#Especially DAX. Particularly DAX

[incorrectbatfam]

You're the only person I've seen mention Duke and Izzy so can we get some hcs for them?

They have an ongoing skeeball feud at the arcade. She usually obliterates him, but will occasionally let him win

Duke was nervous about bringing her to the Manor because he was afraid it'd change things between them, but that went away the instant she met the pets

She has a particularly soft spot for Titus and will sometimes come over even when Duke isn't there

Day patrols keep Duke too busy to join most after-school clubs, but he always makes it to Izzy's tournaments and competitions

He introduced her to Pokémon trading card games and took her to buy her own pack. She immediately pulled a rare one

They fell asleep on the couch during an all-night Tarantino marathon

Since Izzy is fluent in Latin, she helps Duke come up with character and place names for his DnD campaigns

He really likes holding her hand and gets a little sad when he has to let go

They're both the middle kids in their houses, so they can get away with a LOT

We are Robin is proof

But also they use it for mundane things

Like he'll throw paper airplanes at her window to get her to sneak out with him

Sometimes they have corny pickup lines, courtesy of Dick

Or last-minute couplets Duke comes up with

And then they'll run off and do something completely innocuous like get ice cream or watch the local soccer team practice at the park

But going behind their guardians' backs gives them—especially Izzy—the low-stakes thrills they missed from when they were younger

She taught him how to dance. Tim snapped a picture when they thought they were alone

Their friends constantly tease them and have a running joke to see who can come up with the worst ship name. Dax is currently winning with "Thiz"

Duke can keep himself warm with his powers, but he still wears a jacket so he can give it to her in the cheesiest way possible

Of all the bat-partners, Izzy has the most casual introduction to the rest of the batfam. She just appeared one day and everyone was like "cool"

[silence-of-autumn42]

So, Jade Shadows. That quest was...Interesting. I've seen a lot of negativity, and I have to be honest, I disagree with a lot of the issues people have had with the quest. Maybe this is because I wasn't obsessively hanging on to every piece of promotion for this update, but I didn't find it underwhelming, or that it was poorly handled. Did we learn everything about the Stalker? No. And I don't think we were ever going to. But what we got was a key part of why he hates Warframes, specifically, and not necessarily the Tenno as a whole.

Spoilers under the cut

So, the warframe pregnancy. The implication of the quest, to me, is that Jade and Sorren were "low guardians", non-Dax guardians of the Orokin, who had a relationship, which resulted in Jade falling pregnant. This was against the Orokin laws (although it's unclear if it was the pregnancy of a Low Guardian which was illegal, or the relationship which resulted in the pregnancy) and at least Jade was turned into a Warframe, as punishment.

Despite becoming a Warframe, Jade remained pregnant, and eventually ended up taking part in the massacre of the Orokin during the Night of the Naga Drums. Sorren was, at this time, still a Low Guardian, and his life was spared by Jade. At some point, Sorren became the Stalker (I suspect after the Night of the Naga Drums, but that's not confirmed or explicitly denied anywhere, as I'm fairly sure the Hunhow narrated diorama was a figurative memory of the event, rather than literal), and discovered Jade.

Now, we don't know what condition Jade was in when he found her. It's possible she was unconscious, especially if she had an Operator controlling her, like many other warframes, but it's also possible that she became comatose at a later point in time. So, it appears that much of the Stalker's motivations around hunting down the Tenno are intended to protect Jade from being utilised as a weapon by the Tenno, out of a sense of guilt for failing to protect her from becoming a Warframe.

So, what does it mean for a Warframe to be pregnant? We have no clue. This is the first time we know of it having happened, and so there's nothing for us to base this on. That being said, the child appears to have inherited at least some of Jade's warframe abilities, as well as her physical appearance. This suggests that at some point during gestation, the baby became infected with the Helminth strain of Infestation. Will this child grow up? No idea. Will the child be able to move autonomously? Seems so, given they were moving while being held by the Stalker. This is something we'll have to wait and see about.

By the end of it, it seems like Stalker has abandoned Hunhow, and disappeared off into the system with his child. It seems like Hunhow now has no allies, but the Stalker does seem to have taken his advice from the Reapers Lament entries on the website - to cultivate something, to raise something to prosper - his child.

Now, I will admit, the labour minigame was...odd. I don't necessarily have a problem with it, it just wasn't particularly engaging? I think that's the only problem I had with the quest. I don't know what I would have preferred, but I'm sure there was something else that could have been done there.

[the-oracle-of-the-lost]

Seven and Jadzia :) for the bingo

yesssss two characters who deserve so much better than shitty 90s sexism

Seven:

i love Seven so much. i told a Trekkie friend that i was going to watch all the series through a few years ago and the first thing they said to me was "oh you're going to really love Seven of Nine" and they weren't wrong! i was definitely a Star Trek fan before watching Voyager but my love of Seven (and Voyager in general) really prompted me to rejoin tumblr and be more active in fandom stuff. the way she's written in Voyager is so full of ups and downs with obviously some horrible objectification but still managing to be such a deep and multi-layered character despite all the sexism thrown at her. and as uneven as the writing in Picard might be, Jeri Ryan's performance & a lot of Seven's character beats are absolutely excellent and makes me want to explore the character further which is really the most i can ask for when getting attached to a character.

Jadzia

i really like Jadzia!! she has so much potential as a character and i always get sad about how little focus she actually gets in DS9 (particularly when thinking about Jadzia versus Dax in general) and how she's written off (as much as i do love Ezri). i love it when she gets to be fun and devious (constantly thinking about that scene where she pranks Odo by breaking into his quarters and moving all of his furniture a few inches). she has such a wonderful love of life in every regard which is so hard to sincerely find in a character especially in the darker moments of something like the Dominion War. i haven't specifically taken a lot of time to try to write her or think of many headcanons about her but i feel like she'll attain that status one day.

[dickarchivist]

I saw this post by @alamogirl80 and I needed to get my thoughts down, but didn't want to detract from their post so here's my addition to "Do you think clones are tactile and touch motivated because they were never held as babies?"

Short answer: yes I do, and Specter is the most touch needy out of Grave Squad.

Long Answer under the cut

I write my clone OCs Specter and Banshee like this especially. They're "twins" in my lore, and they're joined at the hip. So rarely are they apart. And when they're together, as long as they don't need to be professional, they're always touching in some way. Arm resting on a shoulder, slouching against each other, a quick reach out and touch.

They sleep mirroring each other when they're not in the same bunk. If you had a top down view of them, they'd always fit together as if they're holding one another. Specs and Ban, more often than not, sleep in the same bunk because it's hard for them to sleep without each other. If they can't share a bunk, they hold hands. If they can't hold hands, they wake up periodically and knock to make sure the other is still there.

For Specs especially, touch is important. He'd want to be held 24/7 if he could be. The comfort he gets from contact is so much, that he crosses his arms over his chest and holds himself just to keep anxiety down. He sways side to side, if you watch him close enough. Hugging himself and slowly swaying, as if to be rocked in the arms of a parent. He's done this since he was young.

Dax'Malkin holds the boys sometimes, when they let him. Dax held his children for most of their lives. He does the same for his clones without a second thought. Once, he caught Specs trembling after a particularly rough campaign, and without hesitation he just lifted this full grown man like a child and held him. Walked to a bench, put Specter under his chin, rubbed his back, and held him. They never talked about it after, but it meant a lot to Specter. He was the first one to call him "Buir Dax".

[fivemillionkeys]

Hey all

I'm still looking around for an long time rp partner. I do have some storylines going at the moment but I'm still kind of figuring out what I want & the more possibilities the better.

Who am I:

My name is Dorian/ Dax. My pronouns are he / him - They / Them. I'm 26 and I have been in the rp community for over 12 years. I have done both long format storylines on rpg forum boards as well as rapidfire ones on Discord and telegram. I've always played fandomless only. I'm pretty flexible when it comes to setting/ rp style.

I am in the CET timezone. My first language is Dutch so it can be that I make small grammar errors when writing in English, especially when writing multiple paragraphs. I study creative writing, so sometimes my replies are a little less frequent when the semester is particularly busy. But I love to chat ooc as well, so you can always shoot me a message and I'll make sure to reply as quickly as I can ^-^

Most of my OCs are male. I currently have three female characters that stuck around. I don't mind writing female characters, I'm just not very good at it. But who knows, improvement might be inescapable fhfgddd. All of my OCs have an overachring background lore. They are all from the same universe. The lore of that universe can be included in our storyline but it's not necessary for the storyline to function. Basically it can be used if it enriches the story, but I have no problem with dropping my guys into any story world/ AU imaginable.

What I am looking for:

Fandomless rp only

Available on Discord or Telegram

I am 26, so I would prefer it if my rp partner is 21+

I'm okay with pairings of any and all genders. Friends, enemies, lovers; all is possible as long as it's plot driven.

I am very new to the term "dead dove" and am a little hesitant to partake. Not to say that I won't write any dark themes ever, but it's not specifically what I'm looking for right now. A plot can have its dark moments, but I am not looking for a fully dark plot.

I don't really mind whether you write multiple paragraphs, do one-liners or anything in between. As long as it's well structured, has substance and engages with whatever is going on in the plot, it's great. I love complex inner monolog about what your character is thinking/ feeling. I also really love it when people put detail and thought into the surroundings that the characters are in.

What would work great for me is if you / your character loves to explain things about their homeworld. Or if you/ your character would love to learn about my homeworld.

I love the bonding between characters that formers through learning / exploring together and one of them taking the other under their wing.

