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Nov. 15th, 2013 09:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsTwo episodes from the end of season 2 of Deep Space Nine, and Debi has taken to calling this the Fanfic Season because so many of these episodes are just straight off the AO3. Like, I'm not complaining. BUT IT'S HILARIOUS.
17. Playing God
Jadzia-centric! A baby Trill shows up to be Jadzia's mentee. It's a cool exploration of the Jadzia-Curzon dynamic, but nothing about it is all that memorable except the eventual reveal that Jadzia took the Dax symbiote BASICALLY OUT OF SPITE.
18. Profit and Loss
I spent this whole episode shrieking "THIS IS THE CASABLANCA AU!" Of all the station bars in all the world, Quark's hot Cardassian resistance-fighter ex-girlfriend just HAD to walk into his! Who apparently is the LONG-LOST TRAGIC LOVE OF HIS LIFE, too bad we've never heard about her before and will never hear about her again. Also too bad Quark is really creepy about getting her back.
Also Garak is there dropping hilariously heavy-handed tailoring metaphors and eventually doing some triple-crossing for no particularly clear reason, except that he's Garak and somebody needs to be doing the triple-crossing in a Casablanca AU.
The episode ends with a classic "NO SEX UNTIL THE COUNTRY IS LIBERATED!" which would be great if it were ever going to be followed up on, but alas, Hot Cardassian Resistance Fighter and Quark's newfound passion for a free and democratic Cardassia will alike be never seen again.
(That said, I would totally read the Adventures of Hot Cardassian Resistance Fighter and her Two Angry Resistance Fighter Students, just off on their own. They were great!)
19. Blood Oath
And the Casablanca AU is promptly followed up with the THREE MUSKETEERS AU! Or, I mean, I guess it's more the Man in the Iron Mask AU, in which all the Musketeers are old and sad and planning ONE FINAL GLORIOUS ESCAPADE. Jadzia, playing the role of reincarnated D'Artagnan, bumps into three cranky old Klingon buddies with whom Curzon swore a pact of SWASHBUCKLING VENGEANCE. After some soul-searching, they all go off on a SWASHBUCKLING MURDER ADVENTURE with KLINGON SWORDS and it's great.
In addition to all the amazing Jadzia swashbuckling, there is also some nice and fairly subtle stuff between Jadzia and Kira about killing, a thing which Kira has done a lot of, and Dax has done a lot of, but Jadzia, not so much. A good episode!
20. The Maquis, Part One
Is this the first episode of a Star Trek show ever in which Federation ethics and rules are actively questioned? I THINK IT MAY BE. Sisko's old friend turns up and turns out to be a part of a terrorist group on the Cardassian-Federation border. At the end of the episode he symbolically gives Sisko his uniform, and Sisko is clearly HORRIFIED that anyone would voluntarily take off their uniform, like, "wow, dude, do you know what happened last time someone tried to take MY uniform away from me? I SPENT THREE DAYS IN A BOX, BRO. A BOX!"
Meanwhile, Quark attempts to seduce a Vulcan terrorist and accidentally ends up selling her weapons instead, oops. As a sidenote, wow, Vulcan fetishization is SUCH A THING on the Ferengi planet, isn't it? Like, imagine ALL THAT VULCAN LOGIC added to Ferengi business-sense! THEIR BABIES WOULD BE UNSTOPPABLE, says Quark dreamily to himself.
21. The Maquis, Part Two
Sisko tries to give his terrorist friend his uniform back, like, three times ("A BOX!") but terrorist friend is having none of it, so instead Sisko goes on a life-changing field trip with Gal Dukat to stop the terrorists and prevent war from breaking out. Dukat spends the whole episode trying to bond with Sisko and it's kind of hilarious.
In the middle, Sisko finds time to deliver Kira a rant about the Federation and their unachievable ideals and how he has just realized that SOMETIMES Federation ideals can be SOMEWHAT SHORT-SIGHTED in real-world situations, and Kira is like "DUDE. I KNOW. THIS IS WHAT I HAVE BEEN TELLING YOU FOR THE LAST FORTY EPISODES. I KNOW."
