#lb 2021 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thegeminisage · 5 days

Text

STAR TREK UPDATE TIME!!! thursday we watched tng's "emergence" and ds9's "crossover" (honorific)

emergence (tng):

I HATE HOLODECK EPISODES. i wanted season 7 to go out on a high note. nostalgia and time would have made me forget so many of tng's sins if it had gone out on a high note

girl, the enterprise CAME TO LIFE, had a baby, and then died, and nobody had anything to say about that except "ok let the baby fly into space hope it has a good life!"

the enterprise and moya from farscape could have raised their children together communally. like feral cats.

if kirk had been captain when the enterprise came to life he would NOT have let that baby fly into space. he would have gotten one of those little toddler leashes. he would have paid child support. he's not the step dad he's the dad who stepped up

i honestly don't remember what else happened here because the following episode blew my tits clean off

oh yeah wait i think it was racist to make worf shovel the coal. shame on them. data's way stronger than worf he should have been doing it he would have been like yay i love a novel experience :) i can add this to my file on coal shoveling :)

crossover (ds9):

WORLD'S LONGEST YEAH BOY

no, i'm just going to abandon my bullet points. where do i even begin...you know, actually, let's begin at the beginning, which is the tos mirrorverse episode. i have a wider meta on this in me somewhre i bet but it wasn't always this way! i like, initially watched this, went, "huh! that was neat," and thought no more about it until i read a fanfic (don't ask for it i'm not telling, it was more like 2-3 fanfics honestly) and then i was like WAIT HOLD ON A SECOND. see, my fascination with mirrorverse comes primarily from the following hypothesis:

everyone always says that bones in mirrorverse and bones in the prime universe are the same guy and that makes him god's specialest princess, which i don't disagree with! but i think, deep down, EVERYONE is the same. i think mirrorverse (quite accidentally) provides a pretty compelling commentary on both nature vs nurture and the cycle of violence. kirk, who undoubtedly went to a much worse version of tarsus iv in the mirrorverse, becomes a guy slaughtering colonists by the thousands, because in his mind that's what power looks like and being powerful means being safe. spock, who is brought up to believe violence is logical instead of pacifism, follows that doctrine just as strictly as he sticks to his morals in the prime universe, and indulges in his emotions just as rarely, because in either case he is punished just as much, if not more, for going against vulcan and human social norms.

put the same guys in the opposite situation (ie a mirror) and they will turn out as their own twisted reflections every time. mirror kirk is just as driven to succeed, just at a different game. he has just as much of a temper, but without the apologies that come afterward. he's just and dangerous and as handy in a fight as prime kirk, but without the moral compass that has him pulling punches instead of a knife. he has that same desire for power, though it's to protect himself rather than to protect other people. mirror spock is just as sharp and calculating, he's just running different numbers, after different results. he's just as good at sussing out emotional motives because of his forced distance from them, but he has spent a lifetime being rewarded for exploiting the emotions of others instead of trying to understand them. he even shares the same preference for being the first officer instead of in command, though the two spocks have differing reasons for this. you could even argue that he has the same capacity for loyalty, inasmuch as it's safe or possible to be loyal in the mirrorverse; he avoids trying to kill kirk as much as he possibly can, and when he finds out "his" kirk is gone, immediately does everything in his power to see to getting him back where he belongs. the mirror characters aren't opposites; they're reflections, inversions. they started out as the same base thing. they were made ugly and evil by their circumstances.

we didn't get to see much of mirror kirk and none of mirror bones (to my eternal woe), but knowing mirror spock DID ultimately take action towards pacifism and reform is extremely damning evidence for this hypothesis, at least in my mind palace. our own spock is defined by his compassion and selflessness; he gave his life in the warp core because the needs of the many outweighed his own needs. mirror spock is running the calculation in the other direction; he is thinking of his own needs. yet he comes to the SAME CONCLUSION - it is important for people to be safe, because logically nothing else can hold.

i notice that they carefully avoided saying whether or not spock ACTUALLY killed kirk, and i love that, because i loved the open-ended nature of the original mirrorverse episode - i loved that we could imagine anything happening. kirk dying or becoming a better person or becoming a worse person. i'm a little sad to have finally lost that, but i love that we can still just as gleefully imagine spock shoving a pole through kirk's ribs (in the horny way) or them being little rebels with bones and fighting the system together. ooooh and you better BELIEVE i had to pause the episode and cover my face and take a moment to have my hysterics when they implied mirror spock may have killed mirror kirk bc our kirk asking mirror spock to kill his other self was one of the horniest things tos ever did, up there with amok time and that stupid bondage harness.

