#of course it did they don't take the character seriously or consider what they're doing with him despite his legitimate grievances

[genericpuff]

I wonder why christian misrepresentation are rarely talked about if compared to other religion misrepresentation. Like, I've seen people really vocal about Greek myths misrepresentation in LO and such (and it's valid because it's a culture and religion) but I rarely saw the same thing with christian even though there are many media who use christian religion innacurately, to the point where it comes off as using it as an aesthetic and not a proper religion.

Is it because of rampant religious trauma especially in western world? No ulterior motives on this question. I'm not a christian and yet I'm curious about this. I apologize if this sounds harsh.

I obviously don't have The Answer(tm) to this but personally speaking (and I'm about to get VERY personal here so take this with MOUNTAINS OF SALT), I think it's just the obvious - Christian mythology is one of the most well-documented and strongly protected out of virtually any other religion on the planet. Especially here in the West, it's commonplace for kids to go to Sunday school, for couples to have Christian weddings even if they're not practising Christians themselves, even the American anthem references the Christian God. It's simply not as easy to 'misrepresent' it because the representation is written into our very fabric of society. Even Greece itself is primarily made up of Orthodox Christians.

So anyone that does 'misrepresent' it are either completely mislead hardcore Christians, or people who are doing it intentionally, such as with the intent to make a parody of it or to deconstruct it through a different context or whatever have you. And of course, people will still get mad at those things, if you're implying that people aren't vocal about Christian misrepresentation then frankly IDK what to tell you there LOL If you want a contextual example in the realm of webtoons, Religiously Gay was dragged to hell and back during its launch for having a very crude and insulting depiction of St. Michael, and frankly, yeah I don't disagree because what the fuck is this-

(like at best it's just terrible character design lmao that said, there's also plenty else to criticize Religiously Gay for, including its fetishy representation of gay relationships and the fact that it's still just the "naive person who looks and acts like a child hooks up with mean person in a position of power" trope, blech, but the character design is definitely the first thing you notice)

There are even plenty of hardcore Christians who will deadass claim "misrepresentation" over things that ARE factually correct but they just haven't read the actual Bible and simply cherry pick what works for their own agenda. And of course those people are routinely called out by people like myself who know for a fact that Jesus wouldn't have promoted the war crimes that many modern day Christians are committing and justifying today. So it really depends on the definition of "misrepresentation" here.

The issue specifically with LO and Rachel that I personally call her out for (and many others) is that she's called herself a "folklorist" and claimed she's so much more knowledgeable on Greek myth than anyone else, while making a complete mockery of the original mythologies while not being honest about her intent as to whether LO is actually supposed to be a legitimate retelling OR a parody (because it sure acts like the latter more than the former, but she still seems to expect us to take it seriously and consider her knowledge of Greek myth superior?) Which leads to a lot of her teenage audience claiming shit like "Persephone went down to the underworld willingly" and "Apollo did assault Persephone in the original myths actually" and the classic "why would Lore Olympus lie or make up fake myths?"

You just can't pull off this extent of erasure with Christian mythology because we have a whole ass book of it that's been preserved, sold on shelves, and systematically integrated into society for thousands of years. Of course, there are people who will still try their damned best to twist the Bible to match their own bigotry with the whole "Jesus hates gays" bullshit (he would never), but it's met with equal amounts of 'misrepresentation' that are actually fully well-read and are intentionally subverting and changing things to either critique, parody, or restore the original intent of a lot of stories in the Bible without all the manufactured right-wing crap.

Greek myth, on the other hand, has some stories that are well preserved, and others, not so much. And in the modern day outside of the poems and hymns, you'll also rarely, if ever, see anyone use stories from Greek myth to ostracize, torture, and murder other people. "Misrepresenting Christianity" is more often done by actual Christians who are using the Bible to commit hate crimes than the people who have actually read the Bible and are just taking creative liberties with it for the sake of deconstructing / parodying / analyzing / subverting it. Veggie Tales "misrepresents" Christian stories because obviously Moses wasn't a fucking cucumber lmao but it still accomplishes its goal by retelling Christian stories in a way that's fun and educational for children.

By comparison (on the whole, I'm not comparing LO to Veggie Tales LMAO) LO just isn't clear in its intentions beyond Rachel's initial statements that she was trying to "deconstruct" the myths, while labelling herself as a folklorist. Therefore, I'm going to criticize how she does it because the way she's done it up until now has been very mishandled and has resulted in a lot of misinterpretations of the myths simply for the sake of fandom. And yes, these people exist in Christian media as well - they're called TV evangelists.

And that's my (very heavy) two cents.

#here's your reminder that missionaries are colonizers #find me the Hellenistic pagans knocking on people's doors asking them if they want to hear about the glory of Aphrodite lmao #honestly it also depends on what you're surrounding yourself with #obv if you take part in the LO fandom and avoid what's going on in the christian world then what you experience and see will seem skewed #like even i could be very wrong in my opinion based on my own experiences as someone who lives in the west- #maybe there ARE pagans knocking on doors and using greek myth to commit hate crimes #so yeah we all gotta try not to fall for survorship bias #there are plenty of stories of people getting mad about christian mythology and its misrepresentations on BOTH sides #lo critical #lore olympus critical #anti lore olympus #webtoon critical #ama #ask me anything #anon ama #anon ask me anything

[shayyprasad]

skittles | peter parker

summary: peter likes to pick on your size.

warnings: ...short... shaming...? idk it's supposed to be an attempt at fluff

pairing: peter parker x short!fem!reader

word count: 0.67k+ words

peter parker loved you, no doubt, and he also happened to love making fun of you.

"ughhh, peter just give it to me!" you whined, reaching for the remote he held way up above you.

"what do we say when we want something?"

"give it to me or i'll snap your neck," you said, despite the fact the both of you knew it wasn't possible. but, hey, we're all for empty threats.

"mmm, close. but no."

"give!"

"being tall is so much fun."

"you've stooped down too far to be considered tall now."

"awww, wittle y/n is angwy!"

you gave him a warning stare, and he grinned in response. whining again, you tugged at his shirt. peter had the most smug look on his face, and you just wanted to slap it right off, "beg, shorty."

you gasped, "no! and i'm not that short! i'm- i'm... just below average."

"okay, okay. you're not short. you're," pete paused, thinking, before his eyes lit up, "you're fun-sized!"

"i'm sorry, what? how is that any better?!"

"aw, c'mon, that's adorable!"

"fun-sized!" you repeated, frowning. "how on any earth is that any better?"

"no, no, it's better! like- like... skittles!"

"...skittles? the candy?"

"well, yeah."

"the candy? did you just compare to to candy?"

"i guess. but, wait, if it's any consolation, you totally taste better."

"peter!"

"what?"

"give me the remoteeee. i wanna watch gilmore girls!"

"you've seen it a million times."

"boo-hoo. it's my turn."

he tsked, "okay. but you gotta get the remote first."

"peter, i swear i'll end your supply of kisses. for a lifetime."

the boy gasped, "you'd never, skittles."

"no. i don't like that name. i like 'angel'. call me that. not skittles."

"but it's so cute! and it fits!"

you simply glared at him. "so does angel!"

"meh. and it is," peter insisted.

"it most definitely is not."

"well, of course you don't like it. you're fun-sized."

"not. fun-sized. that's so much worse then being called half-pint! or oompa-loompa! actually, is it bad that i prefer pee-wee? or stumpy?"

"no, i think i like skittles."

"peteeeee. babyyyy."

"yes?" he asked, teasing.

"give me the damn remote," then after a second, "please?"

"hmmm-"

"you know what?" you said, tossing your hair over your shoulder, "no kisses."

"nah, you'd-"

"they've been revoked."

"but-"

"re-voked."

"ski-"

you snapped your head back at him, raising an eyebrow.

peter smirked, "skittles."

true to your word, you'd refused to kiss him the rest of that day and into the next. unfortunately for you, he was taking it great.

peter seemed to really like that nickname, but it didn't matter. you'd break him.

probably.

"skittles!"

you groaned loudly, muttering curses under your breath. from across the hall, you could see peter, a bright grin on his face. shoving things in your locker, you refused to give him any good attention.

who's skittles?

"not me," you muttered under your breath.

"hi," peter said, leaning in for a kiss, which you dodged. peter pouted, "still?"

"yes."

"oh, well. hey! i got you something!"

"ooh, really," you asked, breaking character.

he chuckled, "peace offering." peter tossed something at you, which you managed to catch. looking down at it, you groaned once again, glancing back up at his stupid face.

"seriously?" you asked.

it was a pack of fun-sized skittles.

"you likey?"

"no. me not likey." but since you were hungry, you tore the bag open. before you could get any, he grabbed some.

"hey! those are mine!"

peter plopped them in his mouth, "i gave them to you."

"exactly, so they're mine now!"

he opened his mouth, sticking out his tongue, "want them back?"

"ew, no!" you crossed your arms, "i'm telling may."

"oh, yeah? what'll she do?"

"ummm.... ground you."

"she can't ground me. i'm spider-man."

you smirked, eating an orange skittle. "remind me again, does she know that?"

"no- hey!"

"that's right." you stood in triumph, closing your eyes briefly. in that moment, catching you off-guard, he kissed you. forgetting momentarily of what you said you wouldn't do, you kissed him back, smiling lightly.

pete smiled, "tastes like skittles."

#tom holland x reader #tom holland #peter parker #spiderman #peter parker x reader #peter parker x you #fluff #tom holland x you #peter parker drabble #peter parker fanfiction #peter parker imagine #marvel #the avengers

[alexizacatboy]

I did a redesign for Sir Pentious! (Opinions below)

I really enjoy this silly goober, no natter how good or bad I think the show is, but my god...the og design...I feel really negative about it. Something just feels so frustrating when I look at it!

So here's some of my thoughts:

Considering his role in the show as more of a comic relief (though he's truly trying to redeem himself and takes it more seriously than, for example, Angel Dust), I wanted to give him a softer shape. Something to indicate that he's not really a threat to anyone, given how easily he's beat by Cherri Bomb (thats her name, right?)and, of course, Alastor.

I also gave him a bit different clothing, so instead of a suit he's wearing a vest. I think it looks better on him, as well as underlines the fact that he's an inventor (along with his visible goggles and a differently shaped hat). Bowtie became a simple tie and I gave him gloves! I don't find the "claws" thing about the designs cringe since animating fingers like that is probably more simple, but the fact that the patters of different characters are same recolored stuff definitely is!

Then, of course, I gave him a snake face with his fangs out. Because despite his goofiness, he's still supposed to be a demon (or, well, a sinner, more specifically).

What I REALLY dislike about the og design is the fact that he has a lot of eyes which are the same color!!!! I feel like it makes the design a little heavy and hard to look at, at least for me. So I left him with normal eyes, as well as giving him (somewhat of) an eye pattern on his hood. I also left the eye on the hat, but it's not really his, rather just a useful hypnotic device in the shape of an eye!

--

What I dislike about the og, is the color scheme and the similarity of the design with other "sexy handsome" characters (though, in this regard he is a little more unique)

I mean sure, he fits with the world in terms of colors. But that doesn't mean the colors arepicked great! I'm a big enjoyer of 1 character = 1 color thing. It makes you realise how different the cast is! However, when 1 color is associated with muktiple characters, it's pretty hard to see their differences and what makes them their own self. Sir Pentious looks like yellow Alastor, when he's supposed to be just himself!

If I haven't watched the show and only knew one character - Alastor (for understandable reasons), I'd think they're somehow related. Friends, enemies, boss - employee, equals as overlords - that kind of stuff. I'd never guess Sir Pentios acts differently. I'd just assume they have same character traits or same motives! I'd never be able to tell actually tell the difference!

That's not how you get people to watch your show! You're not supposed to offer them a cast of similarly looking characters and then say "oh, well, they're actually all very different! You just have to watch it to find out!"

No! You have to visually tell them "They're very different, but they're together for a reason. What reason? Why don't you watch my show? Wink wink"

That is how you do it!

Overall, I hope you guys can give me some thoughts! I'm not a professional, of course. And I'm not telling anyone that they have to abide by what I say. It's simply my opinion and hiw I feel about it. If you like Viv's designs, then that's great! Hope you have a great day!

#hazbin hotel redesign #hazbin critical #hazbin hotel #hazbin pentious

[zvtara-was-never-canon]

So, sokkastyles makes this post about people who criticize Zuko for “I’ll save you from the pirates” act like he didn’t changed and if his redemption arc was non-existent or something. Which is somewhat valid, some people act like Zuko didn’t change and he did grow as person for the most part.

I pointed out “Most people don't pretend Zuko never changed. 'Cause he did. It's just annoying when people romanticize Zuko tying Katara to a tree and stuff when it isn't romantic. It's like romanizing Aang kissing Katara in EIP, it isn't romantic, he kissed her without consent”.

Then sokkastyles said this:

no, it is not like that. A cartoon villain tying the hero to a tree is not like kissing someone without their consent. People romanticizing it is fine, actually. What's not fine is for you to compare what in canon is a nonsexual act to Aang violating Katara's consent, and then tell zutara shippers they are

"annoying" for doing something you don't like that's totally harmless. Go away. You are annoying.

Then after some brief discourse they blocked me and posted this https://www.tumblr.com/sokkastyles/747582627682336768/tying-someone-to-a-tree-is-just-as-bad-as-kissing?source=share

Maybe, just maybe I’m overreacting, but grabbing someone by the hand and tying them up is pretty serious offense that could happen, and is just as bad if not worse than kissing someone briefly without consent. But that’s just me, what do you think?

It really is comparing apples to oranges - but not in the way that idiot assumes.

The Ember Island kiss was "non-consensual" in the sense of "Aang didn't verbally ask to kiss her first" (which is common and normal to some degree no matter how much zutarians lie that "Well, EVERYONE asks first", especially considering they had consensually kissed twice before) but not in the sense of "Katara very explicitly rejected his advances and Aang FORCED himself on her."

She asked for time to think, he jumped the gun, she got mad, he realized it was a bad move and felt awful.

Meanwhile, the zutara tree scene is literally Zuko holding Katara hostage, taunting and threatening her. It's not sexual, but it is hostile - and zutara as a ship only exists because of people MAKING that scene sexual and writting fics of Zuko full on raping Katara. THAT is the base of the zutara ship, no matter how much they deny it. The pirate scene, in zutara fanon, has always been "What if Zuko raped Katara and that made her like him?" That has been the consistent fanon zutara spin on that scene.

Now, zutara fans would tell you "But it's fine to do something like that as long as you know it'd be abhorrent in real life. Fictional characters are not people that are truly able to consent to literally anything, good or bad, that happens to them in a story" - and let me be clear here, they're right. Katara and Zuko are not real. The victim, the criminal and the crime itself aren't real. Claiming "liking zutara is supporting rape" because of those fics would be like saying liking Avatar is the same as supporting the use of child soldiers in a war, or that the writers commited real child abuse against a fictional 13-year-old when they created Zuko's backstory.

But, of course, they can't just end it at the reasonable part. Them enjoying non-con subtext/fanon for their ship is fine because it's not real - but one poorly timed kiss means Aang is the devil and that anyone that likes Kataang is a raging misogynist and RAPE apologist, even though zutarians are the ones constantly going for rape for THEIR ship.

