[dubiousculturalartifact]

I’m less than one season into DS9 but I’m just??

KIRA NERYS??? I LOVE YOU?

like idk they might ruin her later, idk YMMV…

but how often do we get a female character like her? who gets to be angry and abrasive and commanding and she doesn’t get punished by the narrative for being any of these things?

who isn’t just ‘cold’ and a ‘b****’ so a man can later make her soft, it’s just her, as she is? and people respect her authority? Sisko works with her and trusts her, and doesn’t try to condescend with that?

and her anger and harshness is accepted as part of who she is, while we also delve into the ways in which it is a product of warfare and trauma and PTSD? it’s not treated as hysterics, or because someone hurt her romantically, but there are real reasons why it’s there? 

but on the same level, nobody expect her to be ‘fixed’ immediately? nobody demands that she change who she is, only that she sometimes be willing not to be forgiven by some rando dude, but forgiven by herself?

she doesn’t just exist to be kind and caring and communicative, to prop up the male character’s narratives the way most major female characters in Star Trek up to this point I’ve seen have been (idk I haven’t watched all of TNG because I got bored but so far it wasn’t impressive). she’s not a nurse or a counsellor or a sexy villainess, and that’s not to say there’s anything wrong with that kind of character, but she is something different, and that matters a lot.

and she has faith? deep, abiding faith, in her religion and her people? but it too, is a complex thing, because she’s a cynic that carries faith in her heart and her bones? and I’m not religious, but I can still respect that about her, and the way it’s written, because her faith is the softest thing about her, but not in a simple way, the way most religious female characters are written. she’s a zealot, her faith propelled her through a war, and it’s still jagged, but it exists in her and brings her light at the same time, and it’s a lot??

there’s just so many angles of her character that a lesser show would immediately grind smooth. so many ways she already asserts herself, that most female characters aren’t allowed. she isn’t there to be Angry-Sexy, she’s just there, and she takes up space because she demands it, and earns it, and they haven’t done that much with her yet, but she is still vast and complicated and that??? is a lot???

and she’s clearly, underneath the brashness, a total dork in a burnt orange corduroy jumpsuit, (bless the 90s) a minor operative in a small war whose fight was NEVER small, not to her, because it is everything to her??

I NEED TO COSPLAY HER IMMEDIATELY