#rosalind chao

tuppencetrinkets:

Icons, 200x100, slightly sharpened, from DS9 S1 HERE.

• Benjamin Sisko #26,000
• Ferengi (Nog, Rom, Quark & the Grand Nagus) #9,800
• Garak #161
• Jadzia Dax #11,300
• Jake Sisko #4,000
• Jean Luc Picard #700
• Jennifer Sisko #1,000
• Julian Bashir #11,600
• Kai Opaka #1,500
• Kai Winn #900
• Keiko O’Brien #1,800
• Kira Nerys #19,000
• Lwaxan Troi #1,700
• Miles O’Brien #14,400
• Odo #17,000
• Q #1,700

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INFP – the Healer, the Dreamer, the Clarifier

Keiko O’Brien put up with a lot, and never really got her due. She joined the crewway back in TNG, then left her career to cross over with her husband Miles to DS9, highlighting the show’s themes of family life and diversity. Once the focus shifted to the O’Brien-Bashir bromance (which, to be clear, I think is wonderful), our intrepid botanist went neglected.

Most of her episodes catch Keiko on her bad days, bickering with her husband or worrying what to do with her life. It was tough deciding whether she was always in the grip, or just aggressively using her higher functions. When we see her on good days, she’s obviously smart, sweet, and crazy in love with an Irish engineer who’s as stubborn as she is.

Dominant Function: (Fi) Introverted Feeling, “The Deep Well”

Keiko and Miles love each other deeply in a way that’s obvious to everyone, but also a little inexplicable given how often they seem to be at odds. They clash in the hard-headed way of two Fi-users exasperated with constant compromise. His Fi is lower, so he has trouble working out how to emotionally respond, while her higher Fi wants to be understood without having to explain itself (as an INFP who has dated two ISTJs, I can assure you this never happens in real life…ahem).

Their marriage isn’t easy, but it’s interesting to note that Keiko never brings up the option of separation once she’s committed to Miles. She’s mama-bear protective of her husband and kids on the multiple occasions when various outer space phenomena threaten them, as they do often to Starfleet types. She argues loud for her husband’s innocence when he’s unjustly accused by the Cardassians, and she has a gut feeling that he’s still alive after he’s apparently killed. She has to hold in her feelings when interacting with Miles’ imposter, but the creepiness proves overwhelming, and she makes excuses to get away.

Keiko will stick to what she believes outside of her family life, too. She feels that the kids on DS9 need education, so she starts a school. Vedek Winn tries to shut her down for teaching the scientific explanation about the wormhole without the religious story, but Keiko refuses to budge. She takes in a Cardassian war orphan, and pulls her husband aside during dinner to confront him over his bigoted behavior toward the boy.

They may sound argumentative to those outside the O’Brien household, but Miles declares that Keiko is the most supportive person he knows. When Lwaxana’s telepathic illness causes various members of the crew to randomly fall in love with each other, nothing happens to Keiko and Miles. The others were affected because of latent attractions they held unconsciously, but the O’Briens’ internal compasses point only at each other.

Auxiliary Function: (Ne) Extraverted Intuition, “The Hiking Trails”

Keiko is willing to pick up and move their family to DS9 for the sake of Miles’ career, and after a few weeks of boredom, she finds something productive to do and throws herself into the project. She protests Vedek Winn’s intrusion into her classroom because she sees her job as opening the minds of her students and exposing them to new and diverse ideas. When her unborn child has to be transplanted into Kira after an accident, Keiko just rolls with the new situation, inviting Nerys to live with them during the pregnancy and learning the Bajoran birthing ritual.

When we first meet her, Keiko’s freaking out over her impending marriage to Miles. She backs out, then re-commits, changing her mind virtually every few hours. She knows she loves Miles, but she’s anxious about making the right decision for her life.

This is the frustrating thing with Fi+Ne. Every types’ functions push and pull against each other, particularly when they’re far apart in the stack. It’s how the MBTI model explains the inner contradictions we all have, and helps us to grow. But even our top two functions, the ones that turn us into stereotypes if we only work from them without our lower half, can conflict with each other. Fi, in my INFP experience, is often the most rigid of the functions, while Ne is the most changeable.

Living with these two functions tag-teaming each other at the top of your stack gets exhausting.

On the one hand, you want to stick with the position you know is right, but on the other hand, you’re compelled to always be hunting for unexplored options. So while Keiko looks like a crazy person to her husband, I can completely sympathize with her frustration. She wants to support Miles in his career, but she needs to have her own opportunities to pursue.

Being a stay-at-home mom doesn’t work for her (particularly in an advanced future where there’s not much housework). Being a schoolteacher fulfills her for a while, but then that well dries up. Miles tries to build her a small arboretum where she can work with plants in her spare time, but botany isn’t her hobby—it’s her vocation.

Keiko needs to be a botanist. She joins a Bajoran expedition to explore undocumented species on the planet, and then she’s continuously gone on missions for most of the rest of the series. It’s a constantly moving, always changing lifestyle, and it seems to be the best choice she ever made.

Tertiary Function: (Si) Introverted Sensing, “The Study”

Keiko gets bored with routine. She assures Miles she’s okay sitting in their quarters when he leaves for work, but she needs something to engage her interests and skills. Still, she values her home life, and after months of traveling for work, she feels relief at coming back where she belongs. She keeps many traditions, especially food, from her Japanese heritage, and her wedding to Miles is a tasteful mix of Japanese and Irish customs.

Keiko gets help from a telepath to help her recollect the details from a certain childhood memory. She has various pieces—images, textures, a piece of a song—but she can’t quite recall why it’s important to her. The experience brings her memory into focus, and she finally remembers time spent with her grandmother doing calligraphy.

Keiko believes that footage of her husband’s death has been faked, because it shows him drinking coffee in the afternoon, and Miles never drinks coffee in the afternoon. Her certainty sends Sisko and the crew off on a whole investigation, and sure enough they discover Miles (and Julian) still alive and on the run. When she gets him back, Keiko discovers that she’s mistaken—Miles drinks coffee in the afternoon all the time (cue laugh track, freeze frame, end credits)!

Inferior Function: (Te) Extraverted Thinking, “The Workshop”

Keiko can put her foot down, and often does, leading to stand-offs with her Te-aux husband. She rises to the occasion when she decides the station urgently needs a school, planning and scheduling the curriculum and persuading Sisko to give her the space for it. She even gets Rom on board, convincing him that education will be good for his son.

And let’s not forget she managed to give birth to Molly in the middle of a ship-wide disaster.

(In the not-strictly-canon post-TV novels, Keiko takes a job after the war helping Cardassia regrow its biosphere, and then it’s Miles’ turn to give up his career for his partner. I think it’s a lovely development, bringing the O’Brien family full circle.)

Originally, I didn’t think I would be able to fully type Keiko, and I intended to include her in a quick list of supporting characters. While writing the list, I argued myself into an INFP typing. Back in the TNG series, I ended up typing another troublesome Star Trek character as an INFP, and I’m hoping this doesn’t reveal some sort of bias. I have no deep personal connection to Wesley or Keiko, so I don’t think I’m projecting my own type onto them. If I had to guess, when the show requires a character to act one way this week and another way next week, that Fi-Ne combo seems like an easy explanation.

As always, I welcome input and opinions.

Rosalind Chao certainly deserved better, so catch “The Assignment” from Season 5 to see her absolutely owning the episode.