#julian bashir meta

[walkingstackofbooks]

Julian + Loneliness + Love: an essay

BASHIR: Wait. Quark, did you really mean all that? About Dax being my one last chance for true happiness?

In Change of Heart, Season 6, Julian really latches onto these words from Quark, leading us to half-a-season of having to painfully watch him become re-obsessed with Jadzia. Here, I’m going to examine how Julian perceives love – particularly romantic love -- as being that one, impossible-to-get thing that could actually make him happy, and why he might think that way about it. 

--

First: a couple of things I learnt about in therapy that I think are pretty relevant to how Julian does life.

(Please note I am not a professional – my therapist is wonderful and I’ve tried to re-research this too, but I might well have misunderstood or forgotten something, so please don’t just take my word on it! The descriptions of the concepts are also rather simplistic in the interests of time.)

Drive, threat, and self-soothing systems

In ideal conditions: we will be seeking out satisfaction from our lives through our drive system. There will be things we want in life that will give us purpose and make us happy, and we’ll move towards our goals because we *want* to. 

At times, we’ll face things that are difficult, and when we are in danger, our threat system kicks in to warn us of it and get us away. The old fight-flight-freeze-fawn thing; our limbic system takes control, so that we don’t waste time *processing* things and thinking through everything logically -- we need to get away from that sabre-toothed tiger automatically, not stand there thinking about it!

Once the threat has gone away, our soothing system kicks in to neutralise the threat system. As we go through life, we learn from our experiences how to better self-soothe, and gradually add to that system. 

However, it doesn’t always work out that way and my best guess is that Julian’s system is going to be heavily threat-based with very little soothing. 

I imagine that post-enhancements as a kid, he did manage to develop his drive system, finding things he enjoyed doing and chasing after them just because he wanted to. However, his parents’ very high expectations probably meant that even then, his threat system was conditioned to think of *failure* as a threat, and so even from a young age, Julian’s threat system has been highly active in being a driving force behind his ambition - undermining his *actual* drive system. 

Then, of course, he learnt about his enhancements, meaning that he becomes preoccupied with not being discovered -- and from this moment on, his threat system is pretty permanently activated. He seems to find some relief in distraction: escapism through books, in his work, in tennis -- but he doesn’t have a way to soothe this threat, only ignore it. 

By the time he arrives on DS9, I believe he has a few things in his actual drive system, including wanting to help people and seeking adventure. But he is also so used to his threat system being engaged that he doesn’t even notice how driven by fear he is -- and his soothing system is an absolute wreck, with minimal coping mechanisms. 

Attachment style

There are four different attachment styles, as pictured above. These influence how you form and manage the relationships in your life -- in the image it says “partner”, but it’s also involved in your friendships and families. 

As warned, this is a little simplistic, but basically your attachment style is formed by having a warm, consistent and loving relationship with your primary caregiver in infancy. Julian very much didn’t have that, and we know that from when he was very young he “knew he was a great disappointment to his parents” -- so I think it’s very likely he would fall into having a fearful attachment style, with both low self-esteem, and low trust in other people.

(Having a secure attachment with your caregiver also helps you develop good soothing strategies for your threat system! Another reason why his is so depleted…)

Attachment styles can change and improve, so I think that during his time at DS9 (maybe even during the Academy) as he begins to gain experiences of friends who do consistently choose him and with whom he is safe, he probably moves more towards the preoccupied category. But I do not think this man has ever made a *really* secure attachment in his life. 💔

I also don’t think he has ever examined this too deeply? Maybe after DBIP, hopefully some of his friends might have gone “that was a super fucked-up childhood you had there”, but I figure he probably attributes the way he approaches social situations to his autism (which due to his parents’ ableism, means he thinks “I’m doing socialising wrong and everyone else is doing it right so I should listen to everyone else and do it their way regardless of how I feel about it”) and so he doesn’t realise that actually his fear of being rejected and his craving for validation through meaningful relationships -- if he even recognises those feelings for what they are -- are unhealthy coping mechanisms that he could learn to shift into something more positive if he had the time and space and help of a professional.

His relationship with Palis was almost definitely a victim of this, imo. Even if he doesn’t realise it, he’s terrified that she will inevitably reject him (having a ridiculously catastrophic secret doesn’t help with this assumption, but being fearful-preoccupied also just lends him to believe that people are inevitably going to reject him) and so he makes his excuses and leaves her first. 

Amatonormativity

Even if I hope that the 24th century is less amatonormative than now, I don’t think Julian has necessarily been able to benefit from that. Given how ableist his parents are, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to think that they might be queerphobic too, or at the very least dismissive of any lifestyle that isn’t the same as theirs. 

In addition, on DS9, his best friends are Miles O’Brien (who has always been very vocal about how happily married he is) and Jadzia Dax (who had been as happy as he was to be flirty and single and not tied down, until she found her One True Love, and got married), which wouldn’t exactly help discourage the notion of “romantic love = marriage = happiness”. So I think that Julian has definitely internalised all this, and – especially since he’s been taking cues from those around him how to act and what to think about social situations his entire life – he accepts this whole “you need to have a partner” thing as true for him, just because it’s been true for his friends. 

I headcanon Julian as being somewhere on the aromantic spectrum, too (hovering around WTFromantic) --  but crucially, he has no idea. He genuinely struggles to tell the difference between platonic and romantic feelings and guesses how he feels a lot of the time, but since he doesn’t know that he's guessing, he really believes he's in love. And because he has never connected the dots that he’s aro, he assumes the disconnect between *his* experience of love and everyone else’s is just down to his autism, and therefore everyone else is right and he needs to follow their lead in finding happiness through romantic love. 

