#but also i feel that garak would think it's a fashion nightmare

[rogueyami]

Garak: I trust that Starfleet intelligence will be sending someone along to make good use of this opportunity ;)

Julian upon waking up and seeing Sloan: oh god I’m going to be the one gathering intelligence

Also a bonus disgruntled Julian

[ofhouseadama]

prompting you to talk at length about that thing with Garak and jewelry and vulnerability. Also thoughts on what Cardassians value, jewelry wise- obviously for humans we all get stuck on precious metal, specifically gold and silver, but I think Cardassians are also very into pearls.

Yes! I think a lot about how my grandmother bought her divorce from her first husband and survived after the divorce by squirreling away all the jewelry he bought her and all the jewelry she'd inherited and been given when they were married. It was her insurance policy; diamonds as rule, don't depreciate in value. Gold and silver fluctuate, gemstones go in and out of fashion--but diamonds? They can get you away from your shitty abusive husband and pay your rent.

I think the Cardassian diamond, so to speak, has to be something from the Hebitian civilization. Something worth taking that was mined and the mine has long run dry. Some kind of gemstone that is now only available for sale when someone dies or when a family is in financial or political ruin, but otherwise gets passed down generation to generation to generation, appreciating in value. Possibly obsidian, as old as Cardassia itself. The name the Obsidian Order had to come from somewhere--perhaps in the last days of the Hebitians, as the Cardassians destroyed their civilization and the planet, they mined out all the obsidian glass from the planet. Made it into weapons to serve the Obsidian Order, and jewelry to for the ruling families the Obsidian Order nominally served.

From there are the other natural resources of Cardassia Prime that have long run dry--pearls are a great example, I think. The fisheries on Prime have probably long been run into ecological disaster. So not quite ancient Hebitian, but old. And soft and fragile, something that requires intent and knowledge to maintain. I also have a pet headcanon that it was en vogue after Cardassia achieved spaceflight and started conquering their neighbors and colonizing worlds that metal from flagships was eventually reclaimed by ruling families and military leaders to turn into settings for rings and crowns and necklaces and earrings.

We've talked before about how Garak desperately wants to resemble something of a sugar daddy to Julian, once he arrives on Cardassia. In part because Tain's fortune, hidden in bank accounts among at least five different foreign banks that has only grown during the Dominion War, makes him sick and he spends a lot of time driving his millions in latinum into hospitals and orphanages and funding the government and now into Julian--but also because his nightmare is that Julian would ever feel trapped with him. That there would ever possibly be the appearance of Julian having been trapped by him in the first place. The implication that Julian cannot freely come and go from the household of the Son of Tain. Especially if Julian is in exile from the Federation, let alone once marriage is broached and Julian is forced to give up the Federation in order to remain on Cardassia.

And so the solution is material wealth--not unlike a dowry being settled on a woman for her financial security and the security of her heirs. Garak hands over half a million strips of latinum to be invested at a 10% rate in Julian's name only, the 10% annuity to be used by Julian at Julian's discretion. He can re-invest it or spend it or donate it or light it on fire. But he has it.

As for the very real rumors about them--jewelry. Some passed down through the nebulous ancestry of the House of Tain, some of that very old obsidian glass jewelry and pearls set in 500 year old, battle-tested steel. His wedding ring is worth the average Cardassian's yearly salary, before the bombardment. Julian can leave. Garak makes it apparent to everyone that Julian can always leave.

But he chooses not to.

[trout-scout]

ohhhohoh... 1 and 16 for Ms. Donna Beneviento :>c and 21 for an OC of yours! wild card! your choice who it is!

DONNA :') who is both my wife and a character i identify strongly with. therapists please evaluate.

1- Favourites thing(s) about this character?

Back in May 2021, someone (i think trevor henderson) posted a screenshot of her 3d model from the model viewer on Twitter and I didn't even know anything about the game at the time and I was like.....oh......that's gonna live in my mind for the next fifty years. I love her design. Obviously, since i dress up as her, huehuehue. It combines some of my absolute favorite aesthetic elements: strong silhouette, Victorian mourningwear, death imagery, Japanese theater kuroko, and high strangeness. It tells you so much about her & Angie without any words needing to be said. Which, essentially, none are.

I also love what one can glean about her from walking through her house, which, may I add, is house goals. yes even the basement (especially the basement). The little ornaments, the crafting supplies, the two teacups in the reading nook, the mixture of cozy turn of the century elegant homeyness with a folksy twist & this kind of painful, quiet loneliness, this intense aura of dread. The whole time one is there, despite their nice surroundings, you feel this sucking black pit down at the bottom of your stomach and you know terrible things happened here.

A lot of the reason I identify so strongly with her is this sense of hiddenness, this repression, this covering-up. 

a lot of folks say the house B section is boring to replay but I don't find that the case at all. The atmosphere is too strong for it to be boring even when I know the puzzles.

and i love that she's pretty and fashion goals shhhhh

16- What do you think would improve this character? Like, character-arc wise?

Honestly...I have no idea. Part of the impact of her segment is that she both is and isn't present, and that it is relatively brief. If it was longer, would it lose some of its power? I have a lot of thoughts about a potential backstory and what she does all day, and the precise nature of her powers/the Angie situation, but...

I don't know, I was about to say that maybe if the hallucinations were more bizarre and vivid, but seeing as the leadup to the baby is one of the scariest things I have ever experienced in my life (I think I yelled NO, NO, NO the first AND second times playing that) I can't really suggest anything better! Maybe a weirder boss fight? idk game mechanics w/e

Okay, self-indulgent answer is "entire game where you play as Donna during a normal day and you must navigate her self-induced nightmare visions where her entire tragic, traumatic backstory is revealed via allegorical hallucinations...while picking flowers", but that's just my fic Burial. shameless plug.

21- Wild card! Talk about anything to do with this character! Anything at all!

So in 2015 a friend and I started writing this astronomically stupid story entitled White House Black Market after the business casual clothing chain, which was intentionally a kind of mash up of X-Files, Gossip Girl, and the film Jupiter Ascending (later also a lot of other things, but that was the OG pitch). It involved a disgraced journalist uncovering a conspiracy regarding the president of the USA selling genetically modified human test subjects to an incredibly bisexual and hot alien king so he could save his people from a plague.

And then it spiraled out into this wild epic story involving ancient progenitor aliens, dead cosmic god-entities, the galactic government getting corrupted by the aforementioned president, archaeology, extradimensional travel, and secrets. And this one assassin character who was shamelessly based on Garak from DS9 and this art I once saw of General Hux from Star Wars as a sniper. His name was Janus Sicarius. And all this to say is I really miss writing this guy because he had the most heartbreaking backstory and worldview and I'm forever chasing that high with creating character backstories. none quite hit the same.

anyway.