frigging Cardassians tho!
As per the Iron and Ash supplement, Cardassia Prime has a 344.35-day-long year, and a 26-hour-long day, and it takes about 26 days for the moon to orbit, so a month is presumably 26 days long.
Twenty-six does not divide by anything except two.
How long is a damned Cardassian week?
And my husband says, they probably don’t have weeks, and I say, how can they keep track of anything, then? that’s way too long an interval to keep in your head, and he says, not for a Cardassian, don’t they have really good memories, and I say, damn it, you’re right, which means I now have to come up with terminology for twenty-six days so I know when something’s happening on Cardassia Prime.
Can they not do anything easily??
(As an aside, I really do recommend that sourcebook. It’s clearly made with love. I’ve printed out the map of Cardassia Prime as a reference.)
OK, here are a few things I learned and possibilities I explored with their months:
The best answer I can come up with is that they actually can work with 2 13 day weeks per month, and they have 13 months per year. The week to weekend ratio would just be divided 1-5-1-5-1 instead of our 1-5-1. 2 days off for the new moon, 1 day for the quarter moon, and 2 days off for the full moon. In fact, they might be fine with 13 day weeks because they’d have 13 months in a year. This way, a month on Cardassia would be 26 days on odd numbered months, with each even numbered month having 27 days. Sound about right?
(Fun fact- we could also fit 13 months in our year if we really wanted to.)
Other ideas that could be a possibility-
-They could have 8 day weeks. It fits evenly into the number of days. This would mean 43 weeks per year. I see no logical reasoning for it except that it divides into the year. Highly unlikely. Especially since then we’d have to figure out how the hell they divided up the rest of their calender.
-Maybe they have one of those messed up calenders like the Romans with Kalends and Ides and all that and have dates based off of that instead of weeks. So if someone wanted the date in Cardassian time, you’d say it’s 6 days after x day of the 3rd month. Of course, this is an infuriating system, but it is a possibility.
-.Considering that many Cardassian designs on the show were based off of the Ancient Egyptians, we can look at their calender for some clue, and that clue would be that they didn’t have weeks. Just years, months, days, and hours (and 3 seasons, in case anyone cares). Perhaps on Cardassia your break depends on whoever your boss is.
-Or we can come to the easiest conclusion possible- they don’t give 2 shits about moon time and came up with some other solution that we never thought of because we don’t live on Cardassia.
(Also tinsnip, you are so going to pay for all of that math that I did as a result of investigating this. JK, I actually thought this was fun.)
/basks in the glow of your radiance
I kind of like the idea of them having a thirteen-day week. Doneski. Thank you!
I also like the idea of there not being weeks, although how the hell do you schedule anything, then? How did the Egyptians do it?
(And all of this came from Julian going, “But Garak, it’s the weekend, can’t I sleep in?” Oh, fanfic, what have you wrought?)