#DS9 Rewrite

[quarkfancam]

i love the potential tragedy of jadzia's death but whyyy is the entire episode leading up to it written to revolve solely on her as an object of desire for other men. like oh yes it's so sad that these men who pined for her never got to be with her and it's so tragic that she could never have a child with this man. so much that her dying words are about how much she wanted to have a baby with him!!

like... this episode didn't even try to be about jadzia. or what her death could mean for her symbiont. or her friends. it's literally just about her potential as a woman. the only scene we get about her as a character is sisko's speech to her at the end. and that honestly sucks! you could have done so much with this and instead it's all about fucking quark and bashir and worf. and as much as i love them THIS IS NOT ABOUT THEM!!!

[gayatticusfinch]

What if the children of an android, a Nagus, a Starfleet captain, a lizard nazi and an incel Klingon were all friends on a space station called ‘Deep Space Nine’?

[leohtttbriar]

the snow-melted and it's sunny and it's spring and that makes me feel some type of way so here's a kiradax springtime fic featuring the fascinations of a nature-walk and jadzia dax as a sort of ms. frizzle:

On a bright day like this, Kira was happy to be handing out juice boxes.

Sure, she would’ve preferred to have been part of Keiko’s field-trip party, with the older students on a rock-climbing mission to observe cliff-side fungus. But Keiko had been a little too bright-faced and excited as she tucked her climbing shoes into her backpack and gathered all the older kids together for a lesson in knot-tying and rappelling, and, almost immediately, Miles had begged Kira to swap chaperone positions so he could trail after his wife pretending to be worried about the cliffs on which she was leading an educational expedition but really interested in just documenting ‘the moment,’ as he called it.

“When Molly starts to be embarrassed of us,” he said, turning on his camera and smirking as Keiko demonstrated a very long finger-hold on a nearby boulder, the strained muscles in her forearms and shoulders not even appearing to shake. “I want evidence that we’re actually cool.”

“Well, one of you is,” said Kira. “You mostly play games with Julian in your free-time.”

Miles shot her a dirty look but then Keiko was calling her group to start on the hike and he was scampering after her.

So Kira was left with the younger kids on a much less dangerous nature walk that didn’t involve rock-climbing. But she was happy about it. The day was bright, crisp air with warm sun, and she didn’t have to do much more than make sure the little ones stayed on the path and hand out juice boxes. And, really, they were all too mesmerized by Jadzia to misbehave or wonder off.

Kira couldn’t exactly blame them, though. Jadzia had turned up in a shirt covered in colorful scientific illustrations of various Bajoran insects, a giant hair clip that looked like one of the stone-caterpillars that Kira used to make into a stew in her hungriest moments during the war, and a box of tiny, kid-sized binoculars which she handed to each student with all the sincerity and solemnity of a general handing out medals of honor to soldiers. She oo’d an ah’d over every little thing and all the kids were following after her like she was personally responsible for putting a flower in their path to look at.

“Oh, look at that!” gasped Jadzia, pointing up at what looked to be a normal tree limb with such drama that every single kid was gasping with her despite, Kira assumed, not knowing what it is they were gasping at. They gathered around Jadzia, following to where her finger pointed, their little mouths open in awe.

“What?” asked one of the more impatient kids. “I don’t see anything.”

“It’s an aerial succulent,” said Jadzia, bending down. “See, between the stalks, there's a film which will expand and catch on a breeze if the plant needs to move.”

“Like wings?” asked another kid, taking rigorous notes in her notebook (Kira was able to read she had just added plant flying color green pretty in uneven block letters).

“Yes! Exactly like wings!” said Jadzia, as if this comparison had just occurred to her.

“Wow.”

Jadzia had them all draw a picture of the succulent, a star shaped thing with a sparkly veil between each point, tipping this way and that on the tree branch but yet holding steady. Kira attempted a drawing herself, as Jadzia had made sure to provide her with a “field notebook” and binoculars, along with the kids. It was not a good drawing, but Kira liked it. After, they continued shuffling along the path and Kira helped a couple kids not to trip on their feet as they traversed forward, binoculars glued to their eyes.

