Star Trek: Voyager: S3E2: Flashback in Conversation with Octavia Butler and the Future of Emotions

Photo Cred: Dorothy Attakora-Gyan

In honour of my birthday and Aquarius Season, I think it's best that I leave this post as raw as possible, and simply share the first rough draft/streams of consciousness to the introductory chapter of a book I’m working on called, Octavia Butler and the Future of Emotions. I’m thinking of using an episode of Star Trek I watched recently and putting it in conversation with Octavia Butler and how I imagine her work contributing to the future of emotions. To give some context, here’s the working Table of Content below.

Chapter One/Introduction: Star Trek: Voyager: S3E2 -Flashback and Octavia Butler

Chapter Two: Parable of the Sower Unmasking Shame

Chapter Three: Parable of the Talents Unraveling Shame

Chapter Four: Fledgling Fear

Chapter Five: Kindred, Traumatically and Telepathically, Yours

Chapter Six: The Power of Narcissistic Wild Seed

Chapter Seven/Conclusion: Drifting Out of Solidarity

This blog wasn’t initially meant to be the intro chapter, or a chapter at all, nor even a blog. You can read the edited and put together chapter in the future when you buy my book 🙃,

See if you can keep up with me as I am. If you understand me, that’s the true test. Can you decode what I am saying without me having to dress it up all nice for you? Can you accept me at my most vulnerable and raw? In any case, I care not if it makes sense or makes you uncomfortable, that’s the whole point. I don’t get myself sometimes, which is why I tend not to revisit a lot of what I write. 🤷🏿‍♀️

Star Trek: Voyager: S3E2 -Flashback

“Looks similar to naked eye, only sensors can locate”

“Repressed memory to return based on smells, details”

“Triggers memory at the same time”

The memory was a virus taking over

Created a false memory so painful that it was repressed, which is how the host survives.

Loving this episode, thinking about it alongside my chapter, Fledgling Fear, Blood, Vampires, Virus, Hosts, etc.

Fascinating, that’s exactly how I make sense of trauma and fear, shame too, but shame is what I was reflecting on. Star Trek brings to life what Octavia Butler was getting to, thinking of this in relation to The Evening the Morning and the Night too. This is sort of how I’m making sense of shame as an emotion.

The memory, the flashback, we get located in the past, maybe the future, the host, the Black man, they asked, and I said “all of the above” because this is how I read it. This is me. Certain nervous system stuff is me taking flight, in two places at once, in multiple dimensions, shame does that, trauma does that, I’m no longer sitting on the couch, I’m traveling across time and space, through that image, that vision, that dream state, that memory, that trauma trigger

But the memory is also how fear (read the virus in Star Trek, or shame, if we think of shame and fear as objects, like Sara Ahmed, but more literal, but not really because really only energetic which we can’t see, but is still there) the object of shame links, attaches, works with and to create the sensations, the feelings, the pain, the horror of that memory, its painful, shame is physically painful, what if that pain was us feeling the virus at work, digging deeper into the psyche, or unconscious, non-conscious, out of consciousness, repressed, hidden, never to be engaged with, which is where it grows, amplifies, creates meanings that lock us in the loop, when we refuse to look at our emotions, we allow it to do something to us. We have to do something to avoid it, even if it looks passive, because we can’t see the damage, it's actually really destructive.

In the dream in Star Trek, the little white girl was falling, dropping down a massive clip. Many different types of boys and men all letting her go. Abandonment, abuse, betrayal, you fall my hands, wa ma mensa see fum, you let me down, you dropped me, you let me go, the fall, she’s dropping into the abyss, asking for these different men and boys to save her, a Black boy, a white boy, white men, the Black man in one vision saves her, helps her, which amplifies the resistance that reduces the virus, but then, the virus gets more power, and we see her falling and falling and falling, as the virus is winning. Our trauma taking over us. Each fall a harder affect. We move. We fall. We dissociate. Take flight. Numb. Turn to addictions. Work. Distract. Can’t face us falling. Not the egoic death. Wake up from the nightmare, or do we fall asleep in the fawning.

Star Trek just gave me a visual for the energetic.

But when we are able to sink into the chaos, in another scene, the Black man was saying, “I am in control, I am in control”, I said, let it fall, let it crumble, accept reality, surrender to the truth, you are not in control, shit gonna fall regardless, sink into the chaos, this is the example that the Grapevine raised with homegirl from Dear White People. No fish gonna save you bro. Its gonna fall. You’re gonna drown. Accept it. Find a way to make the pain bearable. Shame taught me that the most. You have to surrender to the pain, the unknown (which here is fear energetically). Me, imma swim. Lay on my back and start chilling. When I get energy I’ll find a solution. But I’m no longer finding solutions in desperation. That’s how you gon really fucking drown. Rest. Quick thinking. Smart moves. Not working hard. If I outdo it, I will drown. I already wrote about this. How I would survive the ship sinking in the question Donovan asked.

I rest and swim, etc.

In Star Trek, he wanted control and shit all fell. Now he sitting there looking stupid. I told you it was gonna fall. The little girls voice is haunting him. So deep, especially right now and my thoughts recently on white women, Black women, and unity.

