Charisma is not about of being good or bad, but for the ability of attracting people.
... Is this really a thing?
I love both of these characters, for different reasons.
Garak is... morally dubious, quite often, but amusingly clever about it. He is at least very self aware that he is kind of a piece of shit.
Pulaski is goddamned genius and a hero, doesn't put up with too much bullshit, but displays her sardonic wit when the situation permits.
I disliked Pulaski at first because she wasn't Crusher. Then, as the season went on, I quickly started to prefer Pulaski. Then Crusher came back...
People dislike her because she was a dick to Data in the beginning, and that she's mostly an attempt at making a female Dr. McCoy. I'm really glad the writers gave her a bit of a redemption arc with her relationship to Data though, it makes for an interesting bit of character development for both of them.
She has entire adventures with Data, in the holodeck!
I guess maybe if you watched the show as it aired, yeah you could have some sympathetic animosity... but she's just like, busy, and has no time for bullshit, and Data sometimes does not realize he is doing a bullshit.
Like I'm autistic and highly identify with Data... people being a dick to you for seemingly no reason you can understand, this is extremely relatable and normal for an autist.
I'd argue the two of them, Data and Pulaski, in particular serve as a great model of how a neurotypical and autist can learn how to interact with each other; she indulges his special interest and they go on a Sherlock Holmes adventure together!
And in so doing, he learns about things she notices, knows, and values, that were not apparent to him before... and the same in reverse... they each respect each other more after that, and learn a bit how to avoid frustrating the other.
Data is autistic coded for sure. And yeah, you get it! They end up having a great relationship. I guess people could complain that it's just a rehash of the McCoy and Spock dynamic but, if nothing else, I'm glad she was around for a season just for Data's character growth.
Edit: This might be a bit of a hot take, but I think Picard is more of a dick to Data in general, especially in the early seasons.
I always liked her character arch though. She started out curmudgeonly but began to warm up. I always wonder what would have happened if McFadden hadn’t come back.
Rikers stepmom has soo many possibilities
Garak is complicated and mysterious. We only learned the truth of who he is near the end. Then all his dubious actions make sense. Meanwhile she was straight forward and boring.
Garak knows the rules. Always be polite, until it's time to not be polite. Pulaski started out rude. There's no excuse for that.
Pulaski really came around though. Remember how genuinely happy she was for Data when he kicked that smug alien's ass in Stratagema? And she was encouraging him not to give up throughout the episode when he was having a bit of a crisis from initially losing. I hated her at first but she's grown on me.
Well yeah, that's the standard character redemption arc. Just saying as an opening impression she was rude and arrogant, and first impressions matter.
Garak can probably also do that trachea move.
-- unless you're the right type of man
This is the real emphasis.
How is he supposed to know the cardassian government is doing any of those things when he's just a simple tailor
You can’t put this solely on the fans, writers make characters loveable or off putting. Women characters are very often written in a way that make people hate them. Skyler from Breaking Bad is a good example, she’s hated because she is only shown when she interferes in Walters life in some way. We know what Walter does for fun, but we never see Skyler do fun things and thus feel less sympathy for her, even if the ways in which she interferes in Walters business is almost always justified while Walter destroys much of her life.
How am I supposed to ship him with Bashir if I'm thinking about how he's a genocidal war criminal fascist
how dare she tho
They wanted a second McCoy and they got the first Karen.
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