constable-blorbo
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Latest Posts by constable-blorbo
Space station full of nosy buggers.
fell victim to the siren song of editing the kiraodo. it will happen again!
Garak: Of course, there’s always Major Kira. I’m being serious. I don’t think she likes me. Odo: She doesn’t. But if she wanted you dead, you would be.
One thing that is very important to me about Julian Bashir is that he is genuinely pretty perceptive and emotionally intelligent, more so than he sometimes gets credit for in fandom. And this is especially true after the first season or two, when he matures and develops as a character.
There are numerous moments in which he delivers accurate insights into people’s internal states. In “Defiant,” he recognizes that Kira is lashing out because she’s overworked. In “Life Support,” he reads between the lines in his exchange with Winn and recognizes the underlying insecurity that’s guiding her actions, and calls her on it. In “Nor the Battle to the Strong,” he realizes that there’s more going on with Jake’s mood than just the stress of being in battle, and that something’s bothering Jake that he can’t bring himself to voice. In “The House of Quark,” he understands that the reason Keiko’s upset is that she misses having a career. In “Statistical Probabilities,” he realizes that Sarina has feelings for Jack, and uses that to get through to her. Etc.
Furthermore, he’s good at listening and at managing emotionally high-stakes situations. He talks Miles down from suicide in “Hard Time”; he soothes Jadzia’s nerves about going back to Trill in “Equilibrium”; he listens to Kira when she unpacks her feelings about her father’s death and about watching Ghemor die in “Ties of Blood and Water”; in “The Wire,” he gets Garak to trust him in handing over the switch to turn off the implant, and for the most part maintains his composure even with Garak lashing out while in withdrawal and actively trying to get a rise out of him. In all of those situations, he’s pretty calm and measured in his approach, and he knows what to say to these people to get through to them.
Yes, he also has trouble navigating certain social interactions. He has interpersonal habits that grate on people, particularly his mile-a-minute infodumps. And sometimes he’s too absorbed in his own stuff to pick up on the subtext of what’s happening around him - for example, the (hilarious) exchange in “His Way” when Jadzia alludes to the situation with Kira and Odo and he has literally no idea what she’s talking about. But he is capable of quieting down and going into serious mode and listening when the situation calls for it. And when he’s focused on a person or situation, he is good at putting the pieces together and intuiting what’s going on. When he doesn’t do that, and instead rushes to conclusions about what someone else feels or wants - as in the situation with Sarina, or when Ezri’s trying to confess her feelings to him and he assumes she wants to get back together with Worf - it’s often willful obliviousness borne out of emotionally self-protective impulses.
when i say “i wish ds9′s budget/tv cg at the time was better b/c they could have had odo do so much more” i mostly either mean “gratuitous body horror” or “what if odo turned into a tiny car and repeatedly crashed into quark’s ankles” and not like, anything cool or important to the plot
Deep Space Nine ruled constantly giving characters to interact with different pairings. Master of the A/B plot structure. Is this episode about an ethical dilemma causing big debate around a conference room table? No. We’re following Odo and Garak being catty bitches at brunch today. Also O’Brien is getting tortured again but what can you do.
forgot to post this yesterday because I kept getting swept away by her writing on every page, but. Nana Visitor the woman that you are
from Star Trek: Open A Channel: A Woman’s Trek by Nana Visitor
Screenshot redraw from Star Trek DS9! As a person who's favorite dnd race is a changeling can you guess who my favorite little guy is? Come on, Odo lives in a BUCKET, he's so silly and so dear to me...
i love lwaxana and odo’s relationship so fucking much. its the kinda thing where i think ‘oh they would have crazy queerplatonic shit going on’ except they do actually have crazy queerplatonic shit going on and it’s happening onscreen
STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION // S7E21 Firstborn You have given me a glimpse into my son's future and I know now that he has his own destiny. And I believe it will be a great one.
During my TNG rewatch my Ukrainian partner exclusively referred to Alexander as either Sasha or Sanya as in their culture they never refer to someone with their full name outside of formal events, instead using a shortened version.
This made me curious and I asked if Worf's name could be shortened like this. It took them a minute but they figured they'd call Worf either Vova or Vanya.
Since no one in the Rozhenko family ever uses these shortened names I've come to two possible conclusions:
Helena and Sergey didn't want Worf to feel like they were trying to make him Human so always used his Klingon name.
The Rozhenko family is both the most overly formal and loving family in Star Trek.
There should have been an episode where Odo gets zapped while shifted into an object and the zap does something to his morphogenic matrix so he's stuck like that and the whole episode is everyone doing their best acting scenes with a mug or perhaps a bag
OKAY OKAY OKAY
So to shapeshift, right, is to become that thing, isn't it? I'm sure that's how the Founder, and later Odo explains it. The changelings aren't just pretending to be that thing, in a way they're being that thing?
Okay so I'm a little unsure now that I'm actually writing this out so the rest of this maybe isn't as much sense as I thought it was....
BUT. If the above is correct it suddenly occurred to me another reason other than 'lack of practice' that Odo could struggle to imitate humanoid faces...
Could it be that he has too much of his own, distinct personality? Becoming a humanoid is to become them, to understand them entirely as a person (which is why Founders are the perfect infiltrators, and also why they hate being solids: their changelinghood is eclipsed by their target's personhood, even if they do of course hang onto their objective and knowledge from being a changeling).
But Odo developed as his completely own person, first. Changelings in the link don't seem to have a sense of "self", they are a communal species, but Odo is utterly himself. And so could it be that he is unable to put aside everything that makes him him in order to become and truly understand another person?
Or, in other words, the changelings who don't see humanoids as being proper 'people' can treat becoming them much the same as becoming a bird - they are understanding a different sort of lesser life form, and the fact that a humanoid has its own thoughts and feelings is non-consequential because they are on such a different order to a changling's.
But the thoughts and feelings of a humanoid are so similar to Odo's that -- in a way, because he understands them more -- he has more of an awareness of their individuality and difference to himself, and therefore cannot imagine them the same way he does a bird. He is distinct, and they are distinct, and shapeshifting isn't about copying, it's about becoming, and Odo could never become someone else because it would mean becoming less than himself.
This is a ramble and I don't know if it makes any sense but it's lit up my brain and I'm definitely feeling like
very fond of “julian ends up becoming close friends with over half the people he was trying to hit on” as a character trait for him.
he just strikes me as someone who tends to stay in good standing with most of his exes or casual hook ups and is being invited to their weddings and it’s not awkward in the least because julian is just happy for them.
POV: You're on a fetch quest for Kira and you give her a jumja stick instead of the 85645 self sealing stem bolts she asked for, forgetting that she doesn't like them.
Concept of Julian Bashir on Cardassia working in hospitals and constantly having like 12 Cardassian babies hanging off of him for the heat that he radiates. Then he goes to pick up dinner after work from a local restaurant and the cashier’s hand lingers when handing him back his food and just kinda holds his hand for a long time marvelling at his warmth. Then he goes home to his lizard man husband who attaches himself like an invasive species as they lie in bed to fall asleep together. Julian Bashir is content.
i honestly barely ever think about the mirror universe EXCEPT to mull over my disappointment that we only got to see a little bit of mirror odo.
i also feel like had there been fewer budget constraints he could have been a little more monstrous, much more inhuman in appearance? but maybe that’s me and my unquenchable thirst for BODY HORROR.