#I can see starfleet parents making similar rules

[glimblshanks]

Okay headcanon time: So in Crisis Point Beckett says that Carol has "been a dick to her since she was eight", and my theory on that is that eight years old is when Beckett first started actually living on starships.

It makes sense to me that Starfleet would have an option for people with young children to live planet side and work at the academy for a bit if they wanted to, and I think Carol took that option and raised Beckett on Earth for the first few years of her life.

This is backed up by the fact that Carol is a captain while her husband is an admiral. Assuming that the two of them started in Starfleet around the same time and had mostly the same opportunities to rank up, Carol taking a long break on Earth to raise Beckett while her husband kept working on starships would explain their rank difference.

This would also explain some things about Carol and Beckett's dynamic.

Carol is functionally a single Mom for most of Beckett's early life. It's hard, but she does her best and she loves her daughter.

Then, when Beckett turns eight, Carol decides she's old enough for them to go back onto a starship (and for the sake of narrative we'll say it's the same ship Alonzo is on).

This results in a couple of things:

Carol's knowledge and expertise are suddenly taken less seriously than they were before because she's been away for so long.

Being on the ship also makes it much more apparent that while Carol was struggling to be a single Mom, Alonzo was taking those eight years to build his career and network. This is something she already knew intellectually and had supposedly accepted and agreed to, but being her husband's subordinate on the ship really hammers in the reality of it and brings up complicated feelings for her.

On top of all that, Beckett is struggling to adjust to their new environment and to her dad suddenly being around full-time (of course she is, she's eight!). She's acting out in response.

Alonzo's most regular interactions with his daughter before this took the form of evening video calls. As a result, he has no idea how to actually parent her or deal with her tantrums.

This leaves Carol to deal with Beckett's behavior, and while she loves her daughter she's frustrated.

Dealing with Beckett takes her away from her work regularly, and Beckett's poor behavior reflects badly on Carol. It's having a major impact on her ability to actually re-integrate into the ranks of Starfleet.

Carol responds to this by essentially taking it out on Beckett. She's not abusive or anything, but her parenting style absolutely does become harsher and stricter.

For Beckett, who is already adjusting to a lot, this sudden change in dynamic with her mom only makes things worse and she acts out more. The problem becomes cyclical and more extreme as she gets older, and eventually, you end up with the mother-daughter relationship we see in the show.

I also think this is backed up by some on-screen interactions with Alonzo during the series.

In the very first episode, Carol calls Alonzo and says "She's your daughter too!" In an attempt to get him to deal with Beckett and god, how many times have I heard other women say something similar about their husband's relationship with their children? You definitely don't get the impression that Alonzo pawning Beckett's behavioral issues off onto Carol is a new thing.

Then, in Grounded, Beckett and Alonzo have an exchange that basically boils down to "You listen to your mother more than you ever listen to me" which also makes some sense if Carol was a more consistent parental figure for Beckett in her early life.

Idk, I doubt we'll ever hear a lot about Beckett's childhood in the show itself, but based on what we do know this is the theory that makes the most sense to me.

#lower decks #star trek #star trek lower decks #st lwd #beckett mariner #lwd #carol freeman #Alonzo Freeman #also some of this is based on my own experience growing up in a maritime household #like I was hanging out on work boats at a pretty early age #but I wasn't allowed to go on them until I could swim #I can see starfleet parents making similar rules #like 'our kid can't be on a starship until they can put an environmental suit on by themselves in an emergency #+ I know from my mom that being the stay at home parent while your partner is off at sea very much is like single parenting #So yeah some of this headcanon comes from that too #long post

[kinetic-elaboration]

March 12: 1x10 Journey to Babel

My favorite Star Trek episode! Possibly my favorite episode of anything... I’m not going to have much of anything deep to say about it but I did enjoy it immensely.

I actually know the opening of this ep really well because I was using it as the basis for a still unfinished AOS-verse fic that I still want to write but it doesn’t get old regardless.

We can relax when the Vulcans get here! Can you though??

Spock’s utter non-reaction to the name Sarek. But inside he’s gotta be feeling a lot, right? I mean at the very least, nerves at the impending awkwardness.

I feel like Sarek is so subtly suspicious in this scene. Like... why is no one acknowledging we’re related? What’s going ON?

And Kirk knows something’s up but he’s not sure what.

So rude! Asking for another guide. That really is a rift.

And then Amanda’s look when Kirk mentions Spock’s parents. So subtle, so confused, so judgmental.

Also this is a great concept for an Enterprise mission.

I think Amanda’s really interested in the ship! So this is where Spock works...

Humans smile with such little provocation... Whereas Spock smiles when Kirk isn’t dead

Lol the parallels with Sarek and Kirk calling Amanda and Spock over. Mr. Spock, attend.

Sarek taught him computers! So adorable.

Mrs.Sarek lol. But she proves the unpronounceable name can be sort of pronounced.

Idk if I believe this whole depiction of Vulcans as patriarchal... It doesn’t really square with T’Pau running the whole planet. Nor is it logical.

Amanda is so glad that Spock has friends!!

I love to see Kirk defending Spock.

Lmao at the idea of Sarek following the teachings of his father. Was he doing that when he took a HUMAN wife??

Kirk and Amanda bonding over their stubborn husbands.

Oh no, the signal is coming from inside the ship!

Kirk is sure loving this.

So Sarek is 102. That would make him 60-some years older than Spock.

Sarek’s vote carries the others! He’s so important.

Now Kirk is trying to charm the aliens.

I just noticed that Amanda asks Spock if she can share the sehlat story. She looks at him and he very obviously inclines his head. He’s okay with McCoy hearing this.

Alive with six inch fangs!!

Sarek being so protective of Spock and his dignity. “He’s a Starfleet officer!!” Honestly so proud of him.

Sarek/Amanda is actually the best ship.

I feel like Spock gets his humor from Sarek honestly. Like the way he talks to the Telluride Ambassador is so similar to how Spock talks to people.

Can’t believe Kirk had to break up a fight between Spock’s dad and another ambassador lol.

Of course Kirk has to be shirtless for the dramatic reveal of MURDER.

Spock doesn’t think Sarek killed anyone. (Even when he kinda throws him under the bus with that “my father is capable of killing.”)

But then there’s Sarek “I agree, I am a very suspicious person here.”

Meditation cannot be discussed with Earthmen.

Sarek had 4 heart attacks and didn’t tell his wife. The nerve.

Sarek and Spock ganging up on Bones. A real bonding moment.

Spock’s blood has human blood elements...interesting.

Spock was researching for Sarek. Idk why that hits me so hard... He finds this really long shot solution, an experimental drug that isn’t even used on Vulcans and just says “okay problem solved we’re going to fix my father now.”

Calling his father by his first name... cold. He doesn’t do that with Amanda.

*Stefon voice* This ep has everything, mystery, intrigue, family drama, diplomatic drama, medical emergencies, shirtless Kirk, and a fight scene!

Poor Spock, on top of everything else, his space husband is injured too.

Now Spock is off to question the prisoner. Eep, wouldn’t want to be that prisoner.

I feel like Spock’s excuse of not wanting to give up command is total Scotty erasure, and seems really flimsy on its face.

The Andorian tells him to think about passion and gain...asking Spock to think about passion!! How dare?

Not a lot of Kirk in this episode but every Kirk scene is gold. He’s being charming again. And he has such devotion to Spock and his family, even risking his own health to make sure Spock can help Sarek--and Sarek hears all of it! We are specifically shown that he’s awake!

Kirk’s face when he looks at Spock in the Captain’s chair is just so loving.

Hmmm I guess no one trusts Scotty around here!

Bones is not encouraging confidence by not knowing what Vulcan blood pressure should be.

Haha just knocked Spock the fuck out. “My patients don’t walk out in the middle of operations.”

“Sir, we stunned the Andorian and pieces just started falling off.”

I love that the inside of Sarek is smoking.

...You know actually the Enterprise did need Kirk specifically to command in this crisis.

How is CHEKOV the next in command lol? He’s 22 and the lowest ranked person there.

It’s interesting that the Orions are the bad guys in this episode.

