captain gabriel lorca — of star trek: discovery. a study in embracing one’s pain, in abandoning who one was and who one is meant to be in service of a greater purpose, and in the immense costs that must be paid to survive. penned by katya , your resident shy & awkward koala. 25+, she / her.
⤷ rules / about | memes | thread tracker
hey, loves!! I am going to be moving lorca ( once again ) back to a small multi, as I simply cannot keep up with as many blogs as I have, but do want to write him. please find us over on @pathlit !!
while “weird guy who is actually from the mirror universe and snuck here for some diabolical hijinks” is a viable Star Trek character concept it also was a terrible explanation for lorca’s actions. lorca shouldn’t be an inherently evil guy. lorca should be a cautionary tale. this is how rampant violence breeds rampant violence. this is how the most well meaning people can do the most vile things. this how compromising your morals once makes it that much harder to stand by them ever again. this is how being so dedicated to a singular ideal can become an excuse for hurting anyone. choosing to make lorca some random twist villain robs discovery of its thematic integrity and robs michael of the resolution to her conflict with georgiou in the second episode (she would realize that unfettered consequentialism is a plague and in some cases you shouldn’t do something because it’s the wrong thing to do). oh my god it’s been three seasons and I’m still furious about this.
“Have you no decency, Lorca? Actually, that was a trick question. I know you don’t. We both know you lost that with your last command.“
“What’s he talking about?”
“The tragic tale of the U.S.S. Buran. It was ambushed about a month into the war, the Klingons boarded it and blasted it into smithereens. Only one crewman managed to escape: Gabriel Lorca. Apparently, the honorable Captain was too good to go down with his ship.“
“Mudd’s only half right. We were ambushed, and I did… escape. But I didn’t let my crew die. I blew them up. I knew what awaited them on Qo'noS. Degradation. Torture. Slow, public death. It’s the Klingon way to spread terror. Not my crew. Not on my watch.”
“Well, they say confession is good for the soul. Too bad none of us have one anymore.” - Harry Mudd, Lieutenant Ash Tyler and Captain Gabriel Lorca (Star Trek: Discovery, Episode 1.5)
perhaps, once, before the war, before the buran, before reality had enlightened him and freed him of illusions and idealism. perhaps then he had been a good man. the universe had enough good men, and being good was not enough, not when it couldn’t save his crew. whatever the federation might seek to preach, he would be what he needed to be, not good. not noble.
characters who are so inauthentic. characters who only show what they want other people to see of them. characters who simply must have control over every part of themselves. do you even get it
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides … sentence starters
hi i did not sleep last night so it is bad decision hours….
so, because I clearly can’t manage a separate blog for gabriel, he’s moving to my new multi @gaerlhoss. if we’ve written before, you’re welcome to join us there! <3
guess who forgot this blog existed, again?
putting lorca’s blog on a baby hiatus while I get my life and act together on my other blogs. I’ll be here when I don’t feel like I’m constantly drowning and spread too thin.
... I never even thought about what to do with a post!s1 verse for lorca, did I?
🐝 * ― 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐏𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐂𝐄𝐒𝐒 𝐁𝐑𝐈𝐃𝐄 𝐒𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐒. ( all of these are taken from the movie ‘the princess bride’ released in 1987. feel free to adjust to better fit your muses. )
❛ your vote of confidence is overwhelming. ❜ ❛ are you trying to trick me ? ❜ ❛ what if something happens to you ? ❜ ❛ i will never love again. ❜ ❛ am i going mad, or did the word ‘think’ escape your lips ? ❜ ❛ you are sure nobody’s following us ? ❜ ❛ out of curiosity, why do you ask ? ❜ ❛ i suppose you think you’re brave, don’t you ? ❜ ❛ i do not accept excuses. ❜ ❛ did i make it clear that your job is at stake ? ❜ ❛ i do not think it means what you think it means. ❜ ❛ i don’t mean to be rude, but this is not as easy as it looks. ❜ ❛ i’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t distract me. ❜ ❛ you are better than i am. ❜ ❛ please understand, i hold you in the highest respect. ❜ ❛ i just want you to feel you are doing well. ❜ ❛ we must all be ready for whatever lies ahead. ❜ ❛ could this be a trap ? ❜ ❛ if there can be no arrangement, then we are at an impasse. ❜ ❛ i could have sworn i saw something. ❜ ❛ you only think i guessed wrong. ❜ ❛ i was giving you a chance. ❜ ❛ you think your dearest love will save you ? ❜ ❛ what can i do or you ? ❜ ❛ nothing you can say will upset me. ❜ ❛ you can die too, for all i care ! ❜ ❛ i told you i would always come for you. ❜ ❛ why didn’t you wait for me ? ❜ ❛ death cannot stop true love. all it can do is delay it for a while. ❜ ❛ is everything clear to you ? ❜ ❛ you mean you wish to surrender to me ? ❜ ❛ don’t make yourself a fool. ❜ ❛ we can live there quite happily for some time so whenever you feel like dying, feel free to visit. ❜ ❛ i thought you were dead once, and it almost destroyed me. i could not bear it if you died again, not when i could save you. ❜ ❛ who says life is fair ? ❜ ❛ life isn’t always fair. ❜ ❛ i’m telling you, you’re messing up the story ! ❜ ❛ i’m sure you’ve discovered my deep and abiding interest in pain. ❜ ❛ this is where i am, and this is where i’ll stay. ❜ ❛ you don’t look so good. ❜ ❛ i just hope it’s enough to buy a miracle, that’s all. ❜ ❛ there’s a big diference between mostly dead and all dead. ❜ ❛ all your worst nightmares are about to come true. ❜ ❛ have you been chasing me your whole life only to fail now ? ❜ ❛ i think that’s the worst thing i’ve ever heard. ❜ ❛ you’ve got an overdeveloped sense of vengeance. it’s going to get you in trouble someday. ❜ ❛ what hideous sin have you committed lately ? ❜ ❛ if you didn’t say it, you didn’t do it. ❜ ❛ i have been in the revenge business so long, now that it’s over i don’t know what to do with the rest of my life. ❜
evcryopeneye :: sylvia tilly.
