see luka, see luka sleep

1) Julian Bashir was born neurologically and developmentally disabled. He had unspecified cognitive and physical disabilities that could easily be read/interpreted as high support needs autism, cerebral palsy, and/or all kinds of combinations of various existing conditions.

2) His parents had this illegally Fixed. His disabilities were Cured. Not only this, but he was enhanced to have cognitive and physical skills beyond any natal human capability. He is now functionally Better than other humans. This act was definitely a violation of his agency and autonomy, but the takeaway is that he’s now super-abled, not disabled.

3) Now let’s meet some other genetic augments who went through the same procedure! Oh, wow, they’re all struggling. They definitely have superhuman abilities, and part of their difficulty integrating into society is attributed to their being institutionalized and also general cultural Federation prejudice against augments, but fundamentally these people struggle because their augmentations giveth and they taketh away. Their augmentations have not erased their ongoing need to be accommodated! Sarina is straight up catatonic and nonspeaking from constant overstimulation; her enhanced senses deliver more information than her brain is able to process. Such narrative choices clearly demonstrate that genetic augmentation does not automatically heal disabilities and is incredibly likely to Give You New Ones even if it does…

4) unless you are Julian Bashir.

5) The other augments actively express jealousy towards Bashir— that he’s allowed to integrate with society, yes, but also that he’s not functionally disabled. The writing and portrayal of his character is absolutely still neurodivergent and disability coded, that’s pretty consistent, BUT: textually, according to the internal logic of DS9’s narrative, Julian Bashir has been successfully “cured” of his disabilities, and he is the only genetic augment for whom this appears to be true. The others need accommodations to meaningfully participate in society, and he does not.

6) They double down on this by having him “cure” Sarina in Chrysalis. Additional genetic augmentation performed by genius Dr. Bashir manages to stabilize her and she is suddenly able to function independently in society. But is she Cured the way Julian is Cured? No, she still requires support. Could you argue her struggles adjusting are due to being institutionalized and also catatonic for most of her life? Yeah sure, but that still suggests that genetic augmentation is not an automatic fix for being able to function independently. This is well in line with the themes DS9 and Star Trek attempt to narratively convey! It’s not as simple as just doing eugenics until no one needs wheelchairs or Braille anymore; in fact, we agree the practice is actively harmful to the wellbeing of individuals and society.

7) And yet Dr. Bashir is fine. Granted, he has his own issues and idiosyncrasies, but so do the rest of the DS9 cast, and so these are easily attributed to him being a complex and nuanced character, not a disability. Because he’s not disabled, at least according to narrative logic— they Fixed that. Yes, it was traumatic and violating and dehumanizing, and yes, augmentation has demonstrably never worked that way for anyone else in-universe, but Bashir is the narrative’s special favorite boy as far as this concept is concerned. He gets to be Fixed and Cured and never experience any measurable side effects of his own augmentation outside of social stigma and his own complicated feelings about it.

8) Here’s what grinds my gears more than anything: DS9’s narrative recognizes the violence inherent in augmenting Julian without his consent, but not the violence inherent in actually erasing his disability. Shady criminal procedures Cure his deficiencies by bestowing him superpowers, and aside from the fact that it makes both Julian and others uncomfortable, there are no objective downsides to this result. Purposefully or otherwise, it suggests that curing disability is not only possible in Star Trek’s utopian future, but a net positive moral good.

TLDR: The entire justification for Bashir’s special treatment as an illegal augment and the basis of his allowance to remain in Starfleet is that he’s an undeniably gifted doctor who will save countless lives by continuing to practice medicine. Jules Bashir, the six year old who struggled to learn the ABCs, could never have achieved this. Ultimately, Julian’s achievements symbolically justify his parents’ decision to violate him in the long run! Sure, he has depression and anxiety, he may not be content or personally fulfilled, but he functions, and that’s what makes it worthwhile. He contributes, and he does not need to be accommodated. Bashir’s whole personal complex around being an augment is even centered around trying to prove that augments (disabled people) can contribute to society. But considering the episode where other augments are introduced is all about demonstrating their limitations, combined with Sarina’s arc in Chrysalis and Julian’s entire character post-retcon, they are demonstrably only able to do this ONCE THEY’RE CURED.

