#because tuvok loves his wife

[isagrimorie]

You know…. for all of Neelix is the moral officer, and post-Kes he really did try. And I do actually like him if I forget a lot of the things in the earlier seasons.

But honestly, I think the heart of Voyager was Tuvok.

It’s not obvious because he’s very Vulcan about it but he is everyone’s closest friend.

Tuvok is Janeway’s oldest and closest friend, Neelix and Tuvok are friends and when he’s unguarded Tuvok has a fondness for Neelix. He is close to Seven of Nine, and he tries his best to be mentor to Kes even though he knows its not his wheelhouse. He even tries to be a counselor to B’Elenna even though he knows he isn’t trained for it.

Who else was gonna step up, really? Chakotay’s idea of mental health is the spiritual thing which Voyager tried to do less because they uncovered their subject matter expert was a scam artist. Also Chakotay’s other go-to is to subject B’Elenna to some tough love even though she wasn’t ready for it. It only worked because B’Elenna made it work.

He played Kal Toh with Harry and tolerated Harry’s impromptu musical concerts on the Bridge during Night.

About the only one he wasn’t close to was Chakotay because for the most part Tuvok was playing the “I’m her bestfriend.” rivalry thing with Chakotay. Eventually, they did come to respect and work together especially when Janeway seems to run headlong into another death wish scenario.

Tuvok was even great helping Sam Wildman during the time they were all trapped in a shuttlecraft.

And… Tom. In terms of working relationships Tuvok is Ron Swanson and Tom Paris is Tom Haverford. Or they’re the two guys from Mythbusters. They work well enough but they are not really close nor best friends. (I think this is mostly because Paris keeps encouraging him to get together with other women when he is very very clear how he is committed and loved his own wife. And I love Paris, but c’mon, dude, stop doing that. Wingman Chakotay, instead).

Anyway, tldr, Tuvok is the beating heart of Voyager. He is the one with meaningful friendships with most of the main cast.

[bumblingbabooshka]

Tuvok & T’Pel at their Koon-ut-la: May peace and bliss follow them forever.

Based on this picture I found:

Love how T’Pau is sitting down for this. Tuvok & T’Pel’s ceremony was presided over by a local but well-respected priestess because not everyone has the sway to get a stateswoman. Also, I count this more as an approximation of engagement than marriage since they’re established to have a whole marriage-or-challenge thing as adults later on. After the ceremony Tuvok and T’Pel were each given a seed and instructed to plant them side by side in the temple’s garden. When they returned to the temple for their marriage proper whatever they’d planted there that day would be in full bloom.  After that they played- uh...I mean...bonded with one another until their parents had to drag them away kicking and screaming. A fact which neither pair of parental units will ever let them quite forget much to their joint embarrassment.

[get-more-bald]

god I just fucking love Tuvok. the wife guy ever

[fate-motif]

list of voyager characters ranked by least to most done dirty by the writers

10. tom paris: this boy got everything he could have ever wanted from a trip to the delta quadrant. he got a bestie who’s way too good for him, a wife he refuses to cherish and yet she married him and had his child!!! and authorities who refuse to punish him most of the time because he’s a pretty talented flyboy. even modern day trek writers cannot start lavishing praise on this douche and like, okay, he’s not all bad, but compared to what other voyager characters had for story potential and performances it’s crazy how good he got it. the only true indignity this bitch got was threshold.

9. neelix: i feel like neelix lovers are gonna brawl with me about this but i’m still steadfast that neelix was one of the characters least done dirty in voyager, but only comparatively. like, if neelix were on ds9 or on tng he would absolutely be considered an insane waste of story potential with his sad clown complex and his weird little relationship with tuvok but lbr. if they had gone even harder on neelix’s tragedies it would have felt less like he’s a sad clown and his sad all the time and that takes away the appeal of the character. also the mere fact he got to date kes when he never would have deserved her in a million years is already too huge a win for him. i mean it. 

8. the emh: he gets to be a step above neelix because the writers are so fucking bad at writing about hologram rights that it’s a serious disservice to him when the whole of the show star trek voyager bends over backwards over this guy and i cannot stand him. he gets all the screentime, all the tragic episodes, everyone is forced to be sympathetic about him, but at the same time the show makes everything so much worse for him by letting him engineer hologram characters on the holodeck to be his toys (when there’s a whole episode where we realize yes the holodeck characters are real and do not like being murdered, so maybe having two hawaiian babes or your white blond 50s housewife fawning over you is horrifying???) the writers of voyager suck so hard they can’t even write their golden boy well enough to actually make the core of his very character ideologically consistent. depressing.

7. seven of nine: i know people want me to put her over janeway, and i refuse. i’ve made no secret of this, i resent seven, i resent her so hard for taking over everybody’s screentime, i find how serious and untouchable and perfect she’s supposed to be among the voyager cast, the show writers absolutely screwed over every other character save for the emh for her sake and i resent that!!! i will never forgive her, even if it’s not her fault!!! but i’m gonna be realistic. it’s the catsuit. it’s the catsuit, it’s the obsession of putting her in the most stereotypically feminine storylines as an extension of finding her humanity, it’s the mere extension of being a woman written by mostly men. she was screwed over, hard, but i’m serious when i say: not compared to everyone else above her.

