Scodo (scooter Odo)

Lower Decks really missed a golden opportunity to travel back in time to not The Trouble With Tribbles, but to Trials and Tribble-ations, where live action Boimler and Mariner would've had to avoid not only Kirk's crew, but the copy-pasted crew from Deep Space 9.

Just keep seeing how many layers you can pile on top of the original episode.

what strikes me about “Far Beyond the Stars” is how they cast Odo as the one who upholds oppression through complacency. because Odo’s been shown to be very beholden to the status quo - he prides himself on his neutrality, sees himself as only being subject to justice and truth. That was the thrust of “Things Past” - he doesn’t feel guilt over collaborating with the Cardassians, but over the fact that he failed at properly exacting justice under the premises of their rule. He tries to be benevolent from within the system, but doesn’t consider the fact that the system itself might be flawed (though he arguably starts to reconsider this at the beginning of S6). So his AU role here made a lot of sense for him, tbh.        

watched chimera..... i get it now #whatever

Odo emerging from his bucket to shame Ferengikind (specifically Quark)

Gender neutral ways to address a crowd:

❌ Ladies and Gentlemen

❌ Gays, gals and nonbinary pals

✅ Attention Bajoran workers

have I mentioned in any sort of detail yet how creeped the fuck out I am by the way the Founder(’)s(’) treatment of Odo is just like…. textbook abusive? because it is MASSIVELY DISTURBING to watch, okay.

like. punishing him (for what is almost certainly a hypocritical crime), and then doing the “we forgive you. do you forgive us?” routine. CONSTANT constant “we love you and you’re a part of us and we want you back” talk. isolating him from anybody else because they’re not good enough and can’t give him what he needs and don’t understand him the way the other Founders do? fucking with his sense of time such that he neglects any other responsibilities. simultaneously belittling his reasons for not going back with them, and then acting like they absolutely deeply understand that single reason that they’ve half-made up. questioning and wearing down his stated boundaries about linking.

honestly the most freaky part was when Odo was defending his choice to link with the other Founder to Kira by talking about how he wouldn’t be letting any information slip about the new resistance, because linking isn’t a sharing of information, just like, existence or something. when the Founders had literally used the Link to engage in espionage a season ago by manipulating and planting information while Odo was joined to them. like. YIKES on bikes, massive gaslighting ahoy.

and you know what, in light of all this it kind of makes me… suspect that the purpose of launching marmalade children off into space all on their own isn’t just to gather knowledge to enrich the Link and the changelings’ understanding of the world, but also to create “sleeper agents”, enmeshed in non-Dominion cultures, who will be easily ripe for manipulation by the core population of Founders into betraying their adopted societies and advancing Dominion takeovers of new worlds. because the Founders know that changelings are feared and mistreated by solids. Odo himself certainly hasn’t been run out of town or anything; he has a pretty good position for himself - and even so, his primary caretaker as a child was Dr. Mora, who also was and continues to be abusive and manipulative to him. so his that case is at all typical in terms of who picks up and “raises” these baby changelings, what the Founders have done is basically created a population that comes to them already fucked up by their personal history, and easily vulnerable to re-victimization.

People joke about DS9 A and B plots but this cut was bonkers