This is Star Trek! The same show that on the surface across multiple episodes and multiple series with multiple disabled characters has expressly, consistently tried to communicate that disabilities shouldn’t be cured or erased! Other fans have pointed out the Star Trek universe’s wobbly and conflicting success in conveying this message, but still— It blows my mind that DS9 beefed it THIS hard. Bashir is an incredibly well written character outside of this aspect too! Yet from a narrative analysis perspective, where characters are representative symbols and not just people, Jules the disabled six year old really is dead. That’s not purely something adult Julian is written to believe about himself, it is textually true. Jules was completely erased. No matter how much the story condemns that erasure as injustice, there are still no narrative consequences. Richard Bashir goes to jail, but Julian is still a superpowered genius who can help save the world. Julian is troubled and has conflicting feelings about his augmentations, but even that internal conflict never gets in the way of his ability to practice medicine/functionally benefit society. Eugenics wins. DS9 as a creative project is actively thematically trying to push against fascist eugenicist pro-authoritarian rhetoric, and I don’t believe Julian’s arc is intended in any Doylist sense to fulfill it, but still, it does. Even the introduction of other augments who are functionally disabled, intended to complicate the narrative of augmentation/curing as a solution, simply ends up reinforcing Julian’s role as a special example of how the whole practice can ultimately be successful. That’s fucked, especially considering how close they got to doing something legitimately groundbreaking and revolutionary for a mainstream 90s science fiction narrative! All they had to do was let Bashir continue to be disabled after they retconned him to be that way. No one was holding the writer’s room at gunpoint or forcing them into that decision; the least they could have done was stand by their goddamned choice.

We are losing nearly ten percent of the planet’s insect population every decade due to human influence. If you have taken even an entry level biology course you understand how terrifying that figure is for not just humans but all life on Earth. As EO Wilson put it,

“If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos”

Even despite the urgency of this issue, there are few conservation initiatives focused solely on preserving invertebrates. The Xerces Society is one such organization! If you share my concern about insect population decline (and you are able to do so), please consider donating to their current fundraiser to help protect our most vulnerable neighbors. They are still short of their fundraising goal!

First to establish the rules: to get an official reply from the commission and possibly legislation, an initiative needs 1 million signatures within 1 year AND at least 7 different countries need to hit their threshold which is calculated based on population (idk how it's calculated but a little more than 1 in 1000 adult citizens of the country need to sign to hit its threshold). This is to ensure that not all the support for an initiative comes from one or very few countries.

Ok so here's the graph for signatures that the conversion therapy ban got over time according to the wayback machine:

The deadline is in 2 days as I write this and there's a MASSIVE last minute push! 415,223 signatures to go still but the last update to the website added about 360,000 all at once. I think it might still be possible after all.

A fan protest against the lack of action from the OTW on addressing issues of harassment and racism on AO3 and within the organization

This is a Call To Action for Fans of Color and Allies

AO3 has acknowledged that they have a harassment & racism problem that its parent organization, the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), needs to address. Currently, people can use AO3 to harass others through fanworks, comments, and tags. Just a few examples include: racist Untamed “spitefic” that used anti-Indigenous slurs and was written specifically to lash out at fans of color; a Transformer fic that used its Black-coded character to reenact George Floyd’s murder in July 2020; someone naming a fandom scholar who criticized their Nazi omegaverse fic in the tags of the fic specifically to incite harassment to the scholar; writers using racial slurs against commenters who pointed out racism in their hockey fic; and so much more.

