i love Keiko so much. Shes a suprisingly complex female character even by todays standards, considering that she is feminine, gentle, kind, loves growing things and kids, but also completely ready to absolutely drag a Kai for trying to mess with her curriculum, and to reprimand her husband with his xenophobic remarks towards cardassians (no hate to miles tho). And, she kept her composure as much as one can when she gave birth during a shipwide malfunction/invasion, with worf, big mountain gruff klingon, delivering her baby. Like, thats utterly badass.
and she can be badass without falling into the trope of 'shes badass bc every man on the station is scared of her bc she does things better than them'. like idk how to explain this trope properly but a lot of producers and writers fall into this trap that a woman needs to be miles better than her male counterparts to be badass, or she is only badass bc she does traditionally masculine things (think literally of any action or fantasy movie where the love interest is a female herione/ or a female leader of a resistance)
like, in that trope many writers deprive the female character of emotions, or write her as cold, strong, mysterious leader (which is not inherently an issue bc a lot of male heroes have this trope, but the problem here is that women usually fall into either the first or second trope, theres rarely any other characterisation, besides being there to support a male protagonist with no morals or ideas of her own)
But Keiko is different bc she has her own beliefs and her own morals, complete with a whole other arc that has nothing to do with miles (the school)
idk I just love keiko a lot, okay.
(I am aware that Jadzia Dax and Kira also have very independent character arcs but this was a Keiko Appreciation Post)