You see why no one takes these people seriously?

#anti zutara #pro kataang #pro aang

[pluralprompts]

I am not a system, but I have many friends who are and have researched specifically DID due to having those friends. I'm curious your opinion on me writing these prompts - as I don't intend to invade a space intentionally made to provide positive content to communities that I'm not a part of.

Firstly, you can do whatever you want forever, so jot that down –

Okay, okay. On a serious note, I think it's fine. Some disagree with me, especially when it comes to DID, but I don't think someone has to be a system, have any specific disorder, or be of/have any particular identity to write about these sorts of things. I am much less concerned with the identity of the author than I am how the character of a particular identity is written. That is to say, I am interested more in variety of plural and system representation, especially when it comes to positive or optimistic views on our lives*, than I am worried about whether the one(s) writing that representation are plural or a system, too. I care more about if the author is making a well-intentioned effort than if the author personally knows they're a system and openly identifies as one.

* I am comparing, of course, to the two main portrayals of systems in fiction: that we are evil (serial killer trope), or that we need to be fixed (fusion treated as the inevitable, and only, way for us to recover and live happy lives). There are ways to approach these tropes that avoid simply perpetuating stereotypes or disableism, and I would hate for anyone who relates to either to be told they cannot read or write about experiences similar to their own, so I am not saying these should never be written – but at the same time, with these being so prevalent, and so often without nuance, I am naturally more interested in fresh takes that show more pleasant sides of plurality, or at the very least more relatable struggles, than just more of the same.

With this in mind, I don't see singlet writers of plurality as an enemy. Rather, I see any inclusion of plurality in creative writing – from a simple OC kept to oneself, to a poem shared with a writers' group, to a bestselling series – to be normalizing plurality, introducing the concept to some and serving as a reminder of its existence to others. I'm someone who finds representation to be very important to progress, and thus I consider anyone who offers respectful** representation to be an active ally to plurals and systems. I would rather have a singlet writer make some mistakes while creating representation because they don't have personal experience with the subject than have less representation overall; if you're willing to write a character as a system, I'll be glad to see more representation out there.

** When I say "respectful", I don't mean it has to be sanitized or perfect. I just mean that it's done with research, and avoids relying on stereotypes, treating us like a horror trope or, again, like we inherently need to be "fixed" by final fusion – by becoming as singlet-like as possible. Again, looking for good intentions, here.

Besides, people who are presumably singlets will keep accidentally writing systems anyway, regardless of what I think. Seriously, do you know how often I keep coming across this? Sometimes I just sit and wonder how many of these authors are plural, and how many of them know it. Especially considering how often writers describe their characters as "acting on their own".

And on a similar note, I don't want anyone to feel pressured to out themselves as a system in order to write about plurality (especially considering writing about it can be part of someone's questioning journey). I've seen how that's gone down in places like the queer community (*cough* harassing authors into coming out even when it may not be safe for them to do so *cough cough*) and am not interested in repeating it here. You do not have to tell anyone if you are a system – and you do not have to tell anyone if you are a singlet. You have a right to privacy about your identity and what goes on in your life, no matter the subject matter you write about.

In the end, these prompts are for anyone who wishes to write about plurality. Or even wishes to write in general – I'm well aware that many of these prompts would work for settings in which everyone is a singlet! If you want to write them, you're welcome to. If you mess up, that's okay. It's pretty difficult for even systems to write about what it's like being us, sometimes – you won't be alone in that just because you're a singlet.

(On that note, there are plenty out there who would be happy to give more specific advice if there's any particular details or story beats you want feedback on! Cannot recommend @writing-plurals enough for this.)

Thank you for the ask and for your interest in writing about plurality. I wish you luck in whatever it is you're looking to write!!

TL;DR: it's fine lol don't even worry about it, just try to avoid stereotypes and negative tropes about us, and maybe ask around for a plural beta reader or sensitivity checker if you're worried.

#not a prompt #asks

[beasts-of-jadewood]

Super Lesbian Animal RPG Is The Best Video Game I've Played Since Minecraft

Now that I've finally regained my ability to make publicly visible posts, I'd like to take a moment to gush about the critically acclaimed indie game classic Super Lesbian Animal RPG by @ponett and associates.

Holy shit. Holy shit? This game is so fucking good you guys. Are you kidding me? I know the title sounds like a stupid joke and there is actually a lot of humor in this game but you know what? This is a video game that's worth taking seriously. I've never given a shit about romance as a genre before getting into @slarpg because all the romance stories I've seen as a kid are either dragged-out "Will They, Won't They?" types, painful divorce stories, or fucking Romeo and Juliet. There seems to be this overwhelming belief in the genre that the greatest obstacle faced by a truly happy couple that's meant for each other is the process of getting together, and once they've gotten together the story can end. Of course, anyone who's ever had parents knows that shit isn't true, which is why I'm so fucking happy that SLARPG is a romance story about a couple that's already together and it showcases how they can have disagreements and awkward moments but still overcome them and keep going. I love that shit.

In my opinion, the most important thing a turn-based RPG developer needs to do is make sure the plot of their game is solid. With a more action-oriented game like the Souls series or Armored Core, the story doesn't fucking matter and nobody cares about it. People are in it for the exciting, challenging gameplay. If you show them a crisp parry animation that feels better than sex when you time it perfectly or a sick-ass command grab from a boss or whatever, then they're already sold without even knowing who any of the characters are. But you can't have those things with a turn-based RPG so the story is the most important part, and holy shit did SLARPG have the story nailed down on a cross and ready for worship.

See, I've spent my entire life searching for more stories that are relatable to people who live in the real world but at the same time provide a better alternative to the bleak reality we all know and don't love. SLARPG is one of those stories. Melody and Allison will talk about shit like housing being too expensive and Claire will mention how she doesn't talk to her transphobic parents anymore but they're also able to find happiness and stability with the power of love. It gives the game a sort of hopeful undertone that it's meant to represent the real world if people had the courage to do something about all the awful shit we have. Basically, SLARPG shows that misery exists in its world without normalizing it. Every drop of tear shed by Melody is treated with the immense gravity it deserves. At no point did the game say "This suffering you feel is just what happens in the world, better get used to it kid." but it also simultaneously shows how it's possible to move forwards from that sadness one step at a time. I fucking love that shit.

Read more for spoilers.

Now, getting into spoiler territory. I really like how this game also managed to marry its personal, emotional conflict with its greater, physical conflict. At no point in the game are you made to feel like the action-packed excitement of "Fight enemies, save the world." is interrupted so the characters can work through their private emotional insecurities. No, the characters' emotional insecurities and the world-ending threat they face feed into each other and feel as though they're one in the same. Even the main villain was revealed to be someone suffering from similar insecurities in the end and it's the protagonists' ability to make a positive example of themselves that played a key role in defeating her.

Speaking of the villain, she actually made me briefly consider not liking this game since she initially said that she wanted to destroy all the world's evil and recreate the world in a better state, only for the heroes to immediately try and stop her. I had a huge issue with this plot development at first because I hate it when people who wish to change the world for the better are portrayed as the bad guys for some reason. That is, until SLARPG revealed that its main villain was just making up an excuse and simply wanted personal revenge for the perceived murder of her wife that didn't even actually happen, while the heroes wanted to stop her because they were understandably ignorant and afraid of what the fuck her plan actually meant and how many casualties it might cause. In other words, the villain never actually intended to make the world a better place and was thus not portrayed as a bad person for doing so. She wasn't portrayed as a bad person at all, in fact. Rather, she's more depicted as someone blinded by her own rage and victimized by enabling trolls who wanted to start shit for fun, which made her far more relatable and interesting in my opinion.

All in all, I think SLARPG was great. It's a thematically consistent and tonally hopeful story with a good message and relatable characters. The game itself also left quite a few unaddressed antagonists like the evil crypto-mining corporation that keeps the reanimated corpses of former employees as slaves, or the mysterious being from the astral plane that possessed the protagonist and was never truly defeated. These things make me hopeful that we'll get a sequel or DLC or something one day, and I'll be there to support this series every step of the way. Bobby, if you're reading this, thank you so much. I haven't seriously enjoyed a contemporary work of fiction for years now but this game reminded me of how it feels to actually love a video game for once instead of playing through it out of spite like I did with the Souls series. Keep up the good work, for real.

#slarpg #super lesbian animal rpg #ponett #furry #lgbt art #video games #video game analysis #video game praise

[archivalofsins]

This is proably going to be rude and petty as hell. Hence why it's not going in the tag but-

I love how some of the reaction to the information from Deep Cover has been people just want to frame her in a bad light without considering or even attempting to analyze the reasons behind her behavior. As though these same individuals weren't literally just harassing people for analyzing her character in ways they did not like.

Yet, now, they're asking for people to analyze her more to find out what?

What people were able to fucking discern from her previous statements regarding children before she just blatantly said she jumps kids?

20/06/18 Amane: Thank you very much for teaching me. ……but, though I realise it’s strange me saying this after I asked you, I must admit it’s kind of unexpected. You give off the impression of someone who wouldn’t want to get involved in things like this. Kotoko: ……well, you’re not wrong. I’m surrounded by people who could all be murderers, so I don’t plan on going out of my way to talk and make friends. I can’t let my guard down. But I like ambitious people like you. If you want to study more, then I’m happy to teach. Amane: I see…… You look scary at first impression, but I quite like the way you treat everyone equally regardless of whether they’re older or younger than you. You don’t just treat me like a child or anything like that. Kotoko: Treat you like a child? Hah, you’ve got to be kidding. Back when I was your age, I was already the person I am today. I don’t have any plans to let you get away with something just “because you’re a child.” ……remember that. There, I’ve finished marking. 83%. How do I put it… Even though you act like this, it’s not like you’re super brilliant at studying or anything, huh.

The fuck- How does that make any sense? What are people supposed to analyze? Shit that isn't there?

I can look at a cube for several hours but that's not going to make it a sphere.

Get the fuck out of here. Like no it is not okay to go crying about nuance now when it's convenient to a character you like while ignoring it in Amane's case. All while people who do take the time to analyze these things and take them seriously get continually harrassed for doing so in ways that frame prisoners too negatively. Yet, now that the negative part has been blurted out for all to see we need analysis.

No, people just need someone to find a reason why she's still redeemable. As I've been saying and will continue to say if your forgiveness is contingent upon someone being a good person who you can morally agree with that is not forgives that is just an agreement. That is just a deal.

By forgiving for that reason one is going I expect this other person to behave in ways that will be pleasing to me so I think what they did is fine. Something that only leaves room for disappointment when that person does not turn out to be as moral as one believed them to be.

Add to this that others have been continually harassing people within this community that theorize about characters in a way they personally don't find appealing or see as framing them too negatively. Like yeah no one wants to analyze her. Yeah people are happy she just went on her voice drama and said the quiet part out loud again for the people in the back that didn't hear her when she said it in 2020.

That ship has sailed it's left the harbor because-

"Kotoko isn't a real person, she doesn't actually have thoughts and feelings. Come on; it's not as serious as you're making it. Of course, she's going to be reduced to being violent when she acts violent. She's just two dimensional after all. I mean did you hear her in Mikoto's voice drama when she attacked him? Did you hear her new voice drama?! Or see what happened to the prisoners she admits to attacking during the intermission-"

"Amane aside she even threatened Mikoto and Kazui too."

22/08/05 (Kazui’s Birthday) Kotoko: ……Mukuhara Kazui. Thanks to you, I wasn’t able to properly serve justice to those who did something unforgivable. I’m currently acting as an agent for our prison guard Es. Don’t get in my way next time. Kazui: Oi oi, don’t be silly, Yuzuriha-chan. There’s no way I could just look away from your outrageous display of violence. Anyway, even disregarding the fact violence against those voted guilty isn’t a part of Milgram’s system, what you’re doing is just acting recklessly based on a broad interpretation. As long as I’m free myself, I’ll stop you. Kotoko: ……what a pointless argument. Hmph. Since Es forgives you, I have no choice but to forgive you myself too. If you're to keep to your word, then you’d best do what you can to keep being forgiven. If you’re not, then next time you’ll be one of my targets. Kazui: Oh, how scary. That girl truly is frightening. ……well then, I wonder what the guard will decide to do with me. That’s the one thing I really can’t make out. Honestly…… 22/12/15 (Kotoko’s Birthday) Mikoto: Ah, Koto-chan. It’s been a while. Both of us have kinda split off from the group, but how’ve things been? A lot’s happened, but fr now let’s try to get along. I mean, it’s your birthday today, right? I got the feeling nobody else was going to do anything, so I came to celebrate. Kotoko: ……how carefree. It doesn’t matter, a villain like you won’t be forgiven next time either. And when that time comes, it’ll be the end for you. I’ll make sure of it myself. Mikoto: Ahh?? Just try and do it, you nutjob. I’ll crush anyone who hurts me…… You’re gonna be totally beaten at your own game……![TN: The word “me” here uses first person pronoun “boku”.] Kotoko: Hm. The border between the two is getting a lot vaguer. Your entire existence is a crime. And I will see you’re punished for it. That is what Milgram, and Es, and I have chosen.

"I mean she's even heavily armed."

"We've gotta think about safety- Right~?"

People should keep the energy they gave in mind before it gets returned to sender.

I don't want to see anyone asking for nuance now that was behaving the way I saw before when it came to other trials. It's not that serious it's all in good fun, my verdict doesn't say anything about me, keep that energy. Then on top of that don't expect people you've consistently met with hostility and disrespect to make your case for you when you need it.

Just because it would be helpful for the characters you favor. Literally no one wants to analyze her because some people within this fandom have made analyzing Milgram feel like a wholly unsafe thing to do. The people who like Kotoko's character regardless of her flaws have something that none of the others who favored the prisoners before this point did-

A full month before her music video releases and her trial starts to figure out how to explain this behavior. I say let them figure it out. However, people claiming no one wants to look at Kotoko's situation with nuance are either being disingenious or haven't seen the constant bullshit people who analyze these characters actually go through.

For people like that I only have one thing to say,

Do it yourselves then. It's a lot of work, it's thankless, but analyzing things is fun. Exploring the media one enjoys and figuring out why they enjoy it is fulfilling. Not only that it's something anyone can do. Be the nuance you want to see instead of complaining about people not giving you the answers you want to hear.

Because again I can look at a cube for several hours but that is not going to make it a sphere.

#gunsli rambles #gunsli vents #milgram spoilers

[lachiennearoo]

I AM ASSEMBLING A TEAM FOR A LOW-BUDGET ANIMATED MOVIE

I know am asking a LOT right now, but considering this is a passion project without a deadline or budget, I guess it's why I'm asking here (and well, I'm no professional lmao).

In 2019, I wrote a short quebecois (french canadian) cyberpunk, action, sci-fi story novel. It was my most beloved project, and it still holds a big spot in my heart (even tho some newer stories of mine are higher quality). Ever since I made it, all I've done is draw scenes, characters, anything from it. I have a folder of about 200 pictures, animatics and concept art added to it over the years. One thing doesn't work for me to do the project though: I can't voice act, I can't make music, and I can't animate (well, not anything above basic storyboards, and I wanna do something in 3D lmao).

