Usually I post my thoughts on certain things and/ or reblog them
However
On my main account @unknownfacelessfanfictions I regularly post Fanfics/ Oneshots etc. And there are a lot of Star Trek related fanfics that I will link below.
Other things you should know:
Deep Space Nine is my absolute favourite show and one of the best things Star Trek ever did. No you can't change my mind.
Star Trek Enterprise deserved better and wasn't as bad as everyone thinks
New Star Trek does not equals bad. I enjoy it quite a bit, especially Star Trek: Prodigy
"These are the voyages" does not exist. Trip lives. Everybody is happy. The only thing I will except is Talla.
Live long and prosper guys
Links below:
My Star Trek Oneshot Masterlist /work in progress
-> currently thirty-six works available (including Body Language)
Body Language -> Commander Tysess x OFC Series /work in progress
you will never catch me complaining about an actress on a tv show having an imperfectly concealed pregnancy or a character going on a sudden trip somewhere while her actress is on maternity leave. so many actresses (and women working in any other field) are fired, punished and pressured into making reproductive decisions for their employers' convenience & if i have to try a bit harder to suspend my disbelief then that's absolutely what i'm going to do if it means people are getting to exercise reproductive & bodily autonomy without punishment
My favorite writing of this was how Star Trek DS9 handled Nana Visitor's pregnancy. It felt out of character for her character (Kira Nerys) to get pregnant and it's the semi-utopian future, so presumably birth control works quite well and abortions are easily available. Solution: another female character gets pregnant, is injured in an emergency situation, and Kira agrees to act as surrogate. They effectively wrote this entire story line well enough, with implications for the dynamics between Kira and the biological parents, that I didn't realize until later that the actress was actually pregnant. I thought it was just an interesting plot line.
Jumping on, I personally love it because of the unique way it shows Kira’s strength and commitment to her friends. To make that kind of sacrifice, to take on that kind of burden for her friends is incredibly powerful to me. Im sure someone’s got their cynical “oh she’s been traumatized into never prioritizing herself” take but I don’t see it as a martyr complex thing at all, I see it as her compassion and willingness to go out of her way for people she cares about. And the resulting becoming part of the O’Briens’ family, accepted as Molly’s aunt and coming to live with them is genuinely beautiful to me no matter how much the show might play it for laughs. And yes, the poly ship is very fun hehe.
My only gripe with the entire storyline - and I do mean ONLY - is that her decision would have made an amazing episode in of itself. It would have had to be filmed in the weeks immediately following her telling the producers and writers that she had a baby on the way so that she wasn't showing yet (and then held on to until she was showing to slot it into the correct part of the timeline), but the idea of being stuck on a runabout with an injured Keiko, a doctor who CAN do the procedure but has to be convinced that she fully understands the risks she is taking and have her say "Yes, actually, I do understand and fully consent, because I care about these people and so do you" would have been AMAZING.
@thoughts-i-have-had-in-passing You made me want to see this part so I went searching at ao3 and I found a great fic that's pretty much exactly this. It sounds like you may have read it (or maybe it's you? lol) but just in case I wanted to put it here.
I’ve been watching DS9 (second season no spoilers please) and I went to see the top ships on ao3 which were not surprising at all, but the one that made me chuckle was seeing Odo/Quark among the bunch.
Because I can’t see that happening EXCEPT for a in-name-only marriage clerical error that Quark keeps on the books because he thinks it will keep Odo from testifying against him in court and Odo keeps on the books so now when he testifies against Quark, everyone knows it’s not because he’s been subpoenaed, it’s for love of the game.
relationship headcanons
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odo x gn!reader
wc: 1,020
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he falls for you quietly. at a distance. in a way that odo himself can’t quite grasp until he’s forced to face it. but even from the very beginning, he’s always been hyper-aware of you and your presence. there’s times where he swears he can pick out your footsteps when the promenade is bustling. or pick up the light cadence of your laughter coming from quark’s, and he pays a visit under the guise of checking things out.
you don’t learn this until much later - when he slips an accidental confession: “i’ve always known when you enter a room.”
from the start, odo is almost even more stiff than he was before. even around you. stiff with the fear of not being enough or being too much. his vulnerability, you learn, is subtle but profound.
he’s so used to being the observer. lurking in the background. being paid no mind. odo doesn’t quite know how to handle being seen. it takes a while for it to fit.
