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selenakFinished the last two fictional relationships. This was a fun meme, and resulted in some mere descriptions and some mini ficlets, depending on inspiration. I think the ones which worked best for me were:
Given the time the good Doctor (no, the other one) spent in the holosuite, and the rather entertaining adventure they had the last time, Garak invited himself along into a further adventure. This one didn't star Julian Bashir, Secret Agent, it starred Julian Bashir as Giacomo Casanova, visiting Paris. Garak refrained to comment on the obvious.
At any rate, instead of scamming the French court via a lottery, Bashir got into an argument with someone named D'Alembert who was there to petition someone about a dictionary and its publication. Or something like that; Garak didn't pay too much attention, because he made an acquaintance of his own. (Naturally, Garak deduced who the most intelligent member of the court was at once.) They had a delightful conversation about doctors, part of whose charm was that they talked too much and were just that bit out of reach for a permanent relationship, so one could always wonder. And about gardening.
(Garak was always annoyed nobody took his claims about having been a gardener on Romulus seriously; he had spent two years in that function there, and cover or not, had actually enjoyed it more than he had tailoring at first. He missed it.)
Afterwards, as he and Julian Bashir grew more and more distant and the war grew worse and worse, as he had to work against his own people and get hundreds of them killed in order to end the Dominion's rule, he found himself returning to that holosuite program on his own. Just for an hour of conversation over chocolate or coffee in exquisite porcellain cups made of photon particles. Aside from her wit, there was a wistfulness in her at odd moments, and he blamed his susceptibility for this for the fact that one day, he found himself saying:
"I used to look at the stars like an appalling adolescent, trying to find Cardassia. These days, I try not to see it."
"I picked a star once," she replied. "It is still waiting for me, and I try not to look for it too often. Until I can claim it, the candles of Versailles will have to do... and we have such flattering candle light here, Monsieur."
Clearly, someone had messed up with Bashir's programm, Garak thought, and then decided she was talking metaphorically.
"It is made for hiding," he agreed.
"For a while," she said, and her smile was altogether far too aware for a hologramm.
***
The Force was strong in her, Obi-Wan could sense that at once. She obviously had no Jedi training, or Sith training, for that matter, yet knew how to handle her powers. If the way she had just taken out several Trade Federation droids was anything to go by, she was a skilled shooter as well.
Obi-Wan offered her to join the army of the Republic, secretetely intending to make a petition to the Council so he could apprentice her as a Jedi as well. Of course she was much older than even Anakin had been, but these were desperate times, and it was obvious the Sith had no age rules, so the Council might be swayed. To his surprise, the woman just looked at him and said: "No."
"Why not?" Obi-Wan asked, surprised.
"I am a clone," the woman said, "and I do not fight for people who use clones as their slave soldiers."
With that, she spoke to the thing she wore on her wrist, and said: "Teleport".
Obi-Wan Kenobi never saw her again.
****
To show up in the midst of a genocidal war against human kind wasn't the wisest thing to do, which was why the Doctor did it alone, without Ace. As it was, he was barely able to admire the unquestionable beauty of Minbari design before he was discovered on the Grey Council's ship, arrested, examined for devices which explained his presence and upon the discovery of his non-human anatomy brought before the youngest member of the Council, who usually dealt with the kind of phenomena which distracted the others from their war.
She asked him whether he was a spy. "Not really," he said. "Though I could tell you about Earth. All about Earth, in fact, which you might want to know. Given that you're about to destroy the planet. Rather a pity; they make excellent tea, and no one has ever rivalled their umbrellas, either."
"You have two hearts," she said, ignoring his words. "So you must be Centauri. Does this mean the Centauri chose to side with the humans at this late hour? Do you really want to see Centauri Prime come to ruin as well?"
Rather than terror or anger, both reactions she had expected, there was sadness in his expression when she spoke of Centauri Prime. Thenit was gone, and he pursed his lips in what eerily resembled her late mentor's manner of counselling her.
"You really should brush up on other species, my dear. No, I am not Centauri. I do like the hair style, though. How about you?"
Her young face started to lose its stern determination and became bewildered, angry, with just a second of amusement lurking in her eyes before she became angry again.