22. The Wire
THIS IS THE MOST CLASSIC PIECE OF HURT/COMFORT FANFICTION I HAVE EVER ENCOUNTERED. Like, wow. Okay. So in this episode, Garak is SICK and is pushing Bashir AWAY but won't tell Bashir WHY so Bashir INVESTIGATES and it turns out that Garak has a chip in his head that RELEASES PLEASURE ENDORPHINS TO HELP HIM COPE WITH TORTURE and now it's MALFUNCTIONING and he's ADDICTED because:
"LIVING ON THIS STATION IS TORTURE FOR ME!"
So basically it turns out that Garak has been in a constant state of orgasm for the past two years. AND NOW HE'S ADDICTED TO THE ORGASM CHIP. HE MIGHT DIE.
"WE HAVE TO REMOVE IT," Bashir says. "I'LL HELP YOU THROUGH THE WITHDRAWAL. WHATEVER IT TAKES."
And then Garak goes through withdrawal symptoms and gets ANGRY and yells at Bashir about how he has nothing to look forward to on this stations except LUNCHES WITH HIM, and then Garak angstily spits out three contradictory stories of horrible things he's done in an effort to PUSH BASHIR AWAY, but Bashir REFUSES TO LEAVE HIM, and then there's some WRESTLING, and I can't make this up. I tried to explain this episode to someone else and I just kept falling over laughing. The big reveal at the end is that Garak says he betrayed his friend Elim . . . but ELIM IS GARAK'S FIRST NAME! DUN DUN.
Debi's recipient for Yuletide requested hurt/comfort fic, a genre with which neither of us are all that familiar except secondhand, and she's been meaning to read some for research. NOW SHE DOESN'T HAVE TO. Thank you, Deep Space Nine.
(Oh, and as a cherry on the hilarious fanfic Sunday, it also turns out that Odo has a spy chip in Quark's quarters so he can 'monitor' him whenever he wants. OKAY, ODO.)
23. Crossover
"IS THIS A MIRROR EPISODE?" I said, as soon as I saw the title. "Oh, man, it's not going to be a mirror episode, I'm going to be so disappointed -"
IT WAS A MIRROR EPISODE. A mirror episode in which Kira meets semi-evil Mirror Kira, who has clearly watched the Vampire Willow episode of Buffy like FIVE TIMES and is SO EXCITED to have a mirror version of herself to seduce that she can't even express it. And, oh my god, Nana Visitor knocks it out of the park; everything with Kira and Mirror Kira is PURE GOLD.
As a sidenote, Mirror Kira wears a black leather catsuit, but given that we have already seen that sexy attire for Bajorans consists of layers and layers of interesting knits, Debi and I have decided that black catsuits are the Bajoran equivalent of, like, really boxy business pants-suits. Super professional! NO SEXY TEXTURING AT ALL.
Anyway, Major Kira presides over a slave ship full of humans, because when Kirk was in the Mirror Universe and talked Mirror Spock into embracing the side of peace, love and understanding, the end result was all the aliens forming an alliance and conquering the now-gentle humans and sending them to work in the mines. WAY TO GO, KIRK. The only thing funnier to me than this is the fact that Major Kira is like "You know who Captain Kirk is, yes?" and Kira is like "Captain who?" KIRA DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR ENTERPRISE SHENANIGANS.
Also - also! - Mirror Sisko is not only Mirror Kira's boytoy, but also a MORALLY AMBIGUOUS SPACE PIRATE. We dubbed him Han Sisko.
Fanfic season just keeps GETTING BETTER.
24. The Collaborator
Well, they can't all be gold. I mean, to be fair, Debi and I have been wanting an episode that deals with Bajoran collaborators under the occupation, and this could have been really good. The problem is that it revolves around Kira's INCREDIBLY BORING Bajoran bishop boyfriend and every time he is on screen my brain shuts off. It's awful. His face is just so dull! I keep wanting him to be evil so I have a better reason to dislike him than just "HE'S BORING AND HAS A BORING FACE," but no, he's perfectly nice, it's just that he's boring and has a boring face and we have to spend SO MANY MINUTES watching hm and Kira make out. SIGH.