When Keiko had suggested a field trip, Kira had not expected to be asked to help. But it seemed Sisko was of the opinion that she needed “a break,” or something like that. And so he had volunteered much of his chief staff to help out with the trip to Bajor and even extending the offer of the supervised field trip to some of the schools that would be nearby their educational expedition. As the morning progressed, Kira couldn’t help but be thankful for it. There were worse ways to spend a day. And Jadzia had been very happy when Kira had turned up, which always made Kira feel warm in more ways than one. She might've switched assignments, anyway, if Miles hadn't asked.

Eventually they ended up by a stream and Jadzia instructed everyone to be on the lookout for fossils.

“I know there are fossils,” she whispered triumphantly to Kira, once the kids were darting back and forth on the bank like the intrepid explorers they were. “I scouted the trail—this watershed area is almost nothing but limestone.”

Kira bent down to examine the earth herself, picking up an angular yet smooth-cornered rock and rolling it around in her palm.

“Limestone has more fossils in it?” she asked.

Jadzia plopped down next to her. “Yep,” she said. She reached over and gently guided Kira’s fingers to hold the rock so the angle was pointed up. Then she poured a splash of water on it, smoothed away some dirt, and pointed to an imprint in the stone. “See?” she said. “A shell.”

“Oh,” said Kira, looking closer at the strangely patterned whirl. It looked like the aerial succulent.

“Limestone is a graveyard, for organic life,” said Jadzia, halfway to soft but still cheerful. “It’s got a bit of a sacred history on Trill, but I never bought into all those sad poems. Trills only seem to know how to write sad poems”—she rolled her eyes, and Kira bit the inside of her cheek to contain her grin—“and I just don’t think fossils are things to be sad about anyway. True, this”—she indicated the rock in Kira’s hand by cupping Kira’s knuckles and pushing gently against them, causing Kira to, embarrassingly, blush—“is made of the compressed bodies of ancient marine life, but it’s not as if they’re gone. There they are.”

Kira turned her gaze away from Jadzia’s open face and back to the dirty rock in her palm. She didn’t like to think of it as a graveyard. Death was a strange, conceptual thing for Bajorans—as all things are and have been and will be all at once, so eternal ending is just one edge of infinite reality, which has many edges stretching on and on.

“It’s just evidence that they were,” she found herself saying. “But they also are. Just—are.”

Jadzia tipped her head, her eyebrows pinched together. “This might be one of those temporal perspectives I don’t get,” she said.

Kira smiled. “I mean,” she said. “In some way, this…shell?”

“Crinoid.”

“This crinoid,” said Kira, still biting back a grin. “Is swimming around now. In the sea.”

Jadzia looked at her, eyes sparkling. “Okay,” she said. “Then limestone isn’t a graveyard at all.” She picked the rock up out of Kira’s hand and placed back on the ground but replaced its weight with her own palm. “Everything just adds and adds, in every direction.”

Kira’s smile couldn’t be stopped. She curled her fingers around Jadzia’s wrist. “Yes,” she said, leaning in close, tracing the line of sun lighting up the dark hollows on Jadzia’s face and the soft hairs on her jaw.

Jadzia tilted her chin down, their noses now millimeters apart. The sound of the stream and the sound of her breath on Kira’s mouth washed over her. “Nerys—” she said, voice sweet.

Then, “Da-ax!”

They leaned away from each other quickly.

“Yeah?” called back Jadzia, wiping her twitchy hands on her shorts.

“I fell in!” said one of the kids while all the others laughed.

Kira snorted. Jadzia pressed her palm against Kira’s once more before launching to her feet.

“Duty calls,” she said, dramatically. “Remember me fondly.”

She walked off, already lecturing all the kids about the joys of an impromptu swim and the subsequent chance to dry off in the sun, and soon Kira was being bombarded by tired students in search of snacks.

She slipped the rock in her backpack, when no one was looking. An eternal touch of a swimming creature and the warmth of Jadzia's hand--everything just added on. It was a bright day.

