I am actually surprised I haven’t seen any posts before now correlating Shaw and Bjayzl and making Seven be ashamed of who she is – who she was made to be and who she had to fight to become. Seven had to forge her identity and these fuckers demeaned her for it.
#I’m going to end up writing fic again aren’t I?#the feels aren’t going to contain themselves I am at boiling point with the spite#justice! some damn justice please
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.
It’s only been a day? For real it feels longer. I only watched Picard yesterday? Sounds fake but ok.
So it’s been a day and I am getting mad all over again because THE ENTERPRISE!?!! Really?
It’s visceral how wrong this feels and I’m struggling to articulate it.
Kirk had the Enterprise first in terms of The Original Series. Chronologically obviously Archer was first. Naming the first ship Enterprise, and that becoming a flagship thing makes sense. TNG is literally named ‘The Next Generation’ so of course. It was literally designed to show the adventures of the next Enterprise and crew. With Pike (and SNW) we technically have had 4 series surrounding the Enterprise. Four.
Seven originated on Voyager. That was a literal ship of outsiders because they were stranded far from StarFleet. I know a ‘maverick’ Captain of the Enterprise is hardly unusual. I mean it’s the spot for the absolute best and I don’t deny that’s Seven but at this point in the Trek timeline it’s a handicap. The Enterprise is nothing but legacy and history and baggage. I’m unsurprised because rumours are at least the working title of a spin-off (if not the actual title) is Star Trek: Legacy – like no just no.
It’s a cage. It’s a box. It’s a prison.
Seven is her own character. It does her such tremendous disservice to shackle her command to the Enterprise and the inevitable comparison to all the other Captain’s. Hell the Stargazer for all that was a legacy ship of sorts would have been a much better choice. Doesn’t have the same weight.
If nothing else Strange New Worlds will hopefully still be airing. Do we really want two shows about adventures on the Enterprise, at the same time?
Let her be free. Give it a ghost of legacy if they must. Make it be the Stargazer, or the Excelsior as Captain Harry Kim has got promoted to Admiral, but not the Enterprise. Just because Seven is a ‘legacy’ character doesn’t mean she can’t tread new ground. Really the only legacy thing I want them to do is actually develop and have some continuity with the dropped plot threads. Laris who? I will never be over that.
I mean with how bloody badly they treated Seven and Raffi this past season I don’t even want a spin-off anymore. But if it’s going to happen they are already off to a bad start.
WHY DID NOBODY TELL ME THIS WAS ONLY 90 MINUTES LONG?!
Ahem 😳 sorry I am a terrible audio listener. I have to be stuck in some kind of manual labour before I can even begin to hope to process. I was putting this off as I thought audiobook = 9 hours or so.
I can probably listen to this most Sundays when I do the ironing. I could have listened to this weeks ago 😭
Ok ok I’m gonna go listen now. I am prepared for the feeeeeeels 🥰
I thought it didn’t mention anything about Janeway giving up? I remember the line Seven said was “Janeway went to bat for me, threatened to resign, but… I gave it up, went full Ranger.”
Well we saw how well “big play bluff resignations” went with Picard. Seven knew Starfleet was everything to Janeway so gave it up to save Janeways career. It was the logical thing to do. Also Seven sacrifices for her friends 😦
I know Seven had some kind of emotional inhibitor but I haven’t seen all of Voyager. Is it removed at some point? I need to know for fic reasons.
It was part of her cortical node right? And Icheb gave her his I think? (I read wiki) so I’m not sure what that means. BUT I mean with the depth of emotion she felt re: Icheb’s death + how much Seven loves Raffi there’s no way it can still be functioning right?
On the other hand I do recall Once Upon a Time and how Regina removed her heart and still managed to break a curse with true loves kiss because even with her feelings gone she loved her son that damn much /sigh
Googles. Cool. As it’s no longer relevant I won’t be mentioning it. I was just typing something and went “waaait can I say that?” and thought I should check. Turns out yes I can. Whoo!
People complaining about Seven sitting in the Captain’s chair. 🧐 Searching for logic. Can not find. Seven is a Ranger that’s like the definition of “looking out for the little guy” no? Does she have to do crime to do that? Sure, probably, but that’s the hero we need as the ‘establishment’ isn’t always right.
Captain Seven is the Captain we need IMO.
Plus! Plus! Importantly Seven is still Seven and why can’t people who are different see themselves in a hero? I’ll get super salty in a minute about autistic rep. Breathe self. Breathe.
They are talking about murder? Oh wait Bjayzl seriously, that’s the murder they are talking about? Yeeeeah I kinda don’t follow the fallacy ‘hero’ thinking of “killing is always wrong”. Bjayzl had hurt a lot of people and importantly as I remember it (haven’t seen season 1 since it aired admittedly) but they were still doing their Borg black market operation. Killing them would have harmed that. Not stopped it probably because bad guys are like hydra, take one down and two more take their place. It’s like whack-a-mole. But still I think it was justified.
