#because while I think Garak sees that things on Cardassia need to change- what would Julian know about it?

[youngpettyqueen]

I love this argument that Julian and Garak are having about Earth vs Cardassia political styles and I especially love that Garak is like. shocked at how impassioned he is about this topic

[vaguely-concerned]

A Stitch In Time First Read Reactions & Thoughts Monster Post Part 1

Basically exactly what it says on the tin! I kept making notes while I was reading and somehow it grew into this sprawling monstrosity that had to be split into three parts haha. In short: I loved this book, 10/10 incredibly gay and full of yearning Garak is there the whole time would recommend. 

Quotes from the book in normal text, my reflections, reactions and self-indulgent bits in italics :) Please, please only click on that read-more if you're ready for some truly long-winded nonsense, I fear I have gone and been extremely myself about this and I can only beg your forbearance for it while I get it out of my system lol

Part 2, Part 3

- My dear Doctor:

Forgive my delay in responding to your kind communications. I wanted to give this modest chronicle I’ve enclosed a modicum of organization and update it before I sent it on to you. Thank you for your concern. I have thought of you often since our last meeting, and I am pleased to hear that your life on Deep Space 9 remains challenging and productive. Considering all the changes that have taken place I would have expected nothing less. And I’m certainly not surprised that your research proposals have been accepted. You’re a brilliant young scientist—even if you are genetically enhanced. As for my life here …

This is such a deceptively innocuous and normal-sounding beginning to what is about to be an extremely unnormal and unhinged thing to send a friend as a letter. He made it all of one paragraph of keeping it chill and I honestly think that’s pretty impressive all things considered. Thankfully Julian Bashir — who, let’s not forget, gave Jadzia his fucking diaries to read after much shorter acquaintanceship than what what we’re operating on here — is possibly the one person in the galaxy with the unhinged energy to take it.  

(‘I have thought of you often’ he says. And how., as we shall see)

- Yes—I’m afraid you weren’t expecting this response to your kind inquiry; it goes a bit further than “Greetings from Cardassia—Wish you were here.”

Fhksjdfhasdkj well. In spirit that is exactly what you’re saying tho garak fhdskjaas. It’s just that you’re also pathologically incapable of shutting the hell up and for this I love and treasure you. 

- So why Captain Sisko is so upset with me because I accomplished the goal (which he established!) of getting Romulus into the war against the Dominion baffles me. And it’s not because of the few lives that were sacrificed. Federation expansion has taken a toll in countless life-forms—about most of which they are blissfully unaware. The moment you step into a garden and begin to cultivate and prune, you become a killer. Perhaps the captain was upset because he had hesitated to do what was necessary to insure the integrity of his garden. Sentimentality is another trait that makes humans dangerous.

*Garak voice* Julian please tell me why your boss is so mad at me I literally solved all his problems for him. for which he’s wELCOME btw

Eyes open for recurring metaphors about gardeners, Tolan is haunting this narrative and it’s only polite to say hello whenever he shows up

- Indulge me, if you will; I need you as a witness.

Can I just say how fucking wild it is in terms of character development for Garak to openly admit he needs someone interpersonally. Incredibly fucked up that he writes both parts of this directly to Julian, though — both the part where he’s pretty sure he’s going to die trying to free Cardassia from the Dominion, and the ‘now’ timeline on post-war Cardassia where he seems to be dazedly coming to the realization that he might live, actually, and what that means to him. 

- As a child I would go to the Tarlak Sector with Father, and while he supervised his crews I’d play by myself amid the black-and-white angularity of the monuments, imagining myself a great gul or legate giving the funeral oration for a fallen comrade. 

Already we are starting to spot the thread, if you’ll excuse the expression, of why Garak might be Like That

I also came to admire Damar’s idealism, which led him to renounce his allegiance to the Dominion. If he had one weakness it was his propensity for long-winded speeches. But given the fact that none of us are perfect, the man would have made a fine leader.

As I stood at the memorial service, I thought about all the grand affairs I had witnessed here when I was a boy. None of our famed heroes and statesmen has ever had such a humble service—and none of them, from Tret Akleen on, deserved more than Corat Damar.

You are a species of long-winded speakers and Pythas Lok 

- Dr. Parmak, the unit leader, worked furiously to stabilize the little girl, and when she was evacuated by the transport unit he broke down. He’s a very good man, this Dr. Parmak; he reminds me of an older version of you, Doctor. 

Introducing Dr. Kelas Parmak, last seen in the then-noodle incident mentioned in The Die is Cast. Quite possibly the chillest person who has ever lived, considering he gets over the whole thing where Garak like tortured him pretty fast. (To be fair Garak DID say he was sorry. Between this case and Odo’s, that apparently goes a surprisingly long way lol) 

- But Garak, you’ll say, there’s no excuse for killing a defenseless woman. And there isn’t… unless you’ve been brought up in our system.

I love that he keeps a little Julian around in his head to talk to at all times. That’s one of the most freakishly intimate things in this whole book of freakish intimacy. Garak has a little Tain on one shoulder and a little Julian on the other shoulder and they have heated debates as to the validity of murder as a solution to any given problem that’s put before him

- I also thought about this Cardassian sense of duty and how it is largely responsible for bringing those of us who are left to these current circumstances. I asked Dr. Parmak how an entire people can come under the sway of this duty and blindly give allegiance to a state that goes mad and murders its own children.

“Poisonous pedagogy, Elim,” he replied. “We believe what we are taught.”

Poison/Disease contagion is a metaphor that will wind through this whole thing,and different people mean different things by it. Parmak means it about The Facism, which is the right one. You’ll be unsurprised to hear that Dukat Sr. has a rather different spin on it, and that he’s wrong! 

- But Tain at home was anything but mysterious. It was not unusual for Uncle Enabran to appear and take me away on some excursion that involved a long walk through a section of the city. During these walks he’d test my awareness, and challenge me to describe a house or a person we’d just passed. If I hadn’t been paying attention and couldn’t remember the details, the walk was over and we’d silently return home under the oppressive weight of his disapproval. He also seemed to know how I was performing at school, and if he wasn’t satisfied with my progress or behavior he’d punish me. I was a hard worker but I had a mischievous streak, and I enjoyed getting others involved in questionable activities and arranging it so they were found out and took the blame. On those rare occasions when I was caught, Tain would somehow find out and punish me—not for my misdeed, but for having been caught. And after he discovered my fear of small, dark spaces, his favorite punishment became keeping me in one until I had convinced him that I had analyzed and fully understood how my mischievous scheme had gone wrong. I found it odd that Mother and Father never had anything to say about these punishments.

. . . 

At first I thought I was in trouble, and my face must have reflected this fear because Father attempted to reassure me with a forced smile. But the uncharacteristic falsity of his behavior and his barely concealed agitation only made the situation worse. I had never seen him like this. Mother’s face was a mask; it revealed nothing. She spoke as if I needed to clean off the day’s work before we ate.

Garak treats him and Bashir ‘drifting apart’ the same way he describes his young self being trained by Tain to go over his ‘mistakes’ — what did I do wrong? You also see it (almost most heartbreakingly to me) from Tolan when he gets sharper out of worry at the end of the scene where the agent comes to take Garak away to the Bamarren Institute: 

I was stunned. I wanted to ask more, I wanted to ask about the dedication ceremony that afternoon, but I didn’t dare. Father had that look when one of the workers didn’t get it right the first time. But what had I done wrong? 

Oh buddy. He’s so fucking confused. The only thing you’ve done wrong yet is having been born with some connection to Enabran Tain, Elim, I’m so sorry

- We were the “missing pieces”—and in order to find our place in the mosaic of civilized society, we had to be broken down and reconstructed from the bottom up.

Keep your eyes open for ‘broken down and reconstructed’ too, it will be on the final test lol

- The good captain gave me one of his bemused stares.

Sisko ILU. He’s not in this book a lot so I’ll take the chance to say it here, because I do. 

- It was explained to us that until we became disciplined in our relations with the “complementary gender” we would make better progress this way. When I asked One Tarnal how we would learn this discipline without interaction between the sexes, he blinked and mumbled something about “distractions.” When I asked what that meant I was told that I had a loose mouth and given five days of hygiene-chamber maintenance as punishment.

“You don’t know enough to ask so many questions.”

Elim 'Genuinely & Guilelessly Too Deeply Pansexual To Be Able To Follow This Logic’ Garak

- Pythas/Eight descriptions because this is a bad mutual crush situation: 

- Unfortunately, the only student left was quiet Eight Lubak, who kept completely to himself. He agreed to accompany me and quickly moved to the door. He was short and slender, and his dark eyes and long lashes made him look younger than the rest of us. He was almost too delicate for a Cardassian. I was not encouraged … but I had no choice.

‘Dark eyes and long lashes’ huh lol

I started to follow him, but he made it clear that I should stay where I was and wait. All during this, Eight was quiet and controlled—and as sure of himself as if he’d done this many times. How did he know where he was going?

. . .

His face was dark, intense with concentration; his brow ridges, which were unusually pronounced, cast shadows over his eyes. My heart began to pound when I realized what Eight was planning. These were certain to be older students, but he expressed no hesitation, no doubt.

. . .

I didn’t know then if I could ever call Eight a friend. Something about him was strange and impenetrable. But it didn’t matter. At least I knew there was one person in my section I could trust. How I had misjudged him. It was obvious that Eight had what Cardassians call a ferocious spirit—and that I could learn a great deal from him.

. . .

Eight also came from a “service” family background, and it was soon clear to everyone that he should have been designated One Lubak, a fact not lost on the actual holder of that designation who, judging from his behavior and speech, came from the highest echelons of our society.

. . .

Five was an athlete who also did well in class. I could see that he was attracted to Eight. As indeed I was. 

Big round of applause for Andrew Robinson managing to sneak the skywritten subtext into the text like this, it’s an exceedingly rare gift to get to have from the media of this time 

. . .

But by then the group had passed. What murk? Me? Have all the others been captured? Surely not Eight. I couldn’t believe that was possible.

. . .

The only member of my group who performed as well in all areas was the taciturn Eight.

. . .

The truth, of course, was that I didn’t know how to forge those kinds of bonds. I wanted to be closer to Eight, and to a lesser degree Five, who besides being one of the great Pit strategists Bamarren ever had was fair in all his dealings.

. . .

Eight remained for a few more minutes. I had the feeling that he wanted to say something more to me. Suddenly he turned and disappeared behind a barrier. The air was filled with whatever went unsaid. He was as shy as anyone I had ever known.

The boys are being useless lesbians at each other omg……… what must this whole mess look like from Pythas’ POV tho. He’s been keeping an eye on his friend/crush so he doesn’t get himself killed by running his mouth off too much to the wrong person and before he knows it the guy is embroiled in an inadvisable bisexual sandwich of betrayal and savage intrigue. I wonder if anything would have been different if Garak and Pythas had managed to actually talk to each other here.   

- Eight was the only person who deserved number One as much as I did—maybe more. My solitary behavior was not always in service to the group. Eight and I exchanged encouraging looks. The support of my one constant friend was all I wanted. I sat there and shut out everything else.

*Garak whenever someone prefers Pythas over him* understandable honestly I’d do the same thing he’s the best have a nice day

End Pythas/Eight teen crush corner

- My mind wandered. I was sure that I heard sounds of the women students gusting with the winds. Suddenly mother materialized … she looked like she was apologizing. I wanted to tell her how much I missed her, but her image dissolved and … Father took her place. I knew he was telling me something very important, but I was growing dizzy and afraid that I’d join Six on the ground … his words were carried away by the winds.

Suffering and agony

Some assorted 'Just assure me that I'm not going mad, Doctor'/Garak's ever-tenuous grip on his mental health moments:

-I don’t know why I wasn’t surprised that he knew. Instead, I was grateful; it told me I wasn’t going mad.

A recurring worry for him I’m sure it means nothing! I feel the same fellowship with him as I do with Harrow in The Locked Tomb series, which I’m sure says even less, don’t worry about it.  

And how do we even begin to rebuild a world that doesn’t exist anymore? A world that exists in my mind with the same arid bitterness as the dust in my mouth. I have never lived with despair, Doctor, the way I live with it now. It’s almost like a phantom companion that shadows me and casts doubt on whatever I do.

“Why save him?” it asks, as we remove a young boy from the rubble of a school. “You’re only keeping him alive for a future of privation and chaos. Wouldn’t it be more satisfying to join the burial unit?”

I want to scream at this phantom, to shut it up. Once I turned around suddenly and raised my hand to strike it. When I realized it wasn’t there, it was too late. Everyone in the unit was looking at me; I’m sure I must have looked like a madman. Dr. Parmak tried to send me home, but I refused—alone it’s even worse.

I’m just imagining Julian arriving on Cardassia like ‘hey yeah I got your letter and we should fuck about it right now but first of all have you told Parmak you’ve been having vivid hallucinations again because that’s very relevant medical information Garak!!!’ 

- But it was in the Pit and my work with Calyx that I suffered the most. My dreaming made me “an air man.”

“You have no grip, no focus. How can you find your strength if you can’t hold your place? Living in your dreams is like living in exile.”

*whisper* pls don't...

- As I tried to put faces on the shadowy children, they began to approach me. They became more distinct as they moved through the rain and haze. Can you believe it, Doctor? They weren’t my schoolmates; they were the Cardassian orphans from the Resettlement Center on Bajor we once visited. The orphans left after the Cardassian occupation forces withdrew. The same young girl was their leader and her lips formed the same question.

Have you come to take us home?

I jumped up. I felt the shed closing in, threatening to swallow me. I ran out into the rain and gloom.

“There is no home anymore! Can’t you see that? Look around you! It’s gone!” I screamed at them and fell to my knees in the sodden waste. They continued to stare back with that same look of fragile trust that I would somehow relieve them of their fear and bring them home. I couldn’t look at them anymore and dropped down into the muck. My despair was no longer just a voice; it was this monstrous world the evil had created, and it surrounded and overwhelmed me.

I don’t know how long I remained curled up in the mud. I felt myself being lifted and half carried, half dragged back into my shed. It was Dr. Parmak. He cleaned and changed me as best he could. He prepared a cup of Tarkalean tea, which made me think of you, Doctor. How ironic, another doctor pulls old Elim out of the muck of his despair, but this time he’s a Cardassian.

The fact that in the episode itself, Garak (in a haze of endorphins and practiced dissociation) is barely like ‘yes yes I’m sure we’re ALL very upset about the orphans. Or whatever. Well what do you want me to do about it Doctor it’s just the way of the world’ and then it just haunts him horrifically for the rest of his life forever and ever the end! Very on brand.  

Garak does seem to genuinely like and care for children in general, which makes my heart all weird and sad

Also Parmak making Tarkalean tea and Garak being like ‘oh. Like Julian :’(‘ about it my HEART. The fact that he’s a serial befriender of very patient kindhearted doctors willing to put up with his nonsense is probably the only reason he’s still alive lol. Thank u Parmak

- A difficult move under pressure against strong physical resistance from an opponent … and something would snap. A painful blow might set it off, a whispered insult, perhaps just a thought or a feeling of hopelessness, and I would suddenly lose control and lash out like a madman. I became suffused with a raging, crimson anger that poured out from some black hole somewhere deep inside me.

I feel like we see the outlines of this still in him by the time of the show — more tucked away and harnessed, but definitely still there. He’s got an instinctive Fight response a mile wide, it’s just that these days he mostly expresses it by becoming incredibly fucking MEAN when he feels threatened rather than outright physical attack. 

- And there was a soothing quality as it spoke of dry legal definitions. It acted as a balm for my bruises and bitterness. I began to feel such longings. It was like hearing music that you love when you least expect it. How I missed Mother, and working with Father in the flower beds. How I longed for home. I dropped my guard and surrendered to the voice. The tears I was determined never to shed accompanied choking waves of shame and relief, sadness and joy. I finally was able to admit to myself how unhappy I was.

*me with my magnifying glass studying the Palandine/Bashir parallels* listening to Bashir talk about Federation nonsense things presumably fills much the same niche in Garak’s psyche as this haha

- “I assure you, I am not in the habit of attacking people I don’t know in public places. We got our feet tangled in the crush, and he went down—just as, moments before, I nearly wiped out the scent display when he ignored the fact that I was standing in his path. I trust he’s not hurt.”

“I expect more from you, Garak,” Odo lectured. “We’re all under a great deal of strain.”

“As am I, Constable. Please, sit down at least. I feel like a schoolboy being disciplined by the docent.”

Odo sighed and awkwardly perched on the barstool next to mine. 

Their dynamic is. Everything to me. Also we learn later that the guy Garak picks a fight with here because he’s upset Julian is hanging out with Miles (lmao oh… buddy) isn’t just anyone or on impulse, but is one of the most hostile-to-Garaks Bajorans on the entire station with a small gang behind him, and Garak knows exactly who he is. Which lends it a certain… something. Almost an edge of very roundabout self-harm.  

“I can’t stay long. I have to finish dealing with this …”

“ … situation,” I finished. “You’re very fortunate, Odo.”

“How so?” he asked.

“These people have come to trust you. They rely upon you. You’ve made a real connection here.”

Odo merely grunted. I was careful not to mention Major Kira, knowing how reserved he was on the subject.

“Do you still want to go home?” I asked.

The question startled Odo, and for a moment the mask of official reserve dropped from his face. This was the first time I had brought up the subject since his admission to me during the “interrogation” in the Romulan warbird and Tain’s ill-fated attempt to destroy the Founders’ homeworld.

“ I … can’t say,” he replied ambiguously.

“Well, I can. There’s certainly nothing here to keep me.”

“I never told you how sorry I was about Ziyal’s death.” Odo could be quite sensitive in such matters.

“You did, actually,” I nodded. “But thank you.”

“Still, you and Dr. Bashir have created a strong bond.”

“Not really,” I answered quickly. “I’m afraid that what I have to offer has run its course. It’s certainly no match for darts.” I heard the bitterness of my tone, and so did Odo. We sat in silence for a moment.

“I understand you’ll be involved in the invasion. You must be pleased.” Odo steered us away from the heaviness that had descended.

. . . 

“When do you want to schedule your consultation?” I asked. Odo—no doubt influenced by his budding relationship with the Major—was about to branch out sartorially. But it occurred to me that Quark was the last person he wanted to know about it.

“We’ll talk,” he replied, nodding to Quark as he briskly marched back to the Promenade.

AHdorable all around. Hilarious that Odo picked up on trouble in human/lizard paradise and, with the vigor of a person who has freshly had love work out for them for the first time, going ‘not on my fucking watch you’ll talk to each other if it’s the last thing I do’. Also the sheer readiness with which he expects Julian to be Garak’s safe place. What on earth does this relationship look like to outside observers. Especially to Odo, practiced observer of humanoid folly, who completely nails Garak’s whole deal in Improbable Cause to the point that Garak lashes out defensively over it.   

- My solitary confinement was agony. The only way I got through it was to rethink all my attitudes about the Pit and the Wilderness and to focus on how I could make my stratagems more effective. Just as I had learned to do when Uncle Enabran locked me in that suffocating closet. Was this the universal torture for failure, I wondered?

Going through the whole book it is so stunningly awful that this IS the logic his inner world is shaped around for the vast majority of his life, right up until the ‘present’ part of the storyline where it’s being slowly deconstructed and reassembled. 

- I apologized to the others for disrupting their family; I explained that I had great need of this creature. Not only was Mila (as I eventually called him) the answer to my current problem, he was as important as any of the docents at Bamarren, with the possible exception of Calyx.

;_______________________________________________________________; there’s no part of this that isn’t crushing

Unlike the last time, I had preparation and an ally.

Tain really had to work at deadening Garak’s ability to form loyalty to anything else but him, because left to his own devices and natural instinct Garak will clearly packbond with ANYTHING. He’s so desperate to belong to someone and be loyal to them. 

- As the sun came up, the otherworldly beauty of the Wilderness was gradually revealed by each succeeding gradation of light. I was deeply moved by the presence of so much color in what had initially looked like a dead world to me. Beginning with a cold pale gray, the dawn flowed through a range of blues and into the softest rose and pink and then to a hot red that soon gave way to the merciless bleached bone-white of midday. I was able to see how much territory I had covered the previous night.

Can I just say how unspeakably tender it is that he takes the time to write this out in this. It serves literally no purpose in this narrative but sentiment — to be beautiful. He saw something beautiful once that moved him and he wants to share it with someone. What the fuck. 

- I became increasingly concerned; the sun was getting higher, and the overhanging ledge was now my last source of shade. At one point I took Mila out of his wrapping to check on his condition. At least that’s what I told myself. I was afraid that if I was honest and admitted that the real reason was to solicit help from a regnar, the slide into total insanity would be swift and sure. I was getting desperate.

