#.we know what we are but know not what we may be ; ba.shir

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Languages

Instead of being good with numbers, I headcanon that Julian is instead very adept at learning languages.

While there are certain alien languages Julian can’t learn, he picks up on the languages he applies himself to relatively fast. Julian was taught Arabic by his mother from a very young age, reinforced by the year his family spent living in Juba with his uncle (if the UT goes off, Julian defaults to Arabic). In addition, throughout the years, he picked up other languages, including the sign equivalent of Federation Standard, Russian, and Spanish.

Within the first year on DS9, he’s begun to pick up Bajoran and Cardassian (by about year 3, he's fluent). He's working on Ferengi, which he continues to learn from Quark and Rom, and eventually Nog (though his dialect in that regard is eclectic given the variety of teachers). While he picked up some Klingon from Martok in 371, and has expanded on it since then, he’s not well-versed in it (he would like to be eventually).

If he can, Julian will swap to someone else’s preferred language to help them feel more at ease (and to keep up constant practice). This is especially true with patients. However, if it's a language he's not completely fluent in, he can quickly find himself saying something odd on accident.

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What is a habit your muse has, which they consider perfectly normal, but others think is weird? (for Julian)

- headcanons || accepting -

Julian spent literal decades hiding what he was from everyone, so there are certain things he does out of habit and can't really kick. He always always slows down how quick he can do something, and sometimes if he does something with those reflexes, he always looks a little panicked that you saw him do it. Sometimes you get his weird little fake laugh if he thinks he's been "caught", even after he's been outed.

[dimensionalspades]

What are some headcanons that you have and want to share more, but it's difficult because they rarely come up in threads?

- anon questions || accepting -

That's a fun one, I'll toss out one for each!

Arlynn has a stuffed dragon one of her brothers got her when she was young and hides it from literally everyone.

Aziraphale can be directly linked to how much fatter the cats around Whickber Street have gotten through the years. A lot of his time is spent caring for them.

Daud's identity is near impossible to find in the real world, there are very small echoes in the Void that you can use to trace back to his mother, and that's the only way to find his real name. He does actually want to know it but never vocalizes that.

Gurney can fall asleep standing and sometimes dozes like that if he gets too bored in meetings he's not needed in.

Julian is always speaking Arabic, translated by the UT. Any time it malfunctions, he constantly forgets, given that the UT is so constant/unobtrusive.

Leon's apartment is so rarely used that while he's had the same place for like 10+ years, there are still at least 3 moving boxes of stuff he never opens/just exist to collect dust at this point. He also has like 0 decorations and uses the place to sleep and watch Netflix mostly.

Pasiphos has fully driven several people to madness with their tech, and because of their wealth/status, they've essentially disappeared said people into a ward in the Scandinavian mountains.

Soldier is a huge musical buff and as it's his favorite, he has the entirety of Pirates of Penzance memorized. His second favorite and most watched movie is "Singin' in the Rain"

Sova has bitten someone's finger off when they made the mistake of trying to steal his eye while he was still conscious. He will bite again.

Vittorio is fluent in Latin. In his postfog verse, he uses this fact to get himself a job, and due to the magic sealed inside him/his tattoos, he has a drastically increased lifespan.

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Violin

After having Julian augmented, Richard and Amsha pushed him into everything they could. Amsha pushed for the arts, Richard pushed for maths and science. What Julian ended up with was no time for himself, endless tutoring, and Richard growing frustrated when it was discovered Julian's dyscalculia hadn't been erased by the therapies.

Aside from Julian's outbursts and breakdowns, he would later drop many of those activities save for a few: the languages he'd begun to learn, his growing passion for medicine, and the violin.

Initially, Amsha had tried to steer him towards other instruments, but Julian resisted. It wasn't until they tried the violin that Julian actually invested his interest and time willingly into it. Amsha was no longer dragging her child to practices, he was excitedly running towards them.

However, Richard still attempted to capitalize on this, asking Julian to play for his well-connected friends. When he was younger, he would do so to earn Richard's praise, leading to him being tutored by a master violinist for a few years. However, as Julian realized how shallow Richard's affection was for him, he began to sabotage his father, playing poorly on on purpose to humiliate him. As Julian began to assert himself more and more, he would outright refuse, sparking an argument with Richard as soon as they were alone. He despised the feeling of being his father's marionette, rarely receiving affection from Richard but being brought out to show off.

