#the voices of a distant star

[funnywormz]

ik this is only bashir's made up mind garak but........ this was extremely flirty and i think it's funny that bashir's mental image of garak involves him being 1) good at tennis 2) flirty as fuck and 3) evil

[garaks-padded-bra]

Made a gif, hope you appreciate

I really enjoy how Julians mental image of garak behaves in this episode

Some attributes of Mind Garak i enjoy:

- slams people into walls (?)

- enjoys tennis

- can pick up a ball with his foot and the racket like Rafael Nadal

- knows the happy birthday song

- not only knows the birthday song but is the kind of guy to pepper an ‘AND MANY MOOORE” onto the end of it

- calls him by his first name (real garak doesnt do this once if i remember correctly)

- back to the happy birthday song thing - i cannot stress how much this thing cant sing

- it was horrendous

[vaguely-concerned]

UNHINGED DISTANT VOICES THOUGHTS (or: now we don't have time to unpack all of that julian but --)

this ep has such a banger concept (several banger concepts that should have had an ep all to themselves, really), even if its overall implementation is pretty mid. the idea that julian seems to readily believe that the most central voices inside him are aggression, fear/suspicion, doubt, confidence/sense of adventure, professionalism... and garak, being surprisingly, seductively good at tennis and taking care of him :}

in a doylist perspective I don't think this is well-crafted enough to read into it too deeply before it starts to fall gently apart, but through a watsonian lens and my fannish heart this is fucking fascinating fdsjka. where. where are all the positive feelings and sides of you that aren't about bickering with garak julian. are you okay julian. I like that since the augment storyline hadn't been conceived of yet at this point, you could look back and justify Julian's surge of confidence at the end as him realizing the lethean hasn't been able to get that deep in his mind to find what that whole mess must look like in his brain. 'you don't understand me half as well as you think you do' gains such depth, basically accidentally

'I'm a part of you, remember? I know what you know. Well... maybe a little more.'

'Still the man of mystery?'

'Oh, you wouldn't have me any other way.'

what. the FUCK fhdskjha. what's more gay, the lethean having picked through bashir's brains for this characterization of garak and their relationship (that Bashir easily buys and depends on through the ep), or him seeing half a minute max of julian and garak having lunch and uh. drawing his own conclusions, apparently. wild stuff)

Isn't this also the first time we see Julian actually play tennis with someone? All the other times it's been racquetball, right? Well well. Interesting. is all I'll say.

avery brooks does SUCH a good job changing his voice in this to match julian's doctor voice, I almost jumped in surprise when he was talking b/c that certainly isn't sisko's voice coming out of sisko's mouth

garak alternatingly going 'now -- what do you want me to do?' in a very... willing directable sort of way and telling julian that he's a good boy doing good and being so supportive and attentive and that's how the lethean tries to keep julian's shields down the longest. many thoughts. few of them PG.

JULIAN'S REASONING THAT THIS REALLY ISN'T GARAK -- NOT EVEN HIS MIND'S VERSION OF GARAK -- IS THAT THIS GARAK ISN'T COMPETENT ENOUGH FSDKJFHKSDJ. and he sounds so petulant about it too. 'the real garak would have this fixed for me a long time ago if I just batted my eyelashes and told him I thought cylon pareg's body of work was very interesting and layered :'( I miss him'

jazdia julian BROtp got me crying in quark's tonight, this was such a good direction to take that relationship. I know they kind of fuck it up again in s7 but y'know I'll take the good stuff while it's here haha

julian makes for such an amazing crotchety old man im love him

julian has a near-lethal stress dream about turning 30 and being bisexual. it's weird but very entertaining, and garak is there

[blazingblorbos]

I was busy within the hour this released. but I'm here now and. ... oh boy just bear with me

I'm gonna just... copy/paste my initial thoughts as I watched this, here, for the next couple lines:

Final Results:

Now listen to me, I need to scream into the void all my newfound realizations and woes but it's 1:30 in the morning and I need to wake up early the next day. So understand that I'm making this as short as gayly possible (it may not be short at all).

Aside from all the lesbian saxophone that my eyes just witnessed, which is a scream that will never make contact with any airwaves - digital or otherwise - ... The last two minutes of that trailer were entirely unexpected.

Now don't get me fucking wrong I wasn't NOT paying attention to the section of the teaser during the livestream that showed us a glimpse of Black Swan's fear and surprise drowning in that fiery background. but. ... bro— FUCKING COME ONNNN MAN!!

