#and of course for Garak it was the best thing to happen to him in ages

[various-things]

the fact that one of the few times we see Julian close to crying in DS9 is when he's pointing a gun at Garak, prepared to shoot him, and that the tears are in his eyes before Garak starts being especially horrible to him, is something I certainly think of at times and shall again

[vaguely-concerned]

Ever since watching The Wire for the first time, my brain has doggedly kept working away at the Especially the lies of it all, and specifically at how much the structure beneath the different stories Garak tells contributes to the overall meaning of what he’s trying to say. While the contradicting narratives of course expertly obscure the factual circumstances of his getting exiled, using them also allows him to tell aspects and facets of the emotional truth I don’t think he ever could have, if he’d simply told the actual story of what happened. (It’s very Varric-core of him honestly.)

The first story — the ‘oh, you think you know me?’ story — says I have done things that would sicken you if you knew any detail of it. It’s clearly meant to scare Bashir away so he’ll leave him to die shamefully in peace already lol. But it’s also one of his (probably much-needed lbr) little lessons to Julian that are so frequent in the beginning, given while Garak still has some hold on himself — “Don’t be so quick to forgive me if you don’t even know what I’ve done; what would you do if this really were the sum total of what I am?” (And Julian seems to surprise him by going ‘Well, exactly the same thing, because no matter who you are I am a doctor. But I sort of take your point.’)

The second story — the letting the orphans go story — says I have failed to smother my soul in its cradle when it was required of me, and I regret that more than anything I’ve done. To my ears this is the one most shot through with active self-loathing too, which is interesting. He’s officially lost the control he’s been clinging to and it’s about to get ugly. His TL;DR is ‘Sentiment is the greatest weakness of all’, even all the way back here. (Which is the one lesson Julian steadfastly refuses to learn, which I think in turn does some serious rearrangement of Garak’s soul over the course of the show haha. Get uno reversed into the process of loving and being loved without shame asshole.)  This is also where he builds up to admitting to having any sort of need for companionship or closeness at all and — so much worse — that Julian’s role in his life actually has fulfilled some of that need, and he’s DRIPPING with defensive venom over it b/c well I get it Garak vulnerability is scary it can take a person like that. 

(I also feel there’s something honest and forbidden in ‘Suddenly the whole exercise seemed utterly meaningless’. I suspect ‘actually… why the fuck are we even doing this???’ is not a welcome sentiment in an Obsidian Order water cooler environment, no matter what you’re saying it about lmao. The very first seeds of him deconstructing the things he’s been taught about Cardassia and his work might be hinted at here, though they of course take a looong time to come to any real fruition.)   

The third story — the ‘Elim was my best friend’ story — says hey, remember that thing you said once, about how sometimes, you have to be loyal to yourself before you can be loyal to anything else? Well. guess what. I couldn’t even be that lmao. It also furthers that thread of being divided from yourself, split, that having ‘Elim’ as a separate person around in all versions of the story brings in. He’s in control of himself again, but he essentially hands his life and soul over to Julian to decide what should be done with them. 

I’ve done horrible things and it finally caught up with me, I’m getting what I deserve → I let sentiment master me and the fact that I’m too weak to do what’s needed of me shames me more than the evil I’ve done → I fucked up. I betrayed myself and everything I held to, all for nothing, and I have no one to blame for it but myself. But it’s very nice that you’re here anyway, Doctor. (Wow. I didn’t realize quite how isolated and lonely that last one was before right now. The way Tain has shaped him really has just… locked him completely into himself, huh.) We can also see a movement through from a completely professional context in the first story, to an intensely interpersonal and internal context in the last one — even his fake stories spiral in towards intimacy, which I think is what he longs for here even if he can’t quite like. Touch that without the stories as a buffer yet, it’s clearly like touching a hot stove for him to interact with it too directly. 

And you know what I find incredibly interesting the whole way through? Even on his deathbed, where he’s dying from the thing Tain had put in his head, he’s protecting Tain. He puts all the blame for where he is on himself (‘My future was limitless, until I threw it away’), even if he has to employ a strange twisty logic where he’s split himself into two to do it. Don’t get me wrong, Garak has done horrific things all on his own haha, but it’s notable that he almost isolates Tain from that. ‘Tain was the Obsidian Order. Not even the Central Command dared challenge him. And I was his right hand.’ Tain in Garak’s stories is this infallible implacable weirdly distant figure, even now. Indeed, as will make a lot of sense with the revelations further down the line, more than anything it seems the gaze of an abused child desperate for recognition looking up at an idealized (if not in any way nurturing) parent.‘He was retired at that point; he couldn't protect me’, Garak says, as if what he’d need protection from in the first place isn’t Tain himself lmao, as if Tain had no active part in any of this. He never lets blame touch Tain at all. At this stage he would rather consider himself a broken flawed tool than accept that the hands that have wrought and wielded him have ever had any fault in them. AND in the middle of it all, with plausible deniability, on death’s door and knocking meekly to be let in before he must finish the mortifying ordeal of being known and test the even more daunting possibility of being loved, Garak at the same time manages to drop the breadcrumb trail of clues to make it possible for Julian to find Tain if he so chooses and gets in the ‘sons of Tain’ thing too for future dramatic irony purposes. Truly he is the Michelangelo of lying. Every falsehood a multifaceted masterpiece. Elim ‘achieving a state of intertextuality in real life is possible if you work hard and believe in yourself’ Garak. I love him so much. 

I think all of this is why “I forgive you. For whatever it is you did,” works so well, because it too works on a structural level. It’s such a deceptively multilayered response — it has the syntax of a joke, in a way, and it is kind of funny even under the circumstances, but delivered with such earnest warmth and fondness. It’s both recognition and acceptance (forgiveness!). It’s saying ‘I finally understand enough of what you’re trying to tell me beneath and through all that, in whatever way you’re capable of, I see you’ and ‘my answer hasn’t changed (bitch)’. The forgiveness Julian offers here is complete — on principle, and out of personal feeling and empathy (only one of which Garak deigns to respond to during the second story, where he calls it ‘smug Federation sympathy’, placing it more completely on the principle side than it probably is. ‘Dude you’re my friend please don’t just lie down and die in a completely avoidable way on me, who else is going to not only tolerate but actually gleefully enjoy me being annoying as fuck over lunch’ seems to be the subtext that’s a lot harder to acknowledge and invite in for both of them. And yet Tain seems perfectly clear on the fact that Julian is Garak’s friend, which, y’know. Must be fun living with the knowledge that Tain has eyes everywhere looming over you every day haha guess you’d just have to tune that out.) 

Most of all — ’Don’t give up on me now, Doctor’... and he didn’t! He didn’t. Augh. Ow.

[charlesemersonwinchesteriii]

Things that I know about A Stitch In Time prior to listening to it:

Garak goes to spy school, which is for spies (for some reason the idea of this is amusing to me. like I get it duh of course the Order must have some sort of training system but also. fanfic ass trope. Spy School! For Spies! it's even a boarding school and everything. DARKEST ACADEMIA)

Garak performs a classic bisexual rite of passage by falling in love with both members of an older(?) married couple (or well textually probably only the wife. I feel like I'd have heard about it if he were Betacanonically Queer (TM) in this book. but here's hoping I'll be astonished while listening!)

I can't remember if I read anything specific about it or not but just based on vibes alone I do not have high hopes for this couple's like. life expectancy.

Based on vibes alone I do not have high hopes for ANY character's life expectancy in this book tbh. If it involves Cardassians in general and Garak in specific I usually just assume everyone involved is doomed. This is going to be a FUN 12 hours and 28 minutes!

There was a post somewhere that mentioned that some supernatural magical stuff happens in this book and I'm SO FUCKING STOKED. HERE'S HOW GARAK ORB EXPERIENCE CAN STILL WIN!!!!

The entire concept of this book is so funny to me. Garak goes 7 years being ohhh so mysterious to Julian about himself or his past and then just spills his whole life story to him in a letter as soon as they're separated. Babygirl is going through Bashir Withdrawal Syndrome.

Most importantly KELAS MY BEST FRIEND KELAS FROM ONE (1) LINE OF CANON!!!!! I have no actual evidence that he ever shows up in this book but like he has to right. right. he's absolutely everywhere on ao3 y'all had to have gotten him from somewhere. I assume.

