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.
Actually I am super remiss in that when I scheduled this to post I forgot to add that my fave source for meta involving history is @forest-sprites though basically all of their meta is gold.
the way ofmd deals with masculinity is so fascinating. we have stede, who’s about the least masculine a character could possibly be in the traditional sense: he gets sad instead of angry, he refuses to engage in physical violence, he encourages talking about feelings, he likes fashion and interior design and romanticizes everything. he likes picking flowers. and he has been told for his whole life that he is worthless because of all of this. he has been bullied and taunted and abused for it, but that didn’t keep him from adding a secret closet to his ship (lmao) to keep his excess fineries. he is still outwardly himself.
then we have ed. ed who is the pinnacle of the idea of masculinity, part of why he was remembered as history’s greatest pirate in the first place. he’s violent, ruthless, quick to anger, hierarchical, and his name, blackbeard, even emphasizes a symbol of masculinity. he’s revered for his masculinity. his performance is so powerful that people surrender before he even shows up in person. but it’s not him. blackbeard is a character ed has played for as long as he could remember that served to protect him from harm. you can’t get hurt if you’re never vulnerable in the first place.
when he meets stede, he finds someone he doesn’t have to present as blackbeard for. he can indulge in the frilly colorful clothes, the dancing, the emotional honesty that stede treats as normal. ed lets stede hold his heart in his hands and stede calls it beautiful. and stede, for the first time, has met someone who doesn’t see those things as hateful or embarrassing. everything stede has been mocked for unequivocally delights ed. in the reverse, stede sees blackbeard as the man stede never was. the ideal of a pirate that he read about and romanticized before he became one himself. to stede, blackbeard is everything he could never bring himself to be.
when ed begins to outwardly become interested in stede’s way of life, izzy serves to try to force him back into that hypermasculine presentation of Blackbeard. izzy hates stede for all the same reasons stede has been hated his whole life, and he sees stede as poisoning edward with his embarrassing foppish behavior, emasculating him. this comes to a head when ed signs the act of grace, shaves his beard (the symbol of his performance of masculinity), and kisses stede. all of those go against traditional masculine norms and by extent, the idea of Blackbeard. but ed isn’t performing anymore. he smiles more after the kiss than he ever does in the rest of the show.
then, stede is held at gunpoint by chauncey, who calls stede a monster, a plague for ruining the greatest pirate in history. ruining through emasculation, which in countless other media has been presented as horrific. think about other media that puts masculine characters in prison or the army (the similarities are staggering)—the threat of beating the character down until they’re submissive and emasculated is ever-present. losing the appearance of masculinity is by and large seen as one of the worst things that could possibly happen, and is often paired thematically with the loss of autonomy.
so stede agrees. he’s horrified with himself. he himself was already not traditionally masculine, and he spread it to blackbeard like a disease. everything he (and, interestingly, the viewer) has ever been told is that ed’s shift throughout the show is something to be terrified of. ed shaving his beard, in stede’s mind, confirmed his worst fear: stede had made ed into everything stede hated about himself and wanted to change; he killed blackbeard. but what he and chauncey and izzy can’t see is that stede actually gave ed more autonomy, more freedom and comfort to be himself and do what makes ed happy.
so stede runs. he runs back to where he once performed masculinity as a father and husband (regaining his own beard, so to speak), now sure that blackbeard would have been better off not knowing him. on some level, stede does want parts of blackbeard’s edge to stay (he’s like izzy in that way) and is scared he’s somehow excised it permanently. ed doesn’t want to leave it all behind either, but he’s terrified that stede could never accept the side of him that still exists as blackbeard. i also think this is why ed didn’t try to kiss stede until he was the least like blackbeard he could be; he saw it as being less likely to get rejected for the ugliness he saw in himself.
it’s interesting that ed doesn’t go back to being blackbeard immediately after stede abandons him. at first, he goes all-in on the emotional vulnerability, trying to hang on to the hope he had allowed himself to experience when stede had agreed to run away with him. hanging on by a thread. the thread snaps when izzy mocks him for pining after stede, for lacking the masculinity izzy required in order to maintain his respect. in quick succession ed was rejected by stede, whom he loved, and izzy, whose respect he’d had since before the show began. so he threw his walls back up. he painted his mask back on, closed himself off, and removed every reminder of when he had allowed himself to be vulnerable.
ed’s return to masculinity is not presented as a good thing. it’s a trauma response, a defense mechanism, and it’s toxic. the show experiments with defining a line between toxic and non-toxic masculinity; izzy, calico jack, the kraken, stede’s father, the admiral twins, they all represent the ways toxic masculinity enforces a culture of violence and punishes any emotion except anger. stede and his crew represent a healthier version of masculinity: emotional honesty, encouragement and care for others, kindness, and love. it’s not an accident that as ed allows himself to love and be loved, he begins to leave behind the toxic aspects of masculinity he had before. i’ve used the word emasculated to refer to ed’s transformation throughout the show, but in truth that’s not entirely accurate. it lines up with how many people would view what happened to him, but in reality he did remain a man, he just became a healthier one.