We also know that he really likes old books like James Bond. (I headcanon that he finds pre-1990s fiction safer, because there is no chance that the villain is secretly going to be an augment all along, or any other anti-augment prejudice or micro-aggression in them.) So despite being a 24th century guy, he becomes steeped in these 20th century views -- and with him trying to figure out all the time what’s a “normal” way to act, both in a “not-an-augment” sense and a “not-autistic” sense, he’s internalised a fair amount of “what love really is” from these books which, like, isn’t always great to say the least. 

Season 6

QUARK: You know what's really sad, what really keeps me awake at night? She's out of reach because we let her go. BASHIR: I suppose so. But some things just weren't meant to be. Evade. O'BRIEN: Julian, are you sure you want to-- QUARK: Chief, please. You know the rules. No coaching during a round. You're probably right. But what if that's a convenient rationalisation? What if deep down in our heart of hearts we both know she's something unique, something we may never see again. A chance at true happiness and we let her slip through our fingers. 

And so we come back to this conversation. Quark is manipulating Julian to win the game of tongo, but whether or not he knows how deeply his words will cut, they leave a lasting impression upon Julian. 

Quark calls Jadzia “a chance at true happiness”, but when Julian repeats those words later -- despite his perfect recall -- he describes Dax as being his “one last chance for true happiness”. And this, I think, is what really gets to him. 

We’re deep into Season 6 -- Julian is not “happy”. He’s become depressed, despondent, weighted down by the war. It’s not been long since Statistical Probabilities -- is he watching the casualty count grow, the war continuing exactly as they had predicted for the time being? At this point in time, “happiness” feels like a pipe dream for him.

How long has it been since he has truly had a long stretch of contentment? Most people put it at pre-Dominion-camp, right? So he had a pretty long stretch of being happy and (incidentally) in a relationship with Leeta from the end of Season 3 until s05e07, and then a few months later, he was kidnapped – which makes me think that if he’s thinking back on the “good old days” of DS9, it’s quite likely he’s thinking of a time when he was in a relationship. 

Julian comes from a background of believing that no-one would accept him for who he is. Even in Statistical Probabilities, among his friends, O’Brien and Sisko and Worf all openly discuss how augments should have restricted access to general society. And that’s just the augmentations: he also knows that his personality can be annoying and off-putting to many people. So he thinks that it would take an extraordinary person to actually like him and want him. 

> Back in Season 2, when he was talking about Palis, he said “Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and I think to myself, will I ever find anyone that wonderful again?” Quark describes Dax as similarly unique -- and I think that strikes a chord with Julian, causing him to think “I lost Palis, I’ve lost Leeta, I’ve lost Dax -- how many more extraordinary people can there be? Dax really was my last chance.”

Julian doesn’t properly understand his feelings. He’s used to relying on other people to help him figure out what they are and how he should react.So Quark asserting that Julian does still feel attracted to Jadzia and does resent Worf and that he should have tried harder with Jadzia is something he accepts. (Just like later on, when Vic tells him he should be moving on, he accepts that very easily, too.)

> His preoccupied attachment style and fear of loneliness also means that he gravitates towards social interaction and people being friendly to him. After this, and particularly after Jadzia’s death, he starts having a bit more time for Quark: Quark’s inclusion of him in this “we both like Jadzia and resent Worf” club does provide him with some of that relationship-ness he needs, and even though he isn’t quite on the same wavelength as him, Quark is making him feel seen and understood, so if he’s lonely and there’s no-one else, he’ll probably seek Quark out that bit more. 

>> And come to think of it, we’ve definitely seen Miles leaving Julian behind at the bar (with no-one to talk to but Quark) to go home to his wife and kids, just reinforcing the people-with-relationships-get-to-be-happy thing.

So yeah: Julian’s actually feeling some really big feelings about his loneliness and unhappiness and wanting to feel better, but he ends up projecting all of this onto his lack of a relationship, and more specifically, that Dax is probably the last person he’s going to come across who would accept him so completely.

Which sucks, and is a really toxic attitude. We don’t see it change the way he treats Dax on-screen, but even so, there is a sense of misplaced entitlement: he’s entitled to be happy and therefore he should have been entitled to have Dax. And I hate that for him. But he really is deeply, deeply afraid that without being in a relationship with her, he’s never going to feel genuinely happy again. 

(Yes, he has friends, and he enjoyed spending time with them, like in Take Me Out To The Holosuite. But remember -- his threat system is constantly on with his fear of loneliness, and he doesn’t have the skills to actually soothe that fear and put it to rest. What he can do is use his malformed coping mechanism of distraction -- distracting himself with his friends and holosuite games and so forth. And no doubt they do give him some true satisfaction and validation -- but since he doesn’t have an internal source of validation, he’s lost when they can’t provide. 

And additionally, when they can’t provide it’s often because they’re in a relationship. In the beginning of Chrysalis this is made super obvious, when Miles can’t hang out, and Kira and Odo are going to Vic’s together, alone, and he just ends up in bed working. Until 3am. I can’t help thinking he was somewhat trying to avoid being alone with his thoughts.)

And then Jadzia dies. And he has to refind his footing in a Daxless world and I can only imagine that he just accepts the depression is here to stay forever now. 

Season 7

And now Chrysalis happens and firstly: I’m not here to make excuses for him. Chrysalis was pretty fucked-up, and irl I don’t think I could be friends with him after what he did. (But also irl I’d have given him a real talking to and not just accepted his bs like everyone else did in this episode and I think with that he might have realised earlier what he was doing so idk. I think if you’re gonna judge Bashir for this episode you also have to judge everyone else for standing by…)

Anyway, Sarina appears, appearing to be his dream woman, and Julian’s just lost.

