got super weirdly emotional about ds9 s1e15 (”if wishes were horses” in which figments of various people’s imaginations come to life wreak havoc etc, star trek star trek) mostly i think because of my weird painful empathy for bashir??? in it? well both bashir and jadzia. i at once think jadzia is absolutely right to be upset about bashir’s apparent interest in a bashir-obsessed, sex-obsessed, subservient version of her, but also i am so like…….. idk i think on some level i just discovered that having some imaginary, one-dimensional version of a person i was interested in from some one-off fantasy show up, and for the actual version of that person to be confronted by it, is maybe my Literal Worst Nightmare Made Flesh. and bashir was just put off/taken aback/apologetic enough about the whole thing for me to fully project onto that scenario the degree to which i think that my interest in other people is inherently harmful & violent, i’m fundamentally predatory, it denies other people’s personhood for me to be interested in them, etc. this isn’t even strictly how i feel anymore, not least bc i’m not actually still dwelling in tortured silence wrt my most recent serious iteration of having a nightmarish secret crush, but it’s still recent enough that watching some version of it happen was a lot in a very uh unanticipated way. so. that’s my star trek thoughts! ds9 review so far: i like it; i am embarrassed that i like julian bashir so much.