IT IS TIME

for me to commence my selective rewatch of Deep Space Nine
Episodes will be watched/skipped pretty much in accordance with https://ladysisyphus.livejournal.com/904031.html , because I make my own syndication schedule.
They are not impressed by space drama.
I say Dukat

You say fuck off fascist space lizard
Oh, to be a pile of CGI goo in a bucket...
get u a goofriend ... nap on his jelly
Jennifer Sisko sounds like an NPC from a Dreamcast survival horror game.
I’ll stop, I swear, but buy me a drink sometime and I’ll spend two hours telling you why I understand the objections to Kira/Odo but appreciate it for its mutual respect and equal footing.
I love how Kira, Odo, Dax, and O’Brien fall into perfect sync with one another and Bashir is just rolling around ops like an untethered squeaky toy.
Every time somebody steps on him he lets out this idealistic little ‘fweeeeee’
Honestly, I think the reason they take SO long to figure what the fuck to do with Bashir is that the whole show is about trauma, and Bashir has the trauma of … being a big nerd with a 4.0 GPA?
I’m a bit sad we didn’t get DS9 with today’s tech, where Odo sometimes transforms his entire self into a six-foot middle finger.
I should babble sometime in a non-Twitter context about how maybe DS9’s most interesting through-line is the Cardassians’ recovering from the trauma of perpetrating violence.
Or someone should buy me a second drink when I’m done taking about Kira/Odo.

I could seriously write a paper, though. Get all trauma theory on pop culture. The kids love that stuff. (The kids do not love that stuff.)
Has any show on television ever held heterosexuality so much in unknowing contempt as does DS9?
Look, it's 6:30 in the morning and I'm sewing and watching Star Trek to distract Heyes from waking up @drmoonpants; you're going to get some phaser-hot takes.
All Changelings Are Bastards
There are SO many things I wish they'd done differently with Lwaxana Troi's Sexual Harassment Fun Times, but especially making clear that telling her to fuck off is always effective, and her constant attentions are torment only to the people too polite to do so.
Which is why Picard and Odo are her perfect targets. One's too British and the other's too moe.
You know, I’m almost glad this show was too locked-down by the studio to release its intense bisexual energy. It’s more delicious all pent up, and besides, they can’t fuck it up that way.
DS9 is about the only time I've seen humanist scifi truly graps some fundamental underpinnings about religion: 1) it comes from real things, 2) traditions about and modern analyses of those things never line up, 3) pointing that out does not and should not dissuade believers.
Bajorans realize the importance of having monks who fuck.
I know people (myself included) have pointed out how selective the Universal Translator is about universally translating, but let's just assume that in the future, the Algorithm knows what sounds more badass when left in the original language.
I pointed out yesterday to @pts that Cardassians come in two shapes: swan and sphere. You are either all neck or you have none.
Curséd are all the actors who had to live in the eight-mile shadow cast between Marc Alaimo's head and his shoulders.
Garak is neither swan nor sphere, which just goes to show that he's Cardassian queer as well as regular queer.
Odo is equal parts the horrifying deep-learning doge angel and the baby doge angel.
2020 feels like the effort needed to say “self-sealing stem bolts” while wearing Ferengi teeth.
Odo: I modeled my hairstyle after my scientist-dad

[flashback to Odo’s scientist-dad walking into the lab with a mohawk, proto-Odo morphing into a pair of scossors]
Mirror universe episode where Odo was raised by Bobak Ferdowsi from NASA.
Fuck, the sheer sartorial power of armored Cardassian leg-warmers.
Five Times I Should Probably Have Let Gul Dukat Die, Except Fuck, He Did Not Deserve It At That Very Moment, by Benjamin Sisko
Whenver dudes talk about The Wire I just pretend they're discussing the Garak episode.
No fictional married couple has ever hated being married as much as the O'Briens do.

Every positive thing Miles says about being married sounds like there's a gun pointed at his head just offscreen.
"Enabran Tain" is sort of my "cellar door".
In the future we will all sit politely behind our desks, waiting for main cast members to call us.
Discourse subtweet, but I don't think it's fair to blame DS9's critiques of power for how Trek has handed over its helm to people who get real hard at the idea of secret space police but we'll only use our secret space powers for good we swear (or WILL WE???)
The idea of a Section 31 show makes me throw up in my mouth.