Strong signs of Odo's crush on Kira coming into play, though! LET THE PINING BEGIN.
17. Playing God
Jadzia-centric! A baby Trill shows up to be Jadzia's mentee. It's a cool exploration of the Jadzia-Curzon dynamic, but nothing about it is all that memorable except the eventual reveal that Jadzia took the Dax symbiote BASICALLY OUT OF SPITE.
18. Profit and Loss
I spent this whole episode shrieking "THIS IS THE CASABLANCA AU!" Of all the station bars in all the world, Quark's hot Cardassian resistance-fighter ex-girlfriend just HAD to walk into his! Who apparently is the LONG-LOST TRAGIC LOVE OF HIS LIFE, too bad we've never heard about her before and will never hear about her again. Also too bad Quark is really creepy about getting her back.
Also Garak is there dropping hilariously heavy-handed tailoring metaphors and eventually doing some triple-crossing for no particularly clear reason, except that he's Garak and somebody needs to be doing the triple-crossing in a Casablanca AU.
The episode ends with a classic "NO SEX UNTIL THE COUNTRY IS LIBERATED!" which would be great if it were ever going to be followed up on, but alas, Hot Cardassian Resistance Fighter and Quark's newfound passion for a free and democratic Cardassia will alike be never seen again.
(That said, I would totally read the Adventures of Hot Cardassian Resistance Fighter and her Two Angry Resistance Fighter Students, just off on their own. They were great!)
19. Blood Oath
And the Casablanca AU is promptly followed up with the THREE MUSKETEERS AU! Or, I mean, I guess it's more the Man in the Iron Mask AU, in which all the Musketeers are old and sad and planning ONE FINAL GLORIOUS ESCAPADE. Jadzia, playing the role of reincarnated D'Artagnan, bumps into three cranky old Klingon buddies with whom Curzon swore a pact of SWASHBUCKLING VENGEANCE. After some soul-searching, they all go off on a SWASHBUCKLING MURDER ADVENTURE with KLINGON SWORDS and it's great.
In addition to all the amazing Jadzia swashbuckling, there is also some nice and fairly subtle stuff between Jadzia and Kira about killing, a thing which Kira has done a lot of, and Dax has done a lot of, but Jadzia, not so much. A good episode!
20. The Maquis, Part One
Is this the first episode of a Star Trek show ever in which Federation ethics and rules are actively questioned? I THINK IT MAY BE. Sisko's old friend turns up and turns out to be a part of a terrorist group on the Cardassian-Federation border. At the end of the episode he symbolically gives Sisko his uniform, and Sisko is clearly HORRIFIED that anyone would voluntarily take off their uniform, like, "wow, dude, do you know what happened last time someone tried to take MY uniform away from me? I SPENT THREE DAYS IN A BOX, BRO. A BOX!"
Meanwhile, Quark attempts to seduce a Vulcan terrorist and accidentally ends up selling her weapons instead, oops. As a sidenote, wow, Vulcan fetishization is SUCH A THING on the Ferengi planet, isn't it? Like, imagine ALL THAT VULCAN LOGIC added to Ferengi business-sense! THEIR BABIES WOULD BE UNSTOPPABLE, says Quark dreamily to himself.
21. The Maquis, Part Two
Sisko tries to give his terrorist friend his uniform back, like, three times ("A BOX!") but terrorist friend is having none of it, so instead Sisko goes on a life-changing field trip with Gal Dukat to stop the terrorists and prevent war from breaking out. Dukat spends the whole episode trying to bond with Sisko and it's kind of hilarious.
In the middle, Sisko finds time to deliver Kira a rant about the Federation and their unachievable ideals and how he has just realized that SOMETIMES Federation ideals can be SOMEWHAT SHORT-SIGHTED in real-world situations, and Kira is like "DUDE. I KNOW. THIS IS WHAT I HAVE BEEN TELLING YOU FOR THE LAST FORTY EPISODES. I KNOW."
