#adam up a second

[sanspants-radio-appreciation-hub]

[mutedsybille]

"Mom, can we have the Distortion at home?" "We already have the Distortion at home" The Distortion at home:

[nouverx]

"But do you feel like a young god? You know the two of us are just young gods"

[ricky-mortis]

“You’re a caveman. And I’ve invented fire.”

Close-ups under the cut :)

[viktors-sternomastoid]

Viktor's healthy sternomastoids (and jaw) - 1/?

[fistfoughtinthesawbathroom]

I yearn more than anything to see adam as a 48 year old man.

[eggyulksart]

doodles in between matches with the gang

i keep getting the flerken videos interaction because someone on the team really wanted to fist the enemies

[synonymroll648]

lil reminder that prentice was beacon of the golden towers before he was arrested. both he and wylie probably thought that they'd see each other in the towers when he was a level seven. and wylie probably thought he'd see tiergan around the base levels as a mentor too, since he was still teaching there before he resigned in protest of prentice's arrest. and prentice and leto were probably work buddies alongside being in a rebellion together, since leto was beacon of the silver tower presumably before and after prentice's arrest.

just. y'know. bits of prentice's life before, and how that must've impacted his loved ones all the more long-term.

[origami-butterfly]

Reminder for pride month that queerness is not limited to whiteness and if you erase non white queers, when talking about the community, every queer person who isn't white gets to throw rocks at you and shoot you out of a cannon 💖

[a-most-beloved-fool]

Tell us more about your hate for Dr. Mora...?

Yes!

The thing with Dr. Mora is that the people who wrote him weren't actually properly aware of what they were writing. What they intended to write was a nuanced father-figure who gets to reconcile with his formerly no-contact son. What they actually wrote was... a bit different.

I've talked about him on here before, so I'm going to go ahead and link that post here, because I think there was good discussion (and it's a bit shorter), but if you want the long answer, it's below the cut!

From even before Mora's first appearance in The Alternate, we know that Odo feels a great deal of resentment towards him as a direct result of how Odo was treated when he was in Dr. Mora's lab. He is mentioned more than once before he ever appears on screen, and always in negative or neutral ways (such as Odo speaking about the 'Cardassian neck trick' that he clearly didn't enjoy performing).

When he does first arrive on station, Odo is very obviously uncomfortable with him. He does not want to spend time with Mora - in fact, he explicitly states that he does not see Mora as a father-figure, and that he does not trust him.

Now, the plot of this episode features a gas which caused Odo, when in his rest-cycle, to unknowingly turn into a seemingly-mindless monstrous creature. Seemingly mindless, I say, because the creature does have enough of a mind to remember his resentment of Mora and repeatedly target him. I, personally, am of the opinion that That Level of resentment does not come from nothing and can't be easily dismissed.

During this episode, Mora is the first to realize that the creature is Odo. He pulls Odo aside and informs him of this. I'm just going to leave a section of the episode summary from Memory Alpha here, because I think it says it better than I can:

Odo proposes that the gas from the planet they were on affected him somehow, but Dr. Mora suggests Odo may have been responsible for unsolved crimes in the past. He then says that now that they know the truth, none of the station staff will trust Odo, and advises Odo to return to the scientific center with him, stating he has experience with Odo.

To me, that reads as a wildly abusive interaction. That is Mora trying to manipulate Odo by distancing him from his friends and casting doubts on Odo's ability to do his job (which Odo takes great pride and comfort in). He takes the two things most important to Odo - his connection to his coworkers, and his career, and dismisses both of them as false, somehow. It's deliberate, and it's cruel. The phrase, "he has experience with Odo," especially gets on my nerves. That is not a wording that would be used by a man who sees Odo as his son or as a sentient being. That's how you talk about a feral animal or a science experiment. Frankly, I think Mora does see Odo as a science experiment. He's curious about Odo's interests only to the point that he thinks it's curious that Odo can have any interests or preferences at all. He doesn't actually respect Odo as a person - he only sees him as something to study.

There's a very small amount of conversation between them at the very end of the episode where Mora says that he never knew how Odo felt about their time at the lab, and Odo agrees to let Mora be a small part of his life going forward, which is supposed to be a start down the road to reconciliation, but it doesn't feel earned. It's cheap and, honestly, a little insulting.

Already, I do not like this man, but the episode The Begotten is where things really go downhill. This episode is supposed to show a proper reconciliation between Odo and Mora. It tries to iron out all of the resentment that Odo still holds about how he was treated at the lab.

It fails, utterly.

This episode starts when Quark acquires an ill changeling infant. Odo is the one to recognize the changeling for what it is, and takes it upon himself to try to teach the changeling about the world and how to shapeshift - made more difficult by the fact that Odo is still stuck in his Humanoid form.