I think that part of the brilliance of Trek is represented by Arena. If someone asked me to define Trek in one episode I simply would refuse because I don’t think that’s fair, but Arena lies there as the representation of not fulfilling the expectations of the common audience, both in the 60s and in 2021. Arena is the episode where everything is set to end up in a bloodshed. The title itself evokes violence. No one is going to an arena to make peace. Arenas are meant for competitions, for fighting, for winners and losers. Arenas don’t have a lot in common with equality, one must win, the other must lose. And based on that, the episode begins. There’s fighting, there’s violence. Everything the audience expected, obviously. And we think, even Spock thinks, “Go, Kirk, get Gorn” because it’s what we do since we were kids in P.E., we choose a team, we root for the other one to be defeated. That’s the culture that brought us the wonders of sports and the tragedies of wars. But then, Trek shift gears. Kirk doesn’t defeat Gorn nor he is defeated. “How is that possible?”. The expectations of the audience are no longer fulfilled. Arena becomes the representation of the fight between unnecessary violence and peace. Peace is, ultimately, the winner, not Kirk, not Gorn. When peace wins, both sides win. Everyone wins. So Arena is built to look like a fun episode where the great Kirk defeats an ugly alien, but hidden in its core it’s the compassion that makes Kirk great and a question directed at the audience, the audience that was expecting what we were told to expect, and the question is: “Can you see that there is another way?”. Arena couldn’t define all that Trek is, but it was and it is a symbol of how brilliantly Trek brought a possibility opposed to what we usually expect. It brought an alternative.
been thinking more about race and disability wrt to julian bashir, but also wrt benjamin sisko, a character i almost never see discussed as neurodivergent, and how this framework offers some interesting (to me at least) insights into both characters. as many disabled and neurodivergent people of color have consistently stressed, race and disability/ableism are co-constituted. european race science in the late 1800s and early 190s freely used race as the language of disability - specifically intellectual inferiority - and vice versa; disability also became the language of race, meaning those whose brains and bodies were thought to be irrevocably different than those of european aristocratic men were automatically deemed intellectually and physically inferior (let’s also think about how siddig as julian was required to wear shoulder padding because his natural thinness wasn’t considered masculine enough)
throughout DS9, sisko’s role as emissary sets him apart from his fellow humanoids not only spiritually, but neurologically. his connection to the wormhole aliens, or prophets, manifests in his brain, and he’s hospitalized with difficult side-effects multiple times. many starfleet higher-ups are openly uncomfortable with sisko’s ability to communicate with the aliens - they’re uncomfortable, in other words, with his neurodivergence. sisko is often put in positions where he has to choose between making decisions based on his connection to the prophets, and making decisions based on starfleet-approved neurotypicality. and this neurodivergence is also very much about temporality and the prophets’ non-linear approach to time (anne mclintock uses the term “panoptical time” to describe how colonial europe understood all human history as progressing in a singular line towards white european modernity)
then you have julian bashir, who was genetically augmented at a young age so his brain could work faster. but more importantly, he was augmented so his brain could work according to what standardized education of the time deems normal (the show talks about how young julian, or jules, was “slower” than other kids his age, failing to meet certain pre-determined benchmarks) and, many times throughout the show, by virtue of being the station doctor, it’s julian who’s in charge of “treating” sisko’s neurodivergence. in “far beyond the stars,” an episode that seems to completely forget that julian is also a man of color, sisko’s alter ego is institutionalized and deemed mentally ill for daring to write about a future where black people are free. “it’s real,” sisko insists, while all the white people (and julian) look on in pained fear. essentially, in this moment, a mind that dares to envision liberatory black futures is not only criminalized but pathologized. to imagine black freedom is to be mentally ill. in a white supremacist society, to think and write about black freedom is to be considered neurodivergent.