It doesn’t happen immediately. When Sarina shows up on his doorstep and falls asleep on him, he is so awkward and uncertain what to do. And in the morning he’s still unsure and hesitant as to what this all means. 

I’m certainly nor blaming Sarina -- she’s figuring everything out even more than Julian is! -- but when she makes breakfast for him and sends him off with it, I figure that is a massive romance-cue for Julian, who’s given up on his dreams of domesticity. If his feelings are just platonic at this point, he figures out they must actually be romantic, because people who are in love live together and make breakfast for each other. And if he has already started falling for her, it’s a confirmation that he’s allowed to fall for her, because they’re already acting romantically, and she started it. (Again, not an excuse -- he should have known that she is in no position to make a move to start a relationship.)

He’s not thinking logically and pursuing a relationship with his drive system, he’s still being driven by his threat system and fear of loneliness, and being in a relationship is the only thing that he can imagine will soothe him. (I mean tbh this has been his problem all along -- possibly even back to Palis -- and ugh, it sucks, because even though in a way he kind of can’t help it and he’s clueless to why he wants a relationship so much, it’s also kind of on him that he’s never done some serious self-reflection, and the fact that his trauma has led to him acting like this doesn’t negate the fact that he’s taking advantage of a very vulnerable woman and hurting her.)

It’s been implied by a) Quark, b) Vic, c) Bond-type books and d) most recently, Ezri, that he wasn’t quick enough to get Jadzia and should have tried harder. So of course, once he starts thinking he’s in love with her and that a romantic relationship is what they need, he’s desperate to start as soon as possible so that he doesn’t lose his chance. Because if he thought Dax had been his last chance, how much more is he going to be thinking that Sarina is his real last chance?

Sarina is pretty similar to him, and he can empathise a lot with her. And he knows how augments are treated by the world. And he knows how difficult it’s been for him, finding someone to love. And so he projects his own loneliness and fears onto her, and figures that being in a relationship is what they both need, because she’s unlikely to be given many chances either (which is kind of a contradiction to “I need to act now in case I lose her”, but hey, limbic system. Rational brain has long been taken out.)

And then as soon as he realises she’s only gone along with him because she feels like she owes him, it clicks and it’s over. It doesn’t make up for what he’s done but it genuinely never occurred to him -- and what’s more, he knows it should have occurred to him, and he still can’t figure out why he wasn’t more rational about this all. 

> Which is also why none of the other characters were allowed to have a proper talk with him this episode because I think that would have made him realise what he was doing. (I know Miles kind of tried with “Julian, she’s your patient”, but when Julian came back with his excuses, Miles didn’t exactly argue against them.)

> And also, how much do you think that her telling him “I don't even understand what love is. I don't understand anything… What am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to feel? Tell me. I want to make you happy” resonates with him. Does he realise that these are the things he’s been asking himself his whole life, that this is actually how he’s been living his life and doing relationships this whole time. Are these actually a direct reflection of his thoughts about her: meeting with his friends, showing her off at dabo (he was always so proud of Leeta, remember?), that whole cliche of a romantic dinner… Are these all things he felt he was meant to do to make her happy and to show her what a romantic relationship is like?

And the thing is -- he does learn from this experience, and we see that he doesn’t try to rush in with Ezri when he starts getting feelings for her. (Yes, his learning shouldn’t have come at the cost of Sarina’s wellbeing, but it did, and I’m just going to accept that because he’s a fictional character and also I love him.) I don’t know if he got to the bottom of figuring out why he went so off-the-rails with Sarina. But clearly, it’s a mistake he doesn’t want to repeat. And I do want to give him some credit for that. 

So let’s go on to Ezri. 

BASHIR: Funny, I was just starting to... O'BRIEN: Starting to what? BASHIR: I don't know. But there was something-- something about her, wasn't there? Something that made me happy, anyway. She was this old soul and yet so young at heart, and… and-- I don't know what I'm saying.

I read this as a sort of admission that he doesn’t know what romantic love is. He knows he felt something, but I don’t know if he found something in what Sarina said that makes him doubt and wonder if it is love that he’s been feeling, or something else. But also, he leaves before O’Brien and Quark can comment, not asking for anyone to help figure out what he’s feeling. (Particularly as Quark’s made it obvious he thinks Julian must be in love with Dax, even if he doesn’t want Julian to be in love with Dax.)

And then when she returns, they begin their whole awkward dance around each other: though interestingly, as he’s talking about his inability to talk to her about his feelings in their eventual conversation, he sounds genuinely confused, and even distressed, when he says “I mean, I'm not usually like this. If I find someone attractive, I just-- I just tell them. I don't play these ridiculous games.” It seems he’s been experiencing some subconscious barrier whenever he’s wanted to bring his feelings up -- probably not dissimilar to most people’s hesitation to ask out a crush, but like he said, that’s not usually his style at all. 

Presumably, this is because he’s worried that he could lose Ezri altogether if he makes a move and his feelings are unrequited, along with the knowledge that pursuing Sarina had been the complete wrong thing to do. Although again, maybe more subconsciously than not: when Ezri suggests they’ve both been hesitating because of their friendship, it seems to click for Julian as something that he’d not properly registered before. 

Additionally, at this point in the show, losing people to the war seems inevitable. There’s been a long period with very little hope that either Ezri or Worf are alive, Kira, Odo and Garak are all off on Cardassia doing goodness-knows-what, until Odo returns with the Founders’ disease and again, there’s very little hope that he’ll survive. So it’s not really surprising that Julian finds himself unable to speak to Ezri about his feelings, given that this is the time least suited to losing friends to stupid mistakes like telling them you love them. 

