#and b'elanna? she is...considering things....

[catgirljaneway]

Voyager Text Posts: Strange Promo Pics Version

Voy + Textposts 3

(Voy + Textposts 2) + (Voy + Textposts 4)

[bumblingbabooshka]

Learning Curve Hall-of-Famer right here. Tuvok making Chell clean the transporter room with the equivalent of a toothbrush as, I assume, a punishment of some sort & Harry coming out of left field with a 'You missed a spot <3' just to kick him while he's down. Harry, the man's gonna be there LITERALLY all day. Absolute bastards these Starfleet types <- said with love

[leohtttbriar]

when is the voyager episode where b'elanna is transported to an alternate timeline and is immediately captured as prisoner to diagnose and fix some mysterious borg cube illness and b'elanna has a phaser to her own head and says she'll pull the trigger and won't help if they try to assimilate her so they sort of agree to let her be in exchange for her help and then seven works with her and accidentally begins to self-actualize through the force of b'elanna's compassion and bright intelligence and so seven, instead of forcing assimilating on b'elanna (which was always the borg plan), let's her go which makes b'elanna reconsider the depth of saving that's possible for a borg drone and so of course she turns her ass back around and tries to help seven get out but oh no the borg cube is under attack by alternate-voyager and tom comes storming in to get b'elanna and kill the drone that has her and then seven, still in the process of self-actualizing, tries to bridal-carry b'elanna away from the violence but in the midst of the battle seven gets hurt and b'elanna tries to save her with her special kind of compassionate engineering and so seven whispers, dying, "i've been considering...alternate possibilities", while cupping b'elanna's horrified-and-surprised-to-be-horrified face and b'elanna kisses her because she has to put that feeling somewhere. then b'elanna's-timeline voyager figures out how to get b'elanna back to her actual timeline, transporting her just as the alternate-timeline b'elanna comes racing in (having fought her way out of some other borg cube to come help her voyager) and b'elanna begs alternate-b'elanna to save seven just as the transporter sparkle takes her away.

and she's transported back to her own timeline and her own voyager and she's feeling a little inexplicably lost and she's silently weeping in confusion in a lab where seven finds her to ask for her help making one of leonardo's flying machines because obviously his design was inadequate but seven has a vested interest in doing it right for reasons she refuses to name as 'beauty and wonder' for the immensity of vulnerability implied so she seeks out someone braver and better at beauty and wonder. so b'elanna wipes her tears and helps seven and finds out again in a wide-eyed perspective how a person can change and how new things can be built.

[isagrimorie]

People give Janeway guff about not giving Kazon replicators and transporters. Still, it's proven repeatedly that giving one Kazon faction an advantage over the other would be mixing it up in an internal war that would LITERALLY shift the balance of power.

Klingons at least know the technology they have engineers, even as it's becoming a dying breed over Warriors.

TLDR in Alliance Chakotay and Tuvok convinces Janeway that making an alliance with a Kazon faction is the way to go.

And so she does finally concede on this little experiment but with a lot of reservations going in: That once they leave the infighting will go on, and might actually have been worse.

Tuvok naively thinks it might help and bring about a Federation.

B'Elanna then pushes forward Harry's sarcastic comment about forming an alliance with Seska and then at the first sign of this, Chakotay balks.

And then Janeway says something that I feel is her guiding principle in dealing with hard decisions:

Janeway: "You can't have it both ways Commander. If you want to get in the mud with the Kazon you can't start complaining that you might get dirty."

Again, this is what I love about Janeway -- she gets flack for it but when Janeway makes a decision no one else wants to make it.

As I've mentioned in another post in tags: #right or wrong#i admire how janeway is always the one#who goes#the buck stops with me#she makes the hard choices on voyager#especially during debates#when the staff just goes around and around in circles#like in memorial where she starts just in the background#listening to the senior staff debate#from how janeway started in episode 2 of season 1#where she's presented with the horrific#sophie's choice of neelix dying because he has no lungs#and then subjecting another person to the same fate#to the (now boring debate about tuvix)#to this moment#to the moment on the memorial episode#she will take on that burden#and she will always stare at the hardest choice unflinchingly#because someone has to#as the 12th doctor once said#sometimes all your choices are bad ones#but you still have to choose#

In this episode, she allowed herself to be persuaded but she's not sold on it. But she's letting her crew run with it -- okay so we do this, but if we do this, we commit to it. And yet, at the first uncomfortable decisions... there's already balking. This was Janeway testing the waters if any other person on her senior staff could carry water about making the hard choices.

So far the ones who have stepped up were B'Elanna, Tom, and Neelix.

Anyway, I wish there was more fallout on the whole Kazon vs Trabe conflict because that was actually interesting.

But also Voyager had a Doctor Who problem -- if they meddle in the affairs of a spatial politik, they don't know the repercussions of their actions and just look at Living Witness and the reputation Voyager gained simply by doing a bit of a trade deal.

Voyager can help when they can, see: helping Brenari refugees escape the Devore. (Counterpoint).

But they can't and shouldn't really interfere with internal politics. They're not like DS9 where they can stay in one place and fix things permanently. They're just passing through.

This is also why I think she wasn't really considering Tuvok and Chakotay's thing during the Void episode where they raid another ship's resources. (Also, because after Ransom and Equinox, she knows what faltering in the Federation principles can do).

Crucially, she's also known both Chakotay and Tuvok enough that while she loves them -- Janeway knows neither men have the stomach for their proposals.

The Alliance episode was one example of that already.

Janeway, though, if she is pushed to make that commitment and there was absolutely NO way they can prevent raiding others-- Janeway would have committed to that action 110%. This is why I feel Janeway would actually come to a similar conclusion as Sisko in In the Pale Moonlight.

Especially, if she gets daily reports of Starfleet casualties. I have a feeling, there would be less kicking and screaming when Garak finally does his reveal.

Janeway has rules for a reason. She is fastidious about it. For a reason. Because once she commits to an action, it will take both hell and high water to take her off that course.

/edited

[clementine-kesh]

B'Elanna for the character asks?

How I feel about this character

she’s everything to me. saddest most tragic girl of all time. deeply repressed, anxiety-induced anger issues with self-hatred up to here. idealist but doesn’t want to admit it. strong mad scientist tendencies, if she ever met soong it would be a disaster. i think about her all the time

All the people I ship romantically with this character

seven ofc, really one of the most underrated ships of all time it’s SO good. will make you go crazy thinking about the themes. deeply compelling but because neither of them have any emotional intelligence it’s also very funny. i’m very into her and harry together because i’m a sucker for best friends to lovers and they could be such a compelling pairing on the basis of them both being young idealists on opposite sides of a conflict forced to work closely together. also like i said in my answer for janeway, she and janeway were definitely having an affair in the unaltered endgame timeline

My non-romantic OTP for this character

i really like her mentor/mentee relationships with both chakotay and janeway. they clearly both believe in her so much and that’s a huge part of her character arc. it’s great to see her blossom under their leadership

My unpopular opinion about this character

80% of people can’t talk about her without being weird and misogynistic and racist and i especially hate when people characterize her as angry or combative. she’s really not! she’s always got a valid reason to be angry and usually when she does get angry it’s at either tom or seven who are both fucking annoying. so