22. The Wire
THIS IS THE MOST CLASSIC PIECE OF HURT/COMFORT FANFICTION I HAVE EVER ENCOUNTERED. Like, wow. Okay. So in this episode, Garak is SICK and is pushing Bashir AWAY but won't tell Bashir WHY so Bashir INVESTIGATES and it turns out that Garak has a chip in his head that RELEASES PLEASURE ENDORPHINS TO HELP HIM COPE WITH TORTURE and now it's MALFUNCTIONING and he's ADDICTED because:
"LIVING ON THIS STATION IS TORTURE FOR ME!"
So basically it turns out that Garak has been in a constant state of orgasm for the past two years. AND NOW HE'S ADDICTED TO THE ORGASM CHIP. HE MIGHT DIE.
"WE HAVE TO REMOVE IT," Bashir says. "I'LL HELP YOU THROUGH THE WITHDRAWAL. WHATEVER IT TAKES."
And then Garak goes through withdrawal symptoms and gets ANGRY and yells at Bashir about how he has nothing to look forward to on this stations except LUNCHES WITH HIM, and then Garak angstily spits out three contradictory stories of horrible things he's done in an effort to PUSH BASHIR AWAY, but Bashir REFUSES TO LEAVE HIM, and then there's some WRESTLING, and I can't make this up. I tried to explain this episode to someone else and I just kept falling over laughing. The big reveal at the end is that Garak says he betrayed his friend Elim . . . but ELIM IS GARAK'S FIRST NAME! DUN DUN.
Debi's recipient for Yuletide requested hurt/comfort fic, a genre with which neither of us are all that familiar except secondhand, and she's been meaning to read some for research. NOW SHE DOESN'T HAVE TO. Thank you, Deep Space Nine.
(Oh, and as a cherry on the hilarious fanfic Sunday, it also turns out that Odo has a spy chip in Quark's quarters so he can 'monitor' him whenever he wants. OKAY, ODO.)
23. Crossover
"IS THIS A MIRROR EPISODE?" I said, as soon as I saw the title. "Oh, man, it's not going to be a mirror episode, I'm going to be so disappointed -"
IT WAS A MIRROR EPISODE. A mirror episode in which Kira meets semi-evil Mirror Kira, who has clearly watched the Vampire Willow episode of Buffy like FIVE TIMES and is SO EXCITED to have a mirror version of herself to seduce that she can't even express it. And, oh my god, Nana Visitor knocks it out of the park; everything with Kira and Mirror Kira is PURE GOLD.
As a sidenote, Mirror Kira wears a black leather catsuit, but given that we have already seen that sexy attire for Bajorans consists of layers and layers of interesting knits, Debi and I have decided that black catsuits are the Bajoran equivalent of, like, really boxy business pants-suits. Super professional! NO SEXY TEXTURING AT ALL.
Anyway, Major Kira presides over a slave ship full of humans, because when Kirk was in the Mirror Universe and talked Mirror Spock into embracing the side of peace, love and understanding, the end result was all the aliens forming an alliance and conquering the now-gentle humans and sending them to work in the mines. WAY TO GO, KIRK. The only thing funnier to me than this is the fact that Major Kira is like "You know who Captain Kirk is, yes?" and Kira is like "Captain who?" KIRA DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR ENTERPRISE SHENANIGANS.
Also - also! - Mirror Sisko is not only Mirror Kira's boytoy, but also a MORALLY AMBIGUOUS SPACE PIRATE. We dubbed him Han Sisko.
Fanfic season just keeps GETTING BETTER.
24. The Collaborator
Well, they can't all be gold. I mean, to be fair, Debi and I have been wanting an episode that deals with Bajoran collaborators under the occupation, and this could have been really good. The problem is that it revolves around Kira's INCREDIBLY BORING Bajoran bishop boyfriend and every time he is on screen my brain shuts off. It's awful. His face is just so dull! I keep wanting him to be evil so I have a better reason to dislike him than just "HE'S BORING AND HAS A BORING FACE," but no, he's perfectly nice, it's just that he's boring and has a boring face and we have to spend SO MANY MINUTES watching hm and Kira make out. SIGH.
