#Someone: T'Pel? She's married to Tuvok.

[bumblingbabooshka]

and then he quit Starfleet for over 50 years

[firstroseofspring]

8, 11, 16, 19, for the trek asks? 💖

<3333 heyyy!!!!

8. are you a nepo baby? (has trekkie parents/uncles/siblings)

no i am not actually! my family doesn't know anything about it really, i started watching it on a whim! :)

11. do you have any songs that you associate with star trek characters?

yes !!! @trillscienceofficer introduced me to the beths and chappell roan for b'elanna and i think about her every time i listen to them. i also really like son of a preacher man for tuvok/t'pel...

there's a filipino folk song called katakataka (i listen to the eva eugenio version) that reminds me of sirella nd martok. i tend to think of worf a lot when i listen to old country songs... big bad john by jimmy dean im thinking of specifically cause of the lyrics but also just like the steeldrivers and other country artists have this earnest vibe that i think fit him. :) hank williams singing about the country... old soul worf vibes

andd also corny but oh no! by marina... and brutal by olivia rodrigo are very b'elanna and seven songs to me

16. your favourite ship?

i forgot to mention in the first ask but actually i'm a big fan of k'ehleyr and worf they had a lot of tension (the good and bad kind) that i found sooo compelling fr... the shared history... the arguments... the yearning.... the loud silence!!!!! oughhh. just the- worf wanting to be with someone who understands his background in the way she can, who doesn't see him as lesser for being in starfleet, but then also holding her up to the same standards other people hold him up to- we have to do this the perfect klingon way or this is wrong etc.

and k'ehleyr trying to discern after they sleep together whether he wants her or wants to be understood or wants do the honorable thing and marry her despite what he might feel... but then also not really feeling totally okay with herself and her identity, and what being with worf, who embraces that stuff to a fault, would mean for herself and eventually for alexander. i thought that the dynamic was so engaging and i liked seeing what a relationship looked like outside of (? but not totally) human convention the blood on the palm scene? slayyeddd

19. share a headcanon!

hmmm i think vulcans think it's polite to look away when someone (vulcan, this might be impractical with other races) is displaying an emotion really overtly! crying or laughing maybe... i think if someone was going into pon farr and getting mad i'd try to leave or at least look away, it must be uncomfortable to see on display like that!

[trillscienceofficer]

“Distant Shores” (Voyager short story collection, 2005) review: meh

I'd hoped this collection would be better, frankly; luckily the stories that involve B'Elanna (and there were quite a few of them, to my surprise) are mostly okay. Kes also appears prominently in at least two stories but Harry didn't really get one where he's the protagonist, and I'm surprised none involved Naomi or the Borg kids. Three stories seemed very concerned with the surviving Equinox crew and at least two seemed to want to vindicate them somehow?? I don't know, weird choices. But regardless, the problem wasn't so much in the ideas but in the execution, which was often atrocious.

story-by-story breakdown under the cut

“Da capo al fine” by Heather Jarman - this is the 'frame' story, you get to read the first half at the beginning and the second half at the end, but this story doesn't work so well for this purpose as the one on “The Lives of Dax” did for that collection. The plot is about Admiral Janeway and her last moments with the Borg Queen in “Endgame” but, idk. I think the author wanted to write a reckoning with all of Janeway's arch-nemeses but the story fails to have any stakes.

“Command Code” by Robert Greenberg - Tuvok and Chakotay get snippy on the bridge once Chakotay is left in command very soon after “Caretaker”. The concept is intriguing! Unfortunately the author's style is as dull as watching paint dry.

“Winds of Change” by Kim Sheard - this one was really fun! After being possessed by Tieran, Kes is struggling with her anger and reactivity so she goes to B'Elanna for help, and they try some of B'Elanna's sports holoprograms. This does not go well! Everything seems lost until B'Elanna offers a different approach to holoprograms, and it turns out they can work well together. This was just a really nice take on a dynamic that was really underexplored in the show (the author makes a point to say so as explicitly as she can), and it's honestly one of the best stories in the bunch.

“Talent Night” by Jeffrey Lang - my man Jeffrey (of “String Theory - Cohesion” fame) contributes to the collection with a hilarious story concept and great characterization for all involved, mostly B'Elanna, Tom and Harry, who are in charge of organizing said talent night. I can almost forgive the fact that it just an elaborate setup to get B'Elanna and Tom together by making B'Elanna needlessly jealous. Almost.

“Letting Go” by Keith R. A. DeCandido - this story is about the ones 'left behind' by Voyager, the families and loved one of the crew back in the AQ. I think I would've liked this way more if the author had chosen to follow anyone else other than Janeway's fiancé Mark. I liked how grounded the story is in the events of DS9 and First Contact and the range of reactions that all these people have to Voyager's disappearance, but I found myself wondering more about Greskrendtregk and T'Pel than Mark. I also found it hilarious that the story ends with Mark having married someone else and having to write to Janeway, who he's just learned is still alive, about it. I have to say though that it was a nice touch to have a lot of the people involved be the families of the crewmen who died in “Caretaker”—they obviously don't know what happened but the reader does, so their presence lends a lot of emotional gravity to the narrative.

