.

Of course, this new cohabitation situation means confronting that mountain of weird feelings – after a rather fraught period of counseling, parenting establishment, and romantic experimentation, Tom and Harry eventually settle into a mostly-platonic partnership.

Amid said period, the kids finally get names – meet Philo Jonah, Micah Drew, and Jamie Kris Paris-Kim (after esteemed Starfleet captains, tweaked for gender neutrality – even if they can guess the kids’ sexes now, there’s no guarantee they’ll stay that way).

Harry with the babies:

Tom with the babies:

Whenever both Harry and Tom have to be on duty (or just need a break), other crewmates are often roped into babysitting (Chakotay volunteers whenever he can, mostly out of guilt – when he can’t himself, he can usually talk B’elanna into it).

As “evolved beings”, the triplets’ intellectual development is accelerated – when they’re about 2 years old, they start going to lessons and holodeck playdates with Naomi Wildman, and later the Borg kids.

While the Paris-Kims prefer a warm, damp environment, amid the regular chaos on Voyager it’s discovered that they can withstand just about anything due to the nature of the Threshold mutation (essentially, having briefly existed at every point in the universe at Warp 10, the human body attempted to adapt to all of them, settling on Extremophilic Amphibian as Most Likely To Survive Everywhere) – a trait which comes in handy in some particular disasters.

Language is an interesting challenge with the triplets – they can understand Federation Standard, but can’t vocalize it, so they have to come up with and teach their own chirp-based analogues (coding “Pakimese” into the ship’s translator becomes Micah’s pet project).

Their physical growth is also unusual, quite different from their parents (it seems being born fishy is more stable than having fishiness thrust upon one), as they slowly develop more humanoid arms and thoraces while never showing hind leg stumps – by adulthood they’ve nearly gone full mermaid.

To help the kids get around the ship without having to crawl everywhere, Harry and B’elanna develop mobility devices for them, creating a sort of hybrid wheelchair-segway that allows the kids to lie forward in their natural posture rather than sit backwards in a chair.

Harry gets a promotion. This has nothing to do with Threshold, it just needs to happen.

Tom’s initially reluctant to pursue a relationship with B’elanna with his family obligations, but Harry eventually encourages him. When the two get married, Harry and the kids are Tom’s groomsmen, and when B’elanna gets pregnant, family swim time is one of the first planned activities.

Once contact is reestablished with the Alpha Quadrant, it takes Harry a few tries before he works up the courage to tell his family about their new additions. It takes John and Mary a while to fully grasp their origins (“Who’s the lucky girl?” “Um… Tom?”), but they adore their grandkids from day one.

Tom, meanwhile, staunchly refuses to inform his father about his grandchildren, not wanting him to mess them up too – when Voyager finally reaches Earth, Owen Paris damn near has a heart attack when he finds Tom with 2 partners and 4 kids.

In adulthood, Philo becomes a geoengineer and joins one of the first permanent survey outposts in the Delta Quadrant, reconnecting with and later marrying her childhood friend Mezoti. Micah settles on Earth as a xenolinguistics professor, programming fantasy holonovels in their spare time. Jamie is the only one to join Starfleet as an officer, studying astrogation and becoming the first “human” in Cetacean Ops.

[homewrecking-lore]

There is so much to be said about the unhealthy codependency the Voyager crew have, but I still can't get over how much love was expressed by these characters for each other. And right from the beginning! The first moment we see Tuvok and Janeway alone in show premiere is Tuvok's face softening into a smile as he approaches her. We see Janeway fretting - because she met Harry's parents. Because she never seems to know the crew on a personal level and wants to. B'elanna calling Harry 'Starfleet'. Tom intervening for Harry at Quark's bar and Harry seeking out Tom even when everyone corners him about it. Chakotay taking the time to reach out to the officer who transported him safely to Voyager. And it's this constant thread throughout the show that they will always choose each other. Doesn't matter how many years pass or what life they're offered they'll erase timeline after timeline to give each other one more chance. Just a bit more time. Maybe this time they'll all make it.

[leohtttbriar]

the sequence of “deadlock” to “thaw” to “tuvix” to “resolutions” is so interesting. a sequence of traumatizing events about: what it means to be intimate with no one but yourself, intimate with fear as a simulated person until you both fade from simulated reality but remain in the material one, and intimate with a merged half such that it's not two halves but one whole--and then with an equal with whom, by position and consequence, no intimacy can be allowed to exist. which i guess is just a different kind of intimacy?

it's like a cycle in which janeway learns she is alone in a fundamental way, making decisions and hard calculations with no other cooks fixing the broth, and while there could be a new and equivalent love, there actually can't. no matter the small acknowledgment, she walks back onto the ship to the start of the cycle, again. sacrifice, fear, choice, sacrifice, fear, choice, sacrifice--

in a meta way, there's an interesting read regarding how mulgrew didn't want janeway and chakotay to get together, and how she was right for it: the first female-captain character of this enormous franchise couldn't be the first to also have an explicit romance with her second-in-command. to be in a specific singular position requires constructing some scaffolding that might not otherwise be needed. in this is the implication that, while other captains would be as lonely as janeway, they might not be quite as actually alone. and it's like how strachey describes queen elizabeth i, forever unmarried, but in the most cunning of ways--prevaricating on committing to the personal, leaning into the tension but never breaking it, pledging only in the quiet so it can't ever be interpreted as contractual, all to retain a hold on centered power. a power which, in many ways in the story, is the ethic driving the crew back across the galaxy and acting as infrastructure for the culture of their unbelievably distant home, through sheer will. it's a kind of compromise of personhood to the position that seems particular to janeway, because of her gender and the fact that she's the highest-ranking officer of a distant culture's diplomatic and governing organization for 70,000 light years.

