#maybe one day she'll want to unpack the annika baggage | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ssaalexblake · 1 year

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If trek had Wanted to play it that way, they could have had Seven try and do a reclamation of the name Annika Hansen.

What we’ve been shown up until now, through all of stp to date, is that they Don’t want that.

Seven at first wanted to be called Seven because like, that’s her Name right? And the Voyager crew accepted this. It’s what she wishes to be called and she’s one of the crew. Seven whom doesn’t know how to be human doesn’t want to be called Annika because all she knows is Seven. She might as well have picked a random name out of a hat rather than Annika, she’d relate to the words the same.

The seven we see in STP decades later in S1 is still going by Seven. There is a hint that, maybe, she’d tried to go by Annika because the evil ex girlfriend calls her this. All of our main characters call her Seven. We can’t know is whatshername was being cruel, or if Seven had genuinely tried out going by Annika, but I like to think that she asked her to call her Annika.

Because she totally betrayed Seven and tore her child apart, piece by piece, to steal his borg implants. She did not see Icheb, she saw an xb to make a profit off of. It’s breathtakingly cruel what was done to both Seven and Icheb here, but if you consider that maybe Seven asked her to call her Annika because she wanted to be known by her human name at this point in the timeline, and that the woman she asked to do it then kidnapped her son who is just like her and dissected him alive just because he’s Borg. It adds a whole other layer of utter horror to it.

Seven tried to be Annika but was reminded in the most brutal way possible that actually? She’s still Seven of Nine.

Flashforward to S2 of STP, Seven is Still being looked down upon and treated cruelly because she’s an XB. And one morning she wakes up in a strange bed, in a strange room, and looks in the mirror and she’s... Not Borg. She’s confused, has no idea what’s going on, and some guy she’s never met walks in calling her Annika and she finds out she’s Married to this guy. She later learns that she’s President Annika Hansen of the confederation of planets, and that this woman is an oblique monster. Once again, she is Annika, and once again, she has no idea who Annika Is.

But once they go back in time and she’s still Human, and she meets people who aren’t scared of her and aren’t cruel, she can be friendly and happy in groups of strangers. Nobody’s forcing her to be some stranger under the name Annika, but she’s Not Borg either. She’s thriving. She’s happy she’s ‘ordinary’.

But everything happens that season, and I have no urge to do a full season rewrite but it culminates in Raffi pointing out to Seven that whether she’s borg or human or both, she’s extraordinary. Seven may not know or may dislike who she is, but damn, Raffi loves this woman. She openly wonders who Seven would be if she just sat still and stopped running from the borg parts of herself and just existed and moved forwards as that person.

Raffi, in short, does the absolute opposite of the evil child murdering ex. She’s not reducing Seven to her implants, or pretending they don’t exist, she’s saying all of these things are her and asking her to embrace the woman standing there as much as she has. Cuz Raffi loves her, and she wants seven to love herself, too.

And Seven, monumentally, says she’s okay with the implants. Okay with the borg. That there was a reclamation all on its own. It wasn’t seven not knowing being anything But borg, and it wasn’t Seven ignoring all the parts of her that are borg, it was her embracing that she’s two things at once that makes one person.

This is the part in the story where Seven properly accepts her borg side. In theory, this would be when Seven becomes more than just a name she’s had for as long as she remembers and something she’s actually embraced.

Except. She joins starfleet. Gets assigned to a captain who refuses to let her be who she wants to be. Him stifling her in the command structure is just a real time demonstration of him trying to crush her identity. She’s not allowed to do what she wants in the command structure (though, this at least, she did know she was signing up for), but she’s not even allowed to be referred to by her preferred name. He Insists she go by the name she has no recollection of using properly in her youth, the name she wore as an evil dictator. She doesn’t have a Choice on how to self determinate.

If the first two seasons were a mission of self discovery and the finding of self worth as she is, then this is the challenge to her newfound convictions. Shaw is, to be frank, a massive jerk who is overstepping his bounds by 8 miles thinking he can choose which names his crew are allowed to have, but narratively I guess his appearance as Seven’s personal test of conviction makes sense. That it’s being shown through her now being Forced to be known as her human name as she’s finally properly accepted her borg side is just a bit of a kick in the teeth.

Seven has no positive associations with this name. To her it’s hiding as a small child, crouched in terror under a table, as the borg approach her to take her. To her Annika is the person she never got to be. She’s the evil president of a totalitarian regime. She’s the woman who got Icheb killed.

This story with Seven was never about her accepting Annika, it was Always about her learning to let her go.

It was always about her embracing Seven instead.

Now she is being forced to toe a line and be somebody she’s not. Seven rebelling against Shaw is not just because he’s a massive jerk, it’s in self defence of who she IS.

And i’m kind of curious as to how this one will end.

#that picard one #picard spoilers #i Always have seven if nine feelings 😭#and hey #maybe one day she'll want to unpack the annika baggage #but rn all that this story is saying is #'we're deadnaming this woman to show this man is a jackass'#and i am taking it as such

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