Fantasy worlds tend to work best for the dynamics described above but there are _a lot_ of variations possible (think: pirates, medieval, apocalyptic, historical, steampunk, victorian ect) and especially once we know which characters make a good match we can do endless AU's with them too!

I love plotting together and talking ooc. I am so for telling each other about our silly little guys & how they are 100% not prepared for the stuff we're about to throw their way. Please tell me why they would be absolutely insufferable together or super wholesome :3 Feel free to send funny memes about our guys or pictures about our storyworlds. On the other hand I would also like to get to know you & what's going on in your life. Being both friends & rp partners would be awesome! No pressure tho, it's fully valid that not everyone is comfortable or able to open up quickly.

2 - 5 replies weekly would be great! Though I fully understand that life is very busy and this won't always be possible. Communication is key. As long as the ooc contact stays on / periods of inactivity are communicated about before (if possible) or afterwards, it's all good. Rapidfire would be very fun to do for certain storylines but I understand that it takes a lot of time. So maybe we could try and arrange that on a weekend day.

I love it when people are overall enthusiastic, come up with ideas, engage with the plot, and engage a lot ooc.

Welp, this has become quite long and rambly despite my best efforts not to. If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to let me know. Even if you are unsure if you match what I am looking for, just ask. Exceptions can always be made ^-^ But yeah, if you would like to rp feel free to DM me ^-^

[thegeminisage]

ok, i'm getting behind on ym star trek updates. last sunday we watched ds9's "sanctuary" and tng's "parallels," monday we watched ds9's "rivals" and tng's "the pegasus" (out of order!!! 💔) and last night we watched ds9's "the alternate" and tng's "homeward." we were supposed to do "rivals" and "the alternate" monday, and then the "pegasus" and "homeward" last night and i really wish we had bc i was not in the correct headspace to really enjoy the alternate but that's what i get for forgetting to check my spreadsheet!! ANYWAY.

sanctuary (ds9):

i love sisko in this episode. he has the same vibe w his subordinates as he does with jake, that he will back them up even if they're breaking rules but also when kira didn't do her homework he does have to lay down the law a little bit. lovingly, but he does. and since he never does it w/o a reason and w/o compassion nobody really minds

i'm sorry but the reverse sexism was really funny. thank you 90s tv for being brave. especially with her having multiple husbands. get it girl

kira and haneek should have explored each others bodies also

quark picking up the nephew like yeah hes gonna do it again. poor odo

literally it was such a good little conundrum bc all the logical reasons they gave for bajor not being able to support more people were like correct or whatever BUT THEY WERE FARMERS. you get the idea they really could have helped and that kid didn't have to die but inherent, knee-jerk suspicion of new/foreign people just got in the way in both cases. like you had the solution right there!! unfortunately, as we know, people

why is it ALWAYS kira's episodes that go this hard also. it's always like "here's a thing about the complex and ugly truth of the human(oid) nature and how we just have to live with ourselves" and every time it pops off

parallels (tng):

we were just saying "there's no ways tng would have the pussy to do something like this" when tng came on and also was really good

first of all, my worf e deanna DREAMS are coming true. sorry to the actors ik they hated it but i know in my heart worf e riker e deanna is real..............

i read the episode summary for this one but it said AMNESIA not WORF SWITCHING REALITIES. so i had fun going wait the cake WAS chocolate earlier and being gaslit along with worf

his little surprise party hat. please.

i didnt notice data's eyes being blue at the time but going back and looking at the pics is WILD

my baby boy wesley crusher was there also........i missed him sm

the universe worf left was crazy. picard dead, geordi dead, deanna forever without her husband...jesus christ

but my FAVORITE part (aside from the romance) was the bit there the zillion enterprises showed up and the crazy borg-hunted riker was like NO NO WE'LL NEVER GO BACK girl i was like oh but i wanna see inside those other enterprises! actually no i didn't

worf finding out deanna began having the potential to develop feelings for him after the ritual suicide thing and then IMMEDIATELY turning around to seduce her when he got back to his universe...so true. i would have done the same thing. i know he's gonna get w dax later and deanna will eventually marry riker so he's GONNA fumble it but don't fumble it!!!

rivals (ds9):

have only seen princess bridge 1 time when i was a teenager so i was not able to enjoy the biggest appeal of this episode rip

actually i thought the a plot of this episode kind of sucked ass. i didn't find the conman particularly funny or charming but i also didn't hate him enough to get invested in his downfall. also, it was so stupid that he took that machine when the guy explained that it had literally killed him............like, girl, are you stupid? obviously ds9 can save it with endearing characters and like, Acting, but i wasn't having much fun with it

i DID love the obrien bashir racketball matches though. first of all the fact that luck decided who won and not actual skill and no we'll never know...but secondly, bashir like Oh No I'm Going To Kill Him With Tennis. like, my guy, you could have just showed off less out of the gate. it went against his twink instincts though

keiko's go-get-em-tiger was really good. he would have won anyway i just know it

quark trying to DRUG A DOCTOR. his audacity truly knows no bounds. i hope those orphans got their blankets

i do like also that when they figured out the matches had been rigged they weren't even mad about it, they were both just curious and trying to experiment. i love when obrien and bashir hang out it's really great

the pegasus (tng):

TNG HAD PUSSY TWO EPISODES IN A ROW EVEN

picard day really good. yes. be miserable. i love riker getting to dunk on him

i really really REALLY enjoyed riker's energy when his old captain came aboard. jonathan frakes isn't the most technically accomplished actor on that cast, but he does such a fantastic job with that shift - riker is normally such an easygoing, funny, down to clown guy that whenever he gets :| you notice RIGHT away. episodes where he gets to be serious and angry wouldn't work if he got them all the time (though my lament for tng is that we don't get character stuff more often...), but BECAUSE they're rare, even a little too rare, you take notice all the more

i wish we had gotten to see riker sparring with worf <3

argument between riker and picard was FUNNNN i don't like picard but i DO like it when sir patrick stewart acts and i think him being on his game and jonathan frakes also being on his game was wonderful. first of all, i love it when they say the m-word, and secondly, riker grinding his teeth because he WANTS to tell and all his instincts are screaming at him to tell and he CAN'T because his loyalties are divided or whatever...delicious.

beaming aboard the ship frozen in rock with the perfectly preserved bodies. mwah. dead bodies won't even age. i know it was a budget thing and space probably wouldn't really keep them from decomposing THAT well but it quite literally took riker back to the scene of the crime and he was like yeah no i'm not having it. GOOD for him.

bonus when riker gets locked into the brig <3

the alternate (ds9):

ODO...................................

i recognized the scientist by his hair!!! he mentioned before he copied it from him

dr mora die challenge. it's not exactly that he "abused" odo in the traditional sense but he did put him in a cage, and he dehumanized him with his experiments, and every single word out of his mouth was either dehumanizing or patronizing. i love how quick they both were to correct the assumption about this guy being odo's dad - like yeah maybe an adoptive dad in a way but odo wasn't a "child" he was just so different from humanoids he had to figure out communication from scratch

like, this mf commenting on odo not having gotten the ears, or like wow you can tell what emotions people are displaying just by looking! say that again to my face i'll kill you.

dax was so weird in this episode. i kept wondering if she was possessed or something because she showed up out of nowhere and offered to buy drinks with bashir and said something about the pillar being moved. a red herring which was perhaps unintentional but unsettling nonetheless. her personality is still fluctuating a lot - at times she's prissy and at other times she's just one of the guys! but at least now she has one, from time to time. not in this episode though

i felt. SO BAD for that little life form they kidnapped. you suffocated it to death :(

i also felt terrible for odo. firstly, he deserves to kill that guy. secondly, how humiliating for him to be seen in goop form by half the station...he doesn't like being seen like that :(

i still blame dr mora though for basically triggering that last transformation...i was so mad at the end when odo was like yeah we can reconcile :) like i get loving the people who "raised" you even when they "abused" you but this wasn't quite that. i wish we had got more of a sense of them having, at any point, actually ever liked working together to solve the mysteries of shape shifters. i looked him up on imdb though and he DOES come back so maybe better luck next time

homeward (tng):

i fucking hated this episode.

firstly, who brought worf to his parents? i thought it was their adult son who was in starfleet, but was it worf's dad who brought him home? cuz this guy is worf's age and was not officially in starfleet...

secondly, there should be a clause in the prime directive about "if everybody is about to die save them with the least interference possible." i get that that runs the risk of like, being written down in their bible as jesus and altering their culture, but the idea that the culture is better off totally annihilated than altered is a little bit missing the forest for the trees. like, putting those machines on the planet in the first place would have been WAY less inference than having worf and his brother lead them to safety.

ALSO, I CANNOT BELIEVE WORF'S BROTHER KNOCKED THAT WOMAN UP. like, this kid is not gonna pop out of the womb with his surgical alterations!!

also, that guy who killed himself didn't get his special document delivered back to his people...worf KEPT IT as a souvenir? one of the only surviving documents from their old culture??

furthermore, his brother did not "won up to responsibility" by staying with those people. he's further contaminating their culture with his outside influence including the HALF HUMAN BABY and since he's marooned there he will never see his parents or brother ever again. because he got the awooga eyes. like, yes, he saved them when starfleet (picard in particular) were being horrible, but also, he didn't save their culture even a little bit, and he's lying to himself if he thinks he did. and WE COULD HAVE SAVED THEIR CULTURE WITH THE MACHINES. that was so much lower risk...................

redeeming factor of this episode was that worf is HANDSOME under all that klingon makeup. like i knew he was attractive because i've seen like headshots online but i like never saw him moving his face and acting without it. he's actually really expressive..........why do you hire a man this beautiful and then put him under all of that. like he's absolutely stunning i was so shocked

TONIGHT: ds9's "armageddon game" and tng's "sub rosa," which i have seen celebrated online for some reason? something about sexy ghosts??

