He’s exceptionally unpleasant.  The last time we were in the same place, he made racist remarks to describe my dress?  So yeah, he’s a real fucking winner.

(Haha, thanks, I think he’s wrong too, he’s just always giving me these really garbage comments and I’m super annoyed.)

I’m glad to hear you’re into DD9 the way it is!    I’m done catering to ‘normal’ conceptions of identity and sexuality. They have more than enough advocates, and I think to the detriment of the rest of us.   I used to read a lot more fanfiction ten or fifteen years ago than I do now, and everything was 'WOW I GUESS I LIKE THE SAME SEX NOW, LET’S JUMP INTO BED’.   I was so frightened by that idea, but I saw it Everywhere, so I thought it was normal and I was a little scared that that would be expected of me no matter who I fell for.   I had a really analytic and slow approach when I first liked people who were not male (among other stuff) because it meant re-thinking who I was and I don’t want to contribute to anyone else feeling that it’s not okay to sit and consider themselves and be unsure when they try things.  

One date doesn’t mean Julian is instantly bisexual and even if it did, it’s up to him to decide how much he’s comfortable with.  He’s not adverse to sex (as evidenced by Leeta), this is just suddenly an intimidating new avenue because he’s spent his 26 years of life perfectly happy to think his identity as a heterosexual man was established.  Now he might be finding otherwise, and that’s kind of alarming.  

And perhaps I’m being overly optimistic that I think there might be people like DD9 Elim who are willing to wait for people like DD9 Julian to figure their shit out.  (This theme comes up in my SWAN/ISH stuff, even.  I didn’t realize how big a thing this was for me until I took a look at the things I was making in a larger comparative context.  So this is maybe more like my own now-obvious hope that someone will tolerate waiting for me to be comfortable rather than anything about Julian or Johnny.  And fuck, shit like this is why writing terrifies me in general.  I am always so scared someone will find something out about me from the words I put together.  I feel so much safer, and simultaneously like I’m expressing myself better, when I paint.  But I have some stories that have to get out, so I sort of brave the terror anyway.)

 I’m in a nice situation in that I’m developing an AU instead of working with totally established people, so I can alter things to be more friendly while still being true to the original characters as much as I can.  I want there still to be Julian and Garak in there, or else it’s not worth making an AU instead of original fiction, but I like having the freedom to remove all the skeevy stuff Julian did in earlier seasons of the show, and to then give him the confidence of pursuing what he wants and enjoying it after he’s had the time to actually discover what he wants in the first place.

/long-winded unnecessarily personal respone

I’m really not a drabble person, unfortunately.  I’ve always sort of found it frustrating to read drabbles, and even if I thought writing them wouldn’t be just as frustrating, I’m too long winded to ever write one, haha.  I’m planning to do shorter little … scene-lets? Rather than the long form stuff I’ve been doing, but nothing so tiny as a drabble.  

I made a bigish DD9 thing for late December holiday shenanigans last year, and I don’t know what I’ll do this year, but I’ll probably do something little with them, at least!

I’m so glad you’re so interested, thank you!

Well, to be honest, I never even made it to the point where I got the opportunity to be first-handedly upset about ‘Gay people only exist in the evil timeline’ with Leeta and Ezri or something, I guess?  Do not get me wrong, I am pissed about that, but I’ve literally never seen it.

Initially, the thing that really did it for me was just that I was very attached to the DS9 characters.  I used the show to deal with a thing that was really big and painful and important, and after seeing the sort of forced-feeling 'EDGY, VIOLENT, DIFFERENT, HORRIBLE’ vibe of the mirror verse, I was really upset.  The characters were important and beloved to me the way they were and seeing the way they were in the mirror verse was legitimately distressing.   

I also really was invested in the story of the 'real’ versions of the characters, and didn’t really have a reason to care about these versions that seemed to made up just to be sort of aggressively violent?  It felt like I was being ripped off every time it was a mirror episode. And, you know, again, upset because of people who were dear to me suddenly being horrible. 

I also feel like I must be one of the only people alive who is not delighted at the idea of sleeping with myself, or of Kira sleeping with herself??  I don’t understand the idea of being attracted to yourself, so the heavy overtones of that plus the 'Homosexuality makes this world EDGY and EXTREME’ overtones put me off.

From what I hear, I’m not missing much, as the character I love most and find most compelling (Garak) is not a layered as fascinating in that world.  Evidently, Andy didn’t even really like playing him because of that, so I’m like, 'eh, whatever.’

I may watch all the mirror episodes someday when I can separate them from the people I love and just follow whatever narrative might be there, but I doubt it!