Icon from a picrew by grgikau. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
More of my headcanon for Cardassian child development
Young Cardassians are natural climbers. This was extremely helpful in the early years to avoid ground dwelling predators. Their mottled pattern (that fades before adulthood) breaks up their shape against the tree.
This also means infants will just naturally cling to their parent’s (or other adult’s) back. Adults will curl their tail up to keep the infant from just falling (if you’ve been around babies, you know), and to protect them.
However!
This means modern urban toddlers have a whole lot of climbing urges and nothing but those nice curtains to scale. Toddlers would probably have cat trees instead of playpens
A moment of silence for Dukat’s wife who had to raise all his little tree gremlins…
are there like fanmade terms for cardassian anatomy and can someone please direct me to a guide or something? reading lots of garak-related fan fiction lately and I have no idea what some of these things ppl are referring to. most notably I’ve seen “chufa” come up in multiple fics and from what I googled that is a type of nut???? and I don’t think they were referring to like. those nuts. not finding these terms on memory alpha so I’m guessing this is all fanmade terminology. anyways any help is appreciated thanks
Alas, I have done absolutely no work on anything writing-wise for months now. My brain is mush. Time is no longer a relevant concept. When it comes to life, the universe and everything, my thoughts mimic those of a bowl of petunias falling swiftly through the clouds.
So here, have a rough sketch of a Cardassian undressing instead, with all the shadows in the wrong places.
(putting my very mediocre GCSE in Fine Art to use, for once…)
Pretty much straight out of the egg these babies can start scrambling around on all fours. Within a few weeks to a month they begin to take their first awkward steps, partly relying on their tail as a counter balance.
By 1 year the neck ridges and scales begin to resemble that of an adult Cardassian.
Baby Cardassians have mottled markings that would have allowed their ancestors to stay well hidden. As they age the patterns fade until they are nearly invisible.
Their tails are extra chubby, giving them a store calories. The first few months sees the most rapid growth rate in young Cardassians and they need the those fat stores to power through them.
PLEASE if you love Garashir and yourself, read this fic. It is a gift you can give yourself! It is 18k words of smut and banter and absolutely genius! Contains one of the funniest lines I’ve read in a while.
Summary from ao3: An entirely scientific investigation into, um, bits. Things. Privates. Wedding tackle.
As always, please read notes, tags, and warnings, and leave lovely comments!
I decided to do something with all my ideas about what Cardassian genitalia looked like, and here we are. Below the cut are some anatomical sketches (of the kind you get in text-books, so they are mostly SFW, but it depends on where you work, I suppose) and a description of my take on the Cardassian reproductive systems.
Content warnings: anatomical sketches, anatomical descriptions, mentions of menstruation and pregnancy.
As this is about reproductive anatomy in broad terms, I have used the terms ‘male’ and ‘female’ in an essentialist way. This is mainly to be as clear as possible. I think that we should move away from referring to, for instance, “external female genitalia” when we could just say “vulva”. However, when you discuss an alien species where writer and reader don’t have any common frame of reference, that can get very confusing. There are definitely Cardassians who are intersex, trans and non-binary, so what is described below are broad generalisations describing cis Cardassians.
thinking thoughts about cardassians again… on biology and gender and clothing and related topics… here are some interpretations/hcs that absolutely no one asked for
so im pretty sure that the only cardassian whose chula we actually see (that teardrop shape on the chest) is natima lang, because she wears clothes that are cut low enough to show her chest
at first i took it to be a general cardassian anatomy thing, like they all have chulas, but then i noticed that rekelen (natima’s student)… does not have one? and ziyal does not have one either (this could be just a result of her being half bajoran, but she still has a visible chufa despite this, while her chest is completely smooth. it stands to reason that she would have a similar faded teardrop shape on her chest)
so it got me thinking, as i am prone to do when it comes to this show, what determines whether or not a cardassian has a chula or not? also, are there any cardassian men who are ever shown wearing clothing that’s cut low enough to definitively tell if they have or do not have a chula?
it seems almost universal that cardassian men wear relatively conservative clothing. men’s necklines are almost always cut higher than the line of scales that surrounds the chula like we see on natima lang. also, cardassian military uniforms have enough chest coverage to completely conceal the chula or lack thereof. this makes it impossible to tell if people like dukat or damar, who are always seen in military attire, have such a feature
it’s also worth noting that women’s attire in professional settings varies, with some (like rejal and belor) wearing higher necklines while others (like kejal) wear lower cut tops, not dissimilar to men’s casual clothing. in kejal’s case, though, enough unscaled skin is showing to make the assumption that she does not have a chula.
something else to note is that garak has some more… risqué fashion choices from time to time, showing off just a little more neck and chest. and judging by the placement of natima’s chula and surrounding scales, relative to where garak’s neckline is, it seems like garak does not have one either.
cardassian men’s necklines are pretty universally similar in that they cover most, if not all, of the chest, and almost all of the designs (with a few exceptions in garak’s case) seem to align with the scale pattern of the chula, perfectly concealing it. it seems like the vast majority of cardassian men deliberately wear clothing that conceals their chula or chest.
i take this to indicate that cardassians assigned male at birth are born with chulas, and the chula is associated with masculinity (perhaps a secondary sex characteristic?) as a result, therefore the vast majority of cardassian men have them.
cardassian gendered fashion is mostly cisnormative, and is subverted by people like natima lang (who has a chula). she has no feminization surgery to make her chest smooth but still wears traditionally feminine clothing (low necklines). garak not having a chula is an indication of his own transness as well, and his wearing of some lower necklines exposing his smooth chest (and not to mention the traditionally feminine makeup that he sometimes wears) are also subversions of these norms.
I think there is a very strong case for amab Cardassians having chulas, and that ‘s this:
[image description: publicity photo of Damar, with a red arrow pointing to the diamond-shape on the front of his uniform.]
That diamond-shape would be basically where the chula would be. It’s not too uncommon that uniforms are simply updated versions of earlier uniforms/warfare-ware (man what a word) - for instance, the golden braid generals wear goes back to armour. With that in mind, it doesn’t seem unlikely that Cardassian uniforms are a highly stylised version of a Cardassian version of this:
[image description: a Greek bronze cuirass fashioned to look like a naked chest and stomach.]
My personal headcanon is that all Cardassians have chulas (with the exception of Cardassian-Bajorans, which might mean that Rekelen is part-Bajoran), but I will die on the hill that, if anyone has chulas, it’s AMABs, so I love this analysis.