Sisko suggests that Odo get the help of Dr. Mora, citing the fact that Mora had worked with a baby changeling before. Odo flatly refuses. Mora shows up anyways, entirely uninvited, and Odo does not want Mora anywhere near the infant - and certainly not without supervision. We know that Mora's methods for 'training' Odo involved pain and discomfort, and Odo is opposed to allowing the same methods to be used on the infant. He wants to take his time, and let the infant grow and learn at its own pace. But the changeling is slow to learn, and Starfleet is impatient, and, eventually, Odo is coerced into using pain to force the infant to change its shape. This works, and both Odo and Mora are delighted. Both acknowledge the utility of the other's method - Mora says that Odo was correct to build a connection with the infant, because it clearly likes him, while Odo says that the pain was also necessary.

This is supposed to be read as a good thing. The use of electricity and other pain-inducing methods is, I believe, supposed to be read as a 'necessary evil' - like requiring a child to eat their greens or take a bath when they don't want to. It claims that Dr. Mora just wanted what was best for Odo, and that he loves Odo. It even goes so far as to imply that Odo is being cruel to Mora, by keeping him at a distance and not forgiving him for the past.

In my opinion, that is an absolute load of hogwash. What I see is not a parent who tried their hardest but was flawed. I see a man who tortured a child, and now refuses to understand why the child may resent that. Part of the issue is just that it's a really shitty analogy. There is no world in which tossing a child into a Pain Machine is the same as requiring a child to comply with a set bedtime. It's abuse, straight up. I cannot see that as anything other than Mora deliberately causing actual pain to a literal infant. Frankly I do not care that it "got a result"

Now, it's true that, with Odo, Mora did not initially know he was working with a sentient being. But firstly, that excuse doesn't apply to the new changeling child, and secondly, he never once truly apologizes. Throughout, he maintains that what he did was justified because it got results. Even when he acknowledges that Odo's method of building a connection with the child helped, he still believes that the pain he caused was necessary, and that Odo's resentment of him is nothing more than an overreaction.

The episode seems to agree with him. The episode, in fact, seems to think that Odo should be the one apologizing to Mora for not forgiving him sooner! Everything we've seen of how Odo interacts with Mora suggests that Odo was traumatized by him (and I do mean literally traumatized, not just the way the word is now used in pop-culture), and somehow the episode appears more concerned with the fact that Mora is hurt that he's not allowed a place in Odo's life. Odo's discomfort around Mora and around letting Mora near the child is seen as irrational.

Mora never actually acknowledges faults in how he treated Odo. He apologizes that Odo felt hurt, but never actually accepts that he caused it, and when pressed, deflects blame onto the Cardassians and deadlines. This is mirrored in the episode by Starfleet and Sisko giving Odo deadlines re: the infant's development. Odo only turns to using pain on the child because he's running out of time - and then he does use pain, and the infant responds, and Odo decides that Using Pain On Children Is Good. This was written as a spot for Odo to relate to what Mora went through and to sympathize with him, with understanding paving the road for reconciliation, but it just. it pisses me off. This is just the fucking cycle of violence, illustrated in full-color.

(I also disagree with how they wrote Sisko in the episode, tbh. That man adores babies. You cannot convince me that he could hear the word "baby" and not immediately do everything in his power to protect the changeling baby from Starfleet pressure. Like, c'mon.)

So, while the episode sees a 'reconciliation', I see a man who was abused by his father-figure slowly get coerced into using the exact same methods, and then decide that they were correct and justified after all. It reads like a horror story, to me. The message seems to be, "you should forgive your abusers if they're your parent," with a side of, "corporeal punishment is fine and often good, actually," and a little dash of, "it's cruel to go no-contact with your parent, because you owe them for raising you. it doesn't matter what they did to earn that treatment - you're overreacting."

Obviously, I don't believe this is what the writers tried to write. But it sure is what it looks like to me! And I know that I'm not the only one who reads the episode this way.

To be clear, I don't hate Mora because I think he's an abusive 'father' - though I do, certainly, think that - I hate Mora because the writers were entirely unwilling to acknowledge that he's abusive in any real capacity. They wrote an abuser who was actively abusing, on screen, and pretended he was just a normal loving father who screwed up a little, and who didn't deserve how poorly he was being treated. They could have done fantastic things with him! Instead they blindly wrote... that.

[rabbitinthemeadow]

Alas, the cradle of my heart waits elsewhere || Four

[robertphilip]

All the party guests go home, except for one...

[bathroomtrapped]

oh my god?? SAWNIC????? IS THAT YOU???

[forbiddentaako]

pov you are lute and adam made you go down to hell to talk with the devil herself about why the fuck she keeps sending sinners to heaven and you go to the meeting only to find out that ur ex who you got sent to hell is there also and is girlfriends with her now

[ahyesthesufferingoftvteens]

You know I don’t think Kaidam shippers really explore the more unhealthy side of Adam and Kai’s relationship…which is disappointing to me because it sounds like something that would be really fun to explore?

This is a long post, so I’m gonna put the rest under the cut, for those who are interested in hearing me out:

Like in most depictions I see Kaidam as this very cute and fluffy and wholesome ship. Which I absolutely love, and I think Adam and Kai can be like that!

