HEY GUYS

The limited edition 4-CD soundtrack featuring 5 hours of music from all 7 seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine will be available on February 12th. 

it’s $50 so hopefully some kind soul will torrent it i mean what

Watching Deep Space Nine: A Performance Art Piece
In which the artist reacts in real time to the ten part finale of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

“Truly a provocative examination of private personal relations to fictional media.”
—No One

(Spoiler-Free? You’d have to really work to extrapolate anything from what’s here.)

i can’t believe i’m crying to a john mayer song but fuCK YOU GUYS 

To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night
To defy power which seems omnipotent
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent
This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory.

“This is her family. The father that is not her father. The baby that is not her baby. That’s Kira’s family.”  —Robert Hewitt Wolfe

Kira Nerys has had enough of your bullshit.
Kira Nerys will break her cup on your face. 

i put off watching this episode for a long time because i thought it was going to feel forced and ridiculous, and i think i may have been pleasantly surprised? it’s a bit silly, as lover-of-the-week episodes often are, and sexual odo gives me secondhand embarrassment, but wow, let’s talk about agency and how well rene auberjonois acted this and how natural it felt for odo to want this. i know the writers wanted to do this while odo was actually a humanoid for a hot minute there but i’m so glad it happened this way. if this had been human!odo i would have been really uncomfortable with the whole thing, like it was only something that he was doing or would want to be doing because he had the “right equipment.” it would have made his sexuality seem like an imitation of humanoid custom rather than a real, valid, personal desire for physical intimacy (in whatever form that happens to be with a changeling who takes humanoid shape). his revelation that he had an experience with a fellow changeling (“The Female Changeling”???) that “you might consider sexual” was fascinating - was it sexual to him, at the time, as a changeling? or would it merely be sexual by humanoid standards? do most changelings even have a concept of sexuality among their own people? i guess it doesn’t really matter - odo has a concept of sexuality, desires sexual contact and emotional intimacy, and apparently got laid pretty good before he got his heart broken. again. fuck. 

The Gamma Quadrant isn’t empty, it isn’t just a bunch of planets. It’s bound together by the Dominion, a very very tough, very smart, very old civilization, run by the mysterious Founders, who are experts in genetic engineering, and who turn out to be Odo’s people, the Shapeshifters. They then go and engineer these slave races that do their bidding. Essentially, the two main slave races were the ‘carrot’ and the ‘stick’. The carrot being the Vorta, who would come to your planet and say “Hey, you’re nice people, here’s some M-16s and some popcorn, and whatever else you want baby, alcohol, fire-water? All you have to do is sign this little contract and we’ll make you cool.” Then there’s the Jem’Hadar. So the Vorta say “Oh, you don’t want to play ball? Then meet these guys. They’re gonna kick your ass.

okay just sobbed through that entire episode.

~DS9 SPOILER ALERT JUST IN CASE~ like i know this show is almost 20 years old now but i’ve known what was coming in this episode for MONTHS so don’t do that to yourself!

anyway. i still wasn’t sure how i was going to feel about the whole genetic enhancement plotline once they actually brought it up, because i knew that Siddig el Fadil didn’t approve of it, and i didn’t know any of the details. but, in my opinion, this revelation not only makes Julian a much more interesting character, but it makes all of his previous character development FINALLY MAKE SENSE. nothing about Julian felt cohesive before, and i’d always felt like the writers just weren’t really sure what to do with him, or even who he really was. he’s arrogant!/he’s a bit of a bumbling sweetheart! he’s obsessed with being perfect!/he’s afraid of being perfect!

i know that the writers almost certainly had no idea what they were doing with this plotline and thought it up a week before they wrote the script because they hadn’t given Siddig enough screentime lately or something - but they honestly could have fooled me into believing that they’d planned it all along. it makes so much sense given what we know about him, including how contradictory he is. sure, he’s a little arrogant - of course he is, he’s genetically designed to be better than most “normal” humans, and he knows it. and it’s the fact that he’s known all along that is the most heartbreaking, that the message he received as a child was: we don’t want you, not like this anyway, because you are not good enough. so they made him good enough, they made him almost perfect, but attaining that perfection is illegal and dubiously moral and must be kept secret, and so Julian never got to feel equal to other children, because he Wasn’t Good Enough, and then suddenly he was better. he doesn’t know how to feel about himself, whether or not to be proud of his own accomplishments (does he really deserve that award, that commendation, that published article? or is he just - as he calls himself to O’Brien - a “fraud?”) we know that he purposely missed a question on his final exam at Starfleet Medical - he’s terrified of his own potential, he’s terrified of what could happen if his parents’ secret was discovered, and he’s probably terrified that somewhere deep inside of him is a monster of Khan Noonien Singh caliber waiting to get out. and yet, perfection is what his parents wanted, what they designed him to be, what he believed they loved him for, as they could never love little struggling Jules, who was decidedly Not Good Enough to be loved.

Julian is, in many ways, still that little six-year-old boy, trying to please his parents, trying to live up to their expectations so that he will be finally be lovable. and he is also that frightened, angry fifteen-year-old, who finally understood what his parents had done to him, and what it meant, and how it embittered every accomplishment he’d ever made or would again. he resents what he is, but believes it is the only thing he has to offer. there’s much more to Julian Bashir than his genetic structure - “genetic recoding,” says O’Brien, “can’t give you ambition, or a personality, or compassion or any of the things that make a person truly human.” but i’m not sure Julian really believes that of himself, and that’s really, very sad.

TAIN: I can’t see you. Are you alone? 
GARAK: (looking at Julian) Yes. There’s no one else but you and me. 

…oh my GOD WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH ALL THESE GARAK FEELS?
chrIST and can we talk about the fact he specifically allows Julian, and ONLY JULIAN, to stay in the room and silently witness his last conversation with the man who is revealed to be his FATHER? 

KIRA: I’m sure there are plenty of women on this station who would be very interested in you if you gave them a chance. 
ODO: I’ll keep that in mind, Major.

KIRA: Will you ever be able to trust me the same way again?
 Necessary Evil, 2x08

ODO: I’m guilty. What more is there to say?
 Things Past, 5x08

Mister Worf and the Adventure of the Gold Lamé Bathing Suit