The funniest and saddest thing I’ve ever read fhdskjfas emotional support regnar that he names after his fucking MUM hours. There are things going on with Garak no psychologist could ever hope to get to the bottom of 

- Three more members of the Furtan group were on the other side of the rock formation, but Mila had found a hidden depression that required some quiet digging to get into, and we avoided detection. We settled in and resealed the opening with sand and loose rocks. After an indeterminate period, the Furtan hunters left. As we waited for nightfall I fell into a deep sleep. 

BB!Elim and regnar Mila like ‘OUR secret hiding spot’. (Seeing how much garak both craves and thrives on getting to have that sense of ‘we’ and fellowship tho. And knowing that’s going to be not only deliberately kept from him but made psychologically impossible for him for a very long time. We should bring Tain back to life so we can kill him again and more painfully actually. Mercymorn acid jail for a thousand years time.)

- While I understood that I would have to watch my step with One Charaban, I also acknowledged that I had never been in a manlier or more attractive presence. It was like encountering an ideal that I’d only dreamed about. As I walked back to my section and accepted the congratulations of my mates, I was baffled not so much by the appearance of this new and commanding person in my life as by my recognition of his strong connection to me. But what connection?

Baby pansexual disaster at his finest

- The other day, the Doctor, Odo, and I were at the Replimat having lunch, an event that Odo, after our conversation, had taken it upon himself to organize.

. . . 

“But what about you, Doctor?” I asked, returning to the business at hand. “It seems there’s a movement afoot to have you replace Captain Sisko.” The doctor winced.

“Is this true?” Odo asked. We both looked to the doctor for confirmation. He sighed.

“There’s a group of … genetically enhanced people who feel that one of their own should be guiding the station during this emergency, and they’ve petitioned the Federation Council, but it’s Jack and his group, and no one takes them…” Exasperated, he broke off. “Garak, how did you hear about this?”

“My clientele talk and I listen.” This was also true: an idiot savant who wears his presumed genetic superiority like a badge of privilege walked into my shop and never stopped talking. Of course I encouraged him, and by the time he left I had heard all about some organized attempt to elevate Dr. Bashir to the leadership position. I could see that the doctor was upset that I’d divulged this information. Clearly this genetic business was not his favorite topic of conversation.

“Is this something we should keep an eye on?” Odo asked, studying us carefully.

“No, not at all,” the Doctor assured him. “It’s just Jack’s people. This was nearly a year ago, and I’m afraid they have too much time on their hands—like some other people I know.” He pointedly looked away from me as Odo continued to study us, trying to decode the undercurrent of this last exchange between us. No wonder he was such a capable security operative. Odo registered every change in tone and temperature and tracked the change down to its cause.

“Tell me something, Garak.” It was clear that he had found an opening for one of those deferred questions he kept on a prioritized list somewhere in his changeling head. He was still a basically shy and tactful person, especially when it came to other people’s business, but lately he’d become more openly inquisitive. I wondered if it was Major Kira’s influence.

Matchmaker/self-appointed and woefully under-equipped marriage counselor Odo……….you are Everything to me you dumb beige bitch. Garak goes a bit aggro in return when he tries to get too close to something tender but honestly odo buddy gooey friend of my heart maybe you shouldn’t barge into this particular glassware shop like a rampaging elephant huh someone’s going to get cut. Also Garak could have refrained from pressing on Julian’s bruises for attention here and we may not have had the rest of the scene, but alas. 

This must be the lunch where we deal with uncomfortable subjects.

“But if Cardassia is liberated from Dominion control …” Odo went on.

“When Cardassia is liberated,” I interrupted.

“Would you return?”

“Would you return to the Great Link?” Odo reacted with sharp annoyance to the question.It wasn’t a fair one, because although we were both exiles, we were in very different circumstances. With the humanoid shape he was still learning to live with, and his deepening relationship with Major Kira, Odo was discovering a new mode of existence, a new link. He had an alternative, however difficult the choice. I didn’t.

“Yes, I know. You can’t say.” I was sorry I had asked again. It was a question he was obviously struggling with.

The feeling Garak seems to have towards Odo in this period where like… you know when you have a friend who has a lot of the same mental health issues as you do and you see them get better and start to flourish and you are genuinely so happy for them but also feel just how deep in the muck you yourself still are with no prospect of getting out. And the way Garak consistently wistfully includes Odo’s romantic relationship to Kira when he observes how he’s coming out of his shell and why he has reasons to stay. 

“Would you return to the same Cardassia?” the doctor asked.

“What do you mean ‘same’?” But I knew perfectly well what he meant.

“To a Cardassia containing the political and social elements that made the current situation possible.”

“My dear Doctor, that’s also the Cardassia that made me possible.” I half-hoped my joke would end this conversation … but I knew better.

Julian baby please read the room and take this up some other time somewhere private maybe (and yet I understand how you wouldn’t think of that until later once Garak’s had a rare public freakout)

Absolutely heartbreaking in every way that garak seems so convinced he must have done something wrong or simply doesn’t have anything more of interest to offer julian and that’s why they’re drifting apart, when a just as likely reading from what’s actually on the page here is that julian feels he keeps getting it wrong and hesitates in case he makes the damage worse. Garak have you considered who this man is before you decided you must have fucked up and resigned yourself to the dark closet of self-isolation tain put in your head. I’m in shambles. 

Also Julian is saying a lot of very true things about Cardassia in this scene that Garak needs to hear and that he’s clearly processing all through the rest of his time on DS9 and beyond, as angry as it makes him, and the good doctor means so well but he IS being incredibly condescending, and he keeps pushing even as Garak is signaling he’d rather not go in depth on this, especially in such an exposed public setting. (This is a conversation they SHOULD be having in private, both for emotional reasons and b/c Garak’s position on this station is a lot more vulnerable than I think Julian realizes, as the hostile comments he immediately starts getting during this convo show.) I mean I guess it’s not this man’s fault he is fundamentally British and autistic what can a bitch do fdjslkfhasj (I say this with all the love in my fellow autistic heart, please do not misunderstand me here). But it’s a very Julian well-meaning but flawed thing to do — he’s focusing on the principle and intellectual side of it, but he’s not taking into account that just maybe having to deconstruct the entirety of your worldview and belief system and then feel responsible for implementing them to create a better world afterwards could be an emotionally fraught process that requires not only reasoned political debate but personal, emotional support from a friend. He isn’t getting that Garak isn’t so much categorically resistant to the basic ideas he’s setting forth — it’s that he wants to be convinced on a practical level that it could even work, because otherwise it’s just a useless pretty picture. 

(Which is a big part of their dynamic on many levels, I’ve always felt. All those times he challenges Julian’s more hopeful and idealistic world view — ultimately he doesn’t do that because he wants to break Julian’s faith down until he agrees with him, he does it because somewhere deep down Garak wants to be convinced. He wants there to be hope somewhere in the world, even if he won’t buy the quick and glorified ‘it’s easy to be a saint in paradise’ Federation version of it. And Julian’s version isn’t that, in the end; it gets tested again and again and he really, genuinely means it, even when it’s hard. Which is one of the most healing things about his presence in Garak’s life overall.) 

Ironically I also think Julian believes so much in Garak and his capabilities that it simply doesn’t occur to him that Garak as a private person might just be like. Too scared and overwhelmed to even contemplate this, at least until Garak is upset enough that he can’t gracefully hide it. (“With your background and experience, Garak, I’m certain that you could serve as a liaison between a new Cardassian government and the Federation.” The Doctor paused and waited for a response. None was forthcoming. “I once suggested that you visit Earth as a member of the Cardassian government-in-exile….” oh so no biggie then Julian that sounds easy and painless and I’m surprised no one has thought to do this yet, this Obsidian Order wilted leftover sandwich of a guy is surely going to be welcomed with open arms wherever he goes among his people fhsdakjfas!)

I feel like this is one of Julian’s less sympathetic traits that he would probably feel such intense self-loathing about once he realized it’s one he shares with his father — this instinct to try to shape someone into a ‘better’ version of themselves. I think Julian’s version of this primarily comes from a much, MUCH kinder place than in his father; he has the will and ability to see the best in the world and in people, and he can’t help but want them to live up to that once he’s seen it. He fundamentally believes people can be better, can be good, when given the help and tools they need, and that’s such a beautiful part of him. BUT along with that there is also a danger of that tipping over into becoming paternalistic and controlling, of overly privileging the ideal you see over the person who is actually there right now, and trying to forcibly change the one into the other ‘for them’.  

Considering Garak’s past experiences of being shaped and controlled by someone else’s idea of what he should be, I’m if anything surprised he doesn’t react worse to this, honestly! I think it speaks to the basic trust and goodness that exists between them that he doesn’t. Julian is clumsy but not malicious, and even here Garak does recognize that on some deep level.   

(Probably because he’s also been touched by Julian at his best, in The Wire — where his support and acceptance is absolute and unconditional, free of the instinct to control anything.)

My voice had risen to an uncharacteristic pitch. It was still ringing in my ears as the Doctor stared at me as if he were studying a baffling microbe. I, too, was baffled. I had no idea where this outburst came from. I know that a distance has widened between us during the past year or so and I know that the holosuite program incident and the revelations of his genetic enhancement are the symptoms of this distance rather than the cause. It’s only natural—we’re very different people. I also know that he had only the best intentions in suggesting that I use the Federation model in order to influence the future of Cardassia. Misguided, yes, and somewhat patronizing and arrogant, but hardly sufficient to elicit this embarrassing and public loss of control.

I mumbled some sad excuse which the good Doctor and Odo were kind enough not to challenge and left the Replimat to return to my shop. As I passed Quark’s I caught his eye and we nodded. Why I included him in my outburst also puzzled me; I rather admire his industry and resourcefulness. I especially admire the way he consistently bends Federation rules so that they work for him.

That’s such a fair evaluation of Bashir’s intentions and personality honestly. Even this upset and feeling that distance between them, Garak still has complete trust in the Doctor’s basic good intentions and nature. (Are you really such very different people at the end of the day, though, Elim. Should the genetic enhancement arc maybe be telling you something here.)

Also such a hilarious element of the Garak-Quark relationship.’Sorry to get you caught up in the crossfire bro I’ve never thought of you as anything but an avaricious opportunist (complimentary)’  

What is important is that I feel that I am necessary, that I function with all my faculties in the service of a greater cause. And while I wait for this invasion, is making Odo more attractive to Major Kira a greater cause?

It is in fact nothing but the greatest cause Garak. Getting Kira happily lovingly laid is priority one at all times. 

- I had no real friends to speak of, and told myself that loneliness was the price I had to pay for success. I considered the games and behavior of my mates to be childish, and that any unnecessary interaction would only distract me from my work. The truth, of course, was that I didn’t know how to forge those kinds of bonds. I wanted to be closer to Eight, and to a lesser degree Five, who besides being one of the great Pit strategists Bamarren ever had was fair in all his dealings.

(I feel like this whole part is going to hit Julian in some kind of way lmao)

Literally just. Put me in a little box on the bottom of the ocean and leave me there forever I can’t go on. Also he’s SUCH a clever-but-socially-inept teenager in this part around the people in his group he doesn’t like fhdkjsa. Ugh they’re all so annoying and fake just leave me alone *eyeroll emoji* I didn’t want to be included in their idiotic conversation bb elim… I would die for your lightly insufferable but entertainingly snarky teenage butt in a way that actually makes me feel more kindly towards my own inner idiot 16 year old.

Also it’s no wonder he’s so out to sea when it comes to interacting with his peers — by all accounts he didn’t play much with other kids as a child and then he’s dropped straight into a social Lord of the Flies piranha tank shot through with Class Shit. 

Inspired by my guide Mila, I would experiment at withdrawing my presence when I had to remain in the same room with people I didn’t like.

Honing his future customer service worker smile 

Here follow some Bamarren and beyond observations I’ve elected to call ‘Sex Stuff’:  

- Oh ok so garak gets some sexual Thing out of being beaten to a pulp after mouthing off through the same mechanism that made spanking known as the ‘English Vice’ across Europe when that was the go-to punishment in British boarding schools. I see. Many things are revealed to me

I looked from the pale, frozen face of Three to the others. They all looked like statues commemorating fear. And I was pleased. I realized at that moment that they were in my control, and that I would no longer have any trouble with them. Especially Three. I felt the power like a drug surging through my system.

And then, of course, the other side of the masochism/sadism scale smoothly coming in, he contains those multitudes. In Garak’s defense idk if you could go through a psychosexual development that wasn’t deeply, deeply weird in this sort of environment 

“What do you want me to do?” I was trembling as if my body were chilled.

Well, I mean. You know fhkdsjha. And he’s rewarded with the first non-aggressive physical contact he’s had here, you say. (For reference he’s talking to Barkan, of the aforementioned ‘manliest presence’.) I’m sure this didn’t awaken anything in him or anything.

“Elim, why do you think we have these ridges?” She stroked the scalloped cords of cartilege and bone that ran along her neck and down her shoulders with a delicacy that stopped my breath. The energy had turned into molten liquid that was now flowing into my groin. The rest of the world was swallowed by complete darkness and I was back inside the tunnel.

“Because … we do,” I replied stupidly.

Fhdjskfhsdjkfhadskjfhas he’s so easy fdsjkfhas. And what a one-two punch of sexual confusion he got there. That one afternoon did irreparable damage to the libidinous development of this poor man and now he has to live like this.

For the second time tonight I was spellbound by another’s passion. In very different ways, Charaban and Palandine held me in their orbit, like powerful suns.

I was learning something new about myself—an emerging desire for power, but a power that had less to do with mastery over others than it did with connecting to them. The way I felt the connection to Charaban … and especially to Palandine.

And, I’m so sorry to have to break it to you like this, your biodad. I’m sorry Elim you’ve got something truly unfortunately Freudian going on here. It’s not your fault.  

“I love the Blind Moon,” Charaban said softly.

“Why is it called that?” I asked, deeply relieved by the mysterious change that had come over us.

“It’s the time for lovers’ assignations,” Palandine answered. “The moon will give them enough light to meet, but not so much for them to be discovered.”

“So if you and Elim were true lovers I wouldn’t have been able to find you,” Charaban teased.

“That’s right, Barkan,” she said with a direct look. I shifted position in the ensuing silence and tried to hide my disappointment with Palandine’s reply, but at the same time, the pleasure I felt in the company of these two people kept growing.

“See?” Palandine suddenly addressed me. “You can do it.”

“What?” I was startled by her delighted burst.

“Smile. Look at that, Barkan. Wouldn’t you tell someone with that smile everything he wanted to know?” she demanded.

“The first time I met him—well, the second…” he corrected himself, “he had a smile that I wanted to wipe off his face.” He was referring to that early morning in front of the Central Gate.

“But it wasn’t that smile,” Palandine insisted.

“No,” he conceded. “Definitely not that one.” And the truth was that I could feel this smile throughout my entire body.

Noooo this is about to go so wrong…it’s all fun and games and bisexual poetry recitation under the blind moon until someone gets stabbed in the back like the Caesar (well caesar notably got stabbed from many many directions but you see what I’m trying to get at here)

- [The Klingon] looked up, and I immediately knew two things about him: he was inebriated beyond reason and he was one of their shock troopers, a callused veteran of hand-to-hand combat. I took a deep breath; as dolts go he was quite impressive. My spirits were suddenly and immeasurably lifted.

“You spoonhead!” he growled at me. I hated that word.

“And you … a great warrior who brings down dabo girls with a single blow,” He looked at me trying to decide if I had insulted or complimented him.

“P’tak!” I shouted, “I mean that you’re the biggest coward in the Klingon Empire,” He released the dabo girl, and as he moved to the narrow stairway I thought that he was also the biggest Klingon in the Empire.

I looked for my advantage. This was not an equal match, and my gigantic friend was in the full flush of a berserker blood lust. I sighed. I’m too old for this, I thought. 

. . .

“Get security, Chief, and tell them to prepare the biggest cell they have … or a smaller coffin for me,” I said as I moved into the alcove and squeezed through the opening where the panel had been. 

 Listen I would apologize for including this here but he’s clearly getting off on this and I couldn’t do anything about it if I wanted to. 

I cannot convey just how much my already intense enjoyment of canon is enriched by the knowledge that Garak is up to these kinds of hijinks constantly in the background when the camera isn’t on him. In his defense he was left unsupervised. O’Brien’s fond mildly exasperated help is just the cherry on top. ‘Well I GUESS Julian would be upset if I let you get beaten to death by a drunk Klingon so fine I’ve got your back’  

(I made for the upper Promenade—and wondered if Calyx might be enjoying this spectacle from wherever he was. ;______; I like how much of an impact Calyx has on his development, considering how briefly he was actually in his life. Plus: Calyx; the Aiglamene of Bamarren? Locked Tomb/DS9 fandom overlap people, Let’s Discuss.) 

“Help me,” he croaked. I was touched by the giant’s childlike surrender. I knew the feeling well.

“I will,” I replied and immediately wondered why I had agreed. I’m getting soft, I thought. 

The greatest joy to me of a lot of this is, like… idk if these are all exactly the things that happened at every turn. In fact I’d say they very likely aren’t, Garak’s entire character taken into consideration. But they are certainly the things he wants someone — someone he trusts as far as he knows how, someone he earnestly wants to be closer to than anyone else, and also wants to see all of him — to know about him, to share in. This could just have easily been a story he told Julian in person over lunch to make him laugh. It’s silly and frivolous and fun, and as much at his own expense as a ludicrous person as to show off. To a true lying liar who lies connoisseur, unreliable narration tells more than it obscures etc. lol  

- (About Barkan) It was the appearance of warmth that made his charm so attractive. A part of me wanted to tell him everything, to challenge the duplicity of his negative evaluation, but the clarity I found in the Lower Prefect’s office was still with me. Looking at him, I was reminded how Palandine had taught me to smile when I asked questions.

Apart from Pythas, who gets his own little twink corner, most of the people Garak is attracted to throughout this are his height or taller and slender but athletic. I’m just saying that when he spotted Julian in the Replimat for the first time he really saw a young man with the face of an angel who is exactly his type fhdjskah maybe he should have seen this coming for himself. Too high on endorphins and hubris to think this would awaken anything in him irrevocably and now he’s stuck with the consequences.  

Why? I asked myself. Why?! For the life of me I could not understand why it was important to her that I respond. Why should she—so beautiful, so alive—be disappointed if I didn’t return her … what? What did she want from me? Friendship? Why me?

I was in turmoil. Her grace and manner, the way she tilted her head and half smiled when she listened, as if everything amused her … it was like a forbidden dream of the unattainable. The attraction was painful because I instinctively knew that while my life would be simpler and more controllable without her, it would also be as drab as my Bamarren uniform.

. . . 

“Are you making fun of me?” It was at that moment, when I asked the question, that I realized just how afraid I was of being the object of her ridicule. She stopped laughing and for the first time she was speechless. 

Losing my entire fucking MIND about how Garak is basically taking Palandine’s place when he approaches Julian at first. Odo and Garak ‘I love you so much I want to become you because it’s the only way I can imagine really being close to you’ handshake meme

Sex stuff end. For now.

I was about to leave when Odo asked about the designs for his “new” sartorial look. I could see that he was masking his concern, so I assured him that the sketches were some of my finest creations, and would be ready within the week. He grunted his thanks and I stepped out onto the Promenade. Love does make fools of us all.

I’m clawing at my face with emotion. Odo… And Garak did finish those sketches even after his moment of existential ennui over them before. 

- Please for the love of god stop putting Six out in the merciless sun T_____T how many times must a poor lil nerd boy pass out before he can rest in the sand etc. 

- “It’s not every evening we find Barkan Lokar strolling with a murk through the Grounds.”

“Lokar? My father buried the Legate, Turat Lokar,” I said without thinking.

“Did your father kill him?” Palandine joked. But I didn’t laugh. The Lokars were a legendary family, and the old man’s funeral was the largest I had ever seen.

Why is this so funny. Garak you are so fucking weird. ‘Oh yeah I know that guy my dad did the flower arrangements for his funeral’ 

- A spirited dabo game involving several Klingons and a serious-looking dabo girl I hadn’t seen before caught my attention. If Quark had been present he’d be giving her one of his congeniality lectures. I truly sympathize with the young woman; if I had to spend all day with these drunken dolts….

Literally so hilarious that’s his first thought. First impulse: ‘surrounded by idiots’ solidarity. Garak what were you doing day drinking at the devil’s sacrament/quarks at midday girl…

- Rom soon appeared with a small container of kanar. He was wearing an outfit I had made for him.

“H-here you are, Garak. I hope you enjoy it.” Ever the gracious host.

“Thank you, Rom. And please, try not to let your collar lie there like a dead targ.” I adjusted the offending fabric, and Rom sweetly tolerated my fussing.

I’m fucking crying what the HELL. Surprise wholesome dynamic that keeps going through the whole narrative. Garak just uncomplicatedly likes and appreciates Rom, with no particular ulterior motive. Plus: fussing is also how we see Mila express affection, like mother like son.   

