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Thinking about drink symbolism in Deep Space Nine. The most famous, of course, is root beer, and how it serves as a shorthand for insidious Federation soft power; but then there's also kanar, which gets used to symbolize Damar's moral degradation; raktajino, which symbolizes getting to work / business as usual; bloodwine, which symbolizes the bond between Klingon warriors, and between Worf and O'brien; red-leaf tea, which seems to have connotations of smug Cardassian feelings of cultural superiority; scotch whisky, which emblemizes the friendship between Miles and Julian; probably others.
Yum, very nice. Raktajino always symbolises multiculturalism to me. And a little of the accommodation of root beer. Rokassa juice is what kids drink when they’re off school sick.
Ive noticed this trend with queer characters lately where writers use martyrdom and self sacrifice as a way to use the bury your gays trope but at the same time say its not bury your gays because the character(s) chose it and i dont like it
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I am so charmed by how tumblr-esque dorothy l sayers' way of expressing her fondness for her hero is. she truly was spinning that guy around in an anachronistic microwave and chewing on him and beating him with hammers and biting him biting him biting him and so on with the greatest affection imaginable fr fr. she may have been vastly more articulate and educated than I'll ever dream of being and I respect her writing skill immensely, but blorbo brain recognizes blorbo brain across the ages too. she literally starts out at 'he's like a little worm ❤️in a top hat :)' and only keeps going from there and it's glorious. tell me that descriptions like 'he looked, with his long, narrow face, like a melancholy adjutant stork', 'true, he is all nerves and nose --' and 'he was a colourless shrimp of a child' are not in the same literary tradition as, if removed in time from, the modern tumblr idiom for blorbo appreciation. you can't. I'm right about it. anyone can give their hero hard grey eyes and ptsd but it takes tumblrina instincts to also repeatedly liken him to a bewildered heron
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The reason I reached for genre romance novels for Star Trek is Ive read so so so many of them and I know roughly how most of them convey something about the culture that produced them, in content and structure and what it means for what a culture values in a partner, and in themselves. It’s somewhat easy to use the scaffolding I already know to use existing genre conventions to explain something about the aliens in Star Trek.
I have not read enough murder and thriller novels to articulate what the genre is establishing about culture and values so I can’t be like ‘this is the dime airport novel about women getting sexy murdered but in Vulcan’ because I don’t know which genre conventions are load bearing and which are just more traditional. The murder mysteries i HAVE read are literally just Agatha Christie and maybe a handful of others that are directly inspired by her. I’ve watched a lot of murder television, but that is nottttt the same medium.
Bringing out those tags because so, so interesting, perhaps one of my favourite things, to mess around with patterns of story*. When I sat down with Spock to transcribe his autobiography, we came up with a form for what Vulcan memoir might look like, which he subverts. (There’s some of Sarek’s poetry too.)
Meditations on a Crimson Shadow is described as being set during a future war, so is a Cardassian sf novel. I figured it would surely, at least superficially, tell the story of Cardassian supremacy and permanent conquest, like Orwell’s boot stamping on a human face forever. Except maybe if you were reading it in the basement of your father’s home as your whole civilization implodes around you. Then I thought it might read differently. Or at least you would start the previously unimaginable work of imagining differently.
If historical fiction tries to reconfigure what we think was possible for people in the past, sf tries to configure what we think can be possible to us in the future. They feel very close, in my mind. Can we find sources or traditions in the past that give us succour or hope? What visions of the future are available to us, or do we need to imagine, and how do we map our way there? I think about these things all the time.
Walter Benjamin, On the Concept of History, VI
* Patterns of Story was the title of my MA creative writing module where we read 6 novels and mucked around with them in as many ways as possible. This week we’ll go through one scene in Madame Bovary and see how meticulously it’s constructed. This week we’ll read some post-apocalyptic Kentish dialect and I’ll do my party piece from Ulysses. This week I’ll tell you why Moll Flanders is like the Doctor Who Hartnell-era story “The Sensorites”. This week I’ll explain what I think are the two distinctive modes in the crime novel. And this week we’ll read a modernist novel that you’ll doubt at best or hate at worst but ten years later you’ll email me to ask the title because you haven’t been able to get it out of your head. I loved teaching that class. What an amazing technology novels are. I really do like them, probably nothing nicer than novels.
