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My dad told me today about a star trek fanfiction he wants to write. It would be about an earth 21st century social worker who gets accidentally frozen or sth and wakes up in the 24th century, so around the time of ds9.

They wake up on earth, which due to the abolition of capitalism has no needs for his particular skillset, and somehow end up collecting a bunch of misfits (a klingon who is afraid of battle, an atheist bajoran, an anarchist cardassian, etc. Just some people who don't fit the society they were born into for whatever reasons.) whom they help overcome the life of crime they were forced into due to them being different. Each one has a skillset based on how they survived etc and they find a way to use it for good, to save the planet or the space station or whatever.

He already wrote a few lines where they dock at ds9 and Odo is called due to them staging a riot at Quark's.

Anyway

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I absolutely love Kira's arc with Cardassians and I feel like we don't talk about it enough. We start out with this woman still righteously angry at the Cardassians for everything that happened on her planet, but she grows beyond that anger so beautifully. She accepts a Cardassian father figure, she takes a half Cardassian girl into her own family, ultimately she fights for the liberation of Cardassia itself.

And yet through it all, her righteous anger remains. She isn't overflowing with some sort of sentimental, idealised forgiveness. She's a real person, learning and growing, and it's beautiful.

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So one thing about Julian is he is so serious about his job as a healer. Trying to cure the Jem Hadar is an obvious example, or deciding to settle down on Teplan for 2 months for a chance to help them.

But there's two times in the series where arguably the two people closest to him lash out at him in pain--and you can see he is hurt by what Garak/Miles say to him. But he doesn't stop for a second trying to help him, because he understands that they are scared and this man cannot stop himself caring.

It's really hard even in AU's to imagine him wanting to be anything but a doctor, not because he's intelligent but he is at his core so damn compassionate.

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Thinking Julian and art...

Thinking about how drawing was his favourite activity as a young child. Going through reams of paper, the feel of letting his hand swirl around the page and making colours and lines, delighting in showing his parents and having them smile and laugh over the scrawls that are meant to represent their family. Because it's all very in line with how a 2 year old should draw.

Julian gets older, and his classmates start to make circles for heads, with dots and a wonky smile and long sticks that are meant to be legs. They start holding pencils with their fingers where he still fists a crayon. But it's okay his hands don't seem to move with the same control they do, because Julian still loves drawing. He particularly loves colour because it shows how everything feels even if it doesn't show how it looks to everyone else. His teacher asks them to draw themselves and he rushes to get every blue and purple he can and melds them together in a jumping spiral. His teacher tells him it's nice, but not in the same way she points to the other children's and says how good their ears are, or that the hair colour looks just the same.

His Mum starts to sit by him when he draws, pushing him to copy the squares and triangles from the sheet brought home from school.

Kukalaka rips, and Julian finds the best warm yellow to fix his hurt, even as Mum purses her lips and says it's supposed to match.

His teacher calls his parents in, talking to them gravely and pointing to a curling painted paper, explaining how Julian didn't listen to the assignment, and instead of pets in the garden at home, he hadn't tried and kept drawing the same blobs. Julian stares out the window, the defense that they weren't the same because the dog waved into a brown spiral, and the cat was a smooth dash of it, sticks in his throat.

His parents won't look at his drawings anymore, only telling him he needs to try. And Julian feels the shape of it change and press down on him.

The next meeting with his teacher follows, this time sweet and concerned as she points to the new self portrait, with Julian this time all Sharp edges in black and red.

Adigeon prime happens. Amsha excitedly brings some supplies to the hospital room--a real sketchbook and nicer artists pens then he was ever allowed - and asks him to draw something.

Kukalaka, observing from a shelf too high for him to reach, becomes his subject. And Julian can see every important detail to his shape and his hands follows it on pattern. On the paper becomes a perfect replication of exactly how Kukalaka sits in this moment. His parents are delighted, saying how talented he is. How wonderful his art is now. Julian stares at it well into the night, each pencil stroke, trying to understand where the flaw is because the Kukalaka in the drawing is wrong.

He tries again, usually by an adults prompting, to draw. But now it's a chore, a party trick like he's a machine taking a photograph. The thrill of pulling out something that only existed in his head and putting it to paper is gone, and there's a loss he can't verbalise until he runs his fingers over the yellow thread in Kukalaka.

Years later on Ds9 he Garak and Ziyal discuss art. Or rather, they listen to Ziyal excitedly talk about expressing herself in every medium she can get her hands on. Garak admits a modest ability, demonstrating a cartoon like style on the PADD between them. When they ask Julian he finds himself pausing, pen almost going to automatically trace Ds9 on the PADD, before letting it idly doodle across the screen in a soothing way.

"Ah, I've never had the talent for art you see."

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There’s a post about how we need more female characters who genuinely care about people but are really bad at caregiving, and honestly that fits Kira Nerys really well. I’m thinking of Starship Down where she’s tasked with looking after Sisko and keeping him conscious when he has a head injury, and she just starts visibly flailing despite making an effort to hold it together. “Listen up…. because there’s going to be a test later” and then trying to keep him alert by droning on about duty rosters because she gets Task-Oriented when things are in dire straits and does not know how to scale things to a more personal level with someone she has a working relationship with.

Like, so much of how she deals with emotionally fraught situations is by getting up and doing something about them (even so far as traveling back in time) or just keeping busy to avoid dwelling on the matter at hand. When her father was dying, her response was to go out and kill some Cardassians about it, and then order another attack upon his death, rather than sit by his bedside. When Bareil died (pre-resurrection via mad scientist noodling) she went right back to work despite Bashir telling her she didn’t have to. It is a trauma mindset from someone who witnessed a lot of death and suffering and had no choice but to pick up and keep moving and keep fighting. And when she has to sit down and really focus on someone else’s vulnerability, it’s very uncomfortable for her. She cares very deeply about the people around her but she’s clumsy about it.

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lets be consoled by mama

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i step up to the mic. “the voyager polycule is canon” i say. the crowd starts booing. suddenly a voice from the back interrupts them. “he’s right you know”. everyone turns to look. it’s garrett wang and robbie duncan mcneill

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have you ever read a fanfic so good that you wanted to write a fanfic about that fanfic, but was too shy / too intimidated to ask for the author’s permission and too afraid that your writing wouldn’t be half as good as theirs and that it would be an insult to their work that was basically a literal masterpiece, so you just sat there fantasizing about their work and how beautiful it was and how you wished you could just eat it and how you wished canon could write your blorbos half as good as this writer did and how you just wanted to cry because you just loved that fic so much????

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pals

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watched conclave

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PokéChibi Dex #0498 – Tepig, the Fire Pig Pokémon

"A ravenous glutton, it uses its excellent sense of smell to find food, then cooks it to a crisp before eating."

Who should I chibi-fy next?

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I love the Star Trek fandom because everyone has their own little niche. like I love J7 and tos, but i love coming onto someone else's blog and seeing its only ent and ds9. or they only post about miles O'Brien. Or are diehard supporters of tas and also specifically majel barret characters. it feels like going to buffet seeing everyone all sit down together with their random assortment of favorite foods

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Inspired by the fantastic @8pxl's incredible train pixel art piece!

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