As a consequence of this, Julian rarely plays the violin for others, preferring to keep it to himself. That being said, he rarely has the time for it, and as such has fallen out of practice. With time and effort, he could get back to a more proficient level, but as it stands, he's more focused elsewhere.

[dimensionalspades]

💭 + Julian's view of his parents!

- headcanons || accepting -

Oh we just want an essay huh

By the time 'Doctor Bashir, I Presume' rolls around, Julian's feelings are negative. He still loves his parents, very deep down, but he's been no contact with them for over a decade and doesn't want to change that. Throughout the episode, his feelings grow more acidic because he realizes just how self-absorbed they are and it fully sets in that he was never his own person to them, just a "legacy".

But there was a time when he adored them. When he was a child and couldn't grasp what'd happened to him, he trusted his parents like all kids do. For quite a few years, Julian tried to be the perfect son to appease his father. But as time went on, the cracks started to show. Julian often couldn't process the overload of enhanced sensory information, leading to meltdowns and, occasionally, Julian shutting down entirely. His parents would grow increasingly controlling of Julian, forcing him to take up classes and tutors in an effort to shove every bit of knowledge and accomplishment onto him. They refused to seek therapy for Julian, fearing that someone would figure out what they'd done, and even went so far as to move on occasion if Richard felt even the smallest hint they'd be exposed. Julian tried to ignore his problems with very limited success, and instead buried himself in hyperfixations, with his parents intervening in interests they deemed not worth his time.

This built a deep-seated resentment that quickly turned into hatred, particularly for Richard, who showed Julian time and time again how shallow his love was. He only ever saw Julian as an extension of himself and punished him when he stepped outside of that role. Richard's "need" to have the perfect son completely demolished Julian's sense of self, and his refusal to help Julian manage the pitfalls that came with being enhanced and autistic left lifelong scars on Julian and is why he's so meticulous about masking.

While Julian knew how selfish his parents truly were, he still loved them when he discovered that he'd been augmented. The discovery shattered him completely, and if asked, he probably can't remember the full confrontation with his parents due to stress. Everything fell into place, and in an instant he saw what his father for what he was; a malignant narcissist who hated his son.

Amsha, however, is a more complicated case to Julian. In his youth, when he was struggling with sensory overload or just in general, he would run to Amsha. Often, when Richard grew angry with Julian or they got into an argument, Amsha would comfort him while reinforcing Richard's point of view. She enabled Richard's abuse, and many times grew just as frustrated with Julian's struggle to manage his emotions and socialize "properly". It actually wasn't until DBIP that Julian saw just how much Amsha agreed with and sympathized with Richard. While the reveal of what they'd done showed him that, her demand for Julian to understand their point of view of practicing eugenics on their son hammered home that Amsha wasn't a better parent than Richard, she was just better at manipulating.

Post canon when Richard is out of jail, they attempt to get into contact with Julian again, but Julian refuses, and goes so far as to leave the station if they ever try to visit ds9.

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What’s the lie your character says most often? For Julian!

- meta || accepting -

1. What’s the lie your character says most often?

"Yes, I slept well." Especially later into and after the series, Julian's relationship with sleep is absolutely shattered. Aside from sleep issues coming from the adhd/autism combo, he was kidnapped twice while he was asleep, one ending in his being a POW and the other in Sloan psychologically fucking with him for a few days. While those aren't the greatest factors, they do affect his sleep. Julian is very fond of sleeping next to people for a sense of safety, and this only increases after 371. Add in the rest of the trauma from DS9 and Julian rarely sleeps very well.

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1, 9 and 12 for both Julian and Gurney :)

- character building || accepting -

1. What’s the lie your character says most often? 9. Do they give tough love or gentle love most often? Which do they prefer to receive? 12. What’s something that makes them laugh every single time? Be specific!