Oh, just to add that if we go with Harold Bloom (wait! come back!) and read Shakespeare as "inventing" the human, then Garak's blustering that Shakespeare is rubbish and pointless can of course be taken as yet another crock of performative bullshit - not only does he QUOTE HIM TO TAIN (let me throw words learned from my beloved in your fucking face), but Shakespeare represents his encounter with humanity by which we mean Bashir by which we mean the crumbling of Garak's belief in Cardassian supremacy. Shakespeare by which we mean the human by which we mean Bashir rewires (see what I did there) Garak's brain to such an extent that I would not be surprised if Garak regularly catches himself thinking in blank verse.
I feel like we have to consider the fact that when it comes to Cardassian art, Garak might be an intensely unreliable narrator.
Cardassia is a fascist state with state-sanctioned art with a clear ideological thrust, and Garak, at the time he is introducing the "generational epic" to Bashir, still considers himself a Cardassian patriot, a loyal son who is duty-bound to promote his cultures superiority and shining examples of science and art. He is presenting to Bashir mainstream, sanctioned, SAFE Cardassian art.
But the thing with regimes like that is that they ALL have burgeoning underground arts scenes.
The Soviet Union had a robust network of underground musicians, whose recordings were passed hand-to-hand on really shitty copies of copies of copies made by fans. China had a whole genre of speculative fantasy and science-fiction writers whose work is largely lost now but were, again, passed from hand to hand among fans. It was considered "acceptable" for young men who were proper paid-up party members to be exposed to some of this stuff in their youth (you will note that even the fictional totalitarian society shown in 1984 has a place for bohemian poets that the state doesn't crush) and what would happen is that yesterdays underground artist might become tomorrows icon as a generation of fans exposed to him at a young age took their places within the power structure and decided he was now acceptable.
Garak is showing Bashir the public, approved face of Cardassian art, which he finds dull because of course he finds it dull, its state-sanctioned nonsense meant to uphold the tenets of "your first loyalty is to the state, the second is to your family, which serves the state eternally." I absolutely guarantee you there's a bunch of banger shit being hand-coded and played in filthy back-alley holosuites that Garak was exposed to as a young man (Tain would have made sure his son had a broad education and exposure to what passes for the liberal underground on Cardassia so he could better understand and fight it) which he would never show to Bashir.
Mmm yes this is all delicious. It is my headcanon that Garak wangles himself a gig in the Order that involves assessing writing for sedition. You know, to better serve the State.
I want a gay Sherlock Holmes. Like actually gay. Not gay in the sense of "your welcome to view John and Sherlock's relationship that way ;)" I want slow build over a season with a passionate love confession in the pouring rain and then a long kiss. I don't want fanfic. I want canon it's on the screen and impossible to deny.
It doesn't need to be Sherlock, it can be two gay detectives that are cute and soft while solving murders. I want one to make breakfast as the other goes over nasty crime scene photos and eat their oatmeal like they are browsing the morning paper and the other joins in with their eggs and toast.
I just want two gay people solving crimes and being wholesome, is that too much to ask for?
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This was on a post about how it's ignorant and privileged to wear headphones in public and I fear its already become a part of my vocabulary. Must everything harbor a moral failure.
This man has his own agenda when it comes to people like us. He’s more likely to recruit you… Garak and Bashir, on Starbase 375. Set during 'Favor the Bold'.
Cold Heaven
Starbase 375, 2372
They were in the turbolift together, just the two of them, heading up to the observation deck. Bashir, falling back loose-limbed against the wall, said, “Bit much, isn’t he?”
“Who?”
“Lieutenant Tunok.”
“Oh,” said Garak. “Him. Yes. What did you say to get him to go away?”
“I said I’d be with you the whole time. And that I’d let them know when I’d delivered you back in your quarters.”
“I’ve slipped my collar at last. Shall we seize a runabout and make our bid for freedom?”
“Not today,” said Bashir.
The lift stopped, the doors opened, and they came out onto the observation deck.
“Nice view,” said Bashir. “If you like watching ships come and go.”
Garak hadn’t, in fact, liked watching the only thing left to care about fly off into peril, but he’d come and watched anyway. “This way.”
