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.

c-rowlesdraws:

conceptadecency:

c-rowlesdraws:

gently shakes these sketches out onto tumblr at 2 AM like a ramen flavor packet

1) Agent Enabran Tain and a mistake! The mistake’s name is Elim. Look at him! So cheerful, so full of crushable innocence.

2) Director Tain, some years later, doing paperwork. Being at the pinnacle of his career is nice and all, but sometimes being stuck behind a desk can be so dull compared to the excitement and variety of fieldwork. He hasn’t gotten to stab anyone in ages.

since PADDs are supposed to be fun futuristic advanced tablet computer things, it cracks me up whenever Trek shows a desk just littered with them. How much data can one of those things hold? Is it like one thing each, like Hit Clips? Amazing.

OMG. Was Mila hot too? Were they, like, OO power couple? Love to know your headcanon on that.

@conceptadecency​ the answer to both questions is 100% yes

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but what do you mean “were”?? They’re still absolutely a power couple even in retirement:

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(I have your fic The Family Bond to thank for how I imagine their relationship; I’m so glad these two terrible people found each other, love is real)

philosopherking1887:

setacourse4home:

kiranxrys:

kiranxrys:

          S05E14 ’In Purgatory’s Shadow’

ok can I talk about this moment for a second here because I have too many thoughts to keep them in the tags. I’ve always felt like what makes garak and julian’s relationship so special is the trust between them and this scene really just exemplifies that for me? garak comes to trust julian in a way we don’t really see him trusting anyone else. there’s something so powerful about that. 

not only in this scene is he okay with julian hearing one of his greater personal secrets (that tain was his father) but one of his deepest emotional secrets too - his desire to have a family who loved him, how hard he tried and what he gave up only for tain to betray him. but when tain asks him whether anyone else is there, garak says “there’s no one else but you and me”. like to garak, julian is not a dangerous outsider but almost a part of/an extension of himself. 

he could’ve easily asked julian to leave and we know that he would’ve right away, but he doesn’t. maybe he even wants julian to be there with him and hear the truth. that level of trust is so strong, and so difficult for someone like garak. and that depth of emotional honesty is what always makes their relationship so beautiful to me, makes even small moments like these so compelling to watch.

I kinda wanna double-down on how important this little exchange is:

The way Garak looks over his shoulder at Bashir when he first answers Tain has always made my heart hurt. 

Garak is answering Tain’s question, but he’s speaking to Bashir. So it’s not just that he didn’t ask Bashir to leave – it’s also Garak is asking Bashir to stay. 

He not only doesn’t mind; he wants Bashir there. And that, as you say, is an ultimate trust – and so beautiful and so compelling.

In another reblog branch, @copperplatebeech wrote:

To me this is the most poignant moment in all of Trek, any series. I enjoy a good Garashir fic as much as the next fan but this is the onscreen moment that crystallizes both who Garak is, how he was wounded, and in a perfect understated way what Julian is to him. He’s inside the defenses, he’s a witness. And the way Siddig played the scene telegraphs that Julian knows it.

And in a reply, @beacuzz-i-can wrote:

if you look closely you cam see Julian nodding. “Yes I’ll stay”

I looked at the full script for “In Purgatory’s Shadow” on the Star Trek Minutiae website, and some of the notes/instructions between the lines really took me by surprise.

TAIN: Are you alone?

Garak looks over at Bashir, then back at Tain.

GARAK: Yes. There’s no one here but you and me.

Garak sits down next to him, unsure of what to do.

So, first of all, Bashir’s little nod wasn’t in the script. I’m pretty sure that’s something Sid and Andy worked out between themselves that not only added a depth of significance that wasn’t present in the script, but actually contradicted a later direction:

GARAK: I’ll do as you ask, on one condition.

Garak hesitates. He looks over at Bashir. Whatever he has to say, he doesn’t want Bashir to hear it, but he doesn’t have the luxury of waiting.