Star Trek

“I saw her again, the girl” the memory to resurface; somethings gone wrong with the mind meld, smells; scents; triggers; the idea of a false memory is fascinating; that’s literally fear; false evidence appearing real; and how I’m seeing fear in Fledgling is what’s showing up in Star Trek; that’s also how shame gets us fucked up, think of that virus as chronic pain for instance; don’t face reality, medicate, just do whatever to avoid facing shame, emotions love that shit, that’s how they run us, which is why one thing about me, im gonna do the emotional work, because not knowing how to control my emotions almost cost me my life, and made me move away from a whole lot relationally, materially, all of it= if emotions as objects were this virus, this is literally how we do damage, even to the body, the link between emotions and chronic disease for instance, which is why trauma needs to be accounted for by doctors, dr. gabor mate’s work addresses this, you have to look at what trauma actually does to the body, its physical, its physiological, imagine a virus just going at us, in Star Trek, it’s a virus, increasing radiation levels should destroy it he says, “help me” what’s his name? tupac? The radiation seems to be killing the virus, the virus migrating, embedded in captains brain, the virus takes over captains brain in the meld, the virus protein was breaking down when he wasn’t letting her go, but then the white boys came and all let her fall, the shade, theirs a native appearing boy letting her fall too, I couldn’t pay attention to all the different ; peptides generated in brain, childhood memory as camouflage, so trauma the mind would repress it hiding where conscious mind would want to avoid; memory is a tricky thing, if it was real, it’s been buried and copied so many times that no one could tell what would happen. Yup.

The idea of looking at difficult emotions as a virus that’s not seeable but only detected by sensors; invisible; chemical; like in drinking; pheromone; I don’t think it’s a virus per se, but that’s how I see emotions, as an energy, an object, invisible, that when we refuse to face head-on, takes over in destructive ways, but because this is done on the energetic level, it will also materialize somehow externally, so within, as without, all of a sudden there’s addiction issues, there’s the panic attacks which he experienced, other illnesses that started as energy, which is the convo LLana and I were having, the tests cant detect what we can, I feel the chaos, I see how this invisible virus is trying to attack me, shame especially, fear too. Feeling the energy in my body, the chaos, the cells it moves, I literally twitch and move as I reverse things, you can’t tell me that something isn’t attacking my body, autoimmune diseases, that’s how I read it. I’m reverse-engineering something in my body because I wasn’t facing the trauma, we weren’t, intergenerational, I’m the one saying fuck this, nah, I will find a way to control you, but then it pushes harder, which is what he was doing, at some point, it wins, the trauma, the fear, the shame, not facing it means it always wins, breakdown, we break up, we fight, we overdose, we fall ill, we hurt others, we hurt ourselves, self-sabotage, or harm others, Octavia Butler touches on these themes, not facing the difficult memories and the emotions and imprints that come with it only lets something in it live.

Star Trek frames that thing as a virus, Ahmed says its objects, I say its invisible objects that is energetic. I’ve asked if there’s equations for all this. What is the physics I wanted to know, I’ve written about this, it’s a real thing getting in our way, but they can’t detect it with their science, or their math, somethings not adding up, LLana understood, their technology can’t keep up with ours in such that so much technology is located in the spiritual, the energetic, the embodied, the knowing, the knowledge, indigenous knowledge, there are equations, answers, variables located in realms they can’t access but they don’t know they don’t know because they don’t know and too prideful to ask, plus its secret knowledge that comes when you go through the process, but they not hearing us. So we create our own tools within us, we access what codes we need to get into our own bodies and do the work ourselves, heal ourselves, reverse what we can, aid as much as possible, wait until their technology catches up to what we were saying from jump, only its much later, then we rely on their medicine to help us. Wild.

That was a fun Star Trek episode. It worked well with yesterday’s reading of Fledging, vampires, blood, hosts, virus’, saliva, scents, etc. I'll consider working with this episode in the chapter. I like the pairing together. It sets the stage for the next chapter on trauma too. I moved it around so fear and fledgling come before kindred and trauma. Star Trek provides a nice bridge between the two chapters. It looks at the memory, the image, Bergsonian time, Einstein, time-space, time travel, invisible objects moving us out of the present. Octavia butler uses Dana to show us that in Kindred. I’ll wait to do that chapter but can start to lay the groundwork in this chapter on fear.

“Your mind to my mind=mind melding-

Does this post make you uncomfortable? Can you not wait to tear it apart, and destroy and point out all the flaws and inadequacies? Are you so excited to make fun of me afterward? Have you already read versions of even more raw templates of this and found that funny and despicable?

Who knows where this will go. Looking forward to revisiting the episode and sitting down to properly connect the dots. Nexus or bust. Hopefully, you can read the finished product one day. I’m planning on using 2 of my chapters from my Ph.D. as sample chapters. Let me know if you have any advice for writing a book proposal/query. This feels like the first book I just might publish. Looking forward to what 37 has to offer. 3+7=10/1. A new chapter, new start, just getting started.

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Until next time, in solidarity.