perhaps, then, julian’s complex and painful relationship to race is just as much about skin color or nationality as it’s about the fact that he’s been “fixed” into white normativity by his augmentations. his brain has been engineered to work the way (euro) scientific standards of efficiency demand, so much so that he’s a doctor, a scientist, a role that, historically, from an european standpoint (and trek’s approach to science is almost completely rooted in western bio-medical epistemes) was the standard for human intelligence against which lesser races were defined. from this perspective, it’s key that jules was considered too “slow,” too out of sync, essentially, with “paonoptical time.” what might jules’ neurodivergence have allowed him to see and do, that the augmentations potentially snipped away? would he have been an artist or musician? would he have had visions? would he have been an empath? would he have been a scientist who challenged starfleet norms and protocol?
i want to be careful here and say that i’m not suggesting an easy binary between artistic vs neurotypical, or that julian bashir as he appears in canon lacks the capacity for kindness and empathy. rather i’m interested in thinking about what neurodivergence looks like when we consider the racial history of disability and layer that onto how both sisko’s and julian’s neurodivergence mark them both as insiders and outsiders within starfleet (sisko’s role as emisssary is useful until it goes against military protocol, julian’s intelligence is an asset until it’s revealed he came by it “illegally”) and as both insiders/outsiders racially. they’re both black men in the future, but sisko’s neurodivergence firmly locates him oustide european traditions of intelligence and logic, while julian’s tethers him to those logics. there’s a lot more to unpack here but, i just think positioning sisko as also neurodivergent opens up a lot of uncharted ground for thinking through his and julian’s connection to each other and to blackness, and to thinking through race and disability and neurodivergence in futuristic media.
my late night thots no one asked for are that richard and amsha bashir truly loved julian and did what they did out of a deeply fearful, anxious love born from living in a technotopia where people who get to do the coolest things have to be super smart and brainy in a very narrowly defined way. furthermore the fact that they wanted to enhance his genes speaks to a deep sense of shame and self-hate within both of them (and we can speculate how this shows up but, for one thing, it’s clear there’s a class difference between amsha and richard and that richard is constantly trying to measure up to his perceived lack and hurting people in the process) that deserves more nuancing in fic, especially when we consider how the “eugenics wars” were concentrated in the global south and therefore most likely impacted the regions richard and amsha hailed from.
and finally, if we factor in richard’s inferiority complex about his class and race and masculinity with amsha’s pained grace and regretful acquiescence we can see why julian dons a mantle of snobbery and hauteur in order to project self-assuredness (like richard) while keenly aware that he’s wrong/imperfect/guilty (like amsha), and how all of that is also tangled up with the shame he feels about not being good enough without his augmentations, while also resenting the fact that his parents both gifted and cursed him with these talents.
tldr; the bashir family story is often contextualized through ableism and parental homo/transphobia but, imho, only fully makes sense with an intersecting racial and class framework. ableism and homophobia can’t be decoupled from race (the history of european race science is the easiest example of how race was long used as a shorthand for intellectual deficiency) and, in the case of these three characters, what we see unfold onscreen is just as much a story of immigrant/model minority transgenerational trauma as it is a story of how ableism and homophobia damages parent/child relationships. richard and amsha are also, in their own way, responding to ableism, is what i’m suggesting. and their love for julian is always shot through with their own self-loathing and anxieties around failing societal expectations.
i don’t know how to insert a readmore in mobile so you’re going to have to deal with this post. bear with me. i don’t understand why ds9 fandom casts garak as some sort of suave oscar wilde daddy dom when he’s clearly the kind of older man who gets trashed at a casino at 3pm on thursdays and tips dabo boys extra to hold him while he cries
the first thing we ever see him do is beeline over to the very shiniest twink from a nation comprised solely of shiny twinks (while he’s fucked up on space oxy btw) like “hey, i usually don’t approach people from space grindr in crowded public places before noon like this, but i haven’t had sex in nine years, so hmu if you ever want to…. ‘visit my tailoring shop’……… as they say.” he’s not that smooth.
imo that’s the very thing that makes g/b so great. like while garak IS technically a dangerous feminine powerful enemy spy, which as we all know is julian bashir’s charmingly bisexual fetish, even when bashir runs into ops for the first time like “I THINK GARAK IS A SPY AND WE CAN LEARN ALL MANNER OF SPY SECRETS FROM HIM” jadzia is immediately like “bro maybe but i’m pretty sure he mostly just wants to s your d.” and it’s actually incredibly magical that it even works!! ONLY fucking julian “teach for america” bashir would look at this portly middle-aged disaster of lizard man like “holy shit, i finally found my very own bond girl, holy shit, my dream.“ i honestly honestly just don’t think people understand the central themes of star trek: deep space nine at all
hhhhhh so. Bashir is genetically enhanced. we don’t know exactly what his genetic resequencing consists of, but we do know that his reflexes and reaction times are superior, that he’s at least stronger and faster than the average Vulcan (so, about three times stronger and faster than the average human), that his memory and learning capacity are hugely enhanced, etc.