Spock’s parents can so clearly tell how in love Kirk and Spock are.

“One does not thank logic.”

When Kirk collapses and Amanda moves closer to him, Sarek is still holding his fingers out for a kiss like a lovesick nerd.

Bones gets the last word!

And now Kirk, Spock, and Sarek are going to be recovering in the same room for a while lol.

I didn’t write any notes on the Spock and Amanda scene because it’s just... too much. Too overwhelming. It’s so dramatic, first off, and... Amanda is just so human. You know in some ways she’s assimilate to Vulcan life--how she can pronounce Sarek’s last name and how she thinks the Vulcan way of life is “better”--but she really wasn’t written to e like a long term Vulcan resident imo. I mean when it comes right down to it, she’s very human. I like that but I just think it’s interesting.

I’m a little uncomfortable with like the degree of emotional manipulation... saying she’ll hate him forever, slapping him. But Spock’s excuse looks pretty flimsy when you consider that there are other people who can command the ship. But then... well like I said, there WAS an emergency and Kirk really was the best man for the job so like you do get an example of how not all officers are interchangeable. And I was trying to wrap my head around the argument that this isn’t just a Starfleet position, it’s a Vulcan one, and one Sarek would understand: duty, rules, and the many before the one. So I guess it does make sense, and the tension is appropriate for the scenario.

I also appreciate how the point of this episode was to show, as DC Fontana said, three people who hadn’t been a family for a long time becoming a family again, so you can see all the complexity in their history and how the differences in their cultures blend together sometimes awkwardly, and how hard it is for all of them.

This is the best ST installment for Vulcan fashion. Like, this ep, T’Prng’s dress in Amok Time, and Ambassador Spock’s asymmetrical coat in STXI are the only valid Vulcan outfits. I never got the robes and head coverings thing. Like, are robes logical? I think not. Plus, they are desert people but they are NOT austere, so I don’t get all the dark colors and shit. Vulcans should absolutely all be wearing hot pink wide legged pants and fur-trimmed ponchos; I am not joking. Also I thought Sarek’s outfit was great: it’s simple and professional but still has a lot of color on it; it’s exactly what it seems like a Vulcan ambassador would wear. And they never reach that level in any later installment!!

The Amazon trivia tells me that deleted dialogue said that Sarek was an engineer before he was an ambassador, which I don’t totally get (that’s not... a science...and he went to the VSA right?), but I do find it VERY interesting and I wish I’d known that when I wrote HAICG and had Spock name his son after an engineer.

Next time is Friday’s Child, which is also a great episode to watch and think about HAICG.

#the year 2021 #2021: star trek #2021: fandom thoughts #star trek tos

[aion-rsa]

Star Trek Villains Who Actually Had a Point

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This article contains spoilers for various parts of the Star Trek franchise.

Last fall, airing just a few weeks apart, both Star Trek and Star Wars debuted season premieres of new streaming TV episodes in which the heroes of each show had to fight a giant, legless worm-monster. In Star Trek: Discovery’s “That Hope Is You Part 1,” it was the deadly Tranceworm, while The Mandalorian’s “Chapter 9: The Marshall” had the murderous Krayt Dragon. The differences between the Final Frontier and the Faraway Galaxy could not have been made clearer by these dueling beasts: in Mando, the plot involved killing the monster by blowing up its guts from the inside, while in Disco, Book taught Michael Burnham how to make friends with it.

The Trek universe deals with the concept of evil a little differently than many of its famous genre competitors. There is no Lex Luthor of the Federation. Palpatine doesn’t haunt the planet Vulcan. The Klingons have no concept of “the devil.” (At least in The Original Series.) This isn’t to say Trek doesn’t have some very memorable Big Bads, it’s just that most of the time those villains tend to have some kind of sympathetic backstory. Even in the J.J. Abrams films! 

So, with that in mind, here’s a look at seven Star Trek villains who maybe weren’t all bad, and kind of, even in a twisted way, had a point…

Harry Mudd

In Star Trek: The Original Series, Harry Mudd was presented as a straight-up con-man, a dude who seemed to be okay with profiting from prostitution (in “Mudd’s Women”) and was also down with marooning the entire crew of the Enterprise on a random planet (in “I, Mudd”). He’s not a good person. Not even close. But, he does make a pretty could case against Starfleet’s lack of planning. In the Discovery episode “Choose Your Pain,” Mudd accuses Starfleet of starting the war with the Klingons, and, as a result, putting the larger population of the galaxy at risk. “I sure as hell understand why the Klingons pushed back,” Mudd tells Ash Tyler. “Starfleet arrogance. Have you ever bothered to look out of your spaceships down at the little guys below? If you had, you’d realize that there’s a lot more of us down there than there are you up here, and we’re sick and tired of getting caught in your crossfire.”

Seska

At a glance, Seska seems pretty irredeemable. She joins the idealistic Maquis but is secretly a Cardassian spy. Once in the Delta Quadrant, she tries to screw Voyager as much as possible, mostly by hooking up with the Kazon. That said, Seska is also someone caught up in hopelessly sexist, male-dominated power structures and does what she has to do to gain freedom and power. The Cardassian military isn’t exactly enlightened nor kind, so the fact that Seska was recruited into the Obsidian Order in the first place certainly explains her deceptive conditioning. You could argue that Seska could have become a better person once she had Captain Janeway as an ally, but, the truth is, she was still a spy caught behind enemy lines, but suddenly without a government to report back to. So, Seska did what she had to do to survive, even lying to Chakotay about having his child. The thing is, again, outside of Starfleet, Seska is at the mercy of the sexist machinations of the Kazon, so again, she’s kind of using all the tools at her disposal to gain freedom. Had Voyager not gone to the Delta Quadrant, and Seska’s villainy may have been more clear-cut. But, once the reason for her espionage becomes moot, her situation gets more desperate, and, on some level, more understandable. 

Charlie Evans

In The Original Series, Kirk loves telling humans with god-like powers where to shove it. In “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” he phasers Gary Mitchell and buries him under a rock. But, in “Charlie X,” when teenager Charlie Evans also gets psionic powers, Kirk does a less-than-a-great job of being a good role model. For most of the episode, Kirk tries to avoid become Charlies’ surrogate parent, and when he does try, it results in an embarrassing overly macho wrestling match featuring those famous pink tights.

Read more

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Charlie was a deeply troubled human being, and there was no justification for him harassing the crew and Janice Rand in specific. But, angry, kids like Charlie have to be helped before it gets to this point. Kirk mostly tried to dodge the adult responsibility of teaching Charlie the ropes, and only when some friendly aliens arrived, did everyone breathe a sigh of relief. But, don’t get it twisted, those aliens are basically just social workers, doing the hard work Starfleet is incapable of.

The Borg Queen

Because the origin of the Borg Queen has dubious canonical origins, all we were told in Voyager is that she was assimilated as a child, just like Seven of Nine. As Hugh and Jean-Luc discuss in the Picard episode “The Impossible Box,” basically, everyone assimilated by the Borg, is, on some level, a victim. The Queen was never presented this way in either First Contact or Voyager, but, at one point, writers Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens had pitched a story for Enterprise which would have featured Alice Krige as a Starfleet medical technician who made contact with the Borg.

Because both Alice Krige and Susanna Thompson played the Borg Queen, it’s possible the backstories of each Queen is different and that maybe they aren’t the same character. Either way, assuming the Borg Queen retains some level of autonomy relative to other drones (likely?) then she’s pretty much making the best of a bad situation. In fact, at the point at which you concede the Borg are unstoppable, the Queen’s desire to let Picard retain some degree of his independence as Locutus could scan as a kind of mercy. The Borg Queen actually thinks she and the Borg are making things simpler for everyone. And with both Data and Picard, she tried to make that transition easier and, in her own perverse way, fun too.