- I realized as I took a sip of my drink that I was in a dangerous mood. Drinking in the middle of the day. The Doctor would be quite disappointed with me. When I’m unable to immerse myself in work my mind becomes occupied by an invading army of thoughts intent upon conquering all equilibrium and peace. Kanar is a valuable if unreliable weapon I employ against this army. The pills the Doctor gives me are a poor substitute.

Julian, severely unimpressed: uh-huh

‘Would Julian want me to do this to myself? No. However he’s too busy playing soldiers with O’Brien to tell me so, apparently, so that can’t stop me.’ You petty lil bitch garak (affectionate)

The fact that he’s doing the The Little Julian Who Lives In My Head thing already here, where the real Julian is actually around but not engaged with him. I’m so sad. He’s managed to discover shrimp colour spectrums of loneliness and pining.  

- Ever since the Romulan business and Captain Sisko’s near breakdown (outside of the Doctor, whom I told shortly after the incident, no one knows about this, but one recognizes the symptoms), I’ve been obsessed with memories of Bamarren. 

The fact that he tells Julian about that. Presumably partly in a practical way to make sure Sisko doesn’t fall to pieces completely but he doesn’t seem to have any shame about it or expect Bashir to react too badly over it either. The trust…

- I must admit that I was quite taken aback. Evidently there is honor among dolts.

I’m genuinely impressed by how enjoyable it is in this book to be party to Garak’s inner voice. It’s so fun in here, among all the horrors. 

- Nine approached me as I sat alone in our quarters reading the first part of Cylon Pareg’s Eternal Stranger, a saga spanning several generations of a Cardassian family during the early and middle Union.

*whisper of agonized affection* between this and his happy place being studying wormhole theory… he’s such a little nerd. 

Nine swallowed again, an even more bitter taste, and marched off to a life of diminishing returns.

LMAO burn. And, as we shall see, not necessarily inaccurate.  

- As I walked away I heard the custodian ask Tarnal what it was I had done to deserve this punishment.

“Nobody told me. But I know he’s got a mouth on him,” Tarnal replied.

The more things change I guess fdhsakja. Known across the school for being a) a sneaky lil bastard and b) never ever shutting the fuck up when he really really should 

- “And you have to use that wonderful smile of yours more often, Elim.”

“What’s that got to do with listening?” That was the subject, and Palandine had typically made a jump in logic I couldn’t follow. She also forgot that I was a Cardassian male and smiling was not one of our strong features.

“If they feel comfortable with you, people will tell you stories about themselves that will reveal their deepest secrets.”

“But what if the stories aren’t true?” I challenged. “I could smile till my cheeks hurt, and you could tell me any kind of story you wanted—and what would I know about you except what you invented?”

“You would know, if you were truly listening, the kind of story I use to define myself,” she asserted.

“But it’s not the truth!” I maintained.

“Why not? Because it’s not what you believe? Or it doesn’t fit a definition of the truth that someone taught you? Look at people, Elim.” Palandine gestured as if the enclosure were filled with people. “Observe them. The way they walk and talk, the way they hold themselves and eat their meals. That’s what they believe about themselves. Is it the ‘truth’? Are they really that way? I don’t know. Perhaps it is a lie. But what people lie about the most are themselves, and these lies become the stories they believe and want to tell you.”

“As long as I’m smiling,” I mumbled.

. . . 

“Truth, as we’ve learned to define it, is not only overrated,” she went on with a controlled passion, “it’s designed to keep people in the dark.”

This last statement stopped me.

“You mean the way we’ve been taught?” I asked.

“Of course.”

“What about our government?”

“They tell us the stories that we need to know in order to be good citizens,” she replied carefully.

“They don’t tell us the truth, is what you’re saying,” I concluded.

“There you go again. They tell us their truth, Elim, and we are here to learn how to listen.”

. . . 

“Let the ones without power scowl and make fierce faces.You smile. It’s an invitation to connect with another person. And once the invitation is accepted, relax and listen … you’ll come to know as much as you’ll ever need to about that person,” she said with a smile that I greedily accepted.

“You would know, if you were truly listening, the kind of story I use to define myself,” she asserted. 

“But it’s not the truth!” I maintained.

“Why not?” 

SO when I was saying he’s taking Palandine’s place in this dynamic with Julian early on I was not kidding and I was not wrong hahaha. And it’s also what this entire book is, in the end. Trusting Julian to ‘truly listen’ to the story under the stories is maybe the biggest show of trust and vulnerability Garak could ever extend to anyone. Extremely The Wire-core once more.

The idea that tiny Garak was too outwardly glum and serious is. Amazing and brainbreaking. People feeling uncomfortable under his gaze b/c he’ll just like scowl distrustfully at them. Palandine I don’t know if you fixed him or made him worse but you certainly did something fundamental to him and committed him to the bit and for that I cannot thank you enough

- I no longer had Palandine to myself—but surprisingly, I didn’t mind, in fact I was pleased that Charaban was here. His stillness, like everything else about him, had grace and strength. I sneaked another look in his direction and marveled that this was the same person I had first encountered in the storeroom. He returned my look, and in the next few moments a bond grew between us that I had never thought possible. 

You know if Barkan was really smart or had the capacity for extended self-control he would have just kept stringing Garak along as the third in his disastrous marriage. Garak is used to subsisting on the merest scraps of affection and consideration, you’d barely even have to feed him. (Ala Daisuke Jigen with many an evil ex, for the Lupinheads out there lol) A threesome here and there and maybe gently stroking his hair afterwards and you’d have him for life, probably. Alas or perhaps thankfully Barkan is ultimately just an asshole and not that smart. 

- A Bolian client came down the steps outside the door and was about to enter the shop, but for some reason he stopped at the threshold. He looked at us, turned, and went back the way he came.

LMAO that guy was like ‘something really fraught and homosexual is going on here and that is frankly none of my business, as you were gentlemen don’t mind me.’ A real ally and a bro.  

“I’m keeping you from your business.” Bashir stood up. “I won’t take up any more of your time.”

“I’m pleased you stopped by.” I was about to escort him to the door.

“No, you’re not,” he said quietly.

“Excuse me?”

“Garak, I come from a culture that has perfected the ‘stiff upper lip,’” he explained with the same faint smile.

“What does that mean?” It was a genuine question; there was a change in his attitude.

“It means that we never complain, never admit to our feelings, never ask for help. It’s just not done,” Bashir explained. “And those people who lack character’ and insist on airing their needs—especially in public—are subject to ridicule… and worse. Does this sound familiar?”

“Perhaps,” I replied softly.

“But I’m also a doctor, Garak. And I know which group of people suffers the most. I really won’t take up any more of your time.” He extended his hand, which he rarely did, and I took it. “Thank you for the tea.” He turned and went out the door.

I stood there for a long moment, deeply upset. I felt trapped within myself, knowing what I had to do to get out but unable even to begin. Yes, Doctor, it does sound familiar. But as to the question of which group suffers the most…

. . . 

After Charaban’s betrayal I became as withdrawn and solitary as I had been when I first came to the Institute. I tried to spend time with Palandine, but it never quite worked out; between her regular duties and the recruitment and planning for the female Competition, she had little time for anything else. But there was something else, a distance that had crept between us that I didn’t understand. I felt ashamed, that somehow I had failed and it was my fault, but I found it difficult to discuss. This was probably the loneliest I had ever been.

1) Going NUTS over the fact that these are separated by ONE paragraph. Andy Robinson staring directly into the camera making parallels between the main love interests in this book like ‘Am I making myself clear here. Do you get it yet’. Also really interesting to make this relationship pattern a, well, pattern in Garak’s life, and not a unique element of his and Bashir’s thing (which Doylistically was basically a byproduct of cowardly 90s standards for tv writing more than anything else lol)

2) But there was something else, a distance that had crept between us that I didn’t understand. I felt ashamed, that somehow I had failed and it was my fault, but I found it difficult to discuss. This was probably the loneliest I had ever been.

 The Palandine/Bashir parallel train barrels on, scoring a deep trail of heartache into my soul. Also in that case it’s so sad because he really hasn’t done anything wrong or anything to be ashamed of, Barkan and Palandine are the ones who fucked him over :’( 

3) I stood there for a long moment, deeply upset. I felt trapped within myself, knowing what I had to do to get out but unable even to begin. + Tolan’s grief at seeing Garak after Bamorren: “He’s hard, Mila,” Father said. . . . “But to the point where he’s unreachable?” Father asked. “Where nothing penetrates? How can he express even his basic needs if he’s trapped inside a shell?” + Just as I had learned to do when Uncle Enabran locked me in that suffocating closet. Was this the universal torture for failure, I wondered?...........................................................................

4) More proof to my eyes that Julian’s side of this whole thing seems to be more about thinking Garak doesn’t actually want him to be there. He doesn’t think he’s welcome here or that he’ll be able to help more than he hurts with whatever’s going on for him. ‘I really won’t take up any more of your time’ AUGH 

Garak buddy… every time he tries to get closer to you or extend some care, you bristle like a hedgehog even though you’re trying to do it in as polite and decent a way as possible — what is the poor guy supposed to think beyond a certain point lmao. (Though on the hopeful/beautiful side… what is this entire book but Garak actually taking the advice/suggestion Bashir gives in this scene to reexperience his past and put it in context — not in the holosuites, but in his own way by writing it all out in a way that makes sense to his Cardassian brain and then sharing that with Julian directly. Like. The last line of the book is ‘You’re always welcome, Doctor’. Elim ‘I will become emotionally healthy enough to ask Julian to come visit with an open heart if it fucking kills me’ Garak)  

I’m so soft for how careful they both are with each other in this scene, though. Even in this difficult place where there’s stuff they don’t understand about each other and they are having difficulty connecting for… several reasons, they are trying so so hard to be good to each other. Which is why I think they have every chance of working out brilliantly long-term; once you’ve got a mutual respect, willingness to keep working to understand and communicate with each other even when it’s difficult, and that fundamental ‘I don’t want to hurt you’ good faith in a relationship you’re a good chunk of the way there, from what I have observed. 

Julian cares that Garak was upset, much more than he cares about being right, and this time he shows it in a more private setting where Garak can take it in. They’re trying!  

5) The implication in But as to the question of which group suffers the most… that Garak also realizes how much he’s hurting Julian by not being able to let him in…

Most of all the fact that Bashir in this scene is like ‘Listen Garak I get emotional repression. I’m literally British.’ is one of the funniest things that happen in the whole book. To me. (I’m Norwegian, culturally this has. Some overlap with my experience, let’s say lol) 

- Six had long since gone home. He wanted to succeed so badly, but his body couldn’t withstand the constant assault of the training. I’m sure he found an academic situation. 

Oh thank GOD. Genuinely so relieved to hear this. This is how many times a nerd boy must pass out before he rests in the sand and gets to go to normal university instead of murderschool, the question is finally answered.  

- Tain has shown up again and I want to throw rocks at him until he goes away. And I know he won’t. 

- My shed has become somewhat more bearable, but the clutter and confinement of the interior space requires that I leave the door open. To keep myself busy when I’m not working with the med unit, Doctor, I am engaged in a project I must tell you about. It baffles me. Perhaps you can tell me if I’m losing my mind altogether.

. . . 

[Parmak] turned to me with the strangest expression on his face—and looked me directly in the eyes for the first time.

AUGH. (Plus, the fact that Parmak consistently calls him ‘Elim’.)

But what baffles me, Doctor, is that I attach no meaning to what I’m doing here. I’m just doing it because I need to. And to be truthful, I don’t see this as a memorial at all. On the contrary—if I could, I’d singlehandedly rebuild this city myself, piece by piece. I stood here watching Parmak’s blood dry on this pile of rubble, engulfed by a feeling of loss and utter mystification as to what these piles mean.

Just assure me that I’m not going mad, Doctor.

This whole section is the biggest mood and I’ve rarely felt closer to a fictional character haha. His quietly dissociated tired bemusement both with himself and what he’s doing and Parmak’s reaction is… yeah that’s exactly what that feels like. And ‘Just assure me that I’m not going mad, Doctor’ has done irreparable damage to my psyche, I’m going to be thinking about this forever

- Palandine gestured that she would deal with me and sent the mate on her way.

“So what did you use me for?” I asked.

“What do we ever use each other for?” she replied without hesitation.

“Answering a question with a question is an old trick, Palandine.”

“No trick. I needed a friend.”

“And you don’t need a friend now” I hated the tone that was creeping into my voice.

“It’s complicated, Elim.”

I was afraid to ask why.

“What did you use me for?” she asked.

The question truly baffled me. I only wanted her love. Was that using her? I would gladly have given mine in return.

Still gnawing on concrete over Garak partially reenacting Palandine’s way of approaching him with Bashir in the beginning. At that point he also needed a friend (and he needed someone to run to Sisko like ‘THE SPY TALKED TO ME :D’ to deliver intel through so he was also using him lol.) The way Garak picks up traits from the people he loves like he’s doing the soul version of Odo’s shapeshifting-as-closeness thing because it’s the only way he knows. 

- “So it’s Eight,” he said, dismissing me from his world.

“I don’t think you understand, Barkan….” Palandine began to say.

“It’s not necessary that he understand,” I dismissed him from my world.

Barkan… you did not understand what you were doing, getting into an emotionally and sexually charged petty-off with this man. RIP your stupid ass I guess lmao

“I wanted to tell you. But when I realized … I didn’t want to hurt you,” she said with a gentleness that rankled me.

“I’m not hurt. Neither one of you can hurt me. I wish you a successful… partnership.”

Palandine is so interesting!!!! And like here’s one of the things that I think make a big difference in Garak’s relationship with Palandine vs. his relationship with Julian — who tells him exactly the same thing in ‘The Wire’, after all! (I don’t want to hurt you) Because Palandine doesn’t really mean it, does she? She doesn’t mean ‘I don’t want you to be hurting, I want to protect you from being harmed’, she means ‘I didn’t want to be the thing that hurt you; I didn’t want to be faced with your hurt’, while she is doing things that will inevitably hurt him. I think there is genuine affection and care on her side, but they’re in such a fucked up, brutal world and they’re so young. 

‘I’m not hurt. Who’s hurt’ says teen crying quiet tears of blood as his world falls to pieces 

“I love him, Elim. And I’m also ambitious. I want what he wants. You’ll understand this when you find someone to share your….”

Not me wondering how much of this has echoes to Mila’s relationship to Tain and how that’s part of what Garak reacts to — that survival mechanism of ‘I want what he wants’, subsuming and submitting yourself completely. Which of course is what a Cardassian is supposed to do to the state, and that Garak also does with Tain for the vast majority of both of their lives. The worst part is that Palandine really had some reason to hope for more — she and Barkan start out in a more equal position than it’s implied Mila and Tain ever did, that’s always framed as an inter-class thing, and while Palandine’s family situation is not as grand as Barkan’s it doesn’t seem like it crosses the service class/ruling class barrier. But the structure of the state imposed on every level of society right down to the most intimate and personal areas of life is going to crush the life out of that hope real fast. I’m sorry girl. Wanting to have a fighting chance in this world isn’t the worst sin anyone’s committed and tbf you are like a teen by all accounts

- “My name is Elim Garak. I don’t know where I’m being sent, but I hope you’ll remember me as your friend.”

“When I was told today that I was One Lubak, I was honored… and afraid that I’d lose you as a friend. Thank you. My name is Pythas Lok.”

Neither one of us ever took our eyes off Mila, who was still trying to blend into his surroundings.

Crying gently into my cereal

Garak ‘I wasn’t sure I could ever call him a friend’ vs. Pythas ‘Afraid that I’d lose you as a friend’

Something powerful was stirring deep inside me, and I began to shake. Mila snapped his head to the side, the way he does when he senses light or heat change. Convulsive waves pushed up from my center and tears filled my eyes, blinding me. I had absolutely no control over what was happening to me. By the time the convulsions subsided and my eyes cleared, Mila had disappeared into the rock-and-sand home he came from. 

Absolutely sobbing my eyes out into my cereal 

Spoiler warning: Garak having to go somewhere to be alone after something calamitous happens in his life because that’s the only way he can cry is a theme that will reemerge later and do unspeakable emotional damage to me personally haha

As I hiked back to the Institute, I had the thought that maybe somebody was doing the same thing for me and bringing me back home.

No baby you see someone is doing the exact opposite of this to you right now because you have a basic goodness and capacity for real honest love that Tain doesn’t and he’ll never in a million years set you free just because he loves you and it’s the right thing for you 

- And Jadzia is gone. The station is a sadder and grayer place without her. I’m surprised at how keenly I feel her absence. Even though I know that her symbiont has been “joined” with another person … well, it’s not the same, is it? Indeed, knowing that Jadzia’s personality is somehow contained along with several others within this other person, I wonder how I would react if we were ever to meet.

:(

The doctor has reminded me that these are personal choices, and it’s not for us to judge how one chooses to mourn. Quite so. Who can even begin to understand another’s grief? “Do you judge people by the clothes they ask you to make?” the doctor asked once. I bit back my response, but the point was well taken.

:’) little soul-healing brush of Julian kindness time 

- “What does Tir Remara want with you?” Colonel Kira demanded, ignoring my offer of tea. Immediately an entire picture formed in my head of the scenario her abrupt question suggested: Tir Remara—a spy, perhaps even a changeling, preying upon a lonely Cardassian who was working for the Federation and engaged in top-secret work.

“She wants to have my children,” I replied with a serious look.

“You can’t be serious,” she managed.

“I’m not. Now do you want this tea or not?”

Kira should just have strangled you all those times she wanted to you snarky asshole fhdskja

[ofhouseadama]

Not 2 be insane but I Am Looking at the idea you posted abt Garak going a bit feral over Julian being pregnant and associated scent changes…I would like to see to see it.meme. Perhaps with Julian getting it handed to him in bed while Garak refuses to let him do an ounce of the work because it’s his Right to be a spoiled pillow princess when he’s with child, “how Dare you exert yourself in this condition, Doctor?!”

I have never been mentally well literally a single day in my life. There is no litmus test on sanity to enter my askbox. Fear not, humble brethren. Anyway it's been a chill Saturday and we've run all our errands and done all our chores and I took a two hour bath in which I drank two rose ciders so like, let's hop to it.

I think there is absolutely a cultural norm on Cardassia that an expectant parent is supposed to rest and be nurtured and be taken care of and be Safe and Preparing for the Birth which is supposed to be a Grand Event unless it is an aberration and sin against society because the child was conceived and/or born outside the marriage bed. I think this is also deeply, DEEPLY tinged by class expectations and classism -- ie, ruling class and middle/professional class pregnant people are both afforded this luxury but service class pregnant people are not. Service class folk are expected to work all through their pregnancies, deliver a baby, and get right back to work. They are then called bad parents because they can't afford to take time off with the newborn baby, and the baby probably gets handed off to a grandparent or auntie or uncle or sibling to be cared for. And if that baby is a bastard, or the birthing parent dies in childbirth and no other parent can be found? Good fucking luck, kid. To the Center for Unconnected Children for you. Hope you stand out and get a nice apprenticeship after the age of emergence on your thirteenth birthday or join the military or get scouted by the Obsidian Order because they know you are powerless and easily exploited.

And so you have, in one corner, the bastard orphan Elim Garak who was raised by a housekeeper as a foundling in the basement of the household of the most notorious monster of the Alpha Quadrant, never once allowed to call his parents his parents, who has now been raised up to the uppermost echelons of the Cardassian government in a time where they desperately need to repopulate the planet. And in the other corner you have Julian Bashir, whose augmentations have concealed every single symptom of pregnancy besides some mild fatigue and bloating. He doesn't even know he's pregnant until Starfleet sends out a notice to all CMOs that there was a bad batch of birth control shots, and the vaccine that was supposed to stop his body from producing the hCG necessary to sustain a pregnancy uh... did not do that. Has not been doing that for several months now.

(In the middle of a night shift at the hodge-podge tent city and prefab complex that's serving as a hospital in the ruins of the Imperial Plaza, Julian and two other human aid workers find themselves cursing as two blue lines appear very rapidly on their pregnancy tests. The other two are quickly shuttled off world to obtain abortions to head off an international incident. Julian starts running every genetic sequencing model he can using the baby's DNA already present in his blood. He discovers three things: that he's approximately fourteen weeks along, that he's going to have to engineer this baby's entire immune system, and that the baby is a girl.

In what remains of Tain's mansion, some half mile away, Garak suddenly realizes why he's been furiously nesting for the past three months and has a panic attack about how he's going to tell Julian the news.)