GARAK: (continuing) That you don’t ask me this favor as a mentor, or a superior officer… but as a father, asking his son.

Reading that really threw me for a loop, as I’m sure you can imagine. Like… what? If Garak didn’t want Bashir to be there listening, why didn’t he tell him not to come in with him, or gesture that he should leave when Tain asked if they were alone?

I’m guessing that Sid and Andy decided that direction didn’t make any sense and agreed to change the significance of Bashir staying for Tain’s shri-tal and Garak revealing their relationship to him. It couldn’t be just “he was there and Garak didn’t really want to tell him, but it was too late to shoo him out and he decided it was OK if he knew.” They made acting choices that turned Garak’s look over his shoulder at Bashir from “uhhh… you just gonna sit there while I hear my dad’s last words?” to asking him to stay, and turned “There’s no one else but you and me” into a signal that Bashir is “not a dangerous outsider but almost a part of/an extension of himself,” as @kiranxrys put it. The actors are the ones who made this into a deeply intimate moment in which Garak deliberately chooses to reveal to Bashir his most closely held secret, the one that has shaped his whole life and caused him so much pain.

sapphosewrites:

sapphosewrites:

Thinking about “The Die Is Cast” and Garak’s moment of “The fault is not in our stars, dear Tain” where he quotes Shakespeare

And at the start of “Improbable Cause,” he argued to Bashir that Julius Caesar wasn’t a good tragedy. Not just because he could see the end coming, but because Caesar should have expected he’d be betrayed. In Garak’s mind, any good leader would.

When he quotes to Tain, I’d always thought it was a moment that symbolized his acceptance of his connection to the Federation, that he wasn’t going to leave Bashir behind. But I somehow missed the more obvious, literal moment- Lovok has betrayed Tain, and Tain never saw it coming. Garak is watching the moment of Caesar play out and recognizing that it is relevant, and tragic.

The original quote is from early in the play when Cassius (the mastermind behind the assassination) is trying to convince Brutus to join in. He has a long speech discussing how, despite what the cult of personality pretends, Caesar is human and as such as human flaws. He has epilepsy, he can’t swim and is afraid to drown, he is greedy for power even if he won’t admit it.

Cassius says: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” He’s saying that it was not fate but them that allowed Caesar to rise so high above- and it is also in their power to lay him low.

When Garak quotes it, does he mean it in the sense of, “the fault is not in our stars but in ourselves [because we fucked up],” or is he seeing Tain as fallible and flawed, perhaps for the first time? No longer a mighty or mythic figure, but an inherently flawed man overreaching in his quest for power. Does Garak realize that the fault was not in his fate, but in himself, that he allowed Tain to control him?

(Even if he does, he is still loyal to the end. Brutus felt guilt and regret about the killing of Caesar, after all.)

geekthefreakout:

Dukat made a big deal about Cardassian corpses being sacred, how no one but the closest family should be allowed to view them.

In In Purgatory’s Shadow, when Tain is dying and asks Garak if they are alone, Garak looks back at Julian… and says yes, they’re alone.

That speaks volumes. Garak wanted Julian there when his father died. He keeps looking back towards him for reassurance as Tain rambles about enemies. He allows himself to be the most vulnerable and honest he has ever been to date, with Julian right there watching.

He lets Julian see his father’s dead body.

That’s…. love is not a strong enough word. Intimacy. Trust.

That’s powerful.

I gotta say I am entertained when Damar has a whole *moment* upon being informed that Garak is Tain’s son and everyone else is like, “Yeah that was two seasons ago. Catch up.” He stands there and just stares at Garak while the rest of them have moved on.

So I’m rewatching Improbable Cause/The Die is Cast. I’ll admit I was pretty drunk the first time I watched this which is why I think I completely forgot the scene in which Garak and Tain sit reminiscing????

Garak looks so damn *happy* and then there’s the whole thing with Odo 😭 GODDAM YOU, Enabran Tain. Dying in a Dominion prison was too good for you.