[thegeminisage]

STAR TREK UPDATE TIME! last night we watched ds9's "in the cards" and "call to arms."

in the cards:

this one was SO cute. i loved that the b-plot was the a-plot and vice versa. like yes you have open warfare getting ready to happen in the background but what really matters here is baseball

there's not a single unfunny joke in this whole episode. worf listening to klingon opera at 82 decibels. the mission impossible esque theft of bashir's teddy bear. the horrific puns in kira's speech. jake and nog accusing kai winn of stealing a baseball card. jake bullshitting to weyoun that he was a time traveller investigating willie mays. i could go on and on

but, of course, special shoutout to this guy who was doing the immortality thing. the uh. "my cells get bored and experience cellular ennui so i have to deliver uplifting and entertaining messages to my nuclei with this here machine" guy. the "getting hounded by soulless minions of orthodoxy" guy. shoutout to him for easily being the funniest one-off character trek has ever had. every word he said was full of like 10 other words. i felt like could listen to him ramble forever and he would just keep getting more and more outrageous. he is my favorite kind of star trek background freak i think

finally, the end did get me to well up a little. jake and sisko my BEST friends are so heartwarming and also his and nogs good deeds giving everyone that last moment of peace...wah

call to arms:

MY KING ROM! i'm so thrilled he's finally getting hitched. actually, between that and his general demeanor (calm and brave in the face of danger) i was SURE they were gonna kill him off in this episode. so sure that i paused and checked for "status: active" on memory alpha. very scary moment

also it's so funny how he came up with this saving grace hail mary solution while in the middle of a wedding panic attack. he is so smart and i love him

quark overbuying the yamok sauce and then kira calling him a worm right in front of dax, who is a worm, and then quark missing the yamok sauce at the end. this show is truly so funny sometimes. the way he like. wah. says he thinks rom's wedding is stupid and rom is dumb for staying behind but really he's elated rom got married and he's worried about rom's safety. alright. idk i think letting us see that he does HAVE a soul was so important because now when he says evil shit it's so much easier to infer that he doesn't mean it exactly the way he says it, or it's not all he really thinks, etc etc. he's grown so much for me this season <3

KIRA AND ODO'S LITTLE CONVERSATION.................man everyone seems to Hate this ship so i've been so worried it will be bad but Actually it was very good. neither of them are very good with the touchy-feely stuff unless someone's dying, about to die, or has just died so this was actually very in-character - even odo was relieved to sort of put it on hold for the moment. it was charming. also, it's romantic that he knows exactly what would make her the most comfortable in this moment <3

sisko and weyoun are great but theyre never gonna be what sisko and dukat were. like, weyoun has taken over that little frenemy who is also a freak niche because they wanted to remind us that dukat is ACTUALLY a bad-bad person and not just our friend shaped war criminal, and they're fine, i like weyoun, but he just isn't dukat

i do NOT like this thing theyre doing with garak and ziyal. please please please for the love of god no. he is like 20 years older than her. if you are going to make him date someone who is not bashir can that someone PLEASE be his age

DAX AGREEING TO MARRY WORF! now that's romance. damn it's really going around

idk, it's really nice because everybody was at their best and bravest. dax giving worf a reason to come back and kira and odo and quark all babysitting the station together and sisko giving dukat hell before he leaves, martok's perfectly timed rescue, jake and rom staying behind. ds9's action episodes normally feel a little weaker to me but this one had so much heart, it was absolutely fantastic

TONIGHT: voy's "scorpion part ii" AAAAAAAAAAA and "the gift." rip kes but HELLO SEVEN OF NINE!

[dragontamerno3]

DS9 S2 E23 - Crossover

Horrifying episode but also a good one? If that makes sense?

I thoroughly enjoy the idea that no matter what the timeline Spock literally changes the course of history. I fucking love Spock so damn much.

Its an interesting twist that Terrans are the "lower class" in this episode, especially after all that we know that happened to Bajor in the main timeline. It makes absolute sense, though, that if the Terrans were as cruel as they were SOMEONE would step up to knock them down.

Kira's whole deal made me think of Vamp Willow and how she was even hitting on herself when the two crossed paths. I liked this version of the character in the way you can appreciate the bad guy sometimes. She was fun, interesting and horrifying. She was not a good person in the slightest but she was also... creepily empathetic? Like if Hannibal invited you over to dinner, he'd have a pleasant talk and THEN murder you.

Odo in this only felt different in the sense that he was filled with hate but tbh, I feel like our Odo would be a little like this if we just let him have his way. Our actual Odo has said several times already, in various ways, that he missed how the Cardassians ran things. I'm not sure how much mining and what not happened on the station then but the rest felt close. What I was shocked by was how he died. Dude literally exploded into piles of goop.

The second Sisko showed up I knew he'd end up being the hero. When Mirror Kira called him to meet with her his smile wavered for a fraction of a second, it was clearly there but gone so fast that it could easily be missed. And then when the Garak murder threat came up, how our Kira spoke to him, he was seriously thinking about what she was asking for. I love that he took Miles with him at the end.

Speaking of Miles. Meek little Miles. I adored him in this episode. Poor thing, I just wanted to hug him. How he was excited that other him had a best friend and then got even more excited over the idea that he could be a Chief of ANYTHING? And then later when he was fixing things and Bashir was trying to hide how he whispered "I don't see you. You're not here...."? Poor broken, Miles. The way he spoke up to Mirror Kira may have been my favorite part. That and Quark.

I did not imagine Quark to be the leader of the underground but it makes sense from a smugglers POV. It was a great way to bring him in and change the tone of things. I don't have much to say about him because he was in very little of the episode but damn was that a nice touch to bring him in like that.

8/10

[butterflyslinky]

Okay so @station18908 said "Deep Space 911" and I was intrigued but don't have time, so I'm going to toss my thoughts out there and see if someone else will bite.

-The crew of the USS Los Angeles is docked at Deep Space 9 for a while because Dominion War.

-Their captain is, of course, Bobby Nash, traumatized widower. He puts up with Kirk-level shenanigans, so Star Fleet Command figures he can handle being on the station. He bonds with Benjamin Sisko over cooking.

-His wife is Athena Grant, who is also his Chief of Security. She is Very Tired. She and Odo become good friends without ever speaking to each other except about business. She is extremely suspicious of Garak the tailor but can't do anything about him.

-Ensign Buckley is their navigator. He is still Buck. He becomes very fast friends-with-benefits with Julian Bashir, bonding over shitty parents and bisexual disasterhood. He hits on Dax regularly, and it occasionally works, but they end up info-dumping to each other more than actually doing anything. He tries it on with Kira exactly once and gets his ass kicked.

-First Officer Howard Han doesn't know what to do on the station, but ends up bonding with Chief O'Brien over how the universe hates them. He's also the best person to take into the Gamma Quadrant because he handles a crisis very well.

-Chief Medical Officer Henrietta Wilson enjoys her time on the station, even though she finds Bashir absolutely insufferable. Her beautiful wife Karen is the Chief Engineer. She and O'Brien are work friends, but otherwise avoid talking to each other. They both end up hanging out with Kira more often than not.

-Lieutenant Eddie Diaz is the Chief Pilot. He finds Sisko to be a good mentor as both a Starfleet officer and a dad. He also enjoys hanging out with Worf and beating the shit out of each other. (Dax invites him to join her and Worf outside the holosuites sometimes--he maybe takes her up on it)

-Josh and Maddie are both Communications Officers. Josh spends his time on DS9 sleeping around with literally anyone. Maddie spends her time in the holosuites with Dax and a reluctant Kira, learning more self-defense and fighting moves.

-All the kids join Jake and Nog's little pack. Jake and May go on two dates and decide they're better off as friends. Christopher feels right at home with other boys raised by single fathers. Jee-Yun, Mara and Molly quickly learn they are the cutest things on the station and can wander through the station and everyone will give them treats.

-Ravi has no idea what's happening. He parks himself at Quark's and goes with the flow. He almost gets left behind when the Los Angeles deploys again.

That's all I've got so far. As said it's open to anyone to add on/take over!

[tokidokifish]

garashir for ship asks!!!

HELL YEAH HERE WE GO TIME FOR SOME ~CONFESSIONS~

What made you ship it?

i don't know. listen - you may think i'm being oblique. but the fact is i heard about garashir LONG before i ever got into ds9, we're talking YEARS back; i can't even remember who i knew that shipped it, because it was just that long ago. i even tried reading a fanfic, though i can't remember what it was or even where it was, because this might have predated ao3. like even before i got into the show, something about that pairing Appealed To Me. and then, of course, i DID watch the show and Whoo Boy. i mean have you SEEN them interact. i think, honestly, what sealed the deal for me - what got be truly invested - was - well, for one thing, i tend to automatically rebel against relationships that the canon WANTS to happen; even if it's a relationship i end up liking it takes me a while to come around to it bc i'm so burned out on the vibe of "he was a guy, she was a girl, can i make it any more obvious?" that so many het romances get slapped with. i'm always looking for the characters that have the most chemistry (in my opinion) and goddamn call those bitches a science department because they have maybe the most chemistry of any two characters in that show. they challenge each other in the best way! and they just LIKE each other. what a novelty! i've got my fondness for the whole slap-slap-kiss trope, but god do shows and movies rely on it way too much these days, gag. so to have these two characters which, yeah, snip at each other sometimes, but very genuinely enjoy each other's company?? sublime. love it.

What are your favorite things about the ship?

well, i think i got into it a bit with the "they just like each other", but i think i especially like that garak liked julian right from the start. like oh, yeah, garak obviously had ulterior motives for approaching julian at first, but after that he just - continued to seek out his company! i've stated it a lot in my fics but just the fact that garak alone never seemed to find julian irritating when like everyone else on the station did, even if they came around to it - like i'm not one of those people that's like "the character you see yourself most in + the character you're most attracted to is your favorite pairing" bc i think it's bullshit, but as someone who is Very Annoying and is used to driving people away, oh god the idea of being just simply ACCEPTED by someone is like. a fuckin. drug. it's honestly probably the biggest reason i have trouble shipping julian with anyone else, even though i do enjoy his relationship with miles and i especially like writing him and kira becoming close in the later seasons. and, again, the fact that garak and julian do challenge each other, and they reflect one another in such interesting ways - and, of course, they are sooooooo normal about one another even in the context of a show that WASN'T writing them as romantically involved. 's good. 's a good ship.

Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

certainly it's not unpopular amongst the garashir girlies - but obviously i consider the idea that their relationship is at all "unhealthy" complete bullshit. like i made a whole post about it. genuinely i cannot even understand the mindset - other than, of course, because garak is a "bad man" (also something i disagree with, but whatever) he cannot have healthy relationships. he's "evil", so all of his relationships must be toxic. just lol. lmao, even. i think my most unpopular opinion is that i find it VERY hard to picture them hooking up early in the series and then having a relationship on the side. like it's not a deal-breaker in terms of fics, but just not my cup of tea, yanno? i think there's attraction and affection from the get, but i think PEAK garashir happens after ips/bil, and especially after dbip, when i feel like they'd've truly come to understand one another (as much as they need to, obviously; i think a big part of the garashir relationship is the idea that garak will always have secrets and julian is fine with that (is that why people think it's toxic?)). oh also i think people who shrink the age difference are cowards. they're both grown-ass adults! let them have their 20+ age gap! it's a charm point!

[lietwice]

i want..... more post-canon verses. just all the variations of what could've happened. particular flavours that I've thought of are:

garak has kept in touch with julian by writing letters, except when julian comes to visit, it turns out garak has been lying ( surprise surprise ) about the state of things so that Julian wouldn't worry too much about him.

garak has kept in touch with julian by writing letters, including ASIT, which is basically his life story, and is being weirdly open with him via letter. when julian comes to visit, though, he goes back to his lying self and won't open up in person ( or not without some pushing, at least )

for whatever reason we decide, garak can't stay where he is. could be due to the state of cardassia, because of enemies, because of his episodes of psychosis, or any other reason. and from there, there are also several other possible variations - he could communicate this to julian, or he could imply it to julian ( think garak concentrating real hard at 3am, writing out the question 'how to ask for help without asking for help' so he can brainstorm ideas ), or he could try to communicate it but the information fails to get there. he could ask julian to come to him, thinking maybe he just needs a little bit of help and then he'll be fine ( he's wrong and maybe a little bit delusional and needs to be told gently ). so many possibilities.

garak can't keep in touch with julian for some cardassia-wide reason ( communications blackout type thing ), so he has to get creative about getting his attention. maybe there are some starfleet volunteers, and he does something he's sure will be big enough that julian hears about it via starfleet. or he could pass on a message via them, except it's cryptic and weird because of course it is, because that's the only way he can let julian know he wants to contact him.

then there's all the possibilities with kids. variations of my essan verse. garak could be in contact with julian already when he adopts him, and then the next time he writes to him he's like 'btw I've accidentally adopted a child'. or OR or a combo of one of the other things I said. so he's lying about the conditions on cardassia or something, until he adopts a child, and at that point he's like 'hey so you know when i said it was fine to live here? now it affects this child so it's actually not fine'.

ok so also imagine the communication issue is a thing, right, so they haven't been in touch. julian comes to cardassia to help via starfleet, but still doesn't know how to find or contact garak. and he's been there a while and maybe given up, when he finds garak via garak bringing a child in for medical treatment.

and that's just what i can think of rn. pls come at me with ideas. or if you like any of the above pls tell me!!! let's write stuff!! can also apply to non-julian characters IF we plot a pre- or mid-canon connection. all of these only work for people garak already has a strong connection with hence why it's mostly suited best to julian.

[tiggymalvern]

Eight shows to get to know me, tagged by @dreamerinsilico. Only the first couple are in any sort of rational order. 1. Blake's 7. The original disaster crew, in which Blake the idealist wants to take down the fascist dictatorship. Unfortunately he's stuck on a spaceship with a bunch of accidental randos, only some of whom are idealists. The rest of them just want enough money to go and live somewhere the government won't bug them. I was a few weeks short of seven when I started watching it (yes, that was too young) and eleven when it ended. It was the first TV I saw where bad things happened to the protagonists, where they died and it made one hell of an impression. (Also, Servalan gave me the first inklings I was bi.) Since the BBC didn't broadcast a repeat, I didn't see it again until I was nineteen and it got a release on video tape. And it was SO MUCH BETTER even than I'd remembered. All the nuances, all the moral quandries had completely passed me by as a kid. What might you have to do to take down a fascist dictatorship? Where do you draw the line on justifying collateral damage? Then I discovered that there was a fandom for this show, that people wrote fanfics and published them in zines, and the university intranet (there was no internet) had message boards where people TALKED about it. It's not an overstatement to say that it changed the course of my entire life. This show is also probably responsible for my lifelong love of morally grey protagonists who snark at each other. So, that one got long, it always does. Shorter from now on, I promise! (Okay, maybe not that much shorter. How everyone else managed to do this meme without going off about their obsessions, I have no idea.) 2. Due South. My first slash fandom, illustrating my other recurrent fannish addiction, besides the snarky disaster crew - the two people who are odd, who are loners (or who socialise, but have acquaintances, not friends) and then they meet each other and they just fit 💗💗💗 And let's be honest, those two people were usually two men, because of the misogynistic writing for TV shows. 3. Burn Notice. My current snarky disaster crew obsession :-))) 4. Hannibal. Trope number two, the loners who fit, put together in one of the best, most complex TV shows ever written. It doesn't just happen to push my buttons, it's also objectively, amazingly good. The first time you watch it, you love Will Graham and want to squish him and protect him, and then slowly you find out more and more. And then you go back for the first rewatch and you realise that it was there, all the time, so many hints, but it was so carefully done that you just didn't see it. (I have stated before and will again that season two of Hannibal is probably the best single season of any TV show I have ever seen.) 5. Black Sails. Another snarky disaster crew, in which practically everyone is queer (SO many bisexuals, yay!). The first season is not what it became, because the writers started carefully with an action show about pirates chasing gold. And with that success, from season two, they were free to write the show they wanted. A show about idealism and love and rage at the world, in which every character is so well written that each time alliances shift and enemies become friends or friends betray each other, it's justified and it makes sense in terms of their motivations and who they are. 6. Deep Space Nine. The Trek series that changed the franchise. Arc plot! Morally grey characters, hello Garak! A Federation captain who says to hell with the rules, I'm doing what seems right at the time :-) 7. Trigun. I wondered whether to put this one in because I prefer the manga to the anime (the manga's longer, with more complexity, especially in Vash). But it's weird loners who instantly click perfection, with the added twist that one of them was put there to betray the other from the start, and then he can't and the angst is off the scale. 8. Farscape. A snarky disaster crew with the amazing bonus of Aeryn Sun, one of those rare at the time female characters who was as amazing and well written as any of the males. (I haven't watched Farscape in many years. I probably should, I wonder how it's held up?)

As usual, tag yourself if you wish to play :-)

[various-things]

A year later, above the Founder’s homeworld.

(this is part of a fic I am writing but I think it works as a ficlet and the brainrot is real so here we are)

For some time, the only sounds are the hum of the ship and the beeping of the tricorder.

He’s quiet in a way Garak has never seen before. It’s not the perfunctory silence of carrying out his work while a patient is otherwise engaged. With that thought, the memory of being questioned by the Constable and the then-Commander surfaces, of the Doctor working in the background.

Now, there’s tension in the set of his jaw. He’s not meeting Garak’s eyes—hasn’t spoken since he came into the room and said he needed to examine him.

There hadn’t been time for Garak to plan for contingencies of surviving beyond his attempt at genocide. He’d embraced the logic of sparing no thought to what might await if he didn’t succeed.

He’s not sure what will become of their friendship.

“Have you been informed of what led to this, Doctor?”

The Doctor glances up at him. “Briefly.” His voice is almost a whisper.

It’s overly bold: pushing when that single word made several things very clear. Garak is aware as he does it. “And what, if you’d be willing to share, was recounted?”

“No.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You can tell me what happened, if you’re willing to.” He’s angry. Of course he is.

Garak doesn’t want to provide an explanation. But also, he’d tried his best to kill him: his closest remaining friend. And he wished with everything that he’d succeeded. It isn’t so much, in the face of that, to offer the Doctor some version of the truth—to acknowledge the harm.

Their privacy here is almost certainly perfunctory. Julian sits down beside him on the bench, revealing more of the ship’s carpet as he moves out of view. Garak stares at the lines of grey and crimson against taupe. “How is the Constable?”

“He’s alive.” The Doctor pauses. “He’s not dying anymore.”

“The Founder made it very clear that The Dominion intends to destroy my people. I saw an opportunity to prevent that.” Garak breathes in, picking up human sweat and the strange chemicals of an alien atmosphere, running the things he can say next over in his mind.

“I was terrified.” I am terrified. “And I acted rashly.” And I failed.

He decides to look back to his left.

The Doctor is frowning, distrust evident. Understandable. “You would have started a war,” he says.

Garak pushes down the ‘My dear Doctor,’—habit almost surpassing him. “We’re already at war.”

The Doctor shakes his head. He sets the tricorder down beside him and leans forward, putting his elbows on his knees. “I don’t know what to…” he trails off. His shoulders move in a shrug.

Would it have been the initial bombardment? Almost certainly, with the firepower the ship held and its position directly above where they beamed down. Vaporized by the blast.

“I hope you understand, Doctor, that I would give up anything, for Cardassia, for the lives of the quadrant it belongs to.”

“I do—and I can’t even tell you that your math was flawed because of course you were making the best decision you could, by your estimation. So… ”

The Doctor stands after a moment, picking up the tools he’d brought with him. “You’ll be fine. Deep tissue contusions, but no broken bones. Your shoulder is sprained. I’ll be able to treat it later.”

He steps out of the cell and activates the force field back into place.

Garak watches him go.

[dragonmuse]

Oh yes, pretty please to the fic list thing!! I would love that!!