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

she should’ve dumped tom when he proposed because like what was that. one of the most depressing displays of heterosexuality ever. girl this is the hundredth time you’ve begged that man to consider your feelings he is not going to change and he does NOT change throughout the rest of the show. accepting his proposal just makes her out to be a total pushover and it’s a deeply lame and sexist writing choice

[worflesbian]

the voyager crew's condemnation of b'elanna's actions in barge of the dead is really interestingly similar to the enterprise crew's condemnation of the Hegh'bat in ethics and the ds9 crew's in the sons of mogh. there have been several notable occasions when klingon values demand that a character kill someone else, and those ruffle some feathers but are ultimately allowed, whereas in these three instances the idea of suicide according to klingon culture is met (initially) with a hard No. i think the only reason they allow b'elanna to induce a coma and return to the barge of the dead is that she doesn't want to Die, just induce a death-like state that the emh can resuscitate her from, unlike worf or kurn requesting to be flat out killed and being flat out denied.

to clarify, i'm not trying to say that anyone on next gen or ds9 was necessarily wrong for how they reacted to these situations, and i'm not trying to weigh in on any kind of debate about the topic of assisted suicide itself -- i'm more interested in the fact that the desire for vengeance, like jadzia's in blood oath or worf's in reunion, is a much more easily accepted example of culture demanding death. i think that the human/non-klingon crew are more ready to understand the desire to kill someone who's done bad things and hurt innocent people because it's a desire they've, if not felt, then at least considered before, the aspect of klingon culture isn't so important because they can fundamentally relate -- but the desire to die in the name of values they don't understand or place equivalent importance on is significantly more foreign, they don't relate, they see it as alien. that's the desire that gets equated to lunacy, despite coming from the same place culturally as the need for vengeance. it isn't necessarily that one is more morally acceptable than the other, that's impossible to objectively judge, but the fact that one is less foreign and more explicable in human terms. the other is an uncomfortable reminder that klingon culture, the culture of crewmates, friends, partners -- is, ironically, alien.

[foone]

So if Threshold happens to different Trek crews, who gets who pregnant? Voyager is one of the few shows where it makes heterosexual sense, (for lack of a better word, "sense" not being the word anyone would use to describe threshold)

So for Voyager, it being Paris (pilot) and Janeway (captain) makes sense through that lens. Paris, sure, because he is a pilot. We could pick a Science Guy to do it, but then it might be B'Elanna who does the flying fast, and then who is she going to kidnap for Lizard Sex? Harry? ... Yeah it'd be Harry. Anyway once you've picked Paris, you've got to figure out which woman is funniest to have him abduct into Lizardry. B'Elanna? No, not funny enough. She'd be a Klingon lizard and beat him up instead of mating, even if they did get married later. Besides, what if she evolves into a super-advanced Klingon, not a lizard? *claps* PUT TUVOK ON THE SHUTTLE. Kes? No, they already did a Tom v Neelix episode. Seven of Nine isn't on the show yet, so Janeway it is.

Ok so for other shows, we gotta pick a pilot or science guy (who might be screwing around with transwarp, and thus get Lizarded) and someone they could turn into a lizard to have babies with. The show is assuming heterosexual pairings here, but we know about things so we are not so limited.

The original series: as much as I'd love to say Sulu and Uhura ("I'll save you, fair maiden!" "sorry, neither"), I think TOS was much less of an ensemble than later Treks, so it'd need to be Spock. Spock is doing some science stuff, he gets hyper-evolved, and he picks someone else to hyper-evolve and turn into his lizard bride. As much as I want to say "Kirk", I think it's more likely that he runs off with Uhura and then Kirk has to rescue them. Kirk was always about being the one who rescues people, having the Enterprise come rescue Lizard!Spock (is that antisemitic?) and Lizard!Kirk and it's called commanded by McCoy? Nah.

TNG: the direct analogy to VOY would mean we have Wesley and... Picard? No, no, and no. Sorry. Frankly, we already had this plot on TNG (Genesis), and canonically the answer is Worf and Troi. The problem with it being a pilot thing is that Wesley is a child and Data (the official science guy) is an android, so he can't really be hyper-evolving. We could go with Geordi, the other Science Guy, but then we've got the image of a black man kidnapping a white woman. Uhhhh no. We already did that episode and it is an example of Deep Shame for the show. So Worf and Troi it is.

DS9: so this is what inspired me to make this post. We all agree Sisko would be a damn good father to his lizard babies, but would it be him? If so, with who? You could have it be Dax, and she lizards first and kidnaps him, which makes some sense given that she's a Science Guy. But you also have to consider Weird Guys. Every Trek series needs a Weird Guy so that whenever an ancient alien artifact turns the whole crew into Muppets or whatever, they can be the one who isn't affected and can thus solve it. This is all to say, Odo/Kira could be done. We've had a few episodes where he's been shown to do very extreme things out of his pining for her, so it makes some sense. Odo/Quark would be funnier but given how the DS9 writers handled Profit and Lace, I really don't want to see them do a gay mpreg episode.

ENT: the series with canon mpreg! Direct translation of would be Mayweather/Archer. Mmm. Probably not. I think it's gonna be a rarepair: Trip/Hoshi. Trip/T'Pol is too canon to be funny. The next best option is Archer/T'Pol and that's just kinda bleh. It makes sense but it's just the kind of thing they'd do and it'd be bland. We can do better. Honorary mention: Trip and Reed.

I've not watched enough of the New Treks to have an opinion there. Maybe SNW: Ortegas and La'an. Don't ask why.

[logicgunn]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers! Spread the self-love 💞

So...I'm a couple of months late to this party! Apologies. And I apparently have 105 works now, so this is hard. I'm going to take The Long Dark out of the running. It's too big in my brain to be fair to any other work.

the sky hasn't always been blue (SGA, TeylaBeth, Teen)

You can safely put the whole series in this rec. It wasn't my first Teylabeth Fic, but writing it was a good time for me and I think it shows. Elizabeth is an interesting POV for me to write, but also a really vulnerable one because she makes me feel exposed. Still. There's some real moments in there, but you'd never know which ones.

ask me (ST:V, B7, Teen)

This one was an exchange gift, and I did not think I was going to pull it off, or that the recipient was going to like it. I think it works because I kept referring back to canon dialogue between the two to capture and maintain the fiction between them, but also because I wrote it from the POV of B'Elanna, who gave me a chance to oscillate between stoicism and fury. Keeping Seven in character in the Voyager timeline and having her show interest was a challenge.

Crimson and Clover (SGA & SG1, Teyla/Vala, Teen)

Another exchange gift, and a VERY rare pair. (Seriously, there are only 5 works total on AO3, I hope someone writes another one!) I had not considered them before the match was sent out. Something just clicked in place for this, despite zero interactions in canon, and I feel like it's one of the most honest things I've ever written.

red pens and other moments (SGA, MCShep, M)

Drabbles are HARD. This was written for Domaystic 2023, I decided to do a McShep narrative of domestic moments to carry the story of their relationship and it gives me feels every time I reread.

Cut from the Same Cloth (Ent, Hayes/Reed, E)

If you look up Hayes/Reed in the Enterprise fandom, many of the fics come from the same scene where they are fighting in the gym. There was something about the way the actors played it that screamed repressed queers in the military (which, since McShep is my first written fanfic, will be no surprise to anyone). This is probably not a particularly good one, but, woah, I just sat down one day and my hands kind of wrote it directly from my subconscious. I was never going to share it. And then I did.