[frostyreturns]

Frosty Reviews Idiocracy

This is one of those movies that people kept telling me I needed to watch because it seemed like a movie I’d like. Now that I have seen it I have no idea how this movie escaped me before now. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I even knew it existed and I just never saw it available anywhere. It must have been pretty low budget and didn’t have the marketing power behind it but even still it seems to have a cult following. I like most everything Mike Judge does so it should have been a no brainer.

It’s a dumb comedy but if a dumb comedy was a fairly accurate speculative dystopia. The idea is people are just going to keep getting dumber and dumber until one day a know nothing dumbass from our time would be considered the smartest man in the world. Part of the reason for the speculation is the idea that stupid people reproduce a lot while smart people reproduce very little. I have a bit of an issue with this reasoning…I think not reproducing is more of a midwit thing than a smart people thing. People smart enough to use protection when they are not ready…but not smart enough to figure out the benefits of a larger family and to be able to create the wealth to provide for it. The dumbing down of the world thanks to the fact that dumb people breed more is just part of the picture and the movie never really tackled the fact that we’re being dumbed down on purpose with drugs, porn, shitty education, lies, constant mindless media distractions, fluoridated water etc.

I bet if the movie was made or remade today social media especially stuff like tik tok would be prominantly featured, it’s kind of a real shame it’s not there because it would have been so perfect. I can so easily picture scenes where there’s some serious problem they need to address and the characters are just in the background doing tik tok dances instead.

I thought the movie was pretty funny but the funniest thing to me was the backstory behind the footwear. The movie was obviously super low budget which is a shame because otherwise I think this could have been a much better and more widely known and loved movie. At times the shitty backgrounds took me out of it a little. It was so low budget Mike Judge was dealing with some wardrobe stuff himself and when he was looking for footwear he asked for ugly shoes that they might wear in a future where everyone is retarded. He specifically asked that they be sure not to use anything that might become popular…the shoes they used for the movie were crocs and the wardrobe woman assured him they were so ugly there was no way they would ever become popular.

At times the joke felt like it was stretched a little thin, the premise was funny and many of the jokes were funny but there was times it felt like…maybe a whole movie wasn’t needed for this joke. The specifics of the plot were kind of inconsequential and I never felt really invested in any of the characters enough to care what happened to anyone. Particularly Dax Sheppard…I can’t stand the fucking guy but I do have to say he was cast perfectly for the role I totally believed him as a brain dead dipshit.

Most of the jokes were running gags one of my favourites was the way that the Fuddruckers restaurant slowly changed its name to buttfuckers. The whole movie isn’t just dumbasses laughing at people getting hit in the balls 24/7 there’s a subtle genius to the humour. The way the fat uninterested Costco employee greets them all by saying “welcome to costco I love you” says so much about the future he’s painting a picture of. A dehumanizing mega corporation that doesn’t even bother trying to appear like it cares and just pays an employee to just lie directly to you…stripped of all nuance and subtletey. It says they have to try less because people are too stupid to see it for what it is. There’s just something about a faceless corporation pretending to give a shit about you that feels so offputting and dystopian. I once got a birthday email from my bank and it kinda made me want to find out who was in charge of that decision and go take a shit on their desk. You’re not a fucking person don’t talk to me like you’re a person.

Some of his predictions are right on although he was wrong about Costco being the main megastore that eats up everything else and tries to be the one and only store, this was made before Amazon became basically what he was predicting costco would be. And he also rightfully predicts an oversexualization of society…his examples are silly like starbucks becoming a place where you get handjobs but it does seem like as things get shittier more and more people are resorting to some kind of sex work. I’ve never been on twitch because the idea of watching people play video games makes me a rage, but im told it’s basically impossible to use it without seeing half naked women turn it into some kind of erotic content.

I also thought the movie displayed the dunning krueger effect pretty well. Initially the main character who is from the past and is thus the smartest person alive is treated like the dumbest person they’ve ever seen…becuase they were too stupid to recognize how stupid they are so even basic common sense looked and sounded retarded to them.

In many ways we already live in the idiocracy, we’re getting dumber and we reward shitty dumb behaviour. The movie was essentially a reduction to absurdity of a real phenomena that’s only gotten a lot worse since it was written. The political pageantry was especially prescient because we’re currently watching a shit show involving a former and probably future president that’s actually been on WWE before.

Idiocracy was a good blend of dumb nonsense movie and intelligent satire. Definitely worth at least one watch despite the sometimes horrible cgi and somewhat lagging lackluster plot. It’s funny and it definitely holds up.

[tryslora]

Nate vs. the Edits

I have a ton of posts partially written, and this particular one will probably touch on some of those themes. Particularly the concept of time (and how little of it there is in a week).

So. Apologies in advance for that. I have swiss cheese brain. I might not even remember if I’m repeating myself. Maybe y’all will forgive me, or maybe not. I figure readers are happy enough to click next/close and move on. <3

The topic I’m thinking about today is how editing and drafting can be inherently antagonistic.

It’s no secret that I owe multiple books right now. I have two that need to be drafted: the next in the Seven Lakes series, so my indie publishing life doesn’t fail before it gets off the ground, and the next Welcome to PHU book, otherwise known as Nate’s book, which uh… I should’ve started drafting two years ago.

It’s also no secret that I am working with Duck Prints Press to bring out paperback editions of the PHU books, starting with the Twinned trilogy. Commit to the Kick is already in print through DPP, and the second and third books are in progress. We’ll Kickstart print editions once they are edited and ready to roll.

Editing is… hard. I mean, it’s probably hard for everyone, but it’s really hard for me because it is one of my mental breaking points. My brain assumes that when something is drafted, it’s done, and making big changes (or even small changes that have big effects) is hard for me to do. I am more than willing to admit to this fault.

It means that when my brain goes into edit mode, drafting mode goes POOF and disappears. And well, vice versa.

Over the last year, I’ve done a lot of work in learning how to edit, and I’ve gotten better at it. I did a first round edit of Into the Split to handle some large issues before DPP starts working on it. I did a big overhaul of a short story and turned it into a much better version of itself that I could submit to a market. But during that time, I couldn’t draft.

Part of that was time being a finite commodity, and part of it was that editing makes me overthink everything. And for Nate’s book in particular, there is a lot to overthink.

Nate’s book (Run Together, or RT in acronym form) is a book where it would be very easy, and possibly even a good idea, to have multiple narrators. While I had considered it briefly for Pels’s book (Not Your Guardian Angel), in the end, that one was a stronger book for being a single POV. This one I can see all the ways that having all three characters allowed to speak could make it stronger. Cass internalizes so much. And Dax… we’ve hardly gotten to see into his head at all in the PHU ‘verse so far. We know about how he handles his Talent, and that he’s a football stats vending machine. But seeing into his emotional side would be nice, especially considering the things he needs to work through during this storyline.

Every time I started working on the book, I thought about all the pieces that had been broken in ITS and needed to be fixed, and I stalled. I couldn’t wrap my head around the best way to tell the story.

I dubbed this problem “Nate vs. the Edits” in my head, which seemed like a decent title for a bout going multiple rounds in my brain with heavy fighting and damage. Like. Yikes.

Editing makes me analytical, and drafting requires me to shove my analytical parts into the background, letting the foreground take inspiration without failing under the anxiety of the details.

I have always trusted my subconscious when drafting. I have a brain like swiss cheese—I can’t hold details in my mind on purpose, but if I trust them to be there (like programming to a base case for recursion—yes, I know this makes no sense to anyone but me) the story works. I can recall things if I don’t try to recall. Trust my subconscious to fill in the blanks.

Right now, I have “outlined” the first maybe… quarter? third? of Nate’s book. I split a few of my pieces of the timeline into enough information to be able to draft three chapters. Except I feel like they aren’t quite right. The pacing is off.

I’ve lost the ability to write for the joy of writing the serial, for the joy of rolling around in drafting fic about the characters who live in my head. Or, I haven’t lost it… not completely. But I’m struggling with it, and yes, continuing to second guess myself. I’ve become my own gatekeeper, constantly concerned about whether I’m doing it right.

Ironically enough, this also affects editing. I haven’t opened the file for MF that I received a couple of weeks ago because I’m a bit afraid of what I’ll see. Like. They are edits and there are already notes in there that I just have to either agree with, reject, or find a different way to do it. Easy peasy, right?

HAH.

Instead, I’ve decided to use blog posts as my palette cleanser. I’ve spent the last half hour after work accomplishing nothing more than eating dinner and reading half a volume of manga. I know I need to write something so here I am, putting words on a page in hopes that it breaks the fiction loose.

Nate’s rattling around in here somewhere. So is Adam (for the 7Lakes book). They are ready to roll. It’s me that’s stalling.

A part of me thinks that when I’m retired, it’ll be easier. Mornings for drafting and afternoons for editing, or vice versa. Chores as palette cleansers between tasks. I hope that turns out to be true.

But for the moment, I’m squeezing in writing and editing like a teenager hiding my viewing of racy videos—hiding in a closed office for thirty minutes and praying I can get to the end before the time is up. Stealing away and closeting myself with my tablet, spewing words onto the keyboard, spilling my mind like blood from a wound.

/exhales

Yeah. I’m full of weird analogies. 