[docholligay]

OH MY GOD OH MY GOD did Garak just do it??? Sisko's face seems to suggest this is a surprise to him, and while of course he should be acting this way in front of his crew if he did okay it, I don't think that's what's happening here. Also, storywise I think this would be a bridge too far for many viewers. Someone dewlling in this kind of moral grey isn't always well received despite people saying they want the moral greys. People don't like it when characters they think of as 'good' do something they find personally reprehensible, unless they are a villain or gay and then they were literally abused as a child or whatever justification.

Anyway, Garak did the murder and doesn't feel bad and I think that's very sexy of him.

[deeplovelydark]

tags by @bijoumikhawal

this all tracks but like. soooo interesting to me

[writergeekrhw]

that post made me curious. how many hours of television do you think you've written in your life?

Let's see. I'll count cowritten and written because, well, the work is the work. I won't count stuff I completely rewrote but didn't take credit on, or stuff that was never shot or never aired, so...

1 ep of TNG at 46 minutes (about) - 46

37 eps of DS9 at 46 - 1702 min (I wrote a lot more than that, but good enough)

Futuresport, TV movie - 91 minutes

Dead Zone, 1 ep - 43 minutes

Twilight Zone, 1 ep - 22 minutes or so

Andromeda, 9 eps - 43 minutes - 367 (which is a very low estimate)

Dresden Files, 3 eps but it's complicated so let's call this - 168 minutes

I'm not going to count Scarlett since it didn't air.

The 4400, 2 eps, 41 minutes each - 82 minutes

Riverworld, 2 parts, 189

The Gates, 2 eps, 43 each, 86 minutes

Star-Crossed, 2 eps, 42 each, 84 minutes

Alphas, 5 eps, 44ish minutes, 220

Elementary, 16 eps, 44 minutes each, 704 (minimum)

Prodigal Son, 1 ep, partially shot, never finished, never aired, 0

The Irrational, 5 eps, 42 minutes, 210...

So, 87-90 episodes (depending how you count Riverworld), adding up to 4014 minutes which is about 67 hours.

Only counting produced and aired credits and not things that were either never produced or never aired. If I counted those, it'd be at least 80 hours. Plus all the rewrites and polishes, which would bring it to around 100 or so.

Not bad.

Though I'll happily do more.

Coincidently, as I write this, AWOLNATON "I Am" is playing in my headphones:

"Maybe all of these things made me who I am And I am Only lookin' up when my head's down Ooh, veins are glistening So thanks a lot for listening (Aaahh) You might also like I guess I wanted, I guess I wanted I just want you to know"

(I didn't count the episode of "Good News, Bad News," I wrote. It was a UCLA student produced sitcom that aired on some University exclusive channels. That would be 22 more minutes. But I feel like that's a stretch and it's not on IMDB so...)

[swimmingwolf59]

A collection of my spones fics! My personal favorites are bold and brash blue!

Series

Between Worlds. Spones raise Joanna on board the Enterprise. 10 fics. Ongoing.

After the Fire. Spones get-together centered around the original series movies. 2 fics. Complete.

Doubt and Trust. Mirrorverse spones - first fic is a tos s1 rewrite in mirrorverse. 2 fics. Ongoing.

Family. Old married spones and their relationships with Sarek and Amanda. 2 fics. Complete.

Canon Compliant

If the Stars Looked Down. Ace!Spock chronicles. Complete.

The Houseboat. Spones go on shore leave together. Written for summer of spones 2021. Complete.

Lines Around Your Thoughts. 5+1 McCoy loves Spock's art <3 Complete.

The Logical Thing to Do. Spones retelling of the DS9 episode "Change of Heart". Complete.

Every Stitch. McCoy knits Spock a sweater. Written for 12dos 2021. Complete.

The Importance of Keeping Your Vulcan Awake During Sehlat Hibernation Season. Old married spones and their pet sehlat. Written for 12dos 2021. Complete.

Held Together. McCoy proposes to Spock when he's half-asleep. Written for summer of spones 2022. Complete.

