talking meme day 28

[rivendellrose]

deborah_judge asked for "Some meta about a character you love in Discovery," and since I already threw a lot of my ideas/feels about L'Rell at her over on her journal a while back... I figured I'd better round things out and talk about my broken angel, my Lieutenant Bambi, my reluctant Klingon... Ash Tyler.

Way back when Discovery was still a pile of rumors that I misinterpreted so badly that gaslightgallows and I have a whole AU where Sarek and Michael are contemporaries who grew up together on Vulcan and Amanda Greyson serves with them on the Shenzhou as a sort of visiting teacher and translator, one of the many swirling bits of information that I took in at some point was that there was going to be a Human POW named Ash Tyler and (if I recall) there was some hint that he might be of romantic interest to Michael Burnham.

I disliked this whole idea immediately and intensely.



I didn't have a particularly good reason for hating this idea -- I think it mostly came down to the fact that I imagined this unknown character as something like Freddie Prinze Jr.'s character in Mass Effect 3, or perhaps Jacob Taylor from Mass Effect 2: big, burly, classic military, achingly Human, and intensely boring. I have a long history of disliking the Human Everyman characters, and my instinct said that this Ash Tyler was going to be exactly that. Also, I had already come up with a romantic interest I very much liked for Michael Burnham in the aforementioned AU (an Andorian, naturally), and I was unreasonably attached to that pairing. (Still am, when it comes down to it, and more ridiculous fic that will never see the light of day has been written for Michael and her Andorian boyfriends than I care to admit. But I digress.)

Anyway, in the excitement of the series actually premiering and me falling hopelessly in love with nearly everything about it, I completely forgot about the unwanted Human POW love interest until "Choose Your Pain" was the next episode to come out, whereupon I realized "Oh no, it's time to meet That Guy." At this point I became even more ridiculously defensive. I didn't want a new character! I liked the ones we had! This new character would distract from the characters we already had, and I had no interest in him! Also, Michael didn't need a love interest! She had more important things to be figuring out, like why her captain was so weirdly obsessed with her, and how to forgive herself, and how to make friends!

So I walked into "Choose Your Pain" feeling very much ready to dislike this guy, whoever he was and whenever he showed up. I was Not Falling For This Bullshit.

Then this dirty, mussy-haired thing with absolutely gorgeous eyes showed up, found out that Lorca was a captain (a captain!) and immediately tried to give him the last little pathetic scrap of cracker that he'd been saving from his last meal god-only-knew-when, because he lost his last captain and he wasn't going to let that happen again.

And I think I actually heard the defensive, cynical part of my brain squeak "oh shit!" as it melted into a pathetic, deeply-invested, already-lovelorn puddle of mushy goo. Reader, I fell for That Bullshit so hard. I took that bait and swallowed that hook completely, and by the end of the episode (after being totally frantic that they would kill my new hero), I was delighted to see that we were keeping him.

Less than half an hour later, my husband said, "Hey, listen to this crazy theory people on the internet have! They think Ash Tyler is Voq!"

And my heart sank. No sooner were those words spoken than my brain tallied up the evidence and went "Yup, seems legit." An hour of freaking out and tallying up further evidence ensued, and after that I never doubted for so much as an instant that the guy who'd made me fall in love with him in less than two minutes was in fact also the guy I referred to as Dumbfoq the Unbelievable, the guy who ate Philippa Georgiou's face, and who, incidentally, was probably the most generally stupid Klingon since, like, the Duras sisters' ill-fated brother.

By the next episode, I was ready with a gif just for him:



I won't lie, there was a significant amount of flailing and yelling at the screen. Particularly because that next episode (Lethe) was pretty heavy on the hints, right down to Lorca being like "Haha, I totally want a chief of security who fights like a Klingon!" WELL, YOU'RE GETTING THAT... And then, of course, he's from my hometown. Let me be clear: my actual hometown, the small suburb where I went to high school, which no one outside of Washington State has generally ever heard of. No one, in all the history of Star Trek canon to this point, has even been from my state. But Ash Tyler, Secret Klingon, is from my fucking hometown. And, just like everyone from there, he said he was from Seattle when someone asked him, because that's what you do when you're away from that hometown. I did the exact same thing when I went to boarding school in New Hampshire for a summer. Because no one outside our state knows of this town. (How, then, did it turn up here? Because Bryan Fuller grew up in Washington State.)

