Codenameregnar - Cardassian Sympathizer

It's actually completely ok for people to only focus on the gay couple and nothing else in the show. Good, even

So in DS9, the very first day Sisko arrives at the station, before meeting Kira, he is told "have you ever met a Bajoran woman?" and then kind of explained that they have a very strong character in what humans perceive as aggressive way.

We do not meet many Bajoran women as deeply as Kira, but some we meet sometimes fit her "no fucks found" attitude. Even Leeta, while more cheerful and naive looking, has a strong character and doesn't put up with bullshit. She may look more "girly" to humans (boyish to Bajoran?), but she still runs low on fucks.

Now, Kira's boyfriends that we meet tend to be calm, compassionate and caring in a way some human men are, but may not be perceived as very masculine.

So, culturally, we could say that "feminine Bajoran women" are more masculine to humans and "masculine Bajoran men" are more feminine to humans.

And then Ferengi, who are like an exaggerated old school version of how humans are.

In all this, we have Rom. Ferengi think he is a lesser man (=less masculine) because he doesn't know how to make profit (a trait that has been insisted to be "male"). He is insecure and shy. He doesn't even walk with the same allure as the other ferengi men, including his son. And he starts a revolution by forming a union as maybe the only masculine trait of showing character and trying to be in control of a group of people. Something clearly against Ferengi's rules and customs.

And Leeta, who is maybe a bit queer to Bajoran eyes is attracted to this maybe a bit queer Ferengi. This maybe a bit masculine Bajoran girl is attracted to this maybe a bit feminine Ferengi boy. And then he does the very masculine Bajoran/feminine Ferengi thing of caring for others with the strike.

They really were meant for each other.

Lesser-known steps of the writing process:

Finding all the paragraphs where you used some hyper-specific word more than once

Rearranging paragraphs that you swear you wrote in the right order but turned out to be totally backwards

Going for a walk, coming up with the perfect line, and forgetting it as soon as you get home and open your laptop

Creating a separate document where you can dump all of those nice sentences that no longer fit in anywhere

Waking up in a cold sweat because so-and-so was supposed to be barefoot but never actually took his shoes off

Thomas W. Riker: I need to take the Defiant into Cardassian space to expose their government and set myself apart as a Maquis and as more than the Riker everyone expects me to be.

Meanwhile, William T. Riker in the holodeck of the Enterprise:

Credit for the video