6. janeway: oh boy. i know, i know, how dare i put janeway over seven when janeway wasn’t forced to wear shrink wrap, but she’s up this high because the writers could not agree over anything she ever did and it shows. god bless kate mulgrew for making a consistent character out of that mess, but if it weren’t for her sheer talent and professionalism, janeway would be up there with archer in the list of captains with the moral backbone of a chocolate eclair. the rest of the shows lavish love on their captains. they talk about their backstory in-depth. they let them have romantic adventures every once in a while. janeway gets to be almost solely defined by her mission to bring her crew home and considering how multidimensional characters like picard and sisko are, that’s…depressing. to say nothing of how kate mulgrew was being forced out of spending time with her family for a show that in the later seasons started to edge her out in favor of the bouncier, sexier girl they brought in. like. as a captain, janeway was done SO dirty by the writers. it’s crazy. we should talk about this more. 

5. tuvok: why is he above janeway? … aside from the fact that after they introduced seven his screentime went to the chopping block. to put it simply, waste of potential. so many of tuvok’s episodes rehash his insistence on staying steadfast to traditional vulcan values, which is great, except for the fact that we don’t need that story told over and over and over again when they could follow more interesting avenues that several tuvok-centric episodes pointed towards. we could have seen more of his relationship with janeway in the past. we could have seen him truly come to terms with trusting the maquis with his life in the earlier seasons. we even had a planned episode where we met his family! imagine if we had actually seen t’pel and have her be an actual character instead of a representation of why we’re not seeing tuvok fuck! it’s tragic. it’s absolutely tragic. 

4. b’elanna: ending up with tom paris the way he treats her should make this one a no-brainer, but i’m going to keep going, because there’s a lot more to be done here. the white male writers have no idea what they’re doing writing this character, and yet, much like janeway, roxann just barely claws out a cohesive character from the mess she was given, but that doesn’t mean that the process was graceful. so she hates herself because she thinks her klingon traits make her unlovable, then why make the other voyager characters berate her on her temper incessantly and with no room for argument and make them in the right? are we also supposed to see her as hindered by her klingon ancestry? yes. the answer is yes. the writers are racist. the writers are so goddamn racist it’s nit even a joke b’elanna i’m so sorry they did this to you you deserved so much better. 

3. kes: yes she’s in third place. nobody wants to talk about kes, because her writing was weird, and jennifer lien wasn’t as successful in sculpting an engaging character out of the garbage writing she was given, i say that if b’elanna had been taken out of voyager in s4, the same could be said for her. everything that the writers do to disrespect janeway and seven is triplicated in her, even more so magnified because she’s not a tough boss ass bitch who uses guns, but a lowly nurse, which means the writers are completely disinterested in exploring her inner life. i cannot stress this enough. kes left her homeworld when they are going to lose all support making it in a desert planet frequently raided by slavers, and we never talk about it again. it is galling how little the writers ever give a fuck about her and nobody mentions it, because again. she’s the most feminine of the female characters, which means not even the fans who understand how misogynistic the voyager writers are care about interrogating her inner life and that is the most depressing thing of them all. that’s why she’s the female character done dirtiest by the writers.

2 and 1. harry and chakotay: they’re tied. they’re tied because the racism is just inescapable in both their characters and it’s so ever-present, so impossible to ignore, so repellent that most people give up on even looking at them as characters because they so often end up channelling the writers’ naked, unabashed racism you want to avert your eyes. i mean it. i mute most early voyager episodes when chakotay is onscreen because i hate that fucking pan flute. if you fuck up writing a character of color this hard, you automatically owe reparations. and that’s why i’m fine with that insufferable republican freak robert beltran having been on prodigy because look at me in the eye and tell me paramount did not owe him from everything they put him through while working on voyager. and that’s also why i’m demanding harry be rescued the same way in the future. it’s just reparations. garrett wang is owed so hard i’m not even joking. i don’t care about debates about the other spots on this list so long as you admit that in first place rightfully goes to harry and chakotay. 

[jenlrossman]

Tuvix as a metaphor for Janeway's mindset throughout Voyager

When Tuvok and Neelix merged into a new individual after a transporter malfunction, Tuvix was born. Possessing a combination of the memories and personalities of his component parts while still being his own unique self, Tuvix quickly proved he was more than just a transporter accident, showing he had potential to find his place among the crew of Voyager and settle in to this new normal.

And when Janeway learned of a way to separate him, bringing back Tuvok and Neelix, Tuvix was killed. Against his wishes, against the doctor's ethical subroutines, Tuvix was killed.

I'm not going to discuss whether or not this was right. That's an entirely different subject that many people have debated ad nauseam.

I just want to talk about how the decision to kill Tuvix and bring back Tuvok and Neelix might actually be the defining moment in developing Kathryn Janeway's mindset for the rest of the series. The sometimes questionable mindset best described as

"There's the right way, the wrong way, and the Janeway."

To Captain Janeway, Tuvix is a problem to solve. He is the thing standing in the way of the status quo, the thing preventing her from seeing her loved ones again.

She says as much, when Kes is expressing reservations about developing feelings for Tuvix and says she hasn't given up on the idea of him being separated.

You’re experiencing what people on this crew have been going through since we first got stranded in this quadrant. Do we accept that we're separated from our loved ones forever, or do we hold onto the hope that someday we'll be with them again?

Tuvix, therefore, is a physical representation of being stuck in the Delta quadrant. He is the thing preventing them from being with their loved ones, and she might not be able to get everyone home right now if ever, but she's going to do everything she can to see Tuvok and Neelix again.

Whether or not it is right for her to kill Tuvix, that isn't as important to her as proving—to herself and to her crew—that she is going to do anything she can to get them home, and killing him is a symbolic representation of that.

We see this mindset continue throughout the series, and the Lower Decks episode Twovix gives us some great examples.

While most of the crew is dealing with another transporter malfunction, Boimler and Rutherford are dealing with holographic representations of various things the Voyager crew encountered. And they just happen to be some of Janeway's greatest hits… Or misses.

