in which I have a go at a certain branch of Merlin shippers and theorize about Ferengi taboos

queer_fest is open for prompts. I enjoyed participating last year and will again this year, though I'm still mentally collecting prompts. One I know already. It's an idea that admittedly ows itself to yours truly being ticked off and truly SICK of one Merlin/Arthur request that asked for Gwen erasure too many (not at Queer_fest, elsewhere), but it's also the wish to see one of my few OT3s getting written. Ater all, bisexuality - and love that works in polyamory, not "just" one person/another person monogamous arrangements - are among the subjects to celebrated at this ficathon. Therefore, my prompt numero uno will be: After Arthur's return, Merlin and Arthur try to live as a couple on their own and quickly discover they can't. They need Gwen. Not just for her common sense but because they love her. They don't rest until they find her in the present. I'd like both Arthur and Merlin written as bisexual (not straight, not gay), and the relationship between them and Gwen explored as a triad where each party is invested in the two others.

One of the prompts I saw already posted is a DS9 one and asks for Jake/Nog, which I'm all for, but the prompt itself positions something I'm not sure about, to wit: "Nog has always broken Ferengi taboos - what's one more?". What I'm uncertain about here is: would it even make sense for Ferengi to have a same sex relationship taboo? I think to assume they have one is to ignore the practicalities and the precedents of a deeply sexist society that, before the reforms that start during the course of the show, isolates their women from public life, most professions and hardly lets them off the planet while at the same time having a floroushing intergalactic economic presence. Bearing ancient Greece and in particular Athens in mind: these conditions are more likely to encourage same sex relationships and the elevation of them not just to equal but superior status to the male/female ones. (A lot of those quotes about erastes/eromenos relationships that often end up in slash said by one character to the other come if you read further with some nasty misogyny, along the lines of women not being possibly capable of the emotional and spiritual depth of true love, etc.)

If we look at tv canon, there is just one incident that could be constructed as a clue to how the Ferengi see same sex relationships, and that's the season 2 episode that's basically Yentl in space, with Quark in the Avigdor role. I haven't watched it for a while, but when Pel, who is a Ferengi woman disguised as a man, kisses Quark (who doesn't know yet she's a woman), he doesn't react repulsed or homophobic, he just doesn't go for it and pretty much ignores it. He only freaks out somewhat later when finding out she's a woman, because this is the big taboo breach. If we include media tie-ins, which of course is optional (and I usually ignore them, but hear me out), there are the complete Ferengi Rules of Aquistion as written by Ira Behr and Robert Wolfe, both writers and producers of DS9 (Ira Behr wrote most of the Ferengi episodes), and they include after a show quoted rule that says "Never have sex with the bosses sister" a rule that says "Always have sex with the boss" with a footnote "In case I need to spell this out: there are no female bosses on Ferenginar".

In conclusion: I don't think the Ferengi have same sex relationship taboos. You can still write Jake/Nog as taboo breaking, but more because it's an interspecies relationship, and while there are a lot of those on the show (to wit: every woman but Pel Quark is ever attracted to plus of course the long term couple of Rom/Leeta), it's in each case not exactly a case of joyful acceptance from both of the species in question.

Thirty Days of TV: Day Twenty-Two

Day 22 - Favorite series finale

Even these many years and many other beloved shows and some excellent finales later: All Good Things..., the series finale of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It managed to accomplish so many things: clever use of the "three different time lines" macguffin, allowing the audience which had followed the show both a look back to the start (oh, and for departed crew members to come back, not just Denise Crosby as Tasha Yar, but also Colm Meany as O'Brien, who at this point already had clocked two seasons of DS9 as a regular but made the time for an appearance on his old ship, the Enterprise), at the present and at a possible future. It used Q and the Q/Picard relationship well. (Much later I discovered it also managed to upset a certain branch of Republicans, because of the short scene where Q takes Picard back to prehistoric earth, shows him various amino acids in the primordial soup and casually remarks this is the origin of life on earth. Apparantly creationists took expection to that. Here's to an additional bonus!) It allowed the entire ensemble to shine, playing two, sometimes three different versions of themselves. It wrapped up the show yet also reassured us there were many more adventures for our heroes to come. In short, it was TNG and Star Trek optimism at its best, without coming across as preaching or blind.

And here is the very last scene, which still reduces me to fangirl mush no matter how often I watch. The sky is the limit!

( The rest of the days )