Ossyra

Yes, we saw Ossyra feed her nephew to a Trance worm, and we also saw her try to kill literally everyone on the USS Discovery, including Michael Burnham. However, in the middle of all of that, Ossyra did try to actively make peace between the Emerald Chain and the Federation. And, most tellingly, it was her idea. Ossyra also pointed out one of the most hypocritical things about the United Federation of Planets: the fact that Starfleet and its government rely on capitalism without actively acknowledging it. Essentially, Ossyra was saying that the ideals of the Federation are great, but the Federation has all kinds of dirty little secrets it doesn’t want to talk about. In her meeting with Admiral Vance, pretty much everything she said about the Federation was true—and her treaty proposal was fair. 

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The only snag: she wouldn’t turn herself over as a war criminal. Considering the fact that the Federation made Mirror Georgiou into a Section 31 agent, despite her war crimes in another universe, this also seems hypocritical.  Why not just do the same thing with Ossyra? Tell everyone she’s going to prison for war crimes, but make her a Section 31 agent instead? Missed opportunity! 

Khan

Khan was genetically engineered by wacko-a-doodle scientists at the end of the 21st Century. At some point on Earth, he became a “prince” with “power over millions.” But, as Kirk notes in “Space Seed,” there were “no massacres” under Khan’s rule, and described him as the “best of the tyrants.” Kirk’s take on Khan in “Space Seed” is basically that Khan was an ethical megalomaniac. Most of what we see in “Space Seed” backs this up. Khan doesn’t actually want to kill the crew, and stops short of doing it when he thinks he can coerce them instead. His only focus is to gain freedom for himself and his exiled fellow-Augments. In the Kelvin Universe timeline, Khan’s motivations are similar. Into Darkness shows us a version of Khan who, again, is only cooperating with Section 31 because he wants freedom for his people. Sure, he’ll crush some skulls and crash some starships to get to that point, but in his dueling origin stories, Khan is, in both cases interested in freedom for his people, who, are by any definition, totally persecuted by the Federation.

Khan is still a criminal in any century. But, we only really think of him as a villain because he goes insane in between the “Space Seed” and The Wrath of Khan. The Khan of The Wrath is not the same person we met in “Space Seed.” As he tells Chekov, “Admiral Kirk never bothered to check on our progress.” Had Kirk sent a Starfleet ship to drop in on Khan and his “family” every once in awhile this whole thing could have been avoided. In the prime timeline, Khan goes nuts because Ceti Alpha VI explodes and nobody cares. In the Kelvin timeline, Admiral Marcus blackmails him. Considering that Khan is Star Trek’s most famous villain, it’s fascinating that there are a million different ways you can imagine him never getting as bad as he became. In “Space Seed,” he and Kirk basically part as friends. 

Q

In “Encounter at Farpoint,” Q accuses humanity of being “a savage child race.” And walks Jean-Luc Picard through the various atrocities committed by humanity, through the 21st Century. Picard kind of shrugs his shoulders and says, “we are what we are and we’re doing the best that we can.” When we talk about the philosophy of Star Trek, we tend to give more weight to Picard’s argument: the idea that by the 24th century, humanity has become much better, in general than it is now. But, the other side of the argument; that there’s a history of unspeakable violence and cruelty baked into the existence of humanity, is given less weight. We don’t really listen to Q when he’s putting humanity on trial, because we can’t see his point of view.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

But, because Q wasn’t a one-off character, and because he said “the trial never ends” in the TNG finale, he’s actually not really a villain at all. Q exists post-morality, as we can imagine it. His notions of ethics are far more complex (or less complex) than we can perceive. Q is one of those great Star Trek characters who is actually beyond reproach simply because we have no frame of reference for his experiences or point of view. In Voyager, we also learned that even among other members of the Q Continuum, Q was kinder, with a more humanitarian approach to what he might call “lesser” lifeforms. If Q is villainous, it’s because of our definitions of villainy. Of every Star Trek antagonist, Q is the best one, for the simple fact that he’s not a a villain at all. 

Which Star Trek villains do you think had a point? Let us know in the comments below.

The post Star Trek Villains Who Actually Had a Point appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[a-stitch-in-time-and-space]

Queers in Space (DS9 Edition) Part 1 (Seasons 1-midway season 5)

Continuation to Queers in Space (TNG)

Benjamin Sisko: Similar to Picard's Captain-Gender, Sisko is Dad (some characters, like Julian, might occasionally look at him and think Daddy, mainly when he's being Righteous). He’s very caught up in caring about everything and is just happy he’s got such a large family (although he wishes there were more babies he could dote on). What he otherwise really loves is getting pegged by beautiful women.

Kasidy Yates: Speaking of women who peg...  She uses she/her pronouns and “woman” but her relationship to gender is like... not relevant. Not needed. Whatever. Call me whatever and I'll respond to it. And she's pan. She's been in space for long enough to have realised that attraction is attraction. Chaotic bench, I love her.

Jake Sisko: he's a burgeoning bisexual, Byron is his literary inspiration and he's the only man on DS9 who's pretty consistently half-well-dressed (you cannot change my mind about this). He and Nog have tested kissing. Mayhaps they may try out more in future.

Kira Nerys: Her lesbianism was so powerful that she was barely allowed to interact with other women (mirror!Kira may have been a bad bisexual trope, but she was also far closer to the truth). Not just a lesbian, but stompin' about in her butch boots and padded shoulders for the first half of the series, damn! All those guys she keeps dating are her beards.

Jadzia Dax: Omnisexual, poly, genderqueer babe - the poly part is why I cannot fully ship her with Worf, even though I love that she’s with a partner she can spar with (in ahem multiple ways). The whole point of trill is to experience life to the fullest and Jadzia takes that brief very seriously (that is canon!). At heart she's also very romantic. The fact that she and Nerys don't seem to have any storylines together is homophobia.

Julian Bashir: Trans, queer, dork. He canonically comes aboard knowing nothing about himself or the universe, he's just here to learn and have a good time and be an idealistic hero and accidentally fall in love with both his best friend and a lizard spyman and we're here cheering that wonderful foot-fetishist on like proud parents (Benjamin has literally sat him down to give him his blessing, but also express his confusion about his tastes).

Elim Garak: Blessed by the mouth of Andy Robinson himself, omnisexual and into Julian and down to clown and generally just a chaotic energy of fun and murder and sex, in whatever order. I read a thing about Cardassians choosing gender through specific make-up and the blue mark on the forehead, and they're all intersex and honestly Yes This! Garak opted out. He dresses like the genderqueer slut icon he is.

Miles O'Brien: I could go 50 different places with him. At first I wrote him off as a straight cis guy, but then as DS9 went on I became less sure... for one, there's Julian and the poly marriage with Keiko and Nerys. For two... it'd be fun if he were gendershrug. “I'm an engineer, I haven't got time to think about that” - does this open up the possibility that in the future all humans choose their own gender? I mean, the federation is supposed to be a form of minor utopia, so yes, and Miles just never got around to it and never will.

Keiko O'Brien: My poly, pan queen. I didn't see her and Nerys coming at aaaall and may I just say I am thrilled. It's what she deserves. She has two hands and a large heart (and a large bed too). She's a lady, but by now I've entirely decided that cis just doesn't exist at that point in the future. Gender is A Choice and she liked the sound of woman and like with everything else she liked the sound of, she grabbed it with both hands and went “mine” (she did that with Miles and Nerys as well).

Worf (Part 2): Ds9 is when Worf got more interesting to me. He was fine on TNG, but here, my word. Both the worst and the best. Okay, yes, he's very monogamous, I will relent. But also he's got a much bigger bi energy going for him, which I celebrate. On that note, if Garak isn't his type, what kinda person is? I'm assuming he's just not into Cardassians as a rule, because of their culture-biases. He likes a partner who'll punch him in the face before propositioning with all their cards on the table. What he needs is to get pegged.

Odo: Ace and aro. He’s full of love. In order to mimic “solids” he tries to make sense of his emotions from their perspectives and so comes to the conclusion that he definitely isn’t allowed to love Quark and definitely ought to be in romantic love with Nerys, but once he understands himself better, he doesn’t feel such a need to limit himself. He has unlimited hands you guys!!!! (sometimes he has no hands, but that doesn’t limit him either). He’s tried out various body shapes, and he likes the sound of “man.” He can’t place his finger on why, and honestly he doesn’t have to. It’s his identity. Hope he realises how loved he is.