I know that there’s no secret to this. Yes, we all believe that we have a muse when we write, but we also have to put in the work. Editing is work. The paralyzation comes with the territory, and it means I’m learning. I am discovering what I’m doing wrong (and right!) and I need to internalize it.

No magic formula, just… patience. Doing it anyway. Pushing through.

If I have to edit and re-edit the first chapters of RT, it’s okay. It’s a serial, but I always try to get 4-8 chapters in before I start posting. I have time to fix things.

And somewhere, somehow, I have to do the editing for MF, too.

Two entirely different parts of my personality vying for what little time we have.

Best let them get to it, then, huh?

Want to support me? -- Patreon | Ko-Fi | Reblog & Comment

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[svartalfhild]

A Case for Jezri

Listen, I know how the DS9 fandom feels about Jezri, but I just wanted to take a moment to explain why I like it. I'm not asking people to agree; I just want to give it some love because there are things to enjoy and to explore in that ship that haven't gotten any discussion.

(Also why is 99.9% of the Jezri tag just people tagging their hate? Who raised y'all? Please be respectful towards your fellow fans who may not feel the same as you.)

I'm no stranger to finding my gold nuggets in the trash heap when it comes to Star Trek ships. I'm the type to find the things to love about something that was executed poorly by the writers. Datasha is my TNG OTP. Need I say more.

So don't think I don't understand some of the main objections people have to Jezri. I get it. I do. So with that out of the way, let's get into the good stuff.

Julian's personal story, particularly in the later parts of the show, has a strong motif of loneliness, which comes from two or three different aspects of his life. The first one is of course the fact that he's an augment. He's socially isolated by his mental and physical superiority. No one can keep up with him, and he has to diminish himself to fit in, especially before the truth comes out. The second is the evolving lives of the people closest to him. There reaches a point where nearly all of his closest friends are either married or in committed relationships, and he's the free floater who has to hope he can still fit into their lives somewhere. The third aspect is his own shit luck with relationships. No one sticks with him for very long for whatever reason. And there was the everything with Jadzia on top of it all. Poor man couldn't catch a break.

And then along comes Ezri. Quark is quick to treat her as same old Dax with a new coat of paint, for whose affections he immediately tries to generate competition with Julian, because he is a sexist little toad. Julian, to his great credit, is like "what the fuck, Quark" and makes it clear that he sees Ezri as a different person, not Jadzia 2.0 who he now has a chance with. Ezri is his new friend, and he's not going to be pulled into Quark's bullshit.

The writing is unfortunately rather uneven when it comes to showing us the establishment and development of that friendship, so we have to piece together the vibes from several disparate moments, some big and meaningful and others more incidental, but that's not too difficult for me. Fandom has done more with less.

Anyway! Through all of that, we kind of get to see that Ezri sees Julian differently than Jadzia did in a way that allows them to click very quickly. Jadzia sort of saw Julian as an adorable puppy excitedly wagging his tail at her (and by the time he matured into someone who was more her type, he'd stopped pursuing her and then she was with Worf). Ezri sees him as the charming guy who knows how to have a good time. It seems natural to me that Julian would quickly latch onto someone who thought his holosuite adventures were demonstrative of a healthy sense of fun and not a sign of immaturity. Ezri is literally the bad bitch he pulled by being autistic.

And they are such adorable awkward nerds with each other! The big eyes! The soft touches! The fumbling! The trying to keep things platonic because they just like each other so much that they're afraid of messing things up! The breaking down and making out anyway because they can't escape the vibes! *chef's kiss*

The thing that completely sold me on Jezri, though, was their moment together at the end of the last episode where Julian is mourning Miles' departure and feeling lonely and then Ezri rolls up like "Hey~!" and expresses the desire to have dinner and do holosuite adventures with him. That was so beautiful to me. Everything is changing and so many of his friends have left and it's the ultimate pit of loneliness for him, but then there's Ezri. He has her now and he's not alone and the war is over and there's hope and the start of something new and soft. I cried, y'all. Like maybe it's because I'm at a place in my life where I feel left behind while I watch all my friends move on with their lives, but man, the way Ezri represents the light at the end of a dark tunnel for Julian just got me so good.

Here are some of the headcanons I have to supplement the sparse canon material and give further depth and enjoyment to my shipping experience:

They're both bisexual.

Since they're both healthcare professionals, they have a lot to talk about where their fields intersect. They make a great team when they're working, but this also results in them developing a shorthand with each other that is somewhat infuriating for others.

Ezri's closeness with Julian allows her to better develop her friendship with Garak, and there are several times when all three of them get up to shenanigans together.

They sometimes get each other new tea blends to try as a fun little surprise.

Ezri tries to teach Julian some of the gymnastics stuff she remembers at least once with mixed results.

Julian particularly loves hugging Ezri, and she particularly loves holding his hand.

Julian persuades Ezri to read Lord of the Rings, and she gets really into it, so they end up doing a holosuite adaptation as Legolas and Gimli. Ezri plays with her beard a lot.

Quark fucking hates how cute they are and Kira makes a point to tell him about every sweet moment she sees between them just to fuck with him.

Ezri very much gets in on the Fuck With Section 31 train and helps Julian do spy shit. The criminal psychology knowledge comes in handy.

Anyway, these are my feels. Please don't air your grievances here. I just want to sail on my dinghy and hope someone out there is sailing with me.

[nebulouscoffee]

For the ship ask game: Worf/Bashir; Deanna/K'Ehleyr; The O'Brien's/Data; Kasidy Yates/Ro Laren!

Ooooh thanks for all these interesting picks!! (What I'm learning is, either you guys are just extremely good at coming up with ships, or I am a chaotic multishipper who will ship literally anything fhjdskhjfs)

Worf/Julian Bashir- ship it

What made you ship it?

That dart board scene from Way of the Warrior. I didn't even particularly want to ship it, I just have eyes😂

What are your favorite things about the ship?

Yes, Worf's canonical opinion of Julian is "He is a child who plays with toys", but I actually think- if the right situations arose and he got to see Julian as more than just "arrogant chatterbox" and "guy who still has feelings for Jadzia"- Worf would realise to his horror that Julian has a LOT of qualities he's consistently been shown to admire, even some he wishes he could exhibit so readily, like the fearless opposition of authority figures (remember the TNG s4 finale when the Klingon High Council asked Worf to kill that kid saying it was "the Klingon way" and he said "but it is not MY way"? Julian does this kind of thing all the time lol! And with little to no hesitation. Worf is rarely around to witness it, but it's so funny to imagine him being caught off-guard like 👀... girl that honour tho👀 👀)

Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

Idk if it's unpopular necessarily, but I love putting Worf in polycules and I disagree that he's too monogamous to make it work! I think Worf gets jealous and possessive when someone he's agreed to a monogamous relationship with starts flirting with other people, but if these were always the terms right from the beginning, he'd honour them. Anyway I enjoy a LOT of Worf polycules haha, but the ones that involve Julian are Worf/Dax/Bashir, Worf/Dax/Sisko/Bashir, and (my new personal favourite) Worf/Martok/Garak/Bashir. (Mutual who infected me with that last one, thank you, you know who you are😂)

Deanna Troi/K'Ehleyr- ship it

What made you ship it?

TROI: I didn't know it was possible for a human and a Klingon to produce a child.  K'EHLEYR: Actually, the DNA is compatible, with a fair amount of help. Rather like my parents.  TROI: I know exactly what you mean. My father was human and my mother is a Betazoid.  K'EHLEYR: Really? It was the other way around for me. My mother was human. You must've grown up like I did, trapped between cultures.  TROI: I never felt trapped. I tried to experience the richness and diversity of the two worlds.  K'EHLEYR: Perhaps you got the best of each. Myself, I think I got the worst of each.  TROI: Oh, I doubt that. 

The first time I watched this, I took Deanna's comment at face value- but, both earlier and later episodes explicitly state that Deanna often felt out of place on Betazed, & her sheer discomfort every time Lwaxana comes on board (especially with the way she talks telepathically, which Deanna considers "rude") suggests that she isn't being completely honest here. Which is fascinating! (Truly, having 90s Trek women blorbos is taking inconsistencies and building elaborate webs of explanatory insecurities lmaoo)

What are your favorite things about the ship?

I am a sucker for alien cultures and worldbuilding and the internal worlds of characters who inhabit and oscillate between those worlds, & I've noticed most of the ships I think about a lot are either human/alien or alien/alien (I can project way more easily onto those haha). So Deanna/K'Ehleyr is a goldmine in that regard

(Also, I just love dynamics where a "tough" character has a surprising amount of respect for a softer, more empathetic character)

Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

I don't know the prevailing opinions on this ship, so I shall once again invoke the Worf Polycule Rule and say K'Ehleyr should have lived and been a recurring character and Deanna's "we hook up every time you're on board the Enterprise" and she and Worf would still have needed Deanna's help raising Alexander S5 onwards so this eventually would've led to Worf/Troi/K'Ehleyr

Miles O'Brien/Keiko Ishikawa/Data- ship it

What made you ship it?

I'm gonna be honest- I had never even thought about this before today, so it was in fact this ask that made me ship it. Thanks!😂

What are your favorite things about the ship?

Well, it allows me to reinterpret a lot of the early Miles/Keiko content in a less "traditional married couple" way, which- as presented on the show, always felt a bit dated for the 24th century lol.

