So, just finished watching the episode where Odo and Lwaxana get married, and I’m thinking about it, and comparing my reaction with my reaction to the episode I refused to finish last night. Which was the one where Kira and Shakaar get together, and at the point I stopped before I started the lots of internal screaming, Odo was about to fuck up at his job because he’s distracted by them, their closeness, and possibly his jealousy over some aspect of it.

I get far more cranky over that episode than the one where he passionately defends his love for Lwaxana and desire to marry her, and not just because it’s the cliche of the love triangle. To the point of, as I said, internal screaming. (Only not external screaming because I tend to prefer to be a physically quiet person. People tend to underestimate me that way.)

So, the question becomes why?

My usual interpretation of Odo is an aro-ace character who is randomly forced into this unnatural romance plot with Kira, and there’s at least one episode he apparently is interested in sex, and I made faces at that. Because all of those bits tend to read as “everyone must be interested in romance and/or sex, it’s unnatural and wrong not to want it”.

If I try to read it as something in universe? Odo is a neurodivergent aro-ace who is trying to mimic the social cues of romance that he sees around him in an attempt to better fit in. And sometimes that’s enough to be able to watch the episode I did not finish last night, because I can read it as “Odo is distracted by attempting to observe how romance works between (Bajoran) humanoids”, if only just. It keeps the screaming to a dull roar and I can make it through the episode, and the next one I watch can be the calming down episode.

It still doesn’t really make sense, because Odo doesn’t let his need to observe humanoid behavior interfere in doing his job, and yet, suddenly, because Kira is involved, he fails to do his job to his usual standard, and they’re put in danger because of it.

So. Yeah. Lots of screaming.

And yet, Odo getting married to Lwaxana doesn’t make me scream, and it’s not because Odo and Lwaxana have any more chemistry than Odo and Kira.

I think, honestly, it’s because his entire speech reads as someone who has found a soulmate. A platonic soul mate who made an effort to understand him. Who has a lot of her own defenses to hide who she is, and understands the need to apppear different from who a person actually is. And he does love her for it, dearly. But it’s not romantic love.

And their marriage is for her sake. He’s doing this to protect her reproductive rights as her culture understands them. Treating her as a person whose opinions and desires matter, rather than an object to be owned (as the person she’s married to at the beginning of the episode has been treating her).

That she then makes the decision to go back home at the end, to give Odo the room to be himself, and not have her unrequited romantic love for him potentially ruin their friendship, just. It makes me so happy. She is someone who is very much interested in romance and sex who doesn’t have any interest in changing her aro-ace partner. Who doesn’t treat Odo as broken or unnatural for having no desire for either romance or sex.

Yes, it takes her a while to understand it, but she makes the effort where, as far as I can tell, no one else actually does. Quark seems to be the only person who goes out of his way to imply that Odo’s lack of sexual or romantic interest is unnatural, but no one makes any effort to say “yeah, it’s normal, there are humanoids like that too”, either.

Just. I really appreciate the acting in the episode that took what could have been something written as romantic and turned it into a platonic awesomeness without taking away the love of it.