I definitely think there’s more to say about Ezri and Julian, but I feel like I’m losing the plot of what I’m saying a bit, so I’m going to stop there. 

In summary:

Julian’s driven by his threat system: his fear-of-failure, fear-of-loneliness and fear-of-discovery/fear-of-rejection-for-being-an-augment. He doesn’t realise how much this affects him.

Julian thinks that other people/pre-90s media know about romance and love more than him and he should try to emulate them rather than figure out what he wants from them. 

Julian doesn’t really understand his own feelings – his upbringing never gave him the chance to, and it hasn’t occurred to him to explore them and figure out what makes him tick and what doesn’t. 

He’s deeply unhappy by season 6 and relying on easy but short-lasting waves of happiness to get by (e.g.holosuite adventures)

Because of all these things, when it is presented to him that there is a way to get lasting happiness, and that one way is to be in a relationship, he buys into it completely – falling for that idea probably far more than he actually falls for any of the ladies in question. 

[walkingstackofbooks]

#.also casually dropping a story about watching a child die when he was a kid on the first date.#.genuinely though can we talk about him sharing that he watched a young girl die in front of him as a kid as like getting to know you stuff

Haven't watched this episode in a while but actually yeah?? That's an incredibly traumatising story to be told so casually... It makes you wonder how much other trauma he went through for this to be like "yeah, no biggie"....

Julian Bashir showing surprisingly deep and intrinsic understanding of disability and how it can make someone feel helpless and ashamed in the episode Melora before the writers even had any idea that they were going to reveal Julian was also disabled my beloved.

[captainjimothy]

personally i do think julian bashir is trans, but not in a way that sublimates his genetic alterations into a trans allegory. i think he's disabled and trans at the same time, but i think his rebellion against his parents--the symbolic death of his old self with the name change--that's not about gender, for him, at all.

it's about the incredible violation of autonomy he experienced as a disabled person under the knife of a eugenicist society. it's about the need to reclaim some, any, of the agency that was so completely stolen from him by his parents.

it's about discovering that his entire self was deconstructed and reconstructed, without his knowledge or consent, for the express purpose of being less of a burden on his parents.

because let's not forget that the death of julian's old self was not his decision. it was his parents who killed the old self and created a new one.

let's not forget that human society in star trek is still recovering from the eugenics wars--that just because it's post-scarcity doesn't mean it's a utopia.

let's not forget the multiple episodes where bashir is forced to confront the fact that his "success story" is truthfully a gross reminder of how deeply his society (and his family) hates disabled people, not only shown in how they tried to fix him, but also in the fact that the process so rarely works as intended, yet is still done anyway--and the failures and the ones too far gone to save are locked away! with no connection to general society, and only the bare minimum provision for their physical needs, with no privacy and no autonomy!

and let's not forget that julian sees these people and is torn between the empathy he has for them, and his urge to fix them. and he goes through with this urge on Sarina, "fixing" her to conform to his idea of what she ought to be, treating her as a problem to be solved, objectifying her via "my ideal woman was trapped in this disabled body/mind and i saved her," thus continuing the cycle of violence, because even he can't conceive of a world where the disabled do not need to be fixed. where the violence done to him was wrong. fuck man

[fortheloveoflatinum]

Rewatching Star Trek DS9: Past Tense (The Bell Riots)

The thing I love most about time travel episodes is that the future hangs in such delicate balance. Also - the gentle reassurance that we matter. You matter. I matter. This isn't utilitarian calculus; it's a philosophy that holds that we all have immense intrinsic value and are all capable of shifting and shaping the course of the future.

Spock: [to Kirk] Save her, do as your heart tells you to do, and millions will die who did not die before. - Spock in the TOS Episode, "City on the Edge of Forever."

And Kirk, despite everything - despite his love for this woman, despite what his heart tells him to do - knows that in order to save the Federation and the future he has had such a magnificent hand in creating; if he wants a just and equitable future to be forged, it all hinges upon one small, 'insignificant' woman - it serves to show that the good of the many outweighs the good of the few - Kirk lets her die to save those millions of people - but also proves that the good of the few - or the one - can indeed outweigh the good of the many.

It's a simple, human truth that we are all significant in some way. When we go, it's not what we leave behind that matters - it's how we lived.

Captain Picard: Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. But I rather believe than time is a companion who goes with us on the journey, and reminds us to cherish every moment because they'll never come again. What we leave behind is not as important how we lived. - Picard in the movie Star Trek: Generations.

And in the DS9 episode Past Tense: Parts I and II, this fundamental truth is also proven true. That one person - any person, every person - matters. Not because of the wealth they've accumulated, not because of their fancy house or their six-figure salary or their corner office - but because they smiled at a crying child, because they sparked hope in the hopeless, because they were kind, because they were generous with their time and because they lived to serve the greater good.

Life. It's not about what you own - it's about who you touch. Even transported to a barbaric 21st century too much like our own - with just the clothes on their back - even their combadges stolen - Doctor Bashir and Captain Sisko touch people. Their presence changes things. So much so that the ripples of their actions change the future for every Federation member, because Starfleet is gone and all that remains of it is the crew of the Defiant.

I remember the Ray Bradbury story, "The Sound of Thunder," with its eminent metaphor of stepping on a butterfly and altering the future. But what if we step on a butterfly in the present? Surely, the future is altered. Everything we do - matters. Everything we do has ripples across the timeline of the future. None of us are islands unto ourselves. This tangled web we weave, it's a tapestry and its threads are those of the people we've loved, everyone who we've ever known and whether we were cruel or kind to them matters.

What can you do? Start by smiling. A smile from a friendly stranger can save a life.

