Kitrin

[washlore]

quality content

based on this ↓

[sourcreammachine]

so odo’s uniform is part of his body as a shapeshifter, but his commbadge is a real piece of machinery. so like, he’s gotta still have it on him when he’s something else right. inside his goo. like when he’s a rat the rat’s got a badge inside it right

[respocked]

newfound hobby: rewriting jokes about agent stirlitz to be about garak

[respocked]

“Garak, what’s two plus two?” Entek asked. Garak knew, and he knew Entek knew, but he didn’t know if the Central Command knew, so he had to keep it under wraps. 

Garak walked into Doctor Bashir’s Infirmary and asked: “Doctor, would you like to start working as an Obsidian Order agent?”. Shocked, Doctor Bashir jumps up from his chair, then looks at Garak as if he had lost his mind. Garak turns around and starts to leave, but then he stops and asks: “Doctor, could you spare some aspirin?”. Old spy trick: people only remember the end of conversations.

Garak casually approached the rendezvous point with his contact. According to the preplanned signal, he knocked on the door one hundred and twenty-seven times. To no response. He took a step back and looked into the window – just like he thought. On the windowsill there was a sign they had been discovered – sixty-three clothing irons.

Garak has left behind a darling on Cardassia – beautiful Palandine. Just in case, his letters to her he writes in Romulan and with his left hand. He also doesn’t send them.

Garak heard a knock on his tailor shop’s door. He opened them. It was a little regnar. “Hello, little silly. Do you want some milk?” he asked. “You’re fucking silly!” said the regnar. “I’m from the Obsidian Order, idiot!”

Well-disguised, Garak walked down the streets of Romulus. Still, somewhat in him betrayed that he was a Cardassian spy: maybe it was his slightly foreign accent, maybe his Obsidian Order insignia he left pinned to his chest, or maybe just his ridges?

Garak loved to sit in his chair and feel the power of Cardassian literature. The power was electrical in nature and came from the chair itself.

A stranger came into Captain Sisko’s office. He stood in front of his chair and made odd gestures with his hands and various winks. Finally, with an air of intrigue, he said: “Cardassian voles are migrating north, and grain weevils are following after them.” Captain Sisko looked at the stranger with obvious distaste. “Garak’s shop is downstairs,” he said.

Garak opened the door to his bathroom. Suddenly, the light came on. “It’s a trap!” Garak thought. It was actually his mistakenly opened fridge.

The speedometer on Dukat Senior’s skimmer showed 120 km/h. Outside of its window, Garak walked, expertly pretending like he was not in a hurry to get anywhere.

When it was time to walk across the Promenade, in order to not arouse any suspicion, Garak dropped to his hands and knees and quickly crawled to the meeting point.

[otterrebloggingthings]

Okay, my first instinct was to rewrite anecdots about Stalin to be about Tain, but Garak-Stierlitz is SO GOOD, thank you, it is so beautiful. Okay, so I obviously need to add some.

Sisko and a Starfleet admiral are having a coffee in Sisko’s office. Garak with a tray full of oranges walks in, puts the tray to the table, takes the secret documents from the vault and leaves. "Who was this one?" asks the stunned admiral. "This one? It was Garak – the Obsidian Order’s best agent on Deep Space Nine", replies Sisko. "And why don’t you arrest him?" asks the admiral. Sisko frowns. "Eh, he will wriggle out as always!.. Will say he brought us oranges!.."

Garak fell into a deep hole and only got out by a stroke of luck. "Cardassians do not believe in luck", thought Garak and just in case got back into the hole. Doctor Bashir came to Garak's quarters after finding his shop empty. "Garak, I need to talk to you", he said. "Garak is not here", answered Garak. Bashir cursed under his breath and went away. This was the third time this week. Garak drove down the street when he noticed Dukat signaling. He didn't want to pick up him, so drove by. In a few minutes, he saw Dukat again. "Roundabout," figured out Garak. "He is mocking me," thought Dukat. "If we go this way, we will get back quicker," said Bashir. "My dear Doctor, if we go this way, we will get beaten," said Garak "Garak, you're too paranoid, nothing will happen" They turned into the alley and got beaten. "How did you figure it out, Garak?" asked Bashir later. "I just already went this way yesterday," unusually truthfully answered Garak.

