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.

eco-lite:

Some mostly out of context funny/sweet/heartbreaking moments from Una McCormack’s Enigma Tales:

image

Garak forcing stuffy military men to squeeze onto a tiny sofa together. Utterly diabolical.

image

I love that in The Crimson Shadow, it’s implied that Kelas takes care of Garak’s garden while he’s away, yet here we learn that he’s actually terrible at it. First of all hilarious. Second of all, very sweet that Garak trusts him to keep trying.

image

Pulaski just assuming that Garak and Kelas are lovers. A perfectly valid assumption–it’s the same assumption I make myself. Also, Peter Alden pointing out how it is frankly fucked up that they should be lovers considering the circumstances of their past encounter. He’s not wrong… Kelas is just a forgiving angel of a man.

image
image

Pulaski bringing Kukalaka to comfort the comatose Julian are you kIDDING ME? This scene is so bittersweet.

image

Hahahahaaa ouchie.

image

Despite everything, Garak is a very compassionate person. He very kindly talked down Telek, who was about to kill him, and was sensitive and remorseful that Telek’s Bajoran genetics had been eradicated as a child, at the insistance of Telek’s Cardassian father. And then immediately after that assassination attempt–a moment in which you’re surely allowed to think selfishly–he instead thinks of “My poor Julian,” another man who father did not want him as he was. And that’s not even acknowledging all the other shit Garak is going through here. It’s a lot.

Love to end on a sad note. But seriously, everybody go read this book! These are just a few great moments among many. Lots of angst, lots of tenderness.

garcavisconde:

*covered in blood* i will…. *trembling* CHOOSE TO BE KIND… *in pain* i will be… NICE to others… *wanting to kill* i will see good in EVERYONE *yelding a knife* i will NOT be like those who hurt me… *screaming* i will be BETTER than who i was…

apolesen:

Yet another reason to love Kelas Parmak: he references Audre Lorde (1934-1992), who described herself as “Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet”. 

This particular essay is about white feminist academic panels excluding black voices. It’s very interesting and beautifully written. 

Enigma Tales by Una McCormack

“You cannot dismantle the master’s house with the master’s tools,” said Parmak.
Garak blinked. “That’s… not a quotation I recognize.”
“No?” Parmak gave a wry smile. “Look it up. You’re not the only one who reads, you know.”
Garak smiled back. “I have never underestimated you, Kelas.”

The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house by Audre Lorde, p. 19 (Republished by Penguin Books in the Penguin Modern Series, 23, under this title)

survival is not an academic skill. It is leraning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those others identified as outside the structures in order to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master’s house as their only source of support. 

thewindinthewillowsworld-deacti:

image
image

I open a book curious ab the plot after reading the summary and the first two pages is this? Do you know how this knocked me out cold and it took me several hours to get back to it? How I had to absorb what I had just read?? This destroyed me. This literally sounds like the stuff we, in the community, write. This is from an official novel… I need to sit down.