Icon from a picrew by grgikau. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. The X-Files. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
I realized belatedly that this looks like a Progression of Fucks Given by Elim Garak, from ”ZERO FUCKS GIVEN to “FAR TOO MANY FUCKS FOR THIS LIZARD’S COMFORT” to “SISKO WOULD YOU STOP PUNCHING ME FOR LIKE ONE MINUTE”
…every time I look at it, the watermelon outfit gets a little worse.
Anyway I know Data is just, played by actual human man Brent Spiner but on like a watsonian level I like to think about how Dr Soong just chose to give him little like. Human person details like he has that little pudge under his chin. I think it’s nice :-)
[ID: tags from @mouthmoodz that read “#also on a doylist level i like how they cast brent spiner to be the android #and not like some generic looking 6ft tall guy #i just like everything about data he is nice :)” /end ID]
Yeah!! Yeah that too. It’s like kindof expected with androids to be like Behold, The Perfect Man™ and then it’s Data and tbh. Yeah <3
ID: Four gifs from DS9, showing Weyoun 5 sitting in Quark’s bar. He laughs and says, “How delightful! The mysterious plots, the subtle innuendos, the veiled threats. It’s all so… entertaining.” He smiles and then reaches for the glass of poison, which he proceeds to drink. End ID.
I still can’t get over the fact that when garak learns that there is a man out to poison him his first reaction is to BLOW HIMSELF UP FIRST and be like HA jokes on you im already being murdered shdjdksrhdjs wtf my man are you alright
My absolute favorite Alexander Siddig story - and oh boy I have a lot of favorites - is that one day he noticed everyone on the DS9 set was suddenly asking him these weird very carefully phrased gentle questions like hey buddy, how you doing? you feeling alright? Can we get you anything? you know you can always come to us for help if you need it and he was like wtf why is everyone being weird and it turned out that he had been showing up to set late and generally looking tired and the whole crew thought he had gotten into hard drugs but in reality what he was doing was staying up till 4 AM every night playing Ultima Online
when he gets goin he basically tells stories constantly but it is somewhat sobering because a solid percentage of them are just about casual racism he has experienced and often seems amazingly unbothered by
anyway let’s see
- a fan approached him at a con and very very nervously thrust a magazine into his hands…with a photo of James Callis. He tried to explain to them repeatedly that he was not James Callis but they were so nervous they were basically not responsive so he finally signed the photo “Alexander Siddig is not James Callis” and gave it back and they thanked him and walked away
- He was sent to the UK from Sudan on a plane alone (running from political unrest in the country) when he was maybe 3 years old and the only thing his family sent with him was a suitcase full of mangoes because he loved them and they were hard to get in the UK (this would have been the late 60s)
- He desperately wanted to be an elf in Lord Of The Rings and they offered him a different part (I forget which one) and he was like ???? okay but I would like to be an elf and they told him flatly that they only wanted white people for the elves and he very rightly turned down all involvement in the production in response
- Not only did he spend all of the 90s playing video games he very much still plays them and now and, hilariously, is always the group healer which is something to unpack if you wanted to
- He took his kid to Disneyland and the person in the Mickey Mouse costume broke protocol to say “OH MY GOD IT’S DR BASHIR”
- The first review he ever got for being in a play spelled his name horribly wrong
- there are so so many more but after a year of hearing them it’s all a soup in my head PEOPLE WHO’VE BEEN LISTENING TO HIM ON ZOOM AND REMEMBER PLEASE ADD YOUR FAVORITES
Also since this post is doing numbers now I want to make sure everyone knows because I think almost everyone following me already is part of this but this is getting outside my standard circle: Alexander Siddig is an Angel. The reason I know all this stuff is that he has spent the last year+ essentially donating what is now hundreds of hours of his time talking to his fans on Zoom. He listens to everyone’s stories, comforts people, reassures people, offers advice (of varying quality, but we love him anyway), listens intently to every single infodump, answers pretty much any question asked of him, has gotten very into trans and nuerodivergent rights, remembers people, checks up on people, and is generally so incredibly gentle and sweet and kind to absolutely everyone and as of right now is still doing this when he has time despite no longer being in quarantine and currently filming on the other side of the world. If you are new to this fandom or otherwise don’t know a lot about Sid or his zoom outreach I am delighted to let you know that every bit of kindness and gentleness and generally nice vibes you get off of Julian is just Sid being Sid and he is every bit that and better in real life
yeees to all of this, he’s an incredibly kind, thoughtful man!
I’m trying to think of other stories, but my brain is mush - the only one I can think of is that while he was on Gotham he got a call to be on Doctor Who (and it was while they were doing the whole new cast and my suspicions will always be that it was for The Master), and he was just “yeah, can’t do it, already on a show.”
A Great Sadness, considering how badly Gotham ended up writing his character, although Sacha Dhawan is doing an excellent job over on DW.
Also the ongoing tomato-growing saga (didn’t he even show us all the tomatoes at one point?)
ONE MORE:
- when he was like 19-20 he got a letter with no return address no info no nothing and it just said to meet at a certain place at a certain time. He very smartly did not go but he found out years later that said letter was a recruitment letter for Mi-5.
