#and yknow its also quodo

[helisol]

answering the people’s prayers

quark is my poor little meow meow and here is why

me and a friend of mine came to the conclusion that the writers of ds9 accidentally put a seven seasons long tragic character arc into their show without realising and I need to share our findings with you. 

*full disclosure the writers for sure didn’t know what they were making but the result is still the same. tragedy.

now you may ask, is calling quark a tragic figure of epic proportions hyperbole? maybe! but also it really isn’t for two reasons:

first is that quark can’t win. throughout the entirety of ds9 he’s in a situation where he just constantly draws the short straw and loses things (and people) and he can’t make it better. those moments in the show probably don’t make the average viewer sad, like in a tragedy, but I’m hoping to unlock some elusive shrimp-color emotions in you with this rant.

anyway second there’s the fact that quark is,,, alone. not in the physical sense. mans literally runs a bar and has tons of friends Co-Inhabitants Of Deep Space Nine I mean nobody understands who and what he is with one notable exception and he can’t tell anyone either because that would defeat the purpose. what purpose is that? well it's complicated but let’s start with that.

in my quodo rant- which you dont have to read but like it might give you more insight on my personal brand of brainrot- I made the same observation that most people make when they look at quark which is “there’s something wrong with this rat bastard”

now many people say that and they mean “this small orange man is a douche and I don’t like him” and like okay you’re not looking at the big picture though

when I say “there’s something wrong with him” I mean this dude is literally repressing his personality and nature so hard that he’s turned it into a performance. into some weird art form. masking so much he made it impossible for anyone to really know his true self. he’s trying to be an ideal version of himself that does not and can not exist.

to quote myself- his own wiki page literally calls him “a compassionate and generous man by ferengi standards” which pretty much translates to “not really a good ferengi” quark is that, a people-person and he loves his friends but he pretends that he is Not any of those things because it's not what a ferengi should be.

and think about it. who needs to conform but the people who are not the thing they’re trying to conform to? who has to try really hard to be something except for people who are not that thing? quark is not a good ferengi but he feels the need to try so very hard to be one. 

he tries to conform to every little ideal and rule of acquisition that he grew up with even though 9 out of 10 times he fails. and still he tries to be the ferengi he is not. for what?

it’s a piss poor attempt of trying to hide who he is. he’s a ferengi who doesn’t know how-to-ferengi, but unlike the rest of his family, he hates that about himself.

his mother, brother and nephew all take a certain kind of pride in being #NotLikeOtherFerengi because they’ve found acceptance and love and support. ever notice how quark has pretty much none of those things?

rom has his engineering, a brilliant son, his mother’s love and a wife who adores him- and he ends up becoming the grand fuckin nagus!

what does quark have? well he doesn’t get his mother’s full support, his brother and the general public regard him as a ’loveable asshole’ at best, and even his actual friends don’t really think twice when talking shit about him.

quark, fundamentally, is the same as his family. he does not and can not be a good ferengi because it’s not in his nature. they’re simply built different. but unlike his family he wasn’t born with the understanding that that’s okay. 

he doesn’t think it’s okay to be different because when deviancy comes to light bad things happen to him. it started from when he got made fun of because of his mothers liberal attitude and it continued when rom got ripped off in the marriage contract situation because he fell in love (which Normal Ferengi don’t do) and brought further ridicule over their family.

even though it’s not necessarily true as demonstrated by his family’s success story quark believes that deviancy gets punished, not rewarded.

that’s the first tragic thing- he IS a deviant. he DOES care about his family and his friends and he wants to be loved and to have something to be proud of. profit is secondary to him. he just can’t admit it, ever.

it’s not that hard to piece together that quark genuinely doesn’t like himself. Ferengi Love Songs really highlights that with him becoming depressed after a big part of what helped him keep up appearances as ‘a good ferengi’, his commerce license, is taken away from him. 

everything he does in that episode is in service of a) getting that commerce license back and more importantly b) BEING COMFORTED. his life sucks at the moment! he would really like some support! 