she has to be aware she's more representative than real at this point. like, it's almost an idea somewhat suggested by her brief duplication and her brief simulation. (and like of course she split tuvix back up--she only thinks now with two bodies instead of one, kathryn and captain, and it's inconceivable these separate persons might genuinely fuse.) the solitude of janeway makes either her insane or, as strachey put it, "a sane woman in a universe of violent maniacs."

[lostyesterday]

Star Trek Voyager ended with two canon couples – B’Elanna/Tom who get married and Chakotay/Seven who start dating right at the end of the show. But what if things had gone differently? What if a different set of couples had gotten together?

Scenario A: B’Elanna and Chakotay start casually dating in season 3 and Chakotay proposes to B’Elanna in season 6. Seven and Tom start bickering constantly in season 6 until it is revealed at the very end of season 7 that they’ve been secretly dating for several months.

Scenario B: In season 4, it is revealed that Harry has been in unrequited love with B’Elanna all this time – or so he thinks. It turns out she loves him back and they get married near the end of season 7. Janeway and Neelix have the exact same relationship they do in canon except that in mid-season 7 they’re infected with a virus that makes them tell each other their darkest secrets. After this, they suddenly start dating.

Scenario C: B’Elanna dates Tom starting in season 4, but then a love triangle begins when the Doctor falls in love with B’Elanna too. In season 6, B’Elanna breaks up with Tom because they argue constantly, only to get together with the Doctor in season 7 who argues with her at least as much. This is never acknowledged. Seven initially starts dating Harry in season 4 as an “experiment”, but they end up staying together long-term.

Scenario D: In season 5, Neelix becomes Seven’s main tutor in “becoming human” (based on Neelix's observation of humans over the last few years). The two of them grow to become good friends and start dating in season 7. In season 6, Janeway and the Doctor suddenly start being put into increasingly obvious and contrived sexually charged scenarios. In the final episode, the Doctor confesses his love to Janeway and they share a single kiss. It is implied that they eventually get married.

[straightbaittournament]

may the best bait win! propaganda under the cut

brienne and jaime:

[major spoilers for the show] homoerotic as hell. for some reason. from what i've heard this seems like a rare case of buried straights. jaime i believe dies right after they get together. the first time they have sex jaime says he's never done it "with a knight" before. literally most of my knowledge about this ship comes from bait: a queerbaiting podcast (one of their "straightbait specials"), which i'm officially suggesting as propaganda i'm only up to s4 but i feel like they should be hereThey def have already been submitted but I'm getting in early on the #BraimeSweep They're soulmates 4real :( <33 "Brienne caught him before he could fall. Her arm was all gooseflesh, clammy and chilled, but she was strong, and gentler than he would have thought. Gentler than Cersei." "The swords kissed and sprang apart and kissed again. Jaime's blood was singing" "Jaime's golden hand cracked him across the mouth so hard the other knight went stumbling down the steps. His lantern fell and smashed, and the oil spread out, burning." "You are speaking of a highborn lady, ser. Call her by her name. Call her Brienne." "In this light she could almost be a beauty, he thought. In this light she could almost be a knight." Come on. This het couple has no right to drive me (a lesbian) crazy. If they don't get together I'll explode.

kathryn and chakotay:

Janeway is the Captain of a Starfleet ship lost so far from home it will take decades to reach. Chakotay is the Captain of a Maquis (rebel) ship also lost there. They decide to work together to get home and combine their crews when the Maquis ship is destroyed, and Chakotay becomes her second-in-command. Because of the seriousness of the situation, Janeway feels that she cannot afford the distraction of a romance and so they never get together. They have NO personal space and look longingly at each other quite often and one episode has them forced to abandon ship potentially forever and they live together in a little house and he builds her a bathtub because she complains about not having one and they share a romantically charged massage where he tells her a made up story about a warrior and the woman who inspired him which he openly admits is made up and actually about them. Also he holds her while she cries about their chance of going back to the ship being destroyed. In a different episode she “dies” and he cradled her body while weeping about it. They also have candlelit dinners regularly and she lent him a copy of the book her ex-fiancé gave her, and every time the show conspires to make one temporarily unaware of the other, they flirt hardcore. An episode designed to show how they wouldn’t work as a couple only makes more people ship them. Also a young version of Janeway meets older Chakotay via time travel and asks him if they’re together in the future despite her being engaged at that point. He declined to answer directly.they have a lot of Tension thruout the series & a very deep relationship, but Janeway has someone waiting for her back home & Chakotay ends up in a romance plot with another person in the last season (that I personally felt came from out of nowhere but whatever) I rooted for them! I rooted for a str8 couple! I did not care that Janeway had someone waiting for her back home even tho I usually do! but I did not care! they deserved to fuck!

