Forgive me for being unusually voluble; I’ve had a few glasses of wine and watched an episode of Sherlock, and so I’m in a good mood and quite chatty.
Re: things that tick them off on the date – Hmm. Julian being ignored by Garak, and it makes him angry? Interesting. What is he expecting from Garak? Does he want his totally undivided attention? If so, why? Does he have an expectation about how a date should go? Has he decided this is a standard date after all? Which leads into -
Re: Julian being flirty with the waitress – Julian, that’s rude as hell, even if you aren’t certain what this is, if you’ve agreed to it being a date, don’t flirt with the waitress. Poor manners! What does Garak do with bad manners? Does he forgive it, because Julian’s young? Does he take him the hell to task? DS9 Garak would. “Good conversation is one thing, my dear Doctor; good manners are quite another. If you’ll excuse me.” Hmmmm, curious to see what happens.
Re: kids, not having or wanting and writing them anyway – that’s okay. I hate going out dancing, and I’m writing a fic about going dancing in a nightclub. :) We don’t always have to like things to use them in our little worlds… Good practice if we don’t, really, as long as we try to get them right… And you’re right about having them adopted being helpful; they’re already little people, vs. humanoid larvae. (Those first three months are so unrewarding…)
Ah, twelve-year-old Mira in Klingon women’s clothing with a bodice gap – that’s so cute. I love the idea of her bedecked in armour to head off to school. Seems right.
Interested to hear that Miles will get more of a say in Awkward Adventures. He made a lovely foil in the first story, and then we switched to G/B interaction, and I honestly wasn’t sure if we’d see more of him. I’m glad we will. It’s hard for me to fault him, really, to fault any of them; I mean, IRL, if I didn’t know Garak, I would want him to stay the hell away from Julian, because something is weird, right? And something is weird, the guy’s got a crazy past, and Julian’s kind of vulnerable… but that’s not our mistake to make, it’s Julian’s… And Julian can protect himself better than we think he can. /randomly turned into his big sister? Not sure.
I’m not sure how Dukat fits into my little snaky headcanon with Garak fleeing from Cardassia, etc. I guess Dukat’s a Cardassian export. He gets to go back. And he enjoys seeing Garak freezing in the dark. But also he works for Dominion Pizza, for some reason…? I guess that pizza boosts the revenue stream of the homeland? Or something? This is where silly starts to shade into dark, and it’s a bit of a fractal swirl, really.
Ahh ha ha, all hail Pizza Jesus~ I have no idea, none at all, and am staying far away from it. Let’s just let him run the pizza place. He seems to like it.
Angry Date: It’s not quite that dramatic on Julian’s end. Or it wasn’t, whatever. I got rid of it and moved it to another file in case I decide the other direction is worse and I need to bring this one back, haha. Garak is just doing a lot of talking to the whole three people they encounter and he’s pretty pleased that he can Cardassian at someone, so all the people who have served them or done anything for them for the entire evening have not spoken to Julian, and Julian’s a little annoyed. Or he was. Whatever. It wasn’t as weighty as your questions, unfortunately. I think he spends this entire date in a state of ‘What do?’ punctuated with moments of joking clarity, so he’s not even tackling bigger issues at the moment. He’ll probably do that when he gets home and then fall asleep only to suffer through nightmares about Sanik and orchids.
AND THEN FLIRTING is not super overt and could be taken for just Julian being a dork, which is kind of how the waitress takes it and is sort of how Julian means it, even if the girl has a distracting fluffy skirt on. Garak doesn’t give him a hideous lashing about it (because he tries not to assume incredibly rude intent) but instead gives the waitress some ambiguous information about the status of his relationship with Julian in a sort of vague retaliation. Julian apologizes and accepts that he probably deserves worse for doing anything that could even look like flirting and they continue on as vaguely normal, including joking about flirting with the waitress, so this seems to be the route that goes better. The Julian being ignored one just got him all snippy and Garak responded that with a bit of ‘What the fuck is your damage, I get to speak my own languge with other people pretty much never’ and then things got a bit sharper than I wanted. I still might just scrap the whole thing and try again, I don’t know! The other half was easier somehow, and I had to write a whole movie in that one. I don’t know what the fuck.
I’m also on the ‘good practice to write things you wouldn’t personally do’ train, so ~awesome~. I am similarly not a going out dancing person (or a partying/being with people for long periods of time person), and yet I am excited for story about dancing, so!
aaaaaa Mira going to school in armor is precious, I might have to draw this.
Miles is definitely involved in Awkward Adventures. My original plan for those that is… mooooostly staying intact is that they’re all framed as stories Julian relays to Miles on a regular basis. There have been a few exceptions - generally the ones that Julian thinks would be massively TMI for Miles are condensed down to footnotes to some other story - but Miles is definitely going to be involved in the rest of that. It’s actually sort of why the extra part I added to the first one wasn’t planned or an ‘official’ Awkward Adventure, because it wasn’t even tangentially framed as being relayed to Miles.