More Than Adequate. Trans!Spock gets a massage from McCoy after binding too much. Written for summer of spones 2022. Complete.

Just a Pinch of Salt. Spones get into a dumb argument while making breakfast. Complete.

Traditions of Intimacy. 5+1 spones making a meal for each other. Complete.

First Impressions. Spones through canon but ALSO mainly 5+1 McCoy meets Sarek :DDD Complete.

In One Piece. Spock notices that McCoy has a rather peculiar post-transport habit. Written for spones day 2024. Complete.

Compatible. Six times McCoy and Spock have to postpone their dinner date due to an argument. Written for the spones zine "We Go Together" vol. 1 issue 2. Complete.

AUs

Spock 'n' Roll. Rockstar!Spock. Complete.

This Mysterious World. Pokemon AU! Also a series lol. 3 fics. Complete.

Take Me Out. Baseball AU - M rating. Written for summer of spones 2022. Complete.

Peach Melody. Stardew Valley AU. Written for summer of spones 2022. Complete.

Entangled. First contact AU. Written for the spones zine "We Go Together" vol. 1 issue 1. Complete.

Not Safe for Vulcans

Surgeon's Hands. Spock gets a taste of them surgeon's hands. Complete.

Bones. Post the tholian web, if you catch my drift ;) Complete.

Behind the Mask. Matchmaker Chekov convinces Spock to go to a masquerade party. Complete.

QPR

Whatever Gets You Through the Night. Post man trap + QPR mckirk. Complete.

Not Explicitly Shippy

Of Gods and Ghosts. Missing scene at the end of the Final Frontier. Spock and McCoy talk about loss. Written for 12dos 2021. Complete.

Weight of the Universe. Two scenes post some disastrous weddings. Written for summer of spones 2022. Complete.

AOS

Reciprocal Averaging. Sarek uses statistics to figure out Spock's most suitable mate. You'll never guess who it is. Complete.

[gaykarstaagforever]

DS9, Season 2, Episode 12, "The Alternate"

"When your overbearing, condescending, emotionally-abusive dad wants to elbow his way back into your life, you should admit be was right about everything and agree."

This feels like a script that went through like 5 different rewrites by 5 different people who all needed therapy.

What was the obelisk? What was the goo? What happened to the goo? Why did the gas make Odo freak out? Why did that immediately mean "he tries to kill everyone"? I'm not saying you have to explain everything, but you should probably explain SOMETHING.

Don't tell me it all pays off in Season 5 or something. I get that the shape-shifting thing is related to the Dominion. But you can't just do a weird "the Blob attacks DS9" episode, say it was Odo the whole time, and move on.

[lizardsfromspace]

Watching people rewrite history to claim fans loved DS9 when it first aired. The Nitpicker's Guide included a long, whiny essay about how the writer had to pretend DS9 was a unrelated show called "Bajor: Terok Nor" in order to accept it as a TV show. "How can it be STAR TREK when they don't GO ANYWHERE" was a thing. I had people telling me that around the time of the Abrams movies lol. DS9 fans were a cult thing for ages, its status as a near-universally beloved show is actually really recent

[attiredpan]

Listening to this as a mental reference for my rewriting of the DS9 Season 8 Episode 1 thing from the documentary specifically in relation to Nog fucking up some Section 31 goons before blowing the ship up, thereby faking his own death

Anyway go listen to Epic The Musical it’s really good

[star-trek-fandom-confessions]

Confession #83

"If there is one DS9 episode I could delete from my memory, it'd be "Let He Who Is Without Sin..."

Could've been a funnier episode with a good script doctor, but no, gotta flanderize Worf instead. I know he can be an uptight prude sometimes, but this episode was too ooc even for him.

Don't get me wrong, Leeta crushing on Rom was cute and the ending with Worf and Dax was kinda funny. But those were the only good parts of the episode.

Honestly, that one fanfic rewrite on Ao3 of the episode, that's based off the movie, The Hangover, was better. Heck, if Michael Dorn cameos as Worf in Lower Decks and lampshades how embarrassing he was on Risa, that'd be funny too."

