#Garak is fucked up

[knivesandteeth]

I love Garak and Kira because their characters are like... Yeah, trauma doesn't make you a better person. Sometimes trauma just makes you a bitter, caustic individual filled with regret and self loathing. That doesn't make you any less worthy of care or healing or community. It's not the trauma that saves you, it's community and being given the love we were denied. Pain isn't virtue.

[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

[1960z]

“I forgive you. for whatever it is you did.” is such an insane line.

like imagine going your whole life believing that you’re only worth as much as you’re useful, doing things you know deep down are horrible just to serve the interests of a man who won’t even acknowledge you as his son and then after he exiles you 2 years later you find yourself on your deathbed, all your crimes finally caught up with you, the young doctor who at this point you believe could not have a more different experience of life than you decides against everything you’ve been taught about yourself that you’re worth saving.

and no matter how much you tell him you’re horrible, how wretched you make yourself look in front of him, he doesn’t care. he doesn’t care about your past. you’re forgiven. you’re worth saving, just by virtue of being alive. and he’s not saving you out of pity or even kindness, he’s doing it because he genuinely believes that. and for the first time since you were a small child, perhaps even ever, you feel like you have intrinsic worth.

[chitinleg]

got him off-balance!

[robobrainrot]

Garashir, anyone? 🥂

[charlesemersonwinchesteriii]

underrated garashir scene is when Garak makes THIS gesture right in Julian's face

[dreamerdrop]

“Lovers never fall out of the rift for Curzon!”

Listen, listen. I think Holo Bashir absolutely tried to fuck Curzon too but then he met Doctor Garak and and he and Garak went at it like rabbits and now Curzon can only get an occasional “Garak wants to be cucked tonight” thing instead.

And on that note. Imagine getting rejected by a fucking hologram.

[idonotbitemythumbatyou]

I promise I’ll stop talking about The Wire someday but do people realise that Garak wanted Tain to kill Julian? Like do you realise that?

He gave Julian the-terminally-curious Subatoi Bashir the name and address of the most dangerous man in the quadrant? On accident??? My guy was practically begging Tain to take care of his latest Sentiment Problem for him because he couldn’t do it himself. Do you see??

[bagheerita]

So I read A Stitch in Time and one result of that which I was certainly not expecting was that I feel so much sympathy for Enabran Tain. Garak's life is a tragedy, but Tain's is a fucking black comedy.

I mean, he's a terrible person and an absolute shitbag, but can you imagine? You have this kid. You go to all the trouble of arranging for him to be raised in a family situation where he won't be rejected from society for being your bastard. You get him into the nicest indoctrination school where he can hobnob with plenty of uppercrust kids. You get him a job in your Order and all the proper training. And he's actually, like, really good at it. But he has this fatal flaw of being completely incapable of not making stupid, short-sighted, emotional decisions.

A scene I imagine has to have happened just prior to Garak and Tain's confrontation at the end of part II:

Like goddamn. When Tain asked "what's your plan for getting rid of her husband?" and Garak's just like "plan what plan." Dude. I'M disappointed, I can only imagine the guy who's job it is to know and plan for everything isn't at least as disappointed.

I know he didn't actually, but do you think there was ever a time when Tain wanted to be like, You know what. Just go back to Tolan and become a gardener. Join that illegal hippie cult. It's fine.

[andromedaexile]

I did a PowerPoint night with my friends and they were on board with my Star Trek smash or pass until I brought up a photo of Morn

[ectogeo-rebubbles]

Free but very cursed DS9 fic idea: Body Parts AU where Quark decides (perhaps after hearing a little bit about Curzon) that the best way to die would be during an orgasm. But obviously if Quark knows that's going to happen, that's a huge boner-killer. So he and Garak have to start fucking on the regular, just to help Quark relax and get used to it, and also to make sure Garak can learn how to consistently give him a GOOD orgasm so that he can be sure to time his assassination just right <3

[vaguely-concerned]

okay. listen. a Concept. garashir roughhousing (gone (psycho)sexual) and at one point bashir wakes up from the high of finally getting to express all his repressed aggression in a safe space with someone who not only accepts that in him but can match him and is actively Into It, especially when he stops holding back some of his lil gmo twink strength, to be horrified like 'oh my GOD garak your nose is bleeding hang on I'll get a napkin or something I'm so sorry holy shit' and garak's lying there woozy with lust gazing up at him with wide betrayed eyes like 'no wait don't go you haven't even stabbed me yet :'('

(obviously this is mostly a shitpost, but I'm just saying I think they could provide a certain kind of space for each other that way. julian gets to have a place to live out all the rougher, less socially acceptable sides he usually has to downplay and push away to seem as non-threatening as (augmented) humanly possible with someone who loves him and who appreciates getting the entire spectrum of julian bashir, from the most obnoxiously annoying and needy to the unsettlingly coldly ruthless and back. and garak gets to have the shit beaten out of him in as medically safe and infinitely loving way as possible and/or finds he can still use his bloodied hands and take care of someone with them. this to me is the definition of what one might call a win/win situation. like don't get me wrong they would be having a lot of embarrassingly tender yearning gently-stroking-your-hair-and-holding-your-hand sex too. but. also this. which I think is also very tender, just in a different way. do you feel me.)

[youngpettyqueen]

I do love that Julian's first reaction to seeing Kira's face in his holo program is to assume that Kira is fucking with him. like yes, that would be the natural conclusion to literally seeing her, but have we considered it would be very funny if these two were regularly fucking with each other and constantly engaged in prank wars

[chitinleg]

"Mister Bashir, what a pleasure it is to finally meet you."

Julian, why in god's name would you invite him to play the villain?

[pinkgrapefloyd]

elim garak is who terry silver thinks he is. no i will not elaborate

[charlesemersonwinchesteriii]

Julian tells Miles he should give his wife a present and immediately suggests the exact same gift that he and Garak famously give each other, which could mean nothing