HOW FAST THE SCENE FLIPPED, HOW QUICKLY- WHATEVER THAT THING (IT DEFINITELY WASN'T THE ACHERON WE KNOW) WAS TOOK THE LEAD and LITERALLY tossed Black Swan around like a helpless bird. a PREDATOR chasing their PREY

AND THE PREY IS BLACK FUCKING SWAN???? THE FUCKING MEMOKEEPER FROM THE GARDEN OF RECOLLECTION?? THE MYSTERIOUS AND ELEGANT SOOTHSAYER???

To see Black Swan of ALL characters in this game so far be filled with such visceral fear and trepidation, to be tossed around at the MERCY of something that could have so EASILY killed her just like. t h a t. is beyond insane.

I expected it to be more of a "What terrible horrors have you commited?" 'Wow! Horrors that even Black Swan thinks is terrible, Acheron is capable of s-' no she literally almost killed her. She's not a human by the way. Black Swan is not a human being anymore she is like. coNdEnseD mEmORy AND SHE LITERALLY ALMOST DIED. WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT???

also, we love Allegra Clark in this house this woman is hilarious

[filmjunky-99]

s t a r t r e k d e e p s p a c e n i n e created by rick berman, michael piller Garak [distant voices, s3ep18]

[youngpettyqueen]

me when Voyager revealed Janeway used to play tennis: haha wouldnt it be funny if Janeway and Julian knew each other

me after watching Coda, in which Janeway is near death and in a coma with an entity in her head taking the guise of a loved one that's trying to convince her to let herself die:

[hawkp]

his tennis balls :(

[writergeekrhw]

A small detail I've always wondered about is why the rest of the senior crew represents different parts of Bashir's personality in "Distant Voices".

I think I'm just missing something, but why is it that they represent parts of his personality that don't align/somewhat contradict their own? (i.e. Dax's aggression and O'Brien's pessimism are uncharacteristic, even though Sisko's professionalism is similar to his own.)

Are the inconsistencies meant just to be a sign that the whole ordeal is a hallucination? Or is there something significant about Julian's perception of them to be found in the form they take inside his head?

I know this is kind of a trivial question, sorry if it doesn't really have much of an answer!!

Honestly, it's been so long, I don't really remember the logic. Best guess, they don't match up completely, but, as you suggested, there's some internal dream logic to it, in that Bashir perceives those traits as mapping to those people. He sees O'Brien as pessimistic (which O'Brien can be). He perceives Dax as aggressive (which she can be), etc.

Sorry I can't give you a better answer, but it's been a while. Plus, Joe Menosky wrote the story, and the simple truth might be that Ira and I stuck to his original structure and character mapping.

[breadhalfburnt]

good morning everyone

there is a cat outside so now i can’t sleep

what are fun, relatively quiet activities to enjoy on this god awful occasion?

[inthedeepeclipse]

Found this on Arashi’s wiki page! Like YES this is exactly what is happening!!! She’s making her voice sound more airy and its working and its AMAZING!!!

[guideaus]

my experience with makoto shinkai/comix wave movies is funny, bc i happened to start watching the worst movies they had to offer, and i had no clue what the hell everyone else was going on about with praising these movies until i finally was ok with kimi no na wa

[osg-pod]

On the Shoulders of Giants, a mech podcast, is feeling wintery as we cruise through January and into February with more episodes. On January 23rd we'll be releasing an episode on popular tabletop roleplaying game Armour Astir: Advent, which will include a brief interview with the game's designer, Briar Sovereign! Next up we're triumphantly returning to live action movies with 1990's Robot Jox! Then catch us late in February making a lot of hay out of a little mech short with 2002's Voices of a Distant Star.

We also have a trailer video now! Check it out and share it around!

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere you get your podcasts!

For more information and all of the images discussed on the show, check out our show website. And don't forget to follow here on Tumblr for updates and mech-focused shitposting.

[sapphixxx]

well. 5 Centimeters per Second still makes me cry my eyes out.

[sevencolouredworld]

Hoshi no Koe/Voices of a Distant Star has been re-published in German on November 7th 2023! You can buy it here.

Originally published in German back in 2008 (in Japanese 2004 and in English 2006) I am now hoping this will lead to more of her works being published in German so I can read them.

If you want a sneak peek you can read the first 20 pages or so in English here: https://viewer-trial.bookwalker.jp/03/15/viewer.html?cid=3e9a5615-c7dd-42d1-a888-1eb26c856771&cty=1