I’m not here to change anyone’s mind. I know there has been a ton of discourse around Shaw deadnaming Seven, but I’ll wade into the muck anyway.
Firstly, I am aware that deadnaming is a triggering subject for a lot of people and as a cishet woman I can’t truly understand it.
But I also think we need to contextualize it in Star Trek as a piece of fiction. Yes, Shaw is my Blorbo. No, deadnaming Seven isn’t okay. However, television has been reduced to 10 episode seasons. We literally don’t have time for subtlety or character development the way we used to. The writers picked deadnaming as shorthand for Shaw being an asshole and as a quick way to flip the switch to him showing respect with his dying breath as a character redemption. Was it lazy? Probably. But I’m genuinely curious how you would change it. How would you get the same effect given he is a new side character in a series focusing on a half dozen legacy characters who take screen time getting excited about the carpet on the Enterprise D (fact, not complaint).
I just get the same vibe as people who think characters should talk out all their feelings like a therapy session to divide all the good guys into white hats and the bad guys into black hats. I want assholes to redeem themselves and heroes to make bad decisions. I want scenarios that make me question my own day to day actions and motivations. For the love of all that is fictional, can we keep characters of varying character so not everything is a Disney movie.
Hey I think we’ve had a miscommunication. Probably entirely my fault as like I said I have never used the meme format to make a point before. It was probably too complex which is why I wrote too much and the font is so tiny.
What the writers motivations were for why they wrote it is… well a friend just explained to me Watsonian vs Doyalist textual analysis which is basically in universe vs out of universe. I was coming at this from an in universe perspective. What happened, happened, and if the characters were real people (obviously they are not) about how they would process that/feel about things etc.
I am incredibly conflict averse which is why I tagged the way I did. I want to stay in my lane. If Shaw is your blorbo I am honestly happy for you. Seriously not being sarcastic. Fandom is an expression of love. Different characters resonate with different people etc. so I’m not in any way saying you are wrong for your feelings.
Purely talking about this from a character perspective my point actually had very little to do with Shaw at all. It was entirely about Seven’s (potential) POV/reactions as related to prior trauma. She’d been in an abusive relationship, and Shaw’s actions (while much less than what Bjayzl did) would have been like a callback. That part wasn’t Shaw’s fault, he wasn’t to know about triggering trauma/bad memories. The end part of my point, about how it was worse coming from the Captain, is again from Seven’s POV, because Janeway I guess and Picard maybe and how ultimately Seven wouldn’t have expected that behaviour from StarFleet. Not to say that StarFleet hasn’t disappointed her before but the Captain was someone her subconscious could have reasonably assumed would be a safe person, someone she could trust and Shaw wasn’t that.
If you’ve ever been in a long term abusive situation you form certain behaviours to protect yourself. When you get out you swear it won’t happen again but triggers are triggers. You want to think you’d fight but those self-protective behaviours are fairly ingrained, it’s instinct to curl in yourself and just endure. Obviously this isn’t going to be true for everyone but it’s my perspective, and my read of this fictional character. Now there wasn’t much to go on at all in season three but enough for speculation, and perhaps yeah a lot of projecting. Seven is so strong and so for her to simply accept it. I couldn’t help but go “oh. Conditioning from Bjayzl” and that was my point.
And in the spirit of attempting to avoid miscommunication. As I felt you missed my point I would like to address my understanding of yours. I wasn’t arguing at all that the writers shouldn’t have written that Shaw did what he did. In fact I was going deep with it, finding meaning and connections, and yeah all the shades of grey and varying levels because life is messy. We all have our own perspectives based on life experiences/beliefs and that is true for characters as well. I would agree with you that’s the interesting part. I wouldn’t remove this plot element even if I could. I’m just exploring the consequences of it.
