I'm gay, I have a new hyperfixation, and I'm new in town. Hello ds9 fandom.
(I’ve been a Trek fan since I was a kid, but I only got around to watching Deep Space Nine last September, promptly became obsessed with it like nobody’s business, lost valuable sleep during finals because I was too invested watching the last season, and then stayed obsessed with it. And then started doodling. Oops. I’m usually really intimidated by social media and fandom spaces in general but y’all don’t seem too intimidating... and it’s probably easier to yell about a show that ended before I was born here than it will be convincing my friends to watch it, even if it does have a gay lizard. So yeah- here I am! please be my friends)
Now that I’ve got the daunting Intro Bit out of the way.... I love how Sisko and Odo end up with a weird sort of ‘I’m a religious figure to an entire culture through no fault of my own and I don’t like it but I can’t do much about it so I’ll grudgingly accept it and at least try to do some good’ solidarity. One has to admit that christianity lowkey popped off with the whole stained glass concept, so voila, a weird semi-abstract symbolic religious-y stained glass window for both of them.
Sisko: the Emissary himself, the Celestial Temple/wormhole with the Gateway/DS9 behind it- the yellow circle in the center of the wormhole incorporates that swirly symbol that props up in religious contexts and on the Emblem of the Bajoran Republic; pah wraiths from the fire caves at the bottom; the text on the sides is, at least if my sources are correct, the message on the Reckoning Tablet in Modern Bajoran: "The time of reckoning is at hand. The Prophets will weep. Their sorrow will consume the gateway to the temple." The four hourglass things in the corners are Orbs (I wanted to include all ten but I didn't end up with enough room. The sacrifices we make for aesthetic...)
Odo: this one was more challenging since not only does ds9 not show any religious symbolism or details for the Dominion religion/culture, but neither the Vorta or (almost certainly) the Jem'hadar create art of any form for me to base it on, so it ended up a bit more abstract and based a lot on Weyoun 6 in Treachery, Faith and the Great River. Why did I slap them in the goop ocean instead of anywhere else? The main answer is for the aesthetic but there's some symbolism in there somewhere in the fact that Odo is also a part of the link but is basically the only one of the founders who treated Weyoun as an equal and cared when he died, and Weyoun looking up at both Odo and the Federation emblem while he's kicking the bucket, but I won't belabor it. Also it ended up looking a bit gayer than I intended but nobody on this show is straight (derogatory) except for Kai Winn so that’s ok