Michael Burnham [to Spock]: “There’s a whole galaxy of people out there who will reach for you. You have to let them. Find that person who seems farthest from you and reach for them.” - Michael Burnham in that one Discovery episode where they go to the future and also there's an epic war going on in the background

Reach for someone, anyone; everyone. Only then can they reach back for you.

Be kind, to the Earth, to each other, to all creatures. Don't step on butterflies or kill bees.

What can you do? Watch Star Trek, and live by Starfleet values. Find a moral compass, and let it guide you. Remember that science and education are the answer, just as much as peace on Earth and - eventually - beyond.

[vaguely-concerned]

the way the wire sets up these two opposing forces in garak's psyche that I think continue to wrestle it out in the background for the rest of the show -- on one side, his father-who-won't-even-acknowledge-that going 'I hope you keep living in shame and despair and desolate isolation for decades to come sport😜' (tain has basically gone 'be so kind as to create a hell of your own making and then stay in there for me, there's a good boy'. and garak has done that. oof. tain made him build a closet in his own head and locked him in it by doing nothing except make it clear he's not allowed to get out because he deserves to be in there. he never had to tell garak to do anything; that's what makes him special. I. am in shambles)

and then on the other side coming in with a steel chair, julian's soft steady voice going 'no one deserves this' and 'I don't want to hurt you' and 'I'll help you through it'.

one side that not only utterly abandoned him to his own misery but engineered it in the first place to control him, and one side that boldly, brazenly, doggedly refuses to abandon him, both on principle and out of personal care, no matter what garak says or does through the episode to try to throw him off. (and accepting the personal care aspect seems to part of bashir's journey of the episode; he has to admit to himself that yeah they are friends at this point. he is not personally watching over this guy while he sleeps like a lanky dweeb guardian angel for purely professional reasons lol thank you for calling his fucking bluff jadzia.) tain and bashir are basically having a quiet faux-affable battle for garak's soul at the end of that ep and while it starts small, down the road it eventually becomes clear julian won. tain gambles that his own influence will always triumph in the long run (he got there first, after all), and he's wrong.

all of this is presumably also why garak writes a stitch in time specifically to julian (aside from all the normal gay reasons) -- at the end of that he all but says that it's partly because he knows in such a deep way that julian would never judge him as harshly as he judges himself. the kindest voice in garak's inner world is julian bashir, that's how deeply he's internalized it. what the fuck. that's one of the most beautiful ways of touching someone's life I can imagine I feel nauseous and disoriented adn I need to go lie down for a while

[walkingstackofbooks]

The fact that he feels less vulnerable confiding in the teens that he would like his teddy bear back than he does at the idea of asking Leeta is something I've never considered before but now my brain is very much chewing on. Why is it easier to ask Jake and Nog than Leeta?

In the Cards is a fantastic episode just for the 1 - 2 combo of 1) Julian without hesitation declaring his childhood teddy bear would be the one thing that would make him happy right now and agreeing to get Jake and Nog what they want if they get him Kukalaka and 2) the reveal that Leeta fucking stole it and has been sleeping with it

[onwhatcaptain]

I still have tons to say about the Garashir Goes Canon™ moment in Lower Decks so here is my big meta post about it! Below the cut is a meta discussion about the penultimate Lower Decks episode, contextualizing what it means for something to become canon.

To be clear, this is a mostly positive post with analysis included. You’ll see lots of love for Garashir and Lower Decks and also oodles of fandom meta below the cut, since we have a complicated relationship with Paramount. My analysis and graphic is based on a recent lecture about Star Trek canon I gave at KiScon!

First, I have to say that both Unification and this Lower Decks episode following mere weeks after of my lecture panel at KiScon titled Fuck Paramount, about what Star Trek canon really is and what its place is in relation to us as slash fans, is absolutely mind-blowing timing. I wish everyone in both the K/S and Garashir fandoms had been able to attend it because it was absolutely designed to serve as a framework for both of these major fandom moments. And also it was just funny as hell. But most importantly, it was relevant, and existed to give us a sense of understanding when navigating Paramount hell, particularly when they play Gay Chicken (will they, won’t they — most of the time, they won’t).

Since not every single Star Trek fan on this website was at KiScon last month, I want to expand on that a little more here, this time in Garashir context, since last time it was centered on K/S, though Garashir came up several times! When I was giving my lecture, I asked the audience what it would look like if K/S were made canon tomorrow. Everyone had different ideas—but the most common theme that came up was sheer distrust of Paramount doing it justice.

For those of you that are reading this, the thesis of Fuck Paramount was that you as a fan and a viewer have more control over what is and isn’t canon than you think, and that our role as fans is to take ownership of our stories back from corporate interests. I also developed a four-sided framework to describe how we interact with canon to take power back and make sense of canon. Both Unification and the very, very fresh Lower Decks episode have already been controversial for a number of reasons, the primary one they share being: “Wait… does this make this canon?”

So far it looks like the main reactions for this Lower Decks episode (especially considering how sudden and late in its run it is) are mostly “HOLY SHIT THEY REALLY DID IT” and “I AM DISAPPOINTED BY THE MERE SCRAPS.”

And my position on it is that both of them are completely reasonable reactions that don’t contradict one another! I’m going to make the case for both sides as I try to explore the implications of this episode with respect to the episode’s subtext, corporate storytelling, and so forth. I’m not going to go too much into the academic aspects, but I am happy to make the original slides available for anyone who is curious about my canon analysis framework.

Why It’s Enough

On one hand, this episode is done well. Undeniably. It’s a lot of fun. I have also said many times before that the only way I’d want K/S or G/B to become canon is if they suddenly randomly drop the info that they were married and don’t bring it up again, because otherwise they might do more harm than good! This was an example of it done incredibly well, in my opinion.