he wants someone to hold his face and say “you know, it’s okay that your license is gone. you don’t need it.” because maybe if someone did that he could drop the act and stop trying so hard to be a good ferengi.

but what does he get? what does he have at the end of the episode? a minor conflict with his mother was resolved, but he has to keep up his performance. the charade never ends for him!

he can’t admit to anyone that he’s aware he’s different. he’s waiting for them to figure him out. and nobody ever does. because nobody cares for quark enough to really see him and go “I know what you’re doing, you can stop now”

...

except! for! odo!

this is not quodo rant 2.0 so I’m gonna keep this brief but odo does understand him. the problem is just that odo ALSO can’t admit that he’s not what he makes himself out to be. 

he sees what quark is doing but instead of saying “you can stop pretending now. we can both stop.” he uses quark as a way to keep up his own act.

in my mind there’s no talking about Quark without Odo since they’re both doing this performance of ideal selves together, but I’ll get back to that later.

so we can all agree that quark is in a very bad situation when it comes to how he feels about himself and the world around him. my friend described it as a reverse-corruption arc (or a straight up corruption arc from the ferengi perspective) in which quark, over the years, becomes more and more influenced by the hoo-mans. 

in and of itself this is a great arc, since he’s turning into a more moral person and it makes him an interesting character but what people may not consider is that it is AGONISING TO HIM.

he HATES his own character arc and he is being dragged through it kicking and screaming internally. quark literally says so in Ferengi Love Songs. I hear his delivery of “I’ve fought against it, I really have.” and I go ape shitt because that’s really just it huh. quark is fighting every step of the way to not show his real natural self to the world out of fear of getting hurt.

and the real tragedy is that nobody on the station notices or understands why he’s struggling so hard. except for one guy who is also his fucked up ‘partner in the struggle to hide ourselves’ and who he can’t talk to about his feelings because if he did it would be admitting that they’re friends and not just a cop and a criminal.

his family just says “well, why are you struggling, we’re also not good ferengi and we’re Fine” and his friends say “well, it would be good, actually, if you stopped acting like a ferengi”

and he is all. alone. with this struggle.

that’s tragedy baby.

but what is also tragedy is how this plays out in the actual show.

most of what I’ve said is like. subtext mixed with some visions I got from an angry god. but let’s discuss the fact that if you accept quark’s internal struggle as tragic his whole story becomes a tragedy.

I mentioned at the start that ‘Quark can’t win’- what that means is just that, like in any good tragedy, no matter what actions quark takes he ends up having to deal with negative consequences.

Jadzia, the only person who openly declared herself as his friend ignoring the weird romantic shit because fuck that and Odo who I WILL straight up call his love interest because we all hate rick berman here both just leave in some abstract sense.

jadzia ‘coming back’ as ezri means she’s not entirely dead, but she isn’t really as interested in him now. that hurts. their whole relationship is different and he couldn’t prevent it.

and with odo he did try to prevent it, I think. see my quodo rant where I go on about this in more detail but in the ds9 finale quark essentially goes “if you’re going to leave me, you better give me a real goodbye” in the hopes that maybe odo would either give him closure or just not go. but he does. he loses odo as well.

quark, the guy who said "I've made a career out of knowing when to leave" in the FIRST EPISODE watches as the most important people in his life just go away.

he’s been on ds9 for well over 20 years and he will stay for forever while everyone around him leaves.

am I the only one who thinks about this and just wants to punch a hole in the wall to feel manly again? like HELLO???

and this isn’t even mentioning all the shit he has to cope with in terms of material loss. you may think that losing people would be more important but remember this man has a masters degree in Pretending To Be A Ferengi because it's the only thing that he can hide behind.

quark spent his whole life acting like the perfect ferengi to fit into a society that would reject his true nature.

the fact that he has to try so hard still makes the society reject and punish him and it makes him miserable.

and if that wasn’t enough. when all the wars and all the great losses are over. the society starts to change because it’s now run by his brother.