In June 2020, after the murder of George Floyd, the OTW committed to addressing these issues. It has been nearly three years and they have not yet implemented any of the changes they promised, other than a blocking/muting tool that was already in development before 2020. We need to hold the OTW accountable to their own promises. (See the section further down on “Why Are We Doing This” for even more detail.)

As fans, together, we are powerful. We are organizing to protest the lack of action on promises made by the Organization for Transformative works to deal with issues of racism and harassment on their platform, Archive of Our Own.

We call on fans to do any or all of the following actions any time between May 17 to 31, 2023 to send a message to AO3 and OTW that we will hold them to their promises.

On AO3

Change the title of ten (or more!) of your most recent or most popular fanworks to include ‘End Racism in the OTW’ in the beginning, and provide a link to this post in your summary or first/top creator’s note

Post a new fanwork any time between May 17th to 31st with “End Racism in the OTW” either as the title or at the beginning of the title. The fanwork does not have to be long - it can be a 100-word fic, a quick sketch, a podfic of a ficlet, a 20-second vid/edit, a short piece of meta, etc. In the summary or first/top creator’s note, provide a link to this post

If updating any WIPs with a new chapter, add ‘End Racism in the OTW’ to the title and provide a link back to this post in your summary or first/top author’s note

Update your AO3 icon using the profile pic graphic in our Social Media Toolkit

Plan to maintain these changes until May 31, 2023, or longer if you wish

Send a message to the OTW asking for an update on their 2020 commitments!

For Readers: leave encouraging comments on fanworks with the "End Racism in the OTW" title to show your support of this initiative.

On tumblr

Reblog this Call to Action with the tag #End OTW Racism

Update your profile pics and banners using the graphics in our Social Media Toolkit

Follow this account for updates and signal boost our posts

On Twitter

Follow @/EndOTWRacism (remove the backslash) and signal boost our pinned tweet

Update your profile pics and banners using our graphics, and change your display name to include #EndOTWRacism

Use sample tweets and graphics from our Social Media Toolkit to tweet about your fanworks, and use the hashtag #EndOTWRacism

Help us make this a long-term campaign - sign up to help with other anti-racism projects and future actions!

What Do We Want?

Since their June 2020 statement, OTW has been working on updating their Terms of Service (TOS) to address racist and bigoted harassment, but with little transparency and only the vaguest of updates. It has been three years since their commitment to this update - we want to see the results of their work implemented in the next 6-12 months. Their TOS updates and complementary policies should include:

Harassment policies that can be regularly updated to address both on-site harassment and off-site coordinated harassment of AO3 users, with updated protocols for the Policy & Abuse Team to ensure consistent and informed resolutions of abuse claims

A content policy on abusive (extremely racist and extremely bigoted) content; by abusive, we are talking about fanworks that are intentionally used to spread hate and harassment, not those that accidentally invoke racist or other bigoted stereotypes

These points are not particularly new and are not our own innovation; please refer to Stitch's article written over two years ago, asking for several of these very things.

OTW has also already committed to various process-based actions for longer-term works towards centering antiracism, including hiring a Diversity Consultant. The last update that OTW published said that the consultant would be hired within the next five years (after already having had three years to work on it since their original commitment). That is not soon enough. We want to see the following process-based actions implemented:

Hiring a Diversity Consultant within the next 3-6 months

Committing to a policy of transparency on this topic, with quarterly updates on the progress of these projects including challenges and their plan for overcoming those challenges. These quarterly updates should be published on OTW News page and newsletters, not solely discussed in Board meetings

Why Are We Doing This?

16 years ago, Astolat famously published her manifesto calling for a fandom Archive of One’s Own. In that time, AO3 has grown to be a central pillar of fandom, likely far outstripping its founders’ original vision. It is more than just an archive now; it is a central hub of the modern fannish experience. AO3 and the OTW must continue to grow and evolve with fandom over time to remain a healthy and functioning pillar of fandom. To that end, there are several areas in which the organization, as it admits itself, is lacking.