we know that genetic resequencing is complex work fraught with a million potential complications, and that it’s not necessarily just about editing existing genes, but potentially includes genetic splicing and similar work - especially when you consider that the most legal and acceptable genetic engineering under Federation rules is in the case of assisting hybrid species and allowing healthy gestation of mixed-species babies, and also addressing potential health concerns and defects in-utero
it’s not unreasonable, therefore, to guess that part of the reason bashir’s genetic resequencing has resulted in such success, in such a stable subject, is in part because of choices made in the editing of his genetic profile; with the most research possible being into species hybridisation and cross-species genetics, it’s equally reasonable to assert that part of the best route to stabilising negative effects is in splicing in non-human genes. therefore, it’s possible that within his genetic profile, bashir has hidden aspects that aren’t entirely human - that he might be susceptible to some things that would affect other species that wouldn’t affect other humans
so i’ve been reading several rewrites of Empok Nor (5x24) where Bashir comes along for whatever reason, either replacing Nog or coming along to join the team and i’m just
what if Bashir was affected by the biogenetic compound that triggers the paranoid and defensive reaction in him that it triggers in Garak and the other Cardassians? what if Bashir, like Garak, became absolutely certain that everyone else on the station was a threat to him… but like Garak, had a complex “xenophobic” reaction?
because in Garak’s xenophobia, he still kills Cardassians. xenophobia, as pointed out in M_Moonshade’s excellent I could Be Your Own Avenging Angel, is about in-groups and out-groups - its about protecting what and who’s yours against what isn’t and who isn’t
and I think most of us would agree that Garak’s response to Bashir would at the very least be complicated, because Garak is probably closest to and most loyal to Bashir in the whole of the Alpha Quadrant, so much so that he repeatedly betrays - in small ways - Cardassia for him
but what about Bashir himself?
Exposed to the biogenetic compound, I would posit that if for the next hour or two he was with O’Brien, his loyalties would stick with O’Brien and maybe to the rest of the Starfleet crew - but if he was with Garak, it would stick with Garak
and. honestly? I think it might stick with Garak anyway
because Bashir loves O’Brien, and Bashir does trust O’Brien, but his relationship with O’Brien is fundamentally different to the one he has with Garak. Not because of his attraction to Garak or because of sex or love, but simply because like
O’Brien and Bashir’s levels of intimacy, like those between Garak and Bashir, are by their nature based in deception and lies.
O’Brien and Bashir love one another very deeply but for various reasons (O’Brien’s Irish emotional repression, ingrained toxic masculinity, the secrets between them, the complex class and racial dynamics between a posh Arab Brit and a working class white Irishman depending on how much you subscribe to the fiction that race and class don’t exist on Earth anymore, except for the many places where they obviously do, etc) cannot voice their affection, or the specifics of it, outright
Garak and Bashir love one another too, but for different various reasons (of course, the secrets between them, Bashir as a young naive Human painfully caught up in the Federation’s liberal expansionism versus Garak as an older man deeply conditioned to be loyal to Cardassia’s imperial expansionism, but also critical of both it and the Federation when they share xenophobia etc in common, the complex power dynamics between Bashir as CMO with full citizenship and a command versus Garak, an exile in a tenuous position of stability with little more to his name than his shop), they cannot voice their affection, or the specifics of it, outright
but when O’Brien and Bashir fight, they need breaks from one another. they constantly disagree and have clashing values - and Bashir can and will overrule O’Brien as a senior officer, but O’Brien won’t always take that, and will sometimes force his hand; they genuinely get on one another’s nerves at times and need breaks from one another, bc for all their shared affection Miles is a very repressed allistic cishet and Bashir is a lonely, clingy autistic disaster bi. there’s nothing wrong with either of them being the way they are, but between differing values and fundamentally different personality types, not to mention small things that they do either on purpose or by accident to wound the other - Bashir playing on O’Brien’s insecurities when he’s casual about his intellectual or genetic superiority, O’Brien when he points out Bashir’s fragile relationships etc - they need space and time from one another. their relationship works as well it does because they let each other have distance.