Michael "delete the wife" Sullivan—Janeway's holographic Irish boy toy, who she widowed and altered to suit her preferences even though those episodes deal with the possibility of all holograms having a chance to achieve sentience

The macrovirus—which was dealt with by Janeway unleashing it on a crowd of (again, possibly sentient?) holograms

The personification of fear—the clown who was defeated when Janeway went so far to save her crew that she literally made the concept of fear afraid of her

Chaotica—Janeway didn't particularly want to play the role of Queen Arachnia but she got very into it because when push comes to shove, she really doesn't mind being the villain if it means protecting her crew

And of course, the Borg…

The series finale of Voyager is the ultimate example of the "anything to see our loved ones again" mindset Janeway shows in Tuvix.

Voyager gets home. It takes 23 years, but they get home.

However, Seven is lost along the way, Chakotay dies after reaching earth, and the delay in getting home has exacerbated Tuvok's Vulcan equivalent of Alzheimer's to the point that he is not himself anymore.

Three of the most important people in her life, gone.

So what does she do? Of course she doesn't accept that, she can't, she never has been able to.

Kathryn Janeway goes back in time, erases the lives of everyone in the universe to rewrite history on her terms, she defeats the goddamn Borg—just to see them again.

And of course she does it herself. As we learned in Tuvix when the doctor refuses to separate him, Janeway doesn't care. She'll do it all herself, ethical consequences be damned, she just needs everyone she loves to get back to the Alpha quadrant.

So whether or not it was right to separate Tuvix, it doesn't matter. The right way, the wrong way, none of that matters. Not to her, not as long as doing things the Janeway gets everyone she cares about home safely.

[trillscienceofficer]

from Cinefantastique Volume 28 #4-5, November 1996

KLINGON ENGINEER: Roxann Biggs-Dawson as B'Elanna Torres gives heart to the hard-working Maquis engineer.

By Anna L. Kaplan

A bedroom scene between B'Elanna Torres (Roxann Biggs-Dawson) and Commander Chakotay (Robert Beltran) appeared in the second season VOYAGER episode, "Persistence of Vision." This scene provoked a very loud and negative response from fans. A surprised Biggs-Dawson laughed and said, "So many people gave me so much flak about that, as if I had written it. It was amazing, the letters, and the comments. Mostly the women really spoke out strongly against it, and felt that it was a weak cop-out. I totally disagreed with that."

In the episode, an alien was able to subdue the crew and put them into trance-like states by mind control, whereby each individual believed himself to be with someone extremely psychologically important. Tuvok, for example, joined his wife on Vulcan, while Tom Paris saw his father. B'Elanna, hard at work in engineering and determined to save the ship, found herself talking to Chakotay, apparently, who convinced her to stop work and join him. While she knew it was not really Chakotay, and said so, B'Elanna succumbed to the temptation.

Noted Biggs-Dawson, "I felt that the strength of that alien, the way he could get to us as humans, was that he understands the deep need, whether you're a Vulcan, or a half-Klingon or whatever, that we all have to love and to be loved. The things that would put us into those trances were those very deep needs. I think for B'Elanna, it wasn't a reflection of a direct attraction to Chakotay. He represents so much to her, a father figure, a mentor, her teacher, her coworker, and he is an attractive man. I think it was a desire to give in to a side that she does not give into easily, and that was what caused her particular trance. I don't think that necessarily means that he is always on her mind. It probably took her by surprise as much as it did the audience. It was more of a reflection of her need to please, to fulfill, all of these things are very real, very human.

"At [STAR TREK] conventions, a lot of people [were] feeling that the writers just felt that the only thing B'Elanna was about, was being in love with Chakotay. That wasn't what the message was at all. I didn't read it that way when I read the script. It did say something about all of the characters who succumbed to those needs of wanting to love and to be loved, those things that we shove away, and push away, and don't want to deal with." It is readily apparent that Biggs-Dawson thinks a lot about B'Elanna Torres and what makes her the person she is. She noted about the second season, "I think it's been interesting. I've had some interesting costars, one was a computer, and one was a mechanical man. I'm waiting for them to give me a real person to play off of." She laughed. "I keep joking. I had an episode last season where I played opposite myself, then opposite a machine, then opposite a machine with my voice. So it's obviously a theme. Hopefully [this] year I get to talk to a real person. The second season episodes the actress is referring to were "Prototype" and "Dreadnought." She noted more seriously, "When I saw both 'Prototype' and 'Dreadnought' they scared me a bit, because it was going to be difficult to pull off. I think the end result was that we found some interest- ing themes I didn't know were there in the beginning." In "Prototype" Torres repairs a robot whose creators are gone. The robot then wants her to make new robots. Biggs-Dawson observed, "So much of 'Prototype' was the only way B'Elanna could deal with her own mothering instincts and creation [instincts]. At this point in her development, probably the only way that she can confront her feelings and herself, is through the creation and adoption of a mechanical being, of a robot, and to be as excited about that as some people [are] about children or other kinds of creation."

In "Dreadnought" Voyager encounters a Cardassian missile whose computer Torres had reprogrammed when she was a Maquis, using her own voice for the computer. She has to stop it from destroying a highly populated planet. Said Torres [sic, the author meant Dawson], "'Dreadnought' was an interesting challenge because it was very much dealing with who B'Elanna used to be, confronting her former self. She was forced to see how much she had changed, and who she was at the time. She was forced to battle that in a very, very tangible way. That I found to be the most interesting: think I had most of my revelations when I went in to do the computer voice. As I was recording that side of the episode, later on, there was a real sense of growing to understand who I was before, who B'Elanna was who was actually programming all that stuff into the computer."