As soon as the Cardassian hospital administrator find out the happy news, she asks two questions that are not actually questions: when is the wedding, and how much time off would Julian like to rest before returning on light duty for the rest of the pregnancy? Julian protests that he's the Starfleet liaison to what remains of the Cardassian Ministry of Health, and she reminds him that as soon ask Garak does the Right Thing and gets him down to Ministry of Vital Records, Julian will become a Cardassian citizen and therefore under her purview to order around as she wishes. It comes very close, but she does not actually have to call Garak to throw very gently lift Julian up over his shoulder to physically remove him from the hospital.

But it's a very close call.

Julian spends about a week in bed propped up on five different pillows because he genuinely is exhausted, while Garak has about fourteen different panic attacks about Cultural Expectations and if Julian is going to want to marry him and how they are going to provide for this child when Tain's mansion still has booby traps in every dark corner and they still can't get wheat to grow and everyone's eating rations and what if Section 31 decides it has a vested interest in the genetic heir to an illegal augment and the biological son of Enabran Tain.

Kira shows up because on a technicality, she still is Julian's CO and saw the update to his medical files and is prepared to hold either of them at gunpoint to make this wedding happen. The child may be conceived and born in the same bed, but it's a piece of paper that makes it a marriage bed! Julian, befuddled, says he didn't realize he needed asking. He just assumed it was going to happen once he could stay awake for more than four hours at a time. Garak has a fifteenth panic attack. Kira puts her gun away.

Anyway this is a very long way to say that once Julian's libido resurrects itself with a fucking vengeance after the first trimester exhaustion, he is not allowed to exert himself at all and finds out that Garak's knowledge of nerve endings and pressure points translates very well to massage. Among other things.

[abigailnussbaum]

How to do Garak/Bashir in Canon DS9

Yesterday there was a fun tweet asking people how they would remake DS9 if they were given the option today.

Which led to some fun discussions (you can see my answers here). Obviously one thing that pretty much everyone said was “canon Garak/Bashir”. That’s generally considered one of the show’s big missed opportunities, with both Andrew J. Robinson and some of the show’s producers expressing regret over never having gone there. But it did get me thinking: how would you tell this sort of story? Because look, it’s one thing to write Garak/Bashir in fanfic, filling in gaps in the canon or changing the entire tone of the story to suit your ‘ship. But if you’re retelling DS9 along basically the same lines - the end of the Cardassian occupation, the discovery of the wormhole, the Jem’hadar, the Dominion, the war with Cardassia - and with the personalities of the characters and the tone of the show largely unchanged, how do you fit Garak/Bashir into that story?

There are some obvious issues with trying to work this ship into the show’s story and overall tone. For one thing, Bashir is a Starfleet officer. We like to make fun of his early, annoying incarnation, but even in that form he is clearly a decent, principled man with strong values. It’s one thing to flirt (literally or figuratively) with a mysterious, sexy spy, but getting into a relationship with him would not only be stupid, it would run counter to Bashir’s image of himself. You could go in a dark direction with this - Garak seduces Bashir purely as a way of gaining power over him (and perhaps out of force of habit); maybe they end up in a kind of Hannibal/Will relationship. But that doesn’t seem sustainable in the long-term, or congruent with the type of show DS9 was. Bashir can’t trust Garak, and Garak has done things that Bashir would consider disgusting. That’s something you have to take into consideration if you want to write them as a long-term couple.

It’s also worth considering that, as much as the Garak/Bashir pairing lingers over the fannish perception of the show, it’s not actually that prominent in the series itself. The last episode that I would call a Garak/Bashir story, “Our Man Bashir”, is an early S4 episode, well before the Dominion War happens. And Garak is absent for a lot of the later developments in Bashir’s life - “Doctor Bashir, I Presume” (you’d think Garak, with his complicated relationship with his father, would have something to say about Julian having been illegally genetically enhanced by his parents) or “Statistical Probabilities” (a troupe of savants who claim to be able to predict the course of the war would surely be of interest to Garak). In most of these stories, Bashir is accompanied by O’Brien, a much safer option as far as suppressed sexual tension is concerned (it should go without saying that this feels like a deliberate choice on the show’s part, to undermine any idea of a Garak/Bashir relationship). Meanwhile, Bashir is absent from most of Garak’s important Dominion War stories - his relationship with Ziyal and her death, his position in Damar’s rebellion, “In the Pale Moonlight”. So if you’re going to retell DS9 with Garak/Bashir as a real ship, you'd have to rewrite a lot of these stories to take that into account.

Finally, you’ve got the show’s ending, which is an extremely dark one for Garak, who gets everything he thought he wanted - his position restored, a place of honor in Cardassian society - just at the point where Cardassia is decimated and, in his words, left dead. Working a romance with Bashir into this ending would be tricky, and risks ending up with the final scenes of Man of Steel - two people making out atop a mass grave.

(Obviously, I’m taking it as a given that this hypothetical version of DS9 is much, much better at writing mature, complicated romantic relationships than the real one. Most actual DS9 romance was painfully juvenile, and the one exception, Sisko/Kasidy, was also an extremely low-drama ship - Sisko literally sent Kasidy to jail and the next time they met they were like “so, that was a bit of a bump in the road; dinner later?” It should go without saying that Garak/Bashir would not be a low-drama ship, so the writing would need to be there to support it.)

Anyway, complicated but obviously not impossible. This is what I’ve come up with for how I would rewrite the show with Garak/Bashir as an ongoing couple. I’m sure there’s plenty of fanfic with other, better ideas.

To start with, lose the claustrophobia business. Or, you know, keep it, but the reason Garak was expelled from the Obsidian Order and banished from Cardassia is that he’s gay. (To be fair, I feel like “claustrophobia” was pretty clearly code even in the original show.) A lot of people in the upper echelons of the Cardassian hierarchy know this - Dukat certainly knows - and miss no opportunity to harass him about it.

Obviously, in this version of the show Cardassia is deeply queerphobic. I don’t think this is a huge leap. Cardassian society is deeply conformist, and family-oriented in a fascist-adjacent sort of way that prioritizes the father as the master of the home. It’s hard to imagine a society like that tolerating deviations from gender norms, and it seems fair to assume that reprecussions for such deviations would be severe.

Garak doesn’t actually have a problem with this - or at least, not that he expresses. Garak’s defining trait is that he believes in, and loves, Cardassia deeply, and espouses its chauvinistic (in both senses of the word) values to anyone who will listen. But at the same time, he’s smart enough (and enough of an outsider) to know how hollow and destructive those values really are. So Garak will explain to anyone who challenges him on it that Cardassian homophobia is right and proper, while knowing that he has fallen victim to it himself.

Bashir is out. Though “out” might not be the right word because the Federation is so nonchalant about queerness that the notion of being closeted doesn’t really exist anymore (this is a version of Star Trek where we actually follow through on the promise of a more progressive future). But at any rate, to Bashir and the other Starfleet characters, him being gay is so unremarkable that it doesn’t even come up until his and Garak’s frienship is already established. This deeply shocks Garak - he knew humans were perverted, but the good Doctor, his friend? Bashir, meanwhile, wastes no opportunity to needle Garak about his society’s barbaric homophobia (Garak: “humans may be prone to such... urges, but Cardassians are made of finer stuff”; Bashir: *rolls eyes so hard he can see the back of his head*). But at the same time, and without being entirely willing to admit it to himself, Garak is intrigued.

And so we continue for about five seasons. Garak flirts with Bashir, partly because he thinks this is a way of unsettling the good Doctor, but really because he wants him. Bashir assumes that it’s all an act, and plays along with it a little because, hey, sexy spy. But he never imagines that it could go somewhere real, and probably wouldn’t follow through if it did.

And then Bashir gets replaced with a Changeling (this is a version of DS9 where that idea was seeded throughout the first half of the fifth season instead of being decided on five minutes before “In Purgatory’s Shadow” started shooting). And the changeling takes one look at Garak, sees an obvious in, and seduces him. Which clearly causes some awkwardness when Garak finds the real Bashir in a Dominion prison camp.

Bashir finds out. Worf tells him (this is a version of Worf who isn’t weirdly sexist and judgmental about other people’s sex lives). (Bashir: “why is Garak being so weird around me?”; Worf: “he and the fake you were doing it”; Bashir: “what”; Worf: “they were boning”; Bashir: “WHAT”; Worf: “they were engaging in sexual intercourse”; Bashir: “that's not possible. Garak only flirts with me to keep me on my toes”; Worf: *shrugs* “if that’s what you want to call it”.)

So now Bashir is upset because he’s spent the last five years bugging Garak about Cardassian homophobia and it turns out that Garak was a victim of it, plus he’s now been victimized by someone wearing Bashir’s face. And Garak is upset because he let his attraction to Bashir (Garak: “my base lust!”) blind him to the fact that his friend had been replaced by a changeling, leading to him being comromised as an agent (I will leave it as an exercise to the readers which one bothers him more). And, well, if you can’t get from there to romance on your own, you may not have read enough fanfic in your life.

Then you get the war, and honestly, I don’t know. You could do an on/off thing. You could make it a very casual relationship in between the two of them trying not to die and/or lose the Alpha Quadrant to the Dominion. You could have Bashir say “fuck it, I might die tomorrow and this guy makes me happy; who cares if my boyfriend is a liar and a murderer”. You could even go the Worf/Jadzia route and have them muse romantically about having a life together after the war. But either way, they spend more time around each other than they did in the original series.

But! When Garak goes back to Cardassia to help Damar’s rebellion, there’s a lot of tension between them, because Damar heard from Dukat that Garak is a pervert (you could still keep Ziyal’s death and Garak’s anger at Damar over it; those two always made more sense as friends anyway). And then it turns out that there’s an entire Cardassian queer underground, and in typical Cardassian fashion they’ve turned it into a whole spy network with operatives at every level of government. (Garak: “why did you never approach me?”; queer Cardassian underground: “dude, have you met you?”) And they’re willing to work with Damar if he promises that in the new Cardassia, they will no longer be persecuted (I think this dovetails pretty nicely with Garak’s observation that Damar needs to be disillusioned about the flaws of Cardassian society). So all of a sudden Garak is looking at a future where what he is doesn’t make him a pariah anymore.

And then you get to the destruction of Cardassia, and, again, I’m not sure how that combines with Garak/Bashir. The entire ending of DS9 is pretty rough on romantic pairings in general, but at least when Kira/Odo and Sisko/Kasidy break up, it’s bittersweet, and in service of other new beginnings. Garak’s ending is just bleak, and I’m not sure how you deal with a romance on top of that. The best I can come up with is Bashir saying “yes, this is horrible, but you can rebuild, and if you need my help with that, I’m not far”, leaving a door open for them to reconnect in the future.

Thoughts?

[a-stitch-in-time-and-space]

Various Feelings About ASIT Part 6: Doctors (and other lovers) Part 2 of 2

What I'm mainly trying to do in this part is reconcile what the book is – a love confession to Bashir – with what is in the text – the opening overtures to his romantic relationship with Parmak.

So I'm going to use a little bit of looking at Parmak as a probable reason why Bashir might've taken awhile to get to Cardassia after reading that novel:

Parmak and Bashir are comparable in the same way I feel Pythas and Palandine are comparable. The latter shared their names with him at Bamarren, helped train some of his later most recognisable (often unhealthily utilised) traits, are too caught up on the system themselves to be good for him and vice versa. The former challenge his ways of thinking, have witnessed parts of his worst self and offered forgiveness without a catch, are incredibly kind and giving, make him do better simply by existing as they do.

There are too many quotes and a half about Garak lamenting the change in his and Bashir's relationship. A couple of them seem to indicate Bashir's own awareness, at least of the fact that they don't communicate as easily as they used to, but one thing the book never gives us (for obvious reasons being this is Garak's pov) is Bashir's reasons for drawing away.

[Excerpt fromt the book: Bashir smiled and accepted the invitation. I led the way back into the shop, and while I coaxed two teas - one red lead and one Earl Grey - from my ancient replicator in the back, the doctor strolled about as if he were genuinely interested in the various sartorial displays. He was clearly ill at ease, and I wondered how the gulf between us had widened to such an extent. I was determined to narrow it.]

I can (and do) hypothesise and headcanon, but I'd like to know if any other novels give us more perspective – perhaps one of Una Mccormack's, but that's awhile down the road for me yet.  In any case, Bashir and Garak drift apart. I wonder whether it looks different from Bashir's pov – does he think it was Garak pulling away because of the Cardassian conflict – they have an argument about it earlier on, in which Bashir unwittingly is rude about their society and Garak lashes out at him – or did he just have some sense of perhaps tension between them post-wire, that he misread as a wish on Garak's part wishing for him not to be around as often. How much has to do with his own PTSD (unexplored on the show and, so far, in subsequent books)... here is where I go into my own territory and think that the person he had the most trouble hiding his emotions from was Garak and maybe it was subconsciously easier to stay away from him, lest he be honest towards someone who wasn't being honest back (or he had no idea how to process his crush, so ran away from it, which, mood).

[”I’m keeping you from your business,” Bashir stood up. “I won’t take up any more of your time.” “I’m pleased you stopped by.” I was about to escort him to the door. “No, you’re not,” he said quietly. “Excuse me?” “Garak, I come from a culture that has perfected the ‘stiff upper lip,’ he explained with the same faint smile. “What does that mean?” It was a genuine question; there was a change in his attitude. “It means that we never complain, never admit to our feelings, never ask for help. It’s just not done,” Bashir explained. “And those people who ‘lack character’ and insist on airing their needs - especially in public - are subject to ridivule... and worse. Does that sound familiar?” “Perhaps,” I replied softly. “But I’m also a doctor, Garak. And I know which group of people suffers the most. I really won’t take up any more of your time.” He extended his hand, which he rarely did, and I took it. “Thank you for the tea.” He turned and went out the door. I stood there for a long moment, deeply upset. I felt trapped within myself, knowing what I had to do to get out but unable even to begin. Yes, Doctor, it does sound familar.]

There's so much of interest to explore in terms of Garak feeling like Bashir abandoned him and then running to another doctor (maybe Bashir thought that Garak had left him in turn – must of stung to think of him with another doctor) – not that I'm calling Parmak a rebound.

[Extract from the book: - be given a new brain. I rather enjoy this peripatetic politicking. It’s something I would never have done on my own. In some respects his is so much like you, Doctor. If I’ve found someone’s opinion insufferably boring, he’ll kindly but sternly lecture me on the value of tolerance.]

They both represent pivotal parts of his healing process: Bashir on Deep Space Nine removes the wire, makes him feel less lonely, quite probably is the main component in his belief in inter-species co-operation, fundamentally changes the way he wishes to live (is the first person outside of the little Circle of Secrecy that knows Tain is his father?), Parmak on Cardassia helps him reconcile with his past, takes the beginnings of political concepts he'd discussed with Bashir and puts them into practise, also literally everything about the fucking Memorial Statues, not to mention that time when Garak fully breaks and he helps him recover, (and Garak tells him freely that Tain is his father).

(also both Bashir and Parmak are horrified by the thought that Tain is Garak's father, which, mood)

Where is the change then? How come Bashir didn't work out and Parmak does? The answer possibly lies in reciprocity – where Garak couldn't offer what Bashir needed in return, he could do that for Parmak. This isn't a judgement, I'd say the problem is that Bashir didn't know what he needed and Garak wasn't open enough to maybe fully be considered someone Bashir could go to (even if both Bashir and Garak might've wished he was), while Parmak is much more grounded in who he is as a person and by the time they meet, so is Garak, because he utilises those lessons he'd learnt from Bashir. Oh the irony.

[Excerpt from book. Parmak asks Garak for advice: “You know, Elim, I’m neither a soldier nor a politician. I’m a doctor.” “I do know that. I also know that we’ve been betrayed by our previous leaders. Our only hope is that men like yourself can offer an alternative.” “But you have the expertise that can... .“Doctor, I have an expertise that comes from survival and compromise. There’s already plenty of that on the other side... and it’s not an alternative that will create a new and lastinf union.” “No, I suppose you’re right,” he conceded.”  “You’re a doctor, yes, and that’s your strength. I’ve learned something about your profession over the past several years. Don’t think like a politician. Think of the planet as a patient barely hanging on to life. Think like a doctor. How would you save this planet?” He considered what I’d said in his careful manner.]

Maybe a good indicator is that Garak never actually directly told Bashir that his first-name was Elim.

And then A Stitch In Time happens and all of those things that no-doubt must've frustrated Bashir to no end that Garak wouldn't share with him are laid bare in their entirety in a way that sounds like he'd love nothing better than to finally pick up where they faltered, with no more lies and secrets... only problem is it sounds like Garak might've found someone else and now it's too late.

[Excerpt. The last lines of the book: It has become my personal totem. I hope that someday you’ll have the opportunity to see it. Nothing would please me more. You’re always welcome, Doctor.]

I would love to ask Andy if I ever meet him if he thinks Bashir would have come to visit after that letter, despite everything that was written subsequently. After all, the last words were an express wish to see him again. Even if just as his friend, I feel like Bashir would've wanted to take him up on that offer...

[oblio-k]

daemon AU starring Enabran Tain because thats all i was thinking about yesterday.

Grafted

“It’s wrong to do this to them!” A man protested with a hiss, in the depths of his memory, and the agent couldn’t remember who he was, even if he remembered what happened to prompt the outburst. He was led into a room and he looked over at the man for… reassurance? Permission, he convinced himself, later on. He’d never relied on anyone before, he wouldn’t believe that he’d relied on some nervous man he couldn’t even remember.

“You told the director this group was the best, that Students 10 and 17-”

“This is too risky! If they die because of this we’ll have wasted a whole group of potential agents-”

“This is an order straight from the Director, Gul.”

“Very well,” the man’s voice hardened. “I obey.”

His memory of the procedure was shaky at best, but he’d gone in with a daemon he had long forgotten and then emerged, the lone survivor. His eyes sparkled with flecks of dust and every so often the tips of his fingers would begin to fade into gold while he was hooked up to wires and injected with medication and chemicals that made everything a blur.

Then, he woke up, a strange machine being pulled away from where it was positioned over his face. The small dots where needles had pierced his skin were healed by a medic sworn to secrecy, and he was given a few days rest.

The man he couldn’t remember had stayed with him those days, and they’d talked about what must have been meaningless things while playing kotra together. The man’s daemon had curled up on his lap, chittering comforting things, and the medic returned every few hours to check his vitals and give him more injections. Finally, the dust on him went away, and he was put in a room with another child.

“This is disgusting,” a female agent said, as he looked over the details of the mission they would be going on for a few days. A test for a new procedure. “I can see why humans won’t touch each other’s daemons.”

Human daemons took years to settle, he’d been told. Cardassian daemons were already settled as soon as they manifested a week from birth, and never changed species.

“Director’s orders, ma’am.”

His second daemon was a miniature riding hound. The agent averted her eyes as the creature was split from its master and grafted onto him like a new limb. After some cosmetic surgery and a few hours alone, it was as if he had been born with it. It whole-heartedly believed he was its master, and his mannerisms and speech patterns were steadily replaced with those of the daemon’s true master.

In his head, he’d started to think of a plan to get what he wanted most, for Cardassia.

-

“Don’t be naughty, Căz.” Mila blocked the daemon’s head as it tried to snatch a padd from her hand with its mouth. It hissed at her, coiling up. Mila dropped the padd as it lunged at her, fangs bared. Her daemon hissed back, and she had to hold him before he could try attacking the tiny creature. “Marett, no!” Her daemon could easily kill Căz, and she didn’t feel like getting eliminated by the Obsidian Order due to Marett being overprotective.

“Căz, come.” The little daemon bit onto the padd and struggled to drag it to its master. Enabran reached down to pick up the padd. Căz hung on tight, making a pathetic sound as its master made no motion to let it ride on his shoulder or tuck into a fold of cloth. Enabran let it hang, turning on the padd and reading it right in the doorway as if to punish his daemon.

Mila stood up and continued cleaning his bedroom, glancing at the two of them every so often. Marett stayed on her shoulder, feathers ruffled. He didn’t trust their employer, insisting that they were in danger as long as they knew what they did.

Marett nipped her ear with his beak and she looked over in time to see Căz drop to the floor, landing with a sad little squeak and not moving. Enabran didn’t even flinch, though he should have been in pain from his daemon being injured.

Perhaps it didn’t work like that when the daemon you had wasn’t yours to begin with. She hated to think about what she’d seen, but the device he’d wrapped around Căz to keep it alive before killing its real master, the dust she’d seen in his eyes as he interrogated her, Căz limp on his shoulder…

Frowning, Enabran nudged his daemon with his boot until the tiny snake stirred. “Căz, you know I detest it when you act so childish.”

It couldn’t respond, hadn’t since it was forced onto the Obsidian Order agent who’d stolen it. Standard procedure for a man of his station, he’d told her. Daemons could be a liability, tricked into revealing information in order to save their masters. Removing their ability to speak was a safety precaution, but the method was a closely guarded secret of the Order. All the poor thing could do was squeak, hiss, and keen.