Seven doesn’t kill people because she enjoys it, or for personal gain. What she did sure had high levels of revenge and was driven by pain. But there were benefits to a lot of people from it too. I’m talking about basically a world of espionage here – and a sci-fi world at that. Plus it’s fiction. Under those headings I support it.
@sayamantha
But this is Star Trek they’re not assassins and they’re not supposed to be vengeful in their killing. It’s a “if it has to be done” Sevens story is more complex than the other Captains. But at the end of the day that’s what people are “upset” about but they’re also very limited in they’re thinking of black and white and what the media has provided previous for female archetypes.
She could have taken her in got info to shut it down but it wasn’t about that for Seven it never was and it was clear from the moment it started playing out that it was about Seven killing her.
Personally this is a Captain I want.
That’s actually a really good point and something I hadn’t properly considered – genre expectations.
I was looking at it through the lens of “does this story make sense? / can I believe in it?” As opposed to “does this fit the genre rules of Trek?”
I still 110% support Captain Seven. I think challenging archetypes is a good thing and if there’s a touch more nuance in there, that’s no bad thing. But yeah I take your point. It is well made.
I’m taking a duvet day as I’m exhausted and decided marathoning some Voyager would be best 😉
I’m mid season 4 (first time through) and I’m on the Waking Nightmare episode. Seven is kissing Harry and I was like “omg that can’t be real!” (And it wasn’t) but what made me cackle is the holo-romance dialogue of “resistance is futile” 🤦♂️🤣
Buuuut anyway aside from my poor attempts at humour. I do have one kinda serious thing.
I read a fic where Seven referenced the incident of resurrecting Neelix to Raffi, sort of as an apology that as she wasn’t Borg she couldn’t do that for Elnor.
But when I just watched that episode I thought it was more complex than that as Neelix had a bad psychological reaction. Something Seven would have dismissed as irrelevant before but after? When Neelix was putting his affairs in order he made a point to see her first, to let her know there was no ill will and that he thought she was great.
Given Seven constantly says about how she doesn’t get the complexities of human interaction. I wonder if she would have been troubled that she had missed Neelix’s obvious problems. To her at the time he would have been being illogical and inefficient etc. but the things that Seven dismisses fresh from the Borg, are things that do have profound impacts on the things that she does consider that matter. Gestalt I guess?
There is a point in here somewhere perhaps linked to what Jurati said about what the Borg dismiss, is actually a strength that they have been ignoring?
Like part of Seven’s journey is a bit like a Vulcan kinda with the emotions? Spock says that it’s illogical but humans do a lot based on it, and that affects all kinds of things.
I just realised I’ve been going mad over Seven/Raffi but there’s little rambling on here. I’ve been rambling all over the discord instead. Anyway, I still haven’t watched last weeks episode (damn UK delay) but I saw a spoiler and I have THOUGHTS and feelings. It hurts and I’m actually going to make it a post this time.
Right so Seven said that she tried to join StarFleet when Voyager got back from the Delta Quadrant but they wouldn’t let her – instant agony! All I could think was of the first Voyager episodes when Seven was so desperate to rejoin the collective because she didn’t want to be alone – she wasn’t used to it, and she needed connection – and Janeway told her that the crew would be her new collective. They were individuals, but Seven would be one among many – she wouldn’t be alone. That was what Janeway offered her if Seven stayed.
I’m going fucking feral right now at the thought that Voyager got back and the crew went their separate ways. They had families and lives to return to – BUT SEVEN DIDN’T! Seven only had the crew of Voyager but it was alright because Voyager was a “StarFleet crew” and she could transfer her connection to the larger whole – AND THEN THEY TURNED HER DOWN!
Now I could write a freaking essay about how bloody stupid that was. Especially given what StarFleet eventually did with the xB’s and integrating borg tech into their own ships. Surely a ex-borg that had been free the longest, and was already loyal to StarFleet would have been useful? But I digress.
Adrift, alone, with nothing but her skills and her need to affirm her humanity Seven joins the Rangers. All she has is the work. She’s good at it but it has to be lonely. As a Ranger she works alone. There are other Rangers but it’s a big galaxy – a bit of the old “one riot, one Ranger” going on. She meets and helps lots of people but the connection is fleeting – she doesn’t BELONG anywhere – and it’s the belonging that Seven needed/searched for and then are they really telling me for 20 fucking years (or however long it’s been since Voyager?) that Seven didn’t have it?!?!?
No bloody wonder she’s having issues with commitment, and needing to keep moving or be vulnerable. The one damn thing she wanted – to join StarFleet – the thing that she made herself VULNERABLE for – and she lost it. They rejected her.