meanwhile, the dynamic between Bashir and Garak is… quite different. Bashir can shoot Garak in the neck one evening, and the very next day, they’re back to having lunch together. Bashir barely bats an eyelid at Garak attempting genocide, let alone the numerous times he’s killed people in front of Bashir - or attempted to kill Bashir himself. it’s not that their values don’t clash - they do. constantly. it’s not that both of them don’t keep secrets from the other. it’s not that they don’t have vastly different personality types.
but where O’Brien and Bashir’s clashes often lead to little wounds that need time to heal, Bashir and Garak, they’re… you know, they’re fucked up. if they cut each other, the next step isn’t always the infirmary - sometimes, it’s fingerpainting in each other’s blood, and as much as Bashir feels conflicted about this, he frequently goes along with Garak anyway, so long as there’s no one else to observe
disagreements, especially minor clashes, rarely serve to shove them apart - they typically bring them closer together, so that they can argue-flirt with more intimacy. it’s not that Bashir trusts Garak more than O’Brien, or really that he entirely trusts Garak at all - but if you put Garak in the room, Bashir automatically stands at his side and falls into rhythm with him because of their shared wavelength, no matter who else is there. just look at Civil Defence, or any other episode where Bashir appoints himself resident lizard wrangler
so with empok nor like… just the idea of Bashir, just as inflamed and paranoid and struggling to think clearly as Garak, naturally gravitating toward and falling into his rhythm with Garak, and he doesn’t want to do any harm but they’re under attack! they need to defend themselves - he needs to defend Garak, and let Garak defend him!
and maybe he falters when he sees Nog - and when he sees O’Brien, boom, there’s the conflict, because he and O’Brien are friends. he loves Miles, Miles loves him, and they’re both Human, they’re both from Earth, they’re the same, but… are they the same in the way that Bashir and Garak are?
if there’s an in-group and and out-group, where does Bashir belong? who does he belong with?
and what does the fallout look like after, when all three of them have to grapple with the way that trust looks between them, surprising or otherwise?
I’m so glad most of you are here BECAUSE you want to listen to me talk about Julian Bashir incessantly because if you were here for any other reason I would be sure you were tired of this but this way I can be unleashed
Anyway
I am lucky enough to have a channel that plays Star Trek every night and they just run through the series in order and I let it run pretty much every night and fall asleep to it and have for like, 2+ years now
The side effect of this is that I have at this point seen DS9 all the way through like 3 or 4 times at least and there’s just. I’m Here, I’m Queer, I Love Dr. Bashir, there’s so MUCH there’s so many little subtle moments he has that you don’t even catch the first time or maybe even the second
He fiddles with his hands constantly when he’s talking or listening. He puts his feet up on consoles a LOT. People always call him Doctor or Julian or Dr. Bashir but no one ever calls him “lieutenant” (which is his actual rank) except for Enabran Tain. He’s the first person, and one of the only ones in the whole series, who takes Kai Winn to task directly to her face and he does not give a shit while doing it. In the first mirror universe episode where he gets sent to ore processing he gives his food to one of the other prisoners. In the episode where Odo turns into that monster thing and attacks him they ask him if there were any issues with the lights and he says he has no idea because he never turned them on for fear of disturbing his patients. In general as soon as he has a patient to care for he throws his own self preservation concerns right out the window. People try to intimidate him constantly but no one ever actually does. At one point he calls Dukat “Offensive” to his face. When Jake is hurt in the cave in in Nor The Battle To The Strong, when he comes to Julian is gently stroking his forehead. The amount of time he spends on the planet caring for Ekoria in The Quickening isn’t like, a couple of days, but several weeks. It’s one of the more legendary gifs from my blog but in that one shot from Trials and Tribbleations he really does have a middle aged male Bajoran officer basically in his lap with the guy’s head resting on his thigh. He IS already friends with O’Brien but the level of gentleness and caring that he actually shows Miles when he’s hurt or afraid is genuinely really special when you take it out of the context of the show and take their genders into consideration. Go watch a couple of the scenes from Visionary when Miles is waking up afraid in the infirmary and Julian is reassuring him and try and envision a male doctor looking at his middle aged male patient in real life even slightly like Julian is looking at Miles in that episode and process how unique whatever’s happening there actually is. There’s just SO MUCH there’s so much fridge content, so many things he does that are genuinely exceptional or unique, so many subtle GNC things and parts of his character that are so much more interesting when you take gender into account, so many little subtle things to unpack that tell you about him and so much of it is so easy to miss because it’s either quick or subtle or you don’t think twice about it in the show but it feels different when you reframe the context, try to envision any of it in real life. he’s just. He’s so special. You know he’s special from moment one but the more times around you take the show, the more little details you have the chance to notice the more special he seems.