[theimaginatrix27]

If you didn't already have a super cool Dominion future fic series going that I wanted you to continue pouring your heart and soul into I'd humbly request an AU fic version of this... Because I mean I have mixed feelings about the cult angle but also it's kinda too close to home at this point if you look at it the right way...

If I were rewriting DS9 in 2024 I'd make the Pah-Wraith cult arc more directly about esoteric fascism, conspirituality, and how the extreme right uses new-age and countercultural spiritualities as a vector of radicalization. I think that would be way better than what we got, if I'm being quite honest

[walkingstackofbooks]

Fanfic Writer Interview

Tagged by: @a-most-beloved-fool - thank you!! <3 <3 <3

What fandoms do you write in? At the moment, pretty much just DS9, though I've written one TOS ficlet this year.

How many words have you published in 2024? 139, 411 😅😅 Absolutely bananas, I cannot even comprehend how I did that!

It's been an absolaute delight to properly fall in love with writing this year though ❤️Before 2024, I'd written very little fanfic ever, and this has been JUST so much fun! (ftr, 3.5k in 2021, ~3k in 2015, and - huh! Almost 30k in 2011/12 🧐 Well, that's a surprise - apparently my "baby's first fanfic" back in 2012 was a whole 20k, which is far longer than I remember!)

What is your greatest achievement this year? I mean, Vision Awry for sure! Seeing it grow and grow and slowly realising just how long it was becoming (although even right up to the end, I was never able to guess accurately!) My crazy summer marathon to get it all written before I resumed posting (which I did mostly manage!) and then the last few weeks in December pouring my heart and soul into actually finishing it before the end of the year. It's completely mad that I did that!

(Although weirdly, now it's finished it's just kind of like 'yeah I suppose I did that, feels ages ago now though' and I feel like I have to really push myself to feel the pride and excitement I think I should be feeling? Idk, it's weird 😅)

What are your top three fics you've written this year? Oh gosh, I have to choose? Okay...

Vision Awry - obviously :P

Sleep Paralysis - that mad, 3-day blitz of inspiration was so worth hiding away in my room for 😅

Um, unpublished, but the Miles&Julian-talk-about-suicide ficlet I posted on Tumblr? It was far better than I expected when I read it back, and was a higlight amongst the rest of the December writing-is-hard feels.

What was your biggest pit of despair moment? There were definitely many times during Vision Awry... the biggest were probably either:

Re-starting Day 5 in August, after writing nothing during June and July, and reailsing I had no idea what was going to happen in Day 5 apart from the deaths at the end;

Writing Epilogue 3 in the last few weeks, only eking out 1-300 words at a time unless I overdosed on meds (😅 it worked tho...), getting increasingly convinced that I was not going to be finishing by the end of the year, which sucked; or

Any time I realised the scene wasn't working because of X thing which meant I would need to totally rewrite it. I don't do drafts, really, so that was always devastating 😭 (but DID work out for the best, at least)

What have you learned? SO, so much. I'll limit myself to three things. (I'm sorry, I'm no good at choices or being concise!)

That if I have an idea, ideally I need to write all of it, straight away, and finish it while it’s fresh. I honestly don’t know how many WIPs I’m actually going to finish, because even while I love many of the ideas, I’m not in love with them the same way I was when I started.

That I love writing Garak and Julian interactions, even though I keep forgetting that I do, because Garak is an absolute pain to write sometimes (affectionate), and I've never been the biggest fan of stories that are solely Garashir.

That I need to be super careful about opening up prompts, because while they’re great for short-term motivation, if I don't complete them in a timely manner they end up hanging over me in a less-than-fun way.

What three fics have you read this year that you love? I do not know where to start with this one, omg, there are too many <3 <3 <3 Trying to think of ones I haven't mentioned before... (and while I'm trying to be better, I'm so bad at bookmarks 😅)

After The Siege by @youngpettyqueen - I didn't know I needed Worf&Julian but this has stayed in my mind since April and I love it to pieces. This dynamic is soooo gooddd 💕💕

The Recitation of Names by @jennelikejennay - Incredible, haunting, pre-TOS Spirk fic about the events mentioned in Obsession.