In June 2020, in the wake of the George Floyd protests and the uprising of the Black Lives Matter Movement, The OTW published a “This Week in Fandom” referencing the works of Dr. Rukmini Pande and Stitch, among others in which they discussed ‘making change for a better society’ through ‘conversations about race and racism’. In response, Dr. Pande and Stitch submitted a letter to the OTW calling for a more formal public statement than an offhand reference in a News Roundup that only served to call for thoughts and discussion without any indication the organization intended to do anything, policy wise, to address the issues being raised.

Eventually, the organization did remove the references to the works of Dr. Pande and Stitch and then made an official statement on the issue of racism within the organization and AO3. In it, they identified several things they would be prioritizing to combat harassment and benefit users. Some of those have been implemented (notably those that were already under development). However as of this writing, little else has been done especially in regards to:

Improving admin tools for the Policy & Abuse team

Reassessing the current mandatory archive warnings with the possibility of implementing others

And, most importantly, reviewing the Terms of Service (TOS) to allow the Policy & Abuse team to address harassment that is currently not covered by the existing TOS

By their own admission, the current tools and policies of the OTW are not sufficient to deal with issues of harassment and racism.

Several people who were involved in the founding of the OTW, including previous OTW Board members and staff on the original OTW Content Policy Committee, acknowledge that the founding of the OTW in 2008 and early board iterations failed us as a fandom by not doing enough, and by not even considering the way racism is perpetuated in fannish spaces, despite a long history of racism in fandom.

It has been nearly three years since the original commitment by the organization with little visible, measurable progress on these three crucial issues and a complete lack of transparency on where they are in regards to even beginning to deal with these issues. In fact, in Q&As, it was heavily implied by a member of the board that those calling for OTW to deal with issues of racism (which OTW had already acknowledged as a problem!) were not really fans but outside agitators.

This has cast significant doubt on the organization's sincerity and commitment to their stated goals, and on their position as leaders of a central fan tent-pole. Fans of color are not outsiders. They are right here, members of our community, and they are being harassed and targeted and driven out while space and platforms are being given to racists.

#he spent centuries happy in a middle management position#hes supposed to look like the dictionary example of a boring buisnessman

#He's up there with Edward Cullen in terms of extremely boring immortals who pick the worst things to do with their unlimited time

A lot of very good tags on this, but this one in particular:

#he's specifically Just Some Guy: admin flavour#walk into any office and you'll have a dozen eliases#some of them scarier than tma elias#and that's one of his BEST qualities

valenti: kepler would have a ja-- eiffel would have a big old dog. or a big young puppy [was he about to say jaguar...] shachat: eiffel IS a big young puppy urbina: kepler would have like. a highly trained pack v: or a MOUNTAIN LION. with a laser on its back u: still highly trained. he would have like, alpha from [pixar's] UP. that dog with that level of training and loyalty s: it would be huge. probably an irish wolfhound, it would be the best trained irish wolfhound u: most of the others don't strike me as having pets someone in chat: lambert would have a chia pet v: he killed it, but he had it for like a week u: jacobi had a tamagotchi s: maxwell probably owned like, a section of neopets at one point in time, but that's not real pets

then they ranked their survival chances in a zombie apocalypse (all paraphrased):

shachat: eiffel dies instantly valenti&urbina: kepler just shoots him-- if they're eating eiffel, they're not coming after me! u: don't shoot him, it'd be a waste of bullets. he just shoves him u: pryce and cutter outlast everyone v: i feel like p&c cheat because they stay in a zombie-proof bunker, kepler and lovelace survive by sheer force of will and badassery s: kepler would be like those characters in the walking dead with a gated community (she has never watched twd) u&s: pryce and cutter last a long time even if they're all dropped into the wilderness hunger games style. i don't know if they last longer than lovelace or kepler s: i think lovelace wins u: minkowski does well, jacobi does slightly less well. s: maxwell does surprisingly well. she outlasts jacobi for sure, i wouldn't be shocked if she outlasted kepler u: hilbert would not last too long u: hera is tough s: either the power will go out or it won't. this whole flesh thing isn't really her concern u: hera might find the entire thing kind of entertaining

hilbert calls him the most dangerous man you will meet after cutter, so kepler becomes this dangerous, intimidating figure who demotes him under the coffee cup and slams his hand in a drawer when he's being ignored. he emphasizes his rank, because that's what hilbert respects and defers to.

