Datzadi

And taking this further: would anyone mind if I just posted chunks of dialogue or prose? Out of context even?

Deanna would be ALL FOR Halloween!

I know it's not really one of the celebrated holidays in TNG, but it is VERY FUN to think about the crew organizing an 'ancient Halloween night' just to shake things up.

And god, those costumes would be great!

SPOILERS for the game, but at the end the computer and human characters become one being. And that made me think about how Data and Deanna experience the world in very different ways and what a similar experience with them would be like.

They run into strange technology all the time on unexplored planets, in ruins, from other cultures etc. And the idea of a device that would put Deanna and Data, maybe not physically together in the same body, but link their senses and thoughts together briefly as if they were, is some kind of thing I’m enjoying thinking about.

In the game Observation, SAM (the computer) and Emma are clearly cohabiting Emma’s body. Speaking and thinking as one, but still separate people.

If this were a Star Trek episode, I would love to see how overwhelming this experience would be for either Data or Deanna, and I would wonder if this device was even meant to link artificial sentient beings to organic beings in the first place.

Is this a device they can take with them, or is it a device very firmly built on a planet? Do they have to be in constant contact with the device, or does it link them until the link can be reversed?

What was the original intended use of this device? Was it to help people communicate? To help see from other people’s point of view in negotiations?

And how does this experience affect their relationship? Is it positive or negative?

An image that keeps popping into my head is Deanna and Data in her quarters, both of their hands touching a smooth, black object on her table.

Despite Data’s rather even keeled nature, I keep thinking he would be the one to struggle with this. Could he form an addiction of sorts to it? Of linking to her?

And there are erotic implications too. Deanna isn’t a stranger to being in someone's mind, but this is different. This is being that other person in a way that goes beyond telepathy and her own empathy. To be able to be the skin being touched and the hands that are touching? A sort of pleasure squared. Data may not experience pleasure in the same sense, but the mix of his own sensory input and hers is an experience profoundly different for both of them.

That part in the episode The Next Phase where Data closes that door

I don't have much to add to this one, but I think it's very cute!