“Closure” by James Swallow - Seven and Neelix get trapped in a cave that used to be inhabited by aliens and Neelix walks off to find a way out when—Kes shows up. Is it a vision, induced by the Ocampa artifacts in the cave? Is it actually Kes who's come back to say goodbye? It doesn't make much difference to Neelix, who is very glad to see her again. I think I would've appreciated this story more if it hadn't turned Neelix into too much of a lovesick fool; I don't like the idea that he actually never got over Kes with this kind of intense sentimentality. The story was enjoyable but something about it rubbed me the wrong way.

“The Secret Heart of Zolazus” by Robert T. Jeschonek - this one is terrible. Seven crash-lands on a planet and is saved by an outcast who pretty much gives her life for Seven and it's supposed to be ~inspirational~ or something but it's written in a way that... I don't know, reads exactly like one of those corny christian moral stories? I swear it's one of the most artless, embarrassing things I've read this year. The one thing it has going on is that Seven gets to kneel beside this dying alien girl who's taken a hit for her and so you can read some subtext in there, but the horrifying ableism is truly not worth the ticket!

“Isabo's Shirt” by Kirsten Beyer - the horrors aren't over though because this story is worse!! It's unabashedly J/C but oh boy both Chakotay and Janeway are so HORRIBLY out of character I couldn't cope. How did this even get published? Is this shipping brain at its worst?? Plus it's embarrassingly racist. I was never particularly interested in this ship but if THIS is in any way representative I am for sure steering well clear.

“Brief Candle” by Christopher L. Bennet - note: if you can't understand the distinction between romance and workplace sexual harassment you should probably not be writing romance! This is particularly galling because this is the 'Marika Wilkarah lives on Voyager for a few weeks' story which is something I wanted to see explored for a long time, and like... Marika HAS some interiority and convictions in this story but 1. we never see her really interact with other Bajorans if not in hindsight (why??) 2. her remaining resentment for Seven is barely mentioned and 3. she basically wants to be close to someone before dying and? essentially harasses Harry into having a relationship with her?? what???? If this were a fic it should get a 'dead dove do not eat' label. That was so, so awful and such a disappointment for the interesting concept this story promised to be. As I said in a previous post, the one thing this story has got going on is that Marika sides with B'Elanna during the events of “Barge of the Dead”, which I think it's a great take! But not enough to make me forget how bad the rest is.

“Eighteen Minutes” by Terry Osborne - the story of the time the Doctor spent on the planet from “Blink of an Eye” before he got beamed back to Voyager. I'm always extremely ambivalent about Doctor episodes/stories and this one is no exception. On one hand, the conflict he faces between his programmed-in hippocratic oath and the prime directive is believable, but on the other it ends up being another one of those weird power fantasies in which the Doctor gets the boundless gratitude and undying affection of the people around him because... he's done his job as a medical practitioner? It feels in character but I don't have to like it!

“Or The Tiger” by Geoffrey Thorne - LOVELY B'Elanna characterization in this one right until the ending, which I hated. Authors always tend to exaggerate B'Elanna's propensity for violence when in reality the show consistently shows her being very restrained and extremely remorseful whenever she snaps (and she only snaps because people tell her constantly that she's unable to control herself!) It's one of those stories where the point is 'aw the Equinox crew is trying very hard to make amends and the Voyager people are being mean to them' which... baffles me as a setup? It was interesting to see B'Elanna believably get into a rabbit hole when confronted with new technology that could help Voyager! But I'm not sure she wouldn't have snapped out of it as soon as it was pointed out to her that she might've been hurting living beings with her actions. We've seen B'Elanna struggle with this kind of moral quandaries before (“Prototype” and “Dreadnought” come to mind), so that the conflict dragged out for as long as it did here (and that she beat someone up for it!) feels deeply out of character to me.

“Bottomless” by Ilsa J. Bick - another one of 'the Equinox crew deserved a second chance!' stories, this time with crewman Marla Gilmore. I loved the technological conundrum (what do you do if your submersible is stuck on the bottom of the sea??) and Marla's lingering guilt and resentment felt believable and genuine. Shame that she expresses this mostly by being mean to B'Elanna (thought it happens mostly in her head), and you get the feeling she's just sharing the author's POV, since she has Tom saying some terrible garbage too... there's really nothing quite as diabolic as misogyny (and misogyny that's racially coded) coming from women authors! Ultimately Marla sacrifices herself to save Janeway and Chakotay and in so doing she expiates all of her Equinox sins, which would be okay (I guess) if it wasn't the exact same plot of “Brief Candle”, for some reason.