Biggs-Dawson likes B'Elanna Torres. She said about B'Elanna, "She makes mistakes. I love that the writers allow her to be flawed and fallible. I think that's what makes her so interesting. So often on television you have these characters that are playing all good or all evil, and they battle it. Here you've got this character that is a little bit of both, which I think we all are. Her decisions and her struggles, what makes them so human, in a way, [is that] there is often not a definite right and a wrong. There's a lot of gray area in there, and I think that's where B'Elanna lives." Biggs-Dawson has some ideas about how to explore her character, but hasn't yet approached the show's producers or writers to discuss them. "We can say whatever we want, whether anything's ever done about it, that's another story," she said, laughing. "They're very open to listening to us. I actually haven't felt the need to discuss the future of my character with them at all, because I feel like so far they've been very much in line. It's only been in the last few weeks that I've had some desires or thoughts that I might want to approach them about. But it's really been the first time in this two year process that I might want to go to them and say, 'Why don't we look at this side of her character. We want to explore this.' I think in the beginning, they hand you a character. They know so much more about this character than you do. Now it's been two years and she's starting to meld vith me. I think they understand that. As we play these characters, we start to almost take them, and they become ours, and our insights mean that much more."

The versatile and talented Biggs-Dawson, who played Diana in A Chorus Line on Broadway, has film credits which include DARKMAN II and GUILTY BY SUSPICION, and has appeared on such television shows as MATLOCK, THE UNTOUCHABLES, and POINTMAN. As B'Elanna Torres in VOYAGER, she hopes to inspire and teach, something that has always been possible on a STAR TREK series. She speculated about the future on VOYAGER, "It's important, as relationships develop, and I hope they will, that being a strong woman doesn't mean that you can't have a partner, or you can't show romantic feelings toward the opposite sex. I think that the rules have to be redefined. To think that in order to be strong you have to be alone the rest of your life is kind of frightening, and I hope that STAR TREK will be at the forefront of showing a new kind of woman, who will redefine the love relationships between male and female. I'd like to see that."

But facing the hiatus before third season, she is ready for some time off, which she said she will use, "Mostly to relax. I've go a few conventions, and a couple little vacations planned. But I think mostly to relax, it goes by so quickly."

[tea-earl-grey]

For the character ask game: What about Tuvok and Michael Burnham?

from this ask game

Tuvok:

how i feel about this character.

i love Tuvok so dearly. i think he's the strongest Vulcan character of the whole franchise and Tim Russ does such a masterful job portraying him. i really can't think of a single scene where i don't enjoy Tuvok's presence in some way.

all the people i romantically ship with this character.

just his wife t'pel. i can't think of any other tuvok ships i've seen that i hate but there aren't any that really interest me either.

my non-romantic otp for this character.

Tuvok & Janeway without a doubt. they make such a good best friend pairing. all of their scenes alone together make my heart melt a little with how much they care for each other

unpopular opinion on this character.

hm... the only thing i can think of that might be controversial is the fact that Tuvok and his morality is flawed. i think so often he (and other Vulcan characters) are seen in the fandom as the paragon of reason and sense and i think that flattens characters somewhat and also doesn't reflect what we see in canon. there are episodes like Meld where Tuvok advocates for the death penalty or Learning Curve where he's shown to hold his crew, especially his Maquis crew, to unrealistic standards or Resolutions where the crew has to basically mutiny before Tuvok considers going back for Janeway and Chakotay. yes Tuvok does have a strong sense of justice and yes he almost always follows logic but he's also very much a utilitarian and sometimes his morality is at odds with the audience and the rest of the crew which i like and i think should be considered more often.

one thing i wish would happen/had happened in canon.

that he got more stories... i mean it's not a secret that we only really get three-ish stories stories in the last four seasons that truly focus on Tuvok as a character and not just on him as a supporting character for others. i think he gets some strong supporting roles as a mentor and friend but i wish we got more stories actually centered on him.

Michael:

how i feel about this character.

MICHAELLLLL! Michael has by far one of the strongest arcs and characters in all of Trek. while early disco is a bit hit or miss for me, Michael is such a strong & compelling character that it makes up more it.

all the people i romantically ship with this character.

i love Michael/Book and am very happy with how they ended up in s5. i also do like Michael/Laira too because even just a few scenes i think their chemistry really jumped off the page.

my non-romantic otp for this character.

i do really love Michael & Saru. the few times they hug in s4 and s5 really took me out and i love the mutual respect & trust they've managed to cultivate despite their rough beginning in s1.

unpopular opinion on this character.

i mean i think it was a common (non tumblr) fandom opinion that Michael cries or emotes too much and that's obviously just some racist and misogynistic bullshit. Michael's whole journey is about throwing off the repression she was forced into as a child by growing up on Vulcan and live her life on her own terms and part of that is embracing her emotions. like probably one of the best scenes in the whole show is the sheer joy after she makes the time jump to the future at the beginning of s3.

one thing i wish would happen/had happened in canon.

i would have really liked Michael to have explored her relationship with Vulcan culture/society more, especially in s3 and beyond. like she obviously had a difficult time growing up but Vulcan culture is still her culture and i would have loved to see her more with post-Burn Vulcans and Romulans. even just her and T'Rina bonding over a Vulcan holiday or something would have been so good.

thanks for the ask!!! <3

[thegeminisage]

ranking voyager characters from favorite to least favorite

i meant to do this at the end of season 1 and again after the finale but we'll just have to go with at the end of season 2 instead

seven of nine - i haven't met her yet but i just know.