Strong signs of Odo's crush on Kira coming into play, though! LET THE PINING BEGIN.
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Date: 2013-11-15 03:29 pm (UTC)You have to tumble this so I can reblog it every time I remember it and laugh and laugh and laugh. And laugh some more.
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Date: 2013-11-15 03:55 pm (UTC)As a sidenote, the aged collaborator in "The Collaborator" showed up in a really scandalous mesh-knit vest over a cable-knit sweater. INAPPROPRIATE!
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Date: 2013-11-15 04:07 pm (UTC)*marks date and time*
Jadzia, playing the role of reincarnated D'Artagnan
Bwahahaha.
Is this the first episode of a Star Trek show ever in which Federation ethics and rules are actively questioned?
Technically not, but effectively yes. It's the first time where it isn't an alien mind-controlling people or shit like that--the first time the franchise turns an eye inward and asks, "really?"
As a sidenote, wow, Vulcan fetishization is SUCH A THING on the Ferengi planet, isn't it?
It's the ears.
because when Kirk was in the Mirror Universe
Apparently, when the episode was going to come out nobody knew that this would continue the original Mirror Universe shenanigans, and when Mirror Kira said "Kirk" people responded "no shit!"
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Date: 2013-11-15 04:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-15 08:37 pm (UTC)That was my first thought too!
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Date: 2013-11-15 08:34 pm (UTC)I love Jadzia's voice as she tries to deny it, and Kira clueing on instantly because, duh. It's one of the best moments between them, and they have some pretty good moments.
Is this the first episode of a Star Trek show ever in which Federation ethics and rules are actively questioned? I THINK IT MAY BE.
I have thought for a while that I ought to make a post about how I love DS9 extra much because I'm Swedish and leftist, and whenever people go "OMG socialist paradise!" I go "eh, not really." And DS9 is pretty much "eh, not really" about the claims of Federation paradise.
THIS IS THE MOST CLASSIC PIECE OF HURT/COMFORT FANFICTION I HAVE EVER ENCOUNTERED.
Garak/Bashir is all about the classics. It's a pity it was never on-screen canon (though the actors shipped it, which is something).
A mirror episode in which Kira meets semi-evil Mirror Kira, who has clearly watched the Vampire Willow episode of Buffy like FIVE TIMES
Well, technically that'd be the other way around. Although, seeing how DS9 is set in the future, maybe they've both watched each other!
Also - also! - Mirror Sisko is not only Mirror Kira's boytoy, but also a MORALLY AMBIGUOUS SPACE PIRATE. We dubbed him Han Sisko.
The most hilarious thing about this (and it's pretty hilarious on its own) is that regular Kira will probably never be able to look at regular Sisko quite the same way again.
Also, all of your comments are gold and I love them.
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Date: 2013-11-15 10:08 pm (UTC)And indeed! DS9 is set far in the future, there is no reason at all that mirror!Kira should not be Buffy-fluent. Well, except for despising human culture and all that it stands for, I guess.
I'M SO LOOKING FORWARD TO SISKO MEEITNG MIRROR SISKO.
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Date: 2013-11-16 07:36 am (UTC)I guess replicators would deal with a fair bit of that, but yeah, if nobody ever hits anyone over the head with a hammer I'll be very surprised.
Well, except for despising human culture and all that it stands for, I guess.
I haven't had the impression that Kira despises human culture. She just doesn't want it taking over Bajor. Which, all things considered, isn't an unreasonable position.
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Date: 2013-11-16 01:40 am (UTC)(if it helps, you can think of Vedik Boring as Father Mulcahey's boring space twin and then suddenly he gets mildly pitiful. Still not very interesting though.)
ALSO THE WIRE IS THE BEST EVER. AS IS THE CROSSOVER.
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Date: 2013-11-16 01:47 pm (UTC)But it saddens me because everything else about Kira's existence is so delightful to me, and I want Kira's love life to be delightful to me too! ALAS.