Okay, back to goofy tweets.
As someone who has been recording a LOT of lectures lately, I love the idea of Gul Dukat just taking a day to create In_Case_Of_Bajoran_Revolts.mp4
I hope someone finds all the raw footage and makes a Taking the Hobbits to Isengard-style mix.
I have a lot of questions about Mrs. Gul Dukat.
I appreciate that they walk the line with Dukat so well that he's a fascist asshole warpig, but you also like it when he gets one over on the OTHER fascist asshole warpigs.
Tell you what, the closer we get to the real 2024, the more DS9's vision of 2024 makes me need to put my head between my legs and hyperventilate a little.
I find it sort of charming how nobody can agree if it's Baygior or Bayzhor.
The bitter joy of knowing how much Kai Winn fucking hates her job.
The first time I saw 'Heart of Stone,' I was a 13-year-old girl, just like Odo.
Truly, buy me that third drink and I’ll tell you all about why an ugly, awkward teenager who wanted SO DESPERATELY to be lovable identified with the goo-man.
A lot of my adolescence was spent wanting to be Dana Scully and Kira Nerys, only to grow up much more like the bulbous (semi-)human disasters they love.
Made the mistake of going and looking it up and now I cannot believe that the alien race that gave us Enabran Tain, Tekeny Ghemor, Ulani Belor, and Tora Ziyal can possibly respect SKRAIN G. DUKAT
Papa Dukat: What shall we name this boy, my love?

Mama Dukat: [opens her mouth to speak, but as she does, her words are drowned out by the screech of a passing seagull]

Papa Dukat: Bold choice, but okay.
Everyone is bisexual in the mirror universe except Garak; mirror Garak is 100% straight and that's why he's so goddamn cranky.
I would pay actual human dollars for the patterns for 90% of what Garak wears.
The fact that the show can't acknowledge Garak and Bashir's GIANT crushes on one another makes Odo just sound like a colossal dipshit when he tries to accuse Garak of not actually being a cold unfeeling robot arm.
'Mr. Garak, you just might actually care about one single solitary person in the entire galaxy! ...I mean, other than the twink you've been lunching with for three years straight now.'

'Bold of you to assume I've been doing anything straight for any amount of time, Constable.'
Dax backstory

Daxtory
That day, Bashir was amazed to discover that when he was saying "Go fuck yourself with a hatchet, Dukat," what Garak heard was "I love you".
'Why can't my wife be more like a man?' is an incredibly heterosexual thing to think, sure.
you've been hit by

you've been struck by

a smooth plasma field
I wish I liked Sisko/Yates more, but it is just so obviously poisoned by the same sexist, ham-fisted desire for artificial heterosexual conflict that makes the O'Briens' marriage excruciating.
Men and women can't be happy together! They must be argh and misunderstandings and refuse to talk about feelings and 'what do you mean by that?' and hating to spend time together unless a sexy thing and/or baseball is happen!
Wormzoned: The Julian Bashir Story
There's a second-year class at Starfleet Academy in tripling all your time estimates so when you say "it'll take six hours" and your captain says "you've got two" you're not completely fucked.
I basically have every line of Sisko's from the 007 Bashir episode saved in my brain as a series of .wav files.
No wonder Garak hates the decor; it's been chewed so thoroughly.
Ziyal's forehead spoon is not blue! Trans headcanon accepted.
I love Worf at all times, but the times I love him the most are the times he super reminds me of my Uncle Gordy.
fuckin' love a Klingon lawyer
I do love it when Trek looks at their more feral races, sighs, and admits that, yes, if they're spacefaring, at least some members of that society have to be nerds.