this is what makes Julian so important to me and also one of the things I’m having the most fun with from a Cardassian perspective in writing Interpersonal Studies as far as the qualities that make him a Bad Human and now they’re not the same qualities that will make Cardassians think of him as a Good Cardassian because like
so the thing that people hate most about autistic people isn’t actually our difficulty with social cues, our tendency to be rude or boring because we’re too into whatever we’re talking about or that we’re ignoring or not seeing those social cues, or even that we often show greater ability in areas that to us are mundane or unimportant but NTs fetishise enough that they become insecure about our comparative ability (eg mathematics or verbal analysis)
the thing that NTs hate about us most is that like. if we’re driven by a code of morality or ethics, we cannot and will not be budged from it, and the places in which that code comes up are seemingly - to NTs - unpredictable.
and i think of that every time I see people try to argue with Julian (this also applies to Kira ofc) and do their best to explain or convince them that they need to do this other thing despite their moral positioning
Julian, you have to kill the Jem'hadar. Julian, you have to let your friends die. Julian, you have to stop doing medicine and start doing this. Julian, this way is more logical. Julian, this way makes more sense. Julian, this is war, this is crisis, there’s no time for your bedside manner or your bleeding heart here
and 90% of the time he doesn’t even ARGUE. He doesn’t even BOTHER to argue, he just says, yeah I’m not doing that, see you later
and he keeps doing medical care on strangers, on Jem'hadar, on “doomed” people and “lost causes”, on saving people he hates more than anybody just as keenly as the people he loves
because it’s not just resolve or strength of character that makes him resist people’s arguments - there’s nothing in them to resist. you can’t convince someone like Julian that his morality or compassion needs to be put aside by talking to him about practicality or politics or anything like that. you either have to force him into an ultimatum where he’s choosing one morality over another - eg when Garak tried to force his hand - or you pretty much have to knock him out and drag him away, and good luck with that.
Julian is one of the most cheerful and flexible people in the show, he’ll genuinely go along with anything, he’s curious and driven and he loves meeting people and learning about them and telling them about himself, and he’ll go do something new to HIM whether it’s a traditional “adventure” or not, especially if he gets to go with someone he likes. but at times like this, he becomes utterly inflexible, RIGID, and you can’t fucking budge him for love nor money, and it makes me so emotional that that deeply adhd-autistic core of care and focus and pure, agonisingly strong emotion drives a man who touches everyone, who strokes people’s hair and squeezes their shoulders and quotes poetry and smiles and teases - because it’s comforting. because he loves to connect to people. because he wants them to feel safe in his care
i regularly think about the ambassadors episode early on and how all those ambassadors came out of that Jeffrey’s tube calling him julian and treating him like their new favourite nephew - because I know, and you know, that for all the time they were stuck in there he barked orders at them to keep them still bc he’s a lieutenant commander and a chief medical doctor and It was a crisis scenario, and he also said absolutely everything they needed to hear even though they were frightened and uncomfortable and cramped and in pain
people brush off julian’s goofiness and social ineptitude but like… First, a lot of it is driven by social anxiety and probably RSD, you can see that with how much it fades the longer he’s on the cast, but shows up again with new people who intimidate him or make him uncertain
but second like. that ineptitude is in reading non verbal social cues or not stimming or levels of “appropriateness” from a Human NT perspective. a lot of aliens don’t have the same issues other humans have has - Klingons visibly appreciate a lot of his directness if not his humour, as does Garak - but also that ineptitude never comes from a place of genuinely lacking compassion. Julian bashir brims over with earnest love and care for everybody, EVERYBODY, he meets, and not only does that drive him, but he considers it his duty first and foremost to LET it drive him, no matter what people think or try to order him otherwise
i love him so much it hurts
I am going to cry this is absolutely beautiful thank you for writing this out you are the most right person alive
I was saying the last day to a friend that what people don’t realise about Garak is that yes, he’s extremely provocative and he lives to offend and provoke people, to pick out vulnerable threads in their characters and pluck and play with them like he’s pulling them out of their clothes, and yes, he says things that are specifically about Cardassian superiority and culture, especially when he’s provoking Bajorans
this is partly because he’s The Worst™, partly because he genuinely feels he deserves everyone’s hatred, partly because he’s happy to be trusted but too much of a nationalist to be trusted if that means people forgetting he’s Cardassian, and partly because he thinks it’s funny
but consistently, when people describe their culture and defend it to him as proudly as Garak describes and defends his own, he is PLEASED. Garak will tell you until his face turns purple that he hates Klingons, Ferengi, Bajorans, Romulans, Vulcans, etc, but whenever Kira describes Bajor’s religion or Klingons go toe to toe with him whilst talking about Kahless or when Quark defends Ferengi culture, Garak is PLEASED
because to Garak, from his moderately insane perspective, if he tells you Cardassian culture is superior and all you do is call him a spoonhead and walk away, you’ve just proven him right
but if you SHOW your culture, if you defend it piece by piece, it doesn’t matter if you spit in his face while you do so - he’ll be glad, because if you care enough about it to defend it like that, it must be good for something, and it must be worth defending.