Quark: He thought he was your average straight man on the station, but ds9 has a way of bringing out your true colours and it turns out he’s in love with an occasional bucket of goo. He expresses this by snarking at aforementioned goo-man. This isn’t even me, this is just... canon facts. Ferengi have strong binary genders. Quark is a man, but he’s later not-so-secretly sympathetic towards people who veer away from binary gender, such as...

Rom: Is “not having the lobes for business” code for being trans-femme? Kinda feeling it is. In a way it’s harder to be trans-masc, simply because afab people in Ferengi culture have a much harder time escaping the home planet in order to explore themselves, and Rom will eventually launch a campaign for equality for trans Ferengi (what is “trans” in Ferengi?) Also he’s more ace than he realises. He has urges (that one episode... definitely proved that), but they’re not directed at anyone. He likes being loved. Surprisingly sex doesn’t play as big a role in that as he might’ve thought it would.

Nog: "Doesn’t have the lobes for business” but is kinda chill about gender. Probably due to having grown up amongst other humanoids. Especially come starfleet academy he fully embraces gender and sexuality definitions as being “eh” to him. It’s not his interest, so he doesn’t define it. That being said, he’s also somewhere along the bi/pan spectrum.

Leeta: Pan-ace. She likes a certain amount of attention, and she has strong sensual attraction and she doesn’t mind sex, but as long as she’s loving and loved, she’s happy. After dumping Julian (like they both deserve), she gets a bunch of sugar-parents, who pay her school for her. It’s like hunger games out there, with how every one of them tries to impress her the most. She likes the attention and she loves studying, she can do it all. Be a bombshell and a smart cookie.

Gul Dukat: His gender and sexuality are “idiot clown-man.”

#ds9 #benjamin sisko #kira nerys #julian bashir #jadzia dax #elim garak #jake sisko #kasidy yates #miles o'brien #keiko o'brien #quark #odo #nog #gul dukat #worf #I haven't watched all of it but I couldn't wait #writing

[starfleetdoesntfirefirst]

Immediate thoughts/liveblog roundup...

- Michael’s voiceover gave me chills. Not only is the depth and nuance of the emotions that Sonequa Martin-Green puts into Michael’s words incredible, there’s just something amazingly powerful and hopeful about hearing the beginning of the “Space...” Star Trek opening voiceover spoken by a black woman lead, fifty years later.

- Michael pretty much overtly accusing Sarek of a) knowing when he adopted her that a Vulcan education and upbringing would fuck up a human child and b) adopting her for Spock’s benefit.....holy fuck

- Also, Michael having long natural hair when she was adopted that her foster parents and/or school then cut and straightened is indescribably fucked up.

- I was just starting to get incredibly frustrated with Pike basically acting exactly like Lorca–“I’m the heroic captain who’s going to Do The Right Thing No Matter What, and I Know What Is Best”–and then Michael stopped him in his tracks and the ENTIRE BRIDGE stared at him and judged him………beautiful.

- I might write more on this at some point, but as people have pointed out, one reason Lorca was initially seen as ambiguously heroic by some of the characters/audience despite all the manipulation and manslaughter was that he fit the common character type in U.S. popular culture of the heroic, rebellious male leader who Ignores Those Stuffy Rules and Does What He Knows Is Right. So it was particularly satisfying, and I’m sure (especially considering the overt discussion of Lorca’s standing desk later) deliberate, to see Pike get stopped in his tracks when he tried assuming (!) that he was the only one who was going to argue in favor of rescuing fellow Starfleet servicemembers (!!) and talking over his crew because he was so convinced that he was right and that it was time for him to give a Heroic Manly Leader Speech to prove it (!!!). I especially enjoyed that it wasn’t just Burnham who stood up to him, but that the whole bridge crew backed her up and Judged Him With Their Eyes. Immediately.

- Speaking of archetypes, “Skip your ranks. They don’t matter” is just the captain version of throwing the textbook in the trash and telling your students to call you by your first name.

- In some ways I am not a huge fan of how Pike’s style(TM) is pretty similar to Lorca’s style(TM) (“fly good,” “I was expecting a red thing; where’s my damn red thing?”), regardless of whether he trashes Lorca’s standing desk settup, since IMO Lorca’s style(TM) was part of the problem, but in other ways I can see how it could be cool to demonstrate that leadership can be formal/casual/jocular/careful/etc and that what matters is the underlying respect and motives and so on. Don’t love it, but willing to see where they go with it.

- My vague and fanciful but hopeful theory is that the Red Angel Thingy in this season is going to keep leading them from point to point where there are Starfleet (or other) survivors from the war so they can rescue people. <3 Which would fit in with the theme of healing from the war that Martin-Green keeps mentioning in interviews, and also be v. v. cool.

- So much bridge crew! Rhys! Airiam! Bryce! Joann! Keyla! Rhys has a first name and it is Gen! Joann and Keyla working together and making scared eye contact when Michael is in danger and smiling at each other in relief when Michael is safe!!!

- Background character using a wheelchair in Discovery’s hallways! It would be amazing if dsc does some disability representation this season--I mean best of all would be disability representation in the main cast AND background cast, but I am still very excited about this one dude.

- Speaking of which, I really really want a well-handled ep/arc about Keyla, who is disabled, and her ocular implant (but I confess that if it’s poorly handled by a writer who is neither disabled nor bothers to do their research and talk to disabled people, I’d almost rather not have it). Fingers crossed!

#star trek: discovery #dsc spoilers #discovery spoilers #spoilers #burnham #sarek #pike #lorca #rhys #owosekun #detmer

[gffa]

I’ve quoted a lot from this book, it’s one I think is really worth reading as it has a lot of overviews of Star Wars through the lens of psychology and this interpretation of Anakin is one I thought was really interesting, as someone driven by fear rather than by evil.  That it doesn’t excuse that his actions are evil, nor excuse that he could have applied the mindfulness teachings he was given and didn’t, but that he’s far more complicated in what actually drives him, all that scared little boy that he could never move past, not with Sidious there sabotaging every step of the way. Anakin is still responsible for Anakin’s choices, but it’s so, so much more complicated than that!

The most common answer to my question is, “Darth Vader is evil and the Jedi are good.” But I argue the point that Darth Vader really isn’t evil. His actions are clearly bad and should be characterized as evil, but those actions are motivated by something else. He is driven by a magnified emotion we all experience to one  degree or another. Darth Vader is motivated by anxiety. Therefore, the correct answer to my question about the difference between the Jedi and Vader is where they place their sense of control. Vader attempts to control everything external to him, whereas the Jedi strive to demonstrate self-control and allow for free will. 

and

More failures ensue, and Anakin focuses on them, building further on his increasing lack of control. Instead of looking inward, focusing on his emotions, and being mindful of the moment and his purpose, he externalizes and emotionally reacts with little thought to his underlying fears and anxiety. Over and over he runs into variables he cannot control, and this plants more seeds of anxiety, doubt, and fear.

Anxiety Disorder’s Need for Imperial Control: Was Darth Vader Evil or Scared? Frank Gaskill

“Father-son myths attracted huge audiences in the 1970s and ’80s. Men feared being like their fathers, but they wanted desperately to bond with them even if they could never really please them enough to feel anointed.” —psychiatrist Frank Pittman “Join me and we can end this destructive conflict….” —Darth Vader to his son Luke

Viewing Star Wars for the first time was and is for many people a life-changing experience. Princess Leia’s ship comes into view with Tatooine in the distance as Darth Vader’s Star Destroyer closes in. This opening sequence is the iconic memory from Lucas’s classic film that we all share. Despite the power of the opening scene, the image that held me captive as an eight-year-old seeing Star Wars for the first time was the moment when Darth Vader steps through the smoking air lock his troopers blasted open. With his black cape flowing about him, Vader stands to survey the damage in the smoke-filled corridor. Without a word, his mere presence bleeds ultimate power and fear. The only sound we hear is his slow, deep breathing. I knew I liked Vader. Throughout the next 40+ years of viewing the Star Wars films, I knew Vader was similar to me, but I was unclear initially how that could be. He didn’t feel like a villain to be feared and at times seemed almost aspirational in his goal of galactic stability and peace. As the films progressed, he became more and more human. As a little boy, I couldn’t understand what I was sensing about Vader. As my dad and I left the theater that night in May 1977, he held my hand. Squeezing it, he looked down at me and said, “You know, that Darth Vader was pretty cool.” I looked into his eyes and agreed. Vader was cool. The 54 Darth Vader toys and figures inhabiting my office are a testament to that coolness. But how could a murdering, planet-destroying, princess-torturing (his daughter, I might add) machine of a man be cool? Cool is probably not the right word, but more important, I don’t believe Darth Vader was evil. Darth Vader wasn’t a bad guy. He was just very scared.