janeway & tuvok - cop out to do a tie? possibly. they remind me so much of kirk and spock respectively. every time i go "oh no it's gotta be tuvok" it switches to janeway. every time i go "oh no it's gotta be janeway" there's another good tuvok episode. tuvok is such a wonderful look into vulcan culture through the eyes of someone who was not alienated from it and abused by it, and you never doubt his ability to get ANYTHING done, even if it's sketchy as hell. i think about his wife of 68 (almost 69! nice) years and his 4 babies and his orchids and his lute all the time. man can SING. on the other hand, janeway is such a breath of fresh air after deanna troi - who i love, but who was constantly victimized for being a woman. janeway just gets to be janeway - she's excited about exploration, she's deeply compassionate, and none of these things make her weak anymore than they made kirk weak. sometimes her adherence to her Ideals is a little picardian, but i forgive her, because she reminds me way more of kirk

chakotay - sometimes a man builds a bathtub and your opinion of him rises by. a lot. i've always liked the difficult position he was in of trying to balance maquis and starfleet interests and protect both sides from themselves and each other, but the ADDED LAYER that for much of the journey he has CANONICALLY been in love w janeway is simply too much to bear. also, i think his trust issues w betrayal are very gripping and they compel me. he has been through so much SHIT and i do love a little traumatized guy. ALSO also, they don't do enough w this in canon, but in my mind palace he and tuvok HATE each other (chakotay hates tuvok for being a spy, tuvok hates chakotay for nabbing first officer job), which i think is extremely funny

the doc - my best friend the emergency medical hologram...i like that he's a brand new kind of person, even if it brings up infuriating questions about the status of all these endless holodeck characters we create and then carelessly abuse or delete. he doesn't have a name! people treated him like he didn't exist! watching him come into his own and bond w kes has been one of voyager's great delights. also, gay king.

b'elanna - she doesn't always get a lot to do but when she does it's almost always good, racism episode notwithstanding. what i like most about her is how ride or die she is. she was willing to get her ass beat to give tuvok a tiny chance of escaping torture, she was willing to die to take down her own superweapon, she defended chakotay when his actions were entirely indefensible (AND she's secretly in love w him?? girl.), she will not hesitate to do any number of crazy things for Her People, and since she's estranged from her family or whatever they are all aboard this ship. you couldn't ask for a better friend than b'elanna and good for her. also, she gets to be gay with janeway about once a season so far which i've really enjoyed. she could do so much better than tom paris

harry - harry also rarely gets anything to do, but that makes his episodes all the more distressing. he's just a little guy! the so-called baby of the ship, until he was replaced by an actual baby with tiny adorable mother-killing spines on its head. i'm still mad that the really big important harry kim episode we got turned out to be such fucking garbage when the concept was SO good, and i'm not super hopeful for his future, but who knows. btw, he could also do better than tom paris. he and b'elanna could ride off into the sunset w/o him

kes - i don't dislike kes, and her scenes with the doctor are especially nice, but i feel like she, like deanna, gets victimized a lot, and her whole thing with neelix was so difficult it's hard to get the taste of it out even though it's over now. that said, i do love how compassionate and mischievous she is, and i love when janeway gets to give her mom hugs :( <3

neelix & tom paris - another tie. this is so difficult for me because i started out HATING tom paris and really liking neelix, and a few plotlines/episodes made me reverse my opinion. tom paris got a lot better when he was like yeah i decided i'm not gonna be a shitheel anymore! especially that he went on a multi-ep arc tricking us into thinking he was backsliding when really he was doing secret agent shit. props! but he's still not terribly interesting. neelix was AMAZING in the atom bomb episode but my interpretation of him as a guy who was gentle not in spite of but BECAUSE of past suffering didn't last long when he decided to be so fucking horrible to kes for no reason. i really want to get over it with neelix the way i got over it with tom paris, but for now they're both at the rock bottom of this list

for fun, i think my season 1 list would have looked like: janeway, tuvok, doctor, b'elanna, chakotay, harry, neelix, kes, tom paris. probably? it's hard to know now. we'll see how all this shakes out by the end of the series.

[stitching-in-time]

Voyager rewatch s3 ep21: Before and After

Ah, the one where Kes travels through the extremely cursed future timeline. I have a hard time forming an objective opinion about it's merits as an episode, because I'm just like 'nope! do not want!!' the whole time. But godawful cursed timeline aside, there were a few nice things in it here and there that saved it from being totally awful.

For one thing, it's nice to get a Kes episode that isn't about some old man being creepily obsessed with her, so that's a win right there. (The bar is so fucking low, lmao). Jennifer Lien does a terrific job as an elderly version of Kes, especially considering she was only 20 or 21 at the time. She's very believable, and the makeup was pretty good too. But everything else about the future timeline she experiences is just like, what??

First of all, the Doctor randomly has hair in the future?? Okay. But tbh, having him keep choosing names for himself like Mozart and Van Gogh is actually hilariously on brand given the Doctor's penchant for self-aggrandisement.

Then we meet Kes's future family, which is a whole other level of yikes. She's married to Tom (I thought they finally let that die, jfc!!) and they have a daughter, who's married to Harry, and they have a son. I know the Ocampa nine year lifespan is kind of an extenuating circumstance, but still, marrying your best friend's kid is just weird!! It's gross!! Do not want!! I love Tom and Harry's friendship so much, don't make it weird like that!!

We find out Neelix becomes a security officer, which is, yet again, wtf?? Neelix has no expertise that would suit him to that, and more importantly, Tuvok can't stand him. Stop forcing them together!! It's yet again weird and gross how they will not let them just agree to be acquaintances. Stop forcing them to be best friends when Tuvok clearly doesn't want it!!

Worst of all, we find out that Chakotay is the captain, because Captain Janeway and B'Elanna both died during an attack by the Krenim during the year of hell. Wow, no thank you!! cursed timeline cursed timeline cursed timeline!!!! It felt so weird and empty not having them there for most of the episode. Please let us out of this nightmare!!