"No, it wouldn't look good on you, I agree," the Doctor said. "Tell me, Delenn, what will you wear when your race has conquered Earth? Still grey? It won't be necessary any more, you know. All that blood will be gone, along with the people. You could wear white and it wouldn't get stained."
Her face closed off again, though she did not ask how he knew her name. "Do not lecture me on bloodshed. The humans murdered Dukhat, and when we reached out our hands in peace, they murdered our legate as well."
"Have you ever tried saying "exterminate" when you kill them?" he asked helpfully. "I know a species which uses it as a catchphrase. They are very honest, you see, if nothing else. They don't hide behind vendettas. They want to wipe out the rest of the galaxy because they truly believe nobody but them deserves to exist."
She was silent, and so was he. At last, she said: "Go, wherever you came from. I will not hinder you."
"The advantage of being an individual of free will," he replied, tipping his hat, "is that you can pick any point in the universe and make it the center of a new life. Any point at all."
A few hours later, the Battle of the Line started, but her mind was still with the strange encounter she had had. When they called her to witness the final phase, she did. And then she chose a point. A single small dot, a starfury with a pilot whose interrogation she ordered.
Years were to pass, though, before she wore white.
***
Note to New Who fans: you don't need to know Old Who canon to understand that one. Just bear in mind this is the Doctor in an earlier incarnation, neither Nine or Ten.
***
Also, I gave in to temptation and aquired a Dexter icon, for the pleasure of having Mr. Hall and Ms Benz on display in the same picture, and because I fell in love with this clever, creepy, tricky show. Which if comments by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ide_cyan and buffyannotater are anything to go by, shares with The Godfather the fact it transcends its literary source. Well, I wasn't planning on reading the novel any time soon anyway, as I don't want to be spoiled. So, some more ramblings about the tv show.
One of the elements which fascinate me is that I can't decide whether a person we only meet in flashbacks as he's dead in the present-day time frame, Dexter's foster father Harry, is one of the most chilling or one of the most human characters I've seen on tv. Harry, a cop, spotted the early signs of Dexter's serial killer nature in his adopted son when Dexter was still a child and dealt with this by telling Dexter a) how to adapt, blend in, fake normality was necessary to keep from being discovered and b) to channel those lethal impulses by killing other killers, criminals whom the law can't reach for one reason or the other. The juxtaposition of a Norman Rockwell father-son idyll in pastel colours with what Harry and young Dexter are actually talking about is eerie and creepy and just when you (well, I) think that Harry must have been almost as sociopathic as any ole' serial killer to come up with this, you also wonder: but what would a parent, specifically a policeman, do if realising this about his child? And there are definitely hints that Harry hoped Dexter would reach the stage where faking it (normality, relating to other people outside his immediate family) would become making it. The flashback where Dexter asks him, returning from the Prom he didn't want to go to, "Will I ever feel it, Dad?" and Harry says sadly "I hope so" would be a case in point.
The last episode also highlighted something I've been wondering, so I'm glad they dealt with that - how Dexter's sister Deb felt about all those father-son alone times in her childhood. Deb and Dexter in the present day get along well, by and large. But now that she's coming into her own as a cop, he for the first time sabotages instead of supports her because what she's investigating could blow his cover. The flashback to their teenager years in a way mirrored that. Deb felt excluded, not good enough and betrayed, and her father, having decided that she was to be protected from the truth, caused this. Dexter followed the Code of Harry by lying to her but clearly felt some guilt as well, hence the gesture of giving her the tin can and telling her she's the better shot, which is interesting because he doesn't feel guilt about much else. Certainly not about the need to kill; otoh, it's arguable whether or not the reflection of what Rita and the kids would feel if he gets arrested and the truth comes out is a reflection of guilt - not for being a serial killer, but for the potential of causing them pain.
