i’m not the praying sort, but i’ll probably always have a soft spot for the astronaut’s prayer
for those who aren’t familiar with it, it’s a possibly-spurious quote by alan shepard (and is thus sometimes referred to as the shepard’s prayer) on the launchpad of Freedom 7, immediately before he became the first american in space. it goes like this:
Okay fuck so for like the entire first part I thought this person was like… Using one of those 3d pens to replace lace in this curtain somehow
Then the next couple I was like “wait are they just like painting the curtains a different color? Were the lace threads just black or something on that other one?”
Then finally it clicked and I freaked the fuck out
i love that motorcycles exist. like i’m genuinely so glad that someone was like “what if bikes were as fast as cars and could turn you into roadkill if you hit a pothole”
what if there was a vehicle so dangerous you had to wear armor to drive it
I couldn’t deal with it anymore I’ve gotta have an explanation for why all Betazoids on Voyager have extremely human names so I’ve made up my own:
Lieutenant Veronica Stadi: one of her parents was a xenobotanist who were fascinated with the alien flora of Earth. She’s actually named after her mom’s favorite alien flower Veronica longifolia, also known on Earth as the Speedwell. Veronica probably picks up the nickname Speedwell as an almost-pun on her ability to fly ships really speedily and really well all while avoiding quantum filaments
Juliet Jurot: given that she choses to attend the Vulcan Science Academy, I’m just going to assume that her whole family is very interested and open to experiencing the cultures of other species. Thus she’s named after the Shakespeare character - her father had a deep and important friendship and working relationship with a Klingon translator who worked on translating Shakespeare from the original Klingon into several Betazed languages. She’s a little mad that out of all the Shakespeare characters her dad could have picked he went for the tragic teenager and Jurot just has to carry that reference as a level-headed adult woman now, but she also does see the appeal of the alliteration over like “Perdita Jurot” (Sycorax Jurot though, now there’s a fucking cool Betazoid name)
Lon Suder: his parents were SO psychic that they saw both into the future and outside of the bounds of the narrative and knew their son would be in a horror episode of Star Trek: Voyager and were like “hmm let’s name him after renowned Earth horror actor Lon Chaney just to be thematically appropriate; that’ll be fun for a couple people in the audience to speculate on.”
kira’s ongoing narrative in relation to cardassia and post-genocide complication of easy stories – not, of course, that it was not genocide, but that some people she thought of as enemies were allies, and many people who were a part of the oppressing forces, were later, in turn, the victims of a mass attempted-genocide
and the idea that she, personally, cannot hate every individual cardassian, because she genuinely wants to build and heal and what that looks like, versus many (understandably) traumatised bajorans who are still and will always be at war
it’s such a complicated, ongoing, twisty-turny storyline that returns again and again, with dukat, with garak, with ghemor, with damar, with ziyal, with rugal (although he and kira don’t really interact, but in terms of the wider complexity of bajoran-cardassian interactions), with marritza (I’ve forgotten characters I know it – there’s natima as well, although I don’t think she and kira interact?)
and then her ongoing narrative related to healing vs punishment vs power with – yes li nalas and bareil, with winn and opaka (battle lines really is the first realisation I think of kira’s needs and ongoing journey), with the people she was in the resistance with, some of whom are trying to create new lives some of whom cannot, ziyal again…
i also wonder about a stitch in time, and the knowledge that cardassia’s rich, spiritual life was all but stamped out by a military dictatorship, and how kira would feel about this/whether she would feel a connection with the underground religious space that survived despite it
i think the reason it (mostly, let’s not go into the storyline with her mother) works is that it’s something her narrative returns to over and over, like a worried tooth, not necessarily in a single straight line, but via individual stories from many directions, with this understanding that she’s at the centre of this massive change and she may have to take on a leadership position in order to facilitate and hold together bajoran ideals and culture and history and pain and hope through that, and bit by bit she grows into that role. and in some ways it doesn’t come across as conscious, but it builds up slowly like drops accumulating, until there’s a picture there
it’s so so good, and imo the most complete/successful storyline given to a character in ds9 (I think nog-and-rom as a somewhat more intimate ongoing push-and-pull storyline, and also benjamin sisko on a macro spiritual level have a similar kind of thorough exploration, if different in focus, and also - to an extent - odo). my one big thing with kira’s narrative is consistently how they handled ziyal, that is my personal biggest detractor. shocking because – perhaps with benefit of hindsight, perhaps with a little less sexism idk – there were so many ways they could have gone with ziyal, it seemed obvious while i was watching, and yet
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