This episode serves as all the confirmation you could possibly really need of Garashir. Yes, there are quite a few gimmicks involved—it’s all AU, all the way. Garak is now a surgeon from another dimension, and Bashir is from an entirely different dimension, and also not really himself, but a hologram. Here’s how they’re introduced:

WILLIAM BOIMLER: “Elim Garak, a brilliant Cardassian Surgeon—and his husband, an emergency medical hologram based on Dr. Julian Bashir.”

What I really love about this moment is that it actually does more than it looks like it does, at face value. For most of us, our first instinct is to go, whatever, he’s based on Bashir, he’s not even the real one! But what they did here was brilliant—it serves as implicit confirmation that our man Bashir is also bisexual, and loves Garak. He is indeed not a corporeal human being, but as the DS9 episode where the LMH is designed based on Bashir tells us, the hologram is designed and based on who he is. It has his personality traits. Interviews are conducted to make sure that the hologram is as authentic and true to the real thing as possible:

O'BRIEN: “You mean this programme is going to have all of his personal likes and dislikes?” ZIMMERMAN: “That is why we bother to choose a human template in the first place.”

William Boimler, from the prime Star Trek universe, doesn’t say the EMH is based on some Bashir, he says this one is based on Dr. Julian Bashir. Again, this serves as clear confirmation that he is modeled on recognizably the same character from DS9. They’re not that different in essence from their prime universe counterparts, or it wouldn’t be fun for the writers or the audience. We learn that Garak is still former Obsidian Order. They are still the same people, in essence. They may be AU characters but the point is for them to be similar to the originals, or they may as well just have been some guys!

The important thing, for me, is that it’s a clear, unambiguous acknowledgement. It’s played straight. Well, not straight—but not as some elaborate joke or filled with contempt. It doesn’t tease and doesn’t dance around the issue and wink and nudge, begging the viewer to question whether or not they’re together. That much is made immediately very clear. In the episode, AU Garak and AU EMH Bashir are a married couple, and they kiss. Every moment of their relationship is sincere, the comedic moments being not about the fact that their relationship exists, but about the dynamics it brings to the story. It also tells us very clearly that they’re not even from the same universe, and that their compatibility remains nonetheless:

HARRY KIM: “Are they from the same reality?” CURZON: “No, but they love to brag about how statistically unlikely their marriage is.”

Again, I tend to see this as a positive nod to the compatibility of these characters rather than a brush-off that says the prime universe Garashir couldn’t be together. And then Garak tells us his universe’s Bashir is like the original: still a racquetball player and competes with Chief O’Brien—again, revealing quite a bit.

And the B-plot is about them squabbling, acknowledging very clearly to us that Cardassians really do just love flirting via argument, which serves as a brilliant nod to everyone who complained for three decades that the DS9 writers never really admitted that Bashir and Garak were just flirting. Finally! The writers seem to understand quite well what’s important to us, even if this isn’t the ‘Real Garashir.’

What satisfies me ultimately is that this doesn’t in any way look like a rejection of the possibility of Garashir in the prime universe. It looks to me like it supports the text, not a mean-spirited denial that it could only happen under bizarre AU circumstances. To sum it up with another Boimler quote:

BOIMLER: “The multiverse is just a rehash of stuff I already know.”

Hm… :)

And as I pointed out in a prior post, the whole point of the episode is to show that even in different circumstances and worlds, the love characters have for one another remains a constant and is utterly transcendent. The episode straight up tells us that some relationships are so powerful that they span dimensions and realities, and then Garak and Bashir say they would follow one another to any reality!

In my panel-lecture, I said, “[Paramount’s control over the text] suggests that certain readings require their endorsement or confirmation to be true.” But this doesn’t feel like that to me, and so I accept this. It leaves room for possibilities of all kinds, and opens more doors rather than closing them. I can appreciate that.

I also spoke about how canon isn’t one thing—not a binary yes or a no, and that there is no singular meaning. I call this multiplicity:

“Multiplicity is about the continuous proliferation of ideas and the rejection of the text as having a single meaning. It rejects mere viewing or the consumption of media in favor of dialogue and participation rather than a one-way communication.”

This episode served to defy singular interpretations of the text. It tells us that there are infinite possibilities and it took a route that challenges the single-story interpretation of Garashir = Not Canon. It made room for new perspectives and affirmed what “the stuff we already know.”

Why It’s Not Enough

Now for the other side of the coin: why it’s not enough. As exciting as it is to have this kind of confirmation from the current writers for Star Trek in a frankly increasingly conservative storytelling environment, it’s still disappointing for many people that even in the most progressive Star Trek that exists, they cannot or will not openly state that the prime universe Garashir got the ending and acknowledgment they deserved. 

It feels like begging Paramount as a corporation for scraps and thanking them for what really doesn’t feel like enough—it stops short of full, sincere, complete validation of Garashir’s queerness. As I said in my panel, it’s normal for us to want confirmation from the writers and creators that what we’re seeing is real and not just imagined, even when the role of fanfiction is for us to transform canon and reject it ourselves.

It’s absolutely exhausting for us to say we see something that is continuously denied by those who ‘own’ the story in favor of mass appeal, and to me, that is a legitimate perspective that can coexist with the idea that fandom is designed reshape the canon to fits its own needs, and that we don’t need confirmation from the creators for something to be true. Fandom exists to defy corporate ownership of stories, but to have to fight for mere moments where marginalized perspectives are foregrounded causes anger for good reason. We may not need confirmation from them, but saying that we should never expect anything from Paramount releases the corporation of accountability and obligation to respect the audience and their own characters. We should be able to expect and trust that these characters and their relationships can be done justice by those who have the privilege of steering that ship.