All right then! Here we go on a journey. I have listed these in the order they occurred to me and then by going through my bookmarks, then sorted by fandom. Some of these I’ve read upwards of a dozen times, some pre-date AO3, but all have been moved over.  I’ve been in fandom a long time, so it’s a long list! 

Letters from the Northern Continent by thehoyden. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.  Garak/Bashir. A poignant look at Julian going to Cardassia to help in war devastated areas. Probably my favorite fic of all time, if I was forced to choose just one.

Jeu-Parti by Macedon. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Jake/OMC.  Jake meets an unusual Vulcan who changes the trajectory of his life. Over the course of the series, Jake grows up, becomes a father himself and learns how to love a person, who is both entirely different to him and yet so much the same.

Children Will Look To You (title shortened) by Staight_Outta_Hobbiton. Star Trek: Alternate Original Series.  Bones-centric.  Bones accidentally adopts the children orphaned from the destruction of Vulcan and takes them home to his huge family compound. All the found family feels. The series is WIP, likely permanently, but feels very satisfying as is. 

Most Likely To by Kaneko. Breakfast Club. John Bender/Brian Johnson. Sometimes life doesn’t go like you planned, but you still wind up where you’re supposed to be.

Higher Education by Resonant. Breakfast Club. John Bender/Brian Johnson. Bender makes a life for himself in opposition to his father’s and it turns out pretty well. Bender’s struggle with his sexuality is realistic, heart-breaking and then healed. 

Watchmen Zombie!Au by etherati. Watchmen. Dan Dreiberg/Rorschach. What if becoming a zombie was the best thing to ever happen to Rorshach? Dan navigates the changes in his friend and the world. There is a touch to this story that has never let me go. I think it’s the slow burn of it and the real consideration for how even the most difficult, hardened people can let themselves grow softer. 

Ladders by emungere. Hannibal. Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter. I read a lot of Hannibal fic, but this one stuck to my ribs. A long journey with Will and Hannibal as they sort out their life post-cliff dive, in a house in France.

Responsible Science by lettered.  Avengers. Bruce Banner-centric. This series is mind-meltingly good if you enjoy philosophical debates, troubled protagonists and serious takes on tropes. There’s de-aging, time loops, and more, but they are all taken deadly seriously. Bruce is a fascinating lens to journey with, his sharp edges never dulled down for narrative convenience. 

PWP: Pie Without Plot by orange_crushed and MajorEnglishEsquire. Supernatural. Dean/Castiel, Sam/OFC.  Dean gets to hang out in a bakery and run it and accidentally falls in love with doing it. Sam gets a kickass girlfriend. It’s just good, clean , floury fun.

And This Your Living Kiss by opal_bullets. Supernatural. Dean/Castiel. AU where Castiel is a poetry professor, who’s class Dean reluctantly audits as an adult, only to discover that the lone poetry book he published as a young man is Castiel’s personal favorite. This story is poetry in its own right, aching and lovely. 

At Least There’s the Football by sheffiesharpe.  Sherlock. Mycroft Holmes/Lestrade.  This series is about falling in love in a very realistic and heartfelt way. It’s elegant and kind with its characters. 

The Least of All Possible Mistakes by rageprufrock. Sherlock. Mycroft Holmes/Lestrade.  Lestrade has always been a woman in this story. She is also a gorgeously fully realized character that makes me cheer for her and makes me cry for her, even though I’ve read it a dozen times and know how it all turns out.

Of Old Mystics by omphalos and Wolfing.  Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Ethan Rayne/Rupert Giles. This fic is probably the longest on the list, spanning more than half a million words. It’s a novel about chaos and order, love and destruction. 

Little Gods by Teland and Jane St. Claire. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and X-men. Nate Grey/Oz Osbourne. Take the chilliest werewolf of all time and let him go on an amazing journey with one of the most powerful mutants to ever live. It reads like a dreamscape.

Pike and Benny Stash by Viridian5.  Buffy the Vampire Slayer (movie). Pike/Benny.  Just teenage dirtbags falling in love. This was written in 1999 so I think it’s the oldest on the list. I definitely read it as the series was posting, so that’s fun.

Everything About It Is a Love Song by pocky_slash. X-Men. Charles Xavier/Erik Lensharr. Erik shows up when they’re in their seventies and is like ‘come retire with me’ Charles :). It’s just very sweet and tender. 

Zweiundachtzig by Dow. X-Men. Charles Xavier/Erik Lensharr. A modern au where Erik makes jewelry and in sharing a studio with Raven, finds a family and the love of his life. Just makes me want to melt into a puddle really.

Frankenstein and the Newt by orphan. Pacific Rim. Newton Geizler/Hermann Gottlieb. A sprawling series that launched several aus of itself.  It is touching, philosophical, funny and also deadly-serious. The Omelette-verse stories are my favorite, but they’re all great. Contains monster fucking. 

Absolute Beginners by adreadfulidea. Archie Comics. Jughead Jones/Reggie Mantle. This was a Yuletide story and I can’t even say why it grabbed me by the throat so hard. It’s shorter than I usually hold this close to my heart, and really about a single day. I just love it.

Human Interest by MadLori. Brokeback Mountain. Ennis del Mar/Jack Twist. A reporter stumbles on a ranch owned by two men and decides to write about them. Instead she becomes close with them, learns about their past and becomes a part of their future. Sprawling look at what they could’ve been.

Under the Table and Dreaming by hollycomb. Toy Story. Sid Phillips/Andy Davis. Don’t let the pairing or fandom dissuade you. This is the story of two lost kids that find each other, hold on tight and don’t let go. It’s about adjusting your expectations, figuring out what love looks like at every age and stage of life. 

Mod About You by Ellabesmirched. Star Wars. Kylo Ren/Armitage Hux. Modern AU where Hux is a businessman and Kylo is a tattooed, pierced and much kinder version of himself. Lots of drug use, discovery and sex.

[thegeminisage]

STAR TREK UPDATE TIME. last night we finished off the third season of ds9 with "facets" and "the adversary."

facets:

FINALLY some good fucking food re dax. oh finally finally finally. i absolutely loved this episode start to finish. 10/10 no notes. well no i have two notes 1. it's hilarious that they included leeta bc they didn't have enough characters for all of dax's lives 2. i wish we didn't on-purpose forget that crazy mf who kidnapped her in that one episode...where was he. anyway, aside from those two things, literally perfect

gonna start with the b-plot - nog finally passing his starfleet exams was such a huge fucking deal and it was an even BIGGER deal to me that rom - rom, who initially almost stopped his own kid from going to school because of his brother's influence/ferengi culture in general - got so mad on his kid's behalf he yelled at quark NOSE TO NOSE. not only that, he had a uniform commissioned from garak at a high expense...his son is more important than even MONEY and GOOD FOR HIM!!! my new friend rom.

i'm trying haaard with quark - i liked his scenes in the a-plot - but him fucking with the test is just so horrible. i am begging for even a scrap of character development or even just likability. why can't his schemes and shenanigans be something that doesn't cause emotional harm to other people?? he did a lot of that in the first two seasons, what happened??

anyway, it's cosmic justice that dax assigned him hairbrushing and pregnancy talk in her little ritual. at first i was like i can't believe theyre not gonna make him curzon because he's an asshole and so was curzon but this episode was so enlightened

actually, i had a little spoiler going into this episode. one day i was gooling pics of curzon bc i couldn't remember what he looked like and was so shocked to see ODO! i was like damn is odo mimicking curzon, i thought it was dr mora, what manner of backstory...but then i happened to see the summary for the episode later (i try not to read them, but it happens) and was like ohhh. and it turned out to be perfect

like, the picks for everyone were great - maybe o'brien as tobin was a little mean, that could have also been quark lol - kira was such a perfect feminist trill even with her little voice and sisko made an AMAZING joran (his fakeout was SO fun and i love when sisko calls jadzia old man) but you can't get more perfect than curzon and odo

like, theyre both assholes who go too far sometimes, though obviously they're different KINDS of assholes - odo's grumpiness in generally more benevolent, though not always, and curzon's is much more hidden under charm. they're also both PINING! what a plot twist. it actually explains so much (why he asked for her despite expelling her) and it's like...yeah, jadzia was an adult, but the age difference still made it kind of inappropriate, and he knew enough to know that. and rene auberjonis can play that kind of tortured wish-i-didn't-love-you angst PERFECTLY

and even though he's an asshole, you didn't feel like jadzia's sympathy for him was misplaced, because he obviously did his best to make amends (important!!) and suffered over it a great deal - that his own inappropriate behavior almost cost jadzia something she'd worked her whole life for, and it was nearly a mistake that couldn't be undone. you felt like he actually HAD a wake-up call, unlike a lot of the characters in tng or in a recent case voy who were only sad and made excuses so THEY could feel better without actually attempting to correct course for someone ELSE'S sake. i liked curzon a lot, he had a lot of nuance

also, i gotta talk about odo. since curzon and odo's personalities are so different, it actually makes total sense why they'd want to stay joined...odo gets to be free and easy around others, and curzon gets the joys of being a changeling. odo's rigid personality doesn't complement his abilities as a changeling very well, but curzon's personality kind of does??