Okay, I'm thinking... We know Keiko was Data's friend first, and it was him who introduced her to Miles, right? So what if she and him originally met because Data was experimenting with having a love life and Keiko saw his profile on Enterprise-D Tinder or whatever and thought "hey, that sweet android man from the arboretum! Why not?" And they ended up making dinner in each other's quarters, infodumping about plants, having sex a few times, no strings attached (I genuinely feel like Keiko would be one of the least weird people about Data's whole No Emotions thing). Meanwhile Miles is grumbling in Ten Forward after a music recital that his life is sort of at a standstill, and he's a bit lonely, he just wants someone to come home to- and Data (the only person listening, naturally, which leads to a one night stand lol) suddenly has the thought- why not set him up with Keiko? And thus- the iconic, infamous, two-show-spanning O'Brien polycule begins.😂 (Jokes aside, Data probably steps out of this arrangement after a bit, once he realises they are deeply in love and headed towards an eventual marriage-with-children situation, and that's how he ends up giving Keiko away at the wedding)

Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

Are there even... opinions on this one? I guess I could voice what is perhaps an unpopular opinion about Data, which is- I don't actually think he and Geordi ever slept together at any point during TNG. To me, they are one of those "they've never kissed but they are married" situations- like they are way too dependant on each other to risk their friendship like that! I do think Data could've been hooking up with more people than shown in canon, but it was always arrangements like this- ones he could end at any point with minimum damage and no hurt feelings. Geordi is much too close to him for this; but being the O'Briens' third from time to time? Definitely could happen

Kasidy Yates/Ro Laren- ship it

What made you ship it?

Writing a fic about them! (It is one of the many, many Fully Written Fics I Cannot Post, and I am so annoyed with myself hahaha)

What are your favorite things about the ship?

[spoilers for DS9: For The Cause and TNG: Preemptive Strike below]

They are both so unapologetic about their Maquis collaborations it makes me insane! Like, when Ben finds out, Kasidy is sorry about the lying to him part- but the show never makes her realise she was wrong to help those people, or even apologise to him. Same with Ro- when she betrays the crew, Riker just sort of understands (and doesn't even seem that surprised when she turns her phaser on him!) She regrets having to let them down, but not what she felt she had to do for the Maquis (and the Bajorans in it). It's really fun to imagine their paths crossing at some point- maybe Ro was captured by Starfleet and they end up in the same prison after 'FTC'; maybe Kasidy and Ben just never fully rekindle their relationship (not even necessarily because of her betrayal, there's also her clear disapproval of his actions in 'Rapture' and 'TDDUP' to consider) and she finds a much freer existence in the Maquis with Ro? (Breaks my Sisko/Kasidy heart a little, but still. It's interesting🥲) Of course, if we want a less messy more wholesome alternative, she and Ro only meet post-canon - Ro's lost her Maquis family and wants to help deliver aid to the Bajoran diaspora & victims of the Dominion War, Kasidy's trying to pick her life back up after Ben left her. They go on to have many adventures together in their freighter🥰

(The freedom they could give each other to be unrepentant about their criminal behaviour, basically! Literal #BeGayDoCrime ship)

Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

Despite everything I said above, I think they would actually have their fair share of disagreements. They're both in so much pain! Maybe Kasidy wants to deliver supplies to the civilians suffering on Cardassia Prime, and Ro isn't happy about it. Maybe Ro tries to comfort her with the idea that Ben's still around as a borhya, and it massively backfires. Maybe Kasidy finds Ro's guilt over letting Picard down grating, maybe she projects some of her anger at Ben onto Ro. They'd probably have a lot of weirdly cutting guilt-trippy arguments and passive aggressive makeup sex. But they would still give each other the space to talk, and cry, and like, be angry

[calicostorms]

DAI OCs Masterlist!

Organized by last name alphabetically, more minor ocs of mine not mentioned- my wardens are posted separately here. Some of these ocs also have backstories spanning elements of DAII, but most of their appearances are in DAI. IDs are in alt text in interest of streamlining the already very long post.

Astila [she/her]: An ex-chasind driven from her homeland in the Wilds during the Fifth Blight. She spent a short time as a mercenary; when the sky opened she took it as a sign from her gods and she joined up as one of Leliana's agents. She's known for being quick-tempered but playful and generally friendly with a brutality in battle.

Playlist link

Achar Aanavi [ze/zir/zem, she/her]: Born in the Denerim alienage and left young to travel to Rivain in search of work to support zir's mother after zir's father's death. Ze met zir Raiders and joined up as a cabin boy, crawling up the ranks and switching crews several times before finding zir current Raider crew that ze has been with for many years as the first mate! Known for being quiet and authoritative in spite of short stature.

Ilya Abramov [he/they]: He grew up in the Disciples of Andraste. After the Warden slaughtered nearly all of those in Haven after being attacked, he lost both his parents and older sister. He left Haven at around nine or ten and traveled as a merchant for several years before returning to honor the dead. He eventually joins the Inquisition as a scout after the destruction of Haven, and can be found in the Hinterlands scouting or in Skyhold walking around. Known for a nervous demeanor but a brutality in battle among other scouts.

Playlist link

Meraad Adaar [any]: Meraad grew up in Par Vollen as an Antaam member. He was sent to Seheron for military assignment and ascended the ranks there– after about seven years there he was reassigned after contracting soul sickness (PTSD) after striking a blow against a close friend in his platoon after they defected to the Fog Warriors. He corresponded with others and escaped on a ship bound for Rivain with them. They joined up the Valo-Kas mercenaries where he became known for his easygoing demeanor and skill with leadership. Shokrakar eventually made him second in command.

Meraad took on the responsibility of raising another mercenary's child, Hissra. Six years later, an elven child named Ophir attempted to pickpocket him in a busy market, and they became his ward. He joined the Inquisition as a contracted mercenary and fell for a tranquil named Lenamar Dax during his time within the Inquisition. Spent considerable time badgering Cassandra about pursuing the cure for tranquility after her personal quest. Often known for being a gentle giant with a skill for leading in battle.

Playlist link

Hissra Adaar[she/he]: Quiet but self-assured, Hissra is known for being a bit difficult to read. Born to Tal-Vashoth parents, she was raised among the Valo-Kas. Her parents died during a mission in her teens and Meraad and Shaye Adaar took over her care, teaching her how to lead a group. Meraad was especially close to her. Joins the Inquision either as an agent, or in the Inky!au, becomes the Inquisitor and romanced Blackwall. After DAI she devotes herself to fighting back the Qunari invasion of Rivain.

Playlist link

Fen'an Alahannon[he/they/neos]: My personal favorite (biased) (in love with him). He was originally born in Tevinter in servitude and his mother escaped with him to the Anderfels, where the Alahannon clan took him in shortly before her death. Despite his skill with a battleaxe, he's better known for his skill making clothes and textiles.

He's known for being very protective of those close to him, particularly his adopted sister, and only went south due to his sister wanting to join the Inquisition. He stays on as an agent of the Inquisition to watch out for her, though in his time there he falls for Asgeir Brynjarson, an avvarian mage possessed by a spirit of hope. He leaves with Asgeir after Corypheus is defeated to take Dorian up on an offer to help the Lucerni in Tevinter. In the two years before Trespasser he spends most of his time freeing slaves, killing slavers, and working with Dorian to further anti-slavery causes including a measures which make it easier for ex-slaves to become liberati.

Personal playlist, Fengeir playlist, Fenyuo playlist

Von Bemot[he/him]: Technically his full name is Vonstein, but nobody calls him that. My Kal-Sharok dwarven oc! He became head of his family after his older sibling passed and his parents died young [likely from Blight explosure]. Took over their trading in Tevinter but left to help the Inquisition help fight the Blight in a concrete manner during Inquisition by joining after contacting Josephine. Eventually pursued a grey warden named Dmitri after Adamant. Known for being friendly but still offputting and a bit strange with an eerie ability to sense nearing darkspawn similarly to a grey warden.

Haven't fleshed him out a lot unfortunately but I would like to <3

Markas Cadash[he/any]: A well known member of the Carta who spent his youth smuggling, though he rose up the ranks quickly in favor of making the deals with other Carta houses. Known for being calculating and good at his job, though it falls to the wayside slightly when he becomes Inquisitor. He falls for Josephine and though he continues his pragmatic way of getting things done, he quickly grew to respect her ability to talk people into deals and began using her approach. Became a better person as a result of falling for her, but still a bit cold and self-serving at his core, and uses the Inquisition to his whims more than my others OCs do.

Playlist

Ithelan Eanmanen[he/neos]: My partner's favorite of my blorbos <3. Grew up in Antiva with his clan and had a natural penchant for lying and charming his way into information. After a clanmate died due to his carelessness, he became more interested in information to keep people he loves safe. Later joined the Inquisition as one of Leliana's top agents and fell in love with Dhaveira Alahannon (Fen'an's adoptive sister) who he'd met once previously and was head over heels for.

Personal playlist, modern au playlist, ithedhavi playlist

Davgon Hofer[he/him]: My somewhat underdeveloped falconeer avvarian oc which I have yet to flesh out too much. Formerly lived in Nevarra but left and later joined Fennec-tooth Hold. He has magic but it's not very powerful and he prefers to use a bow. Known for a quiet, soft-spoken demeanor and skill with hunting. Joins up with the Inquisition as an agent of Leliana's, helping to train her birds and often found in the rookery. Pursued by a rivaini dalish woman named Nadasa during his time in the Inquisition, drawn to her self certainty when speaking with him.

Elgara Lavellan[she/he]: In her early 30s, Elgara is self-assured and well designed to natural leading. She's a pragmatist with a secret playful streak that Sera and Solas often bring out in her. She manages to maneuver well enough to save her entire clan and give them a modicum of political power, and frequently sends letters to her ward, Aya, who is an up and coming hunter. Romances Solas across the course of her game but eventually grew frustrated and exhausted by his cagey nature around sharing knowledge, and breaks things off in favor of pursuing Sera near the end of the game who is a welcome warmth after Solas' frequent chill.