eiffel needs positive reinforcement and constant supervision, so kepler encourages and compliments eiffel, hovers over his shoulder on any long and tedious task, and keeps him company while he does it. he focused on eiffel's resourcefulness and the very impressive thing he did when they first met, because eiffel wants to be acknowledged, and being acknowledged makes him better able to do his work

minkowski responds to authority and clear objectives (she said that she'd save the captain in the riddle of the orion), so even though she resents and complains about the busywork he assigns her upon arrival, she still does it! she seems to relish the opportunity to test the boundaries of an authority figure, and also to finally not be the one in charge. the responsibility of running the hephaestus was taking a HUGE toll on her, so it almost seemed to be a relief when the si5 arrived. she also handed off authority to lovelace when it got to be too much, because she was honestly unprepared to lead that level of catastrophe with as little training as she got.

lovelace has been denied her agency, ignored, mistrusted, dismissed, insulted, lied to and traumatized for a very, VERY long time. so kepler arrives, he speaks plainly to her, he seems glad to see her, and he willingly negotiates with her and gives her the position she requested-- master at arms. AND he enforces her authority even against jacobi and maxwell. even though lovelace was definitely planning to wipe out the si5, and the si5 really didn't intend to allow them to get back to earth alive, she was able to cooperate with them to bide her time, because she understood that kepler wouldn't initiate hostilities against them as long as it was expedient, as long as they seemed willing to fall in line.

and (my favorite!) hera's been regularly dehumanized, taken for granted, and pretty much just expected to limp along with all the damage she sustained because of hilbert by the hephaestus crew. they didn't have the know-how or resources to repair her properly, and she didn't want to tell them that she was in pain because she was already feeling inadequate about her ability to work because of how they spoke to & treated her. so when kepler heads up to the hephaestus, he makes sure to bring maxwell and repairs her systems. he calls her 'young lady'. he never once uses a pronoun or name for her that hera didn't choose. he spoke to her exactly the way he would've spoken to a younger, civilian woman, and he went out of his way to enable maxwell to help her in limbo/memoria.

and when it came to jacobi and maxwell, jacobi is also someone who wanted to be acknowledged, so kepler acknowledged him. kepler sought him out specifically and said 'i know you've been deprived of opportunities, and i'm here to give you one because i think you're worth it'. when he recruited maxwell, per michelle agresti's own words, he gave her an unprecedented amount of agency and autonomy and that was what she had always wanted.

It's not about comments, it's about community. I'm lying here at 1:36 in the morning and I can't sleep and that keeps going around and around in my head. It's not comments, it's community. I dunno if this is an epiphany or I'm an insomniac and I'm not making any sense.

But I've been running this blog for three and a half years now and seeing the things that spark joy in authors, and seeing the insecurities, and seeing people saying, "I need comments, I want comments, I have to have comments, if I don't have comments then I just feel like I need to give up" -- and I try and understand as best as I can but I don't think I actually get there. And I think the reason why that is, is because I've always had some form of community.

When I joined my last fandom, I knew a couple of people who were interested in it on tumblr, but I threw my first fic out there not knowing what I'd get. The fandom was still small at the time, and...the show was on hiatus, and there wasn't a lot of fic going on AO3, and so...when I put my fic out there, I actually got a response and it was pretty cool. And because I got online in the 90's, when people commented to me, I commented back in a conversational tone, and because the fandom was full of people of a similar age to me -- who also got on the internet in the 90's -- they also responded in a conversational tone. And next thing you know, we're making friends, we're following each other on tumblr, we're having a grand ol' time.

