Icon by @ThatSpookyAgent. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. The X-Files. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
I know it’s his job technically but I love how ds9 crew will just call Sisko IMMEDIATELY whenever they have a problem like “dad help” and he’s ALWAYS like “yes of course I’ll come to your quarters at like 10pm at night because you claim to be seeing Rumpelstiltskin I’m so proud of you for asking me and I’m glad I’ve cultivated a parental relationship where you trust me enough to call me when you screw up”
The subtle way the other writers exist in Benny’s world is so interesting. They’re all in some way marginalised - Benny is treated most obviously so by the narrative, and arguably would be treated the worst in real life, but also in the room are a Jewish communist, an Irish immigrant, a woman in an interracial marriage, and an Afro-Arab foreigner. There’s differing degrees of “otherness” here, but none of the writers would have been considered representative of idealised white society in the 50s.
So why is this just Benny’s story? The obvious answer is that he’s the most visibly other, since this is set before the American civil rights movement, but Julius isn’t white either and could not pass as such.
I think it’s because Benny’s the one who’s most aware of his identity - and perhaps more importantly, the only one who most believes a better world is possible. We do see that the other writers are aware of their disadvantages - but when Julius asks for more than what he’s got, he’s still asking for less than his colleagues. I think that if Julius had written Deep Space Nine, he would have written about a white captain with a black first officer. That story might have gotten published, because it ultimately conforms with racist standards, despite being better than the status quo. But Benny wrote himself as the captain.
If Benny asked for a pay raise, he would have asked for four cents. And he would have pushed the issue until they made him stop. Far Beyond The Stars is Benny’s story, not because he’s the only marginalised character, but because he refuses to assimilate.
“If we had changed the people’s clothes, this story could be about right now. What’s insidious about racism is that it is unconscious. Even among these very bright and enlightened characters – a group that includes a woman writer who has to use a man’s name to get her work published, and who is married to a brown man with a British accent in 1953 – it’s perfectly reasonable to coexist with someone like Pabst. It’s in the culture, it’s the way people think. So that was the approach we took. I never talked about racism. I just showed how these intelligent people think, and it all came out of them… it was about racism, well maybe so, maybe not [….] But the fact of the matter in ‘Far Beyond the Stars’ is that you have a man who essentially was conceiving of something far beyond what people around him had ever imagined, and therefore they thought he was crazy.”
You can deny me all you want but you cannot deny Ben Sisko. He exists! That future, that space station, all those people, they exist in here. In my mind, I created it. And every one of you know it. You read it. It’s here.
okay i’ll bite. chomp even. kill perhaps. maybe even maim
So… I chomped. I killed. I maimed men to cover the crimes of other men. I am an accessory to chomping. But the most damning thing of all… I think I can live with it. And if I had to do it all over again - I would. Garak was right about one thing: a guilty conscience is a small price to pay for the safety of the Alpha Quadrant. So I will learn to live with it… Because I can live with it… I can live with it… Computer - erase that entire personal log.
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