“Why don’t you keep Miss Garak company while I work, Căz?”

A reward for fetching the padd, despite the punishment for trying to catch an easy ride up to his shoulder. Marett quickly flew over and picked up the other daemon without any prompting from her. If they waited too long, Enabran might change his mind and give Căz another task. She took the daemon in her hand when Marett brought it back, and Enabran gave her a small nod and left. Căz wheezed, looking up at her with its large, silver eyes. She ran a finger down its side and could feel some broken ribs.

It was easy enough to heal the daemon’s ribs with a tool from the first aid kit hidden in the bedroom. She placed it on its master’s bed, but it began fussing, following her hand. “Căz, you need to rest,” she told it, voice firm.

Căz cried, curling up and looking every bit like a miserable hatchling fresh from its egg. Marett nuzzled it with his beak. “I can keep you company, little one.”

“Marett. Remember what we talked about?” Her daemon hesitated, but then crawled over to her. Căz cried again, a tiny keen almost too quiet to hear. It was a heart-breaking sound, but she couldn’t trust it. The daemon had been rude and cruel when its real master was alive, and though there was a chance that it was traumatized and hurting from whatever had been done to it to attach it to the Enabran that existed now, it could also have adapted to its new master. Become just as deceitful as he was. If his daemon couldn’t be used to hurt him, why not exploit that?

Căz could very well just have been spying on her, waiting for the perfect opportunity to get rid of her and Marett.

It would be easier to figure that out if the daemon could talk. She prided herself on being able to figure out when Enabran was lying to her, she was certain she’d be able to tell the same of his daemon.

“Mila…” Marett shifted on his feet, glancing back at Căz. “Can’t it just come along with us? I’ll make sure it doesn’t try to hurt you.”

Marett rubbed against her face as she tucked Căz into her pocket. “Alright. But we can’t let anyone see us walking around with another person’s daemon.”

-

“What do you think, Căz?” Enabran asked his daemon as it came back to him holding a recording device in its mouth. It dropped the device in front of him, squeaking. “Good work,” he praised it, rubbing under its chin with a finger. It flopped down happily, wriggling. “Where should we put this?”

It looked at the floor plan on the padd next to it. It touched its nose to a spot in the wall.

“Come to the entryway when you’re done. Miss Garak’s fiancé will be arriving soon.”

Ever obedient, Căz picked up the device again. He put it on the floor, and it slithered off to a small hole only it could access. From there it could get to the basement apartment and hide the device.

It would be important to monitor the conversations Mila had with her brother. He couldn’t risk the man exposing this new weakness of his, this raw evidence of sentiment. “Căz?”

The daemon peeked out of the hole, giving a questioning squeak.

He turned in his seat to look at it. “...Do you doubt me, now?”

Instead of making a noise or bobbing its head in response, Căz dropped the device and slithered back to him. With some struggle, it crawled up the leg of his chair. Reaching him, it locked its jaws around the grip of his disruptor and strained, trying to pull it out. He pulled the weapon out for it and placed the two on his desk. Căz released the weapon and coiled up next to it, staring at him.

“Ah.” His longest-lasting daemon even agreed with him that he was making a mistake. “It would be easy, wouldn’t it?”

Căz nudged the weapon with its head.

No one would miss the siblings if he got rid of them, got rid of the whole issue, as he should have the moment he found out about the child

And yet…

As he put the disrupter back at his hip, his daemon hissed at him. He put the snake back down on the floor. “Don’t be late to greet Mr. Garak, Căz.”

It didn’t move, snarling.

“I won’t let this ruin anything. We will get what we want.”

-

In all the years Elim had known Enabran, he’d only seen his daemon a handful of times. The first time he remembered seeing it, he was almost five and the tiny creature had peeked out of the man’s sleeve to look at him as they walked home, hand in hand. Even then, he’d known better than to ask what the daemon’s name was, or to look at it for too long.

He’d glimpsed the daemon again going into Enabran’s shirt as he was informed that he had been accepted into the Bamarren Institute, the tip of its thin, black tail.

Elim had quickly figured out that it was best to keep his own daemon hidden. It helped that his regnar could camouflage herself, but she couldn’t help coming up to whisper in his ear whenever she overheard or saw something amusing. That stopped the next time he saw Tain, and for the first time, saw the whole of his mentor’s daemon.

“You like to talk to your regnar, don’t you?”

“Occasionally.”

“Elim, I thought I taught you better than that. Don’t you know how dangerous a daemon can be? If you want to be an agent, you must learn that.” She’d curled up on his lap, afraid. Tain had waited, and then his daemon slithered out of his sleeve and into his hand. It couldn’t have been more than ten inches long and was thinner than any of his fingers. Its silver eyes were oversized for its head and seemed to be staring off into space. A pale gray-blue, its tail gradually faded to a deep black.

It made no sound, said nothing.

“I’ve arranged for your daemon to undergo a certain procedure. A parting gift before you go off on your first mission.”

“A procedure?”

“Yes. Căz received the same operation when I was around your age. Your daemon won’t be such a risk to you. I’ll show you.” He opened his daemon’s mouth with a finger and held it out. It had no real tongue, and there were golden scars lining the back of its throat. “It’s painless. You won’t be affected.”

After that, his daemon couldn’t speak, and seemed more lifeless than usual. Where she’d once loved to scurry up and down him when they were alone, she preferred to hide in his clothes, and only moved quickly when she had to.

Căz, he thought to himself, after Tolan told him the truth on his deathbed, his avian daemon fading into dust beside him. His biological father’s daemon had a number for a name. He wondered if he touched the little snake if a bond would bloom between them. Would his lifeless regnar perk up with a new familial daemon to touch?

“Mother, have you ever seen his daemon?”

She knew who he was talking about, and put a hand on his shoulder. “Yes. Căz and Marett used to play together, a long time ago. It would ride in my pocket when it wasn’t feeling well?”

“It? Not her?”

“A very long time ago, she was. Then she changed.”

“After the procedure?”

“Yes,” his mother lied to him. “After it was muted. It used to go by a different name, as well.”

The next time he saw Căz, his father was dying in a Jem’Hadar prison camp, and the daemon was trying its hardest to get away, mustering up the last of its energy to fall off of the cot. Elim picked it up, and there was no bond between them. Căz squeaked, and Elim didn’t put it back onto the cot, holding it close to his chest. It nuzzled against him, seeking out warmth before it faded into dust as they spoke.

But his father was still alive, despite the death of his daemon. A cold feeling gripped him as he realized the real reason why Căz was kept hidden all those years. “It lasted a lot longer than expected,” his father mumbled, mostly to himself.

“Căz wasn’t yours?”

“No. I don’t remember my real daemon. We were split when I was young. Căz was grafted onto me, and then muted.” He was grateful that Julian could keep silent. Even he felt distressed by the idea of stealing someone’s daemon. “Pitiful little thing. It always knew I wasn’t its master.”

“Father…”

“Elim, do you remember that day in the country? You must have been almost five…”

[adigeon]

february fic roundup & fic recs

(originally posted on dreamwidth)

I wrote 13,830 words in February, according to my tracker, which isn't awful. On average I wrote 493.9 words a day. The most words I wrote in one day was 3,013, and I had 12 days where I wrote nothing :(

Details on what I posted in February behind the cut, as well as some links to fic I read and loved in February:

What I posted:

Days When the Rain Would Come: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Tony Stark/Stephen Strange, 1,732 words, rated T. Summary: Tony deals with someone unexpected coming to Peter's rescue, someone he really would rather not be playing nice with.

Peldor Joi, Doctor Bashir: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Julian Bashir/Elim Garak, 5,279 words, rated T. Summary: The Bajoran Council of Vedeks insists that Deep Space Nine's temple host the Orb of Time during the Peldor Festival celebrating the tenth year since Cardassia ceded control of the station. What could go wrong?

better than a homing beacon: Star Wars Original Trilogy & Star Wars: Rogue One, Cassian Andor/Luke Skywalker, 4,055 words, rated T. Summary: Cassian repeats what he’d told Loneozner: he needs transport to the Thand Sector, and quickly. No Hutts, no Imperials, and he can work for passage. And, of course, the droid: “There’s something wrong with my R4 unit,” he says. The R4 spins its dome in acknowledgement. “Any time it accesses its nav systems, it crashes.” “Luke’s really the person to ask about droid stuff,” Camie says.

Diffused Light: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Karl Mordo/Stephen Strange, 1,440 words, rated T. Summary: While trapped in the Soul Stone, Stephen Strange receives a visitor.

The Latest Work: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Julian Bashir/Elim Garak, 1,220 words, rated T. Summary: Garak is put in the unfortunate position of having to correct a misconception Bashir seems to have about Cardassian culture.

Found Wanting: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Ezri Dax/Kira Nerys, 945 words, rated T. Summary: There's one of Jadzia's memories in particular that Ezri thinks a lot about.

What I read: 

Now for some recs! I did a lot of reading in February, so this is a bit lengthy. February was also the month of "huh, didn't realize I shipped that," including me dipping back into Harry Potter fic for the first time in years.

The Second, Silver: MCU, Tony Stark/Stephen Strange, 9,122 words, rated M.

Summary: It was a beautiful watch. A mechanical wonder in rose gold, with a blue dial that showed the heavens, the moon and the stars. But it didn’t mean anything. It was simply another beautiful object that Tony owned. Though he admired the construction and design, the watch wasn’t even particularly to his taste, too cold and remote, its hands too delicate. He wondered why he’d gotten it in the first place.

Rec notes: Can't recommend this one strongly enough - mundane/no powers AUs for MCU aren't usually my thing, but the Tony voice in this is dead on, and Tony's POV of watching Stephen change is excellently done. There's a great thread running through the whole thing about Tony's reputation in the public eye and the extent to which he's closeted that I found incredibly compelling. (I actually read this in January according to my bookmarks, but I couldn't bear not sneaking it in here!)

we're in the process of rebuilding (and we're starting from scratch): Star Wars: Rogue One, Cassian Andor/Bodhi Rook, Bodhi Rook/K-2SO, Cassian Andor/K-2SO, Cassian Andor/Bodhi Rook/K-2SO, 4,524 words, rated T.

Summary: “I think my best friends have replaced me,” Cassian said over his breakfast. / Jyn was the only one left at their table, and she raised an eyebrow in reply. He knew what that meant. She was just interested enough to continue listening but not so curious that she’d ask him to go on. He did anyway. / “Bodhi and Kay have been sneaking off to spend time together when I’m not around.” / “Pretty sure that’s just called ‘hanging out,’” said Jyn.

Rec notes: Post-R1 everyone lives, has Bodhi befriending K2, Cassian being jealous of both of them, and it's just really lovely. Nicely understated, almost, given how complicated the relationship dynamics are in this.

Flighty: MCU, Scott Lang/Sam Wilson, 5,472 words, rated T.

Summary: In which Scott Lang spills his guts to Sam Wilson at who cares o' clock in the morning, and it all goes uphill from there. Feat. Wakandan infomercials, brooding worthy of any A-list superhero, an uncomfortably sincere compliment, and a requited crush.

Rec notes: This is so great. Scott POV, Scott learning Xhosa from Wakandan infomercials, just a fantastic portrayal of Scott in the aftermath of CA:CW. Also just pure chemistry between Scott and Sam and great banter. I did not realize I shipped this but I think I ship this.

volatile: Star Wars: Rogue One, Cassian Andor/K-2SO, 1,856 words, rated T.

Summary: Found Index : startled laugh, with the light in his eyes; squinting up at, his mouth shaping kay kay kay like a benediction as if machines could be blessed, but maybe they can, because there is cassian andor, smiling and squinting, and—

Rec notes: Bang-on K2 POV, and the pseudocode interspersed throughout works wonderfully.

deep in my soul: MCU, Karl Mordo/Stephen Strange, 1,695 words, rated E.

Summary: Within the Soul Stone our heroes dream the sweetest of dreams, all unaware they are in trapped in an imagined paradise. All except Stephen Strange, who wants to savor what the Stone has gifted him.

Rec notes: It's porn and it's also very sad and very very good!

To Watch the Faraway Stars: MCU, Heimdall/Loki, 2,930 words, rated T.

Summary: There aren't many things Heimdall cannot see. Loki is sometimes one of them.

Rec notes: Wonderful Heimdall POV, especially the bits where Heimdall is looking over the universe and seeing things that no one else could. There's such a great melancholy optimism to the fic, too, which befits its setting post-Ragnarok.

Sick Day: Broadchurch, Alec Hardy/Ellie Miller, 1,560 words, rated G.

Summary: When Hardy calls in sick, a suspicious Ellie decides to pay him a visit.

Rec notes: Dead-on Hardy & Miller chemistry, and I love how restrained Hardy is in this. Hardy/Miller can be a little...florid, sometimes, with Hardy coming out of his shell too readily for my tastes, but here he's perfectly in character while being a little more emotionally vulnerable with Miller than we get to see him in canon.

when the wolfsbane blooms: Harry Potter, Remus Lupin/Severus Snape, 7,576 words, rated T.

Summary:  Even a man who is pure in heart/And says his prayers by night/May become a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms/And the autumn moon is bright. Or: Severus Snape makes a new friend, invents a new potion, and accidentally changes everything.

Rec notes: Canon divergent Marauder-era Lupin/Snape; diverges after the Whomping Willow incident. Snape starts researching werewolves and decides to cure lycanthropy. Cue Snape spending lots of time with Remus, testing potions on him. Snape is still convincingly Snape, and all the potions-theory stuff included is aces.

upon this tidal wave of young blood: Harry Potter, Harry Potter/George Weasley, 10,124 words, rated T.

Summary: George stands before him in the doorway, like a gangly, terrible ghost. His face is heinously pale, which makes the dark bags under his eyes pop in a way that is altogether unflattering, and he wears only a large, striped sweater and a pair of boxers with bats on them. His hair is much longer than it had been last time Harry had seen him, and it’s pulled back into a loose knot. “Harry,” he says, and it comes out breathlessly. / “George.” Harry stands there, wholly encapsulated by familiar heartache just at the sight of his friend. His eyes flick past him to investigate the flat. Clothes and dirty dishes are strewn all over the living room and, if he’s not mistaken, there are at least three pairs of underwear hanging from the ceiling fan. He glances back at George, who is now leaning against the doorway staring at him, expressionless. Harry clears his throat. “I, um… came for a visit. Sorry.”

Rec notes: Harry/George is a post-canon HP ship I had never thought about before, but now that I've thought about it I reckon I might never stop thinking about it.

George Smiley's Wikipedia Page: John Le Carre's works, gen, 1,139 words, rated G.

Summary: What it says on the tin. An imagining of how George's wiki page might look in universe circa a few years after Legacy.

Rec notes: An in-canon wikipedia page for George Smiley. Excellently put together; I especially got a kick out of the "In popular culture" section.

@heyitsspiderman: Into the Spider-Verse, gen, 27,392 words, rated T.

Summary: @heyitsspiderman: people act like they know this city but when i’m in the air i find more boroughs all the time. so far ive counted ten. dont listen to big brother in your ceiling (google) telling you otherwise (google maps)

Rec notes: Marvelously put together work where the various Spider-people figure out how to text between their dimensions and end up in a group chat together. Also, Miles is on Twitter! The coding on this must have taken so much work. The character voices are dead on (I especially enjoy Noir in this,) and the way the plot comes in while sticking to the text/Tweet/etc. format is extremely clever.

[cyrelia-j]

A Tale of Two Parmaks (or the big write up on my crazy versions)

In thinking of multiverse and character stuff, I thought this would be a good opportunity to familiarize everyone with the two big versions of Parmak that I write. He isn’t super fleshed out in the books, but I think that there’s still somewhat of a consensus on defining character traits both physical and mental/intellectual/emotional that make up the heart of him. I know that in both my primary iterations of him there are some characteristics which diverge sharply from what most people imagine he’d look like/think like/act like. There are a few short things I’ve written where I think he remains “canon” Parmak but those are definitely the minority.

So, without further ado, may I present:

C132 Parmak and C147 Parmak

(Yeah, I totally ripped off Rick and Morty for this)

The idea for those not familiar with the show is that there are various multiverses where alternate versions of the world/characters exist. It’s a pretty common theme in sci fi but I took the universe designation format from that show. Just as a reference, in the show it’s generally accepted that the “Primary Universe” characters are C137 so I definitely will not be using that number :)

C132 Parmak: This Parmak appears in my serious and dark/dramatic stories. I’m working on an ambitious series of backstories for his life in this universe. Right now these start with “If” and are going to continue through [upcoming as of 5/24/18] “The Downward Spiral” and others. Parmak in these stories is intersex- having characteristics of both sexes. In this universe I had envisioned Cardassia as having a detailed spectrum of sexes (Known as the Ba’zan Spectrum) which range from what we would approximate from Cis Male at one end to Cis Female on the other. I won’t get too detailed with that in this post but as a note, Parmak is “X210” which means that his primary body characteristics skew slightly female in appearance (ie the hip to shoulder ratio, slightly more feminine ridges, a bit of a softer voice etc) but as far as biological sex are closer to the center of the two.

The reason that this characteristic and matter of his sex gets such detail is because it’s a critical part of this Parmak’s identity. What I mean is this: I wrote this character to reflect a bit of myself. In the Cardassian records systems and medical systems etc he’s not considered male, he’s defined by this designation. But he considers himself male and refuses to be defined by the sum of his biology. As a trans male I wanted this part of him to be reflective of my own feelings and experience. (Yeah I know, confusing avatar- think of the Cyrelia J pseud like Conchita Wurst) This Parmak has spent his life with different expectations and prejudices being pushed on him because he refuses to call himself anything other than male. He’s rejected from his petition to study medicine before he gains a sponsor, he’s slandered and objectified by people he encounters, and he encounters a lot of pressure to conform. In spite of that he refuses to be anyone other than who he knows himself to be.

This Parmak is from Nokar. He was a physically “abnormal” child in that he is an albino (in the Cardassian sense), he has poor eyesight, and has kyphosis (a spine curvature which can be very minor to a pronounced hump- my cousin was born with this so that’s where the concept had originated from. Scoliosis, that thing they test for in schools is a spine curvature on the other axis). He’s terrified of his own reflection and has no desire to know what he looks like. He’s actually very attractive. His main drive and passion in life is medicine. When he was a teenager there was a plague of a mutated Yarim Fei which struck his village and everyone but him died. He spent months burying those who died while simultaneously trying to cure them with his own limited medical knowledge. He realized later he wasn’t infected because of his mutated genes. This really shaped his life because when he was able to devote himself to medicine he worked tirelessly for a vaccine on that and other diseases.

His passion and unique talent is in pharmacology and chemistry. This gets a bit “too perfect/sue-ish” but I like it so it’s not likely to change here. He’s like a magician/alchemist when it comes to his ability to mix up serums and drug compounds. It’s a highly coveted almost genius ability and one that Tain wants like oxygen. This Parmak was involved sexually with both Tain and Garak. He’s afraid of Garak’s eyes because of Tain’s induced illusion ability. He was soft spoken but fearless and was taught by his foster father Vakem Parmak that the Doctor’s role is to survive at all costs, be unbreakable, and so he was raised from his late teenage years to his mid 40s to withstand poisons and torture of an extreme form. It had only ended when Vakem Parmak died. Shortly after that he was recruited by Enabran Tain (albeit not exactly willingly). It made him arrogant in his abilities until Garak broke him. That combined with his experience in the work camp changed him.

In the present day, he’s kind but pragmatic. He’s aware of his own shortcomings but he still has a “survive at all costs” mentality due to his upbringing. The Parmak family credo which he lives and dies by is “one for a hundred” meaning for every life taken he must save a hundred. He’s unbending in this assessment. He still has his quirky sense of humor, he still refuses to look at himself in the mirror, and he doesn’t understand why people find him attractive as his own self-image is still poor. He has few hobbies because his life is work be it medicine, advocacy, raising a family, or self assigned “missions”. He enjoys reading and gardening but really has to be dragged into leisure because he doesn’t understand it. His life has taught him that life isn’t leisure only survival and work so he’s not very able to relax.

He’s a tireless advocate for the Northern Continents and northern rights and he has far less moral limits than I would imagine canon Parmak to have. He’s willing to kill to save but he works to heal the disenfranchised and protect those who need him most. He also has a warped pain tolerance because of his foster father’s training and enjoys being hurt- he doesn’t ask for it or seek it out, but he was conditioned to have that response when it occurs so that’s been used against him. I guess you could say he’s a bit of a broken Parmak.