if you don’t bother to defend it, or if you jump to personal insults, that’s fine, but you’re ceding to Cardassian superiority in the first place, and he thinks that’s a shame.
Garak as a Cardassian despises individualism and it’s probably what he hates most about the Federation and Starfleet - like, Quark and Garak have their root beer conversation where they both scornfully discuss the Federation’s cosmopolitan multiculturism and basically point out that the Federation is just as much a colonial force as Cardassia or the Klingins etc, and one of the ways you can consistently befriend Garak is by telling him things he doesn’t know and defend them not from a place of logic or sentiment, but LOYALTY to a higher cause, and to a collective
he doesn’t tell julian he needs to learn to murder his friends just bc he thinks julian killing people is sexy, although it is - it’s also because he wants julian to learn that he can have his friends as an individual, or he can have his ideals as a servant and representative of the causes he claims to support, but he can’t be both an individual AND truly loyal to a collective. he has to choose one, ideally the latter.
even if that cause is Starfleet, he’ll grudgingly respect it
my favourite thing about garak is also how he consistently comes off as liking and trusting and respecting women far more than he does men, especially bc like
so garak is the pettiest bitch alive, but the bit in civil defence when he tells dukat to back the fuck off kira has NOTHING to do with dukat himself
garak hates dukat. he killed his father, he thinks dukat represents everything flawed and wrong and corrupted in the Cardassian military and government, he thinks Dukat is an embarrassment, hedonistic, selfish, and all these other flaws
and yet in that moment, he doesn’t embarrass Dukat in the way that would hurt him most, by implying it and making Dukat figure out what he’s saying. he doesn’t say it to another character and let it cut him. he doesn’t even tell KIRA, and let her refuse Dukat
garak, in short, doesn’t do anything about that interaction in a Cardassian way. he doesn’t belabour the point, he doesn’t draw it out
he sees that dukat is making advances on kira, and that not being Cardassian - and also bc Kira thinks that even Dukat wouldn’t stoop that low - she isn’t noticing the cues, and he’s furious
he’s furious that dukat is disrespecting the major like that. the major that garak genuinely quite likes, no matter that kira will never trust him and always hate him - garak has never been and will never be offended when kira threatens him or insults him, even about ziyal later on, because kira is a bajoran and she makes a bajoran something worth BEING. she knows her history, she knows her culture, poetry, religion - she educates both gently and aggressively, she tells federation people to fuck off when they’re ignorant, and she is PROUD of who she is. Garak calls her by her title a LOT more than he does some people, for one, and apart from the threats which we all know he enjoys from everyone, he almost never says a bad word about her when she comes up in conversation which I think is so funny
and when he sees what dukat is doing, he’s disgusted. yes, he’s disgusted bc dukat is disgusting and bc garak likes kira, he’s disgusted that dukat is treating kira like one of the bajoran women he could pluck out of a line up and casually take for his comfort, but more than that, he’s disgusted that dukat is taking advantage of kira’s trust and ignorance.
but what he’s disgusted by most isn’t dukat himself, but that he’s a Cardassian doing this in front of Garak who sees what he’s doing, in a room of stupid aliens who don’t know any better, and he thinks Garak will LET him? that he’ll APPROVE? like fuck he will!
garak speaks very bluntly in that interaction. it’s probably the bluntest and simplest we see him get outside of begging tain to acknowledge him as a son.
what’s telling about it is how dukat reacts - how he says, wounded and scandalised, “Garak!”
how it’s JULIAN that has to seriously tell garak to back off
because even Dukat didn’t expect garak would do that. because its not very cardassian of him. a Cardassian doesn’t just bluntly reveal the intentions of another like that when he has nothing to gain from it - it isn’t done! it’s impolite, it’s improper! Kira is just an alien woman, after all, and Garak has just embarrassed Dukat in front of all these aliens not because he’s being selfish and self indulgent and that’s bad from a Cardassian POV, but because Garak is seeing Dukat disrespect this alien officer in a way that he dislikes, and so he puts a pin in it
as though kira is a Cardassian. as though she’s worthy of that defence as an OFFICER, not as a Bajoran or a woman.
