amazing how the DS9 writers had the perfect ziyal x garak storyline fall into their laps - an exile becoming a father figure to a traumatized young girl whose biological father is not only a war criminal but a selfish prick, and thereby healing said exile’s own trauma over being exiled by his own father - and make such overwhelming narrative sense for the characters that andrew robinson refuses to play garak as anything other than fatherly/avuncular towards ziyal, but instead they spent multiple episodes stupidly refusing to follow this extremely logical trajectory by trying to convince us it’s some starcrossed romance…between a teenager-ish girl and a gay man in his fifties. when i tell you heteronormativity is the ghetto…