This Present Unconscious Menace Living under Imperial rule has to be stressful. Freedoms are being undermined, the Senate is dissolved, the existential threat of the Death Star is unleashed, and the knowledge that all the Jedi have been killed or expelled offers little to no hope. The tiny rebellion has little chance against the Imperial Starfleet or the regional governors who hold planets captive on the basis of fear. Other threats are ever present from the Hutts, bounty hunters, slavery, and bribery. Stress is omnipresent under the Empire. As Ben Kenobi tells Luke, there had been a sense of safety and hope when the Jedi were considered “the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic, before the dark times … before the Empire.” In the present day, we may not be living under an empire, but we could be living under another, more sinister menace that is walking among us every day. In my private practice as a psychologist, I see a lot of scared kids and parents. More accurately, I serve the needs of a lot of anxious people. As a society, we are working harder in our jobs now than at any other time in history. Levels of anxiety are the highest ever reported. Individuals are reporting 40 percent more stress, worry, and panic now than they did in the 1950s. With parents under such intensive pressure and stress, the lives of children are similarly under mounting pressure. Living in such conditions on an ongoing basis raises levels of anxiety to pathological levels. Our innate fight-flight-freeze responses tend to engage in situations in which these responses are not needed. When we lived in caves and jungles, fight-or-flight responses served us well and kept us alive. However, exaggerated or uncontrolled responses to anxiety can have dire consequences in those who have limited awareness of how fear can affect them personally in regard to anger outbursts and rash decision-making. In Star Wars, the Sith are well versed in anger as this emotion is what they use to channel the Force. A deeper human emotion fuels the anger of the Sith. Emotions need to be addressed because without such attention, the dark side awaits. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is an approach to psychological treatment that alters thinking patterns and/or behaviors that cause problems in people’s lives. CBT is used in an attempt to reduce anxiety-based negative thoughts and behaviors that interfere with successful living. CBT is the state-of-the-art tool for anxiety reduction. Anxiety can be paralyzing. It can make you feel that you are under an existential threat, but CBT can help. Before beginning CBT sessions, my most frequently used tool is an introduction to the true nature of Darth Vader. As he is one of the best-known characters in cinematic history, the majority of my clients, even little five-year-olds, have a good understanding of his story. My first session with anxious and fearful kids begins with a foundational question: “There is only one difference between the Jedi and Darth Vader. What is it?” The most common answer to my question is, “Darth Vader is evil and the Jedi are good.” But I argue the point that Darth Vader really isn’t evil. His actions are clearly bad and should be characterized as evil, but those actions are motivated by something else. He is driven by a magnified emotion we all experience to one degree or another. Darth Vader is motivated by anxiety. Therefore, the correct answer to my question about the difference between the Jedi and Vader is where they place their sense of control. Vader attempts to control everything external to him, whereas the Jedi strive to demonstrate self-control and allow for free will. Darth Vader wants peace and justice throughout the galaxy. He aspires to an admirable goal for sure. Vader so much desires and believes in a peaceful galactic future that he implores his son to join him on his quest and to destroy the Emperor. Vader actually wants the same goal as the Jedi, but he pursues that goal in a manner that leads him down a frustrating, failure-ridden, and dark path. Vader’s Childhood: Tell Me About Your Mother … Experiencing so many early life stressors must be very hard on young Anakin. His time on Tatooine probably reinforces within him a deep-seated sense that he is controlled by life circumstances. His ultimate unconscious conclusion could be that he has little control over his own destiny, and this may reinforce his desire to seek control of his own destiny. Control of future events drives him. In its response to being controlled by so many factors, Anakin’s nature is to attempt to control as much as possible, even things far outside his ability to control. When under stress, people tend to seek ways of gaining control, sometimes even using magical thinking. Before he leaves his mother to train as a Jedi, we get a clear glimpse into Anakin’s heart as he says, “I will come back and free you … I promise.” Although the sentiment is beautiful, we are able to see the pressure this 10-year-old child places on himself. No child should feel that he is responsible for saving his parent. Perfectionism has been described as a kind of neurosis that pushes someone to achieve severe and exacting goals. A subtype of perfectionism in children has been identified as “pervasive perfectionism.” Such individuals are very well organized and tend to set incredibly high personal standards. However, these individuals often react strongly and very negatively to mistakes in a way that results in anger outbursts or meltdowns. Pervasively perfectionistic children tend to have parents who have high expectations of them or are often very critical (think about the Emperor as Anakin’s father figure with unreasonably high expectations). Having such a perfectionist manner of thinking leaves a person with unavoidable failure as nobody can be perfect, not even one who expected to bring balance to the Force. Having repeated experiences of failure plus never feeling a sense of perfect completion can leave one feeling defeated, shameful, and guilty. Individuals who tend toward perfection often develop a dichotomous way of thinking that is very moralistic. Anakin, as he turns to the dark side, surmises his dichotomous manner of thinking by stating, “If you’re not with me, then you are my enemy.” Obi-Wan responds to the Sith way of thinking by stating, “Only a Sith deals in absolutes.” The Story of Anxiety and Fear in Vader’s Life Anxiety is a powerful force, one required for survival. Anxiety is a more modern term for a base emotion we know as fear. Fear affects all the parts of our brains but especially the limbic system and a little area called the amygdala. When researchers electrically stimulate the amygdala, individuals can immediately experience a fear response and demonstrate all the symptoms of fear, including sweating and a rapid heart rate. Human beings need this fear response especially when living in caves with lions, tigers, and bears as their adversaries. With the fear response, heart rate goes up, breathing quickens, and blood flow moves to the extremities, placing us in a ready state to fight or run. This state is often called fight or flight. In the physical body’s effort to survive, it will attempt to control the external environment in any way possible even if that requires jumping out of the way of a car, fighting off a perceived attack, or jumping onto a robot that hovers over lava. In an increasingly stress-filled world, people’s bodies often invoke the fight-or-flight response as the biological self perceives an existential threat despite the absence of such a threat. Examples of this can include public speaking and taking a test, which for some people can result in sheer panic. An underlying propensity for anxiety or a perfectionistic style can fuel the fight-or-flight response and makes us believe in the little “brain lies” that can cause us to think we must control variables that are far beyond our control. Stressed brains seek control over stressors, real or imagined. Fear and the need to control external events repeatedly arise in Anakin’s personality. He fears for his mother and feels the need to return to Tatooine to free her. He also fears the loss and potential death of Padmé, the woman he loves, after a blaster hit causes her to fall from a Republic gunship during the chase for Count Dooku. Ben Kenobi embarrassingly challenges and reprimands Anakin so that his Padawan will remain focused on the mission. Anger and frustration are clearly evident in Anakin’s face. His heart is with Padmé and cannot be in two places at once. In this moment, he loses sight of the mission because of his fear for Padmé’s safety. A true Jedi would release his fear and not allow emotions to cloud his judgment. A similar display manifests during the Jedi rescue mission against General Grievous’s ship. As Ben and Anakin are trying to rescue the Chancellor, Anakin wants to break off the attack to help save the clone pilots who were being slaughtered behind him. At every turn, Anakin demonstrates his core of fear and unreasonable goal setting. He repeatedly experiences the pull to save others to prevent bad things from happening. Ultimately, the variables that he strives to control grow into the most unreasonable and unattainable goal of all: the establishment of peace and order throughout the galaxy. As Anakin attempts to control seen, unforeseen, and imagined tragic life and galactic events, he experiences failure time and time again. Anakin fits the model of the “pervasive perfectionist.” He increasingly responds with anger and ultimately rage. He perceives himself as having failed his mother by not saving her from the Sand People. Imagine the personal sense of failure when she dies in his arms. His response to this perceived self-imposed failure is to react with rage in an attempt to seek moralistic justice by killing an entire village of Sand People, including women and children. More failures ensue, and Anakin focuses on them, building further on his increasing lack of control. Instead of looking inward, focusing on his emotions, and being mindful of the moment and his purpose, he externalizes and emotionally reacts with little thought to his underlying fears and anxiety. Over and over he runs into variables he cannot control, and this plants more seeds of anxiety, doubt, and fear. Hope of Redemption I grew up in an abusive household where I would be physically attacked for even minor infractions. For a child struggling to see the best in people, finding coping mechanisms in the midst of this upbringing was incredibly difficult. Seeing Return of the Jedi seems to be the only thing that got me through my childhood. Star Wars became a coping mechanism and gave me hope that things could be better. The familial relationship between Luke and Vader is the most tortured I could imagine, but Luke never gave up hope that there was good within his father. The moment Vader comes back to the light and saves his son was always a teary-eyed catharsis for me. If Vader could come back from such ugliness, maybe my dad could, too. It took me years to decode why Return of the Jedi was my favorite part of the saga, but once I connected the dots, it made sense. I just wish I would have had someone there to point it out to me sooner. That’s why I tell this story often, to show that Star Wars helps. And for the little boy I used to be, it was the only help I had. The culmination of his anger that is based on fear and doubt is a physical assault against his wife. As Anakin’s fear increases, his anxiety escalates, resulting in an intensification of his desire for external control. This never-ending cycle is what leads him down the path to the dark side. Vader on the Psychoanalytic Couch Our emotions are complicated. Sometimes we don’t even have the words to express accurately the way we are feeling. This lack of emotional language can be very hard for kids, particularly for boys. An example of confusing emotions would be when someone is both angry and sad. It would be hard to come up with words to explain the emotion other than “sangry.” Even adults can emotionally revert to this childlike feeling. The best visual of such an emotion is when Luke responds to the knowledge that Darth Vader is truly his father. We see and hear shock, anger, sadness, and fear all at once expressed in Luke’s face and his tortured scream. One model of understanding complicated and even competing emotions is to think about our emotions in four boxes: (1) mad, (2) sad, (3) worry, and (4) happy. When mad, we are typically being blocked by something that has been placed in our way. Anakin is mad that he is refused permission to sit on the Jedi Council. The Jedi have blocked his way. But worry is why Anakin ultimately becomes Darth Vader. Worry is seated in a person’s desire to control the unknown. People are unable to control the past or the future, but those who remain firmly rooted in the present can manage their circumstances more effectively. Yoda and many other Jedi stay rooted in the present. Yoda once tells Luke, “Difficult to see. Always in motion the future.” I like to rewrite the quote as “Difficult to see. Always emotion the future.” Darth Vader’s emotions cloud his judgment, and this focuses his mind and heart on the future and the past, not on the present. Anakin was not mindful of the present as Sidious gained greater control over him through lies and deceit. If Anakin had been more aware of his complicated emotions and the way fear ruled his life, he might have become more aware of the dire circumstances that held him within the grip of the dark side. Being mindful of the present may have resulted in the destruction of Sidious rather than the destruction of Vader’s own life by his own turning to the dark side. With You Always Star Wars is just a movie series, not a real story, but we can still dream it all happened. Although the films have a nice, tidy ending as Anakin returns to the fold and dies in his son’s arms, we are left with a complicated picture of a little gifted boy who turned to the dark side. The character of Darth Vader has fascinated us and will continue to fascinate us for generations to come. It is all too easy to cast a blanket commentary on Darth Vader by calling him out as bad or even evil. We similarly can name the white-dressed princess as good and pure. Such simplistic and dichotomous thinking can cause us to miss the great emotional depth of the characters in Star Wars. These characters are complicated, real, and relevant to our lives. Good people can be bad. Bad people can be mean but also have great aspirations. Darth Vader does a lot of bad stuff because he is scared. And he’s really cool, too! Thanks, Dad.