Playlist

Nydha Lavellan[he/him]: Initially bright-eyed and excitable, he was quite happy and sweet person. Often ruled by emotion and a bit immature, he gradually becomes pessimistic and slides into many obvious fits of depression as he gets closer to the end of DAI. Has a lot of unresolved PTSD from the unexpected and fraught decisions he made which led to the death of (most of) clan Lavellan.

He romances Dorian, who is one of the few places he finds solace, and is quite close friends with Cole. He also romances Rajmael Anise, a dalish OC of @secretly-seraph1m 's who took it upon himself to become his personal guard. Rajmael helps him guard his space and time better, and helps him grieve his family after he gets news of the death of his clan.

Personal playlist, Rajnydha playlist

Mellita Trevelyan[she/he/neos]: A surly, sharp tongued ex-circle turned blood mage who escaped to join the more extreme sections of the mage rebellion with a revolutionary spirit and chip on her shoulder. Originally discovered to be a mage quite young, she had little mind for Circle politics and used her nobility for perks until she became disowned. She has a secret soft side, often brought out by Lark Orrick, her eventual partner who originally was in Ostwick circle before his own escape years before her own, and her tertiary partner, Sammael. She's insane and I need her so bad <3

[innovationalofficesolution]

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[thebandcampdiaries]

Sammygtree has released a new single: “Talk To Me.”

A party anthem with a positive message

February 2025 - Sammygtree is an artist and songwriter with a truly distinctive style and a highly creative approach to music. This enables him to seamlessly combine the earthy and organic tones of indie music with the nostalgic elements of country and the punch of modern R&B. All the while, Sammygtree also showcases some hip-hop influences as he looks up to iconic artists such as the late great Mac Miller, as well as Drake, Wythe, and Dax, just to name a few. With such a wide range of influences, it's easy to see how the artist has managed to craft such a distinctive aesthetic with his music. Sammygtree's most recent single, Talk to Me, is a perfect example of this. The song has a very smooth tone overall, but there's enough energy to make it a perfect dancefloor banger as well. This is the kind of track that can be enjoyed in a relaxed setting, but it also works well in more electrifying environments—whether at a club or on a car ride with friends, music blasting.

The music is accompanied by powerful lyrics that focus on living in the moment, celebrating the night, and simply letting go of worries and anxiety. The scene is set with flashing lights, energetic music, and a lively atmosphere fueled by drinks and adrenaline - the imagery is already iconic, as it creates a perfect sense of being at the start of a very special night. The imagery of dancing, smooth moves, and shared glances evokes the thrill of connection in a very colorful and fun social setting: it’s bump and grind, wine and dine, baby!

In other words, “Talk To Me” is the perfect party anthem and a strong reminder that the present moment is all we really have. Beyond being a fun tribute to living the high life, Talk to Me serves as a fantastic introduction to what Sammygtree is all about as an artist. The song feels immediate and accessible, yet there's a lot of detail under the hood, especially in terms of production. The sound is compact yet punchy and dynamic, particularly when it comes to the rhythm and the way the vocals lock in perfectly with the beat. The instrumental mix is balanced and direct, with a really deep low end and a crunchy mid-range that adds a lot of excitement to the track.

The introduction of the song is drenched in an atmosphere of nostalgia, as the moody, soft electric guitar chords resonate with warmth but also bring detail and brightness to the mix. These chords intertwine beautifully with the deep bass line, establishing a captivating vibe from the very first moment and immediately bringing groove to the song. As the music unfolds, Sammygtree’s vocals make their entrance around the 20-second mark, and it's impossible not to be drawn in by his smooth, soulful delivery, allowing him to forge a genuine connection with listeners. His voice has a lot of character, and his lyrics are so immediate that immediately give off a very authentic vibe. His lyrics are catchy, and they have a natural flow that matches the music to absolute perfection.

The drumbeat has a slow, laid-back groove, but it’s packed with depth—thanks, in part, to the punchy, full-bodied bass drum, which adds weight and size to the mix. Meanwhile, the snare and hi-hat tones cut through the instrumentation without becoming overpowering, resulting in a well-balanced, dynamic sound. Each element is meticulously arranged to create a sense of cohesion while giving the vocals enough room to shine.

With Talk to Me, Sammygtree not only delivers an irresistible party anthem but also offers listeners a glimpse into his creative world. His ability to blend diverse influences into a unique and engaging sound sets him apart, making this track a must-listen for fans of genre-bending, heartfelt music.

In conclusion, this release channels the spirit of authentic contemporary R&B and neo-soul, but with hints from the diverse range of influences that inspire Sammygtree to create something that’s part of his own vocabulary rather than simply mimicking what’s around him. Time and time again, the artist has demonstrated his ability to craft songs that go beyond mere entertainment.

Sammygtree is on a mission to deliver messages of inspiration and positivity with the hope of making a meaningful impact on the lives of his listeners. In a world that often feels tense and unpredictable, artists like Sammygtree are a breath of fresh air—using their creativity as a force for good, spreading optimism, and encouraging others to find light even in challenging times.

Find out more about Sammygtree’s music, and listen to “Talk To Me,” which is currently available on your favorite digital streaming services.

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How to Use DAX in Power BI for Advanced Analytics

Power BI Training is a leading tool in the field of data analytics and visualization, providing businesses with the insights they need to make informed decisions. One of its most powerful features is Data Analysis Expressions (DAX), a formula language that allows users to create advanced calculations and models. This article explores how DAX can be used in Power BI for advanced analytics, unlocking its full potential for data professionals. Power BI Online Training in Hyderabad

Understanding DAX Basics

DAX is specifically designed for data modelling in Power BI, Excel, and SQL Server Analysis Services. It enables users to go beyond basic aggregations by crafting custom calculations. Some key features of DAX include:

Functions: DAX includes a wide range of functions for mathematical, statistical, and text operations.

Context Awareness: DAX formulas work within two contexts—row context and filter context—allowing calculations on both individual rows and filtered data sets.

Custom Calculations: Users can create calculated columns for static results or measures for dynamic, on-the-fly calculations.

These capabilities make DAX essential for building robust and interactive analytics in Power BI Training.

Essential DAX Functions for Advanced Analytics

To perform advanced analytics, it’s important to understand some key DAX functions that are widely used in Power BI projects.

CALCULATE Function

The CALCULATE function is incredibly versatile, enabling users to modify filter contexts dynamically. For instance, you can compute sales for specific time periods or conditions.

FILTER Function

FILTER allows users to narrow down data to meet certain criteria. This is particularly useful when working with subsets of data for detailed analysis.

Time Intelligence Functions

DAX provides built-in time intelligence functions like TOTALYTD (Year-to-Date totals), DATESBETWEEN (for custom date ranges), and PREVIOUSMONTH (to analyze historical trends). These functions make temporal data analysis more straightforward.

RANKX Function

RANKX is used to rank items, such as products or customers, based on specific metrics like sales or profitability. This is especially useful for comparisons and performance evaluations.

Applications of DAX in Advanced Analytics

With a solid understanding of DAX functions, professionals can tackle complex analytical tasks. Here are some practical applications: Power BI Online Training in Hyderabad

Customer Segmentation

DAX allows you to categorize customers into segments based on their purchasing behaviour. For example, customers can be classified as high-value, medium-value, or low-value based on their total spending. This segmentation provides actionable insights for targeted marketing campaigns.

Profitability Analysis

DAX helps businesses calculate profitability metrics dynamically. For instance, by dividing total profit by revenue, companies can monitor profit margins across products, regions, or time periods.

Trend Forecasting

Using rolling averages or moving totals, DAX enables businesses to identify trends and patterns in data. For instance, calculating a 30-day rolling average for sales can reveal performance fluctuations over time.

Best Practices for Using DAX

Understand Contexts

Context plays a critical role in DAX. Filter and row contexts impact how calculations are performed, so understanding these concepts is essential for accurate results.

Optimize Performance

Complex DAX formulas can slow down report performance. It’s best to use efficient functions and keep calculations as streamlined as possible.

Use Variables

Variables, defined using the VAR keyword, can improve formula readability and performance. By storing intermediate results, variables also make troubleshooting easier.

Test Formulas Step-by-Step

When building advanced analytics, test DAX formulas incrementally. This approach ensures accuracy and simplifies debugging.

Conclusion

Mastering DAX in Power BI is essential for unlocking advanced analytics capabilities. Whether it’s customer segmentation, profitability analysis, or trend forecasting, DAX empowers professionals to extract deeper insights and build more interactive dashboards. By learning and applying key DAX functions, understanding contexts, and following best practices, users can take their Power BI skills to the next level.

Start small with basic calculations and gradually progress to more complex scenarios. With consistent practice, you’ll be well on your way to mastering DAX and creating impactful analytics that drive decision-making.

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Market Updates: Forex Strategies, Trends, and Economic News

U.S. Market Overview and Economic Indicators

Record Highs and Positive Market Sentiment On December 2, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite hit record highs, fueled by a post-election rally and strong tech stock performance. The S&P 500 closed at 6,075.11, while the Nasdaq rose 0.8%. The November jobs report, showing the addition of 227,000 jobs, helped maintain the unemployment rate at 4.2%. These positive figures, combined with market optimism, influenced trading entry and exit strategies. As traders looked ahead to the Federal Reserve’s meeting on December 17–18, automated trading signals from platforms like Ricsma Group became increasingly important for anticipating potential rate cuts.

