Many fans complain about Lwaxana Troi’s StarTrek episodes but there were always those of us who loved her. Yesterday, Matt Baume shared his explanation of his own love for this character brought to life by the wonderful Majel Barrett.

Matt is a queer journalist. Much of his work focuses on how queer people influenced popular culture. His latest book is Hi Honey, I’m Homo.

(And Matt has no idea who I am or that I’m sharing his video on Threadiverse. 😹)

  • the_crotch@sh.itjust.works
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    3 days ago

    Shes a serial sexual harasser who uses her high position in society to avoid repurcussions for her behavior. Fuck Lwaxana, give her the Harvey Weinstein treatment

      • _skj@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        She is a narcissist, talking herself up and putting down the people around her. Constantly bulldozing over clearly established boundaries by deliberately misnaming Worf, harassing Picard and Odo after they’ve made it very clear they aren’t comfortable with her advances, and just completely dismissing almost everything her daughter says. It’s clear she just does what she wants and expects everyone to go along with it, making a dramatic scene if anyone objects.

        She’s a rich bitch that doesn’t care about anyone except herself and only really seems to help people when it already aligns with what she wants. It’s understandable that Deanna only talks to her mother when pushed into it.

        • Wolf314159@startrek.website
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          2 days ago

          If not for Lwaxana, Odo would have never told Kiera how he felt about her, probably would have left the station and rejoined the big puddle much sooner, and as a result would not have been in a position to get the help he needed to prevent the genocide of his species.

          And while Deanna certainly has issues with her mother, it is plainly shown that she has a relatively open and frank dialogue with her mother on a regular basis. To say “that Deanna only talks to her mother when pushed into it” is simply false.

      • Jtskywalker@lemm.ee
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        3 days ago

        That’s pretty much her entire character in every episode she’s in. I can’t think of a single example of her respecting boundaries or consent

        • the_crotch@sh.itjust.works
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          2 days ago

          I can’t think of a single example of her respecting boundaries or consent

          Perfect description of the character. Shes absolutely vile. I wonder if she was a man if more people would recognize how gross she is.

        • NullPointer@programming.dev
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          3 days ago

          she tried to destroy a man’s family by trying to keep him from killing himself. Then “learned” her lesson and went along with it.

        • Zorque@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          There’s that one episode where she relives the trauma of losing her first child.

  • fixmycode@feddit.cl
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    3 days ago

    The Timicin episode (S04E22 “Half a life”) always makes me tear up at the end. The emotional struggle that Lwaxana had is heartbreaking, and speaks a lot about the role that we give our elders in our society. It’s something that we still struggle with more than 20 years later.

    • data1701d (He/Him)@startrek.website
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      2 days ago

      I haven’t gotten all the way through it yet, but I have very occasionally come back to it as a hobby project over the past year because I have been trying to collect a dataset of Majel’s lines in order to train a text to speech voice.

      Usually, I’d find that a bit unethical, but in this case, they literally tried to collect a dataset before she died, which I think is as close to consent to such a reproduction as most passed actors could give. Also, it’s mostly for fun for something like HomeAssistant on Raspberry Pi.

      • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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        2 days ago

        It is an interesting point. I once heard an anecdote that Jimmy Cagney hated being impersonated in Warner’s cartoons, but Bogart got a kick out of it. The same with Weird Al, some folks love getting parodied and others refuse to have him touch their songs.

        Personally, I think it would be pretty sweet if some spaceship three hundred years from now was using her voice .

        • data1701d (He/Him)@startrek.website
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          1 day ago

          I view satirical voice impression and speech synthesis of a real person as two different ethical issues entirely.

          I find impressions intended for satire fall within the real of the first amendment, while the latter can be an unwelcome appropriation of identity when done wrong.

          • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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            1 day ago

            Technology changes everything. Thee were “Tijuana bibles” showing famous folks for years; Deep Fake tech changes that entirely.

            It’s more than you and I can settle. Good night.