#ds9talk

[tuwim]

gods but ezri was a balm on my heart. her absolute mishandling of garak's trauma to what looked like garak's own bewilderment in their initial interactions was captivating to watch. if someone was to come after jadzia there was literally no way to make it better for me. (ofc it'd be perfect if we had ezri w/o jadzia dying etc etc BUT I do also enjoy greatly her issues with becoming a host all of a sudden and feeling inadequate and all.) I also loved benjamin being like, hey, garak wants to decode cardassian military transmissions again, you're a fantastic counselor! :) to ezri. ben. ben please. and his line about ezri being responsible for everyone's mental health on the station at the end while gesturing at a bunch of absolutely messed up people? beautiful.

what keeps souring everything for me, though, is the julian/quark were in love with jadzia bits. this is honestly so fucking bad, still. sis said 'it's like the show tried to retcon julian and jadzia's relationship' when ezri said something about how if not for worf jadzia'd choose julian (WHAT.) and this was a SPOT ON commentary. ezri's relationship with everyone, julian and quark included, would have been complicated and interesting enough from the get-go without this!

but since I brought up one of the honestly worst lines of the ep, let's go with the best one:

GARAK: You know, when I first agreed to help Starfleet, I was convinced it was the right thing to do. I didn't allow myself to doubt it, even for an instant. I never realised how much it was gnawing at me. I suppose I was looking for a way out and the claustrophobia gave me an excuse to stop fighting my people. EZRI: Now that you know that, what are you going to do? GARAK: Get back to work. What else can I do? The Dominion must be stopped. Even if it does mean the destruction of Cardassia. EZRI: The Captain will be glad to hear that you're back on the job.

AMAZING. Spectacular. Get back to work what can I do?? I'll keep getting my people killed, I'll keep fighting against my beloved homeland. Oh nice, back to work it is then!! :DDD

look how proud of herself she is. I LOVE HER.

also shout-out to my past self who in reply to someone saying "like can we maybe. get a counselor on this station" wrote in the tags: "#i believe with my whole heart that a counselor would also become a problem". great going, past me, you were so right.

[tuwim]

a post in my search results: which cardassian has the most daddy energy?

another post right below it, healing me instantly: why do all cardassian men have big slutty bottom energy?

[tuwim]

we finished season 6 of ds9 and I KNEW jadzia dies, but also didn't super get out of my way to get spoiled, so I was. honestly. I was absolutely unprepared for how BAD it was.

I knew people hated her death too, but like I said. I have not read details. so I give it to you all now. it was awful, it was insulting, i hated everything, and i'm genuinely mad about this lol.

sis told me the actress wanted reduced hours and couldn't reach an accord with tptb, so, ok, I get it, we have to get rid of the character. but the WAY to do this. it was war. she could've gone away in a blaze of glory. there was zero need for the weird julian and quark stuff either (what was the PURPOSE of it??? julian wasn't into her since forever, and she's much better friends with quark without him having feelings for her. she was loved and adored by her friends, her death would hit them hard without them having to be in love with her.) AND THE BABY. THE BABY. oh god the baby. the fact that it was war and they could've written her dying doing something absolutely badass in her last moments, maintaining her agency, and instead she was killed offhandedly because she was at the wrong place and time praying for a baby??????????? her last words to worf were about their hypothetical baby??

I can take a lot. I really can. I can ignore shit and move on or headcanon around stuff. but it's been like two days and I'm still thinking about how completely awful and irredeemable this was, holy shit.

the only good thing about this episode was the absolute hilarity of dukat. he showed up spouting absolute nonsense, nothing!! could've happened bc weyoun rightfully wanted to just ignore him and send him away, but no, damar for some reason just had to enable whatever dukat wanted to do. why. I'm completely fascinated by whatever was going on in damar's head. and then dukat got himself possessed on purpose, fucked shit up for EVERYONE, went "you don't have to thank me :)" and fucked off again. beautiful. I'm enraged by jadzia stuff and so tickled by dukat side of things, there's a truly wild mix of emotions inside me.