[stitching-in-time]

Voyager rewatch s6 ep19: Child's Play

This one really packs a wallop. I don't rewatch it very often because it's kind of a lot, but it's extremely well done- while I wouldn't say it's one of my favorites, considering what happens in it, I still think it's one of Voyager's best episodes.

(Spoilers ahead- for anyone who hasn't seen this one before, I'd recommend watching it first- the ep won't hit the same if you know what happens going in.)

Seven's relationship with Icheb was honestly the thing that made me really care about her at last, since it was the first time I truly felt like she loved someone. In this episode, especially, you see how Seven's experience of being a parent to Icheb brings up her trauma over her own parents, but that also gives her a path to heal it. Her desire and need to do better for this boy than her parents did for her is very raw and heartbreaking, and Jeri Ryan's eyes subtly show us the entire struggle going on in Seven's mind throughout this story. I think it's one of her best performances. (Though I noticed they were putting a lot of soft focus lenses on her close ups in this ep, which they usually do when they're trying to make female characters look pretty and romantic, and it seemed a very odd choice for an episode with such dark subject matter. Women don't have to be beautiful when they're processing trauma, dudes.)

It opens with an adorable Voyager Science Fair for the children in the mess hall- I love that Naomi has other children to play with now, and I love that the Voyager crew has embraced the Borglets as their own and come up with activities like this to make them feel important and valued as part of the ship's community. Janeway, Chakotay, and B'Elanna are the judges, and it's cute to see them interact with the kids, especially B'Elanna, who doesn't get scenes where she's able to be soft and lighthearted often enough. It's also cute how proud Seven is of all her charges- she's obviously made progress in loosening up the reins to let them explore and create things on their own, and is now reveling in their creativity like a proud mama. Icheb's project is a device to help Voyager scan for wormholes, and Seven tells the captain that Icheb wants to join the Voyager crew one day in astrometrics. Janeway has to burst Seven's bubble and tell her that isn't possible, because they found his parents, and they have to bring him home.

Seven is shaken by the news, and can't even bring herself to tell Icheb at first. When she does, he doesn't want to leave any more than she does, but she tries her best to put a positive spin and be stoic for him.

When they arrive at his home planet, they find a farming community that has weathered many Borg attacks, which goes to great pains to disguise what little technology they have left, so as not to attract Borg attention. They shot the planet scenes on location, and they look great. The matte painting of the settlement inside a big canyon, surrounded by the ruins of an advanced city, is very cool. I'm not sure if they actually filmed in a canyon, or if they added cgi later, but the outdoor location shots all look like they're surrounded by the canyon, and it looks amazing. The grand, sweeping scale of it is really beautiful, and gives a wonderful sense of place.

Icheb meets his parents, but he remembers litle about them. He's unimpressed by his homeworld, since he wants to explore the stars, and they barely have a handful of space-worthy ships left. He asks to go back to Voyager, and Janeway lets him, but she's determined to help him reconnect with his parents. Gradually, as he spends more time with them, he begins to remember and reconnect with them and their community, and becomes interested in their genetics and biotechnology expertise that they use to farm the inhospitable land. Eventually, he decides to stay with them.

Seven is heartbroken, and angry at his parents for staying on a planet so close to a Borg transwarp conduit, which puts Icheb in danger of getting reassimilated again. She doesn't believe they're doing enough to protect him, but she has no choice but to accept Icheb's decision to stay. Voyager leaves, and she tries to make peace with it, but when Mezoti tells Seven a different version of Icheb's assimilation than his father did, Seven becomes suspicious. She investigates the Borg database from the Borglet's former ship, and finds out that the Borg's records of his planet don't match his parents story. She tells the Captain that something is wrong, and Voyager turns around to find out what they're hiding, and why.

The next scene is one of the most horrifying twists in any Star Trek episode, ever. Icheb's parents play out an awful MacBeth-like scene of going back and forth over whether they should just keep Icheb, or use their son as they planned to- we don't know what it is they have in store, but we know it isn't good, as they rationalize the necessity of giving up their child. An unsuspecting Icheb walks back into the midst of this conversation, after having been out happily playing a ball game with the other teenagers. It's honestly a little hard to watch as his mother attacks him with some sort of injection- he asks his father for help, only to be held down by him to help her sedate him. (There's lots of discourse about who the worst parent in Star Trek is, but I think Icheb's parents win, hands down, no contest.)

Voyager arrives at the planet to question Icheb's parents, but they've already launched the unconscious Icheb in one of their transport ships- Voyager detects the ship en route to the Borg conduit. They learn that Icheb had been genetically engineered to produce a pathogen that kills Borg- that's why all the adult drones died on the cube they found him on. His parents had intentionally sent him to be assimilated as a child, to destroy the Borg and protect their planet. They rationalize it with tearful excuses to Janeway, but Janeway rightfully condemns them, and ignores them to go save Icheb from an incoming Borg cube. They manage to get Icheb out of the Brunali ship, and explode it, which damages the cube from inside, letting them escape before the explosion catches them.

Back on board afterward, Seven finds Icheb analyzing his DNA in the astrometrics lab. He seems unable to engage with his parents betrayal on a personal level, and instead regards their act as an impressive feat of bioengineering. He wonders if he actually was destined to destroy the Borg, and if that would have been better for everyone. Seven, in a marvelous role reversal from when she first came on board, is now the one to assure him that his free will as an individual matters more than any collective goal, and that his life is worth fighting for. He can still fight the Borg in the future, in a way that he choses. It's a really beautiful moment. Bittersweet too, because Seven only has Icheb back because of the horrific negligence of his parents, on a far worse scale than even Seven's own parents managed. But despite having their lives almost stolen by their parents and the Borg, Seven and Icheb have each other now, and the Voyager crew. They have a family who loves them, who they matter to, who will fight for them to the end. In the face of such evil and horror, love and hope still wins out. It gets me every time.

(And I'm not even going to go into the absolute garbage fire of that episode of Picard, except to say it's bullshit, written by people who didn't give a damn about Voyager or it's characters. How anyone could see this episode and want to just throw this relationship in the trash, and spit on absolutely everything this episode was about- it just makes my blood boil. But more than that, I'm just sorry they missed the entire damn point of what Star Trek is about. That show cannot even hold a candle to Voyager, and it will never be canon to me.)

Tl;dr: A truly heartbreaking story, with maybe the most diabolical plot twist in all of Star Trek, but one which ultimately affirms the triumph of love over evil. Beautifully acted, written, directed, and designed. Top tier all around.

[bumblingbabooshka]

I hate when Chakotay is watered down to be Janeway's yes man because their disagreements are actually very interesting. [A lot of rambling analysis of this debate in particular below]

Chakotay in Parallax is very interesting in that he has to navigate a lot of different dynamics. Balance a lot of plates while being watched keenly by everyone around him. Immediately preceding this scene we see him ask B'Elanna for her opinion on the bridge - both as a chance to show her knowledge in his bid to make her chief engineer (because she wouldn't get a chance to otherwise as Janeway has clearly indicated that at this point she views B'Elanna as a troublemaker who won't be considered for the position) and because he just thinks she's a better engineer than Carey and wants the best possible chance of them succeeding. Janeway sees this as unacceptable. Carey is the chief engineer and so he should be called and Chakotay NOT asking for his opinion is an insult to Carey, Janeway, and might make the crew doubt Chakotay (and by extension the Maquis') loyalty to the Starfleet crew.

