it’s like…
ds9 is the first trek to feature a same-sex kiss/have a canonically queer protagonist (including the not-even-really-metaphorical transness of both Jadzia and Ezri)
but it’s also the queerest trek aesthetically (I haven’t seen the last season of Disco yet, does Gray get to have eyeliner? I feel like I saw he does. he deserves it anyway). discounting mirror!verse episodes, it’s still visually and in feeling so Queer
Kira’s butch haircut and stompy boots and anger
slightly vaguer but Jadzia’s chivalrous, tall bisexuality (I talked about the chivalry in the past post I did on her)
Ezri’s awkward, young “I don’t understand my body and gender”
Garak’s flamboyant demeanour from day one and how his presence affects Julian’s narrative
Ferengi generally, but especially Quark’s shirts and jackets and *waves hand* all of that, as well as Rom’s canon inability to “pass” as a proper Ferengi male
the way that - because the station isn’t the latest cutting edge starfleet ship - everything kind of clashes and you get casual fun costuming and forehead-centric alien designs in the backgrounds constantly and cultural meshes that simply exist, rather than uniform conformity
it’s not sterile or stale is what I’m saying
and this is acknowledging the good work that especially disco and lower decks are doing, with the latter imo creating a closeish second in the aesthetic department, possibly because it gets to have a lot of fun with over-the-top cartoonishness due to its… being a cartoon.
just, I don’t want queerness in star trek to
1. conform in expression (drab clothes, acceptably uniform hair styles, muted speech patterns, etc.)
2. conform in structure (every iteration is a “wholesome” monogamous relationship – want to clarify, I am not calling out anything here really, I’m just saying in a broader sense, I need queerness to not be represented through simplistic relationship structures)
it’s also the queerest trek in the way the queerness is weaved into the world, rather than an extra (again shout-out to disco and lwd for some of what they’re doing, and especially the actors of disco) – Jadzia was a man + concepts around amatonormativity I talked about the in the chivalry post, Ezri’s conflict with gender is ongoing throughout s7, Julian claiming ownership over his body shifts how you view his whole arc, hell villix'pran (my love), Quark and Rom’s continued relationships with Ferengi gender roles, Garak’s shame, etcetc.
+ dynamics like Quark and Odo, Weyoun and Damar, Julian and Garak, Nog and Jake, Kira and the O'Briens, or even Sisko cooking for everyone in several episodes
it’s not for nothing this meme exists.
and lastly, its themes of injustice relate so deeply to the protagonists, rather than an “other” of the week – Rejoined, Far Beyond The Stars, Past Tense, anything relating to Kira and Bajor, the Augment episodes, Bar Association, etc.
tl;dr queerness is embedded in ds9 on multiple levels, and while I very much welcome more canonically queer characters obviously, I hope these have the underpinning of world-building, aesthetics, and longform character-developing effects, and aren’t copies of heterosexual relationship structures or “just” throwaway lines or episodes
