Icon by @ThatSpookyAgent. 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.

tirlaeyn:

romulanfucker:

so is it sad that he’s a good tailor because it means he’s truly lost his sense of who he used to be in the order and everything he based his self-worth on has crumbled before his eyes and left him only a menial job,

or because it means he has the skills to settle down and live a normal life but knows he’ll be forever haunted and never truly happy that way,

or because the futilism of blowing up his own shop when it served him well is painfully reminiscent of enabran’s self destruction after a successful retirement,

or because this life of simplicity and stability and regular customers that are almost friends has begun to make him into a good person and his recent actions have taken steps to undo all that,

or because the tailor cover and therefore his appearance as a good man is lying in tatters before him and he knows he can’t lie about it to the people he wants to lie to let alone himself,

or because he realizes he could have avoided all this pain and paranoia if he’d taken another path but he can’t change time so all he has is his unmendable regret and burned up pieces of Julian’s pants

If I can add my own interpretation, I see it as sad that he could have been happy as a tailor in another life. If he had been allowed to live a quiet life as a tailor or a gardener, he could have been happy and successful. He knows now that he’s not cut out for the Order anymore. But he can’t be entirely happy as a tailor, because he still has the memories and training of Order life.

Also I think it’s like, IF he were not a good tailor, if he were only suited to Order life, he could have stuck with that. The part of Garak that’s the tailor, the sentimentalist, the conscience under all the layers is what’s keeping him from going home. It’s what got him exiled in the first place, and it’s what’s keeping him in exile. The tragedy is that’s who he really is, and it’s keeping him from what he wants.

lady-sci-fi:

With Garak’s habit of sassing the wrong people in the wrong situations to do it in (Klingons gangbeating him, Dukat about to throw him over a balcony, being captured by Jem’Hadar…), how has this man lived for this long? How has no one gotten fed up enough with his shit and just killed him yet?

I can imagine younger Order agent Garak limping back to Order HQ, beat up and heavily bleeding from a large knife sticking out of his side. And Tain just sighs heavily and goes “Oh for fuck’s sake, who’d you mouth off to this time?” 

1987allthetime:

To a Cardassian civilian onlooker, Garak looks like a massive hippy. If you were to tell a non-government related Cardassian about Elim Garak and then ask them “why do you think this guy was exiled?” they’d probably guess “oh I bet he was vocally against the occupation of Bajor.” The way he dresses, the way he acts, the way he talks, and the fact that he has a standing lunch appointment with a Federation officer and an unrelated standing breakfast appointment with a Bajoran security officer would scream “harmless hippy” to the untrained eye. He aims to disarm those he can fool into thinking he was exiled for being a coward and a draft-dodger. Those who know who he is of course see right through him, but the disguise is fairly effective for strangers.

If he really needs to sell the hippy act, he hangs some aromatic dried herbs near the door of his shop and walks around the promenade in sandals or better yet, barefoot if he can get away with it. It can be advantageous to be dismissed with a scowl and written off as a spineless Bajoran sympathizer without so much as a second thought. Years of Obsidian Order training certainly taught him how to appear nonthreatening.