[unicorn-and-bluebells]

Just saw "Gravity," and my thoughts:

Tuvok is so beautiful I'm going insane

I thought this plot was gonna go SO BADLY and I'm relieved I was wrong. I've mentioned before that I don't read many fics about Tuvok bc a lot of them are very shippy, and he's very dedicated to T'Pel to the point that it feels disingenuous to his character to ship him off with someone else. So you can imagine my distress when Noss developed feelings for him!! But yeah no Tuvok is so ridiculously married he is just Immune so cool

TUVOK BACKSTORY TUVOK BACKSTORY HUZZAH (also he was adorable as a kid ashdkdkanajeh look at him. What a sweety)

Overall a really good exploration of Tuvok specificaly and Vulcan emotions in general. I talked earlier about Vulcan emotion (and how I feel Neelix's obsession with making Tuvok smile is quite disrespectful), and this episode highlighted something I think is important to that: Vulcans have very, VERY strong emotions, strong to point of danger and pain. They feel things VERY intensely, and they generally don't want to do that, which is why they do all that emotional suppression. Everyone else seems to act like they just never feel emotion (as Tom put it, they think that under the cold Vulcan exterior is an even colder interior), but that's simply not the case. They feel emotions naturally at a level they don't want, and work very hard to bring that intensity down to a level that works for them. To deny that and expect a Vulcan to express their emotions the way everyone else does, or to develop the emotions you want them to develop, is (in my view) very disrespectful, and cruel. So I'm glad that the episode made space for Tuvok to point that out…that he DOES feel emotion, actually, and he has felt love quite acutely, and it almost destroyed him, and it made him literally feel insane, and he doesn't want that to happen again no thanks. And again, this man is So Married, and expecting him to reciprocate Noss's feelings for him is just...life doesn't work that way and you can't expect him to do that

I wonder what Tuvok showed Noss in the meld before she left. Personally I think he showed her his feelings of respect and admiration for her, and (if not wholly, in part) both those memories of his struggles with emotions of love and the strength of his bond with T'Pel. I think those things in combination would make everything make that sort of sense

HOW DOES A SIMPLE "LIVE LONG AND PROSPER" ALWAYS HIT ME SO HARD WITH A NEW FEELING IN EACH NEW CONTEXT DUDE I SWEAR YOU CAN PACK SO MUCH FUCKING FEELING INTO THAT SENTENCE

[pixiedane]

Justice for T’Pel

devoverest replied to your post T’Pel Headcanons: I love this and also have a question that your last bullet point reminded me of: if T'Pel’s marriage bond assured her that he was still alive while missing, how did Starfleet ever see its way clear to pronouncing Voyager’s crew lost and presumed dead? Did they not ask her? Not believe her? Did she not tell them? What do you think?

Oh GOLLY I love this question.

First of all, I feel secure in my belief that no one on the writers staff considered this at all. None of them cared about T’Pel. Why do I say this? We never saw her on the series. We get Hallucination-T’Pel, we get Holo-T’Pel, and every once in a while Tuvok reminds us he’s married so he can’t be held responsible for stealing that holo-babe from Harry, he can’t make out with Tank Girl, and he can’t act on the obvious chemistry between himself and his captain.

Two, there are three reasons. I doubt they asked, I believe she would tell them, but they did not believe her because:

a) She’s not Starfleet. Starfleet has a serious and obvious superiority complex. T’Pel is a civilian. A wife. They would brush her off as a grieving widow, offer counseling, and forget the conversation happened as soon as they left the room.

b) She’s Vulcan. Starfleet is human-centric and humans collectively distrust Vulcans. Vulcan emotional reticence is creepy, Vulcan logic is annoying, Vulcan culture is confusing. And Vulcans don’t do themselves any favors by being tight lipped about everything from religion to politics to sex to everything. Keeping personal things personal is absolutely their right, but humans don’t like it, and also humans can’t be expected to understand marriage bonds if Vulcans don’t explain what that is. That said, I feel T’Pel (because I’ve decided she is very direct) would explain her marriage bond and they would pretend to listen but put exactly zero stock in her knowledge about Tuvok’s status. They’d ask her to prove it, she’d say it’s a feeling (or rather she’d use a Vulcan word that mistranslates to ‘feeling’), they’d pat her hand and send her away and ignore everything she said because they’ve never experienced it and “aren’t Vulcans not supposed to have feelings anyway?”

c) She’s a black woman. I know we are meant to believe that racism and sexism have disappeared by the 24th century but -- well, they still exist in the 24th century as portrayed by TNG/DS9/Voyager. (And they certainly exist in the writers room, where they made the decision not to care about T’Pel.)

