#these have just been piling up every time i've watched an episode bc life's just BEEN

[walkingstackofbooks]

DS9 3x20 Improbable Cause and 3x21 The Die Is Cast thoughts (I'm re-watching, so beware spoilers for future episodes!)

(25/05/2023)

Garak!

Shakespeare! The first mention of this Garashir-fic staple XD

Garak is so obviously flirting XD this is the exact same way Gilora was talking to Miles!

G: "I'd be more than happy to bring some by the Infirmary later this afternoon." B: "Why thank you, I'd like that." His smile!

Kira's "Garak. :/". She's just so annoyed by his existence and it shows XD 

Oh, this is where he fakes his assassination attempt!

"But who would want to kill me? A simple tailor?" Always with the tailor identity.

G: "And of course, there's always Major Kira." B: "This is serious, Garak." G: "I'm being serious. I don't think she likes me." O: "She doesn't. But if she wanted you dead, you would be." Everything about this is 👌👌

Julian is so fed up with Garak's lies, isn't he

And the moral of the boy who cried wolf is... "You should never tell the same lie twice." Of course, Garak. Sigh

"I have bad news for you. Major Kira has an airtight alibi." Garak's tight amusement at this

"What makes you think I haven't already looked thtough [your security files]?... I'm joking, of course." Needing to mollify Odo.

"Odo I -" Miles is so stunned to see Garak there XD

"They're known to be favoured by Flaxian assassins, and it just so happens a Flaxian came aboard the station just this morning." Oh, Garak is gooood

This guy, the Flaxian, is not acting innocent, he's being super slippery and suspicious - but if Garak blew up his own shop, it can't have been him? Unless he was hired by Garak, I guess...

Odo's surprise to see Garak in the shuttle XD

Okay so Garak is genuinely stunned by the other ship exploding? I'm so confused!

"Because if he did know, he'd already be spinning out an elaborate web of lies to cover up the truth." Odo knows Garak's MO too well.

"Considering those uniforms of theirs, you'd think they'd appreciate a decent tailor." XD Odo has an opinion on this?

The unusual Romulans activity, as though they're getting ready for an invasion - this is them getting ready for the Dominion attack with Train?

Another five Cardassians were assassinated? But I'm almost certain Garak faked his! 

"I am not Doctor Bashir and we are not sparring amiably over lunch." Love this outside perspective on Garak and Bashir's lunch dates.

"You blew up your own shop, Garak!" The shock on Garak's face! And Odo's pleased, "Welllll, heh heh."

Ohhh, so there was a real plot to kill Garak

"He retired some years ago. He was, I might add, the only head of the agency ever to live long enough to do so." The fact that Garak is still showing pride at Tain's accomplishment

The emotion on Garak's face seeing Mila :3

"Is there anything you need me to do while you're gone?" Oh, sweetheart!

"Eat it? You're joking." "Yes I am." Julian's fond smile coming out there <3

CHOCOLATES

THEY'RE IN LOVE

"Is it so hard to believe that there's one person in this galaxy who could regard me with a certain affection?" "I could believe there's one (BASHIR cough cough) but I wouldn't expect it to be someone who worked for Enabran Tain."

"Tell me, is there one person in this universe you do care for? One person who's more than just an interesting puzzle to be solved." Interesting that it would just be the one. Why do they care so much about Odo only caring about Kira, because that's what's being implied, isn't it?

Aaaand I've only just realised that this isn't just setting up for The Die Is Cast, TDIC is the next episode! I'd thought it was the end of the season for some reason ..

"Ah, Garak. It's good of you to come. It spares me the trouble of having to send someone else to kill you." ... Whoops

"Like I used to say. Always burn your bridges behind you. You never know who might be trying to follow." I always find it fascinating when aliens have a twist on an English proverb. 

"You blew up your own shop? You, my friend, are a true original."

"I never betrayed you! At least, not in my heart." The emotion!

"You'll pardon me if I appear a little startled." This episode has sure been a tough ride for Garak's emotional control...!

321 The Die Is Cast

Julian's babbling on over lunch :3

Miles trying to pretend he was listening and failing miserably XD

His soft smiles leading into a sad face at remembering Garak

"That's not entirely bad news." *hopeful eye contact*

The slow realisation it's not just one ship out there...

Garak's so happy! 

"I was good wasn't I?" Garak still needing that validation

"I've missed you too, Enabran." Very deliberate pause there

"Next thing you know we'll be crying over our lost youth." Oh that was very pointed, and you can see Garak knows it.

Dr Parmak mention - "When we get back, you should look him up." This is where all those fanfics start?

