#this is the most feel good ds9 story the others involve rick bergman's awful work place enviroment

[pencilscratchins]

please tell me every bit of ds9 drama

oh theres simply too much to cover in one post, so i will limit myself to spreading the legend of Andrew Robinson's fan fiction

So; it's the mid 90's and known character actor Andrew Robinson was just cast as Garak on Deep Space Nine: a one off character, intended to have a single episode in season one. Cut to 1999 its the final season of the show and Garak gets a special send off as a fan favorite recurring character in the shows final moments. How did that happen? Well, the short answer is: Andrew Robinson is bonkers and I'm obsessed with him.

Okay so in order to frame this, you have to know that Andy Robinson? is an ActOUR okay? he is like a well and true, trained classical performer and as such, he would often approach roles (regardless of size) with complete conviction. Garak was no different. He practiced a technique that a lot of older actors would use. Andy wrote a journal from the perspective of Garak to get a feel for the character before he even APPEARED on the show! Andy literally wrote over 200 words of extremely detailed backstory for Garak. Again, NOBODY ASKED HIM TO DO THIS. BUT he showed up to the DS9 writers room with this CHARACTER BIBLE of his gay lizard OC and said "hey i wrote all of this about this one off character that you tricked me into playing because I originally auditioned for Odo, didn't get it, and pressured me with money to appear as Garak (story for another time)," and it was all SO GOOD and the writers loved it so much that they literally couldnt help but keep him on the show. (also, clearly, the writers loved his performance and audiences loved the character, so there was a lot of support of keeping him on the show but really: its all because Andy put his whole ass into this show LMAOO)

Garak's backstory as written by Andy was hugely influential in how his character would later be developed and tons of ideas that Andy wrote about became real canon for the character; and he later expanded the bible into a longer story which would be published in 2000 in the novel "A Stitch in Time."

BUT THIS ISN'T THE END OF ANDY'S WRITING! as the show continued and Garak's popularity grew, Andy became a super popular guest at cons. Clearly a talented writer, Andy would (in his free time) write one shots of Garak's pre DS9 life and inner thoughts on the station, and READ THEM ALOUD AT CONS! While I can't vouch to any of these stories being explicitly Garak/Bashir romantic in nature (though if you attended any of these cons and have more info, please share it) Andrew's writing became a thing of legend. In fact, he and Siddig (who is a gem) actually cowrote a play called "The Dream Box" about Garak and Bashir that they would act out at cons! INSANE! (needless to say, this was less than thrilling to the infamously homophobic producer of 90's trek, Rick Berman who was vocally against Garashir and didn't like Andy very much at all)

In a truly incredible move, Andy and Sid's regard for fan fic was again shown this past year when the two of them teamed up to perform two fics over zoom, vocally supporting fandom creators and reiterating their love of Garashir as a ship.

#assignedmulletatbirth #PHEW #love LOVE LOVE TALKING ABOUT MY BESTIE ANDY ROBINSON #yeah he wrote a lot of fan fic & he and sid both publicly supported zines #this is the most feel good ds9 story the others involve rick bergman's awful work place enviroment #and harassments of actors #so less fun #but this story is just a delight so enjoy #ask #not art #*oop sorry i always think its bergman his name is in fact berman! #i blame ingmar bergman frankly lmaOO