*** And well, as we are already here, some non-Stierlitz jokes: Enabran Tain was in his office, drinking kanar. An Obsidian Order agent came in and reported: "Some man came in, said he can predict the future" Enabran Tain thought for just a second and said: "Shoot him" He then thought: "These frauds... if he knew the future, he wouldn't have come" One day Enabran Tain met an Obsidian Order agent with a fairly common name. Let's call him Skrain. "Weren't you arrested?" asked surprised Tain. "Arrested, convicted, executed," answered Skrain. "How are you still alive then?" "I'm a different Skrain." And also a story obviously from Garak's youth: Three men are sitting in the same train compartment, telling each other jokes about Obsidian Order. A forth comes in and sits in the corner trying to read a book. Some time passes and he says: "You shouldn't joke about this, this place is bugged" "It's not true", answers one of the others and they continue the jokes. Later, the forth one tries again: "There are microphones in every socket!" "Go to hell!" Then he comes out of the compartment and asks the conductor to bring four cups of tea in five minutes. After that he returns to the others. They are continuing the jokes. "I'm telling you, there are microphones in the sockets", he says finally. "I can prove it!" "Really? Well, go on," answer the others. The man bends down to the socket and says: "Dear Obsidian Order agent, please, send four cups of tea to this compartment" Almost immediately the doors open and a conductor comes in with four cups of tea. The other passengers got really quiet (letting the man to read his book in peace). Comes morning, the man wakes up alone. "Why am I alone? Where are the others?" he asks conductor. "Oh, in the night agents came in, took them" "Why did they left me then?" "One of the agents really liked your joke with the tea"

[unamccormack]

Garak fell into a deep hole and only got out by a stroke of luck. "Cardassians do not believe in luck", thought Garak and just in case got back into the hole.

Oh my god.

[katbelleinthedark]

@respocked if we have Garak as Stirlitz, would we then put Dukat as Müller?

Having come back to his office, Dukat noticed Garak hovering suspiciously close to his personal computer.

"Garak, what are you doing here?" Dukat asked.

"Waiting for a skimmer," Garak replied.

"Fine then," Dukat said and headed for the door. In the corridor, he stopped and thought to himself: what kind of skimmer might be in my office? He turned and went back. Cautiously, he peeked inside his office. Garak was no longer there.

Ah, must have departed already, thought Dukat.

[exlibra]

In a Paldar school, a teacher asks the children:

”Where do the happiest children live?” ”In the Cardassian Union!”

”Where do children have everything they want?” ”In the Cardassian Union!”

”Where do children grow up healthy, happy and confident about their bright and wonderful future?” ”In the Cardassian Union!”

Suddenly the choir is interrupted by one of the kids crying.

”Elim, why are you crying?” ”I want to live in the Cardassian Union…”

[currentlycryingaboutlancelot]

still think it’s incredible they made a movie musical about pt barnum where the point is like love and accept yourself no matter who you are or what you look like <3 when pt barnum irl was like exploitation georg who lives in a circus and and dehumanizes 10,000 people daily. not sure how they came up with that one

[zaprowsdower27]

"Telling a fabricated story that audiences want to hear rather than anything faithful to actual facts about relevant history" is the most authentic experience a PT Barnum movie could possibly have been, though

[pissvortex]

Just the Shrew of us… We can make it if we try…

[wolfsteax]

A painting of a nightmare I had recently.

In the dream, my partner and I were following the narrow paths in a dirty hallway with deep pools of water. In the deep water were the bodies of horses, bones and remaining flesh bleached white. We could hear a distant scream behind us that was slowly growing closer.

[catchymemes]

[universejunction]

executive dysfunction

[sawed-on-shotgun]

I have been in multiple situations where a friend group I'm not so familiar with starts making jokes about being into weirdo pervert stuff and there is a slight edge of competition to who is The Most Freakish I know for a goddamn fact that I have everyone beat in the pervert department but I can't say anything because they're probably just talking about light BDSM at most and I like things that are complete social suicide in 90% of spaces

[sawed-on-shotgun]

like oh when you like puppyplay and choking its subversive and edgy but when I talk about getting my sexual awakening at 8 years old from the really fucking weird plant vore sequence in the third ice age movie it's WEIRD and EMBARRASSING i see how it is,

[sawed-on-shotgun]

oh so this post stops getting notes when I make that addition, i see how it is,

[onceiwashere]

