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nooooooooo
I just watched DS9 3x14, "Heart of Stone."
Why, show, why? Why did you have to take a fascinatingly alien character and write a clichéd "unrequited love" plot for him? And why did you have to ruin a nice canon female-male friendship?
It's not that the story itself was so bad. Clichéd, as I said, but I can sort of see how Odo's loneliness might lead him to become deeply attached to the first person to treat him like, well, a person. I was moved by Odo's sorrow. And since Kira is awesome, him loving her makes more sense than if she were some nobody written in specifically to be a love interest.
Nevertheless, giving Odo a romantic motivation is a failure of creativity. A failure of nerve, perhaps; it feels like the show doesn't dare to make Odo as radically different as he really, given his physiology, ought to be. Changelings don't eat or drink, don't have anything like a similar anatomy to humanoids, so why would they have sexual reproduction?
It's possible to interpret Odo's feelings as acculturation. His entire life has been spent among people who value romantic love, so I guess I can see how he might have learned to feel it even though it's not "natural" to him. If I were writing fic, I think that's the route I'd take. But it's not what the episode itself does, even though the episode ends up centering on the key issue of Odo's connection to the "solids" and his choosing them over his own species. The problem is, the episode portrays romantic love as natural/inevitable/universal--witness the fact that the Changeling immediately suspected it as the reason for Odo's choice, and wasn't at all surprised or confused. It's also significant that the Changeling is shown as female when in humanoid form (female always? why should Odo's species have distinctions of sex or gender?) and that she and Odo had that metaphorically-sexual-merging thing in "The Search." The implication is that Odo chooses Kira over her; that both species have essentially the same relationship structure. It makes no sense at all.
This is especially disappointing considering that the writer clearly knew there were other possibilities, given the conversation between Bashir and Sisko about the male crewmember who was "budding" and for whom Bashir was throwing a baby shower.
Plus, frankly, Odo has enough angst that's innate to his situation without laying unrequited love on him as well.
*sigh*
Why, show, why? Why did you have to take a fascinatingly alien character and write a clichéd "unrequited love" plot for him? And why did you have to ruin a nice canon female-male friendship?
It's not that the story itself was so bad. Clichéd, as I said, but I can sort of see how Odo's loneliness might lead him to become deeply attached to the first person to treat him like, well, a person. I was moved by Odo's sorrow. And since Kira is awesome, him loving her makes more sense than if she were some nobody written in specifically to be a love interest.
Nevertheless, giving Odo a romantic motivation is a failure of creativity. A failure of nerve, perhaps; it feels like the show doesn't dare to make Odo as radically different as he really, given his physiology, ought to be. Changelings don't eat or drink, don't have anything like a similar anatomy to humanoids, so why would they have sexual reproduction?
It's possible to interpret Odo's feelings as acculturation. His entire life has been spent among people who value romantic love, so I guess I can see how he might have learned to feel it even though it's not "natural" to him. If I were writing fic, I think that's the route I'd take. But it's not what the episode itself does, even though the episode ends up centering on the key issue of Odo's connection to the "solids" and his choosing them over his own species. The problem is, the episode portrays romantic love as natural/inevitable/universal--witness the fact that the Changeling immediately suspected it as the reason for Odo's choice, and wasn't at all surprised or confused. It's also significant that the Changeling is shown as female when in humanoid form (female always? why should Odo's species have distinctions of sex or gender?) and that she and Odo had that metaphorically-sexual-merging thing in "The Search." The implication is that Odo chooses Kira over her; that both species have essentially the same relationship structure. It makes no sense at all.
This is especially disappointing considering that the writer clearly knew there were other possibilities, given the conversation between Bashir and Sisko about the male crewmember who was "budding" and for whom Bashir was throwing a baby shower.
Plus, frankly, Odo has enough angst that's innate to his situation without laying unrequited love on him as well.
*sigh*
no subject
And of course he wants it again, because being unable to merge with anyone else, he feels lonely. A single, instead of the multitude he should be. And that same feeling of being alone, mixed with observing the lifestyle of the solids around him also creates his romantic involvement with Kira. He wants someone he can trust, aka a true friend, to help him feel less singular, and that love thing is the closest the solids have to that.
That's how it always seemed to me.
(I also like to imagine that she presents very purposefully as female because she has observed that the solids trust females more. Of course, in reality the creators just wanted to show a female of that race, but hey... why not make up for their thoughtlessness with my own imagination.)
no subject
I think it's significant that we didn't see Odo merge into the pool with all the others, but just with that one female-shaped Changeling. The choice emphasizes the appearance of (hetero)sexuality and de-emphasizes the hivemind/multiplicity aspect of the Changelings.
I agree that your interpretation makes more sense in terms of what we're told about Changeling physiology and culture. But what happens onscreen is different. It makes less sense because it forces Odo into a paradigm that doesn't fit him or his species. The fact that it makes less sense is why I think it's ideological--the writers/producers/whoever were couldn't get beyond the notion of individual sexuality and romantic love.