intimacy grows slowly. sitting closer and closer each day. lingers longer and longer after every conversation. asks you more and more questions because odo genuinely wants to learn about you and your view on things. he never cared much about the opinions of solids outside of his work as a constable - but with you, it’s different. odo finds himself bringing things up he used to find irrelevant.
his affection is practical at its baseline. odo feels a bit more comfortable when he can be of service. when he can perform a duty he’s done before. he’s protective and tends to hover. and he’ll pretend he doesn’t, but the way odo positions himself between you and a rowdy group on the promenade isn’t exactly subtle.
his version of flirting is something like: “your cabin’s environmental regulation was off by 3%. i adjusted it. you sleep better at 294 kelvins.”
but real, physical affection is something he needs to learn slowly. it’s awkward, at first. resisting the notion of holding your hand for fear of doing it wrong. wishing he can return the soft caress you give his face when he’s stressed. odo put off kissing you for such a long time. longer than he’d like.
hugs came rather easy to him, however. it’s a full body, enveloping warmth. you swear he melts a little (literally) and odo will deny it. but sometimes he does.
eventually, he starts making room for you in his quarters. making accommodations for you in his space.
a cozy chair in the corner by the window. warmer lighting. one night, you accidentally fell asleep after a long day. and the next time you were over, there was a pillow and blanket neatly folded on the arm of the chair.
odo trusts you. startlingly so. when quark’s got him wound up and he’s stressed and angry, his first instinct is to find you. because you let him vent and grumble without a word of judgement or teasing.
he shares his insecurities on the quiet nights, when there’s nothing to keep his focus on. and odo really, truly listens when you reassure him. because with you, he doesn’t have to be the station’s strict constable or the weird, mysterious shapeshifter. he can be odo.
and he absolutely worships your trust in him. it’s a privilege he didn’t know he needed until he had it. odo has always been the kind of man to keep his word, but it’s doubly so with you. there is never a missed date. never a broken promise. never utters a word you told him in confidence to anyone.
the first time your trust in him touched him was when you fell asleep near him. you seemed so completely at peace, and odo secretly hinges much of his pride on being someone you can feel safe with.
though he’s not a solid, and allegedly above such petty feelings, he can get painfully jealous. it’s always more evident than he would like - spine standing a little straighter, shoulders set, voice carrying an extra sharp edge. he hates when you’re flirted with, especially if odo is standing right there. as if it’s completely out of the question that you might be with him (odo still can’t believe it himself, so it hurts his pride when other people think the same way.)
loves loves loves your little routines together. odo had his own routine before being with you. part of him was uncomfortable at the idea of adjusting it to make room for anyone, even you. but the decision has never come back to haunt him.
sharing the morning together while he goes over reports. a walk around the promenade after your lunch. meeting with you after your shift’s up by the viewing platforms and walking slowly to your cabin. sometimes odo will stay a little longer. sit on your couch with you while you read.
he always shifts just a little closer so his leg presses against yours. he always pretends it isn’t on purpose.
really hates when your duties might take you away from the station for more than a few days, and he’ll let you know it. endless complaining about starfleet’s need to send their officers off on pointless exhibitions to this anomaly or that.
jadzia lets it slip one day that, once in a while, she’ll overhear odo lowkey trying to insinuate he should come along. or, better yet, replace you with someone else. if you confront him about it, odo will simply grunt and give an excuse that neither of you believe.
quark has even started scheduling his nefarious dealings around your away missions. odo is far more grumpy and unrelenting when you’re gone.
but slowly, over time, odo learns to… smooth out his rough edges, even just a little. he wants to try to be a better man when he’s with you. a man who thinks before snapping. a man who softens up before judging too harshly. a man more willing to listen before he acts.
“for you” isn’t something he says aloud often, but it becomes a quiet truth shaping almost everything he does.
One thing Star Trek regularly does so well is patch up overpowered-character plot holes with very specific inner traits.
“Why doesn’t Odo change into—?” Cause he’s bad at it and has rigid moral reasoning.
“Why doesn’t Data just rip that guy’s head off?” Cause he’s not violent.
“Why doesn’t Q just save that planet?” Cause he’s a bit of a dick.
From a writing perspective this is absolutely genius and I love it because my Hollywood necrosis brain wants the obvious plot answer but then I get a gentle finger wag from the writers that says “no no, remember this is not a normal show, it’s a Star Trek show.”
Thinking of Deep Space Nine as "the Dark Star Trek" without digging into what made Deep Space Nine work is so reductive. Like when people discuss Star Trek being "dark" now people bring up "DS9 was Dark and you loved that! Trekkies would hate it now!"