At the very least, they conceded that B'Elanna would have to die for Tom to look at anyone else. Tom is certainly one of the least objectionable suitors they've ever thrown at Kes, since he's a good person, who's somewhat close to her in age, but I'm just tired of Kes being given romantic subplots every single episode. Plus, after they finally stopped giving Tom shallow crushes and let him really fall for B'Elanna, it feels really weird and wrong to go back to a pairing from his shallow crush era.

It's hard to not look at the whole thing through my shipper glasses, since I'm Team Paris/Torres for life, but I can still appreciate the idea that in any timeline, Tom is 100% a wife guy. Tom actually had a lot to do in this one, and a lot of really sweet scenes of just being a super devoted husband. While he and Kes have no romantic chemistry at all, and make the absolute blandest, most boring couple I've ever seen, it still tracks that Tom would always devote himself to being a good husband and dad, even though his relationship with Kes here has an undertone of being a desperate 'any port in a storm' situation. (He's totally still not over B'Elanna here- it's years later, and he's married to someone else, with a kid, and he still gets super emotional talking about her. She's the love of his life in every timeline!! Fight me!!)

There's several nice little moments here and there- Tom and Kes's cursed timeline daughter Linnis talking about how her husband Harry is so good with their baby son, and sings to him all the time (awww!), and Neelix affectionately calling Kes 'Kessie' at one point. (I'm 100% here for Kes and Neelix staying friends. I didn't like them romantically, but I thought they had a sweet chemistry when they let Neelix actually be nice to her. And the idea that ending a romance doesn't have to end a friendship is so important to show.) Also, I noticed Harry had two pips in the future scenes! Which tracks tbh- Chakotay would promote him if he were captain, because unlike Janeway, he doesn't think of Harry as a precious baby son who's never allowed to grow up, lol.

Some very un-nice moments were Tom and Chakotay having to see B'Elanna and Janeway die in front of them (trying to give all the shippers angst today, are we?), and Tom being there for his fake daughter's birth, while knowing in retrospect that he doesn't get to be with B'Elanna during his real daughter's birth later on. (I know, flying Voyager home was important, but it absolutely rips my heart out that he didn't get to have that.)

While this episode, yet again, reminds me of the Next Gen episode 'Future Imperfect', with a crewmember waking up to a future timeline and a family they don't remember, it was different enough that I wouldn't quite call it a rip off of that. Kes's shifting backwards in time through her life reminded me a lot of Picard's time-shifting in 'All Good Things' though, even though the situations were different, but this is nowhere near as good a story as that was. It was at least well paced, and never boring. While I personally didn't enjoy most of the choices made in this episode, at the very least, it all got reversed in the end when they shifted Kes back to her rightful place in the timeline.

The scene at the end, with everyone on the holodeck together having a little party, was very cute, and we see Kes wearing her new longer hairstyle from here on out. (I can't help but feel like they were trying to make her more attractive to the guys in the audience with the longer hair, but at least she's in a regular dress this time, and not a catsuit or a little jumper dress.)

While I liked that we got a scene of Kes heroically climbing through a jeffries tube to get a reading on an unexploded torpedo, and that she became a doctor in the future timeline (yes!!!) I'm still disappointed that nearly all of Kes's episodes focus so heavily on romantic relationships with men. It wasn't creepy this time, at least, but still, 'not creepy' is the lowest bar imaginable, and Kes, and the audience, deserved better.

Tl;dr: A less offensive storyline than most Kes episodes, and well acted by Jennifer Lien, but the alternate timeline in this one is so cursed that it's not a lot of fun to watch, especially if you're a Paris/Torres shipper.

[myfaveisfuckable]

Tuvok:

Ok, first off: real world standards, he's not normal passing. Apart from the ears, he's just too autistic (sorry, "Vulcan" 🙄) to be considered "normal looking". He went to 1990s earth once and Did Not Pass as normal. But in universe, he would on the surface seem like a model Vulcan. And he is, kinda. But he's also so gd weird. (/aff)

Not even gonna get into how badly he wants to be Will Graham because obviously that's there too but we don't have all day. Anyway.

Obvs the emotions struggle is real as it is for any Vulcan worth paying attention to, if only because they were all only ever written by humans.

But also, tangential to him being Will Graham coded (but still separate enough) he is a total mind slut. You know how some characters will go "when I have a problem, I set it on fire" or shit like that? When Tuvok has a problem, he mind melds with it. Homoerotically if it's an option. Dude even got a mind std one time, despite the fact that's not even a thing.

And then whatever the fuck kinda thing he has going on with Janeway. Not even necessarily in a shippy way ("not romantic, not platonic, so devoted the lines blur") but like... not only is he unreasonably loyal to her but he does shit like not only letting her touch him whenever she wants but *deliberately offering her HIS HAND to hold* to comfort her when she needs it (reminder that hand touching is very intimate to Vulcans and can be likened to human kissing) and again, they're never even stated as romantic or anything, they're just friends and yet he is more loyal to her than he is to his own code of ethics.

Obviously part of all of it could be because Janeway (or possibly Kate Mulgrew) is simply Like That, she does do shit like tell her platonic subordinate "then be a good rat and find us the cheese" in a tone that makes me lose it, but it's not all her, Tuvok is also extremely not normal about it. I should submit Janeway too actually, I'll do her next.