[the-heartstring-chronicles]

As someone who has shipped P/C since 1994 and JC since 2006. I just want to say:

Continuing justice for Jean Luc and Kathryn!

( No, no! Not as a ship, you can stop screaming in horror now, I have not abandoned my soulmate pairs)

But as characters:

They both get a very bad wrap for being addicted or married to duty. And in some ways they are, it’s true!

But as confirmed by Picard season 3, Jean Luc says he would have wanted a shot at being a husband to Beverly, from his own lips! And he says that he would have wanted to be a father. She may not have known either of those things, but it doesn’t make them any less fact.

He was also openly affectionate to her, sometimes in public during TNG. Riker knew about them, he says as much to Jack. No one on the crew bats an eye about Jack in fact.

JL and Bev were about as subtle as an air horn set on low volume. Trying to be circumspect, but actually being a billboard for lifetime love. Heck even Shaw knew and we had never met him before. People don’t know that much about a relationship if one person in it is solely married to duty.

And Kathryn! Miss Ma’am let Chakotay build her a bathtub while still trying to get off the planet. She cried at his speech, even though it was so mushy, it could have been day old oatmeal. Why? Because she knew he meant it. ( and I as a mushy viewer, appreciated him being that honest about his feelings too)

She let him give her a rose in Coda and she struggled mightily with his disappointment in her several times in later seasons. Her counterpart in Shattered was also very openly interested in how far they went in seven seasons. (Shoot your future shot lady! Go you!) and no one thinks S7 Kathryn was totally cool with C/7 right? Her face said otherwise. Admiral Janeway, was also heartbroken in about six ways, only two of which were Seven dying and Tuvok getting sick.

She also seemingly, from what I’ve read, made it part of her goal to find him in Prodigy too. Like Jean-Luc with Beverly, when Chalotay is lost, she will seek.

So while yes, duty sometimes sidetracks each of them. they are loving people who adore their other halves as well. They are complex.

And that’s part of why I love each pair, for the devotion that both of the partners in each relationship feel and how they navigate it together.

True love must flow from each heart to make a sustainable ship

And so I hope that as much as we discuss the duty bound Admirals and those who love them, that we also keep discussing and writing about their softer sides and the ways they show that love in return.

[xchronicles]

Okay… real talk now, just between us girlies.

Aaron, if you’re reading this, you’re one of us and you’re always welcome in.

We joke, argue, and moan a lot about the J/C stuff - especially now with Prodigy being the latest new canon story. We all know, at the end of the day, they’re not real. However, what they represent and the impact they have on the audience is very real.

I watched Voyager back in the day when I was in primary school. My emotionally undeveloped self quickly picked up on the J/C stuff, and soon I found myself watching the show more and more, hoping that today’s episode would be about them or at least feature a lot of scenes with them together. I vividly remember the heartbreak after watching "Endgame" and being so confused on what I had just witnessed. I remember expecting the next episode, which never came, and feeling so confused. I felt betrayed by the show and didn’t want anything to do with it anymore. I was just a kid - exactly the target audience that Prodigy aims to reach.

Now, as an adult, that kid in me still feels that betrayal. I’ve always leaned on imaginary characters as a coping mechanism. As a girl who never quite fit into traditional gender roles and was often criticized for not being "girly" enough or not aligning with societal expectations, I found solace in the reversed gender norms between Janeway and Chakotay. At the time, I didn’t realize that this was what appealed to me so much.

What I’m trying to say is that making Janeway and Chakotay canon, no questions hanging, healthy relationship and all, is an incredible narrative tool to show that women can be in the position of power, having a career while also being in a loving, supportive relationship. It would teach younger audiences, especially girls, that they don’t have to choose between career and relationship and, more importantly, that they don’t have to strip down parts of who they really are to fit into a gender role box to be accepted as a proper woman.

I get frustrated watching interviews with Kate because whenever she asks why fans want the J/C relationship to become romantic, she never gets a good answer. I understand her pushback to some extent because I don’t think a man could ever give her an answer that truly resonated with her. Men don’t think about the constant criticism that women face about not being "womanly" enough. Kate gets told that fans want the relationship because she deserves it and that is the problem. It’s not about what she deserves - it's about the women who have been constantly told from a young age what is “appropriate” for them and that if they don't change they'll end up alone cause no man will want them. They’re the ones who truly deserve to see that they can have both, represented in a strong character like Janeway, whom they’ve admired be it for a year or over 20 years

Men do face their own set of pressures though, like being told they aren’t “man enough,” which can contribute to toxic masculinity. However, Prodigy has addressed this issue beautifully through Chakotay. He’s a wonderful example of strong, non-toxic masculinity, embodying the true essence of what it means to be a man. Season 2 did a fantastic job showcasing this with both Dal and Chakotay. I just wish we could see that same level of depth and growth for Janeway, particularly for young girls who look up to her. Right now, the message feels as if you have to choose between pursuing a career or pursuing a relationship.