and he doesn’t rub it in. he doesn’t gloat over dukat. he doesn’t go on and on about Dukat’s affection for Bajoran women or women that don’t want anything to do with him, even through he easily could, even though he enjoys hurting Dukat, even though flustering him would be a benefit in their conversation
because all of that would upset KIRA. it wouldn’t be worth hurting Dukat for, and in fact, I think Garak would have done exactly the same thing if it was any other Cardassian officer, which is WHY it’s so significant bc like.
Garak is so petty, as I said.
it’s telling when he puts his pettiness aside to prioritise something else.
Not to get all philosophical on you at this hour but…
We are all born and stuck in this meat prison alone and then spend our lives trying to connect with others and share what’s going inside of ourselves, which we can never ever fully relay to others. That’s why we do art, because art is a way to try and bridge that distance.
Odo’s people don’t have that. They share everything. They see that as a blessing, because we are stuck and have to use words while they can just blend together. But that means that they by nature have no need for art, since art is a feeling going from thought to physical existence and they never need to physically manifest their thoughts, feelings or ideas.
They might dabble in it but the Founders can’t really see the point.
That seems like a cultural loss, you know? They might see it as proof of the superiority of their existence but it means they as a culture exist only in the present. A thought is expressed and then lost in the goo sea. They have no need for permanence.
But permanence is a starting point of growing and changing too, is it not? They know their history and they are individuals, but there’s no development. They change by sending out their children, expecting them to eventually return. Which is why their culture is stagnant.
I want to headcanon that Odo, while living among humanoids and also while solid, learned to sculpt to express himself. He then took that back to the Founders with him and that, the concept of manifesting your thoughts physically, really rocked the whole goo pool.
But they would start with themselves, of course. Permanence is alien to them after all. They would shape themselves into ideas and emotions. Learn to become abstract forms and shapes that convey complex concepts. It also opens for the idea of interpretation. What does this shape mean to me? Instead of directly showing being shown what it mean.
I got totally lost in the idea of Founder art now.
I propose that the Founders’ version of art is more like theater than fine arts. They embody a thing in order to Become the thing, the way an actor embodies a character to illuminate them for the audience. There’s no audience to the act itself, but when that changeling returns to the Great Link, the experience in all its experiential detail radiates out before getting lost in the goo sea.
But what they’ve been doing this whole time is exploring things that already exist in the galaxy. I love the idea of Odo introducing the concept of abstract art into it!
Good thoughts! Maybe I’m too solid in my thinking. Maybe you are right and art is the act of exploring an existence, so to speak, on your own and then sharing it. As you say - like a kind of theater. Now I’m thinking that a Founder artist is someone that goes out of their way to become different objects and then share that experience with the Link. The other Founders can make requests like “Become a yorkan slime worm!” and then the artist carefully studies what it means to be a yorkan slime worm and becomes that. The Founders then consume the experience like we would any other media or art work.
I guess it’s still a lack of creation. Like, it’s a type of mimicry. The Founders consume the existence of other things but they don’t really create new things to inhabit or become. Until they enter their abstract period.
when we first come across the ruins of their old homes and when we first see them on their homeworld, they have these obelisk-shaped monuments. As the monuments seem old, they’re not too relevant to their present culture, but also they haven’t gotten rid of them, which suggests they do have some concept of non-literal expression of form. I wonder how this plays in their art performance renaissance…
Also id love to see them interact with some of the more abstract star trek lore/creatures… the spaceship-creature, the giant jellyfish, or the mask-archive race from tng foot example, bc their relationship with form and function is so radically different to the ones they’ve interacted with so far. Like, why did they bother interacting with humanoids in the first place? They seem to have some weird attraction to being humanoid
I’m thinking that the obelisks are ancient. So ancient that they’re perhaps from a time where the Founders were solid? Or that’s not their original planet and the art is from another civilisation that once lived there.
To me, it seems symbolic of their relationship to solid culture. They separated themselves from solids a long time ago, after being persecuted, and now all that remains of that relationship is broken ruins. That might be why they left these things behind - as a reminder of that broken relationship. They do see solids as short lived while the Link is forever, so I guess in a way that place where Odo first met them was like a stage where they displayed openly how they view solid culture. Odo and Kira just couldn’t understand it.