#anakin skywalker #darth vader #psychology #star wars meta #meta

[jcstoryprompts]

Chapter B

Here’s the second chapter to choose from, for the sabotage competition.

And for those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s the link to the rules: https://jccutthroatfiction.tumblr.com/post/166775271857/replacement-competition (I suspect I’ve linked this incorrectly, but there’s not much on my dash at the moment, I’m sure you’ll find the original post!

This chapter is a bit longer than the other one, I just realised..

Chapter B

Of all of the people Kathryn expected to see here, he was the last.

His eyes searched the room as though he expected to see her sitting there. But from the surprise on his expression when he finally saw her, he must have been searching for someone else. Regardless, he made his way over - his approach causing Kathryn's gut to churn uncomfortably. It had been a long time since she'd seen him. Too long - or maybe not long enough.

"Kathy!"

Kathryn forced a broad smile, feeling anything but pleased to see her former fiancée, Mark. She'd come here for solitude, to get away from the disappointments of her life and now here she was, talking to one.

Still she stood and extended a hand for him to take, which he squeezed fondly.

"What are you doing all the way out here?" he questioned with a hint of nostalgia.

She couldn't exactly tell him the truth, running away from her problems was hardly Kathryn's 'MO'. "It's difficult to find a nice place to eat out of the media spotlight," she answered vaguely. That was true too, to some extent. Since Voyager's return they'd hounded her, pressed her for gossip on the crew, asked highly inappropriate questions and just become an all round pain in the neck.

"Ah, I can only imagine," he commented. His eyes flicked to the second seat at her table, obviously left empty. "If you're alone, Kathy, you should come have dinner with us!"

She had an idea who 'us' was. Still, her mouth seemed to have disconnected from her brain. "Us?" she questioned stupidly.

He gave a short laugh. "My wife, Carla, and I," he glanced around again, though he didn't seem to spot her.

"That sounds -” like the most uncomfortable thing I can imagine. "Like a great idea."

"Wonderful!" he exclaimed. "She should be here any moment," he threatened.

And she was. Kathryn had hoped vainly that the woman might be late, then Kathryn could have come up with an excuse - something to get her out of there before she was forced into the most awkward meal she was sure to have. Sadly though, Carla's timing turned out to be 'impeccable'. Kathryn barely stood from her seat when the door opened again admitting a tall, young, blonde woman who bore a striking resemblance to another tall young, blonde woman that Kathryn had been trying not to think about. This tall, young, blonde woman - was pregnant.

Kathryn hadn't heard the news, though her mother still kept in contact with the man. Perhaps she had been trying to spare Kathryn's feelings? Of course, this was a great way to find out. She swallowed back the lump in her throat and made a feeble attempt to summon the captain's mask. If she could face the Delta Quadrant, she could face Carla Johnson.

The other woman's face turned overly polite as she approached. There was little chance she didn't recognise Kathryn and seeing Mark with his former fiancé obviously wasn't what she'd had in mind for a nice evening out. Kathryn could almost see the woman's thoughts forming - what the hell is this woman doing here? How do I get rid of her as quickly as possible? What the hell is Mark thinking?

Still, Carla approached, smile broad and bright and thrust her hand out. "Kathryn Janeway, what a pleasant surprise."

Bless the woman, she sounded earnest, certainly more earnest than Kathryn might have managed, had the situation been reserved.

"An unplanned one, I assure you," Kathryn commented quickly. She didn't want to make this woman feel threatened - honestly, all she wanted was to eat her pasta and drink her - bottle - of wine in peace.

"I ran into her here," Mark practically exclaimed.

"Well - how fortunate," Carla responded with hint of tightness in her tone. "She obviously has good taste."

With the exception of the rare, occasional meal on Voyager, anything was good.

She pushed the thought out of her mind before it had time to properly form.

"Well, I should let you both get to your dinner, I'm sure you don't want me intruding," Kathryn attempted.