Truth be told, I think a big part of the issue is that Kate views Janeway as Prodigy’s lead character, which might make her feel that maintaining the “will they or won’t they” tension is necessary to keep the audience engaged. That perspective might be true if the show were solely focused on Janeway like Voyager was, but Prodigy is so much more than that. The core of Prodigy is really about the young crew and their journey. In fact, younger viewers are likely more interested in the relationship between Gwyn and Dal. I truly believe that making J/C canon wouldn’t hurt the show - instead, it could provide a positive example for the young crew and their audience to look up to. Find solace in them just as I have when I was their age, minus the horrible heartbreak thanks to Endgame lol

[a-most-beloved-fool]

btw i DID manage to actually start watching voyager in preparation for threshold day and i have some thoughts on the first episode i'd like to share

-the first two minutes were very star wars. i was amused. scrolling synopsis leading STRAIGHT into space warfare?? which massive sci-fi franchise am i in again??

-i enjoyed getting introduced to crew members i knew were going to instantly die. hello first officer and doctor who i will never see again!

-noooo janeway won't get to see her puppies!!!!

-humongous fan of what appears to be an instant ride-or-die friendship between Harry Kim and Tom Paris

-i think it's fun that neelix (and the the kazon?) don't seem to have beaming technology and are very impressed by it. i hope that's a running theme.

-DON'T like how we're getting b'elanna blaming her "klingon half" for things RIGHT off the bat. GIRL YOU'RE MIXED. YOU'RE ONE UNIQUE THING. DON'T DEMONIZE HALF YOUR HERITAGE. also like frankly she's trapped in a strange place with a stranger (who was very recently and may still be an enemy) while suddenly dying of a mysterious illness so i think her reaction is perfectly understandable

-poor tuvok, it's only episode one and already you're going thru it (having to go fetch neelix out of a bath and hold up a towel for him as he emerges naked)

-i've seen clips from voy before but apparently never heard kes's voice and for some reason it wasn't what i expected. i don't quite know what i was expecting though it just didn't feel quite right.

-neelix did you like. need to shoot those water containers, or was that just an extra "fuck you" to those guys? i mean i understand if it was. they did apparently beat kes up. but.

-tom you seem a little too invested in chakotay's life being "yours" what's with that

-but also oof augh more racism TOM. TOM YOU CAN'T BE SAYING THAT. TOM.

-enjoying the vibe of everyone being like "finally! a doctor i'm ALLOWED to ignore!" with regards to the emh. just turn him off! walk out on him! what can he do? complain? not til u turn him back on!

-fascinated by how quickly chakotay went from being like "i am an enemy to starfleet" to being like "she's the captain🥰😍🥰" like man aren't you supposed to have fundamental ideological differences or some shit. are you just janeway's bestie now or are we ever gonna address that. remains to be seen!

-i would be VERY surprised if all the maquis are just Fine with suddenly being starfleet though. you just unilaterally made everyone starfleet?? you've been FIGHTING THEM! i hope someone gets angry about that, at least. i'm assuming this will come up in future episodes?

-i liked janeway's ending speech <3 hell yeah

anyways i had fun <3

i've been meaning to start voyager for Ages but in spite of having a blog dedicated to a tv show i am comically bad at actually Watching Things (so i definitely don't promise a voyager liveblog lmao. you'd be risking like. three months between episodes at times.) but i finally started it!! exciting.

[bumblingbabooshka]

Everyone needs to start getting way weirder (read: hornier) about this moment so I don't feel so alone.

Also - Tuvok....this is WILDLY funny. Tuvok is SO cringe I love him, he's the worst guy ever. Absolutely 0 hesitation to, IN FRONT OF EVERYONE, straight up go "Hey, first officer? Sorry for cutting you off in the middle of this life-or-death situation but I just couldn't help but notice that I, Tuvok, made a suggestion and you didn't follow it? That's literally never happened before. Did you not hear me or..?" There's literally not even a good reason for him to object it's straight up ONLY because it wasn't his idea.

[jenlrossman]

Tuvix as a metaphor for Janeway's mindset throughout Voyager

When Tuvok and Neelix merged into a new individual after a transporter malfunction, Tuvix was born. Possessing a combination of the memories and personalities of his component parts while still being his own unique self, Tuvix quickly proved he was more than just a transporter accident, showing he had potential to find his place among the crew of Voyager and settle in to this new normal.

And when Janeway learned of a way to separate him, bringing back Tuvok and Neelix, Tuvix was killed. Against his wishes, against the doctor's ethical subroutines, Tuvix was killed.

I'm not going to discuss whether or not this was right. That's an entirely different subject that many people have debated ad nauseam.

I just want to talk about how the decision to kill Tuvix and bring back Tuvok and Neelix might actually be the defining moment in developing Kathryn Janeway's mindset for the rest of the series. The sometimes questionable mindset best described as

"There's the right way, the wrong way, and the Janeway."

To Captain Janeway, Tuvix is a problem to solve. He is the thing standing in the way of the status quo, the thing preventing her from seeing her loved ones again.

She says as much, when Kes is expressing reservations about developing feelings for Tuvix and says she hasn't given up on the idea of him being separated.