everything quark used to define himself and tried to be a part of just starts to vanish in front of his eyes and he has to realise that, in the end, he denied himself all these years for NO REASON.

in the future, nobody will care if he fits the old ferengi ideals. in the future, the perfect ferengi is going to be the opposite of what quark pretended to be all this time. 

he can’t fucking win. no matter what he does fate or the universe or the wormhole aliens or his own mother will change the status quo to make quark unable to fit in.

do you see? do you see why he’s my poor little meow meow? it’s because this is a sad little man and whenever he tries to do what he thinks is right the world says ‘no actually we’ll be taking something you use to comfort yourself with you sad little man’

and the worst offender. I swear I’m not gonna talk about quodo for too long. is what the writers did with odo and him.

the writers probably did not think of quark as a tragic figure the way I do. how do I know? 

if the writers were aware that they were creating a tragic figure with an amazingly rich character arc and an insanely complex internal struggle… they would not have made it Quark. they would have used a generically hot alien. because honestly people who don’t have brainworm are not gonna appreciate this shit if the character they’re looking at is an orange capitalist gremlin with giant ears. I don’t blame them. but it is what it is.

so the writers wrote this incredibly cool thing on accident and also stuck the landing. 

because odo leaving… fucking hurts. 

even if you don’t view them as romantic which is fair you Have to see that quark and odos relationship is special. they’ve been doing this dance for decades at this point, and at the very end odo turns away from quark without a word.

in the moment where quark opens himself up just enough to allow odo to do the same he goes “welp, I’ll be on the runabout, see you never again” and like Yeah obviously it's because odo is still a repressed nerd who can't talk about his feelings but that doesn’t change the fact that this is perhaps the worst thing that could happen to quark.

like, it’s the first and only and last time he does it. even in The Ascent they don’t actually verbally confront the fact that their relationship is far more friendship-like than it is antagonistic. and in the finale there’s this opportunity where he takes action and goes after odo his best friend his enemy because he wants to have something before he too goes away forever-

and the writers said “but it doesn’t happen. he doesn’t get to have it.”

in summary I am rattling the bars of my cage. quark is so hot.

[helisol]

dude im not sure you will get it after reading this either, but you Can read it now

okay so first of all do not expect me to adhere to rules of grammar or Proper capitalisation, I am writing from the heart

so it’s been said before by other people but if Quark and Odo didnt look like the aliens that they are but instead like two regular prettybois the fandom would do cartwheels over their dynamic and Not call them a crack ship. because really, their dynamic fucking SLAPS and I’m here to tell you Why.

their surface-level dynamic is “Respected and Talented Security Chief and Cunning Immoral Businessman who are in Love but pretend not to be” and that's just an off-brand version of enemies to lovers! which is excellent and for some people that’s all you really need to get invested in a ship.

but some people look at it and go “Hm, no, that’s not enough. I mean, they work as friends but it doesn’t really have to be romantic.” and to that I say you are Absolutely Valid, not everything has to be romantic.

it just so happens that these two fuckers have one of the most compelling romance stories ever, and it’d be a shame not to explore it.

so before I dive into the internalised homophobia and repression, I’d like to take a moment to talk about Quark as a character.

because if you have brainworms like me you can kind of see that its an honest to god greek tragedy.

this guy comes from a race of people where being kind, ethical and fair is considered Abnormal and Horrifying. and I’m not gonna call Quark out of all people kind, ethical or fair but,,, 

you ever notice how he’s A Much Better Person Than Pretty Much All Other Ferengi?

dont get me wrong, Quark is still a bastard, but every once in a while his True Character shines through. and I say True Character because guys,,, the way he behaves around other people is an Act. he’s pretending to be something he’s not.

he has to try so hard to be a good ferengi it’s honestly painful to watch at times. because he is a SHIT ferengi! 

he loves his friends- because that's what the ds9 crew are. they’re his friends! and it makes him miserable because that's not! normal! for a ferengi!

let’s compare Quark and Rom for a second. 