“Where are you taking me now?”
“You’ll see.”
Early on during this period of confinement to Starbase 375, Garak had found himself staring at the reflections on the windows of the observation deck and thinking, idly, with some small part of his frenetically overactive brain, that something didn’t quite compute. It hadn’t been easy catching Tunok looking the other way, but Garak was a patient man, not to mention conniving, and that was how he’d learned that, through some error of construction, there was a piece of wall jutting out which, when combined with the curve of the station, created a small dead space into which he could slip and be entirely concealed.
Garak had been surprised and rather pleased about this. His impression of the Federation in general and Starfleet in particular had always been that everything was a perfect fit. It had been comforting to discover that sometimes they didn’t get the measurements right either. As he led Bashir over, he explained all this to the doctor, and found, to his delight, that it still lay within his power to make Julian Bashir laugh.
The space wasn’t particularly large, but they could sit on the floor together, side-by-side, quite comfortably and look out into the darkness.
“This actually worked?” said Bashir.
“Incredibly, yes.”
“Tunok must have done his nut.”
“Oh, I only did it once or twice,” said Garak. Three times, to be precise, but who was counting? Apart from Tunok. Who didn’t count.
“Took pity on him, did you?”
“Doctor, I thought you knew by now that there’s no pity in me.”
“Hmm.”
In fact, Garak had stopped amusing himself this way because he’d been afraid. Afraid that if he misbehaved too much they might decide he was far too much trouble after all and pass him up the line. Pack him off to Earth, perhaps, or worse. A shame, really, since the peace and quiet – and the simple fact of knowing he was not under direct observation – had been helpful. He had no intention of saying any of this to Bashir.
Garak sat with his hands resting on his knees. Bashir leaned his back against the wall, folded his arms, and said, “What was that about earlier?”
“What?”
“All that guff about people putting gadgets in your brain.”
“It’s… happened before, Julian.”
“Yes. When you were in the Order.”
“Meaning…?”
“This is Starfleet we’re talking about—”
“You don’t think Starfleet would cross a line like that?” Garak felt a familiar sinking feeling. He hadn’t been able to get Sisko to listen, not really, and he’d been hoping for more from Bashir.
The younger man sighed. “You know, Garak, I’m absolutely knackered. So, for one night only, how about we cut to the chase and you tell me what’s really worrying you?”
Garak looked at the stars. The stars, which had – until quite recently – been completely unfamiliar, glinted back, but, as usual, gave no helpful insight. “Two men arrived,” he said. “They wanted to take me away with them.”
“Take you away? Where?”
“I don’t know, doctor.”
“Who were they?”
“I don’t know that either.”
There was a pause as Bashir digested this. “What’s your best guess?”
Garak, in turn, gave some thought as to how he should answer. Bashir already had some questions about his state of mind. He didn’t want him dismissing his worries out of hand. “If I said…”
“Go on.”
“If I said that I thought they were from a clandestine intelligence organisation operating within your government about which even Captain Sisko seems unaware, what would you say?”
“I’d say…” said Bashir, after a moment or two, “that I need to give that scenario some consideration.”
“Yes?”
“I mean, some careful consideration.” Bashir rubbed his hand across his mouth. “Have you been all right here on your own?”
Ah, so first they must indeed establish the current extent of his paranoia. Good luck with that, doctor. I’m increasingly unable to judge. “I’ve not been on my own,” Garak pointed out. “I’ve had a lengthy conversation every day with Lieutenant Commander Blok.”
“I’m not talking about your interrogator, Garak.”
“Oh, so I am being interrogated? And everyone was quite insistent earlier that it was a debriefing—”
“Garak—”
“I’ve also had the company of the relentlessly attentive Lieutenant Tunok.”
“Well, he’s not turned up dead yet, so you must be getting something out of the relationship.”
“He doesn’t read, he doesn’t listen to music, he’s not interested in politics, and his conversational skills appear to have atrophied before he learned to speak. We’ve had a marvellous time together. I imagine he admires me as much as I admire him.”
“Yes, you sound like peas in a pod. You still haven’t answer my question.”
“I know.”
“Have you been all right here on your own?”
