Profile of Liska

Jennifer Lawrence as Liska

I feel that a gay character has long been overdo on Star Trek. Kirk/Spock slashfics notwithstanding, fan fiction has seen to correct this, with some of the canon characters coming out and a multitude of original gay characters. Allow me to describe my own.

Genesis of the Character

Liska is a female Vorta, one of the most feared servants of the Founders and capable of ordering a Jem'Hadar soldier to kill himself without hesitation.

Like Tarska Hesar, Liska also comes from the Dominion War Sourcebook by Steven S. Long. Unlike Hesar, though, Liska had a character profile with some descriptions and a full range of statistics.

I don't know how, but when I read over her I thought "Yep, I'm making a gay character." At the time, I was just writing scenes regarding the villains of what would be a Star Trek RPG campaign. The campaign fell through, but I wanted to keep writing the Dominion characters.

Reboot for the Dominion

As awesome a civilization as the Dominion is, I felt they were a little underdeveloped. We only saw the Founders, Vorta, and Jem'Hadar during the war. I can understand; television budget calls for a small number of recurring characters. As I started actually writing fanfiction, I decided that I would need to reboot certain aspects and expand on others.

First, I decided to focus on the Vorta, as they are the most like the opposite of humans. Well, more like modern-day humans instead of Trek humans. Vorta are driven by impulse, ambition, desires, and basic needs, whereas the humans of Trek no longer have those essential drives as they are viewed negatively. Of course, this can be tied back to Gene Roddenberry who said "money doesn't exist in the future!"

Anyway, one thing about the Vorta established was that they are cloned. However, honestly, I did not like this concept too much. Wouldn't it take a long time to create a genetic template and educate them, rather than just picking the best of the best of the best to become clones? After all, the Vorta have free will, unlike the Jem'Hadar.

With the help of Charlotte, I developed a new concept for the Vorta. They are a race that reproduces sexually. However, about 0.05% of them are actually clones. The clones mostly serve in the military, but do perform other tasks such as administration, trade, research, etc.

A Gay Vorta, or a Vorta who happens to be gay

One major problem when writing gay characters, especially if you are not gay yourself, is how much of that you wish to incorporate into their character. Sometimes, this fails. According to the Nostalgia Critic, Doug Walker, during the 90s, writers would have gay character announce that they were gay every where they went and to every single person they met. Another analogy is how they wrote Captain Janeway. She was written, depending on whether or not Jeri Taylor was there, as "the woman captain," whereas Captain Sisko was just "the Captain" and not "the black captain".

In my early writing of this character, I struggled to find a good blend for Liska and her lover Eris. How much of the time do they spend announcing to their fellow officers that they are lesbians? Well, after a while, that gets a little stale. Eventually, I focused more on their work trying to conquer the Federation and had their relationship be secondary. After all, fighting a war is a bit more exciting that just having people saying they love each other.

Personality

Liska is driven. She wants to see the Dominion victorious against any power which challenges it.  She is also immensely capable, determined to win no matter the cost. Despite this, she is also able to see the big picture and notice when she is unable to go further. As such, she is a bit more conservative at fighting than Hesar, which I intend to explore further. After all, the best way to create drama is to have characters who contrast each other, something Gene Roddenberry did not seem to figure out.