Also, afaik Tuvok is the only crew member of Voyager (who makes it back) who had a romantic partner before the ship got lost in the Delta quadrant and remained loyal the entire seven years they were lost. I *think* Samantha Wildman also did but she's a minor character (so she could've been getting it off screen) and she started out pregnant so once born Naomi both kept her busy and was a living reminder of her husband's love. So in that regard, Tuvok is very much not normal but like in the most positive way. He literally didn't cheat on his wife even when his life was in danger (they *were* out there for seven years so of course he hit pon farr eventually) and I think that's really cool of him. But also very not normal.

I'm very tired rn but once the polls come out, simply check out the blog of Bea @bumblingbabooshka (wanna clarify, I'm not him but he is THE Tuvok blogger in my opinion) who has written much on this already.

There's also the whole stuff that happened around his monestary era but I'm not even at that part yet but it must've been wild.

Anyway. Vote Tuvok

Janeway:

- will literally martyr herself at the drop of a hat

- will kill you if she thinks it's what she needs to do for her crew

- will not kill you if she thinks you've got residue humanity after decades as a borg drone even though realistically she really should've (tho ofc we're all glad she didn't)

- will violate your personal rights if she thinks you're not "human" enough and also compare you to a replicator (yes I'm still salty about that. wait what was the question? right, i'll get back on track)

- will say absolutely deranged shit like "then be a good rat and find us the cheese" in the a tone that makes me lose my mind and basically give everyone a crush on her (and also mommy issues) if they spend too long in her vicinity, leading to a very loyal crew

- her solution to having a crush on a fictional character was to delete his wife (very relatable but also very not normal)

- she wanted to watch hot Q on Q sex (possibly for scientific reasons) and looked very disappointed when it was severely underwhelming

- WHO brings a bathtub on a spaceship???

- there's more but y'know

[isagrimorie]

Janeway/Chakotay?

for the ship ask game

Ship It

What made you ship it?

I think I shipped them in the first episode of Voyager. But it kicked off during the episode when they were both stranded on the planet.

I’m a multishipper so Chakotay isn’t the only one I ship with Janeway, but Chakotay is the first person I shipped with Janeway.

For the longest time, I remember in the 90s when we only had seasons 1 to 3, my focus was very much Janeway/Chakotay oriented. Most of the fic I consumed were Janeway/Chakotay oriented.

But what re-ignited my shipping for Janeway/Chakotay was Year of Hell and the waistcoat pocket watch Chakotay gifted Janeway for her birthday. She rebuffs his gift out of practicality.

But Chakotay disobeyed her order and kept the pocket watch. Janeway finds it months later, after Annorax kidnapped Chakotay and Paris. I love the inversion where its Chakotay and Tom Paris who are both damsels in distress, and basically playing the honey pot who works over the bad guys for their own ends. .

And then, later near the close of the episode, when Janeway orders her crew to other ships and after saying her affecting goodbye to her oldest friend, Tuvok, Janeway looks at her pocket watch.

Janeway holds the pocket watch and looks at it as she walks towards the command chairs.

Janeway looks at Chakotay’s chair to her right and looks at it, her expression unreadable. And yet, we sense what she is feeling— the absence of Chakotay.

Janeway looks at Chakotay’s chair to her right and looks at it, her expression unreadable. And yet, we sense what she is feeling— the absence of Chakotay.

Still clutching the time piece Chakotay gifted her. For luck. For something else, maybe, we will never know.

And with that Janeway sits down on her Command chair. Her throne. A lone queen in a ruined landscape. She will go down with this ship, a Captain to the end.

Also, I can’t help but think of the Ozymandias poem. Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away

2. What are your favorite things about the ship?

I do love their mutual respect for each other, but also that Chakotay is willing to be second-in-command to Janeway. It’s really quite a thing for something during the 90s that we know Janeway is in charge and Chakotay is her second-in-command. And even though they would disagree, Chakotay will do his damnest to support Janeway.

3. Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

I don’t know if it’s unpopular but — as I am a multishipper— I ship Janeway with both Seven and Chakotay. I wouldn’t mind a story where they manage to work it out.

Also, I wouldn’t mind reading an angsty story about the 23 years in the Delta Quadrant where all three are miserable because Chakotay loves Janeway, Seven loves Janeway and Janeway loves both but because she can’t allow herself to love anyone while she’s a Captain… it does end up becoming Chakotay and Seven. And its a messy, complicated thing they end up in. Especially if Seven died where none of the two realize that Seven also loved Janeway and Chakotay became the shell of who he was because he felt guilty for loving Janeway while mourning for his wife, who he liked and cared for but didn’t love.

And Janeway also has to contend with the grief of losing Seven but also the relief of not seeing both people she loves together. But at what cost?

Or even an angsty story where the 23 years happened but it ends up happily where they do figure out that there is such a thing as a poly relationship. It would be an interesting story where Janeway has to contend with the realization that she loves two people at once and that she can’t choose.

She loves both Chakotay and Seven equally and differently.

But somehow they do figure things out and they live it all out happily.

So… I guess that’s… unpopular as opinions go.

[bumblingbabooshka]

The sentence “Mark Johnson and T’Pel are here again, sir” becomes every Starfleet admiral’s worst nightmare.

[clementine-kesh]

For the ship ask game: b'elanna/kes, tom/tuvok, janeway/tuvok, harry/neelix, chakotay/b'elanna

PURPLE: b’elanna/kes, i like them a lot! just wish they’d had more interaction lol

RED: tuvok/janeway, y’all know i love a good best friends to lovers ship. ik tuvok has a wife but polyamory exists

YELLOW: tuvok/tom, i had a hard time placing this one because i do fully believe in it but only if it’s in the form of tom’s entirely unrequited psychosexual fixation on tuvok y’know

BLUE: harry/neelix, similar to how i feel about janeway/neelix. i think neelix would offer to help harry get over his girl of the week and harry would be 75% likely to accept

GREEN: chakotay/b’elanna, it makes a lot of sense to me, especially pre-voyager. on voyager though i find it more compelling if they’re both paired with non-maquis people

[serinmatheson1]

Twin Stars of My Heart Pt. 4

Hello my darlings! We're back! This one is going to focus on Kathryn and Chakotay. And a little bit about the other adults in the twins' lives.