I have... well, not a lot of money (no seriously, I am VERY broke). So well while I can try my best to pay anyone who is willing to help, I can't guarantee it'll be a lot (which I know it can be frustrating, as an artist, to not be monetarily compensated for your hard work, so that's why I'm saying it now).

Due to all of this, I'm only asking for people who are GENUINELY interested. I can't provide much in terms of budget so I don't wanna give anyone false hopes. But I promise that I will work very hard to fill in any position that I can, like script writing, character and environmental concept art, direction, I can even try to voice-act if there's not enough actors! As for the work itself, I allow as many breaks as needed. You're allowed to work on any personal project if you ever feel tired or overwhelmed. I too will take many breaks. I don't mind how long it takes, months, one year, a few years even, as long as I know it'll eventually be done and that the people working are genuinely interested.

Now if you've stuck this far and are still interested, I'll share the requirements:

MOST IMPORTANT PART: I am searching for 3D modelers and animators (if you can do both that's cool but it would be nice to separate tasks so it's less tiring for each person working). My characters are very diverse-looking and expressive, so above all, I'd prefer someone who can animate faces well because that's really what I want to pop out (but if you can't, that's okay too, I'm not THAT picky) (tho despite being cartooney, I'm more in the simplistic, Clone Wars - Arcane department than I am in the realistic Disney - Pixar one)

I need voice actors who speak french. No English-only speakers, sorry. Most should be natively québécois (or french who can imitate the accent fluently) but there's a few characters who are anglophones or have a french accent, so that could help too if you're not from Québec but wanna make a voice. The story is rather dramatic and action-packed, with a lot of violence, fight scenes, screams of pain and agony, all that, so be ready for that

And of course, I'd like to have some people who can do the soundtrack (one person or more working together). The story is sci-fi/cyberpunk taking place in Québec, so I'd expect someone who can go more techno, european (and cinematic too)

YOU DON'T NEED TO UNDERSTAND FRENCH TO WORK. I'm fully bilingual so I won't have trouble communicating with you. The only language requirements would be in voice-acting, or if you're working in team and need to communicate with someone else, but otherwise there really is no need because, well, google translate is a thing, and I can always be a translator for you as well if needed.

BONUS: If there's someone available (you don't HAVE to for that part, it's just to make things easier, but they're not requirements because those are all things I can do myself), I could always get some bonus script writers to help the process go a bit faster, and translators in case someone wants to put subtitles in different languages

Here is the folder of (most) of the art on Artstation: https://www.artstation.com/rosaliegosselin/albums/2467754

And here is a very short animation I did for it a while back (if you don't want spoilers tho, don't watch it, it's one of the last scenes of the story lmao): https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/782216

And here's the story itself (it's just in french tho, sorry about that, but you can just use Google translate): https://www.wattpad.com/story/214223068-magicae-automata

I hope you feel inspired! If you know anyone who might be interested, do feel free to share this with them! I look forward to working with you! Shoot me a DM if you're interested, and if I get enough people, I'll start a discord for all of us to talk!

#movie #animation #3dart #3d render #3dartist #voice acting #advertising #jobsearch #filmmaking #cyberpunk #french #quebec #queer representation #gay pride #3d model #modelling #animated movies #movie production #free work

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

I've been pondering if I should send this question in for a while now but I just gotta know.

Did they evolve to be anime? Now I know what ur thinking "Anon wtf do you mean?" let me explain.

So, we see all the statues of the great 7, right? And all of the statues and portraits of them are just them. they look exactly the same as they do in their movies, all cartoony like. But don't you think it's weird how no one has commented on their appearance being all cartoonish? The twst universe is filled with handsome anime men. they're around every corner. And you can probably tell that they look nothing like the great 7, all considerably different.

So the theory I purpose is: What if, way back when, everyone DID look cartoonish back in the olden days, but as time went on, things changed about their appearance to look more anime. Why? idk man.

How do beastmen fit into this since evolution takes a while especially if it's an animal becoming more human-like? Maybe beastmen evolved after the anime switch-up.

This is worded really badly so I'm sorry if you don't understand what I'm saying, this is just my crack theory. Have a nice day!

Well, it’s definitely the first time I’ve heard of such a theory, even if it’s just a crack (not meant to be taken seriously) theory 🤔 (Us TWST fans really will analyze anything down to the smallest detail or atom, lol)

It’s an interesting concept, but that’s not really how evolution works. Random traits don’t evolve and appear in a large population “just because”. The environment “selects” for the traits which are best suited for survival in particular conditions, and then those surviving organisms are able to pass that beneficial trait onto their offspring. I… don’t see the evolutionary advantages to characters “turning anime” over time. (I’m not counting the point “more physically attractive people have a leg up in finding a partner(s)” because 1) humans are capable of non-physical attraction, and 2) the variation among anime traits is too high (example: all the bright colored hair despite environments in Twisted Wonderland highly varying) for everyone to coincidentally all converge in the same style; there would theoretically still be a handful of people walking around in the “old” style).

For such drastic changes to occur, it would probably also take an extraordinary amount of time, which doesn’t line up with the technological advances we see in the Disney classics versus modern Twisted Wonderland. All of the stories of the G7 took place at least at a time with primitive inventions like wheels and fire, which were used estimated to have first been discovered ~5000 and 200,000-50,000 years ago, respectively. Assuming the course of history is similar to our world, the earliest possible time for the G7 stories to have been set is around then (and that’s being very generous). But then consider that some traits take millions of years to appear and/or disappear. Many people, for example, get appendicitis because the appendix, which has been estimated to have been in various animals for ~80 million years, is still in their bodies despite no longer serving a clear function (at least not in humans). Modern TWST has tech like smartphones and touch screen tables, so that’d be similar to the 21st century for us irl; in the (relatively) short time span of thousands of years to 2023ish, I don’t think that would be nearly enough time to essentially completely change an entire race’s look (ie their “style”). Major changes take millions and millions of years to come into fruition. It’s true that mutations can occur! However, they are rarely so largely noticed (most of them end up getting corrected by the genes themselves) or are so atomically beneficial that it ends up dominating an entire group. (Note: it is stated in canon that beastmen evolved from actual animals and that Malleus has ancestors who were actual dragons, but that’s basically all the lore we have in regards to evolution.)

The G7 looking different from the TWST characters is the result of the classic Disney style differing greatly from Yana Toboso’s style (ie meta outside of the actual world of the game). No characters find this discrepancy odd because, in all likelihood, the styles don’t appear different to them in-universe. The G7 probably just have a variety of facial features and body types that differentiate them from the average student or staff member at NRC. For example, the Beautiful Queen and Thorn Witch have slender bodies (which are most anatomically similar to the TWST characters) but sharper eyes, the Sea Witch is plump, the Queen of Hearts has a rotund body and nose, the King of Beasts and Sorcerer of the Sands are lanky, and the Lord of the Underworld has more angular facial features. Variation like this also exists in real life.

We the players only notice the cartoonishness vs the anime look because we are omniscient third parties. Our stand-in for the TWST world, Yuu, does not take note of, nor ever comment on, this style difference that the irl players do. If the G7 did look very weirdly different from everyone else, you’d think Grim would make a cheeky comment about it or Yuu would point it out—but they don’t. Therefore, I can only come to the conclusion that in the eyes of everyone in TWST, the G7 are just regular ass looking people rather than individuals who look stylistically out of place. If you think about it, Mickey Mouse also appears to have an extremely differently style than the TWST characters and is actually a character we meet face-to-face; he has no shading at all and looks flat to us (the players), yet Yuu, Grim, and others still never comment about that or why he can stand and walk despite lookin 2D. They are focused on his relation to Yuu rather than on his appearance. This supports the idea that, in the eyes of the characters IN Twisted Wonderland, Disney characters may not be registered in that stylistic difference. They must look like they “belong” in that world, and thus in the same style as the TWST characters (from their perspective, NOT the players’ perspective).

Something else to consider is that we haven’t (or rather, can’t) met the G7 in person. All the instances of them we’ve seen are portraits in Crowley’s office and the statues on Main Street—in other words, works of art. Who is to say that these legendary historical figures are accurately depicted? Even if they consistently look the same across depictions, it could just be that most artists collectively agreed “yup, based on what we know of history… they must look like this”. Alternatively, these (“Disney style”) depictions of the G7 could be the result of a popular artist movement or style present at the time period(s) in which the seven were at their prime. Again, these points are all also true of real life instances of artworks featuring important figures.

#twst #twisted wonderland #twst theory #twisted wonderland theory #twst theories #twisted wonderland theories #disney twisted wonderland #notes from the writing raven #question #Grim #Yuu #Malleus Draconia #Mickey Mouse

[beatrice-otter]

Third Chance

Title: Third Chance Fandom: Star Trek: Deep Space 9 Written for: fly_to_dawn in Fic In A Box 2023 Characters: Ro Laren, Kira Nerys, Jadzia Dax Length: 13,236 words Rating: General Audiences

AN: Canon has two possible outcomes for Ro Laren. In Picard, she survived the destruction of the Maquis, spent time in prison, and then was recruited by Starfleet Intelligence. In the books and Star Trek Online, she survived the Maquis and joined the Bajoran Militia, and was stationed to DS9 as security chief.

Ro already got a second chance to start her life over, on the Enterprise; I figure this is her third chance at the life she wanted.

On Dreamwidth. On Pillowfort. On Ad Astra. On Squidgeworld. On Cohost.

"Colonel, you can't seriously be considering allowing this." Lieutenant Belasco's voice was filled with a sort of arrogant disbelief that Kira found grating.

If I were going to argue with either Starfleet or the Militia about personnel, it would be to get rid of Belasco, not Ro, Kira thought to herself. The lieutenant was Deep Space Nine's Starfleet replacement for Chief O'Brien. He was less skilled than O'Brien was (although that was an unfair comparison—there was a reason O'Brien had been tapped to teach at Starfleet Academy, a rare honor for an NCO). He was less experienced, both in engineering matters and in personnel management. And he had in full that Human arrogance about the Federation's superiority, with an unhealthy helping of post-Dominion War suspicion and anger.

"Why not?" Kira asked, instead of saying any of that.

"Because she's a terrorist!" Belasco said.

"So am I," Kira pointed out.

"It's not the same thing!" Belasco said.

"Name one thing Ro Laren—or the Maquis in general—have done that I didn't do in the Resistance."

"They used biogenic weapons on Quatal Prime."

"And we used trilithium resin on Solossos III," Kira pointed out. Much as she respected and admired Captain Sisko, and understood his feelings about Eddington's betrayal, that was one decision she disagreed with.

"They regularly killed civilians."

"I killed a lot of Cardassian so-called civilians in my day," Kira said. "That's why the Federation called the Resistance terrorists." She shook her head. "Cardassians don't make as strong a distinction between military and civilian as the Federation does, and when the Cardassians are conquering a place, the civilians are acting as part of the occupation, suppression, and resource-extraction. They're not innocents completely separate from what their government is doing—they're agents of the state no matter what their role or title. That was just as true in the Demilitarized Zone as it was in the Occupation."

Belasco gaped at her, but was at least smart enough not to further that argument. He wouldn't win. "She betrayed Starfleet!" he said.

Now, that Kira had no answer for. But fortunately, she didn't need one. The door to her office chimed. "Come in," she said.

Worf stepped through the door, clad in civilian garb that was half-way between Klingon and Federation styles. She gestured him to a seat on the couch, and sat down in the armchair across from it, leaving Belasco standing off to the side.

"Ambassador, thank you for taking the time away from your leave," Kira said. Given that Dax was still stationed on Deep Space Nine as science officer, and that the station was the hub of diplomatic efforts both between quadrants and within Alpha Quadrant nations finding new equilibrium after the war, they saw quite a bit of him. But he and Dax had a tendency to disappear into their quarters when he was here.

"Of course, Colonel Kira," Worf said, settling himself comfortably. "How can I help?"

"You served on the Enterprise with Ro Laren, didn't you?" Kira asked. "What's she like?"

"Capable, tactically brilliant, and determined," Worf said without hesitation. "She was an asset to the ship on numerous occasions, well beyond what one would expect of her rank. Cool-headed under pressure. However, she did have problems with authority, which made her … challenging to manage."

Kira raised her eyebrows. For Worf, that was effusive praise. "And her last mission with Enterprise?" Had she been like Eddington, biding her time and waiting for an opportunity to betray her crewmates? Or had it been a more spur-of-the-moment thing?

Worf pondered that before speaking. "I was not consulted on that assignment, and I would have objected to it if I had been. Whatever the tactical objectives, it was dishonorable, and part of a flawed strategy that was unlikely to lead to the long-term results the Federation wished. Lieutenant Ro was an honorable officer, and her sympathies would very naturally be with the people she was being asked to infiltrate and betray."

"So instead, she betrayed Starfleet?" Belasco said.

Worf shot him an irritated glance. "Why are you asking about her?" he asked Kira.

"She survived the fall of the Maquis and joined the Bajoran Militia," Kira said. "They're assigning her here, as chief of security."

Worf cocked his head. "I am pleased to hear that she is alive and well, and in a position that will suit her abilities," he said. "I will pass the information on to Captain Picard—she was a protégé of his."

"Her last mission is classified," Kira said. "Can you share anything about what to do to ensure it doesn't happen again?"

"Don't send her out to gain peoples' trust in order to betray them to the Cardassians," Worf said, with the dry understatement he did so well.

"I think I can guarantee that's not going to happen as long as she's in the Militia," Kira said. "Even if the Cardassians turn expansionist again, Bajor will never try to appease them by helping them conquer others."

Worf nodded. "I believe the Federation, also, has learned the futility of attempting to appease expansionist powers. It is foolish, and only emboldens them." This changed the subject to the status of various negotiations and maneuverings among the various Alpha Quadrant powers, which were all licking their wounds from the Dominion War and trying to re-establish their spheres of influence and alliances in the new, post-War reality.

To his credit, Belasco controlled his fuming and made insightful comments at appropriate times. He might be a mediocre engineer, but he had a good knowledge of the larger diplomatic and strategic picture that Kira had found useful.

***

The first thing Kira noticed about her new security chief was the earring.

"Captain Ro Laren, reporting as ordered," Ro said, striding into Kira' office.

Kira looked her up and down. "You a follower of the Pah Wraith?"

"What?" Ro frowned.

"The earring, captain," Kira said.

"The Pah Wraith are a myth to scare children with," Ro said. "There aren't any Wraith devotees, haven't been for centuries."

"You haven't been back on Bajor very long, have you," Kira said.

"Only two weeks on Bajor itself," Ro said. "The refugee processing was on Derna, and the Militia orientation and retraining was on Jeraddo."

Kira nodded. "On multiple occasions, Pah-wraiths have possessed people on this station, either to try and destroy the Celestial Temple or fight the Prophets. One of their followers tried to assassinate Captain Sisko on Stardate 52152. It was a Pah-wraith that collapsed the wormhole on Stardate 51950, and if Captain Sisko hadn't given his life to seal the Fire Caves, the Pah-wraiths would have destroyed the Celestial Temple and spread themselves to countless worlds across the quadrant, and given their malice and love of death and destruction, that would have been disastrous for everyone." She raised her eyebrows. "Nobody told you any of that?"