"Mila may not be around much longer." Garak's quick head turn. He's so easy to read?

"Is this a request I hear?" "Not at all! Just an observation :)" oh Garak. I guess protecting Mila is another reason you want to stay on Tain's good side.

G: "And believe me, if it were my decision, things would be-" O: "I don't believe you, Garak..." Yeah, legit

"You are imaginative, Constable, I'll grant you that. But I would suggest that you put those creative powers to better use. We would like you to share your unique insights on the Founders." Garak's trying to tell Odo to make it up, tell him anything.

"It sounds like you're hoping Tain will succeed." I mean, I can see why - the Dominion bring home would be beneficial, probably.

Eddington >:(

"I'd like permission to take the Defiant into the Gamma Quadrant and try to determine if he's still alive." No of course not. But you tried, Sisko <3

"I am not going to just abandon one of my officers." YES, Sisko, I should have known you'd not take no for an answer

"I consider this a volunteer mission, but don't volunteer yet. There's a good chance you won't be coming back." But it's still worth it to him to try to get Odo :3

Eddington is Not Enjoying This. I guess he wants to fly under Starfleet's radar and not get court martialled? I wonder why he volunteered... It would make more sense to me for him to remain on the station and get more entrenched there

Ah, so that's why Eddington came, to sabotage the mission. He IS sucking up to Starfleet

"You've turned us into sitting ducks for the Jem'Hadar!" Miles trying to attack and Sisko restraining him.

"Because I give you my word." "I make it a policy to never question the word of anyone who wears that uniform. Don't make me change that policy." Oh Sisko.... This hit harder knowing what Eddington will do

"Ohh, no, you're going to torture me, aren't you?" The sarcasm, Odo's so confident Garak can't do anything to him

"Tell me, what will happen if you can't revert to a liquid?" "I don't know." The fear in Odo's face.

"I can wait. The question is, can you?" Chills

"Major, leave the chief alone." XD

"Odo! Talk to me!" The emotionn. "Lie if you have to, but say it now!" He's saying the quiet bit out loud?!

Garak is so transparent! He cannot hide his need to keep Odo alive!

There's definitely something about Garak quoting the Shakespeare he disdained just a few days ago to Tain.

"Why are you doing this?" "Because no changeling has ever harmed another." You kind of let Odo be significantly hurt though... Like, that is a thing that just happened.

"To the Bridge, to get Tain." Odo's bewilderment, yeah we're all with you there!

"Odo, I hope you will accept my sincere apologies for all this." Always with the quest for forgiveness.

Odo's breathless, astonished "What?" as the Defiant appears! 

What a pilot! Jadzia dodging all those phases like they're nothing!

"It's good to see you again, Constable." "Likewise, Major." They are both looking at each other with heart eyes I swear.

This is very similarly shot to Odo's conversation with his Cardassian informant last episode, I like that choice. 

"Do you know what the sad part is, Odo? I'm a very good tailor." Oh, Garak.

[stupidlittlespirit]

Hello!

Sorry if this has already been asked before, but do you have any tips for writing Ford?

Thank you and I'm sending you a virtual hug <3 🫂

Hey!

Thank you so much <3

I'll put some of the stuff I find helps me below here. I find it really hard to describe sometimes so if it doesn't make sense or if you want clarification then let me know :)

Be familiar with the source material. This might sound silly but I've seen fics where the a/n is like 'yeah I haven't read Journal 3 or finished the show but I wanted to write-' .....Please. Just. Finish the show and the Journal. The Journal gives you TONS of useful insight into Ford's actual personality and I think you see a lot more of his mannerisms in it. Rewatch his episodes. Use what you've got of canon stuff.

Watch other stuff with JK Simmons in. It'll be helpful for you to pick up how he sounds and then make it easier replay his tone in your head and make your dialogue more accurate. I don't actually know how helpful this tip is bc I brought this up to my partner (RE: Hearing the character's exact voice in your head as you write) and they said this isn't really something people do, so I'm not sure if I'm alone in that technique or not....? (also sorry Mr Simmons but a lot of your movies are d o g s h i t! So, suffer through them as much as you can for the sake of research. Whiplash isn't in the bad pile though btw, it's one of the greatest movies ever made. Just watch that 14 times in a row until you can quote the entire thing by heart. Or use Portal/Cave Johnson audio. Much more fun.)

Know the Ford you're writing. Is he younger, likely at college? Is he research-era? Is he post-portal? Ford presents (at least to me) as multiple different versions of himself over the course of his journey. He has fundamental traits but the degree to which he displays/shows/acknowledges/applies them varies dramatically depending on where he is in life and who he's around.