Dexter is an interesting case of nature versus nurture, because what Harry gave him was clearly more than a survival technique. He's under no illusions as to why he kills - because he likes it - but is not as completely incapable of feeling a connection to other beings (now that Harry is dead) as he thinks he is; both Rita and her children and Deb are clearly more than camouflage to him. There is also the fact the artificial inhibition Harry installed - the "kill only the guilty" - dogma - kept Dexter from at least one case of murder, when he discovers he was in fact wrong about the motives of the young ex-con whom he had pinged as another serial killer in the making and does not kill him. This particular case also served two other purposes - puncturing Dexter's smugness, his certainty about being able to identify other murderers somewhat, and shaking the audience up somewhat as well. Because said young ex-con might have committed his original kill by lashing out against his rapist but clearly had been close to killing another (innocent) person before Dexter found him. So, have we become complicit enough with the Code of Harry to wish for the boy's death or life based on what he did do or on the other hand could do? And who is either Dexter or the audience to make such decisions anyway?
Another way in which the show circumvents the idea of lethal vigilantism as the only way to solve problems is the way it developes Rita. The problem of the neighbour's dog, trivial at first sight yet serious enough for Rita's children, seems to lead to a darkly humorous conclusion with Dexter dealing with the dog and/or the neigbour lethally. Wait, no, it doesn't. At all. Rita deals with it herself, and not by violent means. Next in the Rita storyline, you get the far more serious confrontation with her former husband, the father of her children and the man who raped her repeatedly. We never see him, but the phone conversations she has with him and the way her daughter, who remembers the guy all too well, deals with the prospect of him showing up again, tell us all we need to know. Again, this is not dealt with by Dexter or violence, but by Rita using her wits and remembering she has the law on her side now.
More thoughts - on Deb, La Guerta and Doakes - certainly to be rambled about in a future entry
Given the time the good Doctor (no, the other one) spent in the holosuite, and the rather entertaining adventure they had the last time, Garak invited himself along into a further adventure. This one didn't star Julian Bashir, Secret Agent, it starred Julian Bashir as Giacomo Casanova, visiting Paris. Garak refrained to comment on the obvious.
At any rate, instead of scamming the French court via a lottery, Bashir got into an argument with someone named D'Alembert who was there to petition someone about a dictionary and its publication. Or something like that; Garak didn't pay too much attention, because he made an acquaintance of his own. (Naturally, Garak deduced who the most intelligent member of the court was at once.) They had a delightful conversation about doctors, part of whose charm was that they talked too much and were just that bit out of reach for a permanent relationship, so one could always wonder. And about gardening.
(Garak was always annoyed nobody took his claims about having been a gardener on Romulus seriously; he had spent two years in that function there, and cover or not, had actually enjoyed it more than he had tailoring at first. He missed it.)
Afterwards, as he and Julian Bashir grew more and more distant and the war grew worse and worse, as he had to work against his own people and get hundreds of them killed in order to end the Dominion's rule, he found himself returning to that holosuite program on his own. Just for an hour of conversation over chocolate or coffee in exquisite porcellain cups made of photon particles. Aside from her wit, there was a wistfulness in her at odd moments, and he blamed his susceptibility for this for the fact that one day, he found himself saying:
"I used to look at the stars like an appalling adolescent, trying to find Cardassia. These days, I try not to see it."
"I picked a star once," she replied. "It is still waiting for me, and I try not to look for it too often. Until I can claim it, the candles of Versailles will have to do... and we have such flattering candle light here, Monsieur."
Clearly, someone had messed up with Bashir's programm, Garak thought, and then decided she was talking metaphorically.
"It is made for hiding," he agreed.
"For a while," she said, and her smile was altogether far too aware for a hologramm.
***
The Force was strong in her, Obi-Wan could sense that at once. She obviously had no Jedi training, or Sith training, for that matter, yet knew how to handle her powers. If the way she had just taken out several Trade Federation droids was anything to go by, she was a skilled shooter as well.
Obi-Wan offered her to join the army of the Republic, secretetely intending to make a petition to the Council so he could apprentice her as a Jedi as well. Of course she was much older than even Anakin had been, but these were desperate times, and it was obvious the Sith had no age rules, so the Council might be swayed. To his surprise, the woman just looked at him and said: "No."
"Why not?" Obi-Wan asked, surprised.
"I am a clone," the woman said, "and I do not fight for people who use clones as their slave soldiers."