My point is, I was a flailing flipping mess by the end of the second episode with this guy in it. (Actual quote from my post about Lethe: "'This is being Human.' LIKE YOU'D KNOW, YOU FACE-EATING SON OF A TARG.") I loved him, I hated him, I wanted to wring his neck and demand to know which high school he went to and whether my favorite theater is still there in the 23rd century. What hiking trails he hiked on. Where his mom's boat was moored. And it was around this time... that I became certain he had no fucking clue he was a Klingon. And at that point, I was lost. I have some kind of obsession with characters who are not what they think they are (see my previous obsession with basically the entire Eight line, back in BSG) and with characters who are caught between worlds (see my youthful obsession with Spock and with Ziyal from DS9, which are happily not documented anywhere on the internet), and... goddamn it the bastard is pretty. And nice. So nice! And so enchanted by Michael Burnham! His stupid eyes do this stupid thing... well, that wound up with me dubbing him "Lieutenant Bambi" over on spacefungusparty. It stuck. And after Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad, I pretty much was 100% head-over-heels shipping him and Michael, which has not changed a whit since then. I love them together.

Y'know, except when he's going bugfuck and Voq is taking over. But oh my god, the acting when that happens. He does this thing with his jaw that slays me, and... anyway. I doubt anyone needs me to recite details. The point is, by Despite Yourself and The Wolf Inside, I was not at all surprised by what happened to Ash, but I was completely gutted by it. Once again, I both loved him and wanted to strangle him. Actual quote from my episode post about Despite Yourself: "This is it, this is the worst, because not only is he Voq, but he's also NOT entirely Voq and he still doesn't know what's going on and now I have to still feel bad for him and STOP IT WITH THOSE FUCKING EYES, LIEUTENANT BAMBI, I SWEAR TO GOD."

I have some very strong feelings about Ash Tyler. Some of them involve questions like "Dear god, has Starfleet not discovered therapy yet?" and "Please, for the love of all that's good, will you please learn the lesson of the last season and tell people when you can't handle things from now on?" Some of them, as stated above, involve petty things like "Seriously, which high school was it?" Some of them are just... an overwhelming desire to see him do better and be happy. I am reminded of BSG, where, though I had some interest in the overall plot, I always circled back to one simple thing: concern over whether or not Athena, Helo, and Hera were okay. The ship was falling apart, everything was horrible, Gaius was in charge of the fleet, but was the Agathon family okay??? In some ways I feel like I'll be doing this kind of circling back with Ash. With everyone else, too, because I really do love all the other characters... but damn it, I love my stupid not!Klingon and I want him to be okay. I also very much want him and Michael to be okay, together, but I suspect that one is going to be a much, much longer and more tumultuous road.

But hey. I was weirdly convinced that they were going to kill Ash off in the finale last season, so everything after that is gravy, I guess!

For next season, I have the following hopes for Ash:

• Talk openly and on-screen with L'Rell about the history of what happened to him, from transition to "rescue" by Lorca.


• Be friends with L'Rell, because I love them together.


• Some subtext here is fine, but I would prefer they not obviously get back together at all. That is a thing that I reserve for fanfic, and should not happen in canon.


• Do not get caught up too tightly in Section 31. They are bad news for their operatives. Except for Philippa Georgiou, of course, because she's badder news than any of them could ever hope to be.


• Speak honestly and clearly with Michael, take responsibility for his actions and swear (AND MEAN IT) to tell her if things ever start to go hairy again with his identity.


• I MEAN IT ABOUT THAT LAST BIT, YOU SILLY BUGGER. Saying "This is too much for me and I need help" is an important part of being a full actualized adult, particularly when you have a Klingon sub-personality who wants to kill everyone living in your brain.


• The writer part of me says "Nope, that's definitely not going to happen, though! He's going to go off the walls again before the end of S2!" ...The writer part of me is almost certainly right.

Comments

[monanotlisa]

This is wonderful! I am usually disinterested in Human Soldier Boys, too, but I trusted the DISCO writers from the get-go -- every other character was sharply drawn and interesting beyond stereotypes. (I still don't love D'avin on Killjoys, but I confess I grew to like him because he is sufficiently goofy, despite the square-jawed appearance that could not be further from what I like.)

But Ash... *dreamy sigh*

In the beginning, I thought the Voq theories were too Out There. But then I remembered the beginning of the show just in time; I wasn't falling for the Shyamalan move of framing the backstory ambiguously a second time (my sister got that Sixth Sense thing IMMEDIATELY and made me feel dumb ;). Like you, I looked at the hints and commentary, and simply could not square this with the bright-eyed boy on the screen, who was lovely and eager and strong, personality-wise. But then I think I came up with some soul graft theories, and of course wrote about it being Problematic that the only Middle-Eastern-ish guy on the show was a sleeper agent. Which he turned out to be!