Corporate Earnings and Investor Confidence Ulta Beauty, GitLab, and DocuSign surpassed expectations, contributing to market optimism. As the stock market reacts to strong earnings reports, traders often rely on scalping indicators from tools like Rich Smart FX to make quick, profitable decisions, capitalizing on short-term market fluctuations.

Australia’s Economic Challenges and Market Activity

Slow Growth and Inflation Dynamics Australia’s economy grew by just 0.3% in Q3, marking its slowest growth since the pandemic. High interest rates and rising living costs have dampened economic activity, with per capita GDP in recession for seven consecutive quarters. Inflation remains a concern, with core inflation rising to 3.5%, while the headline CPI held steady at 2.1%. These dynamics shape forex market trends and influence the forex portfolio strategy of investors utilizing platforms like Axel Private Market to monitor Australian currency pairs like AUD/USD.

ASX 200 and Sustainable Finance Initiatives Despite economic challenges, the ASX 200 hit record highs earlier in the week, reflecting investor confidence. The issuance of a AUD 700 million Green Kangaroo Bond on December 2 marked Australia’s growing role in sustainable finance. Traders using electronic communication network trading platforms such as DBGM FX have been able to quickly react to these shifts, integrating them into their forex portfolio strategy to optimize returns.

New Zealand’s Economic Outlook and Political Issues

Budget Deficit and Economic Adjustments New Zealand’s Treasury reported a $4.6 billion deficit, driven by lower GST receipts and rising expenses. However, expectations of lower interest rates are set to revive the property market in 2025. Automated trading signals offered by platforms like GFS Markets have gained popularity as traders anticipate these shifts in interest rates, especially when navigating major currency pairs like NZD/USD.

Consumer Spending and Productivity Goals Retail sales were flat during Black Friday, raising concerns about consumer spending. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s focus on improving productivity aligns with calls for increased investment in energy infrastructure. As these economic indicators unfold, traders refine their forex portfolio strategy with the help of tools like Topmax Global to hedge against potential risks and capitalize on emerging opportunities.

European Market Performance and Economic Developments

Stock Market Recovery and Inflation Pressures European markets saw a recovery, with the Stoxx 600 up 0.45% on November 28, following strong performances from Germany’s DAX and France’s CAC 40. Inflation remains a concern, with Germany’s core inflation at 3%. As investors react to these developments, scalping indicators offered by WorldQuest LLC are being employed by forex traders to make quicker, informed decisions in volatile environments, particularly in major currency pairs like EUR/USD.

Corporate Growth and Economic Forecasts S&P Global Ratings predicts eurozone GDP will rise to 1.2% in 2025, signaling brighter economic prospects. Companies like Direct Line have seen significant stock movements, which traders are analyzing through automated trading signals provided by Rich Smart to better navigate the evolving landscape.

Japan’s Economic Landscape and Political Reforms

Nikkei 225 Growth and Global Market Optimism Japan’s Nikkei 225 gained 2.5% from November 25–29, driven by global market optimism and expectations that the Bank of Japan (BOJ) will maintain its accommodative monetary policies. The BOJ’s low-rate policy continues to support the market, and forex market trends are closely watched by investors using electronic communication network trading platforms such as Ricsma Group. These tools help refine trading entry and exit points, especially in JPY-related currency pairs.

Political Commitments and Economic Reform Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s proposals to raise the income tax threshold and improve political transparency come at a time when the Japanese government is pushing for economic reforms. These political moves are influencing Japan’s forex portfolio strategy, with traders responding to shifts in major currency pairs like JPY/USD.

Canada’s Economic Growth and Political Landscape

Strong Market Performance and Sector Growth Canada’s Morningstar Index posted a 24% year-to-date gain, driven by strong performances in financial services and technology, as well as rate cuts from the Bank of Canada. Automated trading signals from platforms like Rich Smart FX have been essential for traders looking to optimize their forex portfolio strategy, particularly when dealing with fluctuations in major currency pairs like CAD/USD.

Trade Relations and Political Challenges Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s meeting with President-elect Donald Trump on December 6, discussing potential tariffs on Canadian goods, has added volatility to the Canadian dollar. The threat of tariffs has led to a dip in the CAD, prompting traders to adjust their trading entry and exit strategies using scalping indicators provided by platforms like DBGM FX to navigate the changing market conditions.

[thegeminisage]

it IS. star trek update time. i am so behind because my fucking schedule got fucked. wednesday we watched "meridian" and "defiant," thursday we watched "fascination" and "past tense" part i (i know), and last night we caught "past tense" part ii and "life support" even though we were gonna do them in release order and start voyager first.

rip. we couldn't start voyager with like 30 minutes left. it hasn't been the first time we've had to go slightly out of order and it probably won't be the last. anyway, we've officially made it to 1995! 1994 ended with a string of surprisingly mid ds9 episodes, some i might even go so far as to call duds...

meridian:

had the summary of this one ahead of time ("quark attempts to use kira in the holosuite") and was braced for the worst. i was braced for deanna-barclay's-sex toy 2.0. at one point i was like "if they do it in this episode it's worse because they KNOW it's wrong. in tng they acted like they didn't know better."

thankfully they did not do it. the one thing i can say here is that they did not do this to my girl kira. and, you know, she had odo's support! it's always nice to see them together.

actually, the first scene of this episode sent me to fucking mars. first, kira asking odo about food. i've been wondering about this too so i'm glad she did. SECONDLYYY, kira pretending she and odo were lovers and then her calling him sweetheart again even though they were alone. odo looked like he was going to think about that every day for the rest of his life. i gotta say he does "gruff pining man who refuses to admit his feelings" very very well. could ANYONE really deserve kira? no, except someone who looks at her like she's hung the moon every time he think she's not looking back. bareil who. get out of here.

i just can't believe she touched his hand. maybe odo DOESN'T make hands to touch people with maybe he makes hands specifically so major kira can touch them. AAAAAAAGHGHGH

i absolutely HATED quark in this episode. i am trying so so hard to like him and prior to this i'd gotten up to a "slightly more positive than neutral" but we set back a lot of hard work here. maybe i'm the one racist against ferengis, not sisko, but it sure would help me be less racist if quark wasn't trying to put major kira in a holosuite. it was particularly cruel i think to tell her she'd won some kind of prize when "i've never won anything before."

it is kind of fun to watch odo do his kira thing and his quark thing at the same time, like him or not i respect that quark is one of odo's love interests. in one scene he got to be protective of kira WHILE bullying quark so that must have been a good day for him. i wish it had been a good day for me also

i had seen gifs of quark in the nightgown and when i googled "quark in a dress" i got entirely different sets of pics so it was fun to see where this finally came from! it was decent revenge, also, but i feel like quark never suffers any consequences when he actually does cross a line (vs just doing petty crime). like when he was dating that maquis vulcan or whatever it was. it makes it SO hard to like him and i am TRYING SO HARD. i like ds9 so much. i want to like the entire cast.

anyway, the actual plot. jadzia dax...........i am also trying so hard with her but GIRL you are gonna run off with some guy you met two days ago?? he is gonna leave his whole planet and age 60 years without them for a girl he met two days ago?? can y'all calm down???

it's even more damning because it's jadzia especially; she's very young, and if you ignore what i know about season 6 spoilers she would likely still be very much alive AS JADZIA when the planet comes back, but if not she'd still be alive in a new host. if friendships can run multiple lifetimes, why not romances? she could literally wait for him. instead she is gonna throw her whole life away

that said, the two of them WERE incredibly charming. they had great chemistry and jadzia being nervous in the tree because of curzon's tree trauma was extremely cute. i thought julian was a good sport about it too, considering - i was so worried he'd be a freak.

but my FAVORITE part of this episode was dax and sisko saying their goodbyes. they're both really good actors, especially the guy playing sisko, that i welled up even though i knew jadzia wasn't going anywhere and wouldn't have been THAT upset if she was. i love when sisko calls her old man and I LOVE when he loves people. it was such a sweet scene.

also, sisko with the kids was so cute. he's got the dad energy 24/7 and he's such an easygoing guy. i could watch him do anything. play with kids. mess around with his little baseball. yell at admirals. brush his teeth. literally anything. he's so fucking talented he could pull everything off.

ultimately, with a horrible b-plot and an only barely passable a-plot, this ep was a dud, but even ds9's duds are better than tng's mids

defiant:

SPEAKING OF TNG.............

okay wait first i have to comment on kira's little burnout scene. i can't believe she fucking yelled at julian and instead of getting mad he was like ah okay i see you're overworked i'm ordering you to have a day off. HE'S SUCH A GOOD PERSONNNN he makes me crazy i love him so much

i DO think it was a little mean to have quark be kira's babysitter and offer kira a holo program considering. you know. but i assume the episodes were written in isolation of one another

anyway, RIKER?? i always kind of wished riker and deanna could come to ds9 with worf because they were WASTED on tng, but NOT LIKE THIS!!!

he totally tricked me. i didn't pick up that he was shady until kira was showing him around the defiant and even then i thought maybe there was a hostage situation or some alien was controlling him......NO! it was the RANDOM ASS CLONE from a random ass tng episode!!! girl, WHAT??

him peeling off the sideburns was so funny. like, this riker doesn't have those. and at first i was like the difference is so minimal NOBODY would notice but then i couldn't stop looking at his beld little cheeks. horrible.