speaking of horny, let's get into the actual episode. this episode was so abjectly fucking horny it's ASTOUNDING. it's mind-blowing. i think lesbian kira-on-kira was ABSOLUTELY the way to go as far as introductions. and kira-on-kira PROVES MY HYPOTHESIS!!! mirror kira has the same sympathy for her human laborers (the downtrodden), just not extended further than she extends sympathy for herself. she is also, like our kira, into girls. AND she is seduced by the idea of giving power to a weak bajor. kira's love affair with herself was probably the best part of this episode, number one because women and number two because they understood each other SO well except mirror kira was just unstable enough to be scary. and kira being like a little scared of her and them still being gay was really problematic and horny of them. fun. god. like, BATH SCENE?? HELLO??? i hope nana visitor had the time of her fucking life

mirror garak is also basically the same guy. this is just pre-exile garak. he's so conniving and gay. he didn't even do any of that seductive shit to our kira. why? he's not into girls!

i'm so sorry odo and quark didn't get a better lot in this verse. they don't come back either i checked :( odo was kind of boring, unfortunately, except for3 points: firstly, him slapping julian like 3 times was also problematic but horny. secondly, the goop he exploded into. rip king. (and kira moruning him!! otp.) thirdly, this is odo's disdain and lack of understanding for humanity (humanoidanity?) multiplied by 1000x. this is not an odo who was forced to get to know us and saw that some of us needed the protection he had to live without and now had the power to give, this is an odo who was experimented on and probably killed dr mora on his way out of the facility, and is looking to dish some out instead of take it. FUN. our odo makes hands to touch people with. this odo makes hands to slap people with. rip to that guy and i was absolutely shocked that a do-no-harm DOCTOR killed him but honestly there's probably a net good in that for our julian.

quark running the metaphorical underground railroad out here also seems to echo him selling food to bajorans...also, his, outfit? it made him look like a good person. it's a wonder it took them so long to catch him. our quark is selfish because he sees it as a path to a good life. their quark is selfLESS for the same reason, see? also SCREAM that our kira was like yes we're BESTIES on the other side when she often tells him how much she despises him lmao

o'brien!!! god i wish we had seen more of him but i LOVED him and julian being besties here too. he was like youre NOT my friend and then 20 minutes later helping him escape. it's like he was a sleeper agent, he got one whiff or someone who could afford to have a moral compass and instantly he was like actually yeah humans deserve better than this! i love that julian was just gonna take him back and have two obrien besties and fuck starfleet if they didn't like it lol. obrien secretly also the same, and i'm really glad he got to at least escape w sisko to become a pirate or whatever.

HEY. BY THE WAY. PIRATE SISKO. SO FUN AND EDGY. he was really unhinged and kind of like a lunatic. cw for discussion of rape the rest of this paragraph. so i think there was a light implication via his body language and also "you charmed your way out of the mines" that he was NOT enjoying/consenting to the sex he was having with mirror kira, but very much enjoyed the opportunity to menace her counterpart, and other people, like obrien. again, like odo, he is tired of taking it and itching to dish soem out. UNLIKE odo, we see that he has people he loves! he says "i made the best of a bad life for my crew" and even shakes his head at one of his crew members who is about to do something that will get them hurt - he's also happy enough to take obrien, former target, under his wing on the way out, when he sees something worthy there. JUST LIKE OUR SISKO, he IS protective and he DOES value his people! i loved seeing that core of him, even though his outside was deranged in a fun evil way.

ok, to finally wrap this up, bashir giving away his plate of mush at mealtime because he's gonna get to go back to a nice cozy universe soon (or die) and these people won't is soooo. god. he's SO COMPASSIONATE......like i knew that objectively but we haven't really seen it in action much up until now. it fucking kills me. his compassion, inherent Good Universe vibes, has such a profound impact on mirror obrien in such a short time, but ultimately you CAN'T change this universe. you can affect single people in it, the way kirk got mirror spock, but the point of the mirrorverse is to be evil and edgy (and horny), so no matter WHAT the characters in it do, it is a LAW OF THAT UNIVERSE that powers beyond their comprehension will always reset the status quo to STAY evil and edgy (and horny). like at first i was like oh shit kirk really stepped in it nice job breaking it hero but like it simply CAN'T be fixed. if you try, you will fail. determinism in star trek. wild.

also, wait, sorry, julian coming back filthy head to toe and kira coming back in a ballgown when our sisko has been having kittens trying to locate his people.....iconic. mister privileged having to process ore like kira used to do and kira former ore processor wearing a fancy luxurious evening gown. talk about swapping places.

TONIGHT: tng's "preemptive strike" and ds9's "the collaborator." last non-finale episode of tng!!!

#personal #star trek blogging #tng lb #ds9 lb #one of these days i'll write a real mirrorverse meta #i miss 2021 when i was writing thousands of words of s*pernatural meta daily #would that i could do that for star trek. oh to be a professor once again etc etc

7 notes · View notes