Carla made a move to agree, but was interrupted by her husband. "Nonsense, Kathy. You shouldn't eat alone - I invited you to join us, please!"

Kathryn drew a breath, trying to think of another way to refuse. He could see that she hadn't eaten yet. She could hardly fake an emergency or prior engagement.

She wracked her brain for rather longer than was socially decent, she was certain. Nothing came to mind so she eventually forced a rather uncomfortable: "Ok," in response.

Carla sucked a breath through her teeth, though her smile never wavered.

Mark had never been very good at taking social queues so the ones that both Kathryn and his wife dropped flew far above his head. Kathryn could easily just walk out, but burning more bridges probably wasn't going to help in her return to Earth, any more than running from her problems was. So she sat at the table, opposite Carla. She put as much distance between herself and Mark as was socially acceptable and attempted to maintain her smile.

They set off to a rocky start. Kathryn was unpractised at small talk and Carla seemed unsure what to bring up. Mark led the conversation, oblivious to the awkward air that had fallen over them.

"Carla is a warp specialist," he spoke proudly. "She's been trying to develop a new - ah - quantum drive?" he ended with a questioning glance at his wife. Who gave an amused sniff.

"A quantum slipstream drive," she corrected. Her eyes flicked to Kathryn and she couldn't help but wonder whether Carla was privy to the data Voyager had brought back.

"A noble pursuit," Kathryn commented in a jovial tone.

"Not my ideal career path, but it's fascinating," she responded. Kathryn wasn't exactly sure how to respond to the comment, so busied herself by pouring water for the table.

"It keeps her on Earth, so I can't complain," Mark interjected.

Kathryn paused for fraction of a second, making a poor effort to hide her reaction to his comment. Offhanded and harmless though it seemed, she couldn't help but feel the underlying tone: you didn't stay on Earth and look what happened to you.

She snatched up her glass, once they were all full and brought it swiftly to her lips, eyes focussing on anything but the couple across the table.

She didn't need to look at Carla to feel the brush of cold air wafting over. Obviously Carla had an adventurous spirit, it was so like Mark to find someone like that, but he also hated waiting at home. His insecurity had been present long before Kathryn had vanished in the Delta Quadrant.

"Sometimes it's nice to get away, though," Carla pressed on as though her husband hadn't spoken. "I always wanted to join Starfleet, but my parents weren't really in favour of the idea - they never let me apply to the academy."

Kathryn frowned supportively. She knew many people in similar situations, some of whom had defied their parent's requests and applied anyway. That wasn't always an option, though.

"I do enjoy what I'm doing and I'm still working with Starfleet. Sometimes I just wonder what my life might have been, had I taken a different path."

Kathryn could empathise. After all, she'd hardly intended to be in the Delta Quadrant for seven years - talk about derailing her plans. By this time in her life she'd always hoped to have children, maybe a promotion to Admiral and a nice house in southern Indiana. Now, chances of having any of those things were slim at best. She'd be lucky if she managed to avoid time in the stocks, let alone somehow obtaining a promotion.

Life could be worse, though. Her future self had made that abundantly clear. Over twenty more people dead, Tuvok succumbing to a neurological disease and she'd had to push on through all of this, alone. There was little wonder why she'd ended up bitter and cynical.

She must have made a face at the thought. Mark leaned across the table and touched her hand sympathetically.

"Sorry, I mean - I'm sure you've done enough exploring to last a lifetime," Carla attempted. She actually sounded apologetic, though her lips twisted at Mark's gesture.

"Oh no, it's not that," she withdrew her hand, took another sip of her water and glanced around. Where the hell was the waiter?

"Obviously what Carla said bothered you," Mark pushed. He missed the frown his wife gave him. "Why don't you talk to us about whatever is wrong? Surely talking about your problems will make you feel better."

Had he ever really known her?

She gave a polite smile and shook her head. "We'd be here for a week," she laughed, hoping the humour would defuse some of the tension. It didn't and she spent the next couple of minutes sitting under their piteous gazes as they waited for the waiter.

She could barely even bring herself to reveal what had her so upset to her counsellors, or her mother, for that matter. She certainly wasn't talking about her troubles with her former fiancée and his new wife.

What could she say? I broke the prime directive a lot and am now likely to face charges for that. I fell in love with a man, but couldn't be with him, due to the nature of my position aboard. I thought he'd wait for me but he started dating a younger woman on the crew - one I thought of as a daughter. Incidentally, the man I fell for became my closest friend in the Delta Quadrant and in spite of that fact ran off and eloped with the young woman, without even telling me.

Honestly, the situation with Starfleet was something she'd considered since the beginning of their journey through the Delta Quadrant. She was prepared for whatever they wanted to throw at her. The whole thing was a kind of distraction for herself from what really hurt - Chakotay had chosen someone else.

Apparently one small section of the universe felt for her. The waiter appeared and took a rather long time penning their orders. He was new and seemingly the restaurant favoured an ancient style of pen and paper requests. The boy seemed to have a great deal of difficulty spelling the fettuccini that Mark ordered and even greater trouble with Kathryn's cannelloni.

Thankfully, by the time he departed, Mark and Carla seemed to have forgotten their previous conversation, Mark deciding on a new topic to pick up. "Vegetarian, Kathy?"

Kathryn hadn't even thought about her order. She'd gone for feta, mushroom and spinach cannelloni out of habit. Many of her dinners had been with Chakotay and while he would make the exception for replicated meat, he usually preferred to avoid it altogether. She'd made that compromise, not that it really was one - after all, his meals had been the highlight of her week.

"It sounded good," she responded evasively. All she needed was for him to probe into her 'friendship' with Chakotay.

"I'm sure just about anything sounds good now," Carla commented. Despite how correct she was, Kathryn got the impression that the other woman was being snide rather than attempting to appear jovial.

She sniffed a laugh. "You're not wrong." She didn't really want to elaborate, but like basically everyone, since Voyager's return, they were curious about her time in the Delta Quadrant. She could hardly fault anyone for asking, but answering the same thing five times a day began to grate rather quickly.

"What kind of foods did you have available?" Mark questioned quickly.

Rehearsed as she was, she began her usual spiel, pre-empting his next two or three questions. "We had whatever foods we managed to scavenge and though we had replicators, they run from the same energy source as the engines. We were on rationing most of the journey and needed to maintain our own supply."

Carla actually appeared impressed. "I'm sure that wasn't always easy," she said lightly. For the first time in their conversation, Kathryn sensed that Carla was being genuine. Thanks to the war, many people seemed to be under the impression that their time in the Delta Quadrant was like a holiday - until they heard the details. Most of Voyager's time away from home was classified, but there weren't any regulations against her revealing what they faced on the day to day.

"It wasn't easy some days," she admitted. "But we made it through."

Mark gave a short laugh. "How did you manage without your coffee?"

The mood shift was welcome. She wasn't overly interested in bringing anyone down. She gave a wry smile. "I always had rations for coffee." That was a blatant lie, of course. In truth Chakotay had spent a lot of rations on her addiction, but she'd spent a good deal of rations on their dinners and wine for their meals.

"Then what did you eat?" he joked.

She gave an affronted frown. "I ate," she protested.

He gave her an appraising look and shook his head. "Now that I don't believe."

Kathryn made a move to protest further, but the waiter re-appeared with their meals.

The young man seemed to make up for his inability to spell, with an exceptional ability to balance the three plates and still carry a pepper grinder. He placed all three rather large plates without needing to question which meal belonged to whom and offered pepper. Not to mention his perfect timing.

The food looked incredible. Even if she had been on Earth these past few years, she'd have been eager to try this dish. She waited until both her eating companions had begun, before taking a first, wonderful bite. This wasn't the first meal she'd had since her return, of course. She'd been on Earth for nearly seven months now. But this may have been the finest meal. The pasta was perfectly cooked, the sauce perfectly sweet, offsetting the rich, salty flavour of the feta and the creamy texture of the mushrooms.

Her original plan had been to eat swiftly, thank Mark and Carla for a lovely evening and then make her exit, but she found herself wanting to savour the dish more and more.

