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.
They don’t use table salt, they use something akin to Garum (a sort of thin sauce made from fish used across the Roman empire)
Kanar is made of flowers and the colors are distinguished by wether or not berries were added (clearer blue is flowers only, the murkier brown and mauve colors have berries)
Cardassians, while capable of consuming grains and plants in general, still tend carnivorous and a lot of their cuisine reflects this. If one wanted to try and analyze regional Cardassian cultures based on the “wheat vs rice culture” system, they’d actually have to do it on a fishing vs pastoral system or something similar.
As a corollary to the previous, Cardassia subsidizes some basic food stuffs to make them more broadly affordable to those of any class, to prevent civil unrest. A lot of this is things like eggs or fish.
Well, it’s not super in-depth, but for starters, that they’ve spent millennia as an underground religion because of the threat of arrest and execution by an authoritarian state is awfully familiar!
Beyond that though, the value placed on the Hebitian Records as “the book in which all things are written” is very similar to how Jews think of the Torah. We’re legit called “the people of the book”, and, like the Hebitians, for some of us, it’s just about all we have left of our ancestors. Astraea’s quest for the Hebitian Records is a very Jewish concept.
The only Oralian prayer we know has the lines “It is the song of morning, opening up to life, bringing truth of her wisdom to those who live in the shadow of the night.” Which reminds me a lot of the Jewish prayer, “It is a tree of life to all who hold fast to it; its ways are ways of pleasantness, and all its paths are peace.”
The Cardassian idea that “oh, the Hebitians were Savage and Foolish and they all died out” while the Hebitians’ descendants are RIGHT THERE, quietly minding their own business, is also uncomfortable familiar. A lot of evangelical Christians talk about us like that!
DS9’s overarching story about societal retribution is pretty damn revolutionary actually. It took several generations and the better part of a century, but eventually the same Cardassian political and social hubris that led them to enslave and exploit a whole world led to them making a series of decision that led to th Dominion alliance which wrought a level of devastation on Cardassia far greater than anything Bajor experienced. While this is cosmic karma and in some ways immensely satisfying, it’s also clear that the majority of Cardassians suffering were not high war criminal facists but just regular people. Every Cardassian deserved it and no Cardassian deserved it. The message of DS9 is not, well sucks that innocent Cardassian children are gonna die of starvation now but that’s what happened to lots of Bajoran kids so payback time bitches. It’s that since Cardassia was led by fascism, greed, and corruption all of Cardassia will eventually come to bear the burden of that. The fury of that reckoning cannot be controlled or limited to those who “really deserve it” it will come to all. It takes your breath away as a viewer, and. As an American watching an American show. I’ll never forget that message.
I will also never forget the conversations had by Kira, who was still rightfully still extremely angry over the occupation and ravaging of her planet, with the Cardassians about how to free THEM. About how unbelievably hard it was to also chose to turn around and liberate the very same people who had tortured her and slaughtered so many of her loved ones. There were also Bajorans who wanted nothing to do with helping Cardassia, and they were allowed to feel that way. Kira just had enough perspective by that point to recognise the only way to make the entire quadrant safer was by destabilising the Dominion and freeing Cardassia.
It wasn’t okay and it wasn’t easy. It was awful and messy as fuck, and maybe it also wasn’t graceful, but you know what it was: a beautiful, terrible story I have never forgotten and think about from time to time. There are a lot of storylines on DS9 like that for me.