The introduction of the Bajorans in “Ensign Ro” seemed to suggest that Rick Berman and Michael Piller, who wrote the episode, sympathized with the plight of the Palestinians. “The Bajorans are the PLO but they’re also the Kurds, the Jews, and the American Indians,” Piller responded. “They are any racially bound group of people who have been deprived of their home by a powerful force [….] When you talk about a civilization like the Bajorans who were great architects and builders with enormous artistic skills centuries before humans were even standing erect, you might be thinking a lot more about Indians than Palestinians.” (Cinefantastique, Vol. 23, No. 2/3, p. 38 & 43) Berman, discussing “Ensign Ro”, similarly emphasized that the Bajorans were not modeled on any particular real-life group; “The Kurds, the Palestinians, the Jews in the 1940s, the boat people from Haiti — unfortunately, the homeless and terrorism are problems [in every age].” (Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion (2nd ed., p. 178))

Regarding parallels between the Bajorans and real-world cultures, Ronald D. Moore commented, “Depending on the episode, you could also call Bajor Israel, or Iran, or even America and the Cardassians could be Germans, or Russians or several other examples. While these parallels do enter our discussions and sometimes are more overt than others, we don’t really try to make Bajor a direct analogy to any specific contemporary country or people. Blending the experiences of many Earth peoples and races into our storytelling allows us to comment on these subjects without advocating a particular political point of view, while at the same time allowing us to view the topics in a different light without the baggage of contemporary politics.” (AOL chat, 1997)

*curbyourenthusiasm.mp3* 

Making the Cardassians more villainous made sense to Marc Alaimo, since he knew that the writers needed conflict for the continuing storyline of the series and that the Federation had allied themselves with the Klingons. (“Cold Warrior?”, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - The Official Poster Magazine, No. 12) Robert Wolfe once remarked that, prior to joining the Dominion in fifth season outing “By Inferno’s Light”, the Cardassians “were getting their asses kicked by everyone’s forces” and that that losing scenario motivated the Cardassians to collaborate with the Dominion, much as some Germans were historically persuaded to support Hitler because they perceived it as a method of escaping Germany’s ruinous situation. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion (p. 427)) Weyoun actor Jeffrey Combs felt sure (at the end of the fifth season) that the Cardassians hoped to at least obtain what they wanted out of the alliance and then to rid themselves of the Dominion at a later point. (Cinefantastique, Vol. 29, Nos. 6/7, p. 61)

…

The DS9 writing staff found they kept running out of Cardassian characters who were plain evil. This became especially problematic by the time the writers reached a series-ending multipart story arc, in the show’s seventh and final season. “Dukat and Damar had become so multidimensional,” Ira Behr reckoned. He believed that, by being callously disregarded and underestimated by the Founders but then rising against them in conflict, the Cardassians were similar to other opponents who were historically underestimated, such as the Viet Cong and the Native Americans tribes that fought at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Andrew Robinson was disappointed that the arc didn’t include more tension between his own character of Garak and Damar, motivated by Damar’s murder of Tora Ziyal. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion (pp. 697, 709 & 699))

…

Regarding parallels between the Cardassians and real-world cultures, Ronald D. Moore commented, “Depending on the episode […] the Cardassians could be Germans, or Russians or several other examples [….] These parallels do enter our discussions and sometimes are more overt than others [….] Blending the experiences of many Earth peoples and races into our storytelling allows us to comment on these subjects without advocating a particular political point of view, while at the same time allowing us to view the topics in a different light without the baggage of contemporary politics.” (AOL chat, 1997) Director Winrich Kolbe stated about the Cardassians, “They’re the Prussians of the universe, always ‘kill, kill, kill.’” (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion (p. 22)) On the other hand, episodes such as DS9: “Duet” and “Return to Grace” used the Cardassians as metaphors for the Nazis (with the Bajorans representing Jews). (Captains’ Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages; Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion (p. 307)) Providing yet another viewpoint, the Cardassians were once likened, by writer Jeanne M. Dillard, to American Indians. The species was imagined in this way as part of a Western anology in Dillard’s official reference book Star Trek - Where No One Has Gone Before (paperback ed., p. 156).

*seinfeldbassline.mp3*

Why do I try to be nice about this shit? 