curzon sisko reunion was so good too. sisko pointing vaguely at him to an amazed and speechless jake going oh you remember curzon ha ha and getting sort of dragged out of the room. they're SO funny and i love sisko scenes so much

and of course sisko's scenes with JADZIA! i feel like i understand her so much better now...firstly, she's had this sort of sassy personality for a few episodes, so i'm wondering if we are finally sticking with that one? but then she also has this deep-seated insecurity underneath there which could kind of explain away some of her reserved rigidity in earlier seasons - her whole deal enrolling kind of traumatized her, and her "real" personality is starting to shine now that she's healing? all conjecture/headcanon, but i could get used to sassy jadzia! it feels great that she has actual conflict and stuff to say and like, a pretty fun sense of comedic timing also

and now that her character has started to appeal to me i can see how lovely it is that curzon was once sisko's mentor and now sisko is mentoring jadzia on how to confront curzon...also they fucked twins once. and fucked in the mirrorverse. there's so much to unpack. it's a complex fun relationship that i've always LIKED but am only just now starting to APPRECIATE

anyway, wonderful stuff, 10/10

the adversary:

MY BEST FRIEND ODO. "no changeling has ever harmed another" are such fun arc words and i was hoping he'd be the first and he WAS. i think that other changeling technically attacked him first but whatever. it was what i wanted and i GOT IT and he was so fucked up after <3

sisko's promotion!! i always wondered when they'd get around to making him captain, it was always bonkers to me that he started as a commander. he is still ROCKING that beard also but i do pre-emptively miss his hair. also, sisko taking jake's drink at the toast when he tried to steal too much. priceless. he has such dad energy

dax teasing sisko about his baseball gf..........i love this so much for them. i love that he gets a baseball gf and i love that everyone gossips about it behind his back. i also love how much glee everyone took in calling him captain for the rest of the episode. his besties love him so much.........................

changeling plot was so fun because i THOUGHT it was weird for julian to be crawling around in that little hole but the close-up on obrien had me CONVINCED he was the one and ofc also that one traitor guy was there too and he's super squirrelly. so it kept me GUESSING

i do think it's really funny that they used this nice civilized hypo to draw blood though - firstly, it's less secure, because the changeling was able to swap samples, but secondly, on s*pernatural they would have been cutting each other up INSTANTLY. straight across the palm like idiots. they're so fucking civilized in the 2300s.

the return of the self-destruct codes!!!!!!!!!!! GOD THAT WAS SO METAL. everyone went very calmly to their almost certain deaths too.

the fact that kira was the first to ask after odo after he went, sorry, NONVERBAL, and showed up in the meeting room.......that's romance. r, well, it's not but i'll take it and happily.

"you're too late we're everywhere" THEY'D BETTER GET USED TO THE CUTTING!

TONIGHT: kicking off voy s2 with "the 37s" and "initiations." though i do happen to know the former was originally just supposed to be part of s1 lol

[deepspacedukat]

Once again thinking about the Arranged Marriage AU with Damar. But since I saw Leverage gifs this morning and because it makes more sense this way, may I present: Competence Porn. When people are so good at their job you just absolutely love to watch them do what they do best.

She’s out here doctoring with a bunch of Herford people (not that they didn’t send other professional teams but doctors don’t normally work in power relays) and other Federation/Klingon/Romulan/Cardassian people just doing her thing and kicking ass at it and someone wheels in Damar, who’s taken some sort of leg injury while inspecting/helping at a work site. Of course there’s a fight over the last OR and they’re about to wheel him in but she stops them because ‘Cardassian Jesus can wait’ and the other person (I’m going with a kid) is much sicker than him. They’ve already got Damar anesthestized so he doesn’t know any of this.

She and her one classmate from their graduating class are pre treating him as much as possible while they wait for the OR to open, and when it does they wheel him in, and the first thing they do once that door closes is drop maggots* all over his leg. They can debride an area better and faster than the hodgepodge of equipment the hospital has, and once they’re done they clean him all up and fix him, and nobody knows anything at all about the procedure.

Basically the next day he wants to see them because he’ll be making a full recovery much faster than anyone expected and he wants to know how they did it. She looks him dead in the face and tells him EXACTLY what they did. Somehow this square lizard is enthralled with this and when he can get his hands on a PADD he reads all her reports and absolutely falls in love with her. Because she’s awesome. The reverse takes a bit more convincing but she’s happy with the Square Legate and everything is great. Until they have to break it off because the new Cardassian government really wants this trade deal (or something HUGE) and they just kinda bargain him off.

Anyways they’re both pissed about it and still see each other as often as they can because they’re both busy. Damar gets the great idea to go ‘Fuck this stupid shit, marry me.’ So they get married in some tiny area and they have all their papers in order for when someone tries to get him to marry someone else.

Meanwhile Damar is having a CRISIS because he doesn’t feel worthy of her and he’s just proved it by not putting Cardassia first which is kind of the one thing his job requires. They’re very much trying to comfort each other about this because she’s got her own responsibilities to worry about at home (not for another couple hundred years or so she hopes but who knows when things will happen) and she thinks he should have married someone who can guarantee they can be there for him wether he needs them to be or not.

Then the day finally comes when Damar is supposed to meet whoever the government/other party selected and he is very not happy about this but has his marriage license and she’s not happy because she’s been dragged out of her very short lunch at the hospital by people she doesn’t know to go who the hell knows where. And then the Spider-Man finger pointing meme happens and everyone else is standing around in disbelief that these two managed to find each other and get married without their help.

And if you want to throw in the ‘I’m not human’ wedding night confession because she’s also worried about being found out and turned in and having that jeopardize everyone else like her in the alpha quadrant that’s good too. Especially because Damar would go up to bat for her and her people if anyone tried something stupid like that. I’m just picturing them spending the night in an old shack or barn and banging the hell out of each other while being really sentimental and honest.

Plus I’d love it if Garak was the mastermind behind the scheme in the first place because it would be very Garak of him to do so. He failed again as a wingman but this time it’s because Damar didn’t need one and not that the holodeck lady was upset about being interrupted by a tuxedo lizard man.

*Realistically, I’m not saying this is the most amazingly hygienic thing ever, but hey, if it works (which it does irl because they only eat decaying flesh unlike screwworms that eat both living and decaying matter) it works. And they really don’t have the time to be messing around with equipment and they just go for it. Also I want them to pretreat his leg with kale juice/smoothie. It’s got to be good for something and in this case it’s a tissue integrity maintainer because I can make the sci-fi biology and medical usages. If it’s supposed to be a superfood it can be super awesome at this. Kale is nasty I’m sorry to anyone who likes it. Also y’all don’t want to hear my headcanons on various earth vegetable usages in other alien medical settings do you?

No I’m not writing this because I can’t do it justice. I do not have the skills yet.

-Horta-in-Charge

Look, that arranged marriage AU with Damar lives rent free in my head 24/7.

Also, I cannot express how much I love this Competence Porn idea. Square Legate and Doctor Sexy being a couple just scratches and Itch™ in my brain that very few other things can even come close to scratching. It’s such a cool idea - all of it, even failed wingman Garak. I’ve read through this three times, because I love the concept istg.

On a side note, I would absolutely love to hear your headcanons on various earth vegetable usages in alien medical settings!!

That’s totally fine, friend. Us writers have all been there. We have this idea we see as huge and important and amazing, but we don’t think our skills will match up. You’ll get there. Don’t lose that idea, because one day you’ll have the confidence to give it a shot. Personally, I want to be there when you do give it a try, because you really do have some amazing ideas!

[torielectra83]

Garak and the Jack Pack

Want to thank

@volixia669

for giving me the idea and motivation; this is the first fic I've posted and finished in quite a while. Also gonna tag

@unicorn-and-bluebells

and

@tirlaeyn

since their DS9-related posts are what helped lead me to this (if there's a DS9-related Discord I should join, let me know); note that I'm not much of a shipper (and I'm ace), so I wasn't quite sure how to approach the Bashir/Garak relationship; I just left it in the background (and the lizard man t-shirt).

“Oh, Doctor. There you are, and I….see you’ve brought company!” As he could see, Dr. Bashir was heading for the Replimat for his typical luncheon with him, only four other people were crowded around him. A skinny man with a mustache, a stocky older man with a timid expression, a rather gregarious-looking woman, and another woman who looked rather distant. “Oh, hello Garak. I’d like to apologize for being a bit late.”

“Oh, don’t worry, given what I’m seeing it’s very much a valid excuse.” Garak had heard about the other genetically-engineered people who’d been sent to DS9 to meet Dr. Bashir, but he’d been busy with orders at his shop; he’d been thinking about hiring someone to help out, actually. “Well, that’s Jack, Patrick, Lauren and Sarina. This is my...friend Garak, he runs a tailoring shop here on the Promenade.” “Oh, hi there, Hi. Uh, I gotta go over to the replicator, I’m starving over here.” Jack promptly excused himself, while Lauren made her way to Garak next. “Well, hello, Mr. Garak.” She promptly began her flirtatious attitude. “If you’re trying to seduce me...it won’t work. I am sorry, but I do not generally do one night stands.” Surprised and somewhat disappointed, Lauren backed away.

Patrick then approached Garak. “Do you make clothes?” “Yes, I do.” Patrick then grinned eagerly. “Good, because the clothes the institute gives us are too...itchy and things like that. Do you have softer clothes?” “Well, I can certainly make some? I believe Dr. Bashir said you need “sensory-friendly” clothing?” Bashir nodded; the term was an old term from pre-warp Earth. “I’ll do it at no charge; anyone who’s a friend of Dr. Bashir is a friend of mine.” He sipped his Tarkalean tea as Jack argued with the replicator over not being able to make something, while Lauren used the other one to replicate a bowl of Vulcan plomeek soup.

