There’s a post about how we need more female characters who genuinely care about people but are really bad at caregiving, and honestly that fits Kira Nerys really well. I’m thinking of Starship Down where she’s tasked with looking after Sisko and keeping him conscious when he has a head injury, and she just starts visibly flailing despite making an effort to hold it together. “Listen up…. because there’s going to be a test later” and then trying to keep him alert by droning on about duty rosters because she gets Task-Oriented when things are in dire straits and does not know how to scale things to a more personal level with someone she has a working relationship with.
Like, so much of how she deals with emotionally fraught situations is by getting up and doing something about them (even so far as traveling back in time) or just keeping busy to avoid dwelling on the matter at hand. When her father was dying, her response was to go out and kill some Cardassians about it, and then order another attack upon his death, rather than sit by his bedside. When Bareil died (pre-resurrection via mad scientist noodling) she went right back to work despite Bashir telling her she didn’t have to. It is a trauma mindset from someone who witnessed a lot of death and suffering and had no choice but to pick up and keep moving and keep fighting. And when she has to sit down and really focus on someone else’s vulnerability, it’s very uncomfortable for her. She cares very deeply about the people around her but she’s clumsy about it.
Garak: I have killed again
The various war criminals of DS9: *shock, horror, despair*
……
Garak: I have killed again
Dr Julian Bashir, one of the world’s foremost and most dedicated healers: Lol. Lmao even
the thinggggg the thing about kira and jadzia is that. jadzia is so so so full of joy and the measured, steady, unshakeable optimism of someone much older than she is. but she wasn't always like that, she was a lonely, anxious, nerdy kid who "grew up" 300 years in the span of a single medical/spiritual operation. and a big part of that experience was the dedicated training she got towards knowing herself, knowing her needs and desires and how to meet them, so that she wouldn't get drowned out by the rest of dax. right
and she comes to ds9 and she meets kira, a lonely, anxious fighter who was an adult by the time she was 10, who never had the opportunity to know more about herself than what was strictly necessary--that she is strong, that she makes a good leader, that she can do anything she sets her mind to. but she never figured out what she might like to set her mind to, because freedom was the only thing it was possible to want.
and jadzia sees her old self in kira's face, in the bowstring-tight lines of her, and jadzia takes her by those aching shoulders and says Hey. do you want to know yourself? do you want to know what joy is? do you want to play?
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine // S06E14: One Little Ship
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.
Starfleet @ Leonard McCoy: Could you please just stop violating the Prime Directive for humanitarian reasons, just for a second
Leonard McCoy:
haven’t watched the star treks in five million years but this is what happened in In The Pale Moonlight right
(credit to @/sweepswoop_ on twitter who drew the original Labru meme!)
This is maybe the funniest DS9 meme I've come across and I'd love to be proven wrong