i think a lot about una chin-riley and grief. how grief lives in the body bends its shape to the body makes a home of the body becomes the bodyâs grief. i think about her as a child looking up at the nighttime sky and all its stars, dreaming of a better place. i think of how she had to leave everyone she knew behind to find that better place, and how even once she got there, she had to continue to hide. i think about how the dates we have are hazy but seem to imply that there are gaps in her canonâdetails hinted at that we donât fully see. twenty-five years of estrangement between her & neera, but those twenty-five years are all years she spent in starfleet, and una and her family started passing long before she left for earth. i think about how this means she was still in contact with neera for some of those years. i think about the length of time they must have been friends or lovers or friends who are also lovers/a secret third thing for the strength of their estrangement to sting so hard even now, twenty-five years after neera or una or whoever it was put that silence in place. i think about how in beta canon, some of the novels establish that unaâs birth name isnât una because illyrian names are impossible for non-illyrians to pronounce, so upon joining starfleet she chose a different name. i think about how this isnât canon on strange new worlds but also isnât *not* canon and how many ways there are to read the act of renaming. thereâs the cultural assimilation angle, of course, bending oneself to otherâs wants and needs and in the process losing a piece of yourself. but thereâs also a queerness to the act. queer as in other queer as in else queer as in looking around you and realizing you donât conform to the shape of other tongues. queer as in reborn. queer as in remaking. queer as in having to find a word for what and who you are now and settling on a name that means solitary, solo, single, one. this is not a post about una anymore it is a post about queerness and birthdays and estrangement and growing up, of the grief involved in all of it but also the strange and wild and unexplainable joy of growing into your truest self no matter how old you are. i think about una chin-riley and grief so much. but i also think about una and her smile, una and her tipped-back laugh, una and the way sheâs made a home for herself and others despite the galaxyâs best effort to knock her on her ass. grief never leaves, i think. but itâs possible to invite other emotions to the table to sit alongside that grief. and thatâs what una teaches me
