#rugal ds9

[vaguely-concerned]

the way garak looks at bashir as he puts all the clues together at the end of cardassians. the sheer 'look at that little twink go (affectionate, sexual overtones)' energy he manages to convey in the background there as bashir passionately does the presentation of their group project that garak did 80% of the actual work on. immaculate

[cucumbermoon]

Help, I just realized that when Rugal bit Garak's hand, it actually felt good because of his brain implant and he had to pretend it hurt. That scream of pain was totally fake.

[garakism]

imagine you're a Cardassian exiled to a space station where everyone hates you. the only Cardassian you've had any interaction with in who-knows-how-long is Gul Fucking Dukat. and you finally see another Cardassian and go to say hi - and the kid fucking full force bites you with loathing and contempt

[mercury-prince]

Im sad that Alexander Rozhenko and Rugal Pa'Dar never met bc they really need to paint each other's nails black and listen to MCR together. Obviously it wouldnt fix anything but imagine how happy they would be with naught but an ipod nano full of compressed Linkin Park CDs

[astrangergivingthestrangewelcome]

Even though I have always regarded 2×05 "Cardassians" as an absolute classic, I always thought Dukat's involvement was a little zany and contrived especially bc like. Dukat put Rugal there as a plant and yet he in the end had absolutely no control over Rugal resurfacing or not, but what I understand now is Dukat simply never anticipated that any Bajorans would adopt a Cardassian war orphan. He expected that Rugal would remain in the orphanage until such time as Dukat could use him. The thought that any Cardassian could acclimate into a Bajoran family, acclimate to Bajor (imperfectly, obviously. It's not like Rugal didn't face discrimination from other Bajorans because of the Occupation) never even crossed his mind.

[trip-tuckers-hyperspanner]

i have two major questions about the DS9 episode, “Cardassians,” and the first is, what happened to Rugal Pa’Dar later on and did he grow to love his bio dad? and second, how did Garak get into Julian's room???

[qyrhan]

I firmly believe Rugal should have stayed on Bajor with his parents.

He could’ve been a Major like Nerys, but Dukat ruined that, and everything else in the galaxy.

[funnywormz]

just watched ds9 s2ep5 "cardassians" and honestly rugal's story makes me so fucking sad 😭 he should've been allowed to stay on bajor.......... his adopted parents obviously loved and cared for him very much despite everything and he loved them too, and he didn't deserve to be used as a political pawn by gul dukat like......... he is a real person with real feelings................

also ik kotan pa'dar wasn't entirely in the wrong in this specific situation and i can understand his pain at losing his child, but at the same time rugal wasn't wrong abt him being complicit (and probably actively participating in) the slaughter of millions of bajorans........... kotan was part of the occupation on bajor and i think rugal is completely in the right to be mistrustful of him (and frankly most adult cardassians) for the role he played in it. all of the stuff he's been taught abt cardassians by the bajorans is true and i think it's perfectly understandable for him to hate other cardassians. sure it sucks that that's spilled across into self-hatred but i don't think his bajoran parents intended for him to hate himself, they just told him the truth abt what the cardassians did

it just sucks to think abt him being ripped away from the ppl he's come to know as his family to being stuck with a man he doesn't know and kinda hates. when proka migdal was in the hearing and rugal said his first memory was him teaching him how to swim, he looked so proud and happy and rugal seemed so happy to remember it too............ it feels like nobody rlly acknowledged rugal's feelings or needs in this situation and it sucks. like commander sisko ily but that was a shitty decision to have him go back to cardassia. if it was me i would've based my decision on what rugal wanted y’know...........

also while browsing the tags here i saw that there's a book abt rugal's time on cardassia and now i rlly wanna read it!!!! i need to know what happens to him

[isthereintruthnobeauty1968]

i wanna see stuff about ziyal among bajorans

[brydeswhale]

Rewatching “Cardassians” and TBH that weird little fandom trend of fics saying that Cardassian children on Bajor are being “horribly abused” is so hilarious in the face of this episode, because the only anger that Bajorans display regarding these kids is anger that they’re as much a victim of the Cardassian Occupation as any other Bajoran resident.

This episode LITERALLY says, “Cardassians deperson orphans and treat them as disposable to the point where the victims of their genocide take them in and care for them” and people still want to pretend the Bajorans are the bad guys in this episode.

Like, I dk how you can write something like that in the face of the ACTUAL episode without labelling your fic as an AU or Canon Divergent. There’s no evidence for it, other than an allegation by a dude who instantly exits stage left, pursued by a bear. There was no revenge. There was a bunch of kids in need of homes, and a bunch of people who wanted to give them homes.