With that, she spoke to the thing she wore on her wrist, and said: "Teleport".
Obi-Wan Kenobi never saw her again.
****
To show up in the midst of a genocidal war against human kind wasn't the wisest thing to do, which was why the Doctor did it alone, without Ace. As it was, he was barely able to admire the unquestionable beauty of Minbari design before he was discovered on the Grey Council's ship, arrested, examined for devices which explained his presence and upon the discovery of his non-human anatomy brought before the youngest member of the Council, who usually dealt with the kind of phenomena which distracted the others from their war.
She asked him whether he was a spy. "Not really," he said. "Though I could tell you about Earth. All about Earth, in fact, which you might want to know. Given that you're about to destroy the planet. Rather a pity; they make excellent tea, and no one has ever rivalled their umbrellas, either."
"You have two hearts," she said, ignoring his words. "So you must be Centauri. Does this mean the Centauri chose to side with the humans at this late hour? Do you really want to see Centauri Prime come to ruin as well?"
Rather than terror or anger, both reactions she had expected, there was sadness in his expression when she spoke of Centauri Prime. Thenit was gone, and he pursed his lips in what eerily resembled her late mentor's manner of counselling her.
"You really should brush up on other species, my dear. No, I am not Centauri. I do like the hair style, though. How about you?"
Her young face started to lose its stern determination and became bewildered, angry, with just a second of amusement lurking in her eyes before she became angry again.
"No, it wouldn't look good on you, I agree," the Doctor said. "Tell me, Delenn, what will you wear when your race has conquered Earth? Still grey? It won't be necessary any more, you know. All that blood will be gone, along with the people. You could wear white and it wouldn't get stained."
Her face closed off again, though she did not ask how he knew her name. "Do not lecture me on bloodshed. The humans murdered Dukhat, and when we reached out our hands in peace, they murdered our legate as well."
"Have you ever tried saying "exterminate" when you kill them?" he asked helpfully. "I know a species which uses it as a catchphrase. They are very honest, you see, if nothing else. They don't hide behind vendettas. They want to wipe out the rest of the galaxy because they truly believe nobody but them deserves to exist."
She was silent, and so was he. At last, she said: "Go, wherever you came from. I will not hinder you."
"The advantage of being an individual of free will," he replied, tipping his hat, "is that you can pick any point in the universe and make it the center of a new life. Any point at all."
A few hours later, the Battle of the Line started, but her mind was still with the strange encounter she had had. When they called her to witness the final phase, she did. And then she chose a point. A single small dot, a starfury with a pilot whose interrogation she ordered.
Years were to pass, though, before she wore white.
***
Note to New Who fans: you don't need to know Old Who canon to understand that one. Just bear in mind this is the Doctor in an earlier incarnation, neither Nine or Ten.
***
Also, I gave in to temptation and aquired a Dexter icon, for the pleasure of having Mr. Hall and Ms Benz on display in the same picture, and because I fell in love with this clever, creepy, tricky show. Which if comments by
ide_cyan and buffyannotater are anything to go by, shares with The Godfather the fact it transcends its literary source. Well, I wasn't planning on reading the novel any time soon anyway, as I don't want to be spoiled. So, some more ramblings about the tv show.One of the elements which fascinate me is that I can't decide whether a person we only meet in flashbacks as he's dead in the present-day time frame, Dexter's foster father Harry, is one of the most chilling or one of the most human characters I've seen on tv. Harry, a cop, spotted the early signs of Dexter's serial killer nature in his adopted son when Dexter was still a child and dealt with this by telling Dexter a) how to adapt, blend in, fake normality was necessary to keep from being discovered and b) to channel those lethal impulses by killing other killers, criminals whom the law can't reach for one reason or the other. The juxtaposition of a Norman Rockwell father-son idyll in pastel colours with what Harry and young Dexter are actually talking about is eerie and creepy and just when you (well, I) think that Harry must have been almost as sociopathic as any ole' serial killer to come up with this, you also wonder: but what would a parent, specifically a policeman, do if realising this about his child? And there are definitely hints that Harry hoped Dexter would reach the stage where faking it (normality, relating to other people outside his immediate family) would become making it. The flashback where Dexter asks him, returning from the Prom he didn't want to go to, "Will I ever feel it, Dad?" and Harry says sadly "I hope so" would be a case in point.