i love when dax and kira almost had girl talk about fucking riker but then she didn't even fuck him. sad. i mean it would have been under false pretenses which is kinda sketchy (which is probably why they made time to point out they DIDN'T fuck actually, good job ds9 staff), but still. it could have been fun.

i never did figure out why evil riker (sorry for calling him evil but he kidnapped kira my best friend) had beef with o'brien...was he just trying to get him to leave? does he hate everyone who ever worked on a transporter? i forgot the details of that other ep, and i remain mystified.

i love whatever sisko and dukat have going on. they hate each other but they love to flirt with each other. sisko should be allowed to flirt more often ESPECIALLY with men.

kira did a great job sabotaging that fucking ship after only being on board for .5 seconds. you can take the girl out of the warzone but you will never take the warzone out of the girl. they're lucky she didn't have their fucking heads i love her SO MUCH

i was sad about evil riker having to go to a cardassian labor camp...nobody deserves that. maybe vedek winn deserves--no, nobody deserves that. i like that kira promised to get him out, but i checked for spoilers and apparently we don't hear anything else about him until lower decks. which, good for them for providing closure, but i'm still not looking forward to that show.

also like HE WAS RIGHT. this is the second time someone from starfleet has been like "those cardassians are up to some shady shit" and everybody called them crazy BUT THEY WERE RIGHT. the cardassians are always up to something shady!!!

fascination:

i am sighing so deeply.

okay, right off the bat, i was at LEAST relieved jake finally got dumped by his FULLY GROWN ADULT GF. that was maybe the high point of this episode??

lwaxana troi is back. this is the first time we've seen her since i decided no one is allowed to be mean to her anymore. i do maybe perhaps wish she had touched odo a LITTLE less.

very sad when iodo thought he and kira were going on a little holiday date and she was like yeah remember my boyfriend? get out of here!

the bit with julian and obrien talking about how much racquetball they played was pretty good actually. like it was a good set-up to the thing later where julian was like oh buddy i know i said i was getting sick of racquetball before but i am actually down for HOWEVER many games it takes. he's such a good person. kill meee

jake falling for kira first was HORRIBLE. i was starting to wonder if he had an older woman complex. it was starting to get upsetting!!! someone put a stop to this!!!

"the office has changed winn" i don't think it has i think she's still an evil bitter old bitch. actually i got proved right later in fascination. so.

okay, actually, it was a little funny when dax fell for sisko and then he started nervous laughing about it thinking she was joking because this is NOT like fucking twins together and then she was no im dead serious lets fuck and he got out of there like the road runner so he could take her to sickbay. he's a good person too

also when kira and bashir started going at it, mostly because both of them were equally embarrassed/horrified/begging someone to get them apart with a cold water hose. i bet they were like let us NEVER speak of this again

however most of this episode was VERY uncomfortable and unfunny.........like, quark going after KEIKO? gross. i hate him. and, love and light, of COURSE it was lwaxana's fault...she was so toned down in this ep i almost forgot she was there

final note, it was absolutely miserable watching obrien and keiko fight...i want them to be happy! i can't believe they almost got divorced and there wasn't even a spell or anything happening. obrien was NOT at his best here and he's lucky he's good at apologies. in his defense on one point she DID ask him to decide what to do and got mad about his decision...but like, was he wrong? the red dress DOES look fantastic.

past tense parts i & ii:

I WAITED SO LONG FOR THIS............

ok some bg explanation required. ever since seeing this art and this art i became a little obsessed with an aos version of city on the edge of forever where they visit the 90s. the 90s would have about the same level of nostalgia to a modern audience as the 30s did to tos's original audience, right? it's one of those things i always thought about writing but will probably never seriously get around to. but in my mind palace, the aos version would HAVE to be in san fran - the geographical opposite of new york, and also the climate opposite (socal in summer vs nyc in winter). like i have half a plot sketched out in my head, this is a thing i have given SERIOUS thought to - i just don't know much about this era in trek's history

SO WHEN I REALIZED. THEY HAD TIME TRAVELED. which i did as soon as i saw the guns. i was BESIDE MYSELF with joy

and how absolutely fitting that it's 2024 in that show and in real life! i want to rewatch these episodes on august 30th.

also, sorry, if it's august in san fran why are they so cold...we looked up temps and the LOWEST low is 55, which IS chilly, but they were acting like they were freezing to death lol

this episode is ABSOLUTELY the spiritual sequel to city on the edge of forever. back to a dark period in earth history, stranded there, a good person has to die to uphold history, etc etc. it was SO GOOD.

it aged both poorly and fantastically. every time they were like well the deaths of these innocent people made the world pull their shit together...uh, no, we passed that opportunity several school shootings and one pandemic ago. on the other hand, every time they basically turned to the camera and shamed us for letting it get this bad...what was that line, "causing people to suffer because you hate them is really terrible, but causing people to suffer because you don't care is worse." so true the news has numbed us into total apathy at even the most horrific of injustices "they'll remember how to care, in this century" WILL WE?? absolutely spooky and uncanny

references to the internet were really good. we gotta log on to the net. it won't let me in without my ID. ok are you in a republican state??

julian fighting his own internal nature every time he had an opportunity to save someone and couldn't. i was getting nervous even when he gave that woman a chocolate bar to treat her blood sugar. HE'S SUCH A GOOD PERSONNN

wah. sisko bring julian breakfast

i KNEW that guy who jumped in the fight was bell the second he did it. i knew he was gonna die and sisko was gonna have to replace him. absolutely over the moon about it. sorry to bell of course but we don't get nearly enough sisko content. the other characters in these episodes almost felt like afterthoughts, except for dax and julian a little bit.

even dax just spent the whole episode seducing and then radicalizing a capitalist though. which, good for her, but her scenes were SO BORING compared to everything my best friend sisko was doing

i did have a good laugh and kira and obrien landing in various wrong eras though. "i broke my nose" ma'am your hand in marriage

fun surprise of this episode was the really, really annoying mouthy guard also getting radicalized. i didn't see it coming, because he seemed really determined to get himself killed (to the point of sisko having to manhandle him to get him to shut up even a little lol) and i thought he was just there to make sisko's job harder. but then you hit the end and he has this come to jesus moment in real time before your eyes...i don't believe we'll remember how to care on a global level in this century, but THAT i did believe. it was SUCH a fun nice surprise, i really enjoyed that

my only complaint is that i wish they had played up the danger to sisko more - like we all know he can't die, but i wish the characters had worried about it more. i think the implication was that webb didn't have to die here, but someone did, and since it wasn't sisko, it was him? mush as i love kira and o'briens gag, i feel like we could have spent more time on the fact that sisko was willing to die - and leave his own son behind - if it preserved the timeline, and there was a very real danger of that happening. i really like julian staying behind when he didn't have to, and i felt like it was BECAUSE of this specific reason - he was desperate to prevent sisko's death. which he sort of did indirectly do, but i feel like that danger hanging over everyone would have for a more satisfying conclusion

oh wait final note. the fact that sisko read up on the fucking rules of acquisition because quark accused him of being racist a few episodes ago. KING behavior. i absolutely love that

life support:

...because it turns out he WAS racist against ferengi! i had nearly forgotten but jake reminded us that sisko once said ferengi and humans were too different to be friends. damn. tng is always forgetting its own episodes but ds9 remembers stuff that even i forgot

anyway. was this one EVER rough.

first of all, the b-plot of "nog doesn't know how to act around women" does not go well with the a-plot of "kira loses her lover one inch at a time while modern medicine turns him into a zombie in the name of politics"

i think the b-plot was bad because nog and jake's issue isn't "we had a moment of culture clash" it was "nog is treating women like property when they don't want to be treated that way." like, it doesn't matter if that's what ferengi do, he's NOT DATING FERENGI so he can't expect them to ACT like ferengi women. this was not about the ethics of "can we really protest sexism if it's a cultural thing" it was about nog failing to read a social cue. jake wasn't the only angry one, the girls weren't about it either

that said, this would never have happened if jake hadn't tried to ditch his friend for a girl. at least the girl was finally his own age i guess

i do like that he asked odo to fix it though. he was like odo i need you to be SUCH a huge bitch to nog and me for a little while and odo was like say no more sir

a-plot of this episode was somehow even worse. firstly, the OFFICE did NOT change winn. she is still a power-grubbing heartless old bitch, as evidenced by her outright refusing to lie to bareil for his own health when all she did in season 1 and 2 were lie to get her own way. she CHEATED to get this job and now she doesn't wanna fucking do it, she wants to use a dying (zombified) man as her scapegoat and tool. i can't wait until this bitch dies

and look. i never liked bareil. that first sex vision he and kira had in the orb really put me off. it seemed to make her deeply uncomfortable more than flustered-embarrassed the way you'd get if you'd seen your crush naked in the orb, you know? like i thought they were setting him up to be a bad guy. by the time i realized that wasn't the case it was too late. he always just kinda rubbed me the wrong way

but not even bareil deserves this!! me at the beginning of the episode yeah he's going to hell for touching kira in her orb vision me by the end can we please let him die already PLEEEASE please please

julian in this episode was so sad...he wanted to help, and instead he was being forced by literally everyone to use his doctor powers for evil. i think he was relieved near the end when he (and his patient) finally got to be finished with the torture.

kira's scene at the end was amazing, of course. she's already gone through so much and this is just one more shitty thing!!! she's so strong and i wish she didn't have to be. PLEASE treat her really niceys.

i can't say i'm sorry to get done with bareil's scenes, though, since i never liked him much. but i MUCH would have rather winn died instead.

whew!! that was a long one. NEXT TIME.....................we begin voyager. please please please please be good