"No," Ro said. "I did get a number of snide comments about the earring. But I left Bajor at the age of nine and hadn't been back since, so I didn't know it was anything unusual." She reached up and took off the earring, switching it to the other side.

"Why do you wear it on the wrong side, if not to signal allegiance to the Kosst Amojan?" Kira asked.

"Because I don't like people trying to feel my pah," Ro said. She grimaced as she did so, and fumbled a bit with the clasp, obviously unused to wearing it on the correct side.

There had to be more to it; Kira knew Bajorans who rejected Bajoran culture (or aspects of it) and all that the earring symbolized, but they didn't wear the traditional earring on the wrong ear. They didn't wear earrings at all, or wore Federation-style earrings. But Ro didn't seem to want to say more about it, and Kira had more important things to worry about.

"Have a seat, captain," she said, pointing to the chair across from her desk.

"Thank you, sir," Ro said.

Kira wasn't sure if she saw something ironic, or if that was just Ro's normal demeanor. "I have the non-classified portion of your Starfleet record, and Ambassador Worf gives you high praise."

"Ambassador Worf?" Ro said.

"It's a new appointment since the end of the war."

Ro raised her eyebrows. "He's not very … diplomatic."

Kira shrugged. "He's the Federation ambassador to the Klingon Empire. His straight-forwardness sets him in good stead, there. You'll probably see him around; his wife is our science officer, Lieutenant Commander Jadzia Dax."

"I look forward to it," Ro said.

"I also have a few records from your time with the Maquis," Kira continued. "If we were fighting the Cardassians or the Dominion—or anyone else—you would be a superb addition to this station. If we were a ship in need of a pilot or ops officer, you would also be an excellent asset. But as far as I can tell, you've never had any training or experience with security work."

"That's correct, Colonel," Ro said.

"Any idea why they assigned you here?" Kira asked. Given Ro's record, if Kira were in charge of Militia assignments, she'd have had Ro teaching either piloting or tactics. The Militia didn't have any people with the sort of formal training Ro had gotten at Starfleet's Advanced Tactical Training course.

Ro shrugged. "They didn't consult me, just gave me my orders."

"And if you had to guess?" Kira prodded.

Ro smirked. "I think they thought my experience with Starfleet would be an asset on the Bajoran base with the most Starfleet contact." That was definitely sarcasm.

"Ironic, considering our new Chief Engineer has already been in here complaining about you."

"My reputation gets around," Ro said. "Aside from a few people on Enterprise, not many Starfleet officers liked me before I joined the Maquis."

"Speaking of reputation, if you have an urge to defect again, or disobey orders, please let me know ahead of time," Kira said, voice heavy with both irony and sincerity. She locked eyes with Ro.

Ro matched her in intensity and mood. "Don't give me stupid orders, and I won't."

Kira nodded, secure in the understanding between them. "I'll do my best." In a way, the whole thing felt weirdly like being back in the caves in Shakaar's Resistance cell. Where command was given not based on rank or training or some outside authority requiring it, but on respect within the group. No wonder Ro had had a hard time in Starfleet; they wouldn't have known what to do with her. "So, if you've never done security work before, what's your first step, Captain?"

"I'm halfway through reading the station regulations and the portions of Bajoran legal code that apply to the station," Ro said. "I've already gone over a lot of the security logs from the station's time under Bajoran authority, looking for patterns in both security calls and crimes committed. It looks like there's two basic types of trouble Security gets called for: organized crime such as smuggling and illegal gambling, usually involving Quark in some fashion, and more serious but less predictable trouble coming from visitors to the station. That ranges from 'invasion' to 'cultural misunderstanding.' Not much of that during the Dominion War, of course, but it looks like it's starting to pick up again."

Kira raised her eyebrows. "I'm impressed, captain; that's a lot of work, given how recently you were given your orders."

Ro shrugged. "I wanted to hit the ground running, and if there's one thing Starfleet teaches all its people, it's how to take in and analyze lots of information, and then put it to use."

She really should be teaching, Kira thought; that was a skill the Militia didn't have much of, or if they did, they were only beginning to teach it now; Kira's generation, of course, had no formal training of any kind, and either you sank or swam based on innate skill and whether or not you had a good mentor.

"Any questions about what you've read?" Kira asked.

"I'm sure I'll have questions once I'm finished with the studying and am settled in with the department," Ro said, "but none come to mind immediately."

"Don't hesitate to ask," Kira said. "I worked very closely with Constable Odo—" she suppressed a pang of grief "—and if past experience is anything to go by, there'll be a lot of times when the safety and well-being of this station and her inhabitants depends on the command staff and Security working smoothly together."

"Thank you, sir," Ro said. "I will do that."

"You'll be starting tomorrow morning," Kira said. "I will be at the Security Office to introduce you to your team and see the command transferred to you."

"Alright," Ro said.

"Dismissed," Kira said.

***

Ro sat alone at a table in the Replimat, watching the crowd walk by and seeing what patterns she could spot. Her PADD was out in front of her, but she'd spent a lot of time studying in the past few days, and her brain needed to rest before she could absorb any more information. From here, she could see the Romulan Embassy (in what had been the Cardassian Embassy, before the war), the Security office and detention facilities which would shortly be her domain, and the gift shop. Just out of sight around the curve of the Promenade was the station's temple, the Infirmary, and Quark's Bar and Holosuites.

She'd checked the angles, and from the Security Office it was possible to see across the entrance to Quark's, and watch who was going in and out, but you couldn't see into it; the temple was the only place with a direct view into Quark's (and vice versa, which she couldn't imagine either the Ferengi or the Vedeks were happy with). If you wanted to know what was happening in Quark's, you had to go in. Given that Quark was the most consistent source of trouble on the station, she foresaw herself spending a lot of time there.

"Captain Ro," came a familiar bass rumble.

"Ambassador Worf," Ro said, looking up at him. She'd never seen him in civilian clothes before, and his hair was loose. It suited him. "Congratulations on your new job."

"Likewise," Worf said. "May I introduce my wife, Lieutenant Commander Jadzia Dax?" He gestured to the Trill woman next to him, wearing a Starfleet uniform.

"Commander," Ro said stiffly, wondering how this was going to go.

"May we join you?" Commander Dax said with a smile.

"Of course." Ro gestured to the seat across the table. Dax sat in it, while Worf grabbed a chair from a nearby table and settled himself in it.

"I understand we're going to be working together," Dax said. "Worf has told me a bit about you."

"All good things, I hope," Ro said.

"Mostly," Dax said, wiggling her head.

"Fair enough," Ro said.

"I have informed Captain Picard that you are alive and have joined the Bajoran Militia," Worf announced.

"Thank you," Ro said, not sure she was pleased. Her greatest regret about joining the Maquis was having to betray Picard's trust. He'd done so much more for her than anybody else alive had, he'd believed in her. She couldn't have done anything else, not and lived with herself, but if he'd decided to hate her she didn't want to know.

"He asked me to pass along his greetings and well-wishes," Worf said.

"Thank you," Ro said again, gut relaxing just a bit. At least it wasn't as bad as it could have been; he might even forgive her, if she could get up the courage to contact him. "How's Alexander?" That seemed safer than asking after any old Enterprise crewmates.

"He served in the Klingon Defense Force during the war," Worf said.

"Little Alexander is old enough to serve on a warship?" Ro shook her head. "He can't be, he was just a kid. My time on Enterprise wasn't that long ago."

"He would not have been old enough to serve on a Federation vessel, which is why he chose to serve the Empire, instead," Worf said.

"Klingons grow up faster than most species do," Dax said, "and Alexander grew at a Klingon rate, not a Human one. It's one of the things we're looking into: Klingons and Trill aren't very compatible biologically, and it turns out there's never been a Trill/Klingon hybrid. Doctor Bashir has solved the initial incompatibilities for gestation, which is the hard part, but there are still other things we need to decide before an embryo can be created. I'd like our children to have a bit longer childhoods than Klingons do."

"You're considering having kids?" Ro eyed Worf. He hadn't seemed that great a father to Alexander on Enterprise. Or that thrilled about him. Everyone knew he'd shipped the kid off to his parents to raise, at least at first.

"We are," Worf said.

"Congratulations," Ro said.

"But you knew Alexander as a small child," Dax said. "Tell me about him!"

"I didn't know him very well," Ro said. "Didn't hang out with the families much on Enterprise. I only really saw him during that one mission where I got turned into a kid temporarily. And then the Ferengi, of all people, captured the ship, and they weren't watching the kids so we were the ones with the best opportunity to retake the ship."

Dax turned to Worf, eyes alight with mischief. "Worf! You never told me you let Ferengi capture your ship! How did that happen?"

"They possessed two Klingon Birds-of-Prey and used them competently," Worf said.

"We never did figure out how they got those," Ro reminisced.

"I doubt the Empire would be happy to announce to the galaxy that they lost a pair of warships to the Ferengi," Dax said. "But you said you had been de-aged. How did that happen? Were you the only one? How did you save the ship?"

Ro explained the transporter accident, and told the story of how they'd used childish tactics to outwit the Ferengi, and Alexander's role in the whole thing. Worf hadn't been present for the most part, being locked up in the brig; the Ferengi had been smart enough to clock him as a major threat.

Dax chimed in with a few stories about some of the odder or funnier things that had happened on the station, Worf adding commentary here or there. It was nice. Collegial. The sort of thing that happened when Starfleet officers hung out together, the sort of thing Ro had so often been excluded from when she wore the same uniform Dax did.

"You know, I'm kind of surprised at the warm welcome," Ro said, studying her mug and contemplating getting another cup of tea. "Considering what your crew did to the Maquis on Solosos III."

Worf shifted uneasily, and he and Dax exchanged a look.

"It wasn't exactly our finest hour," Dax said.

"The tactics were effective, but did not live up to Starfleet's ideals," Worf said.

"I had friends there," Ro said. "Not all of them made it out." She shrugged. "That's war, I guess." She wondered how many of the Enterprise crew had died in the war. She hadn't looked it up, too preoccupied with surviving and grieving the loss of her Maquis friends and comrades.

"Most Maquis died when the Dominion started a scorched-earth policy in the Demilitarized Zone," Dax said. "How did you survive?"

Ro sighed. "My ship was on a supply run, and things were hot enough we hadn't been using the standard routes for … a while, at that point. So there were actually a fair number of Maquis ships that didn't get caught in the sweep—they weren't bothering with small targets, at that point. When we heard what was happening, we went dead and waited for the Dominion ships to leave. Then we headed towards the closest colony, gathered up as many survivors as we could fit aboard, and ran for the border. We happened to be on this side of the DMZ, so we ended up in Bajoran hands. Unlike the Federation, Bajor didn't consider us criminals, so we got asylum."

"And then you joined the Militia," Dax said.

"And then I joined the Militia," Ro said. "And the Federation threw a fit. With the Cardassians gone, they don't much care what happens to former Maquis who live quietly and take up, I don't know, farming or something." And honestly, she'd thought about it, but none of her other options had sounded appealing.

"But given that Bajor is joining the Federation, and even those Militia members who don't join Starfleet or serve on DS9 will have access to classified Starfleet information, I can see why they might not like you in a Bajoran uniform," Dax said. "When they posted you to DS9, were they trying to upset the Federation on purpose?"

"If you figure it out, let me know," Ro said. "From what I can tell, there are a lot of conflicting feelings about the Federation and Starfleet within the Militia. So there was probably at least a little of that."

"It's actually a lot better than it was seven years ago," Dax said.

"Glad I missed it, then," Ro said. People looked at her and saw everything they disliked about the other side. Either they were mad at her for leaving Starfleet, or for ever having been Starfleet in the first place.

***

Ro arranged for the formal transfer of authority and briefing to take place the day before her first official shift, so that she could start fresh. She'd met some of her crew in the last week, but not all of them; and much as she'd implied otherwise to Colonel Kira, her head was still swimming with the amount of procedures, regulations, and station history she'd tried to cram into her head.

She eyed the first-shift deputies, all lined up in the security office.

"At ease," she said, and they relaxed a bit. "For those of you who don't know me, I'm Captain Ro Laren. Captain in the Bajoran Militia is equal to a Federation Lieutenant Senior Grade. Which was the rank I held in Starfleet before I left to join the Maquis. My commission is new but don't let that fool you, I'm not new to military service.

"From what I can tell, this department has been a pillar of this station, performing competently under a wide variety of difficult and unforeseeable circumstances. I'm not a fan of changing things for the sake of change, so things will probably stay mostly the same around here, at least to start. That said, if there are traditions or ways of doing things that you think could be improved, let me know. I don't promise to take your suggestions, but I will listen." She'd always gotten along best with officers who listened to her ideas, even if they chose not to accept her suggestions.

"If any of you are planning to transfer to Starfleet once Bajor formally joins the Federation, and have questions about Starfleet service, I'd be happy to answer them," Ro went on. "If you want to stay in Security you probably won't need much retraining, but if you want to specialize in something else, there'll be a lot to learn, and I can help you get a head start."

She eyed her new department. "Any questions?" There were none, although some of them looked like they had reservations they didn't want to voice. "All right then," she said. "You know your jobs. Get to them."

The deputies dispersed, most of them to patrol or guard stations, one to his shift in the cells—empty, at the moment, so she didn't have to deal with that. Ro retreated back into her new office and dove back into the pile of reports waiting for her.

***

Ro woke up, heart racing. "Lights!" Even years in the Maquis, living in huts without computers and ships without voice commands, hadn't been enough to break that instinctive response. But she was on DS9, now, and the computer obediently raised the lights. That, more than anything, helped her catch her breath.

If she'd really been back on a rustbucket held together with spit and prayers, stuffed to the gills with half-dead friends, dodging Dominion and Cardassian ships with little hope of making it to safety, calling for lights would have done nothing except get her bunkmate to yell at her to shut up.

But she was here, in Bajoran soon-to-be-Federation space, on a Federation-run space station, and the vocal commands worked.

Mouth filled with bile, she went to the bathroom and rinsed her mouth out. Then she got an anti-nausea med from the replicator, and a painkiller for the headache she knew was coming. She thought about getting a sleep med, but on a Starfleet-run station, three medications dispensed at once triggered an automatic alert to sickbay. At least, they would if she were an officer; she had no idea about civilians, or whether it would apply to Militia officers as she now was.

Besides, keyed up as the nightmare had left her, she doubted that anything mild enough to be dispensed without a prescription would do any good. She took the anti-nausea med and painkiller, took another drink of water, and went back to bed.

Ro sighed. "Lights, twenty percent." Which was brighter than she usually preferred to sleep with, but it meant the shadows couldn't play tricks on her. She closed her eyes and tried to snuggle deeper into the mattress. It was too hard, too much like the thin pallets that were the best most Maquis ships had, too much like the bare dirt she'd slept on as a child in the camps. She'd have to see about switching it out for something softer.

But the mattress wasn't really the problem. She'd fallen asleep just fine. The adrenaline flooding her from her nightmare, and the dread of another, that was the problem. She could have had the perfect mattress, and her chances of falling back to sleep would still have been slim to none.

She sighed again. That flight—and the weeks and months that had preceded it—had been nightmarish enough to live through the first time.