It’s one thing for me to say that this episode affirms the reality of Garashir, but it’s also true that prime Garashir probably could not be given complete canonization because this is the best way they knew how to ‘get away with it’ all while maintaining its mainstream and popular appeal with heteronormative audiences that would have a problem or reject it if it happened to ‘real Garashir.’

Slash fans, for decades, have existed in the lane of compromise—firmly between having our truth validated and entirely rejected in favor of a Star Trek that is designed to be sold as a product to as many people as possible. Rarely do we receive more than a bone tossed to us by the powers that be, and when we do receive it, it’s on their incomplete terms, often with massive concessions made to make it happen. For Garashir to receive their blessing, they had to twist it into an AU. The reason they could do this episode is because it gave them the neat plausible deniability to also say this has nothing at all to do with prime Garashir, so that it didn’t entirely alienate audiences who wouldn’t support a queer narrative.

This is their way of having their cake and eating it too. In some ways, it looks like they’re just trying to make everyone happy, but the story shouldn’t have to make everyone happy, and a compromise can really just feel like everyone loses, or like prioritizing the status quo again. For decades, the status quo has always left those with marginalized readings of the text unhappy, sidelined by a narrative that is supposed to be progressive and supposed to look to a future where queerness is natural and not taboo. And if this is the best they can do, it’s only reasonable that it should still sadden us, disappoint us, anger us. It’s hard not to resent that reality.

What Now?

I urge folks to continue negotiating the text, as I did above in the first section. I made sense of it in a way that fits my understanding of Garashir! You do not have to assume that there’s no more to it than that because it was all that was said on screen. We don’t have to look at canonization as the final say on the text. My perspective is that we should take it as a wonderful and deserved affirmation, and continue to transform the canon as we see fit. This is your time to decide what it means for these characters. Personally, I see it as a massively positive step forward. Just remember that where canon is concerned, you are in control of what it means.

Canon is still transformable, multiplicative, negotiated, and timely. Holders of the ‘IP’ are only one piece of the puzzle where the truth of a story is concerned. So take this as a beginning to more, not an end! As I like to say, “canon is a means to an end, not the end itself.”

Also, please don’t hesitate to add your thoughts, questions, comments, or anything else. I hope you enjoyed this meta post, if you read this far.

[searchingforserendipity25]

watching ds9 is great for many reasons, not least because sometimes i set my netflix to subtitles in my language when watching it with my family.

and as ever the translators have fascinating formal pronouns opinions. namely:

bashir and garak use the formal address (with the addendum that julian uses the formal-you directly. and garak of course says doctor a lot, which is extra-formal. interestingly, he doesn't always address him by title only! less diffident than it might have been.)

bashir and o'brien use the formal address (works very well with the development of their friendship + vr funny and tongue in cheek, it's great)

odo and kira use the formal address, up to and including during love declarations (as of season 3)

kira and o'brein do NOT use the formal address. baffling choice ngl. i think it's the only case when the ops team is informal w one another. i think the translator ships it guys.

sisko is formal all the time. except with jake i think. actually i can't remember if jake uses the informal w his dad. i'm pretty sure he does.

quark and rom use the informal!! which is quite interesting in terms of characterization. they are brothers!! it does a lot to set the tone.

quark and odo use the formal form in words but not in spirit, it's hilarious.

odo actually uses the formal with everyone.

dax and bashir use the formal.

even dax and sisko use the formal, including in private. this is the one thing i fully disagree with but it does add an interesting layer to their connection.

kira and dax use the formal. i don't even ship it that much but i will be honest, the formal-you is very gay here, as it can be. if you've been there you've been there.

i think kira and vedek bareil used the formal you! which is a normal thing to do with your boyfriend the religious figure i'm sure.

anyway i am choosing to incorporate all of this into my canon. standard has formal and informal addresses, as per my dodgy netflix translation. will update this post as it becomes funny.

[urbandunsel]

so i like to think nana visitor walked into the writer's room and said "hey guys, just wanna let you know im pregnant so that might affect shooting and whatnot" and the writers are like "oh okay! we didn't know you were involved, who's the father?" and visitor says "okay we're all mature adults that don't judge, it's our good friend alexander siddig" and they say "okay neato congrats"

and then visitor leaves the room and the writers say "okay literally how many jokes and sneaky dialogue can we write for kira and bashir during these months cmon guys go go go"

[wisteria-lodge]

I am currently in the middle of First, Do No Harm, a Garak/Bashir fic where it is a plot point that male human augments don't have body hair. Because, well...

they DON'T. (come on, you know I'm right.)

(for context, half these people have literally just escaped being marooned on a desert planet. They *haven't* been shaving)

EDIT: I tried to post some photos of Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Riker, Picard, and a bunch of the guys from Enterprise as a point of comparison, because all of them demonstrably DO have body hair. But that was just too sexy for the Mature Audience filter, so just. Know that's a thing, I guess.

[wanderingwriter87]

thinking about straight laced cardassian traditionalist elim garak absolutely losing it the first time julian runs into xenophobia on prime and immediately being 100% "you don't have to change a thing the world can change its heart 😭😭" about it and completely failing to see the inconsistency in his worldview ♥️♥️

[walkingstackofbooks]

DS9 1x17 The Forsaken: More Feelings about the Augmented Abilities of Julian Bashir

(Apologies, shutting up about Julian is not within my capabilities.)

In The Forsaken, Bashir is charged with looking after three Federation ambassadors while the entire station is having a meltdown. At one point, he and the ambassadors are walking along a corridor when suddenly: FIRE

The bulkheads close, Julian tries to open the door and finds it locked... the scene ends.

