#he's allowed to have the kind of weird problems that plague a lot of autistic people

[justletmeon12]

Garak's relationship with Bashir actually reminds me heavily of a thing that kept happening to me when I was younger:

The thing about being Really Annoying, according to all neurotypicals, and never getting the benefit of the doubt due to both that and people misreading everything you do because you don't speak elaborate unspoken social cue, is that it makes you a) lonely, and b) deeply skeptical of the assumption that certain other people are Bad.

As a result, I've had a string of close friendships and borderline-relationships with smart, interesting people who I'd been told to stay away from - mostly because of mental health issues, difficult home lives, etc. Whether because of that or for some other reason, most of our interactions tended to be built on discussing common interests - philosophy, animals, and yes, literature.

Some of them did turn out to be jerks/creeps (including a couple with some frustrating ideas about minority groups), but the overwhelming thing they all had in common was that they were as lonely and isolated as I was, and that made them more tolerant of the things that made me Bad.

Garak is objectively not a good person. He's a torturer who's overwhelmingly devoted to an empire built on beliefs about racial supremacy. He's also extremely fucked up, and very isolated on a station where even people who don't know his past hate him. Bashir connecting to him as someone else who nobody can stand (and who's also okay with talking about a SpIn constantly) is one of the most relatable things about him.

Garak loving Bashir for all of his Autistic quirks instead of in spite of, is something so healing to me personally