Even if she couldn't fall back asleep, laying here resting would be better for her brain and body than getting up and trying to do something. Starfleet made sure all its people knew that.

So Ro lay in her bed, and tried to keep her breathing even and slow, as the night passed.

At last, she was too bored, and couldn't stand it any longer. "Computer, what time is it?"

"The time is 0348."

"I give up," Ro said. Her alarm was set for 0600, and she couldn't face the thought of lying there for another two hours. And if she took a sleep med now, she'd be too groggy in the morning.

So she got up, wrapped herself in a robe, and curled up on her couch. “Computer, what’s in my inbox?”

“You have two new shift reports marked low-priority, three informational dispatches from the Bajoran Militia, one security alert from Starfleet—”

“Starfleet? What’s it about?”

“The message from Starfleet is a general alert regarding increased piracy in Sector 23.”

“Great, just what we need, problems around the Romulan Neutral Zone,” Ro said. Still, it wasn’t like it was her problem, not like it would have been when she was in Starfleet. “Any other messages?”

“You have a personal message from Captain Jean-Luc Picard.”

Ro dropped her head and sighed. If he was disappointed in her, or hated her, he wouldn’t bother to send a message; but she had betrayed his trust, and she regretted deeply that she’d had to leave that way. While she’d been in the Maquis, she hadn’t had to think about it, off in a world far distant from Starfleet and everything she’d known before. But you couldn’t outrun your past forever. “Computer, play message.”

“Captain Ro. I was pleased to hear that you survived the war, and that you have found your way into the beginnings of a new life. I would be interested to hear about your experiences and your new posting. I hope your new service is a good fit for you, and a good use of your talents and abilities. Picard out.”

Short, and sort of abrupt. But then, he was a busy man, and they’d never been close; he was a captain, and she’d been an ensign. He’d taken an interest in her career. Maybe he was still interested? Ro sighed. She had no idea how to respond. She wasn’t actually sorry about joining the Maquis, despite all her regrets about how it went down Could she just … respond as he had, ignoring all the reasons they hadn’t spoken in years?

***

Ro frowned at the report she was reading. Something seemed off, but she couldn't say for sure. One of the deputies would know. She touched the intercom for the brig and got only static.

She was half-way through bringing up the technical specs to see if she could fix it before she realized she wasn't in the Maquis any longer. There was a maintenance crew on call.

But she couldn't find either the Militia or Starfleet maintenance request forms on her terminal. It was possible she wasn't correctly remembering the Militia procedure—she'd had to cram an awful lot of information into a fairly short period, and things were bound to have fallen through the cracks. She used her commbadge to call Deputy Yndar to her office. They didn't have anybody in their cells today, so there was no harm in having him step out.

"Yes, Captain?" Yndar said, poking his head in.

Ro wondered if that would ever stop being weird to hear. The Bajoran ranks were … odd, after years in Starfleet. "Two things. I've got some questions about a report, and I can't figure out how to submit a maintenance request."

"Ah," Yndar said. "We're still using the Cardassian maintenance request system."

"I know how Starfleet does things, I know how the Militia does things, and now I have to learn a third system?" Ro made a face. "I suppose the Cardassian system is better integrated to the station than our own system would be."

"Here, let me show you," Yndar said. "It should be in a top-level directory, the number of things that go wrong on this station. They broke everything they could and didn't leave any manuals behind when they left, and they deleted the parts catalogue from the station replicators."

"Typical," Ro said. "If they couldn't have it, spoil it so nobody else could, either."

"Yeah," Yndar said. He showed her where the maintenance request subroutine was hiding, and walked her through reporting a problem. Then he answered her questions about the reports. Then he went back to his post. He was efficient, professional, and courteous.

Ro was left feeling a bit off balance.

***

"On the house," Quark said, setting a drink down in front of her.

"Security officers are not allowed to accept gifts, so no, it's not," Ro said.

"Not allowed to accept gifts!" Quark said. "Even if it's only a drink? What harm can one drink do?"

"It's the things that come after the drink that are the problem," Ro said. Actually, the drink was below the value threshold of what she could accept, but she wanted to put Quark a little off balance, and she didn't want alcohol, anyhow. She was going to try a mild sedative tonight, to see if she could sleep through the night for a change, and they often reacted with alcohol or narcotics. "Vulcan spice tea and an Ubed casserole, please."

"Ooh, variety, I like it," Quark said. "Would you like replicated tea, or the real thing?"

"The real thing," Ro said. She hadn't had the real thing since she'd been on Earth for Advanced Tactical Training. It would be interesting to see how fresh it was here, this far out from Vulcan. Replicated might actually be better. But she'd try it and see.

To her surprise, it was actually good quality tea, and fresh enough to be worth paying a premium for—someone must be growing it nearby. The casserole was a different variant than the one she was used to, but not bad.

"Mind if I join you?"

Ro looked up to see Dax coming over from the entryway. "Go right ahead," she said. "Worf left already?"

Dax grimaced. "He never gets to stay as long as he'd like. We've thought about requesting a transfer for me, but … there isn't any place that needs a science officer that's better positioned for Worf's work, right now. He's doing a lot of travelling, and we're hosting a lot of diplomatic conferences here. Things will settle down eventually, and available postings for me will change, and until then we'll deal with it."

She sat down in a chair and nodded to a passing waiter. "My usual, please." She looked at Ro's food. "Vulcan tea and Betazoid food—eclectic tastes. You know, if you want homemade Bajoran food, there isn't a Bajoran restaurant here, but a couple of station residents have a sideline cooking meals for people."

"Thanks for the offer," Ro said, "but I actually don't have much of a taste for Bajoran food. The refugee camp I grew up in had a couple of Federation replicators that only worked half the time, and whatever local plants and animals we could gather."

"Ah," Dax said. She seemed less embarrassed than Federation people usually were by the mention of Ro's childhood; maybe it was the extra lives that gave her some perspective, or maybe just that she'd spent the last few years working with Bajorans who probably all had similar stories of deprivation. "Did the replicators have Betazoid cuisine, then?"

"I'm not sure," Ro said. "I was introduced to this dish by Counselor Troi, on the Enterprise. How's she doing these days, do you know?" It hadn’t come up in the conversation with Worf.

"Still on the Enterprise," Dax said. "That crew has been together a remarkably long time, Worf is the only one who left."

"You're kidding," Ro said. "Even during the war, they didn't give Riker his own ship?"

"Nope," Dax said, flashing a smile at the waiter who brought her food.

"Huh," Ro said, resuming her meal now that Dax had something to eat, too. Well, even if Troi had been reassigned, it wasn't like she'd have been sent here. And just because she was the first counselor Ro had known who wasn't completely useless or untrustworthy (or both) didn't mean that she'd still be willing to help after the way Ro had left.

And Ro was fine, anyway; it was just a bit of trouble sleeping. She'd been through rough patches before, worse than this.

"So I was thinking," Dax said. "Kira and I sometimes do things together in the holosuites—fun things. Spa days, frothy mindless historical fantasy stories, as far away from work as we can get. Would you like to join us?"

Social time with her commanding officer? Ro had certainly never been offered that before. And it was true that she was only two ranks below the Lieutenant Colonel, and one of the senior officers on the station. And the highest-ranking Bajoran besides the Colonel herself. But still.

"If the colonel is okay with it, it sounds like it could be fun," Ro said. Frothy mindless historical fantasies weren't exactly her thing, but she wasn't going to turn down an overture of friendship from a fellow officer.

That was one of the ways the Maquis had been different from Starfleet. She hadn't been the life of the party, but she hadn't been a loner, either. For the first time in her life, she'd felt like she fit in. Or, at least, that she didn't fit any less than other people did.

"I'll talk to her," Dax said. "We've got something planned for tomorrow evening, if you're free."

Definite plans would be more awkward for Colonel Kira to get out of, if she didn't want to have a relative stranger in her recreational time. "I'm swamped right now, trying to get settled in and learn the job. Maybe another time?" It had the virtue of being true.

***

A week into her new security chief's tenure, Kira called her in for a progress report.

"So, how are you settling in?" she said.

Captain Ro shrugged and sipped her tea. "Haven't screwed up yet, that's always a plus."

"I figured I'd have heard about it if you had," Kira said.

"I'm getting a handle on the rhythms of the work, and getting to know my deputies," Ro said. "There's a couple of things I'm planning on changing in the patrol schedule; nothing's really been adjusted since the end of the war, when Constable Odo left. And the security needs are different in peacetime."

"Will you be going back to one of Odo's schedules, or coming up with something new?" Kira asked.

"Peacetime isn't the same now as it was before the war," Ro said. "Trade patterns have shifted, given the number of planets devastated by the war, and Bajor's coming Federation membership. More Klingons, fewer Cardassians, and that means different security challenges. So, probably something new."

"All right," Kira said.

"I'm more concerned about organized crime, to be honest," Ro said. "Constable Odo's reports about his investigations are sometimes … unspecific. He had contacts who would pass him information about certain types of criminal activity, but he never wrote down their names. Whether those helpful people will continue to talk to us … who knows. And from things the deputies have said, I'm pretty sure he sometimes used his shapeshifting to perform illegal surveillance of Quark and other suspects."

"Odo had a very finely-tuned sense of justice," Kira said. "He would never have done anything he believed was wrong." She sighed. "But he learned how to do security work under the Cardassians. He was always fair, and there's a reason we were happy to keep him in the same job after the Cardassians left. But he did miss the level of surveillance the Cardassians used, and Captain Sisko never reprimanded him for spying on Quark or other suspects."

"In the Federation, surveillance by law enforcement is illegal without a court order," Ro said. "Regardless of why you're doing it. Not everyone has a finely-tuned sense of justice like Odo did."

"We're not in the Federation," Kira pointed out.

"We will be soon," Ro said. "The station has always been in a weird place, legally speaking, but that will be resolved when Bajor enters the Federation. Federation standards for evidence tend to be fairly strict. They vary by planetary jurisdiction, of course, and we won't know what the Bajoran laws will be until all the details are hammered out. But there's a minimum standard of civil rights required of all Federation members. Even if Odo were still here, he'd have to change tactics if he wanted any of his evidence to hold up in court."

"With Quark, things usually don't go that far," Kira said. "He's rarely into anything deeply illegal or dangerous, and his various misdemeanors were mostly useful to force him to toe the line." Kira thought about it for a second. "Sometimes also for blackmailing him into doing what we needed him to for the good of the station. Quark understands that, I'm pretty sure it's how Ferengi society works."

Ro paused. "So that's why some of the reports are incomplete," she said, sounding satisfied. "Odo definitely wouldn't have wanted to put that in writing."

"No, he wouldn't have."

"And his deputies are all still loyal to him, and wouldn't want him to look bad."

Kira was pleased to hear they still respected and cared for Odo. With the Dominion War, and Odo's complex relationship to his people, things had been … rocky, in that department.

"But we still have a problem," Ro said. "We can't use Odo's tactics, either practically or legally, which means we don't have the same leverage."

"Quark isn't that bad," Kira pointed out. "He's never done anything really awful, or we would have let the charges go through and gotten him convicted and deported."

Ro shook her head. "Bajor's entry into the Federation changes things. After the Occupation we weren't wealthy enough in our own right to be worth much to the crime syndicates. Oh, sure, there was the wormhole … but it's easy to control who goes through that, so it's too hard to run a criminal enterprise through it, especially back when it was first found. And then the war came. But now Bajor's joining the Federation. It's going to get a lot more prosperous very quickly. And things are going to change a lot in a short time—which means opportunities for the syndicates to take advantage of. And if they can get a solid foothold on Bajor, that means they have a solid foothold in the Federation. We're a lot more tempting a target than we used to be."

"I thought you didn't have any previous law enforcement experience," Kira said. "How do you know that?"

Ro shrugged. "Starfleet isn't all exploring, you know—or all fighting. It takes a while for regular Federation law enforcement to set up in the space around new member worlds, so smaller Starfleet cruisers end up filling in the gaps. My first assignment out of the academy spent some time rooting out a nest of pirates around Gadika III. It took us a couple of months, not because they were hard to fight—or even hard to find. But they'd gotten dug in to the Gadikan government, had a number of people in their pocket. And they got advance notice of our movements. Took a while to clean up."

"I see," Kira said. "I'll pass along the warning to other Militia posts. Do you have any contacts in Starfleet who might have advice?" Given Ro's history, it was a long shot.

Ro winced. "Probably not any who would be willing to talk to me, or at least, not any with current experience in anti-piracy work. Captain Picard would probably answer any questions I sent him, but … it's probably close to two decades since he was captain of a ship that might get sent on that sort of mission. And you know Worf, of course, but he spent his career on larger starships, not small cruisers."

"Right," Kira said. "Well, we'll just have to keep an eye on things." She paused, trying to gauge Ro's reaction. "How are you settling in on a personal level?"

"Fine," Ro said shortly.

Kira nodded, but let the silence linger for a bit before continuing. "How are you getting along with the deputies?"

"No problems, sir," Ro said.

Kira nodded again. Ro Laren was enough like her, she thought, to predict her reactions. Ro was prickly, independent, and would resent being coddled. But she'd also been thrown into a position she was unqualified for to sink or swim, and Kira had never in her life been as isolated as Ro probably was right now. And if she got space to talk, she might use it.

"Dax tells me she invited you to one of our holosuite outings," Kira said before the silence could get awkward.

"She did," Ro said.

"And you turned her down," Kira said. "Was that really because you were busy, or were you not interested?"

Ro shrugged. "Little of both. I really am that busy, but also, fantasy adventure really isn't my thing. I don't mind it, but it's not what I'd choose on my own. And then there was the fact that she volunteered your time without asking you. If you weren't interested, less awkward all around if I said no first."

"Fair enough," Kira said. "I've learned to enjoy the fantasy adventures, but they're more Dax's thing than mine. The spa days are really nice. What do you do to relax?"

"On the holodecks?" Ro said "Mysteries, puzzle games, and rock climbing."

"I don't know that I've ever climbed rocks as a hobby," Kira said. "How's it done?"

"There's two basic types, bouldering and walling," Ro said. "Bouldering is more like what you'd do on a mission: find a rock and climb over it, usually without going high enough to be dangerous, without any specialized equipment. Or not much; if you're doing it for sport usually you use special shoes and put chalk on your hands to help your grip, and put a mat below you to break your fall. Walling takes more equipment to do—you're climbing up a cliff face, or a wall that simulates a cliff face. Usually with a rope to catch you if you fall."

"You climb up cliffs?" Kira raised her eyebrows. "For fun?"

"I do," Ro said with a smile. "It's hard, but if you do it right it's not dangerous—especially in a holodeck—and you have the most incredible views and sense of accomplishment when you're done. I can show you some time, if you're interested."

"I am," Kira said. "If nothing else, it sounds like a more interesting workout than just lifting weights or running on a treadmill."

"It is," Ro said.

***

Ro eyed her inbox. She hadn’t responded to Captain Picard’s message, and the longer it took the more awkward it would get. But she still wasn’t sure what to say.

Fortunately, she had no shortage of other work to do instead. She went through her mental to-do list, decided that more studying of regulations and logs today would be counterproductive, and went on to the relatively easy tasks.