Stories featuring C132 Parmak are: “If—“, “The Downward Spiral”, Invictus, and Inside a Dream” so far

If you like your Parmak closer to Julian ethically, more “light” than “dark”, and much less twisted then this isn’t the Parmak for you :)

On the opposite end we have:

C147 Parmak: This Parmak appears in all my humor/crack/lighthearted stories. His sex is irrelevant to the character unlike C132 Parmak though for reference he’s usually male in this iteration unless otherwise stated; so far in every story but “The Power of Three” he’s been cis male. This character borders on being a parody so I would encourage most to take this one with a grain of salt because he’s not meant to be a serious representation of Parmak. A lot of his traits come about because of silly late night conversations or “what if” jokes. The biggest example would be his cock obsession. For me this is more of a running gag because I imagine it to be so far off of real Parmak canon and behavior that it’s just silly. I find all sorts of stupid things amusing.

He had a happy childhood in the North, has living parents, and only moved South to study medicine for the adventure of it. He’s usually near lifelong friends with Garak (as this Parmak appears primarily in AUs) and occasionally it’s a friends with benefits arrangement. He appears as various types of doctors/healers but in the Extraverse he’s a yoga instructor as well. I’ll probably branch out his professions as I write more for him. He likes to wear his signature hair beads (silly fanon thing of mine) and often says outlandish things “unintentionally”.

He has a massive hoarding problem and he loves pop culture. You’ll find his space (car, house, office, etc) full of records, CDs, books, bumper stickers, old bottles, and anything he finds interesting. In some universes this includes a massive sex toy collection This Parmak loves taking pictures and loves music. He comes across as oblivious and spacey. Some of that’s genuine, some of it’s played up a bit because he likes seeing people smile and he likes spreading positivity. He loves yoga and tends to be super flexible and fit (sometimes in teasing contrast to the C147 Garak who’d rather lounge with a cocktail). This Parmak also loves television, Queen, and Columbo. He’s incredibly adventurous and has a devious little smirk. He’s a voyeur and a closet sadist (in a playful sense- he doesn’t enjoy actually hurting people).

He’s a bit of a bad driver, is into conspiracy theories in a big way, and is into alternative medicine and new age ideas. He’s more the “Hippie” part of “Hippie Lizard”. He absolutely loves sex and could be considered shameless but he’s proud of this and infinitely creative in that realm. I might even make him a sex therapist one of these days since I think he’d be good at it. As a side note, his companion C147 Garak is much the same. He loves games and stories and “cute” things though he seems rather unaware that he himself is one of those “cute things”. He likes to wear his sunglasses perched on his head while still wearing his glasses. Fun fact- his sunglasses aren’t prescription and he never actually wears them as sunglasses.

He’s a good listener, emphatic to the max and is comically strong while being pretty slim and unassuming. Sometimes he’ll also have the congenital stoop of C132 Parmak but not always. He dresses very free in the summer and bundles up like the kid in A Christmas Story in the winter. He has a strange obsession with tentacle porn and stopped consuming sugar sometime in the early 2000s. He’s pretty much everyone’s friend and can be outspoken and opinionated (especially on obscure things). He totally grows on people even if they don’t like him much at first and is always a brilliant doctor and ethically upright and kind character.

Sometimes he’ll appear in contemporary Cardassian fics/drabbles so some of the more Earth centric traits will be missing but everything else will pretty much hold true. The sex thing also holds for anyone in the C147 Parmak verse including Julian and Garak who are usually the 2 other constants. This too is actually kind of personal for me. It’s a lens through which I see the world. Maybe it’s because growing up I was like listening to Howard Stern since I was 7 and had a lot of exposure to that sort of thing. It’s difficult for me not to sexualize things and interactions and in my writing I tend to be super sex driven. Since my RL doesn’t even remotely reflect that activity I enjoy expressing it through fic even if the C147 Parmak and others get kind of caricature-ish.

Stories featuring C147 Parmak are: The Extraverse, Lizards Melt in your Mouth (epilogue 1 not 2), The power of Three, and the drabble Fine Print

So if you don’t like your Parmak to be an over the top extra dick magnet then steer clear of this Parmak :)

As a side note “A Gift for My Darling” has a mirror Parmak that’s a combo of both these Parmaks while being kind of completely insane.

Thank you everyone for taking the time to read, and I hope this enhances everyone’s experience with my stories. I’m always super appreciative of anyone reading and giving feedback. I’m kinda of like a sponge... but not the Seinfeld kind haha

I’ve been debating if people might prefer that I tag either version of this character for ease of filtering so any feedback on that either by reply or DM would be much appreciated!

[ameerawritesstuff]

Garashir from the new prompt list (

Heyo~ So this comes a bit later than I would have liked but here they are! (I want to fill one of these types of requests a day if I can (why do I do this?? (I’m probably just procrastinating other stuff (but honestly, aren’t I always?)))

6 “Don’t you die on me”

“Don’t you die on me.” Garak whispered to Julian, though he feared he was only speaking to himself. He was no doctor, but he could see that the readings showed the young man’s pulse was shallow. He wanted to keep his hope alive, he wanted to believe Julian would miraculously pull through, but when had anything like that ever happened for Garak? No, Garak knew that it was most likely that Julian would die and, by their nature, what is most likely to happen almost always comes to pass.

And why should it matter to Garak? Yes, Dr. Bashir was a wonderful conversationalist and didn’t treat him like a pariah, but would the loss of once a week lunches truly make Garak feel more lonely than he already did? Yes, the whole ordeal with the wire had been significant to say the least, but Julian implied it was simply his duty as a doctor to move proverbial mountains for Garak. But that was just it, wasn’t it? Julian Bashir wasn’t just another doctor who happened to have a happy talent for debate. He was Garak’s friend. Someone who actually cared about Garak and someone who Garak actually cared for. It had been so long since Garak had had that in his life, he almost hadn’t been able to recognize it. How like Garak to let that affection, that surely could only ever be platonic, turn to love.

When Julian had first entered into his coma, Garak had focused all of his attention on the Lethean that had done this to the one beautiful thing in Garak’s life. Altovar was a bumbling fool who had been caught easily but that only made Garak more disappointed in himself. He should have been able to protect Julian from such a pathetic threat, and yet he had missed it. Why hadn’t he followed Altovar after he’d appeared to interrupt their lunch? Was Garak so distracted by trying to give Julian a better birthday gift that he missed a man who projected himself as a threat? His inability to stop harm coming to the love of his life was disgraceful.

And that was it, wasn’t it? Garak finally realized he was in love with Julian only for it to be too late. His love distracted him, causing him to lose any chance he had and now he would recognize that only in time to suffer. Garak laughed at himself as he exited the infirmary, he had to get out before someone walked in and saw him. Poor, pathetic, Elim. What would he do if Julian somehow were to wake up? Confess his feelings and look like an utter fool? No, that would not do. Garak would do what he’d always done: lie. He would lie about his feelings and act as if nothing had changed.

12 “I just want you to be happy”

“I just want you to be happy.” Julian smiled that damned smile of his that was simply too kind. “I don’t really know what kind of person you would be interested in or anything, but I know you’re the type to deny yourself any potential joy.” He had a warm smirk. “I’m just saying that if you are interested in Ziyal, you should stop finding reasons to not be with her.”

“I thank you for your concern.” The irony of Julian being the one to give him this lecture was not lost on Garak. He had spent the past few years finding reasons to not pursue Julian, not only because Garak felt happiness wasn’t for him, but because he was certain his feelings could never be requited. “But really, doctor, I’m old enough to be her father.”

“Again, I’m not pushing you toward Ziyal.” Julian shrugged. “I just worry about you.” Julian looked down at his food and made a face, he wasn’t eating with his usual gusto. “It wasn’t right of me to tell you not to talk to her before.”

“You were hardly in the wrong.” Garak chuckled. “She is Gul Dukat’s daughter and Major Kira’s ward. It’s not as if a friendship between us was likely.”

“But it was still selfish of me.” Julian sighed and bit his lip.

“Selfish, my dear?” Garak asked in confusion. “I hadn’t realized you were interested in Ziyal. You could have simply said so, you know.”

“What?” Julian looked up in surprise. “No, Garak, I’m not interested in Ziyal!” He shook his head as if he couldn’t even fathom the image. “I mean, she’s a lovely young woman, of course, just not my type.”

“Mm, a tad too gray for you, doctor?” Garak smirked. Of course a Starfleet officer wouldn’t find Cardassians attractive. Garak supposed he couldn’t really blame Julian for that, but he couldn’t help but find it a bit unfair seeing how Cardassians were naturally more xenophobic than Humans and yet he was enamored with Julian.

“I’m…” Julian furrowed his brow as if he was incredibly flummoxed. “Garak, you think I don’t find Cardassians attractive?”

“Don’t pretend it’s Ziyal’s Bajoran half that you’re opposed to.” Garak challenged. Perhaps Julian wasn’t even aware of his own prejudice, the Federation prided itself on acceptance after all. “I’ve seen you flirt with enough Dabo girls to know that’s hardly the case.”

“I wouldn’t have looked twice at her if she were an Orion!” Julian protested in frustration. “I was already in love with someone else by the time I met her!” There was a moment of silence as Julian realized what he’d said. He blushed and began picking at his food again.

“This is a surprise, doctor.” Garak blinked. Who could have stolen the doctor’s heart away so completely without Garak even noticing? He racked his brain for answers. “If you’re not interested in Ziyal…” He thought. “Then how was your keeping her and I apart selfish?”

“Did I say ‘selfish’?” Julian gulped awkwardly. “Maybe that wasn’t the right word.” He gave a nervous smile.

“And what would be the right word?” Julian said nothing and simply blushed again. “If Ziyal and I were to become romantically involved, how would that take something away from you?”

“No, no, no!” Julian shook his head fervently. “Garak, really, nothing would be taken away from me, pursue whoever you like.”

“Whoever I like?” Garak tried to process his thoughts. He couldn’t be right, could he? “Doctor, are you saying your selfish desire would be to keep me available?” Julian looked to his side as if something fascinating had caught his attention. “That would imply that you yourself are romantically interested in me.” Julian looked incredibly uncomfortable and turned a deeper shade of red. “Are you?”

“I just want you to be happy.” Julian murmured, still looking away.

“And you worried that wanting to keep me for yourself was preventing my happiness.” Garak breathed. All the pieces fit together, but it was as if the puzzle itself were incomprehensible. Julian had feelings for Garak!? “My dear, that is far from true.” Julian looked back at Garak in surprise. “Nothing would make me happier than to be kept for you.” Julian’s eyes grew wide and he bit his lip before he timidly put his hand on Garak’s. The two looked at their hands for a moment before they looked back at one another with broad smiles.

14 “Please… stay…”

“Please… stay…” Garak said softly. He’d hoped Julian wouldn’t have heard it, that it would have been missed. Maybe Garak could convince himself he hadn’t said it, that he wasn’t so weak. No such luck.

“On Cardassia?” Julian asked confused. “Garak, the war isn’t officially over yet.” He furrowed his brow and sighed. “Look, Cardassia still has a decent amount of doctors, I’m sure. When the Dominion’s surrender is announced…” He shook his head. “I don’t know exactly what to expect, but when I can, I’ll come back, alright? I’ll help you in any way I can.” Garak felt his heart break as Julian was again offering him favor after favor and kindness after kindness. “If you still want me by then.”

“I would never turn you away, doctor.” Garak reassured. “Not even if you had nothing to contribute and were only a burden to bare.”

“If you don’t want me as a doctor…” Julian paused before he looked at Garak in realization. “Oh, Garak…” Garak averted his eyes. “Elim…” Julian whispered as he put his hand on Garak’s cheek. “There is nowhere I’d rather be than by your side.” Garak found himself being kissed and he practically melted into the man he’d longed for all these years. When the kiss broke, his eyes were still closed as he heard Julian speak softly again. “But I have to go back to DS9.”

“Doctor, please.” Garak said with pain in his voice. “I’m begging you. The Breen may not give up the fight, not to mention the Romulans are assuredly planning their next move once they’re free from their treaties.” Garak shook his head. “Do you really think the Klingons are going to end their warring without the Dominion? All of these threats are going to be pointed directly at the Federation.”

“You’re looking for trouble now.” Julian smirked. “We’re about to have peace, Elim.”

“You can’t be sure.” Garak said. “On Cardassia, you’ll be at least slightly out of harm’s way.”

“And I’ll happily stay on Cardassia with you.” Julian smiled. “But I can’t just leave without warning. I have things to pack and arrangements to make. But I will come back, Elim.”

“How long?” Garak asked. He didn’t want Julian to leave his sight. It was as if the final battle being fought only made him more aware of how easily he could have lost Julian.

“As quickly as I can.” Julian promised. He gently stroked Garak’s cheek and gave a small smile. “Come with me.”

“I’ve waited to come home all this time and now you’re asking me to leave?” Garak gave an amused scoff.

“Only for a few days.” Julian said. “Even if there’s nothing you left on the station you want, you can stock up on supplies while I put everything together. Cardassia is going to need food, water, blankets, all sorts of things that we’ll be able to get while I pack.”

“That sounds…” Garak thought for a moment. “Reasonable.”

“I can be like that sometimes.” Julian grinned. “And besides, I want to take you to Vic’s at least once.”

“The Dominion has just surrendered, we’ve confessed our feelings, and you’re thinking about a holosuite program?” Garak laughed.

“Oh, come on!” Julian said, shaking his head. “Vic heard me moping over you at least once a week, it’s only fair he gets to see it wasn’t all for nothing.”

“You spoke to a hologram about me?” Julian blushed. “In that case, I’d be very intrigued to hear what you said.”

“Come to Vic’s with me and I’m sure he’ll tell you.” Julian said, rolling his eyes.

“It’s a date.” Garak smiled into another kiss.

19 “I’m scared”

“I’m scared,” Julian said as he stared at the ceiling, resting his head on Garak’s chest. “I’m scared that this will all turn out to be a lovely dream.” He turned to look at Garak, to make sure those same blue eyes were still in bed with him. To see that this was somehow all real.

“I’m scared it will turn out to be a nightmare.” Garak smirked. “One that ends with you pulling out a phaser and killing me.”

“Oh, please,” Julian scoffed. “If I wanted to kill you, I would make it look like you died of an illness of some sort.”

“So you’ve thought about it?” Garak said, raising an eye ridge.

“I’m merely pointing out that sleeping with you would hardly be part of a murder plot.” Julian smiled.

“I never said you actually would kill me.” Garak said, shaking his head. “The real Julian Bashir is the kindest man to have ever lived.”

“The ‘real’ Julian?” Julian laughed.

“Well, if this is a nightmare, you are actually a figment of my own imagination.” Garak brushed Julian’s hair back. “In which case, it’s highly likely you’re going to execute me very soon.”

“And what if this were a dream?” Julian smiled as he moved to straddle Garak. “Then what would I do?”

“My mind doesn’t do dreams.” Garak shook his head. “It’s so used to the waking nightmare of exile, it can’t imagine pleasantries.” Julian rolled his eyes.

“Are you always this depressing after sex?” He asked. “Because I personally enjoyed myself.”

“I’m sorry, my dear.” Garak smiled. “I’m still having trouble believing any of that happened.”

“We can reinforce the concept.” Julian purred as he lightly feathered Garak’s neck ridges with his fingers. “Repetition is key.”

“I fear you’ll make a positive person out of me.” Garak shivered. “And then where will we be?”

“Hopefully still in bed.” Julian licked his lips. “I’m going to make you see the universe as a wonderful place with nothing but sunshine and rainbows.”

“I’m a Cardassian, remember?” Garak said, shaking his head. “I don’t like sunshine. Too bright.”

“How about rainbows?”

“I suppose they’re lovely.” Garak considered. “I prefer the stars in the night sky, myself.”

“In that case…” Julian leaned in and whispered right in Garak’s ear. “I’m going to have you seeing stars.”

20 “I’ll protect you no matter what… even if it kills me”

“I’ll protect you no matter what… even if it kills me.” Garak turned to look at who had just said that. Of course he knew, there was only one person who would quote a traditional Kardasi proposal to him, but was Julian even aware that was what he was doing? “You will be my family and I will be bound to you forever.” There Julian was on one knee, holding a Cardassian courtship bracelet. However, unlike the one Garak had given Julian to begin their relationship, this one was made of latinum. It was an engagement gift.

“Julian…” Garak breathed. Because really, what else could he say?

“Forever is my pledge to you and I shall endeavor to prove each day that that will be time you will not regret.” The one who proposed could not terminate the relationship. Cardassians could divorce, but only the person who was proposed to could end the union. The only exception being a spouse who denounced their significant other in court as an enemy of the state. Garak had assumed he would be the one to force himself into that commitment if Julian chose to stay with him long enough, he wasn’t prepared to have Julian willing to bet everything on them being together. “I am yours, if you’ll have me.”

“Of course I’ll have you!” As if that were even a question! Garak essentially pulled Julian up to his feet and kissed him. When the kiss broke, Julian started laughing.

“I was so terrified!” Julian said in relief. “I just…” He shook his head with a smile. “I’m sorry, I need a minute.” He laughed again and brought his hand to Garak’s cheek. “I did do it right, right? You just agreed to marry me?”

“And I would do so a thousand times over.” Garak nodded. “But you realize that by being the one to propose, you can’t end our union, correct?”

“I know, Elim.” Julian smirked. “I have no interest in ending our relationship ever. I want nothing more than to be your husband.”

“I should probably put that on.” Garak said, glancing at the bracelet that was awkwardly between them in Julian’s hand. Julian hurriedly took Garak’s wrist and and clasped the bracelet around it. “Where did you get the money to afford this?”

“Don’t laugh.” Julian said. Garak simply raised an eye ridge. “Rom.” Garak tried his best not to let his amusement show too greatly. “He is Grand Nagus now. Plus, I think he likes the idea of me being married. I believe he’s still convinced Leeta will leave him.”

“I know how he feels.” Garak smiled. “When your lover is so incredibly exquisite, it only makes sense to imagine they’ll tire of you eventually.”

“Not a chance.” Julian grinned. “Forever is my pledge to you.”

[kelasparmak]

garashir for the ask meme? :)

full disclosure i don’t remember which ask meme this was because as has been established i’ve been a Mess, but i’ll assume it’s this one:

Fake dating/marrieds: it is COMPLETELY unnecessary. there is no need for them to pretend to be dating or married at all, but julian suggests it because that’s what happens in Spy Books, and garak goes along with it because a) he’s pining and/or b) this is bound to be hilarious. then they both realise they’ve signed up for more than they intended to, but of course they are fucking stubborn as hell so they just keep making it worse for themselves (and, though they’re probably completely oblivious to this, each other). if this were a fic i was writing, i would end it with them not getting together and just having the bluest balls in the world, because they’re fucking idiots. (but maybe i’d write an epilogue a few weeks later, where jadzia and kira are loudly rolling their eyes about how those dumb fucks who are now dating didn’t realise they were in love with each other despite unnecessarily making out in front of an ambassador to ‘prove’ they were married even though said ambassador had had no reason to doubt it and didn’t give a shit until they started with the pda on the bridge and sisko had to pull them apart because it was just making the situation less believable)

Bodyswap: julian is THRILLED - cardassian doctors are super secretive about medicine and anatomy so this is a great way for him to find out things like how a cardassian body reacts to penicillin! garak is initially worried about being super fragile and squishy in a human body but then realises that actually he is much safer in julian’s body than his body is under the care of Excitable Knowledge-Hungry Pupppy Dr Julian Bashir. the episode is basically everyone trying to stop julian from killing himself and garak by performing medical trials on himself.

Telepathy: again - it’s sad. it’s unavoidably sad. they probably just go get drunk and have sad sex. boohoo.

OH NO only one bed at the hotel: julian probably volunteers to sleep on the floor (and probably puts his foot in his mouth by implying that garak is old and will hurt his back if he doesn’t take the bed) but fortunately garak is used to him being a doofus and convinces him that it is in everyone’s best interest if they share the bed. the room has a thermostat which julian has considerately already turned up, but garak ignores this in order to make the body heat argument. they end up both being too warm and uncomfortable. they’re disasters.

Accidental time-travel: BISEXUAL DISASTER TEEN GARAK. always my fave. alternatively, i kinda like the idea of them meeting as kids - like, before jules’s engineering, before garak finds out tolan’s not his dad and he doesn’t get to be a gardener when he grows up. it’d be super poignant, esp if the time travel incident was fixed within the episode but they both remembered it afterwards and had a tiny little piece of ‘before the world happened to him’ of each other to hold onto.

Their first kiss: awkward, uncomfortably positioned, probably in a near-death scenario that they definitely could’ve avoided. julian says something dumb.

Meeting the parents: well, again, julian has met tain and that was…. something. probably better than most would manage with tain. i like to think that garak subtly made richard bashir’s life difficult, not so much because of the engineering (which i personally, as a Real Life Autistic, think is awful, but garak, as a Fictional Cardassian, might understand the motivation behind) but because of his attitude when he talks to julian. if this child is your legacy and you really just want the best for him and will break the law and do immoral things to give him the best opportunities in life that you can, at least do it in such a way that he appreciates it, you idiot. (or, going off garak’s own experiences: if you’re going to give your son horrible lifelong trauma for your own purposes, you have to at least go through with making sure those purposes work, or it’s just a waste!). garak’s perspective is fucked up but ultimately, even if it’s largely for different reasons, i can see him being just as disgusted w richard bashir as the fandom is.