[tuwim]

absolutely in love with the in the cards episode <333 nog and jake are wonderful together and I love how their relationship shifted; from nog being seemingly the troublemaker to following jake's crazy ideas, complaining all the way, "jake as your friend I think I should tell you, you're starting to go over the edge" :D but going along with everything.

also this entire premise would work so well as a fun little game!! can you imagine. you're playing as jake & nog on ds9. you're starting with asking the doctor for the card and he tasks you with getting all the stuff he needs. in order to do so you have to complete all the little side-quests, and each side-quest can come with another one. you meet with the chief, and he's busy, so you can either try to look for the thing you need yourself (will be harder, possibly you'll still need someone else's help for it) or you can do what nog did, talk miles into taking a break and finish miles's job yourself for him to send this thing to you. you go to the cmo. he tells you he wants kukalaka back. you can either go to leeta and ask her to return him, but she'll most certainly ask something of you too, or you can try to sneak into her quarters (harder) and get him yourself. if she catches you, she'll be mad and ask for something too, and it'll be the hardest task of the 3 possible here. there are several choices to obtain all the things you need, and the amount of quests and how hard they are vary based on them. the path with the most quests takes the longest but is the easiest one. and you always get the card in the end even if you don't actually get all the stuff the doctor asked for.

LIKE GOSH. if I had the time and the brains I'd honest to god make a little fan game like that.

[tuwim]

ahhhh watched in purgatory's shadow and by inferno's light such good eps I'm !!!!!!!

too many thoughts to count so I'll just shut up, just one thing: I loved them bonding by the means of talking about a song that'll be sung about worf and his fights ahhh 🥺

[tuwim]

so apparently for the uniform is controversial and I mean, well yeah, but I didn't feel like I was meant to believe benjamin did a good thing. I actually really enjoyed benjamin being like "ok, so he cast me as the villain. well, in that case I'll give him a villain; I'll play the game because it'll naturally allow me to win" and then doing it. no hesitation, no going around this, no clever trick!! no bluffing! and I did so enjoy jadzia being a horrible enabler telling ben later, oh, sometimes I do so enjoy when the villain wins. ben is straight up saying he's doing a fucked up thing, and that he believed the federation would not give him a go for his plan if he asked; so he didn't. (I would've liked it if there were consequences though, but I also do believe that since he was successful, it'll be easy to let it go; which doesn't put the federation in a good light and, again, I don't believe it's meant to.)

what I found weirder than all of that, was the reason he's done it at all. I just didn't read eddington as a significant enough variable for him to go there. I mean obviously, poisoning the planets was a big thing, but I wasn't sold on ben caring about eddington and his betrayal all that much. there just... wasn't enough of him for me to believe ben would be so furious about it, felt so played. I feel like the scene with the punching bag and jadzia tried to fix it, him talking about eddington and him dining together and all, but it wasn't... shown? have I missed something? maybe so, my brain's kinda scrambled. just checked and eddington appeared in 7 eps before this one, which is like 3 more than I'd have guessed, so he either didn't make any impression on me at all, or his appearances really weren't that meaningful. (or, you know, both.) I wouldn't mind ben being so obsessed in 'righting' this mistake of his if I saw him having any sort of deeper relationship with eddington, but there was... nothing.

they should've either played the horror of what eddington was doing much more, maybe showing the cardassians that did not manage to evacuate, talking about civilian casualties, allowing some other characters to be disturbed and horrified at it (but oh, how much darker ben's actions would've appeared then); or actually built the relationship between him & eddington-- not even 'better', just 'at all', heh. because I did so enjoy ben putting results above all, but his entire need to catch eddington felt so incredibly artificial to me.

so I did enjoy seeing that side of him; I thrive on this stuff. but how he got there was just... meh.