“And… Sarina, is it? I’ve noticed you haven’t said anything yet.” Garak simply saw the young woman turn, before holding up a PADD, with words written on it -- “I can’t speak, If you want to have a conversation with me, use this.” She promptly set the PADD down and continued to watch Jack’s tussle with the computer. “Sarina’s unable to speak, I can explain the whole thing later Garak.” Julian felt the need to pre-emptlively apologize for their behavior. “Oh, you don’t need to. I’m seeing people with a lot of potential here.” Bashir nodded. “So do I. And not many others do. That’s why I brought them here. I want to try and help them.”

“They seem to be helping themselves.” As Garak watched, Jack had finally managed to get something from the replicator that agreed with his standards -- a ham sandwich with Bajoran mapa bread. “So, this is the irrefutable Elim Garak, huh?” Jack asked. “Yes, and I see my reputation precedes me.” Garak said politely. “That’s right. Former intelligence agent for the now-defunct Obsidian Order, exiled and now working as a tailor here on DS9.” He said hastily before ripping into his sandwich. Garak raised an eyebrow. “And how did you find that out?” He asked, a tone of interest in his voice. “Oh, you’d be surprised what you can dig up on the extranet. There’s all sorts of unsavory rumors about you, like you causing a Cardassian doctor to break down by staring at them for four hours straight.” He promptly chugged from his cup of targ milk, before continuing. “And that your father was the head of the Obsidian Order, Enabrian Tain, and he got wiped out by the Dominion when the Obsidian Order and Tal Shiar teamed up, yeah, but they didn’t know the second-in-command of the Tal Shiar was actually a Changeling leading them right into a trap!”

“I...think we will have to pick up this conversation sometime later, Doctor.” Garak was getting rather uncomfortable at all this private information being practically shouted in the Promenade. “Oh, and I’ll see what I can do about those new clothes you requested, Patrick.” As Garak walked back to his shop, getting his mind off old events, he began pondering about what to do in the present. My orders are backlogged. I simply need help. As he opened his shop doors to see the current state -- half-finished orders, bolts of fabric all over and supplies in crates he hadn’t unpacked. “I must find someone to help me. I would get Julian but he’s too busy with being in Starfleet.” Garak sighed, and began getting back to working on an order.

Some time later...

Having returned from the Defiant, Dr. Bashir went into Garak’s shop, expecting to see it as it had been for some time -- cluttered and filled with things Garak was working on. He instead found it a hive of activity. Customers were entering and exiting, some waiting for their orders, others were looking at holographic models of new clothes to order. Bashir looked around in confusion. “What the…'' Suddenly, a figure blocked by their holding of several bolts of fabric maneuvered into view. “Look out, everyone!” Bashir knew that voice. “Patrick?!” “Oh, hi, Dr. Bashir.” Patrick didn’t even turn back as he carried the bolts into the back of the shop. “Patrick, how did you get here?” Bashir followed him, and realized the entire “Jack Pack” (as someone, most likely Quark, had nicknamed them) was working there. Patrick set the bolts down for Jack, who proceeded to start measuring what exactly was needed for that order. Lauren was busy inputting data of some kind into a PADD, while Sarina was sewing an order up. “Ah, Doctor, good to see you’ve returned home safe and sound!” Garak greeted him cheerily from behind his desk.

“Garak, what is going on here? How did they…” “Well, Julian. I saw their potential and I needed help. And so far, they have been excelling at everything they’ve been doing. I haven’t been this efficient, ever!” Garak looked positively delighted at this. It was rare to see him like this, and Julian was a noted expert on Garak’s emotions. “But...what about the Institute? And Dr. Loews?” “Well, she needed a vacation, and my offer to give them steady employment was something she couldn’t pass up.”

“Oh, well then. But...how are you so busy now?” Julian wondered. “Well, their brightness led them to not only help clear my backorders, but also introduce whole new product lines based on pre-warp Earth stylings. I will admit I knew little about it, but they have brought in several new kinds of clothing. Like this ‘tee shirt’.” Garak promptly held one up, the front reading “WWCKD?” with a small line underneath reading “What Would Captain Kirk Do?” “They’ve come up with several of these things. Like this one for the USS Voyager.” The shirt had a fictional flyer on the front with a picture of Voyager, underneath a “Missing: Reward” banner as if it were a lost dog. “We’ve also re-created other Earth fashions, from “bell-bottoms” to “zoot suits”. I must admit, they make most current styles of clothing look downright boring!”

“Yeah, Dr. Bashir! Here’s one we made especially for you!” Jack promptly handed him a T-shirt and headed into the front of the shop. Julian simply looked at Garak with an expression of disbelief. “Garak, we caught them trying to pass on classified information to the Dominion, and now, they’re recommending I wear a t-shirt that says ‘If lost, return to lizard man for reward’!” He said angrily, shaking the shirt in his hand for added emphasis.

“Doctor...these people needed another chance. One that nobody else was willing to give them. And another thing...they are still very useful analysts. They can predict trends, root out information and generally think far ahead of the game. To be quite honest, they’re the best analysts I’ve ever seen. “ Garak admitted. “Yeah, where else can you get a nice new pair of pants and information of Dominion troop movements?” Lauren commented.

“So...you’re basically running your own intelligence service out of this shop.” Bashir muttered, running his hand through his hair. “Well, there has to be a third-party intel service somewhere. With the Obsidian Order gone, there’s a market for it; we used to take on clients for analysis as a method for extra revenue. Strictly off the books, of course. So that’s what I’m doing now.” Garak reasoned. “And we aren’t just doing war intelligence either; we’ve got multiple projects for the Ferengi Alliance, the First Federation and the Gorn Hegemony for analyzing things like market trends, population censuses and whatnot.” Patrick nodded. “Yeah, Grand Nagus Zek and Ishka appreciate it! We got in touch with them thanks to the Ferengi maintenance guy, oh, what was his name…”

“Rom, that’s him. Real friendly guy. Came up with the self-replicating mines around the wormhole and keeps the holosuites running, real good guy.” Jack said at his normal speedy pace, before returning to his fabric measuring. Sarina promptly passed a PADD to Bashir, with a message reading “This is the best we’ve been treated in years. We’re working for ourselves, we’re constantly kept active, and we’re being paid 5 strips of latinum an hour.”

“Anyway, I’ll see you later, Doctor. We’ve got a lot to do before closing time today. After that we can meet at Quark’s, perhaps? Jack came up with this astounding holo-program based on another pre-warp Earth cultural thing, a “game show” called...Wipeout, yes. It involved picking the right answers and avoiding the wrong ones, it’s fascinating. But we have work to do and I’m sure you have work in the infirmary.”

Garak promptly ushered Dr. Bashir out of the store and back onto the Promenade. “...what just happened?”

[littlewalken]

TZN Exclusive Interview: Andy Robinson

On Garak, "Star Trek", "Dirty Harry" & Sci-Fi Idealism

TrekZone Network sat down with Andrew Robinson, who played the Cardassian Garak in "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine", in Hamburg prior to the "Evening with Andrew Robinson", organized by FKM Events. We talked about Garak's past and future, Robinson's current projects and the idealism of science fiction fans.

TrekZone Network: Is this the first time you are in Hamburg?

Andrew Robinson: No, I was here 12 years ago for a convention with another organizer. So this is my first time back in 12 years, I believe.

Andy Robinson at the FKM Evening in Hamburg

TZN: Long time.

Robinson: It has been a long time. And as they say, a lot of water under the bridge...

TZN: You have been to Germany in the meantime?

Robinson: Yeah, I've been here several times. For one reason or another and in several different places. I have come here for a whole bunch of reasons. Even just as a tourist. But I have never made a film here or anything.

TZN: Your first stint as Garak was in the third episode of "Deep Space Nine". When you first got that role, did you anticipate or did you know that it was going to be a recurring role?

Robinson: No, not at all. Originally, the role of Odo, that Rene Auberjonois played, came down to three of us. Myself, another actor and obviously Rene. Then Rene got the role. Then they asked me to come in a few weeks later to read for this other role, which I thought was just going to be one episode. But it turned out that they were looking for a way to get the character of Doctor Bashir more involved with the show and so they, they were testing a storyline for Doctor Bashir and obviously the storyline was: he meets this older Cardassian, presumably tailor. Is he a spy? Who is he? This very mysterious person, the last Cardassian left on the station.

They wanted to see if there was any chemistry between Siddig and myself as actors. And of course we hit it off immediately. We had a great time with each other. And so it was based on that when they saw that episode, I think it was "Past Prologue", and they saw that we were working well together then they decided to add more episodes of Garak. Which I am eternally grateful for.

TZN: Do you regret that you were not cast as Odo?

Robinson: No, no, no, no. Not at all. As an actor, and an actor of a certain age, after a while you become very philosophical about these things. And genuinely so. Whoever gets the role, that was their role, you cannot feel remorse or try to second-guess or be bitter. And it always is the right actor as far as I am concerned and certainly with Rene it was the right actor. He was wonderful as Odo.

TZN: The part as Garak turned out to be rather substantial as well, of course.

Robinson: O, Garak was one of the best characters, I mean this, he was one of the most enjoyable, fully satisfying characters I have ever played in my life. And the fact that it is the only time in my life, too, as an actor, that I was able to develop a character over a seven-year period, and not be overused. By that I mean often if you are a regular on a series, they run out of things for a character to say and to do, and so the character just ends up repeating himself/herself, and the actions and the plotlines and after a while it becomes what they call the law of diminishing returns. The character becomes reduced. With Garak, because I was not a regular character, I appeared occasionally, I think I was in 39 episodes, and when I appeared, it was for a reason. Almost always it was for a reason, There are a few episodes when I wondered what I was doing there... But that always happens and at least they paid me, so that was fine.

