julian bashir is autistic and i love him

Avery, they/ze/he pronouns. This is my sideblog for all things deep space nine. I try to do my part to make this fandom more accessible through image descriptions. Search the tag #my gifs for, well, a ton of gifs i've made. Let me know if you need something tagged!

[chipcheesesandwich]

Gah, I love Nog. I never felt more gut wrenched when he said "because I don't want to end up like my father" half crying. He knows his dad/Rom is a great engineer, but the Ferengi culture made him be of no value to their society. Nog knows he doesn't have the lobes to be a great Ferengi, but he knows he has the same talent as his father. And by him entering Starfleet, and being the very first Ferengi to do so, he wants to prove that he and Rom do have value. But the best part coming from this was Rom, being inspired by his own son, becomes less Ferengi and proves his values on his own too. I love them so much.

[slippery-domjot-balls]

Did any of you notice the Nausicaans playing darts in the background?

S4 E16 Bar Association

[respocked]

Quark: Doesn't that hurt?

Brunt: I'm sure it does. Most Nausicaan games do. Speaking of pain - did you talk to your brother?

[computer-voiced-by-majel-barrett]

Fun fact, those aren't just any background actors; They're James Lomas and Shawn McConnell, real professional darts players who also worked as "dart advisors" on DS9! McConnell even went on to become a professional stuntman in things like Daredevil (2003) and True Detective.

Moral of the story: It's always a worth it to hire highly skilled pros just to have them perform their job as incorrectly as possible, For The Bit™

[ds9promenade]

ID: Brunt is calculating something on his little hand computer as Quark approaches and they talk. In the background, two Nausicans are taking turns throwing darts literally into each other's chests. The one looks down at his chest and pulls a dart out to throw back at the other

[goodforwho]

Too many Kukalakas !!! 🧸

Based on this pic of Sid:

[ds9promenade]

ID: fanart of Julian Bashir smiling huge with four teddy bears wearing starfleet uniforms in his arms; the photo shows Alexander Siddig doing likewise

[scratches2006]

Jeffrey Combs with his daughter in Weyoun makeup! Never seen these before, how cute

[foone]

FUN FACT: You've seen his daughter (Catherine Combs) before.

[meepitydoodle]

page I did for @zineobiology !! finally got around to posting it! It was very fun to work on them

[ds9promenade]

ID: scientific research poster titled "Trill Symbionts: Trill Symbionts have adapted to live in specific controlled conditions, but scientists have explored the evolutionary differences they may have had if they were not raised in these controlled environments." There are several images of trill labeled fig.s 1, 2, and 3; they are wormlike creatures with various fin and gill configurations.

[smileyobrien]

paprikash 🤌

for @purplespacekitty :)

[aphrostiel]

kira ✌️ she’s so pretty

[ds9promenade]

ID: digital illustration of Kira Nerys as depicted in Past Tense, wearing a green shirt and red/brown vest, holding two flowers, and with a bandaid on her nose to cover up her Bajoran markings. She is holding up a piece sign and there are sparkles around her head.

[sigynpenniman]

This morning I’m thinkin about how Miles dislocated his shoulder on the Enterprise and Crusher was like Ugh Okay I’ll go get the Osteotractor™️ and then Miles dislocated his shoulder on DS9 and Julian just fucking cracked it back into place then and there

[sigynpenniman]

distinctive medical strategies

[eilupt]

Medical Person Explanation: the more you dislocate your shoulder the less stable it becomes. In early days Miles' shoulder was still pretty tight and needed the Osteoretractor™, but the time he gets to DS9 it's become so loose Julian can just pop it in.

In the future it'll become so unstable Miles will be able to pop the joint in and out at will.

Miles needs physical therapy.

[sigynpenniman]

Miles needs ALL THE KINDS of therapy.

[hully-gully-gee]

He sure does...

[ds9promenade]

ID: two gifs from a scene in Next Generation where Miles walks into Beverly Crusher's medbay in a colorful skin-tight athletic outfit, holding his arm. Crusher says, "I'll go get the osteotractor." Next two gifs show Miles in a similar but shinier athletic outfit being shown into the medbay by Odo, then laying on a medbay bed and wincing in pain as Julian pushes his arm back into place

[leaky-port-nacelle]

Ezri eventually dies, as most people do

The Dax symbiont is passed to the next host

Dax pays a visit to their old friend, the renowned author, Jake Sisko

"Dax, what are you doing here?"

"the last host of mine to not know your father was Joran. And, well, no one wants a repeat of that. I think Siskos may be my good luck charm"

we cut to a montage wherein the first thing Dax does in every lifetime once left to their own devices is to go find Benjamin's closest living descendent. Sometimes they become friends. Sometimes, best friends. Once, they even married, but that's a story for another time. Sometimes, they have a dinner, check in, then go their separate ways.

But as long as every Dax has a Sisko, nothing like Joran ever happens again.

And every Sisko knows, once in a generation, right when they need it the most, to expect a knock at the door. Every Sisko knows to look forward to their next visit from an old friend, from The Old Man.

