#A Stitch In Time

[vaguely-concerned]

So much of Garak as a person starts to make sense once you know his childhood was a fucking gothic novel. His main playground was a graveyard and he'd play pretend by perfoming improv eulogies to an imagined audience. For a long time his main touchstone for most important figures from recent history is 'oh yeah I know about that guy my dad buried him. great flower arrangements for that one'. He finds out later his 'parents' are actually a brother and sister who had to get married to avoid the utter shame and social devastation of having a child born out of wedlock, and they live in the basement of his biological father's house. (the madwoman in the attic vs. the tiny elim in the basement.) His biological father calls himself his uncle and locks him in a closet whenever he fails to live up to his insane and unpredictable expectations and everyone just has to act like that's normal and expected, and his will hangs over everything at all times, unseen but always felt keener than anything else. The father who actually raised him grows the world's most beautiful (and as it turns out, most poisonous) orchids and keeps the mask of a god hidden in a box in his work shed. Everyone in the house is choking down secrets like it's the only air they know how to breathe anymore.

What I'm saying is that right from the get-go this guy never had the faintest shot at turning out normal, so I'm glad that by middle age he's found a way to get a bit silly with it as he continues to be deeply deeply not normal about anything ever <3

[charlesemersonwinchesteriii]

i was getting ready for another day of spying and murdering, practicing my interrogator death stare with my piercing blue orbs. just then, enabran tain came in. “pack your things.” he said. “i’ve sold you to pay our debts. meet your new owners, the crew of deep space 9.”

[cardassi-art]

Home, on Cardassia

This is my love letter to Elim Garak.

[codenameregnar]

Do y’all remember in A Stitch In Time when Garaks getting the everliving shit beat outta him and he’s just having the most amazing beautiful psychedelic and spiritual experience lol. Thats me every single day except Barkan is just my life and the wire is my inherent joy and whimsy

[soupfreak]

when i say i GASPED when i saw this on the shelf….. thank you god and everyone

[swimmingbabe05]

After starting A stitch in time, it’s crazy to me how buck wild Cardassians are. Like they are psychologically torturing their youth and for what? No wonder all cardassians are like That

[youngpettyqueen]

Garak saying "I know when to walk away" is so funny with the context of A Stitch in Time because like. yeah he does know when to walk away. and then he never does

[spocks-kaathyra]

thoughts about the Cardassian writing system

I've thinking about the Cardassian script as shown on screen and in beta canon and such and like. Is it just me or would it be very difficult to write by hand?? Like.

I traced some of this image for a recent drawing I did and like. The varying line thicknesses?? The little rectangular holes?? It's not at all intuitive to write by hand. Even if you imagine, like, a different writing implement—I suppose a chisel-tip pen would work better—it still seems like it wasn't meant to be handwritten. Which has a few possible explanations.

Like, maybe it's just a fancy font for computers, and handwritten text looks a little different. Times New Roman isn't very easily written by hand either, right? Maybe the line thickness differences are just decorative, and it's totally possible to convey the same orthographic information with the two line thicknesses of a chisel-tip pen, or with no variation in line thickness at all.

A more interesting explanation, though, and the one I thought of first, is that this writing system was never designed to be handwritten. This is a writing system developed in Cardassia's digital age. Maybe the original Cardassian script didn’t digitize well, so they invented a new one specifically for digital use? Like, when they invented coding, they realized that their writing system didn’t work very well for that purpose. I know next to nothing about coding, but I cannot imagine doing it using Chinese characters. So maybe they came up with a new writing system that worked well for that purpose, and when computer use became widespread, they stuck with it. 

Or maybe the script was invented for political reasons! Maybe Cardassia was already fairly technologically advanced when the Cardassian Union was formed, and, to reinforce a cohesive national identity, they developed a new standardized national writing system. Like, y'know, the First Emperor of Qin standardizing hanzi when he unified China, or that Korean king inventing hangul. Except that at this point in Cardassian history, all official records were digital and typing was a lot more common than handwriting, so the new script was designed to be typed and not written. Of course, this reform would be slower to reach the more rural parts of Cardassia, and even in a technologically advanced society, there are people who don't have access to that technology. But I imagine the government would be big on infrastructure and education, and would make sure all good Cardassian citizens become literate. And old regional scripts would stop being taught in schools and be phased out of digital use and all the kids would grow up learning the digital script.

Which is good for the totalitarian government! Imagine you can only write digitally. On computers. That the government can monitor. If you, like, write a physical letter and send it to someone, then it's possible for the contents to stay totally private. But if you send an email, it can be very easily intercepted. Especially if the government is controlling which computers can be manufactured and sold, and what software is in widespread use, etc. 

