Bashir In A Skant For Your Bashir In A Skant Needs

ive reached s4 in my ds9 rewatch and i love that sisko is surprised later on when he finds out he intimidates worf bc its so obvious why. in his very first episode sisko comes to worf and has a brief conversation with him before precisely explaining to him how hes only running away from starfleet because he falsely associates the uniform with the grief he's experienced while wearing it, but abandoning it won't help him cope with his grief so why not stay and take up a job on ds9. and worf, having been here like 24 hours maybe less, standing there having had his whole internal conflict laid bare by a man he's really only just met, after seven years serving under captain picard who was very supportive but ultimately oblivious when it came to his officers personal problems, has no option but to surrender to Being Percieved and say thanks Sisko I'll consider it. and then he takes a job on ds9.

two episodes later he comes to sisko to admit to having fucked something up and sisko's like i already know. gossip moves faster than official reports here it's one of the unwritten rules of this station. you're probably finding it difficult to intuite those but that's okay, something tells me you're gonna fit in to this dysfunctional workplace full of freaks and exiles :) and Worf again having had his whole deal casually intuited and laid out before him is just like nodding politely while internally deciding never to fuck with sisko no matter what

Meet the seven new frog species we just named after iconic Star Trek captains!

Artwork by A. Petzold, CC BY-ND 4.0

At the right time of year along rushing streams in the humid rainforests that stretch the length of Madagascar's eastern and northern mountain ridges, otherworldly trills of piercing whistles can be heard.

Are they birds? Insects? Communicator beeps? Tricorder noises?

No, they're little treefrogs!

Boophis janewayae. Photo by M. Vences, CC BY-SA 4.0

Until recently, we thought all of the populations of these little brown frogs across the island were one widespread species, Boophis marojezensis, described in 1994. But genetics in the early 2000s and 2010s showed that there were several species here, not just one.

Now my colleagues and I have shown that they are in fact eight separate species, each with unique calls!

These whistling sounds reminded us so much of Star Trek sound effects that we decided to name the seven new species after Star Trek captains: Boophis kirki, B. picardi, B. janewayae, B. siskoi, B. pikei, B. archeri, and B. burnhamae.

Photos of all new species described by Vences et al. 2024. CC BY-SA 4.0

I subtly and not-so-subtly built some Star Trek references into the paper, but probably the best one is this one:

'Finding these frogs sometimes requires considerable trekking; pursuing strange new calls, to seek out new frogs in new forests; boldly going where no herpetologist has gone before.'

— Vences et al. 2024

There’s a real sense of scientific discovery and exploration here, which we think is in the spirit of Star Trek.

Of course, it doesn't hurt that there are at least two Trekkies amongst the authors (including yours truly). As fans of Star Trek, we are also just pleased to dedicate these new species to the characters who have inspired and entertained us over the decades.

On a personal note, this marks a milestone for me, as it means I have now described over 100 frog species! I am very pleased that the 100th is Captain Janeway's Bright-eyed Frog, Boophis janewayae (if you count them in order of appearance in the paper)—she is probably my favourite captain, and I really love Star Trek: Voyager.

You can read more about the discovery of these new species on my website! You can also read the Open Access paper published in Vertebrate Zoology here.

sloan doesn’t know julian’s spy kink is already being fulfilled by a middle-aged lizard

So I had a hysterectomy today (hooray!) and I brought along my stuffed orca, Shamu, as a comfort object. And everyone i interacted with during my pre-op was like "Oh! Who's this?" so I was telling them all about him, how he's been with me since I was 9 and gone on every single vacation and road trip, and they were telling me about their own stuffed buddies (one lady said she still has hers after 40 years!) and all of this while I was signing consent forms and providing a list of the things I'd brought with me, you know, small talk.

So then a nurse comes over and goes "Okay, I've got some stickers I'll put on your things so we know they're yours" and I'm like "OK cool" so she puts a sticker on my coat and stickers on my bags of clothes and then she turns to Shamu and I'm like "oh I guess he gets a sticker too"

But no. She pulls out a hospital bracelet that's an exact copy of mine and slaps it on his tail, like so:

And i was delighted by this, so I took a picture to send to my friends, who were equally delighted, and were cracking me up with their reactions (like so:)

Anyway, they take me back and put me under, and when I awake groggily a few hours later it takes me a minute to get my bearings, so I don't notice Shamu at first. But then I realize he's tucked up next to me in the gurney, so I grab him, and my hand touches gauze.

And I'm like "huh?" so I look at him and I realize

They gave my fucking orca a hysterectomy

starfleet ds9 crew: we only have two morally compromising options before us here... what we need is a third option

the third option:

he's like if the trolley problem could be solved by a mentally unwell gay lizard jumping onto the trolley and blowing up the track before it got to the junction where the switch could theoretically happen

lankiest guy in starfleet

"Our Man Bashir" as text posts

Another reason I like to write Garak as gentle is I don't think he or Bashir has had a lot of gentleness in their lives.

Part of it is just me projecting my sensory issues onto Bashir, but because of the heavy autism coding you get the feel that Bashir has spent a lot of his life in performance. He doesn't get to have boundaries with his parents. His parents probably wouldn't let him avoid things that trigger sensory issues or physical touch, so he learns that the world is something harsh that he doesn't get to flinch away from and neither do others.

So he spends a lot of his adult life bashing into others boundaries because that's what he's been taught is normal. And they react angrily, rightfully so, but the result is that the only contact Bashir has with people for a long time is them mistreating him and disliking him because of the abuse he's been taught is love. Combine that with all the toxic masculinity you get coming off him, it paints a picture of a man who isn't treated gently. He knuckles down and when human contact is finally given, he takes what's offered desperately.

There are no soft touches for a starving man, no gentle caresses or kind words - just the desperation of a person who wants to feel grounded and human. So I like to give him what he seems to have been denied.