By Design by @akingnotaprincess - I haven't finished it yet (I am SO hype though, I just haven't had time over Christmas!) but it's SUCH a lovely Data/Julian fic, it's so sweet and sincere and wonderful.

What ideas are percolating for next year? Ughhhh, oh man. Idek. I've got about a dozen WIPs but the way my brian is rn, I'm just hoping that I'll be able to edit and publish some of the things I've written on Tumblr to finally put on AO3.

Hopefully I'll get going a bit more at some point - and whatever it is, you can bet on a traumatised Juian, I'm pretty sure ;)

Who do you want to thank? Again, where do I even start, there are so many people who have made this year wonderful 💕 I've never really felt like I've been *in* a Tumblr community before, and this year has really changed that, so a huge thank you to everyone who's made me feel so welcome! 🥰

@ectogeo-rebubbles, @the-last-dillpickle, @hellostuffedtiger for welcoming me into the Sloanshir side of DS9 with aplomb. Waking up to your reviews and recs of Imprisoned was actually unforgettable, it made my day many, many times over, and definitely gave me confidence to continue putting Julian into fucked-up situations!

@jackleg-penwright for messaging me and becoming my first Tumblr friend ❤️❤️❤️

@flippetyfloppity, @dreamerdrop, @phoenixfeathersinfall - your comments are life and love itself, your support for my writing this year has been incredible and made me feel so warm, thank you just so much! 🫂🫂🫂

I'm kind of High Key Anxious about missing anyone out if I tried to tag everyone else who has been supportive and wonderful and lovely, which sucks because I really want to, but if you've ever left a comment on anything I've done, PLEASE know that you are held in my heart most fondly with great love and affection 💖💖💖

tagging: @jackleg-penwright, @dreamerdrop, @ectogeo-rebubbles and anyone else who would like to!

[thealterscrolls]

the passenger ep of ds9 did things to my brain so now in addition to making a rewrite of distant voices i’m making a rewrite of the passenger for the same reason of putting it into a plural julian perspective. something about being “possessed” while already plural yet being unaware of both… deeply compelling

so while i’m here i want to share some of what i’ve written for the opening because i quite like it. there’s nothing distinctly plural about it yet but i wanted to write this to get the tone down

Fingers clench around his throat, nails piercing his skin. He can’t inhale or exhale to cry out as the smoke suppresses more and more.

“Make—”

Those eyes stare right into his own, reaching to the back of his mind and clawing at the folds of his brain. He resists the urge to spasm and tuck in his head at the itch.

“—me—”

His nerves tingle with electricity, while adrenaline pumps through his system, wasted. Julian can’t calculate any means of retaliation or escape. His mind is a void when he needs it the most. Only the throbbing of his heartbeat in his ears fills the gaps between the alien’s words.

“—live.”

The pressure fades from his neck, and the alien’s hand slips away. Yet those eyes don’t let go of Julian’s gaze, even as the alien breathes his last sigh. But as he does, no life drains from his face. Death is already inscribed in every feature.

This is not the first time he’s watched a patient die, but it doesn’t lessen any of the effect on him. The aura of death is contagious, and he stares quietly at the tricorder, which confirms what he already knows just by looking.

No matter his own fear or this man’s crimes, Julian is still a doctor. “I couldn’t save this one,” he whispers, folding the tricorder away.

…

A shiver runs through Julian’s body. His mind is oddly quiet. No remarks or plans of action run through his thoughts. He’s fully present in the moment and absent all the same. Something is off but he can’t place what exactly.

“Are you with me, Doctor?” A hand touches his shoulder.

“Hmm?” Julian looks up at Kira behind him. “Oh, yes,” he stutters, breaking eye contact with her quickly.

She stands to her feet. “Come on. We have to get this ship back to the station and we don’t have any time to lose.”

“Of course, sir,” he says. He follows after her, absentmindedly stroking the marks on his neck.

[writergeekrhw]

Hey, just found out you were here on Tumblr, been rewatching DS9 lately and I wanted to shoot you over an ask about your scripts, more specifically the evolution of them.