Balance him. He's strict and sharp and sometimes rude, but not so much that he's devoid of all other emotion. He's funny and he likes to get silly sometimes. We're literally told that exact thing (quite a lot actually) in the canon material. This is especially relevant if you're writing post portal Ford or pre-Bill/pre-obsession-with-work Ford. Again, he isn't all the time but he definitely is more than people give him credit for. If you're writing Ford during his Bill obsession stage then he's going to be erratic and harmful, more than anything to himself. He's going to be acting poorly because he isn't in his right mind, so extend some sympathy to the guy. You don't have to make it okay that he might be lashing out and hurting others, obviously, but there's a reason behind why he's acting like that. He isn't just 'a bad guy'.

However, he is also an asshole sometimes. Everyone can be. He's very diverse. This diva HAS the range! (He experiences the world in a very different way to most other people, I think, so his behaviour can be perceived as difficult to 'normal' people).

Ford is never one emotion at a time. No character is. If he's angry, there's going to be a reason behind that anger and then several emotions behind that reason. Is he telling someone off because he's intrinsically and irrevocably an asshole? No! He might have been afraid of them getting hurt and snapped at them, and the fear shows as anger. Maybe he's frustrated with them and doesn't know how to appropriately address that frustration. There's always a reason.

If he is just being a bit of jerk, because that's plausible, it's not going to be the case that every time he does something that can be perceived as being jerky, that he is being so.

He is very full of love. For his family, for his work, for his friends, for his object of affection (these tips apply to him in general, if you're writing ship stuff or reader stuff or gen). He is full to the brim with it, he just struggles to identify it, to know how to show it and how to express it.

I think that for Ford, acknowledging his feelings is a bit like touching a hot stove: He recoils from them immediately because feelings are painful and intense, and they're hard to handle. They hurt and he's going to be loathe to keep touching the thing that reliably burns him every time he goes near it. Ford isn't very good at being bad at things and he IS bad at emotions. Really bad. They're not finite or logical or able to be proven like science is. They're artistic and available for interpretation, and they're often nonsensical. That's hard to get your head around for someone who likes to view everything from a black and white perspective.

If you think he has a disorder (autism, BPD, NPD, HPD, whatever) and you yourself don't have that thing, then RESEARCH THE FUCKING THING! Ask people who do have it for advice. Treat it with respect. People that have 'negative traits' from these types of disorders (and believe me, people do think you're awful if you have a personality disorder or autism) are not inherently bad people and them enacting their symptoms doesn't make them evil, provided they know how to acknowledge their wrongdoing post behaviour and try to do better in the future. If I split on someone and act out by starting a fight, it is my responsibility to return to that person and apologise for inappropriately starting a fight once I've cooled down. It can be hard, it can be done through gritted teeth, it will be uncomfortable, but it must still be done because I'm an adult. Obviously, when it comes to things like this, we're always working on a sliding scale because people with complex mental health issues don't always know they've made a mistake so they may not feel like they need to apologise/may not even know that they've done something wrong if they're in a really bad episode. That's difficult to get right however, and I would not recommend writing intensely detailed stuff like that unless you're very used to/accustomed to the disorder.

HE KNOWS HOW TO SAY SORRY and he knows when he's fucked up. This is a skill he's learnt better over time. I think it would be most relevant to use if you're writing him post-portal, though. I don't think this was a skill he had when he was younger/pre-portal and if he did apologise, it was something that had to be really dragged out of him.

Show that he's tender and capable of empathy. I think it was only really during his obsessional years that he locked off that part of his brain, and even then it was more out of pure delusion and trauma/self-protection than it was an inherent drive to be evil. He's never been evil, just misguided, betrayed and a bit of an ass at times.

He does more through action than through talk. In comparison to Stan, who is all mouth and uses verbal communication frequently, Ford is more physically inclined. He tries to be very esoteric but he gives away a lot in his behaviour instead of talking. I don't actually think he knows he does this and that's why he thinks he's super mysterious.

If you're stuck on a scene, play it out as him. Not yourself. It's not so much how am I going to do this, but how is Ford going to do this? What do you think Ford would do in that moment, according to what you've seen him do in the show?

Don't be afraid to make your own Ford, to a certain extent. I'm not writing about a strictly canon!Ford. He's informed by canon for the most part, but he's also my little barbie to dress up and be silly with. I don't necessarily have to solely make him do what I think his canon counterpart would do. I think canon!Ford is aroace/just not interested in romantic or sexual relationships. I don't think he has interest in much of the stuff that my fanon!Ford does, but this is fantasy land and Ford isn't real so we can do whatever we want. He'll feel more real if you give him his canon traits and then add some of your own spices to the recipe on top.