Not even getting into the brazen misinformation – I guess Hitler was exclusively Western Europe’s boring, tidy problem, uninvolved from colonialism, uninvolved with the atrocities of Japanese fascism, uninvolved from the Mediterranean and Middle East Theatre, single-mindedly intent on, I guess, hassling Western European Jewry alone (my great grandparents must’ve come here from Hungary to sight see! They would’ve gone back, but they just fell in love with the lox bagels and the musical theatre and the not having to subsist on tree bark!) – or the absolute logical abortion of demanding that references to the Holocaust require a special, unique level of scrutiny that other genocides don’t.  Or getting into the fact that I explained the importance of Holocaust remembrance in the 90s and you just went on past and explained that you’re discounting the Holocaust as a reference because people in the 90s wouldn’t be thinking about it (oh, Jews were, but not regular people). That’d take forever and a half.

To think, instead of implying that it’s ignorant or uninspired for fans to offhandedly identify Holocaust references in a franchise full of Holocaust references, we could actually skip straight to a discussion about whether or not this approach works, and the what extent! When does this fluid, kitchen-sink approach to portraying oppression allow the authors to make sophisticated commentary that they wouldn’t be able to get away with in CBS others, challenge the ideas that these evils spring spontaneously and intrinsically from any race or loosely-defined culture by dramatizing the process by which anyone can enact, justify, collaborate in them– and when is it clueless, callous appropriation on the part of a mostly white group of authors (including racist – based on secondhand stories about him verbally abusing Avery Brooks on set, his comments about DS9 having too many ‘aliens and Black people’, his treatment of Garrett Wang – pieces of shit like Rick Berman)? Is there any ignorance or blitheness or outright wrongness we can detect in these comments themselves – and does that manifest in the show? How does that manifest on the show? 

Instead of listing off other, very real, atrocities as neat, tidy alternatives to talking about the Holocaust, based on one understanding of the 1990s, despite the indisputable fact that there are as many references to Nazism in the portrayal of the Cardassians as anything else, we could be discussing, on their own terms, what aspects the show takes from which historical moments, which allusions are unclear or could refer to multiple things, and what those choices mean! What those choices meant to the author, what they meant to critics, what they could mean to any individual person who’s experiences these things or lived in the shadow of them, what they mean to us? What postcolonial themes do we already lose by piling allusions to the Japanese occupation of Korea, the Israeli occupation of Palestine, the French and British empires, the Belgian Congo – onto two fantasy races who are both overwhelmingly played by white people (the only named Cardassian with a speaking role played by a Black actor is, if I recall correctly, Legate Broca)? Are there some things that a CBS science fiction soap opera should not, could not, did not portray, discuss, or touch at all – are there any things they tried to portray that they shouldn’t have? But no! Why approach any of this with any semblance of good faith? Why try to hold multiple truths – about an art form built on collaboration and poly-authorship and evolving meaning – in our heads at the same time? All pales in comparison to Elim Garak’s magnificent fucking retractable taint! 

[unamccormack]

For the fic ask meme: 7, 11 (if any) and 15.

7 what is you favourite sentence/paragraph? read it to us! (asker can choose what fic)

I won't offer my favourite recently-written paragraph, because I know you're not Parmak-curious (!), but I do know you like Kira and Garak. So here's a section from Bad Land, which is about Kira, Garak, and Damar's road trip across Cardassia. This is moment when Garak sees his home city for the first time since going into exile. Kira is driving.

Visit Original Link

I enjoyed doing that and might do that audio ask game at some point.

11 what grammar mistake do you keep making no matter how many times your beta corrects you?

I'm hazy on subject-verb agreement with collective nouns. I think it's because there are different rules for British and American English, and between Star Trek and Doctor Who I don't know where I am these days.

15 describe (one of) your wip(s) in the weirdest/most contrived way possible! (asker can choose what wip)

King Lear but Scousers.

[witchingswell]

teheh

[jaceoshi]

seeing garak in one of those outfits that shows off his neck ridges makes me flush like i'm a catholic boy seeing cleavage for the first time i'm so obsessed with him

[warpcorecontainmentfield]

saw something that would be really exciting to many of you

[lady-sci-fi]

[walkingstackofbooks]

This scenario has wormed into my brain the past few days, and I've finally written some of it down! It's unfinished, but if I don't post it now, it will languish in my drafts forever, so here you go: a little bit of Julian Bashir angst!

---

He doesn't find out until much later, when they're docked on Starbase 365, in the middle of what had been an innocuous, enjoyable discussion about latest medical research with the Honshu's CMO. But of course, it's wartime, and even little joys aren't allowed to last, these days.

