you know tom was living for every moment he lay dying in the chute while harry held his hand and curled up against his side and whispered soft reassurances into his ear and changed his bandages with shaking but capable hands. that was the peak of that man’s life. he was in there like damn this sucks 😩 but heh if only the delaney sisters could see me right now 😏 worth it 😜
harry, tenderly holding tom’s hand: i’m so sorry this happened to you… if only i could’ve stopped it… i’ll get us out of here, i promise, i’ll never abandon you
tom, so hard he’s stopped bleeding because all the blood in his body has rushed to his dick: yeagh
harry: i tried to kill you… how can you ever forgive me? how can we just go back to the way we were before as if nothing ever happened?
tom, having reached true romantic/sexual nirvana through that whole experience and knowing that nothing else will ever come close: Don’t Worry About It. let me buy you dinner
i was getting ready for another day of assimilation, putting my ocular implant on over my piercing blue orbs. if i had hair it would be long and blonde but i’m a borg drone so i’m bald. just then, the borg queen came in. “pack your things.” she said. “i’ve sold you to pay our debts. meet your new owners, the crew of the uss voyager.”
while I was being a bit facetious before in calling dukat a pedophile, it is important to me that that kind of predation is specifically evoked around dukat as a way of representing the colonial attitudes he holds toward bajorans and that the sexual violence he commits is not incidental to his character but is, in fact, foundational.
(cw for discussions of colonialism, rape, incest, and other canon-typical ds9 things)
starting chronologically with his time as prefect of bajor, we know that dukat took many different bajoran “mistresses,” including tora naprem and kira meru. while those women are adults, the way that dukat talks about them shows that he sees himself as a paternal figure for them and forces them to go along with it. we can see this in the way he talks to dax (who he thinks is a bajoran woman) in “things past.” he quite literally tells her “the bajorans are... well, they're like my children, I suppose. And like any father, I want only the best for them,” and he plays out this dynamic while trying to make her into his next mistress. when trying to seduce her, he toasts saying “to the beginning of your education,” putting himself in the position of a benevolent father guiding her. In “wrongs darker” dukat also tries to win over kira meru by having another gul be aggressive with her so that dukat can swoop in at the last minute to save her. this performance puts himself in the role of the father looking out for his daughter’s sexual safety, and it also serves to demonstrate the way that dukat wants to be seen in relation to bajor. when he talks about the occupation in “things past”, he tells dax that he’s trying to increase rations to the bajorans, trying to make their lives better. He contrasts himself with the more overt violence of past prefects to make him seem like he is best for bajor - just as he contrasts himself with that random gul to make him look like he’s saving kira meru. dukat plays out his fantasies of being the benevolent father of bajor on the bajoran women he forcibly brings to terok nor. ds9 makes clear, though, that this “benevolence” is entirely self-serving, as he uses it to push these women into the role of his children for his own sexual gratification.
next I want to look at his relationship with his mistress kira meru’s daughter: kira nerys. despite the fact that he no longer holds any power over bajor, he still feels a drive to win over kira, to convince her that he was good for bajor, and to seduce her. All of this despite or because of the fact that he was in a relationship with her mother - a relationship that he bought by providing kira meru’s children, including nerys, with food, making him a symbolic, if distant, father to kira nerys as he provides for her. robert hewitt wolfe said that “in his mind, she's Bajor and Bajor is her, and he's sure she'd end up building a statue to him if she'd just give him a chance. Also the mom thing probably makes him feel even more entitled to Kira.” dukat again wants to control and have sex with this daughter figure and that parallels his relationship to bajor. The resistance has won, and dukat is forced off the station and so kira nerys is able to safely and firmly reject him. however, dukat still continues to express his desire for bajor and his desire for kira nerys throughout the show.
this pattern continues on through ziyal who is both kira’s adoptive daughter and dukats biological daughter. while kira shows this maternal connection to ziyal in the way she brings her to the station, looks out for her, and threatens garak for talking to her. It’s also in the script for “sons and daughters” that ziyal was hoping kira could be a “mother” to her. in this episode, ziyal is trying to bring dukat and kira together so that they could all be a family for her, and kira tries to get along with dukat for her sake. this leads to kira laughing and joking with dukat and culminates in his gifting kira a dress to wear for the party he set up for ziyal. as kira holds the dress over herself in the mirror, she realizes that she cannot stand for dukat at all and refuses to take the dress. having been rejected by kira yet again, dukat instead gives the dress to ziyal. dukat taking such a romantic gift and instead giving it to their half-bajoran daughter literalizes the incestuous dynamic that he takes with bajoran women. It also serves as a signal that he intends to keep bajor through his dealings with the dominion. this episode comes just after kira accepts that she has been serving as a collaborator in the dominion occupation of ds9 and resolves to resist. her relationship with dukat then takes the same trajectory as she is almost tempted to go along with him, but after realizing what taking the dress from him means, she rejects him. kira’s rejection turns dukat focus to his half-bajoran daughter. Ziyal, his actual daughter, now serves as the stand in for bajor as he continues to work to maintain the dominion’s control of the alpha quadrant and, by extension, his place on terok nor.
dukat repeatedly, symbolically portrays himself as a giving father as he takes advantage of his "daughters" for his own gratification and this serves to literalize the role he casts himself in for bajor as a whole.
timeloop episodes/tropes, not just star trek ones (does it actually have that many? i don’t know), are literally my favouritest kinds of episodes. something about the especially desperate sorts, when you fight so hard to change something and it fails over and over - i love seeing how people play on it
@femmeferengi you haven't seen it, you may enjoy the series Day Break, with Taye Briggs in the lead role. Time loop shenanigans, but for an action investigation drama. It may have not aged well (haven't seen it since, like, 2010) but you'll probably enjoy it.
felt the desire to design my own version of star trek crew quarters, imo the layout of officer quarters they have shown throughout different shows always makes me mad because they are weirdly designed. I don’t understand how the federation allocates ship space because the crew are always jammed in cots or hallways or some other shitty navy-style arrangement; the ships are huge, why wouldn’t their crew (even ensigns and such) have slightly more habitable rooms? Also the fact that in some shows like LWD people can get their own rooms at ranks as low as lieutenant junior, which feels wrong in the opposite way.
Anyways I wanted to design my own hypothetical junior officer quarters that are more than what we have seen. Most officers are on ships for years at a time, so I think the rooms should be at least a little homey.
I know it’s a ship it needs to conserve space yadda yadda so I made a 4 person room and an 8 person room, i’d say it’s like a college dorm vs a summer camp dorm, but it’s better than what has been shown in a lot of star trek imo. Some features include sinks and bathrooms (iirc we never have private bathrooms shown for non-senior officers), extra storage space including lockers and under-bed space (these people are on these ships for years, what if they have stuff?), I tried to adhere to modern ADA minimums for things like bed sizes and bathroom sizes, but it’s tricky since trek doors are automatic and sliding, which isn’t really something i could figure out how to factor into some measurements. Also included a basic replicator, idk if it’s ever stated just how inefficient something like personal replicators for crew would be, but basic replicators for water and nutrition bars + using them for trash just makes sense to me rather than restricting them to the mess halls and senior staff.
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