At this point it seems that to Janeway integration ["They're not your people"] means the path of least resistance, specifically tailored towards the Starfleet crew. She wants Chakotay by her side to keep the Maquis crew calm but also seems unwilling to consider them for important positions aboard the ship. Though she says that the Maquis are not Chakotay's people, not his crew, she certainly doesn't seem to consider them hers [Compare this to later instances where she stresses 'our' crew, here she simply says they aren't Chakotay's: Whose crew are they? Are they crew at all?]. This less leaves the impression of "We need to be a cohesive team" and more "You're not in charge here." She essentially accuses Chakotay of playing favorites. In her mind Chakotay's actions are not conducive to integrating the crews which would (again, in her mind) mean the Maquis being docile and accepting, obedient and content - not making trouble for the Starfleet crew. Chakotay counters Janeway's accusation with one of his own: That he IS trying to integrate them into the crew but her not allowing the Maquis any opportunity to prove themselves or succeed, not showing any trust in any of them (except, implicitly at this point, him) is making things difficult. At this point the Maquis crew are ready to mutiny on his word at any time. He knows this for a fact. Aside from that looming threat (the threat being that tensions are high and if nothing changes and they remain high there might be a mutiny even without his word) - Chakotay knows these people and trusts them. Though Starfleet and Janeway think of the Maquis as a violent bunch of criminal terrorists, Chakotay and a good number of the Maquis joined because they believed in the cause they were fighting for. These are people Chakotay knows WILL fight fiercely for what they believe in and conversely, AGAINST what they perceive as injustice. Even if they're not in the majority - they're used to picking fights which seem impossible to win. At this point Janeway admits that she ISN'T making it easy for Chakotay to integrate the Maquis - specifically talking about practical concerns; how she doesn't feel she can let Maquis crew have roles of importance on the ship because they lack the ability to hold them. "They don't have the discipline, they don't have the training," - asserting that they just aren't prepared for any such roles and it doesn't have to do with them being Maquis specifically. Ostensibly, she's treating them as she might treat anyone unqualified for the job.

Chakotay maintains that some of them, like B'Elanna, have the ability to be trained - challenging her point by saying that IF they're trained there's no reason for any Maquis member NOT to be given a more prominent role on the ship. He isn't suggesting they just unqualified people important jobs. If the problem is that they aren't trained, let's train them. These people have the ability to succeed if you give them the tools they need and a fair chance, he insists. Janeway then switches gears and her argument becomes not "The Maquis are untrained so they can't be given those jobs" but "The Maquis crew are unworthy of those jobs when compared to Starfleet personnel" saying that it'll cause insult and upset among the Starfleet crew if any member of the Maquis were to be promoted above them. Again, her idea of integration is based more on Maquis subservience to the Starfleet crew than it is the two crews working together. (Not that I believe she looks at it that way, it's just where her 'path of least resistance' leads) - though she accuses Chakotay of being too focused on "his" crew, she is admitting here that she believes her real crew are the Starfleet officers aboard, not the Maquis. She also admits here that the system she wishes to maintain (and is asking Chakotay to enforce) is one where there will ostensibly never be any chance of a Maquis crew member being promoted because no Maquis crew member will ever be more qualified, more worthy, than a member of Starfleet. We can see how it'd be difficult for Chakotay to convince his crew to remain calm under these circumstances. There's also Tuvok's behavior toward him at the beginning of the episode where the Vulcan nearly goes over Chakotay's head and when he doesn't do so (as Chakotay reminds him that HE'S the superior officer, the First Officer in fact,) Tuvok acts as if him backing down (partially) and conceding (partially) to Chakotay's authority is a favor to Chakotay.

Tuvok in this conversation is downright insubordinate to Chakotay. Despite Chakotay being the first officer, he doesn't take what he says seriously, argues that his own opinion on what should be done should be followed rather than Chakotay's, lectures the first officer about his conduct, and then almost seems to threaten him with a report. In Starfleet's rigidly hierarchical rules, acting like this to a superior officer (ESPECIALLY the first officer) wouldn't be tolerated and Tuvok knows this perfectly well. He isn't a rebellious character and clearly in other episodes adheres to these Starfleet hierarchies and codes of conduct very strictly. He values them highly. But Chakotay, a Maquis, shouldn't be First Officer. Why should he be given respect for a title he didn't earn? [Affirming Janeway's argument about how Starfleet officers won't be eager to follow a Maquis senior officer] Even though Chakotay tells Tuvok off for it ["I don't have to explain myself to you"] he doesn't threaten to put Tuvok on report or explicitly mention his insubordination. It's unclear if this is Chakotay's personality or if he just doesn't feel he CAN do that. Tuvok is one of the three most senior officers aboard and very close to Janeway. Chakotay has to think of the optics of any situation at all times - we see seconds after this conversation that rumors have already started swirling around B'Elanna being relegated to quarters that've fanned the flames of mutiny. Though we know Tuvok has personal reasons for behaving the way he does toward Chakotay (which he later admits), I really don't think it'd be out of the ordinary for this to be how most Starfleet personnel would treat the Maquis if they weren't outright hostile: Like they're only pretend crewmen. To a lesser extent we even see this with Janeway: In the following staff meeting, she clearly doesn't consider B'Elanna a viable option when Chakotay brings her up and almost ignores the suggestion entirely.

It also, again, leaves Chakotay in an impossible position. If he doesn't protect and fight for the Maquis crew, they won't ever be considered a true part of the crew and dissatisfaction will likely spread among them. Dissatisfaction which the Starfleet crew will then use to further label the Maquis as insubordinate, uncontrollable, unfit. Not to mention that if he doesn't advocate for them, he might lose their trust. However, if he DOES try to help the Maquis crew advance the Starfleet crew will view this as 'favoritism' and will further distrust him, won't respect the people he puts forth as worthy. Janeway seems to be intent on not advocating for any of the Maquis crew and also seems unwilling to ask that the Starfleet crew grant leniency. She implies that the Maquis crew need to learn to get in line and keep quiet and it seems almost like [we must remember the optics] she has Chakotay as the only Maquis in a position of power to facilitate that. Chakotay recognizes and pushes against that, saying that he won't just be her token Maquis - there only so she can point to him and say "See? We don't discriminate against the Maquis here." effectively a tool used to shut down any arguments of unfair treatment and a tool to quell the Maquis if any talk of mutiny DOES arise. In this model, Janeway can just tell Chakotay to calm them down and they'll listen because they trust him. She also doesn't have to really listen to anything he says: A token First Officer has no authority; his words don't hold weight. [Chakotay isn't Maquis anymore, they aren't his crew anymore - ok. What is he then? What are they? Nothing, without respect.] This plan seems untenable, as much as Janeway frames it as sensible: "I can't make it easy, Commander. Surely you can understand that," and alternatives as impossible "How am I supposed to ask them to accept a Maquis as their superior officer just because circumstances have forced us together?" - in the long run, how would this be sustainable? In any power structure, you cannot expect a group of people you're unwilling to grant trust or agency to obediently follow you forever. This proposed form of 'integration' in which the Maquis are kept on the bottom rung and told intermittently to stay there quietly by the only one of them granted permission to stand at the top would never be sustainable - especially with a group like the Maquis who again, were founded on the belief that its members should fight against inequity and are already on the verge of mutiny.