Kathryn and Chakotay have a game they play called "USS Calliope". That's the name of the Galaxy class ship that Kathryn is going to command when they get home. Crew members are added or removed based on the day they've had. Tom gets kicked out a lot. But they always bring him back.

They've decided that Mark and his wife can join them on the ship so that they co parent the twins together. It's mostly a coping mechanism when the delta quadrant gets too be too much. They have fun with it

@penguinpower1101 reblogged the original post with a great addition that I can't believe I didn't think of. Tuvok is definitely the "emergency contact". He thinks it's illogical at first because there's protocols about the captain and the first officer being off the ship together. But then they both get stranded on New Earth and when they come back she's like "You said it wouldn't happen, huh?"

He's so Uncle Tuvok. he will never escape being Uncle Tuvok and he pretends to not get it but loves it so much

@batleth-brigade came up with a funny addition of their half siblings being salamanders but Threshold fucked me up so in this universe Tom actually picked someone else. HIs super senses told him Janeway would not make a good mate because she had just given birth My P/T shipping heart says it's B'Elanna but pick your own favorite pairing for Tom

Castor loves Tom by the way. Tom is his second favorite person on the ship after his mom. He always wants to fly the ship with Tom.

Kathryn at a certain point just doesn't want to go home. She's got her home on Voyager and her twins are doing well and honestly, she doesn't want to share custody with Mark. Not that she doesn't like Mark but she doesn't want to give up any precious time with her twins.

That's how the Calliope game came about. Chakotay brings up that if they had a Galaxy Class ship, everyone could live on the same ship and she wouldn't have to worry about it.

Kathryn gives Castor her captain's pips when he's promoted. He wears them on his dress uniform for special occasions.

Kathryn is not one of those people that are natural mothers. Like yes she's a mother to her crew but they are full grown adults who can use full sentences. The twins are not. And she feels like a terrible mother and gets pretty bad post partum at the beginning.

Chakotay tries to make her feel better but it's one of the few things he can't really connect with her on.

Samantha eventually sits down next to Kathryn in the mess hall and is just like "They never tell you about the worst parts of motherhood. I am so sick of changing diapers, I might just let Naomi be naked." Kathryn laughs and they spend the rest of the day just bonding as mothers.

After that they try their best to meet up once a week and just complain about being moms. It really helps Kathryn's depression and over all mood.

Speaking of, The Void goes really differently as well. Like Kathryn wants to hide from everything but she has children. And it's still very hard and she hates everything but there's two innocent children looking at her like she can fix it all so goddamn it she's going to.

That's all for this one. Come back next time for whatever I cna think up

@nightingalewritings @baylardo @cecilyacat

[grissomesque]

Your response to that post about the Tom and B’Elanna scene in Memorial was interesting to me because I always thought it was very in-character for their dynamic, if maybe a little exaggerated. Tom is always brushing B’Elanna off for his interests and B’Elanna is always letting herself be worn down by him. But you’re right that they wouldn’t treat other people that way. I can’t see Tom treating Harry or Janeway that poorly and I can’t see B’Elanna putting up with that behaviour from anyone else. It’s a big part of why their relationship reads so much as two people who aren’t very compatible putting up with each other because they don’t think they’ll ever do any better to me, they act different with each other than they do around other people in a way that makes them both actively worse. Anyways, I totally respect your opinion on ignoring that bit of canon I just wanted to share my two cents :P

Yeah and that's not untrue, it is typical of their relationship, but is it typical for Tom? Like I said, I ping-pong back and forth between 'these two people make each other the worst versions of themselves' and 'they would not do that' because, I mean, look at the arguments in defense of the P/T wife-guy dynamic. Tom does enough right with B'Elanna for people to ship it. So he is often enough a good partner that when he's not, it stands out in a way that I don't think feels totally organic (that is: no one is always at their best in even the healthiest relationship, but this feels actively uncharacteristic.)

So for me it's that I look at his character overall, watch him with Harry and Janeway and even Tuvok!, and I think, that's a good person, genuinely trying his best. Then they pit him against B'Elanna and make him do things that make zero sense to me. This is usually, it seems, less about Tom than it is intended to make a larger point about B'Elanna's capacity for vulnerability, which I feel could have been expressed in one million better ways than just making her boyfriend be a dick to her. But because I understand that to be the writers' intention, I then also understand it to be willfully OOC for Tom. That they just didn't care.

But on the in-character for their dynamic side of things, yes, I think their relationship is toxic. I think we see very little other evidence that Tom is as shitty (on the whole) as he is in Memorial, and I think we see a lot of good in Tom, even with B'Elanna (Blood Fever! Workforce!), that is hard to square with some of his worst behaviors. But absolutely people can act wildly different in toxic relationships with their partners than they do with anyone else.

I'm comfortable with both things being true - that the relationship is bad and that the writing is also bad. Depending on the mood I'm in, what fic I'm writing, etc, I might lean more one side than the other. I do love Tom, though, so the only thing I wouldn't say - this is just me, and it has a lot to do with my personal lived experiences - but I wouldn't say that Tom is a fundamentally bad person, as I've seen some people argue. But I do understand their frustration with him.

[simptasia]

a doofus: vulcans are cold and emotionless me: TUVOK LOVES HIS WIFE T’PEL AND FOUR KIDS VERY MUCH