Like, what is the Klingon bar exam even like?
The most unbelievable part of Star Trek is when they ask someone 'how long have you [x]?' and that person knows exactly how many years without having to pause and do awkward math.
It's tragic that the 'O'Brien thinks he spent 20 years in prison' episode can't go the full Kiss of the Spider Woman.
I'm trying to keep this thread essentially spoiler-free, but I don't think it spoils anything to say that O'Brien does NOT tragically fall in love with fellow prisoner William Hurt.
Trying to no homo Garak is offensive on a basic storytelling level. Why does he like her? Because she's a girl and we needed a heterosexuality! Now shut up and watch 20 minutes of scenes where characters who have absolutely no chemistry flirt perfunctorily.
Admittedly that describes like 90% of Trek romances, but most of them don't come with the added bonus where one of the participants is a literal child.
The distracted boyfriend meme, but Star Trek is looking away from treating two participants in a relationship like people, and toward Boy Stereotype Kiss Girl Stereotype Now (They Will Bicker Later)
Quark helpfully sums up for me Star Trek’s entire philosophy on the matter.
Oh good, I am now distracted from the soul-rotting hatred for Garak/literal child by the glorious, joy-bringing hatred for Weyoun.
Give me a Star Trek spinoff about Vilix'pran and his brood of budded children.
Sometimes a family is a widower, his son, a terrorist, a bowl of Jell-O, a tinkerer, a twink, a Sensitive New Age Klingon Guy, several people in a girl suit, and a capitalist.
The fact that the two time investigators in the Tribble with Troubles are named Dulmer and Lucsly means they're fucking.
tfw they introduce a female character and you can hear, in the far distance, the sound of a refrigerator approaching
You want to piss off a bunch of Klingons in a bar, point out that "honor" is just a reputation mechanic.
Seeing Dr. Zimmerman be a real sleazebag to Leeta might go far toward contextualizing how gross the EMH behaves toward Seven of Nine, if Voyager had even the slightest hint of self-awareness.
The reason Garak doesn't appear in 'Doctor Bashir, I Presume?' is because Zimmerman showed up at the shop and Garak just smiled silently at him for ten solid minutes until Zimmerman slunk away. He can smell when a bald bitch is bad for his boyfriend.
I know that it's a military rank, but it does sound like there's just a lot of Cardassian dudes running around named Glen.
Gul Dukat is short for Gulliver Dukat.
Fuck skinny Bolians., man.
Fat Bolians Only 2k373
Drink whenever a female character gets nerfed to advance someone else's plot.
The cattiest thing in the 24th century is the way Klingons and Ferengi punch the 't' in 'root beer'.
Sorry, Weyoun, but Iggy Pop is still my favorite Vorta.
Suffering from my dumbass premenstrual decision to watch Far Beyond the Stars.
The best decision they made for Bashir’s character was to have him get over Dax. The worst decision they made was to walk it back and make him her eternal friendzoned niceguy.
It’s the same thing they did to Seven. It’s not even so much that the guy deserves the girl, as they can’t imagine the girl going to waste by being un-gotten.
That's what so much fictional het, especially SFF het, feels like to me - not that these two people work well together, but that she would be wasted left unappreciated by a male proxy for the audience, and ... sure, that guy, whatever.
Unfortunately, the thing where Bill Sadler improves anything he's in by sheer virtue of his presence means our introduction to Section 31 makes them seem kinda cool.
Bashir should just say, there's no way the Dominon could have known I was an Augment; even the show's writers didn't know that at the time.
DS9: Section 31 is what happens when utopian societies stop paying attention and let fascist shitheels exploit their desire for unchecked power.

nuTrek: hmm yes what about a whole show featuring these sexy mysterious antiheroes
I also wish nuTrek had paid attention to DS9's warning that upstart cadets given battlefield promotions to captain are at high risk for turning into utter shitheads.
When you propel someone immediately from grunt to starship captain, you don’t get James Kirk; you get the little fuckers of Red Squad.
To be honest, the worst part of DS9's Fake Frank Sinatra is how he turns normal episodes into songfic.
S7 Kira totally has a little braid in her hair I somehow never noticed before and I'm choosing to believe that Odo put it there.
Maybe when my real laptop returns from the war and I need to avoid doing class prep, I'll write DS9 fic.
Star Trek has like 96% no idea how mental health works.
That 4% is every time Deanna Troi accidentally says something useful about relaxation and self-care.
Ezri focusing her butt off trying to remember not to say anything about all the times Jadzia and Kira hooked up.
I choose to believe the Federation anthem sounds so incredibly human because all the other founding races were like, you want a what now? ...okay, but you weirdos write it yourselves.
I wish DS9 had been smart enough to make use of how it made Cardassians so gender-stratified and family-oriented and Bajorans much more freewheeling and inclusive.
“It’s Only a Paper Moon” is the most romantic DS9 episode ever and it only merits that by how the creators obviously had no idea what they were doing.
The same episode but with Nog as a girl would have ended with a tender smooch and sad violins.
I wish Ezri had been given the chance to be an actual character instead of a manic pixie dream Trill.
Why bother with female character development when you could just spend all your time taking about how all the men want to fuck her?
DS9: Our fake 1960s Vegas is an ahistorical raceblind utopia and you should enjoy it!

Also DS9: Please enjoy the period-appropriate attitudes toward women and heterosexuality!
It’s interesting to see which inequalities Star Trek thinks are historical mistakes and which ones it thinks are just natural and immutable.
DU

DUKAT

DUKAT’S NECK

DUKAT’S NECK
The end run of DS9 prominently features all four kinds of heterosexuality: tragic, boring, gross, and super-gross.
The Breen rank “thot” is equivalent to the Cardassian “legate,” so remember to salute your sluts.
One of these dudes is named Thot Gor and that’s my least favorite horror genre.
Hands up if you think I should try to sell @serenityfails on Babylon 5 after they’re done watching DS9.

No, I won’t do this … but only because it’s not in any streaming service at the moment.
If dwarven women have beards, Klingon women should also have beards.
“No, I said you look GOO in a tuxedo.”
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