This is all a generalization of course -- I’m sure someone cared to listen to T’Pel. I mean, honestly, there had to be SO MANY fringe conspiracy theorists spreading rumors about the disappearances. And I’ll even believe someone in Starfleet spoke up for her at some point, but no one listened to them either. 

The in universe reason is: it was simpler for Starfleet to consider them dead and move on than to investigate. T’Pel was a loose end so they cut her off. The meta reason is: the writers were telling their story and mostly their story took place in the DQ. And in the AQ they had Barclay and Admiral Paris and T’Pel wasn’t even an afterthought. They never made her a character, how could she affect the story?

[bumblingbabooshka]

AAAHHHH ok so i’m that person who asked for your tumblr in an ao3 comment because i wanted to share fanart and i DONT HAVE ANY YET UNFORTUNATELY but i maybe will soon…

anyways i. have been scrolling through your blog for the past hour and i, am so in love with your tuvok/t’pel family headcanons and shit… our brains work the SAME WAY and i’m going insane and i love your stuff so much..

anyways.. that was sort of a very disjointed ask but the brain worms!! they are working!! and i’m gonna try to work on some fanart for your wonderful fics today…. have a good rest of your day/night hehe 💚

AAAAA IT'S YOU~!!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH~!!! Your comments always make me smile and I'm so glad someone else also has an interest in this ship (well, people like - believe in this ship since they're canonically married but I mean like actually interested in content for them) As I've said feel NO pressure to make any fanart or anything, just leaving such nice comments is more than enough~!! Here's a headcanon for your trouble: (I always think people who submit asks are brave bc it personally makes me nervous) T'Pel is more adventurous than Tuvok and more willing to try out things that are alien to her so their first date was a double date with Mark and Janeway at Mark’s behest (Tuvok initially began to refuse because Vulcans don't typically go on 'dates' unless trying to court one another for marriage but T'Pel agreed). Picturing Tuvok becoming competitive about a game that gives you prizes and T'Pel, face impassive, carrying the largest teddy bear they have (bigger than her) "For the children," they intone. Sorry, one more headcanon: Before Tuvok left to become part of Starfleet again T'Pel privately kissed him on the lips because she didn't want his ""first"" kiss to be taken by an alien during some sort of Starfleet shenanigans (of which she is familiar)

[bumblingbabooshka]

Hello! In the tags of the "making up extensive backstories for background women characters" post you mentioned T'Pel (fantastic, the most important star trek character) and the lighthouse woman/second life gf...was that referring to Marayna from the episode where a "hologram" falls in love with Tuvok? She is one of my fave background gals and I was stoked to see anyone else potentially talking about her

🎵 I wanna marry a lighthouse keeper and keep her company 🎵 YES INDEED I WAS!!!! I love her so much!! I love her alien design, I love how she's giving off such a lonely lighthouse keeper being driven mad aesthetic, I love how immediately she connected with Tuvok and how it gives insight into his character too as she correctly guessed that he was as lonely as she is even though he's on a ship full of people. I love picturing everything from her point of view...in her dark space station with the yawning vacuum and the gentle beep of monitors and her falling in love with this person whom she feels such a strong connection with even though he only knows her by this fake avatar. I love her last line being "But what about you, Tuvok? Will you always be alone?" absolute arrow through the heart. She's so mysterious. She says she likes being alone and is alone by choice but her actions SCREAM that she's desperately in want of company. (This also speaks to Tuvok who says the same thing). She calls the nebula Her Nebula which again gives me such lighthouse keeper vibes, I don't know why. She wants Tuvok to be with her but it's not enough that he's just there with her, she wants him to want to be with her which shows she's just - !! She's so lonely!! She wants a friend, a lover - someone who likes her for her! What's her STORY!? "You are more like me than you are like them. I've seen the way you isolate yourself. Even in a crowd of people you're alone. We should be together." Oh and also Tuvok's line to her is so !? "I do not have a complete understanding of emotions, but I believe that if you truly care for me, you will not pursue this course of action." And the fact that he then proceeds to have a GREAT understanding of emotion and recommend that she should try living with other people for awhile since it seems like she's in fact VERY lonely? He's very kind to her and idk, I just love the whole scene where we see the real Maryana a lot. It's so poetic how she alone is responsible for maintaining the nebula's beauty for others to enjoy. Ships pass by and never even know she's there...it's like she's a non entity. She has no companionship and people don't even know she exists! How long has she been there? What's her life been like? Was she able to change after letting Tuvok go? What's her real name? Is she happier now? Is she single? All good questions...

[bumblingbabooshka]

That silly “Guys/Girls whose name starts with (letter)’ll ruin your life” type posts but the poster is vulcan so they only ever post “Girls whose names start with T” or “Guys whose names start with S”

[bumblingbabooshka]

Tuvok needs to be put in outfits