cucumbermoon

[cucumbermoon]

3x05 - Second Skin

[cucumbermoon]

Julian Bashir's favorite book is Flowers For Algernon. That's it, send tweet.

[cucumbermoon]

Bertie "I couldn't carry on for a day without Jeeves" Wooster

[cucumbermoon]

can someone tell me why miss keeler from the city on the edge of forever read spock like this. exchanged maybe 4 sentences with the man and she's laying him out like it's her job????

[cucumbermoon]

I find Garak intriguing because the concept of some one gentle forced to bé violent fucks. Someone who desperately wants to be good through kindness but was taught that isnt for him. That the only good he could do was carving flesh. But instinctually he feels that its wrong, that in becoming the Sword of god (tain) hé has lost something intrinstic and warped himself into something monstrous and it still wasn't enough.

[cucumbermoon]

We talk a lot about how bad the dominion camp must have been for Julian and I do think that’s true but I’d like to spare a thought for poor Garak.

In the course of three days he experiences the worst possible combination of events that he, personally, could.

He witnesses - for the second time - the death of a father to whom he is loyal with the fervency of a cult adherent.

He has the possibility of an end to his exile dangled within his grasp and snatched away in the space of a few sentences.

He learns that his absolute least favorite person is now in charge of his beloved homeland.

He has to spend long hours inside a goddamn wall which leads to:

His claustrophobia is triggered and revealed in front of a bunch of Tal Shiar agents.

It’s incredible. If some enemy agency had tried to devise a perfect torture for him they couldn’t have done a better job. And then on top of it all he has to contend with the knowledge that for the last month he’s been fucking a changeling.

[cucumbermoon]

was thinking about Julian "Jules Bashir died, you killed him!" Bashir and Elim "I once had a friend named Elim" Garak again and eventually got to thinking that Julian at least has Kukalaka as a tether to his child self, to "Jules." It's like the one facet of his past identity that he really holds on to and how it's kinda sad that Garak doesn't have something like that

And then I got to really thinking about it. Garak's Kukalaka is just the entire concept of Cardassia, isn't it? His dedication and constant praise to Cardassia as this idealized version of his home is the thing that he holds on to from his days as "Elim." I mean you can argue that the persona he puts on with the whole "A spy???? Who, meee????? Noooooo ;)" bit is his tether to his "Elim" identity but those two things are linked. The idea that Garak holds onto the concept of Cardassia the same way someone holds onto their childhood teddybear is just very striking to me. Except he can't literally hold onto it and take comfort in it the same way because. It's a concept. You can't hold a concept. It's not real.

[cucumbermoon]

Garashir illustration based on a piece from Henri de Toulouse-Lautrecs series “In Bed” ! Reference is below! :-)

[cucumbermoon]

An idiot and his keeper <3

[cucumbermoon]

Where else but Tumblr can you announce that you are suddenly into a 30 yo TV show, and there's like a fandom welcoming party of people living vicariously through your fresh enjoyment and eager to answer any questions you have?

If I went on X or Reddit and said "hey gang this DS9 show is pretty cool," 300 people would call me a r*tard and tell me to kill myself just as an innate response.

[cucumbermoon]

@boppinrobin

It really is the Space equivalent of like 80% of rural America - a shopping plaza that is a third novelty popup stores, a third abandoned storage space, and a third ROCK STAR TRUCK REPAIR, owned by a guy with "Chuck" on his shirt but that isn't his real name because you can't spell that with the English alphabet.

Oh and there's a random Urgent Care center, run by a skilled but creepy little guy whose parents probably wanted a lot more for him.

[cucumbermoon]

Was it Uncle Tom?

They’re modern Dutch.

[cucumbermoon]

Spoiler for star trek DS9 season 3 ep 3: The search part 2

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Since it's a simulation, Quark didn't really appear in this episode and neither did Garak. But these two were still in character, to a certain point. It's like the computer based the simulation on what Sisko and the others thought Quark and Garak would say/do.

I'm just gonna leave here the fact that simulation Garak was vehemently stating how much he'd missed Bashir, how life on the station wasn't the same without the doctor around. Simulation Garak. The Garak Bashir thought of.

Same Garak that sacrificed himself to save Bashir at the end of the episode.

[cucumbermoon]

As a vocal Star Trek fan, it occurs to me that at this point, I haven't actually seen most Star Trek.

I've rewatched every TOS and TNG episode 20 times. And all the (pre-reboot) movies. (I saw that first Abrams movie and...no. No thanks.) But beyond that? I've only seen a handful of DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise episodes. And what I heard about Discovery made me mad. And the two episodes of Picard I saw made me madder. Lower Decks seemed okay for 15 minutes but I never gave it a chance.

My point is, I am a fake old man Star Trek fan, and while that's an okay thing to be...I feel bad about it.

Why do I know more lore from wikis than actual shows? That's weird. I should at least give all this other Trek a chance.

So I swallowed my bile and got the Paramount+ app. It's free for a week, plus it's still cheaper for Premium than other similar apps. And this way I can at least shotgun a sample of these and see what I've been missing. I hear this Brave New Worlds thing is good.

But I'm starting with DS9. It premiered in 1993, when I was 11. I didn't really care about Trek then, and when I got into TOS and TNG in high school, I didn't move on to DS9, because "they're stuck on a space station, this is a bunch of boring soap opera crap."

Even after seeing several episodes and liking the characters, I remained sure that my initial impression was correct.

So I'm watching Emissary, Part 1, atm.

This is immediately great. Writing and acting are a little rough, compared to what comes later (based on what I actually know of this show). But being that this is a new show being new, that's to be expected.

This is AWESOME. Everyone hates everyone, and no one wants to be here. Besides Bashir, and he's a creep and an idiot. Sisko hates Picard because Picard killed his wife, and Picard hates Sisko because Sisko is being a total dick about this. Quark is basically a hostage, Odo is a fascist, Kira wants to kill everyone, including most other Bajorans. And Dax is a 300 yo slug, not taking anything seriously, and cracking wise inside of a young woman's body that you know the slug will TOTALLY exploit sexually. Sisko is a Federation human with an obvious atheistic bent, and he's been on this ruined station for like an hour when some Bajoran holy-woman he doesn't care about tells him he's Alien Jesus. And he is NOT COOL with this. But too bad, dude.

This is everything Roddenberry never wanted Star Trek to be...and that's why it's perfect. This place is a shithole and everyone on it is a jackass. And yet it feels 100% Star Trek, because they're careful about how they do it. Like they actually get the heart and soul of the IP and are trying to do something both new AND traditional, at the same time.

It actually has real TOS vibes. I never got that before. It feels like The Cage, like there's a progressive underpinning, but also, what the hell are all these stupid aliens up to, will yelling fix it? No? ...What about more yelling?

I never saw these episodes of this. Maybe it gets boring later on?

Let's find out.

[cucumbermoon]

which one of u was going to tell me that tea tastes different if u put it in hot water?

[cucumbermoon]

They’re modern Dutch.

[cucumbermoon]

They’re modern Dutch.