Be nice to him. This isn't advice, I'm just begging you LMAO. When you're writing him talk about his science stuff or whatever, have your other character (reader, I presume?) be engaged and happy to listen to him. I wouldn't be interested in someone who annoyed me with their passions, so don't write it as though he pisses you off because the audience can tell if you don't actually like him that much. They will pick up on how you really feel about a character as the author unless you're an excellent liar and it's really hard to actually lie like that and retain a sense of genuine love in your story. Just treat him with love and care. Treat any character with it.

Okay anyway WHEW that's a lot! Sorry. These are just things that I do and they're not my view of how to write Ford 'correctly' or anything, they're just what I find helps me characterise him for my fics. I'm sure plenty of people would disagree with my interpretation and that's fine, we're all receptive to art in different ways so there's not really a 'right' way to be for the most part. Just listen to what he tells you/shows you about himself and the way in which other characters speak about him truthfully.

[oswinunknown]

woe, my unus annus story be upon ye

putting this under the cut bc its long as hell but

its my experience with unus annus that i never really shared, but after todays memento and mori videos, i wanted to type out.

memento mori, love you all.

It's Saturday, November 7th, 2020. 

I was in a downward slump when I stumbled upon the Unus Annus Reddit videos. 

I went to watch it because I figured why not.

But then I went to watch the recent videos. And I realised I was running out of time.

So despite all the piles of Homework, all the tests, all the stress I was ALREADY under. 

I looked at the timer, saw it was gonna end in a week, thought “GAH FUCK IT” and went ahead and binged every episode of unus annus before the stream

By the time the stream started, I had finished every episode and had catched up to where I first watched the recent episodes. And I stayed till midnight watching the livestream even during an online class.

And when the screen went black, and unus annus was deleted, I cried.

Every year whenever I see people talk about how they were here for the full year, watching each episode daily when it came out, when it was new, I feel guilty because I will never get that experience of having it be a daily thing.

However, my experience of Unus Annus, despite being only one really stressful (yet, really funny) week, has been the most formative days of my entire life.

I know people joke about saying their life changed before and after watching a certain piece of media, and I know that's true for some people because I can pinpoint my life changing after that week of watching unus annus. (i suppose its unus hebdomadis bc its one week instead of a year /j)

I remember it was the day after its death that I decided to make my socials, especially my discord, which coincidentally I needed to meet my new friends in online school at the time. Ironically, it was unus annus that gave me the motivation to go and meet them, go onto the call where there was an option to talk over voice rather than text, and I'll never forget how much that simple choice meant to me, especially that year being a really fun and memorable year.

As the years go on, I'm slowly starting to notice how much unus annus has changed my life into a 180. 

Before unus annus, I was mostly shy. I was goofy when I wanted to but I always remained closer to the quieter side whenever i wasnt with friends.

Post unus annus? I've never felt more myself in years. I'm a bit more out there, i talk to people and be goofy regardless of my friends being there, i learn to let myself balance the deep and the goof, i was more and more balancing out the quieter side with a louder and extroverted side that was the same me i grew up with. 

Not only that but it's also what led me into joining the ALWY discord server and making even more friends than I've ever had in my life. Making my summer, and current life all the more better. 

I know I missed out the communal and daily aspect of unus annus. I know I should have been there from the beginning because I was, my humour just wasn't fit for the absolute powerhouses of Mark Ethan and Amy yet. I know I should have watched every video when it came out.

Yet I didn't, I had something much more time sensitive, much more rushed, yet just as emotional as you who were there from the beginning.

So, where am I going with this ramble?

I have no clue, I just wanted to share it because Unus Annus has honestly changed my life, and myself in so many good ways. It was through Unus Annus that allowed me to be more free, more fun, yet still keeping the same self I knew through the years. 

Were it not for Unus Annus, I wouldn't have had amazing friends, amazing experiences, and be able to know more and more personally the people that I care for and am close to. Honestly i expect that had i not been into Unus Annus i probably would be still a shy and closed off girl, as opposed to the more open and showing myself bigender dude who is willing to be funny and be a helping hand to those i care for.

So big.

Thank you Mark, Ethan, Amy, Lixian, Marcus, Rachel, and all the other members of the Unus Annus team.

And thank you to my friends in the Problem Children GC, the ALWY discord, and my irl friends. 

Memento mori.

Unus Annus