Okay, so I’ve joked about Chakotay’s weird sense of humor before, but like……. he really does have such a funny sense of humor???? Like when we think of Chakotay, I think we all kind of forget how canonically funny he is??? Like this dude really does just get a big heckin kick out of messing with people. That’s his hobby. When he was getting his anthropology degree or whatever, I bet he did all of his research papers on the humor customs of cultures and stuff.
Here’s some of Chakotay’s greatest hits:
- That one time when Harry came to him to request not to work with Seven anymore because he made a fool of himself in front of her and, instead of Chakotay just telling him that Seven already talked to him and was not offended by Harry’s behavior, he let Harry dig himself into a very deep hole and THEN told him Seven had already talked to him and that he was assigning Harry to permanently work with Seven just to watch Harry squirm. And then he chuckled about it to himself after Harry left. Iconic.
- When he and Kathryn are on New Earth and she asks if he’s still there and he says “No, I left an hour ago.”
- That one time when B’Elanna was trying to get him to go watch the Space WWE match with her and he was like “no I can’t I have to work” and she was like “dude you’re the boss, just assign someone else to do it” so then HE ASSIGNS B’ELANNA TO DO HIS WORK AND THEN WHEN SHE COMPLAINS HE’S LIKE “I thought you would be happy that I took your advice and delegated :)”
- When he and Kathryn are talking after The Voyager Conspiracy and he’s like “did you poison the coffee?” (and then Kathryn jokes back “not more than I usually do” which brings up the fact that their senses of humor are perfectly aligned because the two of them have the exact same style of telling jokes and when they start joking around together it’s even funnier but that’s a whole other future post)
- The fact that he chooses to tell Kathryn he loves her using a fake “ancient legend” just because he’s a lil shit (yes there were other more emotional reasons behind him using an ancient legend and yes it was a way for her to have an out if she didn’t want to address his feelings but you cannot convince me that he hadn’t planned on using that ancient legend for months in case Kathryn was ever ready to start a relationship and that he made up that ancient legend with the sole purpose of being amusing.)
- Back to the wrestling episode: When he and Harry start ragging on each other and joking about boxing together and he just keeps egging Harry on to get the kid to dig himself into a deeper hole. Chakotay’s not actually that competitive of a person, he just really likes to see Harry get wound up. I feel like this is kind of a running theme for him, actually; he just winds people up and presses their buttons for the heck of it.
- The whole thing where Kathryn tells him he can shoot an apple off her head as a talent and he’s like “Sounds great. If I miss, I get to be Captain :)”
- When Tom suggests that Janeway play Arachnia and she’s like “no” and then Chakotay gangs up on her with Tuvok and Seven to back up Tom’s plan and Janeway looks at him and is like “thanks.” and he just grins. That whole scene reads exactly like a kid asking his mom to help out by taking a role in the school play and mom is trying to get out of it but dad backs the kid up while giving her a shit-eating grin and you just KNOW mom’s gonna have words with dad later. I love it.
- There’s also that scene in Scientific Method where Old!Chakotay and NotTalaxian!Neelix are in sickbay and Chakotay starts a “my affliction is worse than yours” contest with Neelix. I’m 100% sure that this is another example of him pressing someone’s buttons and getting them wound up just because he’s bored.
- Basically any moment that he has a big grin in the background of a scene as some sort of chaos unfolds. He lives for that.
Anyway, Chakotay is hilarious and I don’t think we talk about it enough.