The dish was remarkably similar to Chakotay's - if Chakotay had had fresh ingredients and a proper cooking space to work with. She couldn't help but wonder how similar the recipes were.

Despite her best efforts her mind strayed further - was he cooking his cannelloni for Seven?  She couldn't help but imagine a scene playing out of him cooking for her, cracking open a bottle of Antarian Cider and a table that suddenly appeared very similar to the one in Kathryn's quarters aboard Voyager.

A lump formed in her throat, making swallowing the next bite rather difficult.

She'd been trying so hard to fight off any thought of the pair, but they'd managed to worm their way into her thoughts like they did most days. Their callous disregard for the friendships she'd cultivated since she'd met both of them was easily as painful as the fact that Chakotay had moved on. At the very least she thought she meant more to him than that.

The remainder of the evening progressed much the same with one rather obvious addition. Carla clung to Mark as though attempting to show how wonderful their relationship was. To be fair she probably felt threatened - that of course didn't make Kathryn feel any better.

By the time she made it through the front door of her small, one bedroom apartment, she was exhausted. The drab, Starfleet issue furniture certainly didn't improve her mood.

She slumped on the hard, grey couch and stared blankly at the wall ahead. Had she still been in the Delta Quadrant, had things remained the way they had been going, tonight she'd have shared yet another dinner with Chakotay. Tonight would have been her turn to cook - and bless the man; he'd have eaten whatever she served, despite her protests.

Had their dinners stopped in the alternate future?

The thought of living that life broke her heart. Admiral Janeway had lost everything in her pursuit of home. Admiral Janeway must have been so lonely.

Was she destined to follow suit? 

#talsicomps #talsicompchapter #janeway x chakotay #wordsofjc #Chapter B

[tomfooleryprime]

Is Star Trek: Discovery’s Michael Burnham part Vulcan?

The recently released trailer strongly implies that Sonequa Martin-Green’s character, Michael Burnham, has ties to Vulcan, but to what extent? Is she a human who spent part of her childhood on Vulcan, or does she actually have Vulcan DNA?

Most people will be quick to claim, “But she doesn’t have pointed ears!” And that’s true. They are quite rounded, as you can see.  

Spock’s ears were pointed after all, right? Spock was a human/Vulcan hybrid and for all intents and purposes, was frequently described as having Vulcan physiology. But that’s not the end of the story. When discussing Spock’s blood in the TOS episode “Journey to Babel,” Nurse Chapel points out, “It isn’t true Vulcan blood either. It has human blood elements in it.” 

So there really are some human elements lurking within Spock. To use genetics terminology, genotypically (DNA wise) he’s half human, but phenotypically (appearance wise), he looks Vulcan. Most of us learned Mendelian genetics in high school biology where we did fun Punnett squares and learned things like brown eyes are dominant to blue eyes and black hair is dominant to blond hair. Using these rules, we might assume that a Vulcan’s pointed ears are dominant to a human’s rounded ears and call it that, but the truth is, very few traits are actually inherited by the patterns we learned in 10th grade science class. 

At this point I should probably backtrack and explain all the reasons why a naturally-occurring Vulcan/human hybrid just doesn’t make any sense.  Whether or not two species can interbreed depends on quite a few factors like chromosome number and genetic similarity. Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes for a total of 46 – one from mom and one from dad – and we have genes in predictable locations so that when the genetic material combines, we essentially shuffle our DNA for the next generation without scrambling it into nonsense. In order for hybrids to occur, ideally they should have the same number of chromosomes and genes in similar locations. Chromosome number isn’t actually a game changer though.

Mules are made from the crossbreeding of a female horse (which has 64 chromosomes) and a male donkey (which has 62 chromosomes). When sperm and egg combine the result is a mule with 63 chromosomes, which unfortunately renders mules sterile due to the odd chromosome. While horses and donkeys are different species, from a genetic perspective, they’re remarkably similar. 

This guy will never know the love of his own children, poor bastard. 

This obviously isn’t true for humans and Vulcans. They might look relatively similar on the outside, but just look at what canon tells us about Vulcan physiology: a three-chambered heart located where the liver should be, a midbrain capable of telepathy, and copper based blood don’t exactly make Vulcans right next to chimpanzees as our evolutionary cousins. (And that blood should actually be blue based on the oxidation state of copper in hemocyanin but I’m already getting into the scientific weeds here.)

So for Vulcans and humans to even have babies in the first place is a remarkable feat of genetic engineering that wouldn’t even be remotely possible with modern technology, but it’s Star Trek, right? It’s sci-fi and it’s the future and we’ve got to suspend some belief. Check. But that doesn’t mean we can’t use what we do know about genetics and speculate about patterns of inheritance between humans and Vulcans.

Firstly, Spock isn’t the only example of offspring between humans and Vulcanoid species. Sure, Romulans may be considered a separate species from Vulcans, but on a genetic timescale, the split seems to be very recent (much like we see with wolves and dogs) and there’s no reason to think they couldn’t easily interbreed with one another. So for all intents and purposes, we might consider a cross between a human and Romulan to be quite similar to a human and Vulcan. Canon offers us at least two examples of human-Romulan hybrids: Sela, the daughter of Tasha Yar and her Romulan captor, and Simon Tarses, a Starfleet crewman who was one-quarter Romulan but tried to pass his slightly pointy ears off as a Vulcan throwback.  

I wonder how much they had to pay Denise Crosby to wear that wig?

If we were sticking to what we learned about genetics in high school biology, we would expect Sela to have inherited her father’s dark hair rather than her mother’s light hair. Think about it: aside from Sela, when was the last time anyone saw a blonde Romulan? But it would appear that genes for hair color in hybrids seem to be playing by a different set of rules than what we would predict in humans. So coming back to the ears, both of these individuals lend weight to the theory that pointed ears do predominate in Vulcanoid hybrids, but… Crewman Tarses’ ears are less pointed, suggesting pointed ears might be an example of something called polygenic inheritance. It’s a pretty simple concept, actually. Mendelian genetics taught us that things exist in binary, either yes or no, this or that, brown eyes or blue eyes, but as I’ve already explained, so few traits actually work that way. One of the most obvious examples in humans comes from skin color.

Have a dose of melanin. It’s gorgeous!

There’s no one “skin color” gene. Scientists have actually identified at least eight genes that contribute to skin color that can interact with one another in various ways to produce a spectrum. Most people recognize that biracial children often end up with a skin tone somewhere in between their parents; this complex chart shows how eight different genes for one trait can lend to incredibly beautiful and diverse variation. It also demonstrates how people who end up on Maury because they swear they could never father a dark-skinned baby are scientifically illiterate turds. This graphic is an approximation, but you can see how it is uncommon but entirely possible for two people with intermediate pigmentation to have a very light-skinned or a very dark-skinned child, depending on the roll of the genetic dice.

Based on Crewman Tarses’ slightly pointed ears, it’s easy to imagine that ear “pointiness” (a very scientific term) might fall along similar patterns of inheritance if it can be diluted over generations rather than simply being present or absent. So could Michael Burnham have Vulcan ancestry and round ears? Once the biologist in me ignores the sheer madness of a Vulcan/human hybrid in the first place, I’m willing to say yes.    

Now let’s have a lookie-loo at Michael Burnham’s eyebrows. 

Tweezed to perfection

I’m willing to believe that could be the result of Vulcan DNA rather than a fashion choice. 

Lastly, there’s this very brief scene in the trailer that implies that this woman and this child are the same person. Tell me that isn’t the Vulcanest haircut you ever saw? 

Seriously, it looks like the Beatles threw up all over her head. 

Sure, she could just be a human who has accepted Surak’s teachings at some point in her life, right down to the shellac-styled hair, but I think it’s clear that whether or not Michael Burnham is descended from Vulcans, she at least spent a chunk of her childhood in their company. So while the canon is still out on whether she actually harbors any Vulcan DNA, but I don’t think it should be ruled out strictly based on the shape of her ears. 

#michael burnham #Vulcans #star trek discovery #fan theory #genetics #hybrids #human/vulcan hybrid