i want someone who’s never seen star trek try to make sense of this.
the replies to this post are the fucking funniest thing:
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#Star Trek #DS9 #god kiwilapple is extremely close though #good job kiwilapple #(ftr: man is realising that he’s just contracted a bioterrorist virus which) #(causes your attempts at linguistic communication to come out as gibberish) #(and you perceive others as doing the same) #(also a couple days later it kills you for good measure) #((you know what really weirds me out about this episode?)) #((when Patient Zero turns up everyone leaps straight to ”holy shit what’s wrong with O’Brien?!”)) #((rather than ”*sigh* great‚ now we have to fix the *translator* too”)) #(((also why *didn’t* the translator mask it?))) #(((a given patient spouts the *same* gibberish when trying to communicate the same thing through speech and through writing))) #(((which suggests a consistent verbal remapping that you can just treat like a new language))) #((((of course thinking through the implications of stuff has never been Star Trek’s strong suit)))) #((((and especially not in a season one)))) #illness tw #death tw #tag rambles
I still can’t get over the entry in the ds9 sexy firemen calendar that’s just like that one photo of putin shirtless on a horse but recreated with dukat
There’s a calendar?
xjzbdkdb no but it exists in my mind. January is just Sisko standing at a stove cooking in the Starfleet vest and undershirt with his sleeves pushed up, but it degenerates and by December it’s just Quark naked except he’s covered in ice cream
do you want to share the other months? i’d like to know
This whole project is organized by Jadzia, of course.
January: Sisko cooking, sleeves pushed up. He looks relaxed and his smile can warm your heart.
February: Weyoun??? Like five of him
March: O’Brien posing stiffly next to a replicator
April: Odo in liquid form (the only time anyone could get a picture of him)
May: Morn, at his seat in Quark’s, clothing(?) unbuttoned.
June: Bashir doing the Anaconda pose in his silver onesie
July: Captain Boday. His skull isn’t the only thing that’s transparent.
August: Rom, hiding his nsfw bits w the communist manifesto
#Star Trek #DS9 #it’s so weird to me that Odo never tried to get more information on how his own body works out of the Founders #not even before he knew they were evil #like #to name the most blatant example #if you’ve spent your whole memory-span among beings with lifespans of 1 – 2 centuries or so #and you finally meet a member of your own species #and she greets you with ”oh you’re early we weren’t expecting you for another 300 years” #would you not then *immediately* ask about your life expectancy? #like I get that there’s a zillion questions to ask but #I feel like that would be near the top of my list in general and *especially* after she says that #but he doesn’t ask about his life expectancy at *all* during that visit! #not even off-screen! #(we know this because he *does* ask on-screen *years later*!) #((the answer is live-until-killed by the way)) #tag rambles #death tw
Odo switches around his gender presentation whenever he feels like it, and pretty much everyone is nonplussed. He’s comfortable with pretty much any pronouns besides “it” so there’s a lot of different people around the station who use different things. Some always use he/she/ze/they etc, some switch around depending on how Odo’s presenting that day. Sisko usually uses the binary pronoun that most closely fits that day’s presentation when introducing Odo to temporary visitors to avoid getting off track with explanations, but he often uses “they” among station staff. For one species “odo” actually sounds very similar to a pronoun in their language so they basically view him as a French speaker would view a woman named Elle, and to everyone else it just sounds like they never use pronouns for him. Kira is most used to using “him” because that’s what was used exclusively during the occupation (Odo didn’t feel comfortable being as free with his form under the Cardassians) but sometimes she’ll use a Bajoran pronoun that doesn’t specify gender but rather respectfulness [those actually do exist in some human languages!!]. Starfleet’s files officially list him as genderfluid because the first time an officer asked his gender he said “…I am a fluid.”