I specifically find the statement "How am I supposed to ask them to accept a Maquis as their superior officer just because circumstances have forced us together?" to be interesting because personally I'd say that being forced together for the rest of almost everyone's natural life is a pretty good reason to ask people to adapt and Janeway does understand this but only applies it to the Maquis - the Maquis are the ones who have to adapt, not Starfleet. The only thing the Starfleet crew have to do is tolerate their presence on board.

At this point Janeway again claims that if Chakotay can show her a 'qualified' Maquis candidate she'll consider them. I believe this is true but we already know that Janeway's standards for qualification will likely not fit the vast majority of the Maquis and Chakotay ignores the claim in favor of putting forth B'Elanna again, firmly. Janeway predictably dismisses her as unqualified and Chakotay disagrees, arguing that he knows her. He's worked with her. He KNOWS that B'Elanna can excel at the job even if she doesn't meet Starfleet/Janeway's qualifications. He doesn't value those qualifications over what he's observed about her - just as he didn't value Carey's title over what he knew about the gap between his and B'Elanna's abilities. Then, Chakotay switches gears. He admits that Janeway's right - he does view the Maquis as his crew but that's because Janeway (almost self admittingly) doesn't and if he doesn't, who will they have? [What kind of captain, kind of man, would he be?] "You're going to have to give them more authority if you want their loyalty." "Theirs or yours, Commander?" Janeway frames Chakotay's words pointing out the flaws in this plan which I outlined earlier, as almost a threat (if she doesn't have Chakotay's loyalty it'll most definitely mean mutiny). Chakotay asserts that it wasn't a threat, he's only trying to help by telling her how the Maquis crew will react to what she's telling him. "I'm sorry you can't see that" - not an apology for what he said but that she isn't willing to budge, not willing to listen to him and acknowledge that she might be as biased towards her crew as he is towards his. Chakotay is trying his best to acclimate his crew but if Janeway isn't willing to do the same, to talk to her people as he's talking to his, then this will not end well and that isn't a threat. It's just the reality of the situation. He then asks permission to leave, showing he is willing to observe Starfleet protocol (just as when he asked permission to speak freely), and Janeway lets him go, exhaling at the intensity of their debate when alone in her ready room.

[leohtttbriar]

b'elanna essentially being in the position of medical professional while kes paces and waits for her friend to get out of surgery is so sweet and interesting to me. like, b'elanna's work doesn't normally involve this sort of personal care, despite the fact that she's often called upon to save everyone's lives in a way that's not dissimilar to a first responder---triaging, applying duct tape, holding everything together until she has a moment to fix things more thoroughly. but she does it so well. better bedside manner than the programmed doctor, so kind to kes who definitely cares and thinks of the doctor as more Person than b'elanna has previously expressed, and so patient with kes's anxieties. there's just something about how b'elanna might not consider a program a fully realized person, might not have considered the robots in "prototype" fully realized persons (but maybe more so than the EMH given that they were embodied--it's hard to read in the episode), but she always acts very specifically with the assumption that beings like this can feel pain and that others would feel pain at their potential loss. and she respects that. kes may be firm in her idea of the doctor's personhood and b'elanna may be unsure but they both act equally kindly toward each other and the doctor about it. which is so interesting.

[thegeminisage]

star trek update time! sunday we did voy's "course: oblivion" and "the fight," and last night we did voy's "think tank" and ds9's "penumbra."

course: oblivion (voy):

this one fucking sucked ass

ok, initially, it's pretty exciting, because that demon planet episode was cool, so a sequel is cool! i even like tom and b'elanna's wedding despite thinking she could do way better. and the plot twist was even fun. like, weird, but it's scifi

what i don't understand is the back half of this episode being watching them all die horrible, pointless deaths. like, they're sentient now, yay! they get to go back to nonexistence slowly and painfully and DON'T EVEN. GET TO SEND OUT A PROBE

like, it would have all been worth it if the probe had worked. it would have meant something if they could pass on their experiences or knowledge or helped the real voyager in some way it might have even been better if someone on voyager had realized what the debris was and had a picard-like moment where they were all oh thots and prayers for those guys lol

but instead we got absolutely nothing, which begs the question of why we wrote and shot it

i guess one could argue that they went hard. dragged you to hell. but i didn't want to be dragged to hell in this particular fashion on that particular evening. so.

the fight (voy):

this one actually makes me mad bc it's one of those episode concepts that could have been award-winning and character-defining if they'd done it right, and instead it was absolutely awful. like that episode where Only harry kim goes home. agh.

conceptually, chakotay, who never had a strong desire to connect with his heritage until after his father died fighting cardassians, would be REALLY wound up about his "crazy old man" grandpa refusing treatment for a treatable condition on the basis of spiritual beliefs. like it's just a gene! they repressed it in chakotay! the miracles of modern medicine! if we had focused on that conflict for more than the 60 nonconsecutive seconds we got (and 86'd the racist panflute and all mentions of the phrase "vision quest") that alone could have done wonders for this episode

conceptually the boxing angle is really good too. chakotay TALKS about how angry of a person he was before he came to be on voyager but we never SEE it. he'd be a lot more sexy if they did let him get mad sometimes. robert beltran actually acted during this episode a couple of times, which was big of him considering how bad the script was. he could have killed it if he had the chance (summary of all of voyager robert beltran could have killed it if he had the chance)

the way the aliens communicated was also SO COOL i feel like we were so close

so like, consider the version of this episode that lives in my mind palace:

chakotay has the gene which made his grandpa crazy but they suppressed it in him before birth but being around the aliens reactivate it but we DON'T find that out yet

we see that he has hallucinations and that the hallucinations are the only way to communicate with the aliens and get voyager out of trouble, but he's like weirdly resistant to this idea even though he's down to clown and he won't say why

and the the hallucinations, are, critically, flashbacks of his own time boxing to blow off steam when he was fighting with his dad or after his dad dies (some dark period in his life - if we could swing some kind of fight ring situation to make it Even Worse that would be fun and sexy too). boothby is NOT there, the crew of voyager are cast in roles of people he used to know instead (because i want tuvok to be the one putting his mouthguard in, sue me), and the only one we don't recognize is his grandpa, who is his opponent

and eventually the hallucinations get worse and the EMH figures out the gene thing and chakotay talks about his feelings in front of the emh and janeway like how hard it was that his grandfather wouldn't consent to treatment and how it made him resent his own family/heritage and how it's part of the reason he didn't pick that stuff up until after his dad died because he didn't want to look like that to other people and it's a great monologue but BEFORE HE CAN FINISH he starts hallucinating again and THEN we get the scene of him following his grandfather around through the fog while they both hear voices

and when the aliens finally do get through to him it's with the same method of recycling footage of dialogue from the episode because that fucking ruled but and this is also crucial the only way to let them in is to STOP fighting. chakotay has to stop fighting. the boxing represents the struggle he's having against the gene that makes him hallucinate which represents the struggle he has with his own family/his past regrets and he has to STOP FIGHTING and accept it/them/himself/his own history/you get the idea in order to let the aliens in. AND he can pace around shouting at no one while being terrified because i did like that part too

and then anyway voyager is saved and at the end they resuppress the gene BUT not before he says goodbye/sorry/thanks to his grandfather for helping him communicate with the aliens, even if his grandfather is still only a hallucination

do you see my fucking vision?? do you understand???