Their conversation meanders from topic to topic, until Doctor Ashande brings up how impressive she'd found his research into the Teplan Blight, especially his ongoing dedication to it, despite the planet's recent destruction by the Dominion. "What made you choose to continue?" she asks.

"Destruction? No, I— I think you must be mistaken..." Julian replies, even as he hurries to the computer to double check. Because she can't possibly be right, he'd have heard something, been told—

"Teplis III" flashes up on the screen, and Julian's heart stops. Words blur together – "warning", "interference", "resisting Dominion authority", "complete annihilation" – and yet, as jumbled as it is, he understands immediately what has happened. The Teplans are dead. And it's his fault.

"No..." he breathes, mouth still trying to deny what his brain already knows. "No— No, it can't be, that's not, I-I don't..."

The date of the attack stands out, laying the blame squarely at his feet: 51625.3. Less than a month after the changeling had been rooting through his files while impersonating him. That's how the Founders must have found out about the Teplans' "resistance" - his own damned research.

"Vaccine", "Blight", "Bashir", "Bashir", "Bashir" – he can't look away from the screen, can't stop re-reading these words that he's already committed to memory, that he'll never be able to unsee.

"I'm sorry, I'd assumed you'd know," Doctor Ashande is saying. "Your Commander Dax is next door, should I fetch her?"

He shakes his head: he's fine, he's fine, this is his mistake, his responsibility, he just needs to—

"Breathe. That's right, nice and slow. Why don't we sit you down, yes? And breathe again, in.... hold.... out.... That's it. Ashande to Dax - could you come through, please? Doctor Bashir's had a bit of a shock."

Time is too slow and too fast; a million thoughts burn through him before Jadzia appears, but all at once she's there, crouching down beside him, asking him what's wrong.

"I should have listened, I should've— They told me not to help, Jadzia, and now they're dead. They're all dead."

His stuttering barely makes sense, even to him, but somehow, Jadzia seems to understand. "Teplis," she says, her gaze flicking from Ashande to the computer and back to Julian. "Oh, Julian. I'm so sorry."

"Nine months," he whispers. "If I'd only left them alone, they'd have had years."

"Julian, it's not your fault. We both wanted to help - it's the Dominion who sent them the Blight, who attacked them. Not me, not you. You were only trying to help."

"Well, maybe I shouldn't have!"

"Julian, you aren't responsible! And your vaccine, Mechlem's birth – that gave them hope, Julian. That's got to count for something."

->Julian argues that it was his obsession with finding a cure that made the Founders catch into what had happened. He reckons that the changeling might not have picked up on the vaccine if its only mention had been in one of many Starfleet reports he files - but he'd ran so many experiments, written so many pages of research while trying to find a cure that he'd made it impossible for the changeling to miss what he'd done on Teplis.

-> Much later, he finds out that Sisko had known about this when it had happened, but hadn't been able to bring himself to tell Julian, since it was around the time his parents had just left the station. He had told Jadzia though, who'd agreed that now was not the right time to tell him.

[walkingstackofbooks]

OOOOH, now THIS is a FEAST!!! Love it when Starfleet fucks up by telling people far too little, and when Julian fucks up by thinking he knows best, goddd. This is perfect ✨👌✨

[defconprime]

Kira Nerys

[penandinkprincess]

ilya getting spooked and thinking the loon is a wolf in the distance does make me laugh imagining shane finally convincing him to go camping and then that first night packing up food away from the tent and saying they need to change out of clothes that might smell like food

"what? you have rules for this even in nature, hollander? we are sleeping on the ground. I think it will be okay if you sleep in a shirt you ate a hot dog in."

"no, it's just to make sure animals like bears and stuff won't be a problem."

"...what"

"if you eat in clothes, they'll smell like food and-"

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN BEARS MIGHT BE A PROBLEM, SHANE"

"no, that's why we change clothes and pack the food away! so they won't be! 🥰"

"WHY DID YOU BRING ME TO A PLACE WHERE THIS IS A CONCERN"

"it's fun!"

"FOR WHO? THE BEARS? BECAUSE WE BRING THEM DOORDASH?"

[washlore]

i didn’t have a warrior cats phase so i’m actually not very graceful when drawing cats. palette is kinda all over the place, these are flat colors with small details so they’re not at all the coats i’d actually give them. etc