Bonus: he likes to take on a hyper-feminine form when arresting Quark, to annoy the little misogynist
#I feel like you would appreciate this #Star Trek #DS9 #Odo #gender #(I personally tend to headcanon him as having gotten attached to his maleness in much the same way) #(he gets attached to his patrol schedule and furniture placement) #(but I like this version too)
I’m curious where on the tempting/horrifying scale people find 1) Myron’s lifestyle of multiple bodies and 2) the narrator’s lifestyle of wearing someone else’s mask. I find the latter absolutely awful; better than death and maybe better than homelessness or prison but worse than most other things. The former is tempting for the life extension and the extra time, but it would take a *lot* of getting used to and I’d have a hard time believing the other person had actually volunteered; I don’t know if I’d go through with it given the opportunity. Is it possible for two people to wear masks of each other and get the life extension and redundancy that way? Because if that would work and my husband was down for it I could see doing it with him. (I asked him and he is not sure if he would be down for it, but thinks it would be worth trying.)
Myron’s lifestyle body-wise is pretty far along the tempting end of the scale, more for the redundancy than the productivity though the productivity is a nice bonus.
(“like a person with a mere single body was only just clinging to life” is pretty fucking relatable, tbh)
I still agree with the past self running a Star Trek: DS9 LJ comm and yelling about Rao Vantika that I would *absolutely* shack up in somebody else’s body to keep from dying. (I like being singlet, but I like being alive a lot *more*.)
>>I’d have a hard time believing the other person had actually volunteered<<
I also still agree with my previous Rao-Vantika-related yelling that if I had some particular reason to believe I was going to die *soon*, rather than just the baseline anxiety of clinging-to-life-with-a-mere-single-body, I *would* resort to nonconsensually possessing someone if that was the only option available. I’d try to move to a more willing host once I got the opportunity, though.
(I know that’s pretty horrifying, but I think dying’s even more horrifying. And I think it passes the Golden Rule, albeit primarily *because* I’ve already decided I would do it myself. I think I’d be pretty forgiving of [someone who possessed me because their choices were that and dying] because I *know* I would have done exactly the same thing in their place, and it’s hard to be really angry at someone for doing something when you fully agree that it was their best remaining move.
(I mean, obviously bodyjackers-in-self-defence should be as nice about it as possible: don’t fuck up their body, let them get plenty of time at the front if they’re not going to try to kill you (*especially* if you’re using some (non-mask) form of body-sharing in which people who aren’t fronting aren’t conscious), again try to find a willing host ASAP, etc))
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Yeah, wearing somebody else’s mask is not the *worst* thing but still seems pretty bad. A lot of that is because of the power dynamic, though: it’s the other person’s body shape and the other person’s sole decision how much control of the body you get and when. If it were a more equal relationship I could see a lot more appeal, even if I personally prefer singlethood.
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#look Rao Vantika did *some* genuinely evil things #but in large part the dude just wanted to survive and I completely respect that #(and because it’s the first season and they’re still finding their feet) #(the mind-transference device Vantika invented is *never brought up again*) #(despite the fact that it should be a game-changer) #(despite the fact that a mere five episodes later they face a problem that) #(could easily be solved with the judicious application of a mind-transference device) #((you bet your ass any goddamn person in that village would have *gladly* volunteered to host the Storyteller)) #reply via reblog #Star Trek #DS9 #it was a good story and I am glad Anomaly talked me into reading it with this post #(Alicorn is very good at causing Emotions with her writing) #(but she often aims for *negative* Emotions) #(and it has been a long time since I was in a state of mind where I could handle that) #(so half the time if I read a new Alicorn story I regret it because I’m too fragile for that kind of thing right now) #(but this was in the other half) #tag rambles #death tw #there is probably some other warning tag I should put on this but I am not sure what
Was digging through some ancient Tumblr posts and stumbled across this.
I completely missed January 3rd (maybe back in the day I should have tried queueing something for what was then several years in the future?), but hey, happy birth year, Dax!
Brinens and Things 