1. Like all people from Star Trek, Julian does do the cardinal sin of "I'm fine" a lot. Julian's particular "I'm fine" comes from Richard (shocker). Richard tried to close down Julian's emotions a lot. When he was sad, when he was angry, when he was even too excited. Richard had a picture of the model family and that included a child who had no needs and was a perfect son. By the time he could get away from Richard and Amsha, those behaviors were already ingrained in his mind. His "I'm fine" gets a lot of mileage, and as the show goes in, I hc Julian gets somewhat better at being honest (especially post 371).

9. Julian is a gentle love kind of person all the way through. The only time he raises his voice is if that's the only way he can get through to someone (i.e. when Kira was overworked and trying to leave, Julian knew there was like 1 way to get her to pay attention to him. Notice how he immediately swapped back to a professional but gentler tone). And you guessed it, it's Richard's fault. Richard was 100% tough love all the time. He very rarely showed affection, and while Amsha did, she was still sparing with it and often would reinforce Richard's ideals when giving that gentleness. If you try tough love on Julian, you'll either have Julian forcing you to swap out how you talk to him or you'll end up with a very, very unfriendly doctor.

12. Science/physics puns. Julian will never get tired of them, tell him puns all day.

1. It's not that Gurney is perpetually honest, it's that he's perpetually honest to certain people. Generally those aligned with the Atreides will get very few lies from him. If you align anywhere outside of that he'll tell you that Arrakis has purple skies and that sand is harvested from deep oceans for no actual reason than he finds it funny.

9. Tough love. Gurney is embodied by reality. While he knows gentle love has its place, he's not very versed in it. Kind, yes, and gentle, yes, but when it comes to things like training, rating something, Gurney will tell you the truth or a lie so egregious you know he's bullshitting you. He has a poet's soul but he doesn't see a lot of reason to sugar coat. Be ready for the real world and all that. As for which he likes to receive it's a little more complicated. In theory, he likes gentle love, but accepting that can require a bit of vulnerability and that can be a little tough for him. He'll always accept tough love because he likes the honesty that usually comes with it.

12. Oddly, funny reviews of his music. I'm not talking like taking the piss out of his music, he feels deeply about it but he's hard to offend ("acquire some taste" kind of vibes). It's more that if he shows you a piece he's been working on and you've got something funny to say, go for it, 9 times out of 10 he'll chuckle.

[dimensionalspades]

Health

Julian's immune system is an incredibly efficient machine. Most illnesses, especially of the human variety, will struggle to infect him. He's resistant to alien illnesses, and still needs vaccines, but he is very rarely sick.

This can, however, backfire in spectacular fashion. Sometimes, when something infects him, his system is so quick and aggressive that it'll accidentally turn on itself, eradicating the disease but triggering an autoimmune response. This is usually followed up by Julian quarantining and using immunosuppressants to stop his system from devouring itself. This has thus far only happened twice; once when he was young (and was taken back to Adigeon Prime by Richard for treatment), and once on DS9, wherein he was off duty for a week as he recovered.

This is a completely unfixable issue for augments, though Julian and the Jack Pack have put their heads together to try to come up with a more effective immunosuppressant to make things more manageable. Though they haven't been successful so far, Julian likes using the time to spend with them, and they've been able to come up with a more effective immunosuppressant for non-augmented humanoids.

[dimensionalspades]

Languages

Instead of being good with numbers, I headcanon that being someone who desires socialization in all forms, Julian is instead very adept at learning languages.

While there are certain alien languages Julian can’t learn, he picks up on the languages he applies himself to relatively fast. Julian was taught Arabic by his mother from a very young age, reinforced by the year his family spent living in Juba with his uncle (if the UT goes off, Julian defaults to Arabic). In addition, throughout the years, he picked up other Earth languages, including the sign equivalent of Federation Standard, Russian, and Spanish.

Within the first year on DS9, he’s begun to pick up Bajoran and Cardassian (by about year 3, he's fluent). He's working on Ferengi, which he continues to learn from Quark and Rom, and eventually Nog (though his dialect in that regard is eclectic given the variety of teachers). While he picked up some Klingon from Martok in 371, and has expanded on it since then, he’s not well-versed in it (he would like to be eventually).

If he can, Julian will swap to someone else’s preferred language to help them feel more at ease (and to keep up constant practice). This is especially true with patients. His default language remains Arabic, and should the UT turn off, that is what Julian speaks.

[dimensionalspades]

TAG DROP: Julian Bashir