[deepspacescully]

it’s genuinely so awesome how ds9 stops halfway through its oceans eleven themed holosuite episode to let sisko explain why he’s uncomfortable roleplaying in an era that in reality he wouldnt have been accepted in. hard to imagine a show nowadays that would play this so straight.

even though he does eventually join in, and kasidy presents a different perspective, his opinion isn’t treated as invalid by the narrative or anything. it’s perfectly understandable & in character for him to feel like he does, and also in character for him to put aside his feelings to support his friends. just great stuff

[lezzienerd]

It’s incredibly in character for him too cause he literally lived in that era for an episode. For everyone else the racism of the era is known but much more academically. But Sisko was physically beaten and faced the horrific discrimination of that era. So it was too real to just put aside easily.

[mystery-ink]

Also, this was something Avery Brooks himself added to the script.* Without his contributions DS9 would have been a very different and worse show. He was the one who wanted a positive relationship with his son and father, and he added so much depth and complexity and context to the story. Brooks absolutely should have been given creative credit for what he brought to the show.

*he didn't write it himself but he told the writers that Sisko wouldn't be comfortable with this, and why, and they worked it into the story.

[theflikchic]

One of the reasons Odo is like one of the best characters to ever do it is because the writers were like, "He was raised in a lab, he doesn't know who he is, he's in love with his best friend but she doesn't know it, he's reclusive and blunt and has the most extreme daddy issues imaginable, he's got all the angst and he still manages to be a sarcastic bastard" and today, writers would make that character some conventionally attractive, gloomy bad boy who's either eighteen or twenty-something but the DS9 writers slapped on, "And he's played by a middle aged man" and that - THAT the's secret, right there.

[cake-and-umbrellas]

At first they wanted "Clint Eastwood" but then René stepped into the auditions and Ira Steven Behr got his whole vision turned around for the better.

[groundzer0s-art]

Dukat not pictured because that would be too much effort

[ds9promenade]

ID: digital fanart of DS9. Panel 1, Weyoun is making bright adoring eyes at Odo, saying "Founder!" with hearts around the word. Odo responds with a very small "gross." Second panel, Weyoun's face shrivels as Dukat's words from off-screen say "Weyoun, you can't trust this asshole!" Panel 3 is only Weyoun, his head twisting inhumanly far around so he can call back to Dukat, "Do not" — text continued in panel 4, which has zoomed closer on Weyoun's face — "fucking interrupt me, Dukat."

[pippinstook]

they like to play darts together

[ds9promenade]

ID: fanart of Miles and Julian on a brownish-red background; Miles is holding a dart, about to throw it, while Julian stands behind smiling at him

[2x16]

i was talking to my mom about cardassians and said something along the lines of ‘what must it be like to be a cardassian civilian. like abstractly knowing the rest of the galaxy thinks of your species as ‘the evil ones’ and kinda sorta knowing your government runs labor camps and torture prisons and is a military empire, and it’s a huge deal for everyone else in the galaxy, but you just like run a restaurant so it’s not a big part of your daily life, so you just like, go about your day and make soup and don’t think about it’ and then halfway through my sentence i actually heard myself and then had to go sit down for like ten minutes. like sat down in a chair and stared at the floor for ten minutes

[ds9promenade]

and fuck if you think about it, the writers do to Julian the character exactly what Jules' parents did to their "disappointing" child. they didn't like the way he was unfolding — so they reached in and reconstructed him.

The writers took the naive, fantasy-enamored lover boy developed over several seasons and retroactively remade that character into a facade. A mask. A shell into which the new, "true" Julian takes root.

And like Jules' parents, who eradicated the child they couldn't see any potential in, the writers don't seem to have thought through all the repercussions of their meddling.

Julian was never actually the naive young dreamer that is the foundation of how other characters + we the audience understand him; he fabricated the starry-eyed doctor (insensitively) enamored with "Frontier Medicine" to conceal the Truth, which is lies and shame; he got as far from earth as possible not for the thrill of it, but out of the terror of being Found Out.

He doesn't enjoy conversing with the station's resident Exiled Spy because Garak's his foil, someone exciting because of how unalike they are; he loves Garak because here is someone who knows what it is to be built of lies. When Julian is with Garak, he's not the only one constantly deceiving everyone, not allowing anyone to get too close. In mutual acceptance that they will never know the full truth about one another, each paradoxically ends up knowing the other better than anybody else ever will.

Nor does Julian play secret agent in the Holosuites so he can fantasize himself completely different — he's tapping into what he sees as his true self, escaping to a reality where dealing in secret identities makes you a hero, not a liar. He gets to be who he is — a genius of deception — where that's a good thing. Where he doesn't have to be afraid that friends who find out will be disgusted, betrayed.

Both Julian's parents and Julian's writers doom him to ceaseless stress and stigma. Even when his deepest fears come true, even when Everyone Knows — and it is, miraculously, okay — they've opened him to exploitation by those who'd use his powers for further subterfuge.

Does Julian ever get to just Be Himself? Or has he been rewritten, reshaped by forces beyond his control, too many times?

[unholysails]

trying to contain my rage whenever i hear people skim over or completely ignore the fact that julians entire motivation and life and career choice is born from one single desperate wish.

to make his augmentations mean something. to make HIMSELF mean something. anything good. anything at all. anything. so it wasnt for nothing. so little jules didnt die for nothing. he will be good and kind and fearless and loyal and single minded in his pursuit of fixing everyone because he cannot fix himself. he cannot undo what happened to him. but by god, he will make it mean something.

[skrankku]

I wanted to draw O'Brien strapped to a table.