The interior security station comms still were not fixed. Ro pulled up the maintenance form, only to find it wasn't there. Not pending, not resolved, not denied, nothing.

She tapped her commbadge. "Ro to Yndar, I can't find the maintenance form for the security comms problem. Is there something I'm missing?"

"I'll check," he said. A few minutes later he called her back. "I can't find it, either. That's weird."

"It's not a known bug in the system?"

"No, sir, I've never seen it happen before. I wondered why it isn't fixed yet."

"Okay," Ro said. "Well, I'm submitting it again, we'll see if it gets eaten again."

***

Kira had to cancel her next holosuite outing with Dax; there was a minor diplomatic incident with the Romulans that turned out to be not so minor after all, and which needed in a truly infuriating amount of flattery and reassurances to smooth over. Kira actually wasn't directly involved with most of it; it had happened on the station, but (thank the Prophets) hadn't been caused by station personnel. Still, for someone who hadn't contributed to the problem, dealing with it took far too much of her time. Dax had been very helpful, both as executive officer and also with advice about the necessary diplomacy. Ro had handled the security aspects of it competently. Julian hadn't been involved at all. Belasco had kept as low a profile as possible, which was a relief given that he was even less suited to diplomacy than Kira was.

***

Ro double-checked the maintenance requests. The Security Station internal comms had been deleted from the queue again. She hadn't had time to worry about it (or much of anything else besides Romulan egos) while dealing with security for the Romulan ambassador. Now that things were back to normal, it was one of many things to check up on.

She tapped her commbadge. "Ro to Belasco."

"Belasco here."

"Your maintenance request system has problems. It's eaten two maintenance requests."

"Nonsense, it's working perfectly."

"How would you know that if it's eating requests?" Ro asked.

"Nobody else has complained."

"That just means it's an intermittent fault."

"If you submitted a maintenance request and it's no longer there, the request must have been submitted improperly. These Cardassian systems are a bit tricky, and you're new here."

"Deputy Yndar walked me through the process," Ro said. "He's been here since the Cardassians left, and knows the station backwards and forwards."

There was a pause. "What was the nature of the request?"

"Security's hardwired internal communications system isn't working."

Belasco scoffed. "That's a low-priority fix if ever there was one. You all have functional combadges, it's redundant."

Ro agreed; it was mostly there because the Cardassians were paranoid and wanted a system that would be harder to crack into even if you stole a Cardassian communicator. "Which is why I'm more concerned about the fact that your system is deleting maintenance requests."

"And again, nobody else has a problem."

"You mean, nobody else has reported a problem, which is not the same thing," Ro said. "Maybe they're just sitting around wondering why nobody's come to fix their issue yet."

"If it'll make you happy, I'll come fix your communications systems personally." There was a sarcastic edge to his voice.

"I don't care who fixes it." Ro reined in her temper. Belasco was an ass who hated her; she'd served with people like him before, and she probably would again. At least he didn't outrank her. "Fix your maintenance system. Ro out."

***

"Want a spa day?" Ro looked up to see Dax poking her head into the security office.

Ro glanced down at the file she was working on. Her shift was over, and it wasn't like the paperwork was going anywhere. "In the holosuites, I presume? How's the program's massage therapist?" She hadn't had a really good massage since leaving Enterprise, and it always helped her sleep. On DS9, a spa on the holosuite was probably the best option.

"Pretty good for a non-sentient hologram," Dax said. "Not at the level you'd need for serious therapeutic work, but perfect for ordinary massage."

"I would love to join you," Ro decided. "Give me ten minutes to wrap up what I'm doing?"

"Meet us in Suite 6," Dax said.

'Us' probably meant the Colonel as well. Ro wouldn't have necessarily chosen to hang out and get a massage with her CO, but on the other hand, Kira seemed to be competent and sensible and wasn't holding Ro's past against her, so it'd probably be fine.

Ro finished reading the report, signed off on it, and headed over to Quark's.

***

"You could have asked before inviting her," Kira protested as they changed into loose robes in the holosuite.

"I thought you liked her," Dax said innocently.

"I do!" Kira said. "But it's awkward socializing with subordinates, and a little warning would have been nice. Especially for a spa day."

"I’m your subordinate, too,” Dax said.

“That’s different,” Kira said. “We were friends for years before I took command of the station.”

Dax shrugged. “Being commanding officer doesn’t mean you have to be isolated. I like her, and it's a fun way of getting to know your senior staff better."

"Sisko never hung out at the spa with us," Kira pointed out.

"Ben gave dinners where he cooked for people instead," Dax said. "Besides, given what she's been through, I'd say she needs some simple, easy relaxation, and I like the spa, and I like people. And I want to be hospitable to our new staff."

"You haven't asked Belasco to do something," Kira said. "And I'd say he could use some simple, easy relaxation if anyone could."

"I did when he first got here," Dax said. "He turned me down. And then I saw the difference between how he treated his Bajoran subordinates and the Starfleet crew."

"Is there something I should be aware of?" Kira asked. You wouldn't think a single step on the promotion ladder would cut her off so much from the station grapevine, but she was constantly surprised how much less she heard about.

Dax made a face. "If it were enough to act on, I'd have told you already."

The holosuite door opened with a hiss and a little grinding noise; Quark was cheaping out on maintenance, as usual.

"Ro! Glad you could join us," Dax said. "Kira and I usually start with a dip in the hot tub and then a massage. What are your preferences?"

"Hot tub then massage sounds fine to me," Ro said, stripping off her clothes. She was fit, but with a variety of scars old and new that Federation medicine could have easily eliminated, if Ro had chosen it. She hadn't.

Kira had scars, too, that she hadn't allowed Julian to remove. She didn't want to do away with the physical reminder of some of the things she'd been through.

***

The hot tub was great. There were two pools, side by side, one set to a good temperature for Bajorans, the other set to Dax's comfort. It was a little odd to have someone in the same pool, but it wasn't bad.

"So," Kira said, "I hear they have spas on some Federation starships?"

"No," Ro said. She leaned her head back against the padded rest and consciously worked on relaxing each muscle group individually one at a time. "Enterprise had a salon, and there was a massage therapist attached to Sickbay that anyone could make an appointment with any time, but if you wanted something like this you had to use the holodeck."

"A massage therapist in sickbay?" Kira said.

"It's part of physical therapy," Dax explained. "We don't need one on the station, because if someone needs serious rehabilitation, we send them to Bajor. But a large exploring ship like Enterprise, which might not come back to a Federation port for months or years, needs to be able to do everything. Including long-term physical therapy and rehab."

"Huh," Kira said. She and Dax started debating where the line was between extravagance and caring for the well-being of people so far from home for so long.

Ro closed her eyes and let the conversation wash over her as she let all her tension seep out into the water.

***

Ro had been quiet in the hot tubs, but as they snacked on finger food before their massages, Dax asked her about what she was finding hardest to get used to on the station.

"You know, it's funny," Ro said. "This is the first time I've ever come into an assignment as a superior officer? When I was in Starfleet, I made it to lieutenant, got busted down to ensign for getting people killed, then I got assigned to the Enterprise and eventually promoted again. But I was still on the same ship, everybody already knew me both times I made Lieutenant. The people I was commanding knew me before I got the rank. And then in the Maquis, you don't—didn't—get outside assignments. You joined the crew of whoever wanted you, or wanted to follow you."

Kira noted that present tense. "The Resistance was like that."

"I know," Ro said. "We had our share of old Resistance fighters in the Maquis."

"Watch who you're calling old," Kira said dryly.

"Didn't mean it that way," Ro said with a grimace. "I've commanded people, and I've started my life over somewhere nobody knew me. I've done both multiple times. This is the first time I'm doing both at the same time."

Kira had never had to start her life over; not really. That was a major difference in their life experience. Still. "Coming here was a little like that, for me. I'd never served with strangers before, and I'd certainly never commanded them. And I had no idea what to expect from Starfleet officers, and most of what I did expect turned out to be wrong in one way or another. Captain—then Commander—Sisko was a great help, and I learned a lot from him."

"It's not that it's difficult," Ro said. "Just odd."

Dax chimed in with a story about Torias and his first squadron command, during advanced pilot training, and the trouble he had gotten himself into, and the conversation turned to stories about pranks and hijinks and stupid accidents they had done or seen in their careers.

***

Ro wasn't sure whether it was the sleep med or the massage, but she slept better that night than she had in a while. That only lasted until the handover briefing at the beginning of her shift the next day, when Deputy Gerjo noted that Belasco had fixed the internal comms system during beta shift the night before.

"Very thoughtful of him, to come in and handle it personally on his off shift," Ro said neutrally.

Gerjo rolled his eyes but didn't comment, and the briefing went on.

Ro got herself a cup of tea from the replicator and sat in her office, thinking. Belasco didn't like her, and this was a low-priority repair. She would have expected the comms repair to go to the very bottom of the priority list, and yet he'd come in to do it personally the very day it was reported to him?

She checked the surveillance logs—Ro wasn't thrilled about spending most of her working hours in a place with continuous recordings, but at least her office didn't have cameras, just a sensor on the door to report who went in and out, and when.

Belasco hadn't brought an assistant with him. This sort of work—tracing a fault that might be in one of several rooms, or in one of several interconnected computer systems—was usually done in pairs to speed things up.

He didn't like her, but he'd found a reason to be alone in her office while she was off-duty.

Ro had had fellow officers express their dislike of her through pranks on several occasions, both at the academy and on her first posting. She would have hoped that someone who rose to command a department on a joint station wouldn't pull nasty pranks, but she couldn't rule it out.

A quick search of her office didn't find anything.

A security scan, however, did.

Ro tapped her commbadge. "Ro to Colonel Kira."

"Kira here. Go ahead."

"Could you join me in my office, sir?" Ro said. "There's something you're going to want to see."

There was a pause.

"I'll be right there, Captain."

***

"He bugged your office?" Kira was shocked.

Ro shrugged. "Can't prove it was him. He's the only person who's been in here alone besides me since I got here, but I didn't do a security sweep when I moved in. It could have been here longer than that."

"Not much longer," Kira said. "Given the war and all the mess with his people and all the people who hated him because he was a changeling, Odo did regular security sweeps of his office and quarters. If this had been here before he left, he would have found it."

"Still doesn't prove that Belasco planted it," Ro said.

"You keep saying that, but you're the one who said it might be him," Kira said. "You don't like him."

Ro shrugged. "That's why I want to make sure we don't rush to blame him. I've spent a lot of time disliked and distrusted by my fellow officers, and had too many people assume I'd done things I hadn't just because it was an easy answer and they wanted to believe the worst of me."

"Whereas you'd rather they thought badly of you because of the things you'd actually done," Kira said, voice heavy with irony.

Ro nodded. "Yeah." She looked at the bug again. "And if he did do it, there's not much we can do unless we can prove it. Which might be a problem. It's a professionally made bug; high quality but generic. I checked on the specs and it's the sort of thing someone uses when they don't want it to be traced back to them. But it wasn't hidden very well, and if whoever planted it had known how to use it effectively, they could have made it a lot harder to find."

"So, someone with access to good equipment, but not a professional spy." Kira put her hands on the desk and leaned over it, examining the small bug.

"Exactly," Ro said. "And you never know. It might have been there for a while. It might have been planted by someone who wants to keep tabs on station security. It might have been planted by someone who could erase their entry to the station from the security logs."

"Somebody good enough to hack into the Security Office's computer would be good enough to set the bug properly," Kira said.

"Most likely," Ro said.

"Do we know if this is the only active bug, or are there others?"

Ro shrugged. "It's the only bug active in the security offices, ops, or the deuterium refinery. Those are the only places with enough security to do an automatic scan that would find it—it's small and designed to go undetected if possible. Anywhere else, we're going to have to send deputies to comb the station with hand scanners. Oh, and your office would also need to be scanned manually."

Kira grimaced. Of course the deuterium refinery—formerly the ore processing facility where the majority of Bajoran laborers had been forced to work during the Occupation—would have that kind of surveillance. "Let's do a full scan of the station."

"It won't pick up any bugs that aren't currently in use," Ro pointed out. "So if someone has a stash of them somewhere, we won't find them."

"I'll call Dax, see if she has any ideas."

***

"Well?" Ro asked.

Dax looked up from her tricorder. "Maybe."

"What's the problem?" Kira asked.

"There are a lot of electronic devices on this station, both station equipment and personal items." Dax shrugged. "The components in this device are a bit on the rare side, and some of the alloy combinations they had to use to get this much scanning and memory into a device this small are distinctive. But not distinctive enough to be easily identified, and there could be any number of legitimate devices made with similar materials. I can modify the tricorders to look for it, but it's going to be a short-range scan and there are going to be false positives. And there are also going to be places where the equipment in the walls will mask what's on the other side of them."

"How short a range?" Ro asked.

"Max range, with no walls or furniture or other things in the way, will probably be about five meters. If you're scanning through bulkheads, probably more like two or three meters, depending on what exactly is in the bulkheads."

Kira and Ro exchanged a glance. Ro shrugged.

"Not ideal, but it's better than nothing," Kira said.

"Problem is, if it is Belasco, he'll hear about the scan as soon as we start it, and dispose of any evidence," Dax said. "It's going to be hard to hide deputies combing the station with scanners. And even if we had every one of our officers and crew out looking, he'd still probably have time to move or destroy anything."

Ro nodded. "And if it's not Belasco, they might still be tipped off. And the bug was found in the security office; it might have been a deputy. They're the only people who spend a lot of time in here without an escort. So even just limiting the search to the deputies might not be enough."

Kira smiled. "I think I have an idea."

***

Ro looked at the crowd in the security staging area. It was the first time since she'd taken command of the department that they'd all been gathered into one place. The deputies were chatting desultorily. All were present, except for the few in the middle of their sleep cycle who would get briefed later. She called them to attention and began her briefing.

"We're going to be doing a training exercise and manually searching the station for surveillance devices, security weaknesses, contraband goods, and explosives. Some things have been planted for you to find. There will also be false positives. It is not your job to remove or diffuse anything you find at this time; we may be doing other exercises for how to handle that aspect of things later, but this current exercise is simply about searching the station. All you have to do is report your findings."

She explained the procedure, the rewards for the three people who found the most items of interest, and reminded them of the boundaries of Federation privacy regulations and how they applied to security scans without a warrant.

"And," she said, "we're also going to be practicing information security. If this were a real scan, if somebody had planted listening devices or a bomb or something, we would want to avoid tipping them off until we'd found our target. So! Consider this exercise classified until it is completed. And that includes your crewmates in other departments: nobody says anything to anyone outside the department until we're done. And if you can scan an area without looking like you're scanning it—or at least without anyone seeing you do it—so much the better.

Deputy Pinar raised a hand. "Sir, the scanning program is automated, right? We don't have to be watching it as it runs?"

"For the most part," Ro said. "But the scan will only work at a fairly short range, and there are a lot of things on the station that could block or distort it, so you'll have to check every so often to make sure you don't need to re-scan an area from a different spot or something. But no, you don't have to walk around staring at your tricorder while pretending you're not."

Ro waited a few seconds. "Any other questions?"

There was a general shuffling and shaking of heads.