I do have to say that I greatly enjoyed jadzia's enabling though, and being all along for the ride. likening ben to curzon, seemingly unbothered by what happened after. some poignant hesitation would've been nice though, like at some point a somber question- 'benjamin, are you sure about this?' and she'd stand by him if he said yes, and would've grinned at him after his success, but it'd make it all maybe slightly less jarring.

[tuwim]

absolutely obsessed with the 'things past' episode by the way. WHAT A GOOD ODO EP. I loved how you could SEE odo in thrax, and the frustrated, desperate, hopeless - for it has already happened and there is nothing you can change about it - arguing with oneself. holy shit. obsessed with the implications of odo 'linking'(?) him and dax and sisko and garak all together as well. I know there was something something space anomaly involved, but I wonder if he could do it without it and with, let's say, a telepath maybe?? like the one I think he's still married to? what I'm thinking about is lwaxana. lwaxana who already saw odo as no one's seen him, at his most vulnerable and ashamed before, and accepted him; I think both of them could find deep joy in joining like that together, just, you know, without the traumatic memories obviously. and if lwaxana could let go of her romantic feelings towards him, since well, that would probably not be a good idea otherwise.

it was such a tiny part but I loved his conversation with kira too; how in kira's view he was that pillar of justice, pure and untouched by the terror of the occupation despite literally working for the occupant. and it was horrible for her to get so disillusioned, but - I also think it could be good, too, because she herself has had so much trouble forgiving herself for what she's done and what it's done to her, and facing the fact that it was simply impossible to live through it and remain 'pure' in a sense - it's a sad realization, but this kinda blink and you miss it talk with odo is a crucial bit to how her worldview changes and how she develops.

dukat remains hilarious in that absolutely creepy way. I already said recently how I'll always buy dukat genuinely believing untruths, about himself especially, and I love how it's portrayed almost to a comedic degree in the show but also it's not really unrealistic at all. taking a bajoran woman he's got absolute power over to be his ~friend~, for his position makes him so lonely and he's so misunderstood, and she'll surely learn how he's such a benevolent and complicated man - I really enjoy how he's being actively ridiculed, but at the same time he's not harmless in this ridiculousness, he's very much an eerie threat throughout.

on a slightly lighter (?) note, garak was another entertaining bit here. I can scarcely figure out what he was thinking when he decided to tag along on the conference about the occupation of bajor by bajorans and talk shit, like he HAD to know what he was doing. did he get bored on the station and decided making a nuisance of himself (<- undeservingly put in the kindest way possible lol) was the way to go. incredible that dax and sisko took him along tbh. didn't we also last see him when he tried to commit a genocide and kill several other characters and himself as a bonus. I'm still thinking about how he got basically a slap on the wrist for that. and (absolutely connected to the founders ep) about his incredibly weird relationship with odo that I also appreciate so greatly. while this episode didn't focus on it exactly, it was fun how these two characters were played against each other; their standings during the occupation, how they're perceived, how they feel about it and how they outwardly react to it. but this is a topic for an essay. also a genius move on the conference goers side to give him a name tag with a 'former cardassian oppressor'. like I'm positive he insulted everyone the instant he opened his mouth and this was the result. unfortunately I also think the trip did make him genuinely invigorated because he's a freak. 'oh if I knew it'd be like that I never would have gone!' shut up you loved every second of it. terrible.

[tuwim]

I think the let he who is without sin was the first episode in which I did not really enjoy worf haha. I mean I adore & love worf with my whole heart and I kinda get what they were trying to do with this ep and I'm excited whenever I see him in general, but also I felt julian so so much when he was like "why??????????" to jadzia when she said she wanted to be with him :'D even though I also totally get why jadzia would want to be with worf, the weird ep notwithstanding.

ANYWAY what I also got from this ep is that julian and quark totally fucked on risa. this is my headcanon now and no one can convince me otherwise. it was a simple 'what happens on risa stays on risa' arrangement they were both into as a one-time thing and they probably never thought about it again in their lives.