Quark reeks of self loathing because a lot of the time he just Doesn’t act like a ferengi is supposed to, and this drives a lot of conflict in the show. he knows how a ferengi should act, it’s just that he can’t!! fucking!! do it!! but he still tries and tries to fit into that mold, which straight up ruins his life on multiple occasions.

Rom is also not a Model Ferengi, but he lives without hating himself. and it’s mostly because he doesn’t care about how a ferengi Should act, he’s loved and cared for even when everybody knows that he’s a shit ferengi! because his non-ferengi-ness works to his benefit. it encourages and highlights his abilities as an engineer. the success and love he finds make it easy for him to be content with his true self. Unlike Quark, who doesn’t get unconditional love from anyone.

its so!! tragic!! because you can see what Quark is really like!! his true self!! he’s a nice guy who cares for people!

its right there all the time and it's so blatantly obvious. especially in episodes like “Body Parts”, “Bar Association”, “The Way Of The Warrior” and “Ferengi Love Songs”

his own wiki page literally calls him “a compassionate and generous man by ferengi standards” which pretty much translates to “not really a good ferengi”.

anyway so Quark is a tragic figure or whatever but we’re actually here for the REPRESSED! HOMOSEXUAL! TENDENCIES! that he and Odo both exhibit.

with characters like garak you don’t really need to have brainrot to pick up on those tendencies, because that was something andrew robinson chose to do, on purpose. 

and to be fair, Quark wasn’t intended to be Any kind of representation, not even by the actor. I’m just pointing out that he Does look and act and talk like a little gayman.

I will admit that he is Painfully Straight in the text of the show, but on a meta level he’s just. a dude who has a serious case of repressing his real personality. and taking it a step further- he also represses his feelings towards another man.

and that man is Odo.

a few things on him:

Odo is literally desperate to be a person. unlike Quark, who at least has the comfort of belonging to a society of people with a set of rules and expectations, Odo has never met anyone or anything like him in all his years of life.

like, we all know Odo basically grew up in a lab, right? 

with people who didn’t know anything about him. who he was so unalike that they literally called him “Nothing”

but he still learned to look and talk and act like them (because if he didn’t he’d feel *pain* which is very fucked up by the way?)

so we know for a fact that Odo wants to be recognised as a person- which is why he tries really hard to conform to the ideals of the society that raised him. instead of exploring his nature as a shape shifter he maintains a humanoid form, picks up a job and creates an entire personality around what he wants to be seen as. but not what he really is.

and that's the thing that causes all the conflict between Quark and Odo. the type of person odo wants to be seen as is the polar opposite of whatever the fuck quark wants to be seen as.

In the same way that Quark acts like a Normal Ferengi, Odo acts like a Normal Security Officer.  and in a cruel twist of fate, the Ferengi happens to be the antithesis of the Security Officer.

If you only look at them as the things they act like, and not the things they are, you might say they’re way too different to like each other, right? 

but,,, if you think about the fact that they’re both putting on this act,,, this performance of idealised versions of themselves,,, you can see that they are The Same. They Are Both Gay Repressed Loser Aliens Who Try To Act Like Things That They Aren’t!

Imagine you’re Odo. 

Imagine that you’re Nothing, because you’re not like anything anyone has ever seen- and because you are Nothing you don’t fall in love with anyone for years and years. since who could love something that isn’t like them at all?

But then one day this Thing shows up in your path and you just hate it. Because it’s not like anything *you* have ever seen. It’s disorderly and looks grotesque and it’s criminal to boot.

It’s all the things you learned would make a “Bad Person” It’s everything you aspire not to be, because if you were any of those things you would BE PUNISHED.

But the trouble is, eventually he’s not an “it” anymore, he’s “Quark” and you see him every day of your miserable little life because you live on the same damn station in space and it’s hard to avoid each other.

He also happens to be one of the only things in your life that are constant. He will never leave because he is stubborn and greedy and you just *hate him so much* that you’re convinced he must be doing all of it to spite you. And yet you also can’t seem to leave him alone.