"Dismissed."

***

By the end of the shift, as people were turning in their tricorders and signing out, many things had been found. None of them were what they were looking for, and only one was something Dax had planted as part of the exercise. It would take several days, at this rate, to scan the whole station.

"I expected more grumbling," Ro said to Deputy Yndar as they wrapped up the last few details and got ready to hand the station over to beta shift.

Yndar shrugged. "We've had enough problems with spies and saboteurs over the years that everyone can see the reason for it. And besides, patrol is either boring or exciting in the bad way. The competition livens things up a bit."

***

Given the limitations of the scan, Ro was almost surprised when they found what they were looking for.

And even more surprised that the stash of bugs was in Belasco's quarters. She hadn't thought he'd be stupid enough to keep them where they would obviously be his. If Ro had illegal surveillance devices, she'd put them somewhere she'd have plausible deniability if they were found.

She waited until after shift to call the Colonel. As far as the deputies were concerned, this was just another thing planted for them to find, and Ro wanted to keep it that way for now. She had an awful hunch about where he'd gotten those bugs.

***

"No lecture about Federation privacy rules?" Kira asked as Ro used her security override to open Belasco's quarters.

The door slid open, and Ro gestured her inside. "He's not a civilian, he's a Starfleet officer and you're his CO. You have the authority to search his quarters and personal effects at any time. And even if he was a civilian, the scan was perfectly legal, so it would be easy to get a warrant based on it."

"Good to know," Kira said.

It only took a few seconds for Ro's tricorder to find the bugs. They were in a box in a bureau by the door.

Ro scanned them. "No fingerprints or DNA on these ones, either," she said. "Whoever gave them to him was careful."

"We'll see if Dax can figure anything out," Kira said. "Meanwhile, it's time to have a chat with Mr. Belasco."

***

Belasco's confident walk into Kira's office faltered a bit when he saw Ro standing by her desk. Guilty conscience, Kira wondered? Dax was standing on Kira's other side, but it was Ro that Belasco kept glancing towards.

"Lieutenant Belasco," she said, gesturing to the box of bugs. "Would you care to explain why you used an illegal surveillance device to spy on your colleague?"

"You had no right to search my things," Belasco said, drawing himself up to his full height.

"So you admit they're yours?" Dax asked.

Belasco glanced at her but didn't respond.

"And as it happens, Lieutenant, I do have the right to search your things, as your commanding officer," Kira said. "And I'd like an answer to Commander Dax's question."

"Sir." Belasco said stiffly.

"Do you admit that these are yours?" Kira asked. "Do you admit that you planted a bug in the security office while you were in there to do maintenance?"

Belasco bit his lip, then decided to brazen it out. "What if I did? She's a traitor! She can't be trusted! And she has you in her corner, which I expected, you Bajorans are all thick as thieves together. But she got Commander Dax behind her, as well. There was no point in any official action, but I wanted to make sure that when she betrays us, we'll know."

"She has me behind her, Lieutenant, because unlike you, I listened to the people who actually knew her, instead of to my prejudices," Dax said pointedly.

"You're all taken in by her," Belasco said. "I don't know why, it's not like she's that charismatic—"

"I'm a pretty good judge of character, Belasco," Dax said. "I've had seven lifetimes to practice."

"Lieutenant," Kira said. "Refresh my memory. What do Starfleet regulations say you should do when you believe your superior officer is committing a dangerous mistake and nobody in your chain of command will listen?"

"Contact the Judge Advocate General's office, or the Operations Office, for advice, depending on what sort of mistake it is," Belasco answered promptly. He bit his lip and wouldn't meet her eyes. Not out of shame, but out of … something else.

"And you did, didn't you?" Ro said. "And whoever it was you got ahold of confirmed that I was a dangerous terrorist and a threat to the station and to all of Starfleet, but said their hands were tied and there was nothing they could do because the Bajorans were being irrational, and gave you the surveillance devices so you could prove it. Probably promised you a promotion and a better posting if you got intelligence they could use."

Belasco's jaw dropped. His mouth moved wordlessly for a few seconds. "I—I don't—That's absurd! Why would you think that?" He wasn't as convincing as he was trying to sound.

"When I was out of Starfleet the first time," Ro said, "Admiral Niles Kennelly gave me a secret mission. Officially, I was to make contact with a group of Bajorans who had attacked a Federation colony, to help the Enterprise settle things peacefully. Unofficially, I was to provide the group with weapons. Kennelly said that he knew the Cardassians were vicious, violent people, and a threat to the peace and stability of the whole quadrant."

This was a story Kira hadn't heard; she glanced at Dax, who gave a slight nod that she knew it; Worf must have told her.

"Kennelly said he wanted to ensure the group could defend themselves," Ro went on, "both because it was the right thing to do, and because anything that stopped or slowed the Cardassians in their goals could only be good for the Federation in the long run. But his hands were tied, officially, by the spineless cowards in the diplomatic corps who wanted to appease the Cardassians at any cost. But he could reinstate me and send me with secret orders. If I succeeded in arming the group without anyone realizing how they'd gotten the weapons, he would let me keep my commission and give me my pick of postings."

It sounded too good to be true, Kira thought. And if there was an admiral who favored Bajor that strongly, Captain Sisko would have called him in to help when they'd had conflicts with Starfleet or the Federation.

"Obviously he kept his word," Belasco said, "because otherwise you wouldn't have been in a position to betray Starfleet later."

"He didn't, actually," Ro said. "He couldn't. He was being court-martialed. You see, every single word he'd told me was a lie. He was actually working with the Cardassians. They were the ones who had destroyed the colony and framed Bajoran terrorists, to try and get the Federation involved on Cardassia's side. Kennelly was their patsy, but he also genuinely believed that a war would be good for Starfleet and that an alliance with the Cardassians would be good for the Federation. I figured out what was going on, and told Captain Picard, who was able to expose the whole thing. It was my courage and integrity in coming forward—even though I knew it might get my commission revoked, again, and sent back to prison—that got me my post on the Enterprise. Not Kennelly's machinations."

"I don't see what any of that has to do with me," Belasco said steadily. He was tense, and his eyes kept flicking between the two of them, Kira noticed.

"Your contact at Starfleet Ops wouldn't have been Admiral Kaluža, would it?" Dax asked. "She heads the right subdepartment for your complaint to hit her desk."

"How—" Belasco swallowed. "I don't know what you mean."

"I've had the misfortune of working with her before," Kira said. "Kaluža believes that Bajorans are violent thugs, and inherently untrustworthy. She's been working to keep Bajor out of the Federation since the idea was first floated shortly after the Occupation ended. I know of at least two separate occasions when negotiations were stalled because of things she had convinced Starfleet to demand, or various Federation ambassadors to ask for. And a separate one where she intentionally and maliciously edited a cultural briefing to make a new ambassador to Bajor look bad."

"If she's the one who gave you the bugs," Dax said, "I don't doubt she truly believed anything she told you about how untrustworthy Bajorans are. But she'd be delighted to have inside intelligence she could use to try and drive further wedges between Bajor and the Federation."

If Kaluža were the only stumbling block, Bajor would have joined long before the Dominion War, Kira mused. Bajor had never made too much of a fuss about her, because there were a few people like that on the Bajoran side of the negotiations, so they didn't exactly have the moral high ground. But there was no point muddying the waters to point that out.

"She can't prevent Bajor joining at this late date," Ro said. "But she could, for example, make it much harder for members of the Bajoran Militia who want to transfer to Starfleet to do so."

"If she's your contact, Lieutenant, I'm sure she thought her birthday had come early when you brought your concerns to her," Kira said.

"But whether you got the bugs from her or someone else, you should come clean," Ro said. "It will never be easier than it is right now. I know for a fact that there are a number of Starfleet officers like Captain Picard who have a great respect for people who realize their mistakes and own up to them. Whether you stick it out or confess, this is going in your record. Every future commanding officer you ever have will see that you tried to spy on a fellow officer, a Federation ally. The question is, what are they going to see next to that? Are they going to see you came clean and did the right thing? Or not?"

Belasco was wavering, Kira could see it in his eyes.

"Do the right thing," Dax said. "Starfleet should be better than paranoia and hate and spying on our allies."

Belasco opened his mouth, closed it again, and looked down. He shook his head, and looked up again. "I am serving Starfleet and the Federation as they need to be served," he said. "I wish you could see that, sir."

***

"Now what?" Ro asked after Belasco had left. He would be confined to quarters until he could be shipped off back to Starfleet.

"Now, we write our reports and leave it in Starfleet's hands," Dax said. "And hope we don't have an engineering crisis until we can get a replacement."

"We can't prove he did it," Ro said. "The evidence is circumstantial, and he never actually confessed."

"If he gets a good lawyer, he probably won't even be court-martialed," Dax said. "It'll be a black mark on his record, at worst."

"And there's a good chance he'll be targeted by Section 31 or any other unscrupulous senior officer looking for someone to do their dirty work with plausible deniability," Ro said.

Kira shrugged. "It's out of our hands now," she said. "Hopefully his replacement will be better. You did a good job, Captain; I was impressed with your professionalism. You didn't let your prejudices make you jump to conclusions, and you advocated for Belasco even though you didn't like him."

"Thank you, sir," Ro said.

***

Ro turned down Dax's invitation to dinner at the Replimat, and headed home as soon as her shift was over. As the doors to her quarters closed behind her, she sighed. It had been a long day without any good resolution for anyone. Belasco had no idea what he was in for, and he was going to be in a position to fall in with people who would amplify his worst traits. She wished they could have either gotten through to him, or gotten him out of Starfleet.

Still, at least they’d gotten him off the station so she wouldn’t have to deal with him any longer. And done it before he’d had a chance to spy on her. And her new CO liked her.

It wasn’t like the support she’d gotten from Picard; he’d believed in her, trusted her, given her space to prove herself. It had been what she needed at the time. But they’d had such different lives, and he’d been so much older and more experienced that there had been a large gulf between them even before she’d left Starfleet.

With Kira, she was closer to her age and experience, and there was a kind of camaraderie she could never have had with Picard.

But Ro was still grateful for everything she’d learned from him. And she’d put off calling him long enough.

Ro got herself a cup of tea from the replicator, and sat down in front of her communications screen. She started the recording. “Captain Picard, it was good to hear from you. I enjoyed meeting Ambassador Worf again, and his wife Lieutenant Dax and I are becoming friends. I was glad to hear that you and the new Enterprise came through the war well …”

#fan #fanfiction #star trek #deep space nine #ro laren #kira nerys

[thestobingirlie]

do you think jonathan and nancy were equal trainwrecks in st3? you've spoken really well about how nancy bulldozed over him a lot, ignoring the dark room rules and continuing with the investigation even when he said it was a bad idea, and of course after they're fired she shows 0 sympathy for what it means for him financially, but i've always thought if nancy was bulldozer then jonathan was just a doormat, and kind of a two-faced one at that

before they fell into the investigation, he did ignore the sexism nancy faced. the support he offered was passive "they're assholes, but you'll win them over some day", when later during their argument he said she was naive for caring what they thought and thinking she could be a star reporter. when nancy says the whole summer had been humiliating, he likens it all to them being interns, when he was actually treated really well at the job. he's obviously faced shitty treatment in the past from his father, and probably at school and around town, but at the paper he was left alone to do the work he was hired (and interested) in doing, and then didn't have any focus on him when they were being yelled at, even though from the newspaper's perspective he did the exact same amount of bad as nancy (or more, considering nancy was laughed off of any other responsibilities than fetching food; jonathan was treated as an actual employee with a work station he abandoned)

it sucks that only jonathan apologized (though only for not believing in nancy, instead of also entirely blaming her for choices he also made), not just because nancy also fucked up but because it's just more of the same of jonathan not actually being honest with nancy and shows how their characters just don't help each other grow or develop

oh 100%. neither jonathan or nancy are good in their relationship in s3, which i think is what really turned me off to them together.

jonathan is absolutely a doormat. i think it comes from his years of parentification. he doesn’t stand up for himself until he’s finally pushed to the edge. which in s3 happens when they get fired, and he unleashes what he’s likely been feeling and thinking this entire time.

he whines about nancy coming in the dark room, but doesn’t actually try to stop her. he tries to cheer nancy up about how she’s treated, but doesn’t actually do anything to stop it, or make her situation better because he’s too scared to rock the boat. he didn’t want to go along with her rat plan, but did anyway!

he’s just really terrible at standing up for himself, which is a major issue when in a relationship with someone like nancy, who does what she’s set her sights on and doesn’t really listen to other people.

and when it comes to the sexism, i think, like nancy when it comes to the byers poverty, he has a hard time recognising what he’s never experienced.

i think it also might come from this aspect of jonathan’s character that’s been present since s1, which is that he doesn’t really recognise ‘normal’ issues. this is hard to put on paper, but basically we see that he doesn’t take nancy seriously, he thinks she’s just like everyone else, who has the same issues with her parents that everyone else does and she’ll eventually fall into the same miserable dynamics.

i think this comes from the way jonathan retreats from society and casts himself as a loner. he can’t fit in, so he has to dismiss everyone else, and he can’t take them or their trauma seriously. because that kind of means acknowledging them as people in a way he doesn’t want to do.

think back to s2, the way he comforts will is that nobody likes boring people, and that sticking out and being different is the only way to be cool and loved.

i think jonathan just can’t really comprehend nancy struggling because in his eyes, she has it all. she’s got the house, she’s got the dad making six figures, her parents are together. when she complains, i think he sometimes gets stuck thinking about how much she has, instead of what she’s still missing.

i hope i worded that right? it’s kinda jumbled in my head. i don’t think jonathan necessarily thinks his trauma makes him special, but i think he struggles to look past his trauma when considering how other people struggle.

my biggest issue with how rushed their apologies were, isn’t just that nancy doesn’t take back the oliver twist comment, but because we don’t actually get that chance for jonathan and nancy to truly talk about what happened, and their issues, and how their relationship falls apart the second they experience conflict. obviously people say, “oh they’re about to be attacked, of course it was quick”. but, the duffers could’ve had them had a conversation whenever. they go back to hopper’s cabin and spend all night here! they couldn’t have had a talk when everything calmed down?

in my opinion, jonathan and nancy are just two people that, because of their trauma and the way they approach relationships, shouldn’t be together. until they truly work through all their issues and develop as characters, they won’t have a healthy relationship. and that’s because of both of them, not just nancy, and not just jonathan.

#jonathan byers #nancy wheeler #anti jancy #stranger things #asks #anon

[tired-fandom-ndn]

What's your take on the Monster High Isi Dawndancer situation? Isi was their only Native American doll, but the company, citing many concerns and criticisms from Native people over the course of the original doll's release, have decided not to reissue her in the Monster High reboot, as they feel she's an offensive character and do not wish to insult Native people.

This has caused some people - who are white - to defend why she's a great character actually, and I don't like that I can't find Native voices talking about this. So I turned to you to get actual Native input: is this a character who should be rereleased as a doll and included in the new webispodes, in your opinion, or did the company do the right thing by removing her?

