fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2809 ]

[ SECRET POST #2809 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2809 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 012 secrets from Secret Submission Post #401.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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08. http://i.imgur.com/UXlQY85.png

Did they really ruin their friendship? The only thing along those lines that I can recall is them asking Andrew Robinson to play Garak less gay, which is unfortunate, but they still had a pretty awesome friendship as far as I can remember.

yeah it's more like it went "Whoops this is too gay, they are just good friends okay Andrew?"

And it barely mattered BECAUSE WE COULD STILL SEE HE WANTED THAT DOCTOR DICK MMMMM-MMMMM

They really stopped regularly interacting after the holosuite episode where Julian shoots Garak in the shoulder to stop him from killing everyone. There's a really awkward goodbye on Cardassia, where they barely make eye contact. But beyond that..

They did-- the writers eventually started really limiting their scenes together and doing more with Julian and O'Brien (which... only made people 'ship that too, honestly, with Julian insisting that Miles preferred spending time with him to spending time with Keiko. Really bad way to write characters as Totally Hetero)

But yeah, they toned everything down and avoided giving them as much interaction after a certain point.

Ahaha omg are you serious? If they wanted to go that route, then the scene where Bashir and O'Brian are stuck in Section 31 guy's head and awkwardly discussing their feelings for each other was the wrong way to go about it.

This scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WpsaJldNYU

Yep. Totally straight. Not.

IA partly, but how is that "Not Hetero" though? I personally never really got any slashy vibes from Bashir and O'Brien -- to me they really seemed like just inseparable super-close best friends. It's not an impossibility to enjoy being with your friend as much as with your wife. (people keep arbitrarily telling me that for some reason you are supposed to love your wife *more* than you love anyone else, but I guess that's something that's never made sense to me and feels vaguely immature. If you love your wife thiiiiiis much, what's the big deal if you love someone else thiiiiiis much too as long as you love them in a different capacity?)

I just think the rationale of that ship is totally different from Bashir/Garak. Bashir/O'Brien is more "aww, they're so cute together, it would be so much fun if they were gay" while Bashir/Garak is "wow, they are actually gay." The *smouldering* and *longing* and slow-burn flirtation/seduction that Garak and Bashir had going on really *was* a candidate for Not Hetero because it was literally almost explicitly full of sexual desire, and intentionally so to boot, not just As Close As A Married Couple, which has nothing to do with sexuality and therefore isn't necessarily Not Hetero.

(no subject)

annethecatdetective - 2014-09-12 03:16 (UTC) - Expand

That was SO AWKWARD.

Don't remind me. Ziyal was boring as hell and nowhere near as entertaining as the conversations with Bashir.

That upsets me twice as much because I love Garak/Bashir as friends or otherwise, and I think Ziyal had a lot of potential that they wasted.

Ziyal was boring with Garak. She was interesting, IMHO, with Dukat and the way it fleshed out his character in interesting ways. I wish they'd just stuck to that part of the storyline.

She definitely made Dukat more interesting and furthered his and Kira's storyline, but had very little to do by herself. She was a (mediocre) artist, but that was pretty much it.

My feelings exactly-- boring, and a little bit squicky to me with the two of them as a romantic couple, but with her backstory she could have been at the heart of something so much more interesting as well.

Is that really what happened? Andrew J. Robinson's book implied some sort of quiet falling after the holonovel mishap where Bashir had to shoot Garak.. but I never got the feeling that they were intentionally separated. Just that in the storyline they were doing [mainly the Dominion war] they didn't have enough time to sit around chatting over lunch.

Regardless, I think they would have split naturally. Garak and Julian have very very different ideals. Over the backdrop of a war, things could have gotten messy.

I could be wrong, and the show writers really did interfere. After all, their reaction to overt Dukat sympathy from the fanbase was to turn him into a looney tunes supervillain. Of all the Star Treks, DS9 was pretty darn squirrelly about character gray areas.

Yes, the show runners really did interfere at the time. Not that I think "changed my mind" is necessarily bad - Nana Visitor made them not have a Kira/Dukat storyline by flat-out refusing to do it - but yes, it's well-known and Robinson's book is a retcon to explain why they weren't seen together so often. And Bashir had plenty of time to chat to O'Brien or Ezri...

Wow. They wanted Kira/Dukat? I can totally see why she'd refuse to do that.

Is this why they paired Garek with Ziyal? I mean, I loved Ziyal, but she and Garek had no chemistry ~~and she belonged with Kira.~~

I agree that there wasn't a lot of romantic chemistry between Garak and Ziyal, but I was fascinated by the idea of their dynamic because they have one critical thing in common: they're both irreconcilably outsiders from Cardassian society, have no real "home," but have connections to Cardassian culture that they can't ignore. I'm really intrigued by the prospect of the two of them bonding over that.

(no subject)

saturnofthemoon - 2014-09-12 03:13 (UTC) - Expand

I feel like more than a few shows have done this, but I'm disappointed Star Trek was one of them. :/

Oh, Julian, you fandom bicycle, you.

Are you with Jazia or Ezri or Garak or Miles or Miles & Keiko this week? IDK Let me check my fic reading calendar.

:)

I'm totally with you!

Yes, I ship them with a passion. But even for non-shippers it was a real loss. They had such great chemsitry together and their scenes were witty and funny and everything you want from a good character dynamic.

Although I hate that they took this road I'm more sad about the actual ending. They could have saved so much if they'd given them a proper final goodbye. Instead we got this awkward scene in which they barely looked at each other and didn't even touch. Even if cardassians tend to shy away from body contact in public, a hug would have gotten a long way - or a hand on a shoulder for that matter;P

I'm still bitter about that too. Garak/Bashir was my favourite relationship on the show, I loved them both as friends and as a romantic ship. And the writers ruined that relationship for the *worst* possible reason. That left a nasty aftertaste on an otherwise very good show.

So with you, anon.

Urg, there could be a book on how Trek has betrayed LGBT fans over the years and jumped through hoops to do anything other than seem a bit gay. :/ I think Garak and Bashir's friendship just about survived, but there were other things, like the Ziyal storyline, that really didn't work out so well.

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