So Odo Must Hate Quark. everything else is a non sequitur for him. he can’t not hate Quark.

because Quark is, and i’m sincerely sorry to apply christian fucking imagery to this, The Forbidden Fruit.

If he liked quark he’d admit some kind of moral failing. it would be the end of his act. but on the other hand...it might be a good thing, because at least he could have quark.

but Odo can never go through with biting into this apple because the consequences are horrifying to him. he could never have quark because, according to his performance, he would Never like quark to begin with.

and here’s a take for you: Odo's Brand Of Internalised Homophobia Doesn't Stem From Heteronormativity. It Stems From The Fact That He Was Kind Of Assigned Asexual At Birth.

and the show sort of alludes to this, for real! not just subtext! canon! except the writers used the wrong person. 

because instead of Odo having these Forbidden Feelings for Quark he has them for,,, Kira.

but since this is My Quodo Manifesto you’ll understand that i am 100% willing to just toss that part of canon out the airlock.

so Odo does canonically have that mindset of “no one could ever love me”  for decades he repressed any and all feelings of love to avoid getting hurt. in the show he breaks this cycle of repression when he takes a chance and enters a relationship with Kira. yay?

but we all know that aint it chief. and part of the reason why That Ship Ain’t It is the fact that Quark is Right There. and he is simply the more interesting choice for odo.

he and Odo literally share the same problem and have weird intertwined character arcs! they are both dreadfully afraid of not conforming to the ideal versions of themselves, so they reject everything that could challenge their Performance!

on some fucked up level they hate each other *and* themselves individually. and this hatred makes them reject parts of their real identities for the sake of protecting their image. which. yknow. in gay people. is internalised homophobia!

so you can see that they’re both repressing A Lot even if you view them as Friends, but the most important thing in this kind of romantic dynamic is usually,,, when the characters *stop* repressing.

and the thing is. the thing that Kills Me with these two. They Never Get That Moment. Thats Why You Need The Brainrot To See Them As Romantic.

The Ascent gives us an example of what happens when they both take their act too far. I mean, who could forget “Fascist!” and “Fraud!” That is what odo thinks of quark’s performance and vice versa, but we don’t really hear them adress the fact that they *are* playing these roles to a ridiculous extent.

We also never get an example of what would happen if they dropped their act instead of over-performing it. or rather we don’t get to see both of them drop it.

And the reason why we never get that moment is because there’s this one key difference between Quark and Odo. 

Quark knows that he’s constantly repressing his true nature and his feelings for odo. We pretty much hear him say so in the iconic root beer scene in Way Of The Warrior. he knows that he’s not a good ferengi but he keeps up his act.

So quark is aware enough to feel that sweet sweet self loathing. But Odo isnt self loathing as much as he is just self sabotaging.

and this subtle difference between them is why, at the very end of the show, we get “That man loves me, can’t you see? It was written all over his back!”

this moment is quark dropping his act and asking odo to do the same. he wants to hear a genuine Goodbye from him because they have known each other for Decades and they are Friends. but odo is so unable to express the feelings he’s been repressing all these years. that he self sabotages again and just walks away.

even though this is like. very anticlimactic. considering I just spent 2000 words talking about how Odo and Quark are Most Certainly Gay For Each Other.

The fact that their ending is so Weird is the reason why quodo is so engaging and appealing to me? especially post-canon quodo.

like, the amount of “what if’s” this ship has are Astounding.

What if either of them had dropped their act a little sooner? What if they both did, for just a moment, and it was the straw that breaks the camels back?

What if Odo comes back after a few years? What if Quark comes to get him?

What if, in that moment in the finale where Quark drops his act, Odo had returned the gesture? What if Gag-Reel Quodo Kiss.gif Real?

with the depth that I read into their relationship, those what ifs are really fun to think about.

anyway its 1 am and i’m not an english major so literary analysis is not like, my strong suit. plus most of this was written in a late night screaming session with a friend who has the exact same opinions as me. i just think aliens hot and in love. thats all.