Oh. Okay. At One Point The Studio Literally Forbade Siddig And Andy From Talking About Garak And Bashir

Real world influences on Cardassian fashion- Natima's dress and the Edwardian era

So. Something very interesting to me has always been Natimas sleeves.

Yeah. These weird, pleated things. They're interesting because I immediately know what time period is being referenced here, and it becomes more obvious on the Cardassian extra who also wears this dress, as she has a different hairstyle (Natima's hairstyle reads like it's referencing Heian Japan to me).

The hair, paired with the sleeves, comes off as very Edwardian. Risqué, perhaps, by Edwardian standards, but Edwardian.

For comparison, three white dresses from the Edwardian era with pleated/tucked sleeves (the first has the sleeves as part of the main dress, the other two are blouses). The point at the end of the sleeve isn't especially Edwardian, but I have seen a few Edwardian-does-medieval dresses.

Even Natima's skirt, which is incorrectly identified as a straight cut midi by some artists, has a subtle Edwardian reference. This kind of midi with weird cut outs (that her student in orange, Rekelen, also has) reads as very modern to us, and it is. The Edwardians didn't really cut skirts like this- it was ankle to floor length, straight or trained... but they did like using unusually shaped layering pieces and seam lines. These pushed on until we start seeing even more similar detailing in skirts from the 1910s.

(top left is a 1910s example, two right images are courtesy of @chic-a-gigot)

Natima and Rekelen also are both wearing boleros, or dresses that imply boleros, which aren't directly referencing an Edwardian style, but are a piece of clothing from that time.

Natima's dress interestingly, implies a bolero and a style of pleated bodice that was not worn with a bolero, in my experience.

(Bottom right from @chic-a-gigot again)

This style also may have been referenced for Ziyal's gold dress, though the pleats here look more like a Bertha collar.

Rekelen, Natima, and the Cardassian extra are also all wearing undershirts, though this really only comes off as am Edwardian reference for Rekelen; coats or dresses with elbow length sleeves had long sleeved blouses or dresses underneath.

I even have specifically orange examples of this! However, Rekelen's clothes are way less Edwardian than Natima's, and I wouldn't have picked up on the era possibly being referenced of this outfit wasn't being shown off alongside Natima's.

(Right from @chic-a-gigot)

This plays like a really nice ending at first like "aw yeah Garak's a good guy in his own way after all :)" and then you rotate the events of the episode in your head a minute and realize that the only way any of this makes sense is if he was genuinely ready to turn them over to the military dictatorship and only changed course after Gul Dipshit was like "we can murder them and it will be epic and based" and Garak's mental calculus was "the terrorists are less of a threat to the military dictatorship alive than they would be as martyrs".

The quadrant's most charming and affable spook.

Thinking of Deep Space Nine as "the Dark Star Trek" without digging into what made Deep Space Nine work is so reductive. Like when people discuss Star Trek being "dark" now people bring up "DS9 was Dark and you loved that! Trekkies would hate it now!"

Deep Space Nine didn't work bc it was Dark and it wasn't Dark out of nowhere. Deep Space Nine is intimately tied to TNG in a way no other series is with another (Voyager could've been just as rooted in DS9, but. Y'know. Wasn't). Not only in characters, but that the show is so devoted to exploring deep cuts from TNG: the Bajorans, but also the Ferengi, long dismissed as failed villains, and the Trill, one-off aliens-of-the-week who DS9's writers turned into one of Trek's major species. The central thesis of DS9 isn't that the Trek Universe Is Fucked Up Actually. It's that things get more messy and complicated when Starfleet has to stick around and not dash off to another planet at the end of the episode

DS9 is darker than other Treks, yes, but DS9 is also the warmest, with the most grounded, human characters, not in spite of the fact that two-thirds of the cast are aliens but because of it. The writers treat alien characters as not representatives, but individuals. They treat everyone as individuals, with foibles and flaws, not as perfect, straitlaced future people. DS9's dark episodes are darker than other Treks, but also it's more willing to get silly and emotional. Only DS9 could do the "Sisko confesses to a conspiracy to get the Romulans in the war" episode, but also only DS9 could do the "a holographic lounge singer tries to get Odo and Kira together" episode right after it. Boiling the entire series down to "Deep Space Nine was the Dark Star Trek! Grimdark!" is...just not it

It's both of them

Everyone who was on ds9 when it was terok nor became happier and everybody who came after became more miserable.

The idea of something being classy and fancy is such bullshit. Consider charcuterie boards. Random cold meats, cheese, crackers, olives and pickles served straight off a cutting board is the kind of goblin dinner I would eat laying in bed in my underwear too hung over to move. But since it's french then suddenly it's all refined and sophisticated.

unpopular opinion but i think a ship that's not canon but both halves are canonically insane about each other is infinitely better than a ship that's canon and boring

What is the Cardassian equivalent of smoking a cigar do we think?

Something macho, elitist, homosocial… an activity someone could be really pretentious about or enjoy casually.

bbygirls...Thank you @wellntruly for taking this very anime-esque screenshot:

Original:

I love the random replacements for clichés writers insert in science fiction shows. like when a 21st-century human would say "stop pacing you'll wear a hole in the floor" but in a space show the alien/future human says "you're oscillating like a Betelgeusian night badger" or some shit. like fuck yeah he is. amazing drive-by worldbuilding. I'm gonna spend the next half hour wondering why the Betelgeusian night badger evolved to do that