think tank (voy):

finally a good fucking voyager episode

i did like all the weird aliens aboard the ship. the whale, the jellyfish, the robot, etc. a v cool bunch

i also liked that they caused the very problem they showed up to solve - though i wish janeway had gotten to yell at them about being frauds and hypocrites and gotten them to change their ways, rather than tricking them into getting obliterated. like tricking them WAS hot but the other way would have been very captain kirk of her, and they were such an eclectic group i was almost sorry to see them go. i kept thinking if they truly loved solving problems they'd do it for the sheer experience, and since that guy was taken AS payment, he could be made to understand how fucked up that was and let seven go. alas.

speaking of seven, the conversation about seven leaving seemed unnecessary considering we've had times when seven has almost left before and we all know they aren't getting rid of a regular cast member in a one-off episode like this. that said i do love how they played up her uniqueness

AND i like that she got to play bait and trick them. her loyalty is to voyager <3

oh yeah and i love that tuvok attempted to do a nonconsensual mind meld this ep. good for him.

penumbra (ds9):

okay i think i'm FINALLY warming up to ezri. and it wasn't even the toxic family episode that did it although that did fuck me up real good it was the fucking. moment she had with worf in that episode i hated where he went "you are dax." they took that whole conversation and turned into an episode, more or less

listen, i've been ezri/quark this whole time, but i did start to think, a few minutes into this episode, how sweet it would be if ezri and worf fell in love again. it's forbidden, and jadzia took that taboo very seriously, but ezri doesn't necessarily have to since she abandoned her family anyway for being fucked up freaks, and it could be INTERESTING, the ways in which she and jadzia are alike and different, and sad, too - how we see worf fight with himself ove rit, because it both is his wife back from the dead, and it also very much isn't. he'd be moving on and not moving on. it's complex. there's potential there

and then they actually did it! i was so shocked! and happy! but also MAD, ebcause i know she's gonna end up with JULIAN, which is the LEAST interesting choice, a country mile behind both quark and worf, which are great choices!! what the fuck!!!! it really makes me wish they'd had longer with ezri and hadn't just fired terry farrell for bad reasons because THIS COULD BE INTERESTING. i see it now! it took them some time to get there but they found the points of interest! they just didn't have time to dig in

on the other side of things, i'm v happy for sisko but like…ggirl…i don't know that i'd accept a marriage proposal from him rn. he's being so weirdly obsessive about his retirement home on bajor and when he talks about the prophets he doesn't make it sound like. like a religion or faith the way kira does. which i sometimes disagree with on the grounds that i despise organized religion (sorry to religious people reading this) but it does make sense for her character. when avery brooks talks about the prophets sometimes he gets that crazy cult light in his eyes. bro.

and since they're just guys who have beef with pah-wraiths rather than the unknowable entities they used to be AND now they're telling him who he can and can't marry it doesn't feel like he was chosen for anything it feels like he got suckered. they created him for whatever reason and now they think they own him and rather than pushing back against that idea every time he goes against what they say they turn out to be right and he looks like a chump for trying to have personal agency. it's Not Great

we left on a cliffhanger which means this is part of the final arc…i'm gonna miss ds9 so much!!!! aughghggh

TONIGHT: ds9's "strange bedfellows" and "til death do us part."

[dinovia-grant]

Writer Asks

I was tagged by the dearest of all dearhearts, @cassiopeiasara

1. How many works do you have on AO3? 53, but full disclosure, I haven't yet moved everything I've written to AO3 yet.

2. What’s your total AO3 word count? 885,181 (but honestly, OBaaT Georg is an outlier, and maybe shouldn't have been counted...)

3. What fandoms do you write for? Currently? Ever? Currently, it's SuperCat and, more recently, Guiding Light/Otalia. Stupid unfinished WIP that has haunted me for 15 years...

4. What are your top five fics by kudos? These are all SuperCat, btw. One Bridge at a Time, At the Pleasure of the Hotel de la Paix, Uncharted (part 11), At Sea, and (the shocker) Steel Blue.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? Yes, as many as I can. I've been known to respond to some years after they were written. Comments are the lifeblood of my writing. One comment at the right time can inspire so much. Sometimes, even the completion of a lingering unfinished story...

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? Easily, my tears ricochet (Mirandy). My wife (Lisof9) and I took a vow decades ago (pre-dating, even) that we would always write happy, hopeful endings where the couple is together.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? Everything else? See above. That doesn't mean there isn't angst. My wife taught me everything I know about chasing characters up burning trees and then lobbing grenades and feral raccoons at them. She also taught me about cliffhangers.

8. Do you get hate on fic? Once. A long time ago on an ER fic, of all things. I didn't write a word for two years after that.

9. Do you write smut? Yes. I'm kinda known for that. It is sometimes even requested, meaning the prompt is given to me because it requires smut.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written? Hmm... Not really? Let me explain. One of my SuperCat stories mentions Emily Carlton from The Devil Wears Prada, and one of my Guiding Light stories has a brief cameo from a character on Saving Grace. The only true crossover I've ever written was wacky. It was Star Trek: Voyager and CSI: Miami. Decide for yourself: Wackiness. It's short.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? Not sure I understand the question. You mean plagiarized.? There was a rash of that happening in the early 2000s, I think, but my readers always let me know.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? I'm not sure. Probably.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? Oh, absolutely! My wife should be considered my co-writer in everything because I have been known to pick her brain when I'm stuck. I've also co-written in the Guiding Light/Otalia fandom and in the L&O: SVU Casey/Olivia fandom.

14. What’s your all-time favourite ship? Oh, lord love a duck. SuperCat is certainly my once-and-future obsession. I've been writing them for over seven years at this point and, at last count, have 10 WIPs in the works for them.

My OTP Prime, though, is B'Elanna/Seven from Star Trek: Voyager because that's how I met my wife.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but probably won’t? Hide Beside Me (Guiding Light/Otalia) has haunted me for 15 years, but remember when I said comments were the lifeblood of writing? Someone commented on it last week which revived my interest in finishing the story. I have a draft for chapter 32 in my WIPs folder right now because of that. I hope I finally get to check that one off my to-do list.

16. What are your writing strengths? Research, capturing character personalities, dialogue, and romance.

17. What are your writing weaknesses? Fight scenes and the fact that I'm so slow as a writer.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? Actually, I have a plan to write an Astrid/Raphaelle story in French when I feel I'm up to snuff in French again. I can't wait. I love that ship.

19. First fandom you wrote for? Ever? Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. Buck/Wilma, on my handwriting practice pad from school. I was 10. Published in a 'zine? A Star Trek: The Next Generation Worf/Deanna story. Published online? Xena, Warrior Princess.

20. Favourite fic you’ve written? Currently, there are two:

Queen of Hearts, (ST:Voy, B/7), because it was a love letter to the woman who is now my amazing wife.

One Bridge at a Time, (Supergirl, SuperCat). I'm proudest of this one because it took me seven years to write, came in at 310+k words, and I finished it. I never gave up on it. It was always in my mind. And now I'm working on a sequel to it. :)

I tag anyone who would like to answer it. Although, I would be interested in reading the answers from @shaych03 and @fewthistle if they'd like to participate.