AND. Historical documents are now only readable for scholars. Remember that Korean king that invented hangul? Before him, Korea used to use Chinese characters too. And don't get me wrong, hangul is a genius writing system! It fits the Korean language so much better than Chinese characters did! It increased literacy at incredible rates! But by switching writing systems, they broke that historical link. The average literate Chinese person can read texts that are thousands of years old. The average literate Korean person can't. They'd have to specifically study that field, learn a whole new writing system. So with the new generation of Cardassian youths unable to read historical texts, it's much easier for the government to revise history. The primary source documents are in a script that most people can't read. You just trust the translation they teach you in school. In ASIT it's literally a crucial plot point that the Cardassian government revised history! Wouldn't it make it soooo much easier for them if only very few people can actually read the historical accounts of what happened.

I guess I am thinking of this like Chinese characters. Like, all the different Chinese "dialects" being written with hanzi, even though otherwise they could barely be considered the same language. And even non-Sinitic languages that historically adopted hanzi, like Japanese and Korean and Vietnamese. Which worked because hanzi is a logography—it encodes meaning, not sound, so the same word in different languages can be written the same. It didn’t work well! Nowadays, Japanese has made significant modifications and Korean has invented a new writing system entirely and Vietnamese has adapted a different foreign writing system, because while hanzi could write their languages, it didn’t do a very good job at it. But the Cardassian government probably cares more about assimilation and national unity than making things easier for speakers of minority languages. So, Cardassia used to have different cultures with different languages, like the Hebitians, and maybe instead of the Union forcing everyone to start speaking the same language, they just made everyone use the same writing system. Though that does seem less likely than them enforcing a standard language like the Federation does. Maybe they enforce a standard language, and invent the new writing system to increase literacy for people who are newly learning it.

And I can imagine it being a kind of purely digital language for some people? Like if you’re living on a colonized planet lightyears away from Cardassia Prime and you never have to speak Cardassian, but your computer’s interface is in Cardassian and if you go online then everyone there uses Cardassian. Like people irl who participate in the anglophone internet but don’t really use English in person because they don’t live in an anglophone country. Except if English were a logographic writing system that you could use to write your own language. And you can’t handwrite it, if for whatever reason you wanted to. Almost a similar idea to a liturgical language? Like, it’s only used in specific contexts and not really in daily life. In daily life you’d still speak your own language, and maybe even handwrite it when needed. I think old writing systems would survive even closer to the imperial core (does it make sense to call it that?), though the government would discourage it. I imagine there’d be a revival movement after the Fire, not only because of the cultural shift away from the old totalitarian Cardassia, but because people realize the importance of having a written communication system that doesn’t rely on everyone having a padd and electricity and wifi.

[ladyylavenderrr]

I moved to her to hold her, and she didn't resist. She didn't move. She let me put my arms around her and draw her vibrating body to mine. The touch, the feel of her against my body was something I had never expected to experience outside my imagination. For the first time since Bamarren, I wanted to expand my presence, to feel everything that was coming through this moment and joining us. Inexplicably, I had a sudden vision of the Guide, the woman from the meeting.

"This is our secret, Elim," Palandine whispered.

"Yes," I answered. "Our secret." Another one. But it didn't feel like it would poison me.

———

Quick and crappy doodle of our favorite doomed couple. I always imagined Palandine’s hair being half up and half down in this stage of her life to show the conflict she’s going through, one side of her playing the perfect spouse and the other being free with Garak. Something like that

[messvoid]

posting this little thing here...

[master-of-the-game]

Young Garak (first missions in the Obsidian Order) sketch.

[yardistard]

Do you remember when Julian had a massive crush on Jadzia so he sent her his old diary in the hopes that she would read it and understand him better?

anyways, let me introduce you to A Stitch in Time, where Garak records his entire life history, laying bare all of his darkest secrets, and sends it to Julian in the hope that he may listen to it and understand him better

[cardassi-art]

This is a piece I’m super proud of. I love them so much. And with the recent Garashir revelations, lol, I thought now was a great time to share.

They deserve to feel soft and loved. As do we all :3

[knivesandteeth]

I wonder how much of the romulan espionage arc in ASIT was about Tain attempting to usurp the father role that Tolan had occupied in Garak's life and claiming final dominance that he could never get from Tolan in life. Taking all the skills that Garak learnt from Tolan to bring life and making him use them for assassination. A metaphor for the Cardassian Empire finally erasing or warping the remnants of Hebetian culture to its own ends??

[codenameregnar]

Do you think ‘Everything I learned about myself from staring into Julian Bashir’s big wet hazel eyes for seven years: the Elim Garak story’ was a working title for a stitch in time at some point? Bc I do.

[garak-pussy-indulgence]

i love u andy i love u a stitch in time I love u grack