Deep Space Nine didn't work bc it was Dark and it wasn't Dark out of nowhere. Deep Space Nine is intimately tied to TNG in a way no other series is with another (Voyager could've been just as rooted in DS9, but. Y'know. Wasn't). Not only in characters, but that the show is so devoted to exploring deep cuts from TNG: the Bajorans, but also the Ferengi, long dismissed as failed villains, and the Trill, one-off aliens-of-the-week who DS9's writers turned into one of Trek's major species. The central thesis of DS9 isn't that the Trek Universe Is Fucked Up Actually. It's that things get more messy and complicated when Starfleet has to stick around and not dash off to another planet at the end of the episode
DS9 is darker than other Treks, yes, but DS9 is also the warmest, with the most grounded, human characters, not in spite of the fact that two-thirds of the cast are aliens but because of it. The writers treat alien characters as not representatives, but individuals. They treat everyone as individuals, with foibles and flaws, not as perfect, straitlaced future people. DS9's dark episodes are darker than other Treks, but also it's more willing to get silly and emotional. Only DS9 could do the "Sisko confesses to a conspiracy to get the Romulans in the war" episode, but also only DS9 could do the "a holographic lounge singer tries to get Odo and Kira together" episode right after it. Boiling the entire series down to "Deep Space Nine was the Dark Star Trek! Grimdark!" is...just not it
The central thesis of DS9 isn't that the Trek Universe Is Fucked Up Actually. It's that things get more messy and complicated when Starfleet has to stick around and not dash off to another planet at the end of the episode
Emphasizing this because there seem to be a lot of people who have only watched DS9 and are missing the point: they think that DS9 presents the Federation as an evil expansionist imperialist power no different, no morally better, than the Cardassians or the Romulans or even the Borg or the Dominion -- the only difference is that they conquer with bribes of resources and the promise of protection from the other powers. (Nice planet you got there; it’d be a shame if something happened to it...) They seem to think that the Federation is just the 20th/21st-century US/ NATO/ The West with better technology, with the same dishonest self-interest and cultural arrogance, without having learned anything or done any work to live up to its ideals.
You will not understand DS9 if you don’t understand that it also believes in the ideals of TOS and TNG, but has a more realistic view about how hard it is to maintain and fight for those ideals in a complicated world. It is NOT trying to make the point that the Federation and the vision it stands for are “Fucked Up Actually.”
I think it’s important to remember that DS9 was the first truly serialized Trek. It bridged TV’s transition from mostly episodic shows to longer-form narratives. That kind of storytelling didn’t really exist in TV, before.
I don’t even really think of DS9 as being particularly dark. It’s just that it’s the first Trek that got to follow up on things that would have been one-episode plots on earlier shows. DS9 was able to show us the cost and the consequences of Federation idealism, because it had a structure that made those stories possible to tell.
Keeping in mind I have seen VERY few episodes of DS9 and know TNG like the back of my hand (except for whatever episode Im' watching right at that moment, apparently, then suddenly I'm a total noob >.>)
...The way I always viewed it is this: Remember what Kirk said in "A Taste of Armageddon"?
"It's instinctive. But the instinct can be fought. We're human beings with the blood of a million savage years on our hands, but we can stop it. We can admit that we're killers, but we're not going to kill today. That's all it takes. Knowing that we won't kill today."
TNG is all about fighting those instincts in one way. DS9 fights them in another.
TNG isn't naive for having a more isolated episode structure and a group of characters who are hopping from issue to issue on a weekly basis without examining the long term consequences too much (although I feel the need to note: it's not entirely devoid of THAT either. There ARE issues in TNG that rise up to bite them all in the butt later on: *gestures wildly at Commander Sela*).
And likewise, DS9 isn't overly DARK just because it gets to do what TNG didn't: aka actually show those consequences. Sometimes those consequences were bad, and sometimes the consequences were good, but they were always consequences we didn't always get to see.
TNG boils issues down to what is happening right NOW. It is pure ethics and philosophy confronted. Because that's the reality we often have before us and we do not always have time to consider the future. With that in mind, we can only do what we feel is right in the moment. And that's true both in universe, and when you look at it from a meta perspective.
It presents the crew with a choice they HAVE to make while knowing they probably won't be around to see how it turns out. When there are no hypotheticals about what could be or should be, when you HAVE to make a decision, without knowing everything that might happen in the future as a result of it.