But I still love him. So much. Sigh. Did you read my Yuletide gift? https://archiveofourown.org/works/16953219

[rivendellrose]

I like the occasional human male soldier -- Helo from BSG won me over for very much the same reasons as Ash, so I probably should have suspected that I'd fall just as hard here as there -- but I tend to prefer my military characters as aliens or women, if I like them at all. I should have known they'd do a good job making Ash into a character I couldn't resist, given how well the writers did with all the other characters on Disco, but I... was overcome with strong feelings in a dozen directions from the minute Disco was announced, basically, so some of them were bound to spill over into nonsense. I was determined to love the show as hard as I could, but I still panicked about every little thing that was announced. The whole thing reverted me to my fourteen year-old self, I guess.

Regarding the potential awkwardness of a man of Middle Eastern descent being a sleeper agent... I'm white, so I can't really say much about what people of Middle Eastern descent would feel about it, but I personally feel, first, like I'd rather have him exist as he is than be a white guy with the same story. And I also feel confident that what we've seen so far is just the beginning of his story. Same as with the Stamets and Culber romance, I'm not ready to judge it until we've seen the whole. There's a potential for awkwardness there, for sure, but the first chapter isn't always a good judge of where a book will end up, and I feel like, so far, Ash has been handled as a person, not a stereotype. I trust that will continue.

I had not seen that fic before, and it was lovely! Thank you for linking me to it. ♥

[deborah_judge]

Thank you! I had a hard time connecting to Ash before the very last episode (when he chose to go with L'Rell he became more interesting to me) so this helps a lot. It *is* interesting that Voq is *so* dumb and yet Ash is...okay, maybe not a genius, but not as dumb as Voq. I'm not sure what to make of that.

Dear god, has Starfleet not discovered therapy yet?"

Yes!

[rivendellrose]

It *is* interesting that Voq is *so* dumb and yet Ash is...okay, maybe not a genius, but not as dumb as Voq. I'm not sure what to make of that.

Oh, boy, is it ever. Ash is perhaps not the sharpest tool in the shed, but he's entirely functional. The only decision he makes over the course of the season that I solidly regard as a poor one is not telling anyone that he's having blackouts and a really hard time managing his past trauma, which is a pretty understandable decision for a young man in a military context to make, especially when there's a war on and everyone around him is under a lot of stress. It's obviously a poor decision in the long-run, but it's understandable how he ended up coming to that decision, and it doesn't make me question whether or not he possesses generally average mental capabilities.

Voq, on the other hand, is arguably the stupidest Klingon we've ever encountered in Star Trek, and there have been some pretty stupid Klingons over the years. He just does not seem to grasp concepts that, frankly, ought to be pretty basic. I want to feel sorry for him, sometimes, but he's so ill-tempered on top of being stupid that I can't manage it.

So I guess what we've learned from this is that somehow, Klingons are not only capable of making a Human out of a Klingon, to the extent that even standard medical scans didn't pick up the masquerade, and encoding that Human's memories and personality on top of the existing Klingon... but they can also make the brain at the base of all that a good deal more intelligent than it started out. Unless all that stupid is just Voq's personality, not his potential?

Also, I like to think Ash now has the occasional awkward experience of looking back on one of Voq's memories... and understanding it a lot better than Voq ever did.

[gaslightgallows]

...Ohgod I forgot about the Duras sisters' idiot brother. That's... that's some hella company for Voq to be in. *facepalms*

Also I love how I can read through this post and pick out the bits from the various emails you sent me during the initial viewing. XD

[rivendellrose]

I don't remember Duras very well, either, but I remember an overwhelming sense of "Can you really blame them for being nightmares, when that walking disaster got put in charge of their house instead of them just because he's a dude?"

Same with Grilka's first husband, actually. I'm glad we're finally getting a "Yeah, Klingon society is sexist, here's a woman who is going to make it work for her anyway" type story. ...At least I hope we are. XD

Lol, yeah. Lots and lots of bits from our emails and from long-ago DW posts with me just kind of freaking the fuck out. Often in two or three directions at once. ...I still love that "I SEE YOU, VILLAIN" gif. Best way to encapsulate my reaction to Ash during "Lethe."

[mekare]

FLAIL. I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed reading this excellent post about my favourite Lieutenant/Klingon. I even got my SO to call him Lt. Bambi by now. Hehe.