I'm Painting All Of DS9's Main Characters (+ Some Others) In My Sketchbook ( Because I Want To Look At

Living among the Federation has made you woke Garak

(cw suicidal thoughts)

Headcanon that Julian's parents moved to San Francisco while he was at the Academy to keep an eye on him/ "support" him and he was invited round to theirs at least once a week and they would randomly show up at his dorm with some dinner ("we know you're working so hard, Jules") (half the time it's something he doesn't even like that much) and while he is enjoying his time at the Academy - and it's still better than living with his parents and he gets actual time away from them now - his post at DS9 is the first time he's ever been able to properly distance himself from them.

This is also partly why he became such a ladies' man - his mum turned up once when he was entertaining a girl and she quickly apologised for interrupting and then the next week when they were eating together all his parents' questions were about the girl and they were saying "if you don't have as much time for us, do let us know, we wouldn't want to get in the way of true love future grandchildren 😉😉" and Julian gets kind of used to having a girlfriend as a sort-of form of, like, self-defense? Which is an awful reason to have a girlfriend and is not a mindset that particularly serves him well, but at some points when his parents are being particularly intense, it becomes literally about survival.

(Also, a reason why he's so weird about turning 30 - he's kind of freaking out because there were lots of times when he never really thought he'd make it, but it's a lot easier to stick to the socially acceptable line of "I feel so old :/" rather than telling people "I only stopped being actively suicidal sometime after I left Earth and still can't quite believe I ever escaped")

uh

i finally started listening to alone together and realized i miss my boys so much [twitter]

One reason In the Pale Moonlight lands so well is that the show plants the seeds early on for Garak representing a sort of “out” for Sisko when he has to circumvent official procedures. There’s the bit in The Search where a holographic mental projection of Garak shows up to flirt with Sisko and enable his rebellion against Starfleet, and then The Way of the Warrior has the part where they’re wondering what to do about the Klingon invasion fleet headed to Cardassia and Sisko says “we need a third option” and it immediately cuts to Garak. In the Pale Moonlight picks those threads of Garak being someone Sisko leans on when he needs to take a more underhanded approach (and someone who, similarly to Quark, Sisko can put pressure on with no repercussions).

But Garak’s perspective on it is interesting, because of how much his dynamic with Sisko reflects the dynamic he used to have with Tain. There’s that part in The Wire where Tain tells Bashir “I never had to order Garak to do anything… that’s what made him special” and that’s pretty much exactly how Garak behaves with Sisko in this episode. He does what he does best - being maximally useful to someone more powerful and anticipating everything they want and need, taking an intention and shaping it into a workable plan with little direction. He comes up with the entire scheme pretty much on his own and puts it into play with minimal participation from Sisko save things he needs official sanction for, and anticipates all contingencies and variables beforehand. And then of course sees to it that the plan is carried out, in a way that Sisko would never sanction but that he knows that on some level Sisko wants - or rather, that Sisko wants the outcome while being spared having to order Garak to take the measures to see it through.

Garak molds himself into the role Sisko sees him as playing in a way that’s similar to how he made himself into the person Tain wanted him to be - in that case, as Garak puts it, he was a “reflection” of Tain himself. Except with Tain, that process involved Garak shaping himself to embody the values that Tain espoused, and expunging the parts of himself that Tain abhorred, namely weakness and sentiment. And with Sisko, Garak reflects the parts of Sisko that Sisko doesn’t want to face and wants to shunt off onto someone else. And that plays out not only re: Sisko’s willingness to make moral sacrifices for the greater good, but even just on a smaller scale - there’s the part where Sisko snaps and threatens Forgery Guy, and Garak steps up with that truly terrifying smile and promises to drop in on Forgery Guy to “say hello”. Just playing the role of Sisko’s Evil Henchman to perfection, and thus enabling Sisko’s loss of control and his cruel streak. He’s very subservient to Sisko throughout the episode! But it’s through that subservience that he actually gets the upper hand on Sisko, solely by reflecting his darker side at him and getting in that jab about Sisko’s self respect being sacrificed. It’s so utterly delicious.

Touch His Tit Tuesday DS9 edition

This is so stupid

Well would you look at that!!

non sequitur ? uhhh ,i hope to be having a lot of seq uit her actually

ive reached s4 in my ds9 rewatch and i love that sisko is surprised later on when he finds out he intimidates worf bc its so obvious why. in his very first episode sisko comes to worf and has a brief conversation with him before precisely explaining to him how hes only running away from starfleet because he falsely associates the uniform with the grief he's experienced while wearing it, but abandoning it won't help him cope with his grief so why not stay and take up a job on ds9. and worf, having been here like 24 hours maybe less, standing there having had his whole internal conflict laid bare by a man he's really only just met, after seven years serving under captain picard who was very supportive but ultimately oblivious when it came to his officers personal problems, has no option but to surrender to Being Percieved and say thanks Sisko I'll consider it. and then he takes a job on ds9.

two episodes later he comes to sisko to admit to having fucked something up and sisko's like i already know. gossip moves faster than official reports here it's one of the unwritten rules of this station. you're probably finding it difficult to intuite those but that's okay, something tells me you're gonna fit in to this dysfunctional workplace full of freaks and exiles :) and Worf again having had his whole deal casually intuited and laid out before him is just like nodding politely while internally deciding never to fuck with sisko no matter what