We're then left in suspense for the rest of the episode; we only see Sisko and Kira's side of things, who are assuming the worst, not knowing how badly they all got hurt.

Eventually they get in and find Julian and the ambassadors, who immediately start heaping praise on Julian:

BASHIR: Here, take my hand, Madam Ambassador. Watch your head. TAXCO: Please, Julian. Call me Taxco. SISKO: Ambassador, are you all right? VADOSIA: Yes, thanks to Julian. LOJAL: The doctor was remarkably calm and logical for a man of his years under such severe conditions. VADOSIA: We'll be putting him in for a commendation.

Sisko congratulates him ("Nice work, Doctor Bashir." "Just in the right place at the right time, sir.") and that's the end of that.

But I couldn't stop thinking about how different Julian is to how we've seen him so far in season 1.

It's pretty well established that Julian in the early seasons (and some might say, all of them) is often smug and insufferable. In Season 1, we've seen him boast about the most minor things (becoming salutatorian, Q-Less) to how good a doctor he is ("I was very impressed, Doctor." "And well you should have been." The Passenger).

But at the end of The Forsaken, he seems positively startled to be praised. In complete contrast to The Passenger, in which he takes Kira's compliment and adds to it himself, here he doesn't even take the praise, but dismisses it as luck. What's changed?

Well, I think there are a few things in play here. For one, he's shaken up, he really hasn't been in that many life-or-death situations - maybe the boasts come out later. For another, he usually boasts about his medical expertise, which he knows is good; he might not have felt he did anythign special here. But most importantly, I believe - this is the first situation he's been in where he's had to choose between revealing his augmented abilities or potentially letting people die.

We don't see much of what he does, admittedly, but we do see him trying to unlock a door: first he tries the access codes, when that doesn't work he strains to rip the cover off to get the the lever underneath, which he tries to pull until one of the ambassadors touches him, when he appears to give up. I find it pretty easy to read that touch as having reminded Julian that he's not alone, he has to act normally.

(sorry for the poor quality)

Yes, we really don't know if he could have got them out using his augmented abilities, or how "superhuman" he had to be to get them into the vents. But I think it's very possible that he did have to find a balance between getting people to safety, and not showing an above-average ability in the methods he used.

And keep in mind these are Federation Ambassadors. Julian's already stated in this episode - though it's unsure how seriously - that spending time with the ambassadors could "destroy his career". How much more aware will he be of keeping his secret around them, when they already appear to dislike him and would have the power to investigate if anything did slip?

Other people have hypothesised that his boasting is a way to hide his abilities in plain sight, as it were - and this makes enough sense to be at least part-way true. I think his boasting is a mix of genuine pride in his work; being, in brutal honesty, a young, naïve idiot; badly misjudging how to make himself likable; and attempting to normalise how good he is by showing off at every opportunity.

But this event is one he wants to downplay - he doesn't want a reputation for being good at anything else. He can't afford people to question how a doctor forced entry into the vents, or whatever he needed to do to get in there. While the ambassadors are coming out, he sticks to his job and doesn't respond to their praise - in fact you could say he looks concerned or worried. After they've gone, and Sisko congratulates him, he's startled out of his thoughts for a second, before responding: "Just in the right place at the right time, sir" - a throwback to their earlier conversation, and a dismissal that he did anything particularly special.

(again, awful quality, I've never made GIFs before!)

[dreamerdrop]

Julian Bashir where he is uncomfortably obsessed with death in a glib and casual way that makes everyone else cringe because it goes beyond just “doctor desensitised to death” territory.

he treats the potential death of others as sombre and serious, but when it comes to his own life, he makes jokes about it, until he accidentally slips one day and “well it wouldn’t be the first time i’ve been a walking corpse” and everyone just stops.

it’s fine, he just meant that he has a couple zombie-based holoprograms, obviously, you know how he is with his holosuite games, right, haha.

it’s funny how a corpse can still feel the burn of alcohol in his throat. it’s funny that a corpse can still feel pangs of loneliness and longing. it’s funny to be dead and still have to deal with the burdens of being alive.

[batgirlii]

"Past Prologue" Thoughts

I've decided to start rewatching DS9, so I'll catalog any thoughts I have here.

This episode is a great examination of the early Kira and Sisko relationship. Kira has reasons not to trust Sisko that come from living under an oppressive colonialist regime. This is also why she's hesitant to turn Tahna in.

Sisko is coming from a place of privilege in this case, as he is from earth and a Starfleet officer. He doesn't necessarily understand Kira's point of view when it comes to the Kohn-Ma and why their actions might be necessary.

This episode also has the iconic meeting of Julian and Garak, which has been talked about to death at this point. But I forgot just how weird and funny their interactions were at first.

Overall, it's interesting to see how these relationships began in comparison to how strong they become in the future.

[various-things]

These are just some clips put together based on some stuff around Garak trusting Julian—it didn’t fit into the music-involving edits I’m doing at the moment but y’know, I was thinking thoughts so here’s this. Here’s the youtube version.

[fortheloveoflatinum]

My Newest Polycule Obsession

okay so honestly my toxic trait at the moment is re-imagining the post-canon DS9 polycule with Damar and Weyoun 6 (or 9) and basically it's consuming my spare time :

Julian & Weyoun bounding over their respective augmentations

Weyoun getting into trouble intentionally just to see Odo

And Damar bailing him out

While Garak makes them all matching outfits

Caption of the above GIF for all the Captains that can't see it: Weyoun reacting strongly to poisoned kanar, probably saying something along the lines of 'quite toxic' although his words aren't subbed and I don't remember them entirely.