You’re experiencing what people on this crew have been going through since we first got stranded in this quadrant. Do we accept that we're separated from our loved ones forever, or do we hold onto the hope that someday we'll be with them again?

Tuvix, therefore, is a physical representation of being stuck in the Delta quadrant. He is the thing preventing them from being with their loved ones, and she might not be able to get everyone home right now if ever, but she's going to do everything she can to see Tuvok and Neelix again.

Whether or not it is right for her to kill Tuvix, that isn't as important to her as proving—to herself and to her crew—that she is going to do anything she can to get them home, and killing him is a symbolic representation of that.

We see this mindset continue throughout the series, and the Lower Decks episode Twovix gives us some great examples.

While most of the crew is dealing with another transporter malfunction, Boimler and Rutherford are dealing with holographic representations of various things the Voyager crew encountered. And they just happen to be some of Janeway's greatest hits… Or misses.

Michael "delete the wife" Sullivan—Janeway's holographic Irish boy toy, who she widowed and altered to suit her preferences even though those episodes deal with the possibility of all holograms having a chance to achieve sentience

The macrovirus—which was dealt with by Janeway unleashing it on a crowd of (again, possibly sentient?) holograms

The personification of fear—the clown who was defeated when Janeway went so far to save her crew that she literally made the concept of fear afraid of her

Chaotica—Janeway didn't particularly want to play the role of Queen Arachnia but she got very into it because when push comes to shove, she really doesn't mind being the villain if it means protecting her crew

And of course, the Borg…

The series finale of Voyager is the ultimate example of the "anything to see our loved ones again" mindset Janeway shows in Tuvix.

Voyager gets home. It takes 23 years, but they get home.

However, Seven is lost along the way, Chakotay dies after reaching earth, and the delay in getting home has exacerbated Tuvok's Vulcan equivalent of Alzheimer's to the point that he is not himself anymore.

Three of the most important people in her life, gone.

So what does she do? Of course she doesn't accept that, she can't, she never has been able to.

Kathryn Janeway goes back in time, erases the lives of everyone in the universe to rewrite history on her terms, she defeats the goddamn Borg—just to see them again.

And of course she does it herself. As we learned in Tuvix when the doctor refuses to separate him, Janeway doesn't care. She'll do it all herself, ethical consequences be damned, she just needs everyone she loves to get back to the Alpha quadrant.

So whether or not it was right to separate Tuvix, it doesn't matter. The right way, the wrong way, none of that matters. Not to her, not as long as doing things the Janeway gets everyone she cares about home safely.

[elephant-in-the-pride-parade]

Prodigy Recap

I love it I love it I love it I could watch it forever

I'm truly irrevokably in love. I'm done for. I'm probably going to rewatch this all month before I am satisfied I've fully taken it all in. I NEED to rewatch Mindwalk and Supernova again ASAP because knowing what I know now about the memories HJ had just recovered. I know it is going to wreck me to watch her in those episodes with S2 in mind.

My ship HELD HANDS GUYSSS. HE TOLD HER SHES HIS HOME. HE DIDNT FEEL LIKE HE BELONGED ANYWHERE UNTIL THEY MET. SHE BROKE TIME FOR HIM AGAIN AND AGAIN. HER EYES GOT SO BIG! THAT HUG LOOKED SO GOOD. (I'm getting off topic a lot but i need to get the "my ship is canon - in a way i don't hate!!!" fangirling out of my system.) breathe. breathe. okay gonna keep going.

Its gonna take me a few more watch throughs to fully wrap my head around the paradox. And around how you fit a humpback whale in the original ISS Voyager (seriously. has that been there the whole time? does OG Voyager have a whale? was she retrofitted in the AQ? did Mirror J steal a whale from 1996?) And if that timeline where KJ was lost on the infinity means shes also trapped on future solum with Chakotay or just dead. and and and... so many things. so many fic ideas. so many plot bunnies

(wait no -- shoves the plot bunnies away -- go away. not ready for more wips yet)

There. was. so. much. that I loved. it was such an ambitious story to tell in 2 seasons and oh my god, i really feel they mostly pulled it off. They brought back Voyagers legacy characters and put them to work in a plot that fit them, and it was such a joy to see them again. They stay true to who they were on Voyager - thoroughly wonderfully 100x better than on Voyager in Chakotays case. and i really believe theyre the same characters with a few more years of life since ive last met them.

And the new characters too. I love Dal and Gwyn and Rok and Murf and Zero and Jankom and Maj'el to pieces. (Majel!!! is such a perfect tribute!) I want to see so much more of Noum and Tysses. I am in tears over Adreek. God how much i want Season 3 just to see how their stories continue.

But I think... what strikes me most and what I appreciated the most was how much this show wholeheartedly respects its fans!!!

It never dumbs things down or babies it's younger audience. its very mature for a kids show. it is a great introduction to star trek and the universe without over explaining. there are storylines in these 40 episodes that would be right at home in TNG or Voyager. it's really more of a fun for the whole family show than a kids show in that way. (it says something that it's the first "cartoon" my parents have ever cared for and they are watching it wholely for themselves.) It really manages to tell the story in a framing thats aimed at kids without taking anything away from the story its telling for all ages.

