What most humans tend to overlook -- because they have the option of overlooking it, because it's a human tendency to assume that the way the world happens to be at the moment is the way it obviously must and should be -- is that Starfleet is, at its base, a human institution: human majority, human organizational rules, structures built on human blueprints, environmental parameters set to human standards, etcetera ad nauseum... which makes sense since Starfleet was a human idea that the other Federation founders agreed to more from a spirit of indulgence than any driving enthusiasm of their own, but still: it all defaults to human.
Gaila isn't human.
Jim didn't join Starfleet until Pike dared him, too busy clinging to his bitterness and curdled anger, but Gaila left everything behind -- her language, her culture, her planet, her species -- and plunged headfirst into the unknown without so much as a backward glance; she lives every day among aliens who reduce her to a stereotype yet holds onto herself, her goals, and her sheer joy in
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Gaila isn't human.
Jim didn't join Starfleet until Pike dared him, too busy clinging to his bitterness and curdled anger, but Gaila left everything behind -- her language, her culture, her planet, her species -- and plunged headfirst into the unknown without so much as a backward glance; she lives every day among aliens who reduce her to a stereotype yet holds onto herself, her goals, and her sheer joy in ( ... )
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