Tag Archives: Zines

Mar 28 2012

DS9 Stories/News: DS9 Slash Couples (6) – Garak & Bashir

Some Garak-Centric Fan Fic

Doctor Julian Bashir is one of the main characters in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, played by Alexander Siddig. He is Deep Space Nine’s Chief Medical Officer.

http://fanlore.org/wiki/Bashir

In Canon

Bashir starts out as a TNG-like character: young, brilliant, oversexed & over-enthusiastic, far more naive and idealistic than most of the rest of DS9′s staff. He even has a teddy bear, called Kukalaka. Later, he is revealed to have been genetically engineered as a child, with the retcon that his naivete in earlier outings was just a facade.

Aside from Kukalaka, his closest associates on the station are the polar opposites, Miles O’Brien & Elim Garak — the one “plain and simple”, the other (despite his protestations) anything but. Julian has a classic buddies relationship with the married Miles, featuring beer, darts and frequent trips down the holosuites to refight the Battle of the Alamo. On the other hand, you don’t need slash goggles to see that Garak flirts with him constantly. He also has an enduring friendship with Jadzia Dax, which features unrequited love or lust on his side. In the final season he gets to hook up with Ezri Dax, in a move which left many fans going ewww.

ewww

ewww

Fan Perspectives

Blossom Morphine writes: The writers created him to be an imperfect character, someone who would grow throughout his time on the station instead of starting out being the perfect officer. Bashir was brilliant, beautiful, kind, and wanted adventure. He fancied himself someone capable of handling any situation, and was very talented in many areas, both physically and mentally, but socially inept. He was by no means a pure character, but he was still rather naive, especially for being part of a military organization, not to mention a little arrogant.

In Fandom

Bashir is one of the most popular characters with fanwriters. Nostalgia writes that he’s easily … the most-written character by far.[4] According to her, he’s also commonly held to be Trek’s only bisexual character,[4] and he certainly lives up to that reputation in fanfiction. In slash, he’s most frequently paired with Garak; Garak/Bashir is by far the most common slash pairing in the DS9 fandom and is still being written.

There’s also a large following for the buddies coupling of Bashir/O’Brien (aka BOBslash), which also includes threesomes and love triangles featuring Miles’ wife, Keiko and/or Garak. BOBslash generally tends to lie on the vignette end of the spectrum, while G/B inspires anything from drabbles to novels.

Back cover of Salutatorian #1, Julian Bashir & Garak by Janet D'Airo

Back cover of Salutatorian #1, Julian Bashir & Garak by Janet D'Airo

In the fandom’s heyday, there was also an almost equally prominent strand of het which pairs him with Jadzia (usually referred to as Julian/Jadzia to distinguish it from the pairing with Ezri Dax).

Bashir/Ezri did not find favour among fanwriters, and tends to appear only to be repudiated in favour of the author’s favourite brand of slash. Ezri gets to die heroically a fair bit as well.

Example Fanworks

Slash

Garak and Bashir by *jossujb

Garak and Bashir by *jossujb

Fanzines

Bashir-focused anthology zines include:

Garak and Bashir by *jossujb

Garak and Bashir by *jossujb

Nonfiction

Newsletters focusing on Alexander Siddig, the actor who portrayed Bashir:

Archives

Garak and Bashir

Garak and Bashir

Especially the Lies: Garak/Bashir (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine)