Risa: Your Home Away from Spacedock
Welcome to Risa
All the pleasure of shore leave, none of the holodeck glitches.
Rule 1 — Be Civil, Not Klingon
This is a vacation planet, not the neutral zone.
- No harassment, brigading, or trolling
- No bigotry
- Keep the banter playful, not hostile
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Some things aren’t welcome aboard.
- No spam or scams
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- No illegal content
- NSFW memes must be properly tagged
Rule 3 — Keep It Trek
Posts should be Star Trek memes or Trek-adjacent humor.
- Crossovers are fine
- Low-effort “unrelated” memes may be spaced out the nearest airlock
Rule 4 — Gatekeeping Belongs in a Black Hole
You’re welcome to have your own opinions on what counts as “real” Star Trek but forcing your view on others or pretending it’s the only valid one? That’s not the Starfleet way.
Everyone’s Trek is valid, from TOS purists to Lower Decks shitposters, and you don't get to dictate what is real or not for everyone.
If you see a post that violates the rules, or that doesn't inspire Jamaharon, report it so the mods can handle it.
Otherwise grab a horga’hn, order a Risan Mai Tai, and enjoy your shore leave.
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I’ve never heard of anyone saying they hate progressive things on nu Trek because they’re MAGA. They blame the writers and the producers. Like I liked the gay relationship and the non binary characters on Discovery. I thought, that’s what makes Trek what it is. Diversity and representation. The writing might have dropped off a bit after the first couple seasons, but I still liked the show, and loved the characters.
I knew a few people who hated the Klingons in DSC S1 because they were meant to be a direct correlation to MAGA fucks. Execs even said as much. They got hyper salty. But yeah most people dogwhistle to high hell about the diversity on the show. My favorite are the people who complain about Adira having a come out moment not because they got to come out but because "It shouldn't have mattered in the future". Nevermind the fact that they were raised on an isolationist as fuck Earth while having a squid inside of them and having to hide that and queer folk not really being able to logic through that and yadda yadda yadda. Just so stupid.
Right — they shouldn’t have had to come out in the future, but the final frontier is made in a Hollywood basement like the Red Hot Chili Peppers song said.
People also say Frieren can’t be autistic because sites an elf. But she’s written by a human to represent autism.
Fantasy can and should get away from our problems to show us the best of what we can be and how wet could be living but it still has to represent us as a people, too.
Agreed but my point was they're fucking stupid because even in universe it works. By that point in the future, Earth was isolationist as hell and attacking people from Jupiter because they didn't know better. Just lashed out without opening a dialogue. Super hostile towards anyone, shoving Starfleet HQ out of Earth and closing their borders to everyone. Now you've got a kid who's been raised in this environment with one massive thing that's different to everyone else, a trill inside of them. They've gotta hide that constantly. How much of themselves do they have to hide on top of that too? Because if they asked to be called 'they/them' instead, would that bring more scrutiny? Would people start investigating? Find out they're different? Etc. The terrorized mind of someone on the run not wanting to trust others and making it a big deal makes perfect sense.
But even then, there's a real world phenomenon with queer folks who come out in accepting environments. They expect it to be a big deal so if everyone is accepting they think that they weren't understood. They can often come out multiple times to their parents because they don't think they were believed because it wasn't that big deal to their parents that it was to them.
Oh yeah, and the fact that almost every single fuckin' person who I've seen say that has been a cis straight person. They have literally no frame of mind to ever be able to argue it but they still want to say it "doesn't make sense" for a queer person to have a moment like that. I want to hit them. Hard.
You got me. Cis and straight. But I appreciate the detailed response because, you're right. We don't have the frame of mind. So how can one hope to be an ally with something they don't understand? The answer is communication. And, of course, keeping an open mind.
Also hitting. Hitting can be a part of it between consenting adults.
I want to preface this by saying that I'm a hetero cis dude, I bruise easily, and I didn't watch DIS that far, but Trek has historically worked best with allegory rather than just transplanting today's issues into the future. Having Adira openly be non-binary with nobody caring and come out as a joined human feels like it would work as the traditional allegorical approach. That's essentially what they did in Rejoined, after all.
That said, subtlety wasn't exactly DISCO's strength and I am, again, a hetero cis dude. And times change so maybe that approach just doesn't work well anymore.
I don't really care though. Trek is not forced into the mould of the past and TV has changed. Moreover, allegory only was able to work because the discussion wasn't a constant lingering conversation. With the world hating trans folks, being more obvious with that acceptance will never be a bad thing. Making people feel accepted will never be a bad thing.
This isn't about y'all as cis straight people. Like... This actually frustrates me to an extent because it's people who can't understand what it's like having an opinion on something they can never understand and minimalizing it. It has nothing to do with y'all.
That all being said, there have been numerous times in Trek that a character has been extremely nervous or upset about a internal truth only to reveal it to someone else and they don't care. Really don't understand why Adira needed to be different. We queer people don't want it to be a big deal. Our lives and identities are not a source of entertainment. Neither is Adira's. They're just non-binary which is why it was like a 3 minute scene that wasnt a big deal. If Stamets was able to just be gay without it being a big deal (the representation were dying for instead of being a clown for entertainment) then why can't Adira?
This is some real shit, and it's very frustrating. But have you considered:
Which is why I was surprised when I learned Discovery made a point of it. TOS never made a point about there being a Russian on the bridge or a black woman being the third officer. TNG... honestly wasn't all that progressive for the '80s and '90s. Probably Berman's fault. DS9 never only brought up Jadzia's pansexuality in regards to Kira being comparatively close-minded, and even then regarding specific species rather than gender or sex; nobody gave a flying fuck that Dax was into someone who was currently a woman that one time, just that they had previously been married. Sisko being black similarly wasn't worthy of comment until he personally experienced the 1950s. VOY had half the command staff, including the captain, as women without a single comment. And DIS has previously shown Stamet's and Culber's relationship as completely ordinary. Part of Trek is showing us at our best, so why the change?
The relationship between Stamets and Culber was one of my favorite parts of Disco's first season until they fridged Culber. It was cute watching Stamets go from his usual prickly self to just melting whenever he talked about Culber. Culber was woefully underdeveloped until the second season, though.
I think there's a big disconnect here that just was overlooked. Not saying you did it on purpose or anything, it's just easy to not see the differences, especially with the difference in time. You're right in that they never made it a big deal about those specific characters (granted they sort of did with moments like Lincoln and Uhura) but it's because the story didn't need to make it a big deal to get the point across. They're all visible minorities. Uhura is black, Sulu is Japanese and the Russian guy sounds like a Russian. But sexuality is not visible. At least not unless you make it so on purpose.
Adira was being called she/her for the first few episodes they were there because of that reason. No one is ever going to know that they're non-binary unless they say it. They then had a singular fucking line where they said I prefer they/them. Like... this is why I got frustrated before because that is going out of its way to not make a point of it. There was a singular scene with a singular line. It's maddening to hear people say that they drew any attention at all when they went out of their way to give it as little attention as possible. The character had already been introduced and to reflect someone accepting who they are (with both the trill and their sexuality) they had a 30 second scene (I just timed it). This is why so many people, like myself, get upset when people say that this was not needed. It absolutely was and by denying that type of representation in the series and denying the chance of someone to be able to come out utterly denies that chance of representation for people watching it. It feels really shitty. Again, I'm not trying to say you are intentionally doing this or that you are at all but that this is how it feels to people like myself. People who have been watching Star Trek for years and finally get a chance to see ourselves on the screen only for people to come in and argue about whether or not the first time someone like us ever seen on screen is appropriate when they're not even part of that community.
So, fun fact. Culber was always intended to die in Season 1 and be resurrected in Season 2. Not something I personally like or agree with but I do find it interesting. That's why Culber didn't get much in the run of character development until he was brought back, in which case they overpivoted to focusing on him a lot more than Stamets during Season 2 for that stuff. The one thing that did bother me was Stamets being completely incapable of losing people over and over again. Like having a hard time dealing with it, sure, but he took it way too hard way too many times. Thank fuck they retconned a part of it at the end of Season 3. He was staring at Burnham like he hated her for blasting him out of the airlock to protect the ship but Season 4 he's just business as usual.
Ah, I actually thought it was a longer, more emotional scene from the way I've seen it talked about, or even the focus of an episode. A quick comment is basically exactly how I would have expected Trek to handle that. I mean, yeah, gender isn't always visible, especially for non-binary folks, so it needs to be mentioned.
I really didn't like Berg and Harberts as showrunners. They had a serious penchant for melodrama and I found it suspicious that they claimed everything viewers didn't like was Fuller's fault, even in episodes produced long past when Fuller left. And that was before we found out how they were treating the staff. Killing a character for shock value while intending to revive them later very much sounds like them.
Oh nah, it was extremely short. Take a look here. Adira first starts coming out at 20 seconds and at 48 seconds it cuts to a different scene of Culber and Hugh talking about Adira. Just using they/them pronouns with no big deal. Grey, Adira's Trill boyfriend is a trans man too. There's a couple of lines that he says that are off hand references about being trans. Clearly there to be like "Trans representation!" but not enough to be like "MASSIVE BIG DEAL!" Especially because Grey's whole experience was radically different from Adira's.
Part of it was shock value from them but it was also talked about by, I think it was, Michelle Paradise. They wanted to use it for a variety of different things. It was a bit tone deaf for sure but it wasn't just the chucklefucks. And yeah... almost nothing was Fuller's fault. Especially when Fuller's whole vision of Discovery was radically different at the start. He wanted American Horror Story but Star Trek. That's why the registry ID is 1031. 10-31. Halloween. Dude has a hard on for scary stuff. Got some tastes of that with the tardigrade/Glenn episode (that was great) and some psychological horror with Mudd timelooping murder and the Agonizer booths looking more terrifying than they ever have though.