And it's adult audience...

I worried about how it would feel to have enjoyed such a rich fanon universe in the 3 decades since the show ended. There were advantages to having a ship with very little canon. the fan universe thrived on how much room there was to work within. After that - having headcanoned and written and imagined so many futures for the characters - I feared having some new canon come in and make a new story for them that would invalidate so much if that imagination, or create something so unsatisfying or rigid or antithical to their last canon encounter that nothing new would be inspired by it. (P/C in Picard was like that for me)

Prodigy didnt do that. Prodigy made no grand sweeping canon for the years in between Voyagers homecoming and the new show. Prodigy didnt shoe horn any character into a rigid relationship status. Prodigy picked them up, set them on a new adventure, sprinkled in tantalyzing new details, and left a wealth of room around the events of the season and the relationships between the characters for so much fan imagination to thrive. The possibilities before and during and after the seasons for the characters are bountiful and perfect for imagining their other adventures. I couldnt have imagined my ship becoming canon (or maybe affirmed by the canon is a clearer way to put it) in a better way.

And then they went and added Tank Top Action Janeway in there as a treat.

Truly a masterpiece. i'm so grateful for this show. i hope it gets the 3rd season it so dearly deserves.

[bookishpower]

I love seeing a shipper reactivate.

I was in for a follow-up mammogram this week and was fairly nervous about the whole thing. I knew it was likely to be nothing, but after breast cancer took two of the sweetest co-workers I ever had in 2024, my blood pressure was up a bit.

After another mammogram, I waited, and was ushered in for an ultrasound. There were several of us crammed into a room the size of the closet, all of them strangers to me, and I'm lying on a table with my tit out. Thankfully, the doctor conducting the scan was the sweetest lady with the most wonderful and reassuring bedside manner.

Somehow, we got onto the subject of Star Trek.

I mentioned that a lot of our farm animals growing up were named after Star Trek and Lord of the Rings characters. The doctor got very excited when I mentioned that one of our dogs was named Riker. She told me that when she did a turn on a burn unit in Ohio years ago, a badly-injured girl's wish was to meet William Riker. In his absence, Jonathan Frakes stepped in to visit her (in costume, I believe she said). Unfortunately, she wasn't on that day, so she missed out on the opportunity to meet him, and was still salty about it.

I named some other farm animals, but she just sighed and turned back to my boob on the ultrasound screen. "I could never get into Deep Space Nine or Voyager after the way Next Generation ended. All I wanted was for Troi and Riker to get together."

"Oh...did you never watch the movies? Or see Star Trek Picard?" I asked her.

The wand didn't fall off my boob, but it was a near thing. "Do they come back?"

"Yeah, they do. I think you should really watch them, you'd be very happy with how things turn out for Riker and Troi."

Her eyes got wide, and I swear I saw a long-dormant shipper revive before my eyes. Probably something similar to my face when I saw the Janeway/Chakotay relationship being treated with respect in the Beyer novels and Prodigy. Before I left, I gave her the names of some of the movies she should start with and reiterated the Picard show. I hope she's enjoying them right now.

Also, no cancer for me! (just a cyst)

[louthestarspeaker]

it's almost 1am here's my essay about Dal and captainhood <333

I hath promised a Dal essay and I hath delivered… 

I've had this in the drafts for so long, but I just rewatched season two and it really allowed me to solidify a lot of my thoughts.

One of things that really strikes me about Dal's character and his relationship to command is that being in charge is a place of safety for him. He's had to be self-reliant and self-sufficient pretty much his whole life until the Protostar. It's something that was engraved into him since he was small, that the only person Dal could really depend on was himself.

And because he was never around anyone who actually cared about him until the Protostar, that was the right thing to do. This need to be in charge, to be in control really, is a learned survival skill. "I can tell you from experience, people in authority lie."

But in season two, his circumstances have changed (for the better!), and that's not the right thing to do anymore. Ultimately, to me, Dal's season two character arc is about vulnerability and trust. He's been in survival mode for so, so long, and now we watch him learn to heal.

You start with this boy who's spent the grand majority of his life alone or with people who are exploiting him, and the story takes him by the hand and tells him "now that you're safe, now that you have people who care about you, you can't live like that anymore."

All throughout season one he learns trust. Trust in his crew, in Hologram Janeway, in the Federation and in Starfleet as institutions that can and will help him and his newfound family. But as a captain,when he was guiding his crew through active crisis after crisis, trust looked like open doors. It looked like laying out all the variables and problems on a table so they could figure a way out together. 

Trust looks very different on the Voyager-A. It asks him to have faith in what he's not seeing, what he's not being told. He has to believe that they have his best interests at heart, that he's not trusting his family to something that will try to hurt them. 

Captainhood isn't just bossing people around for Dal. It's the responsibility of holding the lives of the people he loves in his hands. He trusts his own hands. He has the best interest of his crew at heart. 

To ask Dal to relinquish control, is to ask him to place the lives of himself and his family into someone else's hands. Which, historically, has not gone great for them. It prods directly at his trauma, asks him to take undo and ignore the survival instincts that kept them alive for so long. Is it any wonder he has trouble with that?