TV Tropes has a quick overview of the character here under Isi Dawndancer (since digging through the 10+ fan wikis is a pain): http s://tvt ropes.or g/p mwiki/pm wiki.ph p/Char acters/Mons terHigh

Okay so I looked at the TV Tropes page and her wiki page and here are my thoughts:

She's a deer spirit, specifically based off of the Deer Woman apparently. Really don't know how I feel about the Monster High franchise using a sacred spirit as inspiration for a character, but she's not a w-ndigo, which is. . . something, I guess. More than I expected. Also I just hate deer-centered Native characters in general. They're tacky, overdone, stereotypical, and often dehumanizing.

"Native Scaremerican" can we fucking not actually. In complete seriousness though, she doesn't seem to have any official tribe/nation, which is very aggravating.

She's wearing what looks to be dreamcatchers, which are Ojibwe (Northern midwest US). The wiki says that her clothing patterns are "Aztec", but they definitely look more like they're inspired by a number of different Southwest tribes, namely the Apache, Diné, and Hopi. She's from "Boo Hexico", which supports the Southwestern influence, but her name is Choctaw, which is a Southest nation. So she's a mishmash of a whole bunch of unrelated cultures :/. Also the feathers are shitty and unnecessary and her name is just stereotypical in general.

"She is a deer spirit from Boo Hexico who lived there all her life until a vision notified her of Monster High and urged her to study there." A vision? Really? The Native American character gets spiritual visions to guide her?

Dancing seems to be the only cultural thing she's got going for her. What kind of dancing is unclear. Is she a jingle dancer? Fancy shawl? Buckskin? Because traditional dances have purposes and meanings, they're not just generic swaying and that seems to be the vibe they're going with for her.

(I hope it's not buckskin dancing. That would be weird all things considered.)

The TV Tropes page says that she has a power that makes guys fall in love with her and she's repeatedly described as flirty. There's a lot of awful stereotypes centered around the idea of Native women being seductive and irresistible and I do NOT like seeing that continued here.

"The birds of the air and beasts of the field are all my friends. I would not want to cause jealousy by choosing one over the other." Wow. A Native American character who just loves animals so much and has a special connection to them. How unique and interesting.

All in all, she's a fucking mess and even just looking at her design makes me want to cringe out of my skin. I definitely support the company's decision to discontinue her for the reboot, but it would ring very hollow if they continue to produce dolls of her. I also feel like just discontinuing her completely is a cop-out because companies use that sort of backlash against stereotypical characters as an excuse to not include Native characters at all, claiming that it's just not worth risking offending people when they really just don't want to put in the work.

#Anonymous #ndn tag

[sunken-samsonian]

can you explain why you like face-off?? curious lmao

GOOD QUESTION TY FOR ASKING <3

It isn't because it's a particularly good movie, or that the acting is amazing. I honestly just kinda like the symbolism and concept. It's a WILD ride of a movie and I like it most for the absolute buckwild execution <3

The concept of two guys switching faces is inherently so funny, but they made it an action movie. Not to mention they decided to cast Nicholas Cage and John Travolta as the two main characters. Sidebar, they wanted Arnold Schwarzenegger originally but he declined the role after reading the script. ANYWAY

The whole movie is hilarious, it's great fun if you don't take it too seriously. Beyond that, some of the things they do are kinda cool. Castor and Pollux Troy are a really interesting sibling dynamic, and I wish it got a little more runtime than it did. Castor clearly cares a lot for his brother (arguably he's the only person Castor cares about, considering the information we get about his son), and Pollux knows almost instantly that Sean is posing as Castor when they meet in prison. There's also a mention of Castor hand-feeding Pollux his pills, which is a wild departure from the priest-posing, gun-slinging, face-stealing sonofabitch we get throughout the course of the movie.

We also see a surprising amount of psychological turmoil when Sean goes through with the switch, especially once he gets freed from prison and meets Castor's pals. He is slowly losing his identity to the man that killed his only son, and this insanity and turmoil is what ultimately makes him believable to Castor's gang.

Castor's situation is a little different, we see him absolutely butcher a bureaucratic job when he assumes Sean's identity. This is expected, Castor doesn't do well with taking orders from higher-ups arbitrarily. We get surprising interactions between Castor and Sean's family though. You'd expect cold and uncaring, completely detached. He actually shows a surprising amount of concern for Sean's daughter, teaching her how to deal with pushy boys permanently (still one of my favorite scenes tbh). Sean's wife gets more passion than she has in a long time, which is absolutely hilarious to behold.

They also have some pretty cool religious symbolism here and there (mostly toward the end), and the scene where they're surrounded by mirrors is iconic for a reason. Confronting your enemy, and also yourself! (They are one and the same)

Tldr; it's a really funny watch when you don't take it seriously, and they do some interesting things psychologically if you want a deeper watch. It's a fun movie, that's why I like it. :]

#ty for asking anon <3 #face off #face/off #nic cage #nicholas cage #john travolta #cannot believe I'm going to be living in the face/off tag all by myself lmao #fr though! very fun movie #samsonian.txt #anon ask #anon.txt

[emma-is-swaggy-and-epic]

Y'know what, since i've fleshed out my new OCs a bit more i think it's time to explain them more in-detail! Starting with my danganronpa OC: yuriko togami (so needless to say: SPOILERS FOR DANGANRONPA AHEAD!!!)

I have complete character sheets of her as well as my other OCs on arts and OCs amino (my username on there is VixinTrix)

Oh, and also i feel i need to prefice this by saying that the only danganronpa game i've played so far is trigger happy havoc. I've watched a youtube video a long time ago explaining ALL of the lore but i've tried to forget most of it so that it doesn't ruin my experience playing through the games so i may get some stuff about the game's lore wrong with this character, like i'm not sure if byakuya actually DID rebuild the togami corporation or if people just SAY that he did as a joke considering i only ever see people mention it in the comment sections of meme videos....but i mean...either way i guess it doesn't matter considering yuriko's mother CANONICALLY DIED BEFORE SHE COULD EVEN BE CONCIEVED so she's already not following established lore in that regard...

Yuriko (yuri for short) comes from a danganronpa AU where celestia ludenberg never died (how and why that is the case is up for your interpretation) and she eventually got married to byakuya, resulting in them having a daughter....that daughter, of course, being yuri!

Yuri was born as the heiress of the togami corporation, she lived a sheltered life so she never really had any friends aside from a borzoi puppy she got for her 13th birthday. Growing up all people could really see her as when they met her was just the daughter of celeste and byakuya so she felt the need to prove to the world that she was more than that so she took up chess and constantly practiced every chance she could, which eventually earned her the alias of the ultimate chess master

Personality-wise, yuriko comes off as very cold and harsh much like her parents though it's less "i'm so much better than you and i don't think you deserve my respect" but more "i genuinely do not care about anything that's going on and i just want to be left alone" which means she doesn't really emote much, but when she does she looks absolutely unhinged (think omori's battle portraits in omori)

Despite this however, yuri is very gentle and is quick to crack a joke when she needs to...though it's kind of hard to tell considering she always talks in a very monotone voice (my voice claim for her is simGM's portrayal of kourtney kardashian) plus she LOVES dogs more than anything and will sob uncontrollably if she sees a puppy

Due to the stress of being the heiress of the togami corporation and nobody seeming to care about her aside from who her parents are, she took up smoking weed sometime later in life and she became almost dependant on the substance (and yes, while i know smoking is a VERY SERIOUS thing, i feel like i need to mention that i got the idea of making her a stoner because before i actually drew her design, i liked making jokes about her recreating the "420 gucci gang, my mom took my vape" meme and stuff like that and it kinda just stuck)

Also like, a few days after i made her i realized i accidentally just reinvented my little nightmares OC myrtle soooo.....

Though in my defense, myrtle and yuriko MAY look similar and have similar character motivations but I ASSURE YOU THEY'RE TOTALLY DIFFERENT!!! See, myrtle is a pretentious emo brat who takes things way too seriously and her whole story is her trying to fix the universe after she created a dimensional merge with her reality bending powers. YURIKO is a dog-loving stoner who plays chess and simply doesn't give a shit about anything

Also if you think about it, yuriko is pretty much just shaggy from scooby doo....they're both stoners with pet dogs who come from rich families....not only that but considering yuri is a DANGANRONPA OC, that also means she probably solves mysteries....god fucking dammit...

#scheduled #oc: yuriko #tw drug use #artists on tumblr #art #digital art #digital illustration #danganronpa #danganronpa oc #danganronpa fan character #danganronpa fankid #explaining my ocs #oc #ocs #danganronpa spoilers #tw smoking #tw weed #she's less of a celesgami fankid OC and more of a fusion between my little nightmares OC myrtle and shaggy from scooby doo....

[thelordofgifs]

Obscure Tolkien Blorbo: Frequently Asked Questions

Making a quick FAQ post for organisational purposes!

Why isn't [insert character] in the bracket?

Because nobody submitted them, or they were disqualified for receiving too many submissions and failed to make it through the lightning disqualification polls.

Why is [insert character] in the bracket? They aren't obscure!

Well, firstly, obscurity is subjective (although I attempted to quantify it). A lot of hardcore silm fans (at whom this tournament is aimed, of course!) find some of these characters very un-obscure indeed - but not everyone is coming to this tournament from a "lives breathes and sleeps HoME" position! That being said, in retrospect I'd probably have chosen more stringent rules for disqualification, based on my quantified obscurity score instead of simply on number of submissions. My mistake, please don't eat me, I promise I'm actually really nice :)

UPDATE: a lightning disqualification round ran to (somewhat) fix this issue! More here.

I feel the need to personally reiterate to you that these characters aren’t obscure.

Cool. Vote against them then.

Seriously these characters aren’t obscure at all.

Have you considered that I heard you the first fifteen times?

How did you calculate the quantified obscurity score, then?

I'm glad you asked! obscurity score = number of fics on AO3 tagging that characer * number of submissions the character received.

How did you seed the bracket?

Slightly unconventionally, since this is an obscure blorbo poll, I seeded the characters by obscurity score and then pitted the most popular characters against each other in the first round, to give the more obscure blorbos a greater chance of success. Was this entirely fair? Probably not, but I think it makes it more interesting than the "extremely popular character against unheard-of character" matchups we'd have otherwise seen.

This matchup seems really unfair though.

In early rounds the matchups are all quite even actually, since they're all between blorbos with adjacent obscurity scores!

Can I send you propaganda for my blorbos?

Absolutely! Some new rules for propaganda:

If you want propaganda to be included in the body of a poll itself, drop it in my ask box before the character poll opens! (You can find the dates for future polls in the Round 1 masterpost here.) If you want to make my life easy, keep your propaganda text-only - no pictures or links - and in a single paragraph so that I don't waste a minute having to delete all your line breaks.

If your propaganda contains pictures or links, or the poll is already open, or you just want to make your own post instead, feel free to do so and tag me in it! I'll reblog it under the tag #otb propaganda.

Help! I can't decide whom to vote for!

Well, ultimately that's your decision! But some rough guidelines, if you're struggling to make up your mind:

If Eldacar is in the poll, vote for Eldacar.

Polls are always in the order "more popular character vs less popular character", so if you're rooting for someone obscure to win the whole thing, voting for the second option is a safer bet.

Choose feminism and vote for women. Because of the nature of this tournament there's a lot of textual ghosts/very obscure female characters in here, which makes me happy - don't let them lose!!

What are the lightning disqualification rounds?

These are two special polls I ran to fix the error I made in disqualifying characters too early! Those who were unfairly disqualified went up against the ten most popular characters in the bracket; in each poll, the five characters who received the most votes remained in the tournament. More on my reasoning here.

In the end, only one disqualification occurred: Eärwen was replaced by Azaghâl.

Help! I accidentally voted for the wrong character!

Luckily, that’s easily fixed! Drop me an ask or dm with a screenshot proving that you voted for the wrong character, and I’ll take your vote into account if the margin is literally that close (unlikely but you never know); and I’ll change the numbers on my results spreadsheet to account for your mistaken vote too.

#obscure tolkien blorbo #will edit as needed

[lorz-ix]

River City Girls Zero (2022) / Shin Nekketsu Kōha: Kunio-tachi no Banka (1994)

I was really excited to try this game, since we're still sorely missing localizations for most SNES Kunio games, and this is the one that originally inspired the first River City Girls. After that game released, and thanks to the wonderful collection of all the NES Kunio entries translated to english for modern system, I kinda got very into the franchise, you see.

Turns out this was a massive disappointment. It's a very bland, very linear beat' em up that completely fails to live up to the expectations set during the previous console generation, only providing higher quality visuals and sound, and a slightly more intrincate story that takes itself too seriously for how unimpressive it is.

The new localization is fine, with a couple new opening and ending songs, a new animated opening sequence, and the option to choose between a 1994 faithful translation and one that tries to link this game more closely to the characterization of the River City Girls storyline. That's if you're playing in english of course, I noticed every other language only gets one translation. Tough luck.

I felt this localization job was completely unnecessary. As a game, you're essentially forking over 10-15 bucks for a SNES rom with little replayability and extras that add next to nothing to the experience. I would rather pay full price for a collection of all the SNES games with less bells and whistles, if they did it for the dozen NES titles they should have less of an issue doing it with the 5 or so SNES ones. Instead, they chose to give us one single very mediocre game, and I find it hard to have any hope that they'll release the others in the future.

River City Girls 2 (2022)

Even after the previous letdown, I was still very hopeful and excited for a full sequel, and I think it mostly lived up to those expectations. I want to play more of it, play through the story with different characters and do more of the side quests, which is a sign that I had a good time.

There's tons more dialogue for each of the playable characters, which is a treat. There's always some funny moments to laugh at, and I find the cast to be quite charming. Their movesets have also been improved and expanded, so there's more to do and experiment with during fights. You can get pretty creative and do some demanding combos if you're really willing to explore what everyone can do. The combat is a clear step up and probably the easiest thing to praise.

The story is also quite nice, pretty much what I'd expect from a sequel, fun the whole way through, but it's also where I began to have issues. I think some secondary characters that could easily be considered series staples, and who showed up in the first game, should have made an appearance here, but I guess that's my personal take and it can be forgiven. My biggest issue was how Ken was used, with his resemblance to Kunio having actually zero significance to the story, and him being apparently much older than the main cast? I believe he could have made for a more interesting and engaging baddie if he was also a teenager and a similar plotline to the one in Zero had been used.

And, oh man, don't get me started on how they fumbled the dragon twin(k)s. They're usually a top threat in any game they're in, and they got fantastic redesigns here, but they were barely used and I didn't even get to fight them. That should be some sort of crime. Genuinely the most underutilized members of the villain cast. What the hell happened here.

I guess I didn't notice this sort of stuff back when I wasn't a fan and these characters were all new to me, huh. Maybe this is all just fanboy rantings. Maybe it's not a big deal. But I seriously think the dragon twins are cool and they should be used more.

Other than that, my roomie (who I played through the entire game with) and I felt that the frequent fetch quests and backtracking required to advance the story got fairly annoying, but perhaps we wouldn't mind it if we were playing at our own pace and took our sweet time. I think playing with more patience would greatly improve the experience. All in all, I believe it was a very fun game, great fun with a friend, adorable characters, just not perfect you know. I'm only a bit passionate about some of that stuff.

#lorz mediapost 2023 #gaming #river city girls