When You Have A Fictional Man Who's Very Good And Gentle And Compassionate But Is Also A BDSM Sadist

imagine a bajoran teenager living on ds9 who's trying to decide what to do with her life and feels compelled to get closer to the Emissary, but gets the sense that Sisko is a little uncomfortable with being approached in that way, and she's a little young to join the bajoran military and try to get stationed under him, so she looks for another pretense to like have a conversation with him or something

and she overhears Jake talking about playing baseball with his dad, and maybe at the temple she overhears Kira talking about going to the holosuites with them for a baseball game, and she gets the sense that baseball is Important

so she gets up her courage and approaches him on the promenade some time when he doesn't seem too busy, like "excuse me Emissary, I wonder if you would allow me to ask a favor of you."

and Sisko tries not to look like he's steeling himself

"I would like to learn about Baseball."

and he gets this big grin. and tells her what day and time to show up to Quark's for the next time he and Jake are gonna play (and ngl maybe part of him is thinking she's closer to Jake's age than Mardah is...)

and like as they're doing warmups, and she's taking things Very Seriously trying to learn the ropes, Sisko makes an offhanded comment about how Cestus III would be the place to be if you really wanted to get immersed in the sport. and of course she takes this a lot more seriously than he meant it. like a direction in life given to her from the Prophets, directly from their Emissary.

so after all of one (1) time playing baseball in a holosuite she approaches Kassidy to learn more about Cestus III and works like a short internship under her to earn passage there. and shows up in like Pike City or someplace like "hi, does anyone around here hire non-federation citizens? i don't care what type of job. also when are baseball tryouts?"

and like after several years spent getting good, bc she approaches the sport with y'know religious devotion, she returns to her people. and starts a training camp on Bajor that's like basically a monastery. like teenagers who want to pursue religious studies but can't sit still long enough to have hope of becoming a ranjen, they get sent to her to learn to practice Baseball

like imagine a young adult with a really elaborate earring and also like the baseball shoes and the short pants tucked into tall socks going "you know, waiting for a sign from the Prophets is a lot like playing left field..."

quick garak study to get his stupid scaly lizard face right- as prep for fanart >:)

send garak / garashir requests in askbox if you dare

His way!!

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.

Deep Space Shipping

I've seen many of these, but here's my attempt at mapping the DS9 polycule! ;)

All of these ships have 25+ fics on AO3 (aside from Kira/Miles, but the Keiko/Kira/Miles tag makes up for that :P) I love this fandom and this silly queer space station so damn much ❤❤

And man, some of the triads/quads/and more that come out of this are 👌👌

Bitch you are the captain of a starship for the USS Enterprise what the fuck do you mean

Star Trek TOS: *Stablishes that the touching of hands is incredibly intimate in Vulcan culture akin to fully making out.*

Star Trek TOS: *shows us Spock holding Jim's hand while talking about the importance of his feelings.*

The fandom: *reads it as romantic.*

The writers: oh my god, that's crazy, where did you get that from?

Star Trek DS9: *Stablishes that, in cardassian culture, flirtation is done by arguing and bickering, that is how they show interest in another person.*

Star Trek DS9: *Constantly shows Garak and Bashir arguing and bickering, including a scene where Julian shoots at him and everything.*

The fandom: *reads it as romantic.*

The writers: OH MY GOD, THAT'S CRAZY, WHERE DID YOU GET THAT?

There should have been an episode where Odo gets zapped while shifted into an object and the zap does something to his morphogenic matrix so he's stuck like that and the whole episode is everyone doing their best acting scenes with a mug or perhaps a bag

*some dramatic scenario in which odo is relieved to see quark*