there is nudity<\/em>, it’s kind of exciting.<\/p>\nThe relationship continued to develop in interesting fashion — sort of a warrior-and-the-monk thing, all tied into Bajor’s increasingly complex intersection of religion and politics. I loved every second.<\/p>\n
And then…I don’t know what happened. Someone maybe decided there wasn’t anything else they could do with the pairing or there wasn’t anything else they could do with Bareil, specifically. Rumors started swirling around that an upcoming season 3 episode, “Life Support,” would be the character’s last. I expressed concern to a non-geek friend (who, by the way, could not have given two shits, but managed to act like this was, indeed, a Very Important Issue in the grand scheme of things), then sat around and worried ’til the episode aired. (Again: a time before spoilers!!)<\/p>\n
As it unspooled, I sat on the very edge of my bed, pillow clutched to my chest, stomach knotted a thousand times over.<\/p>\n
They killed him.<\/p>\n
I burst into tears.<\/p>\n
We are not talking lady-like little sniffles, here. We are talking full-on, body-heaving sobs<\/em>. We are talking a 16-year-old crying like there is no tomorrow over a fictional character because she can’t believe that those fucking fucker fuckingtons took him away<\/em>. We are talking, possibly, about the last step before true insanity.<\/p>\nMy friend — the same one I had confided in earlier — called me that night, just to chat.<\/p>\n
“Um…what’s wrong?” she asked, after I answered the phone with a voice that had deteriorated into nothing more than a wheeze.<\/p>\n
“They…killed…him,” I sobbed.<\/p>\n
“Oh. I’m…sorry?”<\/p>\n
“Mrmphmrrrrrr.”<\/p>\n
Later, of course, a mirror universe version of Bareil was brought in for an episode, and that soothed the wound a tiny bit. But that’s the first time where I remember my fannish heart being smashed into teeny tiny bits, my breath taken away by my inability to actually control things on TV with my mind<\/em>. I wish there was a tidy postscript or moral I could offer, something about how this incident changed how I look at ‘shipping or fandom or the occasionally frightening passion with which I embrace things. But I still ‘ship, I still geek, and I still love things deeply enough to be hurt by them. It’s all part of the experience, I guess. If I’m going to be crushed again, let it be, and let it be by something that involves a character as mind-blowingly hot as Vedek Frakkin’ Bareil.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pondering The Phantom Menace‘s magical tenth anniversary this week has produced a couple of semi-interesting thought blipverts for me. First of all…I’m old. Undeniably, decriptly, cantankerously old. If I had a lawn, I would defend it. Second, what a moment that was, eh? Judging from all your Poodoo comments, everyone has a seminal TPM memory, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,4],"tags":[107,182,183],"class_list":["post-1802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fandom","category-tv","tag-deep-space-nine","tag-kira-nerys","tag-vedek-bareil"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1802\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"kirabareil\"](\"http:\/\/alertnerd.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/kirabareil.jpg\" "\\"kirabareil\\"")
<\/p>\n