At least when it counted, she could get the job done, even if it came with a side of annoying babble. Her inability to read him freaked her out, she was expecting another reading of the riot act. Something about how she just breaks everything, oh she was met with something else. While the tone is his usual no nonsense, direct and authoritarian, there was a smudge of something else in it she couldn’t pinpoint. Tilly had always had issues with authority, but this was off the charts. Lorca was intimidating, ruthless, and all things considered, sometimes Tilly seriously contemplated if he was heartless but she wasn’t going to deny that war often required those traits. It just wasn’t what any of them had signed up for.
For maybe the first time in history, she felt like she’d done the right thing.
It took her just a fraction of a second to launch that idea into the sun.
“Engineering.” The word out the exact same moment it did her Captains. It threw her. A blink. “Sorry I didn’t mean to-” there she went again, always almost doing the wrong thing. Shaking off her own spiral of thoughts she felt herself almost freeze, unsure what to do, which course of action would annoy him the least. “Engineering. Bridge controls. That’s the plan right?” Unsure of if she’d managed to put the parts of his plan together properly.
They could access bridge controls from engineering. Figure out what was going on in the bridge. Once you knew what was going on, you could begin to get out of it. Wordlessly, she managed to cut power to the door, they were almost there…she couldn’t help but feel more nervous about the peril they were in the closer their destination got.
he remains unfazed by her near interruption; the idea, after all, is the only sensible one, and he’d rather she ( or any officer ) suggest it than hold their tongues. gabriel may lack the patience for ❛ bridge control, ❜ he agrees. ❛ or main power so that we can open the damn doors and get to the bridge itself. I’m not feeling picky. ❜ he has never much liked running a vessel from engineering, as if the absence of a view-screen blinds him even when the ship’s sensors does most of the work of seeing anyways. no more than a psychological distinction, he knows, yet engineering has never felt like a place he belongs. especially not on this ship, with the spore drive a door away. there is the realm of science, a far cry from his talents.
though engineering may be closer, three additional doors remain between them and that destination. at each, he gestures her towards the control panels, gaze alert as he surveys the corridor behind them, expecting something. only with door locks released does he turn his back to pry the door open. if someone were to ask, gabriel could not say what it is that so troubles him. he cannot say what he expects, but he trusts an instinct honed through years of work in security, through command in a time of war.
then the only remaining door is to engineering itself, and there’s a grim calmness that has claimed every fiber of his being. they have yet to encounter a single other soul, and even a ship operating with a small crew due to both war and top-secret nature of its efforts should not be this empty. the realization cannot spark fear in him, yet before this last door he gestures that she pause instead of motioning her onward. ❛ with any luck, beyond that door we’ll find our crew already at work setting this right. ❜ luck never so favored them, some treacherous part of his mind suggests, and he keeps the thought resolutely to himself. ❛ but in case that is not what we find, I want you out of sight, is that understood? I go through this door alone, and you stay here. ❜ the corner between corridor wall and doorframe will not offer her much by way of cover, it will prove something. it will prove enough, or so he hopes. he won’t risk another unnecessary life upon his conscience.
random (chaotic) dialogue starters.
She’s lingered behind, in the new-standard uniform she rarely wears. No amount of camouflage can conceal the strangeness of her eyes or the lack of rank insignia on the delta at her chest, but Pris can often pass without comment. So long as she doesn’t draw attention to herself, at least.
This counts as drawing attention to herself. It’s not exactly a gentle question, particularly after the discussion they’d left. Perhaps his honesty surprises them both. Paints a certain wry twist to her smile.
“I’d heard you were noble.”
When the ends are me and mine, I will justify the means. She relates more than she’d like. Finds herself nodding with an understanding only slightly less than approval.
(They forget, sometimes–she forgets–that she has lived too long to only be what she is now. That she survived bloodied seas, the Eugenics Wars; that sometimes she woke still grasping for the hands of those she couldn’t save.)
Still, Pris has devoted herself to her ideals as much as any member of the ‘Fleet. And it doesn’t take an empathic connection to sense the horror in his devotion. Just the barest look at his record, or at the way he stands in front of her as if half-ready to bare his teeth.
“Just be careful that’s not what defines necessity.”
incredulity writes itself upon his features, in raised eyebrows and lips that half-purse. they give way after a brief moment to a mask — a mask of wry amusement, laced with charisma he has learned to wield as both shield and blade, carried upon a lopsided smile.
❛ I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, but I’ve been called many things. noble’s not one of them. ❜ perhaps, once, before the war, before the buran, before reality had enlightened him and freed him of illusions and idealism. perhaps then he had been a good man. the universe had enough good men, and being good was not enough, not when it couldn’t save his crew. whatever the federation might seek to preach, he would be what he needed to be, not good. not noble.
he considers her, however, perhaps a moment too long. and though he takes in all that might set her apart, he gives no inclination and makes no remark. and though lack of insignia offers him no means to know how to address her ( neither by title nor by degree of respect necessitated by rank ), he treats her warning with uncharacteristic solemnity. ❛ what should define necessity? you needn’t worry — I have no compunctions regarding being noble. ❜ it will never be the source of necessity, not to him.
