Odo emerging from his bucket to shame Ferengikind (specifically Quark)
Remember, no matter how badly the Women Characters are being treated on Star Trek, The Women actors behind the scenes are somehow being treated worse!
One thing that is very important to me about Julian Bashir is that he is genuinely pretty perceptive and emotionally intelligent, more so than he sometimes gets credit for in fandom. And this is especially true after the first season or two, when he matures and develops as a character.
There are numerous moments in which he delivers accurate insights into people’s internal states. In “Defiant,” he recognizes that Kira is lashing out because she’s overworked. In “Life Support,” he reads between the lines in his exchange with Winn and recognizes the underlying insecurity that’s guiding her actions, and calls her on it. In “Nor the Battle to the Strong,” he realizes that there’s more going on with Jake’s mood than just the stress of being in battle, and that something’s bothering Jake that he can’t bring himself to voice. In “The House of Quark,” he understands that the reason Keiko’s upset is that she misses having a career. In “Statistical Probabilities,” he realizes that Sarina has feelings for Jack, and uses that to get through to her. Etc.
Furthermore, he’s good at listening and at managing emotionally high-stakes situations. He talks Miles down from suicide in “Hard Time”; he soothes Jadzia’s nerves about going back to Trill in “Equilibrium”; he listens to Kira when she unpacks her feelings about her father’s death and about watching Ghemor die in “Ties of Blood and Water”; in “The Wire,” he gets Garak to trust him in handing over the switch to turn off the implant, and for the most part maintains his composure even with Garak lashing out while in withdrawal and actively trying to get a rise out of him. In all of those situations, he’s pretty calm and measured in his approach, and he knows what to say to these people to get through to them.
Yes, he also has trouble navigating certain social interactions. He has interpersonal habits that grate on people, particularly his mile-a-minute infodumps. And sometimes he’s too absorbed in his own stuff to pick up on the subtext of what’s happening around him - for example, the (hilarious) exchange in “His Way” when Jadzia alludes to the situation with Kira and Odo and he has literally no idea what she’s talking about. But he is capable of quieting down and going into serious mode and listening when the situation calls for it. And when he’s focused on a person or situation, he is good at putting the pieces together and intuiting what’s going on. When he doesn’t do that, and instead rushes to conclusions about what someone else feels or wants - as in the situation with Sarina, or when Ezri’s trying to confess her feelings to him and he assumes she wants to get back together with Worf - it’s often willful obliviousness borne out of emotionally self-protective impulses.
Obviously Dukat's continued predation on Bajorans is all flavours of deply fucked up but the moment when he ad-libs the "Ah.... It's a miracle!" when the cultist's child turns out to he half-Cardassian is so absurdly funny. You can see his face fall for one moment when he realizes he fucked up real good this time. When he realizes everyone will see what he did the best that he can come up with is "let's all kill ourselves real quick". A true master of improvisation. Always 10 steps ahead.
After 356 years and seven lifetimes… I still lead with my heart.
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[Image description: three gifs from Star Trek Deep Space Nine focusing on Jadzia Dax
Gif 1: Close-up of Jadzia in a TOS uniform, the background is red. Jadzia Dax is written at the bottom in a stylized manner
Gif 2: Various gifs of Jadzia. On the left there's a gif of her in her red wedding dress. On the right, there are two small gifs of her, in the first one she looks upset, but she is laughing in the second one. Below is a close-up of her blue eyes. The last gif is at the bottom and shows her sitting on the Captain's chair of the Defiant during combat.
Gif 3: two merged gifs of Jadzia. On the left, she is standing and smiling. On the right, she has her gaze down but looks up as she listens to what's being said to her. At the bottom of the gif, the following quote is written in a stylized manner: "If you want to know who you are, it's important to know who you've been"
/end image description]
The fact that garashir became canon is 100% thanks to Sid and Andy who have both been very vocal about this ship and still talk about it 30 years later. They are the number one shippers of the pairing and I can't help but think it happened thanks to their dedication to it.
My favorite gif. I never get a chance to use it, so I’m just going to share it.
Feel like Odo would spend his entire life telling people that he never collects keepsakes and never puts any decorations up, but one day one of the Bajoran children on DS9 would give him a slightly crumpled piece of paper with a scribbled drawing of them and Odo together. And he would act grateful but very nonchalant about it, being like “this is very nice of you, but I have no need for it”, until Kira or Quark or someone walks into his office and sees it on the corner of his desk, with a little frame around it