holodexmachina

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kirk wearing the i am kenough hoodie

a little past the peak of this trend but he really works it

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/cc @epersonae

Lwaxana, I know alot of people didn't like her but I loved her, she was crucial for Odo, their relationship was beautiful and I was wish they could have ended up together.

She bought so much joy everytime she was in DS9, I loved her and always will.

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five fic friday

these first three I probably read like six times each, and I have frankly struggled to even leave a coherent comment, so

Can't We Be Friends (E, 11K) by @oatmilktruther - ye olde co-captains with benefits

Stede's Lucky Catch (E, 5168) by @veeagainsttheday - canon-divergence in 2x7

Ed's Song (M, 1244) by @celluloidbroomcloset - attempting to take it slow

(huh, all of these are just very good Ed POV)

and then two great short modern AUs:

Sail, Not Drift (T, 9083) - based on a real story that the second I saw a news story about it I thought "wow that should be an OFMD AU"

[Remix, Jim/Olu-style] What happened in Vegas? (T, 1061) by @yerbamansa - a remix of their previous Schitt's Creek fic that works perfectly for Jim and Olu

some bonus fic for this week, because I'm on kind of a DS9 fic kick I guess?

A Part to Play (T, 2111) by @redsesame/@holodexmachina - AU of one of the mirror universe episodes, MAKING SISKO ACT IN CHARACTER GODDAMNIT. [ahem] featuring two of my favorite tags in recent memory: "I know this is the smut website but I've removed the sex, I've taken a perfectly good canon sex scene and given it anxiety"

An Act of Humanity (M, 92k) - post-series Garak/Bashir, very thoughtful Garak POV. Tense, philosophical, well-plotted, and even a happy ending.

A Muse Meant (G, 3991) - I went through the Lwaxana/Odo tag while I was chewing on my own idea, and this is my favorite so far. (there's still a few I haven't read) there's some fun things happening here with language and gender here, even if it sticks to the canon ending.

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A thing I need neurotypical Star Trek fans to understand is that Spock—and the whole Vulcan species—are heavily autism-coded. Originally unintentionally, but now it seems that they're doing it on purpose.

Autistic fans feel this deeply and relate to Spock a lot. When he acts really weird and his friends accept him anyway, it's so comforting. We can be weird and off-putting and people will still love us! This was something the TOS writers very much intended, because the point was befriending people who are different.

But when Vulcans are constantly racist, when Spock is seen as only happy and lovable when he changes, when human characters announce that what REALLY matters is emotion and community, which Vulcans can never understand....well.

One wonders if that's how you see us. Especially when we see neurotypical fans accept this viewpoint uncritically and lean even harder into it than the show does.

I wrote about this at length on my author blog, but all I'm really asking right now is for you to think for a second about what you say about Vulcans and ask: if I subbed out the word "Vulcan" for the word "autistic," do I sound like a raging asshole? And if the answer is yes, don't say that thing!

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This isn’t unique to Star Trek of course, but I do think it’s so funny how the normal amount of time it takes to respond to a comm or a hail from someone else is entirely dependent on whose perspective we’re seeing it from. If someone tries to use their combadge to contact someone else and they don’t respond within 2-3 seconds, that’s immediate cause for alarm. If, however, we’re watching a character who receives a communication from someone else, they’ll often finish up whatever they were doing before responding and no one will be alarmed at all. Or sometimes when our protagonist ship hails another ship, they’ll say “no response” approximately three seconds after sending out the hail. But if another ship hails them, they’ll often have a whole little debate before responding. Obviously this is necessary for pacing (who wants a twenty second pause of complete silence waiting for a response in the middle of a scene), but also it’s just one of those fun, charming things about Star Trek that makes no sense whatsoever.

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Joanne Linville as Romulan Commander in STAR TREK (1966–1969) “The Enterprise Incident”

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no cops at pride, just translord, lesbotron 3000 and dr twink standing like this

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The real difference between McCoy and Kirk is that when Spock turns into an unskipable cutscene McCoy is frantically mashing every button while Kirk is enjoying the view

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Violating Starfleet bridge protocol with Momma

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Section 31 really is the best example of how franchise bullshit can ruin any story that relies on ambiguity, isn't it? The whole point of Inter Arma Enim Silent Legis is that it's deeply unclear whether there is such a thing as Section 31, or whether it's just the case that the Dominion War has pushed Starfleet to use more underhanded tactics than it normally deems appropriate. Sloan and Bashir are dramatic foils, both tempted by the fantasy of spy novel shenanigans in a society that has (correctly) decided to not operate in that manner.

So it's left ambiguous throughout whether Section 31 is just Sloan's personal James Bond fantasy or whether there really is such a thing. And, we're left with the uncomfortable ambiguity over whether the question actually matters. Someone is doing unconscionable shit. Maybe it's the Federation's secret sin eater. Maybe it's the Federation itself. Does it matter? Does the cool fun sexy spy fantasy that Section 31 promises change the fact that this is not how the Federation is supposed to work?

And then you get a pack of writers who think 'actually, that cool sexy spy fantasy seems dope as shit, let's do that. Who cares about those pesky ethical questions'.

I swear to starship-needing god, sometimes it feels like contemporary Star Trek is written by people whose whole concept of Star Trek is Memory Alpha

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New Star Trek spinoff idea: This

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"Risk! Risk is our business. That's what this starship is all about."

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Star Trek The Next Generation "The Big Goodbye"