Moving in together: again - a disaster. they’re both very particular about their living space, but julian at least has a very meticulously planned chaos sort of thing going on. ‘yes, i know all my clean shirts are under the left cushion on the sofa, that’s where they’re supposed to be, it keeps them pressed just right’. ‘yes, i know there’s been a half-eaten scone on my datapad for six hours - i’m saving it for later’. et cetera, et cetera.

A crossover of my choice: fuck. uhhh - all i can fucking think of (and i don’t know why) is jane austen novels. semi-canonically, garak adores them, and i think they fit really well. the only question is which of them fills the plucky and a tiny-bit-obnoxious heroine role, and which fills the awkward and extremely obnoxious hero role. i think maybe neither of them are either one. i think maybe they’re background/side-characters who have their own thematically fitting adventure and love story while the main drama is going on.

An au of my choice: i’m always a sucker for section 31 julian! whether the semi-reluctant, taking-it-down-from-within version that we get in the eu, or an initially-idealistic ‘i’m a spy! wow! so cool! … fuck, my actions have consequences!’ version, or a full on ‘ends justify the means’ version. this could be the only change from canon, or garak could still be with the order, or it could be a situation swap where julian’s an outcast spy and garak has a Big Secret about his childhood but actually never got involved with the order.

If you like, another trope/scenario of your choice: predictably, i’m gonna go with polyamorous domestic bliss on post-canon cardassia. just let my middle-aged disaster son be happy with his idealistic traumatised doctor husbands! …. no but for real, please let this happen, it’s all i want in life.

[heroesandvillainsofmbti]

ENTP: Elim Garak, “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”

ENTP – the Inventor, the Debater, the Improviser

The truth is presently a topic of some debate. The elusive Elim Garak has a line in the episode “Cardassians” in which he straight up announces he doesn’t believe there is such a thing. I don’t think he means this the same way that some certain talking heads do.

As an ENTP, Garak always seems to be trying to discern the reality between the lines of the facts, the secrets people keep behind the plain words they speak. Sometimes this makes him suspicious and paranoid (although, people are trying to kill him most of the time). Sometimes this means his stories get so tangled no one knows what part of him to trust.

Maybe you couldn’t write a character like Garak right now, but even so, Garak lies with zest and imagination, not to cover up the stupid things he’s done. Garak’s version of the truth requires an open and nimble mind, and I think, a desire to know what the truth really is, beyond what most people have considered. I feel that he would be very unimpressed with what passes for a good lie these days.

Dominant Function: (Ne) Extraverted Intuition, “The Hiking Trails”

Garak exemplifies the phrase “Making it up as you go along.” It’s impossible to get a straight answer out of the man. His response to any given question will change depending on when you ask it, and he can spin a tale from nothing at a moment’s notice.

As he tells Dr. Bashir, the real moral of the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf isn’t: ”Never tell a lie,” but, “Never tell the same lie twice.”

In a strange sense, Garak believes all the lies he tells. Not just because he commits to them, but because his stories reveal an essence about him that the bare facts of the matter wouldn’t. We may never know what exactly got him exiled, but we know that it was a moment of moral weakness for which he feels a failure.

But he’s too naturally evasive to just say that, so he has to make up stories to explain himself.

Garak finds his most willing audience in Bashir, and they discuss everything from philosophy to politics to poetry over their many lunches. But Garak will talk to anyone he can trap. On a long-distance mission with Worf, he inquires at length about joining Starfleet, and almost convinces Worf to help him. Turns out, he’s just messing with the Klingon, partly out of boredom, and partly to keep his lie-telling skills in practice. When the Defiant heads into the Gamma Quadrant to take a disintegrating Odo home, Garak tags along at Sisko’s request to keep the constable company.

“If there’s one thing Cardassians excel at, it’s conversation!” Garak declares, and proceeds to keep Odo mentally distracted from his troubles with “innuendoes, half-truths, and bald-faced lies” for hours.

All this verbal dexterity made Garak one of the top achievers in the Obsidian Order, the Cardassian Union’s feared and notorious intelligence agency. Of course, it also got him tangled up in Cardassian politics, and hated so badly that no one would help him when he was exiled. He can’t even get his father, the best liar in the Order, to admit to his parentage. He blows up his own tailor shop in order to get Odo to investigate because he can’t just tell him he’s in danger. He concocts an assassination plan to prod the Romulans into the war against the Dominion, while convincing Sisko that he’s up to something else the whole time.

And he’s near death before his best friend on DS9 even learns his first name. Before then, he introduces himself to Bashir as, “Garak. Plain, simple Garak.” But nothing is ever simple when Garak is involved.

Auxiliary Function: (Ti) Introverted Thinking, “The Laboratory”

Devious doesn’t even begin to describe Garak. He plots wheels within wheels, lies over lies, just to accomplish the simplest objective. It all makes sense to him, but baffles his enemies.

And his friends, quite frankly.

Garak’s Ti leads him to “never tell the truth when a lie will do.” It’s Te that is concerned with objective fact. Ti works from inner, personal logic. Garak has his own goals and purposes, so he’ll live by whatever truth he needs to succeed.

His stealth and subterfuge may seem twisted to others, but Garak strives for elegance in his plots. When he’s hired by Quark as an assassin (because Quark needs to kill himself; it’s a long story), he tries a number of methods, all meant to do the deed quickly and painlessly. His machinations to provoke the Romulans are really pretty straightforward when you think about it—they just takes some maneuvering to get there. Once, Odo suggests he’s a coward for shooting people in the back, to which Garak replies, “Well, it’s the safest way, isn’t it?”

Garak is intellectually curious and seems to like being the smartest one in the room. Spy work probably appeals to him just for the puzzles it presents, as devising and cracking codes are all part of his skill set. He makes people crack, too—he once broke a subject he was interrogating by pure mental will, simply by staring at him for hours until he confessed.

Garak brings this same focus and precision even to his work as a tailor. He’s detail-oriented and inventive in his designs, and critical of others’ poor fashion choices. It may be a cover for his exile, but there’s no reason to be shoddy about it.

Tertiary Function: (Fe) Extraverted Feeling, “The Garden Fountain”

Garak is a master manipulator, using both subtle threats and outright flattery to get his way. He’s not afraid to put stickier ethical concerns to the side if it means accomplishing a greater good—for instance, assassinating a Romulan senator to ensure that the Romulans will fight the Dominion, or trying to exterminate the entire race of Changelings to save the Alpha Quadrant. He’s generally critical and disdainful of Starfleet’s open-minded, compassionate ideals, and finds Bashir and the others ingratiatingly naïve. It’s almost a victory for him when he can get Sisko to break his moral code during their plot with the Romulans.

At the same time, Garak’s loyalty to the state of Cardassia knows no bounds. Far more than any personal shame he carries from failing in his duty, is his shame at being unaccepted by his homeworld—and by his father, who engineered his exile. He is a patriot to his core, and kills more than once to prove it.

Garak argues often with Dr. Bashir about the superiority of Cardassian culture and ethics. When Cardassia Prime is left devastated and smoldering at the end of the war, he sullenly wonders if Julian sees this as poetic justice for the violence and oppression the Union inflicted upon others. He understands that the whole galaxy thinks they deserve it, but Garak still feel driven to help rebuild, no matter what his people have done.

Inferior Function: (Si) Introverted Sensing, “The Study”

Garak doesn’t like being on DS9 (of course, as Odo once drily remarked: “Who does?”). It’s not just the fact of his exile, but also the physical discomfort of the environment. It used to be a Cardassian station, but once the Federation took over, they changed everything. Suddenly, the place is too cold, too bright, and too cheerful. Everywhere he goes, people look at Garak with suspicion and disdain.

As an Obsidian Order operative, Garak is implanted with a pleasure-inducing device in his brain to help him survive in the case of torture. Living on DS9 feels like torture, so he turns the thing on, and never turns it off. He becomes dependent on the implant, and then has to depend on Dr. Bashir to take it out before it kills him.

What Garak really hates about his life on DS9 is that he’s actually a very good tailor. He admits to finding a certain simplicity in the task that alleviates his mental hyperactivity, but this was never supposed to be his life’s work. When he blows up his own shop, it’s partly to attract Odo’s assistance, and partly out of disgust at the place he can’t escape.

Cardassians in general have a xenophobic streak that fuels their militant fascism. On a mission to DS9’s abandoned sister station Empok Nor, Garak gets infected with a drug meant to enhance this trait. He goes on a killing spree against the Starfleet team, trying to wipe out the outsiders invading Cardassian territory.

Garak also suffers from claustrophobia, brought upon by memories of being locked in a closet for punishment by his father as a boy. It flairs up in times of extreme stress, even when he’s not actually enclosed in a small space. Despite this, Garak desires to return home and rejoin his father in the Obsidian Order, just like old times. He joins a dangerous mission and tortures Odo to prove he’s still got it, but all he gets out of Odo is the admission that the lonely Changeling really wants to return to his people no matter how evil they are.

Which is an instinct Garak knows a little something about.

[zapiarty]

First Trials

Julian had been a father for two weeks and he’d only gotten roaring drunk once. Once was probably bad enough, but it was the only way he could cope with the realization he was a father to a six year old girl the day after she’d arrived. Sure, he’d had weeks to prepare for this, it should have sunk in long before then. But it hadn’t, and Jadzia had patted his back as he moaned about how he had no bloody idea what he was doing and why did anyone let him do this!?

Thankfully the hangover the next morning was fixed with his custom made cure and he could get on with the day. He still had no idea what he was doing, was for once in his life flying blind with no solid plan of what he was doing or how he should act. The only thing he knew was that he wasn’t going to act like his own father. It had only been two weeks and already Julian knew he’d never change anything about Mila, that he loved every bit of her. That was normal right? Jadzia told him that was normal.

She wasn’t completely comfortable yet, but Julian wouldn’t push her. They avoided names as much as they could, though Julian couldn’t resist using all those nicknames he’d heard other parents use for their kids. Mila still took a moment to realize that was her name, so he figured it would be easier that way.

They had awkward moments, moments where they both weren’t sure what they were supposed to do, but Julian pushed through that awkwardness like he did when he knew people were finding him annoying. At least Mila didn’t feel that way, she was always worried it was the other way around.

Julian often did not know what to do. But he instinctively knew what he wanted to do when Mila came home from class one day and looked close to tears. She didn’t bring any attention to her distress, trying to walk by him with her little school bag to her room as if nothing was wrong. Julian knew enough to not let that happen. “Sweetheart? Come here.”

He tried to avoid any statements that might be taken as orders, wanted always to give Mila the choice of what she was going to do if he could. But he really needed answers to this one, so he so softened it by keep his voice low and gentle. She only hesitated for a moment, but kept her head down until Julian slowly lifted it so he could look into her honey eyes. “What happened, why are you crying?”

Mila bit her lower lip, her tiny canines poking out and Julian couldn’t help but find it adorable. His momentary distraction ended when she mumbled something he was sure a normal human wouldn’t have heard. Despite the fact his blood had run cold, he forced himself to ask, “Repeat that, sweetie?”

Her eyes went downcast, and it shattered him all over again when he heard her repeat in a louder mumble that degenerated into full on crying, “Some of the kids called me spoonhead, and Lizard Face, and Professor O-O’Brien told them to stop, but as we left class one shoved me and-and, asked if I’d die if they put me in a freezer because I’m cold blooded.”

Julian was aghast, and trying very very hard to contain his fury lest Mila think it was directed at her. To his horror, she continued by sharing exactly what happened with the perfect memory of a Cardassian.

“Hey Spoonhead!”

Mila looked over at them, but didn’t say anything. She’d heard it before. The Bajoran boy a year older than her turned to his friend. “See! Told you there was one here now!” His voice rose as he turned back to her, “What’s the matter, spoonhead? Don’t like the cold?”

She hid her hands in the large fuzzy sleeves of the thick cardigan Julian had gotten her. Her shoulders crept up as she tried to withdraw into herself, not wanting to admit how cold it was on the station, how cold it had been all her life. “It’s only...a little cold.”

The boy shoved her harder, causing her to almost topple over and drop her bag. “What’s the matter? Don’t want to talk?” He sneered and looked back over his shoulder at his friend who had the same look on his face. “Told you - they’re all the same. Still think you’re something, little butcher? Why don’t you run back to Cardassia, then? Like all the rest of the butchers?”

“I didn’t hurt anyone.” Mila replied defiantly, reaching to grab her bag as she hoped they’d leave. They didn’t. But the boy’s eyes widened and his face turned a bit red, his body language told her he was getting flustered.

“Sure you haven’t. We know all about your sort - what’s Bajoran taste like, snakey?”

Mila glanced around them, so many people were staring, all of them with the same look she’d always seen on adults. Most adults. Right, she had Julian now, he was waiting at home, she’d be late. Garak said to never be late to anything, punctuality was important. While she wasn’t looking at them, that seemed to make the boy even more mad. “Hey- if we put you in a freezer would you die? Lizards do, right, if they get cold enough.”

This was too much, she had to get home, she had to leave, she saw Mrs. O’Brien turning the corner with a deep frown and a dark look on her face. Mila turned and ran. The boy’s voice followed her for a moment, “Then maybe a Bajoran will find out what you taste like, eh, butcher?”

Right after those words Mrs. O’Brien shouted something, but Mila was too far away by then, she couldn’t hear it anymore. Late. She was going to be late.

Julian pulled Mila close, wrapping her up as much as he could, her tears soaking into his uniform. He did his best to shush her soothingly, all the while wrestling with his pure outrage. He needed to call Keiko first, and then he’d be making a call to Odo. He wasn’t about to let this stand. In the meantime, he looked down at his little girl, “Sweetheart, would you like to meet a friend of mine?”

Mila looked up at him with her big honey eyes, glassy from her tears, and blinked in confusion. Julian smiled, “I think you’ll like him. His name’s Kukalaka, and he’s been my friend since before I was your age.” Still confused, she nodded, and Julian scooped her up and lifted her in his arms. She was heavier than an average human child her age would be, but thankfully his augmented strength compensated for that, and he wasn’t worried about her realizing just yet that he shouldn’t be able to do this.

Going to his room, he showed her his worn teddy bear, and the smile it caused her lessened his anger...just enough for now. Just enough to get through dinner and put her to bed before he decided to make sure this would never happen again.

[sleepymarmot]

DS9 season 3 liveblog & notes

[Season index: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 PS]

The Search 1

Um... so what about that treaty about no cloaking on Federation starships, that was such a big deal in The Pegasus?

What's going on with Jadzia's hair...

"We're going to take our only warship into the territory of people who think of us as intruders to convince them we represent no threat" Logic???? What kind of plan is this?

Loaned? Ah, ok.

"When did I start thinking of this Cardassian monstrosity as home?"

If this is "one of the finest collections of ancient African art you'll ever see", what is it doing in their luggage instead of a museum? This is almost as bad as Picard and that priceless artifact in The Chase...

"Maybe it is. Maybe I'm your friend, and maybe I want you to see that you are still needed here no matter what some idiot Starfleet admiral might think." ;_;

Why dim the lights when you cloak? Just to give a visual shorthand to the viewers?

Wow Odo... I don't understand why everyone is so hard on Quark in this episode -- Sisko bullies him, Bashir insults him for no reason, now Odo is yelling at him with more aggression than he's ever shown in two seasons...

Seriously?! Cloaked ships leave a trace, and nobody in all decades of conflict ever noticed that?! I mean, even if somehow only the Romulans know, that means they can detect cloaked Klingon ships, which would mean they could as well have been uncloaked -- that'd be a massive retcon that doesn't work with anything we've seen before.

I still don't understand how replicators can produce foul tasting food... They make exact copies on a molecular level...

Poor Bashir -- it's as if Sisko picked his best friends to leave behind on purpose...

another literal redshirt dead

Class M planet with no star? What? 

Why do these changelings all look like Odo -- imperfect imitations of humanoids? I thought Odo's appearance was the result of trying to fit in Bajoran society + lack of skill to make face more detailed. These changelings live by themselves so they can pick any shape they like, and I'd expect them to have more control over details, so just repeating Odo's design looks like a lazy shorthand to indicate they're the same species -- as if their liquid state weren't enough. They even have the same hairstyle -- which he copied from a Bajoran! If the writers are trying to say "they're just copying Odo" then they should all be played by the same actor.

The Search 2

Oh come on, Kira, there's absolutely nothing wrong with having a lot of questions in this situation!!!

Me: well this story is pretty bad so far, I don't have any expectations for it anymore Screen: Andrew Robinson as Garak Me: interest instantly restored

(I'm certain every person liveblogging this show made or reblogged a post in this vein...)

Alright, Sisko's plotline is definitely some kind of hallucination

Or is it? I thought it was all too good to be true, but maybe the Dominion is just tricking them

Wait, that subcommander is alive and on DS9?

Okay, I didn't like that "Starfleet security officer" and now he's more suspicious. Maybe he's a part of the Dominion. Maybe the changelings are a part of the Dominion. Maybe all these people acting strangely are changelings in disguise. Maybe everything is a conspiracy. I dunno, this entire episode feels incredibly fake. 

"It seems our leaders have simply gone insane" Garak stop reinforcing my impression that you and Sisko are somehow the only real people in this story... Well Dax and Bashir also seem to be alright, but they're a bit too passive.

Oh, Garak didn't look behind himself and got shot, guess he's not real either

FUCKING FINALLY

This is so unsurprising that I can't tell if the writing is to obvious or if I've seen this spoiler before and half-forgot. Probably both.

And they just let them all go. Sure. I wonder how they managed to gain so much power, if they're prone to dumb decisions like this..

What a shitty story. Jfc. The only amusing part was that according to the main characters, the Starfleet admirals are stupid and untrustworthy (what a surprise...), and Garak is smart enough to not only take action when needed, but seem to almost realize the world around him is wrong (but he still somehow fails a spot check in a firefight...). Bashir clearly wants him to join the team and run around having adventures (not a surprise either...). It's funny that the character who comes closest to becoming self-aware is actually one of the simulated ones.

The fakeness of the plot is obvious enough to make me unable to take it seriously, but not clear or fun enough to just relax and enjoy the ride. I don't hate simulations on principle, but I need them to be good simulations. The Federation is too stupid -- it might have worked with some new admiral, since they're often assholes, but we know Nechayev and she was obviously OOC. The editing is pretty telling: there are weird timeskips (worst offender: Sisko gets into a fight and then without a change of pace others come to break him out from the brig), plus I don't think there were establishing outside shots of DS9. And anyway, the very first scene with Sisko where he's in a shuttle even though at the end of the previous episode he was about to be captured, and then Dax and O'Brien show up and we've never seen them escape is a dead giveaway that everything about this group of characters from here on is somehow wrong. And that's 8 minutes into the episode. I thought "Well, maybe it's an editing experiment, and it'll be a how-we-got-here flashback episode" but nope. What a waste of time.

Lmao I just read this in a comment to a review of this episode: "When I first saw the The Search, Pt II I found it unusual that Bashir is in a shuttlecraft with someone and for the first time manages not to annoy his travelling companion. And then the ending reveals why – it was all a dream!" That's right! I actually thought that too! :D

I can say one good thing about this episode: Odo's love of order has always had dark undertones, and I like that it's explored and discussed here as a racial trait which made his brethren into a galactic evil force.

But otherwise I'm not very impressed with his storyline? In the first part his anger and compulsive homing instinct look offputting instead of sympathetic. At one point he makes an expression that is probably supposed to be soft and makes the viewers go "aww", but ends up just looking forced and creepy. And the tender moment with Kira at the end just didn't work for me.

The House of Quark

OUCH

I was pretty scared for Quark, since he's not a big fan of violence, nice to see he's taking this so well

A new pretty outfit for Quark! A beautiful Klingon woman!

Another beautiful Klingon with a great grey mane. Yes, my commentary is very deep today.

I just continue to be amazed by Quark's luck with the ladies. Cultural exchange with a Vulcan in the previous season, now with a Klingon.

Aw, O'Brien actually wants Bashir's opinion now. And Bashir gives good relationship advice to a married man -- compare to their conversation in Armageddon Game!

Doesn't this solve their problem? If Kozak died dishonorably, that means D'Ghor gets nothing. Which is what should have happened in the first place. So now that D'Ghor challenged Quark, Quark's inability to fight will be shown to everybody (as if it weren't obvious enough...), so D'Ghor's lie will be exposed. And then he'd not only have no right of ineritance, but presumably also become a criminal for lying to the coucil.

