#ameliarating

what is bitch eating crackers-ing?

​it is a reference to (originally, according to know your meme) this tweet from 2011:

14. that one thing you see in fics all the time

Well it’s not “one” thing, but this is as good as a venue as any to confess that, while I love Sisko/Bashir, it’s the pairing I think about the most from a meta/analytical perspective (can’t quite say an id perspective), and is possibly the most thematically interesting relationship on the entire show to me……. so much shippy fanfic of them is just unreadable to me.

The reasons for this are varied. There’s the way that so much of it will take the wet tissue paper approach to Julian Bashir’s characterization/trauma and cast Sisko as the strong and loving caretaker, in ways that tend to both infantilize Bashir and deny Sisko vulnerability. (Personally I think they’re very similar people, and both have nurturing impulses, but that Bashir is actually somewhat more resistant to showing vulnerability, and more likely to sublimate those feelings into caring for someone else.) There’s the corralling them into a conventional Romantic Couple mold, which is pretty orthogonal to what compels me about their relationship (namely the ways in which they relate to each other, and the intimacies that arise between them, feel very much embedded in their professional relationship, and the institutional ties that bind them). There’s the sort of Healing Through Family undertone to how that’s executed, which I don’t like for Bashir. And there’s the whole thing where it actually feels similar to a lot of fanon for Garak/Bashir in that it’s taking Bashir’s desires and aspirations and subordinating them to what his partner wants - there’s an assumption that because Sisko wants to settle down on Bajor and live a cozy domestic life, that must be what’s good for Bashir. (Personally, I think playing house on Bajor would bore Bashir to tears, and frankly I’m not sure it would entirely satisfy Sisko either.)

But also. Also. They just don’t fuck correctly. They’re not letting Bashir top and they’re not letting Sisko suck cock and it makes reading fic about them feel like trying to find water in the desert. Pleeeaaase give them enrichment. And while submissive!Bashir is really not my thing, I do feel that, if one’s going to write him that way, there’s a huge missed opportunity to make him a BRAT!!!! This man mouths off to authority regularly and is generally uppity. He would never talk to Sisko this way for real because he respects him too much, even when they’re in disagreement, but if they’re roleplaying?? He’s just too acquiescent in so many BDSM fics for them and it takes me right out of it. Yeah people can have different “scene” personas from their usual personality and sometimes that’s part of the appeal but we are talking fictional characters. And I just don’t see anything particularly interesting character-wise in this take on him.

17. there should be more of this type of fic/art

Moral dilemma fic!! I articulated my feelings about this here and I don’t really have much to add but. Moral dilemma episodes are SUCH a Star Trek staple and it’s such an underutilized way of digging into a character’s psyche and values and pushing them to their limits. It’s hard to express that I am interested in Bashir suffering, it’s just that I want him to “suffer” in the sense that I want him to undergo his own version of “In the Pale Moonlight,” in which he’s forced to betray his morals in little humiliating ways for the greater good, and in which his victory at the end leaves him feeling nothing but grimly resigned to the choices he’s made. (I admittedly am not writing anything that goes that hard for him, but I do have a lot of little situations in the long post-canon Cardassia fic in which his ideals get tested or in which he’s forced to make moral compromises he’s not happy about. And I also want to read about it, badly.)

I would also like to see more fan art in which Bashir actually looks like Alexander Siddig. And especially in which people get the shape of his nose right.

18. it’s absolutely criminal that the fandom has been sleeping on…

Another post-canon Cardassia related answer - a lot of PCC fic involving Bashir does not delve deep enough into medical ethics. (To be fair, I have been avoiding a lot of those long fics just because I’m trying to focus on my own take on that situation, and I can find fics with similar concepts distracting in that regard. But my friend @bijoumikhawal corroborated this complaint, and I don’t see much casual discussion of that possibility on here either.)

The thing is - there are so many reasons to assume that Cardassian medical ethics are extremely questionable, and that procedure would go against what Bashir is accustomed to. The Science Ministry is explicitly stated to be under the jurisdiction of the military, which says something about their priorities in research; there’s also a Voyager episode in which a Cardassian doctor is revealed to have made his medical breakthroughs via unethical experimentation on Bajorans, and I can’t imagine those abuses weren’t widespread during the occupation. And just… everything we know about Cardassians suggests to me that their medical ethics would um. not prioritize things like patient autonomy or informed consent.

I actually have a scene in my fanfic in which Bashir gets in an argument with his (actually very politically progressive) research partner, because she mentions that it used to be mandatory for all adult Cardassians to donate blood and bone marrow; he’s horrified by that, and she’s confused as to why he sees it as an issue. That OC has also been a really useful vector for me to explore how widespread exploitation and abuses of power are in Cardassian medical/biological research, and how doing that kind of work within those institutional strictures all but necessitates becoming complicit in abuse, no matter how good one’s intentions are.

I told you this was the one you wanted while you were trying to pry answers about which wip was which because apparently I didn't put this one on my wips page for some reason, whoops. anyway this is the "me playing in the Macau and Pete relationship sandbox one" - who is doing the acquisitioning of the title depends on your perspective (but it's probably Macau).

sometimes your brother gets shot and almost dies and you end up coming home from the hospital with a new in-law, it happens.

I waffled about whether to write this one from Pete or Macau's pov and settled on Pete, but I am now kind of wishing I'd gone with Macau - though there is something funny and enjoyable, too, about Pete going through the experience of being assessed and ultimately adopted by a stressed out teenager who can't decide if you're a friend or a pet or something in the middle.

the part of this I am most looking forward to writing is the bit where Pete gets hurt and Macau gets to freak the fuck out about it. but we're a ways from that at this time.

Xiao Xingchen made a choking noise that Xue Yang thought presaged another round of puking, but then he said, "I'm aware," sounding a little strangled. Xue Yang went still, something in his chest sharpening, but Xiao Xingchen added quickly, "I've — of course I've made it clear that I'm committed."

"Okay, okay," he said instead. "I get it. I'll try."

"Good," Macau said, almost savagely. "You'd better."

"Uh huh," Xue Yang said. "I can tell when you're freaking out, Xingchen, you're not subtle."

If all went well, if she managed to get herself (at least provisionally) accepted here, if that was the intent of all of this and not a prelude to something worse—

(Don't borrow trouble. You're not in a position to start planning, not without more information, so don't go chasing problems you don't have yet.)

Fenris very scrupulously did not so much as glance in his direction.

But he did bend his steps toward one of the taverns he'd seen.