Icon from a picrew by grgikau. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
Maybe it’s my scaly bias talking but I think we should adopt the Jem'Hadar. They’re literally victims of cult conditioning and engineered drug addiction. Child soldiers. They have been shown to be sympathetic and caring in their own alien way. I refuse to believe there’s nothing to be done for them
my unpopular DS9 opinion of the day is that the Dominion solid races aren’t actually given the level of attention and sensitivity by the writing itself that we all give them. I feel like what we got was largely up to things like Avery Brooks’s directorial work in 3x06 The Abandoned, and Jeffrey Combs pleading with Ira Steven Behr to be able to have one Weyoun who questioned the order of things and even partially defected to the side of good.
one thing my poor partner has heard me talk about ad-fucking-nauseam is how we got a clear answer for what happens to the Founders. We know that they surrender and end the Dominion War, but we’re never told the terms of that surrender. We know that Odo goes back to the Great Link to cure the morphogenic virus. And we’re supposed to infer that once the Founders are cured, next on the agenda is, you know, freeing all of their slaves, right? It seems reasonable to assume that. Except for the fact that all the deuterocanonical media that addresses the postwar Dominion says they’ve made absolutely glacial progress on that if they’ve made any at all. I’m not here to argue about how good the litverse or Star Trek Online story arcs for the Dominion are, I just. I feel like it’s very telling that the series’s narrative went to such lengths to show that the Founders will have a future and Odo will have a large part in it, but didn’t even think to address what the future held for the Jem’Hadar or the Vorta.
It’s fantastic that the Dominion fandom has taken these two whole, entire races of people who are not allowed to be people and given them the sympathy and dignity that the narrative only barely thought to give them. But I would like it if we could acknowledge a bit more that the narrative was, overall, very lacking in this area and could have used a lot of improvement.
Im so glad that the dominion agents that we see often as villains on ds9 are the vorta and the jem hadar rather than the founders, and not just bcos the founders not appearing as much gives them an air if mystery but also bcos the sort of predestination of the vorta and jem Hadar as violent antagonists make them so interesting to empathise with. You can never fully despise the jem hadar, even when they do something awful bcos you are constantly aware of the fact that they are genetically engineered yo serve the founders and have no free will. You remember that their addiction to white leaves them with no choice but to serve and that those who make it past 16 years of age are considered “honoured elders” and you empathise with them despite their villainy. I found myself despising the vorta, for their underhanded and callous nature, until i realise thst was how the founders designed them. And then there was that bit in favour the bold where weyoun said the vorta cannot appreciate art of music and have poor eyesight and it just makes u put aside your anger at the dominion soldiers to consider the depressing futility of their nature, that they were designed to be indebted to an oppressive force and carry out its will and they have nothing, no true free will not even a sense of beauty, to help them overcome it. Thats just another thing i love about deep space nine it focuses so much on the small details and complexities of every issue that it finds a way to make u empathise with its villains, when in any other show they would have been reduced to a faceless horde that was easy to hate.
The Jem'Hadar are cute actually. I refuse to elaborate.
Yeah no you’re correct. I like the funny stiff hair they have going on in the back, and all the spikes. The spikes are really cute it makes em look like bearded dragons
I’ve always thought they looked lizard-y, or maybe a bit dinosaur-y
Agreed! Also loook at this! The most Jem'Hadar lizard I have ever seen: Armadillo Girdled Lizard
The Jem'Hadar are cute actually. I refuse to elaborate.
Yeah no you’re correct. I like the funny stiff hair they have going on in the back, and all the spikes. The spikes are really cute it makes em look like bearded dragons
