#this could even extend to her time in the maquis but thats so much and i dont have a good enough grasp of the maquis to tell it

[firstroseofspring]

i didn't want to leave a wall of text on that muse post by @marxistgnome but i love it so much and this is going to be so rushed but i could go on and on and on about b'elanna and storytelling and narratives. this got really long and so under the cut it goes

it all really ties into that post i once saw about this consistency with b'elanna episodes where they reveal more about her as a person through her interior life- her thoughts and dreams and visions... what she does when she's alone. and muse really gives us this close up look at the way she sees things and what she cares about through kelis - the stories she tells him and the way she interacts with him- because he gives this good intimate portait of the world as b'elanna sees it- as she's described it to him (almost makes you wonder what she was considering there- whether she thought she should tell someone their stories because they're stuck in another quadrant and might not make it home, or if she thought she wasn't going to get off that planet and might not make it back to voyager)

and of course he's crafting a play so there's room for his own creativity but b'elanna tells him their story really well and she cares about it and you can tell. she cares a lot.

we get another really good look at this in barge of the dead like famously- and it's so consistent in that episode too because she's on the barge and she recognizes kortar from the stories her mom told her as a child and he directly acknowledges that. he says she believes in grethor and in him and she believes because her mother told her the story after she nearly drowned in the sea of gatan. remember prophecy? she's recounting the whole heroic battle with the borg to the klingon generation ship that think baby miral is their savior and the whole scene is framed like (at least it felt this way to me) that for all she says about not being familiar with klingon culture in any respect, the way she interacts with storytelling especially reveals the depth of her understanding of it- shes telling the story and she's telling it really well according to klingon custom and the first thing the visiting klingons do after she tells it is compliment that ability. and its sooo much.

when her and harry are going back and forth at the end of muse and she just goes harry have you ever inspired somebody? when he asks why she even cares so much about the ending of kelis' play. there's just like this klingon belief about living a life that's worthy of being shared with others- like when in day of honor the hologram is evaluating whether she's spent her year honorably and asks her what she's done with her life that's worth celebrating and she can't answer and he tells her that she's giving him excuses. and the direct parallel that could be drawn about how she feels about that with the janeway vision in barge of the dead where she's being condemned and the whole reason is that she's done nothing worthy of glory- 'nothing worthy of song and story.' my goodness

even when she convinces janeway to let her go back to the barge- janeway says it's not real, that she won't let her risk her life for something that she only thinks she experienced- but b'elanna tells her it doesn't even matter if she thinks it was real- that it was real to her and she cares about what her mother thinks of her and she doesn't want her to die thinking badly of her.

we see this with worf, of course the angle we're given is honor and truth and duty- but how you're remembered and talked about is important, even from generation to generation- disgrace in his family is disgrace for him. when they accuse his father of being a traitor at khitomer, it's important to him that his father be remembered as he was - truthfully, honorably, as someone to remember well (even the titles and names they give themselves being little retellings of their lives and the members of their family- on memory alpha worf isn't just worf, he's worf, son of mogh, of the human family rozhenko, mate to k'ehleyr, father to alexander, husband of jadzia, bane of the house of duras, slayer of gowron etc etc.)

((sidenote but b'elanna never in her life introduces herself as b'elanna daughter of miral always as b'elanna torres but on the barge of the dead kortar calls her miral's daughter immediately. and if she's partially from this culture where naming and titles are so important in that respect and b'elanna thinks her mother is. not what she wants to be known by not what she wants to be identified as it's soo relevant to what she calls herself. roxann dawson said that b'elanna wanted to be 'human and perfect' like her father and so she's not ' b'elanna daughter of miral' anymore because she doesn't want miral to be a part of her story, how she's remembered. so it's belanna torres.))

anyway this same- dedication to truth we get from worf and his father's memory we see even with b'elanna in 'remember' where she gets those telepathic dreams/visions from the alien woman about what really happened with that group of people they oppressed. the crew discover that the dreams are starting to affect her health- and so they offer to suppress them, take them away and b'elanna just refuses. because how else will she know what happens to them? who's going to tell their story? and she shares that story once she has it with anybody who will listen because its worth telling.

i'm going a little crazy but klingons and writing and literature and song and stories and living memory its all so. it's ridiculously important culturally. and how that translates back to b'elanna is so fascinating