Quark is awesome

What a good episode. Quark acts cool and noble! Klingon vs Ferengi value clash & working together! A-story and B-story work together well because despite no direct connection, they're both uplifting and thematically linked!

Equilibrium

Oh, of course when Jadzia gets screentime, it's for her to act OOC

Aw, a J&J friendship scene

Time for the annual comment on how much Bashir grew up! I've already talked about his scene in the previous episode, and now there's this lovely, purely platonic scene with Jadzia

How can these Federation weirdos sleep without blankets?

This was okay. But can we have a Jadzia episode not about her almost dying? So far this season is disappointing -- only one good episode out of four.

Second Skin

O k a y. You got me, I really didn't expect this

This is the kind of episode I watch this show for

How do you disguise someone as a member of species for years? I can understand cosmetic surgery like in Face of the Enemy, but to change their entire body so it would show as target species during any medical examination... This concerns the episode Tribunal, too. How are agents so deep undercover supposed to work? She spent all these years helping the Resistance. How does that benefit Cardassia? 10 years ago they wouldn't have known the Federation would become involved and their sleeper agent would work with them

Niiiiice

"Just something I overheard while I was hemming someone's trousers" lmao his excuses are getting more and more ridiculous

Cardassian!Kira *is* more attractive than the real Kira

the real Garak demonstrates how much his reflexes are quicker than his simulation's :D

Honestly, by this point I'm just curious for how many seasons can the writers stretch the mystery surrounding Garak. :D They're having too much fun giving out pieces of the puzzle one by one.

The Abandoned

This beautiful woman with a really impressive chest is Jake's gf? Wow!

Why are they just taking away the wreckage instead of buying it from Quark?

Sisko holding the baby and Jadzia and Julian watching him with smiles on their faces :'))

oh my god Odo used his old bucked as a cache-pot for Kira's plant... :O

wait, weren't the Jem'Hadar much more reptilian?

"It's amazing how some people would judge you based on nothing more than your job" haha

If this boy has so much aggression, why is it only expressed as need for physical combat, and not angry verbal outbursts etc? Another genetically engineered quality -- he needs to be a brutal soldier that doesn't talk back?

I find it curious that this episode answers the question "Is it okay for a 20 year old to date a 16 year old?" with such a definite yes. That's pretty questionable territory, and it's unclear why exactly Sisko changed his mind: his opinion about the girl's job or Jake's interests doesn't negate the age difference.

I like that the show takes Odo's backstory as a lab specimen so seriously. I used to expect exploration of this theme with Data, since he must have spent a lot of time in some Federation research centers before entering the Academy.

Civil Defense

Garak AND Dukat? I like this episode already.

Why are they not asking Garak for help? I know they'd prefer other options, but is kind of an emergency! I know they'll have to, eventually, since he's in the opening titles.

"I never knew how much this man's voice annoyed me" :D I'd actually be curious to hear the announcement in full, personally!

This is such a good excuse for a Disaster-like episode?? Perfect synergy between the setting and the needs of the plot

haha of course Odo and Quark are trapped together

"The only place in the galaxy that still recognizes my access code is a Bajoran space station" So what about that code in Second Skin?

bwahaha it just gets worse and worse

I think this is a good episode to show new viewers who want a taste of the show before starting to watch it properly from the beginning: it gives a good idea of the setting and involves all major characters to some degree, but so far it has very few continuity references

"What? That you'd spend your final hours in jail?"

"Tell me, Doctor, what is it exactly about this situation that's making you smile?" "You, Garak." oh my god...

holy shit this station is something else...

Dukat shows up in person! It's strange they didn't even discuss the possibility of calling him earlier. Of course, he immediately turned this into a hostage situation, so...

Oh my god he's making himself tea in the middle of this... amazing

"If you had been on the station when I designed this programme, I would have made an exception in your case."

HAHAHAHAHA

When Odo and Quark walk out, why are so many people just chilling on the Promenade?! They were about to die seconds ago!

What a beautiful episode :D Probably not as suited for beginners as I initially thought, thanks to Garak&Dukat. But I really appreciate the dark comedy side of it

Meridian

I think I've seen this episode in TNG... maybe multiple times... Jadzia is even worse suited for this role than Deanna. 

welp this was really bad on literally every possible level. i could complain for a long time but i'd rather save my breath

the only good thing about this episode: it's so irrelevant you can easily skip it.

Defiant

I think she needs sleep, not a night out in the bar

THAT VOICE 

I think I'm spoiled about this one...

Second Chances did such a good job not villainizing Tom and then this episode comes and ruins it

ah yes tell all your military secrets to the Cardassians, including cloaked ship detection...

why the random kiss

aaand Riker spends possibly the rest of his life in a Cardassian camp? great. just great. why did someone hate him so much they deemed this necessary? they managed to make me so salty about this I didn't even care about the Cardassian stuff, that's an achievement. Will gets to continue his career and marry his imzadi while Tom, who already spent 8 years marooned alone and didn't even get a promotion afterwards, now rots in prison forever. "You always had the better hand," indeed.

it's hilarious how quickly Dukat can make Sisko sympathise with him just by mentioning fatherhood. worked even better than the last time. if he got half a brain he's doing it on purpose.

I hope Riker at least got to spend some time with Ro while they were both in the Maquis. now that's something I'd like to see

Fascination

"I'm a poor substitute for your wife" "I could have told you that 60 games ago"

do we really need the Odo/Kira/Bareil love triangle?

"I usually make it a point to drop by Quark's three or four times a day at random intervals, just to let him know that I'm thinking about him"

"Jadzia, of course. I've never understood how the two of you could be such good friends. [...] It's just that she gets to spend so much more time with you than I do." "Jadzia and I have been doing this for the past two years."  ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

oh O'Briens, pls don't fight over nothing :(

so where is Bashir during all this? because I'm pretty sure he and Garak are not immune to this romance confusion nonsense, and that sounds like a much more intriguing story than what I'm watching

ah, he's with Kira, well at least this one's mutual and not sexual harassment

I understand Odo, but why is Sisko unaffected too?

A question that concerns not only to this episode: why is Kira always the object of everyone's attraction? She's dating Bareil (which I completely forgot about; when she mentioned having a boyfriend in the previous episode I was very confused), Odo has a crush on her, in this episode Jake and Bashir do too, an episode before Riker kisses her, an episode before some creep wants a blow-up doll of her, an episode before Dukat leers at her...

Well... I guess this was less gross than The Naked Now.

Past Tense

I like how Dax adjusts to this time period instantly. was she already born by then?

"Some of these people are mentally ill." *braces myself for some horrible comment* "...They need proper medical treatment." oh thank god

Jadzia looks absolutely gorgeous

surely it's not a coincidence that the only white character among the time-travellers ends up with a millionaire, while the others are locked up in the sanctuary

Sisko and Bashir's discussions are very heavy handed, it's like watching some old moralizing play

I like how Jadzia retrieved her combadge by telling the truth

there was nothing particularly wrong with this story, and it was well-made, but for some reason it didn’t really impress me

Life Support

so. Winn was behind the sabotage, right?

this is like "Ethics" in reverse

haha they want Terok Nor back

"She talks a lot for a female" Nog you used to be better than that...

"Listen to me. I don't care about your negotiations, and I don't care about your treaty. All I care about is my patient, and at the moment he needs more medical care and less politics. Now, you can either leave here willingly or I'll call security and have you thrown out."

now it's more like "The Host". (I can't stop comparing everything to TNG haha)

don't try to make this into a "grey morality" situation. Nog is objectively in the wrong here, the human culture is objectively better than the Ferengi culture in this respect. TNG intentionally wrote Ferengi values to be abhorrent, and DS9 didn't change them but somehow tries to justify them and it just. doesn't. work. Just admit you wrote yourself into a corner, and either retcon the Ferengi to be more tolerable, or set aside your "all cultures are valid" agenda for a minute and admit some things are just bad. this glorification of moral relativism is DS9's version of TNG's worst misapplications of the Prime Directive

wow, are they actually going to kill him off?

"Positronic implants"?! Um. UM. They have working positronic brain now? Since when? Last time I heard, nobody managed to make stable ones since Dr. Soong... Or are implants easier to make than a full brain? Anyway, the possibility of a mixed organic-positronic brain has never even been discussed before, this is kind of a big deal. Dammit, just putting some human skin on Data was something only the Borg managed to do! This sounds 1000 times more complex!

"Major" ah, so that's how they break up, he’s incapable of romance now

ahh, his voice, head movemens and facial expressions are just like Data's

uggh the Jake-Nog storyline went as I expected

wow I didn't expect the treaty to actually get signed!

"I won't remove the last shred of humanity Bareil has left" rude... and that's from the man who befriended Data... I'm disappointed

oh btw if he just casually talks about the possibility of fully replacing Bareil's brain, that means it is possible to create stable positronic brains at will now! this is enormous! Data doesn’t have to be the only one of his kind anymore! Lal can be rebuilt! oh wait, let me guess, this will never be addressed again ever.

Welp. You know, right before I started this episode, I was mentally complaining about Bareil, like "kill him off already". Whoops! I feel bad now. This episode didn't go as I expected, and was more important than I expected too, which is good.

Jake and Nog's storyline and the positronic stuff -- less good. Honestly, the more I think about these two points, the angrier I become and the less I like this episode.

I thought that A and B plots were annoyingly unrelated, but actually... I think they share the theme of "peace above all", on a very different scale. Because the Bajoran-Cardassian treaty doesn't sound very fair to me either. "There's even the possibility that the Cardassians will issue a formal apology"?! Is that really enough? "Even the possibility"? Meanwhile, people like Dukat not only walk free but remain at their high posts. Cardassia|Nog was the offending side, Bajor|Jake did nothing wrong, and yet rather than declare that and demand justice and apologies, the latter can only hope to achive mutual tolerance -- even that is hard enough. Well, let's just hope the show isn't going to try and justify the occupation, like it did with Nog's misogyny...

btw, since we're talking about international politics and status quo: what about the Dominion threat? everyone was really scared for a couple of episodes, and then things went back to normal. we went to the Gamma Quadrant once for no reason (nothing about the plot required that!). the Defiant, a unique warship sent here for defend DS9 and the wormhole against Dominion attacks, is regularly used as a shuttle/runabout for random trips. way to disperse all sense of danger, change and excitement.

I certainly like Bashir in this episode more than I liked Crusher in Ethics (or in The Host, lol). He can get pretty intense when it comes to saving his patient's life. Not "fly to Cardassia to face a former head of secret service" intense, but still.

It's nice to see Winn humanized a bit. The writers have spent a lot of time making Dukat likeable, she deserves the same treatment. I'm so used to mistrusting her, I spent the entire episode being confused whether she actually wants the treaty to succeed or is plotting to make it fail for some reason, whether she wants Bareil alive or dead. But I guess I was supposed to take everything she was saying at face value for once? 

I don't know what the hell is this season doing with these Ferengi B-plots that, I guess, are supposed to be humorous (???) but are wildly offensive instead. Are we supposed to just calmly accept Quark and Nog's extreme misogyny? It was played for drama pretty well in Rules of Acquisition; this is a noticeable step back.

Heart of Stone

I love Sisko and Bashir's casual conversation about a male ensign's pregnancy! Sure, he's an alien, but it's still progress for this show.

Odo and Kira's storyline is so cliched... I don't even make an effort to listen to their technobabble

As viewers we all know Kira will be saved somehow at the last minute, but in her and Odo's place I'd already start discussing a mercy kill. Phaser blast from a friend >>> asphyxiation

"I'm in love with you too" ???????????????????? YOUR BOYFRIEND LITERALLY DIED IN THE PREVIOUS EPISODE

Sisko, he's just a kid. I know you're testing him, but there's no need to go that far.

Okay, I'm going to sound like a broken record, but: what about misogyny? The previous episode made a point of showing that Nog upholds Ferengi values regarding women. And that's completely incompatible with Starfleet. Isn't anyone going to mention that?

heh... there was a thought at the back of my mind that a changeling might be involved

aww, good, stand up to Quark, you two! :)

Well, most of this episode is very boring, contrived and derivative, but it does give Odo some character development (even if it includes the dreaded romance, ugh) and has a good excuse for this plot device at the end.

Destiny

"I also had Chief O'Brien reprogram the replicators to provide Cardassian food" Um, why wouldn't it already be on the menu? I assumed the replicators weren't replaced by Federation ones, and in season 2 Keiko gave a Cardassian dish to  Rugal. I went back to check, and she literally said "I found some Cardassian recipes in the memory bank of our food replicator"!

It makes sense that the Bajorans don't want the Cardassians in their Temple

let me guess, there'll be an unexpected third Cardassian and suddenly the prophecy will sound much more believable

"Now those are about the two friendliest vipers I've ever met" Hey, maybe don't make jokes like this immediately after someone walks out of the door...

Told you so

Damn, the third "viper" seems to actually deserve that name! Will she be the "bad" one, or, in subversion, the only trustworthy one?

"Men just don't seem to have a head for this sort of thing. That's why women dominate the sciences." ah yes hello reverse sexism trope

Cardassians flirt by bickering? Never heard that before... I thought this was more like Klingons.

Okay, they played it straight with Dejar

That's lovely! But "vipers will return to their nest in the sky" doesn't make sense -- how did the comet fragments return to their nest?

The Prophets don't "want" anything! They just can tell you the future because they don't exist in linear time!

Well, this was a lovely episode, if not the most engaging. But the subplot with O'Brien and the scientist was completely unnecessary.

Prophet Motive

Was! This! Necessary?! I don't need to see sex on screen! And yes that includes oo-mox!

Aw Bashir

I can't believe we're getting a story where Bashir is the one who suffers because his friends won't shut up. Karma is real...

nice job breaking it, Quark

The story is pretty shallow by itself, but makes me ask some interesting questions. Would it be ok to nonconsensually transform a bad person into a good one? Especially a person in a position of power? I know I'd be tempted to do this to some politicians... But even if we assume the ends justify the means, who would define good or bad? Sadly, this episode doesn't take these issues seriously.

After 2.5 season of Bajoran religion, it's actually nice to meet the "Prophets" in person again in all their creepy, clueless glory.

Visionary

Time to torture poor Miles with more unreality!

why are both sides being so dumb? just say "Odo was separated from the rest of his people as a baby, grew up with no knowledge of them, and only met them 1.5 times"?

"I'm always diplomatic" *cut* "THAT WAS THE MOST RIDICULOUS THING I'VE EVER HEARD AND I RESENT THE IMPLICATION!"

my first thought: the transporter genuis who beamed in the device was O'Brien

this one doesn't make sense... the sleeping Miles should know about the disaster and the radiation device too...

As usual with time travel episodes, it's very fun to watch, but the mechanics break down at the end and spoil the impression. I like that, as in Civil Defense, every time you solve a problem it gets worse.

It's only season 3, and "O'Brien suffers" as a type of episode is already getting old.

Distant Voices

There's a Cardassian writer named Shoggoth? :D

"Still the man of mystery?" "Oh, you wouldn't have me any other way"

Melting Odo is a genuinely disturbing sight...

"There's hope for you yet, Doctor"

Very predictable story, but it has some character development and lovely scenes with Garak.

Through the Looking Glass

when Mirror!Garak looks in indignation at Sisko kissing Kira: honestly same

Mirror universe Terok Nor is less riot-proof than our universe's was...

Episode: boring and pointless as I feared

Mirror Kira: somehow even worse than the last time, at least watching her hit on herself was mildly entertaining

Mirror Garak: still a giant waste of Andrew Robinson -- seriously, he appears rarely enough, and for the third time in this season he's not playing his real character

Sleeping with alternate versions of friends/subordinates: incredibly gross

Well at least Bashir and Dax looked really hot with these haircuts lol

Improbable Cause / The Die is Cast

Ahh, so many of my favourite things. Odo investigates! Garak confronts his past and justifies his reputation for once! International conflict! Dominion is dangerous again!

The cliffhanger where Garak joins Tain is the most thrilling thing that happened on the show recently! But I'd be severely disappointed if he didn't do that. 

The torture scene is very impressive, but there are some things I don't understand about it:

What, "They're still my people and I want to go home" is the big secret that's worth all that torture? Seriously? Anyone could have told you that. How is this information new or relevant?!

Nevertheless, "he never broke" is a lie, right? Odo did break and confess, even if I think his revelation was completely useless. Don't the intelligence agencies of the two biggest police states in the galaxy have security cameras in their interrogation chambers?!

I could understand if Odo forgave Garak eventually, but not so soon and easily! He tortures you horribly, then you never even mention it and invite him to hang out only several hours after! Sorry, what?!

It's becoming a trend to start Garak-centric episodes with something bad happening to him. :D Oh shit, Garak's hand got bitten! Oh shit, Garak has a migraine! Oh shit, Garak's shop blew up!

Explorers

Come on, O'Brien, is this really more ridiculous than building ships in bottles? :D You of all people should understand!

"For a moment there I thought that you had been put in charge of the Cardassian Ministry for the Refutation of Bajoran Fairy Tales"

Miles, just say the word! :D 

Fireworks in space! :D I don't know what I love more -- the beautiful and uplifting moment itself, or Cardassians going "Shit :))) We gotta be really nice today :))))) Congratulations :)))))))"

After the epic intense two-parter -- 45 minutes of pure fluff :D It has so many things that are specific to DS9: Sisko and Jake's family bond, Bajoran culture and Cardassians being jerks about it, Sisko and Dukat's passive-aggressive skyping, Bashir and O'Brien's slowly developing friendship -- all leading to the celebration of the “boldly go where no one has gone before” spirit, and everything, for once, ends well.

Family Business

"If I were Curzon, I'd have stolen her from you by now" *facepalm* let's just pretend this stupid heteronormative line doesn't exist

this house looks like a Hobbit hole

Quark and Rom's mom is awesome. get rekt you misogynists!

omg Miles & Julian, how old are you? :D

Rom is so nice in this episode

I like Kasidy

Ishka is 10 times more awesome than it seemed

Rom really rocks in this episode

aaaand the ship sails :D

I wish Ishka could make a public statement, and Quark would 

Good episode: interesting family dynamics, amazing Ferengi feminist, cute new ship

Quark and women is a fascinating topic. He's a traditionalist when it comes to Ferengi women, but in daily life among other species usually manages to come off no worse than any 20th century misogynist, and finds strong and outspoken women attractive rather than repulsive. Apparently it boils can be traced back to mommy issues: Quark isn't just a "good Ferengi", he's being reactionary towards Ishka, but at the same time she clearly is a positive influence on him, even if he won’t admit it. Too bad in this episode he refused to take even one step forward as he did in "Rules of Acquisition"...

Shakaar

Shit, things are really going downhill on Bajor... separation of church and state, what's that?

"We spent so many years fighting the Cardassians. We spent so much time hoping and praying for a Bajor that was free. Now that we won, how can people just hand their freedom over to someone like Winn?" "It has been my observation that one of the prices of giving people freedom of choice is that sometimes they make the wrong choice."

Why can't those reclamators be replicated?

"I wasn't aware that our relationship needed solidifying" 

Great episode! (If I set aside the question of replication... Seriously, what's the law here? The Bajorans on DS9 can use the replimat, but Bajor can't ask the Federation to replicate some farm equipment? I don't think it would be physically impossible, surely it's not made of something like dilithium or latinum.) Winn hasn't reminded me of our sad reality so much since her first appearance. The B-plot was completely irrelevant, but I always enjoy seeing this sort of thing.

Facets

Quark... are you trying to convince the station commander's 16 year old son to write porn for you? seriously?

Ah yes, people closest to Jadzia, aka all of the main characters... and a dabo girl who appeared once for 45 seconds

don't do this... especially in front of all of ur friends...

Dax has a multi-Doctor episode! :D

CurzOdo and Quark's reaction to him are beautiful :D But how can he drink?

Poor Jadzia :(

Go Rom! Quark is too much of an asshole this season...

This is messed up... 

Typical man: he's attracted to a woman, so he takes out his frustration and her and nearly ruins her life

How do Trill memories work? Why is this ritual needed when all memories are already in Dax's head? Are some of them in a .zip and need to be decompressed to be appreciated fully? How did Jadzia not know of Curzon's crush? Is it possible to hide some of your memories from the next host(s) on purpose? You know what, nevermind. Rene Auberjonois (whose name I had to copy-paste, I must admit...) clearly had fun with this episode, and so did I.

The Adversary

yes finally! :)

When they introduced the word "changeling" I was like "that's dumb, that's not what the word means" but now I understand. tbh I love them as enemy -- this story is so beautifully paranoid

why are they all assuming there's only one changeling on board

Well, they certainly know how to end the season on a dramatic line...

This season, my honeymoon phase of "oh my god, serialized Trek" finally ended, and I started thinking about whether or not I like these serialized stories. So I felt compelled to write longer notes after each episode, and don’t have any general remarks this time.