Loves and stratagems

stardustashesart:

Changed the sketch color and some other stuff. Nonsense like this is keeping me happy these days!

(via the-last-dillpickle)

conceptadecency:

:

Any fics out there to Garak being addicted to something more physical? Like with needles or something unsavory? Modern AU or such.

What would Cardassian drugs be like?

He probably has something they give him like in a vial so when the time comes he drinks it before a suicide or high risk of capture mission and feels nothing. But it is really addictive and most Obsidian Order Operatives prefer not to touch the shit. Garak used to be that proud but the wxile wore him down and he did, but over time it loses its effect and he has to find either new drugs or new ways of ingesting it directly.

Pretty sure I’ve read something like that but no authors or titles or anything more specific comes to mind. Throwing it out there to see if anyone else knows of any such fics.

The modern all-human AU Deep Dish Nine has Garak being addicted to opioids, although I can’t remember which specific fic it is in. 

As for non-AUs: I can imagine him misusing triptacederine, the sedative he tries to take in The Wire (in what is either a parasuicide or a suicide attempt). Also, I have a HC that before making the gadget that turned on the cerebral implant, he went through a period of activating it by causing enough pain to make it kick in by some form of self-harm. While the actually addicting substance is the same as we see in the Wire, it is definitely more gruesome. (I have considered writing something based on this - maybe I should do that). 

conceptadecency:

damnhardwork:

So I watched Empok Nor this evening, and perhaps this is just the sleep deprivation talking, but I do wonder exactly how much of the animosity and needling we see at the beginning is because Garak is jealous of O'Brien’s friendship with Bashir.

This entire scene whilst they are on the way to Empok Nor could easily read that way:

GARAK: I see. So when you and Doctor Bashir go into the holosuites for hours at a time you’re just repairing them?

O'BRIEN: What’s your point, Garak?

GARAK: I’m just curious. Why do you and Doctor Bashir spend hours in the holosuites dressed as fighter pilots, reliving ancient battles?

O'BRIEN: We do it for fun. It’s a game.

GARAK: So is Kotra. And I’d love nothing more than to play against a man like you.

Bringing up Dr Bashir unprompted whilst trying to push O'Brien into a game of Kotra - a game of strategy and confrontation - does rather seem to suggest that there may be more to this than meets the eye. At least on Garak’s part.

Maybe.

Oh definitely. He’s so jealous. 

Definitely jealous. 

major-space-lesbian:

okay so i have not read the post-canon books at all—i have only read about them in memory beta. also i am steeped in fanon, obviously. so i could be totally off base here.

nevertheless… it seems pretty shady to me that it’s never made explicit that garak and parmak are together??? given everything about garak, and the way that their relationship is portrayed in the book (sounds pretty much like “heterosexual life partners” except at least one of them is obviously not heterosexual), it really doesn’t seem like there is any other reasonable way to interpret that relationship. so why the fuck wouldn’t they just explicitly say that they are married, in the year of our lord 2014???

I am pretty sure the reason is that Cardassia has had intensely homophobic laws, possibly still has them. In Enigma Tales, one character mentions police shooting people because of walking hand in hand with the wrong person. So while the federation people they interact with (and by extension us the readers) see it as obvious that Garak and Parmak are a couple, they cannot be obviously out to the Cardassian public. Furthermore, the way that same-gender-loving people conceptualise and express their relationships if they live in a society which has a long history of persecution, legal and otherwise, is going to be different than those who have not encountered homophobia in those forms. 

I recommend the fic The Castellan’s Shadow that discusses the question of Garak and Parmak’s relationship in the public eye (through the lens of Jake Sisko no less).