Man Cannot Subsist On Live Service Games And Ongoing Series Alone You Have To Read Or Watch Or Play Something

Dreaming of electric sheep.

Quodo 4 Lyfe

total collapse of entire cardassian society -> collapse of strict social norms and regulations -> people no longer required to have That One Haircut -> post-canon garak should grow his hair out long and luscious. maybe put it in a nice braid. some white streaks in there catching the sunlight. are you picking up what i'm putting down

so I’m about a third of the way into A Stitch In Time and I just have so many thoughts.

this is unexpectedly one of the most fascinating books I have ever read, because the circumstances of its existence (tie-in novel for established tv show, written by the actor, largely taken from his character-dev writing) create a novel that would’ve never existed otherwise.

in any other normal novel, the protagonist with a sad childhood who gets shipped off to train to be a weapon of the state, in a violent, loveless institution, would be… taking a stand against the status quo! that’s what protagonists do, they make unlikely friends and they stand up for what’s right and they change their world etc etc. yahoo. yay !

but as we good and goddamn know: garak’s not a protagonist

these flashback portions follow so many classic sf/f coming of age tropes of a young lad finding himself in a harsh new world, but instead of the main character being guided by a convenient moral compass and growing in defiance of the competitive, cruel environment– garak adapts, learns to outcompete his peers, learns to be crueler.

it’s not so much that you’re reading garak becoming worse (though he is, for sure)

it’s more that garak is drifting from being a mere product of his environment, to a perpetuator of it

Garashir illustration based on a piece from Henri de Toulouse-Lautrecs series “In Bed” ! Reference is below! :-)

one of the things I think about a lot with dukat is the way he pronounces the word "bajoran"

pretty much every other character on the show (including the overwhelming majority of actual bajorans) pronounce it with a hard j sound. but marc alaimo nearly every time says it with a much softer consonant, closer to bazhoran or even bashoren.

it's such immaculate flavor that dukat of all people doesn't just mispronounce the name of the people and planet he's subjugating out of like laziness to use vowels/consonants that are closer to his dialect, but that he instead opts for a pronunciation that makes it feel like he's overcompensating. using the zh consonant over the j consonant is honestly less congruous with common patterns in american english of voiced vs unvoiced consonants. he makes the word 'bajoran' feel more exotic and foreign, not less. it gives dukat the flavor of someone who tries sooo hard to pronounce something ~authentically~ that they end up completely missing the mark and sounding totally detached from reality. but of course in his case it's purposeful.

this is why dukat goes so hard as a villain, because yes his text is hyper un-subtle about how much he's the living embodiment of colonialism and racism, but marc alaimo is regularly serving us these acting choices that just take it to the next level. that man and his neck really found his calling huh.

H-9 for Garak! Imagine it, see it in your mind's eye.

I really wanted to make him more lizard-y but I don't have the skills for it yet so I had to go with what I was able to draw ;_;

I do love me some Plain Simple Garak content~

usamericans do you realise that a stereotype we have about u is that you really really love ice. like the amount of ice you put in your drinks and all your ice machines are really silly to us. do your fridges genuinely produce ice????