whatwegrowbeyond:“Be to her, Persephone,All the things I might not be;Take her head upon your
whatwegrowbeyond:“Be to her, Persephone,All the things I might not be;Take her head upon your knee.”Edna St. Vincent MillayI have… many thoughts about Soji Asha.I’ve written about Rios, Seven, Jurati, Hugh, Raffi and Elnor and the Qowat Milat, and I’ve had help from Shakespeare, Cicero, Marcus Aurelius and David Bowie.Soji Asha, though, is my favourite original character from a series rich with very strong characters, and I think it’s because she comes to us as both a blank slate and a richly detailed fictional person. The Soji we know is, functionally, a character within a character. There is Soji, the underlying person, and Dr. Soji Asha, the role she has played. As we’ve come to know Dr. Soji Asha, we’ve seen elements of her characterisation first undermined and then fall away; she has become more of a cypher and, interestingly, more complete as a character. She is a reaction to the franchise’s past and a tantalising glimpse of where we’re going and what it will mean to get there.I love her.I love that we know her as well as she knows herself. I love the certainty that suffuses her confusion; she is, resolutely, who she is, even if she has absolutely no idea what that means. I love that she loved her sister. I love that she loved her work and that she believed in her work, its utility and vitality. I love that her interactions with the crew of La Sirena, with the Troi-Rikers and with Jean-Luc Picard show us who she really is, at her core: she is a good, kind, caring, engaging, funny, curious person.Just like Data.We never got a chance to know Dahj, not really; she was a complete character, introduced to us very well and with some excellent story-telling economy, but the Zhat Vash took her away before she had a chance to know herself and before we, as an audience, got to know her. That is a tragedy.We have watched Soji being led into hell by a beautiful boy who told her he loved her. We’ve watched her confront the horror of her circumstance and fight her way free. She has the chance to know herself, now, and I am glad to join her on that journey.I can’t wait to see where it leads.Persephone,Take her head upon your knee;Say to her, “My dear, my dear,It is not so dreadful here.” -- source link
#picard spoilers#character meta