There is no faulting Miles for being concerned, and I think we often see him either wholeheartedly objecting to the whole Garak/Julian thing or being really accepting in fic, when I think the responsible O’Brien reaction would be something warily in between. I know a lot of people want to make sure he doesn’t come off as racist or homophobic and so have him just embrace it, but I think even if we assume he isn’t, the older guy with questionable past is still going to be an issue when they’re lurking around your best friend. So I really see more of Miles letting Julian do his thing, because he’s an adult, but ready to spring in and do things he thinks are right if shit gets real. He’s not Julian’s keeper, but he’s not indifferent to what is, very reasonably, seen as a potential danger situation. And this will only continue if Julian tells Miles anything he learns. (“So, I think he used to be some kind of spy.” ”Julian.” “And it’s not that he can’t afford to live anywhere else, it’s that he literally can’t go home or someone is probably going to murder him.” ”Julian.” ”He mentioned growing a poisonous flower the other day and-” “HOLY SHIT, JULIAN.”)
Well, if we keep with established shit and say that Garak killed Dukat’s dad, that preserves some of the very PERSONAL hate, though why this Dukat would not mention that to the entire pizza shop and fuck Garak’s shit up there I don’t know. I think he is some kind of official Cardassian link to Cardassia Heights, so the city lets him in as some kind of cultural openness thing. And, you know, he gets involved in business ventures in Cardassia Heights (PIZZA AND DRUGS~), so he goes back and forth under pretenses of doing things for the good of Cardassia and it’s economy and cooperation with neighbors etc etc. His primary function in DD9 so far has been random sexual harrassment, which is not far from his canon function, now that i think about it, but it’d be good to figure his shit out as well.
Now I expect you to reply with a full formed perfect explanation for everything he does.
Deep Dish Nine headcanon discussion incoming! Forgive me for not doing this long ago:
There, now we can ramble all we like.
Angry Date: Ahhh, I get it, and I kind of like it, but I understand why you went with flirty waitress instead. It would make sense to be irritated that you can’t understand anything your date is saying, and it would also be completely inappropriate; still, I imagine Garak asking, “What is your damage?” and I smile… And I enjoy the little snippets of Garak chatting in Cardassian during the date, BTW; charming and sweet.
Re: waitress flirting – was that Julian self-sabotaging, or Julian being a bit oblivious? Or should I just shut up and wait for the damned story?
Oh, the Awkward Adventures are epistolary! Marvelous! I love letters. And I love the idea of TMI footnotes, and Julian just starting to explain, and then visibly checking himself and moving on. Poor Miles.
Re: Miles and wanting him to be nice and not racist - it’s tough, because he’s got all this baggage about Cardassians at the start of the show, and it’s well-earned baggage, and he meets this kid and his dad and that’s okay, but then he gets kidnapped and arrested and dragged to Cardassia Prime on false charges and they pull out his tooth? I mean, yigg, and he still isn’t a big fan of Garak by season 6 - not outright hate or anything, and they sort of come to a weird understanding over Empok Nor, but they do not like or trust each other, particularly… Miles kind of has reason to refuse outright to accept Garak as a potential mate for Julian, because almost every experience he’s had that involved Cardassians has been very negative. To tangent this even further, I have this fic idea that sees Miles & Keiko & the kids visiting Elim & Julian & the kid on Cardassia - but I can’t get past Miles saying, “If you think I am going to bring my children within fifty light-years of that den of snakes, you are fucking nuts, Julian." (rando, sorry)
I agree with you on the watchful waiting for Miles. And that’s actually quite helpful to me, thanks; I have another fic on the go which involves a similar situation, and I’ve been fiddling around with how to have the person react, and you know what? It’s completely allowed to not react, to not accept or reject right away, that’s how things work IRL; thanks for the reminder, Lady.
Also, ahhhhhh ha ha, HOLY SHIT JULIAN, this whole conversation just kills me –
Garak and Dukat’s dad – yep, that’s what I kind of figure, but I’ll be honest: I haven’t come up with much for Dukat because he feels more… integrated into the universe, already? I mean, he’s shown up and harassed Kira multiple times, he has an actual job over at Dominion’s, he is a drug dealer? Or something? I’m not sure? It’s hard to find a way in there, you know? I love the idea of him being a cultural liaison. But he’s just so silly in this universe, and then all of a sudden YOU KILLED MY DAD, and it’s where things start to clash…
Geesh, I’m not sure I can take him on, not in this universe. I’d have to discard a lot of the silly, and I love the silly for Dukat, he needs the silly… Somebody else is gonna have to ride this pony, I think.
cucumber-s