Jomat Luson even comments on how most Cardassian orphans got to their Resettlement Centre. They were almost all found and brought to the centre by BAJORANS.

Also worth noting, Kotan Pa’dar, a noted beneficiary of this Bajoran compassion, is asked, at the end of the episode, to repay that kindness by helping the Cardassian orphans who DON’T have a politically influential biological father around to sweep them up, and he very much demurs. Because his son is his son. These other orphans are as much people to him as were the Bajorans he was helping to genocide.

[ichayalovesyou]

You ever think about Rugal?

You ever think about the little boy from “Cardassians”? And how he probably found out the guy that sent him to his Cardassian biological father was not-so-low-key Bajoran Moses? Do you ever think about how that probably fucked with his head a little bit?

Do you ever think about how that kid is probably in his mid to late 20s now (as in by the 2380s) trying to figure out who in the hell he is? Because at this point neither his Cardassian biological family or Bajoran foster family have custody of him and it’s probably really hard to stay in touch with both of them without pissing one or the other off? Do you think he struggles to reconcile with that even (heck, especially) as an adult?

Do you think that maybe this kid feels like he’s on a mission from the Prophets because he feels like a Bajoran born in a Cardassian body in order to walk both paths? Maybe?

You ever think that maybe he’d join Starfleet to follow The Emissary’s footsteps in order to try and figure himself out as an adult?

Do you ever think about that?

I’m thinking about that.

[emtropi]

the class (and the obsidian order agent inside the walls) when the teacher mentions the occupation and the kid that got raised by Bajorans raises his hand

[midshipmank]

Y’all I just finished The Never-Ending Sacrifice by Una McCormack, and it was actually incredible?! Required reading for DS9 fans tbh. I wish I could have included it in my thesis because it does such a wonderful job at thinking about empire through science fiction. However, it is not that g-dawful Cardassian epic—it’s about what happens to Proka Rugal after he gets sent to Cardassia with his biological father. It was fantastic. I loved it so much.

[mercury-prince]

this is a Rugal (of Neverending Sacrifice fame) appreciation post i guess. the guls who get it get it 💅

[a-stitch-in-time-and-space]

kira's ongoing narrative in relation to cardassia and post-genocide complication of easy stories -- not, of course, that it was not genocide, but that some people she thought of as enemies were allies, and many people who were a part of the oppressing forces, were later, in turn, the victims of a mass attempted-genocide

and the idea that she, personally, cannot hate every individual cardassian, because she genuinely wants to build and heal and what that looks like, versus many (understandably) traumatised bajorans who are still and will always be at war

it's such a complicated, ongoing, twisty-turny storyline that returns again and again, with dukat, with garak, with ghemor, with damar, with ziyal, with rugal (although he and kira don't really interact, but in terms of the wider complexity of bajoran-cardassian interactions), with marritza (I've forgotten characters I know it -- there's natima as well, although I don't think she and kira interact?)

and then her ongoing narrative related to healing vs punishment vs power with -- yes li nalas and bareil, with winn and opaka (battle lines really is the first realisation I think of kira's needs and ongoing journey), with the people she was in the resistance with, some of whom are trying to create new lives some of whom cannot, ziyal again...

i also wonder about a stitch in time, and the knowledge that cardassia's rich, spiritual life was all but stamped out by a military dictatorship, and how kira would feel about this/whether she would feel a connection with the underground religious space that survived despite it

i think the reason it (mostly, let's not go into the storyline with her mother) works is that it's something her narrative returns to over and over, like a worried tooth, not necessarily in a single straight line, but via individual stories from many directions, with this understanding that she's at the centre of this massive change and she may have to take on a leadership position in order to facilitate and hold together bajoran ideals and culture and history and pain and hope through that, and bit by bit she grows into that role. and in some ways it doesn't come across as conscious, but it builds up slowly like drops accumulating, until there's a picture there

it's so so good, and imo the most complete/successful storyline given to a character in ds9 (I think nog-and-rom as a somewhat more intimate ongoing push-and-pull storyline, and also benjamin sisko on a macro spiritual level have a similar kind of thorough exploration, if different in focus, and also - to an extent - odo). my one big thing with kira's narrative is consistently how they handled ziyal, that is my personal biggest detractor. shocking because -- perhaps with benefit of hindsight, perhaps with a little less sexism idk -- there were so many ways they could have gone with ziyal, it seemed obvious while i was watching, and yet