The last episode also highlighted something I've been wondering, so I'm glad they dealt with that - how Dexter's sister Deb felt about all those father-son alone times in her childhood. Deb and Dexter in the present day get along well, by and large. But now that she's coming into her own as a cop, he for the first time sabotages instead of supports her because what she's investigating could blow his cover. The flashback to their teenager years in a way mirrored that. Deb felt excluded, not good enough and betrayed, and her father, having decided that she was to be protected from the truth, caused this. Dexter followed the Code of Harry by lying to her but clearly felt some guilt as well, hence the gesture of giving her the tin can and telling her she's the better shot, which is interesting because he doesn't feel guilt about much else. Certainly not about the need to kill; otoh, it's arguable whether or not the reflection of what Rita and the kids would feel if he gets arrested and the truth comes out is a reflection of guilt - not for being a serial killer, but for the potential of causing them pain.
Dexter is an interesting case of nature versus nurture, because what Harry gave him was clearly more than a survival technique. He's under no illusions as to why he kills - because he likes it - but is not as completely incapable of feeling a connection to other beings (now that Harry is dead) as he thinks he is; both Rita and her children and Deb are clearly more than camouflage to him. There is also the fact the artificial inhibition Harry installed - the "kill only the guilty" - dogma - kept Dexter from at least one case of murder, when he discovers he was in fact wrong about the motives of the young ex-con whom he had pinged as another serial killer in the making and does not kill him. This particular case also served two other purposes - puncturing Dexter's smugness, his certainty about being able to identify other murderers somewhat, and shaking the audience up somewhat as well. Because said young ex-con might have committed his original kill by lashing out against his rapist but clearly had been close to killing another (innocent) person before Dexter found him. So, have we become complicit enough with the Code of Harry to wish for the boy's death or life based on what he did do or on the other hand could do? And who is either Dexter or the audience to make such decisions anyway?
Another way in which the show circumvents the idea of lethal vigilantism as the only way to solve problems is the way it developes Rita. The problem of the neighbour's dog, trivial at first sight yet serious enough for Rita's children, seems to lead to a darkly humorous conclusion with Dexter dealing with the dog and/or the neigbour lethally. Wait, no, it doesn't. At all. Rita deals with it herself, and not by violent means. Next in the Rita storyline, you get the far more serious confrontation with her former husband, the father of her children and the man who raped her repeatedly. We never see him, but the phone conversations she has with him and the way her daughter, who remembers the guy all too well, deals with the prospect of him showing up again, tell us all we need to know. Again, this is not dealt with by Dexter or violence, but by Rita using her wits and remembering she has the law on her side now.
More thoughts - on Deb, La Guerta and Doakes - certainly to be rambled about in a future entry
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no subject
Date: 2006-11-08 10:01 am (UTC)I love that. Makes me want to rewatch Cally episodes.
Re: Dexter's father: have you seen any episodes of Psych? It's another recent U.S. cable TV series, about a man who pretends to be a psychic while he works as a detective. The gimmick rests on the fact that his father, a police officer, drilled him to pay attention to the details of his surroundings, so that he's become extraordinarily observant, and is able to pick up clues that regular detectives miss (and more or less con the local police into hiring him for his "psych"ic abilities). Just about every episode contains flashbacks to Shaun's (the lead character) life lessons with his dad, when he was younger. It's eerily similar to Dexter's relationship with his father, except that Shaun is not a serial killer, just a slacker with a short attention span who has found something he's good at, and that his father is still alive, though retired from the police force, and still giving him life lessons. It's not as good a series as Dexter, but it's a comedy, so it's much lighter, and the two shows make interesting counterparts.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-08 10:03 am (UTC)...private detective, I should specify, given the context. (And he has a partner who works as his straight man and generally the voice of sanity, who knows he's faking because they've been best friends since childhood.)
no subject
Date: 2006-11-08 02:20 pm (UTC)Also, thanks! Cally's introduction episode and "Children of Auron" were particular inspirations.