Then I look at the canon material and we have:

- Adam infantilizing Kai. “Very cool, Kai!” Has the same energy of your mom cooing at a shitty drawing of herself that you made for her when you were four.

- Kai pushing Adam away and barking back when Adam tries to control the situation and force Kai on the back-burner. OR when Kai very obviously states that he wants to be left alone and Adam doesn’t respect that request and tries to fix a problem that can’t be fixed in that moment.

- Adam and Kai both having trouble regulating their negative emotions and potentially getting explosive, which once resulted in Kai getting thrown across a forest. Wowza.

- Kai having a strong need for attention and validation that Adam does not notice as an obvious sign of trouble at home and something that Kai needs to talk about and get help with. Instead he interprets it as, “ugh, he’s being annoying again,” and reacts according to that perception.

- Kai outright hinting that Mira and Adam never really…hung out with him before he was invited to their team? And likely still didn’t while he was in their team? He was very likely brought to training sessions but that was it. They’ve never even been in his house before The Hollow Life. Adam very likely did not see Kai as a part of his circle before everything happened.

- Adam saying things that are insensitive to Kai and then not taking Kai’s resulting insecurities seriously and very obviously treating them as something he can quickly fix with a few words, which hints that Adam sees Kai as shallow.

Like, Adam and Kai’s friendship is fucked up. Toxic even, I would say. On one side we potentially have undiagnosed ASPD and OCD, and on the other side we potentially have undiagnosed HPD/BPD and AuDHD. This is a recipe for some DRAMA.

But the fact that no one has ever explored how this shitstorm of a relationship can evolve into something that’s actually healthy (as far as I can see) is sad because the POTENTIAL is INSANE.

Like, just imagine this…

—————

Kai confesses he likes Adam. Adam, who doesn’t take Kai’s feelings seriously, thinks Kai is shallow, and subconsciously views Kai as lesser probably thinks to himself “Awwww he’s a baby bi! You know what? I’ll date him for a little bit. It’s his first guy crush, he’ll be over it in a week. Besides, I’ll be giving him an example of what a good boyfriend should be like!” And meanwhile Kai, who is definitely very into Adam and desperately wants Adam to like him, is trying very very hard to impress and please and help Adam.

Then the PROBLEMS start coming in and Kai sticks it through anyways because he does genuinely like Adam, and he wants to be better for Adam, he just wishes Adam would actually try to be better for him.

So then this relationship lasts for longer than Adam anticipated, but by this point he’s too in deep, and he’s probably starting to actually like Kai back (but he likely doesn’t understand that yet because Adam strikes me as autoromantic with the occasional exception. Romantic feelings? What are those?), so he just kinda lets the relationship continue while not really knowing what to do about all of it.

That is, until Kai SNAPS. Accuses Adam of never actually liking him (which is partially true) and playing with his feelings (which he did) and then when Adam confirms these assumptions Kai breaks up with Adam and blocks his contacts.

And THAT is when Adam realizes he fucked up big time and that the way he views Kai is wrong, and also that he really likes Kai now. This is the funniest part of the story: Adam begging and bargaining with Kai for WEEKS before Kai even considers talking to Adam again. Kai’s first request is the most daunting: Go to therapy, Adam.

So Adam does that despite his protests, because god forbid he loose Kai again. He gets therapy, and works through some of his shitty behaviors. He’s much more self-aware than he was before now. Kai is working through his own issues as well.

More time passes, and Adam and Kai are finally hanging out again. This time Adam tries his damndest to hear Kai out, and Kai is no longer as explosive, but he’s very firm on his boundaries and doesn’t let Adam walk all over him. They start dating again later down the line (happiest day of Adam’s life) and now Adam has a story to tell his grandchildren about how he nearly fumbled the bag with his husband.

—————

This is a gold-mine to me. The sauce is impeccable. Every relationship can have issues: the goal is to work through them together as a team!

Let me see relationships that don’t work out at first but then with dedication the two meet in the middle and are finally deserving of each other!

Let me see relationships that aren’t perfect 100% of the time but are still absolutely great!

Let me see relationships that sucked and the two work their things out, but decide to remain friends because that just works better for them!

Let me see complicated relationships! They’re so fun to read!

…Also this scenario I wrote out is also great potential for Reekai (Sorry. It’s my OTP. I gotta rant about them). Like if you branch off after the break up and Kai starts hanging out with Reeve (who probably ALSO dated Adam once and would understand Kai’s strife.) you get the very funny concept of “Adam’s exes keep dating each other.”

In this scenario, after accepting that he lost Kai, Adam would probably be somewhat proud of the fact that he set Reeve and Kai up…until he remembers that he did so by being a trash boyfriend. Then he’s kinda down on himself until he quickly picks himself back up and strives for the future.

And I mean, who knows? Maybe in the future Reeve and Kai could consider letting Adam date the both of them once they’ve deemed he’s worthy.

There’s a lot of directions this can go guys. The Hollow kids and their relationships with each other are messy! Let’s talk about it!

[fishwikipedia]

THE SECOND LITTLE PIGGY / “Hangman” Adam Page vs. Swerve Strickland