And so...for me, when I go into a stats spiral, it's more about comparing myself against myself, and "why am I not doing better with this story than this other story", and "why do people like that story? That was just a joke. This one that's serious, nobody is paying attention to and why is that"? But it's not so much about people and the comments or the lack of comments, it's more about me and, you know, trying to understand my own writing and you know, what works and what doesn't and relying on other people won't tell me that and I know that.

And then I remembered the one time when I actually was upset that I didn't get comments. And it was...I had organized this fandom event type of thing -- not really an event -- I was doing this thing, and anyone who wanted to participate or support me or encourage me was welcome to do so. I wanted to do a thing. I did...I, um, called it a ficathon, it was a March Madness kind of thing, where 64 prompts went in, and 1 prompt came out. And I was writing 64 fics at the same time and people were voting on them and it was great. And when we got to the final fic, and I wrote it and posted it on AO3, after -- I dunno, a month? -- of fanfare -- I was getting 50 votes a day on these things, so like people were reading. I didn't get comments. I barely had hits or kudos and it was a huge let down. And it wasn't about the comments, even though I remember I wrote some kind of post and put it on tumblr that I was upset and whatever, and I remember writing about comments and kudos and hits.

But that wasn't why I was upset. I was upset because I had created a thing for my community and it felt like my community ignored it. It wasn't the case and everything was fine, and you know, I had posted it on a Tuesday afternoon or something stupid and nobody saw it. It was, you know. I...probably overreacted, I dunno. But that was how I was feeling at the time. It was an intense disappointment for me.

But it wasn't about the numbers, it was about the relationship and the community.

And when I read some of the asks that I get or the tags on posts -- oh my god, the tags on posts -- when I see these things so often, it feels like what people want isn't a comment, it's a connection. They want people to talk to about their writing. They want people to talk to about stories or about the canon, the characters they love, they want to have a conversation. And for whatever reason, the way social media is set up, we expect that conversation to happen in a certain way or we don't realize it can happen in a different way, and...I dunno. AO3 isn't even social media. But it looks like it in a lot of ways. And so I think...I dunno, people look for community in their comment section. And it's hard to build a community there.

If you have friends on tumblr, or twitter, or discord, or wherever else, if you have relationships with people outside of your fic, at least for me, the comments are less necessary but also, the comments come because -- I mean, god knows, I was not the best writer in my fandom by a long stretch -- but I knew a lot of people. And I liked them and they liked me, and I think that really helped make people want to read my stories. Because again, it's that community piece. I'm looking for connections with them and they're looking for connections too. And if they know me as a person, and they see a story with my name on it, they might think, "Oh, I really like Pi! I'm going to click in and see what her story's about."

Okay. Okay, okay. Here’s the thing. It’s okay to want attention for the things you create.

*clears throat* Wait. Let me say that at the volume at which I meant it.

IT IS OKAY. TO WANT ATTENTION. FOR THE THINGS YOU CREATE.

“Make things because you love to make things” is a great piece of advice. It speaks to creating out of love instead of obligation. But it also ignores the basic human need to show another person a thing you accomplished and go “LOOK! ISN’T IT NEAT??” and have them confirm that it absolutely indeed is super neat! Very few people actually want to work hard on a piece of art, a piece of writing, a sculpture, a dollhouse, a carving, a sweater for their dog, and just Gollum it and never show another person. For most creators, showing your creations to others is vital for that creative part of your soul to thrive. Of course you should love what you do and enjoy what you make! But don’t ignore the part of you that wants to hold it up two inches from someone else’s face and get love and enjoyment from them, too, just because some false platitude instilled a sense of shame for that pretty much universal need.

there is a door on the hephaestus. it is locked, and no one knows where the key is. it is only for emergencies. only for when you are alone. ☄️🏚️