[janewayseven]

20 questions for fic writers, J7 edition

1. How many works do you have on Ao3? 15

2. What’s your total Ao3 word count? 90,585

3. What fandoms do you write for? Star Trek, mostly Voyager, some cross-over into Picard and TNG.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

Four times she denies you and the one time she doesn't. What happens if our ladies have their shit together and mutual attraction trumps stupid little issues, like Starships to run.

Slowly, then all at once a collection of moments, big and small, painting the picture of two women, learning and growing together, falling for each other slowly, then all at once.

Things that Fall What happens from the first time your heart feels full until you finally let yourself fall? An exploration in 12 vignettes.

The Space in Between  Seven is a precious baby-queer, Kathryn is in denial, B'Elanna is the friend we all need (and a fun play-mate to Kathryn).

I'm a little tied up right now My attempt at rectifying the severe lack of prehensile-plant fics in the J7 fandom...

5. Do you respond to comments? Sometimes, when I don't get too in my head about how to respond...

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? Hands down definitely They're In Love, Where Am I?

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? Most of my fics have a happy ending... For finished fics I think I'd go with autumn is a second spring, including WIPs I think home is a moment in time has the most momentous happy ending so far.

8. Do you get hate on fics? Nope!

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? Yes. Depends on the what the story needs - sometimes soft and emotional, but I also have some more kinky BDSM fics. And sometimes they mix, just like in real life...

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written? Within the Star Trek universe, yes (ask me about the polycule, I dare you!). Not crazy by any standards, but a fun little drabble has the biggest crossover: Come to Quarks, Quarks is Fun (...they said)

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? Not that I know of...

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?  No, I don't think so.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? No, not yet.

14. What’s your all time favorite ship? NCC-1701 will always be my first love, but Voyager is hot af. (half-kidding. It's J7. Hands down.)

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? The Janeway & Riker Chronicles. In my mind he hit on her once and got bitchslapped so hard he worships her to this day. They end up being thick as thieves and getting into all kinds of trouble with each other. There's traces of this in some of my fics, but I doubt I'll ever actually write it.

16. What are your writing strengths? Flow, emotionality, little details, switching POVs

17. What are your writing weaknesses? Brevity, Punctuation, getting lost in the characters' mental space too much

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? Sure, why not. But not if you can't speak the language/have someone to help with translation.

19. First fandom you wrote for? Star Trek Voyager | Janeway/Seven

20. Favorite fic you’ve written? I think I'll always be especially fond of my first one (Things that Fall) and the most recent one - just because the idea wouldn't let me go for three years (home is a moment in time) - but I Will Follow Where You Lead has a special place in my heart - because of the challenge of it and the fact that it started a new relationship tag.

Tagging: Thank you for the tag, @curator-on-ao3! If you see this, consider yourself tagged - because I just know I probably forgot to tag someone. Also, to the amazing writers I got to meet here: @moonxshape @jennyandvastraflint @femslash-universe @notdeannatroi @queenology @katerinadeannika @waknatious @stardatextoday @problematick @captainkatie42 @angstbotfic @ussjellyfish @evilwickedme

[nebulouscoffee]

That scene between Tuvok and B'Elanna from 'Resistance' wrecks me actually... It's such a great moment for both characters (and actors, Tim Russ is SO underrated ugh) which highlights the differences between the two of them so well- yet, ultimately shows that under certain circumstances (in this case, torture) the distinctions between people... don't really matter. In an episode full of political violence, this moment is so significant, and I don't even really think I have the smarts to articulate why but I'll try lol.

TORRES: We told you already. We don't know anything about the Resistance.  AUGRIS: I've heard that many times, from many people. Take him.  (The forcefield is lowered, and Torres grabs the guard that steps through.)  TUVOK: Lieutenant, stop! That will not help either of us.  AUGRIS: He's right.

Everything about the way this scene (and the final shot where she's shoved back into her seat) is framed makes B'Elanna appear small, helpless- and embarrassed at her own helplessness- in that cell. We see her fidgeting, unable to sit down, constantly trying to break out or improvise her way out of the situation (she gets electrocuted earlier while trying to tamper with the circuitry)- it makes me wonder whether Tuvok was chosen to be tortured not because they believed he was more likely to have information, but because B'Elanna was more likely to be demoralised watching helplessly as he's dragged off. Augris's line implies that he's "broken" a great many people in the past; a tactic to instil fear and a helpless sense of inevitability in them both (torture doesn't work as a reliable way of extracting information; this is stated in dialogue in other Trek episodes such as 'Chain of Command' so the assertion here is at least not that- but what it does do is demoralise the public involved in resistances like this one.)

Later, B'Elanna is still trying to escape (do the guards know she's doing this? Are they just not intervening?) and she hears him screaming. Tuvok is someone who considers letting others witness him lose control over his exterior a huge (indecent, violating, humiliating) vulnerability, and the fact that he's the one being tortured is Not Insignificant in this context but like- it could've been the other way round. And B'Elanna knows that. It could've been her, and perhaps a small, scared part of her is relieved that it wasn't her, which is an awful way to feel (and if there's one thing B'Elanna hates, it's feeling like a coward). Also- the sheer violation of this, for B'Elanna to have witnessed him in this state, against her will- to later see him bloodied and weakened and flung in a cell, to have heard him screaming in pain- without his consent, knowing she can never un-witness it, knowing it wasn't her fault but still being put in such a situation where she has now played that role... Does this experience forcibly rewrite their respective conceptualisations of each other? Was Tuvok even thinking of her- somewhere outside, listening, worrying, blaming herself, fearing for herself, feeling ashamed, feeling so aware of him and her and the shared humiliation of this- when he was in there? Did seeing her upon coming back out change things? Could it ever change things? Did her presence, even as an outsider, whose memories of this event will always be (visually, at least) the constructs of her imagination- somehow make what happened in there real? Does her role as witness- and her memory thereby carrying some sort of legitimisation of what happened to him now, however warped and coloured by her own perspective and fears and embarrassment- make things better for Tuvok? Does it make things worse? Would he rather have endured this in secret? Would it have been better if she were a total stranger? Would it have been worse? And does any of this even matter when, for a moment, your life (your personhood, your goals, your presence) was completely reduced to what you "must endure"?

AUGRIS: We don't have to ask your friend any more questions, if you give us the answers.  TORRES: I told you I don't.  (Torres stops herself from hitting Augris, who leaves.)  TORRES: I'm sorry. I guess I always assumed that Vulcans didn't feel pain like the rest of us. That you were able to block it out somehow. Until I heard. Was that you I heard?

And the way B'Elanna's voice breaks when she asks this, as if she was still somehow hoping the answer would be no... There are complexities to this which again I don't feel like I'm smart enough to articulate, but like- yes, B'Elanna would like to hear that it wasn't him because that would mean her friend wasn't tortured "that badly", he wasn't put through "enough pain" to scream that way, and it's easier and more comfortable to think of violence (and violation) as something you can rank on a scale, and the lower on it Tuvok's experience ranks, the better! the more easy it will be for them to "move past" this! - but also, there's this element of "I want the answer to be no because that would mean I would not have been a participant in your humiliation, just some stranger's whose voice I don't have a face to put to, which is much better than having to know what you (my friend, my colleague, my respected senior officer, someone I will have to see every day on the bridge, someone I know prefers to keep vulnerabilities hidden even deeper than anyone else I know) sound like when you scream. But also... it doesn't really matter, does it...? Whatever he says, there always was still a moment- however brief- where B'Elanna heard a man screaming in agony, and thought it could've been Tuvok. And in that moment, that possibility was created. Now, it will always exist. That moment will always have happened. It will always have done something to her. It will always exist between them; an ugly, uncomfortable bond.