Dal's not going around crawling through Jeffries Tubes because he's a brat or because he thinks he's entitled to know everything. He's a traumatized kid whose self-sufficiency, independence, and ability to make his own decisions were once, for a very long time, the literal line between life and death for him and his crew.

And even if he trusts Starfleet and Janeway in his head on a logical level (which I absolutely believe he does), there's still this instinct that's written into him. It's a process to learn how and when to turn that off, and that's what we see especially throughout the first half of season two. 

This really culminates in the cafeteria scene after they return with the Protostar and Chakotay, when Dal advocates for the Starfleet temporal management guys to figure out a way to get the Protostar back to Tars Lamora. Dal was able to see that his hands weren't the best ones for the job, and trust Gwyn's life to someone else. That's huge for him. He trusts not just a person, but a branch of an institution he's never interacted with before, with one of the people that mean the very most to him. And Dal's able to give up that control, to place himself and his crew in that position of potential vulnerability, because he's finally started to feel it in his bones that he's safe here.

[jennelikejennay]

In my watchthrough of second-tier TOS episodes (having watched the good ones first) I think a few loathed ones maybe aren't so bad?

Well, they're still bad. But they have more redeeming qualities than I thought.

Gonna talk about The Omega Glory, just in passing about Bread and Circuses (because that was pretty good), and about The Paradise Syndrome.

The Omega Glory

The Omega Glory is about 3/4 of a good episode. Basically, it's the plot of Insurrection: rogue Starfleet officer wants to break the Prime Directive because he thinks a primitive planet has the secret of immortality. And we get some good points about interfering with things we don't understand and the purpose of the prime directive. (Which, by season 2, exists a lot more than it did in season 1.) Plus, our heroes get the chance to show their worth by their resistance to this guy.

And then it takes a sharp left turn into absurdity. It's not enough for it to be a gentle Cold War metaphor. No, we need to write HI THIS IS ABOUT THE COLD WAR on its forehead and play the Star-Spangled Banner. The point being that you can't say "our side is better than their side because of our cherished founding principles" and then completely ignore the cherished founding principles to be a bigot. Which isn't a bad point but we don't need to be kicked in the face with it.

There's been a recurring theme (I'm not sure it's the first time it turned up, but this was the most pointed occasion) that development of other planets mirrors the development of Earth. Apparently it's a known scientific law: Hodgkins's law of Parallel Planet Development.

I thought this was pretty stupid. Why would planets all develop the same way? Why not jump between parallel universes if what you wanted to talk about was planets going in different directions from the same starting point? It's one thing to have themed planets, that's just a clever way to reuse whatever costumes they had lying around. But couldn't they just have an Earth-like planet, without having them actually have the paper Declaration of Independence lying around? It strains credibility and makes it look like history is some kind of inevitability instead of relying on thousands of factors and choices.

However, I'm not entirely sure I was right.

Bread and Circuses

This is a much better-appreciated episode, for good reason. It has some great Spock and Bones moments, Kirk showing his stubbornness strength of character, the crew loyally standing by to follow orders even though they know their captain is in trouble.

One brief off-topic moment: this guy is queer-coded, right? Extremely?

When he asks for Kirk to be sent to his room, Kirk gives a look that suggests to me he very much worries what this obviously gay Roman wants with him. But actually, he's given a nice meal and a female slave to obey his every whim. Which I think I will write a different post about sometime because it may be Kirk's most problematic moment. OR IS IT?

But anyway, it's another parallel Earth, Earth from a single point in history with one specific difference (the Roman empire never fell. No this does not make historical sense especially given they speak modern English). Yet again there is a twist ending where we realize an important parallel to Earth history and get a 2x4 sized moral lesson. But as this one is more of an afterthought, it didn't ruin the episode the way Omega Glory's ending did.

The Paradise Syndrome

Commonly reviled as one of the worst episodes, and yet....I kind of liked it?

I mean, yes, the stereotyped portrayal of Native Americans is a problem. It's positive, but in that weird idealizing way that media tends to be about Native Americans. The Chakotay problem, we could call it.

But all of the scenes that take place off the planet, between Spock and Bones, are great. Spock won't eat and won't sleep because he wants to save Kirk and all the people on the planet. Bones at first thinks he's being heartless, but he soon recognizes that Spock cares very deeply and made all of correct decisions. So let no one ever say Bones doesn't know how to be nice to Spock. He just usually does it when Kirk isn't in the scene, because Kirk isn't there to do it. He knows he's the guy on the spot and it's time to put the banter away.

This episode also has the first mind meld between Kirk and Spock! Spock struggles with it, saying Kirk's mind is "extremely dynamic." Okay, Spock, keep your fra'als in your pants.

But it was interesting, near the end, when Spock said that the Native Americans down on the planet weren't a perfect parallel of Earth development, they were actual Earth people taken from Earth by a species called "the Preservers," who scattered various human people all over the galaxy.

Bones says, "I'd wondered why there were so many humans around," and that's it, that's all we get on the Preservers. But if we assume this explains the other two episodes, I'm not so mad about it after all. A retcon when they realized they were doing it too much, or a trace of a long arc? Who knows. But I'm adopting it now: that old paper Constitution was stolen from Earth along with a bunch of Americans and Soviets and planted on the planet in The Omega Glory. Some Romans got planted on the planet in Bread and Circuses. It's not parallel development—it's branching development from a common source.