TZN: Is there anything you would have liked to do as Garak on screen? Or any aspect of his character, his personality, that you would have liked to develop?

Robinson as Cardassian Elim Garak

Robinson: They did start this love story. But then they could not find the right actress. And so they had this one actress playing Ziyal and they did not like her, so they had another actress playing Ziyal who looked like my granddaughter, so that made me feel a little perverse. Then they just decided to forget about it. But it would have been wonderful to have had a bittersweet love story, someone who breaks Garak's heart, who tries to unlock the mystery romantically and cannot do it.

It is one of the reasons I wrote the book, to explore that part of Garak, Garak's heart. Because as an actor, you fall in love, well you do not always fall in love with your characters but the ones that you do fall in love with, it is a very deep relationship that you have with the character, and the character does take on a life on its own. Because as an actor, that is what you try to do. You try to transform yourself into this character's life. Obviously, I am not Garak, I am not Hamlet, but you find those places within yourself that can make that transformation.

I was not a "Star Trek" fan when they hired me. I had no idea what the "Star Trek" universe was, who Cardassians were, who Klingons, Romulans, I had no idea about any of that.

TZN: You had never seen anything, never heard about it?

Robinson: I had heard about it but never saw a thing. And a Cardassian? I had no idea what that was.

TZN: Then the makeup was applied...

Robinson: Yeah, right. But they did show me the episode, in "Next Generation", I think David Warner was the first Cardassian or was Marc Alaimo the first?

TZN: Marc Alaimo.

Robinson: Yeah, but it was that two-parter where David Warner's Cardassian character is torturing Picard and I thought, well, that is a really interesting-looking guy. That was the first episodes that peaked my interest. I thought, they deal with substantial things. And the acting was wonderful. Of course, David Warner has always been one of my favorite actors.

So I started writing a diary. As if Garak had a diary and I would write things, and I would make up things about him. And it is what you do, it is what an actor does sometimes for any character. You try to create a story, a life for this character. And when the series was over, I realized there were still things I would have loved to say about Garak and that is why I wrote the book "A Stitch in Time".

TZN: Did you start with the diary when you recognized that Garak would not be a one- or two-episode thing but a recurring role?

Robinson: Yeah, exactly, I think I started in the second year. I also started it when I started being invited to conventions and I realized, after two or three conventions, there were four or five questions people who would always ask me. How long does it take, your makeup... But I thought, would it not be interesting if I if at the conventions did something different. And so what I would do is that I would get up and I would read excerpts from these diaries. It became enormously popular, and that in a sense spawned a lot of things, then as actors we all started saying, well, maybe there is something that we can do rather than just get up and talk about our makeup and so forth. And that unleashed a whole bunch of stuff. Even Siddig and I wrote a play together that we did at several conventions and it was really a rather challenging play, dealing with string theory...

TZN: What was it about? I read just before this interview that you had this play...

Andy Robinson in Hamburg in June 2008 (Photo credit: Klaus Wittmack)

Robinson: Well, basically Garak and Bashir meet up in this place and it is like, nobody knows, but it looks like a convention with "Star Trek" fans there. And so they had to conduct this very tricky business in front of these people sitting at tables and sitting in chairs watching them. It was very, very, very postmodern. (laughs)

And there was a time when we were working on the play in front of an audience, too. Towards the end, when we finally got it written and got it right, that was when it was at its best but while we were experimenting with it, I think a lot of people fell asleep. (laughs)

Getting back to those diaries, [Michael Scott] co-wrote a book with Armin Shimerman ["The Merchant Prince"] and he said to me, "You should turn this into a book!" and that was when I did. And it was actually the first "Star Trek" book that was written without what they call a ghostwriter.

TZN: Are you thinking of writing another novel about Garak?

Robinson: No. I actually have said everything I could possibly say about Garak. I really have. Plus, if I did, I would then because of the corporate nature of Pocket Books, the Simon and Schuster division that does the "Star Trek" books, I would then have to follow all these other books that have been written about Garak and that does not interest me at all. Because the story I came up with was actually, oddly enough close my story, especially when Garak was a young man.

TZN: You did write another short story though, right? Set after the book.

Robinson: Right.

TZN: That was the last thing we have heard from Garak. In that story, he is not in a very positive state of mind and not in a good place.

Robinson: No.

TZN: So if we could jump forward in time, to a time and place after that, where would we find Garak?

Robinson: Dead. Honestly, because when I wrote that novella, first I was interested in putting - because I live part of the year in Paris -

I was interested in having Garak in Paris and see what that was like. Paris is like a museum now, and I thought that they would have really preserved it in 400 years and it would have become the museum of the world. But when I got Garak to Paris, it became very depressing. That is why I think he was not in a great state. I realized that if I had have written much more about Garak, he probably would have had to die. I do not want to go into why because it is all political and you are not here about politics. (laughs)

TZN: When did the producers tell you about who Garak's parents were?

Robinson: The big reveal was of course with Enabran Tain, who was the head of the Obsidian Order. I know that the mother appeared at one point when they were on Cardassia in that last series of episodes that I was in and that they ended up at Garak's mother's house, hiding. But the story of Garak and his parents really is what I myself put together, in terms of the relationships.

TZN: Did you have a hunch though that the storyline could develop into the direction of Enabran Tain being revealed as Garak's father?

Robinson: O, no! It was a big surprise to me. It was great!

TZN: Just like for the viewers.

Robinson: O, yeah, absolutely! But that is how I felt every time I would get a new script from the writers because the writers loved writing for Garak, that was the pleasure. It was evident that they liked writing for Garak because of the language, the dialogue that they would give him which was so delicious and so much fun and very ironic. One of the things you certainly know is that in America irony is not at the top of our list. As a people we do not really appreciate ironic humor. I think that one of the things that made Garak popular is the fact that he did have a sense of irony. That to everything he said there was a twist and there was always a subtext. And indeed probably he was lying but enjoying it and enjoying the fact that he was lying and seeing how far he could get away with it and who was gullible and who was smart.

Andy Robinson in Hamburg in June 2008 (Photo credit: Klaus Wittmack)

TZN: There was this one episode with the implant, "The Wire". That embodies everything you just said.

Robinson: Yeah, and that is by far my favorite episode.

TZN: We asked our readers to hand in some questions for you beforehand. One of them is: how long did it take to apply the makeup?

Robinson: At the beginning, it took about four hours, I would say. And then they got it down to about two hours. Towards the end they got more dexterous, thank God, because sitting in the chair for four hours meant that I would have to come in long before dawn and it was just excruciating, it was horrible. Even two hours was bad enough. It is the only thing about Garak that I do not miss at all.

TZN: Did the makeup inhibit you in the way you could express yourself?

Robinson: Well, that is the great, mysterious thing about working with a mask like that. For one thing the technology is very good, there were I think seven prosthetic pieces and they were all very flexible, very pliable and so you put it on and you think, my God, it is like this corpus, you're encased in it. But then you were fine, you could move. You were not, you were not limited the way Rene was limited with Odo because he could not eat, he lost a lot of weight. That is something I should have done!

But he had to take his lunch through a straw and so he could not move much at all because it was a mess. If he marled just a little bit, then he would have to sit in a chair and have to go through a whole process to get it back to that smoothness. That obviously was not my problem. My problem was the claustrophobia that I have, which I experienced actually last night. I went to a bar in Paris with some friends to watch the French lose to the Dutch. (laughter) Really lose. And deservedly so, I mean it. The French should get rid of that coach of theirs because he is awful.

I was at the bar and everybody was crowding in around me, I had to leave at the interval, go home and watch it on my own television. That was the thing about the Garak makeup. That was one thing but then this heavy wig that they put on top of me and then, because they wanted Cardassians to look big, they made the costumes out of the material that you make furniture pads, furniture textiles, and so all the costumes were very heavy and once you zipped them up it was like you were in a sauna, literally.

Actually that is where I lost a little weight, a lot of water weight anyway. When you get under the lights, underneath the makeup and the wig and the costume, there were rivers of sweat, I was soaked underneath. Not very glamorous (laughter) and I certainly did not smell like a flower.

TZN: I have got another reader question here, that touches a different subject. Did you know that there is speculation about Garak's sexuality?

Robinson: Oh, yeah. I started it.

TZN: Really? Then this might be interesting to this reader. He calls himself your gay fan Dominion and he asks a lot of questions like: Why haven't we seen a gay character in "Star Trek"? Have gays become extinct in the 24th century? Do you think there will ever be a gay character in "Star Trek"? Do gays not belong in "Star Trek's" future?

Robinson: O, yeah. There will be gay characters. Certainly now there will be, for one thing, America is still very puritan, we are very squeamish when it comes to sexuality. I remember when I very first played Garak, I played him gay! I thought this would be great! He sees this young man, this young, very attractive doctor on the station, he is lonely, he is the only Cardassian there, this doctor is curious about him, and if you remember, this was a great moment because Sid totally went with it! When he comes up and he puts his hand on his shoulder, Sid did this great thing, it was this sort of an electrical charge that went through him and so I played him totally gay in that episode.