And this is getting into even more things I'm not smart enough to articulate, but like- it's pretty significant to me that B'Elanna is one of the few characters who never actually tries to poke Tuvok into Doing An Emotion, even normally. She doesn't consider trying to get him to crack an entertaining pastime, unlike others (and I'm sure her experiences of feeling like an outsider- always- feeling Very Visible As Klingon, play a role in this- "all they ever saw was my forehead" does not lend itself so kindly to "let's see if we can get Mr. Vulcan to smile", "why, Tuvok, it seems you've been corrupted by Human (read: default) rituals after all!"- it's a light-hearted joke for many, sure, but what if Tuvok genuinely considers the idea of smiling in the presence of others reflective of a humiliating loss of control and deeply debasing?) I think it's pretty clear from canon that he's just being himself; he's not trying to be a killjoy or trying to be mean, he's just Vulcan. And this is one of the few moments in Trek I can think of when a Vulcan's perceived "control" over their emotions is not connected with their reluctance to laugh or cry or say something sentimental, but... this. B'Elanna is shocked, she's horrified, she demands an explanation as to how he can possibly go through something like this and not feel the desire to "fight back" in a way she understands- and the way she cannot grant him the pretence of not having witnessed, here, the way she can't just shove this in a box, pretend she never heard, because she's just so fundamentally honest- and Tuvok (who is also so fundamentally honest), in a painful moment of openness, tells her exactly what his reasoning is. He lets her see. He lets her hear; on his own terms. He wants for her to understand (for her to witness?) his (very Vulcan) distinction between resistance and endurance; his understanding of endurance as its own form of resistance. Idk it's such a quietly powerful and like- devastating- moment for me... So many people try, over and over, thoughout the show, to get Tuvok to break his Vulcansona- try to make him smile, make him say tender things, make him get irritated- just to see if they can do it. Just to see if he'll ever crack. I bet B'Elanna wishes she never had.

[stitching-in-time]

Voyager rewatch s7 ep16: Workforce pt 2

This is one of the rare times the second half of a two-parter lived up to the first part. It was every bit as exciting and full of great character stuff as the first part, and had several moments that just about made me cry.

First off, I gotta say Roxann Dawson's direction was terrific in this ep. For some reason I always thought she only directed one ep of Voyager and didn't start to do a lot of directing till Enterprise, but this is like her third Voyager ep as director, and it's a big one. There's lots of locations, big action sequences, space battle sequences, scenes with every character, and some very emotional scenes that were handled so well. Janeway and Chakotay's meeting in Janeway's apartment, where she doesn't remember who he is, and he has to convince her to trust him, is so well written and acted. Having most of it played in the dark, with the play of light and shadow on the characters faces mirroring their back and forth as they try to feel each other out to figure out where each of them stands, now that they're each in the guise of someone they're not, is very clever and cool.

Despite Janeway's romance with Jaffen, I think it's definitely a very strong episode for Janeway and Chakotay's relationship, since he's a stranger to her here, and a criminal as far as she knows, and yet somehow deep down, even with her memory wiped, some part of her remembers him strongly enough to trust him. And it's extra heartbreaking because her relationship with Jaffen feels real and warm and truthful as well, and there's a bittersweet edge knowing that finding out who she really is means she'll lose what she has with him. And Jaffen knows that he'll probably lose her if he helps her find her real identity, but he doesn't hesitate to do so for a minute, because he really loves her. Ughhh. It's so tragic, and honestly after a set up like that, having her leave him behind feels kind of wrong, especially since they posited it as a 'captains can't fraternize with their crew' thing, which is never something that was strictly forbidden for any of the male captains, and besides, he isn't Starfleet, so it wouldn't apply anyway. If they'd had her say to him: 'hey, we're on a probably decades long journey to the other side of the galaxy and you'll never be able to see your family or homeworld again if you come with us' and if he'd then been unable to make that leap, that would have made more sense. But still, I think any parting for them would have felt a little wrong, since the feelings they have are so clear. When Janeway said she wouldn't need mementos to remember him and started to cry when she hugged him goodbye, I got a little choked up myself. Kate Mulgrew put her whole heart into this storyline and I love her for it, no matter how much it messes me up every time I see it.

B'Elanna's storyline of slowly remembering her life with Tom on Voyager also really gets to me. Considering that her pre-Voyager memories of feeling unloved and and like she didn't belong anywhere were the only ones she retained, seeing her realize how loved she actually is, and that she has a real home on Voyager, after thinking she was still alone on the planet, is extra poignant. It's like younger B'Elanna suddenly being dropped into her current life and realizing that she actually has the life she always hoped for and thought she'd never have, and it's real, and ughhh it's so wonderful to see her come full circle like that. Roxann Dawson plays it beautifully, as always.

Harry finally gets a nice moment of coming up with the idea that gives them enough time for the Captain to take the planet's shields down and beam the crew back to the ship, which was a nice turnabout after having the Doctor usurp him on the bridge with his 'command hologram' ambitions and being all smug toward Harry about it. The Doctor isn't an officer, and shouldn't be in charge unless he's the only one left, so it was nice to have Harry's actual experience beat out the Doctor's new subroutines. Harry isn't a callow young officer anymore, and deserves credit for all he's done for Voyager much more than the Doctor, who messes things up more often than not. They ended it with them being friendly and no hard feelings, which I suppose is for the best, but still, Harry deserves to be treated with more respect.

It was nice to have Seven in real clothes here too, it's easier to take her seriously as a character when she's not being paraded around like a sex object in those godawful catsuits. She's clever and determined and resourceful in helping to find out what's really going on with the plant workers in this ep, and I wish the show would focus on her good qualities as person like this more often, instead of just falling back on pointing out her attractiveness to men or her superhuman Borg powers. I also feel like it would have been interesting to explore how Seven feels about thinking she was just a regular person for a while, only to remember her history with the Borg again. I have to think it would be much less 'happy to be back to normal' for her, when her normal is so sad and trauma filled, but maybe having lived as an ordinary person for a while might have given her some hope that it's possible for her again in her real life too. It's one of the rare times I think they missed an opportunity to explore Seven's character a little more, but considering how often she gets prioritized over the other characters, I'm not to sad about it, since the rest of the crew got great storylines here that were much needed and deserved after how often they'd been sidelined in favor of her.

It was nice that they wrapped up the plot at the end by confirming that the Quarran investigator exposed the secret conspiracy of kidnapping and memory wiping people to put them to work on their planet, so that it wouldn't happen to anyone again. There was a bit of ambivalence to Janeway's words at the end about not regretting for a second that she was rescued and brought back to her real life- it felt a bit like she might have had some regrets, but still, in the end, we know she'd choose being a starship captain over anything, no matter what it cost, because she loves Starfleet, and her crew on Voyager. Through all they've suffered and been through, they've done it together, and become a family, and none of them would have it any other way. A really fantastic ep all around.

Tl;dr: A fantastic ep with great acting, writing, and direction, an exciting climax, and meaty, emotional character scenes. A sterling conclusion to a truly exceptional two-part episode.