Why does this matter to me so much? I guess I just like things to make some amount of sense. It's always nice when they do. It doesn't redeem that obnoxious lecture on the Constitution or a planet of Native Americans thinking Kirk is a god, but it redeems a little bit the stupidity of those cultures existing at all.

[stellacartography]

Thanks to @lisbeth-kk for tagging me.

Fic Writer's Meme

How many works do you have on ao3?

I have 28! 18 in Sherlock, 6 in Star Trek: Voyager, and 4 Good Omens.

What’s your total word count?

182,614, a majority of which is Kinesis, but as a person who has always struggled with completing things, the 100,000+ words that aren't Kinesis are a real victory in my head.

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Kinesis (Mystrade), The Interrogation of Anthony Crowley, Witch (Ineffable husbands co-written with @mevima), Avast Ye Merry Gentlemen (Johnlock Christmas), The Bold and the Bruised (Mystrade 360MG), Atonement (Janeway/Chakotay post-series reconciliation).

Do you respond to comments? Why/why not?

Absolutely! I love comments. If I haven't responded to a comment it's only because life has been eating my brain and I will get to it once I've recovered.

What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

Probably All the Time it Takes to Wait, which is titled after a song I played obsessively at the time while I was dreaming up the scenario of Chakotay actually getting to have feelings about the whole Fair Haven disaster. Nothing is resolved but they have it out. The song is angsty and so is the fic.

What's the fic you've written with the happiest ending?

It's gotta be Kinesis. Not to overhype, but the ending is pretty satisfying and joyful.

Do you write crossovers?

I have the outline of a Sherlock/Star Trek crossover in my WIP pile.

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

No, but I can't wait. Bring it on, internet. I love an argument. I love to analyze the fears and insecurities of people who start fights on the internet over free content lovingly created and bravely posted. I am unhinged and ruthless.

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Hell yes. Smut has been an essential part of my recovery from religion, both the reading and writing of. Smut is so revealing of a character's motivations, their vulnerabilitites, their desires. I think it's a marvellous thing.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to my knowledge. If so, I'd rather not know.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

No.

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes, the aforementioned The Interrogation of Anthony Crowley, Witch was so much fun to write with @mevima. It was way outside my comfort zone, kinkier and darker than anything else I've written.

What's your all-time favourite ship?

Johnlock and Mystrade are forever duking it out in my head. I also love Ed and Stede's speedrun enemies-to-besties-to-lovers dynamic in OFMD.

What's a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

Never say never, right? I have another long one that could be a Good Omens AU set in Toronto in the early 90s. Because it's last on my list of long fics, I don't know when I'm going to get to it. Also all the garbage behaviour of a certain writer/creator has really sapped my enthusiasm for writing in the fandom right now. I had a thought to turn it into an OFMD fic but I'm not sure if or when I'll get around to it.

What are your writing strengths?

Dialogue is my friend. If I get stuck in a scene, I just make the characters talk and it helps me move on. Comes from a background in writing plays.

What are your writing weaknesses?

Endings! Spare me from having to finish anything. I get burnt out and distracted easily but I'm learning to manage it. I look forward to the times when the story really flows, but since most days are not like that, it's about finding ways to write the next 5, 10, 500 words.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

Like so many things, I don't think there should be hard and fast rules about what writers can and cannot do. For me, I'd be inclined to check with a native speaker if I can find one, but keeping in mind that this is not a professional venture, I think foreign dialogue in fic is a "do your best and be forgiving" venture.

That said, if a writer chooses not to get a native speaker to weigh in on their usage and they get comments like "Hey you bum. Don't use google translate for this!" we have to be willing to take our lumps and seize the opportunity: "My hero! Will you look at the rest of my dialogue for me?" Fandom is about connection building.

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

My first creative writing project in first grade was an origin story for a talking boot puppet in a horrifying Canadian children's program called Readalong. But I had no idea what a fanfic was at the time.

My first intentional fanfic might have been an unpublished Sailor Moon or Mulder/Scully fic that may live on in a hard drive somewhere.

First fic on AO3 is actually poetry called Not a Romance about what Kathryn Janeway was thinking after the episode Resolutions.

What's a fandom/ship you haven't written for yet but want to?

Our Flag Means Death. Probably Ed/Stede but there are so many great characters, it might be hard to choose.

What's your favourite fic you've written?

Kinesis. It's the fic I've always wanted to write. It has some of my favourite vibes. And I derived great joy from firing Mycroft Holmes.

Tagging @hubblegleeflower @may-shepard @the-toad-in-your-piano @copperplatebeech @blogstandbygo @fearlessdiva930 @cirquedereve @antheiasilva if you feel like answering and haven't already been tagged. I tag anyone who sees this and wants to answer (please @ me in your response and I will reblog).

If you see this and you're more of a reader, tag your favourite writers in a reblog or the notes. Seriously, this goes for anything. If you tag me on your original posts, I will gladly reblog and hype your content.