Garak's First Scene

Of course the producers did not actually tell me not to play him gay but then they started writing him a little more macho and more like a Cardassian. But I said, "Listen, one of the great things about Garak is that he is not Gul Dukat, he is not one of those macho, militaristic guys, he is your finesse Cardassian." So we struck a compromise but I was always very clear. I did not get into it in the book. Quite frankly, I was going to go in that direction. I had written a whole thing about Garak's sexuality because I felt that Garak was sort of - talk about bisexual, I think that he was multisexual, essentially that anything that moves is fair game for Garak. He has a voracious sexual appetite.

But as I say, especially on American television you have the odd gay character now but it is all going to be just cosmetic. In terms of commercial television ever getting into real sexuality, that is not going to happen. "Star Trek" is very conservative, there is a conservatism about "Star Trek" that I think "Deep Space Nine" in a sense went against. It defied that conservatism. "Deep Space Nine" was not as black and white as the other "Star Trek" shows. It was different. It was not people in a rocket ship doing one-night stands on a planet to planet to planet, coming in and battling the evil aliens or some kind of monster or whatever. It was a community unto itself on the edge and this is what I loved about the show, every one of the characters on "Deep Space Nine" had a moral dimension about them. Each one of them was in touch with their dark side.

That episode "In the Pale Moonlight", when Garak introduces Captain Sisko to the concept of realpolitik, that okay, if you want to get rid of the Romulan threat, what you do is, you kill them. And you kill them in a not very nice way. So you just eliminate your enemy. Of course that is not fair play, that is not the American way. I was surprised, I loved that episode because it was very mature in that sense. It said you have to grow up, this is the world you live in now. And of course the world we live in now is very morally ambiguous to say the least.

I rambled, I am sorry. We went away from sexuality but I think there has to be more gay characters. I do not know what this movie is going to be like but this movie I believe is about Starfleet academy?

A gay Sulu? According to Robinson an interesting idea

TZN:It is a prequel. It is not entirely set on Starfleet academy but shows the young crew in their early years getting together.

Robinson: Right. For instance, I wonder, George Takei, who has come out, who is an openly gay man, and actually now I think he and his partner are going to get married since the California Supreme Court has now finally legalized gay marriage. But I wonder where they are going to go with his character in this prequel. It would be very interesting.

TZN: You did some work behind the camera as well. You directed I believe an episode of DS9. How was that for you, the experience to suddenly tell your colleagues what to do?

Robinson: Yes, right. It is funny, it was very different getting on the other side of the camera and not just working with the other actors, I mean they were fine. But it was the first episode I really had a lot of trouble with because it was my first episode ever directing something. And of course when you are directing "Star Trek" you have the added dimension, the added complication of the special effects. Although they have great special-effects people and you just get out of the way and let them do their work but still you are always trying to visualize what the picture looks like as a director.

But I must say that directing the "Star Trek" episodes really in a sense changed my life because it was the first time I started directing. From there I went on to a lot more directing, mainly theater because I have always been more of a theater person than a film person. And that really gave me the courage to continue in that direction as a director which I have and which has actually led to my current position. I am a fulltime teacher now. I run an acting program at the University of Southern California. And that all came out of directing.

TZN: You have been an actor, you have been a director, you have written a book, actually is there anything artistic you would still like to do? Singing maybe?

Robinson: No, I do not think so. Actually, it is true, it is interesting you should say that. I would actually love to do a musical. I really would love to do a musical, you are absolutely right. I would love to do one of these great musicals. But I still go back and forth. I am going to do a play this summer in San Francisco as an actor. I will continue to direct. I do not know how much longer I will run this program because I created this actor-training program and that was exciting.

I am going to be actually talking about that today. I work with young actors in terms of how does one train to be an actor, what is it that one does? I am being able to put some of my own ideas and thoughts about what actor training is into a coherent program that goes over three years, that trains professional actors. That has been very exciting. That is part of who I am but I think the territory of being an actor is that you do reinvent yourself from time to time. You have to reinvent yourself from time to time. Not to change, you really have to transform because that is the business.

TZN: In your career, you played many roles, and you guest starred in "Bonanza".

Robinson: No, you could not possibly remember! That is incredible. No, o my God, how could you... That is amazing. Yeah, that was the very last season of "Bonanza", too. And I think it was my first work in television.

TZN: How was it to play with such very famous actors like Lorne Greene?

Robinson: Well, see, it was very nice. They are household names but I had just come off from doing my first film with Clint Eastwood. So playing with Clint Eastwood was like playing with God. And then everyone else, they are wonderful actors, but still, my first film experience was the "Dirty Harry" film and that was extraordinary. I must say I enjoyed doing "Bonanza" because it was a show that had gone on forever. I helped kill it because that was the last season... Having the experience of doing "Dirty Harry" which was a feature film, that interested me a lot more than doing television.

Andy Robinson in "Dirty Harry"

TZN: You did very many TV series. The list of your guest appearances just goes on and on and on.

Robinson: Yeah, I did and most of the time I was the villain. That was courtesy of "Dirty Harry". After I did "Dirty Harry" nobody could see me as playing anything but the villain.

TZN: Is there any of these series that you would have liked to be on as one of the lead actors or main cast?

Robinson: In America, there is a series that just ended. I do not know if it is here, I do not know if it has come here. They did five years of it. HBO has these. I do not know if you know Home Box Office? It is a cable network in America. They had these series, "The Sopranos" was their flagship, their famous series. But they had another series called "The Wire". Have you ever heard of "The Wire"?

TZN: The title sounds familiar but that is all.

Robinson: It is interesting because you had me talking about that episode of "Deep Space Nine" that is called "The Wire", that was my favorite episode. Well, this series, "The Wire", is probably the best television series I have ever seen in my life. It was a brilliant series that took the city of Baltimore and it investigated the city of Baltimore in a dramatic series format on every level from drug dealers to police to schools to unions and it was an amazing series. I do not know how it got done because in America we are not big on socially-relevant thematic. We want our entertainment to be pure and uncluttered with things we have to think about. But this was a brilliant series and I, every time I watched the series, thought, o my God, I would love to be on that series! That was one of the few things I ever watched where I felt that way. I hope it comes here, I am sure it will come here. It has to. If it does, you must watch it because it is extraordinary.

TZN: I am afraid we have to wrap up already. One last question: Is there any question that you would really particularly badly like to answer but have never been asked?

Robinson: Wow. I have to say I think I have been asked every question that I can possibly imagine. Short of questions that I would prefer not to get into. No, I do not think that there is. I do not think that there is at all. I find that "Star Trek" fans for the most part, especially in Europe, are relatively sophisticated. I think that there is an idealism about following a series like "Star Trek", especially in this world.

Can we imagine ourselves projected into 24th or 25th century or wherever and still functioning. Obviously, it is weird. As you said earlier, here we are, four- five hundred years later and where have all the gay people gone? Where have all the people of color gone in a sense. That has always been something. What has indeed happened to poverty and what has happened to racism and fundamentalism and terrorism and all the things that bedevil us. I really do hope that science fiction continues to evolve and the way certain writers have challenged themselves to think about what happens to all of these social issues in the future and how we project solutions for them or perhaps not solutions but perhaps just accommodations, how do we learn to live with each other because in the end I think that that is what the "Star Trek" series perhaps offers its best insights about. Then I think that it is also great dramatic material which is the great question how do we learn how to live with each other without violence and without predatory behavior.

TZN: That ends this interview on a very thoughtful note, I think. Thank you very much.

Robinson: It was a pleasure, thank you, it has been great.

[pollyna]

They start dating after the last discussion on The Never Ending Sacrifice and Julian kisses him in the middle of the lunch hour. Garak's tail finds it's way around Julian's ankle and the position is not the best but they don't noticed any of that. They're still kissing and yet they're already discussing again and, if their relationship is going to be like this, always trying to have the last word, finding compelling arguments and with so many other things he has yet to discover, Julian is so in for them that he could never just describe how he feels.

What he wasn't expecting is how much Garak touches him and loves to be touched. Not just during sex, but cuddling, petting his hair, touching their forehead together before one of them leaves for work, walking hand in hand. Some nights they just sit on their couch, or lie on the bed, one of Julian's arm around Elim's waist, his tail around one of their ankles or resting in his sleeve, talking and discussing about their day and, when it happens, gossiping too about every single person on the station. Elim's cheeks are always a little blue when they share moments like that and his expression is so content he has to force himself to move, even if it's just of a millimeter.

Julian himself doesn't realise how much he likes being touched at the same way until Garak has to leave the station and he spends almost a month sleeping alone. Miles tends to pat him on the shoulder, sometimes Jadzia hugs him because we both need it and even major Kira tries to touch him a little more but it's too awkward for both of them. So it's not like no one touches him, but it's not the same. The whole station seems a little bit colder when Garak isn't there.

Back from only God knows where Julian almost jumps on him because Garak's there, he's alive but seeing him it's not enough to confirm he's really all right. They end up in the infirmary because he's hurt more than he says and he's tail is bleeding from two places and there are scraps and bruises to clean and cover.

Julian doesn't stop smiling all the way from the infirmary to their quarters and even when they're eating there still is the shadow of a it on his face. Julian doesn't ask what happened while Garak was away because he knows the man will tell himself when the right time will come. They lie on their bed, tired and full of a dinner with one too many courses, and Julian let himself be the little spoon for once- Garak finds the all terminology very amusing- and let his boyfriend hold him as thigh as they both need. It's warm all around them and Julian, just like Elim, falls asleep in no time.