I've had the pleasure of owning digital copies of handful of early draft TNG scripts, but I've never actually seen an early draft DS9 script, have there ever been any scripts you've pitched or written that turned out substantially different than what you had hoped for or intended?

Sorry for the word salad of a question, all the best, brother.

The episode of DS9 that was least like my first draft was probably "Field of Fire," which I wrote as a freelancer and then didn't get to rewrite myself, since, you know, I was a freelancer. But I thought it turned out well.

[ectogeo-rebubbles]

I hopelessly yearn for the horror of Sloan getting his hands on Julian earlier in the series when he’s still wide eyed and naive and full of joy and grooming him until he breaks in exactly the way Sloan would like but trying to slot ANYTHING to do with Section 31 into the earlier seasons without completely rewriting canon is beyond me. Thus far the best I can manage is like, Sloan having crossed paths with Julian and becoming a little obsessed with him and just biding his time until the war and the augment reveal give him an excuse to finally make contact directly, but that’s pretty weak to me. I’ve considered Sloan being stationed covertly on DS9 posing as a Bajoran civilian, with the intent of monitoring all the other security risks on the station, but instead finding himself spending way too much time observing the good doctor who is somehow too smart and too stupid for his own good. Would he justify his close monitoring of Julian because Julian is inexplicably friends with a dangerous Cardassian. Would he decide that Sisko isn’t taking that potential security risk seriously and decide he has to take it upon himself to steer Julian away from someone who could compromise Federation security. Would he just toss aside all pretence and decide he just wants a twink boyfriend.

Anyway, I just like thinking about early seasons Julian having all his hope and joy carved out of him deliberately by someone who thinks they’re doing him a favour. Idk, it just tickles me.

I love all of this as a whumpy concept!! I really like the idea of Sloan scrutinizing his connection to Garak 🥰 Especially bc we were DENIED that in Inquisition.

Okay I’m gonna try to help you imagine how early seasons sloanshir would reasonablywork. First of all though, here is a random unreasonable cracky idea lmaoooo: Sloan (who is just a regular Starfleet Intelligence officer for the moment) meets Julian one time in early seasons, falls for him, and then specifically starts s31 from scratch to try to eventually lure in Julian Bashir (and corrupt him 💕). Corollary: Julian is obvs into spy stuff but never joined Starfleet Intelligence so Sloan deduces that clearly what he is into is bad boys. 😈

Okay now forget all that silliness and let’s return to something slightly more sane lol. (Barely sane actually bc it involves how nonsensical canon itself is lmao.)

At the beginning of s3, the Founders get put onto s31’s radar. By mid-s4, s31 has not only decided to kill every changeling but has also developed the virus and infected Odo with it. s31 must have been keeping a close eye on ds9 between s3e2 and s4e11. Maybe Sloan was working on Julian all during this time, and information he got out of him led to the decision to destroy the Founders. Maybe Sloan befriended him (and/or fucked him) while wearing a totally different face, or met him online and has only talked to him in text form. (Maybe him crushing Julian’s spirit is a long con, a slowburn. Maybe Julian’s depression during the war is in part a result of Sloan manipulating and gaslighting him since s3.)

Anyway, I really think Sloan would have had a stronger chance of tricking Julian into being recruited if he had gotten to him earlier. He would still have to lie about s31’s true purpose, but at least Julian would not yet be so jaded. If Sloan had gotten to Julian on the heels of his canonical “surveillance lessons” with Garak, he might have had a hope of convincing him it would be the kind of light and breezy and unambiguously heroic spycraft Julian would want it to be, unlike the reality.

This isn’t quite the same as what you crave, but Wicked Game by @hellostuffedtiger is a spectacular fic exploring what would have happened if Sloan got to Julian before Julian ever met Garak. It’s not quite early seasons Julian like you want though. It also doesn’t show the corruption process, but rather the outcome of that process, after a few very specific canon divergence points. It just lives in my head rent free and there is a slim possibility it will scratch part of your itch, so I gotta mention it. <3