Well, really, what did Bashir think? He’d been cold, alone, afraid, and under constant supervision. He’d spent a large portion of each day in an interrogation room. There was practically nothing available that he liked to eat or drink, nor had he found any books or music on file that were familiar. His wider computer access was severely restricted, and they were cagey about talking to him about the progress of the war. He’d thought about asking if there was any sewing around the place that needed doing, but he didn’t want to sound like he’d gone mad. Which he hadn’t. He was fairly sure he hadn’t.
“I’ve been fine,” he lied.
Bashir gave him a look. What was that word the Chief sometimes used? Oh yes. Bollocks. “Oh well,” said the doctor, dryly. “Could be worse.”
Garak nearly laughed. “You know, doctor, I’ve stopped saying that to myself.”
“Oh yes?”
“Every time I do, things take a turn for the worse.”
“Huh,” said Bashir. “Maybe that thing Starfleet’s put in your head has given you the power to alter reality with your thoughts. You should start saying, ‘Could be better’. See where that takes us.”
“If only that were true. Can we change the subject?”
“Sorry.”
They sat and stared at nothing. Garak focused on his breathing.
“You know,” said Bashir, “I would’ve assumed this space would be too tight for you.”
This wasn’t, Garak thought, a little impatiently, changing the subject. “Sometimes, doctor, it seems to me it would help enormously if the whole world disappeared, or at least shrank to something more manageable.”
“Ah,” said Bashir, nodding wisely. “A paradox.”
“Life’s never straightforward, is it?”
“No,” agreed Bashir. They sat quietly until Garak’s breathing steadied, and then the doctor said, “Did I ever tell you about the time I did a runner?”
“You did what?”
“Two days after I found out what my parents did to me. I ran away from home.”
Oh, thought Garak, he does understand… And he felt in that moment that he had never loved this man more.
“I didn’t get very far. I wasn’t really making an effort. I just… didn’t want to be around them. So I ambled off one evening. Hadn’t packed anything. Thought I’d see how far I got. I was only gone a day, if that. My dad found me walking down the road. Gave me the bollocking of my life. What did you think you were doing. Imagine if we’d had to call the authorities, that kind of thing. Heaven forbid we attracted the wrong kind of attention. Anyway. I didn’t do that again.”
“Until you joined Starfleet, you mean.”
Bashir turned his head to look at him. “Yes.” He seemed to sound pleased. To be understood, Garak assumed. Or hoped. “Until then.”
I knew I could trust you, thought Garak.
“Are you coming with us?” said Bashir.
“What?”
“When we set off for DS9. I’m assuming you want to come along?”
“Yes. Well. I hope so. I asked the captain if I could.”
“Want me to have a word?”
Garak thought about that. “No,” he said. He’d rather know where he stood with Sisko on his own terms.
“Mm, well, try not to worry either way. Because I’m not leaving you here.”
On your own.
“I believe you, you know,” said Bashir.
“What?”
“I believe you.”
People didn’t say that very often to Garak. But other people didn’t matter. “Yes,” he said. “I know.”
“After careful consideration,” said Bashir.
A whole five minutes, thought Garak. No, this was the most he’d ever loved this man.
They leaned against each comfortably. Garak, warmed, let his mind wander. What would he do, he wondered, if those people ever tried to come at him through Bashir? He didn’t have to think long or hard for the answer. He’d kill them, of course, with his bare hands… Would they try that? Would they harm him? Or, worse, would they try to recruit him to their cause? Bashir would make a good agent. Not that stupid holosuite game. Everything else. The intelligence, the quick thinking, the nerve, the practiced concealment, the ability to live life between the lines… Yes, they’d probably try to recruit him. Wasn’t that what Garak had intended, back at the start of all of this? Good luck with that, he told his shadow colleagues. This man has his own agenda when it comes to people like us. He’s more likely to recruit you…
Garak closed his eyes. Put his head against the young man’s shoulder. Felt Bashir’s hand upon his arm. He tried to pretend that they were sitting under the sun on the vast empty shores of the southern continent, but some reason he couldn’t summon up the image as easily as he might have done in the past. All that came to mind was his quarters on DS9. The rest, it seemed, was slipping away, like a dream that could not withstand the harsh light of morning.
I don’t know about you, Julian, he thought, but I’m long past ready to go home.
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