“I know, Professor, “What if one of those lives I save down there is a child who grows up to be the next Adolf Hitler or Khan Singh?” First year philosophy students have been asked that question ever since the earliest wormholes were discovered. But this is not a class in temporal logic… It’s not hypothetical, it’s real. Can’t you see that? A man’s life, his future, hinges on each of a thousand choices. Living is making choices.”
It boils down to that one behaviour: instinct. Doing what you believe is RIGHT and how that matters, whatever the consequences. it's both a valid and true philosophy and also a perfectly good reason for Sisko to start TNG frickin' hating Picard, because even while we know what happened wasn't Picard's fault, we know he was making choices in the best way he and his crew could in an impossible situation... even knowing all that, Sisko's wife is still dead. The people we admire and trust and rooted for indirectly led to the rage and pain of a man we're now expected to follow for several more seasons.
I can see why some people found that a tough pill to swallow, tbh.
We're not supposed to view TNG and DS9 as conflicting pieces of media. They're pieces of media that would not exist without each other.
TNG is the Star Trek series that answers TOS's command: it looks up and decides it will not kill today.
DS9 is the consequence of that choice tomorrow, whatever the outcome may be...
And then, the funny thing is, they still have the make the same choice. And so often... they make the exact same one as TNG did before.
ALSO, from a Doylist perspective, DS9 got to do things that specifically Rick Berman blocked TNG from doing, because he did not pay as much attention to DS9. As a result, there was a whole lot of behind-the-scenes collaborative writing where TNG would set something up and DS9 would run with it.
Ok since vulcans have mating seasons (their pon farr) it means they have estrous cycles and not menstrual cycles which means that they don't have menses.
Imagine a vulcan learning for the first time that human women bleed from their vaginas for a week every month.
Just trying their best to master their emotions and be all calm, like "what a fascinating yet odd physiological phenomenon"
While inside they're like "what the fuck? What the fuck??? what the FUCK!? WHAT! THE! ACTUAL! FUCK! IS! WRONG! WITH! HUMANS!?!?"
Meanwhile a klingon would be like "BLEEDING IS THE SIGN OF A TRUE WARRIOR! THIS IS GLORIOUS!!"
In an inversion of the typical Plot Shit That Occurs, Shran actually has a fun, if admittedly a (by his standards) rather uneventful day, having taken Talla and Porthos somewhere like a park or something and experiences a B-plot for the first time in his life.
Archer and Jhamel however go on some wildly chaotic harrowing Main-Plot tier adventure together
It’s fun to think that yes, even though the federation has been formed and everyone’s allies now, the Andorians, Vulcans and Tellarites all still fight about a lot of things and get into a bunch of disputes with each other and because these arguments happen so often they basically have a rule that anytime it looks like there’s going to be another all-out war they call the humans.
“The Vulcans-“ Call the humans.
“But the Andor-“ Call. The. Humans.
“Tella-“ CALL. THE. HUMANS.
They literally solved hundred-year-old issues by doing the military version of slapping a friendship bracelet on everyone and telling them to play nice with each other and somehow it WORKED. Pick up the damn padd and call the humans.
Idea that once human movies and tv series becomes accessible to the rest of the universe they immediately have to get re-called and re-regulated by the federation.
Like, the Andorians thought they had sexy romance shows, but then the terrans come along and now you've got angry zhavey's, shreya's, charan's, and thavan's calling in concerned on what their teenagers are watching.
And this especially applies to horror movies, Klingon space gets access to some classics and figure they'll sit around and laugh at the silly human horror. Cut to one Texas Chainsaw Massacre marathon later and now some human captain's are reporting that the Klingons are looking at them weirdly, like they almost seem... nervous of them?
Same thing goes for when Vulcans begin to approach human crewmates to ask how they manage to keep their children away from "The animated blue kanine and the female pink sus scrofa domesticus?"
Ferenginar just has a flatout ban against any and all talent/contest shows. To win profit just for having a talent? For showing good teamwork? Without any cheating or lying? Disgraceful media. (Although they would appreciate the trick of adding a sob backstory to gain more sympathy votes)
I love the evolution of the Andorian appearance through the ages. Like, from their TOS appearance,
To them in Enterprise where they had animated little antennae (which apparently people lost their shit over in the best way) and the introduction of the Aenar,
To the beauty Hemmer is in SNW.
I love that they’ve just been around. I could write a whole thing about their history out of universe and the wonderful fact that they’ve been around for so long.
