there's this borderline hysterical laugh garak breaks into a couple of times during the early seasons that is so special to me. like. this man. this man is so high (constantly) and probably drunk (frequently) and he's at all times teetering on the very brink of despair that only pure spite, immense stubbornness, and getting to gaze at julian bashir's smiling face across the lunch table once a week is holding him back from tipping over. and then he has to deal with people like skrain dukat and gul toran on top of that and you can practically hear the cracks forming as he's barely holding on to whatever remains of his sanity by the skin of his teeth
and im thinking that julian and miles can have their nerdy romance where they pretend to fight at the alamo (on the wrong side) while keiko and jadzia are free-climbing the sickest walls on bajor, communing with fungus, flexing their arm muscles, making discoveries, turning rank with sweat and dirt and grease, turning their hands gnarly with chalk and calluses, writing dense scientific reports, collecting samples, and, at night, sixtynining in a portaledge with the rain-fly off so they can see both literal and metaphorical stars.
So if Cardassians canonically argue to flirt, does that mean the way Garak keeps needling Bashir about being augmented, is him trying to say him being superhuman is really hot to him?
sisko being a fan of baseball in ds9 is kind of the equivalent of some guy being really into roque today and trying to show people pictures of the 1904 summer olympics
I had to attend a formal event and I don't own cufflinks so you better BELIEVE I had to use my Star Trek cosplay rank pips...not my proudest moment tbh
thinking about the recurring theme of sisko being someone who constantly comes adrift in time, literally and metaphorically, physically and emotionally. no matter how much he wants to stay here, and how hard he tries to, he drifts, he comes unmoored. you exist here. and always existing here means he can't exist there simultaneously; one precludes the other. and the grief of that truth that rings like a bell through his whole existence at once. hm.